Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 4/12/22: NATO Expansion, Elon vs Twitter, Inflation Data, Covid, Gen Z Misery, Kushner Corruption, Dem Warning, & Yemen Disaster!

Episode Date: April 12, 2022

Krystal and Saagar bring the news about NATO expansion, alleged attacks in Ukraine, Elon Musk's conflict with Twitter, historic inflation numbers for March, a reintroduction of covid guidelines, Gen Z's misery, Jared Kushner corruption, French elections' warning for Dems, and all things on the Saudi assault on 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/Dr. Annelle Sheline: https://www.1833stopwar.com/ https://responsiblestatecraft.org/author/asheline/  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. is irresponsible son, but I have DNA proof that could get the money back. Hold up. They could lose their family and millions of dollars? Yep. Find out how it ends by listening to the OK Storytime podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Camp Shane, one of America's longest running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. But there were some dark truths behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. Enter Camp Shame, an eight-part series examining the rise and fall of Camp Shane and the culture that fueled its decades-long success. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week

early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. and seeker of male validation. I'm also the girl behind Boy Sober, the movement that exploded in 2024. You might hear that term and think it's about celibacy, but to me, Boy Sober is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's flexible, it's customizable, and it's a personal process.

Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it. Listen to VoiceOver on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Cable news is ripping us apart, dividing the nation, making it impossible to function as a society

and to know what is true and what is false. The good news is that they're failing and they know it. That is why we're building something new. Be part of creating a new, better, healthier, and more trustworthy mainstream by becoming a Breaking Points premium member today at breakingpoints.com. Your hard-earned money is gonna help us build

for the midterms and the upcoming presidential election so we can provide unparalleled coverage of what is sure to be one of the most pivotal moments in American history. So what are you waiting for? Go to BreakingPoints.com to help us out. Hi, everyone. Before we get to our recorded show, right after we wrap, there appears to have been an apparent attack in the city of New York in Brooklyn. Multiple people shot during rush hour. The FDNY is reporting multiple undetonated devices. At least 12, 13 people are known to have been injured or have been shot, Crystal. So obviously this is a terrible tragedy.

We wanted to make sure everybody was aware and didn't want our tone to appear off at this tragic and horrific event. Yeah, exactly. And I mean, this is very early phase details that we are getting right now, but just wanted to send our thoughts and our solidarity to New York. We are looking forward to visiting the city. And with all of 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. A lot of big stories literally breaking this morning. We are waiting to get the report on just how high inflation has gone and what that spells for the economy and what the Fed will do in response and all of that. So we're going to break that down in real time. Also, some new moves from Elon Musk. He is not going to join the Twitter board. However, that may make him sort of more of a menace to the company in a certain respect. So we'll tell you about that. New COVID mandates, mask mandates in Philadelphia, first major city to reimpose mask mandates. So we'll break down the direction

of the country and COVID. And a great in-depth look at an epidemic of sadness among Gen Z from our friend Derek Thompson over the Atlantic. He posits a few reasons why that may be. Also sort of debunks the myth that they're not really different. They just are more comfortable sharing their feelings. But there is hard data to point to a real problem among our young people. So we will talk about that. But first, bunch of announcements for you guys. First of all, for our Lifetime members, I know it's been a little while coming. I know.

But we promised you when you signed up that part of what you get as a Lifetime membership is you will be a permanent part of the set. Took us a while. Finally done. There were more of you than we anticipated. However, we finally got it done. We have plaques. What we're going to do, I think, is buy some.

We got some easels. Yes, they're on the way. We're going to put them over on the side of the set so the end of the show, every day, cameras will pan over to show the names of all of our incredible Lifetime members who really, I mean, you guys were the bedrock of building this show from the ground up. And we could not possibly be more grateful. So thank you for your patience. It did take us a while to figure out a solution that was going to work, but we're excited about it. Yeah, we tried several different iterations.

And after definitely different craftsmen, also, of course, we're committed to buying from a local business. And it has to be American- made. Much harder than you might think in order to do business in this country with actual American citizens, but it's all done laser printed. As we promised, it will be part of the show, and it will be visible basically from our Monday show on out, because on

Thursday, we have a special show live from New York City. Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. We made this graphic, which I don't know why I make you laugh. Graphic is a little silly. It makes me laugh with Kyle's face big in the front and Marshall kind of like cuddled up to you. Anyway.

It's fine. The four of us will be live from the city of New York on YouTube, 11 a.m. Eastern Standard Time on the Breaking Points YouTube channel. For those who are asking, yes, of course, like our previous live show, it will be recorded. You'll be able to listen to it as soon as possible whenever we're wrapped. We'll rip the audio and we'll post it on the podcast app as well.

So you guys will get your fix and we'll cut it up into a bunch of different clips, ideally to post on Friday, maybe Saturday. So all of that stuff will be there. For the premium subscribers, just a reminder, you guys are programming the show, so we put out 15 different options. About 5,000 or so of you have voted so far, with some interesting results. Voting is going to close. When should we close it? Tonight?

Yeah, we'll close it sometime tonight, so it gives us a little bit of time to go through the topics and sort of prepare since we're going a little bit more in-depth on these things. There you go. So there's a Google form. It is in your premium newsletter, which James has been working very, very hard on. By the way, thank you very much to all of the nice support that we've got on the newsletter. It turns out you guys love the written kind of review of the show.

So you're going to get that for everything and from every premium subscription here on out. So enjoy. And if you haven't got the premium subscription, what are you waiting for? There we go. Yeah, and just as a little teaser for what it looks like the topics

may be, you guys have some very substantive interests. I'm shocked, to be honest. I have to say, yeah, some of the sort of more political hot topics ones, not getting much support really at all. People are gravitating at least thus far, and we're about 5,000 votes in, to

really in-depth, like, issue-based substantive topics. I shouldn't be surprised because I know you guys respond to that in the show, but it still is kind of cool to see what you all are specifically interested in. Absolutely. So thank you to Lifetime members. We will periodically update the plaques. So if you do still sign up for a Lifetime membership, you will be added.

Yep. We'll just, you know, we'll wait for a sort of number of them to add up, and then we'll add them to the plaques, and those will be a permanent part of the set that you guys will see every day. We're excited about the show in New York. If you are a premium member, go ahead and make sure that you cast your vote today so we can incorporate your feedback into programming the show. I think that is all the announcements we have for this morning.

So let's jump right in with the latest with regards to Ukraine and Russia. And this is actually a really big deal. Let's go ahead and throw this first tear sheet up on the screen. It looks like Finland and Sweden may join NATO as soon as this summer. This is really an extraordinary turn for both of these countries, Finland in particular. And this is the way Washington officials are spinning this. They say Russia has made a massive strategic blunder as Finland and Sweden look poised to join NATO as early as the summer. Washington is banking on the move that will stretch Russia's military and enlarge the Western alliance from 30 to 32 members as a direct consequence of President Putin's invasion of Ukraine. You know, one thing that is pretty remarkable here to their point about, you know, if Russia's concern was NATO enlargement,

this has really tremendously backfired because support for joining NATO in Finland in particular has skyrocketed over the past month. There was not even close to majority support with that population previously. And now it's up about 62 percent in March. This obviously is significant because it would increase the land border between NATO territory and Russia. It would more than double from around currently 754 miles to nearly 1600 miles. It would also this is from FP, it would also extend NATO's northern flank across the full length of the border. Very strategic area where Russia's navy is, a sizable chunk of it, is based. And by the way, there doesn't seem to be any objections from NATO members at this point to the idea of further enlarging the alliance. NATO members

seem universally ready to welcome Sweden and Finland with open arms. They're saying effectively that, you know, they'd be kind of a package deal, even though obviously those countries would kind of determine their own fate individually. But the idea is that they both bring a lot to bear, and obviously they're sort of, you know, aligned, and so it makes sense to bring them in together. But obviously this comes with, you know, extraordinary risks. We've already seen the way that NATO expansion has exacerbated tensions with Russia. And while Putin is responsible for his own actions and his invasion into Ukraine was nowhere near justified, it was a predictable response to previous expansions of NATO.

Russia is already being very clear that they find this to be an untenable situation. Let's put this BBC tear sheet up on the screen. Ukraine war, Russia warns Sweden and Finland against NATO membership. And we also put this map on the side that shows you the countries that have joined NATO just since 1997, 14 of them. You can see there Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and on and on. And so this would add another two to that mix. Here's specifically what Russia is saying. They've said, everything is about mutual deterring and should one side, and we consider NATO to be one side, be more powerful than the other, especially in terms of nuclear arms, then it will be considered a threat for the whole architecture of security. And it will take us to

take it will cause us to take additional measures. That is from Dmitry Peskov. Putin's spokesman said that to Sky News on Friday. So it looks like this is almost a fate accomplished. It looks like there is very little resistance. It looks like the is almost a fate accomplished. It looks like there is very little resistance. It looks like the populations of these countries have become firmly in favor of joining NATO. I understand from their perspective why they would want to do it. I do not understand from our perspective why we want to continue to escalate and ratchet up tensions with Russia. Yeah, and I think that, look, it's difficult to do this without sanding callous. However, we should consider the context through which this entire conflict erupted. And NATO

expansion was a key part of the impetus that drove Putin's paranoid mindset and led him to the unjustified invasion. Not blaming the United States, but we're also not saying that the U.S. did not have any role whatsoever in setting the table through which this specific conflict erupted from, which then begs the question, given what we know now about Russian behavior and about NATO expansion, is expanding NATO really still a good idea? Look, Finland and Sweden, if you're them, I get it. Both have actually been invaded by Russia in the past. Both have a long history of tension and defending their sovereignty and exchanging borders and all of that. However, they do not get to decide. The Swedish people do not get to decide whether the United States is going to launch a nuclear weapon on their behalf.

The Finnish people do not get to decide that. The American people should get to decide that. And we are missing the exact debate that we lacked in 2008. Let's put this up there on the screen. And this is important because this debate mirrors what it is today. Fiona Hill, who is herself a Russiagator, actually says that she warned George W. Bush in the Oval Office in 2008 that offering Ukraine NATO membership would be seen as a provocation by Putin. Then Vice President Dick Cheney responded by asking her if she hated freedom. As Mehdi Hasan

says, sounds like familiar rhetoric to some of us today. Do I wish invasion upon the Swedish people or the Finnish people? No, I've been to Finland. Finland is an awesome place. Terrible food, just have to say it. But you put that out there. And what we see is that that doesn't mean that as Americans, we should be risking nuclear war on the Finnish people's behalf. That is, it can sound callous. You can stand with somebody and also not want to sacrifice perhaps 100 million of your own citizens on behalf of them. This is the cold language of real politics, which is necessary in terms of strategic balancing. And I think your point about how so many of these actions have been taken with little to no debate is a really important one, and one that we keep trying to emphasize here, how quickly and how far and how fast the United States has gone in the escalations with Russia

with very little public discussion or debate. It's just, you know, it's completely off the table, and then all of a sudden it's a done deal. And it feels very much like, I mean, this is being announced as like it's already done, when to your point there should be a real debate and discussion over the wisdom of this move, which also was not done before offering Ukraine and Georgia NATO membership back in that era. It is worth, I think, reading the New York Times article with the specifics of this anecdote from Fiona Hill, because it is so classic. They say, in the Oval Office, Hill recalls, describing a scene that has not been previously reported, she told Bush and Vice President Cheney that offering a membership pass

to Ukraine and Georgia could be problematic. While Bush's appetite for promoting the spread of democracy had not been dampened by the Iraq War, President Putin of Russia viewed NATO with suspicion and was vehemently opposed to neighboring countries joining its ranks. He would regard it as a provocation, which was one reason the U.S.'s key NATO allies opposed the idea. Cheney took umbrage at Hill's assessment. Quote, So you're telling me you're opposed to freedom and democracy, she says he snapped.

According to Hill, he then abruptly gathered his materials and walked out of the Oval Office. He's just yanking your chain, she remembers Bush telling her. Go on with what you were saying. But the president seemed confident he could's just yanking your chain, she remembers Bush telling her. Go on with what you were saying. But the president seemed confident he could win over the other NATO leaders, saying, I like it when diplomacy is tough. Ignoring the advice of Hill and the U.S. intelligence community, Bush announced in Bucharest that NATO should welcome Georgia and Ukraine into the membership action plan. So those are the mistakes of the past., again, it does not justify Putin's illegal invasion of Ukraine. But there's a difference between justification and of, you know, maybe a little less sort of agitating to Putin in his vision of Russia's greatness and what

their sphere of influence should ultimately be. But you're talking about a sizable increase in the land border that they are telling you up front they will consider to be a sort of provocation. So this should be, I mean, this should be a huge debate. People should think very carefully about the consequences of this. And instead, it's just being presented by the press as like, this is something that's happening and who could possibly object? entanglements abroad. John Quincy Adams, we do not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy. We also established under JQA the Monroe Doctrine, under which we would focus on our interests in the Western Hemisphere and to keep the European powers out, which is what an entire century of our foreign policy was oriented around. So then we should understand how other countries can also have their own version of that and can want strategic breathing room in their geographical area.

That does not mean that I think it's okay for people to be subjugated, but it also doesn't mean that we should downplay the risks. And I just keep coming back to George Kennan, the father of U.S. containment policy in the Cold War, a person who understood Russia probably better than any American for or since, wrote this in 1996. Let's put this up there on the screen, please, which is this. Expanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-Cold War era. Such a decision may be expected to inflame the nationalistic, anti-Western, militaristic tendencies in Russian opinion, to have an adverse effect on the development of Russian democracy, to restore the atmosphere of the Cold War to East-West relations, to impel Russian foreign policy in directions decidedly not to our liking. Last but not least, it might make it much more

difficult, if not impossible, to secure the Russian Duma's ratification of the START II treaty and to achieve further reductions of nuclear weaponry. Basically, every sentence in that came true. Every single sentence. And I am just begging people, let's have the debate that we did not have when we expanded NATO into the Baltic states. Let's have the debate that we did not have in 2008 when NATO made an official policy pronouncement that Georgia and Ukraine will be a part of NATO. There's an excellent op-ed in the New York Times today called Putin's War in Ukraine is Watershed, Time for America to Get Real. His

name is Dr. Charles Kupchan. He's an international affairs professor at Georgetown. He's a realist, and what you actually can point to in Dr. Kupchan's op-ed is that the invitation of NATO membership to Saakashvili in Georgia in 2008 invited an action on his behalf that he thought the West was a lot more with him than he originally thought, so he launched operations in South Ossetia. That is what then prompted the Putin, and I'm not justifying it, incursion into Georgia and the takeover of that area. And then Saakashvili was shocked when the West didn't actually have his back. So the point is, is that these gray area pronouncements about who is going to be in

NATO and not can actually increase uncertainty and risk and give people the wrong opinion on all sides. Same thing in terms of Finland and Sweden. It would require a two-thirds vote in the United States Senate in order to ratify that as a treaty. Previously, these things have sailed through. North Macedonia, do you remember ever deciding whether you wanted to send your kids to go abroad and die from North Macedonia? I don't remember having that discussion, and that happened in the last couple of years. This is exactly the debate we have to have right now over Finland, over Sweden. we had extraordinarily huge debates in our history, going back to the League of Nations and Lodges, you know, Lodges reservations to Wilson's 14 points. This became a national policy through which we tried to understand what treaty obligations will the United States have?

What does it mean for American boys and blood? And we lost that in the post-Cold War era. Yeah, we have lost that. And I think that's a part of a larger trend that we've talked about here a number of times with regards to the Federal Reserve and any number of other critical U.S. domestic and foreign policy decisions, which is that there's been this anti-populist pushback that has said, this is all too complicated for you all to understand. So don't worry about it. Let the experts handle it. The one with the PhDs in foreign affairs and the relevant experience,

let them make the decisions and you all just trust us. Just trust us. Well, no, this is what a democracy is all about. It's citizens engaging and informing themselves and actually having input on what are incredibly consequential decisions. As you put it, even putting Russia aside, are you prepared to extend those treaty obligations to two more countries that say, if those countries are attacked, we will be at war, period, end of story? Are you ready to do that? I mean, at the very least, we should be having a

conversation about what that means. And that goes back to my frustration with the press coverage story. Are you ready to do that? I mean, at the very least, we should be having a conversation about what that means. And that goes back to my frustration with the press coverage of this war, which has not been serious-minded at all, which has not helped to inform the American people about the potential consequences and backlash of some of these extraordinary decisions that are being made in a very short period of time with very little, very few dissenting voices. So this is another one that is being presented as a done deal, but it is not. So make sure that if you have an opinion on this, you are making that opinion heard loud and clear. Yeah, 100%. Okay, let's go ahead and move on to this next one. This one we want to treat very sensitively, but I do want to flag it for all of you because that is obviously the

potential in order to go big. So let's set the stage. Let's put this up there on the screen, which is that yesterday there was a report from the Azov Battalion, Azov Regiment. This is from the Kiev Independent, who you should know at the top is one of those white nationalist battalions, which is part of the Ukrainian military. They reported what they said could be the Russian use of chemical weapons against entrenched garrison in the city, the Ukrainian garrison. They said an unidentified agent was delivered with a UAV, and it revealed effects including respiratory and vestibular failures. Put the next one up there. Now, there has been no independent confirmation of this claim whatsoever.

Now, why does this matter? Because a use of chemical weapon would be a pretext through which there has already been declarations by NATO heads of state, including President Biden, the US intelligence community, the United Kingdom, whose foreign minister actually responded saying that if this was true, it would lead to a clear line that was drawn in the sand by the UK and by NATO could invite further escalation on behalf of the West. And why I think that this is incredibly messy is I would not put it past the Russians in order to do something like this. But the people who are claiming that they did so are, let's be honest, this is the far right wing of the Ukrainian military. We are not saying the entire Ukrainian military are Nazis. That's a ridiculous Russian talking point.

They are a small percentage. However, they are a percentage and are a real element that are fighting within this war that President Zelensky himself has accepted as part of the coalition. Let's just be honest about that. That doesn't diminish the justness of the Ukrainian cause. But if they are going to be the ones to claim this, then there needs to be a hell of a lot of independent confirmation and skepticism on your part because it's very clear that there would be a benefit to them and to the Ukrainian cause, obviously, if a chemical weapons charge was proven or accepted by the West because it would possibly invite a military escalation on behalf of the United States. I say this is not a conspiracy. I'm looking at it with as cold, hard, real politic glasses as possible. I'm not diminishing past use of chemical weapons. I'm just stating the blatant fact that if it were confirmed and it did lead to a military escalation on behalf of the U.S., that that would obviously benefit one side in this conflict. And I'm not saying that they would make it up, but it is possible. And thus, we should trust but verify or more we should verify in terms of what exactly is happening here.

We should probably mistrust and verify. Mistrust and verify and then verify it again in order to make sure that this happens before we walk into anything. So we just wanted to set the stage because this is starting to spiral a little bit. This is really dangerous and very important to keep a close eye on because you've already had U.S. hawks, foremost among them Liz Cheney, saying that chemical weapons use in Ukraine would be a, quote, red line for NATO involvement directly in Ukraine. Right. And you can bet that if chemical weapons use was proven or was posited even, you know, confirmed by our U.S. intelligence agencies, which you should continue to take with a grain

of salt if they did that, you would hear more voices added to that Liz Cheney chorus of, OK, now we have to go in. This is a red line. We can't allow this to stand. And so to your point about the Azov battalion and their incentives and their motivations here, this is putting aside their neo-Nnationalist group. This political strain within Ukraine is a major obstacle for Zelensky to try to come to a negotiated settlement. They do not want a negotiated settlement. They want all-out victory, and they do not want to give up, you know, even the semblance of a square inch of Ukrainian territory. These are the hardliners, the most difficult ones to sort of bring to heel and bring to the table.

So that's why they have an incentive. And again, we're not saying that this is the case, but they have an incentive to try to do whatever they can to pull the West further into this conflict. And I also, I mean, you have to keep in mind, this is an existential fight for Ukraine. And when you're backed into a corner and your backup is up against the wall and the fate of your family and your kids and your homeland and everything is on the line, you shouldn't be surprised when extraordinary measures are taken to try to secure your life, your land, your family, etc. So as you're watching all of this unfold and this conversation move forward, and I saw this morning, I think that the UK and Australia are investigating these claims to try to determine whether or not they are true.

Keep in mind what the political motivations here are of everyone involved. Zelensky himself, in his address yesterday, he gives a daily address to his people, did not say that chemical weapons had been used. So even he is not going this far. But again, this is very dangerous. One of the things that we know NATO members have been debating is would it constitute an attack on NATO territory if you had something like a chemical weapons attack where there were reverberating impacts in NATO countries? What would that look like? So you're walking up to a very dangerous line here. Yeah, that's right. And I just think that all of us should be skeptical. We should try and look for the facts. As we all saw in Syria, these things move extraordinarily quickly when they can. And the consequences of that, while in Syria, we're fine because Syria doesn't have nuclear weapons and also isn't a

pure competitive state on a military standpoint, Russia is. And so that is what makes this all the more complicated. We have to see a hell of a lot of evidence before anything should be done. And even then, we should all have a debate as to the ramifications about what's happening. That is not to diminish what is a possible use. However, everything remains very much in the gray area, as you said. Zelensky himself is not claiming this. The British Foreign Office says that they're investigating it. And that is where things stand as of right now. We'll keep you guys updated because the ramifications of this could be extraordinary. And it's one of those things that the media is actually not spending a whole lot of time on right now, but could in the future.

Yeah. If it makes an official claim. And just to be more specific, I found some more details about Zelensky's comments. He said in his daily video address late Monday that Russia forces could use chemical weapons in Ukraine, but did not say that they had used them already. In terms of our government, Pentagon Press Secretary yesterday said we are aware of social media reports which claim Russian forces deployed a potential chemical munition in Mariupol, Ukraine. We cannot confirm at this time and will continue to monitor the situation closely. So those are the official communications coming out, both from the Ukrainian government and from our own government.

That's right. Okay, let's move on to a more fun story. Elon Musk and Twitter. What a whirlwind of things that have happened here. So we brought you previously the news that Elon Musk had bought about a 9.7% stake in Twitter, which makes him officially the largest shareholder of that company. That spawned all sorts of takes because Elon has much more of a free speech view and wants to change the product. So then Twitter announced that after discussion with Elon, the CEO said that Elon Musk would be joining the board of directors. Now, why that's important is because Elon, if he joined the board of directors, would be subject to fiduciary responsibilities as a member of the board, meaning that he could not take actions publicly publicly which could possibly impact the stock price,

which would open up shareholder lawsuits. But number two, and this was underreported, was that as part of his shareholder agreement with the board of directors, what he said is that he would not acquire more than a 14.9% stake in the company, meaning that he would not increase his ownership stake, which could then lead to the grounds for a hostile takeover. That was the ground that was set. Until yesterday morning, when Parag Agarwal made a shock announcement, he's the CEO of Twitter, let's put this up there on the screen. He says, Elon has decided not to join our board. Now,

here's the note that he sent to his team, and I'm going to read a lot of this. Elon Musk has decided not to join our board. Here's I can share what happened. The board and I had many discussions about Elon joining the board with Elon directly. We were excited to collaborate and clear about the risks. We also believed having Elon as a fiduciary of the company where he, like all board members, has to act in the best interest of the company and our shareholders, was the best path forward. The board offered him a seat. We announced on Tuesday Elon would be appointed the board contingent on a background check and formal acceptance.

Elon's appointment to the board was to become officially effective on 4-9. But Elon shared that same morning he will no longer be joining the board. I believe this is for the best. We have and will always value input from our shareholders, whether they are longer be joining the board. I believe this is for the best. We have and will always value input from our shareholders, whether they are on the board or not. Elon is our biggest shareholder. We will remain open to his input. There will be distractions ahead, but our goals and priorities remain unchanged. The decisions we make, how we execute is in our hands, no one else's. Let's tune out the noise and stay focused on the work and what we're building. All eyes on that last paragraph. There will be distractions ahead.

Sounds ominous. Now, there is a particular little hint as to what happened. Let's put this up there on the screen, which is Elon actually deleted a lot of his tweets, which were critical of the Twitter product, but a very conspicuous like, which said this in response. Let me break this down for you. Elon became largest shareholder for free speech. Elon was told to play nice and not to speak freely.

And Musk actually liked that tweet. Now, the reason that this matters, Crystal, let's go ahead and put the CNBC piece up on the screen, is that Elon is no longer bound now by the agreement that he made with the board not to take up to a 14.9% stake in the company. He could now, if he wanted to, pursue a hostile takeover of the company where he could acquire as much of a share as he wanted within the company and then cobble together other pieces with large shareholders or possibly even retail shareholders and force changes both at the CEO board level, but also in terms of governance at the company itself.

So this could have an extraordinary impact on Twitter, the company. Now, the real question obviously everyone's asking is, why should I care? Well, because Twitter, yes, by only having 300 million daily active users, is disproportionately impactful on the elites of news, of politics, sports, pretty much everything. And so with that disproportionate impact, their content policy, how the company is run and more has a huge impact on the way that you receive information from basically all aspects of your entire life. Yeah. I mean, just to be, you know, give you one really specific example, is Trump going to be on Twitter during the next campaign, right? I mean, just that decision alone

is extraordinarily consequential. And it's not just the possibility that Elon could execute a hostile takeover here. It's also that if he was sitting on the board, he would have a fiduciary responsibility to act in the best interest of the company and of its shareholders specifically. Now that he's not on the board, he's not under that obligation. So it wouldn't have to go so far as a hostile takeover.

You can understand. So I can understand why the CEO, the board members, the other major shareholders, I can understand why they're nervous about this. Because ultimately, regardless of how you feel about, you know, Elon's ideology versus Prague Agrawal, this is also about control. And it's about power. And it's about who actually is directing the future of this platform, which is extraordinarily significant and central to our ability to communicate and the way elites process information in this country. So I understand why they're kind of freaked out, but there's a lot of reporting of like employees freaking out, which makes a little bit less sense to me. I mean, I guess ultimately it's also, you know, they're probably more comfortable with Parag's interpretation of, you know, his basic rejection of the First Amendment and free speech.

So they are nervous about what this will ultimately mean for them. I mean, you guys know my overall view is, you know, I feel about Elon the way I feel about every billionaire. They are acting in their own self-interest. He has used Twitter in ways that has been sanctioned by the SEC. Even in this deal, let's go ahead and put the next element up on the screen. So he waited to file his disclosures with the SEC 11 days. So he was 11 days late in publicly declaring that he had amassed a large stake in Twitter. So once you acquire a certain amount, you're supposed to immediately publicly disclose that. So he was 11

days late in doing that. While he was doing that, he continued to acquire Twitter stock at that low price. Then once after belatedly, his stake is disclosed, of course, the Twitter stock price went through the roof, and he personally benefited to the tune of $159 million. $156, sorry. So here's the Washington Post. Elon Musk delayed filing a form and made $156 million. I mean, this is securities fraud, whether it was intentional or incidental. He ends up, as billionaires always do, on top. Even if the SEC ends up fining him for this, he made $156 million. The fine is liable to be a couple of hundred thousand

at the most. So he makes a massive profit here. And this harkens back to other ways he has used Twitter to his own benefit. Back in 2018, he had to enter into a consent decree with the Securities Exchange Commission for allegedly misleading investors when he tweeted he'd gathered enough funding to take Tesla private. Musk paid a $20 million fine and agreed to step down as chairman and vet his tweets with lawyers. Last month, he asked the SEC to scrap that agreement. He also has pushed the rules by polling his Twitter followers on whether he should sell a 10 percent stake in Tesla. The Wall Street Journal also reported in February the SEC was investigating a stock sale by Musk's brother a day before that tweet. All of this is to say that he may be genuinely committed to free speech, but also keep in mind that his free speech on Twitter is something that he has used in order to profit him directly. My overall view here is that with all of these tech companies, these tech giants,

and the problems that they have created for discourse in the public square, the answer is not going to be to sort of like libertarian entrepreneur our way out of it. There's going to have to be government regulation because we cannot depend on the whims of which billionaire happens to be at the helm for when all of our public discourse ultimately depends on these platforms. So if he wants to get involved in being part of that broader solution and not just sort of screwing around with Twitter here, that would be something I would be much more interested in. Yeah. And part of the issue too is assembling a hostile takeover like coalition would just be very difficult.

I went ahead and pulled who the other top investors are in the company. It's Vanguard, Morgan Stanley, BlackRock, and State Street Corp. Cool. Good luck convincing them in order to join a coalition so that you can enforce more free speech policy. All of those people benefit from not having more free speech on the platform. The other issue here, which is kind of interesting, is that Twitter's governance structure is actually set up differently than all other companies. So for example, Facebook and Google are set up such that Zuckerberg and Sergey Brin and I'm forgetting his name, it's Larry Page, all have mega controlling voting power in the company.

Right. Meaning that even though they don't own the vast majority of shares, they set it up as like a class A and a class B structure where class B shares have 10 times the voting power of a class A share, which means that they'll always remain in total control of what they can do. Twitter does not have that because they don't have a single founder. They had a founding team and they've had a real mess of a governance structure. So they're actually much more rife for hostile takeovers. But it also makes it so that all these investors can throw their weight around.

So there could be a big fight here is more what I'm saying. Elon is not the de facto winner by any means. There's also, I mean, there's also a real possibility that he's basically just trolling. Oh, yeah, definitely. You know, I mean, that's certainly a possibility here is he's just being sort of a shit disturber and trolling and throwing his billionaire weight around. Because, I mean, listen, this is a guy who's got a lot of other stuff going on. Is he really like if you were going to actually do the hustle takeover and then, you know, influence them in this way or that way and sort of take control of the home like that takes a lot of time and a lot of focus. And he's certainly got the money to do it, but does he have the personal bandwidth or desire

to make that a core part of what he's up to? I think that's a big open question. He's building two other companies. The vast majority of his attention should be on Tesla and SpaceX. I'd frankly prefer it that way. But, you know, it's interesting nonetheless. I am enjoying the Twitter employees freaking out. All right, guys, we have some breaking news right now this morning, which is we got the very latest in terms of inflation numbers.

And I'm reading now from Heather Long, Washington Post economics reporter on what those numbers are. She says U.S. inflation hit eight point five percent in March. That is the highest level since the end of 1981. It was a great year. That was the year I was born in. High gas prices accounted for half the March inflation. Spike gas prices peaked on March 11th. Rising food and rent prices also hurt. Wages were up 5.6% in the past year. And if you can do basic math, you can see that that does not even come close to keeping up with inflation. So we were prepped for this rather dire report that shows an extraordinary continued increase in inflation. It's really not too much of a surprise, given that

on top of all of the issues we are already having with supply chain shocks and all the red corporate greed and all the rest, that you add on top of that now a war, which is causing increased gas prices further, increased food prices. We covered yesterday that world food prices have shot up to a historic high. And, you know, it shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that we're having these horrific inflation numbers coming out this month. Jen Psaki actually sort of tried to lay the groundwork for this yesterday in her own annoying little way. Let's listen to what she had to say. So because of the actions we've taken to address the Putin price hike, we are in a better place than we were last month. But we expect March CPI headline inflation to be extraordinarily elevated due to Putin's price

hike. And we expect a large difference between core and headline inflation reflecting the global disruptions in energy and food markets. So core inflation doesn't include energy and food prices. Headline inflation does. And of course, we know that core inflation, energy, the impact of energy, of course, on oil prices, gas prices, we expect that to continue to reflect what we've seen the increases be over the course of this invasion. And just as an example, since President Putin's military buildup accelerated in January, average gas prices are up more than 80 cents. Most of the increase occurred in the month of March, and at times, gas prices were more

than a dollar above pre-invasion levels. So that roughly 25 percent increase in gas prices will drive tomorrow's inflation reading. And certainly it's not a surprise to us, but we certainly think it will be reflected. The Putin price hike thing really annoys the crap out of me. It's so cringe. It's so cringe to start with. And second of all, we're not stupid. I mean, we remember that inflation started long before Russia's war in Ukraine.

Is it making the situation worse? Yes. But, God, have some basic respect for the American people and level with them about what is actually going on here. One more piece of data that is significant about the inflation report, And this is from Neil Irwin, who's chief economic correspondent at Axios. He says the most worrying thing is that services, excluding energy services, are also up 0.6 percent. And that has accelerated that price increase each of the last three months. So he says even if durable goods and energy prices stabilize, that suggests real broadening of underlying inflation.

So just to break that down a little bit, what has been driving inflation previously was not services because, you know, people were locked down from COVID. And so they were using their money to buy things, goods, and that was part of what was driving up the prices. So the thought was, OK, well, once things sort of level out and we get these supply chain issues worked out, we can kind of stabilize again and inflation will go back down. But when you see services, those prices also start starting to increase. That indicates you have a broader problem than just the supply chain issues. So all of this adds up to a very worrying situation. And it also means the Fed is going to be under more pressure to hike interest rates more quickly and to rid themselves, get assets off of their balance sheet more quickly, which also has a massive tightening effect. We talked to you last week about how their comments, even from the most dovish members of the Feds, essentially say they're going to be doing both of those things at a rapid pace. We found at the meetings from the last,

the minutes from the last meeting when they hiked interest rates a quarter of a percent, that there were a number of members who wanted to go further than that. So that's the other question, is with the fed looking at this information, it makes it more likely that they tighten quicker, and that makes it more likely

that they tip us into recession. Yeah, And just to give you guys an idea, inflation is actually accelerating because inflation in February was up by 0.8%. In March, it was up 1.2% just in a single month. And if you think about how that compounds, from October, it was 0.9, then 0.7, then 0.6, then 0.6, then 0.8, now 1.2. As it continues to escalate, you can just see the compounding effect of food price, gas price, now service price. Everything is going up. The food inflation is actually up 8.8%. That's the largest 12-month increase since the period of May 1981. And combine that, obviously, with gas prices, and it's a total disaster. I mean,

people are just getting continually hammered in such a destructive way when you consider that most Americans spend the vast majority of their income on housing, food, and gas. And when you have all three of those go up, 5.6 measly increase in wages, not going to do a single thing. So look, we have big problems in this country right now. I mean, even on the gas price, part of the issue, and again, I know it's unpopular to talk about it, but crude oil prices have actually gone down. And yet your gas price has not really gone down that much. The average price is still $4 a gallon. You know why? Gas stations actually make the most profits when oil prices fall. So a

lot of people are keeping their gas prices high. Now look, am I going to sit here and demonize some guy who's a convenience store owner or whatever? He's probably been hammered all throughout COVID, got wrecked, needs a profit. I get it. But I'm saying that on a broader structural level, we have a big problem here because the increase in these services inflation too, I mean, I'm sure you've seen this too, Crystal. I've been hearing from people, if you want to get your house fixed or something like that, good luck, 40%, 50% increase, they could charge whatever they want. Cars, obviously the same thing. The amount of power that some of these people have and are using in order to increase price even more so than inflation

makes it so that people are in a really, really tough bind right now because they're just not making more money, but everything costs more. And that just, I mean, that really hurts a lot of people's household balance sheets and it really affects quality of life. I mean, look, if there's a recession, you should remember that people die. Like people kill themselves during recessions. People die out of lack of healthcare and, you know, inability in order to afford certain types of medicine. They don't buy as nutritious food. Mental health suffers dramatically. Alcohol and drug use goes up.

It's not a joke. You know, it's really not. Yeah, and part of the reason why the landscape is so distressing right now is because effectively the only economic tools we have at our disposal are the Fed, because Congress is so broken and unable to respond to literally anything. So you have to rely on the Fed to get inflation under control, which is obviously a massive issue for working people trying to make ends meet every single month. I mean, it is by far the number one concern for voters going to the polls and just for, you know, ordinary families trying to survive. And the Fed's instruments are very blunt. And the Fed's instruments take a while for you to see

the impact. So that means it's very easy for them to overshoot the mark. They're trying to bring in the economy for what they call a soft landing, meaning that you slowly tighten things up, tighten things up, and hopefully it sort of gets inflation under control without triggering that recession. But that is no easy task, especially when during COVID, they went even further than they had gone during the financial crash of 2008. They acquired, through quantitative easing, an extraordinary amount. It's like 33% of GDP of assets on their balance sheet. And so it's not just a question of how quickly they raise interest rates.

And a report like this will certainly push them towards hiking them a lot more quickly. But when you also are unwinding that balance sheet at a more escalated pace, that also has the equivalent effect of even further hiking interest rates. So that's why you're seeing more and more economists warning that we're heading towards recession. You're seeing more and more people who we don't necessarily love, but who are definitely invested in the future of the economy. People like Jamie Dimon and others looking at this and saying, you know, this is a very tough landscape. You've had massive asset price inflation. And it's a dangerous situation right now. It really truly is.

This inflation report, it's going to hurt. Food prices being so high. Gas prices continuing to be so high. Wage is not even close to keeping pace. And then you have this pushing the Fed towards more dramatic action, which could very well tip the country into recession. So it really is truly a pretty dire landscape. And we got a much better picture of it with this inflation report this morning. Yeah, I feel really bad for a lot of working people out there. Okay, let's move on here to COVID. You thought COVID was done,

but some people just won't let it go. Let's put this up there on the screen. The city of Philadelphia is reimposing the indoor mask mandate based upon its own criteria, which is actually further than CDC guidance. Philadelphia, for the moment, has roughly a 25% of the case hospitalization rate that would trigger a recommendation from the CDC to bring back its indoor mask mandate. However, they have decided, per their own internal statistics, that the daily cases right now, which are 3.2% of the January peak, is enough in order to bring a mask mandate next Monday for the entire city with no definite marker as to when exactly it

will end. Now, this is all a result of the BA2 variant, which a lot of people are making a lot of hay of. I don't want to diminish people out there who are dying and who are getting sick of COVID, but at this point, you've got every single thing that you could possibly want. You can go out and get a vaccine and a booster if you want it. If you get COVID, there's a ton of therapeutics that you can take over the counter. Sorry. Yeah. Both over the counter and with a prescription for your doctor. Any of these things are available to any person and it's mostly for free. And then if you also are still scared, you can wear a mask if you would like to. There are plenty of people who are doing so. You and

I were talking just before this, the current national polling says that 9% of people right now think COVID is a serious problem. But some people just won't let it go. And one of those people is possibly the federal government whenever it comes to mask mandates, whenever it comes to travel. As we have seen, you're still required to strap a mask to your face whenever you're on a plane. Somebody's done a couple cross-country flights lately,

and it's transatlantic, it's a pain in the ass. I'm taking a train soon to New York. Got to wear a mask during that time, too. And yet the COVID czar over at the White House says it's still on the table in terms of an extension of that. Let's take a listen. As you know, the mask mandate for public transportation, airplanes, airports, trains and the like, that is set to expire next week. Do you still support that? Or do you think that perhaps the mask mandate should be extended for public transportation in light of these rising cases? This is a really good question. This is a decision that the CDC

director, Dr. Walensky, is going to make. I know the CDC is working on developing a scientific framework for how to answer that. We're going to see that framework come out, I think, in the next few days. And based on that, we're going to want to be guided by this decision. You know, throughout the entire pandemic, we've wanted to make decisions based on the evidence and science. And that is what I expect we'll do again this week. Let me just ask you, Dr. Jha, does that mean that extending the mask mandate in public transportation is a live option? It's on the table? Yeah, look, this is a CDC decision, and I think it is absolutely on the table. And Dr. Walensky is going to make her decision based on the framework that the CDC scientists create, and we'll make a decision collectively based on that. What about schools? How do these schools

determine whether or not to have kids get back in masks? I know in the Northeast, we're seeing the cases go up. We're seeing a lot of kids certainly suddenly turning up with COVID. Do mask mandates or mask advisories need to come back in schools? Yeah, so, you know, CDC, and again, you know, CDC has created a framework that I actually really like, and I've been very supportive of it well before I came into this role, which basically looks at each community and assesses risk based on infections, based on hospitalizations, hospital capacity. And one of the points that the CDC made was that schools should not be treated differently than the rest of the community. And so if there are mask mandates in the rest of the community, schools should have them. If there are not, they shouldn't be.

That's what we should be doing. So people can go to the CDC, look up where the community risk is, and that's how we should be deciding what's happening in schools. These standards are all fake. These frameworks, all this BS, okay? There's no reason why that you can wear a mask in Union Station or not have to wear one there and then have to wear one whenever you're on the Amtrak train. It's all theater. Let's all just accept that. If you're scared, fine, wear one. Go ahead, be our guest. But right now, only 23% of the American people are still wearing masks at some point. It doesn't make any sense, Crystal. And this is going to be the hill on which Democrats will die if they want to go down this road. Let's put this up there from the Wall Street Journal, which specifically looks at the quote unquote long COVID effect on the GOP's new coalition and specifically points

to school parents who are still pissed off a year or so later about school reopenings and the overall political winds through which you can see that a lot of people who were sympathetic and more upper middle class than others were to the Democratic Party moving away very much behind the Glenn Youngkin message. Not just that, but also inflation as well. And the number one indicator sign I saw is that the Democratic candidate for governor in Pennsylvania decried the Philadelphia mask mandate.

Yeah. So that's why I guess I see the new political impacts of this. Let's wait and see if they actually change policies. I mean, this guy was basically like filibustering on the Today Show. So we'll see if they actually do anything, and I'm not going to get exercised about it until they actually do. A recent Gallup poll says that 3% of Americans say that COVID is the top problem facing the country. I mean, this is, look, the damage has been done to the Democratic.

There's no doubt about it that there are some moms in particular who were pissed off about schools being closed for so long and mask mandates in schools being kept in place for so long. And they shift their political allegiances. I think that is baked into the cake at this point. In terms of the midterms, the segment we just did about inflation, that's the thing. Ten times more. That is the thing. I mean, that is overwhelmingly the number one issue that people say is on their minds. That's what's really impacting most people's day-to-day lives. So, you know, Philadelphia certainly doesn't help the Pennsylvania Senate

races that Democrats are trying to win. John Fetterman likely to be the Democratic nominee there. I'm sure he's probably not happy about the fact that Philly is reimposing a mass mandate because it may depress Democratic turnout in that city and even flip some voters to the other side. But the reality is he was already in a heap of trouble, not because of anything to do with him or anything to do with Dr. Oz or whatever the other hedge fund dude's name is, but because the national landscape is extraordinarily dire for Democrats and it has everything to do with the economy.

And at this point, I think COVID is basically a sideshow. Yeah, it's a sideshow, but it could hurt, right? It could hurt a little bit. On the margins. Yeah, on the margins. I think that's why it's- I think that cake is already baked. It's possible. For the moms who got pissed off enough to, and I'm always, like, I also haven't seen, I've seen a lot of anecdotes about moms who were hardcore Democrats and then switched to Republicans. I haven't seen a lot of data that backs up that that's a large-scale trend. I don't doubt it. I'm just saying I have seen more anecdotes than I have seen hard data about that.

That's already done. I don't think that a mass mandate in Philly or even if they decide to extend the travel thing on airplanes is going to really shift the dynamics there ultimately. I think that's already part baked in the cake of why Democrats are going to have a disastrous midterms this fall. Totally. And on a political side, I think that's right. But I mean, that doesn't mean that we still should be tortured for no reason on these planes in order to wear these ridiculous masks. You know, you could take it down and take a drink or whatever. It's just complete fakery. And that's what drives me the most nuts. I'll get exercised about it if it happens, you know, because, I mean, they didn't give a clear answer. I'm going to riot, Crystal.

I'm telling you right now. I can't take it anymore. I mean, also, people, I think the school thing for most people is a much bigger deal than airplanes because most Americans aren't flying around too much. Very true. All right. This is an interesting study, an interesting report from a great friend of the show, Derek Thompson, who always has thoughtful pieces about sort of cultural trends in society. Let's go ahead and put this piece up there on the screen. Why American teens are so sad. Four forces are propelling the rising rates of depression among young people.

I'm just going to go through this piece a little bit. So first of all, on the numbers, you know, there, some people have a kind of a potential fallacy that the reason it looks like teenagers are sadder than previous generations is because they're more comfortable talking about their feelings. And so teenagers have always been, Moody, it's just this generation is more comfortable actually sharing that and talking about it with pollsters, for example. But there is some hard data to suggest that that is not the case. So Derek points out from 2009 to 2021, the share of American high school students who say they feel persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness rose from 26% to 44%. That is the highest level that's ever recorded. And it's matched with

increases in rates of people having to go to the hospital for suicide attempts or having to seek counseling for suicide attempts. And so there is hard data to match what is being self-reported by teenagers. This is also not equal among groups. So the chart up there showed some of the different demographic groups within teen populations and the way that they are feeling. So you have very high rates, nearly half of LGBTQ teens who say they have contemplated suicide during the pandemic. That compares with 14 percent of their heterosexual peers. group, whether it's by race, whether it's by other identity factors, you see sadness being self-reported going up and up and up. So Derek looks into this, and he posits four overlapping reasons why this might be the

case. And I think these are pretty interesting. So number one, he points to social media. And he has some data here to back this up. In particular, there's a new study from Cambridge University where researchers looked at 84,000 people of all ages and found social media was strongly associated with worse mental health during certain sensitive life periods, including for girls ages 11 to 13. This is backed by other research. It's actually backed by the leaked Instagram, Facebook studies about the way Instagram made young girls feel worse about themselves. And I like the way he explained it. He compared it to something like alcohol, which can be social lubricant and actually be beneficial in certain situations, but for a minority of users presents a real significant problem that's detrimental to their health and overall well-being. The second factor,

so social media is number one. The second factor he points to, which is again related, is sociality. So compared with their counterparts in the 2000s, today's teens are less likely to go out with their friends, less likely to get their driver's license, and less likely to play youth sports. These are all trends, by the way, that predate COVID. But obviously, COVID lockdowns exacerbated both the, you know, over-dependence on social media and the lack of in real life interactions with friends, peers, playing sports, and all of those things. And so what he talks about is, you know, social media isn't necessarily a problem if it's being like instead of watching TV, you're on your phone or on your device. It does start to become more of an issue if it's replacing real-life interactions that, you know, are associated with positive health and mental well-being outcomes. So, again, things like playing sports or, you know, hanging out with your friends in real life.

Yeah. The third piece that he talks about here is just bad news. The fact that there seems to be an endless spiral of sort of existentially bad news. And, of course, news media, which is invested in playing that up at every turn, whether it's, you know, right now looming threat of recession and you've got a war and you've got the climate crisis and you've got Trump looming on the horizon and political divisions and all of these things, that that can certainly stress parents and stress kids. And by the way, stressed parents often contribute to stressed kids. And that's the last factor that he talks about here, which is parenting. Parents are very, especially upper class parents,

very concerned about their kids being able to go to the good school and get the good job and make sure that they end up on the happy side of the class divide. And that stress is being transmitted to kids in the form of, you know, all sorts of expectations and pressure and tutoring and clubs and practices and all of this sort of stuff. And that also, you know, the amount of time that parents spend chaperoning their kids around and taking them to all the various things that they think they have to do in order to achieve a basic sort of stable life that has all increased over the years. So just to recap, social media, sociality, bad news, and parenting, those are the four things that he's sort of pointing to here, many of which were exacerbated by the pandemic. Yeah, this is really upsetting, obviously, given what's happening. You've got these teenagers, they're the future, and how you feel in your teen years is very informative for how you're going to feel for the rest of your life. I never thought I would say this, but look, some of these bad

behaviors for teenagers are down. It says, per Derek, lots of self-reported behaviors are moving in a positive direction. The 1990s, drinking and driving is down 50%. School fights are down 50%. Sex before 13 is down 70%. School bullying is down. All of those are good things, but it's indicative of people not taking more risky behaviors. And while it can be good on the extremes in behaviors like this, it does indicate that people are being more lonely. People are taking less risk and that that is manifesting, yes, in some of these good ways, but that these less risky inclinations and wanting to engage in this type of more sociological behavior is obviously way, way down. And there's a lot of reasons for that. Social media, obviously, the COVID lockdowns pushed things in the wrong direction. And when you look at all those

indicators, what Derek points to is that while all of it, what he's saying is that teens are not behaving badly. In fact, they're not really behaving in any way whatsoever. They're becoming a lot more lonely. And by being lonely, they're not engaging in more social activity, which is then increasing suicide. Social media obviously is a proxy for social interaction, but it's not real. It's not got the same level of connection. And so by indulging these things, and also with the rise of the parenting and the helicopter parent with that, it's made it so that a lot of people are not experiencing life in the same way. This can sound like a boomer talking point. I get that. But I think that there is obviously a certain level of truth to growing up with a phone.

Your youth and life is just going to be significantly different from those of us who were not raised with the iPhone. Yes, that's very true. I mean, there's a couple things to say about this. First of all, the way Derek paints it I think is really helpful, which he says basically, in a lot of ways, kids are being sort of kept kids longer and sheltered more, both by, you know, anxious parents and by the realities of more social media interaction versus real life experimental action in the real world. And so in that way, they're being kept kids longer. And yet because of their being exposed to any manner of things on the internet, in other ways, they're becoming more adult quicker. And those two tensions are creating a lot of stress. So that's one thing. the other thing is with regards to social media, like I see this in my own life. When I look less at what people are saying about me online, my mental health certainly improves. And in theory,

I'm a grown up with better, you know, coping skills to deal with those sorts of things than, you know, a young girl or a young boy who's just sort of like going through puberty and coming of age. And also, I don't have, you know, if somebody says something mean to me online, like I'm never going to meet that person. I don't have to see that person ever in my life. Imagine you have that kind of like nasty or backbiting or petty or whatever kind of comment directed at you on social media. And then you have to show up and see that person in real life at your high school every day. That sucks. That would stress me out. That definitely would contribute to,

you know, an anxiety producing situation. So I think it's really important that we dig into these trends because, look, obviously a healthy society, we've always aspired to, it's going to be better for the next generation. They're going to do better than their parents. That's kind of the definition of societal progress. And there's just one more metric where that seems to not be the case, where we no longer have this expectation that our kids are going to live a better life than we did. And that's a profound indictment of the values and policy choices of our country. I think that's right.

All right, Sagar, what are you looking at? As somebody who cares a lot about corruption, what drives me crazy about the entire conversation is just how bipartisan it is and how, when called out on it, the other side can just rightfully point at your hypocrisy to obfuscate theirs. Democrats who care about Jared Kushner and who excuse Hunter Biden are part of the problem. Republicans who complain about Hunter and then think Jared and by extension Trump are somehow choir boys are also part of the problem. And as someone who cares about both and has done my best to bring as much attention as possible to Hunter's case, it's also good to remember Kushner himself is just as much, if not more, corrupt than Hunter. Latest deal that Jared has delved into shows this definitively.

Leaked documents from within the Saudi Arabian Sovereign Wealth Fund reveal that the crown pence of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman, personally greenlit $2 billion in capital to Jared's fake investment fund. In fact, Jared's fund is so fake, even the Saudis within their fund were skeptical of giving him money. Their internal documents note, quote, the inexperience of the affinity fund management, the possibility that the kingdom would be responsible for the bulk of the investment and risk, that due diligence on the fledgling firm's operations found unsatisfactory in all aspects, and that a proposed asset management fee seemed excessive, as well as a public relations problem for Mr. Kushner's prior role as senior advisor

to his father-in-law. Yet, days after all those concerns were directly relayed to the Saudi leadership in Riyadh, the panel of advisors which recommended against Saudi investment was overruled by the crown prince himself. This is obviously repulsive corruption. Jared Kushner, as we all found out during his White House days, is worse than useless. Almost everything that the man touched in the White House died an incompetent death. And yet, none of this is actually about money. It is about rewarding Jared for his time in the White House where

Kushner was a key liaison between President Trump and MBS, protecting MBS during the Khashoggi killings and architecting Trump's first foreign trip abroad to Riyadh in 2017. Maybe you agree that all of that on a policy level is fine. Okay, that's all good. But even if you do, don't you want the motivation of officials in office to be pure? This corruption honestly matters as much or maybe even more than Hunter, because at least Hunter is not a key official in his father's White House. Jared remains today a key political advisor to Donald Trump. If Trump wins office, that means Jared will remain a key advisor to the next president of the United States, as he was with the last one.

What's really astounding here is just how brazen the payoff to Jared is. Kushner was able to score $2 billion from the Saudis. That is more than a billion than former Secretary of the Treasury Steve Mnuchin was able to score. Even though he, at least to his credit, was an actual professional money manager before holding his position and a key Wall Street executive who amassed hundreds of millions of dollars in his own right. Now, I'm not saying either of them should take it, period. But I think it's corrupt on both counts. But if you're looking at it from a purely business perspective, why would you give the less experienced and more incompetent guy the most money? The Saudis right now are backstopping Jared's fund to an astounding degree.

According to the latest filings, Jared's fund currently has $2.5 billion under management. So do the math. That means 80% of the money under his management from which he is deriving a hefty fee higher than the normal fee is directly from the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The Saudi Sovereign Wealth Fund is a foreign policy tool that I've highlighted here on the show before. It is nearly $600 billion under the direct supervision of MBS. The money, while yes, is supposed to help grow Saudi wealth in non-oil assets, is used strategically by the kingdom to buy major influence in the West and here in the United States. Massive Fortune 500 companies have the kingdom as a major investor.

It's why they make sure they don't ever say anything about human rights over there. And the strategy of buying off former public officials like Jared and Steve Mnuchin, it's a longtime play by Riyadh that goes all the way back to the Bush family. And this extends very far beyond Jared Kushner. This is about the integrity of our country, to keep it free from the influence of corrupt despots in Riyadh or perhaps in Beijing. I've obviously spoken a lot about what Chinese subservience amongst the U.S. elites looks like, and probably not enough about Saudi. Just to give you a glimpse of how repulsive some of these people are, let's take a trip down memory lane to 2019, when Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said that he was, quote, wrong to call the killing of

Jamal Khashoggi a mistake. And he compared it to when an Uber self-driving car accidentally resulted in a woman's death. Yeah, that's the same. That is the level of subjugation the Saudis demand from the CEO of Uber, on which the Saudi wealth fund sits on their board. And that is exactly what will they demand from Jared Kushner, from Steve Mnuchin, anybody else in Trump's orbit who touches their blood money. It is time to enact a complete ban on this outrageous behavior. We need a stock ban for members of Congress, obviously. And sure, the lobbyist ban, revolving door, all of that. On a certain point on the domestic level, though,

there's a limited amount we can do, given the freedom that we have in the U.S. But can we all at least agree that former public officials should not take foreign money? Is that really so much to ask for? We have former senators working for the Chinese government as we speak. We have foreign ambassadors, former Senate-confirmed major cabinet officials on the payroll of every despotic regime on Earth.

It's completely bipartisan. We've got to at least agree on this type of ban. The way that we got the stock ban going was that everyone could pick their villain. Dan Crenshaw, Nancy Pelosi. I don't care. Fine. I just want to see

this place cleaned up because it is disgusting to me to watch what is happening and to see selective outrage from both sides when a clear solution is needed for this

very, very bipartisan problem. I think it's disgusting, Crystal. Two billion dollars. 80% of his fund comes to us. And if you want to hear my reaction to Sagar's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com.

Crystal, what are you taking a look at? Well, guys, liberalism is back, baby. There's been this weird neoliberal triumphalism following Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Western liberal democracies have banded together to predict Putin's war move, sanction his government, and present a more or less unified front against his illegal actions and atrocities. This response was led by a U.S. president firmly of the neoliberal persuasion who had bested left populist Bernie Sanders and fake right populist Donald Trump on his way to the White House. Perhaps, analysts posited, all this populist uprising against radical free market neoliberalism, that was all just a flash in the pan. Maybe, in their view, the silver lining of the slaughter in Ukraine would be liberalism getting its swagger back. Well, French voters have

joined the conversation to say, not so fast. On Sunday, they went to the polls to choose from a wide array of candidates spanning the entire political spectrum in the first round of their presidential vote. As Daniel Nishanian told us yesterday, the result was both stunning and kind of predictable. The top two vote-getters were incumbent Emmanuel Macron and perennial right-wing candidate Marine Le Pen. Those were exactly the same two top vote-getters as the last presidential election. But the clearest result of the race was a thorough indictment of the establishment center-left and center-right ideologies, a rebuke of neoliberalism that is just as thorough as any that we have seen. So the center-right candidate of the traditionally powerful Republicans garnered a mere 4.7 percent of the vote. The center-left candidate of the

traditionally powerful socialists garnered a pathetic 1.7 percent of the vote. Just 10 years ago, these two parties had a near monopoly on power at every single level of government. Now, this rejection upends a lot of liberal triumphalism and Washington talking points, even directly rebuking the conventional wisdom about strengthening Western support for NATO in reaction to Russia's invasion. In fact, New York Times points out that a clear majority of French people just voted for candidates who are broadly anti-NATO and anti-EU. That would include supporters of Le Pen, another far-right candidate, Zemmour, and Mélenchon, a sort of Bernie-ish type lefty candidate. Now, the strength of the leftist Mélenchon was also a bit of a surprise.

He surged in the final weeks of the campaign, even nipping at Le Pen's heels for a position in the runoff on the strength of high support among voters under 35. Unfortunately, just as in American politics, these young voters were less likely to show up, giving Le Pen with her middle-aged base just enough of a margin to squeak through to the runoff. Melenchon's voters will almost certainly decide the final results, although lefties like me are undoubtedly sick of moral victories. At least both of these candidates are going to have to try to appeal to Melenchon's lefty base. Now, we already know how Macron will try to make that appeal. He's going to go all in on a lesser evil argument. You must vote for me to stop the fascist Le Pen. Now, it's extremely unlikely that the bulk of the Mélenchon votes will ultimately go to Le Pen. Last time, under a similar situation, Macron won a majority of Mélenchon lefty votes and only 7% went to Le Pen. However, a sizable 41% of Mélenchon voters simply stayed home, apparently

unimpressed with the lesser evil argument. Now, this antipathy seems to have only increased. Turnout dropped in the first round, and as I mentioned before, that drop was particularly significant among young voters. What's more, Le Pen seems to have successfully rebranded in opposition to Zamora as a more mainstream-friendly candidate, making the second and final round polls a hell of a lot closer than they were the last time around. Democrats, facing the prospect of a Trump versus Biden redo, might want to take note of the waning effectiveness of some of these tactics, in particular, the lesser evil voting argument. Raising the specter of fascism while maintaining the comfort of elites is not, in fact, a big electoral winner. After all,

Macron may well hang on for a narrow win here, in the end, but he had some 30 percentage points he could give up between his first run and now. Biden, on the other hand, barely won by the skin of his teeth in a few key battleground states during a pandemic that Trump massively botched. It simply is not enough to just not be Trump. Macron's sliding political fortunes offer another lesson and dire warning for Democrats as well, one that they are heavily invested in not learning. When Macron ran and won in 2017, he promised to break up the old left-right divides, running as a Pete Buttigieg or John Kasich-style technocrat. He then governed as a typical neoliberal, cutting taxes for the rich,

cutting benefits, attempting to tax the working class through hiking gas taxes, and ultimately sparking the populist guillotine backlash. So on economics, he was a candidate of the elites. On culture, he actually moved right in an attempt to try to appease Le Pen's growing base. As Daniel points out, Macron's government justified various crackdowns on immigration under the theory it would contain the far right. Yesterday, Le Pen got the highest result for a far right candidate in round one of a presidential race ever. Trying to play the rights culture war never works. And that is exactly what Biden and co are up to right now. Just while I was writing this, I saw Biden giving a speech going out of his way to trash the police reform movement and promising to beef up police state funding. Also, I saw Senator Maggie Hassan debuting new tough-on-the-border messaging.

Guys, you're not going to out-cop and outdo the Republicans on Build That Wall. And you should know that because you've been literally running the same playbook for the past 30 years, running further and further right and then somehow blaming the left when you lose over and over again.

But when your economic agenda consists of at best passing decent benefits that you then rip away after a single year, it's kind of hard to fight the right from a place of strength. And when you've all but abandoned material politics, you put culture wars front and center of every single political debate. In the end, Macron is likely to hang onto power narrowly, just as Biden and the Democrats narrowly squeaked by Trump and secured a bare majority in the Senate. But their closely held grip on government is a thin edifice, barely covering the thorough indictment of the neoliberal ideology that they represent.

And Sagar, again, the ultimate result here... And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. So there's some significant news coming out of Yemen. The UN has just announced a two-month truce between the Saudi-led coalition and Yemen's Houthi rebels. Joining us now to talk about whether we should be hopeful that the ceasefire holds or not is Dr. Anel Shiline. She is a research fellow at the Quincy Institute. Welcome to the show. Great to see you, doctor. Good to see you. Thanks for having me.

You recently wrote a piece on this. Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen so people can see it. The headline here is, Cautious Optimism Hovers Over New Ceasefire in Yemen. If the Saudis were looking for a face-saving way to end its war against the Houthis, this latest cessation in hostilities may be it. Can you just bring us up to date with what is happening right now on the ground? Sure. So the ceasefire that was announced by the UN actually followed a unilateral ceasefire that the Houthi rebels had declared, which then was followed by a ceasefire from the Saudi side. So already we had seen the two sort of main primary belligerents in this war, which again is multifaceted, so there are other actors here. But the two main belligerents had agreed to a ceasefire,

which I think provided some of the momentum that then allowed the new UN envoy, Hans Grunberg, to successfully achieve this two-month truce. But again, it's important to keep in mind that just because the truce has been declared, this doesn't mean the war is over. You know, unfortunately, we often see during wars that the warring parties will use a temporary ceasefire to sort of reconsolidate their positions. And the other recent headline people may have heard about was that President Hadi, who had been the interim president, who'd been in exile in Saudi Arabia, who essentially, you

know, had almost no power of his own, but was sort of propped up by the Saudis, he stepped down and allocated his authority to an eight-member presidential leadership council, which is comprised of sort of an anti-Houthi coalition of leaders from around different parts of Yemen, militia leaders and political leaders. And so the question now is, is this leadership council supposed to negotiate with the Houthis, which would be the hope, or are they a consolidation of forces to fight the Houthis such that, you know, whether the ceasefire breaks down or at the end of the two months when the ceasefire is over, it will simply lead to not only a resumption of hostilities, but an escalation in violence. Right. And so, Dr. King, can we zoom out a little bit? What is the role also of the United States here in either supporting this conflict, facilitating this ceasefire? Because this

is one of the biggest humanitarian disasters on the planet right now. Exactly. So unfortunately, the U.S. is completely complicit in what Saudi Arabia is doing to Yemen. So like I said, President Hadi, who was the interim president, who's been in exile and relatively powerless, Saudi Arabia was fighting on behalf of his government, bombing Yemen, blockading Yemen, preventing fuel from entering Yemen at the port of Hodeidah, preventing flights from taking off from Sana'a International Airport. And none of this would be possible without U.S. assistance, because two-thirds of the Saudi Air Force are U.S.-made,

and they only operate with the assistance of U.S. military contractors. And so if President Biden or if Congress acted to say the U.S. is no longer going to support this, the Saudi Air Force would be essentially grounded, and they would no longer be able to run bombing sorties on Yemen. They would no longer be able to maintain the sort of air blockade of the airports in northern Yemen. So this is part of why we may have seen this movement towards ceasefire now, because this conflict has been intractable. The Houthis took over in 2014 and the Saudis invaded in 2015, so it's been seven years. But the fact that Congress had announced this intention to again try to pass a war powers resolution to end U.S. support for what the

Saudis are doing, this may have been why the Saudis were like, you know what, we don't want to be in a position where we can't fly our own planes anymore. Like you Yemenis need to figure this out before we lose even more faith. I mean, Saudi Arabia has already been somewhat humiliated by not being able to win here. Right. But it would be obviously much more embarrassing if they were faced with the reality of not being able to fly their own planes. Are there other dynamics on the ground that have shifted that may have helped to create this space for a truce? Yes. So the part of this also comes out of the fact that the Houthis

have demonstrated an expanded capacity to hit targets in Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi. So people may recall in January a Houthi drone strike that hit Abu Dhabi. This was the first time in years, in part because the UAE had previously reduced their involvement in the war. But then once they re-escalated it, the Houthis responded by retaliating. And the UAE has subsequently pushed really hard to try to get the Houthis relisted as a foreign terrorist organization. This was something that they were demarcated as an FTO at the very end of the Trump administration, and the Biden administration lifted that designation, mostly just because of awareness that this would severely impact the humanitarian situation without actually

necessarily doing all that much to the Houthis who are not integrated into international markets. These aren't sort of Russian oligarchs with money parked around the world. Their assets are mainly in Yemen. But because then subsequently we also saw an attack by the Houthis on the city of Jeddah, which is the second largest city in Saudi Arabia. This threatened to disrupt a high profile Formula One race, which was scheduled to take place in Saudi Arabia, which represents the sort of events that Mohammed bin Salman has been trying to use to transform the image of Saudi Arabia into somewhere that's open to tourists and, you know, well, ready for investment. And so, although it was only, you know, the one drone successfully hit Abu Dhabi, others were blocked. And then we had this one very dramatic explosion at an oil facility in Jeddah but even just those

a single attack really shatters the image of these as places that are safe and secure and somewhere that tourists would like to come and so it's sort of ironic because Yemen has dealt with you know hundreds of airstrikes a day for years, and there's been very little attention. Whereas one drone hits Abu Dhabi, you have one big attack in Jeddah, and suddenly the Saudis and Emiratis are scrambling to try to impose a ceasefire. So my hope is this realization

that increasingly the war is becoming more costly for the Saudis and for the Emiratis. It has obviously been horribly, horribly costly for Yemen. But finally, the costs are starting to come home. And so the Saudis may decide that it's really not worth it for them anymore to keep fighting. And can you talk a little bit more about the human beings in Yemen that are suffering? Let's go ahead and put this tweet up on the screen. This is the latest update from the ceasefire. They say this is from the Yemen data project. Week one of Yemen ceasefire update. For the first time since the Saudi-led air war began in March

2015, there's been a week without airstrikes in Yemen. This is unprecedented. Ceasefire in the air war holds in the first week of declared two-month halt in military operations. First of all, just remind us of what a catastrophe this has been for the human beings who live in Yemen. And then, does this ceasefire come with any relief in terms of the humanitarian situation? So it does come with relief. As the Yemen Data Project pointed out, this is the first week apparently keeping tabs on just the extreme volume of Saudi-led air raids that are being conducted on Yemen. So it's wonderful from the perspective of the people on the ground in Yemen to not be dealing with the threat of bombs falling but at the same time much of the humanitarian catastrophe in Yemen is from the secondary effects of the war so not direct kinetic violence that has

killed approximately 10,000 people but the 400,000 people who have died since the start of the war in Yemen that has largely been from starvation, from disease, from lack of access to clean water, lack of functioning medical facilities. And these are unfortunately all compounded right now, especially the hunger crisis by the spike in wheat prices caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. And so we know major humanitarian organizations were already struggling with reduced budgets. They were already cutting what services they could provide to starving Yemenis. And that's only going to be further cut because the price of wheat is that much higher. So in terms of relief, unfortunately, the other side of this,

so part of the ceasefire agreement was to allow some ships, the Saudi coalition was going to allow ships to the port of Hodeidah, and especially fuel ships are what is needed, because there's been almost no fuel in areas controlled by the Houthis and to allow flights to Sana'a airport. Again, a limited number of flights only to Jordan and Egypt, but this would be a game changer because people have been stuck in Sana'a and in the area around Sana'a. And it's been very dangerous for people to try to sort of make the overland route, you know, a journey that once would have just taken a number of hours in a car can now take more than a day due to checkpoints or blocked roads or things destroyed by the fighting. So it's just really not possible for the majority of people to escape from these areas, especially for things like medical treatment that is no longer available in Yemen. I myself had a friend who had a treatable form of cancer, but passed away,

unfortunately, because he just couldn't get out of Sana'a. It's horrific. I mean, the pictures of these babies and small children, severely malnourished, many of whom have ultimately perished. It is a shameful situation that the U.S. is in any way complicit. So thank you for bringing us the few signs of hope here that this conflict may be resolved in the near term, and we'll watch it closely. Welcome to the show, Dr. Sheehan. Thank you so much for joining us. Appreciate it, doctor. Thank you. If I could say one thing, I would say that Americans can do something here because Congress did commit to reintroducing a War Powers Resolution, which passed successfully in 2019, but then President Trump vetoed it. We had Representative Jayapal and DeFazio and Ro Khanna, and then on the Senate side, Bernie Sanders, say they were going to

reintroduce a War Powers Resolution. And the point being that if Americans care about this, call your member of Congress and call your senator and tell them to support a war powers resolution because that that would reassert congressional war making authority and would tell the Biden administration. Congress is shutting down your ability to continue to assist Saudi Arabia here and we're going to end U.S. complicity in this war. Yeah. Thank you for that. Yeah. Guys, call your members of Congress if you care about this. Tell them support a war powers resolution because of this conflict and also because Congress should have power over whether or not we go to war. Doctor, thank you. Really great to have your insights today. We're grateful. Thanks, Doctor. Thanks so much. Our pleasure.

Thank you guys so much for watching. We really appreciate it. As a reminder, New York, we're coming Thursday live show. If you're a premium subscriber, go ahead and vote. Lifetime members, we got the plaque finally done. We're very, very happy about that. And we will have it on set for all of you on Monday. We're really looking forward to this live show and experimenting with all these new formats. Many big more announcements coming soon. But for now, we will see you all on Thursday. Yep. Get your votes in, folks. We're closing voting tonight so we can prepare for the in-depth topics that you apparently want to hear about. We're excited about it. It'll be fun to experiment with. Enjoy your day. We'll see you back here on Thursday. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight-loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results.

But there were some dark truths behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. Enter Camp Shame, an eight-part series examining the rise and fall of Camp Shane and the culture that fueled its decades-long success. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. so we'll find out soon. This author writes, my father-in-law is trying to steal the family fortune worth millions from my son, even though it was promised to us. He's trying to give it to his irresponsible son, but I have DNA proof that could get the money back.

Hold up. They could lose their family and millions of dollars? Yep. Find out how it ends by listening to the OK Storytime podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian,

creator, and seeker of male validation. I'm also the girl behind voiceover, the movement that exploded in 2024. You might hear that term and think it's about celibacy, but to me, voiceover is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's flexible, it's customizable, and it's a personal process. Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it. Listen to voiceover on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

This is an iHeart Podcast.