Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 4/10/23: Leaked Ukraine War Docs, China's Red Lines On Ukraine, Mossad Behind Israel Protests, Pentagon Censors Leaks, Elon Vs Substack, Texas BLM Shooter, Laura Loomer Vs MTG, Jon Stewart Destroys Pentagon Official, Abortion Pill

Episode Date: April 10, 2023

Krystal and Saagar discuss a massive trove of leaked documents released to us that show inner details on Ukraine War, China's Red Lines on the Ukraine War, and how Mossad worked to foment the protests in Israel, the Pentagon racing to censor the leaks, Elon declaring war on SubStack and Matt Taibbi by removing Substack links from Twitter, did the Texas BLM Shooter act in self defense, Laura Loomer and Marjorie Taylor Greene battle for Trump's affection, Saagar looks into how Jon Stewart destroyed a Pentagon official on their Failed Audits, and Krystal looks into how the Abortion Pill question melted a Republican Rep's brains.To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/To listen to Breaking Points as a podcast, check them out on Apple and SpotifyApple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/breaking-points-with-krystal-and-saagar/id1570045623 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4Kbsy61zJSzPxNZZ3PKbXl Merch: https://breaking-points.myshopify.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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regards to the U.S.'s efforts in the Ukraine war and a lot else besides. Oh, yeah. All over the world. We were able to obtain that set of documents and have done some, you know, deep research into them ourselves. So we're going to be breaking down some of the most significant revelations, purported revelations from these documents. So we'll get to all of that. There's some other big stories breaking though as well. Big battle between Elon Musk and Twitter versus Substack. Major fallout there.

Matt Taibbi's involved. We'll give you all the details there. Also, Governor Greg Abbott of Texas is working to pardon a man who was convicted of killing a protester. This is a really tricky one. We'll tell you everything we know about that situation. And a huge internal Republican battle between Laura Loomer and Marjorie Taylor Greene.

Got all the messy details there for you as well. But we did want to start with those leaked documents, which are quite extraordinary. Yeah, so we have some extraordinary reporting we're able to offer here, everybody. I know that there are some images, specifically around and others that are generally widely available, but there is actually a full set of the full documents that were originally posted on that Discord server that we were able to obtain from a confidential source. Now, we've gone through our own reporting process over here at Breaking Points, and we've pulled out a couple of stories that have already been reported by the MSN. We reported them out ourselves, but we also were able to bring you guys two exclusive

stories here at BP. We reached out to the White House and the Pentagon for comment. We did get a response from the Pentagon and were redirected from the National Security Council back to the DOD and the intelligence community for statements. So for all intents and purposes, the White House is not weighing in here. And with those caveats, this set of documents, extraordinary set of documents, as I said, some of which has already been out there, but much of which has really not. And from what I can glean based upon our confidential source, based upon the full set of the documents that we were able to obtain, this is a pretty rarefied custody. So we're very happy to be able to provide so much of it to you and to not just talk about it in a cable news bite, actually spend

some time. And I also want to say thank you so much to the premium subs and others. It's very sensitive for people like us, independent people, to be handling extraordinarily highly classified material. And so to know that you guys have our back in the case that somebody decides to take our videos down or there's already censorship requests,

which we will get to in a little bit. We know that we have all of you. So thank you to everybody who is a premium sub or who can help us out. BreakingPoints.com supporting journalism like what we're doing here right now. Let me just say before we jump into characterizing some of the information that was contained in these documents, there is a report that One Piece, the casualty numbers, and we'll break this down for you specifically, was altered. But the Pentagon in their statement to us is not actually denying the veracity of these claims. There are a lot of mainstream outlets that are reporting on the claims contained therein. Some of the information that is in the documents is sort of like verified in real time by what actually happened on the ground. So there's a lot of reason to believe that the information is accurate, but no one has been able to fully verify the veracity of the information contained in the documents.

But again, the Pentagon is not denying that these documents are highly classified and came from official government sources. So that's just to sort of set the stage here. We've tried to handle this as carefully and responsibly as we possibly can. And again, to echo what Sagar said, really appreciate you guys for backing us up and enabling us to do this kind of reporting, which is incredibly consequential. That's right. Two big goals here. Don't get the door docked down by the FBI. Number two, which is make sure that we handle it, A, responsibly, make sure that we try our best to confirm it, although the Pentagon effectively did

through some of what they have given us. And then really, most importantly, is give people the best information possible that obviously the government did not want out there. The biggest story to the Ukraine and Russia conflict that has come out of these documents has been floating around out there, but remains probably the most consequential slide of the several images that have come out from what we assume is a very, very highly classified from the top intelligence briefing circulating sometime in the last couple of months. Let's go and put this up there on the screen. What we're basically able to offer you is our assessment here of the documents, which show that two breaking points show a rapidly approaching supply issues for the

Ukrainian air defense capabilities. They say that the U.S. believes that the risk of increased Russian air capabilities is going to rise in the coming months ahead of the Ukrainian anticipated spring offensive. And I'm going to spend some time here. This has also been now reported by The Washington Post and The New York Times. But what has come out of these documents is that the Soviet S-300 and Buk air defense systems make up 89% of Ukrainian protection against most fighter aircraft and some bombers above 20,000 feet. In effect, that is what is stopping Russia from establishing air superiority over all of Ukraine. Now, according to the projections inside of these documents,

one set of these missiles was to be fully depleted by May 3rd, the other one mid-April. So obviously, it's April 10th, the day that we're able to go ahead and bring you this, and we are very, very rapidly approaching the exact date through which the initial projections that were provided one or two months ago, based upon what we can glean from these docs, at which some 90% of Ukrainian air defense capabilities are going to run out. There are a couple of problems, actually, that come here for the Ukrainians in terms of their air defense

capabilities, because many of these are Soviet- era missile systems, which we are not necessarily producing in the same mass producible way for our defense supply chain. A lot of it is older stock and others that either we had or other NATO allies had that they were able to provide for them. Included in the slide actually is an area called risks. And in the risks, what they talk about are the increased amount of Russian capabilities, the lesser reliance now on Iranian-made Shahid, basically drones, and also the ability for them not necessarily to establish full air superiority, but move more in the direction of being able to strike Ukrainian infrastructure targets. So really what we can glean, not only from the slide, which is basically out there, but there are a couple of other slides in there where they discuss this, is that the precarious

situation for the conflict is much more, I think, than any of us were ever led to believe on two fronts. Number one, obviously the U.S. has been lying to us, but the crazy part that really comes out of these docs is how much, Crystal, we are spying on the Ukrainians because it is very clear that they are not giving us the full explanation. In fact, in many of the assessments and others, they're specifically referencing information, stockpile numbers, and others that we are gaining through confidential informants and through spying purposes, not from notification, because it appears the Ukrainians don't really want us to know what their supply rate is to the extent that until they're like, hey, give us more. And then really second, they don't really want us to know how bad things got in one point,

which we will discuss in Bakhmut. They came down to a single supply line road that they had an entire briefing saying that we are very close to full encirclement by Russian forces. Obviously, that didn't happen because it was a couple of months ago, but it just shows you that things are hanging by a thread there to a degree which both the Ukrainians and the U.S. are not telling the American people about. There's a lot to say about this. First of all, some of the picture that emerges from these documents has been hinted at in previous news reports. So we had some previous news reports that were like, yeah, the ammunition situation, like they're really running through

a lot of ammo and specific concerns about the air defenses. We had no idea that it was this dire of a situation where we're like, you're going to be out of these sorts of air defense projectiles by mid-April and early May, a timeframe which is right upon us now. So that is a stunning revelation. Another thing that comes out of taking a look at these documents is, again, something that had been hinted at in the past, which is that we actually have, in some ways, better capability to understand, I'm talking about the U.S. government, to understand what's going on with the Russian side because of decades and decades of development of spying capabilities with regard to Russia

than we do with our own Ukrainian allies, who, of course, we have, you know, supported to the hilt and sent them all sorts of, you know, expensive weaponry and continue to escalate what we're willing to send them. And in many ways, we have no idea what is going on with them. So we're trying to develop in real time, it would appear, our own confidential sources and informants to be able to spy on our own Ukrainian allies because they have not been up front. And let me say also, one of, now I'm glad we have this picture that's emerging because I personally think the more information we have about this war effort, the better. But there's also no doubt

that if the Ukrainians have been reluctant in the past to share with the U.S. about what they're up to, they're going to be evenS. about what they're up to. They're going to be even more reluctant now because they're going to say, what, anything we tell you is likely to end up on a Discord server and, you know, being shared on Russian Telegram channels. So, yeah, we're going to stand by our position of basically not really telling you what exactly is going on. All of this is profoundly important. One question I asked myself as I was reading this, because you always want to say, like, am I getting played here? Is this like Russian

misinformation that's being put out? Is it Ukrainian? Is it American misinformation? This is an intentional leak from the administration. Because with regards to this particular report, you can already see in some of the mainstream press framing the push they're going to make, which is that's why we've got to ramp up support. That's why, in particular, we need to send fighter jets, because this Soviet era stuff, this is not something we can reproduce. So the only answer here really is to provide Ukrainians with fighter jets. So if it was just this piece that had been leaked here, I would actually be really skeptical of the intent of putting this information out there. But you'll see as we go through the further reporting,

a lot of this is profoundly embarrassing for the Americans. Some of it is profoundly embarrassing for the Ukrainians. Some of it is profoundly embarrassing for the Russians as well. Not to mention some of our allies. We're going to talk about reporting with regard to South Korea. Very embarrassing for Israel. There's some stories in here that are really, really quite extraordinary in terms of the recent protest activity in Israel. So the fact that it embarrasses everyone in some certain way, to me, is an indication. Now, there's no guarantees, but it's an indication that this was a genuine leak, that the U.S. government did not want that out there. And that's also underscored by the fact that the Pentagon is going to quite extraordinary lengths to make sure that this is taken down from every channel it is available currently on the Internet.

Yeah, that's right. And actually, to reference the part that's profoundly embarrassing for the Russians, let's go and put this next one up there on the screen. This was from a slide that was included on the assessment of the KIA figures, the killed in action. According to the U.S. assessment, Russia had lost between 35,000, 35.5,000, between 43,500. Now, Ukrainians, according to them, had lost between 16,000 and 17,500. The reason why this figure is important is that this slide was actually initially doctored. Basically, it was taken, the original slide. It was posted on this Minecraft Discord server, which is a whole other discussion for another day. Then that slide was repurposed by Russian propagandists on

Telegram, who actually photoshopped the figure to lessen the number of Russian KIA who were killed and to inflate the Ukrainian number. The original figure based upon the docs, which we have, which are the originals themselves, show between 35,000 and 43,000 KIA. I mean, obviously, that is a gigantic number. I mean, the U.S. lost some 50-something thousand troops in all of Vietnam. And in fact, I mean, if you compare that to some of their past wars, you know, especially since World War II, there's no hiding that amount of dead people. If we think back to Afghanistan, one of the initial triggers for the collapse of the Soviet Union was lack of faith in the Soviet system by the Russian people as more and more of them were not allowed to publicize the deaths of their sons and their uncles who were being killed in Afghanistan, not being allowed to publicly grieve. They've tried to get away around that somewhat by celebrating these guys as heroes. But of course, they are being subjected to a

dramatic internal repression campaign to lessen the figures for overall KIA. I mean, and of course, you have to take this with a grain of salt. This is what the U.S. intelligence community believes. But as you said, Crystal, these are highly classified internal documents. There's probably no real reason to lie internally. This is what we believe. We do not, though, of course, have a solid figure. There's simply no way to know. The Ukrainian figure, though, 16,000 to 17,500, I sent these around to some military analysts

that I trust. One of them flagged to me that even though that figure could be half, of course, the defensive is always going to have less casualties than the offensive. But secondary, Russia has the ability to replace many of its troops. Ukraine does not. Yeah. Part of the reason why much of their fighting age population has actually fled the country. And you're seeing reports of 40, 50 year old Ukrainians who are having to reenlist in the military in order to fight and also why they're preventing military age males from leaving the country itself. So, you know, it's kind of like if you think about the civil, the American civil war, which a lot of people know, the South had

less people. But one of the reasons why they were able to be victorious in many ways, because obviously it's easier to be defensive. But one of the things that did them in in the end was that they were not able to replace many of their soldiers who, even though they may be higher quality and on the defensive, eventually if enough of them die, you don't have enough new recruits,

you're going to succumb and you're going to have to be defeated on the battlefield. Yeah, and I think there's a couple of important things to say here. I mean, first of all, the numbers that are being shared confidentially, apparently, according to these documents, among high-level government officials

are not actually what has been shared with the American public. So I think that's important to keep in mind. Another important thing to keep in mind here is, according to the underlying source document, these casualty assessments are given with low confidence. So even internally, they're saying, you know, we're not 100% on these and they could be sort of wildly off. So that's important to keep in mind. The other piece that I wanted to underscore here with regards to what you're originally setting up, Sagar, that these numbers were doctored and then I believe shared on Telegram the doctored numbers. That actually happened a significant time, maybe a month after the initial leak to that Discord server occurred. And it also is important to note in terms of us

trying to gauge the accuracy of the information contained in all of these documents, which again, we have not been able to confirm, is that this is the only error that has been reported thus far. Yeah. It's the only thing that the Pentagon is pointing reporters to. It's the only thing that the mainstream press is also pointing to is just these figures being doctored on this Telegram channel about a month later. Now, does that mean that everything else is 100% accurate? No, you can't say that. But we're just trying to give you as much information as possible so you can judge for yourself how seriously to take the information that is in these documents. So as far as we know thus far, this is the one error that they've been able to really

concretely nail down where the documents were altered in a way to be more favorable to Russia. Let's go to the next one. And this is probably one of our most significant finds. As far as we know, this is being exclusively reported by us. Inc included in one of the slides here is that leaked documents show that the U.S. assesses that elements of the Ukrainian intelligence service were behind an attack on a Russian plane in Belarus in February. Now, why does this matter? Because what they point to actually in the original slide is they say that the Ukrainian intelligence services, according to them, violated internal orders on operations outside of Ukraine and conducted this attack on the Russian plane. Now, side by side, what we have over there is Belarus actually saying that

Ukrainians were behind a February drone attack specifically on the type of plane that we're talking about here. So we can put side by side that the Belarusians and the Russians blamed the Ukrainian services for doing this. There wasn't necessarily a denial from Kyiv, but there also was a bit of a hush up over it. It was significant enough to actually be included in the internal US assessment. And it raises a real question. How much control does Zelensky actually have over the Ukrainian intelligence services? And perhaps this is credence to the idea that there are a bunch of just rogue elements inside of the government. They're basically doing whatever they

want. We know about the bombings inside of Russia, of the pro-war blogger, of Dugin's daughter, Bob the Crimean Bridge, dare I say the Nord Stream attack, which, you know, was supported by somebody. That one, I don't think anybody at the top wouldn't have known about. But the question, though, remains, you know, whenever Ukraine does something, who is doing it? Because it seems clear here what comes out of the docks from not only us spying on them and their deep amount of secrecy, but their own command and control does not seem to be as solid as we, you know, Zelensky presents himself as the leader here and obviously in the Western press and to his own people. But obviously there are

elements of the government there that, you know, they don't necessarily listen to him and who knows what they're going to drag them into and by extension us into. That's yes. So number one, it could be that they're just sort of like rogue and lawless, which, you know, Americans will be familiar with the way that rogue and lawless intelligence agencies can act on their own and prosecute their own foreign policy. That's number one.

Number two is it could be sort of intentional on Zelensky's part to keep his own hands clean when they're engaging in, you know, what are effectively in some instances, international acts of terrorism, potentially. So there's, you know, that potential piece. But the most important part for a U.S. audience is we are deeply enmeshed in this war effort. You know, I would say that we are engaged in a proxy war versus Russia. Now, the Biden administration would very much dispute that. But it's certainly the way that the Russians view it.

And it's certainly the way that the Chinese view it as well, which we'll get into here as well. When any of these acts, whether it's the bombings in Russia, whether it is blowing up the Crimean Bridge, when it's whatever the hell happened with Nord Stream, when it's this sort of attack on Belarusian soil. All of these things have potential massive impacts in terms of possible escalation. And might I remind you, we are still dealing with a nuclear-armed superpower. And we're also still dealing with, you know, China kind of on the sidelines deciding how involved directly they're going to get into this conflict. So these are not little incidents. These are massively, potentially impactful. And so you have to ask the question, how much control does

Zelensky have over his own intelligence services? And, you know, if Zelensky doesn't even have control of them, forget about us having any say or even advanced visibility into what they're planning and what they're going to actually engage in. So this is an extraordinary revelation. And I also think it is very telling that this isn't a piece that has been picked up widely in the Western press yet, because it's very unflattering for our own involvement and the way that we have involved ourselves in this conflict. I want to read from one particular slide here, which I referenced before, about the U.S. assessment of the ongoing campaign. They say that Russia's grinding

campaign of adression in the Donbass region is likely heading towards a stalemate, thwarting Moscow's goal to recapture the entire region in 2023. Now, that's what the mainstream media went with. But here is the part where it comes clear to all of us that we're able to draw the conclusion that we're spying on the Ukrainians. This is the U.S. intelligence community speaking to the commanders. We would have higher confidence in our assessment if we could accurately estimate the endurance of Ukraine's operations on the Kharkiv, L have taken on Russian troop morale and others. And they continue to reference not having full-scale inquiry into the actual Ukrainian troop strength and what they were doing, both on the Ukrainian and the Russian side. That's just a little picture behind the scenes of how they are not able to actually see fully what the Ukrainians are doing. Ergo, that means that they're not sharing the information with us. And in many of these cases

throughout the docs, they reference confidential information and sources. Well, and let me say this. I can't really blame the Ukrainians. I understand they're trying to do what they need to do. They want to paint the picture as best they can to keep the supplies flowing and have their greatest chance to be able to succeed in their war effort. But we are not just like helpless bystanders here. We have a lot of leverage that we could use if it was important to us to actually understand what is happening on the ground or to actually understand the type of international acts that the Ukrainian intelligence services may be considering engaging in, if that was important to us, we have so much leverage because their war effort, which comes out very clearly in these documents, is wholly dependent on Western NATO

support, primarily from the United States of America. So we clearly have not used the leverage that we have to try to obtain a fulsome understanding of what is happening on the ground here, which I think is important for the American people to understand as well. I have referenced it too. Another one of the craziest documents inside of these, which we've discussed, we didn't make a full graphic for it, was really just, literally the headline of it inside of their briefing is, Ukrainian forces in Bakhmut almost encircled. Plans to send in elite unit to stabilize catastrophic situation. They don't tell us about any of this. None of it. They literally say they were almost encircled by

Russian forces and they had a single tenuous supply road. And when the military internally, as we're describing this as, quote, a catastrophic situation, well, you know, I think that you can say that it's obviously a disaster. Now, it didn't, you know, the Russians didn't end up winning in that particular instance. But overall throughout this, what you see are the precarity of Ukrainian defenses, both at the ground level and in the air level and the KIA figures, but also the toll that has happened with Russia, their inability to make any real gains so far throughout their possible spring offensive, and also just a significantly high KIA figure that

comes through. It's a chaotic situation on the ground there where we were being lied to on almost all fronts, the NATO front, the Russian front, and the Ukrainian front. I think it's important that all of us have as much fulsome information into that as possible. So we did our best to give everybody all of that. And we're going to go to the second part here, which we can pretty much exclusively bring to you. The mainstream media has not been reporting this. One of them is a slide included in a U.S. intelligence assessment with respect to how China is going to deal with the Ukraine situation and the situation through

which they may increase the amount of aid to Russia. So let's go and put this up there on the screen. This is basically an internal U.S. assessment of what the U.S. believes China's red lines would be. So let me go ahead and read all of this that we wrote here. So the documents show that a highly classified U.S. intelligence assessment that Beijing is likely to use any attack by Ukraine deep inside of Russia to rhetorically attack NATO and may influence their decision to provide lethal aid to Moscow. The documents show that the U.S. believes China would see any Ukrainian attack on Moscow as evidence that Washington is directly responsible for escalating the conflict

and would further justify their decision to provide lethal aid if they choose to do so. Now, the reason why I think that this internal assessment is so important, Crystal, even though it's been basically ignored for some reason, it seems by the media, is that inside of this, you can see the direct red lines, is that Beijing has any Ukrainian attack on Moscow that uses US or NATO members' weapons, that's a red line for directly responsible conflict that would give them possible justification for providing Russia with lethal aid. Any increase, and I'm looking directly at the text from the slide itself, of the scale and the scope of material that the U.S. is providing them in terms of possible fighter jets and others, that would be a trigger as well. But really what you

see is that China is looking at the situation in Washington, the Ukrainians very closely, and that also any attack on anything that Russian leaders see as a strategic attack would also be a trigger for Beijing. So this is one where the direct red lines that the U.S. intelligence community believes of what China's red lines in the conflict are is a highly significant piece of information that we're able to bring to you guys exclusively. And we have also a statement from the Department of Defense that we can read to everybody that is just kind of global about the actual response. Go ahead, Crystal. Go ahead and put this up on the screen, guys. This is what they've been sending to every news outlet. I saw the Wall Street Journal had the exact same comment here. But we want to read it to you in full. They say the Department of Defense continues to review and assess the validity of the

photograph documents that are circulating on social media sites and that appear to contain sensitive and highly classified material. An interagency effort has been stood up, focused on assessing the impact these photograph documents could have on U.S. national security and on our allies and partners. Over the weekend, U.S. officials have engaged with allies and partners and have informed relevant congressional committees of jurisdiction about the disclosure. The Department of Defense's highest priority is the defense of our nation and our national security. We have referred this matter to the Department of Justice, which has opened a criminal investigation. We're going to get more in a moment into their, you know, the criminal investigation here and also their efforts

to suppress any of these documents on social media. But what jumps out right away here is they're not actually denying the veracity of the documents. In fact, in a way, they are somewhat confirming it because they say that they're photographed documents that are circulating that appear to contain sensitive and highly classified material. And they are continuing to review and assess the validity of what they describe as those photographed documents. So again, really highly significant. They are not actually outright denying the accuracy of the information contained in these documents. Yeah. So that was in response not only to our question, but the media's question. I specifically listed all of the information that we were able to report to everybody here to the Department of Defense, the White House, and everybody was involved. They were given the full ability to

deny it and to spin us and to call us and tell us that it's not true if they want it. They took the opportunity not to do so and just to provide this global statement kind of on what it is. So I think that you can generally take away from that what you will. We also had a quote from a Quincy Institute expert that we reached out to in order to try and give some context on these documents. That's right. So George Beebe, who's the director of grand strategy at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, I asked him what he made of the China piece here specifically. Let's go ahead and put this first piece up on the screen. First, he said, these judgments seem quite reasonable. The proposition that Chinese aid to Russia will vary according to the severity of attacks on Russia, and I would add, on Beijing's

assessment of how close Russia might be to failure on the battlefield strikes me as correct. He continues, put the next slide up on the screen. The fact that this analysis is failure on the battlefield strikes me as correct. He continues, put the next slide up on the screen. The fact that this analysis is focused on the potential impact of Ukrainian strikes on China's aid decision suggests Washington is worried that Beijing could intervene much more decisively to help Russia under some circumstances, which in turn implies that the level of any Chinese military aid has not yet reached alarming levels. And in some ways, I thought that was maybe the most significant takeaway. I've been trying to square these documents, these leaked documents with what has been reported in the press. And in recent weeks,

we have seen a number of reports that China is, quote, considering providing lethal aid to Russia and has not decided what they're going to do on that matter. What we didn't know is what sort of metrics China was potentially using to determine whether or not they were going to provide lethal, further lethal aid or lethal aid at all, because there's no evidence that they've provided lethal aid to this point whatsoever. So this gives us an insight potentially into the, you know, pretty logical notion that, hey, if Russia looks like they're not doing too well in the battlefield and if Ukraine is striking within Russia, then it makes it much more likely that China is going to fully come to the table on Russia's side, which again could really fundamentally change the

dynamics of this conflict. That's why I thought this was the most significant piece that we were able to report to all of you exclusively. And again, thank you to our premium members for giving us the confidence to do so. But the reason why is because, as you said, Crystal, this would fundamentally change the balance of power in the conflict itself, because then they would have another nuclear arms superpower on their side, providing them with lethal weapons. But secondary, this shows us that the risk of escalation not only lies in how Moscow will respond, it's how Beijing will respond as well. And the increasing alliance between the two nations would endanger our position, not necessarily in Europe, but also possibly in East Asia, if they get even more

involved deeply inside of the conflict, providing Russia with the aid. This also shows you the years-long risks that continue the longer that this goes on, where we would embroil us possibly, and not only NATO, in some sort of conflict with Russia, but that China is not necessarily going to sit here on the sidelines. It's clear here that the U.S. believes that China does see that they have some skin in the game in propping up Russia and making sure that doesn't just go away. And that if they saw a direct role of Washington in some sort of attack on Moscow or on any strategically important Russian leader or others, which is not outside the Ukrainian realm of possibility, what we already know in their assassination campaign, that it very likely

could trigger Beijing's total insertion into the conflict and would abandon any peace plan. Yeah. So, I mean, this is why we have paid a lot of attention to the extracurricular activities, let's say, of Ukrainian intelligence services with regard to, you know, blowing up a blogger in a cafe in St. Petersburg, killing Dugin's daughter as well. You know, both of which, listen, they haven't been fully confirmed, but it looks fairly likely what happened here, let's just say. That's why we paid particular attention to these things, because any sort of provocation of this nature can really change the dynamics of the conflict and where this is potentially heading. So it's incredibly, incredibly significant here.

And I also think it's telling that, you know, the way that the reporting had been done previously indicate, OK, China's weighing their options, but didn't indicate where the risks and the fault lines and the red lines actually potentially lie. And that in some ways is the most critical piece of information here that you could possibly have in terms of gauging what our own, how we should involve ourselves and what we should be, what sort of pressure we should be applying to the Ukrainian side in terms of their actions as well. Yeah. So there you go. That's a story that we can report to you guys exclusively. It's one that we spent a lot of time on,

trying to authenticate and get people's opinions on, sending comment to the White House and to the Pentagon. We tried our best to handle it as responsibly as possible. And also thank you again to the premiums for giving us the confidence to go forward with this because there's a lot of risks. I don't think people understand both legally, but also in terms of getting sued. There are the names of all kinds of non-public people in here, including Ukrainian officials or others. One of the reasons that we thought a lot

about was the dossier and about how the publication of the dossier led to a lot of lawsuits because it was unverified allegations against very specific people that led to legal problems and, of course, ignited a lot of Russiagate and others. So that's how we felt the best to handle this one. And we're very happy to be able to give it to all of you. Let's go to the next part here. This is where we can focus on other areas of intel within the leaked documents that involve so-called allied nations, which are bonkers in their intelligence assessments, but have also been reported by the mainstream media. So let's go ahead and put the first one up there on the screen. This has probably got to be one of

the most insane parts of it, is that the documents show a huge schism between the U.S. and South Korea in terms of supplying lethal aid to Ukraine. Now, the schism matters for a couple of reasons. Number one, it shows us that the U.S. is asking South Korea for arms, and the South Koreans, in their internal negotiations with the National Security Council, discussions with the president,

are saying, we don't wanna give these to Washington because we don't think that Washington is going to be the end user. We think that they're buying them on Ukraine's behalf, and then they're just going to give them to Ukraine, and that violates our internal policy. But second, it shows us that we basically have the phone tapped of the National Security Advisor to South Korea. There are direct quotes, people, of his exact lines and inquiries inside internal deliberations and also the internal thinking of the South Korean president who's trying to avoid phone calls with President Biden and with senior U.S. officials because he doesn't want to be confronted over why his government doesn't want to sell

Washington the weapon. So, of course, South Korea is a very close ally of ours. But I thought it was important for us to pull this out, Crystal, because what does this show? Not all, even our close allies are not all with us on this Ukraine thing. That actually shows you a very clear example of they're like, hey, we don't want problems with Russia. We have our own policy. And D.C. is trying to force us into this conflict, even though we don't really want to be in here. It's really interesting. And they were trying to actively avoid phone calls with Biden because they were uncomfortable about it.

They were like, I don't know what we're going to say or do here because we don't really want to go along with what we expect them to be pressuring us to do. You know, listen, our allies are not going to be shocked that the U.S. is spying on them, right? They're not going to be, oh my gosh, how could you? How dare, like, everybody's realistic about the fact that everyone is trying to spy on everyone else, especially when you're talking about the United States, the global superpower, right? But the detail contained here that they, these, this information was obtained through what's called signal intelligence. So that means, like you said, tapping phones, basically, versus human intelligence, which, oh, you have an inside

source and you find out that way. That is quite noteworthy, and they are going to be very unhappy about this. And also, listen, it's important to note these documents are a couple months old. So anything that's contained, you know, in these documents, time has moved and things have shifted. So this is really a snapshot of a moment in time. However, at the time, the South Koreans really had not figured out how they were going to deal with the pressure that was being applied to the U.S. and how it would violate their own internal policy. And they're trying to come up with workarounds like maybe we're going to ship ammunition to Poland. And then the U.S. can get it from Poland. And then whatever they do with it, I guess we're just going to like not really pay attention.

But this was an active, ongoing issue and source of tension within the U.S.-South Korean relationship. And dare I say, you know, the revelations about the particular type of spying activities we're engaged in with regard to one of our close allies here is going to be another source of tension in this relationship as well. At least some weapons did make it to Ukraine because there's actually a slide that we're in possession of, Crystal, called ROK delivery timeline, which is basically Republic of Korea arms that were able to be sent to Ukraine. I also got from a military analyst who was able to look at this and said that this is going to give the Ukrainians some breathing room in terms of air defense, but also in terms of ammunition

and the total number of rounds that were eventually delivered to the Ukrainian military from his analysis of the slide. However, something that he flagged to me about this slide, about the South Korean weapons that eventually did make their way to Ukraine, is that if the Ukrainians do have an offensive, they're going to blow through this at their current expenditure rate in one or two months. So Ukraine is on the verge of some very, very serious supply problems. Now let's go to the next. Oh, sorry. Which means I just which means we are on the verge of some very significant decisions about how we're going to move forward with regard to are we going to increase our support and continue, you know, in basically the direction that we have? Are we going to use these revelations, as I know some hawks will already be doing, to push for further escalation, things like fighter jets? Or are we going to recognize that, you know, this is not going to necessarily continue in the direction that has been continued

and try to do whatever we can to bring parties to the negotiating table to end this conflict and be able to move forward? So that's why this is, you know, it's incredibly important to understand what the real picture of the war is, at least as far as the Pentagon has discerned it. So the second element here, this also is totally insane. Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen that we can report for all of you, which has also been reported too by the mainstream media. According to our own intelligence assessment, the chiefs of Mossad and Israel's spy agencies were planning a secret revolt against Netanyahu and were actually involved in trying to instigate some of the protests against the Israeli government. highly classified assessment from the government, which basically demonstrates to everybody how much the consternation inside of Israel that there was over this, and that they were basically advocating for not only the chiefs, but the officials themselves to protest against the

judicial reforms. Now, some of this had come out, not necessarily about the Mossad role, but about, you know, the chiefs of how the police agents and others in Israel were upset about this. Some of that had been reported. But to see this with a direct intelligence assessment, this is from March 1st, 2023, that this document appears to have a source on, which is based directly on a CIA intelligence assessment where they have insight into how the Mossad is thinking and what they were doing to Netanyahu is just absolutely fascinating. To put it in U.S. terms, just to understand what a bombshell this is probably already within Israel. Imagine that the CIA was caught fomenting direct protests against Trump or against Biden or against Obama, right, where they are actively working to sow

dissent against a specific policy decision. I mean, we've covered it here, but just as a reminder, this is all over these proposed judicial reforms of the Netanyahu government that the Israeli public has really revolted against because it's effectively a major power grab from Netanyahu, who himself is under investigation from corruption. What we had seen publicly, actually, we really hadn't seen anything from Mossad. We had seen some consternation from within the military. Remember, all Israeli citizens, with some exceptions, including some religious exceptions, serve in the Israeli military. So it's really, you know, an important like societal institution, perhaps even more so than the military here in the U.S.

So there was some consternation within the military, but we hadn't heard anything from Mossad. And let me read to you the way that the Washington Post characterized this. They said the leaked document labeled Top Secret says that in February, senior leaders of the Mossad spy service, this is the quote, advocated for Mossad officials and Israeli citizens to protest the new Israeli government's proposed judicial reforms, including several explicit calls to action that decried the Israeli government according to signals intelligence. Again, that means the phones were tapped or whatever. If accurate, this is a dramatic change in procedure by Mossad's leadership and puts Israel in unprecedented territory, said Natan Sachs, an Israel scholar at the Brookings Institution. It's a sign of just how far the Netanyahu coalition has pushed Israeli society and how high the stakes are. I mean, that's one way to characterize it. But listen, you know, I'm very much opposed to the judicial reforms that are, you know, being pushed forward in Israel. But Mossad, like our own CIA, they are banned from operating on domestic soil.

This is supposed to be about, you know, gleaning intelligence from foreign adversaries, not spying on domestic citizens in Israel or fomenting protests against the current government. So this is really something. This is really something. You know, the other one involving Israel is a crazy slide, and it's called Israel Pathways to Providing Lethal Aid to Ukraine. And what they basically lay out is scenarios where they can try and force Israel to give more weapons to Ukraine to violate their established neutrality policy. They have several ones which are laid out, all which basically involve duping the Israelis into thinking that they're going after Iran and then taking said weapons and escalation to try and shipping them over to Ukraine. I mean, look, this is astounding to me because it's literally an op inside of a PowerPoint where they're like, yeah, here's ways that we can trick them into sending weapons to Ukraine. It also just shows you the background. Look, we all know that behind the scenes, we were trying to get other countries to aid Ukraine, but we are going

so far as to deceive South Korea on trying to sell weapons to Ukraine. And they know it, too. We are going so far as to create scenarios where we're running ops on Israel to provide, make them sell weapons to Ukraine. This is the extent to which we are involved in trying to get the rest of the world to come to Ukraine. We're effectively their State Department and their CIA, it seems. You know, trying to, usually we try and instigate things to help us. It's an interesting kind of flip of things. But yeah, just seeing this, you know, with your own eyes and to look at it, it's crazy, you know, watching this. They even identify the three missile systems, which they want the Israelis to give them, and then have scenarios to which they

can try and trick them into sending them over to Ukraine. There's one other piece here that I wanted to note with regard to, you know, our allies. France is actually out with a denial that they have an active military presence in Ukraine, because that is in fact suggested in these documents as well. According to The Guardian, one slide suggests that a small contingent of less than 100 special operations personnel from NATO members, France, America, Britain, and Latvia were already active in Ukraine. Now, think of how explosive that is, the idea that, you know, something that we will not be totally shocked by, but the notion that we could potentially already have boots on the ground in Ukraine alongside other NATO members when,

you know, our public line from the Biden administration is that we're just supporting Ukraine. They're doing all the work. Now, we already knew that wasn't really true because we also provide them with a lot of intelligence assessments to help them in terms of targeting their strikes and strikes on Russian military leaders, et cetera, is something that we've covered here as well. But, you know, suggesting that there's actually a number of boots on the ground, NATO members from France, America, Britain, and Latvia is also pretty extraordinary revelation here as well. So look, we're going to keep combing through. From what we could tell, these are the most significant stories that we thought were important, and we'll continue to track everything. If more of them are out, by the

way, if you do have more leaked documents, please send them to me. We would love to see them. So we will protect you. We will do everything in our power, as you can see here as well. Obviously, we go to lengths to not only, I know this was leaked anonymously on the internet as well, but even being possession of some of the original versions is actually very hard right now. It's pretty wild. Yeah. And it's pretty wild when you look at them, like they're, the way they appear, it's like someone folded up the briefing and then brought it out of the room and then laid it down on like a pile of books and photographed them. It's pretty wild to look at. Yeah. And by the way, if you're the person who leaked, I'm not going to give you any advice, but anyway, good luck. Yeah, good luck. We'll get to that next. Yeah. And by the way, if you're the person who leaked, I'm not going to give you any advice. But anyway, good luck.

Good luck. We'll get to that next. Protect my own ass. Good luck. Part of the reason that we have to be so careful here, let's go to the next part here on the screen. The White House, the Department of Justice, and the Pentagon are losing it over these leaked documents. Go ahead and put this up there on the screen. U.S. is currently, as we alluded to in the statement that we were given by the Department of Defense, has already launched a full-scale investigation into the release of these documents that were posted on social media and on the Internet.

The documents and the – basically, they purport to show a U.S. military briefing given to the joint staff. Now, the reason why they're zeroing in on that is that the office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff inside the Pentagon, it's not that big. It's, you know, I'm not going to say the exact amount of people from what I've heard, but it's small enough that the FBI can run a full investigation into these people. And whoever leaked these is going to have a very serious time being able to avoid capture because they're compartmentalized and designed. And many of the documents are stamped with the markings and others, and also were taken in such a manner that the person who did it was not very

careful about obscuring some of his outside area. You can see like a hunting magazine behind one of them. Yeah, exactly. He or she, whoever did this, or they, whoever did this clearly did not take the best precautions while doing so. And unfortunately, it really could lead to their almost immediate capture and arrest. And they will throw the book at this person. They are absolutely they will throw the book at this person. Absolutely, they're gonna throw the book at this person. And I think what's more significant,

because of course the government's always gonna try and investigate and prosecute whoever leaks documents, is more so, why is it so hard to find them? Why did we have to go to extraordinary lengths to actually find the original copies? Not just photos of a few of the slides, but the actual original ones that were posted. Well, it's because, let's go go and put this up there on the screen,

the Pentagon has been trying to get Twitter to actually remove posts that contain the classified documents about the war in Ukraine. I can speak specifically about one slide, which is assessing the Ukrainian air defense capabilities. That was getting nuked on Twitter left and right. It was extremely difficult to find. In some cases, even on Telegram, they were being deleted. Why? Because the Russians don't want their KIA assessments that are being released on there. And it left people basically crawling the dark web and other forums trying to find the fulsome set of the docs. The reason why, again, gets to the fact that much of this is so highly classified that it's humiliating for the Russians, for the Ukrainians, for Americans,

and for U.S. allies, who clearly we are tapping the phones of the South Koreans, that we have direct insight into what's happening in the Israeli cabinet, into what the Mossad is doing, spying on our closest friends and allies, apparently, and that we are able to distribute all of this into the joint staff and then have it all come out publicly. So I believe that this is probably the most significant piece, and it actually gets to part of the reason why we also have to be so sensitive. We want to report all of this information, and we don't necessarily want to be censored for it either. Right. And that's one of the ways where we have to work within this system as well, where you don't realize how unfree the internet really is until we're doing something

like this. And you're like, oh, they can nuke you. They can nuke your whole account. They can report you to the FBI and all they could ruin your life and mire you in legal fees for reporting the truth. That's all this person did. This person gave us the truth. And frankly, they did us a great service. I 100% agree. 100% agree. Yeah, they are going to, it appears they're going to great lengths to get this taken down wherever they can on the Internet.

And obviously criminal investigation already opened. I think, you know, of everyone that this is embarrassing for is definitely most embarrassing for the Pentagon because the fact that you have this amount, I mean, you're talking about like a hundred documents coming out here, this level of highly, highly classified information, which can only be accessed by a very select number of people, and this is being posted on a Discord server months ago, by the way, yeah, this is humiliating for them, no doubt about it. And the information that is contained paints a very different picture of where this war stands and where this war could be going

and our own efforts and engagement therein. It paints a very Machiavellian picture of our relationship with our purported allies and our approach to them with regard to pressuring them over their participation in this war effort, not to mention the lengths we're going to to understand what's going on behind closed doors with those allies. So I don't think you can possibly overstate how embarrassing this is for our own government and for our own intelligence agencies. It also bears some time spending. Like, where do these come from?

Okay, so from the best I can tell, and from what I've looked at, Bellingcat, which I know is an organization that has long been on the side of the State Department and all that, but they did a investigation, at least on this one that I've been able to see, that others were able to verify, about the original source of the docs. They came from a Minecraft Discord around a Filipino YouTube celebrity. They then went from there to 4chan before then appearing on Telegram and Twitter.

So that's like the journey from Minecraft Discord server. I feel like my nine-year-old could have been looking at him. Here's another issue about why this person screwed up is they posted in the Discord originally at a place where there's not that many people inside of the Discord. And so that Discord has since been nerfed and the docs were taken down.

That's part of the reason why it's so difficult to find the originals now. Then they were made over to 4chan, but even on 4chan, they're working very hard. Others to delete them. It's been difficult to find, again, the full set before then making their way to Telegram, Twitter, and to other media organizations.

So yeah, whoever this is, it's pretty interesting. Clearly they play Minecraft. Maybe, maybe not. Or maybe they do, I don't know. I mean, it's one of those where the reason why I don't, you know, initially the response from the Pentagon and others was like, oh, this is a Russian disinformation op. Is wouldn't they just release, I mean, the way that they did like Guccifer, for example, with some of the Hillary docs or with WikiLeaks and others is they just released it publicly through a much more well-known organization where they directly contacted. These kind of like surfaced and bubbled up their way through the internet before they were then realized by people like us and others, you know, other people, the

mainstream media that was going through them. And so I just, it just seems to be one of those, like an actual leaker did this. It wasn't some sort of op to try and do that. I mean, at the same time, who knows? You know, maybe it's possible this gives them plausible deniability. They can use anonymity and launder it through several sources. So we can only speculate as to what happened. Yeah, exactly. I mean, like I said before, I really try to ask myself, like, what's the potential we're getting played here by the Russians, by the U.S., by the Ukrainians? And the fact that there is information here that is embarrassing to everyone, to me, is an indication that a lot of the information may be accurate and

that it is a genuine leak and not an intentional leak, which, of course, the U.S. government does all the time, you know, provides information to their favorite sources over The New York Times, The Washington Post or whatever to shape the story and the way York Times, the Washington Post, or whatever to shape the story and the way they find to be most beneficial. I mean, that happens every day of the week here in Washington. So the fact that you had so much embarrassing content here for the U.S. in particular, to me, was an indicator on the side that this is a genuine leak. But it's really important to say, like, we can't know for 100 percent certain, which is why we're trying to give you every caveat and the best understanding we possibly

can have of these documents. The Ukrainian, you know, it's interesting because the Pentagon is basically not really denying that this is accurate, that this appears to contain highly classified info. Their whole approach is more like, we're going to find whoever the hell did this, and we're going to bring them to justice. We're going to take this down off the internet because this is damaging information. That's now they haven't like actually confirmed it. They're saying they're going through the information to see what might be accurate, what might be false and what the impact is going to be. But, you know, they have ways of waving reporters off of information that they truly think is bullshit. So far, the only piece that has been flagged

is that casualty number on the Russian side, which was altered after the fact, after I think these moved from the original Minecraft Discord and from 4chan when it was on the Telegram channels is when that was ultimately altered. Yeah, and again, we sent all of this to the Pentagon. We're like, look, here's what we're planning on reporting.

And here's the way it works. Sometimes somebody will leak something to you and you'll send it to them and they'll call you and they're like, look, here's what we're planning on reporting. Like, and here's the way it works. Sometimes, you know, somebody will leave something to you and you'll send it to them and they'll call you and they're like, look, we're not officially going to deny this. They're like, but this is bullshit. And you know, you shouldn't report this and blah, blah, blah. And some, but by the way, sometimes they are lying about the fact that it is bullshit. This one, they didn't even try. They just waited. And then they were like, Hey, here's a statement that we're giving to everybody. Yeah. The Ukrainians. So the U S is basically like, listen, what they're, they're not denying it. Right. Um, which you can take that for what. Yeah. The Ukrainians, so the U.S. is basically like, listen, they're not denying it, right?

Which you can take that for what you will. The Ukrainians have taken more of like all the hallmarks of Russian disinformation route. Here's the spokesman for Ukraine's Military Intelligence Directorate said on Ukrainian TV, it is very important to remember that in recent decades, the Russian special services' most successful operations have been taking place in Photoshop. From a preliminary analysis of these materials, we see false distorted figures on losses on both sides with part of the information collected from open sources.

So they're using that one alteration, which has been flagged by the mainstream press, which we talked about here multiple times, to basically cast doubt on the entirety of the documents in a, you know, in a way that, again, look, it reminds me of when you had the letter come out about the Hunter Biden laptop and they're like, oh, the hallmarks of Russian disinformation, but without actually pointing out any emails that were inaccurate. Now, personally, I think if there was other information that was clearly inaccurate here, they would be not just telling us on background or telling the New York Times on background and waving them off. They would be out with a full statement saying, this is bullshit. We found these errors. Here's the truth.

And that cast doubt on the entirety of everything that's in these documents. You shouldn't report them whatsoever. That hasn't happened. So make of that what you will. It's kind of like the Hunter Biden laptop thing. They're like, well, it has the hallmarks of disinformation. You're like, yeah, but is it fake or not? And they're like, well, it has all the hallmarks. You're like, oh, so it's real. You're like, tell me one email that was not true. Like one photo or whatever. The Hillary one too. They're like, well, parts of it could be wrong. I'm like, well, which one? Which one is wrong? You have the original.

Tell us which one. And then they're like, well, just ignore it. We're still assessing. We're still assessing. So it's like, oh, so every single one is real. Got it. Okay. Yes. Yeah, so that's another one.

Clearly, the media is hand-wringing over this, like, well, you've got to report it in a way that doesn't hurt Ukraine and all of this. Listen, we have a responsibility. Any piece of info that is newsworthy or interesting in any way, that needs to come out. Whether it's good for the U.S., bad for Ukraine, bad for Ukraine, et cetera. There also—this was—I mean, listen, it's a comment section, so I don't read into it too much. But Michael Tracy was flagging there was a real backlash in the New York Times comment section to their reporting on this because they're basically—their readers have been primed to say, effectively, like,

how could you help the Russians and, you know, engage in this, like, disinformation campaign, et cetera, et cetera, which is a sad commentary on the way that the American people have been trained to think about journalism and the purpose that journalism is supposed to serve, which is to inform the public of, you know, the truth and reality of what is actually happening. But you have some segment of the public, and frankly, I think it's a large segment of the public that they're like, no, we want to be lied to. We don't want to know the truth. We want to be lied to. It's very, very unfortunate. So, yep, the witch hunt continues, and I can guarantee you,

whoever this is, they are going after them. They're going to throw the book at them. And in terms of social media censorship, we'll see how this video, the videos that we posted, did this morning. And we'll see how Twitter and all these other companies continue to handle it because there are extraordinary amounts of pressure right now on all social media companies to ban all of these documents to prevent people like us and really like you from looking at it, which is, you know, it's disgusting. It really shouldn't be. It shouldn't even be a question. It shouldn't be a question in any of our minds that we're able to publish this. And yet, you know, that's the culture of fear that these big censors have instilled in people who are just

trying to bring people the truth. Yeah. It is what it is. And the next phase to look for is the way that they spin this to justify hawkish war aims, which is what they, you know, typically do. So we'll be watching closely for that. That's right. All right. So big imbroglio. Is that how you say that? Between Substack and Twitter, a lot going on here. So users on Twitter started noticing that you could no longer share Substack links. It was treating everything with regard to Substack very strangely, in a way hearkening back to the early Elon Twitter days when they wouldn't let you share any like Mastodon links and other links out of the platform, which resulted in a huge backlash and they ended up reversing the policy. Okay, so Substack getting similar

treatment here. And not incidentally, right after they launched a sort of Twitter competitor of their own within the Substack platform, which is called Notes. So let me go ahead and put this up on the screen. This is some of what users were noticing. So first of all, if you would search for the word Substack, Twitter would return things for the search newsletter. So there's like a hard-coded search manipulation that was going on here to try to disappear any actual Substack results that people might be searching for. You also have unsafe link warnings for any Substack links. I have newsletter is what Zeynep Tafekci says here. Drowning in free speech is her characterization.

And then you also had search results for Matt Taibbi Twitter files, also not returning any results whatsoever. And I'll show you that more of that in a moment. So clearly Twitter deciding they were going to try to nuke this new nascent competitor to them being crafted over at Substack called Notes. So this has huge implications for everybody who is a writer over at Substack. I mean, Twitter is one of the primary ways that Substack authors promote their work and grow their following so that they can do the independent journalism that they're doing over on Substack. And there's also a great irony here because while when Elon purchased Twitter, he claimed that this was all about,

you know, his commitment to free speech, Substack has really walked the walk in that regard. And full, you know, full disclosure, I have a Substack over there with Kyle for Crystal Kyle and Friends. So I am a user of the platform. I also tested out notes this week and it seems like it's a sort of like

well-crafted service there. But Substack has really lived up to the supposed values of free speech. They have not engaged in censorship. There's a wide range of ideological views. Everything from, you know, some of the top creators over there are resistance liberals. You've got never Trumpers. You've got hard right folks. You've got far left folks and everything in between hosted on Substack, censorship free. So there is a great irony to the supposed free speech warrior Elon Musk censoring any ability for these Substack writers to be able to promote their work over on Twitter. So one of the people who obviously is impacted by this is journalist Matt Taibbi. Fresh off his showdown with Mehdi Hassan over on MSNBC, he posted this

on Twitter, quote, of all things, I learned earlier today that Substack links were being blocked on this platform. When I asked why, I was told it's a dispute over the new Substack Notes platform. Since sharing links to my articles is a primary reason I come to this platform, I was alarmed and asked what was going on. I was given the option of posting articles on Twitter instead. I'm obviously staying at Substack and will be moving to Substack Notes next week. Okay, so Taibbi says, I found out I can't share Substack links on Twitter.

I'm going to transition over to using Substack and Notes more and Twitter less. As a result of this, next piece, Elon unfollows what media characterizes here as Twitter Files hero Matt Taibbi after a reporter ditches the platform, which is a pretty extraordinary saga because, you know, Taibbi is the most prominent journalist who was involved in Twitter files. He really was defending Elon quite, you know, or at least refusing to criticize him in his interactions with Mehdi Hassan on MSNBC. And then hours later is being snubbed by Elon and effectively like forced off the platform because they're blocking any sharing of Substack links. Yeah. Pretty crazy. What does it vindicate? I mean, it vindicates, you know, what Taibbi and Barry Weiss and all of them had said.

It's like, there's like, look, we're not doing press for the guy. They're like, we're not, like, we did the reporting. You know, Taibbi was like, he didn't want to criticize him in that Mehdi Hassan interview. But he also was willing to say, like, screw you. I'm not going to stay here if you're going to go after the company that's backed me from the very beginning. So I think he showed his independence, you know, at the very least. I do think it's totally crazy that the Substack was, and I tried it myself in terms of hard-coded where you're

unable to look for it, all over the nascent notes notification. You know, confident companies don't ban their competitors like this. Like a company that's confident in its product is not going to ban a nascent user base, which is the notes feature. Okay. As I understand it was more used, was trying to be used for internal subs, like to promote other sub stacks or people who are already inside the community. I didn't, and does not look like it's marketed as a like actual competitor to Twitter. What do you think? I mean, listen, I'm going to be real. I, okay, I think I got an email as a Substack creator about notes. Did I read that email? No.

I would not have known notes existed were it not for Elon making it very clear that notes exist. I mean, it's an ultimate Streisand effect. So that's number one. Number two, right now notes exist in like a beta format where Substack writers only basically can use it, you know, for

the sort of like trial opening testing period. And so I jumped on there to see what it looks like in terms of, you know, my own like personal, is this going to be something that's useful in my life? And also in order to further understand the story, the functionality is very much like Twitter. You know, it looks very much like, okay, you can, you can like it, you can reply to it, you can retweet it or renote it or whatever they're calling it over there. So it looks very much like, OK, you can you can like it, you can reply to it, you can retweet it or renote it or whatever they're calling it over there. So it looks very much like Twitter. authors and journalists and Substack readers predominantly congregate in order to share, like, a lot of independent journalism that's going on on Substack. Now, they're not banning links from Twitter or links from any other platform or any other journalistic outlet,

but that seems like the natural niche and ecosystem. And the thing that it has that's kind of its value add in terms of Subst-stack journalists is they have some neat tools for making it very easy to share. If you have a quote from your newsletter that you send out, you can very easily post that in the notes platform in a way that looks really beautiful and hopefully for independent journalists, they're sort of like draws people over. Is this like a major genuine threat to Twitter? I really would be skeptical of that. I don't believe that at all. Because Twitter at its best, I mean, we live in political Twitter.

It's a very, you know, particular niche world on Twitter. But Twitter is also like sports and fandom and all sorts of other things. It seems unlikely that, in fact, you know, crypto is also was growing on Twitter. Porn was growing on Twitter. Porn was growing on Twitter. Like there's a whole other ecosystem, like range of ecosystems that are out there that it seems unlikely to me that Substack would be able to supplant. So, yeah, I mean, he really shot himself in the foot here, though, by drawing massively more attention and losing someone who has been, you know, sort of a key ally for him in terms of Matt Taibbi, who has his own very large and significant following and fan base, who is now like, all right, I'm basically done with this platform. I'm committed to Substack. Another example of someone who has been very open

to the Elon Musk Twitter takeover, very receptive to the idea that Elon might actually be committed to genuine free speech values, which personally, I think that ship sailed long ago. Brett Weinstein actually posted this. Let's go ahead and put this next piece up on the screen. He said, Elon, you know the thing where the left eats its own? And this is Elon's reply, which I'll get to in a moment. We mustn't let that happen to the emerging Western values free speech coalition. Many of us have backed your Twitter play and taken substantial heat for it are thrown by this move with regards to Substack. The public square is not a monopoly. So here is Elon's response to Brett.

He says, number one, Substack links were never blocked. That's just not true. Matt's statement is false. Two, Substack was trying to download a massive portion of the Twitter database to bootstrap their Twitter clone. So their IP address is obviously untrusted. And number three, turns out Matt is slash was an employee of Substack. Also not true. Not true. The last piece here, just to show you again, some of the hard coding that was going on at Twitter in an attempt to like crush Substack notes, but probably actually incidentally helped them, and for some direct retaliation at Matt Taibbi,

put this up on the screen. So initially, Matt had indicated he thought his Twitter Files tweets had just been deleted from the platform. It doesn't look like they were, but it does look like Twitter is blocking users for searching for any and all of his posts, including his Twitter Files tweets. So if you search for Mtaibi, which is his username on Twitter, you get this chicken no results for Matt Taibbi screen. If you search for Matt Taibbi Twitter Files, you get the same thing. So basically, they have decided to hard code in a disappearance of Matt Taibbi on the platform. Yeah, it's totally nuts.

I mean, I just think it's just all capricious. I don't know another way to describe it. I don't think anybody comes out of this looking good. And I don't know, really know why Elon on a personal level would burn like many of his people who were not only not necessarily willing to speak out on behalf of his purchase, but we're like, hey, listen, this is important. It's important to get this information out there. It's like you're basically shooting your friends. Substack ideologically was already kind of aligned with Elon. And I just think this comes from a real position of weakness. At the end of the day, he's already admitted that the company is worth half of what he bought it for, actually

less than half of what he bought it for, valued at only at 20 billion. He's hurting in terms of his advertising dollars. And what weak companies do is they ban, you know, nascent, you know, possible competitors like this rather than being like, welcome, you know, we're looking forward to seeing how this all goes out. Listen, you know, I try to evaluate all the Elon decisions on their faces, whether they're good or bad. And I just think this one is really, it's just stupid. It is stupid. That's the only way I can come away with it. It is stupid. It's obviously counter to the supposed free speech principles that he claimed to purchase the company for. I mean, again, Substack has truly walked the walk with regard to no censorship and freedom of speech. And for that, and they've taken a lot of heat for it.

I don't know if you remember this news media moment where suddenly Substack came under attack and they were trying to frame it as like just like a bunch of fringe conspiracy theorists, which couldn't be further from the truth. Again, I think one of the or maybe the top creator on all of Substack is like a resistance liberal. I mean, it really is genuinely ideologically diverse, which is part of what has made the Substack ecosystem really thrive in ways that some of the other free speech platforms have ended up being just like ideologically niche. And, you know, I think there's a benefit to having a wide range of views all hosted on this platform in a way that you can like surface them and find this different work. So there's that piece. But then to your point, Sagar, on just like the business decision of this, yeah, it's your platform. You can do whatever. You bought it. You can do whatever, you bought it.

You can do whatever you want with it. But there's a reason why other social media platforms have not gone in this direction because they actually benefit from having, you know, their platform be a nexus for journalism and sharing from all over the internet. That makes the experience on that platform, Twitter or Facebook or whatever it is,

much more rich and much more valuable and keeps users there. You know, Elon, decision by decision, is making Twitter more and more useful. More and more. Yeah, it's making it more and more useless. Exactly, that's what I meant to say. Because it's, you know, I just find myself, not because I have any, like, ideological vendetta.

I just don't find it as useful as I used to. So I use it less. I post less. It feels sort of like more abundant and dying because of each of these incremental steps. So I think this is, like, a case in point of capriciousness, pettiness, burning bridges of people who were really open to the project that you were engaged in, and just really bad business decisions ultimately. Yeah. I think it's absolutely crazy. Just looking at all this, I think it's a very dumb business decision. And I think Twitter is much worse off for losing Matt Taibbi, especially after Taibbi did such a good job

reporting the Twitter files. That's another really stupid thing if you think about it. The Twitter files were great for Twitter, and they were great for Substack because what happened? He published them on Twitter and had links to a Substack. People could go read more if they want to, if they like his work, and they produced a ton of engagement and free press for Twitter. The internet does not have to be zero-sum. This is like stupid cable news thinking. It's something that we have rejected from day one of First on Rising and here at Breaking Points. Notice, you know, we have partners for our show. We actively encourage people, our own customers, technically, to go subscribe to their stuff. We're like, please go, go to this

other platform, to another subscription product, go and give money to them. Because we know it's not zero. So, you know, if we do something good, they'll have our backs at that time. Yeah, because number one, we believe in that as a values decision. Right. And number two, it's a good business decision too. So yes, it's not a zero-sum game. This is stupid and it's making Twitter worse. In the words of Michael Scott, win, win, win.

There you go. Yeah. All right. There is quite a situation unfolding in Texas. So a man named Daniel Perry, who's an army sergeant and part-time Uber driver, shot and killed a Black Lives Matter protester named Garrett Foster, who at the time was legally open carrying an AK-47. So jury finds Daniel Perry guilty of murder in this incident sparked a huge backlash. And very quickly, Governor Greg Abbott, and let's put this up on the screen, says he is working as swiftly as Texas law allows regarding the pardon of Sergeant Perry.

So there's a process that has to unfold here. It has to be go through the board of pardons who are all appointees of Greg Abbott. So it's not like the outcome here is in doubt. And then Abbott signs off on a pardon here ultimately. So that's sort of the top line of the story. I want to take you through all the details as best we know them because it is like a very fraught situation. And to give you the TLDR, it's sort of like when Texas stand your ground laws intersect with Texas open carry laws. And, you know, the situation was a human catastrophe and, you know, ultimately a protester

being shot and killed. OK, so let's put this up on the screen. This is from ABC News. The headline here is Army Sergeant Guilty in Fatal Texas Shooting of Protester. Let me read you a little bit of this. A Texas jury has convicted a U.S. Army Sergeant of murder for fatally shooting an armed protester in 2020 during nationwide protests against police violence and racial injustice. Sergeant Daniel Perry was working for Uber in July 2020 when he turned onto a street and into a large crowd of demonstrators in downtown Austin. In video that was streamed live on Facebook, a car can be heard honking before several shots ring out and protesters begin screaming and scattering. The 28-year-old

protester, Garrett Foster, was taken to the hospital, where he was later pronounced dead. Perry, who faces life in prison, now awaits sentencing. The jury, in order to come to this conclusion, they deliberated for two days. During closing arguments, Perry's attorney said he had no choice but to shoot Foster as he approached Perry's car with an AK-47 rifle. That's according to the Austin American Statesman. Prosecutors said Perry could have driven away before firing his revolver. Witnesses testified that Foster, that's the protester who was killed, who was open carrying an AK-47, never raised his rifle at Perry. Perry, who did not testify, told police that Foster did. Let me give you a little bit more detail from what we know here.

So to sketch the scene for you, this is back during the Black Lives Matter protests. Austin, like many cities across the country, was a site of some, you know, major and significant protests disrupting and closing down streets and all of those sorts of things. So Sergeant Daniel Perry is driving for Uber and he runs actually a red light in order to drive into this crowd of protesters. Now, he faced two charges here. One was for shooting and killing the protester, Foster. And the other was actually for hitting a protester with his car. And I think the charge there was like aggravated assault. He was actually let off of that charge because

the protesters had said he'd like accelerated into the crowd. The evidence didn't support that. So they let him off of that charge. Now, Perry claimed that this was self defense, that he saw this man, which, you know, related like I can understand feeling under threat from someone who's approaching you who has an AK-47. However, part of what complicated his defense is that if you are seen as the person who is inciting the conflict, you don't get to claim self defense then even in Texas, you don't understand your ground laws. Let me go ahead and put some of the other details up on the screen here from local news reporting by the Austin American-Statesman. So again, they indicate he ran a red light at an intersection, drove into

a Black Lives Matter march before stopping. Perry's defense team argued he acted in self-defense, but prosecutors contended Perry instigated what happened. In addition, and this has got a lot of attention online, prosecutors highlighted a series of social media posts and Facebook messages in which Perry made statements that they said indicated his state of mind, such as he might kill a few people on my way to work. They are rioting outside my apartment complex. A friend then responded, can you legally do so? Perry replied, if they attack me or try to pull me out of my car, then yes. So what prosecutors asserted here is that, you know, these messages showed his state of mind, that he basically wanted to kill protesters

and find a reason or justification for him to be able to do so. They quoted a law professor in the same article, Jennifer Lauren, who indicated, you know, in terms of Abbott's statement on Texas self-defense laws, she said a jury is instructed to reject the defense when the person asserting it provoked the response, as prosecutors say Perry did when he drove his car into a crowd of protesters. So that could be why they found his claims of self-defense unconvincing because he ran this red light to intentionally drive into the crowd of protesters, thus inciting the whole incident that ends with the protester being killed. Okay. So that's the backdrop of what the prosecution is saying, what the defense is saying.

This became a real cause celeb on the right. There was a big Tucker Carlson monologue, but there was also a whole discussion. Kyle Rittenhouse was involved in sort of like, you know, going to bat for Daniel Perry here. And part of what caused the right wing reaction was this picture, let me put this up on the screen. It shows, it's kind of grainy. It's a little bit hard to see, but you can see on the left hand in the circle, this is Foster, who again was legally open carrying, exercising, as they might say, his second amendment rights in Texas, open carrying an AK-47. And from the picture, there's a woman's head that's in front of the actual gun, which makes it a little bit hard to see where it's pointing. So you could look at this and without looking really closely, it kind of looks like he's aiming the gun is facing, it's actually facing

not at Perry, but down towards the ground and towards sort of like the wheels of the car. So in a sense, this picture, even though on first glance could look like it's damning for, you know, the prosecution, on closer examination, it in a sense bolsters the case of the prosecution, kind of undermines the defense here. There's another piece. Let me put this up on the screen. Can we do this as a VO, guys, or do we have it as a SOC control room? Yeah. So go ahead and put this VO up on the screen. This is the initial interview that the police conducted with Perry. They had Perry demonstrate how Foster was carrying his rifle. And the reason that this was significant is they

asked him at one time if his rifle was pointed at, if Foster was pointing his rifle at Perry. And he said explicitly that he didn't want to let him aim at him. So not saying that it was pointed at him, explicitly saying that he wanted to avoid having the rifle pointed at him. So that's effectively what we know here. We can take this down now. Let me go ahead and put this last piece up on the screen, which again has a little bit of the arguments from both the defense and the prosecution, because we want to just really give both sides of this. Opening statements from the state revealed that Foster was a frequent Black Lives Matter protester. Prosecutors said he was protesting nearly every day that summer. The state argued Perry incited the crowd, causing protesters to

respond by hitting and kicking his car and also screaming at him. Defense argued Perry had to defend himself after he was swarmed by protesters. Perry, an Army sergeant, came in contact with the protesters after traveling to Austin from Killeen, is that how you say that, Sagar? Yes. To drive for Uber for supplemental income. So now we have, after a backlash, Governor Greg Abbott basically deciding to pardon this guy who was just found guilty by a jury of killing a protester. And that's what we know. It's a complicated one. You know, we were talking a lot about it before, because like you said, on the one hand, look, we have open carry law in Texas where I'm from. Like he's completely within his rights to be on the street with an AK-47. Also, you have a right to stand your ground in Texas and you have

a right to self-defense and policing the line between the two is very important. Also, you have a right to stand your ground in Texas, and you have a right to self-defense. And policing the line between the two is very important. Ultimately, what I think damned him before the jury is the initial conversation that he has with the police where he says, I didn't want to give him a chance to aim at me. You know, whenever he said that, in addition to the social media comments he said about going there. Here's the other problem, though, and I know a lot of people are looking at that as the evidence itself. What did we learn from Rittenhouse? You can go to somewhere even looking for something, but still, if somebody points a gun at you and,

you know, in the eyes of the jury, instigates it, you can kill them in self-defense. That is where the actual line of self-defense itself. Here's another thing people need to remember and consider. Everything is different. Self-defense law in particular is different state by state. Texas does have one of the strongest stand your ground laws. That is the basis through which Governor Abbott is saying this. Where I have a little bit of an issue is that Abbott, first of all, came out and said, I'm going to pardon this guy. But what he forgot is we have one of the least powerful governors in the entire country in Texas. He has to wait for the board of parole to say that they want to pardon him.

He says when they do, as you said, because he appointed all of them, that they'll do it and they'll sign it. But, you know, if you're looking at this, the assessment through the pardon is not actually coming from the facts of the case. It's coming from an assessment of how the governor himself wants to uphold stand your ground law for Texas. So I'm very torn on this. And by the way, on open carry, I know a lot of people are against it, but one of the reasons why people want it to be legal is you don't want to give anybody a pretext to arrest somebody just for having a gun that is on them, even though bad situations like this can occur. So I will speak out for my 2A bros who are out there. Yeah. Well, you should back Foster's rights to exercises. I mean, and not- Both of these people have guns.

They're doing legal, or at least legally, up until the point of the interaction that it happened with the murder itself. You know, it's one of those where I genuinely don't know. Looking at the jury, clearly they were within mind enough to not convict him of one charge and to convict him of the other charge. On the facts itself, I was not in the jury and I did not see the forensic evidence where I think the most complicating factor for Perry comes down to the video.

Again, I was not there. I genuinely have no idea how I would have voted on this. It's the video and it's also the fact you ran a red light to intentionally drive into this crowd of protesters. And that's where the defense is able to argue you don't get to claim self-defense. However you felt about whatever, you know, Foster was doing in this situation, your right to claim self-defense is really negated by the fact that you incited this conflict yourself. And by the way, you're in a car. You could have driven away if you felt threatened. The piece of this that, you know, I think exposes the problems with stand your ground

laws is it's completely subjective. And you can feel threatened enough to shoot and kill someone by someone doing something that is totally legal, which is open, in the state of Texas, open carrying AK-47. I also would say that it shows some of the problems with allowing people to open carry weapons like AK-47s, where it's going to be natural that people perceive that as like a very threatening situation, a very threatening altercation. The part of this that I find the most troubling is, listen, it's clearly on the part of Abbott. It's very ideological. You know, if the shoe was on the other foot and this was like an anti-COVID lockdown protest and you had, you know, a lefty who'd posted, I'm going to go out and kill some right-wingers, drive into a crowd of them and

shoot and kill one of them. does anyone in their right mind think that Tucker Carlson would be doing a monologue outraged about it or that Greg Abbott would decide like, oh, we got to go in and we got to pardon this guy, even though, listen, whatever you think of the prosecutor, and that's part of what they're saying, oh, this is a George Soros-backed progressive DA, whatever. They had to present this to a jury. A jury evaluated the evidence. They said no on one charge and they said yes on killing this protester. So, you know, to me, yes, I do think the way that these laws interact is complicated and troubling in a way that, to my mind, sort of undermines the undermines the notion that you should have either the stand your ground or open carry AK-47 on the books, but this is Texas and that's what they've decided to do. But given that you have, you know, a complicating set of facts and you have a jury that carefully evaluated this evidence and unanimously decided to move forward, I think it's outrageous to overturn it based on sort of like

social media outrage from a group that you consider to be your core base. I would say at least let the appeals process play out because that's another one is you're actually preempting appeals for a pardon. Yeah, which that is extraordinary in the history of the state of Texas. Whenever a pardon has been from what I've been able to gather, there's never been a pardon on a murder conviction that was did not at least very, very much go through allow the full appeals process to play out. Because don't forget, sure, you can say all you want, like a progressive prosecutor and a progressive jury in Austin,

which is, again, I don't know any of these people. The prosecutor, obviously, but in terms of the jury, I have no idea who these people are. Hopefully they acted in good faith. But it's not like the appeals courts in Texas are liberal by any means. So if he's got a good chance, look, on the facts, if he has a good chance at overturn, there is no state that you'd be better positioned in than the state of Texas or the Supreme Court of the state of Texas before that process were to play out, where he again can continue to argue the facts that he did before that. I actually would support that playing out more so because, Crystal, what Texas Governor Abbott is saying is this violates stand-your-ground law. That is a matter for our courts to decide, not just the jury. If jury nullification came in this case, then actually that needs to be further analyzed. And more importantly, in my mind,

the sacrosanct nature of the way that the courts themselves determine whether this violated Texas Stand Your Ground law. Again, a matter for the Supreme Court of the state of Texas before the governor were to be get involved here. That is how you properly were to handle something like this. Yeah, right. Because what about the, you know, second amendment right of Foster to open carry his. No, no, he was totally within his right. I support his right to do so. I think, you know, I mean, listen, it was a chaotic situation. You know, maybe, you know, don't bring guns out of the way to that. Not a great idea. Something can be not a bad idea or not a good idea, but it can also be legal. I support it to

be legal specifically for horrific situations. So anyway, this is a matter in my mind for the Supreme Court of the state of Texas. And I don't think the governor should be doing this. I really don't. All right. Let's talk about a little bit of Trump campaign drama spilling over. This is an interesting one. Put this up on the screen from The Guardian. They say Trump was reportedly seeking 2024 campaign role for far right activist Laura Loomer. Expresident, has told aides to hire the failed congressional candidate. That is according to a New York Times report. So Laura Loomer, for those, I don't know, Sagar, you might do a better job describing her. She's definitely out there, a very vocal figure.

She ran for Congress twice and lost. She's been pretty clear about some relatively unsavory views, in my opinion. She previously described herself as pro-white nationalism, claiming there's a difference between white nationalism and white supremacy. And a lot of liberals and left-wing globalist Marxist Jews don't understand that. Those were her words in that same conversation. She said the U.S. really was built as the white Judeo-Christian ethno-state, essentially. So those are some of the type of comments that she has engaged in previously. So Trump was apparently, apparently likes her though, because she's loyal. Because she's, oh, she is, she is loyal to him in a religious way. This is, I don't think people

can really understand what Loomer dedication to, to Trump is. In terms of all the stuff that she said, here's the thing about Laura Loomer. She is a provocateur and she is all about attention. That is all she has ever wanted. I mean, she's the- Well, she's gotten it. Do you remember this? Whenever she chained herself to Twitter HQ with the handcuffs in New York City to be like,

please restore my account. She was one of the originally like completely de-planned, de-platformed people. The only interaction I've ever had with Laura Loomer is when she went after me for not believing in QAnon, which was a fun thing. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's right. She's a big Q person too, right? She like flirted with Q. Okay. Look, here's the other thing. I don't even take clowns like this seriously.

What I do take seriously is when Trump wants to hire somebody like Laura Loomer. And the reason why is obvious. And I think this is something that so many people need to understand about Trump. One of the reasons he debases people is because he forces people who are serious to twist themselves into knots to try and justify his most batshit insane instincts,

specifically like on Dominion and Stop the Steal. Right, so that's why people do high IQ stuff. They're like, well, you know, if you think Pennsylvania election law, it's like, no, that's not what he's saying. Right. So that's why people do high IQ stuff. They're like, well, you know, Pennsylvania election law. It's like, no, that's not what he's saying. He's saying that the Chinese literally stole the election. And it's like, how are you going to high IQ your like dinner with Kanye West and Nick Fuentes or like high IQ wanting to hire Laura Loomer as like a serious campaign role? And the reason why I want someone like Laura Loomer is Laura Loomer is attacked.

Anything the man does, she will defend it. He could contradict himself completely. She would defend it. He could go the other way. She would defend it. That's everything that she does is all about just a religious faith and defense of Trump. She almost looks at him like a Jesus than she does like Trump. I'm sure that she'll come after us for this segment. I don't particularly care. Whatever. That's fine. So we're not the only ones who have some issues with Laura Loomer. Marjorie Taylor Greene, not a fan, making it very clear after this report came out, put this up on the screen. She shared the New York Times reporter, a screenshot of the New York Times report about him moving to hire Laura Loomer. That was the headline here. She says, Laura Loomer, this Marjorie Taylor

Greene, is mentally unstable and a documented liar. She cannot be trusted. She spent months lying about me and attacking me just because I supported Kevin McCarthy for speaker. And after I refused to endorse her last election cycle, she loves the alleged FBI informant and weirdo, Nick Fuentes. She tried to get hired on the Yay campaign after the infamous Mar-a-Lago dinner, but Kanye West refused to hire her, so now she's running to Trump. Never hire or do business with a liar. Liars are toxic and poisonous to everything they touch. I will make sure he, being Trump, knows. All right, so that was shots fired

from Marjorie Taylor Greene. Apparently, I guess the fallout here really, because they had been kind of buddy-buddy before. I guess the fallout here was over the whole Kevin McCarthy situation, and there were shots taken at Marjorie Taylor Greene from Laura Loomer. Laura responds, let's put this up on the screen. MTG, the only liar is you. You hired the foreign national who set up the dinner at Mar-a-Lago and you spoke at AFPAC where you were more than happy to embrace Fuentes. Ye asked me to work on

his campaign and I said no because I told him I endorsed Donald Trump, but I support his right to free speech. You were a liar. And then there's all kinds of stuff here. I don't even know what she's talking about. You have a British foreign national who openly attacks President Trump every day working for you and living in Rome, Georgia. I have the receipts. I have screenshots of you telling me you want me in Congress, you're going to endorse me. You only change your mind once you make deals with McCarthy.

You're a disloyal liar. You're working with someone who said he wanted to make Trump miserable by setting him up at Mar-a-Lago. Here you are on video in case I need to refresh your memory. So yeah, this is pretty interesting all the way around.

I mean, she also went after her for allegedly having an affair and being embarrassing. I mean, this is one after her for allegedly having an affair and being embarrassing. I mean, this is one of those Iran-Iraq war situations where it's like, I wish both sides the best of luck. Laura Loomer went on for like 12 more tweets, by the way. This is like not the end of it. At the end of the day, I don't think Trump will hire her

because MTG is such a loyal ally and is probably more important to the movement. But this just gives people an idea. Like there is nobody out of bounds for Trump. If you're willing to speak out for him, literally, no matter who you are, he'll be like, yeah, I think he's a good guy or she's a good girl. Like, I'll hire her for the campaign. And, you know, I was thinking about, I think Richard Hennany or somebody tweeted this out. Laura Loomer actually would be a good spokesperson for Trump. You need somebody who is willing to defend literally everything that you say in a religious way.

So like put morals, I guess, and all of that aside, yeah, she actually would be great at this job. So in a way, I'm like, yeah, she deserves it. I think we all do. If we deserve Trump, then we deserve Laura Looper. It was a reminder to me of like just because Trump has been he's been pretty honest political game lately. Like put aside indictments, it's not great for him. It's good for him in the Republican primary, but I think ultimately, you know, this polling that shows most Americans think he did it. Most Americans think support him being charged like they think there's there, there.

So not great for him for a general election. But he's made some very smart political moves recently. Talking about Social Security and Medicare, you know, like his messaging the way he's really sort of completely undercut the potential DeSantis campaign before DeSantis even months from DeSantis even announcing. I mean, he lost reelection, why it is that under him, Republicans did not do well in 2018. And then 2022, he like really depressed what they were able to achieve as well. And why you still, even with Joe Biden being not that popular, you still wouldn't say that that Trump's like a shoo-in for the White House because this kind of stuff just happens under him all the time. Yep.

You are correct, Crystal. This is something that is baked into Trump. There's no getting around it. Period. Zero. This is it. So, you know, if you support him, this is part of it. This is what you get.

You should just be honest about that. There are a lot of people who are like, look, on balance, you know, this is still something I'm willing to put up with. The left has their own kooks that they have. You know, the luggage guy or whatever the guy is. You know, it's like this is how it is. But at least just be real about what you're getting into because that's what's happening. All right, so how are you looking at? Well, I'm not exactly sure why establishment hacks continue to let themselves be interviewed by Jon Stewart.

The best explanation I can come up with is that most of them are just so arrogant they think they can take him. They're personally liberal. They came up watching him during the Bush years. They think he will at least be somewhat on their side. And then, of course, there's probably just a large contingent that have no nothing about him. But because he's famous and they're fame hungry, they just agree to the interview. Which category Kathleen Hicks falls into, you can be the judge. And for those who don't know, Hicks is the deputy secretary of defense. In other words, the number two person in the entire Pentagon. The deputy secretary is cloaked in immense power. They're responsible for the day-to-day operations of the building, where the secretary is focused on policy and the priorities of the president. Their power extends

to appropriation requests, reconciling disputes, the finance department. And for our purposes, that's what we're going to look at. Something Stewart came ready to tangle with Hickson immediately and brought up was the failed Pentagon audit. Let's take a listen to the initial exchange. It's absolutely the case that the United States military should be able to pass an audit, and we've got to be on that pathway to get there.

Okay, so you need to explain to me, do you understand what an audit does and the degree to which it is linked to the question that you're asking? I believe so. Okay, go ahead. Give me your explanation. First of all, the arrogance of this woman. It is unbelievable to belittle a man like Stewart, taunting him what an audit actually is. Let's focus in on the question at hand. What is the Pentagon audit? Why does it matter? We've brought you before the stunning story that only the U.S. government agency, the only one incapable of passing an audit, remains the Pentagon. Not once, not twice, but five times. We're not just talking about one failed audit. The Pentagon is in its fifth failed audit, was capable of accounting for just 39% of $3.5

trillion in assets under management. So yes, they cannot account for 60% of all the assets that maintain. Further, despite promises, the Pentagon failed to make any improvements from the years prior, showing they don't even care about trying to pass the audit at all. Let's continue with Stewart. Audit that they have in the military doesn't really look at whether or not there's efficacy. It's just whether they got delivered the thing that they ordered. That is any audit. That is any audit.

That is true. But generally, those audits aren't $400 billion for Raytheon and $1.7 trillion for a plane that doesn't seem to be doing it. There is a lot of waste, fraud, and abuse within a system. Audits and waste, fraud, and abuse are not the same thing. So let's decompose these. Then please educate me on what the difference is. Sure. So an audit is exactly what you just described, which is, do I know what was delivered

to which place? The ability to pass an audit or the fact that the DOD has not passed an audit is not suggestive of waste, fraud, and abuse. That is completely false right there. So now it's a question of, it's suggestive that we can't, we don't have an accurate inventory that we can pull up of what we have where. That is not the same as saying we can't do that because waste, fraud, and abuse has occurred. So in my world, that's waste. Once again, the arrogance of trying to explain like an accountant for a billionaire before an IRS audit. Let's continue because this is where things become really bonkers. It's a relatively long clip, but it is important for everybody to get this full exchange in all of its glory.

In my world, that's waste. How is that waste? If I give you a billion dollars and you can't tell me what happened to it, that to me is wasteful. That means you are not responsible. But if you can't tell me where it went, then what am I supposed to think? And when there has been reporting, I mean, this is not, look, I'm not saying this is on you and that you caused this, but I think it's a tough argument to make that an $850 billion budget to an organization that can't pass an audit and tell you where that money went, like, I think most people would consider that somewhere in the realm of waste, fraud,

or abuse, because they would wonder why that money isn't well accounted for. And especially when they see food insecurity on military bases, and they see... You want to talk about that? Because that's a good... We should be talking... I mean, I'm trying to understand where you're trying to go, other than the dollars, which really bother you. I think it doesn't really bother me. I think it's all connected. Okay. Tell me that story. Tell me how you're thinking about that. Well, when I see a state department get a certain amount of money and a military budget be 10 times that, and I see a struggle within government to get people like more basic services, and then that

department that got that, I mean, we got out of 20 years of war and the Pentagon got a $50 billion raise. Like, that's shocking to me. Now, I may not understand exactly the ins and outs and the incredible magic of an audit, but I'm a human being who lives on the earth and can't figure out how $850 billion to a department means that the rank and file

still have to be on food stamps. Like, to me, that's fucking corruption. I'm sorry. And if like, if that blows your mind and if you think like, that's like a crazy agenda for me to have, I really think that that's institutional thinking. Those exchanges are so important because they get at what Stewart is best at, teasing the absurdity of the way that Kathleen Hicks is picking her language to distinguish between fake terms like audit and waste, fraud, and abuse, while being condescending towards Stewart for not knowing those terms. In reality, she's the crazy one who thinks that if you can't account for 60% of assets under management, you're lecturing the people paying

you, then you're the one who needs to be grilled, laughed at, and held to account. And the best point that he has is his argument about the treatment of those who fight in war versus the companies that provide the military with the weapons. The latter half is overpaid, not held to account, lavishly treated, never has met an expense that the Pentagon cannot fund. The former, despite being the ones who actually fight, suffer, and in many cases die, are disregarded and considered negotiable when they come to, take for example, the Washington Post editorial board. The Post wrote an editorial encouraging means testing veterans benefits for those who are suffering confirmed disability after their military service. They even gloat that

reforms like this could save billions. They never wrote an op-ed for talking about the audit. That, Crystal, tells you everything. That's how the media covers it. It takes a guy- And if you want to hear my reaction to Sager's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. Crystal, what are you taking a look at? Well, guys, on Friday, two separate federal judges issued directly contradictory rulings, which set up yet another Supreme Court showdown over abortion rights. First, a district court judge in Texas issued a sweeping ruling that would completely roll

back the FDA approval for the abortion drug Mifepristone. Over 50% of abortions in the U.S. are now accomplished using this drug, which was approved over 20 years ago by the FDA. Never in history has a court claimed the ability to unilaterally roll back a drug approval of abortion drug or anything else, superseding the judgment of the government agency that is charged with overseeing drug safety for the judgment of one unelected judge. Now, the fact that mifepristone has been used safely for more than 20 years makes this decision all the more astonishing.

And the safety and efficacy of the drug is not actually in doubt. A recent comprehensive review of 101 different studies involving 124,000 medication abortions found one death related to an infection from the abortion and one from unrelated causes. But while the use of mifepristone is about as risky as taking an aspirin, it's not exactly a pleasant experience because it essentially causes a miscarriage with the associated cramps and bleeding. And it is this unpleasantness that this judge used to insist the drug is not safe in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. I'm trying to be sober and fact-based on all of this, but it cannot be overstated how much of an anti-abortion ideologue this judge reveals himself to be in this ruling. So on page one, he includes a note about how he will insist

on using the loaded term unborn human or unborn child to refer to a fetus at any stage of development, which would really be something in any context. But especially since this particular medication is only used in the early weeks of a pregnancy, long before viability. He also gives multiple nods to the fringe idea that a fetus should have all the same rights as an adult person. Now, the logical conclusion of such a view is obviously that abortion should be banned nationwide in Alabama and California alike. And if that wasn't enough, this judge also frames abortion as being equivalent to eugenics. So Kaksmaric, that's the name of the judge, really not hiding the ball here

in terms of his own personal zealotry. Even putting aside the fetal personhood stuff, though, which could lead to an all-out ban, this decision would have a dramatic impact, ending availability of the most common form of abortion, not just in red states, but in every state in the entire nation, thereby exposing the lie that the Dobbs decision is really just about allowing each state to choose the abortion regulations that are culturally appropriate for their populations as determined through a democratic process. This judge in Texas would seek to impose his own personal radical interpretation of morality on the whole country. But mere hours later, another federal judge issued a separate ruling that is a direct contradiction to the one which would ban mifepristone in all 50 states. So a Washington state judge issued an injunction which

would bar the FDA from altering the status quo with regard to this drug. So just to be clear, the Texas judge has now told the FDA the drug must be blocked from use everywhere. The Washington judge has said it must still be allowed in the states where it is currently in use. Now, the Texas judge did issue a five-day stay while the Fifth Circuit reviews a Biden administration appeal. But the Fifth Circuit is the most conservative in the country. Legal analysts seem to expect it to uphold this ruling.

So in the meantime, there is actually no way for the FDA to comply with both of these rulings. The most sensible course and the one they will most likely pursue is to use their enforcement discretion, maintain the status quo until this impasse is resolved. And the only way this impasse can really be resolved is through the Supreme Court. Now, it's ironic. It's also predictable. In their Dobbs ruling of returning Roe versus Wade, the court made a big show of claiming they'd be washing their hands of abortion, framed the decision as a sort of gift for democracy, allowing the citizens of every state to now legislate for themselves. This was always a farce as a religious right,

including presidential contender Mike Pence, immediately began agitating for a federally passed national abortion ban. Cases such as the one presided over by the Texas judge also expose that hardcore anti-abortion activists will not be satisfied with letting each state just figure it out for themselves. They believe a one-day fetus is a person with full rights and will not be content to allow California to continue what they see as a mass genocide. After all, they played the long game very effectively on overturning Roe and managed to pull it off after decades of organizing and dogged determination,

not because they won over public opinion, but because they knew how to exploit the most undemocratic parts of our current system. Now, in my opinion, this is all a disaster for women, especially working class women, since rich women have always had access to the care that they want. But it's also an unmitigated disaster for the Republican Party. Last week alone, they got

destroyed in the quintessential swing state of Wisconsin because their extreme position on abortion is so toxic to moderates and so motivating to young progressives in particular. Young Wisconsin college students apparently turned out in droves for a state Supreme Court race, which normally would be an incredibly sleepy affair, all because the fate of abortion rights in the state was clearly on the ballot. Their numbers for a spring race such as this were truly unprecedented. Now, you can already see how uncomfortable Republicans are in the wake of these rulings. Democrats put statements out immediately decrying the abortion pill ban. Republicans, like this member of Congress, did everything they could to try to avoid the topic.

But I just want to point one important thing out, which is that Mifeprestone isn't just used for abortion. It's also frequently prescribed for women experiencing a miscarriage. And by some estimates, as many as one million women miscarry every single year. So are they just on their own if this ruling is upheld? No, I think it's important that we take care of women. And it's important that we have real discussions on women's health care and get off the abortion, get off the abortion conversation. Women have a whole lot more other issues than just abortion. Let's have those real conversations. And let's talk about the other things that are happening in this world. You know, I've got a picture of Emily, Amelia and Maria.

They recently passed away three weeks ago due to a smuggler in my district. What does that mean? That means there's all these other things happening in the world, especially in my district. I've got a district that's turned upside down due to this border crisis. There's everyday people that are impacted on this crisis to include the Tambungas. He may as well just come out and said, please, for the love of God, can we talk about an issue that pulls a little bit better for Republicans? Now, Americans, I think they tend to have moderate views on abortion. Whichever party seems like they're taking an extreme stance is going to find themselves on the losing end of this fraught and morally complicated issue. With the overturning of Roe, there is no more moderate

ground for the Republicans to fight on. Every push to further erode the rights that still exist is an extreme position. According to Gallup, only 13% at this point agree with abortion being banned in all circumstances. So even most Republican voters do not agree with the religious right position. And if Republican elites were hoping maybe people are just going to move on and forget about the fact that 13-year-olds are now forced to have their rapist babies in plenty of places in this country, they're delusional. Wisconsin shows people are not moving on. And the fate of medication abortion heading to the Supreme Court shows the issue, it's not going away. Richard Hanani actually recently wrote this on Twitter. He wrote, being the pro-life party may be incompatible with being competitive anywhere outside Appalachia and the South. We assume

because the country has been evenly divided, it'll stay that way. But Dems might be moving towards permanent majority. So Republicans, if you like losing by 11 points in Wisconsin, 15 points in Pennsylvania, 10 points in Michigan, well, you're right on track, guys. And the powerful movement which brought victory at the Supreme Court after decades of lawfare, they have no intention of stopping now. So there's a complicated legal situation here because you have two judges issuing contradictory rulings. And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. All right. We'll see you guys later. Thank you so much for watching us. We really appreciate it. It was a huge show for us to be able to obtain those documents, bring as much as we can. We're

going to continue to sift our way through them and all of that. And it was a big deal, I think, for us. And just a reminder also of how much we appreciate so many of the premium subs who are out there who have our back and enable the work that we do. So we love you and we will see you all tomorrow. Thank you. Stay informed, empowered, and ahead of the curve with the BIN News This Hour podcast. Update it hourly to bring you the latest stories shaping the Black community. From breaking headlines to cultural milestones, the Black Information Network delivers the facts, the voices, and the perspectives that matter 24-7. Because our stories deserve to be heard. Listen to the BIN News This Hour podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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