Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 3/30/23: Trump Jury Disbands For 1 Month, Kremlin Detains US Reporter, US Blocks Nordstream Investigation, Tik Tok Ban Bill, Jamie Dimon Epstein Case, Elon Loses 20 Billion On Twitter, Blackstone Steals Homes, Assault Weapons Ban, Starbucks Workers

Episode Date: March 30, 2023

Krystal and Saagar discuss the Trump Grand Jury disbanding for 1 Month, Republican voters shredding "Weak" Mike Pence, Trump mocks Desantis over Disney battle, a US Wall Street Journal reporter is detained in Kremlin on accusations of "spying", US blocks a Nordstream investigation by the UN, Zelensky invites China's Xi to Ukraine, Tucker Carlson and Ilhan Omar both blast the Tik Tok Ban bill in Congress, Jamie Dimon forced to testify in Epstein case, Credit Suisse caught in another Fraud Scam, Elon admits that he lost 20 Billion on the Twitter deal, Krystal looks into Blackstone stealing homes from Working Class Americans, and Saagar looks into why the Assault Weapons Ban won't work, and we're joined by Michelle Eisen from Starbucks Workers United to react to CEO Howard Schultz's lies during his hearing.To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/To listen to Breaking Points as a podcast, check them out on Apple and SpotifyApple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/breaking-points-with-krystal-and-saagar/id1570045623 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4Kbsy61zJSzPxNZZ3PKbXl Merch: https://breaking-points.myshopify.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 Thursday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed we do. Nice to have us both back in the studio. Everyone in the household is recovered now. I think we're on the other side of this thing. So hopefully I don't infect anybody here today because I wouldn't wish this plague on my worst enemy. All right. So lots to get to this morning. Some new kind of perplexing news about potential Trump indictment.

Seems to be sort of less certain than it was initially presented. Certainly the timing is way different than it was initially presented. So talk about that. Also, some breaking news just this morning. Russia has arrested a Wall Street Journal journalist. We will tell you everything we know about that situation. There's also some breaking news about Ukraine and out of the U.N. Security Council. They actually voted down an independent investigation into who exactly blew up the Nord Stream pipeline. So we will tell you about that. We also have counterpoints covered this yesterday, but we wanted to get into the details on this as well. That TikTok ban goes way further than also how it was presented and

described to the American public. So we wanted to talk about that. Got some updates on some big bank alleged crime. Jamie Dimon is going to be forced to testify with regard to his bank's relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. We also have Credit Suisse being accused once again of helping wealthy Americans evade taxes. And Elon Musk has revealed what he thinks Twitter's valuation is. It is way less than when he initially acquired it. Also very excited to have a worker organizer from Starbucks, from that original Buffalo Starbucks, that was the first one to unionize to react to those explosive hearings yesterday with the former Starbucks CEO, Howard Schultz. Yes, that's right. So lots to get to today, but before any of that, Spotify.

Spotify. Don't forget, folks, you before any of that, Spotify. Spotify! Don't forget, folks, you can watch the full show on the Spotify app if you are a Breaking Points Premium member. Spotify is working very hard to get the processing time as equivalent to YouTube. YouTube is probably still going to be the easiest way to watch the show, the quickest, the way that we deliver it to everybody's email. But if you have a little bit of time, you'd like to toggle between audio and video, that is fully available for Breaking Points Premium members. The show in all of its glory.

You can watch us. People have had rave reviews about being able to watch it in the app and then toggle back between audio if they want to. So thank you all very much. It looks really good. Yeah, it's fun. I like it. I mean, if speed is your priority, like you want to be able to watch it as soon as humanly possible, YouTube is still your best bet. But, you know, the Spotify experience is

really nice and people have really been enjoying that. So if you are not a premium subscriber, BreakingPoints.com, become one, and then you'll easily walk through the steps of how to get that all set up. All right. All right. Let's start with what is happening with the former president. So you will recall that he put out a sort of bombshell social post, whatever you call them, truth, saying that he was imminently going to be arrested over these Stormy Daniels hush money payments. And to be fair, this came in the wake of reporting, I believe it was from NBC News, that an indictment was expected to be imminent in the next days or week. Well, then we got, OK, the grand jury is actually not going to meet today. Okay. They're not going to meet tomorrow. Okay. They're not going to meet Monday. And now here we are on Thursday, like two weeks later, and we get this news. Let's put this up on the screen.

They're apparently set to break for a whole month. Now, let me give you the details here, because I don't know what to make of it. They're claiming like, oh, don't read into anything here. This doesn't really mean anything, but it's hard not to read some things into this. So they say the Manhattan grand jury examining Donald Trump's alleged role in a hush money payment to a porn star is not expected to hear evidence in the case for the next month. Largely, they say, due to a previously scheduled hiatus, according to a person familiar, the break would push any indictment of the former president to late April at the earliest. Although it's possible the grand jury schedule could change in recent weeks. The Manhattan District Attorney's Office has not convened the panel on certain days, but it is D.A. Alvin Bragg's prerogative to ask the grand jury to reconvene if prosecutors want the panel to meet during previously planned breaks.

So basically what that says is it's really up to Alvin Bragg. If he wants to call them back, even though they had this previously scheduled hiatus, he can certainly do that. They go on to say the grand jury, which heard testimony in the Trump case on Monday, is not meaning Wednesday is expected to examine evidence in a separate matter on Thursday. That would be today. The grand jury, which typically meets Monday, Wednesday and Thursday, is scheduled to consider a different case next week on Monday and Wednesday. And then they're not expected to meet Thursday due to the Passover holiday. And then the next two weeks are supposed to be a hiatus that was previously scheduled. So that's what we know about this.

You know, you could read into it. Maybe this indictment wasn't as much of a slam dunk as they thought. Maybe Trump's strategy, which I think from a political perspective was actually incredibly savvy to get out in front and start making the public case at a time when prosecutors, because of the required silence during the grand jury process, can't make the opposing case. Maybe that complicated the situation. Who knows what's going on? And maybe they're going to still indict him, but just it's going to take longer than we were initially presented. I don't really know what to make of it exactly. I mean, the more I think about it, the more it would make sense a couple of ways. A, it was just never going to happen. He got wind of the grand jury and he tweeted it kind of igniting

a media thing. That's possible. But because of the way that the grand jury and all of it was being presented, at least through the leaks, was they're like, well, we only have a couple of more witnesses that we need to interview. And it's like, well, okay, but if that was the case, they could have sped it up. I actually think, Crystal, it's very possible that the Manhattan DA and the DA's office took a lot of the political consideration that a lot of Democrats privately have been talking about, which is, yeah, maybe this isn't the one you want to start with. They're like, maybe we want to start with January 6th or we want to start with the Fulton County Grand Jury, which is far more in line politically with where the American people view the most damning view of Trump.

And so with this one, they're like, I'm just not sure that this is really the one that you want to ignite, like basically a constitutional political crisis over rather than one where you not even necessarily have him dead to rights. But on the merits, like majority of Americans agree that Trump did not act well on January 6th. And so it would be much more amenable to at the very least like an investigation and or some sort of prosecution. I think that's very possible that that's why they are either taking the break. We should also remember, you know, the grand jury, they don't just hear this case.

Like they have a lot of other cases that they have to hear. So taking a break, A, for a month, and B, considering that when they come back, it's not like this is the only thing that they could consider. Well, giving that month at the same time that we know, which we're gonna talk about in a little bit, about the fact that Mike Pence is being called

before federal prosecutors to be questioned about the January 6th investigation and all those other ones, which are probably a lot more politically damaging against Trump. I can't help but think that it was probably a smart move of him to come out in front of this in the very first place. It was definitely smart. There actually is a new Fox News poll that just, at least I just saw it drop last night, that has him surging to 50% in the primary poll. And DeSantis, I think, is down at 24. And that represents significant

erosion for DeSantis, significant surge for Trump. And the pollster who conducted it actively said this potential indictment has been very good for Donald Trump. My initial instinct was exactly the same as yours, Sagar, that it wasn't so much in terms of Alvin Bragg's decision making here and how he is, because remember, he's really controlling the process and the timing and how this all plays out. So it made sense to me that perhaps some Democrats who have expressed some uneasiness about the fact that this is the initial indictment to come out, perhaps that swayed him, at least in terms of the timing here. So do I still think that it is more likely than not that Trump gets indicted in this case? I would say yes. But the

fact that there is such a delay, you know, you can't help but read some significance into this. To get into more of how Americans do think about Trump, think about Biden, think about this particular potential charge. Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen from Quinnipiac. There was a lot here that was really interesting. I mean, their very lengthy headline here says quite a bit. They say mixed signals on Trump. Majority says criminal charges should disqualify him from running for president, but his popularity is unchanged. He leads the Santas by double digits. If you dig into the numbers here, 57 percent of Americans think that if Trump is charged criminally and they don't really specify which charge, but any charge, I guess they say that

he should be disqualified from running for president again. So 57 percent, pretty solid majority versus 38 percent who say that should not be disqualifying. Fifty five percent think that these specific hush money accusations are either very serious or somewhat serious. So you've got a majority there that do think that the Stormy Daniels accusations are serious. But you also have a large majority, 62%, that think the case, the hush money case against him is mainly motivated by politics, with just 32 percent thinking the case is mainly motivated by the law. You also have some numbers in here that reveal, you know, politically it's it's perplexing because on the one hand, you have so many people saying Trump

has been terrible for the Republican Party. He should be disqualified if he's criminally charged, which, of course, looks potentially imminent. And at the same time, he is statistically tied with Joe Biden in terms of the general election. So that's where the American people are. Yeah. I mean, people always try to look at favorability. People forget that Joe Biden has a very low favorability. Trump always had a low favorability in terms of the general public. But you've got to look also at enthusiasm. And also, what do we learn from 2016 and 2020? You, many people, vote for people they do not like that much. That's basically what it is when the two-party system presents those options before you.

So anyway, I look at all of this politically. I think old Donnie has successfully probably wriggled his way out of this one. As to the Jan 6 investigations, I genuinely have no clue. It's one of those where we will see, we've discussed here too, about what the interpretations of the law actually would be around January 6th at the best. They could get as what, like obstruction of a government procedure whenever it comes to the election. Even then it's a little bit dicey. They're going to focus on the Oval Office meetings that he had in terms of trying to delay election certification. That is another reason why I think the Georgia case is probably the strongest one because

there they have direct interference in a state election which they have much better jurisdiction on and less of a novel interpretation of the law. That too, who knows in terms of what you can actually prove and especially to a jury who you have no idea who that jury is going to be. Yeah, no, that's absolutely the case. Additionally in this Quinnipiac poll, I thought this was interesting, too, which underscores the challenge for those Republicans who would want to move past Trump or the candidates who are opposing him. Nearly eight in 10 Republican voters consider themselves supporters of the MAGA movement. Only 18 percent do not.

So it really shows you he still is very much the dominant figure within the Republican Party. And even as I think the American public generally, it seems like more or less, even with these charges, which are kind of, you know, the weakest ones are the ones that people find to be the least egregious. They're generally in support of him being held accountable. They think it's bad. They think he did it, et cetera. And certainly with any potential charges related to January 6th or election interference, I think the numbers would be even stronger in favor of an indictment and against Trump on that with a general election audience. But with the Republican primary base, I think it'll be this exact same dynamic where it

will only strengthen his hand. It will only further rally people to his cause in terms of the Republican base. So you really do have a situation where, you know, the Republican base is kind of on an island, very different view of this landscape than independents and certainly than Democratic voters and, you know, the broader electorate that would show up in a general election. Yeah, certainly right. OK, at the same time, we wanted to take a little bit of a look at the sort of third place contender right now, former Vice President Mike Pence, who occupies an interesting space in all of this. And listen, DeSantis has clearly been consistently the second choice. But Mike Pence has been in there with, you know, 7 percent of the vote, 10 percent of the vote. And we've always read this as he still continues to have some support among an evangelical base.

He's positioned himself as a sort of return to this Republican Reaganism type of politics, both with floating cuts to Social Security and Medicare, also with national abortion ban. But it looks like in focus groups, there is really very little love for the former vice president among the Republican faithful. Let's put this article up on the screen. The headline here says nobody likes Mike Pence in focus groups. Republican voters are brutal in their assessment of the former vice president. This is by McKay Coppins. Some of the quotes here from a number of different focus groups. I think this was four different focus groups that he sat in on. Yeah, four different focus groups, 34 different Republicans participated. He says he heard only four people say they'd even consider Pence. Two of them immediately started talking

themselves out of it after indicating interest. Some of the key quotes here are, I don't care for him. He's just middle of the road to me. If there was someone halfway better, I would not vote for him. He has alienated every Republican and Democrat. It's over. It's retirement time. He's only going to get the vote from his family, and I'm not even sure they like him. He just needs to go away. This one I found particularly interesting because I think it gets at the key issue for him, which, you know, is something we had sort of identified before. One participant said, I think he put a stain on himself for any, quote, normal Republican when he joined the Trump administration. And then he put a stain on himself with any Trump Republican on January 6th. So I don't think he has a constituency anywhere.

I don't know if anyone would vote for him. To me, why this was important, Sagar, is it showed that there is no ability, given the way that Donald Trump sort of shapes the landscape, to try to find a middle ground, to try to have it both ways in the way that Pence has. He has recently come out at the Gridiron dinner and made some more, you know, aggressive comments against Trump and what happened on January 6th, although he, again, is another one that doesn't even like to say Trump's name. But then on he wasn't doing the thing on. So so you've got, you know, him trying to cater to the Liz Cheney wing of the Republican Party. Well, they're not impressed with him because he was part of the Trump administration because he carried water for him for so long. And then the people who, you know, think that

Mike Pence should have overturned the election on January 6th, obviously they don't support him either. And so there is no ability to try to have it both ways. And I think Mike Pence is finding that out the hard way. Absolutely. And our producers, you know, we went through and watched what happened when Trump, when Pence is even on the campaign trail, when he's not talking about Trump, what is he talking about? He's talking about entitlements. He's like the one area where he's on the opposite side, policy-wise of Trump.

So we have a little bit of that. Let's take a listen. We could have done a better job. But at the end of the day, I will tell you the best thing that we could do of not only turn off this picket of unspent money, unleash American energy. But I think the time has come for us to have a fulsome national conversation about how

we bring reforms to entitlements that are compassionate and common sense to lift the massive mountain of debt that our children and grandchildren are facing. Really just groundbreaking stuff. You've never heard from a Republican before there. lift the massive mountain of debt that our children and grandchildren are facing. Really just groundbreaking stuff you've never heard from a Republican before there. High level of charisma, delivered with a high level of charisma. High level of charisma before a bunch of septuagenarians in Iowa. Good luck, Mr. Vice President. You know, really just don't know what to say.

How can you possibly think that you are gonna run effectively on a Paul Ryan loser message against the most popular Republican in the country, both on a personal and a policy level, and think that you have a chance in hell. I mean, every single thing that we look at, 6%, 7%. Trump is at 50 this morning, 50% in a Fox News poll, which traditionally has, by the way, not been particularly good for him. If you go back and you look at how Fox News did in terms of the GOP primary in 2016 and in terms of how they pegged him against Joe Biden, they historically have underestimated his support. If you want to look at the lifetime of the poll and how they perform vis-a-vis Trump, all evidence suggests that Trump's support is actually underestimated in the GOP, something basically you and I have said from the beginning.

And what did you point to previously? The fact that he was facing potential indictment, people only rallied to his cause even more. You can't have it like this. There's just no way to square it. It's not possible. There was an interesting other dynamic that the journalists who observed those focus groups noted, which is that people would cite,

they would preface their like scathing criticism of Mike Pence with some, they'd say like, oh, you know, he seems like a really nice guy. Seems like he really lives his Christian values, whatever. But it was not just that that wasn't enough to sway them that maybe he's like the right candidate for them. They took that as sort of like a sign of weakness. Like it was almost actively a detriment. What he wrote is what I found most fascinating about the voters digs at Pence was that they were almost always preceded by passing praise of his personal character. He was a quote, top of the line guy, a nice man, super kind, honest, decent person. Not only did these perceived qualities fail to make him an appealing candidate, they were also often held against him,

treated as evidence that he lacked a certain presidential metal. And I think that there are some warning signs in that takeaway for Ron DeSantis as well, whose whole pitch is Trump without the drama. Well, what these focus group voters at least are indicating is, yeah, we actually like the messiness. We like the drama. We have become accustomed to and expect that type of Trumpian personality in terms of our politics. And we aren't really looking for a U-turn from that. know, not only is that kind of devastating for Mike Pence, who has built this whole awshucks personal persona as his political brand, while also helping a man who's the polar opposite become the dominant figure in the Republican Party. But I also thought there were some potential warning signs in there for Ron DeSantis. We're going to get to DeSantis in one moment, but there was an additional piece of significant news with regards to Mike Pence and some of the myriad potential indictment

charges coming for President Trump, former President Trump. Let's put this up on the screen. A federal judge has just ruled that Pence does have to testify regarding the January 6th attack. He specifically has to talk to a grand jury about conversations he had with former President Trump leading up to the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol. This has to do with the D.C.-based investigations in a ruling that they say remains under seal. The judge also said Pence can still decline to answer questions related to the day of January 6, adding that Pence can still appeal the ruling. The appeal option is being evaluated, the source said. So that's everything we know so far. Judge is saying, yeah, you do have to testify, especially about those conversations leading up to January 6th. Pence is apparently

evaluating whether he's going to appeal that decision. Yeah, I mean, he can try and appeal. It looks very likely that he'll have to at least testify. The thing is about Pence is while he did obviously keep an arm away from Trump, he didn't actually do anything to stop it. So in terms of witnesses, like he can testify that, yes, he saw the overstock CEO come into the office and Mike Lindell and Sidney Powell and like that famous Oval Office meeting where they were coming up with all kinds of insane ideas to like institute a coup. But, you know, he didn't also in terms of his criticism on Jan 6th, I believe he held his silence for at least one year. Like he did not actually come out until

he wrote his book and then was going on book tour that he was like, OK, now is the time. Like it's not like he effectively took a courageous position. So even the attempt to try and get the so-called like Liz Cheney voter, the one percent or whatever, it's not like you were even in front of the game. That's why I just don't know how exactly he could seize a political theory of the case for him. Yeah. I mean, those numbers we cover with Quinnipiac where only 18% of Republican voters say they don't see themselves as part of the MAGA movement kind of says it all. I was wondering, Sagar, if you have any insight into how involved Mike Pence actually was in a lot of those, you know, those late night meetings and like the most insane of discussions. Was he kind of intimately involved or was he pushed to the

sidelines? He basically just didn't take he did this thing where any time he believed that Trump was doing something that he didn't like, like he would just go off into the side office. He would try and exert some influence, but then he would just keep his way out of he would keep himself out of the meetings and encourage the president in their private meetings to take a different tack. Like he was not involved necessarily in any of these discussions. As far as I understand it, like tried to push back and kept a significant amount of distance, also because he knew that a lot of eyes were on him for the idea that he would try and object to election certification. So at the end of the day, like he wasn't involved per se, but it's not like he didn't do it. He did anything about it.

Yeah. I'm just wondering what information he might even have that he could share with the grand jury, because it wouldn't surprise me. I mean, Mike Pence is not an idiot. He's a savvy political operated operator, managed to get himself to be governor of state, managed to get himself to be vice president and be able to hang in there the whole time and navigate the very stormy waters with regards to Trump all the way up until the end. It wouldn't surprise me if he was legally savvy enough to anytime there was something sketchy going on for him, rather than doing anything courageous, just to protect his own ass by making sure he's not in the room for those conversations. Like, you know, hear no evil, see no evil, whatever. I know that there was one meeting I think that he like walked out of or he like walked

in and then walked out of. But materially, I just don't think it's all that important to the case. So I'm not even sure what he's really going to be able to say. It's really more about Mike Lindell and those folks. Yeah. OK, so let's talk a little bit about what's going on in DeSantis' world. Yes. Put this up on the screen.

So DeSantis' big super PAC is staffing up. They have hired a couple of significant former Trump aides. The one that the New York Times is focusing on in particular here is a guy named Matt Walken, was part of the 2020 Trump campaign and is going to coordinate strategic communications for Never Back Down. That is the super PAC that is backing Ron DeSantis. He oversaw the rapid response and war room teams for the Trump campaign. He also was the campaign communications director for Glenn Youngkin of Virginia. He put out some tweet after this became public saying basically like Trump was the president we needed eight years ago. Now we need someone who actually is able to, I can't remember

the words he used, but basically. I have it in front of me. Yeah, you got it. He says Trump was the president we needed eight years ago to make America great again. Our movement needs a disciplined leader who wins instead of loses, never backs down, fights smart, and puts the mission before him. On each count, Governor Ron DeSantis is the strongest choice. Matt is an interesting person. I dealt with him a little bit whenever he was part of the Trump campaign. And actually afterwards because he was the comms director for Glenn Youngkin and worked on the Glenn Youngkin campaign. The reason why I think it's interesting is that Matt is part of a contingent of guys

who come from the Ted Cruz campaign, specifically Jeff Rowe. He was the political consultant who actually joined the pro-DeSantis super PAC as well. Rowe was the architect of the Cruz 2016 campaign. And really, I mean, look, I know that Cruz lost, but at the end of the day, he did come in second in the GOP primary. Not only that, but he built a significant data operation. He did win

the state of Iowa. A lot of people do forget that. So Roe has always been kind of seen as a darling of the conservative, not Trump movement, you know, who still gets like anti-establishment, very well invested in technology. He was part of the Glenn Youngkin campaign. He was significantly worked on that. He also worked on a few failed Senate races, but by and large is stuck with the, you know, outside of Trump lane from his alliance with Ted Cruz. So the fact that he bringing on Wolking and other people that he put into the Trump campaign of 2020 are joining DeSantis, I actually see that as the most significant. It's not about Matt himself. It's about this Cruz kind of more

establishment lane people who are still legitimate operators in their own right going to join this DeSantis super PAC. Trump world has been apparently sort of using against DeSantis. Yes. The fact that you've got, you know, Ted Cruz people being staffed up here. Now, of course, again, it's not like this is entirely fair because Wolf King also worked for Donald Trump in a high level role. But, you know, they want to paint DeSantis, and I think with some justification, frankly, as being like throwback to Paul Ryan, Karl Rove, Ted Cruz, putting him outside of, pushing him outside of the lane of being anything like anti-establishment. So that's what they're using this news for. There's another piece here that is also interesting. Put this up on the screen. Trump's campaign is also warning any

potential DeSantis staffers and also staffers to other rival presidential campaigns that they will not be hired to work for the former president either on his campaign or in the White House. So they're saying, you know, if you decide that you're with DeSantis, that's it. You're dead to me. You will not work in the White House. You will not be elevated to any position. Now, I don't know how much I would really I don't know how much stock I would actually put in this, because certainly Trump has feuded very loudly and publicly and aggressively with people before that he has then mended fences with and brought into an administration, et cetera. So I'm not sure I would see this as gospel, but clearly an attempt to use the power position

that he's in right now to scare higher quality people off from joining any one of these campaigns. Oh, absolutely. One of his former comms people, Erin Perrine, also joined. She was one of the people who worked for the Trump campaign. I remember her well. Also, she's a long kind of person in the conservative world. She now is joining the same pro-DeSantis pack. A lot of them have been coming out, trying messaging around DeSantis. Look, I mean, I just don't get it, you know, from a career

perspective. It's one of those where going so early, sure, you know, the risk, you know, high risk, high reward. If it does work out, they certainly will be at the forefront from jumping off. But it's also a big risk, you know, to get on the wrong side of Trump. And my thing that I always come back to is, even if he does quote unquote lose, he's not just gonna go away. Like he'll be the biggest spoiler of all time. He's even said that so many times.

He's like, I would rather see Stacey Abrams win than Brian Kemp. Like he's an art, you know, he doesn't care about the broader party. If DeSantis does somehow best him in the primary, which I think is frankly unlikely, it's not like he's just going to go quietly, you know, into the night. So anyway, from that calculus too, I'm just like, maybe I see something that they don't, but I don't know why anybody would do it. There's, there's one other piece that just broke that I

don't have all of the like details of, but I just want to put out there because I'm sure Trump is going to be using this against his many attacks against Ron DeSantis. But you remember DeSantis had this whole like conflict with Disney, which of course is a really important employer, gigantic corporation in Florida. And part of what he did is they have this special district is called the Reedy Creek District that basically just governs like Disney World in Florida and previously had been stocked with a bunch of pro-Disney cronies who just did whatever Disney wanted. So DeSantis decided to replace all those people with Republicans who were going to back what he wanted to do for the district. But apparently it just came out, their sort of last act, the pro-Disney board before they left, was to get rid of all of their

power and cede all of their power effectively to the Disney Corporation. So the new Republican board members have very little power that is left to them. Now, they're trying to dispute it and trying to take legal action, whatever. But it looks like, as typically happens in America, the gigantic corporation is actually having the last laugh here. Of course they are. And also, if you think that the Trump campaign hasn't been already hammering him, they're like, Ron DeSantis can't even beat Disney in his home state. How is he supposed to have any sort of diplomatic wins? You know, I will say on the Trump campaign, they can be clownish in many ways, but they put out some policy documents recently attacking DeSantis on Ukraine. I got to hand it to them. They're pretty good. They're like, look, DeSantis

at the end of the day, he quotes former candidate John McCain. He is simply like a robot reciting talking points. He doesn't have any real grounding in foreign policy. President Trump is the only one who wants peace in the conflict. I'm reading this. I'm like, this is a serious document, whether you like it or not. Same thing with the insurance attack about the insurance scam. So they're hitting DeSantis in a way that he hasn't been hit before.

It's not just, you know, what is it, Ron DeSantimonious, Meatball Ron, or calling him a gay pedophile. Like, they're backing it up, too, with a case which we do know that GOP voters, by and large, are not going to be favorable towards this. Like, if his whole thing is, I'm a fighter, they're like, well, you can't even take on Disney. Like, you didn't even do it properly. And it's just total asymmetric warfare because Ron can't respond nearly as aggressively if he when he does try to. It gets held against him. It's like, how could you during Donald Trump's time of need go after him? And he's planning to wait till after the Florida legislative session until June before he gets officially into the race, which also limits him in terms of what he can say or do. So, you know, it's a very difficult position for him. I know Ryan and Emily covered this yesterday, but just very quickly, Sagar, there was that those comments from Chris Christie that I thought were really interesting. And actually, honestly,

I know this may be this may be a hot take, but I actually thought it was kind of smart. He was like what the Republican primary race needs is someone like me to get in and just on a kamikaze mission to take out Trump. Because if you try to do it yourself, you're going to get blown up. No doubt about it. If you have someone in there who is their only mission is not to win, but just to try to take Trump down, I'm not going to say it's going to work, but it's probably it's at least a, but it's at least a strategy. It's at least a real strategy. Maybe.

I mean, I just think it would help Trump now at this point. You know, the more that the Republican establishment appears to be against him, and Christie has no real credibility with the GOP base that he once did in 2016. That's true. It's been a long time. But Christie is a talented political operator.

Sure. I have always thought that he is just in sheer political talent. He is a very charismatic and talented individual. The way he would go after I hated this, but the way he would go after teachers during his fights in New Jersey or like teacher union stuff. So and what he did to Marco Rubio, notably famous. I mean, one of the best moments of all time. Absolutely. So anyway,

I'm not saying that it would work or he could pull it off at this point because like you said, it's not like he has a lot of credibility with the base, but you do need some sort of strategy like that because I just don't think that DeSantis is capable of taking Trump down and elevating himself at the same time. Yeah. Absolutely. Okay, let's go to the next one. There's some really troubling news that's breaking right now outside of Russia. Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. The Russian security services, the FSB, has detained Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gersovich. So Evan is an American citizen who was reporting as part of the newspaper's Moscow Bureau.

The journal vehemently denies the allegations against him. Moscow has detained him, saying that they have evidence that he is an American spy, that, quote, he was collecting information constituting a state secret about the activities of the enterprises of the Russian military industrial complex. Interesting that they're willing to just call it that there in Russia. Wall Street Journal says, quote, the Wall Street Journal vehemently denies the allegations from the FSB and seeks immediate release of our trusted and dedicated reporter, Evan Gersovich. We stand in solidarity with Evan and his family. So Gersovich is in Moscow, in the Moscow bureau as part of Russia.

He's been accredited by the Russian ministry as a journalist inside of Russia by the country's foreign ministry. The FSB continues to claim that they had stopped illegal activities, that he was conducting an espionage case that had been opened up against him. Interestingly enough, you and I were talking this morning, the location of where he was detained is actually the most fascinating. It wasn't actually in Moscow. It was in Ekaterinburg,

which is 900 miles outside of Moscow. History buffs like me are like, wait, is that the place where the Romanovs were killed? Yes, it actually is. So, you know, pretty far away from where that is. I know there's some military assets in the region. Look, most likely here, he was doing his job and he was probably chasing down a story about, you know, the Russian military collecting information. That's what you're supposed to do. You're a journalist. Right. And once again, they are the ones who accredited him. And it's not like you can just

travel around Russia without anybody knowing what you're doing. So there's no way that he didn't get on a train to Ekaterinburg without at least some acknowledgement or the tacit approval of Russian authorities. So he's 31 years old. He's been working in a reporter inside of Russia since 2017. Previously worked at Agence France-Presse and the Moscow Times. Earlier was a news assistant for New York in the New York Times, graduate of Bowdoin College, and most recently wrote about the impact of Western sanctions on the Russian economy. So very likely here that he was just doing his job. This is a nightmare scenario, though.

You know, he is the first American journalist who has been detained by Russian authorities since 1986 when the journalist Nick Daniloff was detained on a similar charge when he was working for the U.S. News and World Report, specifically also accused of spying. So if anybody wants to go back in time, 1986, not a great time for U.S.-Russian relations. Not a surprise to go back to that time. And look, this is serious stuff. I mean, the Brittany Griner thing that we looked at, that could just, I mean, that at the end of the day, she was, you know, sports. Like here, they are accusing him of genuinely being a spy. Right. And they could throw him in jail or at the very least, like demand some sort of crazy quid pro quo. So it's

very dangerous right now to be an American citizen inside of Russia. And more so, you know, you got to really feel for, there are a lot of foreign correspondents, UK, from all over the West, who are inside, doing their best. We follow many of them who are, you know, very, very much facing like genuine arrest for a lot of them. This is really going to change the calculus. That's why they did it. Obviously, that's why they did it. Exactly right. The intent is to create a chilling effect on any sort of real journalism coming out of Russia. And we will all be poorer for it because the less that you can understand about the reality on the ground of, you know, even you consider Russia your adversary, the less intelligent decision making we can have here, the less informed opinion the electorate

can have. And so it truly is devastating. I mean, some of the reporting that he was doing about the impact of the sanctions and the reality of the economy is on the ground. That's actually incredibly important because, of course, the initial theory of the case here was that we would not only back Ukraine as sort of a proxy ally in terms of the on-the-ground fighting, but that we would wage all-out economic war in alliance with our Western partners and with NATO. And that hasn't worked out the way that it was initially presented. That's a really important piece of understanding where we are, what Russia can do going forward, what their continuing industrial capacity is going

forward, whether if we end up in a stalemate situation, they're going to be able to ramp up production. All of those things are incredibly key for understanding the dynamics on the ground and what might happen going forward. So even just the loss of this reporter is, you know, really significant in terms of our understanding of this war. But the more important considerations, of course, are, you know, the incredible chilling effect, the fact that you are trying to silence all real reporting on the ground, and then the potential, you know, diplomatic blowback and what that could mean in terms of escalations and impact that could have on the war itself. Yeah. So initial indication is, is that Gersovich's family has been contacted

by the White House. As I said, the Wall Street Journal says that they are deeply concerned for his safety. More so, this is going to be a major diplomatic brouhaha, I think, you know, for unfortunately, probably some time to come. I mean, the hope, most hopeful scenario is please release this man. The other thing is with the Russians, like you said, you don't want these people to be detained and increase tensions between us. Like, you know, Evan was doing his job. The last story I'm reading that he was doing was merely reporting on oil and gas natural prices inside of the Russian economy and the overall impact of the sanctions. That's outrageous. As you said, you would want us to know.

And it's to their benefit that we have, you know, at least some idea what's going on inside of Russia. So look, you know, you can crack down, but you know, the American people and all that do not take to this stuff very kindly. And if this is the game they want to play, they're going down a very dangerous, very, very, very dangerous road. Okay. Let's go to the second part here. We'll keep you guys updated on what happens there. It's a terrible situation. I hope it's released immediately.

Absolutely. Okay, let's talk a little bit about Nord Stream, originally what we were going to do here for the first part here of the Ukraine block. Some very interesting things happening in the UN Security Council. Let's go ahead and put this up here on the screen from French media. Interestingly enough, couldn't really find anything from the US media about this. It says that the UN Security Council on Monday rejected Moscow's draft resolution calling for an independent inquiry into the sabotage last year of the Nord Stream gas pipeline from Russia to Germany.

Western countries have blamed the explosions previously on Russia, but the Kremlin has accused the West of sabotage. Now, interestingly, what they don't note is that there have been numerous now leaks from the U.S. intelligence community who also say that it likely wasn't the Kremlin who blew up the Nord Stream pipeline. Ukrainian of origin or at the very least connected in some way possibly to the Ukrainian state because of course every Rotary Club in Ukraine has access to uh but not like to the government no yeah right some rogue Rotary Club yes you know rogue Rotary Clubs who happen to have a deep training about how to blow up uh under who amongst us doesn't have that type of training seems really highly credible any guy with a patty certificate can do this right of course yeah absolutely anyway the resolution called for the creation of a trade. Seems really highly credible. Any guy with a PADI certificate can do this, right? Of course. Yeah, absolutely. Anyway, the resolution called for the creation of a commission to, quote, conduct comprehensive, transparent, and impartial international

investigation of all aspects of the act of sabotage on the Nord Stream gas pipelines, including the identification of perpetrators, sponsors, organizers, and accomplices. Russia says it had been left out of its investigations launched independently by Sweden, Germany, and Denmark, all of which have rejected that accusation. That's the weird part here, is that the European countries, despite behind the scenes acknowledging that it very likely wasn't the Kremlin, are still sticking to their story and are now coming out and rejecting it. You know, the White House also is using this canard where they are going after the Seymour Horsch report, being like, Seymour Horsch's report is wrong. He says America blew up the Nord Stream pipeline, all of that.

Well, first of all, I don't know if he's wrong or not. I mean, he's a pretty credible Pulitzer Prize winning journalist. You should watch the interview that he did with Ryan Grim and Emily Jasinski if you're interested. But they continue to cling to that and deny that, rather than deny also their own intelligence community, which is coming out. I mean, I don't know if you saw the latest update, Crystal.

They're like, yeah, there were six guys in a boat, and they were Ukrainian, and those are the guys who blew up the Nord Stream pod. Nobody knows who they are. I'm like, first of all, that's bullshit, if you ask me, that nobody knows who they are. What was it? It was like they were backed up by a secret backer or something like that. I'm like, well, I'll let you surmise who that might

be. Again, the point being that- They have threat initials. Sure. Is Russia bad faith in many regards? Yes. Does the UN Security Council, though, do itself any favors where the wording of this, I mean, it does seem pretty reasonable. Like, you could look in there looking for poison pills and all that. All they're saying is you want a UN independent investigation about this to acknowledge it. And it was rejected by all the other members of the Permanent Security Council. I mean, clearly that just doesn't look good for them in terms of a cover up. The resolution got three affirmative votes from China, Brazil and Russia. Exactly. The other 12 members all abstained. What it called for specifically was the creation of a commission to conduct comprehensive,

transparent and impartial international investigation of all aspects of the act of sabotage on the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines, including identification of its perpetrators, sponsors, organizers and accomplices. According to this reporting, there had originally been some kind of hot language in there, basically like accusing the U.S. of being involved. That got stripped out before it was put to a vote to try to make it, you know, at least appear very neutral on its face. And I think that Russia has a point here when they say they've been left out of investigations launched by Sweden, Germany, and Denmark. OK, I might understand that. But also, we are not actually getting any information out of those investigations. Instead, we're reliant on these very selective

leaks and allegations made through, you know, close administration allies in the Western press. That's really the only insight that we're getting into whatever they claim to have found here. So yeah, this was an act of international terrorism. It's hard to overstate how significant an act this truly was. And to get to the bottom of it is something that everyone should really have an interest in, except for the people who were the perpetrators of it. So I think it is quite telling that the UN overwhelmingly rejects this idea of an international, cooperative, independent investigation into what actually happened here.

Yeah, I think it's a major problem. Professor Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University actually testified before the United Nations. Here's what he had to say. The destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines on September 26th, 2022 constitutes an act of international terrorism and represents a threat to the peace. It is the responsibility of the UN Security Council to take up the question of who might have carried out the act in order to bring the perpetrator to international justice, to pursue compensation for the damaged parties, and to prevent future such actions. The consequences of the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines are enormous. They include not only the vast economic losses related to the pipelines themselves and their future potential use, but also the heightened

threat to transboundary infrastructure of all kinds, submarine internet cables, international pipelines for gas and hydrogen, transboundary power transmission, offshore wind farms, and more. Yeah, I mean, he's right in terms of the undersea cables, the internet, so many of those things. There was, what was it, several years ago that one of the undersea cables had an issue and the internet was at risk for like all of Europe or something like that. Do you remember that, the transatlantic cable? Yeah, look, there's a lot of stuff underneath the sea. When we start blowing stuff up and messing with it, it acts as sabotage. Probably haven't been done in over 100 years or so, I guess since the World War II, the last time that we saw any sort of wide-scale acts like this, it's going to

be a major problem. And all of this is just a long way of saying we should all want to know what happened to the Nord Stream pipeline, unless you're one of the people who blew it up. So maybe that's one of the reasons that you rejected it. Calling for complete shutdown of all Ukrainian rotary clubs until we figure out what the hell is going on here. Correct. Let's go to the second part here. Very interesting developments. Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. There's actually a little bit of breaking I can add on top of this. So the Ukrainian foreign minister sat for an interview with the Financial Times talking about China. And Zelensky actually, late last night, Crystal, invited President Xi Jinping to

visit Ukraine. So if you put these two things together, it's interesting. When Elon Musk tweets that maybe we should not allow a nuclear war to happen over Crimea, Zelensky attacks him from his Twitter account. The Ukrainians freak out. The NAFO guys on Twitter are all like, Elon is a Putin asset. Whenever the Chinese offer a peace proposal, the Ukrainians have to take it real seriously for a number of reasons. Number one, their worst nightmare is China beginning to provide lethal aid to Russia that they can use on the battlefield in Ukraine. Two, China is a longtime trade partner and purchaser of Ukrainian grain and props up

a decent amount of their economy. Was their largest trading partner until very recently. One of their largest trading partners. Three, they know that if they don't entertain this well, that the ongoing diplomatic efforts that the Chinese are making will be used against them. China actually just struck a deal yesterday with Brazil to no longer have trade between the two nations denominated in U.S. dollars. That's something that they've long been trying to go against. And lo and behold, it's an easy way to get around any sanctions.

You know, that's, this is a funny thing too. I remember going back and talking about the saying, everyone's like, Oh, the sanctions like so worth it. First of all, not a lot of evidence. It works the way that is attended. Seems like Russia's military is doing fine. Um, in Ukraine. Second, one of the points that I was trying to make is like, Hey, if we're ever in a real thing, we just blew it. Like it's over. You know, China was looking at this and like, okay, we've got a sanction proof our economy. Nope, I mean, we literally just blew the entire international sanction system that could have worked at one time, potentially in some sort of future issue that you have with a real power like China on Russia. And now the Chinese are

doing their absolute best to build up diplomatic capital and sanction proof their own economy and international trade relations with countries like Brazil, who last time I checked is one of the largest powers in all of South America. So, you know, once again, one of the reasons why it was such an idiotic mistake to do so. But overall, what did this Ukrainian foreign minister say? He says, quote, China is testing the grounds in terms of the peace process, whether the moment has come for them to play a role or not. Listen again to the language. He's not shooting it down. He says Beijing has currently still not conceded

to the request from Zelensky for a conversation with Xi Jinping, part of the reason why Zelensky went ahead and invited him to the Capitol here this morning. But he also said that China's foreign minister earlier this month assured him that China would not provide weapons to Russia, which is interesting,

the fact that the two foreign ministers are speaking, he says, Kiev currently sees no evidence that they are doing so. He has made it clear to Chinese officials, it is very inappropriate to try and put on the same footing, military support provided to Ukraine and military support provided to Russia. Overall though, they are, what is obvious to me in this is that they view this as a very important development that they have to take very seriously. You know, if somebody like you or I, Crystal, says what the Chinese did, then we'll end up on some weird Ukrainian media blacklist. Hit list, yeah. Like Glenn Greenwald and other people. But when the Chinese government, which has real power behind it, they are forced to entertain. So once again shows you that a path to resolution is very likely not to run through Washington

and increasingly possibly could run through Beijing just because of the sheer amount of power they have over the situation right now. Yeah, I thought perhaps the most interesting line to me in this whole piece from the Financial Times, which has done good reporting here. Yes, great. They say West Western capitals have expressed skepticism about China's statement of principles for ending the war, which it issued last month. But officials in Kiev are keen to engage with Beijing, which also

once again exposes the lie of Biden's repeated statement that nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine, except when it comes to China trying to broker a ceasefire or peace deal, then it's like, no, no, no, we can't have that. So it just shows you, I mean, that was always a farce. It was always, we were always the dominant figures. We always had an opinion about how this wanted to go. And the war has unfolded exactly in the way that the U.S. has wanted it to unfold in terms of the Ukrainian approach and the length of time that it has taken. So now that there's, you know, any sort of slight opening of peace talks from the Chinese side, which may or may not be real, I just want to be really clear in like tempering expectations here. And Ukraine is interested, then we're like, no, no, no, we've got our own opinion here. So

that is quite remarkable. I also thought some of the analysis here was interesting, which I hadn't thought of before in terms of what China's ideal situation is with regard to Russia. And the argument put forth here is basically like China wants also would like Russia to be kind of weakened because they get cheaper gas prices then. So that's a good situation for them. But they don't want Russia to like completely fail and become dependent on them. Obviously, they want them as the clear weekend junior partner. That's like the ideal scenario. I can get some insight into this.

I studied a long time like Chinese North Korean relations because one of the things is like, why do they care so much? Why are they guaranteed? Right. North Korean regime. Here's the deal. They like it. They like having this junior nuclear power prod in the West right up there against South Korea, traditional, not necessarily an ally of the Chinese. And they like having this, you know, hammer that they have

over the South Koreans anytime that they want, every time they get a little too uppity in terms of their military equipment. And also, it's basically like a dog that you feed that is terrorizing somebody that you don't like. It's the same thing with Russia. They love the fact, too, that North Korea is totally dependent on the Chinese for trade relations, for a lot of its goods, for the border that they share. Same thing with the Russians. I know I'm a broken record on this, but one of the things that we always wanted to provide or prevent was the growing China, being an ally with the Soviet Union because we recognized that it would be a disaster. The power dynamic has flipped. You know, basically the Soviet Union, Russia is now basically China in 1970. And China is now probably more powerful ever than the Soviet Union ever was. And you put the two of them

together, that's not a good geopolitical situation for us overall. They would never want Russia to fade. You know, any sort of democratic type Russia would be a disaster for them. Don't forget the long land border that they share up in the north. So overall, strategically, things are just moving in a bad direction for the U.S. if you care about the U.S. being a global peacemaker. Yeah, for sure. And China is clearly seizing every opportunity available right now with the Saudi Iran deal, with these, you know, potential getting involved in peace negotiations possibility with the deal they just did with Brazil to try to further force into reality a multipolar world that they very much want. I mean, they're very overt about that. Well, I mean, I can't help but

think about that comment that Xi made whenever he was leaving the Kremlin. And he said, you know, change is coming that we haven't seen in 100 years. And what happened 100 years ago? Oh, right. The First World War. OK, didn't work out so well. Let's go to the next part here. TikTok. I know there was a lot of discussion. And Ryan and Emily did a very good job. Watch everything that they had about it yesterday. So we wanted to add a little bit on the discussion about the restrict act and also how Americans are feeling about it. Something very interesting. Let's go and put this up there on the screen. So there is a new poll actually out from Marist that shows that Americans support banning TikTok at a margin of 57% to 36%. The support is actually bipartisan with the majorities of R's, D's in favor. Significantly, Crystal, the youth number in it is at 50%. The Gen Z number

actually falls at 50%. Well, the Gen Z slash millennials number, which is definitely a lot different than the Gen Z number. If you look at the age dynamics, there is a very clear silent and greatest generation overwhelmingly in favor

of it. And it does kind of go, you know, the support goes down as you get younger. It's not as low as I thought it would be. You know, if you look if you look at. OK, so currently Rand Paul is blocking a unanimous consent order because he's like if the GOP never wants to win the youth vote again. And it's like, well, you know, not actually tons of evidence right now that they even would object. But overall, from a polling perspective, I mean, I don't think it's a surprise and people are not stupid from what they're looking at. The real issue is about the mechanism.

And this is where, you know, I've done my best to dig as much into this. I know that there's a lot of consternation right now about the Restrict Act. And we will lay it out, though, for those who have not yet heard it. The Restrict Act is the Biden administration Mark Warner bill authorized one inside the Senate, which they are pushing, which would give them the authorization to ban TikTok if they wanted. Now, the details of this were not public until just two days ago. Now that the actual bill has come forward, which has been co-sponsored by all these different people, what we are finding out is that the act, it doesn't really have anything to do with TikTok. So if that's what you want, something I've advocated for, it actually is about giving authority to the government to basically ban

and surveil communications across all of social media. So we pulled some of the elements of this, let's go and put this up there on the screen just to show people and say the Restrict Act is not just limited to TikTok. It gives the government authority over all communication, domestic or abroad and grants powers to enforce quote, any mitigation measure to address risk and national security now and in any potential future transaction, including but not limited to financial transactions. So this is actually almost completely similar to the Patriot Act for what you want to look at. I mean, review and prohibit certain transactions between persons in the United States and foreign adversaries and for other purposes. Again, who defines foreign adversary? What does that even mean? Enforcing mitigation measures to address risk arising from any covered

transaction by any person with respect to any property subject to the jurisdiction of the United States that the Secretary determines. And then even worse is the, quote, potential future transaction. So there are several other things within the act that you can take a look at. But overall, I mean, let's go to the next one there, please, just to take a look, because really what you can see is that the designated National Security Act for what they can come to includes wireless local networks, mobile networks, satellite payloads, satellite operations control, cable access points, wireline access points, core networking systems, edge computer platforms, cloud-based distributed. I mean, this is a blank check to the Department of Homeland Security and to the White House to surveil basically anything. And it's almost analogous to the FISA situation, where in FISA, they're like, listen, don't worry about it. It's one of those warrants

that applies to people outside of America. But if you're in America and you start talking to somebody under FISA, oh yeah, then they can surveil you. And it's like, so it's a backdoor way. This is not even a backdoor, it's basically just front door, you know, right into any comms.

It wouldn't even just concern TikTok. I mean, we're talking here about almost every single app that you use on your phone and would also give them the ability to try and go to encryption-based messaging companies if you want. If you're talking, I mean, how many people use WhatsApp, right? If anytime you're talking to somebody outside the US, you're on WhatsApp. Well, now they have the ability to look at your communications if you're foreign transacting or you're talking with somebody. So this is not what banning TikTok was ever about. And unfortunately, what has happened,

as I said, is what I asked around, there was a clean TikTok bill that's kind of been within the Senate. People like Rubio, Hawley, a few others have been working on this for several years. Well, the White House basically came over the top and was like, no, that's not what we want. What we want is a much broader, open-ended authority. They effectively wrote the bill with Mark Warner's team and then came out before the bill was even released and said, this is the bill that we want. So a lot of brain-dead Democrats and frankly, Republicans too, signed onto the bill because they didn't know what was in it. There was a lot of bipartisan co-sponsors. Actually, funny moment on Fox News last night, Lindsey Graham did not know that he'd co-sponsored the bill.

They were like, he came out against the bill. And they're like, well, why did you co-sponsor? He's like, oh, I did. Maybe we'll put, let's put the clip in there. You guys want to watch it? All right, we'll edit it in after. Let's take a listen. Yeah, I don't think I support the Restrict Act.

You don't support this because you were named as one of the supporters. Because this is garbage. Is this the one with John? There's two bills out there. One allows a review of businesses that are connected to China, give the secretary the ability to protect our data. Is that the Restrict Act? We got S-686 right here, March 7th. And we got a bunch of Republicans supporting it. Because this thing is crazy town.

You don't want the government looking into your private phone. No, I don't. If they have a hunch you're colluding with the Russians, we remember how that turned out. That's right. Yeah, no, well, the Constitution trumps the statute. So let me come back and, you know, give you a better explanation. As you can see, perfect deal. This guy had no idea they'd even signed on to it.

This is part of the issue. They're using TikTok as a Trojan horse to try and basically have a power grab through the Senate. You know, we're lucky that some people actually called this out the moment that it dropped. And actually, it's become quite bipartisan now in terms of the pushback. Tucker Carlson was one of the first people on the right to do a segment about it. Here's what he had to say. But in reality, and you should know this if you're opposed to TikTok, as we are, this bill isn't really about banning TikTok. It's never about what they say it is. Instead, this bill would give enormous and terrifying new powers to the federal government to punish American citizens and regulate how they communicate with one another.

So there you go. And he puts him on the same side as Representative Ilhan Omar. Let's go and put this up there on the screen. So this is a real horseshoe moment, I think, in the TikTok debate. And unfortunately, you know, from the Biden administration's point of view, this was something which at the very least, look, it had bipartisan support.

It had something that a significant amount of Americans were concerned about. But just like with the Patriot Act and other government overreach bills, they couldn't help themselves to try and basically write in their dream legislation for the Department of Homeland Security. This is like the greatest wishlist

that the DHS, the FBI, and have been, CIA have all been looking for now for over 20 years. They've been pushing these types of things. And clearly they got the admin to try and sneak it in there. And by the way, it still might pass. We should all be careful about this. Massive power grab. Like astounding power grab.

And by the way, if you run afoul of this monstrosity, they can fine you a million dollars or throw you in prison for 20 years. That's nuts. It is insane. And you think about like how vague the definition of foreign interference or foreign influence is. What does that mean? Think of all of the media ginned up

outrages over Russian interference. They just did a whole article based on complete nonsense about how Russia was driving the conversation about East Palestine. Think about Twitter, which has investments from Saudi Arabia. You know, next, you could be they could be the ones that are on the chopping block here

as well. If Elon doesn't nuke it first, we'll get to that shortly. But yeah, I mean, this was I am actually I was already skeptical of this whole direction, as you know, and we had, I think, a good exchange on that earlier in the week. In my wildest dreams, I couldn't have imagined how bad this bill is. Yes, it's a disaster. I know that there are Republican senators who are working right now to try and kill it. I know Josh Hawley gave a speech on the floor yesterday saying it doesn't actually ban takeoff because the president, a bunch of new authority. Hawley has a cleaner bill that he was trying to force onto the floor yesterday for something called unanimous consent, where there's not an actual vote and people just, nobody objects

and it like moves forward to the floor. The what's his name, Senator Rand Paul objected to it, so we're not actually going to face a vote on the bill. I am going to be very interested to see if the bipartisan consensus holds up on the clean bill as well as on the restrict act. So it could be one where it becomes like a Democratic one. But then the question comes, what is the Republican House going to do?

So are they going to move forward just up on the straight ban? And then here's the other thing. Will President Biden sign just a straight ban? Because he's not even supportive right now of what the actual ban is. So look, we'll keep everybody apprised, but, you know, it's a very terrible thing. Actually, do they think they did tremendous damage to the case for even— because now we're not talking even—we're not even having a conversation right now about TikTok. We're like, hell no.

Like, anybody who's even—because we're like, no, we're not going to be passing Patriot Act 2.0 here. A couple other things. One thing on the polling. I'll also be interested to see if the polling shifts to your point. Yes. Because prior to this, most of the voices who were talking about TikTok on both the Democratic side and the Republican side were in favor of a ban. So that was the overwhelming case that was being made to the American people. So I wonder.

And you saw bills passing, you know, in different states banning government employees from using TikTok. So there was this kind of like unit narrative that was going out to the American people across liberal and conservative media. So now that you have this also bipartisan pushback and voices of concern being heard on MSNBC and on Fox News, I wonder if that shifts the polling. That's number one. And number two, I just want to say this landscape of social media regulation above and beyond TikTok, we are just starting to dip our toes in these waters. There are some bills in state legislatures. Utah just passed some really wild restrictions in terms of like what teenagers are allowed to do, what parents have access to in terms of social media. California has taken some steps. Texas has taken some steps as well.

So there is kind of a bipartisan concern, particularly around young people and social media, which TikTok obviously is the number one app among young Americans, teenagers especially. So this taps into some of those concerns that parents have about what social media is doing to kids and whether it's feeding into some of the concerns about anxiety, depression, etc. Joe Biden himself talked about this in the State of the Union, saying they're running like an experiment on our children. So I think there's going to be a lot more legislation in this direction of trying to get our arms around, like, where's the balance between freedom of speech and making sure that there are some guardrails in place? Is social media for kids something more akin to, like, tobacco and alcohol that should just be kind of put off limits?

Or is it something that, you know, just needs some guardrails on it and some minor restrictions or no restrictions at all? These are going to be fights that continue indefinitely into the future. I kind of like this bill. I hadn't heard about it. Kids in Utah need parents okay to access social media. In my opinion, it goes way too far. It's very invasive.

Look, we've talked about how one of the issues for kids and for teenagers is that so much of their life is so sort of it's so guarded. There's so much intrusiveness already for from parents like kids don't have the freedom to just like go and be on their own and figure things out anymore. And I feel like this particular bill goes too far in the direction of parents having total and giving kids no space to figure themselves out and their identities out and who they're going to be and like interact with their friends and be goofy with their friends in ways that are, you know, parents may not want to see but are ultimately harmless. So anyway, this will be an interesting one to continue to keep your eye on because there

are a lot of different approaches out there. Yeah, that's kind of, I got to read more about it. I don't know yet, but it could be interesting. Yeah, that's kind of I got to read more about it. Yeah, I don't know yet. But what could be interesting anyway? That's we need to know. We've got some major potential bank crime that we want to get into here. Two big stories. Let's start with this first one regarding JPMorgan Chase and their top executive, Jamie Diamond, put this up on the screen. So this is, again, for the Financial Times, JPMorgan chief Jamie Dimon to be interviewed under oath in Jeffrey Epstein lawsuits. Sworn testimony scheduled to take place behind closed doors in May as bank fights litigation. So he will

be interviewed under oath about his bank's decision to retain the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein as a client, said people familiar with the matter. The sworn deposition due to take place in May is the latest development in two high-profile cases brought against that bank by an alleged Epstein victim and by the U.S. Virgin Islands, where the disgraced financier had a home. They claim that J.P. Morgan, where Epstein banked for 15 years from 1998 to 2013, benefited from human trafficking and ignored several internal warnings about its clients' illegal behavior. The lender, of course, has described the claims as meritless. Part of the pretrial process unearthed communications between J.P. Morgan employees that contained a reference to a, quote, Diamond Review, as in Jamie Diamond Review,

into the bank's relationship with Epstein. The bank, of course, has denied that its chief executive had any knowledge of such a review. So they have been fighting hard to prevent Jamie Diamond from having to testify about any of this, certainly under oath. They have lost that appeal. And now he is going to be forced to detail whatever it was that he knows. And they've also had, obviously, access to some of the internal communications here that raised some real questions about what Jamie Dimon knows. This, of course, saga comes after things that we've talked about before. You know, a lot of questions about, OK, there were all sorts of,

not just sketchy, like blatantly, obviously crazy transactions going on with this Jeffrey Epstein account. And they kept him on as a client. They did not notify authorities as perhaps they should have about some of the blatantly sketchy transactions that were happening with regards to his accounts. Because, you know, ultimately they were happy to be benefiting from having this incredibly wealthy person as a client. They really didn't care what kind of crime he was committing. Yeah, the Maxwell trial was, you know, it was like old crimes. I'm not saying they weren't important, but they did their best to basically put her in jail without ever having to basically peel back the layer. The money has always been where it's been the most interesting.

We had the New York Financial Services fine of Deutsche Bank from a while back, which went into the banking relations in the way that Deutsche Bank helped facilitate a lot of his alleged crimes, and they were fined significantly for it. A lot of this involves the former head of Barclays Bank, Jess Staley. Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. So Staley, while he was fired as the head of Barclays Bank for his involvement with Epstein, really, it comes back to his time as a JP Morgan executive, where they basically, they say that Staley both witnessed and participated in sex crimes at Epstein's residences and alleged that he did not disclose this, quote, despite having a fiduciary duty to do so. Right. That's the problem. That's the part we're worried about. Cool. God. Anyway, J.P. Morgan is actually suing him, trying to get back $80 million that they paid him for his services.

But he was one of those people who not only allegedly benefited and had a longtime relationship with Epstein in terms of his banking relationship, but then moved on to become head of the British bank Barclays, one of the largest banks in the entire world. And he's kind of sailed off into the sunset and denies all of his wrongdoing, you know, all of that for the lawyers. But even Barclays Banks says that the allegations against him are, quote, serious and new. So the board of directors there basically acknowledging that there are some serious issues and they were also getting in trouble with UK financial authorities. So whatever the road to truth is, it's going to be somewhere here at the level of the highest levels of finance. Just a few more details about Jess Daly and that, you know, former Barclays executive and before that, former Chase executive. He allegedly

discussed Disney characters Snow White and Beauty and the Beast in a series of emails with sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who also allegedly shared photographs of young women with the banker. And they exchanged thousands of email messages between the two of them. So while the, you know, suits against JPMorgan Chase as an entity are going on and, you know, as part of that, Jamie Dimon's being forced to testify. JPMorgan Chase is also counter suing this allegedly scummy sex predator executive to make up for any damages that they are suffering. So there's kind of, you know, a tangled web of legal action being taken here, but it is obviously quite disgusting, the whole situation. Yeah. At the same time, we wanted to update you on the latest news about Credit Suisse.

Now, they just were on the brink of collapse. The Swiss government had to engineer a bailout of them. They ultimately were able to sell Credit Suisse to UBS. So this whole series of problems now falls under the UBS umbrella. But there are some whistleblowers who just came out and said that Credit Suisse, even after being found to have been helping wealthy Americans hide their, you know, their income and evade taxes, they're under a consent decree from 2014 because they pled guilty to all of these things, that they have continued to engage in the same type of behavior years after this consent decree and their guilty plea here with the U.S. government.

Put this up on the screen. This is from CNBC, which had a good in-depth report about exactly what happened here. They said that back in 2014, they notoriously pled guilty to criminal charges for, quote, knowingly and willingly, willfully helping thousands of U.S. clients conceal their offshore assets. They admitted at the time they used sham entities, destroyed account records, hand-delivered cash to American clients to avert IRS detection, agreeing to crack down on U.S. tax dodgers going forward as part of its plea deal. Well, Senate investigators who talked to a number of whistleblowers who worked at Credit Suisse say that they continue to enable as many as 25 ultra wealthy American families hide their fortunes, totaling more than 700 million dollars in that bank in the years after that plea agreement.

An aide to the Senate committee said they thought they could get away with it, and they largely did. It's not a question of whether Swiss banks continue to do this. It's a question of which Swiss banks still do this. The two former employees who worked as whistleblowers told CNBC some of the bad behavior continued long after that plea agreement. Senior executives, part of how they would put pressure on all employees at the bank to maintain their accounts, regardless of whether they were with American clients or wherever they were in the world. They would, at quarterly meetings, read out the asset numbers for each banker. If a banker's asset number declined, then you would get

exposed in front of your colleagues. And as a result, he said, there were many moments where people just simply omit saying things. It was like, don't ask, don't tell might be a good explanation of what happened. They have clients that are Americans, but they would actively switch their passports around to show and flag as if they are not. To give you a sense of some of the specific details of what they're accused of doing here, one American client who was an heir to a $200 million fortune deposit at Credit Suisse, emailed to say they had renounced their U.S. citizenship. Their private banker emailed back, I tried to reach you.

Congratulations. This is a big step for you, and I know it was not easy. The heir to the fortune replied, thanks. Hopefully, this should also make Credit Suisse now more relaxed. The heir closed the message with a smiley face. There are also reports of them flying to Miami to meet with a wealthy family that they knew were, you know, American citizens, but they're pretending and they're meeting them

in Miami. So clearly like in America. But they're pretending that this family is from a different country so that they can not have to abide by this plea agreement that they had with the U.S. government. So just totally brazen fraud continuing. And also what they detail here is that this really was a culture of corruption all the way down that pressured each individual banker to engage in this type of fraud and help wealthy Americans evade taxes. Well, why I thought it was funny was that they were are they're being fined for being in violation of doing something that they were already caught doing in 2014. So they had an entire culture of doing it. And then they were like, no, no, no, we'll just keep doing it. And now we're doing, but here's the other question. I mean, they're getting fined potentially is up

to 1.3 billion, but I mean, what we're looking at is hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars that they helped protect in stolen or in, you know, from basically stolen money from the U.S. taxpayer. So I don't know. You know, you look at all of this and it's just disgusting and it just reveals like what the system is. They already had agreed to pay $2.6 billion the last time. The fact they're doing it again, there's no way they weren't making more money than that. Right.

Like if you can take a $2.6 billion fine, how much are you making on the trade? They just consider it's the cost of business. I thought a point that the whistleblowers made was was very, you know, intelligent, which was it's why else do you bank with the Swiss bank? Yeah, exactly. Because it's more expensive. It's more like there is no good reason to do it other than they'll help you commit tax fraud. Like that's the only real reason that it's worth doing business with these banks. Right. And so, yeah, many, many very wealthy Americans continue to do so

because they knew that the bank would help them achieve exactly what they're being accused of achieving here. There you go. The bank denies the allegations, et cetera. The bank allegedly, yes. Also, it's not like they just bought UBS or whatever. UBS bought them. Sorry, UBS bought them. Yeah, so UBS is now their problem. Oh, it's not like they just bought UBS or whatever. UBS bought that. Sorry, UBS bought that. Yeah, so UBS is now their problem.

Oh, well, probably the same bank it practices. All right. Let's get to the latest from Twitter. We covered earlier this week some of the changes that Elon Musk is planning on making, getting rid of all the legacy verified blue check marks. Now it's all 100 percent pay to play. And you're not your tweets are not going to show up in the for you page if you don't pay. You can't participate in Twitter polls if you don't pay. So, you know, our argument was that this will make the platform increasingly sort of like irrelevant and just worse, much less useful than it used to be. And it's very unlikely

to solve the apparent financial problems that the that Twitter is having. We got a little bit of insight into just how bad those financial problems are. Let's put this up on the screen. Elon Musk is now valuing Twitter at 20 billion dollars. Now, you might think, oh, well, that sounds like a lot of money. And it is until you consider that when he bought the social media company, bought it for $44 billion, and that was just in October when he took it private. This is according to an email, Sagar, that he sent to employees to announce a new stock compensation program, and he said Twitter is being reshaped rapidly. You could think of it as an inverse startup. Ah, right. You know, it's actually funny. When you consider Elon's career,

he succeeded in the two places where you're not supposed to and then failed in the one where people make fantastic amounts of money. So whenever he was starting a rocket company, people told him, they said, don't do this, man. So many rich people have done this before. And there was even a joke at the time, like, how do you make a small fortune in the rocket business? You start with a large fortune. Start with a large one, right? Same thing. On Tesla, who makes a U.S. car company? It never works out. Like almost every single one, it was always a disaster. He beat the odds.

Tesla, I believe, outsold like Toyotas in the state of California last year. Crazy. It actually worked. Social media, though, where well smart meeting people who started out were printing billions and billions of dollars. Yeah, I'll get in this. And now he's not doing so well. So, I mean, look, it's early. He could maybe he could pull it out. I really have no idea. But on a technology level, you flagged this piece that a lot of people are passing around. Let's go ahead and put it up there on the screen from TechCrunch called Twitter is dying. Some of it,

you know, it's kind of annoying in terms of like, oh, I hate speech or whatever is increasing on the platform. Like, okay, shut up. But the real point that it does get to is, look, at the end of the day, use it the most, and distribute the most amount of information, which other people then follow. To a limited extent, they certainly do engage with it. But the high follower accounts are the ones who tweet and give so much of the value on the platform, you are removing what made it even useful to people in the first place. And I think that is what it really gets down to is Twitter was a place for elites to have a consensus, a discussion, and all of that to put out the news and then for other people to follow the news and engage in it, certainly to a limited extent. But that was never the core value of the platform itself. Yeah, it was consumption from a small group of people. Right. I mean, Twitter at its best is where you can go to see the sort of unfiltered,

unvarnished opinions of a certain elite class and have some ability to directly interact with them, some ability to like mock and deride them kind of to their face that, you know, you don't normally get the chance to do. And that is that's like the best part of Twitter. I mean, Twitter is like awful and it's also amazing. It's all of those things at once, which is why we keep going back, even when, you know, it degrades your like thinking ability and has clearly sort of like rotted Elon's brain to spending way too much time on the platform himself, I think is part of the problem here. But if you make the changes that, you know, are set to be to be made here, you know, the legacy Twitter checkmark system was not great. It would have been better actually if it had more

verification. That would have made the information on the platform more useful to the people that use it and to people like us as well. By taking all of that away, I mean, you are sort of ramping up the worst aspects of Twitter, which is, you know, which is what this writer gets at in the core of the piece. They describe the new checkmark system as a parody of verification, since the blue tick no longer signals any kind of quality. But the visual similarity seems intentional, a dark pattern designed to generate maximum confusion. If you pay Musk for this meaningless mark,

you'll also get increased algorithmic visibility of your tweets and the power to drown out non-paying users, which mean all the fakes and imposters can and will overwrite the real deal on Twitter. Genuine users are rightly outraged at the idea of being blackmailed into paying Musk to prove who they are. These people, the signal amid the Twitter noise, are, after all, a core component of the value of the network. So, of course, they shouldn't and won't pay. And so their visibility on Twitter will decay, which in turn will trigger more damage as any remaining users wanting to find quality information will find it increasingly hard to come by. It is death by irrelevance. I thought that was pretty well said. Yeah, I thought it was interesting. Look, once again, here's the other problem too, in terms of what they put out. They're like, well,

engagement on the platform is going up. And it's like, yeah, but is it the right type of engagement? Because engagement doesn't necessarily mean also that you're drawing high levels of advertisers. You can have really good engagement, but if advertisers don't feel like advertising on the platform, it doesn't matter. And then if Twitter blew, what did it, made $5 million or something last month? That's enough. They have a $5 million. They have a $5 billion hole that they need to fix. Some 40% or whatever advertisers were not coming on the platform. So business-wise, they are facing some real issues. That's why he put it at $5 billion hole that they need to fix. Some 40% or whatever advertisers were not coming on the platform.

So business-wise, they are facing some real issues. That's why he put it at $20 billion. It actually sounds about right. He lost about half the value of the company. And it was already maybe worth $30 billion when he bought it. He was overpaid for it by $14, $15 billion, which is the really crazy part. There was one other point in this article that I thought was thought-provoking and well said. He writes that our system allows wealth to be turned into a weapon to nuke things of broad societal value is one hard lesson we should take away from the wreckage.

You can say shame on the Twitter board that let it happen, and we probably should. But technically speaking, their job was to maximize shareholder value, which means to hell with the rest of us, which speaks to the discussion we're having earlier about TikTok, about what these platforms are, what they mean, what their benefit is, what their dangers are, what the harms are, how we as a society want to wrap our arms around what this is. Is this a core function for a democracy or is it not? Is it something that we can just, you know, casually discard or let someone sort of recklessly play with because they, you know, just decided to on a whim? Or is this something that is more fundamental to what we're trying, at least in our best days, to do as a democracy? And so I think there are a lot of sort of deeper

lessons here in the Twitter saga. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Look, especially in terms of just private power future. There were the same problems before it was ever owned by Elon, et cetera. So anyway, yeah, I don't know what's going to happen. I personally just don't think it looks good for the platform. Maybe he could turn it around. It's certainly possible. What do you want to take a look at? Well, the bedrock foundation of the middle class has been stolen right out from under us.

The dream of owning a home has become unattainable for most without a big handout from mommy and daddy. Even the aspiration to afford an apartment has become out of reach for hourly wage earners in every major city in the country. Now, there are a lot of villains in this story. You could look at bad policy by stupid, short-sighted, or corrupt politicians, decades of low wages due to globalization and union busting. But increasingly, a central culprit is profiteering by a group of faceless investors who see housing not as a place for people to live, but as a profit center. And in this category, there is no clearer villain than private equity giant Blackstone. Now, Blackstone

has its hands in literally every corner of the real estate market here and in countries around the world. And post-pandemic, they have been on a massive buying spree focused on rental housing in particular. In fact, in just the past few years alone, Blackstone has added more than 200,000 housing units to its investment portfolio. The results of allowing a soulless vulture to position themselves as America's landlord has been predictable in communities across the country. Residents unfortunate enough to live in properties managed by this global slumlord complain of black mold, raw sewage, and of being pushed out of their apartments entirely. A new report shows the impact of Blackstone's aggressive moves in the already unaffordable city of San Diego, California.

According to the Private Equity Stakeholder Project, Blackstone has mounted a post-pandemic project of mass evictions going so far as to warn San Diego City Council members about the fallout, the company has a major incentive to push these residents out too. California rent control regulations stipulate that rents can only be jacked up 10% per year so long as a unit is occupied by the same tenant. Once you get the existing tenant out though, all bets are off. And sure enough, the company has hiked rents between 40 and 60 percent on units in the buildings that they now own. This is devastating in a city that is already suffering from brutally high rents. More than a third of all renters in the city of San Diego spend a majority of their entire income on rent. That leaves little left for food, medicine,

clothes, transportation and everything else that is a basic necessity of life. The local NBC affiliate interviewed one disabled Afghanistan veteran about how he is coping with a recent rent hike. He said, quote, had, starting work, starting graduate school, went into a spin dive. I'm just now starting to balance out my life because it's been so stressful and I'm just so tired. Not only is Blackstone using the existing loopholes in California rent laws to price gouge their residents, they have also spent millions to make sure that those laws are not strengthened to protect renters. In 2018, Californians had the opportunity to vote to roll back a law that prevents municipalities

from expanding any rent control. Blackstone directly spent over $6 million to defeat that initiative. One of their affiliated companies spent an additional $1.3 million against the measure. What's more, Blackstone flooded the California Business Roundtable Issues Pack with $7 million, which also gave more than $7 million

to kill that measure. So they exploit the loopholes in the law to price gouge, and then they rig the system to make sure that these beneficial carve-outs stay in place forever. San Diego, though, is just a microcosm of the practices that Blackstone is deploying across the country. The Financial Times recently wrote about how Blackstone was ramping up their evictions with an eye on boosting returns. And the company itself has been bragging to their investors about just how profitable these exploitative practices really are. According to the Private Equity Stakeholder Project, Blackstone has touted to its investors that a, quote, structural shortage of housing has resulted in pricing power for rental housing assets and that, quote, rents are growing above the rate of inflation. In other words, they're able to jack up the price

of housing above and beyond inflation. Now, that is no surprise since housing prices have been going up far faster than other inflation for literally decades. But it also provides even more evidence that corporate price gouging is one of the main drivers of the price increases that are devastating ordinary Americans right now. I can't help but mention here as well that Blackstone has highlighted their commitment to so-called ESG principles, among them diversity goals for minorities to be represented among their own ranks and among the ranks of their portfolio companies. I'm sure it's going to be comforting to the majority Black and Brown working class residents who are being evicted and price gouged that a higher percentage of the people who are ruining their lives share some of their demographic characteristics, though certainly not their class status.

Now, these fights over housing are no side issue. They are at the core of what kind of society we live in, what values we uphold, how much of a foothold we're going to allow younger generations into their own pursuit of happiness. And the landscape is pretty grim. But it's not hopeless, because here and around the world, tenants have risen up against Blackstone, and sometimes they've actually won. In New York City, residents of the massive Stuy Town complex took Blackstone to court over planned rent hikes, and they did succeed. These tenants used new renter-friendly laws that were passed by New York State in recent years

to protect thousands of units from Blackstone's price-gouging tactics. It's a small blow of David against the Wall Street Goliath. The Guardian has also documented efforts in Denmark, Spain, and Germany to pass new laws specifically to protect against Blackstone-style predation. After national outrage over Blackstone's tactics, Danish lawmakers passed a law that would prevent landlords from jacking up prices until five years after the completion of any new renovations. This was in response to allegations from residents that BlackRock would intentionally embark upon loud and intrusive renovations with the direct goal of trying to force longtime residents out so that they could then dramatically up their rents. In Copenhagen, this approach came to be known as shake the building.

As one journalist wrote, quote, imagine an apple tree shaking at the trunk to get the apples loose from the branches. In the real estate world, the occupants are the apples, the apartments are the branches. And when a landlord shakes the building, it is to get the tenants out. Spanish lawmakers are also considering legislation that would strengthen rent control and outright ban the sale of public housing to investment funds. In Berlin, the city voted to freeze rents completely starting in January of 2020, although the nation's Supreme Court ruled the cap unconstitutional. In California, tenants already have joined the fight, banding together to try to fight back against the investment behemoth. It's a start, and it's a fight that we should all be paying attention to, because this might be just one piece of our national housing nightmare,

but in the war against ever-escalating housing prices, their fight is our fight too, and their enemies are our enemies as well. And this report really gave insight into their thinking right now, Sagar. I mean, this is a huge... And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. All right, Sagar, what are you looking at? Well, without fail, in the last decade or so, every single time there's a mass shooting,

we get the same response from the general establishment. Gun control and insult weapons bans. All kinds of infographics have now sprung up to explain exactly why an assault weapons ban is needed. How when the ban expired, that mass shootings spiked dramatically, blaming the expiry of the ban for the sick and unfortunately distinctly American phenomenon that we can't really figure out, mass school shootings. I'm sure you've seen this one from the Financial Times. You can barely open social media without seeing it. It's clear, right? The ban expires and then mass shootings increase. There's just a problem though. Does an assault weapons ban have anything to do with those shootings? The answer is no. That graphic

includes handgun shootings, which compromise the vast majority of the so-called mass shootings. And brings us to the next question. What is a mass shooting? Nobody really knows. The definition that graphic uses and that President Obama forced upon the FBI in 2013 is this, a single attack in which three or more victims are killed. On its face, I guess that sounds reasonable. But is it though, really? Because the explosion in that number of so-called indiscriminate killings of multiple victims in a public place has nothing to do with mass shootings as we understand them in the public consciousness. In fact, mass public shootings account for only 0.5% of all gun deaths on an annual basis in the United States. So small it does not even register on the graphic. If we are talking about mass

shootings as the FBI defines it, what emerges instead is an epidemic of gang violence and domestic abuse. Those two combined make up 88% of so-called mass shootings, as the FBI defines them. None of this is to whitewash the horror of Nashville, Uvalde, or any of those incidents either. It's just to say that the overwhelming societal consensus around an assault weapons ban just does not have a lot of evidence to back it up. You don't even have to take it from me. The RAND Corporation, the U.S. government-aligned think tank, last month did a systematic review of all comprehensive studies that we have out there. And guess what they found? Quote, evidence for the effect of an assault weapons ban on mass shootings is inconclusive. Evidence that high-capacity

magazine bans may decrease mass shootings is limited. By the way, this even includes the rigged stats that the FBI uses, citing gang violence and domestic abuse incidents. In fact, I believe an assault weapons ban would actually lead to more horrifying incidents, not less. We are talking right now during the 30th anniversary of the carnage at Waco.

What was the pretext for that initial raid in the first place? A bullshit gun charge against the Branch Davidians, or what precipitated the horror show at Ruby Ridge, another ATF-style charge, and was here attempting to ensnare Randy Weaver with a gun charge that he beat in court after his wife was murdered by an FBI sniper. A ban is just another pretext for federal authorities to prompt raids, investigation, and stops, if that's something that you care about, we're decreasing.

But let's keep digging then. What can change? What did change? What can we do, if anything? Where should we look for solutions? One area of interest is a focus on mental health. Obviously, anyone who is trans or not, who kills little children in cold blood,

is a sick freak with something very seriously wrong in the head. Unsurprisingly, when you filter out gang violence and domestic abuse incidents, mass shooters, as we understand it publicly, overwhelmingly have untreated or undiagnosed mental illness. This, in recent months, has become a major GOP talking point, which I actually agree with. The problem, though, on policy is they don't really agree. While rhetorically backing mental health resource expansion, we have seen the opposite occur. In fact, the very same day that many of these senators were talking about how we need to increase mental health resources, 10 Republican-led governors continue to reject federal funding to expand Medicaid, dooming smaller and rural hospitals, many of which provide mental health

resources in an area with almost nothing else. You don't have to endorse Medicare for All to understand that that will have a major negative impact on some of the poorest and most vulnerable people in the United States. Well-adjusted people don't murder little kids in cold blood. And mental health resources themselves, though, are not the whole answer. What they prescribe may also be as important. The U.S. has undergone an explosion in psychiatric medication over the last two decades, especially in the last two years. In 2019, some 10% of teenage girls in the U.S. are taking antidepressants, and about 5% of boys.

But since COVID, it's not just antidepressants which have skyrocketed. Adderall prescriptions have gone up by a full 30% and rising just in the last five years alone. There is no way to know what percent of American teenagers are on both SSRIs and effectively legalized meth, but it is safe to say it is in the tens of millions and is something that has only happened in the last 20 years. To head off the inevitable, this is not to say these drugs don't work. They certainly do for some people, but the question is could you get the same benefit without any of the risk of bad side effects and withdrawal. There are reams of evidence now to suggest a range of treatment options from exercise to psychedelics may be just as, if not more so,

have a better effect on lowering depression and treating these illnesses than psychiatric medication. We're not allowed to talk about this now, though, because we know the so-called chemical imbalance thesis is now completely bunk. All of this is a long way of raising questions around something I believe may work. Banning assault weapons is just frankly probably not going to do a damn thing, even if it feels good to say it. Expanding mental health resources, pushing real solutions over drugs for profit actually could make a difference, not only in stopping school shootings, but addressing the vast majority of these gun deaths, which are self-inflicted gunshot wounds by American males to the head who feel that they no longer have a will to live. I mean, I just think it's important

to look at the data. And, you know, that's the really- And if you want to hear my reaction to Sager's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. Some pretty explosive hearings yesterday on Capitol Hill. Senator Bernie Sanders sharply questioning former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz about his union busting and effectively lawless behavior with regard to the Starbucks stores that have unionized across the country. Really excited to talk to our next guest, Michelle Eisen. She is a barista and a worker organizer. She was one of the first, she was actually an organizer at the first store in Buffalo to unionize, and she was present for the hearings yesterday. Great to have you, Michelle.

Good to see you, Michelle. It's good to be here. Thank you. Yeah, of course. So first, just off the top, your reaction to what you saw yesterday, and we've got a couple of pieces we can play for people in a moment. Sure. So I sat in that hearing room yesterday. It's actually the first time I've ever had the pleasure of being that close to Howard Schultz. For someone who claims he wants to have a direct relationship with his workers and listen to their voices, he does a really good job of avoiding that most of the time. And that's also what we saw yesterday. What I witnessed, though, was him parroting the same anti-union talking points he's been saying since August of 2021 when we first started this organizing campaign. I saw him avoid most

difficult questions. He is very adept at sort of skimming past the actual content of what, you know, the senators were asking him and just going right into his tirade about how great his company is and why it doesn't need a union. So that was not new. None of that was new. What I didn't really expect was how hard a couple of the senators came at him and actually kind of knocked him off kilter a little bit for someone who's usually very composed. And that was that was nice to see. It was nice to see him actually be put in the hot seat for once for everything that he's put us through in the last 18 months. Well, we had one moment from Senator Bernie Sanders we wanted you to take a look at. Let's take a listen. Have you ever threatened, coerced or intimidated a worker for supporting a union?

I've had conversations that could have been interpreted in a different way than I intended. It's up to the person who received the information that I spoke to him about. Were you informed of or involved in the decision to withhold benefits from Starbucks workers in unionized stores including higher pay and faster sick time accrual. My understanding, when we created the benefits in May, one month after I returned as CEO, my understanding was under the law, we did not have the unilateral right

to provide those benefits to employees who were interested in joining a union. Am I hearing you say that you were involved in the decision to hold benefits from Starbucks workers in unionized stores? Is that what I'm hearing? It was my understanding that we could not provide those benefits under the law. So what did you make of that response there? First of all, not outright denying, retaliating against people, but also just rewriting a little bit of history. I mean, it was a flat out lie. I mean, that's what it was. I was already a unionized barista at that point when he returned to CEO to sort of try and save the day, as he says it, or write the path of the company. I remember him making that announcement that these new benefits were coming down, most of which I will mention were based off proposals that the union workers had originally proposed to the company. It felt like a punishment. It felt like retaliation.

And we're still feeling the effects of that. Later on in the hearing, one of the senators, you know, held up a letter that we had sent to the company saying that the unionized workers actually waived their legal right to bargain over those new benefits and we wanted them instituted, which took his whole argument of, well, we weren't legally allowed to give these benefits to the union workers right off the table. And that was a really great moment because he had to backtrack and he had to say, well, actually, you know, it's it's our preference that we want to bargain over this. The reality is they didn't give these to the unionized workers as a punishment, as retaliation, and because they simply didn't want to, not because they

legally couldn't. You know, just to back up what you're saying here about Starbucks's behavior, I mean, this is not like your opinion or my opinion. This is based on findings by the NLRB of the types of violations that they've been engaged with. This is from Senator Sanders' prepared opening statement. He pointed out the NLRB has filed over 80 complaints against Starbucks for violating federal labor law. There have been over 500 unfair labor practice charges lodged against the company, and judges have found that Starbucks broke the law 130 times across six different states since workers began organizing in the fall of 2021. One other thing that came up repeatedly in the hearing, which I was glad to see, is of all of these, it's what, roughly 360 stores now that have chosen, voted in a democratic

process to unionize. Not a single one has been able to come to a contract deal with Starbucks. I mean, they're clearly stonewalling. And, you know, I would argue, again, in violation of labor law in terms of negotiating in good faith to come to a contract deal with these stores. What has the impact been for you all at the, you know, you were the very first store in Buffalo to unionize. This has been quite a while now that you've been hanging out there with no contract deal. What has that done to morale of you and your colleagues there? It's been difficult. It's been really, really hard to go in every day or multiple times a week and feel like you're being punished for executing your constitutional right to organize your

workplace, to be down the street from a store that has chosen not to unionize or has been scared out of the idea of organizing and watch them making, you know, up to four dollars more an hour than you are based on the wages increases that we didn't get and credit card tipping, which was implemented again to non-union stores, but not to unionized stores. And have to, you know, have those conversations with your co-workers every day about the fact that we're still on the right side of this fight and we have to keep fighting, but feeling like you're being punished, you know, the entire time it's been really hard. Got it. Wow. Well, it's a really tough situation, I know. And then just, you know, for what's next, like, what do you think that the future

holds after this hearing? You know, I, I'm, I've been with the company 12 plus years. It's been a long time. I started with this company because I thought they were a better company, the company they profess to be very progressive and cared about their workers. And I think there's still a small part of me that idealistically thinks that they can be that company, they can get back to that. And we have this new CEO that's just come into power and he has the ability to right these wrongs. You know, he can turn this around in an instant. He can come to us and say, we're ready to negotiate a contract in good faith. Let's get down to it. Let's start these conversations. And I'm hoping that that's what happens. We're going to keep fighting. We're not standing down. This movement is just getting stronger and stronger every day. There are stores filing petitions because they want a voice in their workplace. They want assurances. The company is great.

It can be great. You know, it does offer some wonderful benefits, but it also can come and take those benefits away in an instant. And that's what I've watched them do to us. What we need is a contract that assures that they can't come and just take something away from us. And so I'd like to ask this new CEO to do that, to come and start having these conversations. I'm not going to say, well, let the past be the past.

The company has done some pretty awful things to its organizing workers, but we can start to heal, I think. And finally, Michelle, do you think that these hearings move the ball forward for you and your coworkers? And what would you like to see? You know, what would your message to Joe Biden, for example, be about what he could do to make sure that you and other workers who want to unionize do not face this type of bullying, punishment and intimidation? Keeping the spotlight on these corporations and these billionaires who think that they can just bully their way and pay their way out of allowing their workers to organize, making sure that they are held accountable. We need labor law,

legislation, overhaul immediately. We need some sort of timeline or deadline put on these companies that forces them to the table and to start negotiating these contracts, because what they do is they run out the clock. They try to exhaust workers into leaving the company or giving up. And there's nothing really there to prevent them from doing that. So, you know, the PRO Act would have gone a long way. I still think that can be on the table. So we need to start working towards that. We hear you there. We'll continue pushing for it it and we really thank you for your time today michelle thank you thank you so much guys our pleasure thank you guys so much for watching appreciate it i know it was a weird week i was out crystal was out but we're back we're back here

thank you everybody who's taking advantage of spotify watching the premium show over there i know you guys are loving it breakingpoints.com and then shout out to all our premium members who enable all of our work here work continues continues on the studio, people. Don't worry. You will see very big things in the time to come. It's really pretty. It is. And we will reveal it exclusively to the premium members too, who are the first ones. So if you want to check that out, you can go ahead and sign up. Be breakingpoints.com, as I mentioned. We've got great content for everybody through the weekend, and we'll see you all on Monday. See you all on Monday. See you all on Monday.