Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 4/13/23: Media Hunts Down Pentagon Leaker, US Boots In Ukraine, Tim Scott Speechless On Trump, Fox News Rebuked in Trial, Elon Fights w/ BBC, NPR Leaves Twitter, Electric Car Rules, Cancer Drug Shortage, Disinformation Industry

Episode Date: April 13, 2023

Krystal and Saagar discuss Ro Khanna telling Dianne Feinstein to resign, the Media hunting down the Pentagon leaker for the FBI, the Pentagon planning widespread spying on Chat Rooms after the leak, US Boots on ground confirmed in Ukraine, Russia's terrifying new draft law, Tim Scott speechless when asked how he will beat Trump in the republican primary, a report that Trump is not ruling out running in 2028, Fox News rebuked by a judge in Defamation Trial, Elon humiliates a BBC reporter who claims he's seen more hate speech on Twitter since Elon's takeover, NPR and PBS leave Twitter over Elon's State Funding label, Saagar looks into Biden's insane requirement for the majority of Electric Cars in 9 years, Krystal looks into the dire Cancer drug shortage forcing Death Panels, and guest Jacob Siegel (@Jacob__Siegel) joins us to talk about his new piece in Tablet on the Disinformation Industrial Complex.To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/To listen to Breaking Points as a podcast, check them out on Apple and SpotifyApple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/breaking-points-with-krystal-and-saagar/id1570045623 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4Kbsy61zJSzPxNZZ3PKbXl Merch: https://breaking-points.myshopify.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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give you guys the best independent coverage that is possible. If you like what we're all about, it just means the absolute world to have your support. But enough with that. Let with regards to the oldest serving senator, Senator Dianne Feinstein, about what exactly is going to go on with her and what exactly is going on with her. We also have some revelations about potentially who the leaker of those classified documents are as the media is like out for blood, calling for them to be found and hunted down and dealt with and whatever. So we've got catch the traitor, as one MSNBC CIA ghoul said. So we've got all of that for you. Also, some additional revelations from those documents this morning

about the U.S. presence inside of Ukraine, what the official line from the Pentagon is on that. Also, the very latest with regards to 2024, yet another contender, Tim Scott, entering the race, yet another individual who cannot bring himself to say one negative word about Donald Trump, who is the frontrunner. Kicking sideways. In that race, yes, indeed. Tim Scott is kicking sideways. So forwards or whatever. Anyway, we also have some updates for you, some developments in that Dominion lawsuit

against Fox News. More bad news for Fox News there. And we're going to react to this viral Elon Musk interview with the BBC. You got a couple parts that we want to show you there. And we're going to react to this viral Elon Musk interview with the BBC. You got a couple parts that we want to show you there as NPR says that they are no longer going to post on Twitter because of the, what do you say, state? State affiliated. Affiliated. That's the word I was looking for. So a lot to get to this morning. Before any of that, though, Spotify video. Yeah, that's right. You know, we've been taking a couple of days off from talking about this because we've been dealing with highly classified information. Still are, but don't forget that you can watch the full video on Spotify for our premium subscribers.

You can sign up at breakingpoints.com. You guys are taking great and big advantage of it. I can see the numbers from Spotify, and I know that it's really an easy way and better way in some ways to consume the show. Not necessarily the earliest, but still fantastic for everyone. So it's an easy way to support us and to enhance your viewing experience. You can sign up at BreakingPoints.com as a premium member and support all of our work here and everything we've been doing in the last week. But let's talk about Dianne Feinstein. Yeah, so we wanted to give you a quick update on this situation. So last we heard from Dianne Feinstein, she announced that she was not going to run for reelection in 2024. Well, that was about two months ago. She has not

cast a single vote or been in the Senate since then. Now, this causes, of course, a number of problems. But most crucially, she is on the Senate Judiciary Committee. Her vote is required to confirm any federal judges anywhere in the country. So in terms of Joe Biden's push to get his people on the bench in an aggressive way, the same way that Trump did when he was in office, Feinstein has basically her being unavailable and home in California receiving treatment has kept them from being able to do any of that. So yesterday, this really sort of came to a head when Congressman Ro Khanna, who, of course, is also from the California delegation, put out a statement calling on her to retire. I mean, this is really pretty extraordinary.

Go ahead and put this up on the screen from Congressman Khanna. He says it's time for Senator Feinstein to resign. We need to put the country ahead of personal loyalty while she has had a lifetime of public service. It is obvious she can no longer fulfill her duties. Not speaking out undermines our credibility as elected representatives of the people. Now, as we have talked about here before, for the last number of years, the Democratic establishment, including Nancy Pelosi, starting with Barack Obama, really covered for Dianne Feinstein and defended her, wouldn't speak a word of criticism, certainly did the opposite of pressuring her to resign. They actually propped her up in the last election. So shortly after Congressman Khanna puts out this statement, Feinstein puts out a statement of her own saying she is not going to resign, but she is going to step down from the Senate Judiciary Committee. In that statement, she provided no timeline for her return to the Capitol. I'm reading from The Washington Post reporting right now, which she said, quote,

has been delayed due to continued complications related to my diagnosis. She said she planned soccer to work from home until her medical team said it was safe for her to travel. But she conceded she understood her absence could delay the work of the Judiciary Committee, which she once was poised to chair. So, quote, I've asked Leader Schumer to ask the Senate to allow another Democratic senator to temporarily serve until I'm able to resume my committee work. So not resigning, as she should have done long ago, frankly, but she is going to step down from the Judiciary Committee so they can move forward with confirming judges. This is outrageous. You are not doing your job. You are ill and infirm. Outside of public service, we feel bad for you. It's sad when anybody's in their twilight years and is no longer at the top of their game. She lost her mind a long time ago. I mean, we brought everybody this story here, how she forgot that she had put out a statement saying that she wasn't going to run. Her own staff had to remind her of that. So many stories have now

come out about how she has completely lost it in terms of her memory. Her staff has to tell her how to vote on separate elections. And you know what, again, bugs me the most about this is now that she's stepping down from the Judiciary Committee, that is the only ostensible actual responsibility that she has in the Senate, being on the Judiciary Committee. Now, what are you doing? You're just at home, negligent for constituent services for 40 million. There are 39.5 million people who live in California. Senators are supposed to be helping their local businesses, their constituents, veterans get benefits, all this stuff. There is no way in hell that she is actively engaged in this. When she's, quote, working from home, she probably hasn't been actively engaged.

Nor would you want her to be, quite frankly. Yeah, that's the other thing. If you're a business and you need a tax credit or something, you want to call Feinstein to get that done for you. So basically, California has only one working senator. So 40 million people only have one guy in the Senate who can actually do anything from them. People in Vermont have better service than that, given they act up. I mean, even, what's a tinier state? Montana. People in Montana have more representation than the people of California Right now in terms of getting stuff done

This is craziness like she has to go and what the reason why people don't want to say anything is because they're all these other Senators are just as elderly and firm I mean Mitch McConnell the guy hasn't been seen in like a month after he had a fall true Look, this is all sad. It's sad when 80-year-old people fall. We can feel bad for them. But when we publicly pay their salaries and they're supposed to be doing jobs on behalf of us, then yeah, we get to sound a little bit ageist. And I'm so sick of tap dancing around sensitivities on this. There's a difference between private and public life. That's right. It's not ageist when the person just literally can't do their job. Right. I mean, this is just about like, are you there? Are you literally like doing the

very basics of what this job requires, which the very basics is being present and taking votes on this critical committee, which she's been unable to do for two months now. So just as a reminder, you know, back in 2018, the California Democratic Party, who no doubt saw the way that she was declining and also because her politics had become really out of step with the California public overall, which has moved more to the left. And she's this very sort of like centrist, corporatist, old school type. They endorsed her primary challenge. The California Democratic Party said, you know what, we're ready to go in a different direction. And the National Democrats, again, led by Obama, I think she was the first Senate candidate that he endorsed in that 2018 election

cycle, came in over the top and said, no, we want Dianne Feinstein. This is on them. I mean, Pelosi continues to cover for her. She has never admitted what is really going on here. And so now you have this situation where, you know, a lot of Californians are very concerned about what's going on in the judiciary and the types of votes that are being taken on reproductive rights and all sorts of other issues. And they have no representation from one of their two senators. So, I mean, it's good that she's stepping down from the Judiciary Committee, but it's insane that it has gotten to this point. And, you know,

I have so much contempt for her staffers. I'm sorry. Me too. I agree. What are you doing? You're letting this persist. Come on. Speak out. Absolutely. This is the most populous state in the country already, you know, in terms of proportionally, they are underrepresented. And then you effectively have just one senator to represent this entire gigantic state. So anyway, it's a very telling, sad, absurd, ridiculous situation. But the very latest we could tell you this morning is she is stepping down for the Judiciary Committee, but I guess continues to plan to serve out the rest of her term doing absolutely nothing. If she had any scrap of decency left, she would resign. And, you know, she's worth like $100 million.

I cannot understand it. Go to Napa, invite your grandchildren, and hang out for the remaining time you have on this earth. Why are you subjecting the rest of us to your BS? But they're such egomaniacs, it doesn't even enter their head. Unreal. All right, let's get to the main stuff that we have in the show. Some breaking news this morning on the way that the media is handling this leaker. They seem intent on making sure that this person both gets prosecuted and trying to basically uncover who it is as possible. Now, I'm not going to say that isn't technically

a good act of journalism. It certainly is. It's newsworthy. It's newsworthy and it's in the public eye, but there is a vehemence to which they want to unmask this person as soon as possible to try and get them prosecuted. Not usually how we handle leakers here in the press, but whenever you're against the regime narrative, I guess that's what they've decided to do. The Washington Post hunted down and found a member of a private discord community around a gun YouTuber where this original leaker seems to have originated from. The leaker itself is said to have been posting hundreds of classified documents on this Discord, basically that found community during the pandemic in which they were, he was basically trying to

prove to all of them that he was a big deal. How cool he was. Yeah, he was cool. He started out hand transcribing intel, then just eventually just started taking pictures of classified documents on the Discord before they had migrated to other channels and eventually surfaced to a level where people like us were able to report on it. So the Washington Post sat down for a video interview with one of the members of the Discord. The man's face is, well, I guess teenager's face is blurred because apparently he's under the age of 18. He's going to give us a little bit of insight into who this person was and possible some of his motivations. Let's take a listen. I was first made aware of these documents, I want to say about six to eight months ago. I was in a Discord server by the name of Doug Saker Central. And in this channel, there was classified documents being posted by a user who I will refer to as OG from this point. The documents were often listed as Ukraine versus Russia at first. However, it slowly spiraled into

just intelligence about everything. I would not call OG a whistleblower in the slightest. I don't think that there was a goal nor some sort of accomplishment that he was looking for in sharing these documents. Of course, there's some anti-government sentiment, but that's not unlike most right-wingers in the modern day and age. Oji was not hostile to the US government. However, he had disagreed with several occasions such as Waco and Ruby Ridge and thought that the government is overreaching in several aspects. There was no heavy Snowden-like conspiracy here, like some people may believe.

He is not a Russian operative. He is not a Ukrainian operative. I'll go as far to say he's not even on the east side of the world. Any claims that he is a Russian operative or pro-Russian is categorically false. He is not interested in helping any foreign agencies with their attack on the US or other countries. All right, so what can we take away from that? By the way, Waco, Ruby Ridge sounds like my kind of guy, whoever this person is. Now, in terms of his motivation, it just seems clear, like, there was no, like, higher motive. It was just, like, proven to my friends that I'm cool. Yeah, he's, like, shitposting and being like, hey, I'm actually cool.

I mean, I guess who amongst us hasn't been anonymous online and wanted to be like, no, actually, I really am a big deal, guys. I totally promise. Here's some classified intel to prove my bona fides. I mean, taking away from it, I guess what can we say? First of all, it confirms a couple of things in the background. We've seen in the background before that there was a hunting magazine taking the background of some of the photos. And I had said here before, I'm like, whoever this guy is, I'm like, he did not do a good job because you can see all kinds of paraphernalia. It was like Gorilla Glue and a pair of shoes and whatever. Yeah, Gorilla Glue in one.

Yeah, shoes, a metal ruler, hunting magazine. It's like, you know, step one. Like, it's obviously the Department of Justice is just going to subpoena the IP address of every single person who is in this. If they didn't use a VPN or Tor or something like that, you're screwed already from that. Then all they got to do is go to your house and be like, oh, well, so do you subscribe to this hunting vaccine? Yes or no? Check out your closet. Right. Let me look at your closet. What do your shoes look like? Oh, do you have a metal ruler, like literally hanging out on your desk? So yeah, whoever this gentleman is, he didn't necessarily take the best steps.

Let's go and put the tear sheet up here on the screen. Their takeaway is, quote, leaker of US secret documents worked on a military base, his friend says. So I mean, what can we, I don't know whatever, even to take this for granted because it seems that this person has been posting all of these photos and

videos and text messages and all this stuff on this Discord for a number of years. Now, he bragged to the group, his name is OG, or is known as OG, that he had worked on a military base. But the current speculation around that level of intelligence crystal is it does appear to have come from somebody on the joint Staff because, and the Joint Staff's office is here in Washington. Look, it's possible he was part of a targeting unit or something like that, which is supporting Ukraine operations or some sort of intelligence base, which is outside of here or DC. But some of the immediacy through which people have been talking about this level of documents and the like full scale readouts that this person was getting seems to have been

working on the staffs or somebody at the very, very, very high up on the food chain in the military bureaucracy. Listen, I mean, we don't know all the details yet, but if you take this all at face value, it's, it's pretty wild to me that this was done like very casually as you know, with the, um, young man they interviewed there says, you know, obviously he would have known that it was illegal. But if you were doing this in this kind of a casual manner and continuing to escalate and posting these pictures with things obviously in the background, you clearly might have known that it was illegal. But I do not think that you understood the gravity of what you were doing and that it would trigger, you know, an entire like whole of media and whole of government witch hunt to find you. So that's the part that's just really wild and extraordinary to me. I mean, when we think of past whistleblowers, they were very intentional in their actions.

They, you know, had sort of clear political goals, whether it was just, you know, transparency and exposing secrets or, you know, holding the government to account. But this seems really have to have been a leak in search of clout. I mean, that's this is the first in the modern era. And so it's it's just kind of a wild phenomenon that you could have this undertaken so incredibly casually. So we'll see, you know, what else the media is able to dig up about this guy. I have to believe the government basically already knows who it is though, right? Well, here's the other issue is that this teenager apparently has a video that you can watch of OG, the original poster at a shooting range with a rifle. Now, according to the post, quote, he yelled racial and anti-Semitic slurs. I want to see the video first before we start branding this guy a racist. But I mean,

basically from what they could say is OG had a dark view of the government. The young member said he spoke of the United States and law enforcement as a sinister force that sought to suppress its citizens and keep them in the dark. And he ranted about government overreach. So I guess it's not even necessarily fair to say it was only clout chasing. I think he was upset by some of the stuff that he said. It's very possible that he was against much of what was going on with the Ukraine war. And he wanted to make known what exactly was really going on on the ground. And again, I think we owe this person a great service. And unfortunately, he seems to have not taken any care at all. He was doing video calls, apparently. Yeah. Apparently, people recognized the background of his house in some of the photos that were distributed.

So I think you're right, Karla. Yeah. Whoever this guy is, like, he's either in a jail cell or, you know, like what happened with Edward Snowden where there are 12 cargo vans outside his house and who all happen to be doing electrical work in his neighborhood at the same time. Yeah. I mean, in a sense, like, it's interesting to know what his motivations could have been, you know, which could be a mix of, yeah, basically, like, trying to prove he's badass to this small Discord server, which seems, at least what the teenager said. Yes. That seems to have been the primary, like, impetus for him posting information and then continuing to escalate to really prove to them like, no, no, I really am that badass. Mixed with obviously this like anti-government, you know, ideology under the surface. But, you know, in a sense also it really doesn't matter what his motivations were because he has, in my view, done a great service in exposing the lies that the U.S. government has been telling and exposing, you know, the reality on the ground of this war and providing us with some useful information

that can help us make what are absolutely critical decisions moving forward about U.S. involvement in this war. So, you know, on one hand, it's fascinating to know who this is and, like, what was going on and how did these things end up on some like random tiny discord server. On the other hand, it really doesn't matter his reasons for, you know, being a whistleblower here, exposing these secrets. You know, Glenn Greenwald reacting to this immediately. He says, quote, the democracy dies in darkness. Washington Post now does the job of the U.S. security state, hunting down its leakers, doing everything to expose their identity, says everything about the real function and the ideology of these media corporations. Glenn actually points out that the Washington Post did the same thing with Edward Snowden. While they gleefully used part of the archives that he

obtained, published those documents, and got a public surprise, they demanded he be imprisoned and never pardoned. And unfortunately, that already seems to be the case with the initial media reaction. We have here a snap reaction from MSNBC, where they go to one of their retired CIA officers, who immediately is like, we have to catch and hunt down this traitor. This is how the media, our job is to expose classified information and secrets, regardless of what the consequences are. The consequences are the job of the US government. That is not our job. Our job is to produce information. This is how a news network immediately reacted to this. Let's take a listen.

Officials believe the documents are most likely authentic, though some may have been doctored. Speaking right now, retired CIA officer Mark Palomaropoulos. He's an NBC News security and intelligence analyst. Also, the Washington Post's David Ignatius is still with us as well. Mark, okay, let's continue the CIA briefing. You have 30 seconds to explain to your superiors what the hell is going on here. What the hell is going on here?

So I think it's a potentially serious compromise. We don't know yet. Key points are we have to catch the traitor. Number two, kind of reestablish or reassure our allies, our bilateral relationships. So number one, we have to catch the traitor. He doesn't even get into the substance. He doesn't even work for the CIA anymore, at least allegedly. I don't know if there is a- I don't think you ever really leave the agency, do you? I'm not sure there is any such thing as a former CIA. But look, I mean, this is what they want.

They're doing the job of the FBI, like hunting down this person and trying their best. You know, if I was The Washington Post, you know what I would do? I'd be like, hey, man, you want to give me some more of those documents? You take any screenshots in that Discord server while you're over there? And then I would publish every goddamn story I could. And then maybe we can talk about who the leaker is. That's such a great point because we know that there were way more documents that were originally posted in this Discord server. The most that any news outlet has at this point is like 50. So, like, yeah, if you're the Washington Post and you basically track down, okay, who this been clear in the media's very selective coverage of these

documents is, number one, they're concerned first and foremost seems to be for the sanctity of the security state and making sure that they're all OK and like that our intelligence and the CIA won't be compromised or whatever. And number two, the stories and the framing of what they do report on is really cherry picked. I mean, they intentionally focus on the pieces that can be used to justify a more hawkish response. You know, they reiterate over and over again, oh, it's doctored on the Russian casualty numbers. Not ever really making it clear that, OK, that happened after the fact. And that's the only doctored element that has been pointed out by anyone at this point.

So there's that piece. And then the other thing they like to emphasize is like how deep our intel was into the Russian like military apparatus and how cool our spies are. breaking points team that the gigantic New York Times, Washington Post, like NBC, Fox, any of these people that none of them picked up on because we're actually interested in what these documents reveal, not just, quote unquote, catching the traitor. I mean, unbelievable. Look, I tried to get in touch with some of the guys on the discord. It's actually pretty hard to find. If we had the journalistic resources and clearly they, you know, chartered a plane and flew immediately. If we had the resource, I'd be like, all right, let's sit down, man. What do you got? Let's go through it all. Then our team and all that, we would go through, we would report

every single story. And then maybe we would get to who the leaker is. Although I'm not sure I would necessarily want that on my conscience. But if you look at how it fits with the Washington Post editorial board itself, let's go and put this up there on the screen, guys. They say the most damaging part of the leaked Ukraine documents is the leak itself. Oh, do tell, the trove of the leaked documents, some marked top secret, is a sensational intelligence brief, a highly damaging one, more than the juicy tidbits, most of which entail detailed information of the Ukraine war. The most sensational and damaging aspect of the story may be the fact of the leak itself. And on that score, how and why these documents came to see the light of day, little is known. If most of these documents are genuine,

they say it is with apparent alterations intended. Of course, they try and point to that. But really, you know, what does the editorial board come out to? They say that the leak itself was very damaging for the Ukraine war. And thus, they basically come to the conclusion that this person has done immense damage to US and Ukrainian national security. I mean, the only reason that this person has done any damage is because he told us the truth when they were lying to us. He did damage to their lies. So they basically prefer the lies over the, have you ever seen a media organization that wants less info?

What's wrong with you? You want to sit there as a Pentagon scribe and just print the BS that they tell you? What comes through this? The rest of the world, many of our allies don't agree with us. Number two, Zelensky actually does want long range missiles to strike directly inside of Ukraine.

What, number three, that the situation in Ukraine is way more dire than they tell us and the U.S. tells us. And also, here's the other part, I don't know why people aren't going with this, the Russians are doing terribly. That's another thing that comes out of this thing. Yeah, no, it's embarrassing for everyone. It is. And I mean, yeah, another part that was included in these documents is Russia is actually open to Brazil's offer of helping to negotiate a peace with a host of, you know, unaligned countries. So there is a lot of really important information here, but that seems not to be the primary focus of the media. They say in that editorial piece that the U.S. authorities will urgently need to track, trace the leak's provenance. The Justice Department has launched an investigation intended to do just that. You know, going back to that MSNBC clip, the Morning

Joe clip with like the CIA ghoul who's immediately like, catch the traitor. The other guest that they have on there is David Ignatius, who has a column in also the Washington Post that uses what came out to, again, like sort of cherry pick this and call for a more hawkish approach in Ukraine, which is something we've seen in a number of places. I have his piece pulled up here. He says that our defense production capability should be the, quote, Trump card for the U.S. In World War II, the U.S. converted manufacturing plants across the country to make tanks, planes, and aircraft carriers that simply overwhelmed Japan and Germany.

No similar mobilization has taken place this time. Why not? Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has met several times with defense contractors, but why hasn't President Biden appointed the equivalent of FDR's war production board? Do you get literally calling for a World War II style mobilization to supply Ukraine in this proxy war we're fighting with Russia. Like, that's what they're using these documents to call for catching the traitor and to call for a dramatic World War II level mobilization. Why hasn't Biden done what it takes like FDR did in World War II? I mean, to me, this is just insanity. Yeah. And, you know, when you read even more of the column, Crystal, that you're referencing the David Ignatius column, and he's like, Lloyd Austin needs to explain to the American people why he's not doing more to fight in Ukraine.

He even references, you know, one of the maps that we actually saw. We didn't even, I didn't even see it was all that noteworthy. If anything, it's responsible. It's basically says U.S. spy drones should not fly over Crimea to avoid any sort of incident over Russia. He's like, why are we doing that? That's too cautious. And I'm like, too cautious? You have people in the military who are trying to not get us into a full-scale war. They should be applauded for that. And actually, if anything, that's good on the Biden administration. One of the two things that we learn that validates some of the Biden admins is that caution is worthy.

And also, don't ever give Zelensky long-range missiles or jets because we know exactly what the hell he's going to do with them. Correct. Listen, if there were a handful of David Ignatius-style takes in the media balanced on the other side by people who were saying some of the things that we're saying, like, hey, the only thing that held Zelensky back from long range attacks deep inside of Russia was the fact we didn't give him the long range missiles that he's been begging us for for a year now. Maybe we should like consider the way that this could escalate out of control. And look, here's China's red lines. Maybe we should consider what that means as well. If you also had those voices there, too, you could say, OK, this is like a healthy ecosystem. There's some debate going on. You're looking at these documents, trying to parse. The media only ever pushes in the hawkish direction. I have seen no one making any of the points that we're making

within the corporate mainstream media. They only ever apply pressure in a hawkish direction. Liberal media, conservative media largely, it is really consistent across the board. You've got MSNBC with their CIA dude, catch the traitor. You've got side by side with David Ignatius on the same, very same program, the Morning Joe, like elite table setter for Washington program saying, oh my God, we're being way too cautious about not getting into World War III. So that's how you end up with the foreign affairs landscape that we have. It only ever goes in one direction. And that has never been more clear than it is right now. Yeah, it really is. And look, they want blood. The fact that this guy is anti-government and

likes guns, brother, it's going to be a rough go, Yeah. Unfortunately. Let's go to the next part here, which extends to what the fallout from this is going to look like. Let's go and put this up there on the screen. Quote, U.S. intelligence agencies may change how they monitor social media chat rooms after missing leaked U.S. documents for weeks. Quote, President Biden and other officials were dismayed when they learned the docs had been online for at least a month. Nobody is happy about this, said one official. The Biden administration is now looking at expanding how it monitors social media sites and chat rooms after U.S. intel agencies failed to spot Pentagon documents circulating online. So their response to this is now we need to crawl every discord server, every private chat.

Just watch. They are going to come after. They are going to come after encryption. They're going to be looking for even more backdoors into things like WhatsApp, into any private Reddit, private chat rooms. You should now assume everything is infiltrated outside of Tor, ProtonMail, and I guess the Signal Protocol, although I guess they can even try and go after that one. This is terrifying. I mean, really I guess they can even try and go after that one. This is terrifying. I mean, really, what they're talking about here is creating a dragnet for the entire internet just to look for classified information. But what have we learned in the history of the post-9-11 security state? That's never just stopped there. Once they get everything,

then they'll be able to read metadata and pull to the extent that they don't even have this stuff. They're going to possibly hire more people to trawl through gaming chat rooms and Fortnite groups and all this stuff. Minecraft, because that's where some of this originated. They're literally talking about a massive extension of the US surveillance state. And we all know it's going to happen. And you don't even get to vote for it. That's the most insane part of all of it. They'll just do it. We'll never even hear about it until another brave whistleblower exposes how our civil liberties have been casually violated like over and over again. And then the media will demand they hashtag catch the traitor in order to reveal that person's identity as well.

They say, according to one congressional official, the intelligence community is now grappling with how it can scrub platforms like Discord in search of relevant material to avoid a similar leak in the future. Now, they do have, at the very bottom of the article, they do have some, like, you know, people who actually, like, mildly care about civil liberties, One of whom, a former intelligence official said that if the administration tries to check online chat rooms more closely, we'll have to navigate legal safeguards designed to protect Americans' privacy and freedom of expression. Watching a public chat room is fair game, but law enforcement agencies don't have the

legal authority to monitor a private online chat room without probable cause. Another person who was former general counsel of the NSA said, we do not have nor do we want a system where the U.S. government monitors private internet chats. Now, these former officials may feel that this is over the line, but we have seen many times how the U.S. government will find loopholes. I mean, one thing that they'll do classically is like, well, the government can't do it, but what if we hire a private contractor and they do it for us instead? Like, does that, is that okay then? I mean, we've literally seen them go to that, those sorts of lengths and tactics. Make no mistake about it, whether or not, you know,

they're overblowing how devastating this is to the intelligence gathering and our allies and all this stuff. They are absolutely, the Pentagon, the CIA, they are absolutely humiliated by this. And they will take extraordinary measures to try to make sure that it never happens again, number one, and that number two, you can't have material like this just sitting out there on some Discord server without them knowing about it immediately. So God only knows what they're going to do behind the scenes, but you should be very, very, very uncomfortable with all of this. I mean, the moment I saw this, I said, this is it. You know, private chats are gone, you know, to the extent that they're even safe now.

Yeah. Even with, you know, there's a, I recommend this. They're on your iPhone. You can use something called lockdown mode, which is meant to try and stop like the Pegasus Israeli systems that they've used in the past. It can be a pain in the ass, but honestly, I think anybody who is involved in anything even remotely sensitive now at this point, you're doing a disservice not to. They are coming after you. They will read all and everything private communications that you have. And even just your run of the mill VPN is not even enough now at this point. It's terrifying, really, whenever you think about it. I thought about it a

lot, too, whenever we were handling the classified stuff. I was like, man, you know, it's one of those where you just don't know. And they could throw it right back at you. And look at what happened with Julian Assange in terms of going after people and saying that even asking for people to leak you information is supposedly now a federal crime. So anyway, I'll still say it. Listen, if you have access to any more, we only have 50-some of these docs. If you have access to any of the 250, we will never try and out you.

And we will do our best to publish every scrap of news that is inside of it. So if you have it, please come get in contact. OG, if you're listening. OG, if you're listening, we would love to see all of it. And we will protect you. Let's go to Ukraine and go to the second part here, another important story that has come out. One of the initial ones that we were able to discuss is that U.S. special forces were actually present inside of Ukraine along with French and British special forces.

This leaked several days ago. Counterpoint's actually covered it on the very first day of the leak. Well, that wasn't just part of the leak. It has now been officially confirmed by the Pentagon. Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. The embassy confirms that the Pentagon has U.S. special forces on the ground in Ukraine. They say, quote, I will not talk about specific of numbers and that kind of thing. To get to your question, there is a small US military presence at the embassy in conjunction with the defense attache's office to help us work, quote, on accountability of the material that is going in and out of Ukraine. So they are attached to that embassy and to that defense attache. Now, if you believe that they're just staying inside the embassy, I think that you're an idiot.

Also, if you think that we really care at all about transparency in terms of making sure weapons get to where they are, I also think you're an idiot because, well, here's the thing. We have no inspector general's office that requires any transparency on this whatsoever. The Treasury Department doesn't even have a unit that is looking at this. They're monitoring social media to make sure

to try and see where weapons are. What do we also know from that crazy article that we talked about here about the grifters in Ukraine who just show up and are like US citizens who want to fight and some of these things, they're getting access to full brand new automatic weapons. Who do you think that's coming from? You think you just get crates of weapons that magically appear inside of Ukraine and we have no idea who gets our hands on? So the idea that this is what they're ostensibly doing is BS. We already know that the former Ukrainian defense secretary official, you know, is currently getting under indictment or whatever inside of Ukraine. Yeah. For overpurchasing weapons and overpaying for military supplies, which, again, you know, he's not the one footing

the bill. It's us who are footing the bill for all this. So I just think it's ludicrous. The fact that they even confirmed that they're on the ground though, is again, one of the extraordinary services that this leaker gave us. Yeah, that's right. Because we would not know it for sure. We all suspected, but we don't know it for sure until it comes out. Their theory here is that we sent like army Rangers over to be like glorified auditors. Like, okay, get out of shore. That's an insult to them. It's an insult to everyone's intelligence. And you know, it's amazing. There's like very little pushback on any of that, but any of this with the press, but whatever. Um, the other thing to keep in mind here is that, yeah, from the leak, it wasn't just the U.S. It was also notably France.

Now, France just came out and outright lied and said, no, we don't have anybody on the ground there whatsoever. Yeah, they didn't come up with their like, well, they're just auditing. They're like hanging out at the embassy. I promise they're not actually engaged in the war. They're just like they're making tea and like checking the doing the bookkeeping or whatever. So, yeah, it's really important that Americans understand what we're doing, how many people, where are they, that there is a presence on the ground. This has never been acknowledged before. So, yeah, the fact that this forced the government's hand to at least, you know, admit the partial bare bones truth, 10% of the truth here is a significant service that's been done.

Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, in terms of also where even if they are just in the embassy, let's believe that. One of the things that came out of the documents is that the Pentagon is running all of Ukraine's military operations. They are doing battle damage assessment on strikes. They are going through and logistically, you know, supplying their weapons depots. If those guys are on the ground in defense attache role, that doesn't even necessarily minimize what exactly that they're doing, which is they're basically running the war. Like the Ukrainians are doing the fighting and the dying, and that is very brave. But the high level strategy and all that, it's not happening in Kiev. It's happening in the Pentagon. And then these guys are basically carrying all that stuff out. I really wish, you know, some of this stuff we could show. Like, we're talking about slides and slides and slides of

the U.S. military doing after-action reports on all these Ukrainian ops. This is not even our fight. And we're doing this, all this stuff. Like, that is what those guys are actively engaged in. So just because you're not there pulling a trigger, if you're there and you're doing spotting and you're helping with ISR and all this other support stuff, you are probably even more vital to the war effort than some boot who's on the ground. And even if they're just doing the auditing from the embassy, what do you think is going to happen if a few of these service members on the ground, special operations forces, what do you think is going to happen if they get killed and like dragged through the streets or God forbid? It would be horrible. What do you think that the David Ignatiuses and the CIA ghoul that we showed you earlier from them, what do you think they're going to say we should do in response to that? Yep. So this is a tremendous risk in terms of potential escalation.

It's very revelatory in terms of our real role in guiding this war. We've had little scraps of reporting previously about the way that our intelligence is absolutely, I mean, all these weapon systems that we're shipping, many of these things, like, they have to then rely on us to do the back office work in terms of, you know, making these things work and understanding where to target and who to target and all of that. So we are so much deeper in this than the American people have been told or realized. And you get just little glimpses here of what's really going on. Yeah, absolutely. So we'll keep you guys updated on that story. I doubt we'll literally ever hear about it again. Let's go to the next part here. This one, thanks to our friend Yegor in Moscow flagging what is a story that the Western press has almost entirely missed.

Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. Russian lawmakers are currently in the end stage processes of allowing electronic draft notices. Now, why does that matter? and be signed into law by President Vladimir Putin effectively does away with the in-person delivery of notices to conscripts and reservists who are called up for duty. A lot of the ways that past Russian men were able to avoid the draft is they just stayed away from their addresses. Can't find you. It's kind of like a subpoena. If you're not technically served, you know, or whatever in person here in the U.S. and you haven't technically been served by a court of law and that's why people dodge process servers

and all that stuff. Well, what this would do is it would do away with the in-person requirement and say that any notice issued by a local military conscription office doesn't just have to be sent by mail, but will be considered valid the moment that they are put onto a state portal

for electronic services. Recipients who do not show up will then be prohibited from leaving Russia, will have their driver's license suspended, and will be barred from selling their apartments in other assets. Otherwise, they are basically fully ramping up the digital surveillance state, and they will put a digital dragnet on you the moment that they want your ass to be drafted. So this puts things on the line for a future draft. A lot of guys were able to dodge the past draft by getting out of the country, avoiding their places, selling their apartment. They were just like not going to work and stuff to try to avoid a potential job. I got to get out of here. They're like, I'm out of here. Now, nope. If your name is in the registry,

you're done. You can't drive. You can't go anywhere. You can't leave the country. You can't sell anything. They'll probably cut you off your bank account. They're sending you to the front line in Ukraine. I mean, it's a tragedy, actually, when you consider it. And it's one of those where apparently we haven't been noticing, but it also just shows you the will of the Russian government here does not appear to be breaking. They are very much setting the stage for a second draft if they need one. And that, you know, look, that's thousands, tens of thousands of young men who, look, I mean, they probably don't care about Ukraine either way. And they're just getting, you know, thrown into a meat grinder like this and they're fighting and dying, you know, for Vladimir Putin's ego. It's just a tragedy. It really is. So Yegor, who is one of those military age men who is now, you know, part of this whole disaster. He says, so basically, legally, a totality of adult men in Russia are now a draft fodder for Putin. The mobilization law is still acting with this. He can order to draft anyone in any numbers and people can't run. It will be made very difficult to hide. If you do fail to

report to the draft office. So it's not only the minute they post, they no longer have to find you. The minute they post this like electronic draft notice, that's it. You've legally been, you know, officially served and you can't leave the country. And if you don't come to the draft board within 20 days, then they're going to forbid you to drive a car, receive loans, sell and buy real estate and so on, a whole list of prohibitions. The other thing about this that's worth noting, I mean, this doesn't guarantee that there's going to be another draft, but I think you can kind of read the writing on the wall of where he's going with this and why they're setting all of this up. But the other thing that was shocking is that this really came out of nowhere. You know, it's basically like in one day as fast through the Duma and like set to be made into law. So really caught people off guard

and was quite shocking within Russia, again, according to Yegor and his impression of what's going on there. So this is a massive, you know, escalation in terms of the population. It's also a reminder. Russia has a lot more people and a lot more men that Putin is willing to just like throw into the human meat grinder and horror of this war, apparently with little regard for their lives or their injuries or the pain of their families. So as horrific as that situation is, it is a reminder that time is not on Ukraine's side. In terms of thinking of how this war is going to be brought to a conclusion, Russia continues to have an advantage in terms of defense production. They certainly have an advantage in terms of manpower. Yes, their war efforts have been less than impressive thus far, but you can also see in these documents the way that Ukraine is really sort of struggling to hold this thing together. And the analysis is that

neither side is going to be able to get beyond in this spring offensive a stalemate. So at what point do you say, OK, this is actually the strongest position that Ukraine may be in for a while in order to try to negotiate an end to this war, some sort of diplomatic resolution that could bring hopefully a lasting peace. And these things are never easy. It would be ugly. There would be trade-offs that shouldn't be made, but that basically have to be made. But when you see the just raw resources advantage that Russia has, I think there's some hard decisions that have to be made here. Oh, yeah. I mean, on Russia, too, you know, that could rip the country in half even more so, you know, in terms of domestic turmoil, if they do a full-scale draft like that again.

Maybe. It wouldn't be something good, I think, for anybody who's involved here. All right, let's talk about politics. All right, let's get to some domestic politics here. As CounterPoints brought you yesterday, we now sort of officially have another candidate in the race for the Republican nomination, Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina. So fresh off the announcement that he'd formed his presidential exploratory committee, he went on with Fox and Friends and got asked the most obvious question of all time, one that everyone has basically stumbled on. How are you going to actually, you know, how are you going to defeat Trump since he is the clear front runner here? Let's take a listen to what he has to say. Are you answering my question about how you beat Donald Trump by saying that your personal story

is what's going to sell you to the American people? What I'm saying in response to your question is that the field of play is focusing on President Biden's failures. What Americans want to see is a contrast between the radical left and the blueprint to ruin America and why our policies actually work. I believe that Psalms 139 tells us that we are all uniquely and fearfully made. If we focus on our uniqueness, we focus on our path to where we are,

I believe we give the voters a choice so that they can decide how we move forward, as opposed to trying to have a conversation about how to beat a Republican. I think we're better off having a conversation about beating Joe Biden. So focus on our uniqueness. That's his answer. That is as lame as I'm not kicking sideways, I'm kicking forward. You're running against Trump, dude. So what do you have against Trump? Also, Trump literally endorsed you. That's the most hilarious part. Trump has endorsed him, I think, twice. And throughout the entire time, like, Tim Scott kissed Trump's ass all throughout his presidency to get the First Step Act passed. And now, like, what credible—this is the funny

thing, too, about Tim Scott. What case do you have, man? Trump actually did what you wanted to do. You know, anything that you wanted done got done because you kissed Trump's ass, and then he endorsed you. What credible case do you have to actually succeed him? I don't know. I just think this is a tremendous exercise in ego because he has only one constituency. It's basically the liberal media who likes Tim Scott and likes to prop him up and also his own colleagues. His colleagues think that he's like God's gift to politics. I mean, I'm sorry. I think he's fine. He seems like a genuinely nice guy, probably a good neighbor. But as a politician, like I don't see the skill at all. And I listen to people in South Carolina. I think they agree with me.

I feel like Nikki Haley had kind of a liberal media glow at one point. I feel like anybody who associated themselves with Trump whatsoever, like any sort of liberal media curiosity, has long been gone. And I think that's true for Tim Scott. I think it's true for Nikki Haley as well. I am reminded of before he officially announced his presidential exploratory, he went on with Sean Hannity. And Hannity was the one who was on there a streak for a while. That's the one where he got the Nikki Haley like, I'm not kicking sideways. I'm kicking forward.

Oh, so bad. And he asked him, Scott, at the time, like, OK, so, you know, what differences do you have on a policy level with former President Trump? Here's this quote. Probably not very many at all. I'm so thankful that we had President Trump in office. Frankly, the policies that we were able to pass from 2017 to 2020 were monumental. Thank God we went into COVID with a strong economy. So that is, you know, his official take on his policy disagreements with the former president. And it's like, you know, the other irony is that oftentimes these people, to the extent they do have policy difference from Trump, they're actually worse, as we've talked about, less electable, like more to the right with less

popular positioning on things like Medicare and Social Security. And Tim Scott is a dyed in the wool, both social and fiscal conservative, you know, Reagan Republican or whatever, very similar to positioning as sort of like Mike Pence. But the other thing we were debating is, do you think that people like this really think they can win? Or do you think, see, I do too. I actually do think they have that level of delusion. And then the other piece that you can't take for granted is they have a whole circle of aides and especially consultants who Tim Scott will raise a good amount of money. There are going to be millions of dollars that he's going to spend on TV ads that TV consultants, media consultants are going to get a hefty slice of. So they have no interest in telling him the truth. They want to prop him up, tell him, oh, you have a lane,

and look, people are looking for something different, or whatever they're telling him. So they have a vested financial interest in basically lying to this man about what his chances are, and he has a vested ego interest in believing what they're selling him. I do not think people can underestimate what it is like to be one of these types of politicians,

like a Tim Scott especially, beloved by the donor class. His entire life is lived inside of a bubble interacting with geriatric boomer senators who think they're like, oh, well, he's such a well-spoken black Republican. He can win the black vote. That's literally how they think on top of billionaire donors

who probably tell him the same thing. That is his level of socialization. That is his entire life. Like that's the bubble that he lives in. I mean, anybody who lived in that type of reality, of course, they're going to think that they could win. And then, you know, go back to South Carolina where it's like somewhat of a popular politician, although we're about to get to not all that popular. Yeah. Where, you know, again, you people kiss your ass at constituent services meetings. And yeah, you can easily see how your ego becomes out of control. Yeah, there is a hefty dose of conservative identity politics running through the party, no doubt about it.

Yeah, so there was a poll out of South Carolina of the Republican primary. All right, how are voters in his own home state feeling about this potential run? Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen. You will not be shocked to learn Donald Trump, number one, at 41 percent. Ron DeSantis, number two, at 20 percent. Nikki Haley, the former governor of the state of South Carolina, is in third there at 18 percent. Tim Scott in fourth in his own home state at 7 percent. He's not even the top ranked South Carolinian, even close to it, in this poll of his home state. I think this was the poll that

I was looking at. It had favorability ratings for a variety of politicians, including some of the prominent South Carolina politicians like Tim Scott, like Lindsey Graham, like Nikki Haley. He does have a high approval rating in the state. People are sort of like, yeah, he's fine. Yeah. But that doesn't mean- It's like what I said, he's a nice guy. Yeah. That doesn't mean they're like, oh, we want you to be president. Exactly. They may feel like, okay, yeah, he's fine. He's like, you know, good enough center, whatever, you know.

But that does not mean that they want you in as Kennedy. Also, don't forget, South Carolina is the number three state here. Trump is 41% in the number three primary. Like, am I the only person who feels like I'm taking crazy pills looking at this? Like, 40, that's a lot. And look at DeSantis is still 20 points behind. It ain't like Nikki Haley's even all that popular. She's losing to somebody who's not even in the race. And then Tim Scott's losing to her. Right. Right. I don't know, man. I don't know what to tell you. Yeah, it's it is like it's an amazing situation because you do get a little window into the bubbles that these people are in and the, you know, self-interested financial incentives of the consultant class that's around them.

How disconnected the Republican donor class is from the base of the party. And that even now, I mean, even now at this point, listen, right after the midterms, when things went really for Trump, there was a very clear referendum there and they went great for Ron DeSantis down in Florida. And it seemed like Trump was at this sort of like weakest moment. You know, then maybe I could buy. All right, here's your lane and here's our. Now you have had time to see the way this is all going to play out with the indictments and the rallying around Trump and the way he sucks up all of the oxygen. He makes everything about him. And the whole Republican primary is a litmus test about how you feel about this man who, by the way, is going to be very likely the nominee.

You've had a chance now to take all of that in and still you're moving forward. I don't know. It's amazing levels of delusion and lack of connection to reality within the Republican. Especially whenever we're talking about Trump, who is not backing down in any sense. Not backing down. So let's get to that. This is an interesting piece that we wanted to talk about from Benji Sarlin over at Semaphore. Put this up on the screen.

So he is warning, like, listen, even if Trump loses, let's say he loses the primary or loses the general election, why are you assuming that that's going to be it for him? That he's just going to, oh, that's this, that's so sad that I lost. I'm just going to go home to Mar-a-Lago and enjoy my grandchildren or whatever. His headline here is don't assume this is Donald Trump's last run. And I think he makes some good points here. He says, it might seem a little early, even absurd to bring this up now, but a refusal to acknowledge Trump's comeback ambitions after 2020 may have caused his Republican critics their last best chance to cut off his past nomination in 2024. Everyone in the party should proceed with eyes wide open now, however they decide to handle him this cycle. Let's start with one simple fact.

President Biden will turn 82 just two weeks after election day 2024. Donald Trump will be the same age on election day 2028. God is the ultimate decider when it comes to their political futures. But age alone is no guarantee against another run. Another fact, Trump is extremely predictable. He does not acknowledge defeat. He lashes out at the people he blames for sabotaging him. And he responds to setbacks by trying to immediately prove his dominance again. There is little reason to think a loss would prompt a different reaction this time. What did you think of this, Augur? Yeah, I mean, I do think it is correct. And I do think that I've just always said,

I think the Trump era ends the day that Donald Trump dies. Because even if he's not the nominee, he will still be the driving force behind the party. The counterfactual I've been talking a lot about recently is Reagan. Reagan got out of office and basically peaced out. He retired from politics. He didn't actively engage. This is what a world would look like if Reagan had decided to stay engaged

basically up until the end. Reagan actually did not particularly like George H.W. Bush, didn't agree with a lot of what he was doing, but said, I'm gonna do my duty. I'm not gonna talk against the president. I'm not gonna actively get involved in Republican races. And he kept his mouth shut and kind of let his legacy stand as it was. He was also mentally declining. Well, yeah, but it's not exclusive, right? Yeah. That's part of the issue, right?

Which is one of those things where he was willing to acknowledge that with grace and just kind of go away. Whereas Trump is not willing to do that at all. Trump is like, I'm going to be engaged basically up until I decide. I don't think a scrap of evidence exists that says that even if he was on mental decline, that he would stop. I mean, I think he would probably just become even more engaged. Isn't that what they say when you're older? Like you just revert to like your most base tendencies. I don't know.

Probably, yeah. Most likely. That makes sense. So the thing is with Trump is there's no reason to think that he would just back out in 2024. And even if he did, he would endorse somebody and he would keep the game going up until the last moment and make everybody kiss his ass up until the end. And it all just depends on whether the base is still going to care about that. From what we know right now, yeah, they are going to care what he has to say. Maybe they don't.

Maybe they don't in 2028. It's certainly possible. It's a long way away. But, you know, where things currently stand, why wouldn't you if you're Donald Trump? He loves attention more than anything else on the planet. That's what he would do. Well, and we talked about it right after January 6th. You know, there was a real sort of like shock within a lot of Republicans. It comes out in the Fox News text, which we're going to talk about Fox News in a minute, about how like horrified some of the hosts were. Politicians like Kevin McCarthy even

messaging him on that day. Mitch McConnell coming out and decrying what happened and being pretty decently strong language against Trump on all of that. And the public public opinion was overwhelmingly disgusted with January 6th and what happened and Trump's role in it and all of that. And maybe, maybe there was an opening there if the Republican Party really wanted to move on from Trump. I'm talking about Republican elites here because there's no sign the base really wants to move on from. But Republican elites at that point, they at least had a hand to play. They could have if they acted in concert, tried to, you know, bar him from running from office again or directly impeaching or at least settling on a narrative about January 6th and consistently

like messaging it. That was unfavorable to Donald Trump. But instead, after like a week or two of making some noises about being unhappy about it, they either stopped talking about it or they basically adopted whatever his framing of the day was. And so to the extent that there was an opening there, and I think that's probably the biggest opening that there has been for the Republican Party to, you know, rid itself of Trump. they, you know, they folded and they hoped he would just go away. And that's kind of what Benji is getting at here is like, you see it playing out again. I mean, we just played you Tim Scott being like, yeah, I'm not even willing to say the word Trump. Ron DeSantis over and over again, not even willing

to say the word Trump. Nikki Haley, I'm not kicking sideways. Like to this day, they're still unable to reckon with the fact that you either got to do something to get rid of this dude or else you just should accept that he is going to be the Republican Party until the day that he dies. Yeah. And there seems to be no awareness of that, no recognition of that, no ability or willingness to do anything about it. And so, yeah, this is going to be the play that just continues to repeat itself over and over again. I think that's right. Fox News, as you know, they are in some serious legal trouble here

with regard to the election lies that they platformed in the wake of 2020, and especially with regards to what they said about the Dominion voting systems, or at least what they allowed on their air about Dominion voting systems. Now, we have already covered here some of the very embarrassing text messages that have come out about how Tucker Carlson really feels about Donald Trump, about how they knew that basically some of these things that were being said were total bullshit. They thought Sidney Powell was a crazy person because she is a crazy person, but then

they would put her on air and like take her seriously like she wasn't. Well, now the latest shoe to drop, let's put this up on the screen, is that the Delaware Superior Court judge who is overseeing this defamation lawsuit, multi-billion dollar, by the way, defamation lawsuit against Fox, they just sanctioned Fox and their parent company, Fox Corporation, for withholding evidence in the Dominion defamation suit. And the judge said that he is considering further investigation and censure. So basically what happened here is lawyers for Dominion voting systems came into court and played recordings of a Fox News producer in 2020 that was not handed over to them during discovery until like a week ago.

So this process has been going on now for like over a year and they just were given this latest recording, which has in her deposition, she says she's a former producer for Fox host, Maria Bartiroma and Tucker Carlson. She sued Fox News and said her deposition was coerced. In an amended filing Tuesday, she said she had recorded conversations with Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, and others. And again, those are the recordings that Dominion was just given access to. The other piece here, which is kind of weird, is they lied about whether Rupert

Murdoch was actually like what level of title he held at Fox News because they wanted to sort of insulate him like, oh, Rupert didn't really have anything to do with what was going on at Fox News, even though some of the messages from him would indicate otherwise, but they out and out hid what his actual role was at Fox News, which is like sort of crazy because how did you think that that wasn't going to come out? Yeah, I agree. I mean, I think one of the weird things that really comes out throughout this entire thing is Rupert Murdoch unable to reconcile kind of the empire that he built and also also putting the company in significant legal jeopardy, and also financial damage. Because at this point, Dominion has gotten and gained so much ground crystal, they feel no need to reach any sort of settlement outside of the $1 billion or so range, or suing for $1.6 billion. And now the reputational damage to Fox, not only from the techs, but what is coming from the trial after being censored now,

is they very well may have to call Tucker, Hannity, and some of the top talent to the stand in open court, which would be a disaster. Under oath. Yeah, under oath. And it would be a disaster, too, for Rupert Murdoch. I mean, again, the damage that this would incur to the overall brand, to what's already like having schism with Trump, I think is already, you know, well past what settlement is. And apparently people inside the company are furious with him for not just settling the case for exactly the reasons that I'm talking about. Maybe he just, maybe he just doesn't care. Like, look, he's worth like 50,

$60 billion. So I don't know what a billion six is to him. I mean, he's also, he's very elderly. Yeah, he's old. And infirm and has had major health issues. Let me read this part also from the profile, which is nuts. Put this next piece up on the screen. This is from Gabe Sherman over at Vanity Fair who has this in-depth profile of Rupert Murdoch. And the real crux of what he's talking about here is this sort of succession drama that's playing out within the Murdoch empire.

Because he has these two sons, Lachlan and James, who are kind of at war with one another. Rupert really pitted them at war with one another over control of the organization. Lachlan is more ideologically aligned with Fox News. James is more like resistance friendly and wants to do a bit of a U-turn in terms of the way that, you know, the type of content that Fox puts out and the type of positions that they take. So there's this behind-the-scenes war as Murdoch is very aged and everybody's looking towards,

okay, what happens when this guy is gone? The extent of how old he is is not well-known. Here's what they say, quote, Murdoch has suffered a broken back, seizures, two bouts of pneumonia, atrial fibrillation, and a torn Achilles tendon, as well as a terrible bout with COVID-19. So he's 92 years old.

That is brutal. So that also gets to decision-making and whether he's even in the right state of mind to be doing this. Yeah, if I were one of—obviously it's tough when you're dealing with your dad and all of that. But the bottom line is that for Fox itself, like this is bad, especially with what's going on right now with the judge. The money quote from that Gabe Sherman piece is, the Dominion lawsuit is the worst crisis at the network I've seen. And Gabriel Sherman, by the way, he's done in-depth, you know. Yeah, he wrote the Roger Ailes biography I talk about all the time. Right, exactly. In their own words, Fox hosts have been exposed as propagandists.

Here's a quote from a senior Fox staffer. He said, if we lose this suit, it's effing bad. As far as Murdoch himself goes, you know, the picture that comes out is someone who has kind of lost control over the empire, at least the Fox News portion of the empire in a way, because he initially, you know, really didn't like some of the election fraud stuff. He wanted them to sort of tamp down on it. It was basically overruled by the hosts who saw the ratings going down. They were worried about One American News and they worried about Newsmax. And so after this brief flirtation after the election of actually being like, well, no, Joe Biden really did win. Then they did, you know, an about face and started leaning into, all right, let's have Sidney Powell on. Let's have Rudy Giuliani on. Let's make sure

we get like give credence to some of the nonsense that was, you know, the most insane of the stop the steal stuff. They say, according to Dominion's court filings, Murdoch protected Fox News ratings by allowing the network's hosts and guests to promote a batshit crazy theory that algorithms inside Dominion machines secretly switch votes to Biden to steal the election somehow at the behest of the Venezuelan government. There's a couple other pieces here that are very interesting, which relate to the 2024 discussion we were just having, which is, according to this, Murdoch actually wanted a post-Trump future, as many Republican-aligned elites do. Shortly before the 2020 election, according to a source, Murdoch invited Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and his wife Casey for lunch at Murdoch's Vineyard as they dined outside on steak. This is,

again, before the 2020 election. Murdoch told DeSantis then that Fox News would support him for president in 2024. Right. So a couple of things that are obvious from that statement. Number one, the idea that Fox News is just like, oh, fair and balanced and we're fine. No, this is ridiculous. This has always been an explicitly political organization, you know, above and beyond anything else. That's number one, like to actively tell him like, no, I'm going to from the top down, we're going to back you in 2024 is pretty wild. That's how Roger Ailes used to run the company too with George W. Bush. Oh yeah. Ted Cruz. Absolutely. And you know, I think the real story is that they just have less influence now. Well, that's the other piece of this is he can say all he wants like, oh,

you know, Fox News is behind behind ron desantis and we've shown you the evidence of they have been behind ron desantis but it doesn't matter it's not moving doesn't matter yeah um and i don't think that would have been true in another era they had so much influence with the base and they really set the narrative and yeah i think it's a um commentary on just the media landscape that exists now. You just can't have that tight control anymore. And people are going to make up their minds for themselves. If they are hearing from you, Ron DeSantis is great, they're going to go, okay, he's fine.

But you know what? I'm also watching Newsmax or I'm watching One American News or I'm looking at Facebook or Daily Wire or whatever. And I still like the guy that was here before. And the fact that you've got your host selling me Ron DeSantis doesn't really matter to me. Yeah, that was my takeaway too. I'm not gonna do any succession spoilers, but there is a part in season three

where the idea is that Logan Roy is this Rupert Murdoch character, and they're like, we're gonna go pick the next president. And the idea was that behind the scenes, the Fox News, whatever it's represented, it's called ATN, And so the show, they're like, we're going to go and pick that. And I remember watching it and being like, this is old. Like this is not how it works anymore. This is maybe 2008. Yeah, you can make a case for that. But today I'm like, this actually is wrong. Like that's just not how it works in terms of how the base is able to get its

information. Yeah, they're on Truth Social, they're on YouTube, like, you know, some Tim Pool show, like a million other places that they can get it. They don't need Fox to tilt the thing for them. Yeah. So they'll never get over that, I think.

The last piece that we just added in because it is also revealing is MSNBC got their hands on some audio of an actual Trump campaign official. Oh, right. Telling a Fox News producer that there were no problems with the Dominion voting machines. OK, again, a Trump campaign person

telling Fox News no issues with the Dominion voting machines. Take a listen to this. Are any of the machines I know it was on War Room the other day with Steve Bannon. Have any of the machines been looked at? He had said that one was looked at in Georgia. I'd have to check on that in terms of Georgia. I know during the audit they did check on those machines. They're really good. Can we just go off the record for one second here? Yeah, of course.

I don't want us to say it if it's not. That's why we're checking. I think they have looked at the machines. When the Secretary of State did its audit, there was a lot, I think a fair bit, of looking at the machines. The audit came in pretty darn close to what the machine count was with the receipts. So, you know, I don't know the outcome of those, but our understanding, again, this is from Secretary of State's office, is that there weren't any physical issues with machines on those inspections. And that was from December 5th of 2020, just to give you a sense of the timeline

here. But yeah, no physical issues with the Dominion voting machines. And this is highly relevant for the legal case because Dominion has to prove that they knew this was wrong. It's like the actual analysis, that's what they call it. They knew that it was wrong and incorrect and a bunch of lies,

and they pushed it forward anyways. So that's why audio like this is relevant to the legal case. I mean, it's just humiliating. Funny, too, that he has to go off the record to be like yeah we looked at these machines i know right to admit that the yeah machines were i bet you that guy was on tv talking about how they need to do an audit well they did and there's nothing there well you know anyway embarrassing nonetheless for all the parties who are involved yes speaking of embarrassing um embarrassing, Elon Musk sat down for, this was

like on Twitter spaces first. Right. But also on video. But there was also video for the BBC. So you guys might've seen this initially in just audio format, and then you might've seen the full video, but there's a particular moment from this BBC interview that did not go particularly well for the interviewer with regards to hate speech. Let's take a listen to that. Content you don't like or hateful. What do you mean to describe a hateful thing? Yeah. I mean, you know, just content that will solicit a reaction to something that may include something that is slightly racist or slightly sexist, those kinds of, those kinds of things. So you think if something is slightly sexist, it should be banned? No, I'm not saying anything. I'm just curious. I'm trying to say what you mean by hateful content.

I'm asking for specific examples. And you just said that if something is slightly sexist, that's hateful content. Does that mean that it should be banned? Well, you've asked me whether my feed, whether it's got less or more. I'd say it's got slightly more. That's what I'm asking for examples.

Can you name one example? I honestly don't. You can't name a single example? I'll tell you why. because I don't actually use that for you feed anymore, because I just don't particularly like it. A lot of people are quite similar. I only look at my followers. You said you've seen more hateful content, but you can't name a single

example, not even one. I'm not sure I've used that feed for the last three or four weeks. Well, then how did you see the hateful content? Because I've been using Twitter since you've taken it over for the last six months. Okay, so then you must have at some point seen for you hateful content. I'm asking for one example. Right.

You can't give a simple one. And I'm saying— Then I say so that you don't know what you're talking about. Oof. It's honestly hard to watch. That guy messed up so bad when he lied. Yeah, he lied. And claimed that, oh, yeah, I've been seeing more hateful content in my feed.

Like, you didn't have to do that. You could have just, like— If you're going to make a big claim like that, number one, you need have to do that. You could have just like, if you're going to make a big claim like that, number one, you need to have some examples. You need to be like, it's right here. Here's the video. Here's the data from a reputable source. And, but the, and Elon clearly smells blood the minute that he said, oh yeah, in my feed, I've seen more hateful content. And he's like, oh really? Yeah. Tell me about it. Good. It does. I mean, first of all, so there's a couple other pieces of this interview that we want to show you. But one of the things that portion underscored for me is that they go after some of the mistakes and flaws of Elon's ownership of Twitter in all the wrong ways. Like the real critique of Elon's Twitter handling is first of all, I mean,

it's just been like, it's a chaos. It's total chaos. Things are breaking. It doesn't work as well. It's full of ads. Like the user experience is way worse. But then the other thing is he claimed he was going to run it in this free speech manner and he just hasn't. I mean, he just banned Substack links and went to war with Matt Taibbi over it. Like, so the idea that he was going to buy this and have this consistent free speech principled approach, he just has failed at that. And so their inability to prosecute that case leaves them on very weak ground with regard to what they're actually trying to say here. Oh, yeah. I mean, there's just no question.

And also, Glenn Greenwald flagged this. Really what he was doing is he was parroting the report by a place called the Institution for Strategic Dialogue. Let's go and put this up there on the screen. After he was caught lying, he finally pretends he has no view. He's just repeating the claims of ISD Global, which has said that Twitter is more hateful. And lo and behold, this ISD Global is funded by a bunch of European defense ministries and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Omidyar Group, the Open Society Foundation, the Soros people, like governments and other technology companies with the disinformation industrial complex, which we will actually have a whole guest on to talk about today, is just that it's this architecture of NGOs, non-governmental organizations, which just create these fake statistics, which their mouthpieces in the tech press can use as evidence. If you have examples cited in your feed that you can show him that's one thing but to just say it with no like with no evidence and then immediately back down you just look like a fool and you are a fool

you are a fool also any i mean even if he did have like a personal anecdote that's not really evidence like there i could have a personal anecdote of hateful stuff that was in my feed before elon probably took over yeah i think it also exposes that a lot of the people who have these, you know, concerns about misinformation and are on the side of more censorship from social media companies, they don't have a deeply formed, coherent view about it. So when Elon's like, so you want anything that's like mildly sexist to be banned? I mean, who's going to decide that? I think even at one point in the interview, he's like, what, is the BBC going to decide? Like, who's going to decide it? And that does

kind of get to the, you know, the core issues here. Jack Dorsey had, I thought, a thoughtful post about what he viewed as some of his failings at Twitter and the way he would do things differently. And the core of his argument was vesting these sorts of powers of who gets to say what and what stays up and how you're going to handle all of, jury, and executioner, that whole setup is really bankrupt. And you're never going to solve these problems as long as that is the core model of these social media companies. Now, there are some that have experimented with it. Mastodon is the only one that I know of that has less of a hierarchical approach.

I've never been on Mastodon, so I don't really fully understand it. But there are some sort of experiments out there for how to do this differently. But obviously, the main platforms right now of Twitter and Facebook, et cetera, they all rely on this centralized control and it ends up being a disaster. And so let me show you another piece here that, in my opinion, is a lot less of a good look for Elon Musk, where he's asked about Twitter banning a BBC documentary that is critical of Narendra Modi. Let's take a listen to that. We then believe that some of that content was taken off Twitter. Was that at the behest of the Indian government? I'm not aware of that particular situation. So you're not sure?

I don't know. I don't know about that, you know, what exactly happened in some context in India. The rules in India for what can appear on social media are quite strict. And we can't go beyond the laws of the country. But do you get that if you do that, you've incentivized countries around the world to simply pass more draconian laws? No. Look, if we have a choice of either our people go to prison or we comply with the laws,

we'll comply with the laws. Same goes for the BBC. So he tries to just play dumb. Oh, I have no idea what you're talking about. Come on. Everybody knows. This has been an ongoing issue here.

He obviously knows what he's talking about. Actually, that stance is not one that the U.S. government has looked kindly to or the U.S. public. And often,

that has been part of the problem, which is that we look at it and we'll be like, oh, well, we're just complying with local regulation. Yeah. Where it's like, well, okay, well, hold on a second. Like your whole thing is about values. And so it's like, so are you saying that you just value like business more? If you do, then say that. That's actually fine. But just be honest about what you're doing. Well, and that is what he seems to be hinting at is like, oh, I just got to follow the laws. So if the Indian government says it's got to be taken down, then it's got to be taken down. But then you think about, OK, so if there's like Twitter in Afghanistan, are you going to follow

like what the Taliban allows on Twitter? If you're in Saudi, are you going to like follow what, you know, KSA says is allowed on Twitter? And, you know, maybe the answer, the answer seems to be yes, but that is far from the free speech promotion that he sold when he purchased Twitter. That allows, you know, authoritarian regimes to censor in any way that they want, allows really the U.S. government, if they come in and say, hey, you got to take this down, then hey, it's the local, you know, local law. They've got the right to do it. Who's to say against them? So I thought that was a much more interesting and revelatory line of questioning there from this journalist. And just to show you, like, he knows what he's talking about here. This is not some new issue

just put on his radar. He had actually responded to a question about this indian uh modi documentary before put this up on the screen so he had gotten a question about it and he said oh it's the first i've heard of it it's not possible for me to fix every aspect of twitter worldwide overnight while still running tesla and spacex among other. So very defensive here and sort of uses the same dodge of like, oh, I had no idea this was going on. OK, but now you do know what's going on. So what are you going to do about it? Because it is a pretty significant and high profile example of you taking an action that is at odds with at least the stated principles that you bought the platform with. Yes, absolutely. Totally agree. At the same time, this is just

a little funny coda here. Put this up on the screen. So, you know, NPR had been designated, what did they say, state affiliated media on Twitter. NPR has now quit Twitter after what they see being falsely labeled as state affiliated media. They sent a message to their journalist explaining the decision. They said it would be a disservice to the serious work you all do here to continue to share it on a platform that is associating the federal charter for public media with an abandoning of editorial independence or standards. They're giving a two-week grace period so staff who run the Twitter accounts can revise their social media strategies. And they say that individual NPR journalists and staffers can decide for themselves whether they are going to stay on the platform or not. What's also hilarious is that PBS is now joining NPR, their brethren,

over being upset that they are labeled as government-funded media. Guys, it's called the Public Broadcasting Network. It's like, how can you deny that it's not? How is that some sort of besmirching of your editorial independence? You can claim you're editorially independent. Most people don't believe you. Same with NPR. It's like, well, look, you do get the vast majority of your funding from the government. I mean, sorry, not the vast majority. You get a portion of your funding from the government. In the case of PBS, you get a significant portion. NPR has literally said that federal funding for NPR

is vital to their operations despite outside. You therefore are state-funded media. There's simply no getting around it. And really what it is is that they can't stand being labeled this way because it just exposes who they are. Like they want to have their cake and eat it too. They don't want to be cast as state-funded,

and they want to claim that they're editorially completely independent funding-wise from anything that keeps them from reporting on power. Like, that's just truly not the case. And so I don't know why they have such a problem with the truth. Well, what I would really like to see personally is a corporate-affiliated media label because that is, I mean, those companies get the

bulk of their revenue from advertising and are like deeply conflicted. And so I would love to see some labeling to that regard. Not that people don't, you know, people don't really need these labels. Like they know what's going on here. There was an exchange in that BBC interview because BBC was also labeled state-affiliated media. And Elon was floating like, maybe I'll change the label to publicly funded media or something like that. He was like, would that make you feel better? So anyway, that's where things stand right now is I guess Elon is mulling whether he might shift the title somewhat. Don't shift it. Hold your guns. We don't need NPR.

But be consistent about it applies to. Don't shift it. Hold your guns. We don't need NPR until we're probably better off. But be consistent about it though. Sure. Because that's the thing is it's like very selectively applied as a troll to the companies that he felt like targeting and going after. Right. But like I said, if you want to do something genuinely useful, I would label all the corporate mainstream media, corporate affiliated press. Label them. All right, so how are we looking at? Well, Biden's EPA announced an ambitious new target yesterday requiring two-thirds of new car sales in the United States to be fully electric by 2032. The nine-year effective moonshot actually starts even earlier than it sounds because the order requires that a minimum of 54% of all new cars be fully electric by 2030. This represents a titanic shift in the U.S. automotive policy that sounds nice on paper. And today, though, I really want to dive into and see if this is realistic and even

advantageous. Let's start with the present day. How many electric cars are on the road? Presently, electric cars make up 5.6% of all cars and trucks sold in 2022, up from 1.8 percent just two years earlier. While that certainly is parabolic, we are still talking about what is effectively a niche market and turning it into the dominant mode of new transportation in less than a decade. Is this feasible in any way? Now, the answer is kind of yes, but the unfortunate part is that Biden has not done really anything else to prepare the world or America for this. First thing, what is the most important part of an electric vehicle? The battery. Who makes those batteries? What goes in them? Not only is it not us, but we are losing by several orders of magnitude. Today, China produces 76% of global lithium ion battery cells worldwide, including

those going to most US electric vehicles. The vehicles. The U.S. is number two in rare earths, but we have a major problem. Chinese reserves of rare earth minerals required for EVs actually outstrip the entire production of what America made just last year. We have no reserves. Worse, if you look at the countries that do have them, we are not exactly on the best terms, including Brazil, Russia, and India. Why would they sell it to us and not China? We have less economies of scale for production. We have less EV sales than China, which dominates 60% of the global market. It's not like America is an easy place to actually build anything whenever it comes to mining. And critics of my position will say,

well, Sagar, this presumes lithium ion batteries remains the standard for EVs. But here's the issue. We're so far behind on EV technology, we don't even really have a chance with the second generation. China already makes up 60% of the world EV market, and it is investing heavily in a battery supply chain that both ditches lithium and includes sodium. Because they are first, quote, in two years, China will have 96% of the world's capacity to make sodium batteries. Now, it may sound like we may make up the ground, but it is not easy. They have been investing in this for over a decade. Graduates of top universities are studying this tech. They state subsidize the companies that make these batteries to undercut any private Western competition. And they have a stranglehold

even on the largest EV makers here in the United States, like Elon Musk, who is currently building a new facility in Shanghai and appears to have no qualms with doing business with the CCP. Building an alternative EV supply chain that we would control requires an investment of minimum of hundreds of billions of dollars, if not trillions of dollars. Right now, the Biden EV future looks like one where the dominant mode of transportation in this country is completely reliant on a country that is our main geopolitical rival. That sounds really dumb to me. Again, it can be avoided, but only with a serious Apollo-style program requiring national buy-in and absolute gobs of state-funded infrastructure, which last time I looked at the US Senate, probably not going to

happen. Next, let's look at the other problem. Where will we charge these EVs? Right now, there are approximately 145,000 gas stations in the United States, which is actually a historic low. With EVs, we have about 5,300 chargers. That sounds like a lot, but it is actually not because the average fill time on a car at a gas station is only two minutes, meaning that you can service thousands of customers per day. Even on a level two charger, on average, it takes about four to 10 hours to charge a car from empty to full. You can get around this with things like Tesla superchargers, which will get you a decent range in 20 minutes,

but the numbers on them for publicly available, dismal. There are approximately 28,000 fast chargers distributed across the US. The Biden administration only has current plans to fund approximately 5,000 more. Factor in the 20 minutes or so that it will take for the average EV battery to fill up here, and you are looking at a catastrophic mismatch in infrastructure that exists today to make this a part of day-to-day life. Now, of course, this is not the only way to charge your car. You can do so at home. But this also costs money. Right now, the average

cost of an L2 charger at home is around $1,000 between hardware and installation, sometimes much more. The cost that the consumer has to absorb and requires a significant upfront investment from that consumer. And that brings us to our final problem. While it certainly would be better for the climate if we switch from gas-powered vehicles to electric vehicles, even if that power comes from natural gas, any so-called transition to electric future cannot be sustained on the current power grid. A shift of two-thirds of all cars to the grid would dramatically increase the price of power

across the United States for average home, basic appliances, let alone the car that you now have to charge, which means we need cheap and abundant energy available nationwide. I have spent hours on this show laying out why the only real way to accomplish this is wide-scale available nuclear power,

but here again, the government is the worst obstacle. The newest reactor in the US just came online in June 2016. The one before that came online in May 1996. There is one plant in Georgia that is coming online soon, which means the grand total of nuclear reactors to come online in the last 20 or 30 years is three. That Georgia plant that I mentioned is a cautionary tale. It started construction in 09

and has taken more than a decade to build with huge cost overruns and very little support from the federal government. Any electric future that we live in will, again, require a separate Apollo program just to provide clean, reliable power on top of the infrastructure need to build EV batteries and then keep the supply chain here in the US. I don't want to sound like a doomer. Our country certainly has had the capacity to do some of these things in the past, but the past is the past. Our political system right now has no consensus, and the genuine seriousness that it would require to pull something off like this is way outside the capacity of an aged man like Joe Biden and Secretary Pete.

Maybe we can fix it, but honestly, I doubt it within the next 10 years. More likely, this could be a colossal boondoggle which would inadvertently spike the price for the poorest consumers on electricity and increase demand on the existing grid for all Americans. Again, I hope to be wrong, but laying it all this way, I don't see another way. What do you think, Crystal? I mean, it's a good- And if you want to hear my reaction to Sager's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. Crystal, what are you taking a look at? Well, guys, perhaps no effort is more personal to President Joe Biden or more consistently touted by the president himself than his efforts to cure cancer. Inspired by the untimely death

of his son, Beau, Biden initially launched the so-called cancer moonshot in 2016 when he was vice president. Now in the White House, they have established another admirable set of goals, quote, to reduce the death rate from cancer by at least 50% over the next 25 years and improve the experience of people and their families living with and surviving cancer. And by doing this and more, end cancer as we know it today. But as Professor Anthony Zinkas has been pointing out, right now as we speak, our for-profit healthcare and pharmaceutical industries, they are not even capable of supplying existing cancer drugs for patients who are suffering with that disease right now today. NBC News has some of the details. They say cancer drug shortages are creating dire circumstances for some patients. In some cases, other drugs are available, but they may not work as well. In other cases, patients may die waiting

for the medications that they need. According to that report, four different cancer drugs are in shortage right now, causing rationing, the use of inferior treatments, and leading, as they say there, in some instances to avoidable death. NBC interviewed a man named Roger who is suffering with an aggressive form of prostate cancer stage four. After chemotherapy was unsuccessful, his doctor recommended a new advanced drug specifically for prostate cancer, which is made by Novartis. But that is one of the drugs that's in short supply. So rather than receiving the potentially life-saving care that he needs right now, he's been put on a wait list, which is expected to delay his treatment by several critical months. He told NBC, quote, I definitely need that drug. It's the only way I see my life. But it's not just cancer drugs. A Senate subcommittee recently released a report

on the growing scourge of critical drug shortages, and they held hearings on this matter. According to that report, at the end of 2022, a full 295 individual drugs were in shortage. In a single year from 2021 to 2022, drug shortages spiked by 30%. And because drug makers have few requirements to inform the government of upcoming shortages or explain the causes, regulators, doctors, and patients are often completely in the dark about when a drug might be available or whether it's going to be available at all. Listen to how one of the witnesses at that hearing described the horror that this creates for doctors and for patients. We are lucky enough to live in a country where cutting-edge research has massively reduced cancer-related deaths, but cancer drug shortages represent a tragedy that's happening in slow motion. For example, etoposide is a cancer drug

that's been on the market for over 40 years and typically costs less than $50 a vial. It is given to patients for nearly a dozen different kinds of cancer. But in 2018, due to a manufacturing delay, this drug was on shortage across the country. Which of our patients with cancer should get it? How can we prioritize between American lives? Should our limited vials go to an older woman who was just diagnosed with lung cancer, a young man who's already been successfully taking it for testicular cancer, or a baby with neuroblastoma, an aggressive cancer for which this drug is recommended but others might substitute. Our hospital, like others across the country,

struggled to make decisions based on projected availability, which patients were already under our care, and our best guess at how many new patients would be diagnosed in the coming weeks. As a doctor who's devoted my life to fighting cancer, it's hard to express how horrible that is. In this particular case, we had enough drug for our lung and testicular cancer patients, and our heroic pharmacist was able to scrape together enough atoposide from the bottom of the leftover vials to also treat the infant patient. But our pharmacist should not be desperately trying to squeeze out a few last drops when a life may be on the line. Now, the causes of these shortages will not be remotely surprising to you. It's the same story we see in a whole lot of industries,

only, of industries, only, of course, with lives on the line. Industry consolidation has meant that when a single drug maker stops making a drug or has some sort of supply or factory issue, the result can be absolutely devastating. In the name of market fundamentalism, we have also allowed damn near our entire pharmaceutical supply chain to become dependent on ingredients or processes from foreign countries, most notably China and India. 80% of the factories that make active ingredients for pharmaceuticals are located outside of the U.S. That's the reason why this

hearing was actually held by a Senate committee focused on homeland security. Our drug shortage issue is so dire, it is actually a national security issue. According to CNN, a single factory in Shanghai that made a necessary material for radiological scans shut down. It literally nuked half the US supply of that critical substance. A VA hospital doc told them that the shortage hit them immediately and they were faced with making some horrific choices about whether they had enough to do a needed cancer screen or heart disease scan.

Many of the drugs in short supply are generics, which provide a lower profit margin than the patent-protected drugs. Since Big Pharma is unable to have a monopoly over these drugs and unconsciously price gouge us, in some cases they just decide to stop producing them altogether. Now the neoliberal or libertarian or pharma shill answer to all of this would be to basically bribe the drug makers to make the drugs that we need, give out price gouging monopolies for the generics or use Medicare or tax credits to artificially prop up the prices. Use an endless stream of corporate subsidies to inflate an already wildly profitable industry just to induce them to keep from killing

babies with cancer. Bribe them with even more subsidies to manufacture drugs here rather than overseas. Meanwhile, you're just allowing pharma to blackmail the American people and the U.S. government. Nice cancer drug you got there, shame if something happened to it. Let me just state the absolute obvious. This is an insane way to run a healthcare system. You simply cannot let profit incentives determine who gets care, what drugs get made, who lives, who dies, who spends the rest of their lives under a crushing burden of medical debt. And a cursory glance at this current system

tells you that it is already anything but a free market. Already, public money has been used to fund every single new drug molecule over the past two decades. Why? Because drug companies aren't interested in saving lives. They're interested in extracting profit. So they would rather spend their research and development money crafting a new formulation of Viagra that they can use to extend the patent, or not performing research at all, but engaging in

all-out lawfare to protect their monopoly price-gouging powers for another few years. But listen, I understand if you aren't ready to just fully nationalize the industry. Our government has certainly got a long way to prove they're really up to the task of effectively managing production and distribution. So, how about we start with a pharma public option? Join the ranks of other nations which have recognized that some essential medicines are too critical to be left to the whims of the greedy psychopaths

who run the pharmaceutical industry. Countries that have also decided that the public should benefit from the medicines our tax dollars are used to invent in the first place. As Stat News writes, quote, Publicly owned manufacturers at the state, local, and regional levels could make new medicines developed by a national R&D institute and also produce low-cost generics. These manufacturers would then work with publicly owned wholesale distributors to assure the medications are available at hospitals and retail pharmacies nationwide, all at the same low price. It could even leverage existing public institutions like the U.S. Postal Service and the Veterans Health Administration, both of which have important

experience in pharmaceutical distribution to ensure that cost-effective medications are delivered directly to patients and clinics in every community. Listen, Big Pharma wants to compete in these markets? Great. If they prefer to make the 40th version of Viagra instead, so be it. Remember back a while ago when there was a whole fear-mongering campaign about Obamacare and supposedly socialized medicine

creating death panels? Well, now hospitals struggling with these shortages are forced into actual, literal death panels, trying to weigh the ethics, as we heard, of how to ration a limited supply of life-saving drugs. Plot twist. Capitalism actually brought you the death panels, trying to weigh the ethics, as we heard, of how to ration a limited supply of life-saving drugs. Plot twist, capitalism actually brought you the death panels. Never again should we allow people who are already going through the worst moments of their lives to have to worry about whether the drug that would save their life is profitable enough to make. And I am shocked

that this isn't a bigger story. And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at breakingpoints.com. Joining us now is Jacob Siegel. He is a senior editor at Tablet Magazine and is the author of a fascinating new piece. Let's go ahead and put it up there on the screen. It's a guide to understanding the hoax of the century, 13 ways of looking at disinformation.

It's an important rundown, both on the history of the disinformation wars, but also kind of the architecture of the disinformation industrial complex that exists today. Uh, Jacob, thank you so much for joining the show. We really appreciate it. Thanks for having me. So just, it's a very long piece, but I do recommend that people go and read it. Uh, first the genesis of why you decided to write this and some of the most shocking things that you were able to uncover and kind of string together for people. Well, I started working on it a few years ago, so it's been a long time in the making. And the origins really were in what appeared to be the mass manufacture of narratives in the United States, and just being an American and being a spectator and observing the way in which there was both

this production of these pseudo events, to borrow a phrase coined by Daniel Boorstin, things like, for instance, the Russian bounty story from Afghanistan, which you may recall, which was just an entirely false story, obviously political narrative that was capable of purging from the public record things that were not simply controversial, but also things that were vital, for instance, about health issues around COVID and the pandemic, or for that matter, around the 2020 election and Hunter Biden's laptops. So it was this machinery that had become more and more overt in American life. And seeing these two things, the production of these pseudo events and mass narratives on the one hand, and then on the other hand, the mass censorship that was taking place and recognizing that they were two sides of the same coin. That was the genesis of the piece.

So take us back to the roots of the current misinformation moment, because I feel like it sort of gets glossed over now. But I remember quite vividly the whole Red Scare, Kremlin Stooge discourse was used obviously against Trump and Trump supporters, but it was also used to try to quell the populist uprising, the Bernie Sanders movement. Anybody, you know, Bernie was seen as like doing Russia's bidding. Anybody who supported Bernie was called like a Kremlin Stooge and all of these sorts of things. So what happens that enables

that discourse to be turned into this entire sort of like industrial ecosystem? Yeah, that's right. It was virtually identical language used with the two sort of populist insurgencies on left and right. Bernie on the left, obviously Trump on the right. And the proximate origins of this are in military and defense establishment theories around what's called hybrid warfare. This really starts in 2014 with the invasion of Crimea and also the Euromaidan movement in Ukraine, which the US backs and Russia opposes. And the popularization of this idea of hybrid warfare, which essentially posits that there is a new form of warfare also sometimes lumped in with fourth-generational warfare in which conventional and unconventional tactics are mixed together in a kind of larger information space, globalized information space,

enabled obviously by the internet. And so Russia is seen as utilizing this method of warfare, not only to pursue immediate tactical aims, but also to demoralize target populations, to seduce fellow travelers in the West and even in some Eastern European countries, as it were. And so this idea of hybrid warfare, which has some legitimacy, has some basis in terms of new tactics, new operational techniques being employed in warfare, has some legitimacy in terms of the kind of ways in which the internet opens up this new space for propaganda and for information operations very quickly. And from the beginning, as early as 2014, 2015, there are people who are pointing to the kind of capaciousness of this concept, the amorphousness of it, the ways in which

it can be used to mean anything. And in particular, there are Eastern European security officials pointing to it and saying, hey, this excessive focus on hybrid warfare is actually taking away from the real sort of, you know, beans and bullets aspects of war that matter and turning it into this sort of abstract, vague political concept. So that's there from the beginning. And some of those same critical U.S., in particular, though it's also NATO people involved, intelligence, defense, counterterrorism officials who are talking about hybrid warfare, then begin to talk about, in the context of the 2015 sort of emergence of the Trump presidential campaign, and then really

in 2016, it picks up, They begin to talk about the Trump campaign and the Bernie Sanders campaign as extensions of hybrid warfare, essentially. And they're pointing to memes that are being spread online and saying, in particular, there's a former FBI officer named Clint Watts, who becomes a prominent counterterrorism official, later reemerges in relation to Hamilton 68, the Russian influence-detecting dashboard online. But before that, before Hamilton 68, Watts is one of the key people who is pushing this idea that, as he says explicitly in a piece for The Daily Beast where I used to work, he says that basically that Trumpkins, as he calls them,

and Russian trolls have become more or less indistinguishable. Yeah, I think all this is so important in terms of the history because it sets the stage also for state action. So can you describe where governments begin to get involved, they begin to start funding this stuff, and it gets laundered both through government to non-governmental agencies and then gets perpetrated as fact and repeated by journalists. It's like two sides of the same coin. That's right. The key event there occurs in December of 2016 with the, it's actually the authorization for the 2017 NDAA, which is the defense authorization bill. There is a bill that's a part of that called the Countering Foreign Disinformation and

Propaganda Act that gets signed into law by President Obama in December of 2016, and really is the first major piece of law and policy authorization that creates the architecture for this, what is effectively an information operation that is nominally aimed at defending against foreign threats, but is always from its inception, because of what I just pointed out, because of this blurring that you get from the proponents of hybrid warfare theory and people like Clint Watts who are blurring the lines between Russian trolls, Russian influence operations, and American political actors, even though this is nominally directed against foreign disinformation threats, it's always in fact really sort of omnidirectional. And in practice, it's really directed against domestic political actors in the United States.

You get the creation of the Global Engagement Center and the State Department, which becomes the central governmental hub for coordinating and leading these counter disinformation experts. And then the GEC, in its own mandate, in its own mission statements, is talking from the beginning about leading a whole of society effort that will involve bringing together actors from the tech industry, actors from the NGO sphere, basically all of the most influential and powerful sectors of American society in terms of controlling the kind of messaging apparatus on the one hand and the communication structure on the other hand. So that's all baked in from

the very beginning. Well, I think what's really important about the piece is, you know, the media piece is the most apparent. It's sort of at the surface. It's what we see. We've certainly talked about the media role here, but you kind of dive a level deeper at all of the architecture that has been constructed that is, you know, deeply troubling, I think, no matter where you are in the political spectrum to our civil liberties. So, Jacob, thank you so much for spending some time with us. Thanks, man. Appreciate it. Thanks for having me. Yeah, it's my pleasure. Thank you guys so much for watching. We really appreciate it. Thank you for continuing to support us, signing up for a premium and watching the full show on Spotify for

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