Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 3/26/24: Baltimore Bridge Collapse, Bibi Cancels US Meeting After UN Vote, Shocking New Israel Polls, Trump Accidentally Pushes Gaza Ceasefire, Trump Bond Reduced, Boeing CEO Out After Whistleblower Death, Feds Raid P Diddy Homes, Andrew Huberman Smeared, Assange Extradition Paused

Episode Date: March 26, 2024

Krystal and Saagar discuss the Baltimore bridge collapse, Bibi cancels DC trip after UN ceasefire vote, shocking new Israel polls, confused Trump accidentally calls for Gaza ceasefire, Trump bond massively reduced, Boeing CEO out after whistleblower death, feds raid P Diddy homes, Andrew Huberman smeared by NYMag, Julian Assange extradition paused by UK court.   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 Tuesday. We have a great show for everybody today, but with some sad news, what do we have today, Kristen?

Yeah, there is a lot going on today. We're going to cover this breaking news out of Baltimore, where a major bridge collapsed after being struck by a cargo ship. We'll tell you everything we know about that. Sadly, there are expected casualties. We'll give you all of the details and some absolutely shocking video that is coming out this morning. So we've got that for you. We also have the fallout after the U.S. allowed a U.N. Security Council vote to go through, which backed a sort of ceasefire. There's recriminations from the Israeli side. The U.S. side is now going around promising that this really doesn't mean anything at all. So we'll tell you all about that. We also have a very interesting interview from Donald Trump

with an Israeli outlet about how he would handle the U.S.-Israel relationship and what he thinks of the way that Israel has conducted itself. Perhaps some surprising comments there, very Trumpian comments, let's just say that. Very Trumpian. He also had a big day in court yesterday. One big win in terms of that massive bond amount getting knocked down, but he also now has an official criminal trial date on the calendar, so that is incredibly significant. We also learned yesterday that Boeing's CEO is going to step down at the end of this year as part of a larger leadership shakeup. We had the chance to talk to Matt Stoller, who has tracked, you know, the Boeing fiasco and their

sort of downward spiral for years now. So we got some really great in-depth information from him. You definitely want to stick around for that. We also had breaking yesterday. Apparently, Diddy, Sean Combs, his house in Miami and his house in California, both raided by the feds yesterday. A lot going on there. This is in connection with a sex trafficking investigation. We have not heard officially who is the target of that investigation, but given all of the allegations that are out there surrounding Mr. Combs, you can guess who is probably the target. And Sagar is taking a look at a new piece on podcaster Andrew Huberman. He is not happy about the way that this turned out. I got a lot of details for people. We'll get into

it. I'm putting my bias up front here at the pod and in the monologue. This guy's a friend, so definitely I'm biased in my presentation, but I'm going to do my best to bring it to everybody. All right. So we want to begin with that tragic news out of Baltimore. Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen. So a major thoroughfare. This is the Francis Scott Key Bridge on 695 just outside of Baltimore collapsing after a large cargo ship runs into it. If you watch this video closely, you can see what appears to be that ship losing power multiple times. It looks like two times before hitting this bridge. Of course, there's going to be an investigation to find out exactly what happened here.

But this is a significant roadway. You can also see, you know, trucks and vehicles traversing the bridge. Expectation, as far as we know, at this point is at least seven cars fell into this frigid water. We've also seen some reports there were potentially construction workers on this bridge as well. They are treating it as a mass casualty incident. Obviously, a tragic, horrifying scene unfolding there. In addition, we know this was actually the first 30 minutes of a 27-day journey that this cargo ship was just embarking upon. We can put another image up on the screen here showing you the aftermath as the sun is just beginning to come up there. I mean, this entire truss bridge collapsing.

I saw one person saying this is one of the largest spans of this particular type of bridge in the world. So you can imagine, you know, the number of vehicles that may have been on this bridge, you know, this happening overnight. You can only imagine if this had happened during rush hour. Terrifying scene, Sagar. And we also have a few details we can give you. Let's put this up on the screen from the Wall Street Journal. So they say Baltimore Bridge collapses after being hit by ships sending vehicles into the river. And as I mentioned, there is an expectation that there could be casualties here. Right now, around 20 people and multiple cars, they are saying, are likely to have fallen in the water. As far as we know, everybody who was on board the ship is actually okay. And Sagar,

they say they're going to be cooperating fully with the investigation into what occurred here, but also authorities in Baltimore saying there is no indication that this was intentional or this was terrorism. It appears upon first glance we'll wait for the full investigation, but to have been a horrific technical mishap. A lot of questions, though, around this ship. So this is the Dali. It's a Singaporean flagged vessel. As you said, it was departing Baltimore for Sri Lanka, supposed to arrive there on April 22nd, 1,000 feet long, and it was contracted by Maersk. Maersk said that they had fully owned all of the cargo that was on board. Some interesting details. Actually, previously had been involved in a mishap, it said, in a mishap previously where they did not see any major damage. But the thing is, Crystal, it's a relatively new vessel. The ship was built in 2015 by Hyundai

Industries. So, I mean, this is a pretty reputable corporation with a good engineering background. So there's going to be a lot of questions here. Yeah, this was earlier this year. Sorry, earlier that year following, 2016, the ship was involved in an incident where it hit a stone wall at the port of Antwerp, which sustained minor damage at the time. But nobody was injured. So there is quite a bit of regulatory stuff that's going to kick in now in a similar way that the NTSB handles a flight crash. Like, we're going to have to see whether the pilots on board were acting properly, procedure was taking place, whether there was a mechanical failure that was avoidable, whether this was a maintenance issue before it had left port. But clearly, we can infer a couple of things. It had just left port. So, we really need to examine what exactly led up to

this. I mean, this is a major transportation catastrophe here in the U.S. We were both talking beforehand. I don't know how many times you and I have both been on this bridge. Oh, absolutely. Anybody who lives in the DMV has been on the bridge at least a couple of times or, you know, driven across it. Absolutely. I mean, Kyle's planning to drive to New York today, very likely would have been over this bridge if it wasn't for, you know, the fact, obviously, it closed and catastrophically collapsed. But, you know, this is not only right there near the port. This is also close to the

Baltimore airport. This is one of the major thoroughfares. If you're going from D.C. to New York or New York to D.C., this is one of the major routes that you take because you sort of bypass that downtown Baltimore City traffic and take this kind of outer loop around downtown. So, you know, this is going to cause catastrophic transportation issues for quite a while while this is dealt with, while the investigation unfolds. And, you know, obviously it will take quite a while to reconstruct this bridge, which seeing it just collapse like that, I mean, it's shocking. So our hearts go out to the people who, you know, have lost loved ones in this horrific incident. Obviously, we don't have all the details of how many people.

There is a rescue effort underway. So, you know, we pray that there could be some survivors. But a very, very dire situation unfolding and, you know, truly a shocking thing to behold. Sad. It's a horrible incident. It's a, you know, city that was already, this is probably the last thing they needed. There's going to be a lot of questions here about cargo shipping and all that. But in the immediate aftermath, it's cold water

and it's just a nightmare situation. Just driving along, doing your job. A lot of these guys apparently were construction workers who were included working in the middle of the night. And the next thing you know, a bridge below you just blows out this entire thing. Unimaginable. Just literal nightmare stuff.

Biggest nightmare that there is. So praying for everybody who's involved. Absolutely. Let's go ahead and get to the very latest with regard to our relationship with Israel. So as Ryan and Dr. Parsi brought to you yesterday, the U.S. decided to abstain yesterday in the U.N. and allow a sort of a ceasefire resolution to go through. Previously, the U.S. has vetoed three different ceasefire resolutions.

So the fact that we abstained and allowed this through did appear to be a shift in terms of our policy and what we are willing to do, at least through diplomatic channels, in order to try to pressure Israel to come to some sort of a deal and end their outrageous assault on the Gaza Strip. Let's go ahead and we can show you

as this vote went down. Put this up on the screen. The result of the voting is as follows. 14 votes in favor, zero vote against, one abstention. The draft resolution has been adopted as Resolution 2728-2024.

So that's the actual vote going down. And immediately there were a few questions. Number one, how is Israel going to react? And number two, is this just another version of a PR messaging shift from the U.S.? Or is this going to be backed up by some actual policy changes? We now can answer both of those questions. So let's start with Israel's response. They freaked out, put this up on the screen, threw an absolute tantrum. Bibi Netanyahu canceled the meetings of this delegation

that was supposed to come here and meet with Biden officials. Specifically, they were supposed to be meeting about alternative plans with regard to Rafah and the looming invasion there. I'll read you a little bit from this piece. So they say, minutes before the vote, Netanyahu claimed the resolution did not condition the ceasefire call on the release of hostages and threatened to cancel the RAFA meetings if the U.S. didn't use its veto. That's really not even accurate. I mean, the resolution does, in fact, call for the release of hostages, but that was the way he wanted to spin it. After the U.S. abstained, U.N. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield offered assurances the resolution meant the ceasefire

must come as part of a hostage deal. This explanation apparently did not reassure Netanyahu, who swiftly announced the cancellation of that delegation. We also have some reporting, I'll bring you a little bit, that U.S. officials were apparently perplexed and confused by this and feel like he is just using this moment for his own domestic political benefits. So put a pin in that more on that later. But let's talk a little bit also about the U.S. response. Did this actually represent some sort of a shift? Is this going to come, this Security Council resolution, with some sort of pressure to actually get Israel to stop doing the atrocities and starvation of the Gaza Strip and actually come to some sort of a, what they

said in the Steele, lasting ceasefire agreement? Well, according to Matt Lee, no, it does not represent a shift in our position. It comes with no pressure. It is effectively, per us, meaningless. Let's take a listen to this exchange. And so what do you expect now to happen as a result of the passage of this resolution? Do you expect that Israel is going to announce a ceasefire? I do not. Do you expect that Hamas is going to release hostages? So I'm glad you mentioned that because one of the things that we have objected to for some time is that most of the people that call for a ceasefire, we believe, are calling for Israel to unilaterally stop operations and not calling for Hamas to agree to a ceasefire where they would release hostages. Well, I think it goes both ways, doesn't it?

It could. But the resolution today is a non-binding resolution. Okay. So what's the point? Why did you abstain? Why didn't you veto? We didn't veto because we thought the language in it was consistent with something that – the language as it relates to the ceasefire and release of hostage was consistent with the longstanding United States position. So you don't believe anything is going to happen as a result of the passage of this resolution? So I think that separate and apart from this resolution, we have active, ongoing negotiations

to try to achieve what this resolution calls for, which is an immediate ceasefire and the release of hostages. I can't say that this resolution is going to have any impact on those negotiations. But those negotiations are ongoing. They've been ongoing over the weekend and they've made progress. So I don't expect you to answer this now, but to me, you just stick this in your pocket. If that's the case, what the hell is the point of the UN or the UN Security Council? So we think it plays an important role. It does, even though its action does absolutely nothing. And that you're going to get what you would like to see, not out of the UN, but out of discussions in Doha. So we believe it's important that the UN speak and the UN Security Council speak on matters of international security. It's why we've been

engaged in this process. It's why we thought we were going to have a successful vote on Friday that Russia and China, unfortunately, and quite cynically vetoed. But I do believe that ultimately, if we were able to achieve a ceasefire and the release of hostages is going to come not through a U.N. process, but through the process with which we've been engaged, yes, in Doha. What the hell is even the point of the U.N.? Let me just say, God bless Matt Lee. This exchange was extraordinary. And let me pick up on one piece in particular, because immediately not only Matt Miller, but Linda Thomas-Greenfield and others watched through the mics to say, oh, well, this resolution is non-binding, so it really doesn't mean anything at all. Our position is the same. It hasn't changed, et cetera, et cetera. This is just making stuff up. UN Security Council resolutions are binding.

So they're just inventing new international law to pretend to the world themselves, Israel, whatever, that this is inconsequential. And because they have taken the position that it is inconsequential and that it literally means nothing, causing Matt Lee to ask, well, what the hell is even the point of the UN? Why did you even freaking do this? Why should we care? Revealing that it actually does mean nothing in their eyes and is not going to come with any change in policy, any pressure with regard to Israel. And it's just one more example of their BS propaganda ass covering moves that really don't come with any sort of substantive policy difference to try to effectuate a different policy direction. I mean, look, all of this is symbolic, and that's part of why it's so annoying to watch this whole charade play out.

The Israelis treat it as if it's a real change in policy. They're not stupid, and they know that's not the case. The same thing happened from 2016 when Barack Obama, at the end of his presidency, allowed a U.N UN resolution to go through, which was critical of the settlement policy. Did anything change in the settlement policy, Crystal? Okay, so what did we learn about that? Second, though, is that the Biden administration is doing their absolute best to get as many headlines as possible to make it appear as if they have rhetorically changed anything, while policy on the ground remains

exactly the same. The problem, though, is that in some ways, you know, the Israelis are not wrong in that they have even ground somebody like Biden to the point where even whenever you're going to ship them as many weapons as possible, that they have to try and distance themselves from your actions. And this is where symbolically, I mean, what we've really been warning about from the beginning is, listen, you can do what you want, but you are really suffering in the eyes of the world. And this is just further evidence of that. And that's also why they're pulling out all the stops. We have this, for example, our tried and true friend now in this conflict, the Israeli minister, Ben, Itaman Ben-Gavir, if we can put it up there, please, on the

screen. He says that the security council decision proves that the United Nations is anti-Semitic and its secretary general is anti-Semitic and it encourages Hamas. I mean, everything is anti-Semitic and or encouraging to Hamas. But I mean, I just think that the way that we can look at this is that it is both symbolically a problem from Israel, I think, in the long run. But in the short term, there has been, and this is why it was so critical to play that Matt Lee clip, there is no change in official U.S. policy. And that is the actual takeaway that our audience needs to hear today. Yeah, and I have more on that in a moment. Let me show you the Hamas response to this.

Let's put this up on the screen. So in a surprising statement, this person opines Hamas welcomed the UNSC's decision, called for its immediate implementation. Hamas also affirmed their readiness to engage in a prisoner exchange process leading to the release of detainees held by both sides. So that was their reaction to this. And put the next one up on the screen. Just more to the point about Israel's reaction here. So a bunch of U.S. officials leaked to Axios' Barak Ravid that they think Bibi is intentionally provoking a crisis for his own domestic benefit. A U.S. official said the White House was perplexed by what it sees as an overreaction by Netanyahu,

because in their mind, they're like, we haven't changed our policy. This is all just some bullshit PR stunt. So why are you freaking out? Like we're not cutting off weapons. We're not doing anything different. So why are you freaking out? The official said the White House is puzzled. The prime minister rejected the US interpretation of the UN resolution, decided to air his differences with the Biden administration and public and tell the U.S. what its policy is when the U.S. is already stating its policy, which is different from what Netanyahu is saying. Quote, all of that is self-defeating. The prime minister could have chosen a different course to align with the U.S. on the meaning of this

resolution. He chose not to, apparently for political purposes. So they're saying here, basically, that the freakout is for show for domestic Israeli political consumption, that it looks good for him to seem to be standing up to the US and being angry about the UN Security Council resolution, even as these officials went out of their way to assure him that literally nothing is actually changing. To your point about it being theater, this is proof positive of exactly that. And to really hit this home, I want especially, again, what's actually happening, let's put this please up on the screen, is that the US at the exact same time actually found within the State Department that Israel is in compliance with the Biden demand of international law and humanitarian aid. The State Department has said, quote, we have not found Israel to be in violation either when it comes to the conduct of the war or the provision of humanitarian assistance. This was made, Crystal, they had up until May 8th to provide Congress with that report

on its compliance after the demand was currently happening. And the key point of saying that they have not found it is that that then allows them to continue the weapon shipments and to continue to fulfill the weapons wish lists that are currently here. So may very careful about just accepting, you know, whatever is supposedly a change in policy at the United Nations at the brass tacks level in terms of weapons that will continue to flow. The U.S. State Department certifies that these weapons are being used in the international laws of war and that humanitarian aid is being allowed into the Gaza Strip. I expected this and it still was absolutely enraging to me because you literally had last week Secretary of State Tony Blinken saying that 100% of the population is facing acute food deficiencies. Okay. He said,

this is the first time we've ever seen an entire population suffer from this level of food deprivation. And then not even a week later, you and the state department turn around and certify, oh, there's no problem with humanitarian aid. No, they're not blocking. Do you think we're stupid? Do you think we can't see the images coming out? The absolute desperation as people clamor for anything they can get their hands on, eating weeds, drinking water that is unsafe, unsanitary, making them sick, making at best using feed that is meant for animals to try to put together, you know, something that they could possibly sustain themselves on. The entire population goes at 100%. You've never

seen this before. And yet you're going to certify that, oh, no, they're not blocking humanitarian aid. This certification came on the very same day that the UN released a report saying, yes, it does look like genocide based on Israel's actions, based on not just the number of people that have been killed, but the total annihilation of civilian life based on, hey, we just saw it, not just in Gaza, but we saw the largest land grab in the West Bank that we've seen in 30 years, as we covered yesterday. And with all of this going on, you're going to certify, no, they're following international law. Bullshit. We just saw the drone footage of them targeting unarmed civilians who were just walking by in Khan Yunis. And they hit them,

and when they're crawling and scrambling for their lives, going back in and hitting them again with zero justification. And you're going to certify, no, no, we think it's all fine. They're abiding by international law. Your own base, 50% majority, think that this is a genocide. We have polling that we'll show you in a moment about the way that your own voters view this conflict and how much the U.S. public, Democrats, Republicans, independents, how wary they are of providing additional military assistance to Israel at this moment. And you're going to go against all of that. You're going to go against what a number of Senate Democrats have said,

including Chris Van Hollen, who's no freaking radical. You're going to go against that. You're going to go against what every human rights organization, including a number of Israeli human rights organizations, have said about what's unfolding on the ground. You're going to go against your own words a week ago where you were talking about how the whole population is being starved to death. It's just, it's outrageous. It's absolutely outrageous. And so if there was any inkling of hope that perhaps this abstention, remember, they didn't even vote for it, but they allowed the resolution to pass through Security Council, that this represented some sort of shift in terms of this administration's support for an ongoing genocide in the Gaza Strip. If you had any inkling of hope that that was the

case, this is your answer. Definitively, conclusively, they have not shifted or budged one single inch. They've changed their messaging for their own domestic political consumption. And it is all a game. It is all theater to them. Bibi is playing off of it, doing what he needs to do to try to stay in power. And Biden is changing his messaging and his rhetoric, thinking that is going to fool all of us into thinking that there has been some actual change in policy and it is total and complete bullshit. Matt Miller got asked about this yesterday, whether they still think that UNRWA should be defunded and asked about whether Israel is blocking humanitarian aid. Let's take a listen to how he responded. Do you still believe or is it still the U.S. assessment that Israel is not using food or assistance as a tool of war?

So we have not made an assessment or drawn the conclusion that they are in violation of international humanitarian law when it comes to the provision of humanitarian assistance into Gaza. We have not made an assessment. I mean, Sagar, what do you make of that language that's such like, you know, a non-answer here? Because they really can't come out and say, no, they're not blocking aid because it's so manifestly obvious to anyone who's paying attention. So they just say, well, we haven't made that assessment. Yeah, I mean, they're just living in their own house of cards now at this point because they've constructed their entire policy such that they're trying to have the language of humanitarianism in compliance with international law, in compliance with U.S. law, frankly, and then also to try and assuage some of the concerns of what is just patently obvious to any even neutral observer now at this point. So I just see it as

really collapsing within its own like tortured logic, which frankly, that's really been the case now for the Biden administration for quite some time. And I echo what you said, God bless Matt Lee and all the other State Department reporters, our own Ryan Grimm as well, who have been pressing these people because it all collapses, you know, on its, with the most basic level of scrutiny. And that's really what we're seeing with this guy. Even his MSNBC training is not, it's not coming out all that useful for him in this time. You know, I just, I think about these people, Matt Miller, Karine Jean-Pierre, like I knew her, we were at MSNBC together. She comes out of this like lefty anti-war activist background. And I'm just like, how did you justify

this to yourself? Because Trump is bad and they work for Biden and Biden is not Trump. I genuinely think that's it. Was there a moment, you know, was there a decision point where it was like, I can either advance my career or I can hold to some sort of principle here and the career path was chosen. And then you find yourself in front of a podium justifying a genocide. Like, does it happen little by little? Is there one sort of seminal moment that sends you inexorably in that direction? I think about that because it's crazy to me. I'm sure Matt Miller, I don't really know him, but I know him from his MSNBC days and whatever.

I'm sure he saw himself as don't really know him, but I know him from his MSNBC days and whatever. I'm sure he saw himself as this like moral, liberal, progressive type. And now look at you standing up there and saying, oh, well, we haven't assessed whether or not they're blocking humanitarian aid, justifying carrying water for all of this. These we don't even know. I mean, you know, the number is about 30,000 people. We really don't know. We don't know. We don't know how many people are buried under the rubble. We don't know what this is going to do to every single child in the Gaza Strip for the rest of their lives. Entire thing destroyed, and you're still standing there

carrying water, doing whatever you need to do for that day's propaganda agenda. It's utterly disgusting, and these people are complete and utter monsters. Let's move on to how the public feels about this war, which is quite dissonant, especially the Democratic base, from how the elite elected officials have been supporting this war. Put this up on the screen. So we've got a whole bunch of polling from Pew Research Center. You've got Dems and Lean Dems basically split on yes, no, or don't know on whether Hamas's reasons for fighting Israel are valid, regardless of how acceptable Respondent views October 7th. So there's a difference here, right?

You have overwhelming sentiment against thinking that October 7th was acceptable, right? There's very few in the Democratic Party and the Republican Party anywhere that say, hey, October 7th was acceptable, right? There's very few in the Democratic Party and the Republican Party anywhere that say, hey, October 7th was acceptable. The question is, do you think that the reason that Hamas is fighting is valid? And you've got in the Democrats and lean Democrats, you've got 38 saying invalid, 34 valid, and 28 not sure. And you can see here there's a significant partisan divide. You can also see, you know, there's significant generational divide, which is, you know, kind of a consistent theme across a lot of this polling. Let's go ahead and put this next piece up on the screen,

because I think this is really critical. So you have this question. Is the way that Israel is fighting this war with Hamas acceptable? And in the Democratic Party, with Democrats and lean Democrats, a majority, 52 percent, say it is unacceptable. Only 22 percent say that it is acceptable. And another 26 percent say that they're not sure. So, Sagar, this one really demonstrates how at odds the Biden administration is with their own base of voters and how differently those voters are viewing what is happening here. Yeah. Can we go to the next one, please, and put it up there on the screen? Because a lot of the breakdowns are actually very important. It says Americans are divided over whether Biden is striking the right balance. And quote, percent who say Joe Biden is favoring

Israelis too much. Amongst Democrats, that's a full 34%. Striking the right balance is 29%. Not sure 33% and favoring Palestinians too much. You have 3%. So I think really what you are seeing here is a major and consolidated shift. The next one also seems very, very important to me, which is about the U.S. military aid. Because again, you know, you have in there the number on lean Democrats, and you see that the majority are not really in favor of sending aid to Israel and or not sure. But you also see, I think, some major changes kind of in the overall view of the U.S. electorate on Israel. And I think that's actually what's most important. It's not just about Democrats. We're talking here about military aid to what was previously one of the most popular countries, you know, in the entire United States.

And when we look at some of that loss and some of that breakdown, I think that that has been a societal-wide shift for which Israel is really going, I think, to pay the consequences. A lot of that started with Bibi's speech before Congress with Obama back in 2015. But this has really made it so that I think Israel has now basically allied itself with an explicit political party in the U.S. And we're about to get to that too with Trump where Trump can be all over on policy. He's probably going to be very, very pro-Israel. That said, you know, that's a very, very bad strategic way to align yourself because previously they really did have a lot more bipartisan consensus than I think where we're headed right now. I think 10, 15 years from now, the current status quo is unimaginable. Yeah. With the current amount of Democrats. Well, Trump makes some interesting comments

about that. Yeah, I'm excited. Yeah, you're going to. They're just the most Trumpian comments on this subject you can possibly imagine. You know, there was also a real commentary, if you dig into this data, on the media coverage. Because, first of all, only about half of U.S. adults could even correctly answer the question of whether Israelis or Palestinians had suffered more deaths. Think about that. Only half of the U.S. public thought that they could answer that question correctly. They did not know that the toll on the Palestinian side has been multiples of times greater. And then they also tracked. So the people who said they weren't sure and didn't know which side had suffered more casualties and more deaths, they had a very different opinion of this conflict. They were much more in general sort of pro-Israel and likely susceptible to accept the Israeli propaganda,

the Biden administration propaganda with regards to what's happening here. So I'll give you some of those numbers. They say those that were aware that more Palestinians have died are about twice as likely to say Biden is favoring Israelis too much as to say he's favoring the Palestinians too much. Among those who do not know that more Palestinians have died, you have 15% saying Biden is favoring the Palestinians too much, and only 9% say that he's favoring the Israelis too much. By 69 to 16, those who know that more Palestinians have died favor the U.S. providing humanitarian aid, but those who don't know the balance of casualties, only 29% favor providing aid and 23% oppose it. So, I mean, there's a few things to say here. First of all, you can

see why they're so upset about TikTok and why this has, you know, really reignited this whole conversation about and a lot of political momentum around banning TikTok, because it breaks up some of the consistent propaganda that you get across mainstream media outlets to the, you know, that is so fulsome that most Americans don't even know the very basic numbers around which side has suffered more casualties. And that dramatically impacts the way that they're viewing this conflict. I thought that was really noteworthy. I thought it was noteworthy, but I'm going to say, I don't know if it's just TikTok. You know, I don't spend any time.

I don't literally don't even have TikTok, but I'm on the internet. You know, I'm on Twitter. I think that's not just TikTok. That's what I mean. I think it's just being on the internet. They think TikTok is sort of like uniquely, you know. That said, I mean, I go on my Instagram reels and even there I get served up, you know, some Palestinian content or whatever. I follow a couple of guys, people who are like military analysts and others who are relatively dispassionate. More so, I would just say, if you are not consuming mainstream media, which is the vast majority of people under the age of 55, you are, I mean, this is a key theme of our show, right? You are living literally in

an entirely different world than if you're just getting everything served up on CNN or MSNBC. I also think some of it comes down to moral weight. I mean, this is something we balance here on our show in terms of programming and all of that. But if you do spend any time, Crystal, looking at the vast majority of coverage that these people spend their time on, like the Trump trial and the minutia of Stormy Daniels or MSNBC yesterday, every single hour of their show issued a segment including Rachel Maddow dedicated to speaking out against Ronna McDaniel. Like that's what they think is important. And it almost gaslights like boomers and other people in this country into thinking you're like, yeah, you know what? These are the trendsetting issues of our day. I mean, here's again, look, I get it.

It is a balance. When are they going to speak out against Nicole Waller? Right, exactly. The reason, you know, for today we can lead our show here with Israel, which I don't see a lot of people in cable or other doing is because we're like, wow, this is a breakdown in the U.S.-Israeli relationship. At the same time, it exposes a lot of stuff. It was major headline news, you know, all across Washington. And I just don't see a lot of seriousness in the way that they have coverage. So there's a fulsome conversation where I still come down on the people of the young actually know what's up.

Yeah, that's right. They have better prioritization of what's really important and what's not than the people who are the so-called programmers. Absolutely the case. And there's, it's not an accident that they fall back to their, like, you know, I'm not saying these things are like not important, what's going on with Trump. We're going to cover it too, right? But they fall back to that because that's very easy and very safe for them. Exactly. No one's losing their job over at MSNBC by saying Trump is bad or Trump is a criminal or whatever. But you could ask Mehdi Hassan how it went for him at MSNBC when he was not only critical of Israel, but also was willing to really aggressively challenge Israeli spokespeople who would come on his show. Guess

what? He doesn't have a job there anymore. Now, you can read into that what you will, but he's not the first either. Ask Mark Lamont Hill how that went for him over at CNN. True. So these people are not stupid. They're careerists. They want to keep their job. They want to keep their platform. They can justify that in their minds however they want.

You know, well, at least I can be here and say a little bit of something about something true and something real and something important. And if I'm gone, then, you know, the next person may not even do that. But they understand what line they need to walk and where the safe space is for them in terms of their career. And so all of the incentives are in the opposite direction of actually covering this conflict

in a way just that is factual and honest as what is actually happening on the ground. And so as a result of that, you end up with a population where a majority do not even know the basic fact that Palestinians have suffered multiples more losses during this conflict than Israelis. And you end up with the views that boomers have in this conflict. And you can see consistently the generational conflict. The one other thing, Sagar, that I thought was really interesting, noteworthy, is they asked about how people felt, and these are all Americans, right, about the Israeli government, approve, disapprove. The religious group that had the highest approval rating for the Netanyahu government, you're going to guess.

Evangelicals. Absolutely. Of course. Way higher than Jewish Americans. They had a much higher approval rating of Bibi Netanyahu's government. So I thought that was an interesting note from this poll as well. If you are ever on a plane to Tel Aviv, you're going to find it's going to be like a 10 to 1 ratio of church groups to actual Jews who are going to Israel. That's where the strongest support is.

That's the bedrock right there. And that's actually where the Israeli government and Israeli groups spend a lot of money cultivating that because they know how powerful that is. Look at Mike Johnson, the House Speaker. Yeah, exactly. It works. You're right. The investment's correct. It's not wrong.

First thing he did when he became Speaker, he passed a resolution for Israel called Bibi Netanyahu, et cetera. And it's partly—I wouldn't just say partly. It's almost wholly because of his ideological religious beliefs. Well, I remember walking around Jerusalem and just seeing, you know, you see like all of these church groups literally everywhere. I was stunned. I mean, you heard American English almost everywhere you went. And it really hit home for me. I was like, wow, this is a real like well-funded operation that's happening out here.

And it's only opened my eyes ever since. Yes. Donald Trump gave an interview to a right-wing-leaning Israeli news outlet. He was at Mar-a-Lago. Let's take a listen to a little bit of what he had to say, and then we'll read you some of the additional quotes that weren't included in the video portion. Take a listen.

They would have never done that because they knew there would have been very big consequences. All right that being said you have to finish up your war you have to finish it up you got to get it done and I'm sure you'll do that. Now. We got to get to peace. You can't have this going on And I will say Israel has to be very careful because you're losing a lot of the world you're losing a lot of support,. You're losing a lot of support. But you have to finish up. You have to get the job done.

And you have to get on to peace. You have to get on to a normal life for Israel and for everybody else. They say if I ran for office in Israel, I'd get 98% of the vote. I'm not Jewish, and yet Israel to me is very important. That's why I did Golan Heights. Golan Heights is worth trillions of dollars, trillions of dollars. Okay. He goes on, by the way, to say—

What is he talking about with the Golan Heights? I don't even know. But he goes on to say, like, I asked my ambassador, give me a history lesson. Make it five minutes or less, he said. And then based on that five-minute conversation, he did whatever this thing is with the Golan Heights that he did. He recognized the Golan Heights. Okay. Yeah. But of course, in his way, he's like, it's worth trillions of dollars. It has to do with the real estate value of the land. Very much echoes Kushner's comments, right? About how Gaza, look at this amazing waterfront property for development.

Isn't this fantastic? Like the way these people think is really something else. Obviously, people picked up on the fact that he says here multiple times, he said this throughout the interview, you have to finish up, you have to get the job done, and you have to get to peace. So he'll say things like that. Then he'll also say things that are just wholly like, of course, I'll be grateful. I'll give you everything that you want. And we know from the last time that he was in office, he did exactly that. He did give them everything that they wanted, everything that they asked for. The Abraham Accords were part of the context that Hamas says was what motivated them to commit their atrocities and attacks on October 7th. That's not to justify Hamas' actions. That's just to explain to you the way that they were thinking about this and how they felt that their back was

up against the wall because this normalization of relations was happening that made them feel like the whole world is moving on and they're forgetting about us and we're losing any sort of window to do anything at all. So Trump, you know, says his typical thing about, oh, this never would have happened under me, blah, blah, blah. I think that's nonsense. First of all, you can't prove a counterfactual. But second of all, his administration was a key part of creating this context. And that was continued by the Biden administration. They were pushing for normalization with Saudi Arabia. So both of these administrations and many more besides complicit in creating the context for October 7th. Yeah, the thing is about Trump, though, is he can't help but strike to at least some directional truth. And that's what I

really found in some of these comments. Let's put it up there on the screen. Of course, the Israeli outlet didn't cut the video of this, but we do have the text. Quote, if you were president, how would you counter the wave of anti-Semitism in the wake of war's outbreaks? He says, well, that's because you fought back. And I think Israel made a very big mistake. I wanted to call and say, don't do it. These photos and shots, I mean, moving shots of bombs being dropped into buildings in Gaza. And I said, oh, that's a terrible portrait. It's a very bad picture for the world. The world is seeing this every night. I would watch buildings pour down on people. I would say it was given by the defense ministry and said, whoever's providing that is a bad image. And the Israeli newscaster says, but terrorists are hiding in those buildings. He says, go and do what you have to do,

but you don't do that. And I think that's one of the reasons there has been a lot of kickback. If people didn't see that every single night, I've watched every single one of those. And I think Israel wanted to show it's tough, but sometimes you shouldn't be doing that. So this is what you have to do, but you don't do that. This is the most revealing. This is my always my big defense of Trump. He at least can smell where things are in the media. And he has an uncanny ability through his like PR perception of the world to be like, look, on a policy level, you know, I support you guys. He's like, but don't do that. Maybe, you know, in his own very Trumpian way, but do what you have to do, but don't do that. I thought about calling him, say, don't do it. It's a very bad picture to the world. I mean,

this is the like the savant-ish aspect of Trump's character where you can't see any other Republican ever saying anything like that because they have to stay within a consistent prism. But for him, he's like, I can see that this is going to be a real problem for me. So it's not that politically he's positioning himself differently, but he's almost offering messaging advice. I would also say he said, what did he say? I think they've made a big mistake. They shouldn't do it. It's like people were like, oh my gosh, is Trump calling for an unconditional ceasefire without the release of hostages in Israel? That's certainly one way you can actually read it, which is the hilarious thing about him and the way that he can put himself. That is part of Trump and what is incredible and maddening about him is you

could read into these comments basically anything that you want. Because the comment of like, oh, you have to finish the job, I mean, that sounds really horrifying. But then he's like, you have to get to peace. The piece that this right-wing outlet picked up on was like, you'd be crazy not to do what Israel did

after October 7th. And that's what they use for their headline because that's what fits what they wanted to hear from this conversation. There was another piece that I wanted to read you. And he does throughout this whole interview, which I encourage you to read because it is interesting. He keeps coming back to the assault on Gaza and the buildings pouring down on people, as he said, is like a PR problem for Israel. You heard him say like, you're losing all this support around the world. You know, you shouldn't do that, et cetera, et cetera. He keeps coming back to it as like a messaging and PR problem, not like a reality problem for Israel. But he got asked about the Chuck Schumer comments calling for a new government to be elected after the war is over.

And let me read you this because he gets into the Israel lobby. And it's, again, one of these things that, like, you can't imagine really any other Republican politician exactly saying these particular things. So he says, I think it's a terrible thing to do with regard to Schumer because it takes all of your momentum away because they watch and they watch the government. They watch the people, what's going on. It shows great division in the United States. You have to have support. And you don't have the support you used to have. Some 15 years ago, Israel had the strongest lobby. If you were a politician, you couldn't say anything bad about Israel. That would be like the end of your political career. Today, it's almost the opposite.

Not true, but anyway, put that aside. I've never seen. You have AOC plus three. These lunatics, frankly, goes on to rant and rave about AOC and Rash. These lunatics, frankly, goes on to like rant and rave about AOC and Rashida Tlaib. Then he goes on to say, and 15 years ago, that would have been unthinkable to be doing that. So Israel has to get, Israel has to get better with the promotional and with the public relations because right now they're in ruin. They're being hurt very badly, I think, in a public relations sense. So anyway, some opinions offered there about the importance and strength of the Israel lobby from Mr. Trump. He knows, right? This is what I mean about him.

Well, and that's the thing is he just is looking out for – I don't think Trump is ideological about Israel. I think it's purely transactional, right? You know, he got a lot of money from Sheldon Adelson last time around. There are other influential donors for whom this is a really key issue. He sees where the Republican Party is and it's like, all right, well, this is just where I'm going to be. But to your point, there's, I think, two other pieces going on. First of all, he has a personal grievance with Netanyahu because he accepted the legitimacy of Joe Biden's election. And he's one of the first. That's right. Yeah.

So he has a personal grievance with Netanyahu. And second of all, I think you're right that he sniffs out, you is too much. There needs to be a piece that that can help to drive that divide in the Democratic Party. But, you know, I mean, I also think I was even as these comments were all over the map. And like I said, I think you can kind of take from them whatever you want. To the extent that Netanyahu was thinking, you know, I just need to keep this going and Donald Trump's going to get elected and he's just going to let me do whatever I want. You have to at least call into question whether that would actually be the case based on these comments that you made here. Trump has no loyalty. He has no ideology.

This was a major problem during the administration. We never knew what we were going to get. On the one hand, we're pulling out Afghanistan. The other hand, we're hiring John Bolton. So which is it? Right. So we never really know. In general, he didn't care about policy. But what he does care about is a bad headline. And there are several

moments I'll never really forget from interviewing and meeting Trump. But I can't go into too much detail. But there was one instance where we were insinuating something that would have caused him a bad headline. And he freaked out at a personal level that I had never seen him react before. And it was really in some of those moments kind of covering him up close that you could just see like this is what makes him tick. And so to the extent that he's quote unquote loyal to Israel, it's like, yeah, maybe from a campaign perspective, but if he gets into office and you're BB and you said the wrong thing about Biden, or if he can sense that this is going to be bad for him politically, he's going to cut you loose no matter what. And that's why I think you are correct. I mean, the Trump is simply the master

of saying everything to everyone. It's part of the reason why he is as successful as he is. That's why people often articulate his meandering rhetoric that is all over the place. But I've often found it's actually a major strength for him because his supporters can see, be like, no, no, no, he's the candidate of peace or he's a candidate of strength. Neocons and, you know, isolationists alike can find whatever they want in some of his rhetoric. And I think that's how he's going to continue on this issue. He'll never come down as stridently as a Tom Cotton or any of these other folks because he doesn't believe it. He really doesn't.

Well, and in that way, I mean, Biden is deeply ideological. Yeah, he is deeply ideological. He is very ideological. I think that he is locked in ideological pro-Israel Zionist on this issue, which is why he's been willing to, I mean, he's risking his entire reelect over this issue. If you just look at the numbers, how important this has become for young voters, for Arab Americans, for Muslim Americans, for Black Americans. I mean, there is the core of the Democratic base is there is a significant portion that is deeply distraught over what is happening and what this president is not just sitting

back and watching happen, but is shipping the weapons for and supporting diplomatically and, you know, enabling in every way that he possibly can. So he is actually willing to risk Trump getting reelected for his ideological zeal and commitment on the issue. Trump is just purely transactional. Now, within the Republican Party context, it has always been the case. I shouldn't say always, because actually, if you go back to George H.W. Bush and Reagan, they were definitely better on this issue than Joe Biden and willing to stand up to Israel in certain instances. But in the modern Republican Party context, that transactional math has always landed you on the side of let me just do, you know, whatever Israel wants, let me back them at every turn, etc. I don't really

expect that to be different. But, you know, it's classic Trump just to embody the way that he can say two things basically at once. You know, he says, go and do what you have to do, but you don't do that. So which is it? Do you do what you have to do from their perspective or do you not do that? And, again, you can kind of read into that whatever you want to read into that. I actually, when I read that, I just burst out laughing because it is so classic. Classic Trump. It's like Trump AI. If you asked a Trump AI to respond to this question, that's what they'd say. I just realized Trump AI is almost literally impossible because he's so all over the map,

you could never program that level of randomness into Trump's speech. Trump is always going to have a job and he's also really old, so he probably won't live to see it. All right, let's move on to the legal front regarding Mr. Trump. There's been some major developments on the money side, a huge victory for him yesterday in court. Let's go and put this up there on the screen. Court has agreed to pause that collection of the $400 million judgment against Trump if he is able to put up a $175 million bond within 10 days. Quote, if Trump does it, it will then stop the collection and prevent the state from seizing presumptive assets while he appeals. The appeals court has also halted other aspects of the trial judge's

ruling that had barred Trump and his son, Eric and Don Jr., from serving in corporate leadership for several years, so they will retain leadership over their current business assets. Quote, in all, the order was a significant victory for Trump as he defends the real estate empire that vaulted him into public life. And it came just after Letitia James was expected to then initiate the effort to collect the judgment. So, Crystal, a much more manageable amount of money at $175 million, especially whenever you combine it with some of the windfall that he's just received in his Truth Social IPO that is expected. Actually, Trump just yesterday, if everybody wants to know, officially cracked the top 500 richest Americans with his network

hitting some $6 billion, according to Forbes magazine. So he's actually richer than ever today than he was previously expected. $175 million, previously you and I had discussed, he had a line on a possible $100 million bond. So he was able to get a bond and he could come up with some $75 million. Then he might be able to stave off of this. That said, I mean, he's still got 10 more days, but this is a far, far cry from the bankruptcy and the asset seizure, which we all expected previously. For sure. For Trump's part, he insisted on Truth Social back on Friday that he does have almost $500 million in cash. But he wants to be able to use some of that on his presidential run, which is nonsense. Even in 2016, remember this?

He promised to put a bunch of his own cash in his presidential campaign. Never came anywhere close to what he said he was going to do. But he's saying that, you know, the judge doesn't want me taking cash out to use it for the campaign. So that's why the half a billion dollars was assessed. So anyway, he's sticking to the line. Oh, I actually have the campaign. So that's why the half a billion dollars was assessed. So anyway, he's sticking to the line. Oh, I actually have the money. It's not really a problem, but I just don't really want to use it for this regard. So we'll see what happens here in terms of, yeah, I mean, it's still a lot of money, but he probably can more easily come up with this one.

That's the irony. If you had half a billion dollars in cash, you're a freaking idiot. No financial advisor would ever tell you to do that. Imagine if that segment amount of your net worth was in liquid cash. That's incredibly foolish from a financial perspective. But he's so concerned with the bravado and the appearance that he has to pretend that that is the case. Let's go to the next part. This is also very, very important. The New York hush money case now officially has a trial date set for April 15th, also known as Tax Day, coincidentally, tearing, quote, into the presidential, former president's lawyers for what he said were unfounded claims that the hush money case had been tainted by prosecutorial conduct. The judge now officially set the case, despite defense's

calls, to continue the delay and to throw it out entirely from a last-minute document dump. So they say, barring now perhaps another delay, which is on the horizon, the presumptive Republican nominee will be on trial as a criminal defendant in just three weeks. And the trial, though, is of course going around the Stormy Daniels hush money case payment, a very novel legal interpretation under New York state law hasn't happened before. Even if convicted, Crystal is very likely to go to appeals and actually, you know, set some standard as to whether this was even allowed.

Definitely the weakest of all of the criminal cases against Trump. But of course, anytime you find yourself in the jaws of the criminal justice system, it's not great. Yeah. And I mean, it is a tawdry situation. Sure. If it wasn't Trump, this would be a career ender for pretty much any politician. Right. Right. I mean, it's kind of like John Edwards-esque. Yeah. You know? But see, Edwards was not a billionaire playboy. He was like supposedly

happily married. I mean, I'm just saying that Trump gets away with shit that nobody else does. Of course. Yeah. But I mean, it's destroyed. It destroyed John Edwards' political career. It was over. That was it. Even though a jury ultimately, you know, what did they end up? I think it was either a mistrial or they did. Yeah. He didn't, wasn't found guilty. Something happened in the trial. I don't remember exactly, but anyway, he wasn't found guilty. But I mean, it's that type of like tawdry, sordid, cover up, using campaign funds, etc. So, you know, just to play devil's advocate here, I don't want to discount that this could actually be potentially impactful for the public. And to, you know, offer that side of the case, we can put this up on the screen.

For whatever reason, Biden does seem to be having a little bit of a polling bounce right now. It certainly has. Put it up there. So he, for the first time in quite a while, has now surged past Trump. This is the economist average of polls. So we've got Biden at 45, Trump at 44. I just saw some swing state polling this morning that actually looked decent for Biden. Had him tied in a few key swing states. We haven't been seeing that for a little while. So there's enough of a trend now that it does seem like he's getting

a little bit of a bounce. There's a variety of reasons that could be the case. One, it could be that people are so impressed with his incredible State of the Union performance. Can you tell I'm being a little sarcastic here? But I genuinely think he outperformed the very, very, very low expectations of can you walk up to the stage

and not have a visible health event while you're delivering the speech? He did that. And so it could be, that's part of why. I do think it's possible that another reason is potentially that, you know, the Trump legal issues have been more in the news and more front and center. And that could be taking a toll on Trump. So I just want to hold out the possibility that even though this trial is seen as like the lesser of all of the various criminal charges that he's facing, the details are in some ways the most, I don't know, relatable. They're the most scandalous, you know, and just the idea of him being a criminal defendant and being in front of a jury and the case being made and all these allegations being put against

him, it could have a public impact. I don't want to totally dismiss that. Let's not dismiss it. You're right. And let's let's be fair that Trump's, you know, personality and stop the steal and the madness and all of that had a huge impact in 2022. Yeah. So we can't discount that's the reason I'm willing to discount this one a little bit is this is so baked into the original 2020 thesis, and it didn't have any impact then. I mean, when I think Stormy Daniels, what am I thinking? Michael Avenatti, freaking CNN, and all the other media madness that we had to live through. I would say it was a wash for everybody involved. Now, when I'm thinking January 6th criminal trial, I'm thinking a very different story. When I'm thinking criminal documents, I'm thinking a different story. Georgia, I'm thinking

a different story. So I think there are gradations within this. This one in particular, I think it's so baked in. Stormy Daniels had her moment. You know, Avenatti had his moment. This is all, people know everything there is to know about this case already. And the whole case, Crystal, was made prior to the 2020 election. Michael Cohen pleading guilty, et cetera.

That's the only reason on this one specifically, I'm saying I don't think so as much. Maybe. I don't know. Genuinely 50-50. What do I know? Because the other possibility is that just that normie reaction of like there you are facing criminal, like you're a potential criminal. You're right.

You know, felony charge. Okay, they don't, you know, the novel legal application or whatever. They're looking at this and like, you know, this was a messed up situation. You handled it in a disgusting way and probably in a legal way as well. And now your ass has been dragged in front of a trial jury to answer these criminal charges. So I could see it. There's also just that Trump has benefited, I think, from the fact that he has been for a while, he was a little bit on the back burner in terms of a public person. He wasn't in people's faces every single day. And so there was an ability for some of the memories of what it's like with Trump, what he's all about, all these various scandals and things from the past.

And so for people to have a reminder of that, of his character, of this just messiness that constantly surrounds him, it can't be a good thing for him. It's certainly possible. I certainly don't think, if you're thinking that, oh, this is going to in order to his benefit with the general public, in order to his benefit with the Republican base, fine, but he's already won the Republican nomination. With the general public, I don't think it's going to be a net benefit for him. And I can easily see it being an actual, somewhat of an issue for him. And I'm just talking about, you know, maybe a few points in the polls, which could make the difference. So who knows? We'll watch it unfold. All right.

So we did have a prerecorded segment that we did with Matt Stoller yesterday about the Boeing CEO stepping down. And so some of the problems that were getting into it, Matt gave us some really, really insightful analysis. So let's take a listen to that. All right, guys, we have some big breaking news with regard to Boeing. This, of course, in the wake of major safety issues and huge questions, especially surrounding the death of a Boeing whistleblower. I can put this up on the screen from CNN. So Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun is going to step down. This is part of a larger shakeup of the company's leadership. Apparently, Boeing's chairman and the head of the commercial airplane unit are also leaving. The CEO will not be out immediately, but he is planning to leave what they describe as the beleaguered company by the end of the year. And just so happens we have a great guy here to talk about all of this.

Matt Stoller is the author of Goliath. He also works at the American Economic Liberties Project and writes at the Substack Big, and he is here to react to this news. Great to have you, Matt. Hey, thanks for having me. Yeah, of course. So are Boeing's problems over now that they've taken out the CEO? It's fixed. It's fixed. It's great. No, I mean, there's a lot to say about this, but Boeing has a history of having their CEOs resign and being like, oh, you know, everything is fixed. So I think this happened in like 2003. It's happened at other, you know, and also high level executives.

Oh, we're caught for bribery. Like, whoa, whoops, because they have a big defense unit. They just what they do is they if you are the one who gets caught, then they will, then they'll say, resign, we'll pay you off and you go away. But the rule at Boeing is don't get caught, not like, let's fix stuff, right? So it's, also he's not resigning.

He's going to stay there until 20, you know, for the rest of the year, which is, it's, you know, it's March. Like, that's a lot of, that's like a baby, right? That's a whole baby. That's true. That's a good point. I mean, like, go away, right?

Like, either you take responsibility for it and you resign tomorrow or you're not. And this is, it's like classic, you know, half-assing it, right? No, Boeing needs to be nationalized. It is a disaster. It's not a viable enterprise right now If they're not making safe planes take us back to how this all happened So everything January 5 the door plug blows off 737 max 9 David Calhoun Specifically was brought in to fix the problems of the updated software system that leads to the death of some 500 people previously That's his entire pledge

But what really gets revealed is like the rot of Boeing itself, which you've done a lot of work on. So give us the backstory about the, you know, about airline deregulation, Boeing financialization, spinning off Spirit Air systems, which coincidentally is now involved, you know, here and now they're buying it back. Well, how the hell did this happen? Yeah. So Boeing was a crown jewel of American engineering, right? One of the best companies we've ever created. So to understand how it got ruined, you have to start with the customers, so the airlines. Boeing has a big defense arm. That's always been corrupt and terrible.

But this is a company that they designed the B-52 in like a weekend. They made amazing flying machines. They also were always disciplined by competition, okay? But in the 1970s, we decided to deregulate airlines. And what's important about airline deregulation is that before deregulation, airlines were public utilities. And so if you had cost, right, as an airline,

the government would say, all right, you have a certain amount of cost. We're going to say you make 10% on that, right? And that's just the way it works. And so there's no incentive to skimp. There's no incentive to skimp on customer service, on flights, on anything. You serve people's stake. You make a 10% profit on that.

So there are problems with the public utility model because it leads to inflating costs. But you're never incentivized to screw people over or screw workers over because you make less money. Deregulation flipped that. And deregulation said, now we're going to move to a system where you're just trying to take cost out to make things more efficient. So what happens? Well, they break their unions.

They start to screw their customers. They find all sorts of ways to do junk fees. They're not screw their customers. They find all sorts of ways to do junk fees. They're not actually more profitable. Airlines periodically have to be bailed out. But they cut service to lots of regional cities, right? So the air grid is different today than it used to be. But they also start negotiating much more aggressively with aerospace producers like Boeing.

And Boeing starts to change the way that they price. So, for example, Boeing said when they developed the 737 MAX, we'll give you a rebate of a million dollars if you have to change the way you train pilots. So, the reason that they screwed up the 737 MAX design is because they were like, we don't want to change all the airport infrastructure. We don't want to have to train. We're going to tell all our clients they don't have to get their pilots retrained on new hardware. This is going to be the same thing. But of course, it was designed poorly because the engines were too big for the body of the airplane. Now, one of the, so the airline deregulation was part of a whole financialization of the American economy. So in the 1990s, it finally

slams into Boeing. And there's only one other commercial aerospace maker by the 1990s aside for Boeing, and that's McDonnell Douglas. And the government says, we love efficiency, and we love monopolies. And Boeing is a super high-tech, awesome company run by very sophisticated people. They make the best stuff in the world. Very similar to Apple. Very similar to Google. Very similar to Amazon. So they said, you know what?

Buy McDonnell Douglas' commercial aerospace unit, even though that will clearly reduce competition. It will create a domestic monopoly, and the only other competitor will be Airbus. So the government pushed Boeing to do this. Boeing didn't need a lot of pushing. Boeing also pushed the government to let them do it. And when that happened, Boeing flipped and financialized. So, so this was the Clinton administration. So this is 1996, 97, 98, right? That's like peak

nineties. Yeah. It's like, you know, like Macarena's on the stage. Totally. Yeah. The, the, the, you know The Jennifer Aniston haircut. Yes. Yeah, that's right. And so Boeing merges with McDonnell Douglas. There's no more domestic competition. So if you're an aerospace engineer, you don't like Boeing, too bad. Nowhere else to work.

If you're a supplier and you're supplying Boeing, too bad. Nowhere else. Like you have one option, maybe two, right? And you know, Airbus, it's European, right? So they take forever to do things. And no, I mean, today, if you want to get a jet from Airbus, it's 2027 or 2028 until they can deliver because there's so much demand. So, okay. So they, what starts to happen in almost immediately when the merger happens is there's a fight between the NBA weenies, the bean counters, and the engineers. And the engineers have always had a lot of power at Boeing because they go to

the NBA weenies and they say, give us a bunch of money. We'll design a cool plane. And it always worked before. So usually they said yes. But in 1996, seven, eight, they were like, nope, we are now going to offshore things. We are going to do things in a completely different way. And we're going to, you know, you guys are no longer an advantage for the company. You're a cost center. These are the engineering people, right? The workers, the people that make the planes and have the embedded knowledge to, to actually construct these things. And so they go after them and the bean counters win and they start to cut safety. They start to, you know, there's the first strike of the engineers ever. Like it was a white collar union that was more like a debating society or a club. And then they actually go on strike in the early 2000s. And the first plane that's built with the new outsourcing model is the 787 Dreamliner.

It's sort of a disaster. Yeah. Boeing moves their headquarters from Seattle to Chicago, so they don't have to be near the people they're laying off. They move a lot of work to South Carolina because it's non-union. And now they move their headquarters to DC because for lobbying purposes. And so it just gradually, and the 737 MAX was the culmination where they decided to make explicitly unsafe, bad engineering decisions for financial reasons. And they haven't really fixed it. I mean, the software patch is better, but that needs to be completely re-engineered.

And that's why they also didn't fix any of the, I mean, the door blowout with Alaska Air. That's not some big engineering thing. That's just like the dudes just didn't put the screws in, right? Like that's like very, very bad, right? Just they were not doing quality checks. Right. not doing quality checks. So it's embarrassing, but also that whole culture that was put in there in the 90s of bean counters who are super hostile to safety, to consumers, to customers, to workers, they need to be removed. They need to be pulled out of that institution. I think it needs to be nationalized and the company needs to be restructured. Otherwise, we have all of these planes that are Boeing planes, and people are terrified to fly in them, as they should be.

And, Matt, I mean, how many billions of dollars do we bail these people out, right? I mean, that's what people would say. They'd be like, oh, you're messing with private enterprise. I'm like, okay, but how many? 50 billion? 100 billion? Just in the last decade or so? If we go back to 2001, it's probably even more in terms of number of taxpayer dollars that we've used to

prop up the Boeing company. Yeah, yeah. In the CARES Act, right, during the pandemic, they put a $25 billion line item for like, it was not, they didn't say Boeing, they were like, for a national security aerospace company that rhymes with schmoing. And, you know, and then they didn't have to take the money because they could just borrow money at preferential interest rates because everyone knew, okay, Boeing is a federal backstop. They're taken care of. Yeah. Yeah. So, so you can't, you can't even measure it, right? Because everybody, you know, Boeing is too big to fail. It's a, it's essentially a government, when I say nationalized, I don't mean, you know, we need to take it over. Like we, it is, we own it. I mean,

we've been backstopping it for a long time, as you noted. So we should just formally take it over, restructure it, probably break it up so that you have the defense arm, and then maybe you create a couple of civilian aerospace makers, reintroduce some competition. And that's the way that you definancialize this industry. How does the FAA fit into this picture? Were there failures there as well? Is that also part of this deregulatory train track? Yeah. So it's a great question. So this gets to like a question of political economy, right? Prior to deregulation, because costs are not a problem but a benefit, they didn't want to get, they didn't want to gut their regulators. Regulators were fine. If regulators imposed costs on them, cool. That's just more money, right? That's another

10% profit, right? After deregulation, all of a sudden the airline industry and Boeing and the aerospace makers are lobbying to gut the FAA. And so you see this systemic reduction in funding and ultimately Boeing is, they're doing voluntary like self-regulation because there just aren't even enough inspectors. And the political economy, there's no political support to actually regulate the industry, either the airlines or Boeing. Now, under Trump, and this was a real embarrassment to the FAA and to, frankly, America. When the MAX crashed, right, for the second time, America was renowned for having the best aviation regulators in the world. People followed us, right, because we were

really good and cared about safety. Trump was the last, this was, I think, under Trump, America was the last country to ground the max, which was awful. I mean, it was just awful, right? And under Biden, and I'm not a Biden partisan, there are a lot of parts of the Biden administration that have been really problematic. But the FAA, first of all, has a full-time administrator. It's always been acting because the Senate never bothered confirming it. They actually have one. And they've been very aggressive. They've put caps on the number of planes Boeing can produce, which hits their cash flow,

which hurts. It hurts. They have inspectors on the ground actually looking at the safety systems. They're being very aggressive. They also are thinking of putting a cap on the growth of United Airlines, which is super aggressive because of safety problems there. And so what you're seeing is actual governance from the FAA and the Department of Transportation. It's not enough, and we have to restructure the political economy of the whole industry, but it is something, and that is more than we've had in a really long time. And lastly, Matt, what did you make of the specifics of the whistleblower who was found dead in the middle of his deposition? But what did you make of the specifics of the allegations he was

making about Boeing and what they had to lose with this individual who, by all accounts, was very credible, who was filling the tea about their production, especially in South Carolina. Yeah. I mean, what I understand, I mean, he was saying things that were pretty extraordinary about particularly the 77 Dreamliner and, you know, things like how the managers would, like, steal defective parts from the closet where they kept them saying, don't use these parts. They would steal them and then put them on the planes to like, you know, stuff like that. And it was very, you know, they hadn't,

he had been a whistleblower for seven years, but the stuff that he had been in what he was deposed that day that he died was pretty incendiary and he was going to, going to do more. And so, you know, look, I'm not saying that Boeing killed him, right? Like it's weird that he would be found dead, but they totally killed him. Why don't you cover your ass for legal purposes? I mean, yeah, yeah. I'm just kidding, but I'm not kidding. Well, there needs to be a fulsome investigation and Boeing had a lot to lose from this man's allegations. Yeah. I

mean, look, they don't deserve the benefit of the doubt. That's like the bottom line here is that they clearly the company, you know, there were when the first max crashed. Okay. That's a tragedy. But then they knew, right. The board knew that there were safety issues and they didn't do anything about it. And then the second one crashed. So this is a company willing to kill people. Right. We know that I don't, you know, obviously I have no idea what happened, right? But like by all accounts, the guy was not suicidal. He told friends, you know, if I die, it's not suicide. And like, I think the most telling thing is that his last meal was Taco Bell and no one's last meal before they killed themselves is Taco Bell. So like, I don't- That's a slander against Taco Bell.

I don't know if I agree with that analysis. I'm not going to stand for that. I like Taco Bell too much. That said, I think your point is taken is that, look, this is a company, again, that was criminally negligent, that avoided criminal charges by the skin of their teeth last time around. There's a lot of people with a lot to lose on this one. There's no reason for the DOJ not to throw the book at them at least this time around. And so, man, he's been making very credible allegations. Well, very inconvenient timing for them. Yeah. Really very fortunate for them that he's taken out of the picture. I'll just say that. Yeah. Matt, thank you so much. Great to have you. Appreciate it. Appreciate you. Thanks for having me. Yeah, our pleasure.

Major news yesterday, federal authorities raiding the homes of Sean P. Diddy Combs. Let's go and put some of this up there on the screen. So here we have video from the sky of Los Angeles, where you have Homeland Security investigators dragging individuals outside of a home that was linked to Mr. Sean Combs. You can see that there are investigators that are on site. They appear to be both executing a search warrant and searching all throughout the house for evidence for what appears to be tied to a sexual misconduct investigation, even possibly involving minors. The most noteworthy part of this, Crystal, is that they were simultaneous raids both on homes in Los Angeles and in Florida, in Miami. There was video that appeared to show federal investigators and

authorities on some of his personal assets like boats and others. There's also been a video that has now surfaced of showing Mr. Combs at the Miami airport, just kind of pacing aimlessly. He has not yet been arrested by federal authorities and they haven't really issued any details such and so forth. But a lot of this just comes on the heels of what have been stunning allegations against Mr. Combs. Let's go and put this up there on the screen from the Los Angeles Times. They do a decent job here of writing up some of the recent shakeups that have happened. Quote, four separate plaintiffs have now filed civil lawsuits against Combs in the last month, accusing him of rape,

sex trafficking, a minor assault, and a litany of other alleged abuses, imperiling his empire and sending shockwaves through the music industry. These include his former girlfriend, Cassandra Ventura, known as Cassie, accusing him of rape and forcing her to have sex with male prostitutes in front of him, along with repeated physical assault. Mr. Combs actually settled that suit. You have another woman who is accusing Combs in a suit of drugging and raping her in 1991, recording the attack, and then distributing that footage without her consent. A third woman filed a third suit in which she claimed that Combs and guy singer Aaron Hall sexually assaulted her. And the most recent suit says that Combs and former Bad Boy label president Harve Pierre gang raped and sex trafficked a 17-year-old girl. Pierre said in a statement the allegations were disgusting, false, and a desperate attempt for financial gain.

To be clear, Combs has denied all of this. But, you know, anytime that the feds are raiding two of your houses in connection with an investigation like this, it's clearly that there is something serious going on. So the very latest that we know on the raids of both the Miami and the California homes, a Homeland Security investigation spokesperson said the raid was executed as part of a quote, ongoing investigation. Law enforcement sources told ABC News that the search warrant was being executed in LA. Combs' sons were detained outside the home as is customary in such circumstances and then released without charges. We have an official statement. They say earlier today, Homeland Security Investigations New York executed law enforcement

actions as part of an ongoing investigation with assistance from HSA, HSI, L.A., HSI, Miami, and our local law enforcement partners. We will provide further information as it becomes available. And law enforcement sources also said to ABC News, the searches are being carried out as part of a federal investigation led by the Southern District of New York into alleged human trafficking. No criminal charges, though, have been filed in the investigation. So that's the most of what we know about what's going on here. But this all started with Diddy. There had been rumors about him on different hip-hop podcasts and whatever, but this all really went mainstream when Cassie filed her suit against him,

alleging years of psychological, physical, and sexual abuse. Just to give you some of her allegations, she accused him of rape and for forcing her to have sex with male prostitutes in front of him, along with repeated physical assaults. She claimed that in 2012, Combs told her that he was going to blow up the car of rap artist Kid Cudi, suspecting that Cassie and Cudi were dating. The suit alleges that around that time, Kid Cudi's car did in fact explode in the driveway. And Cudi told the New York Times, quote, this is all true. In 2015, this is a different, there were a variety of allegations against him alleging physical assaults too throughout his career. I was actually, as I went through the timeline, I was sort of shocked. I didn't realize the number of actual physical assault allegations against him. Cassie also

alleged years of physical, psychological, and emotional abuse. She claims Combs forced her to purchase and take illegal drugs like cocaine, ketamine, and ecstasy, that he filmed her as he forced her to participate in sex with male sex workers in multiple cities for his own voyeuristic pleasure in a practice he called freak-offs, and that he beat her on many occasions in retaliation for talking to other men, often with witnesses present. Some of the gruesome details of what Cassie alleged included that she was suffering severe memory loss, potentially from these routine alleged beatings from Diddy and that he was so controlling that even when she sought medical help for that memory loss, again, potentially resulting from these beatings, he got the x-rays, he controlled the medical records. That was the level of total control

he had over her, according to Cassie. Immediately after the charges come out, they settle. And this was in the context we were talking before of that New York survivor's law. This is the law that was put through that gave basically a temporary window for any sort of sexual assault claims where the statute of limitations had expired. It allowed people to bring those claims in the context of a civil suit. So that was the context for actually a number of these claims against Diddy. And as I said before, there are a range of allegations against him. And as you mentioned, Sagar, the most recent one having to do with allegations of sex trafficking, a minor. So

we can all guess that this investigation likely has to do with some of the allegations against him. And just to reiterate, he denies all of this and says that none of it happened. He denies everything, yeah. I mean, we'll take it for what it's worth. I think the timeline, though, is pretty damning, and we can put that on the screen, please, from NPR. I encourage people to go through and read this.

Look, I wasn't all that familiar, I guess, with all of the details here about Mr. Combs, but when we're going back, he started his music industry career here about Mr. Combs, but when we're going back, you know, he started his music industry career here in 1990. And according to this 2023 suit, he actually, in 1990 to 1991, then allegedly began to sexually assault this victim and a friend after a music industry event where he, quote, beat her several days later whenever he was confronted. Again, in 1991, immediately after beginning this, according to that lawsuit, allegedly drugs, in 1991, immediately after beginning this,

according to that lawsuit, allegedly drugs, sexual assault, videotapes, 19-year-old after going on a date with him. Then you continue down the line, 1996, Combs is found guilty of criminal mischief for threatening a photographer from the New York Post with a gun. Then you see in 1999, he is arrested, charged with two felonies, second-degree assault, criminal mischief, in the beating of a record executive and two bodyguards who beat them with their fists, a telephone, a champagne bottle. He publicly apologized. He asked for the charges to be dismissed. He reportedly then paid the individual some $500,000 in assault charges. We're dropped.

It's like we continue down this road, Crystal, and every five years or so, we see a pop-up of a gun charge, a violence charge, an allegation. But it does seem to be that everything began a real crescendo with his cementing of social status through his all-white party in the Hamptons, through networking and using his power, his influence, his money to surround himself with some of these sycophants and to allegedly, you know, have some of the horrible conduct that is detailed here. You really just read like a timeline of somebody going completely out of control. Well, and he became, I mean, this is an iconic figure. Yeah.

Right? In his own right, in terms of being an artist, he became not only like a hip hop mogul, but also this sort of cultural mogul with, you know, clothing line and all, you know, alcohol line and all sorts of other business deals. So he was is larger than life. That's part of what can allow this sort of culture to persist because people feel that their whole career, their entire paycheck, their entire life is dependent on staying quiet, on going along to get along, and not unearthing these longtime allegations against him. And so Cassie is really the one who, through that New York survivor's law, she really broke the seal on, again, there were a lot of rumors. And there were certain things, as you mentioned, that were in the public record in terms of charges and things that he was found guilty of. But she really opened the door for these other, you know, allegations to be launched. And it does make me think, you know, I was a little unsure about the New York survivor's law. But in this context, like, it does make me feel like this made a lot of sense and did provide a window for justice for a lot of people who, you know, back 20, 30 years ago, you probably felt like, especially when you're going up against a powerful person, you have no chance. Like there's absolutely no chance that you can bring these allegations

and be met with anything other than having your entire life completely destroyed and no one taking you seriously. And so providing this window where people could once again come forward, first of all, you know, the times have changed somewhat, but also Diddy is also not quite the towering figure that he once was. Still incredibly wealthy, incredibly powerful, all of those sorts of things, but maybe not quite at the pinnacle that he used to be. And so that provides the opening for these incredibly serious charges to be made against him. So, you know, that's what we know at this point. We'll see where the investigation leads.

I welcome the investigation. I think it's good. I think there's a lot of famous people who've been hanging out with him. I mean, it's according to some of the allegations out there. I mean, it was like a single-member Epstein type situation. You've got Prince Harry now has been named in a lawsuit. You got a lot of celebrities. You got politicians and others. I mean, socially, he was a major and towering figure of New York and in Hampton's LA society, Miami, you know, hanging out with all of these people. And I mean, this type of behavior does not happen in a vacuum. And in fact, these type of people who exhibit this type of behavior often enjoy and get off in flaunting it in other people's face. So

it's like, well, how many people out there really knew about what was going on? And almost every single instance, you know, it was part of the power that you could get away with stuff like this. Yeah. So continue to track that. Between this and, have you watched Quiet on Set yet? I haven't watched it yet. It's four parts, which I did not realize. I thought it was a single one. They're each, you know, like 50 minutes or something.

Okay. You can get through it quickly on double speed. But, you know, it's just made me really reflect on, it seems like in literally every corner of the entertainment industry, you have some sort of like Harvey Weinstein. Especially in the 90s. Especially in the 90s when everything was so centrally powerful. Absolutely. That's true.

Yeah, that's probably very true. But because you have this dynamic of, you know, you have so many people who are desperate for these slots. You have these massive power imbalances. You have a lot of people who are very vulnerable, who may not have a lot of money, who are just, you know, depending on you, desperately hoping for their chance. They think this is their one opportunity. It leads to them, you know, let me stay quiet. Let me put up with these things that I think are unacceptable because I have to, because, you know, I'm dependent on this and other people are dependent on me, et cetera. And it does create a climate that is very rife for abuse. You see it also with R. Kelly. Yeah. I mean, similar type of allegations, you know, here of that level of

control of control of partners, control of psychological abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse, mental abuse, etc. Very similar type dynamics between these cases as well. So anyway, we'll watch and see what unfolds. But if any fraction of the allegations against him are true, I hope that his ass pays for it. Well, especially the feds here are now involved. And that shows you the seriousness with which they're taking that sex trafficking charge, because that is a federal offense, moving people across state lines. That's right. For purposes, especially including minors.

So definitely hope that justice is done here. Sagar, what are you looking at? Well, before I get started, I want to get a few things out of the way. First is I'm biased in the story I'm about to cover. Dr. Andrew Huberman, he's a personal friend to the point we've exchanged texts, phone calls, we've met in person. A lot of my anger around this is of seeing my friend smeared, but I'm also going to try and fuse my personal outrage, add an injustice to a friend with some journalistic rigor, published a front page story on Monday morning titled Falling for Dr. Huberman, the Private and Public Seductions of the World's Biggest Pop Neuroscientists.

Now, you might expect the story to detail perhaps some health lies or bad advice possibly that was proven from the most popular health podcasts in the world, and you open up that story. You find 8,000 words. After reading them all, you will come away with this information. Dr. Andrew Huberman, who is unmarried, engaged in simultaneous relationships with up to six women, according to his ex-girlfriends and lovers. I'm not kidding. And if you want, you can read the entire piece for yourself. It exhaustively details a lead-up of how Huberman has self-admitted to therapy and a tough childhood, then immediately begins to parse in detail the scurrilous allegations of his ex-girlfriends, who apparently have formed their own group chat to try and a tough childhood, then immediately begins to parse in detail the scurrilous allegations of his ex-girlfriends who apparently have formed their own group chat to try and take him down.

What is crazier is what I then found out by asking those behind the scenes. Now, according to those familiar with New York Magazine's original reach out to Dr. Huberman, the vibe started out quite a bit different. The New York Magazine's original email, which I obtained and is so unbelievable that I was given permission to read a few quotes for you here on the show, is in August of 2023, New York Magazine reporter Carrie Howley emailed saying, quote, I am writing in the hopes that one of my big stories this year might be the phenomenon of Dr. Andrew Huberman. When my editor suggested I look into him, I basically shot him down. It didn't seem like the kind of thing I would be into. I listened to a single episode,

predictably months later, I'm fully addicted and devoted. She adds, continues, due to some of the episodes that deal with stress, I'm taking care of my mental health. It was almost like I couldn't engage or become interested until Dr. Huberman made it all profoundly concrete and chemical. I know I'm far from the only person to have experienced this change. She adds a few more buttery things about how much she loved the podcast, and she said, and got no reply. Now, the story should have died there, right? No, no, no, no. Suddenly, the Huberman love affair turned into something very different. Months later, those familiar say that Huberman's colleagues, his family, and his friends from high school began to be inundated with emails from New York Magazine

requesting anonymous information on Dr. Huberman. One of the emails reads as follows. Subject line, off-the-record conversation with New York Mag. Email text, quote, in the interest of transparency, there have been serious allegations made about Andrew as well as the academic work that he is up to these days. Now, hold on a second. What serious allegations? That he was not faithful to his girlfriend? Why is that pertinent to speak to his colleagues about? And what about his work at Stanford? What are you talking about? Here it turns out, nothing.

Despite the author's best efforts to smear Andrew Huberman's work at Stanford and presenting him as some no-show at his own lab, insinuating that something was afoot because of its transition, Stanford itself stood up for him in the piece, saying his lab was fully operational, nothing she was insinuating was true. As for these, quote, serious allegations, again, literally, it is from his personal life. And where did these allegations come from? Well, it doesn't take a genius to see that the sources of this story are jilted lovers of Andrew Huberman's. And it appears, based upon my

conversations again with those familiar, that the reporter was able to make contact with them by literally trolling for negative comments on Reddit threads and Instagram comments. So the timeline is basically this. She asked for a profile and pretended to be a fan. He said no or basically didn't reply. Then she connects with these jilted lovers, leaving anonymous comments on the internet. Then those claims, including incorrect ones about his work at Stanford, are presented to colleagues, friends, and family of Hubermans, including his own father, to react to.

Any positive comments attesting to his character were not included in the story. The full allegations of the women were printed with complete credibility, even though many have exhibited some pretty crazy behavior in their retaliation against him. So those are the specifics of how this all came to be.

But let me just put this aside right now and just say this. Let's say every word of it is true. Every last word. What is the relevance of any of this? Not once in this story did they ever dispute a single word that Andrew Huberman ever said on his podcast. Not once did they prove that he is less than he says he is, including the fact that Stanford University publicly confirms that he remains not only a professor, but one who continues to publish, research, and teach students at this university.

Not once were they able to prove misinformation, malinformation, whatever you want to call it. This is not a story. It is a character assassination of, yes, who a man who is my friend, but a man who I believe has changed millions of lives for the better. Andrew Huberman does not tell you to do anything. He gives you information that you can research and check for yourself. He gives you protocols like look in the sun in the morning if you want to sleep better, avoid alcohol, and by and large, to try and live a healthier lifestyle. Or he will interview a world-renowned scholar on the subject,

and he will draw out information that might be relevant to you, if you want it to be. As far as I'm concerned, that's the only thing that's relevant about him. And if they could find anything he said regarding that which is wrong or was malicious, I'm all ears and I wouldn't be doing anything like this. They didn't. That's why I'm doing this monologue. Because this was an attempt for some reason or the other to take him down for just simply being the most popular health podcaster in the world. He doesn't have to rely on mainstream media to get this information. And I guess that alone is his crime for which he has now been sentenced and convicted in the court of public opinion by New York Magazine. It is not right. And if you ever benefited from his advice, you should share this with people you know

so the actual truth gets out there. Crystal, what's your take? And if you want to hear my reaction to Sager's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. All right, we have one more important story we wanted to get to. We can go ahead and put this up on the screen. Julian Assange has staved off extradition to the U.S., at least for now. This is breaking news just this morning. This is according to a U.K. court. Let me read you a little bit of this. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has fended off the threat of immediate extradition to the U.S. after the high court in

London asked the U.S. for more assurances. U.S. authorities say Assange, 52, put lives at risk by publishing secret military documents and have for years been seeking his extradition on espionage charges. Put aside the U.S. nonsense story there. At a two-day hearing last month, Assange sought permission to appeal the U.K.'s 2022 approval of his extradition, arguing the case against him was politically motivated and that he would not face a fair trial. In a ruling Tuesday, a panel of two judges said that Assange, an Australian citizen, would not be extradited immediately and gave the U.S. three weeks to give a series of assurances about Assange's First Amendment rights and that he would not receive the death penalty. If the U.S. fails to give these, Assange would be allowed

to appeal his extradition at a hearing in May. They go on to say the ruling potentially offers Assange an extraordinary lifeline in a years-long saga that saw him shoot to global prominence for revealing to CNN what he described to CNN, what I think anyone would describe as war crimes. So, you know, Sagar, listen, it's a victory for Assange. He gets to live to fight another day. Of course, we should not lose sight of the fact that he continues to be held in detention at grave risk to his health, which according to his family has severely deteriorated. And his legal prospects are still in complete limbo. Just to remind everybody, the Obama-Biden administration had decided they could not charge Julian Assange without implicating core First Amendment rights, and in particular,

without implicating outlets like the New York Times. The Trump administration took a more aggressive approach. They even had reportedly, Mike Pompeo and others were even floating plans for, hey, maybe we should just assassinate this guy outright, which is complete insanity. That did not get nearly enough attention, by the way, from the U.S. press, which supposedly cares so much about press freedom. Right. So Trump administration begins this prosecution. The Biden administration now has continued that prosecution and are seeking his extradition from the UK, where he has been held now for years, for seven years, actually, before that was holed up as a political refugee at the Ecuadorian embassy in the UK capital. So he's been five years in London's Belmarsh prison and before that, seven years in the Ecuadorian embassy. I mean, it's just insanity that is unfolding. And the reason we always want to update and keep an eye on it is not only because of the personal ramifications for Julian Assange, his young family, his brother and father, who we've met and interviewed here on the show,

everybody appreciates him. This is a human being, first and foremost. But also because of the way that this tramples on First Amendment rights and especially rights to publish information that implicates powerful people. And as of now, collateral murder, which got referenced in the show here yesterday with regard to the similarities to drone footage that came out of the Israel's assault on Gaza, incredibly impactful. But the individuals who were in collateral murder, they never faced charges. And Julian Assange, for releasing that information that was in the benefit of the public interest of exposing what was happening, has been locked up now for years, persecuted for years. And his life,

according to his family, is literally on the line. Yeah, his family's been saying that here and anywhere else that you could find them. It's been 14 years previously. Did you mention this, Crystal, about the guilty plea previous? Or have you read those details? If his family had explored possibly going through that, if this had gone through. But that's still very unfortunate because it sets the legal precedent for the prosecutorial direction of actual journalistic crimes. This was news that broke several days ago. And it does remain, it appears, their backup plan. And it's one which would allow him to plead guilty and possibly either have time served or spend some five years behind bars and then eventually be released. But given what we know at a personal level of his

mental state, given what his family has told us, including here in the studio, the guy needs to be let out almost immediately. And the case needs to be dropped against him. But don't expect anything like that. The Australian government agrees. Yeah, we had those two Australian MPs on our show who were from different sides of the aisle who talked about that. Yeah, they're calling for his release. So in any case, you know, the U.S. has got a few weeks to make these assurances. And then we'll see what happens after that, if he's going to be able to have a full hearing appealing for extradition in May or whether they decide at that point, OK, the extradition process can move forward. And then we'll see what happens from there. But I wanted to make sure to give you all the very latest in this very important case.

Yeah, there you go. All right. Thank you guys so much for watching. We appreciate you. We'll see you all later.