Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 4/11/22: Ukraine Update, FBI Entrapment, PA Senate, Shanghai Lockdown, NYT Shift, Billionaire Tears, Media Humiliated, & French Elections!

Episode Date: April 11, 2022

Krystal and Saagar break down the UK Prime Minister's trip to Kyiv, Ukraine war battle updates, a global surge in food prices, trial results from the FBI's Whitmer kidnapping case, Pennsylvania Senate race, Shanghai's covid zero lockdowns, NYT social media policy shakeup, billionaires panicking over unions, UChicago students exposing the media, and the first round election results out of France!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/Daniel Nichanian: https://boltsmag.org/  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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for the midterms and the upcoming presidential election so we can provide unparalleled coverage of what is sure to be one of the most pivotal moments in American history. So what are you waiting for? Go to BreakingPoints.com to help us out. Good morning, everybody. Happy Monday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed we do.

Lots of interesting stories breaking this morning that we want to tell you all about. So, big developments in the Gretchen Whitmer alleged kidnapping plot. The jury has come to some decisions. We'll tell you about that. And I think there's also a big story here about the media handling of this case. Once again, not preparing people for what the likely outcome would ultimately be. President Trump making a very controversial endorsement in the Pennsylvania Senate race, backing Dr. Oz. We'll tell you about that. We also have new details about the quite dystopian lockdown going on in Shanghai right now.

What it says about the COVID zero policy and approach to pandemics. New York Times has a new Twitter policy that's pretty interesting, also pretty controversial. We have an analyst on to talk about the French election, which I'm pretty fascinated by. I mean, it's kind of a stunning rejection of neoliberalism at a moment when there was a lot of triumphalism about neoliberalism. So we'll get into all of that. Yeah, but we have two big announcements for everybody, for the premium subscribers. Number one, we are going on the road. New York City. Here we come. We're going to be there on Thursday. We're doing a live show from a studio there in New York, not live with an audience. We tried to make it happen, but this is the best that we can do. It was a little too, we got this idea a little

last minute. It was a last minute idea, but we decided to make this work. So we're going to be broadcasting live on YouTube. However, for our premium subs, we have a very special treat for you all. In the email today, there is going to be a Google form. We've got 15 different choices. You guys get to program the show. We're going to have Marshall Kosloff, who lives in New York City. Kyle Kalinsky also lives in the NYC area. We're going to be together. We're going live on YouTube. But the premium subs, you get to decide which five topics that we're going to spend about two hours going deeper into. We'll prepare as much as possible. We'll talk. We'll debate. It'll be a lot of fun. I think that everybody will enjoy. Like we said, we'll go live. And then the latter half of there, we'll do some questions. Of course,

we'll take five questions as normal from our premium subs. The others, we'll do super chat or something like that. But it's a fun new experiment that I think that we're all getting into. Number two, and you guys are, I think, going to like this. You've asked this for some time. For our premium subscribers, we are launching a newsletter. So in the newsletter, every single day that there is a show, we're going to have a summary of all of the topics that we have here. We are also going to include all of our sources, references to past material that we've referenced.

We've been working on this for a really long time. We wanted to make sure that it was an ironclad benefit for all of you. So you guys have asked for a long time, hey, I want to see all the sources and stuff that are in the show for your monologues. It's all right there. You can check us in terms of what we say, but even better if you're busy and you're just in the morning, you want to see what we have there. It's going to be nice, concise summary as well as links and everything else that you could possibly want. Make sure to say thank you to James, guys, because he's putting in the work for this.

He claims that he likes doing it. He says he likes it. It currently clocks in today's edition at around 1,500 words. Yeah, you'll see it's pretty extensive. I mean, the thing I'm actually excited about is some of these stories, the Whitmer case is a perfect example where we've been tracking it for a long time, doing monologues, doing coverage. We'll have a little bit of a trail of record there so that, you know,

if this is the first time that you're hearing of this story, you can go back and look at the progression and some of the past coverage that we've done. So I'm excited about that. You know, guys, we're always trying to think of how we can deliver more, deliver more quality product for you. That's what, you know, we both are kind of always turning over in our minds. So let us know what you think of it. I hope you find it additive. I hope you find it useful. We're pretty excited about it. I think all the premium subs out there, you guys are really going to enjoy it. We want to make sure that you're having the best experience possible.

So summarize number one, vote for your favorite topics for the top five that we're all the four of us will discuss during our live show. You'll get that link for how to vote in your premium. It will be in your newsletter and your email with the link as well to the show. And number two, check your email every single day. You'll have a newsletter there waiting for you if it's a busy day or something like that, or if you want to see what we covered, it's there. So let's go on to the show. Let's start with Ukraine. Number one, first and foremost, the big news coming out of Ukraine is that NATO head of state, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, touching down in the city of Kiev. Not only that, meeting with President Zelensky out in the open and walking

the streets. Let's take a listen. How are you? You know how I am. How are you? Nice to see you. I'm very, very, very glad to see you. How are you doing? You're looking good. It's an absolute, absolute pleasure to see you. I would like to express words of gratitude for the support, for your leadership, for assistance in the weapons, and for your direct and very clear and specific position of your wonderful and powerful country. And thank you for this visit at this very difficult time. Over the last few hours, I've been able to see quite a lot of your beautiful country. And it's an amazing country.

I've also seen the tragic effects of the war. An inexcusable war. An absolutely inexcusable and unnecessary war. But having been here in Kiev just for a few hours, I have absolutely no doubt, Vladimir, listening to you, listening to your team, your redoubtable team, I have no doubt at all that an independent, sovereign Ukraine will rise again. Wow, that's quite a visit there in terms of what happened. Regrettable is a great word. It is a great word. It's a couple of things going on here. Number one,

this is not, I think, as reckless as the original NATO head of state visit there from Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Slovenia, just because Kiev was literally under assault at the time. Yeah, agreed. Now, we've had the troop withdrawal from Kiev. There hasn't been as much shelling and as much combat within the city. So it's not as unsafe. The other thing is that we have to consider Boris Johnson in his own domestic political context. He was not doing so well. This is very much, Johnson himself is a student of history. He wrote a biography of Churchill. Churchill was actually famous for flying over into France during the Battle of France, visiting with the French generals. And Churchill also made several trips to the front. So he's trying to conjure up that,

both also for domestic political support. Europeans are actually much more, I would say, hawkish, I guess, on the Russia question, given that they're literally 1,000 miles or so away. So this is another way for him to shore up domestic political support. But it's still extraordinary to see the second most powerful state in all of NATO to go and sit on the ground in Kiev meant obviously as a tool of solidarity. But it also represents that the situation there in the city is now safe enough for that to happen and for Zelensky himself in order to walk around. They didn't have that big of a guard if you saw that. Yeah, no, that is pretty limited. That is true. Is it accurate to say, though, that the Europeans in general, I'm sure there is a wide

variety of sentiment that varies country to country, though, are more hawkish? Because I would say that the French election results that we're seeing kind of suggest otherwise. I mean, you saw Macron really sort of fall off in these past weeks as he's been very actively engaged and very pro-NATO and very pro-EU. And you saw, you know, both, of course, the right wing candidate Marine Le Pen and the left wing candidate, both of whom were sort of like NATO skeptical on the rise. So I'm not I'm just saying I'm not sure it's as simple as that. With regards to Boris Johnson, you're so right to point out the domestic political context. I looked up the last YouGov poll that was about a month ago, had 63% of UK voters saying that Johnson is doing a bad job. Only 30% say that he is doing a good job. If you all haven't followed it closely, he is besieged by scandal because while London and the UK were under lockdown,

they were hosting nearly nearly weekly parties, just completely flouting the rules and laughing about it. So he's trying to distract from that. And I gotta say, I'm just kind of skeptical in general at this point of these like token symbolic gestures. So much of the world stage here and abroad is consumed by theater rather than actual substance and policy. So, you know, it seems to me like it's an attempt at self-aggrandizement. Is it as foolish and irresponsible as the initial visits? No, I don't think so. I mean,

at this point, like you said, Kiev is not under siege. Russian troops have withdrawn to the eastern part of the country. But did it really accomplish anything other than, you know, him getting to sort of posture for the cameras? No, not really. Yeah. So at the same time, in terms of the Russians, they've tapped a new war commander. Let's put this up there on the screen. President Putin tapping the new commander to take the new control of the next phase of the battle after the initial failure. So this new person is General Alexander Dvorakinov. He's one of Russia's most experienced military officers. This is according to the Pentagon, so, you know, always take that with a grain of salt. They say he is a general with a

record of brutality against civilians in Syria and other war theaters. Up to now, Russia actually did not have a central war commander on the ground. Maybe that's why things didn't go so well. So this is somebody with experience in Syria, somebody who obviously is trusted by Putin. In 2016, he was actually given the Hero of Russia Medal, which is one of the highest awards in the country. And he's somebody who is clearly trusted by the Putin regime. Now, in terms of what's happening also, in terms of the political situation, part of the reason why that this visit happened and then there has been an increased push by the NATO heads of state is because both of what happened in Bucha, but also, let's put this up there, it's got quite

a bit of attention over the weekend, which is that dozens of people were killed and about 100 injured on Friday. It was in a Russian rocket attack on a train station. Now, the reason why this matters is this train station was one of the easternmost stations that was still operating in Ukraine. And because the Russian offensive has really concentrated entirely within the east of the country at this point, a lot of the civilians there were trying their best in order to flee. Now, according to some of the people who are independent observers, at least from what we've seen, there were a lot of civilians who were killed in this, and obviously, you know, outraged the world. This has also spawned, Crystal, a new refugee flood from the country,

from the east towards the west, and even more so. So, I mean, at this point, we're talking about millions and millions of people. Almost 10% of the Ukrainian population has been depleted, maybe even more. And in the east of the country as well, this rocket attack was really seen by a lot of people as an extraordinary event, given that the Russians are already fighting, you know, in terms of hearts and minds for the civilians

within the eastern part of the country, which is most likely, you know, in the long run to be annexed by them. But it was a significant event nonetheless. Yeah. And I think what we can see, and let's go ahead and put this last piece of the map up on the screen. I mean, all of these developments just basically indicate that we're entering a new phase of this war. The Russians have refocused their troops in eastern Ukraine. Here's what Simtak says. They say, despite intense fighting, Ukrainian defenders have managed to hold back Russian offensives in eastern Ukraine. Here's what Simtak says. They say, despite intense fighting, Ukrainian defenders have managed to hold back Russian offensives in eastern Ukraine over the past days. Near Kherson, Ukrainian forces continue to push the fight closer to the city. So you have, you know,

a renewed refugee crisis, people trying to flee the eastern part of the country. Russia sort of shuffling the deck in terms of their military leadership and their strategy, trying to refocus both on that eastern section and also they keep talking about this land bridge to Crimea to secure the regions that they already had a foothold in. And, you know, civilian brutality towards civilians and continued atrocities that is going to make life just horrific for people who live in these regions. Yeah, I think that's really just the broader summary of where it is. We're in a new phase of the campaign, concentrated in the east. But just because that has happening does not also mean that it won't be brutal, that there won't be a lot of civilians that die. And on top of that, the diplomatic situation is such that now a NATO head of state can visit Kiev. But in terms of peace talks, we still don't see anything. That's really, unfortunately, the update for you. Really,

all I just see is a lot of civilians who are suffering, both the ones who were killed, but now it's the millions who are fleeing and were terrified of living under Russian occupation. The country is so destroyed too. Yeah, it's really just an awful situation. Okay, let's go ahead and move on to this next part of Ukraine. Let's put this up there on the screen. This is in terms of the US response. So YouTube is coming under fire here for blocking the Russian parliament channel. Now, the reason that this matters is that they have blocked Duma TV, kind of like a C-SPAN, if you will, for how we would think about it. But Duma TV is drawing a pretty angry response because they said that the restrictions on that are an interference, obviously, by Google and by a

broader U.S. company into internal Russian affairs. Now, the reason I think that this matters, Crystal, is because they are basically setting the stage for casting it as a U.S. company which is taking action against the Russian government, could give them a pretext for like a total ban. It puts them in an interesting situation. But it also just always invites the question of what is the true use of this policy? For example, if there was a video of a Russian member of the Duma, he's since died, I'm not going to try and pronounce his name, died from COVID. But a couple of months ago, he was on the floor telling us the entire plan for invading Ukraine.

This was like November, something like that. And he's like, we're gonna invade Kiev. We're gonna take over the city. No matter, he was an ultra nationalist politician. He laid everything out for us. And it was only after the invasion that everybody went back and found that video. And they're like, oh, my gosh, this guy was just telling us exactly what it is.

It's just in general what, I mean, if anybody was watching the Duma TV, were they really going to be propagandized? Or was it more for news and research purposes like ours? Like how are we supposed to find? How many people are being radicalized sitting there watching Duma TV? It's like, for example, C-SPAN is an apt example. How many people actually watch it? Yeah, how many watch how many people are watching C-SPAN in general? It's better to have this type of archival footage so that you can go back Or if they're saying crazy stuff if they're like hey, we should nuke America

I personally would like to know that and have video of it so I can watch it for myself and not have to worry about some Russian TV channel, you know, taking it, splicing it up, cutting it up and then waiting for somebody in order to put it out there. The raw video is always the best. I mean, there is no way to justify this policy. It is pure insanity. And it also really gives a lot of credence to the idea that these tech companies basically follow whatever U.S. foreign policy is. Well, they blame the government. They're like, hey, we're just acting in compliance with sanctions. And I'm like, maybe. I mean, it's possible. Right. Right. You know, I mean, if you think about like all of the baddie countries around the world, I mean, plenty of countries that are out there

committing also horrific atrocities and human rights abuses. And yet they just follow along with whatever the sort of like Washington foreign policy establishment ultimately wants them to do. It's effectively, I mean, this is another sort of like trying to get on the right side of polite society, virtue signal kind of a thing. I can't imagine that anyone really thinks that having Duma TV on YouTube was some like grand threat to the world order or, you know, or really like directly harming Ukrainians even because as you said, probably the only people who were really consuming this were people who were using it to understand like what are the debates that are going on in this legislative body to try to translate it to the world. It's very important to understand what your enemies are thinking and what

they're saying on their own terms. So this is not in the service of any, literally anyone. And it just seems, frankly, it just seems really silly. It also reminds me, you know, of the moves to like take Trump off of Twitter and all those things. That didn't end up diminishing his power. If anything, it really, I mean, you've made this point a number of times. It probably helped him because people forgot about how freaking crazy this guy was on a day-to-day basis and how obnoxious and his worst, now he has to like put out his statement. So at least there has to be a little bit of thought that goes into it as he's drafting it and going through the iterations. With Twitter, you had this direct access to the

worst parts of his brain. And so taking him off of that, yeah, again, that really didn't ultimately help anyone. It's important to know what even the worst, most nefarious world leaders and governing bodies are doing and thinking. So I just think this is completely unjustifiable. Same thing is now happening to us. I got an update from our podcast host. Let's put this up there on the screen. I'll read you this email. It says, hi, Sagar.

Spotify has continued to believe it's critically important to try and keep our service operational in Russia to provide trusted independent news and information in the region. Unfortunately, recently enacted legislation further restricting access to information, eliminating free expression and criminalizing types of news, puts the safety of Spotify employees and possibly even our listeners at risk. After carefully considering our options in the current circumstances, we have come to the difficult decision to fully suspend our service in Russia. As a result, we will be suspending delivery of podcasts and podcast ad content in Russia starting on April 11th. Megaphone will no longer deliver podcast downloads to IP addresses that have identified as being within Russia. The impact for you should be minimal. There are currently very few downloads being attributed to Russian IP addresses. This is, by the way, a little peek behind the curtain, just so people know that we're not some Russian

plant getting a bunch of Russian downloads. Here it is from our podcast service itself, saying that's not true. However, this is a problem because, and Spotify, to be clear, they said they tried to do their best. I don't know what the actual truth is. It does seem to me that this is probably as a result of both the Russian fake news law and our own sanctions that make it incredibly difficult. But here's a good example. We had Igor Kotkin on, a dissident to the Putin regime. Would that not be better off being broadcast in Russia? It would be.

I mean, it would be. Absolutely. And so now both their government, our government, and all this are making it more difficult in order for people to get a view of the situation. I also think maybe it would be important because there's a lot of bloodthirsty neocons in our media. I think our show would be a useful corollary to the Russian population to say, hey, there's some people in America who condemn Putin, who are not out to get you, and who have an audience and who are saying consistently, you know, Putin is the person to blame in this situation. You are not. We're reasonable folks. We don't hate you. We don't want We're reasonable folks. We don't hate you. We don't want to nuke you.

We don't want to bomb you. I mean, I personally, I would- We're not trying to destroy you. We're not trying to destroy you. We want to live in peace and you know, it's not always gonna be fun and there will be some disagreement, but at the end of the day,

this isn't some existential civilizational battle the way that Putin and them paint it, which is definitely the actual point of view that you'll see on the Sunday shows or like that in America. So overall, I'm saddened by the situation, even though apparently we didn't get that many downloads. In Russia, just in general,

it's better to have the exchange of information, of points of view. This was the original point and promise of the internet in the 1990s, is that it would flatten culture and make it to foster better understanding. Obviously, it didn't work out that way. Yeah, indeed. No, it does feel kind of sad. It's sad. No, it's going to be harder for Yegor to watch this from Russia, but he's going to be

able to figure it out. Yeah. All right. All right. This other piece is something we've been tracking closely and is extremely scary and disturbing and has vast consequences. So let's go ahead and put this next one up on the screen. So global food prices hit their highest recorded levels ever last month. Of course, this is driven up significantly by the war. Let me just read you a little bit of this article. They say the Food and Agriculture Organization announced on Friday that its food price index, which tracks monthly changes in the international prices of a basket of commonly traded food commodities, averaged 159.3 points in March. That's up 12.6% just from February. So it jumped up almost 13%

in just one month. February had already seen the highest level since the organization began tracking in 1990. And get this, it's more than a third higher than it was just a year ago. So this basket of sort of common food commodities, I'm sure things like wheat, for example, has spiked by a third. Prices have gone up in just one year. The FAO went on to say that the war spread shocks through markets for staple grains and vegetable oils. Of course, guys, this is something we've been tracking here. Russia and Ukraine collectively accounted for about 30% of global wheat exports and 20% of maize exports over the last three years. And then you add on top of that, as if that wasn't all bad enough, we've had some impacts both here and around the world in terms of climate change that has also made the harvest less than what it should be.

China said this was like their worst harvest on record, which also puts stress on the food system. You know, countries in that region really depend on Ukraine in particular and on Russia, both for wheat and for maize and some other and sunflower oil and some other critical sort of staples there. And also for some of the components that go into fertilizer, which means that you're not just talking about a now problem in terms of food prices and poor countries in particular being unable to, you know, people being unable to afford to feed themselves and their children. You're also talking about significant lagging effects where the next harvest is also going to be impacted because farmers can't get the fertilizer that they need in order to grow crops.

I don't have to tell you that, you know, you would be hard pressed to find a better indicator of when and where and how revolutions start than the price of wheat and the price of bread. This is a like multi thousands of years historical trend. of when and where and how revolutions start than the price of wheat and the price of bread. This is a like multi-thousands of years historical trend. And of course, it's just going to cause mass suffering. I do want to be clear, there is enough wheat, there is enough food to feed the world, but the price is the issue. It's going to be out of reach for millions and millions and millions of people. Yeah, I think that the real problem here is that if you look throughout history,

and this is actually what I was thinking, part of the reason that the czars and the Russians and the Soviet Union were always so obsessed with controlling Ukraine is it was known as the breadbasket of Europe. It's the largest country in all of continental Europe. They're very fertile soil and they have for years produced an immense amount of the world's wheat. Now, since they become an independent country, they export a ton of wheat to the rest of the world. As you were pointing to with India, one of the reasons that this has always been so concerning and almost immediately they were pointing to on the show was, yeah, food inflation here is bad. It's way worse in developing countries, Africa and in India and elsewhere, where they are, number one, already more food insecure, to use a politically correct term, but also much more dependent on imports and have much more fluctuating commodity food markets. So there's a lot of different disruptions

that can happen within the food markets that make life there very difficult. Now, we're going to get to this in Shanghai, but people should consider that not everybody lives the way that you and I live or that Americans live. A lot of people here eat frozen food. Now, I don't think frozen food is good for you, but in terms of storage and all of that, it's very convenient. Part of the reason why, and we'll talk about this more in Shanghai, that Shanghai is such a complete disaster is because Chinese mostly eat fresh food. So they need food from the markets every two or three days. That's a massive logistical challenge for the government. Same in terms of the flour and other things. This is more of an Indian problem, but people there don't think of grocery store shopping

in the way that a lot of people here in the West do. They're not going to Costco, loading up the SUV. For once a week. For like three months of frozen pizzas or whatever. And so food inflation hits harder on the wallet. And also the supply chain disruption has a much more immediate effect on the food systems in third world countries than it does in the first world and specifically the West and the United States just because of the difference in our food pattern. So this is a disaster. It really is. And as you said, I mean, what's the number one constant throughout all of civilization? No food,

no bread? There's a problem. You can look at the Mayans. You can look at the Sumerians. French Revolution. French Revolution. It's like, I don't even have to go that far back, a couple hundred years. Within the last two decades, these are big, big problems that have longstanding 40th, 50th order effects on society. And of course, you already have some countries where I hope there was already mass famine. I mean, Afghanistan, thanks to our government's policies, Yemen also partly thanks to our government policies. So already before this war, you had a dire situation with regards to wheat and overall food prices, with the UN agency responsible for sort of distributing aid saying that they were

more stretched before the war than they had ever been in history. So with these kind of price spikes, 13% in a single month, it really spells a lot of heartache, death, pain, and disaster, and something we're definitely gonna keep our eye on. Yeah. Okay, another story we've been long keeping our eye on is the alleged plot to kidnap Gretchen Whitmer. So the jury in the trial of four men accused in this

kidnapping plot has partially returned verdicts. Let's go ahead and put this Detroit Free Press article up on the screen. Two Whitmer kidnapping plot suspects were found not guilty. A mistrial was declared for the other two, meaning the jury could not ultimately come to a decision. Let me read you a little bit of this. They say the historic Gretchen Whitmer kidnap plot case ended with no convictions Friday, delivering a blow to the government as it failed to convince a jury that four militia members were domestic terrorists determined to harm the governor because of her COVID-19 restrictions. The jury declared two of those men not guilty, but deadlocked on the charges against the other two who will be retried. You guys probably remember some of the details of this case. It was announced in an FBI press conference very shortly before

the November general election of Trump versus Biden. And the details were quite scary and quite stunning. What we learned is that these extremists, as the FBI is telling, were concocting a plot to ultimately take Gretchen Whitmer from her home, that they had been casing the joint, that they had been purchasing explosives. And, you know, this was a dramatic show of their fight against right wing domestic violence and extremism. Let's take a listen to a little bit of how that was presented at the time. Last night, the FBI and Michigan State Police arrested six individuals charged in a federal complaint with conspiring to kidnap the governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer. According to the complaint unsealed this morning, Adam Fox, Barry Croft, Ty Garbin, Caleb Franks, Daniel Harris, and Brandon Caserta conspired to kidnap the governor from her

vacation home in the Western District of Michigan before the November election. Under federal law, each of these individuals faces a term of any number of years up to life in prison if convicted. Fox, Garbin, Franks, Harris, and Caserta are residents of Michigan. Croft is a resident of Delaware. All of us standing here today want the public to know that federal and state law enforcement are committed to working together to make sure violent extremists never succeed with their plans, particularly when they target our duly elected leaders.

Among other activities, members of this conspiracy on two occasions conducted coordinated surveillance on the governor's vacation home. Fox and Croft, in particular according to the complaint, discussed detonating explosive devices to divert police from the area of the home. And Fox even inspected the underside of a Michigan highway bridge for places to seat an explosive. The complaint further alleges that Fox purchased a taser for use in the kidnapping and that the group successfully detonated an improvised explosive device wrapped with shrapnel to test its anti-personnel capabilities.

The FBI and state police executed arrests of several of the conspirators when they were meeting on the east side of the state to pool funds for explosives and exchange tactical gear. So sounds absolutely horrifying and sounds like an open and shut case. But then we started to learn some more details about exactly how this plot came to be. And frankly, it had a lot of echoes with the type of type of plots that were disrupted by the FBI during the post 9-11 era when they would effectively find some vulnerable young Muslim man, oftentimes encourage him in his radicalization, help him concoct a plot, and then swoop in to disrupt the plot that the FBI had created. In fact, we learned that there were more FBI informants and agents involved than there were people who were being accused of being involved in the plot. Then some of the some of the cools that the FBI was working with here, you started to learn, oh, this one is being charged with domestic violence. Oh, the star witness is having to be pulled out because they're being charged with their own criminal behavior.

Oh, one of the key players here. Now the FBI is saying, oh, actually, you know, they're not really our informant. They were actually a double agent because their own sort of corrupt behavior was exposed. You had someone who was effectively trying to profit off of their work with the FBI in their own consulting business. And I want to give a lot of credit to BuzzFeed, which was really the only mainstream news outlet that bothered to do the work of explaining why this case was a lot more complicated than the government and most of the press was portraying it. Let's go ahead and put this Buzz feed tweet up on the screen. This was some of the original reporting. They actually did the work of digging through what the government case was and what the defense was saying actually happened.

They say when 14 men were charged with conspiring to kidnap Michigan's governor and kick off a civil war last fall, it was hailed as a triumph in the FBI's battle against domestic terrorism. But the men say they weren't plotting. They say they were set up. This tweet thread goes on to say it started when Dan, an Iraq war veteran, joined a group called the Wolverine Watchmen, looking to practice tactical training with like-minded people. But when he read their violent messages, he contacted the police and soon found himself working as a confidential FBI informant. The FBI called it Operation Cold Snap. Dan was wearing a wire when a heavily armed crowd occupied Michigan's Capitol in April 2020. Around the same time, another government informant was helping organize a national

militia meeting in Ohio. One of the participants later told Dan about his plan for the Michigan State Capitol, take the building and then take effing hostages. So what they dig into is the fact that at every step along the way of this plot, it was people who were working for the FBI who were really pushing them forward, who in some instances were, you know, gathering meetings of extremists to try to hatch these plots, who were providing them with material support. And so the defense's argument here was that, no, no, no. Yes. Were they saying some basically terrible things that no one could possibly condone? Yes. Were they actually able and materially like materially able to pull off some plot against the governor? No, they were entrapped. This was classic FBI entrapment. Now, historically, that has been a very, very difficult thing to argue. And we saw maybe no cases during the

9-11 era when you were dealing with young Muslim men in which the jury found this case to be convincing. And I do think that is an important part of this. But you had a government which was so heavy handed and which worked with such just sketchy and nefarious type of people in these plots that ultimately the jury, even though they were very limited in the information that they were given, they didn't have the information that we had at our disposal from BuzzFeed's journalism and others, even though they were given a very sort of pro-government version of the case, they saw enough here to feel like this was entrapment, the government went too far, and these dudes were not really capable at all. I mean, it was basically like a bunch of tough-talking losers who were incapable of really sort of putting this plot together themselves. Yeah, I mean, the way you laid it out is perfect,

which is that, look, the guy who started this was Dame Dan Dan who started the Facebook group and then started reaching out to these people Well, all of the defendants are like hey Dan who was working for the government is the one who pushed us to do this in? First place that's straight-up entrapment. I mean you reference the war on terror I used to write about a lot of these cases and I remember even you know I was younger and a different political persuasion I was like this is kind of messed up because you read about some 18 year old kid who lives in Ohio and he would Tweet something like I heart Isis young Muslim guy somebody slides into his DMS. They're like hey, man. I like Isis, too He's like oh cool. They start talking then they're like hey you should buy a ticket to Syria

He's like okay buys a ticket to Syria. He's like, okay, buys a ticket to Syria. You show up at the airport, the moment you're trying to board the plane, boom, material support for terrorism, you're going to jail for like 20 years. I mean, it's like, what, he really bought a ticket to Syria? Now, the argument from the government was, yeah, but he's a potential lone wolf, so it's better to take him off the street. But you can see very clearly here, it's like, well, he didn't actually have the intent in order to do that. Yeah, he was going to Syria, but in terms of what they were saying or not, it was hard to have sympathy at the time. But when you look at it now on the face, these are very, very dangerous tactics. And especially whenever it comes to this,

it's very clear that these guys were, I would say, set up at worst. And at best, really what is happening here is that they're a bunch of losers, which is funny because that's actually the argument that the lawyer for one of the defendants presented to the jury. He says, Mr. Fox was a misfit who couldn't stop smoking pot. His only friends are FBI undercover agents and informants who were spying on him, entrapped him, and pushed him towards a kidnapping plot to talk tough. Hardly the terrorist mass murder. Isn't this the dude that lived in the basement of a vacuum store and had to go across the street to use the bathroom? Yeah. I mean, listen, you can be a loser and also be a bad person.

And this is not to cast judgment like say these are, oh, they were totally, you know, wrongly and they're great guys. I don't think these are upstanding gents. The real question here is, are the FBI's actions actually keeping you safer? Right. And I think it's pretty clear, not only from the number of, the lengths they had to go to, to craft this plot, but also the people that they were paying and getting in bed with

and authorizing like basically their own criminal behavior, I think the answer here is pretty clearly no. And we also have to keep in mind, there's a lot of incentive. I mean, careers were made during the war on terror on these kind of like splashy press conferences and elaborate plots used to freak the public out that these sort of plans are being hatched

around every corner, but thank God, you know, the good men and women of the FBI are there to disrupt it. And it turns out when you get into the details, the government so far, according to the jury, the government behaved in a more criminal way than these men ultimately did. So you had six people who were charged originally. Two of them took plea deals.

They pled guilty and they cooperated. Two of them, as I said, there's a mistrial. Two of them now found not guilty. So that's where things stand. I just want to give you this is also from this is from the reporting of BuzzFeed on the conclusion of this trial, just to give you a sense of how lopsided the trial ultimately was and how little the jury was able to benefit from sort of a full picture of the government's involvement and these FBI agents and informants and their behavior. So let me read you from this BuzzFeed piece. They say, and the government's telling,

the most critical moment in the alleged plot took place late on September 12, 2020, when Foxcroft and others piled into three trucks and headed out to conduct nighttime surveillance of Whitmer's Lakeside Cottage. It was not a great success. For one thing, their companions that night included two confidential informants and two undercover agents. Some 10 additional FBI agents followed them on route, and stationary cameras mounted at strategic spots tracked their progress. For another, despite all the careful planning, the men failed to find Whitmer's house because they'd been given the wrong address. Heavy rains made it impossible for them to spot one another from across the lake as they had hoped to do.

Nonetheless, the government seized on the narrative value of that outing and several times throughout the trial showed the jury a pair of videos reenacting it, except it looked a little different on the projector screen. In one of the videos, a confidential informant and two agents sit in a truck parked in Whitmer's driveway, which none of the defendants had ever even found. A second video viewed from across the lake shows a glowing infrared illuminator held by an FBI agent standing on Whitmer's boat dock, a vantage point not one of the defendants ever had. So instead of using our law enforcement resources to, you know, actually disrupt things that are going on and actually go after criminal behavior, they were using elaborate and extensive amount of resources to basically help create this plot. This is what the jury has found at this point, and then to swoop in and disrupt it. The last thing that I'll say about this is I do think it's another example of complete media

failure in terms of, you know, there are going to be a lot of people out there who look at this outcome and are just going to be totally shocked. Like, how could this happen? How can you get away with, like, plotting to kidnap and potentially murder the governor of a state? Like, how did this come to be? And so the media does no favors when they gloss over these details, which were very uncomfortable for the government's case because it doesn't help people understand what was going on.

And also the abuse of power of the FBI and the misuse of resources that could be used to actually keep people safe. So I do think it's also a dramatic media failure that very few people are going to understand why the jury decided what they decided. Well, and you know why that that happened. It was because they built it up. This is before the 2020 election. It was presentation of a rising right-wing extremism, and then it got January 6th, and then the media had to go and protect the FBI's new domestic war on terror, and acknowledging the original roots of this right-wing extremism narrative and the role which the FBI played in that, and also possibly on January 6th, cannot be discussed for politically correct

reasons, which then brainwashes millions of people. And like you said, I feel bad for them. If you're one of those MSNBC libs, you're like, what the hell is happening here? You're like, this country's going to hell. You don't even know the facts about why exactly what happened. And from the beginning, what, six, seven months ago, since we started talking about this case, I was clear as day. I was like, there's no way these guys are going to get convicted. It didn't seem possible to me, even with the slanted government narrative, given how many of the informants themselves were criminals, how many of them were engaged in all sorts of sketchy behavior, clear entrapment almost night and day, no matter how you feel about them

from a sympathy point of view. And I think that's a, yeah, it's a real tragedy media story. And politically, this had a big impact at the time. Don't forget how big, she was a star. She almost became the vice president. Remember? I mean, she was one of the most popular Democrats in the country for a time during the whole COVID thing. So I just think that you put that all together as a very clear manipulation by the FBI. They all did this for political benefit. We all know it. They thought Trump was going to lose. They wanted cachet with the Biden administration, help protect this fancy governor, set these guys up. It's a great story. You can make your career kind from the brass. A lot of political careers and a lot of law enforcement

careers made from this type of high profile plot disruption. So the incentives are all in the wrong place. Yeah. I mean, we first became skeptical of it, just so you know, this isn't some like, you know, right wing conspiracy. It's actually a Jacobin article that was like, maybe this was a plot. But also take a look. Just be like some of the hallmarks of exactly the tactics that they used during the war on terror were employed in this alleged plot. And my plea to you guys is just like, regardless of whether these sorts of tactics are used against Muslim men or right-wing groups or Antifa or whoever it is, make sure you apply the same standard and see it consistently for, you know, this is a complete overuse, overreach, and abuse of power that only

benefits, like, the FBI and the police state and does not keep the American people safer. Yeah, well said. Okay, let's go ahead and move on to a fun story. President Trump is endorsing Dr. Oz in the Pennsylvania Senate race. Let's put this up there on the screen. I've got to read you this statement. It is truly something. Classic. Okay.

Endorsement of Dr. Oz from President Donald Trump. This is all about winning elections in order to stop the radical left maniacs from destroying our country. The great Commonwealth of Pennsylvania has a tremendous opportunity to save America by electing the brilliant and well known Dr. Mehmet Oz for the United States Senate. I have known Dr. Oz for many years. He has lived through with us through the screen, has always made popular, respected and smart. He even said I was an extraordinary health, which made me like him even more. Although he also said I should lose a couple of pounds. He is a graduate of Harvard University. He earned a joint MD, MBA from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and Wharton School of Finance. He has authored 350 books. He continues, Dr. Oz is pro-life,

strong on crime, the border of the election. He also passionately believes in high quality education, protecting parent involvement. Perhaps more importantly, I believe Dr. Mehmet Oz will be the one to win the general election. Women in particular are drawn to Dr. Oz for his advice and counsel. I have seen this many times over the years. That was my favorite part. They know him, believe in him, trust him. Likewise, he will do well in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh where other candidates will not be accepted. He knows his job is to serve every single

Pennsylvanian. He is smart, tough, and will never let you down. Therefore, he has my complete and total endorsement. Good luck, Dr. Oz. Our country needs you. So, low-key, I think he might be a little bit right about the women thing. He's 100%. This is like an Oprah aligned figure. This is like

daytime TV. So I do think he might be right. The day Oz announced you can go and check the record, I said I think he's going to win. Specifically because of his appeal to people who are nonpolitical, celebrity. Yeah, he's got an ormy appeal. Exactly. I mean, yeah, that's a hard thing to deal with. But, so this has caused full-scale meltdown in the MAGA universe. And it's especially hilarious to me, given all of the characters who are involved.

So the other rival against Dr. Oz was David McCormick. He actually was leading Oz in the polls up to this. Let's put this up there on the screen. ago, was the CEO and head of the largest hedge fund in the world, Bridgewater Capital, which was run by, oh, right, globalist in chief and China apologist Ray Dalio. He himself is reportedly worth at least up to a billion dollars. At the very least, he's got hundreds of millions in his pockets. This guy is a Wall Street ghoul through and through, a huge proponent of ESG, of investing in China. The worst of globalism incarnate is David McCormick.

But, but, and this is why MAGA is melting down, his wife happens to be Dina Powell. Now, you guys might not know who that is, but she was on the National Security Council in the Trump administration up until 2017 while she was on a leave of absence from Goldman Sachs, of where she currently works right now. She's back at Goldman, by the way. She's back at Goldman. Don't worry. She's doing just fine. And at the time, Trump loved her. She's an Egyptian Coptic Christian. She did a lot of the ISIS stuff. She made a lot of friends in the White House. So a lot of her former friends in the White House are now working for David McCormick, including Stephen Miller, Hope Hicks, a huge number of people from the Trump campaign and the Trump White House. Pays big bucks.

And so they have conferred upon David McCormick the MAGA status. So they feel very stabbed in the back or stabbed in the front by Trump endorsing Dr. Oz. What I think is hilarious about this whole thing is everybody's like, oh, Dr. Oz is a huge liberal because he interviewed Michelle Obama once on his show, or Dr. Oz was pro-choice before he was pro-life. Yeah, so was Trump, okay? Like, yeah, save your fake crocodile tears. And the alternative, Crystal, is that they are claiming that the true MAGA warrior is a freaking hedge fund executive who is, I could not conjure a more Davos-like ghoulish figure than David McCormick. And just to give you a sense of how cynical he is in that piece that we just had up in the New York Times, they say McCormick's married to Dina Powell, Goldman Sachs. Couple has been warning their friends that McCormick plans to play up Trump-like views on the campaign trail, what they described as simply the cost of running

in a Republican primary right now, according to two business associates of his from Wall Street, who asked not to be named discussing private conversations. So they're going around to their Wall Street polite society people and basically being like, we don't really mean any of this stuff. But you know, these rubes in the Republican primary, like we got to play up all this sort of xenophobia and all of, so just disregard what he's saying. It gets worse, Crystal, which is that Dina Powell and Dina Powell and her husband in their meeting with Trump, this is according to people who were inside the room. You take it for what you will. It's from the New York Times. They say that they pulled out a picture of Oz wearing a turban

where he was in Turkey and a funeral procession wearing traditional Islamic garb. And they're like, this guy can't win in Pennsylvania. So they're willing to try and use Oz's Muslim identity. I mean, look, Dr. Oz is not, like, a practicing Muslim. He's a secular Muslim. Not only is it actually worse than being racist, it just shows complete contempt for the electorate

that you think that you could just, like, put that picture up there and that a bunch of, you know, Pennsylvania rednecks would be like, oh, hell no. Right, you're like, oh, I'm not voting for this guy. Exactly. I'm so glad you said that. I mean, here's another one that I found pretty interesting about David McCormick. In a 2018 op-ed in the Washington Post, he backed Democratic congressional candidate Amy McGrath,

who was like literally the worst candidate who ever ran for office in Kentucky and ultimately lost and was backed big time by the Democratic establishment over Charles Booker, who is a much more compelling and dynamic candidate. So anyway, this is, but now, now, this is the new makeover. In an interview with the Fox News host, Mark Levin, McCormick said he was running against, quote, the weakness and wokeness that you see across the country. I wonder how long you workshop that. He noted he'd been driving a Ford F-150 pickup across Pennsylvania to meet voters. And though his father was actually a university president, he made sure to mention the family farm, which he now owns. These people are so freaking fake. It is incredible.

I mean, Trump also, I don't know why anyone was surprised that he endorsed like the TV dude that is, you know, has some similarities to him, frankly. I don't know why anyone has known him for 30 years. Ultimately shocked by that. But yeah, I mean, this Republican primary. So Trump had actually endorsed a different candidate. Remember this Sean Carnell? He signed out. Ultimately, his wife had in court filings that came out that he was accused of domestic violence.

He drops out of the race. That was the original Trump endorsement. And so that left the race really pretty wide open. The last polling I saw had a massive number of voters who were undecided and who said that, you know, 61 percent of those voters said they're more likely to vote for a candidate if Trump ultimately endorses them. So while we've been giving you some instances where the Trump endorsement hasn't really worked out, Georgia being sort of the key one here, this is one where since it was already close, I would think that this helps push Oz to the front of the Republican primary. Right. But at the same time, Oz is not necessarily doing well in head-to-head polls against John Fetterman. Yeah, which is interesting. So Fetterman has, you know, his lieutenant governor has a big profile in the state and a big lead right now on the Democratic side. Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen. This is from the Philadelphia Inquirer. They say John Fetterman has a big lead in the Pennsylvania Senate primary on the Democratic

side. Will attacks matter with six weeks to go. He is facing, the big contender against him is this sort of like corporatist, blue dog Democrat, Conor Lamb. He's a member of Congress right now. And Lamb went up, a super PAC affiliated with Conor Lamb, went up with this big ad, trashing Fetterman, saying he's like a socialist and he won't be able to win in the fall. Same old playbook that they run against anyone who's even like moderately to the left whatsoever. But at this point, Fetterman has such a lead in the primary. The last poll that I saw had him at 33 percent in the Democratic primary, followed by Conor Lamb with 10 percent. So a big gap there. There are still a lot of undecided voters. But if you dig

into those undecided voters, very few of them are actually leaning towards Lamb. So it looks like it's Fetterman's race to lose. The D.C. establishment is actually lining up behind this guy and trying to tell Conor Lamb to chill out so they don't damage him for the fall. Let's go and put this up on the screen. D.C. Dems get on a frontrunner Fetterman's way in Pennsylvania. In his previous runs, they were sort of oppositional towards him because he does come from war of the Bernie wing of the party, backs Medicare for all and those sorts of things. But now, because he has such a formidable lead, party leaders on Tuesday, they say, heard private concerns about a pro-Lamb

super PAC after the group slammed Fetterman as a self-described Democratic socialist, a claim that led to the ad being pulled from one TV station. That's how dishonest it was. Senator Warren raised the ad during a Democratic caucus meeting on Tuesday. Majority leader Chuck Schumer and Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Chair Gary Peters said they were, quote, addressing the issue. And Elizabeth Warren also said publicly, I saw the PAC ad that is currently running in Pennsylvania. It is wrong. It is disgusting. And if Conor Lamb wants to stand up as a Democrat, then he needs to disavow that ad today. So an unusual instance of the Democratic establishment backing someone who is at least

purportedly on the left, although I saw a bunch of headlines this morning about the way that he's like, you know, prostrating himself to make sure he's like, I'm super pro-Israel and I'm not going to rock the boat. So he's trying to shore up that support. Listen, in terms of the prospects in the fall, I think it's going to be very difficult for a Democrat to win in Pennsylvania this year. I mean, it's a true swing state. Biden barely won it, as we all know, very close. And the landscape is just really difficult. So even though right now the polls might say in a head-to-head matchup, Fetterman versus Oz, that he's got an edge, I think it's pretty tough sledding. And it pains me to say that because, you know, some of what Fetterman's done in some of his policy

positions, et cetera, I really like and really appreciate. But I just think the landscape doesn't really matter that much about these two individual candidates. It's just a very tough landscape for Democrats. Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, look, at the end of the day, it's a terrible landscape. Fetterman, he's probably a powerful candidate. He has obviously won statewide. At the same time, the guy doesn't seem to make a sentence without the words LGBTQ. So good luck, especially in this environment. I think that against Oz, especially somebody who's, Oz is not a right-wing culture warrior. He's somebody who can really lean into the COVID, the COVID talking points of terms. There was a great Wall Street Journal piece,

maybe we'll cover it tomorrow, called The Long COVID Effect on Politics, which is basically suburban people who were fed up around school closures and around restrictions and are remembering it even now, months later. Obviously, inflation is going to be a top one as well. Put it all together, it's a terrible national environment. But the MAGA fight part of this is just the most funny one. And don't worry, I'm sure David McCormick is going to burn a ton of his millions and billions of dollars still trying to win this primary. So it is not over. Yeah. Well, listen, like I said, I think Fetterman is as far as Democratic candidates, I think it's a pretty strong candidate. I mean, I think that's what the polling shows. People in Pennsylvania like him. I think he projects a lot of strength.

I think, you know, he was a mayor of a small town that was decimated by by globalization and by NAFTA. And so, you know, he has a lot of credibility. And frankly, just his persona is, you know, really quite compelling and quite unusual. You know, this is a guy who shows up to every event in like... Basketball shorts. Yeah, in like shorts and really comes across as like that every man. I just don't know that candidates matter that much.

When you have a national landscape. I hate to say it, but when you have a national landscape that is as bad for Democrats as it is right now, the particular characteristics or policy positions of either Dr. Oz or John Fetterman are probably going to matter a lot less than the fact that Joe Biden's approval rating really super sucks and people are paying a lot of money at the gas pump. I think that's the reality of the situation. Yeah, we covered it. One of the segments we did on rising, which I'll always remember, was the decline in candidate quality from overall election analysis since 2010. It just doesn't matter that much. Like you said, it's almost all national conditions. Not great. Okay, let's go ahead and move on to Shanghai. This is something I've been watching with a lot of interest. The city of Shanghai right now is in a dystopian, nightmarish lockdown. And it all really began in the last couple of days as food deliveries began to run out within the city.

The first sign that things were not great over there was this leaked video taken from a balcony in Shanghai. We verified the translation. For those who are just listening, a drone is passing over the city, asking residents to go back into their balconies, saying, quote, please comply with COVID restrictions, control your soul's desire for freedom, do not open the window or sing. Let's take a listen. Yeah, I mean, that's control your soul's desire for freedom, Crystal. It's only gotten worse since that video came out. That was five days ago. As I was explaining earlier in the show, Chinese people do not eat the same level of processed and frozen food. So that requires consistent visits to the market and food deliveries in order to feed them.

That is a massive logistical challenge. When current Shanghai city lockdown regulations say you cannot even leave your apartment door, you used to be able to at least leave within the building to go pick up deliveries. Now, these deliveries are a total nightmare. They're either coordinated by the government. About three or four orders that people are placing per day are just being canceled because of the inability to deliver. The other one is requiring a whole bunch of black market trading. Some people have access to groceries in this part of the city. They're selling them to other people in this part of the city. It's a total disaster. People are putting empty fridges out on their

balconies as a symbol of protest against the government. And there's a lot of people who are running out of food. All of this is because Shanghai is totally committed to a COVID zero policy, which is that they are going to lock the city down as long as it takes in order to have zero COVID. Here's the thing. The Chinese government has put himself in a real bind, as I've explained here before. Number one, their elderly population is not even close to as vaccinated as ours. Now, the reason why is because a lot of them thought that zero COVID was going to work because with previous strains, both Delta and the original COVID, lockdown as China did, it actually did kind of work. But Omicron is so transmissible that they now have 25,000,

I think, admitted cases of COVID, which means you have tens and tens of thousands, if not millions of more. This current lockdown policy just not going to work. So they have an elderly population, which is not as vaccinated. Their general population also not nearly as vaccinated. Sinopharm and Sinovac, the vaccine that they've created is also not particularly effective against even original COVID, let alone Omicron. So they're in a real catch-22. They can either do lockdown, an ineffective one, or they've condemned a lot of their elderly population to death by emphasizing zero COVID instead of vaccination. So you put all that together, they're obviously in a tough spot. But the population is suffering to a degree that is really difficult to comprehend. And we are seeing extraordinary scenes out of the

city of Shanghai. We're about to show you a clip of residents, millions of people, sitting on their city balconies who are screaming and singing for freedom from their balconies. This is going to be in Shanghainese, so we're only going to play a couple of seconds for those who are just listening. But just to give you a taste, this is what it sounds like in the city at night. The guy who's speaking there is basically saying, he goes, I don't think people can hold out much longer. He says that there's tragedy. So there's some videos that are surfacing out of China this morning, Crystal, of the Chinese military, which is being deployed in the streets of Shanghai. Now, you put that all together, and this is a real dangerous situation. I don't think the Chinese government is going to

back down. They've never backed down in the past. People should remember, we probably have a better idea of what's happening in Shanghai than people in Beijing and in the rest of the country, just because of the Chinese government's ability in order to crack down. In the Beijing equivalent of Times Square or whatever, there were signs this morning saying, don't believe everything you see on social media and do not share viral videos. So these are all being put out to the population. That's decent advice, though. Actually, pretty good. But the most dystopian one that I've seen yet is this policy.

Let's put this up there on the screen. Health officials in Shanghai are defending the policy of separating babies and young children from their parents if they test positive for COVID-19. So they are literally taking children who are testing positive for COVID and receiving treatment in a public health center. They even say this. This is a direct quote. If the child is younger than seven, those children will receive treatment in the public health center. For older children, we will just mainly isolate them in centralized quarantine places. Some of the reports out of those quarantine places are nightmarish, not enough food, not so bad sleeping conditions, toilets, all of that. So this is a total, I mean, it is difficult to comprehend the level of dystopian disaster. We're talking about people who are kneeling in the street as people come by and check their ID passes, who are swabbing them constantly.

I mean, this is the full stuff of nightmares of authoritarian lockdown. Yeah, and I think the reason why it matters is obviously out of empathy for the people who are suffering there and are scared and the children who are being taken from their parents against their will and all of that. But I also think at the beginning of COVID, when China really cracked down and they like quickly erected these hospitals and they, you know, forced everybody to stay in their homes and they were very, very sort of stringent in what they were doing as best we could tell from here, there was almost like an envy of their ability to take those sorts of super aggressive authoritarian actions. Yeah, that's right. And there was a kind of weird horseshoe between people,

like right-wing people who are kind of like authoritarian curious and left-wing super pro-lockdown folks that were kind of jealous of what was being done in China ultimately. And I think now we see the ugly face of that and the fact that they only focused on what is a completely unrealistic and frankly anti-scientific policy of zero COVID that has not worked in one place in the entire world, rather than focusing on vaccination and making sure that especially vulnerable elderly populations, of which China has a large proportion, making sure that they were protected, you know, with the highly effective

vaccines that we now have, that has led to just an unfolding disaster of catastrophic consequences. And, you know, now it's, as you said, it's too late. Because even if they shifted now, okay, well, let's just go out and get everybody vaccinated. That takes a lot of time. And so in the meantime, you're going to have a lot of severe illness

and a lot of death among an elderly population that is dramatically under-vaccinated. Yeah. I mean, I'll repeat it again. Only half of Chinese aged 80 and older are fully vaccinated against COVID. Half. And that's with Sinovac. Listen, we haven't done the greatest job in the world on vaccination here because of our own government's policy and a deep strain of anti-vax sentiment within the country. But our elderly population is almost 100%, at least one shot, almost 100%. So on that metric, and that was the key age group, we have done much, much, much better. And those are the people who are going to die. Let's be honest. Those people have a way, way higher chance of actually dying from COVID. And listen

to this. Of the 264 million Chinese age over 60, 52 are yet to be fully, 52 million are yet to be fully vaccinated. That's one sixth of the population. Yeah, you're not going to snap your fingers and get that done. It's impossible. Think about it. It takes a month in order to do two doses. What are you going to do? Omicron is going to outpace this thing. It's going to burn through the entire country. And look, we have rural hospital problems, but not even close to the level of China. So they're about to get flooded. They are going fully on the lockdown. Here's an update actually from an American guy who lives in Shanghai. Let's put this up there on the screen. He says, day 22 of my Shanghai lockdown. As we feared yesterday, we have new restrictions.

Before, we were allowed to leave our building, but not our community, to get deliveries. No more. Now we are not allowed out of our apartment door. He references how he has to don a full hazmat suit in order to go down and get some deliveries. He's a volunteer who's allowed to basically go door to door. But he points it out again, which is that his situation is bad and many of his neighbors and others because of groceries and their inability in order to get food. I referenced this, but he says, for my family, we had three deliveries that were booked to deliver today,

two group purchases of meat and seafood, and one individual purchase of soap and shampoo. All three were canceled. We eventually were able to get a delivery from a friend in another part of the city who had better access to groceries. There are reports out there of black market level prices for food, which means that the poor people who live in Shanghai are screwed, as usual, and they're not able to eat and, you know, going to have to have subpar nutrition for themselves and for their kids. Who knows how long this thing is going to last? I mean, the Chinese government, they don't back down. There's no way. This level

of social strife, everybody here would fold no matter what. But over there, they're going to call in the military. They are going to enforce full compliance. And we saw this in very limited instances actually in Wuhan. Sometimes if people in the building had COVID, they would just seal off the building. And if some people in there died, it was like, well, you know, so be it. There were a lot of reports of that. And this is what full communist collectivism really looks like whenever it comes to enforcement. It's such a sad situation. There are 30 million people who live in Shanghai. This is what full authoritarianism looks like. This is nuts. Backed by any ideology.

And yeah, again, I think there was a lot of sort of triumphalism both coming from China but also from Western observers looking at what they were able to do and say, I wish we had that. No, you don't. No, you don't. Listen, I mean we've got a long way to go to have a real true democracy here, but at least the say of the people means something. Oh, yeah. And I will take that and all of the strife and the messiness that that entails on a daily basis over drones circling overhead chastising you for your soul wanting freedom. Okay. Speaking of souls wanting freedom, New York Times journalists, this is kind of,

this is interesting. I'm actually curious what Sagar's going to say about this. Let's put this up on the screen. So New York Times executive editor Dean McKay has issued a Twitter reset for the newsroom, urging reporters to quote, meaningfully reduce their Twitter time and reminding them that tweets and subtweets attacking or undermining their colleagues are not allowed. Let me read you a little bit from this memo that went out to all of the Times journalists. They say, we can rely too much on Twitter as a reporting or feedback tool, which is especially harmful to our journalism when our feeds become echo chambers. We can be overly focused on how Twitter will react to our work. Due to the detriment of our mission and independence, we can make

off-the-cuff responses that damage our journalistic reputations. And for too many of you, your experience of Twitter is shaped by harassment and attacks. Okay. If you do choose to stay on, so they're not saying like you have to get off, but if you do choose to stay on, we encourage you to meaningfully reduce how much time you're spending on the platform, tweeting or scrolling in relation to other parts of your job. So you might hear that and say, all right, well, that's kind of reasonable. I mean, to be honest with you, like I've scaled back my Twitter use and certainly my reading of my mentions. And it has been, I think, both better for me and also helps me create better content for the show without all of that noise in my head. But there's another part of this that is kind of not so great. Let's put this next piece up there on the screen,

which is at a sort of like, you know, panel event, Dean McKay elaborated on what his issue with Twitter was. And he said, I do not like it when somebody at the New York Times criticizes somebody at the Washington Post. I don't do that in any setting. It makes me uncomfortable when people do that. So part of the motive here, at least, and perhaps a lot of the motive here is closing ranks in the journalism profession and not liking reporters being critical of other reporters when, of course, reporters are, you know, they should they deserve scrutiny and they deserve critique in plenty of instances. So that's a part of this that I don't like. Overall, the idea of reducing Twitter use, the idea that people's brains have been rotted by it and they've lost touch with what happens out there in the real world, basically the dictate to go out and touch grass, not a bad one, but using it to protect the other journalists in the profession, that's the part

that's a problem. Yeah, I have nuanced thoughts on this, which is I don't think the problem is Twitter. By the way, I fully endorse, I've also dramatically reduced my Twitter. I've turned off all notifications for people I don't follow. So if you subtweet me, I don't even know. You could be Jeff Bezos. I don't follow you. So I have no idea what you're saying. And it's way better mentally for me in order to check out from any of the nonsense, bad faith criticism, which is predominant on the platform. At the same time, it's a great way in order to aggregate information. Let's be honest. It's a cool newswire service. You get exposure to things that you wouldn't necessarily see. And if you do a good enough job, especially in our line of work, it's great. I don't think the problem is Twitter. I think the problem is the

journalists themselves. That really what Twitter exposed us to was, oh, these people are as biased, as neoliberal, as insane as everybody always suspected that they were. We just never had a clear enough view. I can go on to any of these people's tweets, Twitter pages, and even the ones who try to keep it professional in a time of social strife or during the election or whatever, it's very clear about what's going on. See, but I don't mind that. No, no, no. I like it.

Yeah, I would rather know. That's what I'm saying. The problem is not Twitter. I would rather know, have that transparency. I think what does become a problem is, to your point about the problem is not really Twitter, they live in such a bubble that then, you know, it's one thing if you don't live in a bubble and you have a wide variety of experiences and people with different ideological views and people who are just like normal ass people living their lives. Like it's a one thing if you have an array of those folks in your lives and then you go to Twitter to see what the like hyper online people are saying and

thinking about and the wonks and the analysts and all of that, then you have a more sort of like holistic picture of what's going on. But if you're someone who already is in a totally like totally segregated bubble of elite opinion and people who are hyper focused and obsessed with politics, and then you just fuel that with another representation of that bubble on Twitter, which is the place for elite opinion making, then yeah, you're just going to end up continuing to go down that rabbit hole. So I don't know that getting off of Twitter is going to be much of a cure for journalists, like figuring out how people in the rest of the country actually feel. It's always been this way. And this, this is why I don't blame Twitter. The

problem is the people and the journalists themselves. And when I was saying, I agree, it's a good thing in order to see how biased these people are. But that's what they want to cover up. They're like, hey, you've got to stop telling people this. You're hurting our reputation as the paper of record. And stop being mean to other journalists. Yeah, and stop being- Little fragile flowers that they are. Since the beginning of Washington, it has been a tiny little guild. In the days of the 1960s. The Washington Post editors dine in with the president, the whole, you know, all the president's men, or sorry, all of the Georgetown set to this great book people should go and read. Even today, all the elite cases of

people who had COVID in DC, they were at the gridiron dinner, which is some cringe, fake, secret society for elite journalists. Where they pretend they're funny. Where they pretend they're super cool because they wear white tails, you know, and they're trying to reach the status of actually rich people in this country. So the rich people come. The journalists come. John Kerry was there. That's where Pelosi apparently got COVID.

It's always been this way. Our digital actions are just a representation of our physical social structure. So I don't know. Look, it's funny. I definitely think Twitter has brought out the worst in people, but that has always been there to a certain extent. So the problem is not Twitter. It's the journalists. It's the institutions themselves. Yeah. It also fits with this. Twitter is not real life, sort of like this is the new thinking about Twitter. And that was the idea of like, oh, this is part of why Biden won is because he just like was not online at all. And Twitter is not real life, but it can be useful. It can

provide you with certain insights about what things are really touching a nerve. And so, yeah, listen, I do want to say that I think if you have any sort of a sizable following, not reading your mentions, like not taking too much to heart what is going on, what's being said about you, I think that's the big thing. I really see this a lot where people get very, very, they basically become sort of psychologically broken by what they're, what they're choosing to consume. And it's like, just don't read that crap. Like, just don't read it and you'd be fine. So that part of it is probably just a good blanket idea for everybody. But yeah, the instinct to protect other journalists and to hide the partisan biases of the journalists at the Times is not a great one. Absolutely.

Crystal, what are you taking a look at? Well, guys, big news coming out of corporate America as executives publicly rage, cope and beg as the union wave sweeps the nation. So these executives at Starbucks and at Amazon, they are spoiled, coddled babies. They've gotten their way at every turn for literally decades. They rigged the markets, they bought our political system, and they had a desperate, powerless workforce that was basically at their beck and call.

But now, workers standing shoulder to shoulder are standing up to these decadent giants in ways we have never seen in our lifetimes. And they are making it impossible for the upper middle class customers of these two companies to look away from the abuse and exploitation of their workers, creating a potentially insurmountable force. All right, let's start with the latest at Starbucks and the epic meltdown of their founder, Howard Schultz. Now, the Starbucks union campaign has spread like wildfire since that very first store in Buffalo voted to unionize. Last week, six new stores held elections and workers voted yes in every single one of them. Starbucks Workers United has now gone 16 out of 17 for wins

in these elections, and about 200 stores, 200 stores in 29 states, have filed for union elections. Three more votes are coming in just this week alone. Starbucks, though, they're not just losing elections. They are also losing battles with the body that governs those elections, too. The National Labor Relations Board just ruled that Starbucks illegally retaliated against seven pro-union workers that they fired out of a store in Memphis, Tennessee. Unfortunately, NLRB doesn't have a lot of teeth at this point, but they do have a new, bold general counsel who has said that she plans to use the powers of the office aggressively to have illegally fired workers quickly reinstated through

federal court injunctions. So how is Starbucks corporate handling all of these developments? Well, they are in total and complete freakout mode. They fired their CEO and brought back Starbucks founder and union buster extraordinaire Howard Schultz. They fired their union busting general counsel, whose legal strategies failed to stop the union campaign's momentum. And you know they're really panicked because Schultz immediately announced they were halting the stock buybacks that fatten the bank accounts of shareholders and of executives. In his first town hall, he really gave away the game, though, crying about how the company was being, quote,

assaulted by union efforts. Now, here's where it gets a little sensitive, because I've been coached a little bit, but I do want to talk about something pretty serious. We can't ignore what is happening in the country as it relates to companies throughout the country being assaulted in many ways by the threat of unionization. Assaulted. But the real public meltdown was just triggered by a pro-union barista through their heroic efforts to push back on Schultz's lies in a forum for workers in the Long Beach area. 25-year-old Mads Hall repeatedly pressed Schultz on the distance between their rhetoric claiming, no, we're not against unions, and the reality of their illegal actions firing workers and being sanctioned by the NLRB.

Schultz first tried to just shut the conversation down, saying, quote, we're not going to talk about that. Now, in a different time, that might have worked. I mean, imagine the courage it takes to go up against a billionaire CEO as just one young barista. But Maz did not back down. Here's what happened in their own words. Me and 19 other partners had the opportunity to speak with Howard Schultz. He wanted to know what he could do to restore trust within the company.

And I mentioned that we wanted honesty and transparency about the NLRB charges and what's happening to pro-union workers across the country. I was silenced and told that I wasn't allowed to talk about that. He then apologized on behalf of me to the entire room for bringing it up. Later on, when benefits were mentioned, I said that while our benefits were once leading in the industry, they are not anymore. In response, he said, if you hate Starbucks so much, why don't you work somewhere else? Now, few things give me greater joy than watching Gen Z organized unions and expose corporate bullshit on TikTok. Unfortunately for Starbucks corporate workers who hate their jobs,

they are not going to quit anymore. They're going to organize. Now, this is exactly what Amazon Labor Union President Chris Smalls has been preaching over on Staten Island, triggering a meltdown of a different sort from Amazon corporate. Their legal team has decided to go full stop this deal, whining in new court filings that the historic JFK 8 union election was rigged by the workers themselves and also by the National Labor Relations Board. New York Times reporter Karen Weiss, she got her hands on a copy of their complaint, which seeks to overturn the results of the election. In the filing, they mostly complain about some of the grassroots guerrilla tactics that ALU used to great effect. Things like offering workers weed, attending and disrupting captive audience meetings,

tracking pro-union worker votes during a period when that's supposed to be impermissible. No one should be surprised that Amazon will exhaust every possible option in order to undo the shocking victory of these workers. But I gotta tell you, in a lot of ways, the ketchup is already out of the bottle. Another building on Staten Island will vote this month. A hundred more buildings are interested in organizing. Every one of these efforts, you gotta remember, continues to be a massive uphill battle. But it is undeniable that a fuse has been lit. I am just looking forward to watching Bezos following the footsteps of Schultz publicly melting down over the strength of the union effort and its assault on corporate America.

Here's the big reason these execs are freaking, though. Normally, their war on workers is pretty quiet. It's almost invisible. The status quo is so thoroughly rigged that just maintaining the same trajectory amounts to a devastating class war against regular working people. These workers are truly shifting the consciousness of America in real time, inspiring courage in the working class, but also creating some awareness in the upper-middle-class folks who get their lattes at Starbucks and buy their everything at Amazon. Because make no mistake, upper class guilt can actually be a powerful force. Now, if you know one story in labor history, it is likely to be that of the horrific Triangle Shirtwaist Fire back in 1911. Over 146 workers, mostly women and girls, were killed in a factory turning out garments for the upper classes because their cruel bosses had locked the doors, preventing escape when the tinderbox of lint and fabric

trimmings went up in flames. Some of these workers were burned alive. Some chose to instead leap to their death rather than endure the agony of those flames. It's an enduring tragedy that created such moral outrage that it created lasting labor protections that were enshrined in law. Now, even if you know this story, what you might not know is that even before the tragedy, ladies' garment workers had been organizing, even going so far as a general strike to demand better working conditions. Just take a look at this. At first, their plight garnered little attention with next to no press coverage. But then a couple of rich heiresses, Ann Morgan, daughter of J.P. Morgan, and Alva Vanderbilt Belmont, they got involved. Known as the Mink Brigade, the involvement of rich women helped to trigger press coverage. And that

visibility quickly led to a lot of shops across the city beginning to bargain with unions. So even before the shocking crimes at Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, workers were winning unions thanks to their own courage first and foremost, but also to the elite outrage that was created by the so-called Mink Brigade. This movement meant that after the fire workers didn't just win unions, they also won permanent labor law, granting rights which are still enshrined to this day. Now listen, the alliance was far from perfect, was weighed down by quite a bit of classism, patronizing expectations, but ultimately together they did prevail. The upper class women, they got to feel good about their expensive fashion, and the workers got better hours, wages, and working conditions.

When working class courage combines with upper class awareness and guilt, everything changed. That's the dangerous zone that these two companies, Amazon and Starbucks, are in right now. The visibility of working conditions and pro-union rhetoric everywhere from the New York Times to CNBC to TMZ, that makes it impossible for billionaires like Bezos and Schultz to conduct their class warfare in secret. Their ugly deeds and their brutal tactics and their outright criminality, let's be clear, are increasingly on display for all the world to see, making it harder for your average Amazon and Starbucks customer to maintain their personal feeling of virtuousness. It's no wonder the billionaires and corporate execs have hit the

panic button, but there's no unseeing the shocking abuse of our corporate overlords to everyday workers. I think the fact that it's Amazon and that it's Starbucks, and these are brands that are so sensitive. And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. All right, Sagar, what are you looking at? Well, part of what is so maddening about our current corporate media industrial complex is that it's so obvious that its power is collapsing at the same time, but they continue to maintain a powerful facade. We know with certainty declining cable news viewers. We know declining traffic to mainstream media websites, explosion of audience on independent platforms as a result of their failures. We still see them acting, though,

as if it's all normal at CNN Plus when they blow a quarter of a billion dollars on a streaming service launch. It's normal that MSNBC, CNN, Fox, despite record low viewerships, continue to hold big sway over this country, and they reap billions of dollars in profit. The reason why the system survives is because it is insular. If you never invite anyone on who is a dissident, then you will never have to contend with real failure. If you have enough money in the short term, you can use it to try and buy market share in the future, and the system's power depends on it never being challenged. That is why every once in a while,

it is shocking and exhilarating when the system actually is challenged, which by happenstance happened twice over the last few days during the Atlantic Magazine's disinformation conference at the University of Chicago, where two freshman students challenged representatives of the mainstream media in ways that you almost never see. Let's take a look at the first question from a freshman student to Anne Applebaum of course. A poll later after that found that if voters knew about the content of the laptop, 16% of Joe Biden voters would have acted differently. Now, of course, we know a few weeks ago, the New York Times confirmed that the content is real.

Do you think the media acted inappropriately when they instantly dismissed Hunter Biden's laptop as Russian disinformation? And what can we learn from that in ensuring that what we label as disinformation is truly disinformation and what can we learn from that and ensuring that what we label as disinformation is truly disinformation and not reality? My problem with Hunter Biden's laptop is, I think, totally irrelevant. I mean, it's not whether it's disinformation or, I mean, I don't think the Hunter Biden's business relationships have anything to do with who

should be president of the United States. So I don't find it to be interesting find it to be interesting. I mean that, that would be my problem with the, that as a, as a major news story. Uh, we're going to talk about more of this, uh, tomorrow in our first panel. So stand by. Um, and I, I think we have run out of time. Saved by the bell, huh? She says it's completely irrelevant. Astounding. It took me five seconds to find a tweet from just November of last year when Ann was criticizing Jared Kushner for cashing in on his connections made during his time in the Trump administration, which I've also criticized, by the way, and will continue on tomorrow. What's the difference, though? Well, Ann is fine with dismissing and calling the Hunter Biden laptop story

completely irrelevant when it's somebody that she supports, but not when it's somebody that she doesn't. That's the problem with selective coverage and outrage. It diminishes and actually aids propagandists on the other side who can deflect with your hypocrisy to cover up their misdeeds. The only way out is to just be honest, acknowledge your failings, have some humility, try to bring intellectual honesty to your coverage. But that is just simply impossible whenever you depend on the system never failing in order to propagate your career. The second challenge at the conference also came from a young student to CNN's Brian Stelter in another remarkable question. Let's take a listen. Hi, thank you for coming. My name is Christopher Phillips. I'm a first year at the college. My questions for Mr. Stelter. You've all spoken extensively about Fox News being a purveyor of disinformation. But CNN is right up there with them. They pushed the Russian collusion hoax. They pushed the Jussie Smollett hoax. They smeared Justice Kavanaugh as a rapist, and they also smeared Nick Sandman as a white supremacist.

And yes, they dismissed the Hunter Biden laptop affair as pure Russian disinformation. With mainstream corporate journalists becoming little more than apologists and cheerleaders for the regime, is it time to finally declare that the canon of journalistic ethics is dead or no longer operative. All the mistakes of the mainstream media, and CNN in particular, seem to magically all go in one direction. Are we expected to believe that this is all just some sort of random coincidence, or is there something else behind it? It's too bad it's time for lunch.

You have 30 seconds. No, I mean, there's a clock that says 30 seconds. But I think my honest answer to you, and I'll come over and talk in more detail after this, is that I think you're describing a different channel than the one that I watch. But I understand that that is a popular right-wing narrative about CNN. I think it's important when we talk about shared reality and democracy, all these networks, all these news outlets have to defend democracy. And when they

screw up, admit it. But when Benjamin Hall, the Fox correspondent, was wounded in Ukraine, the news crews at CNN and the New York Times stopped what they were doing, and they tried to help. They tried to help him get out of the country. They tried to find the dead crew members. That's what news outlets do. That's how they actually do work together, to your question about sharing those kinds of connections and trust. We don't talk about it enough, though. We don't share that reality about how that happens. And with regards to the regime, I think you mean the President Biden?

The last time I spoke with a Biden aide, we yelled at each other. So that's the reality of the news business, that people don't see, that people don't hear. They imagine that it's a situation that simply is not. But I think your question, it speaks to the failure of journalism to show our work and show the reality of how our profession operates. That man should win a medal in deflection. Also, advice to the young man who asked the question. It's better to stick to straight facts and pointed questions like that instead of editorializing. It's what allows Stelter to dismiss it as right-wing propaganda instead of reckon with all the legitimate points that he just made. But in both of those instances, you saw a glimpse of just how flimsy this entire edifice is,

why it relies so much on censorship to do its bidding for them. Without the ability to cover up dissenting views, which predominantly are pointing out the failures of the mainstream establishment elite, it crumbles instantaneously, which is exactly why the corporate media, the main purveyors of the most powerful disinformation, are dead set on using disinformation standards against their opponents. And in fulfilling a prophecy,

that is exactly what happened at the Atlantic's disinformation conference near the end when the editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, was forced to address the two viral moments of that conference, embarrassing his attendees. Let's take a listen. I think one darkly humorous but inevitable measurement of our success is that our disinformation conference has been the subject of disinformation campaigns on social media already. So, yeah. Congratulate yourselves for that. We'll study that at next year's disinformation.

Subject of disinformation. It's incredible. Just shows you again the power that the system has, its ability to paint anybody who reveals their failures as the real criminals. All you can do is fight back, at least reveal their lives, reveal how flimsy they are when they're pressed, and spread it as far and as wide as we can, because that is the last remaining power that a dissident has in this society. I mean, how crazy is that, Crystal? Which is that they call these kids disinformation for pointing out their own failures. And if you want to hear my reaction to Sager's monologue,

become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. All right, guys, joining us now to discuss the results thus far of the French presidential election is Daniel Nishanian. He is executive editor-in-chief of Bolt Magazine. Welcome, Daniel. Great to see you again. Good to see you, man. It's great to be here. Thanks for having me. By the way, before I forget, everybody, Bolt Magazine. Welcome, Daniel. Great to see you again. Good to see you, man. It's great to be here. Thanks for having me. By the way, before I forget, everybody, Bolt Magazine is doing fantastic work digging into a lot of relevant issues, including criminal justice reform. So make sure you check out the work that Daniel is doing over there. All right. With that out of the way, break down

these election results for us. This is a little bit dated, but more or less the results stayed the same. Go ahead and throw this first piece up on the screen. So you have the incumbent Macron coming in the first round in first, 28.6%. According to this graphic, it has shifted a little bit since then. Second place is Marine Le Pen. She's on the right, 24.4%. And then actually surprisingly strong showing for the third place there, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who is on the left. Just give me sense of what was surprising about this. And for people who haven't followed closely, this is the first round. The top two contenders, Marine Le Pen and Emmanuel Macron, will go on to head-to-head contest next. So that is what is upcoming. But give people a sense of these different figures and how they've positioned themselves

on the political spectrum. Absolutely. So, you know, France has a two-round presidential system, as you were just saying. And yesterday was the first round. And the stakes really was deciding who was going to move on to the runoff, which is in two weeks. It's quite a quick turnaround. And the candidates are going to be the incumbent president, Macron, who's a centrist to center-right president, and the far-right challenger, Marine Le Pen. Actually,

the results ended up being even closer than what you showed between Le Pen and the candidate who came in third, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who's on the left, who's a left candidate, and he ended up coming within a point of Marine Le Pen, which would have been a huge, huge shock. And in the final weeks of the campaign, effectively, what happened is that the far right's forces consolidated more around Marine Le Pen. There was some division there. And the left, including the center left, a lot of the candidates kept dropping and dropping as more and more people strategically voted, as well as wanted to vote for Mélenchon. And we ended up with these three candidates way on top.

And the establishment parties that have long ruled France for the past 60, 70 years were just all demolished yesterday. The main conservative party, the main center-left party that have really traded off governing France from the 50s to five years ago, combined for just 7% of the vote, which is unfathomable if you had told someone that six years ago, because they were just trading off power. So we're in this strange composition by the standards of before, where there's this left bloc, this centrist bloc, let's say, and then Marine Le Pen, and the left was eliminated from the election yesterday.

So how's it going to shake out now? We've got two weeks to go. I saw that Melenchon has said that not one person should vote for Marine Le Pen, but she is going very hard for his voters. Can you explain kind of the resuscitation of Le Pen? Look, the National Front has always done well in these elections, but whenever it comes to the runoffs, they generally lose. However, she seems to have stripped off a significant amount of power of the center-right in this campaign. What is different this time around in France? Because it just seems like a completely different situation than the previous elections. Yeah. So in one way, the election is exactly the same as last time, because the last presidential election also had a runoff between Le Pen and Macron, and Macron won that by a very large

margin, almost 2 to 1, 66 to 34%. But it's possible that for her viewers who don't know much about French politics, the Le Pen family has been running for president since the 70s. First it was Marine Le Pen's father, and then Marine Le Pen, and they keep going forward almost pretty much every election with some exceptions. And what feels different this

time, yeah, I mean, and they always, as you said, kind of run into this runoff system where everyone else was running, every other establishment party or left party calls to vote against them. And up until now, it's always functioned quite well, including in elections that are below the presidential level, where Le Pen and her party do quite well in the first round and then fail. It's still unclear whether that will be different this time. But the polls are showing quite a closer race. One reason for that is that a lot of voters who voted for either the conservative candidate or left candidates are saying they won't vote in the runoff and are saying that they will not participate in part because now that the person they're supposed to vote for is an incumbent, he has governed for five years, he has governed

during COVID, he has angered a lot of the left, he has also angered some conservatives. The challenge will be whether he can activate that same anti-far-right front that has quite well-functioned for the best 20, 30 years. So here are a couple of things that I had read. First of all, I read that Macron had really moved, especially on cultural issues, to the right to try to stem the tide of, you know, Le Pen and other right forces. That doesn't seem to have worked at all. In fact, it seems instead to have pissed off the left who now may stay home rather than, you know, sort of suck it up and vote for Macron. I also had read that Le Pen sort of softened her rough edges, is the language that I heard a number of times, and that also in terms of economic issues, that she had actually moved to the left of Macron in terms of how she was positioning herself on

economic issues. Is that a fair reading of how things played out in terms of their sort of political positioning? I think there's a number of things to unpack there, right? I think one thing I would invite, first of all, viewers is to not necessarily project the American spectrum onto France in the sense that there's a temptation to read Mélenchon and Macron as sort of like Bernie Sanders and Biden. One thing that's quite different that I just want to immediately name, because it gets to your first part of your question, is that Emmanuel Macron has emerged, it is true, from a cis-and-left government, but since getting power has really drawn people from the Conservative Party, which are also called the Republicans in France, has named people from the Conservative Party, which are also called the Republicans in France, has named people from the Republican Party as prime minister, and has really done a lot of economic policies and cultural policies as well that are drawn from what is the dominant

Conservative Party in France. So in the sense of really having removed himself from even a center-left coalition, it's quite different there than what the U.S. kind of would think of how, like, the intra-democratic fights, right? To your, I think to your point, I think one, it is true that Macron has done policies like lowering the business tax. Liu said he weakened labor laws immediately after being elected. And one of his chief proposals for the campaign was to raise the retirement age, which is a strange thing to campaign on and is going to play a role right now, because that's going to come up a lot. The other side of this is that economic issues, social benefits, it's really a question of who is going to be given the benefits and what type of benefit.

And at the center of Le Pen's ethos is the rejection of immigrants and the rejection of foreigners, and that has remained at the center of her campaign. I was just reading this weekend, the platform that every candidate sent to the voter, and a large part of her platform is talking about the explosion of immigration, our values, our freedoms. I'm reading the translation I noted down for this. Our values, our freedoms, our way of life is threatened. There's talk of threats to French identity. And that is really a question of who also gets social benefits and economic benefits, because that's really at the center of what she's talking about. Whereas the left candidate, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who also had criticism of Macron on these issues we're talking

about, the economy, retirement age. I was reading his platform, and the very first sentence of the platform part is, we must reject the poison of racism, anti-Semitism, anti-Semitism, and hate towards Muslims. So he put that first, in part because at the center of the left identity in France is the struggle against the history of fascism and racism. And so it's not, so that kind of complicates the question of like who is where on this economics spectrum, I think. Gotcha.

It's kind of interesting too. I was just looking at your profile about the breakdown on where certain voters are. So where would you rank the issues in the French election? A lot of what I'm reading is that inflation is at the top of concerns. Russia, obviously, Macron didn't even really campaign. He's been on the phone trying to play

like a shuttle diplomacy almost on the phone with Putin and with Kiev and NATO and all of that. So where are French voters in terms of where they rank as the top issues from what you can best tell from the verified exit polls that we have so far from the election? Yeah, well, it's interesting you bring up the crisis, the war in Ukraine, because that, so France has this one month campaign effectively where new rules set in about media time, equal access, and really an official campaign.

And that coincided with the war. And as you can imagine, the word obviously just made the campaign really recede, especially because the president was running and he was on the news through his presidential hat as dealing with the Ukraine crisis. So it really provoked a bit of a crisis because if you're running a campaign and no one's paying attention, and there were much fewer campaign on TV, there was no real first round debate between the candidates

or even like many of their surrogates. So that's an unusual campaign, even though to turn out to end up being 75%, which is low by French standards, but obviously would be quite high in the US. But yeah, I mean, so the foreign policy to some degree helped rise the numbers of Emmanuel Macron, though they kind of came back to earth by the end. So it's unclear how much of a role that ended up playing. And otherwise, a lot of candidates were talking a lot about inflation, about economic opportunity

and those issues. And that helped, I think, clearly both the left candidate and Le Pen, who we're talking a lot about that, against the incumbent, right, who obviously is going to suffer from those issues. And Daniel, finally, I know you said it's dangerous to project American politics onto what's happening in France. But what do you think that Americans should take away from this?

By the way, I think of Macron less like Biden. In my head, he's Pete Buttigieg, which, in my opinion, is actually worse. But what do you think Americans should take away from how these results have shaken out thus far? Because I think ever since Brexit, there's a real interest in the American electorate in looking at these European elections and referendums that are going on and trying to read the tea leaves of what this might mean for our own national sentiment or for sort of, you know, more global realignments more broadly. Do you see any learnings or warning signs or indicators from this election that we should read into our own national mood? I mean, to maybe go against what I was saying,

but projecting one thing that we are seeing, you know, a lot of countries is the evolution of, is the splitting of the vote between rural areas and urban areas and suburban areas. Obviously, that's a dominant trend in the U.S. We saw that to some extent in France yesterday again, and that's really something that is driving the divide we've been talking about as well.

Though I was just actually seeing the numbers this morning, and I thought they were interesting because they were a bit less large than I had thought. In rural areas, Emmanuel Macron got 25%, and in cities that are larger, he got 29%, and Le Pen was 20 to 27%. So the gaps were not quite as large as maybe we are used to seeing here. But in very large cities, that's really where Le Pen suffers. She got 5, 6 percent in Paris. And in cities that are—in other cities, maybe a bit larger, but really not that much.

So we're seeing that same kind of geographic division of the votes there. But I think what's interesting and what doesn't exist in the U.S. is the existence of a strong left force. What will be interesting for the next few years is what happens within the left and the traditional right, because the center-left was demolished this time, and they added up to 6-7 percent. And Mélenchon, their voters went to Mélenchon. That is going to create a lot of different pressures and patterns in terms of who has the, who gets to be the head of future lists, future candidacies. You know, that doesn't obviously quite exist in the U.S., but we're also seeing a lot of conversations here about what should happen within the left space. Yeah. And there are some echoes here. Yeah. I'm just looking at the age distribution

as well. I mean, older voters over 65 save Macron's ass and And Melenchon dominated, really, among voters under 35. So you do see some echoes of some of the trends that we see unfolding here in American politics. Daniel, thank you for your breakdown. Guys, check out Bolts Magazine. He is doing great work there. And it's great to see you. Thank you so much. Thanks for the analysis. Thank you so much. It was very helpful. Thank you guys so much for watching. And just as a reminder, premium subscribers, you get to vote on the five things that we're going to cover during our live show in New York City. Crystal, Kyle, Marshall, and myself, we will all be there live on YouTube. You guys get to program the show. And also don't forget to enjoy your newsletter, which is going to be in every premium subscriber's inbox every single day of the show. It's a written summary of everything that we discussed, all of the sources that are in

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