Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 3/25/24: Putin Blames Ukraine For Moscow Attack, ISIS Claims Responsibility, Trump Truth Social Financial Bailout, NBC Hosts Furious Over Ronna McDaniel hire, Alex Jones Flips On Israel After Civilian Strike, Israel Expands Settlements, GOP Resignation Exposes Revolving Door, Apple Hit With Lawsuit

Episode Date: March 25, 2024

Krystal and Saagar discuss Putin blaming Ukraine for the Moscow attack, Trump Truth Social financial bailout, NBC hosts furious after Ronna McDaniel hire, Israel drone strike on civilians, Alex Jones flips on Israel, Yoav Gallant trip to US, Israel ramps up settlements, GOP rep resignation exposes revolving door, Apple hit with antitrust lawsuit.   To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/ Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Hey, guys. Ready or not, 2024 is here, and we here at Breaking Points are already thinking of ways we can up our game for this critical election. 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 that. Let's get to the show. Good morning, everybody. Happy Monday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed, we do. A lot of things that are breaking this morning. So as

you guys probably already know, a horrific terror attack unfolded in Moscow. We've got the very latest about who may be behind it and what is going to happen next. It's also another big week for Trump with regard to his legal and personal financial situation. So it looks like today he's going to be getting a court date. He also may be due for a big payday with regard to Truth Social, potentially could bail him out of some of his other issues. So we'll take a look at that. Big backlash at NBC after hiring former RNC chair Ronna McDaniel. Some very interesting commentary from Chuck Todd and others.

We will break down what we think about all of that. A horrific Israeli drone attack caught on video on unarmed civilians that has led even Alex Jones now to call this a genocide along with a number of other atrocities. We had to sort of like pick the worst ones to tell you about today because there are so many unfolding. We also have a lot of big political news with regard to Israel. Their defense minister is coming to town this week. And guess what he's bringing with him? A long wish list of weapons that he would like to be expedited. So a lot going on there. Sagar's going to take a look at yet another GOP retirement and what is happening with all of that. And Matt Stoller is going to join us look at yet another GOP retirement and what is happening with all of that.

And Matt Stoller is going to join us in the studio to talk through this new Apple antitrust suit, which is very interesting, of course. You could not have a better expert to break all of that down for us than Stoller. Justice for green text bubbles is the TLDR of the segment. Before we get to that, thank you to everybody who's been signing up as we've been continuing to tease. In the next month or so, we are going to have a major upgrade to our premium service. You're going to get a lot of extra content, some other things people have been asking for, as well as a major upgrade in the overall user experience. We would ask, especially if you want to get in on that and you want to see it from the day one, you're going to be the first to hear about it. You can sign up at breakingpoints.com, become a premium member

today, and we have that discount that continues. So go ahead and sign up, take advantage, and you will be the very first to know and the very first to experience a very new set of features, which I think you guys are really going to like. So let's go ahead and start with Moscow. I guess it's a hard pivot, but a horrific attack that occurred over the weekend in Moscow. Over 137 now dead, according to the Kremlin. We have some video that we can play here. Just a warning, some of it may be disturbing. As you can see, this happened in the Circus City Hall. There was a concert venue, and there were roving gunmen that were going through, reminiscent of the Mumbai and the Kenya attacks. People coming in and out, and then also just fleeing in absolute chaos inside of the

venue. Reportedly, many of the deaths actually a result of smoke inhalation. Some of the venue. Reportedly, many of the deaths actually result of smoke inhalation. Some of the video that you're seeing in front of you was released by Amok News. For those of you who have been on the internet for a while, that will be familiar. It is the quote-unquote official video service of ISIS, the propaganda. And this is the burning actually that occurred afterwards, Crystal. So there's been a lot of speculation around who perpetrated these attacks. ISIS-Khorasan, ISIS-K, which is based in the tribal regions of Afghanistan and of Pakistan, have claimed responsibility for the incident as well as releasing that body cam footage. President Putin also making a response there. However, tying perhaps, according to him,

some of this to the regime in Ukraine. Let's play some of the video here. However, tying perhaps, according to him, some of this to the regime in Ukraine. Let's play some of the video here. He says, quote, they tried to hide and they were moving in the direction of Ukraine. There, according to the preliminary data, they had a crossing of the border that was prepared from the Ukrainian side. But Vladimir Zelensky has now denied that Ukraine had nothing to do with the attack. This was backed up by the White House spokesperson, John Kirby. Let's take a listen to what he had to say. You might have also seen, hopefully you saw our State Department or embassy there, put out a notice to all Americans in Moscow to avoid any large gathering, concerts,

obviously shopping malls, anything like that, just for their own safety. They should stay put where they are and stay plugged into the State Department for any additional updates and information. Do you have any sense whether this could be linked at all to the conflict in Ukraine? There is no indication at this time that Ukraine or Ukrainians were involved in the shooting. But again, this just broke. We're taking a look at it, but I would disabuse you at this early hour of any connection to Ukraine. And Crystal, this comes amidst the news, if we could put here up on the screen, that allegedly the United States actually warned both its own citizens and Moscow that an extremist attack had, quote, imminent plans to target large gatherings. This was issued on March 7th, a couple of weeks before the attack. So obviously the timing did not exactly match,

but allegedly from behind the scenes, the US government had shared some information here with the Russian authorities, quote, in accordance with its longstanding duty to warn policy. We're not exactly sure whether Moscow dismissed the warnings or not. According to Western officials, they did. Obviously the attack was perpetrated, but there's still some major questions here surrounding the attack. But nonetheless, it is horrific. You know, you have over 100 people now have lost their lives. Yeah, that's exactly right. And many more who were injured. I mean, listen, I don't know who was behind the attack. You might look at it and say, listen, ISIS says they did it. They released body cam footage. The U.S. is saying ISIS did it and that they had,

you know, they had this intelligence in advance that they were warning. The embassy put out a warning to our own citizens and they also reportedly warned the Russian government as well. But it's very hard to know what to believe in this day and age. So I think what perhaps matters more in terms of what happens next is what the Russian people believe happened and then what that leads to in terms of Putin's response. And it's a very dangerous situation. I mean, first and foremost, the carnage is horrific and heartbreaking. Second of all, what is the response? Because we've seen the way that our country, we've seen the way that Israel can dramatically overreact to a terror

attack in a way that actually brings more harm, not only to the world, but to their own citizens. So, you know, this is something we've been talking about for a long time with regard to the Ukraine war is just what a dangerous situation it was, what type of escalation it could lead to. You're hearing very, I would say, like almost apocalyptic rhetoric, not just from Putin, but also from Medvedev in particular, who is known for using sort of very over the top, I guess you would say, rhetoric, but threatening direct retribution. So that's one big question is what happens from here. And I don't think any of us can really speculate. You know, the other thing, Sagar, that I've been thinking about, there was actually a very thought-provoking column in Haaretz about the way that watching

these horrors unfold in Israel has cheapened all of human life. And I think you kind of see it in this instance because there is no taking away from the utter horror when you have innocent people who are there just attending a concert, being slaughtered outright, being trapped in a burning building, etc. And yet, when you look at it, you're like, well, that's the number of people who are killed in Gaza every day in a smaller population. And it does show you the way that, you know, these horrors that are being perpetrated, the impact of them and the psychological impact of them does not just stay in Gaza, does not just stay with

regards to Israel and Palestine. That was something I was reflecting on here as well. And then the last thing that I think we can say with absolute certainty is that this is a tremendous failure from Putin. I mean, all indications are he did have some sort of warning and obviously, you know, he was unable to protect his own citizens. In terms of the response after the fact, as Sagar mentioned, reports are that a lot of the people who perished, it was actually not from gunfire. It was from fire and smoke inhalation because they had a very difficult time finding the exits and there weren't people on site to assist in the immediate response. And so because this is such a really dramatic security

failure and humiliation for him, that also leads to increased concerns about what the response may be so that he can rescue himself from his own humiliation. By the way, noteworthy as well in terms of the political timing, this happened just days after he was, quote unquote, reelected. So certainly his political position is secure. But again, there are some echoes here of Bibi Netanyahu, who October 7th, obviously it's on Hamas, the atrocities they committed. But Bibi's whole thing was,

hey, I'm going to keep you safe, this kind of strongman figure. There were dramatic security failures. It also echoes 9-11, same thing, warnings intel and completely ignored and disregarded by the Bush administration, leaving our own citizens vulnerable. Yeah. So to get to that, so one of the attackers, there've been four actually attackers who have been charged and many of their interrogation videos have been released by the Russians. So we have some video here, just we've kept out anything that's too disturbing, but we're going to show you some of his own words. Allegedly, again, this is completely released by the Kremlin official state sanctioned propaganda, but here's what they've put out. So let's go ahead and put it up there on the screen. They ask one of these gunmen,

where did you get the guns? They said they delivered them themselves. He says, I don't know who delivered them. It was on Telegram. There was no first name, no last name, nothing. How did they find you? Did you look for them or did they find you? He says, no, they wrote to me. Why exactly did they write to you? He says, I don't know. I listened to the lessons there. He's referring to probably ISIS propaganda videos. He says, how come you were just asked to kill people for no reason? No one is just asked to kill people. He says, no, I took a class that was on Telegram. He continues kind of expounding a little bit there. He says, what is on Telegram? He says, the class. I listened to a class. I listened to a preacher. And as he continues, he is going to

describe not only the preacher that he was kind of connected with, his quote-unquote assistant, then texted him. He's refusing to give names. He claims that there was no first name, no last name, that he was sent in connection with all of these, and that about a month ago, that is whenever he was connected to these attackers. He also claimed, Crystal, that he had been given some one million rubles and that he had flown to Moscow from Turkey on March 4th,

which coincides March 7th, right around the time that the US authorities had delivered that warning, allegedly, again, to the Russians. Now, I wanna say, there are some weird inconsistencies that are happening here. First and foremost is that a number of the gunmen were captured alive. In almost every single one of these previous ISIS attacks, they fight to the death and they're either killed by security

forces or they blow themselves up. Many of the guys, for example, in the Paris attack on the Bataclan and others were wired with suicide vests or either to perish. Same in Mumbai. If we think back to the Mumbai attacks, I think believe all but one of the gunmen actually died. And the only reason that one of them was even captured alive is because he was wounded by the Indian security forces. I believe the same is same when we think about the Mali attack and we also think about Kenya. So all of these, like, gunmen, AK-47-style attacks are that they just flood the zone and they basically just expect to perish. The other thing that kind of confused me, and this has been also noted by some terrorist analysts, is he said he was promised, for example, a million rubles. It's very unusual to be, you know,

clinical, like, offered monetary recipient in exchange for this, again, because they expect you to perish. Again, I don't really know much about these individuals. Their names that have been released seem to indicate that they are from the caucus regions. So all of their last names are like, all of their last names indicate at least that they are from some of those regions previously in Central Asia, which I know for certain has long had an ISIS presence. A lot of the guys who were in Syria were of Chechnyan, Dagestani, or whatever descent. And it's not like it hasn't been a hotbed of Islamic terrorism, but I did want to note, you know, it is very unusual to capture a number of the gunmen alive and for them not to fight to

the death. I believe the individuals that they captured are Tajik. Yeah. There's pieces of the ISIS explanation that are confusing. Right. I mean, first of all, if you take this individual at his word, like it just seems insane. Well, also he's obviously under duress. Clearly. Yeah. And this was another thing that Yegor was noting to me, actually, he found it very noteworthy that there were actual videos and images put out of the torture that was perpetrated against these individuals. He said that's different from Russian history. He thinks that is part of the Putin response is like, let me put out these

images basically of revenge to try to salvage myself from my own humiliation and my own failure here. So in terms of the ISIS piece, first of all, like I was saying, this story seems crazy, right? You are on Telegram listening to some ISIS propaganda preacher, and someone who you don't even know is like, hey, I'll give you half a million dollars if you go shoot up this concert hall, and then you just do it? Like, maybe. But, and the other thing to note about ISIS-K in particular is they seem to have a habit recently of really being into striking America's adversaries from Iran, Pakistan, and now Russia. So that's a little eyebrow raising. On the other hand, you know, like I said, they claimed credit. The U.S. is at least claiming they had intel supporting this. They put out the body cam footage, etc.

And the other explanations possible, you know, theories out there don't entirely make sense or add up either. So I don't know. Like I said, I think maybe the most important thing is how Russians feel about how this happened, how Putin is explaining it, whether people are buying this or not. You know. He's floating that Ukrainians had something to do with it. I don't know that there's any evidence to actually back that up. But if the Russian people are persuaded that that is the case, that has geopolitical ramifications, whether it is actually true or not. Yeah. So actually, I have here in front of me a direct translation of the weekly news show in Moscow that aired last night, Sunday night.

They say that the United States and Europe understand that any connection between Ukraine and the attack on this hall would be suicidal for Kiev and the entire anti-Russian alliance. So Russian media, both the government and media organizations of the government, friendly to Putin, have been pushing over the last 24 to 48 hours a Ukrainian connection. They're pushing back hard on any ISIS explanation. As you said, I mean, it very well may be ISIS, even, you know, whenever we do a full investigation into the attack, but they have a direct incentive to say that it's not because that would mean absolve Putin of not, you know, hearing any warning. So look, it's not like there's

any exactly trustworthy actors between ISIS, the U.S. government, and the Russian government here. It is only— Or Zelensky, yeah. Or Zelensky, right. We should point out, I mean, there is definitely a beef that ISIS has with Russia. I mean, especially with regard to Syria in particular. So it's not like it would be totally random and, you know, oh, why do they have an issue with them? So there is a logic to that. But there are some other pieces here that, like I said, they're just strange.

That doesn't mean they're not true, but there are eyebrow-raising and they are strange. There's a logic to all the hypotheses that are involved. Like the ISIS theory obviously makes sense. They have longstanding beef with the Russians. The Russians have been the major backer of Bashar al-Assad. And they killed a lot of people in ISIS in Syria as a result of that. The other one, I mean, this is all goes back to the conspiracy theory around the 1999 apartment bombings, which Putin used as a pretext to start the Chechnyan war, given the fact that they're immediately blaming the Ukrainians. I mean,

that one certainly seems plausible. I'm not saying it is the only explanation, which many, you know, anti-Putin people said, but it's relatively plausible. Then the other one is that, you know, this is some fusion or something of the two. It could be just a Tajik, it could be, you know, localized Tajik militant group that somehow was also funded by ISIS, may not be technically ISIS itself. So there's a lot of stuff, you know, that could be happening. But as you said, the real, regardless of whatever it actually was, how Russians, the Russian government and them whatever it actually was, how Russians, the Russian government, and them use it as a response and how they respond to that, that will be the major, major question. Especially now that they've made a habit

of publishing some of these interrogation videos, if let's say they torture the hell out of these guys and get them to say that it's Ukraine or something on camera, I mean, you can already imagine how that would be used on their behalf. So we'll continue to watch it very, very closely. And it very much could be a major flashpoint here going forward. Trump appears to have found himself in a major financial windfall in one of the most hilarious circumstances of all time. Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. It appears that Donald Trump is about to, quote, make a new fortune with the public listing of Truth Social. According to the financial documents that are coming forward in the filing, Trump's investment in Truth Social, which is held by SPAC, is worth roughly $3 billion. This is after investors in the SPAC have now approved a plan to

take Truth Social public, putting him, quote, one step closer to the $3 billion windfall that could end a financial squeeze that is weighing on his presidential run. Truth Social, quote, with few users and little revenue, is expected to start trading on the stock market next week at a staggering valuation of $5 billion. Donald Trump himself owns 60% of that, and the stock ticker will be called DJT. The vote, it comes, quote, after two and a half years to take true social public. That included charges of insider trading, a fine to settle an SEC investigation, all that has kept Trump on the platform. What they say is that this could be the financial windfall crystal that he needs, which is very likely why he was pushing for this public, because he's got the $450 million judgment against him that remains there. And now he's got a stake that even though he's in a lock up period, he could conceivably get a loan or something like that against his valuation.

That is if the stock actually holds at the value that they do want to put forward. Should note that the amount of money they make is not a lot. I'll just say that. And they actually, they lose money in terms of profitability. In revenue, they make a few million dollars a year. In terms of profit, they are losing tens of millions of dollars a year. So the idea that Truth Social is actually worth $5.5 billion is ridiculous, right? But this is, it's actually a meme stock phenomenon. People who are supporters of Donald Trump, like they're really into it. And so they've bid up the price and he's trying to cash in on this popularity and the fact

that this stock, I mean, listen, the economy and the stock market are fake anyway, but they have wildly inflated the valuation of Trudeau. There's no, in no logical way is it possible that this is worth $1 billion or even like $1 million, given the fact that it is losing money consistently with no hope of sort of turning things around. So nevertheless, this could serve to benefit Trump. But, but there are some big caveats here. First of all, he is subject to a lockup agreement, which would ordinarily require him to hold

on to that stock, I believe, for six months before he could sell it. So that's number one. Now, apparently, there are some sort of like deals that could be struck and legal ways that he could get out of that requirement and be able to sell off some stock. But when you have that large of a stockholder and you have a meme stock that's sort of artificially inflated, him selling significantly, it's probably going to trigger a lot of other people to sell significant quantities and it could lead to a massive crash, wherein obviously your $3.5 million stake or whatever is now worth much, much, much, much less than $3.5 million. So it's not a sure thing that this is going to rescue him from his

financial difficulties. And we've discussed before, obviously, what the immediate financial difficulties are, which is primarily that he owes half a billion dollars. That deadline for that bond payment is today. And as we're about to discuss, Letitia James has already moved to begin the process to seize some of his New York assets in Westchester County in particular in order to make good on that payment. He and his legal team have apparently gone to 30 different insurers and they all said no effectively because you don't have enough cash and enough collateral to back it and they don't really count real estate holdings. So is this going to rescue him in the near term?

Don't know, but there are some challenges and some caveats with regard to this potential new fortune that he is coming into here. As you said, today is actually a pretty critical day for Trump. Let's put it up there on the screen. They say that he's, quote, is expected to spend this morning, actually, while we're taping, in the courtroom of the New York judge who will then soon preside, presumably, over his criminal trial, quote, and ultimately possibly throw him behind bars. That is not even the legal predicament that actually worries Trump most this day. The hearing in which is the so-called, you know, the cover-up of the Stormy Daniels thing is coming at the exact same time that he's got to fend off the $454 million judgment against him. The New York attorney general, as I said, may begin collecting

as soon as Monday. Quote, to avoid a mortal threat to the Trump organization, Trump then must persuade another company to post the bond on his behalf, promising it will then cover the judgment if he loses a pending appeal and fails to pay. Trump's lawyers said that securing the bond would be a, quote, practical impossibility because he would need to pledge some $550 million in cash and liquid investment as collateral on the bond, an admission that laid bare the former president's cash crunch. Under the, quote, unless he strikes, quote, an 11th hour deal, the New York state can then freeze his bank accounts and begin the long and complicated process of, quote, seizing some of his properties. All of these are the, quote, the two twin threats that crystallize two of Trump's

greatest and longest held fears, an actual criminal conviction, and a public perception that he does not have as much cash as he claims. On the cash front, I'm not defending him, but there's almost nobody who's worth billions of dollars. He's got $500 million in liquid assets. And a astonishing amount of money. Okay, I don't know much about the high-end financial system. It does seem a bit ridiculous to me that you have to have liquid investments worth the amount of the bond that you're supposed to pay.

Because, okay, again, once again, only from reading, but don't people often put up like their house or their mortgage or something in a bail bond type situation? So why can't you use then the collateral of your real estate holdings, even in the state of New York, which presumably are going to be taken and held anyway? I guess maybe it's more of a higher risk profile. Again, I don't understand bond law or bond financing, but it does seem crazy because if you had the liquid cash, then why wouldn't you just pay the bond instead of having a bond there anyway and incur some of the interest? I don't really understand. Yeah, I don't either. I mean, the one thing I read said that they don't even like to do a bond of this size even is a problem.

So they were willing to go as high as a hundred million dollars, but half a billion was like, I don't know about that. So I don't know. But apparently for whatever reasons, they are not feeling super comfy fronting the cash for this bond. So it is a genuine question mark what's going to happen in court today and what moves Letitia James is going to make next. Like I said, she started the process in Westchester County, one of his golf courses there, to potentially seize that, potentially fire sale it. So I don't know. New York Post had a report last week, for what it's worth, that Trump is thinking that maybe he's just not going to really take any action to try to solve this problem,

put the ball in her court, and try to make as much political hay out of it as he can, with the hopes that in the future, because this is a complicated process, it would take a while to seize assets. Of course, it would take even longer to fire sale the assets, et cetera. He's hoping that the judgment is sort of knocked down before that happens and he can then reclaim these properties. But who knows? Who knows how this will end? Nobody has any idea. Let's go put this up there on the screen as well from the AP. This is probably actually the most important part is that Trump has now reached a new joint fundraising agreement with the RNC, which will direct donations to his campaign and a political action committee that pays the former president's legal bills before the RNC gets a cut at all. Quote, the unorthodox diversion of Save America PAC makes it likely that Republican donors would see their money go to Trump's lawyers

who have now received $76 million over the last two years to defend him against four felony indictments and multiple civil cases. Some Republicans are already troubled that his takeover of the RNC would shortchange the cash-strapped party. Trump has already began inviting high-dollar donors to Palm Beach for multiple fundraisers against Joe Biden. And quote, the invitation's fine print says that the donation to the Trump 47 committee will first be used to give the maximum amount allowed under federal law to the Trump campaign. Anything then left over will go towards a maximum contribution to Save America Pact. Anything then left over from that will go to the RNC and only

after the state political parties. Noteworthy, though, that the first three out of the four that are listed there in the joint fundings agreement will all go towards paying Trump's legal bills first before any sort of campaign apparatus. And I mean, Crystal, it doesn't take a genius to say this is probably bad for the RNC. But in some ways, I almost just appreciate the brazenness of this because the RNC is Trump. Trump is the Republican Party. So, you know, everything is enshrined totally within him. Even the campaign is more about him than it is about anything. So, yeah, if you're donating to the campaign or whatever, you're donating to Donald Trump's, you know, personal interests.

That's basically just the way it's been the entire time. So, if anything, this is actually very ideological consistent with the Trump kind of takeover of the party, I would say. And I don't know, but I would suspect that a good number of the people who are giving money to Trump don't really have a problem with that because I think they see part of this campaign as this like, you know, a crusade for him personally and to get him out of his legal travails, et cetera. So, you know, they deserve transparency around what is going on here. But it is an astonishing situation where so many of the millions that are being raised are going directly to his personal benefit to try to, you know, get him out of this legal jeopardy that he's in. And his fundraising hasn't been going particularly well. I just pulled this up. These

numbers actually just came out. So federal campaign finance filings that were released last week showed Trump's political operation at a serious disadvantage, struggling to catch up to Biden. This is from ABC News and the Democratic Party. Biden and the Dems raised $53 million last month, ended February with $155 million cash on hand. Trump's campaign and his Save America political Action Committee, two key groups in his political operation, reported raising a combined 15.9 million in February, ended the month with more than 37 million on hand. So a severe disparity between the Trump operation and between the Democratic Party and Joe Biden's operation. And then when you add to that the fact that they have to shoulder the burden, not just of running a campaign, but also of paying these massive legal bills on behalf of

Donald Trump, yeah, it puts him at a real cash disadvantage. Now, how much does that matter? Obviously, money wasn't enough to save Hillary Clinton in 2016, even though she dramatically out-fundraised Donald Trump. So you don't want to read too much into it. But certainly, if you're trying to campaign, you're trying to get the word out, you're trying to pay staff, you're trying to put your message out there in terms of ad dollars, which is what a lot of this money goes to. And it's a problem for you if you don't have a lot in the bank bottom line. Absolutely. Let's put the last element up there, please, on the screen. This was also very important. Plans were actually recently scrapped for that Trump rally in Arizona.

Two sources cited their desire to save money to attend a more politically advantageous event in Ohio last weekend. But that means that Trump's last trip to Arizona remains October 9, 2022. Pretty important because it didn't exactly go so well for him last time on October 9 of 2022 whenever he was stumping for Kerry Lake. Presumably, he will return to the state to stump for Kerry Lake again. The question, though, remains, is this actually going to hinder the campaign? And I don't think we can't. It's complicated. I mean, to a certain extent, I do think it is overblown, some of this investment in get-out-the-vote technology and all this other stuff.

A lot of it comes down to whether people are even interested in voting or not, which is mostly derivative of the national news environment. We can't say it hurts either, right? To have this major investment in door knocking and in the software and in the actual machinery of getting people out there. But Trump has so much enthusiasm that it's not necessarily that he needs money or not. I mean, if money really mattered, then Hillary would have beat Trump easily back in 2016. My theory when it comes to money and how much it matters in terms of any sort of these two individuals and who in America doesn't know, like when the I do think that the higher you go up the, you know, the sort of food chain with regard to political campaigns, the less impactful it is because earned media and the national political climate just becomes so incredibly important. Now, there are certain things like, for example, there's been this whole question of how the Trump campaign is going to deal with mail in voting this time around. Are they going to fully embrace it? Are they going to fully run that mail-in voting turnout campaign? If he had done

that last time around, he may well be president right now. So he seems to still personally be kind of reluctant about it, but the people around him seem to have realized that it was a mistake to forego pushing mail-in balloting. So having that operation fully funded, that is the sort of thing that can make a difference on the margins. And look, we're talking about an election that is probably going to come down to a very narrow margin. So in that way, it is impactful. There's also something to say about the fact that previously Trump was a real fundraising juggernaut when it came to the grassroots. And there actually has been a bipartisan phenomenon recently of grassroots fundraising really sort of drying up.

I think there's just a lot of like apathy and, you know, disgust with the political system or people aren't feeling that hopeful like, oh, there's, you know, something positive. I can invest my money in, et cetera. And he has just tapped his people out too. I mean, the number of times that he hits his fundraising list over and over and over, he really has tapped them out, not only for himself, but for other Republicans as well. But it is, you know, it's also an indication of a sort of waning amount of grassroots enthusiasm that he's not still able to draw from that well to the extent that he was able to in the past. So I think that also is worth noting. Keep this in mind, too. Trump had tons of money in 2020. He lost. So, I mean, he had more money in that campaign, I think more than almost double or something like that. He had the same joint fundraising game, agreement with the RNC. But

then remember what we learned in October, that the huge amounts of the money they brought in was just spent trying to drive even more money from, was like Brad Parscale and Jared Kushner. They wasted billions and billions of dollars. Yeah, they spent wildly. Right, exactly. So money can be helpful. Obviously, no one's going to discount it, but a lot of it will come down to national trends as well. So just keep that in mind.

And, of course, the media, how they cover it, how people are feeling about the election, that's probably the single most important aspect. That's a good transition to media, MSNBC, a little bit of a meltdown over there, over the recent hiring of former RNC chairwoman, Romney McDaniel. NBC hosts and Chuck Todd in particular, openly lambasting their own bosses for hiring her. Let's take a listen. I'll be joined by former RNC chair, Ronda McDaniel in her first interview since stepping down as party chair.

In full disclosure to our viewers, this interview was scheduled weeks before it was announced that McDaniel would become a paid NBC News contributor. This will be a news interview and I was not involved in her hiring. Let me deal with the elephant in the room. Yeah. I think our bosses owe you an apology for putting you in this situation, because I don't know what to believe. She is now a paid contributor by NBC News. I have no idea whether any answer she gave to you was because she didn't want to mess up her contract. When NBC made the decision to give her NBC News' credibility, you gotta ask yourself,

what does she bring NBC News? And when we make deals like this, and I've been at this company a long time, you're doing it for access, access to audience. Sometimes it's access to an individual, and we can have a journalistic ethics debate about that. And I'm willing to have that debate. And if you told me we were hiring her as a technical advisor to the Republican convention, I think that would be certainly defensible.

You got put into an impossible situation, booking this interview, and then all of a sudden the rugs pull out from under you, you find out she's being paid to show up. It's unfortunate for this program. It's unfortunate, Crystal. Now, it's interesting that there's a couple of things because on one level, ethically, I don't disagree with him at all. That said, why are we not showing the same level of consternation about the number of other campaign officials that work at MSNBC. We have a list that we can

show everybody in a little bit, but I want to hear what you have to say before we get into that. I mean, I think this practice, which is entirely commonplace and frankly has been for a while, of taking paid operatives from the political parties and putting them into quote-unquote journalistic positions is a scourge. Yes, I agree. I think it's a scourge when it happens at Fox News. I think it's a scourge when it happens at NBC. And I don't think they're wrong to be upset about the hiring of Ronna McDaniel. And from them, from an ideological perspective, she went along with all. She was in charge when all the Stop the Steal nonsense was unfolding. She went along with it. Now, granted, the Trump people were mad that she didn't do more and didn't

blatantly just rig the Trump Republican primary in his favor and actually tried to run like a neutral primary. But from their perspective, they're like, we talk all day long about this threat to democracy. And then you hire this person that was central to, you know, what was going on during that time period. But you're right that obviously it's very selective. They don't have an across the board concern about hiring Jen Psaki, about hiring Simone Sanders, about the fact that reportedly Joe and Mika are on the phone with Biden all the time. And there's a direct connect there. And so I think if you're gonna be concerned about party-tied propagandists being put in these roles that now they're supposed to be credible and we're supposed to believe what they have to say and we're supposed to think that they don't have an agenda, I don't think you should be selective about it. Now, like I said, I understand why they have an issue here.

I just think that they have some ideological blinders on or are unable to apply the principle across the board. And the ridiculous part of that is Simone Sanders, whose previous job before that network job, who was on the panel discussing Ronald McDaniel, was working for Kamala Harris in the administration. Guys, can we put C3, please, up there on the screen? This is what drives me crazy about all these people. Of all just of the recent hires that these people have, Jen Psaki straight from the Biden podium over to MSNBC for her own television show. Simone Sanders is the exact same thing. I believe she has a show on Peacock. Would love to know the ratings on that one. Nicole Wallace, former Bush press secretary, comms director, direct pipeline to television, and now the host of, I think, the 4 to 6 p.m. hour or whatever. Joe Scarborough, arguably the king of the network himself who talks directly to Biden on the phone, former job, U.S. congressman. And then Michael

Steele, former RNC chair. So let's be consistent, people. And yeah, I think it's gross, too, every time you turn on Fox News, Dana Perino, what's her only previous job? Comms director or press secretary to George W. Bush. Ari Fleischer, comms director to George W. Bush. Kayleigh McEnany, former press secretary to Donald Trump. Yeah, the pipeline is gross. These people whose only previous qualifications were lying to the American people on behalf of the government, then seemingly getting hired by Fox. But we have to be consistent with our standard here. And for them, I think it's very obvious that they fall into a vision of like, oh, well, one is lying and the other one, you know, is directionally occasionally lied,

but tried to steer the country in a good direction. It's like, well, you know, people can see through this. It's like you're freak out and all of this. It's not principled in any way. It doesn't, you know, have a foundation beyond anything just like Republican bad or Democrat bad, you know, over on Fox News. And that's why people have no trust, you know, in terms of any ethics things that they try to put forward. You can see through it instantly. I guess Simone on the panel, Crystal. Now, in fairness, I do seem to recall that there was some consternation when Jen Psaki was literally negotiating her NBC contract. There was a little bit. Only from the White House correspondents.

There was a little bit of discomfort. If memory serves, I think Kristen Welker may have even been one of the people. Right, because she was the White House correspondent. One of the people who was asking questions about this and was like, I'm not sure about this because it was so blatant and so inappropriate for the person who was right now the paid propagandist for the White House to be negotiating her future contract with a quote unquote journalistic enterprise was really something. And of course, you still have to ask to this day, like with regard to all of those people that we had up on the screen, the same questions that Chuck Todd was raising with regards to Ronna McDaniel. Like, what is the reason that she is saying these things?

Is it because she's paid by us now? Is it because she's still a propagandist for the Republican Party? You know, same thing with Jen Psaki. Is she saying the things and taking the perspective she's taking? Because guess what? She still has a lot of friends in the White House and she still wants to be part of that club. And she still wants, as Chuck Todd points out, this was part of what was so interesting about what he had to say, she still wants the access. Of course she does. So does Simone Sanders. Of course she does. So, you know, we need to apply the same level of scrutiny and skepticism, even when it's people who we more often agree with. And I think that's really the blind spot here, is because they usually agree with Jen Psaki and they usually agree with Simone Sanders. They can't see them through that lens of, no, these are also just propagandists who are, you

know, not clearly speaking for themselves and what they actually think is right, but still have these ties, still have these incentives to really carry water for the Biden administration, no matter what it is that they are ultimately doing. I mean, listen, I can't say I'm a big consumer of MSNBC, period. I'm not really not even sure the last time I turned on that channel. Occasionally, you know, we'll cover a media clip here or something. For me, it's Kornacki. Kornacki on election live. Sometimes I will tune in. Kornacki is a gem. As long as it's mostly on him and not on anybody else.

But I have not, it has not come to my attention that either Jen Psaki or Simone Sanders has found a single place where they really disagree with the Biden ministry. Now, I could be wrong again. I don't I don't have an exhaustive review here, but it's not come to my attention that they have found even an inch of distance from the Biden administration position on really anything. So, you know, I can take that for what it's the biggest joke is when Jen Psaki interviews government officials on really anything. So, you know, I can take that for what it is. The biggest joke is when Jen Psaki interviews government officials on her show. I'm like, yeah, really? It's like your former freaking colleagues and you're supposed to be interviewing them. It's insane whenever you're in a position of power. Okay. So let's put the C2 though up on the screen. We briefly flashed it from Wall Street Journal just to tie the bow on this. MSNBC currently says they have no plans to have the ex-RNC chief on their network. She will solely be appearing on NBC News, I guess on Meet the Press or whatever in their nightly news program. I definitely think it's a bit of a screw you though to them.

This was according to the head of the MSNBC network and that's in response to internal staff consternation over this. But as I said, doesn't appear to stop at least the president from pulling Jen Psaki's show, who has a premium weekend slot or whatever, Simone Sanders, and not to mention Nicole Wallace. I also saw people being like, well, it's not like Jen Psaki stood by for a violent insurrection. I'm like, okay, well, even if you believe that or whatever, Nicole Wallace helped sell the worst modern war in American history. Why does she get a pass? Anybody connected to the Iraq war, that is ten times – not even ten times.

Orders of magnitude in a way I can't even express properly in emotion and in rhetoric, worse than whatever the hell happened on January 6th. But if you're anti-Trump, apparently that's all it takes over there. How do you think Ronna is going to position herself now that she's at NBC? Because during the Trump era, she dropped the Romney part of her name, something disappeared. So she could try to align herself with the ascendant Trump portion of the Republican Party, try to keep him happy, you know, try to do the things that she thought that the base wanted her to do. Even as, you know, like I said before, she still didn't go far enough for them because they wanted her to overtly rig it in Trump's favor in terms of the primary. But what do you expect her positioning will be now at NBC? I don't know, to be honest. I think Rana was one of those people who, and this is one thing where Chuck and all of them are not

wrong in the same way about Jen Psaki, they care about access more than anything. She's like a power broker slash player. She'll probably be involved. This isn't, you know, this is their, this isn't really their third act either because they have all of these contracts that they can work as consultants. And the NBC News thing is only part of it. She's probably going to have a thriving consultancy business on the side. People pay for play. So I think she'll probably just continue to cozy up to Trump in the same way or be the Trump-splainer as she always was when she was RNC chair because that's where a lot of her career, business, and all that is going to go. I don't expect any, that's the other thing. You don't expect anything novel from these people, which you shouldn't hire them in the first place.

The only good thing about hiring people in media is when they're actually willing to say something that is interesting, which by definition you can't if you're still inside of the system. Yeah. I mean, there's no expectation that she's going to be some unmartished truth teller, because obviously her career is just about saying what she thinks is convenient in the moment. And so the real question that I'm asking you is like, what do you think will be convenient for her in the moment? Not what does she actually think? And it's entirely possible that she finds it now convenient in the moment to do a bit of a face turn and now be a little bit of a Trump critic. Render herself more acceptable to the NBC audience,

make herself reclaim some of that Romney-style mainstream polite society acceptability so that she can maximize her payday in corporate America through consulting and lobbying gigs or whatever. Yes. So guys, we wanted to share with you a little bit of this absolutely horrifying drone footage that Al Jazeera was able to obtain. In it, you can see four unarmed civilians who are murdered by an Israeli drone. You know, we had a lot of internal debate about how much of this to show you here. You can see them walking and then very quickly you can, you know, see them just strolling along. This is near Khan Yunus. There is further footage that we chose not to show you, where you can see their bodies on the ground. You can see one individual who is crawling along the ground, clearly struggling

for their life before they are struck yet again. And it recalls, Sagar, a lot of things from the past, including collateral murder, which was the footage that was released by WikiLeaks during the Iraq war. This, if anything, I think is even more brazen and even more blatant of a war crime. Just to take you a little bit behind the scenes, we really debated how much of this to show you, because on the one hand, I think it's important for people to see directly some of the horrors and atrocities that are unfolding. On the other hand, you know, you don't want to be too graphic. And in addition, in order for people to be able to see these things, you have to not have them completely suppressed by the algorithm on YouTube. So that's another factor to balance. So in any case, incredibly disturbing, disturbing footage here, which I think in some ways,

for whatever reason, seems to have represented a bit of a watershed moment in terms of how people are viewing what is being committed here. And as one example of that, I would offer you the commentary of one Alex Jones, can put this up on the screen, who shared this footage and quote tweeted it and said, quote, Israel has lost the high ground. This is not war. It is robotic mass genocide. Section 1091 of Title 18, United States Code, prohibits genocide, whether committed in time of peace or time of war. Genocide is defined in section 1091 and includes violent attacks with the specific intent to destroy in whole or in part a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group. He goes on to say, reply to that and said, if you support Israel, you should not support the random killing of civilians. Israel is committing

suicide with actions like this. Use your effing brain. So, you know, just an absolute unjustifiable horror and saga. I think maybe part of why it seems like this was a bit of a watershed moment and made, you know, the horror of these atrocities undeniable for people who were kind of reluctant to go there is because, number one, you can't, you know, but Hamas this, you can't, oh, human shield this. And there's also just something so visceral about actually seeing that cold blooded massacre that is kind of undeniable. Well, and there's also something even more dystopian. And I think that's part of the reason why Alex did. There's something, I'm not saying it should be this way, but for some reason it is.

Emotionally, like the idea of somebody walking defenselessly, not even knowing that they're being surveilled and then being targeted. As opposed to, let's say, being caught in a crossfire or, you know, in a bombing where, as you said, there could be at least some sort of plausible explanation. It was also interesting to me to see Alex kind of go back with some of the people who went against him, for example. And if you look at some of his replies, he says this is setting the stage for what they want to do domestically. That's part of the reason he's speaking out against drone coverage, for example. Someone says, I support neither side, but our tax money shouldn't be funding any of this. Alex, that is my view. He also specifically called out previously not wanting Israel to go into Gaza because he said him and Steve Bannon, they were like, it would be a total disaster. And he's like, and that's really what come to pass.

And someone even said, quote, I'm surprised Alex is just figuring this out. And he says, I do not support October 7, but at the same time, I do not support killing random civilians. You should kill the leaders of Hamas, not unarmed people. And somebody replied saying that October 7th was a war crime and should be met as such. And he again said, so whole people need to die because of a few. Where have I seen that type of logic before? And previously, and finally, I think the most important thing that I think pushed a lot of people over the edge, something says, I would be very skeptical because this is coming from Al Jazeera. He says, it is all over Israeli TV. They are calling for this.

I am not anti-Israel. This is out of control, but it must stop now. Yeah. And I think that's another thing, too. I can say personally the same thing. I'm not anti-Israel or whatever from the beginning. I was just like, I'm just listening to what these people have to say and looking at their actions. And you try and look at it as dispassionately as possible. And so with this,

you're like, OK, well, what is the possible explanation? There is none except for obviously giving orders and rules of engagement that basically don't exist whenever you're going after civilians. And in some cases, possibly even in this one, it's like, what is the possible rationale for an attack like this? If there is no Occam's razor to this and the simplest explanation is that they were just ordered to carry out these types of attacks, which is not something I support. I don't even think the vast majority of pro-Israel folks in the US would support this. They just probably deny that it exists. They deny it.

They either deny that it exists or they're just not going to engage with it, which I get. I mean, that's what a lot of the quote unquote pro-Humans people do too, but you got to be grappling with this. I mean, there's two strategies effectively. One is just to deny reality. Oh, there's no famine. There's no starvation. No, there's not any targeting of innocent civilians. They're all just being used as any civilians who are killed either are being used as human shields or it was, you know, one bad apple, a few bad apples. No way could this be a top-down policy. But of course, when you see the results and you see videos like this, when you see the way that most of the Gaza Strip has been just

reduced to complete rubble, when you see the collective punishment of the entire population and starvation being used as a weapon of war becomes undeniable. But it's a top-down policy. Obviously, it's a top-down policy. It was a top-down policy that was announced from the beginning. Alex's phrasing here of robotic mass genocide also reminded me of some of the early reports that we covered from 972 Magazine about how they're, and other places too, I think The Guardian had a report backing up 972's initial finding, that they're using this algorithm to generate targets, you know, and it's just dramatically increasing the number of targets that they're able to obtain and the scale and the scope of the total annihilation that they're able to perpetrate here. So like I said, it seemed like something about this video, even though we've covered so many

horrors and atrocities that have unfolded on a literal daily basis, it seemed like for some people this really finally broke through and rendered what was going on here actually undeniable. Another person who has been slow to come around to a realization of what is actually happening is AOC. You'll recall, we actually played here, I think, did we play it? The video of her getting hounded by protesters who were demanding that she call it. We never played it. We didn't play it. Okay, well, I watched it and imagined that we covered it apparently, but she was leaving a movie theater and they're saying, why don't you call it a genocide?

She refused to do it, got very upset about it. Well, she too, I think perhaps it seems like the thing that really drove her to this place was the use of starvation as a weapon of war. She is now also calling this out as a genocide. Let's take a listen to, she gave a floor speech. Let's take a listen to, she gave a floor speech. Let's take a listen to some of her comments. In this moment, 1.1 million innocents in Gaza are at famine's door. A famine that is being intentionally precipitated through the blocking of food and global humanitarian assistance by leaders in the Israeli government. This is a mass starvation of people, engineered and orchestrated, following the killing of another 30,000, 70% of whom were women and children killed.

If you want to know what an unfolding genocide looks like, open your eyes. It looks like the forced famine of 1.1 million innocents. It looks like thousands of children eating grass as their bodies consume themselves while trucks of food are slowed and halted just miles away. It looks like good and decent people who do nothing or too little, too late. To me, that level of starvation, the intentional policy of starvation, which again was announced at the beginning, now they have allowed in some aid, but we know it has been dramatically less than what is required. We know from multiple reports on the ground the way that they block and hold up aid.

We know the way that they turn trucks around. We know the way that they have actually at this point, they've been targeting some of the civilian civil society personnel that was there to help distribute the aid. We know the way they've gone after UNRWA. And the bottom line is, you know, Israel bears responsibility for the fact that this population is literally starving to death at this point. And that's not even to get to, which we'll show you a little bit of in a moment, the way that they have tacitly backed these protesters who are endeavoring to block all aid from going into the Gaza Strip. And so to me, the level of famine also is undeniable that, hey, it's not because of human shields or Hamas or whatever. You're literally holding the entire 2 million, 2.2 million people in Gaza hostage and making them pay for things that they had nothing to do with. So apparently that was the thing that pushed AOC to finally acknowledge what was happening in front of her eyes.

So in addition to this horror of this drone footage, and of course the ongoing starvation and famine with no end in sight, we also have these new reports from Doctors Without Borders. Some of their medical personnel, of course, have been in some of the Gaza hospitals doing the absolute best they can in absolutely hellscape-like conditions. Let's put this up on the screen. We have yet another IDF raid of al-Shifa. And here's what Doctors Without Borders has to say. According to their staff, heavy airstrikes by Israeli forces and fierce fighting continue around al-Shifa in Gaza City, endangering patients, medical staff, and people trapped inside with very few supplies. According to public reports,

hundreds of people have been killed in and around the hospital. Bodies are lying in the street. Access to the facility has been impossible for days. The surgical department is reportedly heavily damaged, leaving patients without care. Our staff in the area also say there are mass arrests of medical staff and other people in and around the hospital. MSF, that's the other acronym, Medicines on Frontiers, or Doctors Without Borders, is deeply concerned for their safety due to recent reports, including from the UN, and images of abuse of Gazan detainees by Israeli forces. And they conclude hostilities in and around al-Shifa Hospital have been raging since March 18th after Israeli forces announced they were conducting a

military operation. So just take that in. You're talking about reports from Doctors Without Borders. This is not Hamas, right? It's not Hamas aligned or anything of the like. Their doctors and other personnel on the ground saying that medical staff are being arrested and detained. We've had additional reports of horrors, including executions occurring at al-Shifa, mass executions. There have also been some reports, multiple reports at this point, of IDF soldiers raping women in al-Shifa.

These are not things that are fully confirmed, but I think you have to take very seriously what Doctors Without Borders is saying here about what is unfolding at al-Shifa. You'll recall this is the fourth raid on this hospital. It attracted a lot of scrutiny the first time around when the U.S. basically greenlit the raid of this hospital, claiming there was some Hamas command and control node underneath of it. Of course, they never offered any evidence to back up fully those claims. And now here we are on raid number four, at least. And, you know, these are the things that just continue to unfold, Sagar. Yeah, no, I mean, it's absolutely crazy. The last and final one here

is a video from the gray zone where they do interviews with some of the protesters who are blocking aid. Let's take a listen. So no food, no nothing. No, they don't deserve it. What I care? Kill them. I don't care. Do you trust Palestinians?

No. I know all about them. I don't trust them. I want them out of here. What do you think should happen to Gaza? I want to be civilized with Jews from Israel. We blew up houses of terrorists, mosques, UN offices. into some UN office that was in charge of helping families in Gaza that was affected by the war and we destroyed it.

The police man, the head commander came to us and said, okay, you guys came and blocked. We don't want to fight. And he said to us, I'll just lock the gate. You guys don't need to stand in the sun. We got lollipops. We got watermelon from the police. The police gave you lollipops and watermelon? Yeah, watermelons. And it was great. It was great with them. So according to him, he's being supported there directly by police, military. I'm not exactly sure the authorities that are involved here. But this is just very obvious that they are completely supported by the government. And the government has been crushing

these protests in Tel Aviv, calling for a ceasefire, or at the very least a hostage swap, including families of the Israeli hostages who were, what, sprayed with water cannons. And these people are getting watermelon and lollipops. Watermelon, if you've never known, is a big Israel. Israelis love watermelon. I don't really get it. Watermelon is delicious. I do get it. It's okay, but these people are obsessed with watermelon to a degree that I really did not understand.

Everybody in Israel is eating watermelon all the time. I mean, that video really had it all because you have the first lady who's like, yeah, I want them all to die. You have the next one who's admitting openly, proudly to war crimes in the Gaza Strip. Hey, we found a UN office. They were there to, you know, help people who'd been displaced. We blew it up. Completely just, I mean, no shame, because why would you? Because this is the policy of the government and broadly supported by society. And then you have the final one who's like, no, the police, the IDF, they're with us. They've been great. You know, they helped us find some shade. They gave us lollipops and watermelon.

They've been fine. This has been clear, by the way. The Washington Post early on had a report about the way this was being supported by the IDF and was effectively official policy. Because if they wanted to remove these protesters, then they certainly would in the same way that they, you know, overwhelmingly cracked down on protesters in Tel Aviv and other places who are pushing for ceasefire negotiations to try to secure the release of hostages. No problem cracking down on them. But these individuals are an important part of the Bibi Netanyahu coalition.

So they're allowed to persist. In fact, a majority of supporters of the Netanyahu government support ethnic cleansing and resettlement of Gaza with Jewish settlers. So, you know, that's the landscape that you're dealing with here. And, you know, like I said, we've sort of had to pick and choose which things we show for this segment because there were so many to choose from. You cannot possibly cover them all. which things we show for this segment, because there were so many to choose from, you cannot possibly cover them all. But this is part of the landscape that has made it impossible for even someone who was reluctant, like Alex Jones, perhaps, or certainly someone who was reluctant, like AOC, as well, to call this a genocide and say there is really no other explanation here. It's also part of why, and we're about to talk about more of the political dynamics that

are unfolding, why the Biden administration has found it necessary to at least pretend like they care about Palestinian civilians. And a lot of their upset that was leaked to the press, oh, they're having these hard conversations, blah, blah, blah. And we've seen this in multiple reports as well. It's not that they're so much upset about what's going on. It's like, come on, guys, give us a little bit of cover here. Give us a little bit of a PR whitewash so we can at least say with a straight face that you're not using drones to massacre people as they're just walking along near a destroyed city of Khan Yunus, that you're not collectively punishing the entire population of the Gaza Strip by literally starving them to death, that you're not collectively punishing the entire population of the Gaza Strip by literally starving them to death, that you're not, you know, celebrating and fetting these protesters

who are openly genocidal and trying to blockade, like at least give us a little bit of help. And since the Israeli government has refused even to give them that like bullshit PR cover, then they've had to do this like pathetic, you know, impotent hand wringing and pretend like they care. While of course, you know, if they really cared, there are many things they could actually do, primarily stopping the aid, stopping the weapon sales in order to force a change in the Israeli government position. But they don't actually have anything, any interest in doing that outside of just rhetorical signaling. So speaking of some of the politics of what's unfolding, we have Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Galant, who is coming to D.C. this week. And guess what he is bringing with him? Let's put this

up on the screen. He is coming with his weapons wish list. He's got a whole like Christmas list of all the things that he wants to get from the U.S. government. He wants them to be expedited, according to two Israeli and U.S. officials. Barack Ravid reporting this for Axios. Let me read you a little bit of this. Galan is expected to arrive in Washington on Sunday for his first visit to the U.S. since assuming office more than one year ago. He's going to meet with Lloyd Austin, Jake Sullivan, and other senior U.S. officials. Behind the scenes, Gallant and Austin spoke on the phone on Wednesday, discussed the minister's upcoming trip. The officials added, Gallant told Austin he's coming with a list of specific weapons systems requests. Senior Israeli officials said the request will not only include short-term

requests for the war in Gaza, but also long-term ones, including the option to purchase more F-35 and F-15 fighter jets. Israel wants to have the supply of the jets and other weapon systems expedited as much as possible, according to this Israeli official. We also have some reporting we can share with you from Tony Blinken's visit to Israel. This happened next week. Allegedly, he warned Netanyahu and his war cabinet in a meeting Friday that Israel's security and its place in the world are in peril over the failed Gaza strategy and, quote, you might not realize it until it's too late. He said, according to this report, that on the current path, Hamas will stay in control of Gaza or there will be anarchy, which will just create the conditions for more terrorism. According to the source, Netanyahu said after Blinken's remarks,

we will have our hands full for decades. So that was Blinken's reported message to Bibi. Again, does it come with any policy change? Of course not. It's just a warning to his friend that maybe they're making a mistake. Of course, from Bibi's perspective, not only is he an ideologue and has an ideological interest in the annihilation that they're committing in Gaza, but also he has a personal political interest in dragging this war out as long as humanly possible so that he can maintain his position,

his grip on power, as he is incredibly unpopular within the Israel domestic population. Yeah, Galant is actually going to be here today and probably will remain for several days. Apparently, actually, Crystal, this is from the Times of Israel. They are asking for the options to purchase more F-35 and F-15 jets, which is included in those. That would require a direct approval both by Congress and by the administration. So let's stay tuned. As to that, the secondary thing about this is that the trip was actually

at the behest of U.S. Pentagon Secretary Lloyd Austin. It's not like he asked to come. We are apparently the ones who invited him. Not exactly sure what any of that all means. But we do know it's a moment of extraordinary tension, allegedly, with the Israeli government. For example, the humiliation here is just completely outrageous. I mean, we have Bibi, who greets Anthony Blinken while he's on the ground with an explicit screw you message. We literally have this. We can put it up here on the screen from the Israeli news cabinet, where he says, he was speaking in Hebrew, so we have the English translation. I met with Secretary of State Blinken today. I told him I really appreciate the fact that more than five months later, we've been standing together in the war of Hamas. I also told him

we need to recognize the need to evacuate the civilian population from the war zones and take care of humanitarian needs. But I also said there is no way to defeat Hamas without going into Rafah and eliminating the rest of the battalions. I told him I hope we will do it with the support of the USA. But if we have to, we will do it alone. So clearly, that's a screw you. We're not going to do it. I mean, at this point, too, the U.S. administration has laid it all out on the table.

Blinken has said it. Biden has said it. The vice president has said it. So if they do it, that is as explicit as a screw you as that could possibly exist. Yeah. And we'll probably still ship them the weapons even if they do. Yeah. That's the crazy part.

Absolutely. Biden said it. And we have covered previously how, listen, this idea that, oh, well, we couldn't do anything. Israel is its own sovereign country. They can do what they want anyway. That's just not true. If we stop supplying the munitions, they would run out pretty quickly. They would be in a real bind if we didn't continue to expedite these weapons sales, over 100 of them since October

7th. So there's a lot they could do other than these rhetorical gestures and Biden kind of sort of saying maybe Raf is a red line, but also, by the way, I'm never going to leave Israel. And so Bibi feels this actually strengthens him politically, he thinks, because he can be shown as standing up for Israel and standing strong against the U.S. and, you know, making his own way, et cetera, when in reality, it is just completely humiliating and impotent from the US side. And this was not the only humiliation of the Biden administration while Blinken was in the region.

Go ahead and put this up on the screen. So Israel announcing the largest West Bank land seizure since 1993 during Blinken's visit. So Smotrich, who is one of the most extreme members of the government at this point, he's actually in charge of this settlement policy. And he announced the seizure, the illegal seizure, I should add, of 10 square kilometers. That's about 3.8 square miles of Palestinian territory in the West Bank on Friday. As I mentioned before, that's the single largest land seizure since the 1993 Oslo Accords. That's according to Peace Now, a settlement watchdog group. Here is his quote. While there are those in Israel and the world who seek to undermine our right over the Judea and Samaria area, that's the West Bank, and the country in general,

Smotrich said, we are promoting settlement through hard work and in a strategic manner all over the country. They go on to note in this piece that Israeli settlements in the West Bank are considered illegal under international law. Still, Israel has used land orders like the one issued Friday to gain control over 16% of Palestinian-controlled lands in the West Bank. And obviously, again, total screw you. Totally consistent also with the idea that they want to actually push Palestinians out completely, not only of Gaza, but also using these sorts of tools out of the West Bank as well. This is the one area that the Biden administration has been very vocal about. Weirdly, especially in the beginning, they were much less vocal about the, you know,

atrocities being committed in Gaza. But they felt like I think they had a stronger hand to play in the West Bank because you couldn't but Hamas and excuse what was going on there. So that's why you got this policy of sanctions against a few violent, quote unquote, violent settlers. And I use the quote because there's a lot of violence backed up also by the IDF. And that's the thing is they wanted to make it again like it's, oh, it's just a few bad apples. It's just the far right BB Netanyahu

regime. It's just these few bad apples in terms of the settlers when it's very clear the overall settlement policy is a top-down policy. It is backed by this government. It's been backed by every Israeli government for decades and decades. So to do this and throw this in their face while Blinken is there on the ground is just astonishingly brazen and humiliating. Well, the reason it's crazy, look, in another world pre-October 7th or any of that, this would be massive news. I mean, this is like world-changing news since 1993 because it would have invited major pushback from the Jordanians with the Egyptians. It obviously would have been a UN resolution that would have been mounted in response. Since 1993, it's been over 30 years, and this is a complete destruction of any post-Oslo and post-Camp David Accords theory and thesis and policy set forth by the U.S. I'm not saying they haven't violated it since then in terms of settlement expansion.

But to have the largest one to take place at this time is so explicit and different and in another life would have invited a totally different reaction from the U.S. political administration also marks the failure of the current Biden policy, the idea of the bear hug, which would constrain, whereas opposed what's really happened is really unleashed a whole new set of factors. This may actually be one of the most significant things that's happened in the entire war, and it is not actually getting its due because it shows an explicit linkage of the war to the expansion policy in West Bank, which could presage what was going to happen in Gaza. Yeah, I think that's absolutely right. And so what is the response from the U.S. government? Well, they had to pass this spending, this budget bill. And let's take a look at some

of the provisions of this bill that now was passed by Congress and has been signed by Joe Biden, well, number one, it cuts UNRWA funding through next year, so through 2025, UNRWA being the number one aid organization on the ground in Gaza. So cutting UNRWA funding means you are helping to facilitate the policy of mass starvation as a weapon of war. So we did that. We made sure to send Israel another $3.8 billion. And this is in some ways the most galling. It limits aid to the Palestinian Authority if the Palestinians initiate or support an international criminal court investigation against Israel for human rights crimes. So even as we have overwhelming evidence that Israel is committing war crimes, they're not

punished for actually committing war crimes. We ship them their 3.8 billion, no problem. We do their bidding by cutting funding to UNRWA, something that even, you know, based, which was based, just to remember, it was based on these allegations that were completely evidence-free, that a small number of UNRWA employees were involved on October 7th. By the way, those employees have already been fired. And we also learned that some of the quote-unquote confessions of these crimes were coerced by torture. So some of our allies went back and said, all right, there's nothing here. We've got to restore funding to UNRWA. Not us. We're going to codify it and guarantee

that UNRWA remains unfunded at least through next year. So you've got, you've got that. And then you also say, and hey, by the way, Palestinians, if you've got an issue with these war crimes that are being committed and you have any ideas about taking this to the International Criminal Court for investigation, we're going to cut your funding further. It's just gross and disgusting and also exposes the lie of the idea that the Biden administration is actually concerned about what's unfolding and actually really wants to change course. Because these policies, these provisions in this bill could not possibly be more in line with exactly what Bibi Netanyahu would dictate to us as him wanting to see in terms of priorities from our government.

So I think the words are one thing, the rhetoric is one thing, but you can see from the actions where the policy actually is. Yeah, and then if you want final confirmation about who we're run by, here is a great question at the Pentagon where they're like asking basic questions. So how is this aid peer thing? How is that going to work? Yeah, they have no idea. Let's take a listen. And then on the peer, the Benavides set sail today.

Yeah. So we've got the peer elements moving forward. You've got the sailors and soldiers are starting to move forward. Yeah. What's going to be the Pentagon's role in kind of that final mile? Are you letting contracts for contractors to then deliver that aid into Gaza? What you know, what's kind of the final piece looking like? So that's still something that's being worked out right now. And in terms of the distribution, that's not something that the U.S. military will be involved in. We are, you know, the logistics setting up, coordinating

the movement of the humanitarian aid from either the floating pier or to that floating causeway. But that's something that in terms of how the distribution of aid is going to happen once it gets into Gaza, that's not something that, you know, we're handling. What is this? It's like gobbledygook. I don't have that for you right now. Well, you probably should, you know, at some point. How is this going to work? Are the Israelis screening it?

How is the distribution of aid actually happening? Where is it coming from? How much? This is why this is such a boondoggle and idiot plan when we have all, the only thing standing in front of aid right now are those protesters that the government is allowing. Why does it make any sense to be pursuing any of this? Well, and the government itself too through their policies. And I mean, seems like kind of a critical detail of, okay, the aid has arrived at the port. What now? Because we know the problem is not that there

isn't sufficient aid available. The problem is not that there aren't sufficient crossings or, you know, inlets into the Gaza Strip available. The problem is what the Israeli government is doing, prohibiting this aid from coming in and getting where it needs to go. And not to mention, and this is, you know, one of the other things that unfolded, you had another flower massacre killing starving Palestinians who were trying to go and secure this aid for themselves and their families. So obviously those are some key questions to resolve if you think this freaking stupid port, which apparently was Bibi's idea to begin with, if you think that this is going to help the aid situation whatsoever. And by the way, of course, it's going to take a while for this thing to be built and require a lot of our money and put our

service members at risk. Remember when Lloyd Austin got asked about whether there was a risk to our service members, he was like, yeah, they're, you know, and they didn't have any plans for how to mitigate that risk either, or any guarantees that they're not going to be in harm's way. Because of course, how could you get those guarantees when you're bringing them so close to an active war zone and doing everything right up to the line of actually putting boots on the ground? You'll also recall that Bibi said himself that he thinks it's a good idea if that port is used to ship Palestinians out of the Gaza Strip and facilitate he and his government's, you know, ultimate desires, fondest desires over many years to complete the ethnic cleansing of the Gaza Strip. So that's what

we're really aiding and abetting here. And I think that's why those comments are so significant, because they really reveal that it's's number one, just PR and that they have not, they actually have no plan in place to make sure that the aid gets where it needs to go and that it actually alleviates this crisis. Not to mention that there are people starving right now today, and this doesn't come close to solving any of the issues that have, you know, and any of the problems that have been put up by the Israeli government that has led to this situation. It's very, very sad. All right, Sagar, what are you looking at?

Well, one of the memes that's arisen around me is that I care about dress code just for the sake of it. I know it's funny to go after politicians for dressing badly, but at its core, the reason that I do it is because I believe in this maxim. The job of those in public service is to serve. No, a suit is not the most comfortable garment. The point is that those in positions of power, as we all do when we attend a wedding, you don a garment as a sign of respect for those that we appear before. Increasingly, people in so-called public service don't really believe in the service part at all. They've donned the garments of the upper middle class elite who are capable of working from anywhere in comfort. They insist on rules in place that allow them to openly trade stocks while remaining privy to incredibly sensitive and private information. And now

they increasingly don't even really believe in doing even the smallest part of their job at all. The slow death of Congress has not just been about its ability to get things done, but its transformation into a body of open narcissists who view the office not as a place to do anything, but except to use their perch in public service to attain wealth and power after they serve. This is especially the case in recent days with the news of several high-profile retirements in the House GOP caucus. This monologue was inspired by Congressman Mike Gallagher. He's a man I've met. I've even interviewed him, respected him at one point. But recently, he announced that he was retiring from Congress.

I have no problem with that. The news, though, that came next is what set me off. Gallagher announced not only was he retiring from Congress and would not seek another term, but that he was abruptly resigning the office at the end of April. This is galling for two reasons. One, if Gallagher has any sense of duty to his party, the House GOP now has just a majority of 217 votes in Congress, meaning that the Marjorie Taylor Greens of the world and Matt Gateses and the Freedom Caucus members who all want to cause trouble have even more power. It also means that the sheer business of doing the most basic minimums of passing bills just got so much harder for the House GOP. But two, is that Gallagher decided not just to resign for no

reason and to leave his term early. More so, it appears that his resignation date is specifically designed so that no special election can be held because it falls after the deadline. Meaning, his 600,000 constituents will not have anyone in Congress to do their basic bidding from April to November. But it gets even worse when you find out why he's leaving his constituents high and dry. It's not just that he's quitting. But Puck News reports that Gallagher appears to be resigning to take a high-paying job at Palantir, one of the largest defense contracting firms in the US. It's not a surprise. Gallagher was a leading defense hawk in Congress. I had serious disagreements with him, for example, on Ukraine. But it is a sheer brazenness. Go in Congress, where you were elected to do a job. You then resign early because the

vibes are bad. And then you take a job where we can easily imagine him getting paid, what, at least a million bucks a year? Here's the thing. I get it. I wouldn't want to be in Congress either with some of these jackasses. But I'm a private citizen. I have a YouTube show. I have more of a sense of duty to the people who pay for this show than it seems like Mike Gallagher. For me, it's simple. It's a contract. Unless I'm very sick or there's a personal emergency, I show up to do the show because that's what people pay hard-earned money for. Is it so much to ask that same attitude for people who represent us in Congress and who pass our laws that they feel even remotely the same? Apparently, it is too much to ask.

It's not just Gallagher. Congressman Ken Buck, another man who's been on this show in the past, abruptly resigning from Congress after announcing he won't seek another term. At least he did so when they could still have a special election. By all accounts, there's no reason that he needed to quit. He just decided to, except maybe the reporting that he's set to become a CNN contributor. He denied it. We'll see how it ends up. Kevin McCarthy, he also resigned late last year at the end of 2023. He gave no reason. Yeah, I get it. He got booted from his speakership. That's embarrassing. That doesn't mean you can't still do and stay the basic job, just constituent services. He's a powerful man. Not since though, he's left. He's still been showing up on Capitol Hill. He's here in Washington right now. He's doing speeches all over TV.

In other words, he resigned his job so he could actually do what he wanted to do, all the public profile, without any of the annoying serving the people part. In every case, we have people who are putting themselves and their preferences first, first above the party that they supposedly care about, who have to run the house now above the people who elected them to serve. That is how they think about the job. It's just a way station on the way to wealth and power when things get boring. It's wrong, and we shouldn't accept this as normal. Some people might even say it's always been this way, and I think it has to some degree, but now it is so out in the open. They just want the paychecks, the power, the prestige, the fame.

That's it. They don't care at all about serving you. Even the pretense doesn't matter anymore. We should hear them loud and clear. Remember that, too, the next time that we cast our votes. How crazy is this? This man is resigning. And if you want to hear my reaction to Sagar's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com.

Some big news on the Department of Justice. Last week, where Attorney General Merrick Garland announced a antitrust lawsuit against Apple. Let's take a listen to a little bit of what he had to say. The Supreme Court defines monopoly power as, quote, the power to control prices or exclude competition. As set out in our complaint, Apple has that power in the smartphone market. Now having monopoly power does not itself violate the antitrust laws, but it does when a firm acquires

or maintains monopoly power, not because it has a superior product or superior business acumen, but by engaging in exclusionary conduct. As set out in our complaint, Apple has maintained its power not because of its superiority, because of its unlawful exclusionary behavior. So lucky for us, we have literally the perfect person to break down both what the suit means and the rationale behind it. Matt Stoller is director of research at the American Economic Liberties Project,

author of a fantastic book called Goliath. And also he writes at the Substack Big, which let's go and put your piece up on the screen here. You guys can check this out, which has an in-depth breakdown of what is going on with this Apple antitrust suit and why you say it matters. Apple just got slapped with a major antitrust suit, you're right, alleging a pattern of anti-competitive behavior across all its product lines, and it lost $114 billion in market cap in one day as a result. Great to see you, my friend. Hey, thanks for having me. Good to see you, man. So what is the core of the argument here against Apple? Because as you lay out in your piece,

there are a number of people who are like, why are you picking on Apple? People actually like their products when there are a lot of other industries that you could be going after. Yeah. And I love Apple products. I use them. They're great. They work. They're seamless.

So it's, and I'm also believe in taking on Monopoly. So it's kind of weird, right? Because you're like, well, why would you take on a Monopoly of this company that has these great products? Well, the answer is because they are thwarting innovation and competition in the market. So things could be even better if they didn't do things like restrictChat, where you can do a whole bunch of stuff on WeChat. Like, you can pay for stuff. You can talk to other people.

You can do lots of business. You can't do that here on the iPhone because Apple doesn't allow super apps. But in China, what it means is that the underlying phone system has been commodified, and it's easier to switch from an iPhone through a different phone. So in the US, when you buy a new phone and basically the upgrade market is really the only market because everybody has a smartphone at this point, except if you're really young, about 90 to 98% of people with an iPhone go to a new iPhone. In China, it's about 50% because it's much easier to switch. And so the heart of the case is that Apple has made it much, much, much harder than it should be to switch. The result is people can't

switch. In China, they have to discount. They have to entice customers. And in the US, they don't. That's the heart of the case. That's a good point. I hadn't thought about it. And they have a much more robust competition there because they not just have Samsung, they have Huawei and all this stuff. We don't have that for a variety of reasons. But the whole point is that it does make it easier to switch. One of the things that a lot of people are paying attention to are some of the specific complaints, specifically the green bubble. So lay out some of the things in the complaint that people can look to, the real world application of how Apple is supposedly acting as a monopoly. The heart of the complaint is the smartphone,

right? And it's a pattern of conduct, a pattern of saying you're making it harder to switch from the smartphone, from the Apple smartphone to rivals. And that actually degrades the quality of the smartphone. Because as I noted, you know, a messaging app on the smartphone that can do less than a messaging app that can do more makes the smartphone worse. And Apple is intentionally doing that. But what I've also found really interesting about the complaint is that it's not just an allegation about the smartphone itself. The smartphone is the heart of it.

But it's about the Apple ecosystem, right? So there's a part in the complaint where Steve Jobs talks about the importance of the Apple ecosystem stickiness, right? And so it goes to the top, right? Steve Jobs was very clear that he wants to maintain market power. He doesn't want people to switch and they want to erect artificial switching costs. But what they're also doing is they're trying to extend the Apple ecosystem into places you wouldn't expect, like banking, right? So the tap to pay feature, the way expect, like banking, right? So the tap-to-pay feature, the way that Apple is actually, they're actually starting to charge banks junk

fees for using the tap-to-pay feature, and banks can't create their own app to use that chip. They can elsewhere, but they can't do it here. But they're also trying to do it in, and this is the most interesting thing, in cars, right? So, you know, when you buy a car now, it has to have access to CarPlay, right? Which is the Apple software system for cars. You put your iPhone in the car and it shows, you know, maps and the different, you know, apps and things like that that you need. It shows your iPhone on the screen. And car makers have to have CarPlay in their car or else a certain number of customers just won't buy the car. It's a must-have if you're an automaker. Well, what Apple has told car makers

next time is that the next version of CarPlay is going to include not just the stuff it has now, but also all the fuel gauges and every part of the car's operating system that you see has to be run by Apple or else you can't get CarPlay, right? So you have to put CarPlay in there, but they're going to tie all this other stuff. So Apple is literally going to take over, is trying to take over the user experience for every automobile manufacturer now. And there is, you know, with the exception of people who are going to use the Google Android phone, and they're probably going to do the same thing. So there's this extension of the Apple ecosystem into kind of as many parts of our experience as possible. And I love Apple. We

all use Apple products. But the truth is, there's only so many things that one company can do well. And you don't want a dictator over all parts of the economy. And that's what Apple is really trying to go for. Yeah. Well, especially when you get in the business, not of innovating great new products, but innovating new ways to basically thwart the market. And one of the things you argue is that Apple isn't exactly the pioneering, innovative company of yore. They've gone in the direction of Boeing, as you point out, and other companies. I mean, this is a major trend in corporate America, where it's more about financialization, more about manipulating the market than it is actually building incredible products that people are going to love. That's 100% right. And one of the things that Complaint talked about is

how internally they have these discussions about withholding better features on the iPhone, because they're like, the customers don't need them and they're expensive, but they also do twice as much stock buybacks as they do R&D at this point. So I would love to see like a think different commercial that includes like, you know, Einstein and Gandhi. And then the guy that like, that was the engineer for the green bubble, right? With like the green, you know,

and like the video with 1996 resolution. And it's like, think different, right? That's what Apple, you know, and like the video with 1996 resolution. And it's like, think different, right? That's what Apple is doing. Not everywhere. Like the Vision Pro is amazing, right? And there are, you know, their silicon chips are great, but gradually you can see that power corrupts and power has corrupted Apple and it's going to affect the whole thing. Yeah. There's a great book. I think it's called After Steve or something like that, that a New York Times reporter, I highly recommend it because I love Apple too. Part of the reason I was excited by Vision Pro was like, they finally did something. It's been a decade since they

actually created something interesting. But what the book details is that the vast majority of their profit comes from keeping people inside of the ecosystem and charging fees. So I know a lot of app developers in particular have been excited about this. And I know you've tracked some of this in the past. Maybe break some of that down. Because as I understand it, those fees, according to the app developers and some of the other people trying to build on the Apple platform, are just so prohibitive to be able to do business. Yeah. So there's two things with the App Store. One is the ability to charge that 30%. So one definition of monopoly, and this is what Merrick Garland lays out, is the ability to control prices. So if Apple can just set the price at 30% and people still

have to pay it, or they can raise it or lower it, which they can do, that is evidence of monopoly power. You can also do market shares, right? But there's lots of ways, like what is a monopoly? One way to understand, do you have monopoly powers? If I can raise prices and you have no choice but to take it, that's monopoly power, right? So the ability to charge that amount of money in an app store is evidence of monopoly power. And people who make apps are like, you know, oh, this, this is terrible, right? Cause this is my business and they're taking a 30% tax. Moreover, if you actually make an app and it's just sort of part of a whole system, right?

Like let's say you run a tutoring service and like you have an online tutoring service or a hybrid tutoring service and some of it is on an app. Apple often will say, we don't care that you run a tutoring service that's mostly offline. We're going to take 30% of it, right? So they're taxing increasingly large parts of the economy because more and more stuff needs an app. But the other part is that Apple actually can just exclude any app that has a service that they think might compete with part of the Apple ecosystem or make it easier to switch off the Apple ecosystem. So this is, you know, this is the iMessage thing.

But, you know, there are lots of examples of that. And so sort of to take a slightly different example other than China, most of the rest of the world, the market share that Apple, the smartphone, the iPhone has is lower than it is in the U.S. One of the reasons is because the U.S. is basically the only country that uses the SMS protocol, right? Everywhere else, telecom networks charge. They charge for texting. We don't charge for texting. So people use the, they just do it over the telecom networks, but they use WhatsApp and other places. And so it's not as big a deal to switch from an iPhone to a different kind of phone. So Apple, the switching barriers aren't as high elsewhere in the world.

And so that's kind of what you're seeing, and that's the heart of the case. Yeah, makes sense. How does this fit into the broader DOJ antitrust agenda? It's a great question. So this is the fourth suit against a trillion dollar plus corporation. Trump brought two, Biden has brought four, but it also is part of a broader revolution in anti-monopoly policymaking. So it's not just big tech, right? I think most people would say, okay, well, if you make the iPhone like slightly better, okay, cool, but that's not that big a deal, right? What about meat prices? What about, you know, airlines? What about rent? All of these, you know, bread and butter stuff. And I think one of the things that's happening is people don't pay, there isn't as much

reporting on what else the DOJ is doing, the antitrust agencies are doing, but they are taking on the bread and butter stuff. So there is a big suit against meatpacking, the price fixing there. There is a big suit against big landlords for price fixing. The DOJ is investigating Ticketmaster. They'll probably bring a case. Bunch of big inhaler companies, right? They just cut prices of inhalers from a couple hundred dollars to $35 in response to FTC action. And so you see

kind of like across the board, competition policy is working. Now, I don't want to, this isn't like a broad, I mean, the Biden administration is doing great work on competition policy, but competition policy is only part of the government. There's the rest of the government. And I think that there's a lot of work that they could be doing there that would be much better. But in terms of just the antitrust stuff, there is a lot of meat and potatoes. And that's revolutionary as well.

It's just the big tech stuff. Those are the kind of the pace setters of the economy. And if you're in the boardroom of any company, it doesn't matter if it's waste management or food or tech, you're looking at Apple and Google and Amazon and saying, how can I be more like them? Because they're the most profitable, they're the biggest. And so by taking on the pace setters, you're sending a message to corporate America. That's actually a fantastic point. Yeah. And the business process is all taking this in stride very calmly, rationally. They're like, oh, this makes a lot of sense. Let's analyze this in good faith.

There is an odd against Alina Khan, for example. Especially Jim Cramer. He's the clown of capital. Well, he's known for his cool head and incredible insight into the markets. And his calm demeanor. That's the other thing, his calm emotional stability. Yeah, I mean, there's a, you know, CNBC is very, obviously they're very upset. And it's because monopolization has been sort of the way that people do business since the 80s almost.

And it's where modern Silicon Valley was born. I mean, Silicon Valley is named Silicon Valley because it was semiconductors. They moved off of that now. They just, you know, they make software essentially and monopolization and IP to control markets. And that's just people are offended in that world because they're like, but this is how business is done. This is what we do. And you're saying we can't do that anymore? I mean, at this point,

like bankers don't really think that their business is lending money. They think their business is finding other banks to merge with. Right. And they're like, why are you interfering with business? And it's like, that's not what business is. Right. So Apple, you know, the business of a company like Apple should be to innovate, to improve and to to compete on the merits with rivals. But they think of their business as finding ways of excluding rivals using the existing market power that they have. They're very offended. Wall Street's very offended. There's obviously a financial element to it. Wall Street bonuses are down, although big tech profits are not. But there's self-interest here. But I

think a lot of it is just ego. They're like, how dare our elected officials actually do something about market structure? That's really well said. I've really appreciated this. We're going to put a link to the Substack in the description. We always appreciate your analysis, man. Thank you. Hey, thanks for having me. Great to see you, Matt. We'll see you, Matt. We'll see you guys later. This is an iHeart Podcast.