Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 4/11/23: EXCLUSIVE: Zelensky Sought To Bomb Russia, 5G Threatens Military Satellites, Ukraine Looks To India, DeSantis Abortion Ban, Biden 2024 Announcement, Justice Thomas, Biden's Tik Tok Influencers, US Lab Leak, Thomas Sadoski On Yemen Genocide

Episode Date: April 11, 2023

Krystal and Saagar discuss exclusive reporting from leaked documents we uncovered that purport to show Zelensky Seeking To Bomb Russia, 5G communications threatening military and commercial satellites, the Pentagon Witch Hunt for the Document Leaker, the US humiliated as Ukraine looks to India's Modi for Peace Deal, Desantis Allies warning that the Abortion Ban could backfire on him, Biden makes an incomprehensible announcement on his 2024 campaign, SCOTUS Clarence Thomas caught hiding decades of billionaire gifts, Krystal looks into Biden's desperate Tik Tok Influencer scheme, Saagar looks into Covid, Ebola, Lyme Disease and How US Labs are dangerous to everyone, and we're joined by Newsroom Actor Thomas Sadoski who calls out US silence on the genocide in Yemen.To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/To listen to Breaking Points as a podcast, check them out on Apple and SpotifyApple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/breaking-points-with-krystal-and-saagar/id1570045623 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4Kbsy61zJSzPxNZZ3PKbXl Merch: https://breaking-points.myshopify.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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I think everything that might have dropped in 95 has been labeled the golden years of hip-hop. It's Black Music Month and we need to talk is tapping in. I'm Nyla Simone

breaking down lyrics, amplifying voices and digging into the culture that shaped the soundtrack of our lives like that's what's really important and that's what stands out is that our music changes people's lives for the better let's talk about the music that moves us to hear this and more on how music and culture collide listen to we need to talk from the black effect podcast network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I also want to address the Tonys. On a recent episode of Checking In with Michelle Williams, I open up about feeling snubbed by the Tony Awards. Do I? I was never mad. I was disappointed because I had high hopes. To hear this and more on disappointment and protecting your peace, listen to Checking In with Michelle Williams from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey, guys. Ready or Not 2024 is here, and we here at Breaking Points are already thinking of ways we can up our game for this critical election. We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade the studio, add staff, give you guys the best independent coverage that is possible. If you like what we're all about, it just means the absolute world to have your support. But enough with that. Let's get to the show. Good morning, everybody. Happy Tuesday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed we do. We have more exclusive breaking news out of those leaked documents.

We also have a new response from the Pentagon. It's really quite extraordinary. I mean, they're freaking out about this in every way imaginable. So we'll get into that. We also have some new interesting comments from Ukraine with regard to their interest in India being a part of a potential peace process. So we'll bring you those critical details as well. Ron DeSantis moving forward in the Florida legislature with a six-week abortion ban. Now, this is the guy who was framing himself as the more electable alternative to Trump. And yet, on this particular issue, he's wildly out of step with the American people. What will that mean for his potential campaign? We'll get into all of that. We also have Joe Biden being Joe Biden,

sort of like accidentally making news in the most bumbling way possible. You definitely want to watch that clip. And we're going to dig into Justice Thomas and the bombshell report about corruption and his failure to disclose elaborate luxury trips worth like half a million dollars over decades. There are new calls for him to be impeached. So we will give you all of the details there. But we wanted to start with the very latest with regards to those leaked docs and what we have been able to glean from them. Yeah, that's right. We're in a very advantageous position. As I understand it, you know, outside of the mainstream media, we're one of the only people who has a full set of documents here.

As I've tried to explain before, there are a couple of images from the leaked Pentagon Ukraine documents that had been circulating around on Telegram, between 5 to 15 images. Those are pretty much well-known. They've been well-dissected. They continue to be taken off of social media. The full and original set, though, however, has taken some interesting chicanery to obtain on our part. And so what we have been doing is going through and finding the stories, some being reported by mainstream media, but many others significantly downplayed. Same proviso at the top. Everything that we're reporting today, we sent to the Pentagon and to the White House for the opportunity to comment.

The Pentagon actually, interestingly, which they rarely do, responded almost instantaneously and referred me to the briefing that they gave yesterday. So let's go ahead and put that briefing up here on the screen because it itself is extraordinary before we get to some of the reporting. Basically what you can go through, and we'll have a link here if anybody wants to go and read it, this is all public record, is the direct transcript where the defense secretary or the defense secretary's press secretary is asked, I don't know what, I want to say what, Crystal, almost 10 to a dozen times in every case about these leaked documents. And really all he has

are two talking points. Number one, we are referring this matter to the Department of Justice and we are taking this very, very seriously. In other words, we are going to hunt down and find as soon as humanly possible whoever is responsible for leaking these documents. We'll get into a little bit about that later in the show. And then number two, they continue to try

and encourage BS, basically censorship, on the document saying, well, you don't want to amplify these. We urge you caution because they could be doctored. Now, once again, there is only one piece of this, which is in any dispute whatsoever. And that's not even the original document. It's the one that the Russians took, photoshopped and circulated on Telegram, trying to deflate the number of casualties that the U.S. intelligence community estimates. So already we are dealing with the Pentagon spin machine trying to say that what somebody did with the original documents photoshopping and circulating makes it those they are doctoring, urging caution, when if you read carefully,

they do not dispute one word of what we will report to everyone today and what others have been able to report from these documents. Yeah. In fact, they're pressed on whether, okay, so you've said that there are some things that were changed. We know about the casualty figures. Any other specifics that you want to give us? And they're like, no. No. And, I mean, listen, I think it's important to put every caveat out there that it is entirely possible that the documents have been altered, that the information does not accurately reflect the intelligence assessments that were being shared in highly classified settings at the time.

But I think common sense would indicate if they had found other errors, you'd probably know about them because they highlighted that casualty one right away. Every single article that you read about these, which with good reason, make sure to point out, okay, this, you know, casualty number was altered after the fact that calls into question all of them. But again, if they had actually found other errors and you can be damn sure they've been going through these things with a fine tooth comb ever since they discovered them, which was just recently, by the way, which is a whole other separate, interesting issue. If they had found anything else, we would know all about it. Let me just read directly from the transcript of the briefing, this part where they're urging caution about the way that reporting moves forward with these documents. He says, I just want to encourage you to be mindful, not just about the

impact of reposting these photos, but of the reporting around the photos, and remind you that to be mindful of reporting carefully on this subject. Disclosure of sensitive classified material can have tremendous implications not only for our national security, but could lead to people losing their lives. The Secretary and Department of Defense and the United States government take this apparent unauthorized disclosure extremely seriously, and this is a top priority for us. Now, with past leaks, whether it was Edward Snowden, whether it was Julian Assange and some of the WikiLeaks revelations, this is their go-to line always, that you're putting lives at risk by disclosing this information. I mean, the sort of claims they made about the Assange and Snowden

revelations in particular were totally over the top about how this would devastate our intelligence gathering abilities and this would put American lives at risk all around the world. They've never been able to point to a single example where that was actually true, which, again, you know that if there was one, we would all know about it. So it's just important to remember, while, listen, we have been as careful as we possibly can be in our own reporting around these documents because we don't want to get played. We want to provide you with the most accurate information. We certainly don't want to be responsible for any sort of a dangerous situation anywhere around the world. It's also important to keep in mind that, you know, they're a little bit the boy who cried wolf on this because they have alleged in the past that these, you know, leaks would be an explosive, terrible, damaging situation for our national security. And it was never actually the

case. Bingo. So with all of that, with the exposition, let's get to something that we're very proud to be able to offer to all of you. This is an extraordinary story. And let's go ahead and put it up there on the screen. So in our perusal of the documents, here is what we found. These documents show President Zelensky privately suggested striking a Russian deployment location inside of Rostov, Russia, using drones. Let me repeat that again. President Zelensky in a FISA, basically a spy warrant document, and where we were spying on him, privately suggested to his top generals that they use Ukrainian drones to strike Russian troops inside of Russia.

Zelensky, quote, told his commander-in-chief that Ukraine does not have long-range missiles capable of striking Russian troops deeper inside of Russia nor anything to attack them, suggesting a good opportunity. The private intelligence assessment indicates Zelensky sees a lack of long-range missiles as limiting his ability to strike deeper inside of Russia. Despite previous promises, he does not aim to do so by U.S. authorities. Now, why does that matter? And I'm again, actually have the raw document in front of me in which we suggest a couple of things. One, we are privately spying on Zelensky

because we don't trust him, because we want to figure out what he really wants to do. Two, well, how many times have we been assured here that longer range missiles by Ukraine and for their defenses will only be used in a defensive purpose? Now, look, you could argue, you know, theoretically that it is defense. Now, strategically, it's certainly a whole other thing to be striking inside of Russia militarily. And this actually proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that this happened in 28th of February, not that long ago, that Zelensky maintains, has the desire, has the will to strike Russia, but only lacks the capability. One of the reasons that they talk about inside of this intelligence document, Crystal the reasons that they talk about inside of this

intelligence document, Crystal, is that they were trying to do this or wanted to do this because it happened to be in the range of some of their Ukrainian drones that they might have been able to get to in Rostov. That they didn't have the capability to strike deeper inside of Russia, but have the desire to. And specifically, his lamenting of not having the long range missiles shows you we know what he wants to do with them. It's how many times have we been assured here? They will not use it to strike inside of Russia. Now, once again, you cannot be upset

at a person who is at war for wanting to strike the enemy wherever the enemy is. But you can be upset at US policymakers who have assured us time and time again that this is not something that they want to do, that this is not something that they're going to drag us into, that this is a blood brotherhood where both of our interests are entirely aligned. No, he wants to strike inside of Russia. It's right here, directly inside of the US intelligence assessment. And apparently, we don't even trust him enough not

to listen to every single one of his most minute conversations. So I think this is an extraordinarily significant story. Not a surprise that it's been not reported yet by the mainstream media. I've seen it only referenced one time where the headline that they went with, I believe it was over at CNN, was like, US spying on Zelensky. I'm like, yeah, that's not the headline. What is he saying? He's saying he wants to strike inside of Russia specifically and not being able to because he does not have long range missile systems. When somebody tells you who they are, you should believe them. I mean, this is clear as day as to exactly why we have to be extraordinarily careful when dealing with the Ukrainians, because they desire to escalate this war much to a very much higher degree, which would be a catastrophe for all of us. Yes. This really exposes once again, the lie that our interests and the Ukrainian interests are

exactly aligned. Now there may be some, you know, critical overlap there, but ultimately it is in Ukraine's interest. And again, I don't blame Zelensky for this, for his strategic calculus, for trying to do whatever he can in order to win this war, take back however much territory he can, etc. To strike his enemy, I don't blame him. interest to drag us fully into this war, to have some sort of an escalation that causes Russia to retaliate in a way that forces us to fully, directly engage in this war above and beyond what we have already done. That is in his strategic interest. That might be the only way that he actually has a shot to out and out, you know, win and reclaim all of his territory that he has lost. So it's really important to keep that in mind. And clearly behind the scenes, even as U.S. policymakers have been giving us all sorts of assurances and have been claiming that our interest in the Ukrainian interests are perfectly

aligned and we should just support Ukraine in whatever it is that they want to do, clearly behind the scenes they know differently. And let me also say this, in terms of making the case to the American public about what our involvement should be and what type of weapons we should ship, if they're saying publicly, if Biden and co are saying publicly that we should just give the Ukrainians whatever they want and support them however best, you know, suits them to win the war, then it doesn't make any sense to say, but we're not going to give them long range missiles or we're not going to give them fighter jets. And so you end up with a situation where you're very vulnerable to public pressure from, you know, the many hawks that go on cable news or that give quotes to the New York Times and the Washington Post saying, hey, if we're

in all in for Ukraine and if we just want to support Ukraine in whatever they want to do, how can you possibly deny them these weapons that they say are critical to their fight? This is the real reason why. Now, I don't think Biden has been very restrained. There's obviously been huge escalation in what we have shipped. But so far, in terms of the longest range missiles, they have resisted. And I am 100% sure it's because of intelligence like this that shows we could easily end up with them striking farther inside of Russia in a potential escalatory situation where we get dragged directly into this conflict. Tell us the truth. Tell us why you don't want to give it to them. This is why, because they want to strike inside of Russia. And one month before Zelensky privately told that to

again, the top general inside of Ukraine, go ahead and put this up there on the screen. He was here in Washington and on his tour around the West asking for what? Long range missiles and jets from the West. Now, I think we can say unequivocally he wants longer range missiles and jets so he can strike inside of Russia. Yes, also to defend Ukraine, but that is not the only reason. It's not only just to challenge air superiority over Ukrainian airspace. It's to strike inside of Russia. And we have people, you know, the criticism is, well, what would you expect him to do? I expect him to do exactly what he's doing. He's doing what is best for his country, but we need to do what is best for our country. And this shows you the limiting principle. And it also shows you how absolutely full of it so many of the Ukrainian hawks are in saying that we should trust Zelensky.

Go ahead and put this up there on the screen. Ambassador Michael McFaul, you know, the former U.S. ambassador to Russia, one of the chief hawks in this entire debate just, you know, last year was slamming President Biden for not sending Ukraine long range advanced missile systems. He's also been somebody advocating for sending NATO jets and others to them. And that's one of those where they just don't seem to understand clearly, or maybe they do, that this is exactly what Ukraine wants. I mean, they are advocating for an incredibly dangerous position, trying to put our faith in somebody whose interests far supersede ours. And they're unable to think about what the second or the third order consequences are. Combine that with the reporting that we were able to bring everybody yesterday

about China's red lines in this conflict and what would lead them to give lethal aid to Russia. They said specifically that NATO provided, Washington provided, missile systems, jets, or any other weaponry that strikes inside of Russia would change the strategic calculus of Beijing and would lead them most likely to provide lethal weapons to the Russian government. That's it. So not only then would we find ourselves in a confrontation with Russia, which itself would be a catastrophe, but then you have two nuclear armed superpowers and really the world's largest power outside of the United States coming in completely on the side of the other, which also, you know, this is the other thing that would be

a disaster for Ukraine, not just for the United States. It would be a disaster for those. They're the ones who would die and whose, you know, whose territory would just be even more ravaged than it currently is. So this is one where we need to be responsible about our, uh, about the way that we operate. But most importantly, we have the cold, hard evidence now. He wants to strike inside of Russia. So the debate now has to be, do you want to strike inside of Russia? If you're cool with that, okay. But you need to be honest with us, with Americans, and with everybody about exactly what you are proposing. Because otherwise, you're just full of it. I think that several pieces of potential

revelations within these leaked documents really show us how close we actually are to World War III. And I know it's easy to hear those words and we've been warning of the risks of escalation for a long time now, basically from the beginning of this war, you know, maybe we sound like a broken record on this. But when you combine those two pieces of how close China is to coming on basically fully on the side of Russia and how close Ukraine is to launching the type of long range missile strikes within, deep within Russia that could cause China to come in on their side, that could cause Russia to escalate directly against us or our NATO allies dragging us in. What else do you call that other than World War III? So I think it's really important to take away from these documents just how close to the edge we are, just how important every single one of these decisions about what type of weapons we send and how many we send and

what's our time frame and what we're doing to apply pressure to push for negotiations rather than trying to extend this war, as has been our policy thus far, every single one of those decisions is absolutely crucial. I hope that's the biggest thing that people take away from this because at times during this war, during, I would say, the entirety of this war, there has been a stunning and disturbing lack of public debate, lack of ability to dissent, lack of ability to consider what the strategic risks are in any of these decisions. You're just sort of like smeared and dismissed if you raise any of these concerns. And that has got to stop because this is a very, very perilous situation.

Okay. So there you go. Let's go to the next part here. We're also proud to offer this to you. This has nothing to do with Ukraine. This was buried deep inside of the documents and yet is stunning. Nonetheless, let's go ahead and put it up there on the screen that we can offer to all of you, a absolutely fascinating part of a US intelligence assessment. They show us that private incel says that increased 5G services are increasing the risk of satellite interference that will disrupt commercial and military communications. The assessment warns that some of the new 5G frequencies could encroach on some satellite communications for the U.S. military and could even occur if military satellites are on a separate frequency. Now, I know that this is not exactly breaking news to people who are very interested in all of this, but it's a whole other thing to actually see it directly described in a private US intelligence

assessment. And also this specific assessment was marked secret and also not to be shared with the foreign intelligence services, aka the Five Eyes Intelligence. And they are actually specifically citing satellite communications, SATCOM, that they rely on. This, it appears to be, comes from an intelligence warning crystal inside of the National Recognizance Office, I believe, which is actually one of the most secretive parts of the entire U.S. intelligence community. There are 17 different U.S. intelligence agencies. This is the one that is responsible for all military spy satellites around the world. Obviously, it remains one of the most critical parts of U.S. spy infrastructure. So for them to be warning this is, look, all I

would say is I know there's a lot of 5G conspiracies and all that stuff out there, but you look at this, clearly it's disrupting something. What does that mean? How are we going to get around it? Is there a technical fix? All of that, I'm not so sure because clearly what they point to within this is that A, they don't have a technical fix, and B, that even if you were on a different frequency than the 5G network, that it will still disrupt potential military and communication satellite infrastructure that the U.S. relies on so heavily. I know literally nothing about this except what I read over the last day. But apparently, there was already huge concerns from the airline industry about the way 5G could interfere with

aviation. And so there have been these like deadlines that are consistently extended about deploying 5G in and around airports because of these concerns. But based on my days old knowledge of any of this, apparently that's because they're on the same frequency. Right. The fact that it would have an impact on separate frequencies seems to me to be significant here. Well, I mean, again, a lot of this is already publicly known. Yeah. Privately, there's been warnings about this. SpaceX has actually warned about 5G interference,

saying, quote, they will make Starlink internet unusable because they said that the DISH's efforts on 5G would actually result in a huge interference with Starlink service. There's no reason to say that Starlink satellites are somehow different necessarily than U.S. communication satellites

or U.S. spy satellites. That said, I just think it is fascinating to see it inside of this private U.S. intelligence assessment. It's certainly one thing to talk about it in kind of the open commercial space environment, but it also shows you like the military and their spy satellites are not above also being blocked by 5G. I mean, yeah, I mean, in terms of some of the stories inside of these documents that have nothing to do with Ukraine, that was one that really jumped out at me. And I was like, oh, wow. I was like, this is significant enough. This also takes us back to what this document even is. Look, we don't exactly know where it came from. However, the current speculation is that this is very likely part of a large briefing booklet that is given to somebody like the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Ergo, it very likely came from somebody around the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. There's an office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff here in Washington inside of the Pentagon where they would aggregate this type of intelligence and deliver it to principals and give them like a briefing booklet. And clearly this was significant enough for them to include it because, and this takes some of the background, how do you even get some of your stuff included in the daily briefing based upon from what I've been able to read from people who've been involved in this? It's actually a real process. It's like a war between all the intel agencies to say like, what is the most significant parts of this? What should we be able to put? What do these senior leaders really need to know? It was enough for one of the most principal military policymakers here in the US to be warned about it inside of this briefing book. Not saying it's a catastrophe, just that they found it significant enough to

include inside of their briefing. Interesting. That's all I can really say. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, again, the fact that this was all revealed is incredibly embarrassing and humiliating for the Pentagon and for all of our intelligence agencies. Oh, yes, absolutely. Okay. So take of that what you will. 5G, it's interfering. We don't know what that means. We just wanted you to know that it's part of the briefing booklet. And we think that's something our government is concerned about. They're concerned about it. So maybe we should be concerned about it. All right. Let's go to the final part here about these documents. Just how did these come about? So like I said, Bellingcat, which, you know, it's an organization, very controversial. They did their investigation, how other outlets are looking into it, relying on little bits and

clues. Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. The Wall Street Journal, relying both on Bellingcat reporting, but some of their own original reporting, says, one of the most significant leaks of highly classified information in recent history began amongst a small group of posters on a messaging channel that were trafficked in memes, jokes, and quote, racist talk. Now, first of all, any internet community that is anonymous will, of course, devolve into all kinds of shit posting. So let's not say that that's necessarily a bad thing for this group. Now, what exactly was posted there? top secret sometime in January, including some of the intercepted communications where we've talked about here about US allies, the details of American penetration plans inside of Russia.

Then these documents, which actually at one time numbered in the hundreds, actually stayed in this tiny Discord group up until early March. Basically, nobody in the group found it significant enough to publicize. Nobody in Discord was really aware of it. Nobody in the public. And over these one to two month period, more and more of these documents began appearing inside of this Discord. Then though, another user who was part of this group reposted several dozen images to another group with a much larger audience. This is kind of when the trail picks up. That is where, quote, at least 10 files migrated to a Minecraft computer game Discord server.

Then what happened is that on Wednesday, Russian propaganda accounts on Telegram, which I have now joined, so thank you, Telegram. My phone is now full of acrylic messaging. They, what they did is they took those, repurposed specifically the KIA document, spread like wildfire, and that's when CounterPoints covered it for the very first time on Friday with the initial indication. Since that time on Friday that CounterPoints covered it,

we and some other outlets have been able to obtain a portion of these documents. Unfortunately, we have nobody, it have been able to obtain a portion of these documents. Unfortunately, we have nobody, it seems, but from what I can tell, and I've gone deep, has the original set of the hundreds of documents that this man posted. Discord nuked the original server. They nuked the Minecraft server as well. And currently, you know, we have about half of what was publicly posted on this website. But the other half. By the way, if you have them, please, please send it to us. I would love to read it. But from what I can tell, based on some of the forensic other people that I've interacted with around this crystal, they kind of appear to

be gone. Yeah. I mean, it's a tragedy for us. None of the mainstream outlets have them either. No, nobody has them. Everybody, like the most anybody has is what we've been able to obtain. And so, yeah, those original documents, like I'd have to presume, you'd have to presume the Russian government has them. You'd have to presume that the U.S. government has them, but they have managed to, it seems like, wholly scrub them from the Internet. I mean, one of the things that's fascinating here is sometimes you can delude yourself into thinking that the U.S. government acts in the way that it's portrayed in the movies, like this super, you know, high tech, they're on top of their game in every way. But it's extraordinary. These documents, they were hanging out there for months before anybody noticed, before the U.S. government noticed. And I mean, you can sort of understand it because how could you possibly be monitoring like all of the 20,000 Discord servers, etc.? But it's just kind of wild to think that this top secret, highly classified information has been out there publicly posted for months.

And it only just recently came to the attention of the news media and the U.S. government, who are completely scrambling now. And, you know, they had a quote in here to give you a sense of how freaked out they are, how angry and upset and like humiliated, embarrassed, whatever they are about this disclosure. They interviewed a former FBI senior executive who now is with some government contracting firm. And he said, they're going to be looking to get to the bottom of who did it as expeditiously as possible. They're going to be sparing no resource. The FBI is approaching this as if someone has committed a treasonous act. And one of the things they point to that will be relevant in terms of

their search is something we mentioned briefly yesterday, which is that if you look at these documents, you know, it's they were folded up, they're unfolded, they try to like flatten them out, and then they just laid them on top of like whatever was around and took pictures of them. And so in the background of the documents, you can see what they describe as a variety of items that you can see in the margin of the photos, including Gorilla Glue, shoes, and instructions for a Glasshawk HD spotting scope. Details they say could facilitate the search for the leaker. So they are going to come after this individual or individuals with the full force of the U.S. government. But, you know, in my opinion, this person, frankly, is a hero. Oh, absolutely. To get this kind of accurate, you know, very recent, like weeks old information about the U.S.'s view of this war,

what we're doing, what our understanding of what Ukraine is doing, understanding of what Russia is doing, our understanding of what our allies are doing. It's absolutely critical for the U.S. public to be informed about the reality of what's happening, not the spin that's being fed to us by the U.S. government and regurgitating and regurgitated in large part by mainstream news outlets. And the last thing I'll say, Sagar, is I think it's been telling, too, some of these outlets, you know, I don't want to besmirch them. They've done a good job reporting some of the sound. I think the New York Times in particular, like publishing some of the documents. But the way they frame it. Oh, it's BS. You know, it's very selective in the pieces that they choose to report out. And, you know, one of the parts

that's certainly most sensitive is the fact that Ukraine is may have already run out of like their air defense missiles and the location of their air defense missiles. And the location of their air defense, all of that is very sensitive. And that got reported out, understandably so. But that's the sort of thing that can actually strengthen the hand of the hawks by saying, like, oh, we got to do more and we got to help them and we got to send them fighter jets, etc. Things like China's red lines, things like the fact that Zelensky does want to strike within Russia, and the only reason he hasn't is because we haven't provided long-term missiles. Interesting that those pieces don't get reported out. And then the other thing that they consistently emphasize

is like, oh, we're so deep inside of Russia. We've got these great sources in terms of Russia. We've infiltrated all of their various agencies, etc. So even the way that this has been reported out by the mainstream press, I think has been revealing of a particular hawkish bias that exists across the board. Oh, absolutely. I mean, even today, first, the front page editorial from the Wall Street Journal, wartime intelligence leaks can sink allies. And they're basically going after the leaker, being like, he's responsible for possibly sinking Ukraine and this is America's fault.

No, whatever has happened here is not on the leaker. If anything, it's on the US government for lying to us and the Ukrainians, frankly, about what their intentions are and about their ability to sustain. You're the ones who lied. He just told us the truth, or she, whoever this person is. I'm guessing he, just based on some of the paraphernalia in the background. But look, whoever this person is, they did us all a great service. In fact, in the history of significant military leaks, this appears to be

probably the most significant national security leak since the Edward Snowden documents. And in those documents, what a lot of analysts have been saying is what makes this one the most significant national security leak since the Edward Snowden documents. And in those documents, what a lot of analysts have been saying is what makes this one the most extraordinary is the real-time nature of it, is that you and I can sit here, I've literally got the doc in front of me, and I can read what President Zelensky was privately saying, according to the U.S. intelligence community, a month and a half ago. That's really the crazy part. Some of the biggest revelations from Wiki leaks and others, they were years old now at that point. I'm not saying they weren't important. They absolutely were. The Wiki leaks, even in terms of the national security age, the NSA leaks that Edward Snowden gave us, these were programs that were spun up post 9-11. They detailed the security

infrastructure that had been in place for decades. I mean, this is real-time data from only a month ago about Ukraine's possible counteroffensive. Oh, turns out that the U.S. intelligence and military community privately believes there's no way that they're going to have a successful spring counteroffensive. They also believe the same thing for Russia. Some of the other leaks, one we didn't even get to is Egypt. You know, this is a crazy leak. Egypt, it was inside the docks. The Washington Post ended up reporting it out. They, on February 1st, were privately going to send weapons to Russia. They are the second largest recipient of US military aid in the world. And they did so privately right after Secretary of State Anthony Blinken was there on the ground.

We have no respect. Like the rest of the world looks at us like a joke. They're willing to take our money, but then they won't even do what we want them to do. I'm not saying Egypt should do what we want them to do. More what I'm saying is it is clear that outside of the Western world, the entire Ukraine first narrative, Russia bad, all this stuff, they're just not buying it. We're not just talking about Brazil, India, and China. We are talking about Egypt. We're talking about South Korea. We're talking about Israel, some of the closest US allies over decades. So I think that is the most significant, important thing that has come out of these documents. And

unfortunately, though, given the small number of people that were inside this Discord server, Crystal, it doesn't take a genius to figure out that all the DOJ has to do is subpoena the IP addresses of all 10 to 12 people or whatever who are inside of this thing. And, you know, whoever it is, good luck to you. That's all I can say.

Yeah, for sure. There was also some stuff in there about the UAE deepening their engagement with Russia. That was one that the mainstream press has reported. In mid-January, officials claimed UAE security service officials in Russia had agreed to work together against U.S. and U.K. intelligence agencies, according to newly acquired signals intelligence. That's from one of these documents as well. So it really does show you, as you were saying, that, you know, what we wanted the world to do with regard to the Ukraine war is not did not come to fruition, even within NATO. I mean, you see, you know, France and Germany certainly have a different view towards China and different approach here. And we have been wildly unable to really get the world on our side and convince them that this is truly some fight over democratic values or human rights or anything of the sort. They're not buying it.

Let's go to our next block here. This is probably the most significant event, actually, outside of the leaked documents. So currently, the Ukrainian deputy foreign minister is traveling around the world in a bid to try and get countries to broker peace. One of those is New Delhi. Let's go and put this up on the screen. more involved in helping resolve its conflict with Russia and has even sought now an actual private visit by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other top officials to Kyiv. She told the broadcaster that Kyiv has expected India to invite Ukrainian politicians as well to participate in the G20 and intensify political dialogue that is happening in India that will be held in September where New

Delhi is actually hosting the event. The reason why that this is so important is a couple of ones. One, India was the bore a tremendous amount of brunt of public criticism in the West and specifically here in the US for not going along with sanctioning Russia and specifically for continuing to buy Russian oil. They were, you know, oh, they're taking the Russian side. They're taking the side of the barbarians. They're not, you know, standing up for Ukraine. And India from the beginning was like, look, we're not saying we like what's going on in Russia. They're like, but we're going to buy cheap oil if you idiots aren't going to buy it. And in terms of this whole democracy, you know, under attack thing, they're like, that's just not how we see the world.

We do what's best for our country. It's realism, literally 101. Well, I find it incredibly ironic that now whenever Ukraine appears to be wanting help brokering peace deals, and I think we know why if we take a look at those classified slides around Ukrainian air defense, who are they turning to? India, China, France, three of the countries, which France, you know, of course has supplied weapons to Ukraine, but has always not really been on board with the US and the UK and the, like Latvia, Estonia, the Baltic states in their hawkish view of the conflict. They have always wanted peace. That's why Macron was inside. It was literally just in Beijing. Our producer, Mac, flagged a video where he released this bizarre China highlight reel of his visit to Beijing where he's like, France loves Beijing. We all have great friends. It's all fun, fun and games. Apparently, his visit did not go

very well. Xi Jinping kind of laughed him off the stage, and he committed a very bad diplomatic faux pas. But once again, when Ukraine wants weapons, and they want the conflict to keep going, they come to Washington. When they actually want peace, they're not coming to Washington. They're going to New Delhi. That's what they want Prime Minister Modi to visit them. And here's the other thing. If you're Modi, why would you do it? At this point, you have been denigrated. You have been criticized by Zelensky himself for continuing to buy Russian oil. You have been ostracized by the West, pointed to as some war criminal by proxy. What do you care at this point? Well, I don't think that's the way to look at it because even though they have, you know, done what was best for them in terms of trying to buy cheap Russian gas, they still have been impacted by the elevated food prices and trade disruptions and elevated energy prices. So I do think that there is a, even if you're just looking cold hard self-interest, I think they are directly self-interested in being a part of resolving this conflict.

And I also think that, you know, in terms of like global prestige, you can't, you know, you can't do better than being a critical part of trying to broker a peace here. So that's the, so first of all, you're right. There is a hard power case for why they may want to bring it.

But second, in terms of why and the only way that this might actually work, it would be because this would elevate India basically to great power status. Because, and I'm not saying that they necessarily aren't, but this really would put them effectively on the league of DC, Beijing, and would put New Delhi right up there. Because if they were to do this, which not necessarily all that much in their self-interest,

somewhat, but not necessarily, that would elevate them to the status of brokering peace deals, which are in the interest of the two parties because they have diplomatic relations with both. Modi has had that visit with the President Putin. He also, I mean, he hasn't visited Ukraine, but he hasn't also, of course, been like entirely on the Russian side in the way that Beijing has. This might be the only actual honest broker in the conflict, which would elevate them significantly and give them prestige. But, you know, speaking also from a Washington perspective, that's not what you want. Like you are the ones who are supposed to be the global peacemakers, trying to do shuttle diplomacy.

That's the Kissingerian model. That's something we prided ourselves for years. We have no impact on it. We have no influence in this whatsoever. Because once you take sides, who's going to trust you to be a neutral broker? Exactly. I mean, really clear here. We're going to talk later about Yemen.

It's clear there. It's clear with regard to Iran and Saudi. When you take clear sides in a conflict, they're not going to come to you for peace. They're going to go to countries like India or China or Brazil, nations that have tried to at least publicly maintain some sort of a plausible deniability and neutral status. So I also think that these revelations, this approach to India, it really helps to understand why you're now seeing overtures from Zelensky to nations like India or even nations like China in terms of trying to forge some sort of a diplomatic deal. Also some indications from them that they are willing to not try to retake Crimea,

because you can see within these documents that they're not in a strong position strategically. And they know that, you know, the U.S. has been giving them a blank check, but that may not last forever. And they're already critically low of, you know, certainly air defenses, also ammunition, that they are in a difficult place, that they don't expect this spring offensive to yield anything more than an indefinite stalemate. So that's why there is a new seeming potential interest from Zelensky in actually having some sort of a negotiated settlement to bring this conflict to a close. And it is a catastrophe and embarrassing that the U.S. has short-circuited

any potential peace negotiations to date and is being effectively shut out of, and understandably so, of any possible conversations about a diplomatic resolution here. Yeah, and we actually have some of the comments that the Ukrainian deputy foreign minister made. Let's take a listen to that.

The presidency in G20 is an important and essential role for India. So, of course, we believe that India should be engaged and involved into Ukrainian issue to a greater extent. We are not in the position of instructing India, of course. We do respect the decisions that are taken by India and Prime Minister Narendra Modi with his 3D attitude, diplomacy, dialogue, democracy, with his message that he, diplomacy, dialogue, democracy, with his message that he delivered in Samarkand that there is no era of war. And we do accept it and we do share this message. But we think that India's global role, especially with regards to the presidency in G20,

with regards to the influence in the global south and sharing experience for the global south and being a leading country for the Asian-African countries, is important to also not escape discussion about Ukraine, because it might seem regional here. It might seem distant from here, but it's not. She's referencing Prime Minister Modi's speech whenever he appeared before Vladimir Putin, and he said this is not an age of war. It's kind of a rebuke to Putin's face that happened there. But look, it's just, to me, I love watching how the Ukrainians act when they're not acting in a Western context. Whenever they're not here in their military, you know, outfits begging for weapons and they're outside of the rest of the world trying to talk to them, it's a very different

tune. And I think that tune is exactly what you see there. And the fact that they can't reach out to Washington, they have to look to the rest of the world. People who were vilified for keeping a neutral stance in this conflict now being the ones who might actually be able to bring it to an end. I think that vindicates a lot of Indian strategy, Brazilian strategy, and many others who decided not to take one side in this. I hope it's successful. So we'll keep a close eye on it. And I wanted to turn to domestic politics and what is unfolding right now side in this. I hope it's successful. So we'll keep a close eye on it. And wanted to turn to domestic politics and what is unfolding right now down in Florida. So we've been talking about the fact that abortion politics ever since Roe was overturned in the Dobbs Supreme Court

decision have been a total electoral disaster for Republicans. Wherever you stand on the issue, I just don't think that's deniable at this point. I mean, you saw the pro-choice position winning in places like Kansas. Just last week, we had in Wisconsin the most 50-50 state you could possibly get. You have the state Supreme Court seat that is won overwhelmingly by a liberal candidate who is running on abortion access, and she wins by 11 points in the state of Wisconsin. So I think the electoral significance of this issue is pretty clear at this point. However, Ron DeSantis is moving forward with quite an extreme bill that is being passed right now through the Florida legislature. Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen. So he is, in the words of Politico, charging ahead on a six-week abortion ban. They say that the governor's support

might seem politically risky, but he's been backing restrictive abortion policy for years. Apparently, he initially signaled support for a six-week abortion ban during his first race for governor. Currently in Florida, they've instituted a 15-week ban that includes some exemptions for the life of the mother, but very limited. And I can give you some more details on that in a moment. You have people who are on the religious right who are pro-life activists really praising him for making this move. They say it makes it clear that DeSantis is solidly pro-life. He's trying to move the ball for the protection of the unborn and can be trusted to do that in the future. That's according to the president of the Florida Family Policy Council.

And you've got some Republican consultants. I think this is interesting, Sagar. I'm interested to get your reaction on this. Who are basically saying DeSantis' whole play here is to have his list of policy accomplishments through the Florida legislature be what positions him properly for the Republican primary. So you've got one top Republican Florida consultant saying if he decides to run, he wants to have the most robust cultural and policy conservative list of accomplishments. This makes him impervious to hits from the right. And to show you how complicated this is, even in the state of Florida, some of the Republicans who won in Biden districts actually are not backing the six week ban.

So even within the state of Florida, even among the Republican Party, this is quite controversial. But, you know, personally, I think if DeSantis believes that his positioning within the Republican primary is going to be based on whatever he does in the Florida legislative session. I don't know what race he's running. Well, this is the issue. Let's look at this on the merits. So first of all, for the people who are willing to have abortion be more of a compromise issue, you're going to vote for Trump. Why wouldn't you vote for Trump? That's actually one-third of the people who voted for Trump in 2016 were pro-choice.

They just didn't care that much. Then, if you are trying to win hardline abortion voters like evangelicals, why wouldn't they just vote for Mike Pence, who's going to be for a national abortion ban? He's like, six weeks? What are you talking about, six weeks? That's way too much. I'm for a full-scale ban. Now, not a lot of people are for it, but those maybe 13% or whatever of the country, but they all vote Republican, and they're all evangelicals, and they're going to support somebody like Pence. So who exactly are you targeting here? You're basically pushing legislation, which is dramatically politically unpopular on a national level and most likely in the state of Florida. And then second, you are trying to do it to burnish

your credentials in a almost like targeted way that somehow strikes at exactly the middle of nowhere. Like there are two chasms in the debate. There's Trump who thinks that the Roe versus Wade overturn, he will take credit for it, but politically knows it's a disaster. And then there's Pence who is like, no, we didn't go far enough. We need to outright ban abortion.

Who are you going for? There's just not a lot of voters in the six week category. They're either basically for a ban or they're like ish pro-life, I guess. And then a lot of people, and even those people most likely will vote for Trump since he's the one who got Roe versus Wade overturned. Or they're just straight up pro-choice voters, which is some 75% or whatever of the entire country. Matt Iglesias made actually a good point about this, which is Ron DeSantis' best, most compelling lane in the Republican primary is like, I'm a more electable version of Trump. And I've always been skeptical that that was going to be a winning argument because, frankly, I just don't think the GOP base,

I don't think they see it that way. I think they believe Trump is perfectly electable. After all, he was president before. I don't think they put the priority on electability that the Democratic base seems to. So I was always skeptical of that case. But that's the strongest argument is like, if you want to beat Joe Biden and the Democrats, you might like Donald Trump. But now we've got a record of several election cycles that didn't go well for Republicans. Let's go with the guy who is more electable. Passing a six-week abortion ban, which is insanely unpopular in Florida and everywhere else. It's not even really popular

with the Republican base. It's popular with like the most activist part of the religious right, no doubt about it. But this is insanely unpopular. How does that make you more electable in a general election? And it's not just on this. I mean, Trump has been hitting him hard on Social Security and Medicare. DeSantis has positioned himself in terms of policy and ideology to the right of Trump, especially on issues where the Republican elite hard right position is actually out of step definitely with the country and actually with a significant part of the Republican base. So in my opinion, when you look at this, he's damaging his ability to make that electability argument, which is the strongest case

that he really can make both to GOP voters and to the donors that he will need in order to back his campaign. Just to underscore this and how unpopular this position is, and frankly, this is actually, this was not cherry-picked. This is one of the maybe more beneficial polls in terms of the six-week abortion ban. It shows that having higher numbers than I've seen in some other polls, but I didn't wanna sandbag the case.

So this is from the Wall Street Journal. According to their survey, first of all, 60% of voters now say abortion should be legal in all or most cases. That has actually gone up by five points and reflects the fact that since the Dobbs decision, which overturned Roe versus Wade, support for abortion rights nationwide has actually gone up. So the pro-choice position hasn't stayed this 50-50 issue that people have assumed. The pro-choice position has actually become significantly more popular, not just in this poll, but other polls as well. 29% said it should be illegal, except in cases of rape, incest, and when the woman's life is in danger. 6% say it should be

illegal in all cases. Okay, that's down from what it used to be was at 11 percent, which was still very low, but again shows you that shift. When you're specifically talking about an abortion ban at six weeks of pregnancy, 62 percent oppose that ban. Just about 25 percent, 25 percent say they support a six-week abortion ban. So this is a wildly unpopular position. And we have also seen, you know, sometimes things are unpopular, but they're not particularly motivating to voters. This issue has been extremely motivating for voters in a way that, again, I didn't necessarily foresee. No, no, I didn't necessarily foresee. No, no, I don't. I didn't foresee it nearly either.

I think really because what it did is it activated a bunch of people who just don't vote that much. I mean, that's what we really saw in Wisconsin. I also would just say it really underscores the biggest political noose around the Republicans next. They outperformed dramatically in many elections in Wisconsin, except for one that happened to do with abortion. So if the Democrats can make 2024 all about abortion, it will be dramatically to

their benefit. It puts Trump in a very difficult political position. And, you know, I don't really know how he can possibly wriggle his way out of that one because you can't disavow your own voters while also trying to win over a swing voter because they basically are diametrically opposed. I saw Ryan Gerduski, who is a DeSantis supporter, say that the six-week ban is the single most unpopular thing that Ron DeSantis has ever done. And it's interesting, too, because that's where the institutional GOP is most aligned with him. And that's always going to be the toughest one to square. As someone who has had three babies, at six weeks, it is rare that you even know that you're pregnant. Like, that's how early you're talking.

There's already stories, I was just reading these horrible cases that the Washington Post documented with the 15-week ban, which has these limited exceptions for the life of the mother. But it's only when you really, like, are on death's door that they will, you know, even with the 15-week ban, if you're beyond that, that they will actually perform the abortion when mother's life may not be, you know, imminently in danger right at that second, but it's very much at risk. They documented these two women who who around week 18, their water broke. Now this is, you know, long before fetal viability. And these were women who had struggled to carry pregnancies to term in the past. And in any other, you know, state where abortion is legal,

the standard of care is that you offer the women at least the ability to have the abortion. The baby is not going to live. And if you allow the mother to go through with like, you know, the miscarriage, wait for the miscarriage to happen, they're at much heightened risk of infection and much heightened risk of hemorrhaging. Well, one of these women, she ends up hemorrhaging to the point that she loses half of her body's blood, nearly dies, has to be put in a medically induced coma. So we're already talking about a situation where women's lives are at risk, even with something like a 15-week abortion ban, which is already in Florida. You can only imagine the sort of horror stories that are going to come out when you have a six-week ban in place. And do you think

that the press is going to ignore what is happening to these women and their stories and the way that they're being put at risk because of these new policies? I don't think so. So in any case, I think he's delusional in terms of the Republican primary. If he thinks his little legislative record down in Florida is going to be what sways voters at this point, you can see the Republican primary is going to be dominated by Trump, his indictments, people coming after Trump. That's the landscape that you've set up. And then if your strongest case is on the electability candidate, you are just like, you know, cutting yourself off at the knees in terms of that position. There's no question that a six-week ban is just dramatically politically unpopular for many of the reasons that you just cited. I will say 15-week ban has a significant amount of popularity. That was at least at some point post-Obs was around like 70% approval. And look,

I mean, in Europe, like Germany has a 12-week ban. Like I think France is at 14 weeks. Now, I don't know about these- They have much broader availability to receive care based on risk to the mother. So I was going to say, it seems that they have more exceptions outside of elective abortion, which I think most people are broadly on par with. So I'm more saying it seems quite reasonable to have some 15-week standard with the elective or with the proviso that anybody whose life is in danger also has access to an abortion. Just from a general, like actual where we could land on all of this for a national public policy. I wanted to pull up the numbers because here's part of, you know, the public sentiment has really shifted post-Obs consistently, not just in this Wall Street Journal poll, but in effectively every gallops polling, pews polling, people have become more pro-choice. I think it's partly because

they've seen these bans go into effect and they've seen the way that the law has been applied. And so when you say in Florida, you know, the life of the mother's at risk, they really mean like you have to be about to die right then and there. They don't take into account, well, if you don't have this procedure, you're going to have the baby is not going to live like that's off the table. You are going to have outcomes in terms of their health during pregnancy or states that don't have these bans into, you know, that have not been instituted. So I'm looking, the Wall Street Journal poll had numbers, I believe, on abortions after six weeks, as I said, only 26% support it. Abortions after 15 weeks, it's almost identical. It's like 27% support it, maybe 30. They have this like bar chart where they don't give the specific numbers,

but it's not popular. Maybe it was more popular before these bans went into effect, but now that people have seen the impact and what it actually means in real terms for women's lives, you're talking about a few, you know, few more percentage points popularity than the six-week abortion ban. Yeah. I mean, it's certainly possible. I'm more thinking about like where some sort of grand bargain actually could be struck in terms of where people feel comfortable. I don't know. What has any support then? Just what, is it Roe versus Wade, like the first trimester? Yeah. I mean, I think Roe versus Wade, yes, I think that is correct. Because remember, Roe versus Wade was only about, you know, pre-viability.

So post-viability, then states could do whatever they wanted. So in states like Mississippi, I mean, they basically had, with Roe versus Wade plus Casey, they had already basically banned abortion in the state. There was like one clinic open and then that was under pressure to close, et cetera. And that was permitted. I personally don't support that, but that was the landscape ahead of time. And I think that is generally where most people are. It's like 60% of the public that is, you know, generally pro-choice, generally believes abortion should be available in all or most cases.

So, yeah, I think that's where the public sentiment is at this point. See, I'm not sure, though, about all or most cases, because isn't all or most cases include late-term abortions? I mean, like, here in D.C. Well, all cases would be late-term. Most cases would be the sorts, you know, people, like, how they personally define it, I think, really is very different. Right.

But for, you know, for a lot of people, they'd say most cases is, you know, previability or something like that. So it's, listen, Americans have always had mixed, complicated views on the issue, which I understand because I'm not going to deny it's like a morally fraught and difficult and complicated issue. There's just like no doubt about that. But number one, sentiment has moved in the pro-choice direction post-jobs, I think because of the reality of some of the situation. Number two, now the ground that Republicans are exclusively fighting on is definitionally extreme. Yeah, that absolutely true. Because to go further than what the court has already done is just definitionally going to put you on the wrong side of public opinion in any case. Six weeks, no question about it.

It is the single most unpopular thing the man will do. Will it matter? We'll find out. In the same respect, there are some warning signs being raised from a bunch of Republican strategists. Just some of these quotes are funny. So let's go ahead and put this up on the screen from Politico. They say, as Trump dominates the airwaves, quote, it feels like effing 2016. Terry Sullivan, who ran Marco Rubio's 2016 campaign for president, said this is deja vu all over again.

Trump dominates media coverage, making it impossible for his competitors to get any coverage or for attraction. Another Republican strategist who supports DeSantis but was granted anonymity to speak freely, said, it feels like effing 2016. Is there anything that can suck up as much political oxygen in the American political landscape as Trump? I don't think so. And then they have this anecdote that is brutal. DeSantis went to New York, to Long Island recently to promote his book or whatever and his potential candidacy. He was greeted by, they say, a number of New Yorkers in MAGA hats and a sign that read DeSantis 2028. So not this election cycle, but maybe next one we'd give you a shot, suggesting you get out of Trump's way. Then Politico went to the event where DeSantis was speaking, and they said that nearly all of the attendees that they interviewed spoke favorably about DeSantis, but said they are already committed to supporting the ex-president's comeback bid.

So, like, yeah, we like him, but, you know, we're with Trump. Yeah, I mean, look, it's 2016 all over again in terms of his domination in the race, and I think very specifically for a reason, especially, as you said, citing the Iglesias point, that a lot of what DeSantis does, or at least says that he wants to do to try to be electable, is less politically popular than what Trump wants to do. Yeah. We'll see which one wins out. I honestly have no idea. Yeah. So let's get to our current president. He did a little interview with Al Roker of the Today Show with regard to the Easter egg roll.

And, you know, there's two things that are noteworthy here. First of all, his inability, persistent inability to communicate his thoughts in any coherent manner whatsoever. Second of all, he seems to, for I guess the most clearly stated way, in the most clearly stated way, indicate that he is planning on running for president again. Take a listen. Will you be taking part in the Easter egg rolls after planning on after 2024? Well, I plan on at least three or four more Easter egg rolls. At least three or four more? Maybe five. Maybe five.

Maybe six. What the hell? I don't know. Are you saying that you would be taking part in our upcoming election in 2024? Well, I'll either be rolling an egg or being the guy who's pushing them out. you would be taking part in our upcoming election in 2024. I'll either be rolling an egg or being the guy who's pushing him out. Come on, help a brother out. Make some news for me. I plan on running Al, but we're not prepared to announce it yet. All right.

So plans on running, but not ready to announce it yet. And he plans on being the guy that rolls or pushes. That's the oddest interaction. Yeah, I mean, Al Roker, I can't believe that guy is still working i'm like al retire man you i'm sure you got enough money at this point brother i love it i love the way that when biden says something like that which is just like totally nonsensical right everyone just pretends like oh yeah of course yes sir i totally understand what you're saying. Well, okay, so he says, I plan on running. But what is with the delay? That's where it all comes. Like, nobody seems to understand. We have some reporting a little bit that gets into it.

But it's just odd because it would give him an advantage to be in the race so he could give the American people, I think, the clear contrast. And so he could continue to start raising money, which is what expected to be a very expensive presidential race. There doesn't seem to be any strategic benefit to running. Here's the other case that I could make. Trump is dominating the airwaves. Trump is dramatically unpopular right now. He's got like a 25% favorability rating. Let him hang himself as the center of the stage of the news, and then I'll come in and sweep up just like I did in 2020. That's not a bad case, I guess, I could make, but I still would want to be in the race and have some skin in the game.

Yeah, I don't know. The only way I can explain it is through his own personal attributes throughout his career of indecisiveness and not necessarily about the decision of whether or not he wants to run again. I have always thought that he's going to run again. I've always thought that the idea

the Democratic Party was going to try to push him to the side was overblown because, you know, listen, Kamala Harris is the heir apparent and she is less popular and they really have no way to get around. Right. So I always thought they were going to move forward with Biden if he was at all capable of, you know, being propped up in a weekend at Bernie's kind of a way. He, though, has always throughout his career had trouble just making decisions about like, where are you going to launch? Where is your campaign going to be headquartered? Who's going to be in charge? What kind of messaging are you going to roll out with? Who are going to be your admin? Like these basic campaign decisions. He's both a micromanager and he's really indecisive.

So then everyone just gets hamstrung. And in the same respect, I don't think they take seriously any sort of primary challenge. So they don't feel pressured to get in. And so they just let Biden like do his thing and not really come to any particular decision. And then the announcement date just keeps getting pushed and pushed and pushed and pushed and pushed. That's my best guess of what's going on. Yeah, it's very odd. I mean, they keep saying that they expect him to launch sometime soon. We have the Axios report we can reference here up on the screen. And they're saying now believe it could come as late as July or perhaps even the fall. I mean, the reason the fall seems very odd is that only puts you one year out from the actual 2024 election. I mean,

it says the announcement timeline could be affected by his advisor's desire to have strong initial fundraising numbers to try and avoid news reports about a lack of enthusiasm or vulnerability, which if that's what you're saying, that's already a vulnerability that you don't think you can raise enough money. It's a little bit odd. Yeah, that's true. Especially, I mean, you're the sitting president. Yeah, you should be able to raise a ton of money. Trump raised $300 million, something crazy in the first six months of his campaign.

I'm talking in my monologue about this sort of like desperate and pathetic social media influencer plan that they've been rolling out because it's always been the case Biden has had like zero organic excitement for him among young voters, grassroots or online. You know, it was very much last time around this suck it up and vote Joe kind of a vibe and continues to be the case. He's even less popular now, certainly than he was at the time. His

popularity appears to have dipped in the past several months for, you know, I think a variety of reasons. But yeah, they're sort of desperately trying to float like access and little goodies to online social media influencers to try to get them to make the case for Joe online. It's like, good luck trying to gin up that AstroTurf. We'll see if that's going to work. I don't see it. Yeah. I mean, I think the fact though that they do have to delay it just shows you the fundamental strength of his campaign is just any contrast with Trump because that's the only way he came in. And the weakness of the campaign is nobody really likes him. A lot of people would like to see somebody else.

Most people think he's just way too old and he's a begrudging kind of acceptance as a president, which is a very odd position to be in. Yeah. Very odd. Very odd. And I think the total political landscape really lays bare a nation in difficult decline. I don't want to say terminal decline, but in quite decline, given that you have two likely candidates that really not very many people actually want to see occupy the Oval Office moving forward. And both of them also are quite aged. So let's talk about, we weren't able

to get to this yesterday, but this is quite explosive. The revelations that ProPublica was able to unearth about Justice Thomas and the repeated luxury vacations that he has been gifted along with, you know, a lot of other perks and benefits from this Republican donor billionaire. Let's go ahead and put this first piece up on the screen. You can see this is the yacht that Thomas has been able to, the luxury yacht that Thomas has been able to travel the world on that is owned by this billionaire. And on the other side is this painting of Thomas, the billionaire, whose name is Harlan Crowe. Leonard Leo, actually, who's the head of the Federalist Society, is also very prominent and prestigious

and important in terms of conservative circles and especially influential with regard to the Supreme Court. There they are smoking their cigars and hanging out together at Crowe's luxury retreat getaway, etc. So let's go ahead and put the actual ProPublica report up on the screen. Let me give you some of the details here because they are pretty extraordinary. The headline is Clarence Thomas and the billionaire. They start off with an anecdote

about what happened in late June, 2019, right after the Supreme Court released its final opinion of the term. He boarded a large private jet headed to Indonesia. He and his wife were going on vacation, nine days of island hopping on that super yacht that we showed you before, and staffed by a coterie of attendants, they say, and a private chef. Now, if he had paid for this trip himself, it would have cost over $500,000. But he didn't.

He was brought along and all expenses paid by his buddy, Harlan Crow. Now, this was far from the only trip that Harlan Crow had gifted him. For more than two decades, they say Thomas has accepted luxury trips virtually every single year with the Dallas businessmen without disclosing them. He's a public servant who has a salary of $285,000, but he's been able to vacation on Crow's super yacht around the globe. He flies seemingly regularly on Crow's private jet. He's gone with Crow to Bohemian Grove. That's that sort of infamous exclusive California all-male retreat. You can ask Alex Jones about what that is.

And to Crow's sprawling ranch in East Texas. He typically spends about a week every single summer at Crow's private resort in the Adirondacks. And they have a bunch of photos in the report that shows the lavishness of the type of accommodations that Justice Thomas has been provided here from Harlan Crowe. They say that this has no precedent in the modern history of the Supreme Court. And where this really gets into trouble, none of this has appeared on Thomas's financial disclosures. His failure to report any of this could run afoul of ethics laws. And reminder, the Supreme Court has very little in the way of ethics laws. Other federal courts have a code of conduct. They have specific guidance about how to deal with conflicts of interest. Supreme Court is largely up to, you know,

them basically policing themselves. But there is a requirement that you disclose these sorts of gifts. And just this year, it has been updated to clearly reflect the fact that, you know, private jet trips, for instance, don't count as just sort of like normal hospitality of having a dinner at a friend's house or whatever that you wouldn't have to report. So this is really something. And adding to the concerns of corruption here is the fact that when Thomas is going and staying at this private resort, there are a lot of other influential Republicans, influential corporate executives there. Recent guests included executives at Verizon, PricewaterhouseCoopers, major Republican donors, one of the leaders of the American Enterprise Institute. So they're sort of gathering all of these conservatives together and, you know, putting them up at this luxury private resort. And then Crowe himself has been a significant donor on the Republican side. But even putting all of that aside, you know, what we talk about with

regard to corruption, whether it's politicians, whether it's the Fed, whether it's judges, whoever it is, is even just the appearance that there is a problem is a problem. And when you're talking about, I mean, this dude has lavished millions of dollars in gifts on Thomas and his wife. There is a real issue there. Even if you could say, oh, he didn't influence them at all. He never talked about Supreme Court cases, et cetera, et cetera. The appearance of that level of direct corruption is incredibly damaging. Here's the thing. Look, if you want to be friends with the guy as a private citizen, nobody is stopping you. But if you want to be friends with the guy as a Supreme Court justice, yeah, that's basically complete. I've seen a lot of Republicans say this is like a witch hunt against Clarence Thomas. I mean, look, there's no real defense of this from a pure ethics point of view. At the end of the day, federal judges have immense power, specifically the Supreme

Court. They have incredible amounts of power. You and I may know them, most people may know them as somebody involved in abortion or any of these other top line cases. Remember this, the vast majority of the cases that come before the court have to do with administrative and business law, commerce. They're the ones who set tremendous amounts of regulation with respect to how businesses get to conduct themselves, environmental protection, taxes, how the administrative state is allowed to behave and levy fines. That is what really that they're, you know, they're bread and butter, like day-to-day stuff that they actually do.

We just don't pay as much attention to it. Well, I don't think that there's a single possible rational defense of this. Remember Bob, I mean, Bob Menendez was indicted by the feds for accepting private jet travel and not disclosing it as some sort of in-kind donation and possible even parts of bribery. Like, look, if you're really friends with a guy,

fly commercial and meet him on the island. It's like you are very within your ability to do that and still hang out with your friend. There's a difference too. Like, look, you can board the yacht for the day and have dinner or whatever and then stay on land and pay for your own private accommodation. Look, any of us, any person who would be accepting gifts of this kind would

understand it as a gift and not just something that you're getting nothing in return for. Maybe that is friend. Maybe you can believe that they're 20 years of friendship and all that stuff. Look, actually, I'm going to say this. I think they probably are friends. I think they're genuinely friends. I don't doubt that. They probably do get along. Harlan Crowe is one of those cringe lords who funds people like Liz Cheney and Jonah Goldberg over at the Dispatch. So his politics and Clarence Thomas's very much kind of stand side by side based on from what I've seen about the guy. And many of these right-wing billionaires consider themselves like philosopher kings, which is why they even care so much about some of the most repulsive people on the planet. I also do want to say his fits are horrible and he should be

canceled for that alone. Specifically the sandals. But put it all aside. Male sandals are very controversial. Oh God. I mean, I cannot imagine having a billion dollars in dressing like that. I guess when you're a billionaire. Whole other level. You can get away with it. Oh, God. I mean, I cannot imagine having a billion dollars in a dress like that. I guess when you're a billionaire, you can get away with it. Whole other level. Well, so a couple things. I do think the fact that he is

an activist in terms of conservative politics, I think that matters. But even if he wasn't, I think it's still a major issue. Even if he was a French billionaire, like somebody who had nothing to do with the work,

it still would matter. Yes. The fact that he has business interests that can be directly impacted by what the court does, that makes it all the worse. But even if he didn't, right, even if he was just like an heir and it didn't really matter what happened to the court in terms of his fortune, this is still a massive issue. And just to give you a sense, so for other federal judges below the Supreme Court, their code of conduct requires them to avoid even the appearance of impropriety. So they're supposed to be held to a very high standard here. And then the other piece of this, which, you know, is just worth noting. Apparently, Harlan Crowe actually financed a documentary about Justice Thomas. In that documentary, Thomas is quoted as saying,

I don't have any problem with going to Europe, but I prefer the United States, and I prefer seeing the regular parts of the United States. I prefer the RV parks. I prefer the Walmart parking lots to the beaches and things like that. There's something normal to me about it. I come from regular stock, and I prefer that. I prefer being around that. Contrast that with the portrait that is painted here of a man who's flying on private jet to board a luxury super yacht for a $500,000 trip to Indonesia. And I think you get a little bit

of a different picture than what he's trying to portray himself in in this Harlan Crowe finance document. If you like nice stuff, it's fine. Nobody begrudges anybody for wanting nice things. In fact, that's what a lot of people want money for, is to be more comfortable and to be able to participate in fun experiences. Nobody would begrudge you for that. I actually have heard that he's kind of a biker guy and does enjoy some of those biker trips. He really genuinely loves the Walmart parking lot. Apparently does. But here's the thing. That doesn't exclude one from the other, right? And, you know, I can see a world where you both like to do that

and you like to go on the yachts, but you just don't mention it. Look, there's no square in this one. I think it looks terrible. And, yeah, I mean, like, I believe so strongly in the appearance of corruption being as bad as corruption itself. And for Thomas, this is a terrible look. It's always been a bad look too with how active his wife is in politics.

And people are like, that's sexist. You know, are you saying, I'm like, listen, they chose this life. Nobody asked you to be, you know, like nobody was like, nobody said that you didn't have a choice in becoming the Supreme Court. You knew what you were signing up for. You don't get to be a private citizen. If you want't have a choice in becoming the Supreme Court. You knew what you were signing up for. You don't get to be a private citizen.

If you want to be a private, that's the funny thing. He probably could make a ton of money if he just retired and wrote some crappy book that Harlan Crow could bulk buy. And then he can afford these own vacations. No doubt about it. For all these guys. This life is accessible to you. Just leave. But for a lot of them, they want to have their cake and they want to eat it too.

Well, I'll just say I hope you guys have seen through the body of our work that we very consistently apply these principles with corruption. Whether it is, you know, conservatives, liberals. Dianne Feinstein. Exactly. Yeah, so, I mean, this one, this is incredibly flagrant. And the fact that he didn't disclose it over this many years, I think, shows you that he knows it's a problem. It's a bad look. It's a terrible look. No question. OK, Crystal, what are you taking a look at?

Well, Biden, in his own bumbling ways, stumbled into making some major news with Al Roker on Easter Sunday. Take a listen. Are you saying that you would be taking part in our upcoming election in 2024? I'll either be rolling an egg or being the guy who's pushing them out. Come on, help a brother out. Make some news for me. I plan on running Al, but we're not prepared to announce it yet. I plan on running Al, but we are not prepared to announce it yet. So there you go. Any lingering suspense over whether our octogenarian president was going to run for a second term should officially be put to bed. As we expected all along, Joe Biden is running. Even if the Dems

wanted to push him out, they can't get around the problem that the chosen era parent Kamala Harris is even less popular than the current White House occupant. But there are signs that while Biden is apparently eager to do the official Easter egg role for another six years, the American people are somewhat less enthusiastic about the prospect of seeing him occupy the office of the president for another term. According to a brand new CNN poll, just 32% of respondents say that he deserves to be reelected. What's more, his performance is panned across a variety of personal characteristics. 67% say that he does not have the stamina and sharpness to serve effectively, which I mean, given that Easter egg roll clip, can you really blame them? 65% say he does not inspire confidence. 54% say he's not honest and trustworthy. And 54% also say he does not care about people like them. That last one I would say is particularly devastating,

given that perceived empathy has always been one of Joe Biden's greatest political talents. These numbers are really bad. But among young people, the numbers are downright catastrophic. In that very same CNN poll, only 26 percent of voters 18 to 34 believe Biden deserves to be reelected, as opposed to 72 percent who do not. It's easy to take for granted young people's antipathy towards the current president. After all, he was not really their candidate in the Democratic primary. But Biden did win young voters by 26 points over Trump. And early in his presidency, young voters actually handed him very high approval ratings as he took action through the American Rescue Plan, including stimulus checks, and signed a bunch of executive orders

in line with progressive priorities, things like addressing climate, lifting the minimum wage, etc. Young voters are supposed to be the bedrock of the Democratic base, and they're supposed to be the emerging coalition, which given time will swamp the Republicans. And yet, there are signs that the Biden team realizes they got a major problem with the youths, and they've cooked up a game plan to try to force Biden love on millennials and the newly politically powerful Gen Z. The plan is both pathetic and gross. Here are the details, as reported by Axios. President Biden's not-yet-official bid for re-election will lean on hundreds of social media influencers who will tout Biden's record and soon may have their own briefing room at the White House, Axios has learned. So apparently, guys, the White

House is working to do with influencers what has long been done with the mainstream press, which is to promise them access in exchange for favorable coverage. This is the corrupt heart of access journalism and a key reason why the mainstream press, cable news in particular, handles mainstream political figures with such kid gloves. They're more interested in maintaining their White House Christmas party invites and off-the-record briefings than they are with actually doing their job the way that they should. Well, now Biden is looking to astroturf some online enthusiasm by the same promised influencers of goodies and proximity to power. According to Axios, hundreds of these so-called influencers are already working directly with the White House.

About two dozen were invited to a White House State of the Union watch party. The White House is also moving to give them a dedicated press briefing space so that they can maintain more consistent communication. Name checked in Axios reporting as creators the White House is working with are Heather Cox Richardson. She's the wildly successful resistance substack author. Vivian Tu, a financial TikToker. And Harry Sisson, a young, dumb political TikToker. Here, presumably, are some of the cringe dividends which are already being reaped from this program. Take a listen. See, this is exactly what leadership looks like. Earlier today, President Biden met with the three Democratic representatives in Tennessee that Republicans voted on expelling. He met with them, he thanked them for fighting for democracy, and he invited them to the White House. See,

unlike Republicans, President Biden actually supports democracy. And he's not gonna just sit by and watch Republicans do these crazy radical things like expelling Democrats for supporting gun control. Thank you to President Biden and these representatives for standing up for democracy and standing up for America. But judging from the comment section, not clear that Sisson's Biden propaganda efforts are really succeeding here. Some comments are supportive, for sure. Others say things like this. What a joke. That's what leadership looks like, oh brother. When kids love warmongers, how heartwarming. Let's not forget the Willow Project and the meat writing is crazy. Anyway, you get the point. I guess I've just come to expect that corporate media is co-opted, self-interested, and biased. But it's really kind of gross to see supposedly independent

creators seduced by the explicit promises of access from a corporatist like Joe Biden. It's also a perfect window into the roots of media corruption. Many times, there's not a direct exchange of cash, just a quid pro quo of power, clout, and relevance. A lot of people out there willing to sell out for literally nothing. The good news is they might win clout with the current president, but they will lose it with the young audiences who are not remotely buying this spin. So Sagar, this is a big game plan to get the youth excited about Biden 2024. What do you think? 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, I may have been mired in leaked Pentagon documents now for the last 48 hours, but I couldn't let it pull me away from another vitally important story that we have been following from day one over here at Breaking Points, the lab leak hypothesis of COVID and the Pandora's box of inquiry it has opened. From exposing the media's cover-up of LabLeak to the corruption of Dr. Fauci, there's always been a deeper point of LabLeak. COVID was the tip of the iceberg on lab safety, the complicity of the U.S. government and the complicity of the U.S. scientific establishment. A new investigation hints at just how deep the rabbit hole goes. They point, as just one example, to a lab in Thailand that was searching Southeast

Asia for exotic viruses. The research was supported by the US government from 2011 onward and entailed Thai researchers going into remote caves and forests inhabited by millions of bats, quote, including species known to carry diseases deadly to humans. They report, quote, the scientists collected saliva, blood, and excrement from the wriggling razor-fanged animals. Those samples were then driven to Bangkok. As any reasonable person may ask, why would anyone in their right minds do this? Because the goal was to, quote, identify unknown viruses that might someday threaten humans. And then, in a move that will shock

absolutely nobody, researchers were bitten by bats and one accidentally stuck herself with a needle. They claim nothing ever happened as a result of those incidents, but the incident was recorded in 2016. Despite that, for five years, the US government still continued to fund that lab, which did not shut down until it voluntarily did in 2021. The report notes that on the very same campus as this Bangkok lab, they had another lab that was actually shut down in 2018 because of, quote, mechanical failures, even though it was supposedly built to handle dangerous viruses. Once again, the most insane thing about this report is that this is just one example. They note that the number of labs handling dangerous pathogens funded by the US government

is quote, believed by experts to be in the thousands. In fact, the real interesting part of the report was detailing not only the existing insane projects that we continue to fund abroad, but the genesis of all of them. Before 20 years ago, we actually took studying dangerous pathogens and viruses very seriously. It was restricted almost entirely to bioweapons facilities like Fort Detrick in the United States or other nations that were studying them. No outside funding, very little private research involving universities and others. But in 2001, the anthrax attacks changed everything. All of a sudden, anthrax incidents coupled with post-9-11 hysteria flushed billions of dollars into the Pentagon and National Institute of Health's budgets to help prevent future bioweapons attacks and also to predict future pandemics and to try and stop them. In fact, Scientific American, which later went woke during the COVID pandemic, in 2008 published a huge report looking at the $41 billion in the seven years spending on biodefense in 2008.

They cite a government accountability office report from 2007, which, quote, said, we are at greater risk today than ever before of a pandemic because, quote, the great increase in bio laboratories and the absence of oversight they receive. Richard Ebright, who today is a major critic of Fauci and a lab leak warrior for truth, was even quoted at the time, warning, quote, the Bush administration has driven a 20 to 30-fold increase in the number of institutions and individuals with access to live, virulent bioweapons agents

from 400 institutions and 15,000 people. To connect the dots further from then to now, the only person on record defending all the money spent on bioweapon safety was a protege of Dr. Fauci, Michael Carrillo, who was then the head of the NIAID Director of Extramural Research, who said, quote, we're much better off having spent this money, pointing then to an anthrax vaccine and to a smallpox vaccine for why the country is safer for having funded it. Even then, Fauci and his men were connected to protecting gain-of-function research dollars at all costs. Most of us never questioned any of this for two reasons. Number one, we had no idea any of it was going on. Two, we just assumed that

these scientists knew what they were doing. But now we know that's just total BS. And we're looking back to see if all signs were there if we wanted to see them. Take Ebola. Our own Ryan Grimm has been doing a fantastic job of reporting in recent weeks. We're really supposed to believe an 18 month old child was playing by himself in a cave and he happened to become patient zero for Ebola? Or maybe it was a nearby research facility that is now confirmed to have been studying Ebola. In fact, new research shows in 2021 the same human-adapted strain of Ebola was previously seen in the 2014 outbreak with no new novel mutations over five years. Scientists want us to believe that the strain was frozen inside of a human patient somewhere in sub-Saharan Africa for five years, and that's why it didn't change.

Or maybe the nurse who got the 2021 strain happened to be working in the area of the 2014 Ebola leak where there was a lab. Much more work is left to be done on Ebola, but it's not the only hint of a potential lab leak. Sufferers of Lyme disease have long pointed out that one of the original outbreaks of Lyme disease in Lyme, Connecticut in 1975 just happened to be the closest mainland town to Plum Island, the site of the Plum Island Animal Disease Center, which was a hotbed of U.S. biological weapons research for the U.S. military for decades and is known to have been studying, at the time, tick-borne illnesses, specifically diseases like Lyme disease. Geography, of course, proves nothing. Critics of the Lyme

leak hypothesis have long pointed to evidence that the bacteria itself has been present in and around the U.S. before the outbreak. Sure, possible. Question though, is it a natural flare-up of Lyme disease in this geographical town next to the lab, or was the illness being studied in the lab and then got released from the lab, and that's what eventual nationwide outbreak? It's been 40 years since that happened, and only in 2019 did the House of Representatives even try to mount an effort to get to the bottom of it, despite vigorous objection from the scientific establishment. My question is simple. If it's wrong, why not try and find out? At least rule it out.

Because how can you look after the COVID-19 pandemic, look at the fact that Lyme disease happened to blow up in the town next to the bioweapons lab studying things like Lyme disease and just accept the government's word as fact. We need to take control of our scientific research dollars back. Like everything else sparked by the 9-11 attacks, it is now cleared we created a monster bigger than anthrax and terrorism itself. We unwittingly built a multi-billion dollar virus engineering empire that has already started one pandemic and it could start another very easily. The clock is ticking already. 27 new top level labs are under construction. Fauci is retiring with no punishment and the dollars are still flowing. If we don't

stop it now, we may never get the chance ever again. Lyme disease. That one's great. Yeah. I mean, it's funny too because- And if you want to hear my reaction to Sagar's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. There are some potential new developments in the war in Yemen, which the U.S. has been complicit in by helping to arm Saudi Arabia. And we're joined now for an update on that by Thomas Sadowski. He is an actor, former actor at the newsroom and also ambassador for the nonprofit organization, War Child USA. Great to have you, Thomas. Good to see you, man. Thank you. Thank you guys very much for having me

and thank you for taking the time. Yeah, absolutely. You know, this has been classified as the greatest humanitarian disaster on the planet, something you've been calling attention to. And let's go and put this tear sheet up on the screen. There have been some developments that I'd love you to speak to. There's a headline from The Intercept, our own Ryan Grimm. He writes, to help end the Yemen war, all China had to do was be reasonable with Joe Biden nowhere to be found. China's diplomacy set the stage for Saudi concessions and ceasefire talks. Are you hopeful here that this could actually bring a resolution and end to this conflict? You know, I think that it's a really good first step. It's shameful,

frankly, that we're delinquent in our humanitarian and diplomatic work over there. And it's concerning to me that the Chinese have sort of stepped in to fill that very huge void. I'm hopeful in the sense that, you know, the Saudis seem to be ratcheting down the tension with the Houthi regime in the northern part of Yemen, which I was in not too long ago, which is in pretty rough shape. My concern, I think, past that is that what happens after this? You know, it's still a civil war that is going on over there and one that has to be addressed. So there's a lot of work still left to do, but this is a very good first step.

My hope is that maybe this will rattle the cage enough of the United States to sort of wake us up, get us off of our asses and get over there and do some good. So how did you get involved in this organization, Tom? For people who maybe not know, just lay out the humanitarian disaster of what is happening in Yemen. It has been happening now for quite some time. Yeah. I mean, for the past eight years since the civil war started over there and since the war started, since the Saudis sort of got involved and since the international community, specifically in the West, led by the United States and joined by its allies in Canada, the UK, Germany, started supporting the Saudi and UAE bombardment of northern Yemen. We've seen a situation develop over there that, I mean, it really staggers imagination. What was happening, the international community that had formed around that Saudi coalition

was allowing and supporting that coalition to use famine as a weapon of war. So it wasn't just that they were attacking population centers, coming very close to destroying, you know, world heritage sites and Sana'a and things like that. They were also like bombing agricultural lands, water treatment facilities, stuff like that. It became really, really brutal. And when you spend time there in the country, it's an extraordinary country with extraordinary people. The destruction is everywhere, particularly in the North. It's incalculable, the amount of loss. So it's not hard to see where this deprivation has come from, unfortunately, you can see it up close. You can feel the levels of pain and suffering. You see the stunted growth of the children that come from

prolonged, severe malnutrition. The sort of polite term that is being used these days is acute food insecurity. But all that means is starving to death. And, you know, you're talking about millions of people. 16, I think 16.1 million was the last number that I saw of people in acute food insecurity with just about 2 million in the famine state or thereabouts. That's really, really bad. I saw recently the United Nations had released some reports saying that things were getting better. And on some sort of level, if you were reading the report, yeah, people were coming off that famine end of the

roll. The reason they were coming off the famine end of the roll is that they were dying. Um, a good way to take people off of those numbers is to just watch them perish. And it's, it's, it's really, um, disturbing. Also, we're getting running, ready to run into a situation here coming up in the warmer months where the mosquito season is getting ready to hit. One of the primary, um, side effects side effects of prolonged acute malnutrition is the collapse of your immune system. The mosquito population over there brings a lot of issues. So you're going to have a serious spike in dengue fever. You're going to have a serious spike in a lot of other insect-borne diseases and sicknesses that are going to really ravage that population all over.

And the international community has failed yet again to meet its standard for what the UN is saying it needs in order to help the situation. Help the situation by not allowing it to degrade further. They asked for $4.3 billion. That's not to fix the situation. That's to keep it from degrading further, $4.3 billion. I just checked right before we came on air, and that fund is currently 10.5% funded. Why do you think there has been such a reluctance to offer up the minimal aid that would be required? Why do you think there has been such a reluctance to, you know, offer up the minimal aid that would be required? Why do you think there's been such a reluctance on the U.S. part to stop, you know, tacitly supporting Saudi's involvement in this conflict? And why do you think as this unfolds,

there's so little interest from the news media in this just absolute crisis, which we are complicit with? Yeah, great questions, Crystal. I myself have not been able to wrap my brain around how and why we've allowed our fellow human beings to suffer on this level, not only allowed, but been complicit, like you said, been complicit in exaggerating that suffering and perpetuating that suffering. I think that, unfortunately, what ends up happening is, you know, in the 24-hour news cycle, a lot of things come along, you know, the ridiculousness of what ends up ultimately getting covered and prioritized. You know, a conflict like this in a small country at the tail end of the Arabian Peninsula that hasn't historically had much contact in any way, shape, or form with the

United States or with our population, it just gets completely not even thrown to the back pages. It just doesn't get included at all. So I think what you're seeing is a population, our population that doesn't know, just doesn't know. I was, you know, in D.C. after I got back from Yemen, I went down there to meet with some senators and members of the House. And, you know, it's heartbreaking how much people in government know about what's going on over there and how little they're doing about it. I had the opportunity to sit with a number of senators,

and they were very well informed. I was very heartened to see that they were very well informed. But when I left those meetings, it just sort of dawned on me, like, if you know that much and you're doing so little, I don't know how we can pretend to have any kind of moral authority or any kind of moral position from which to lecture anybody in the world. That's a great point. It's really pretty extraordinary. The situation continues to get worse, and our solution to it seems to be to do less. You know, Secretary Blinken announced the United States was going to be kicking in $444 million, I think, to the UN fund.

And he said it, you know, with a great deal of empathy and compassion and talking about the extraordinary suffering over there. What he didn't say is that what that offering of that money is 25 percent less than what they gave last year. And very few people in the media said anything about it. It's shocking. And not only that, when we were in DC, I had the opportunity to meet with some folks at USAID, which is an extraordinary organization. They do extraordinary work. They're talking about Congress cutting their funding to Yemen by upwards of 38 percent this year, with more cuts on the way next year. There is a peace that is coming, but what happens after that is entirely up to us. The suffering doesn't go away just because Saudi bombardment stops. In fact, it becomes a much more tenuous and a much

more desperate situation because now that these goods and services are starting to flow more freely into the country, there needs to be oversight as to how it's going, where it's going. My fear is that big organizations like the UN will step in and say, well, what the funding is going to do now is going to do, we're going to work on transition and rebuilding. And we can't move on to that point yet. We're not there yet. We're still in a profoundly delicate situation around famine, children starving to death, 1.1 million mothers, breastfeeding mothers in acute food insecurity. It's unconscionable that the United Nations fund is only 10% funded, that we are cutting funding. Meanwhile, and I don't want to get into atrocity Olympics, nobody wins, everybody loses.

But how many billions of dollars in the last two years have we sent to the war in Ukraine? Yeah, that's a good point. And, you know, in Yemen, we have perpetuated and participated in the suffering of these people who have done nothing to us. When I was on the ground over there, I talked to folks and they kept on asking, why us? What did we ever do to you? You know, they kept saying, you know that it wasn't Yemenis who flew the planes into the towers on 9-11, right? That they were Saudi. You know that, right?

And yeah, I'm not here as a representative of my government. I'm not here as a representative of my people. I believe my people, if they were to know what was happening over there and how we have participated in how we have turned our back on that degree of suffering of women and children would be livid. I wholeheartedly agree with that because you see the way that, you know, when the suffering of Ukrainians is put on TV, America, we got to do, you know, what we need to do. But when you have a media and a political class that, you know, completely invisibilizes not only what's going on here, but certainly any role that the U.S. has in playing, then, you know, people, they're not putting Yemen flags out in their yards and there's no political will to do much of

anything. It just gets completely ignored. So we're really grateful for the work that you're doing to try to highlight this crisis. Where can people find your organization? War Child USA.org. Got it. And those folks outside of the United States who are looking to help out. War Child Canada is sort of our interlocked sister organization who leads the charge, and they are really extraordinary as well. So I would ask folks to look at those two organizations, specifically USA and Canada. Great. We will have the links to those in the description of this video. Really appreciate it, man. Thank you. Thanks, Thomas. Thank you for the time. Yeah, it's our pleasure. Thank you guys so much for watching.

It's been a wild two days over here at Breaking Points. I just want to reiterate again, thank you to all the premium subs who give us the confidence to do reporting around this stuff. Dealing with highly classified information can be terrifying. Often at points, you got to make sure all your legal basis and all of that is secure. And if should censorship ever come, not saying it has yet, but should it come, we know that you guys have our back.

So we love you. We appreciate you. Have a great CounterPoint show for everybody tomorrow. And we'll see you all on Thursday. Love you guys. See you soon. Over the years of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone, I've learned no town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend.

I've heard from hundreds of people across the country with an unsolved murder in their community. I was calling about the murder of my husband. The murderer is still out there. Each week, I investigate a new case. If there is a case we should hear about, call 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I think everything that might have dropped in 95 has been labeled the golden years of hip-hop.

It's Black Music Month, and we need to talk. It's tapping in. I'm Nyla Simone, breaking down lyrics, amplifying voices, and digging into the culture that shaped the soundtrack of our lives. Like, that's what's really important, and that's what stands out, is that our music changes people's lives for the better. Let's talk about the music that moves us. To hear this and more on how music and culture collide, listen to We Need to Talk from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I also want

to address the Tonys. On a recent episode of Checking In with Michelle Williams, I open up about feeling snubbed by the Tony Awards. Do I? I was never mad. I was disappointed because I had high hopes. To hear this and more on disappointment and protecting your peace, listen to Checking In with Michelle Williams from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast.