Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 4/3/23: Trump's Lead Explodes Post Indictment, Asa Hutchinson Enters 2024, Pro-Russian Blogger Blown Up, Fox News Faces Massive Payout, Elon Strips NY Times of Checkmark, Meme Lord Convicted, Biden Kills Healthcare For Millions

Episode Date: April 3, 2023

Krystal and Saagar discuss Trump's lead over Desantis exploding after the indictment news, Trump en route to NYC for surrender, Asa Hutchinson enters the 2024 GOP primary race, Marianne Williamson has a surge poll despite media blackout, a Pro-Russian blogger is blown up by a bomb in St. Petersburg, Fox News on Trial facing a 1.6 billion payout, Elon Musk strips the New York Times of their Blue Checkmark, Saagar looks into how Douglas Mackey an Anti-Hillary Meme Lord was just convicted by the Biden administration, and Krystal looks into Biden letting 15 million people lose their healthcare.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.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Hey, guys. Ready or not, 2024 is here, and we here at Breaking Points are already thinking of ways we can up our game for this critical election. We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade the studio, add staff, give you guys the best independent coverage that is possible.

If you like what we're all about, it just means the absolute world to have your support. But enough with that. Let's get to the show. Good morning, everybody. Happy Monday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed we do. Of course, lots of big breaking news this week, including, of course, we are expecting that former President Trump will be arraigned tomorrow. So we've got all the latest details there, and there is some new news there, both on the legal front and on the political front. Let's just say that our predictions thus far have come true. Yes.

So we'll dig into all of that. We also have a new entrant into the 2024 race. Everybody get hyped for Asa Hutchinson joining the 2024 field. He's the first sort of like out-and-out anti-Trump candidate. So that is interesting. At the same time, Marianne Williamson actually surging in the polls. So we'll break that down for you as well. Prominent military blogger was murdered in Russia in a St. Petersburg cafe, along with some of his supporters were also injured.

We'll break that down for you as well. Dominion is celebrating today because they had a major victory in their lawsuit against Fox News. That case moves forward. Got the details for you there. Elon doing something genuinely hilarious by removing the checkmark just from the New York Times and no one else. So I'll tell you about what that means. And we have a couple of announcements before we get into the show. So first of all, we are going to be doing a live stream special in primetime tomorrow night because tomorrow is the day that Trump is expected to be arraigned.

He also has a press conference scheduled for the evening that we are going to take live. So go ahead and put this up on the screen, guys. Sagar, what are some of the details the folks need to know? Trump on trial. I know everyone's always asking for live streams and for primetime specials and all that. So we decided, okay, this is a genuinely historic event, President Trump being arraigned. He will be arraigned in Manhattan in the middle of the day, but he's doing a major press conference around 8 p.m. tomorrow night, Eastern Time. So the four of us and me, you, the CounterPoints crew will all be here at the desk. We'll give everybody a little bit of a pre-show and then a post-show as well. We'll fully watch the press conference here together. So you can watch it here

on the Breaking Points stream. And we are also going to be having some legal analysts. We will be running an AMA feature for our premium subscribers who can sign up at breakingpoints.com. On the AMA, you can submit your questions, legal questions for two legal experts that we will have here on the show who will answer them. And then we will also break some of that down for you as well. So it's an opportunity for the premiums to ask questions. We will answer them live and also just have a fun live primetime special here at a normal time. So we'll be starting around 7.30, 7.45 Eastern time, depending on when we think Trump will be speaking. But the four of us will be here at the desk and bring you live analysis. No regular show tomorrow. Instead

of regular show, we're doing the evening primetime live stream. If you're a premium sub, submit your questions on AMA. If you want to ask questions, become a premium sub and you can do exactly that. Second of all, Spotify video. That's right. And so that's another reason to become a premium sub. You can watch the video fully on Spotify. And just so everybody knows the full video, audio, all of that, we will post the second day on the Spotify channel as well as on our normal podcast platform. So if you can't join us live, don't worry about it. You can take everything the morning of whenever you wake up. We'll publish it as early as possible. So if you can't stay up or have something to do, you can watch it that morning. And then CounterPoints will be moving to Friday. So we will still have

content for everybody all throughout the week. Don't worry. It's still going to be a lot of fun. And of course, you can become a premium sub, breakingpoints.com. For the AMA feature to head off the ineditable, use the AMA feature within the Supercast website whenever you become a subscriber. But okay, let's start with the actual news. Let's get to the show. All right, let's put this up there on the screen. In a surprise to absolutely nobody, Trump surges to his largest lead ever over Ron DeSantis after the news of the indictment breaks, showing that most Americans don't think Trump should be allowed to serve as president again if convicted. But amongst Republicans, his star is not waning, it is, what, bursting. Is that how you would say it? Rising.

Okay, all right. Exploding. Rising. That's a good word. Well, it used to be a good word. Okay, so Republican preference for Trump over DeSantis has increased after Trump's indictment to 57%. DeSantis sinking to 31%, 12% undecided. Keep in mind, this is not even in a multi-field poll. This is in a direct head-to-head, and it is a surge of 26% in that one-to-one contest. Not only does he attract majority support, previously he had 44%, now up to an outright 52, when even pitted against a wider 10-candidate field. So that's the two headlines. Not only does he surge against head-to-head in Ron DeSantis, taking 57%, but also even in a multi-10-candidate race, where you have some of the declared and potential GOP challengers to Trump, he still is at a 52%.

And actually- This doesn't account for the Asa Hutchinson search though yet. You're right. I apologize. So just keep that in mind. For anybody who's asking exactly who the hell that is, we will bring you the details. For Ron DeSantis, there's even worse news, which is that Trump only drops by 5% in a multi-candidate field. DeSantis drops by 10. Just showing you once again that in a multi-candidate field, DeSantis drops by 10. Just showing you once again that in a multi-candidate field, a large percentage of people who are quote unquote anti-Trump, even though that's not actually that many of them, are still not entirely wedded to Ron DeSantis. So, I mean, the overall headline is that this is a brutal and terrible poll, not only for Ron DeSantis,

but for anybody who's even thinking about challenging Trump. You know, CeCe, Nikki Haley, Vivek Ramaswamy, Mike Pompeo, Asa Hutchinson, I guess, who we'll talk a little bit about, you know, in the next block. But overall, I mean, shocker, he's a lot more powerful than he was before after the indictment news. Who could have predicted this? I think that this is even more movement than I expected. I mean, we're talking just to underscore this. The last time this pollster was out in the field, it was just two weeks ago. And there has been huge movement since then. So Trump was ahead the last time, two weeks ago, but it was 47-39, much, much closer than what it is now. And as recently as February, DeSantis was actually narrowly ahead of Trump in this poll.

Now, I think with all of these polls, as we're moving forward and thinking about how to interpret them, et cetera, what's important to keep in mind is not what the like absolute numbers are. It's what you see in terms of the movement, because as we've talked about the Republican primary polls so far, they've been really wildly divergent across different polling methodologies. But if you see significant movement within one single poll, that tells you something here is really happening. And, you know, I think it seems pretty clear this indictment has really strengthened Trump's hand. It has forced all of the Republican candidates to basically rally around him, giving him the strength. And it's important to keep in mind,

too, this is probably the first of several indictments. So it's not like you can say, okay, we'll get through this. If you're Ron DeSantis, all right, we'll get through this. Yes, he's dominating the news cycle now, but then we'll be able to move forward. I'll be able to talk about what I'm doing with the Florida legislature or whatever. No, this is going to be the dynamic that is playing out the whole time. And even after we get whatever potential indictments are going to come you know, come down here, then you're also talking about legal wrangling. You're talking about potential trials. You're talking about different, you know, motions to dismiss in front of judges. This is going to go on and on and on, at least throughout the Republican primary and potentially throughout the entirety of 2024.

Just as a side note here, you know, there's also some interesting news here in terms of the general election. Yes, a majority of voters, you know, they think he did it. They think it should be disqualifying. But then when you're like, all right, Joe Biden versus Donald Trump head to head, there has been zero change there. Biden has a two point lead, which is within the margin of error. So it's basically a jump ball. Even with everything that's happened so far on the general electorate side, this hasn't moved the needle whatsoever. So, so far, and of course things can change if he ends up, you know, being found guilty of these things or if, you know, another indictment related to the documents or January 6th or faked electors or whatever comes out, maybe that shifts things. But most of the general

electorate audience kind of already has these things priced in, is my reading, at least of the initial polling on this front. Yeah, I think you're right, which is, you know, look, anybody who didn't like Trump, this is not going to change anything. Anybody who was on the fence about Trump, I also don't think this particularly changes anything because it's baked into it. It's like, yeah, he really looks like a guy who's a stand-up dude, pays his taxes on time, and would never, ever do a book, would never, ever try and disguise a payment by his own personal lawyer. Even to the respect of the details, of which we will get mired in, unfortunately, just because of the historic nature of the case. For us, most people, you said this in our initial reaction, they're like, they're not taking much away from it. What I find more interesting, though, is DeSantis still looks to be full steam ahead.

He gave a speech two days ago in which he basically brushed off the polls, but also tried to defend Trump because that's what so many people, especially Republicans, wanted to see from him. But he's still in an odd area. He still can't say Trump's name. He doesn't ever talk in specifics. He just talks in wide generalities. Here he is. Let's take a listen. We resolve to lead by conviction, not by polls.

I have never taken a poll about any of these issues that I've championed since I've been governor. Didn't on day one and still haven't to this day. A leader doesn't respond to polls. A leader gets in front of issues, identifies what needs to be done, sets the vision, executes the vision, delivers the results, and guess what happens when you do that? The polls change in your direction. So now he turns around purely for political purposes and indicts a former president on misdemeanor offenses that they're straining

to try to convert into felonies. That is when you know that the law has been weaponized for political purposes. That is when you know that the left is using that to target their political opponents. And I can tell you this, these Soros-backed DAs, they are a menace to society. They are a menace to the rule of law. Speaking of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, is that an important state? Somebody can tell me about that. Now, why is the governor of Florida in Harrisburg? That's an interesting question. But the second one, first of all, in the poll thing, there's just no way that's true. Let's let's all just be honest. Like, it's impossible. All politicians are some of the most poll-tested people.

That's why it is almost a verb at this point. Like, or I mean, like poll-tested candidate in terms of the way that we think about them. Second, though, in his response to Trump, he still can't say the man's name. Yeah. Who? Which former president? This is where trying to play the game of being on Trump's side, but never actually mentioning his name, not coming to his defense in the same way that a Marjorie

Taylor Greene or a Matt Gaetz or any of the other diehard actual MAGA people would just shows you the disadvantage that he is. And then the poll just shows you something very clear. Republicans like Trump. They love Trump. You know, at 57%, he is like by and far the leading candidate. To the extent that you might be able to beat him, you have to win over not just a little bit, a lot of the people who love him and see him as under persecution. How can you do that if you're not willing to really like go in a full-throated defense like that? Well, the funny thing to me listening to him talk about like, oh, I don't take a poll. I'm not poll-tested. Like you're literally giving a poll-tested answer about the Trump thing as you're like that. Well, the funny thing to me, listen, I'm talking about like, oh, I don't take a poll. I'm not poll tested. Like you're literally giving a poll tested answer about the

Trump thing as you're claiming that you're going to get poll tested answers. Yeah. Because he saw what happened the first time around when Trump put out his truth social that was like, oh, I'm about to be indicted on Tuesday. Of course, the timing wasn't exactly right. But anyway, there was a rush to his defense from a lot of Republicans. and DeSantis was notably really quiet. And then when he did say something, he took a little jab at Trump with a little like, well, I don't know anything about hush money payment to porn stars. But, you know, and then he went on and gave his poll-tested answer. So he learned from the backlash that he got, and then he tried to craft the answer that he thought people wanted to hear from him. And it just really reeks of finger in

the wind type of politician. And again, I kind of, I mean, I don't really like Ron DeSantis at all, but I have some empathy for him because I think it's an impossible position that he's in. Very difficult. I really do. You know, what really motivates and galvanizes the Republican base at this point, above everything, is seeing the way that the people they hate are triggered and upset and how much they hate Donald Trump. Right. And how do you beat a guy who's actually getting like indicted and arrested by these people? Like there is no level above that. So, yeah, I think it's an impossible landscape. I think the media landscape is going to be

impossible for these Republicans to navigate because all they're going to get asked about from here on out almost exclusively is how do you react to this indictment? How do you react to what Trump said about X or Y or Z? How do you react to potential charges about January 6th or fake electors, etc.? One other thing I wanted to pull out of this poll that I do think is relevant, you know, I said before, and I do think that this is true, you know, all of these charges, the specifics of them we're going to get into. And I think that they matter a lot on a substantive level in terms of the politics of it. I think it is a Rorschach test of just how do you

feel about Donald Trump going in? But, you know, the potential charges that the public finds the most persuasive in terms of thinking that he actually did it is actually the classified documents piece. And there is some news that just broke that they have more evidence suggesting that he was directly involved in potentially moving some of those documents and even reviewed some of those documents after they'd been asked to turn everything over and after they had claimed that he had turned everything over. So that's the one where people are most persuaded that he actually, quote unquote, did it. The next one is inciting the January 6th attack. And so, you know, I think some of the other charges are sort of more persuasive to

the American people. But again, I'm not sure that it really makes that much of a difference. If you think Trump is a criminal and he deserves to be held accountable, you're unlikely to look at these particular charges and be like, oh, but not like this. But this one is wrong. It's like, no, people want to see him held accountable, then they're going to be fine with basically whatever charges are thrown at him. As for other GOP voters, they're coming to Trump's defense, not just in the polls. Let's put this up there on the screen. Trump has been raising money like nobody's business with this campaign list. He's raised $4 million in just the first 24 hours after his indictment. Keep in mind, that's just after the news of the indictment broke. Just go ahead and

wait until there's television cameras showing him in handcuffs potentially or has a mugshot released by the city of New York or the state of New York while he's being prosecuted. And then after his press conference, which if you think Trump did not time his press conference exactly for prime time in this country, then you don't really know anything about Donald Trump and how much he understands the media. This is a fundraising bonanza for the Trump campaign. They are probably stronger than they have been in a long time. So anyway, look, value judgment aside, those are just the facts. He's surging in polls and he's making a ton of money. So everybody else who was hoping that this might bring him down,

maybe, but not an indication of that yet. Yeah, I do want to say though, like this is not all like, oh, this is great for Trump. On a personal, look, he faces potential prison time. I'm sure the man does not want to go to prison. Very stressful.

So on a personal level, I'm not saying he's like celebrating this. I have no idea what his mindset is. There's some reporting that this is, you know, deeply like unsettling to him and he's stressed out about it, even as he's trying to project, you know, a sort of public bravado. All we can speak to is the politics of it. First indications are for the general election. It doesn't make that much of a difference. Now, I do think that that could potentially change. So I want to put that out there.

I think it's really clear, though, the impact that it has on the Republican primary, and it makes it very tough sledding for anyone not named Donald J. Trump. Absolutely right. Okay, let's go to the next part here about Trump and any of the news that is broken. First of all, just an inside look into the actual process through which Trump was indicted. Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. I encourage people to go through and read it if they're interested. Article is how Alvin Bragg resurrected the case against Donald Trump. What it points to is a couple of things. The original investigation by Cyrus Vance, who was the Manhattan DA into Trump, had stalled over a year ago.

Eventually, after he left the office, people who were inside the office had came to Alvin Bragg after he'd been taking the job. And they said, hey, look, there actually is some quote there. There you should look at this investigation. The original DA's office's decision not to prosecute Trump was controversial within the office. A lot of them are people who really wanted to go after Trump for the hush money payment. At the same time, they had two major incidents. Number one was a meeting that they had with Michael Cohen, where they went through some of the details around the hush money payment, the scheme and the installments to which they thought that they could bring a case.

And two, apparently, is they were looking not only at Stormy Daniels, but they were also looking at other hush money payments. There has been some indication that it could include Karen McDougal, the former Playboy model who we've told you about, but there also could be other ones that never came legally to light in the nature of these NDAs that were being distributed. Again, all of it though, the reason why that they went for the felony case is just having bookkeeping fraud where you are mislabeling a transaction on your books. That's a misdemeanor. For it to be a felony, that mislabeling in the payment has to be in the prosecution or in the cover-up of another crime. The theory is that another crime, though, is a federal crime of which, though, that they have no jurisdiction.

So that novel kind of theory of the case is exactly why Cyrus fans did not prosecute over a year ago. But Alvin Bragg thought that he could do so and that he had some more information that he could bring to light. And I think, you know, in general, it was an interesting look just at the pure, like, legal mechanics and how the case went through the office and why exactly, you know, April of 2023, we're still talking about a hush money payment from November of 2016. Yeah. So the other thing that was fascinating here is when it was Alvin Bragg's predecessor, Cyrus Vance, he was really looking more into some of the questions about that didn't have to do with the hush money payment at all that had to do with Trump inflating his net worth. And it was like business fraud in that direction of, you know, lying to banks and potentially lying to the IRS about how much he was actually worth. And that

was the piece that they couldn't quite put together. Michael Cohen has been apparently instrumental in considering any of these charges the whole time. And Cohen didn't have as much insight into directly the operation of the Trump organization and whether or not these assets were inflated in a potentially criminal way. And so that was where Alvin Bragg, when he takes over the office, where he was kind of struggling because he felt like Cohen didn't have strong enough information. They couldn't quite put the pieces together. And so and he only had a few weeks. The clock was ticking when he took over. He only had a few weeks to make a decision about whether or not to charge. They already had the grand jury impaneled and they were already working through the evidence there. So he decides we're not going to move forward

with this one, much to the chagrin of a couple of the prosecutors who were involved, who ended up sending him a letter, say, you know, expressing their upset that they weren't moving forward with that particular direction. And they ended up resigning. And by the way, the New York Times got their hands on that letter and that had been reported out previously. But then Bragg settled on, okay, well, Cohen doesn't have insight as much into this whole net worth situation, but he directly was involved in the hush money payments. And so they start pulling on that thread and that's how they, and they, you know, staff back up because they'd lost some of their key

prosecutors and that's how they end up, you know, in this place. So basically, the press had sort of left these potential charges for dead because the initial investigation floundered, went nowhere. Alvin Bragg pulled the plug the whole time he was insisting the media like, hey, we're not done here yet. But it seemed to the press like, all right, this one has kind of like fallen apart. And, you know, behind the scenes, they were actually working through this hush money piece. And that's how you end up where we are today. There you go. So that's inside. Now, in terms of the details itself, Trump spent the weekend doing time-tested strategy, going after not only the Manhattan DA, but now the judge. Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. He writes, quote, the judge assigned to my witch hunt case, a case that has never been charged

before, hates me. His name is Juan Manuel Marchand. We has handpicked by Bragg and the prosecutors, the same person who railroaded my 75-year-old former CFO, Alan Weisselberg, to take a plea deal. Plead guilty even if you are not. 90 days, fight U.S. in court, 10 years life in jail. He strong-armed Alan, which his judge is not allowed to do, and treated my companies, which didn't plead viciously. I am appealing. So that just gives you an insight a little bit into the legal strategy. Daily Mail also reporting this morning that Trump is likely to hire a First Amendment lawyer in the case that there is a gag order that the judge has on the case, both from the Manhattan DA and from Trump himself, which would put him obviously in a difficult position. And actually,

it would be legitimately interesting from a First Amendment law perspective. It's like, well, how much of it is criminal? How much of it is in the public interest? And should a defendant be allowed to speak publicly about what's happening? So anyway, also in terms of the details, here's what you guys need to know about today. Let's go and put this up there on the screen. Trump is going to speak at Mar-a-Lago on the day of the expected arraignment. As we already told you, we will be covering that live here in primetime on the Breaking Points YouTube channel. But today at exactly noon Eastern time, Trump will be leaving from Mar-a-Lago to the city of New York, where he will reside in Trump Tower while he is there. From that point tomorrow, on Tuesday, around 2.15 PM Eastern time, he will be taken to the Manhattan courthouse.

They're apparently going to block off the entire street before he is taken and arraigned. Not only arraigned, but it's likely he'll be processed, his mugshot will be taken, etc. So all of those proceedings will be happening tomorrow, but the initial transfer to the state of New York, to the city of New York, where Trump will reside for a single night before returning to Mar-a-Lago on the day of is all going to happen today. It is likely that he will take questions and possibly speak to the press at that time, monitoring that right now very closely. Of course, what Trump is doing is he's turning this all to a show. Why do I even know all of these times off the top of my head? Because he tells us. He's like, I'll be there. Be there at noon just so that the cameras can come. They can set up. They have a press thing. Also, invitations have been going out to MAGA allies from across the country to Mar-a-Lago to join him at the press conference in a Republican show of strength. They're saying, we welcome and we are excited and welcome to host you here

at Mar-a-Lago. They're turning it into a major campaign event. And, you know, given the amount of money that they are now making off this, why wouldn't they? At the same time, Crystal, people like Jim Banks, the prospective senator from Indiana, the congressman who's kind of a MAGA person, endorsed Trump in the middle of the indictment. Oh, really? Lee Stefanik and others, you know, majorly coming to his defense. Lots of MAGA allies. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who apparently refused to endorse Trump, initially coming coming to his defense. Lots of MAGA allies, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who apparently refused to endorse Trump, initially coming out to his defense,

not necessarily endorsing. So the coalescing around Trump all continues. And let's go to the next one here too, though, because the legal jeopardy that Trump faces is not just in this case, as you kept alluding to. It continues in many of the other cases. So right now, the Justice Department and the FBI have actually amassed new evidence, this is according to the Washington Post, pointing to possible obstruction of justice by Trump in the classified documents

investigation. They are increasingly suspect that Trump actually went through the boxes after his subpoena. Similarly, there was a report this morning from Brett Baier over at Fox News that several of the Secret Service agents who are on the detail for Trump are going to be subpoenaed and are going to be brought before a grand jury or brought before investigators where they will be asked specifically whether they witnessed Trump going through the documents, what the handling of said documents and all that. That's before the special counsel, Jack Smith. And all of this leaves aside the other investigation into January 6th with Mike Pence is now being asked to testify before. And then of course the Fulton County investigation where after we met the kooky

four woman, it's been silence over there. We don't really know what's going on. They locked it down over there. Well, they should have been after whatever the hell happened over there. So there you go. Yeah. And I mean, yes, it is going to be quite a ride here. I think this is the first of a number of charges that Trump is likely to face, but we'll have to see how that all unfolds. The last thing that I want to say on this, put this last piece up on the screen,

is that, you know, let's keep in mind, we don't know exactly what the charges are going to be. We don't know how wide ranging they're going to be as well. There's reporting Michael Cohen provided Manhattan prosecutors with documentation about a Trump hush money payment to a second woman. Expectation is that would be Karen McDougal, though we don't know for sure, who claims to have had an affair with him. That's according to Lanny Davis. That's what he told CNN. That is Michael Cohen's lawyer. That suggests that Alvin Bragg's case could be broader than the Stormy Daniels payment.

So we'll have to wait and see exactly what is contained in these charges. How many are there? 35? 35. 35 different counts, which as Sagar pointed out before, you know, each individual payment to Michael Cohen, because it didn't come in one lump sum, would be one count. But is there, you know, are there additional charges related to the Karen McDougal affair? Is there stuff in there that we don't even know about? That's certainly possible

as well. So we'll have to wait and see. We'll be watching with a lot of interest to see the specifics of the charges and what they mean. Some insight into that, I actually spoke with a former federal prosecutor. And one of the things that they said is that that is kind of a mob playbook. It's one of the ways that they will inflate the number of charges against a suspect if they really, really want to go after them, is do the multiple count charges instead of the all-encompassing charge.

It's actually up to a prosecutorial discretion in terms of how you do that. They're like, look, clearly this, you know, they're trying to throw the book, and this is what throwing the book looks like. Trying to make a big show. Yeah, I mean, look, it's a fun number. They will have a big show, too.

Yeah, everybody's like 30, everybody, listen, to make a big show. Yeah. I mean, look, it's a fun number. They will have a big show too. Yeah. Everybody's like 30. Everybody, listen, life is a show. WWE apparently just got bought. So, you know, we could all learn a little bit of, uh, from what happens in that. Not to say that it isn't real, of course. Let's talk about Asa Hutchinson. All right. Never before has Asa Hutchinson been so, uh, teased as we have in this show for the big announcement. He is former Arkansas governor, is in fact running for president, seeking the Republican primary nomination. Let's put this up on the screen. The New York Times had an interview with him. They say Asa Hutchinson announces presidential bid.

The former governor of Arkansas, prominent Trump critic within the Republican Party has been testing the waters in Iowa. Now, to give you a sense of Asa Hutchinson, he's kind of like politically, I would put him in like the Mike Pence lane. Very socially conservative, certainly like led the charge after Sandy Hook in partnership with the NRA to make sure that absolutely no gun legislation passed, was involved in passing a complete abortion ban within his state when he served as governor. So this is a very, like, you know, certainly conservative, right, hard right figure in terms of his politics. But in terms of critiquing Trump, he's been one of the more vocal folks out there. And unlike, you know, DeSantis or Nikki Haley or whoever take occasionally these little

passive aggressive jobs at Trump, Asa Hutchinson is not afraid to make a full throated case against Trump and some of the actions that he's taken. He's really the first kind of explicitly anti-Trump figure to enter the race here. Larry Hogan took a pass. Liz Cheney so far has not stepped up to jump in here. So he is the one who's the most vocal in terms of his critique of Trump. He said Mr. Trump and those who supported his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election should not have positions of power. He stood against the RNC's censure of former Representative Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois for serving as the only two Republicans on the House Committee investigating the January 6th attacks. He called Trump's election denial a, quote, recipe for disaster for the party.

And he was one of the few Republicans to issue a statement after Trump's reported indictment last week that did not dismiss the charges as political. So he thinks there's a lane for someone to be, you know, hard right on the issues, but explicitly anti-Trump and sort of like, you know, in the resistance vein in terms of his Trump critique. And so he is stepping into that race to fill that void. You know, the thing is about Hutchinson's that, as you said, he is socially conservative in some ways. At the same time, he actually became a villain on the right because he vetoed a bill banning so-called- Oh yeah, I forgot about that.

He's actually a little bit more of a libertarian. I would describe him as like a libertarian, traditional three-legged stool conservative, like a fiscally conservative, socially conservative in the old way, but not necessarily in the new way. And then also anti-Trump, more of a Reagan-esque. I mean, look, does his candidacy matter? Maybe. I mean, it'll be a fun test of somebody,

like it will be a fun test of the ceiling on the Liz Cheney vote inside of the GOP. Second, you can guarantee, as you know, he was on Meet the Press and he was all over the Washington press corps with his announcement. But in terms of his reception amongst the GOP base and others, there has just been very limited bounce from any of this. A, he's the former governor of Arkansas. B, Sarah Sanders is actually a vocal critic of him and many others are inside of Arkansas. So the extent to which he would have any real political constituency is basically non-existent. Now, I don't even know if they've done any polls which include his name. I was trying to find it. Oh, really? Okay. So

I don't see any really. In terms of the people who have name ID and who are anti-Trump, Pompeo usually rates at like 3%. Mike Pence is always the highest. He's at 7. And he's a very, you know, it's a very consistent 7 almost across every GOP poll that we look at. Nikki Haley is between 1 and 2%. Ramaswamy does not even come to 1%. And, yeah, so Aja Hutchinson, we'll see. For those of you who are watching Succession,

he's like a Conor Roy type figure. I am not, so I have no idea what that means. But I'm just looking at these polls. I'm looking at RealClearPolitics, and they've got their tracker of where everybody is and taking all the different polls into account and averaging them. Somebody has certainly polled his name,

but he's not listed among the polls that they have here. And to give you a sense of the potential support, Liz Cheney is at 2% in the average of polls here. So taking the explicit anti-Trump lane, you know, I mean, politically, he's basically like everybody else in the field, more or less, but probably actually worse than Trump on the politics because he probably supports cutting Social Security Medicare, though I don't know that for sure. He absolutely will. Okay, so anyway, that's why I put him kind of in the Mike Pence lane in terms of his actual political ideology. But I think the fact that Liz Cheney is at 2% in these polls when her whole brand at this point is basically being anti-Trump shows you how much appetite there is for this type

of politics in the Republican, with the Republican primary electorate at this point. So anyway, that's Asa Hutchinson. That's the bet he's making. That's how he wants to have an impact on this race. And I guess we will see what the voters have to say about that, Sagar. Yeah, we will. All right. At the same time, I can't help but notice that Asa Hutchinson, who has zero chance of being the Republican nominee and is polling at nothing currently in the Republican primary, is getting lots of media attention. Meanwhile, the only declared Democrat in the race, because remember, Joe Biden hasn't even declared that he's running for president, has been almost completely shut out. And Marianne Williamson, I got to say, she's got a little bit of a bump in the polls here that's kind of

noteworthy and does, I don't want to overstate things whatsoever, and I don't want to be naive about any of this, but does have some echoes into the early rise of Bernie Sanders back in 2016. Let's put this up on the screen from Newsweek. The headline here is Marianne Williamson making gains against Joe Biden, new poll suggests. So the very first poll that had her name in it, she was at 4%. And just a few weeks later, she's now made it into double digits. She's at 10%. That's actually almost exactly the same trajectory of Bernie early in the race. His very first poll was 4%. And then a few weeks later, he hit 10%. And then he went up from there. Obviously, the dynamics are very different because you're talking about an incumbent president. On the other hand, it is effectively a head-to-head, one-on-one. So,

you know, it's interesting that clearly, even as she's been nearly completely shut out by the media, voters are hearing something from her that is making them interested in an alternative. And the other thing I'll say, Sagar, here is, while I certainly think it is a longest of long shots to imagine that Marian could actually supplant Biden, I think she is being a bit underestimated. People forget that this was a woman who was, you know, a national figure, a bestselling author in her own right before she ever took up politics. So there are a lot of I can't tell you how many people I've talked to who's like mom and grandma loves Marianne Williamson. So she has that. And then you also just have Biden is making a lot of mistakes now with regard to the progressive base. People are very upset with him on a number of issues. And you have a majority of the Democratic base that

is saying they would like someone other than Joe Biden. So there is clearly an organic interest in an alternative candidate. So I think to just dismiss her out of hand or to shut her out of the media as they have is kind of outrageous. And it shows you that, you know, the thing that they really look for is, number one, candidates who are going to say the things that make them comfortable. And that also have the sort of like in the club credentialing that the corporate press, you know, that the corporate press esteems and takes seriously. Yeah, look, I mean, 10%, as you said, like it's a long shot. It's always going to be difficult taking on an incumbent president. That is still pretty high.

I mean, if you consider what an insurgent candidate would look like. That's higher than everybody than DeSantis. Yeah, that is higher than everybody. But Ron DeSantis in the Republican primary, they get plenty of media coverage. It's higher than Andrew Yang ever got in any major Democratic poll. So it's not nothing. And at the very least, if they allow a debate to happen, that would qualify you for the debate stage, which is, I believe, what was the old metric? You have to be polling at least 2% and raise X amount per money. I doubt she would have any problem with the money. So,

okay, polling-wise, I mean, she at least checks the box to what she was much more so than what she held in the 2020 primary. So anyway, I think it's interesting. I don't really have anything else to say about it. Yeah, I think, again, the media piece of this, it really irritates me because think of how much press Nikki Haley has gotten. Oh, tons, yeah. And she's at, what, 3%, maybe 4% on a good day in the polls. And it reminds me very much of last time around in 2020 in the Democratic primary in which candidates they took seriously as real contenders and which ones they completely tried to dismiss. Because Andrew Yang, obviously, at the beginning, they tried to completely blackout. They'd like his name wrong. They just like leave him out of polls because they didn't

want to talk about him. When he was out polling, some of their darling Beto and Kamala and whatever, he'd be polling ahead of them, but they just pretend like he didn't exist. And so it's partly they take credentials as gospel, number one. And number two, like this particular type of D.C. credentials, by the way. And number two, they don't want to platform anyone who's going to say anything that they find to be uncomfortable. Listen, everybody knows I'm friends with Marianne. I'm not a disinterested party here. And so I also have some insight into the fact MSNBC, which is supposed to be like the progressive lean left, whatever, lean forward network. I don't think that she's gotten a maybe she's gotten one request from MSNBC, whereas Fox News is beating down her door. So, again, it shows you who they decide to elevate

and who they decide to try to quash. The one thing that I will say, which I think is a real positive, is every year that goes by, the mainstream corporate media gets less and less powerful. And they have less control over, you know, what people think and what people see and what people hear and what ideas they're open to. And so I think that's why you see some bump here in the polls for Marianne. Yeah, it's certainly very interesting. Oh, let's go on to a very troubling piece of news out of Russia. A prominent pro-Russian military blogger, Vladan Tatarsky, whose real name was Maxim Fomin, has been killed by a blast in a cafe in St. Petersburg where he was giving a talk. We have a little bit of video from this incident. Just a warning, it is obviously, you know,

it's a scene from a war where basically there's a massive explosion in the middle of St. Petersburg. Let's put this up there on the screen. We'll play it for the audience. For those who are just watching, you can see how the cafe just gets completely blown out. And yeah, I mean, he was killed by the explosion. We don't know quite a bit about the details, Crystal, about any collateral damage or other,

but clearly it was a targeted terrorist attack. Now, in terms of the reports about who and how he received the bomb, it appears to be, or at least the reports coming out of Russia, and I always take these with a grain of salt, is that a woman brought the bomb to a meeting and hid it inside of a figurine, presenting it to Tatarsky as a gift before he was then blown up and killed. Figurine of himself, by the way. Yeah, figurine of himself, which is, that's pretty savage, brutal. So in terms of the details and others, I know that you've been speaking to our friend Igor, who is inside of Russia and who can analyze some of the Russian media for us. What does he have to say? Yeah, so shout out to Yegor Kotkin. You can follow him on, I think he's got a sub stack and certainly a Patreon. So

this analysis all comes direct from him. So in terms of who this dude was, he was one of these very prominent military bloggers. He had over half a million subscribers, I guess they call them on Telegram. And he was one of the more sort of like violent psychopathic of the military bloggers. Now, according to Yegor, there are people who are more ghoulish in his words, but they're almost all anonymous. So he's the most prominent, like known, outspoken, very aggressive military blogger. He's one of these who, he's not a direct Kremlin mouthpiece. So he has been critical from the right, like he, at times of the Kremlin, like he wants more brutality in the war, more violence in the war, et cetera. He's actually from the Donbass region. And before the most recent revolution in Ukraine and the start of this latest separatist war, he was actually in

prison for robbery in eastern Ukraine. So that's kind of his backstory here. You know, listen, it is very likely that this was done by Ukrainians in a very similar manner as what we saw, you know, a previous outspoken pro-war figure who was killed about a year ago. And there really is no alternative explanation for the way that she was blown up. It's most likely that it was the Ukrainians. You can't rule out that it was the FSB because this guy has been critical. Right. Now, the reason that Yegor says he is more suspicious of the Ukrainians is because it's not just you took this guy out. It's you took him out in a cafe

with a lot of other pro-war, he was there giving a talk to a lot of other, you know, pro-war Russians who came to hear what he had to say. So you're not only killing him, you're killing, maiming, injuring, and potentially killing other bystanders who are pro-war. And you're doing it in a cafe in St. Petersburg, which is the birthplace of Vladimir Putin. So there's a lot of symbolism here that suggests it's probably more likely to be the Ukrainians than FSB. But again, you don't want to entirely rule it out. So that's kind of the way that he is viewing this whole situation, which in a lot of ways makes a lot of sense. Of course it makes sense. And we already know, you know, that the U.S.

I mean, look, most of us can already guess. Three months from now, CNN will honestly source a New York Times article where it's just like, well, you know, it might have been elements of the Ukrainian state. But Zelensky never knew about it. And U.S. involvement was never there. The CIA, of course, had nothing to do with it. I don't know if any of that is true. I mean, it is troubling whenever this stuff is happening. I mean, just imagine if somebody was killed in downtown New York City or in downtown Washington, people would be

outraged and up in arms, and they would really want to know and get to the bottom of it. Now, of course, look, they are waging a brutal war in Ukraine. I'm not saying that they don't deserve it. What I'm saying, though, is that all of this is just embroiling in a situation in which we may not be able to control. That's really what the dangerous part of it is. Going back to the assassination of Dugan's daughter on Russian soil, the bombing of the Crimean Bridge, and now here the bomb blast in downtown St. Petersburg in a cafe in a Sunday. You know, I love how Reuters phrased it, too. The second assassination on Russian soil of a figure closely associated with the war in Ukraine. As you also said, I did some more reading.

I mean, one of the things is who would kill him inside of Russia? Like you said, sure, it could be the FSB. But the FSB, by and large, you know, they're allowed, in general in Russian society, they seem to be okay with allowing criticism from the right, from the more pro-war wing. So they can be like, look, we're being responsible. See, like all these crazies want us to do this. We're not actually doing that. From the left though, there are all these horrific stories of anti-war protesters and college students getting sentenced to years in Russian prison for retweeting criticism of the war. So you can see which way law enforcement is. It's almost entirely geared towards the anti-war movement, not towards the pro-war movement.

Initially, when the Dugin assassination happened, I speculated. I was like, look, it's possible. Maybe they wanted to take him out. But as all the intel and the reporting came forward, it looked pretty clear that it was a Ukrainian attack. And, you know, given the circumstances, I guess you can't rule it out. At the same time, look, you know, these movements, these have internecine stupid conflicts all the time, you know, these revolutionary type paramilitary organizations where they kill each other. So you can't rule that out either, but troubling nonetheless, because you can bet that the Russian government already, you know, they're already pointing the finger, at least some figures are at Ukraine and many of them, and especially inside of the Donbass where the war is going on, they're all like, it was Ukraine's

fault. And this guy was already from there. So they could have used as a retaliatory attack. Yeah. The last detail here, even the cafe, like so much of this seems to have been very intentionally chosen for its symbolism, which is what led Yegor to feel more suspicious that it was the Ukrainians than any of the potential other explanations. Another piece of the symbolism here is this cafe apparently has ties to the leader of the Wagner group. And so, you know, if it was the FSB who wanted to assassinate this guy, he'd more likely do like poison, you know, there wouldn't be this blowback with, because this was obviously directed at him, but the audience was a target in a way as well. So would you really be targeting your own civilians who are supportive of your war effort? That can instill fear in the broader population of even, you know, like going to any of these talks and, you know, doing sort of like

public support for the Russian war effort here. So those are some of the pieces that make it not make so much sense from the FSB potential perspective. But again, you just really never can be 100% sure. Yeah, exactly right. We've got some updates here for you with regard to Dominion's lawsuit against Fox News. And I gotta tell you right now, it sure looks like they got the upper hand. Significant ruling from a Delaware judge that came out on Friday. And long story short, this thing is set to go to trial. And some of the pieces of Fox's potential defense

have also been ruled out. The judge basically saying, it is not disputable that what you were putting on air was false. You can't argue that it was clearly wrong. It was clearly a misstatement of fact. So that piece of your defense, you're not going to be able to go with. That leaves, and let's go ahead and put this report up on the screen,

that the AP headline is, Judge Dominion defamation case against Fox will go to trial, and reminder Dominion is suing Fox Fox will go to trial. And reminder, Dominion is suing Fox for $1.6 billion. This judge ruled that it was, quote, crystal clear that none of the allegations made by Trump allies and Fox in the weeks after the election were true. So now what Fox is going to have to argue in front of a jury is that they did not show actual malice. That's the legal standard that is required for Dominion to prove in order to actually win this case. And the definition of actual malice is that they had to have known it was false or acted with a reckless disregard for

whether or not it was true. And of course, Sagar, we have seen some of those internal messages already that certainly seem to indicate that at least some people at Fox knew that what was being put on the air at times was total bullshit, and yet they went along with it anyway. So actual malice, a very difficult standard to prove, though, because in some ways you have to get into someone's inner thoughts and mentality in order to show definitively that they knew this was false and they did it anyways. So that is the task that is ahead of them now. Yes, that's right. On its face, it seems like a difficult one. But also, guys, this is a Delaware jury. So look, from what I heard, I asked around. People inside of Fox are deeply unhappy with this ruling. They had been holding

out on a settlement specifically to see if they would be able to get not only if they were going to go to trial, but if it could go to trial in the way that they wanted. Because now they are not talking about the facts of the case. They are only talking about actual malice. And with the actual malice standard, the fact that they have text messages that showed consternation within and also the overall branding of that, they are either going to have to settle for a massive number. Dominion feels very confident going into this legally that they will prevail. And so they are either going to have to pay very close to what the initial lawsuit is, or they're going to have to take it all the way to the jury and basically roll the dice, where if they're going to pay a billion or whatever, then they might as well drag it

through court and make it as long as possible. But overall, you can make no mistake. The Murdochs and Fox News and all of them are very, very upset about this ruling. Don't forget, I mean, that is almost equivalent to an entire year of profit within the network. About a billion is what they make in profit overall year over year. Yeah, it's not a of profit within the network. About a billion is what they make in profit overall year over year. Yeah, it's not a little slap on the wrist. It's not nothing. Yeah, exactly. So, you know, from they're already facing financial problems because of just diminishing advertising, not specific to Fox, the entire cable network on top of their overall business is literally on the backs of geriatrics who are dying. You know,

no offense to them, but it's just an actuarial table. And so the long-term prospects of their network's not great. Fox Nation is already also not going great. They have a high burn rate in terms of cash with acquisitions. And then on top of that, they might have to pay now over a billion dollars. So not good times for the Murdoch family right now. They are paying a billion, I think, at this point,

no matter what. It's only a question of what the margins are. I think that is probably correct. And they've also kind of placed a bit of a bet on Ron DeSantis in the Republican primary. I don't think that that is really working out thus far. Now, that doesn't mean they won't switch horses here at the moment that they feel that they have to. I do want to say, you know, read the Fox statement here, just for the lawyer's sake. In a statement, they told the AP that Fox will continue to fiercely advocate for the rights of free speech and a free press as we move into the next phase of these proceedings. So they're framing this as a First Amendment free speech issue, which in a sense it certainly is.

But, yeah, I think they have the fact that you have such explicit statements from so many of these Fox hosts and producers makes things difficult. There were also some other details that were in this report that underscores, again, the difficult landscape they face. In particular, Dominion went at length through, you know, they fact checked all of the claims that were being made on Fox. And they sent emails to basically everyone within the organization, some like 1,300 emails that they sent out. So literally thousands within the Fox organization of, here's where you're wrong, and here's what the actual facts are. So to pretend like, oh, we had no idea, that makes it difficult. And then within Fox News itself, they have a fact checking operation internally called the brain room, I think. And they had done their own fact checking of some of the election fraud claims and basically debunked it all. That also would have gone out and been available to all of the shows. So to claim that, oh, we really believed this or we really had no idea and this was just

like an innocent mistake, I think is going to be difficult to convince a jury of that at this point. Oh, it's going to be a big problem. Certainly be difficult to convince me at this point that that was the case. Yeah, of course. It'd be difficult for, I think, for anybody. And like I said, taking then the account of a Delaware jury. So you already have a disproportionately liberal jury pool, which hates Fox News. So you put all that together, and I would be very scared if they were lawyer.

This is, I mean, it's not existential, but business-wise, I mean, this is a big, big problem. And look, of course, legally, they also are going to have to drag their asses through court, and they are going to try and fight this to the end. Because even if they do lose, you can appeal it, and there's caps on the amount of payment, damages, et cetera, that all of it can come to. So it's not like Dominion is going to be getting paid, but this is a big drain reputationally and financially. At the end of the

day, the Murdochs never really cared about the reputation of Fox as a journalistic organization or anything. They cared about the money. This was always a money project, and it's been tremendously successful over the years. That doesn't mean, though, that they're not stupid and they can't see the future. And this very much is going to just, at the very least, limit the amount of cash available for operating expenses, hurting their profit and all of that. They own not just Fox, all of News Corp, all of these different places, which they remain responsible for. Keep that in mind. It is a money-making venture at bottom, but I think actually sort of uniquely to the cable news network, it was explicitly set up as an ideological project as well.

And that comes through in some of the messages here, too. Like, I think it was Murdoch who messaged, like, all right, well, let's just try to put the election stuff behind. Let's focus really hard on Georgia and do everything we can to help Republicans there. I'm paraphrasing those weren't the exact words, but it was like very explicit, like we want Republicans to win in Georgia and we're going to do everything we can. Now, listen, do the other two cable news networks also push hard for Democrats? Yes. I don't even know that it makes a difference to make this distinction at this point. Those two really did just follow like

the money sort of led them into the liberal positioning that they're in now. With Fox, it was set up originally as an explicitly ideological project. I do think that that relates to another thing that comes through in the messages here, which is they were really quite terrified of the rise of Newsmax in particular. Oh, yeah. During the election fraud, stop the steal peak, Newsmax was getting hundreds of thousands of viewers. And Fox was falling off a cliff. And, you know, these things can turn really quickly, even with all of the years and the money and the investment

and the brand name and everything that Fox has going for them. They really perceived Newsmax as a sort of existential threat. And so that caused them, even as there was some desire in the beginning to rebut Trump's claims, that really caused them to make a U-turn, it appears, and go in the other direction because they were so fearful of the audience, which they no longer had control over, which I also think is just revealing in fearful of the audience, which they no longer had control over, which I also think is just revealing in terms of the cable news landscape. There was this idea in the Republican primary, oh, Fox has picked DeSantis. That's going to be great for him. They're going

to be able to promote him and push him over the finish line. But they don't have that. If they ever had that kind of control over the Republican base, they definitely do not have that kind of control anymore. Oh, absolutely. I recommend people go and read, it's called The Loudest Voice in the Room. It's a biography of Roger Ailes, but it's about the history and the founding of Fox News. I always found it very interesting just to see exactly, as you said, the power that they once had. Not that long ago, we're talking about 10 years ago, in 2012, they were kingmakers for the Tea Party, for the 2012, the whole decision behind the scenes about Rami. They even had a meeting.

Murdoch at one point was flirting with Obama because his wife at the time liked Obama. And so they were like, well, maybe we'll broker a piece. Obama took this meeting very seriously. He saw Fox as his number one enemy. It's not like that anymore. With the internet, all of that has changed.

For the better, because at least people like us can exist. Yeah. Okay. Indeed. All right, we got some Elon exist. Yeah. Okay. Indeed. All right. We got some Elon moves. We got a report here.

Okay. So as we covered previously, as of April 1st, everyone was basically, all the legacy blue check marks were allegedly going to lose their checks. That did not happen. However, one very prominent organization did lose their check mark on that day. That would be the New York Times. Put this up on the screen. The New York Times and a number of other outlets and celebrities came out and explicitly said,

we are not going to pay for Twitter verification. We're not going to pay for it for our organization. We're not going to pay for it for our journalists. We're just going to go without. We're dead set against going for the pay to play Twitter checkmark situation. So Elon sees this and he replies to someone on Twitter and says, oh, OK, we'll take it off then. And then he goes on to say the New York Times being incredibly hypocritical here as they are super aggressive about forcing everyone to pay their subscription.

I'm not sure that those analogies really hold up, but anyway, that's his take. So as far as I know, everyone else has maintained so far their legacy blue check mark, but New York Times now looks like this. Put this up on the screen. They are check mark-less for their main account anyways. The mark of shame.

A bunch of their journalists and even some of their other, I don't know, New York Times business or whatever Twitter accounts still have their check marks. But it is, I can't help but be amused by the fact that the paper of record is the one account that had their check marks stripped. Oh, you can't help but just absolutely love the entire thing. The Washington Post put out a statement this morning, Crystal, I'll have you know, saying that their journalists will not be paying also for check marks. Here's the thing. On the merits, I actually think they're correct. Oh, I'm not paying for a frigging check mark. I don't think a news organization should pay for the check mark just because actually one of the things that the Washington Post said in a statement is, by the way, being on Twitter is not part of your job requirement.

Like the only time we pay for something is whenever it's literally, you do it for yourself. So if journos want to pay for it themselves, go for it. You and I have basically made a decision. We're like, yeah, we don't really need it. We're not Twitter first people. The majority of our audience is here on YouTube or on Spotify, on Apple Podcasts, you know, Instagram as well. We don't pay for any of that. So we're like, to the extent that we use Twitter, it's either elite signaling or to like make an announcement. I mean, I am, I am adamantly

opposed to paying for the checkbook as like a matter of principle, because it does feel like, and this is why a lot of people are reacting to it. I mean, it feels like a hostage taking kind of situation. And it's also like, okay, you're just paying to have your tweets boosted, like signal boosted. Yeah. It's not like it's a real verification. You can still have all kinds of imposters, whatever. So I'm not going to embarrass myself by, like, paying to get my tweets in front of more people. Right.

Definitely not going to do it. But, yeah, the dynamic of everybody maintaining their check marks except for The New York Times is amusing to me. Oh, yeah. I must admit. Oh, yeah. I must admit. Yeah, exactly. So anyway, I think it is amusing, you know, from a perspective of just like, yeah, we're just going to yank it for you.

And I find it also funny just from the emotional connection that so many people have to their blue checks. Like, look, take ours. I'm like, I don't care, man. If it goes away tomorrow. They said April 1st. I was ready. I was like, okay, you know, whatever.

And then it went away. It's still there. I was like, okay, you know, again, this makes no impact or whatever on my life. I do know though, the level of connection that so many elite, specifically bloggers, people who kind of made their bones on Twitter, developed the vast majority of their, a lot of sub stackers are like this actually. Not like Glenn and Taibbi, because they're genuinely talented, but a lot of people who built big resistance followings and all that, they all got that through Twitter.

And a lot of them are opposed to Elon, so they don't want to pay either. At the same time, that's how they make all of their money. So I think many of them will cave. The only blue feature, go ahead. Did I see that he was gonna make it so that you could pay for the checkmark, but that nobody would know about it? Well, there's make it so that you could pay for the checkmark, but that nobody would know about it?

Well, there's no way. Because if you click on the checkmark, it'll say this person is subscribed to Twitter Blue. I think I saw, though, that he was going to make—who knows if this is true, whatever. But I think I saw that he was going to make it so you could, like, secretly have the checkmark and get all the algorithmic boosting and ability to do the Twitter polls and whatever else you get for this at this point

but not be publicly shamed for paying for this nonsense. Right now the only blue feature which seems interesting to me is long form tweet is the ability

to break the character limit but at the same time what am I publishing? I'm not a writer anymore. I hate the long tweets. Really? Some of them are good. Whenever I see

the freaking read more it makes me irrationally angry. I'll tell you why I like them. Some of them during the SVB crisis, some financial analysts wrote like a genuinely very helpful blog post in one tweet. I was like, oh, this is great. Actually, somebody sent me this. I said, this is great. This is one of the only times that I've seen one.

And I've seen a few other explainers and others. Why the blog post then? Like put it on some stack or something, you know? Yeah, well, it saves me a click, okay? I'm not a fan. That is the only one I've seen yet. That's the only blue feature currently that seems intriguing to me. Think about Trump's freaking long-ass truth socials.

That is not an improvement. I'm actually for brevity generally. What's the famous quote about writing where, I think it was either Voltaire or Rousseau, and he said, forgive the length of my letter. I did not have time to write you a short one. Because it shows you that when you write a short letter or something, you have to think about editing your words. You have to think carefully about choosing it

to try and convey a big message in as few words as possible. We kind of do that all the time in our monologue, so I somewhat get it. But yeah, there's something about the magic of Twitter, about the short and the pithy thought that you can punch up of trying to express a complex idea in, what is it, 280 characters. At the same time, I don't think in many cases you can express a complex idea in 280 characters. You know, to go back to the news outlets here, you know, to the extent that Twitter

becomes less important for their journalists or their journalists are less visible on Twitter, in terms of the management of these newsrooms, they'll be very happy. Yes. Because they've been very, they've been frequently embarrassed and, you know, annoyed with the takes that their reporters are having and how much time they're spending and like rotting their brains on Twitter. Right. So I'm not even sure that it's like, certainly for newsroom management,

they'll actually be happy to see, it was a no-brainer for them to be like, no, we're not paying for you to like go on this service where all you do is make our lives more difficult

in terms of the actual news gathering and news distribution process. So there's that aspect as well. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, there's no way. So maybe he's doing them a favor. Also, we got to talk

about the algorithm. So Elon open sourced the Twitter algorithm with some interesting results. Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. What it shows is that actually there were some categories of people who were getting boosted. Now, amongst those is author is a power user. We don't know what the definition of that. Author is a Democrat, so a Democratic candidate to help boost politics. Author is a Republican. Okay, okay, so power user,

Democrat, Republican, all of those seem reasonable. There's a fourth category. It says author is Elon. The funny part, though, is Elon actually replied to it and said, well, I had no idea that I was in there. I will be looking into it and possibly editing it. Oh, please. I mean. Come on, dude. Well, okay. Well, given the fact, Crystal, that he has fired people before for telling him that his tweets weren't getting as much engagement, maybe they wrote it into the code without his knowledge just to say, look, Elon, you're doing so well. But regardless, it is genuinely hilarious

that the open source code shows you that Elon's tweets are artificially being boosted outside of, it's like, he's not even just categorized as a power user, which is how you should do it. He's just, author is Elon. He was like a special category in the code. So I did a little, obviously I'm not a coder,

so reading this is like foreign language to me. I did read some coders who were analyzing this, and I don't know their legitimacy or whether they're good coders and understand this fully or not. But the thing that I read is that it's not this particular part of the code is not actually directly boosting Elon's tweets or Democrat tweets or Republican tweets, it enables them to do an A-B test of new features so they can easily see at a glance whether the new feature is good or bad for Elon Musk personally. This is according to Colin Frazier on Twitter, who seemed to know what he was talking about. So, I mean, bottom line is basically the impact is the same. They're making sure that whatever new changes they roll out on Twitter are going to be personally beneficial to the owner of Twitter, which, listen, at this point, he's lost like at least $20 billion on this whole deal. I guess the least that he can get out of it

is a little signal boosting of his own tweets. Yeah, why not? You know, if you're going to lose that much money, you might as well get something out of it. So anyway, that's the latest on Elon. He never does disappoint in terms of a fun segment. All right, so what are we looking at? Well, last week I brought you all the case of Douglas Mackey. He's a pro-Trump Twitter user who in 2016 tweeted out a meme targeted at Hillary voters, telling them that they could avoid the line and vote by text. To most people, that sounds funny or lame, possibly a mix of both. But to Joe Biden's Department of Justice, they saw a crime.

The very first week in office, they indicted Mackey on a charge of conspiracy to deprive individuals of their right to vote. Prosecutors alleged that some 4,500 people called the number on the meme and that Mackey distributed. They honed in on Mackey's private messages where he and other pro-Trump Twitter personalities reveled in the reach of their accounts, hoping they could trick, quote, dopey liberals not to vote. Now, is Mackey a good person? Probably not, but that's not enough to put somebody on trial. Ultimately, this trial was about whether satire online should be legal, even satire that is malicious, mean, and targeted, whether that should be illegal or not.

Here is the meme. And to be clear, Mackey did not even make it. He only distributed it along with many others. Do you really believe any reasonable person would see this meme and otherwise not vote? The Biden Department of Justice certainly did. Apparently, so did a jury of Mackey's peers who convicted him in the Eastern District of New York on Thursday on conspiracies to deprive other American citizens of their right to vote. Already, the censorious establishment is doing backflips online over the victory of this case. Why? The government even put out a victorious press release about the verdict, put it as a warning to anyone else who may do so online. But a closer scrutiny of the trial itself is necessary. For the government to be truly ironclad in their case,

they would have to prove that Mackey's meme crossed the satire line because people otherwise texted to vote rather than vote itself. Their theory of this case relied on the fact that some 4,500 people called his phone number. Yet, when his defense challenged prosecutors to bring forward one single witness who said that they were fooled, they could not do so. Let me repeat, not one person was called to the stand to testify that their civil right to vote was actually deprived by this meme,

despite having their phone numbers. And that means from the facts of the case on its face, all the government proved was that Mackey posted this meme, that some people interacted with the same phone number, and that he may have been malicious in his intent. As to the witnesses, the star witness at trial had nothing to do even with depriving anyone of votes. Instead, it was a dude named Microchip who was part of Mackey's group chat. During this testimony, Microchip cast Mackey as a leader of the group who distributed memes targeted at liberals, but under cross-examination admitted two key things. Number one, he was testifying because

he was cooperating with the FBI and pleaded to a reduced charge. Two, quote, there was no grand plan around stopping people from voting. So if there was no grand plan, there was no conspiracy, right? He can't prove a real conspiracy and he can't prove a single witness was harmed, then what are we doing here? Obviously, none of these questions mattered to the New York City jury that convicted Mackey, but one has to wonder if the politics of the area played into that, and also to the wisdom of bringing charges like this in the first place. Prosecutorial discretion is a hell of a drug, and immediately, with the precedent set, a lot of people are looking for similar examples and say, hey, why isn't this person in jail? Many pointed to this tweet by Christina Wong, a liberal Hillary supporter in 2016, who tweeted, quote,

hey, Trump supporters, skip poll lines at election 2016 and text your vote. Tech votes are legit, or vote tomorrow on Super Wednesday. That, along with the video that was viewed close to one million times. Now, if you ask me, that's funny, and just as along with the video that was viewed close to one million times. Now, if you ask me, that's funny and just as ridiculous as the meme that Mackie posted. But now, by the standards the government has set, any of the 843,000 people who watch that video have been contaminated by Wong's conspiracy to prevent Trump supporters to vote. Now, curiously, Ms. Wong remains free and clear to this day. To be clear, she should remain so. So should Becky. People say stuff on the internet they don't mean all the time. Worse, this has been rewarded now by the FBI for wasting their time policing Twitter trolls

rather than letting child sex predators like Larry Nassar go free. As I reminded everyone last time, the nanny state behavior of the feds here is something that reveals a very, very deep rot. As Matt Taibbi discovered, FBI agents whose salaries we are paying were spending their time flagging moronic, tiny Twitter accounts, joking, including one who said, quote, I am a ballot counter in my state. If you're not wearing a mask, I'm not counting your vote, saying that every negative comment on the post, you would add a vote for the Democratic Party. Or another example, the low follower user who tweeted, quote, I want to remind Republicans to vote tomorrow, and included the wrong date. This was flagged by FBI agents who wanted Twitter to take it down. It had three retweets. And under the standard of the now established Mackey conviction, they can claim anyone who saw that

tweet and misinterpreted it could have had their civil rights violated, or a conspiracy to do so. The standard now has been set and the gauntlet thrown. We now live in a significantly less free internet. The best response to this from an individual perspective, post less even if you're anonymous. If you screw with somebody like Hillary, they will track you down to the ends of the earth and potentially throw you in prison for a decade for a crime of her running a terrible campaign. Ultimately, this is about elite protection.

They target those who make a mockery of them. When they make a mockery of us, they get rewarded. They remain free. They get richer than ever. And once again, I'm not saying that he's a nice guy. And if you want to hear my reaction to Sagar's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. Crystal, what are you taking a look at?

Well. I'm pleased to say the more Americans have health insurance now than ever in history. But that was then and this is now. 15 million Americans are set to be kicked off of Medicaid starting this month, leaving many without any health insurance and a health care plan that basically amounts to just pray that you and your kids do not get sick. A devastating, unnecessary calamity being intentionally inflicted on millions by their own government, one that has been effectuated by Democrats and Republicans acting in concert and which, outside of this Washington Post coverage I just showed you, has barely registered with the

news media that is blissfully insulated from the impact of all of these policies. As friend of the show Jeff Stein put it, pretty remarkable that America temporarily constructed a safety net during COVID, including major health care coverage, food benefits, anti-poverty funding for families and kids, etc., and then just systematically and slowly demolished it. With regards to the millions about to be kicked off their health care, the process has a bureaucratic and antiseptic name, Medicaid unwinding. Basically, during the pandemic, states could only gain access to certain federal dollars

if they pledged not to kick anyone off of the Medicaid program. That means that women who had had a baby and would have only qualified until just after the baby was born, they were able to stay on. It means people who may have missed their renewal notices in the mail were able to stay on. People who struggle to complete the mountain of paperwork in time to prove they are sufficiently poor to qualify, they were also able to stay on. And that last category, it might sound small, but it's actually massive. HHS estimates 7 million people will get kicked off of Medicaid who actually qualify due to issues like long wait times, bureaucratic mistakes like sending paperwork multiple times, and missing renewal notices. That could be an especially large problem because of how many

people have new addresses due to housing instability exacerbated by the pandemic. Millions more of the working class fall into a giant coverage gap because they live in states which did not expand Medicaid. So those individuals make too much to qualify for Medicaid, but then not enough to actually afford plans on the ACA exchange, even with the subsidies. The Washington Post interviewed a single mom who was set to lose her coverage on just how devastating this is all going to be to her life. So Connie Bunch is mom to a toddler son and a 10-year-old daughter who has cerebral palsy. Caring for a disabled daughter and struggling with her own health issues has made

it nearly impossible for Connie to be able to hold on to a job and certainly not one with health benefits. She was only able to stay on Medicaid because of those pandemic-era provisions. That's a benefit that she believes actually saved her life. It enabled her to go to the emergency room one evening when her face began drooping, resulting in a diagnosis of Bell's palsy and also the discovery of several small brain aneurysms. Now, Connie is also among the millions who struggle to afford insulin for her diabetes and medication for her high blood pressure. After Medicaid unwinding, who knows how or whether this mom will even survive to be there for the babies who so thoroughly depend on her. But the truth is, gazing at this tangled healthcare mess is to realize how broken the system is, even at its very best. A vast, expensive, dehumanizing

bureaucracy is required to determine who checks all the right boxes and lives in the right state to be worthy of basic care. It's actually going to cost states quite a bit of money to figure out who they can kick off the program. Money that, of course, could instead be spent making sure moms like Connie have the care that they need. Social safety net programs that only benefit the poor and working class are also incredibly politically vulnerable, as low-income Americans have zero political sway in Washington and little visibility to the national media. Consider how toxic it is for politicians to even consider cutting Social Security or Medicare, and compare that to how the

child tax credit, rent forbearance, expanded unemployment, and now Medicaid for millions are stripped away while Democrats are in power with barely a whimper. Why? Because Social Security and Medicare are near-universal programs that every American feels they have a stake in. Means-tested safety net programs are ghettoized as welfare for the unworthy. And in the current political climate, they've also been blamed for inflation, even as spending for bank bailouts and corporate subsidies is just accepted as a matter of course. What's more, the overwhelming majority of political journalists grew up in at least the middle class and have had zero personal experience with any of these programs. They also live in class-isolated bubbles, where their only interactions with the beneficiaries of safety net programs are through

the service workers who deliver their Uber Eats or care for their kids. Journalist Jeff Stein has made sure to document the stories of those for whom these programs have been a precious lifeline, which has now been cut away. He wrote a while back about a single mom who has slowly slipped back into financial desperation as program after program has been demolished. In her words, it was a weight lifted like I can't describe. I could actually buy what I wanted to at the grocery store. Living is so much harder now. That this brutality is being inflicted quietly,

surgically, under Democrats, makes it all the more galling. After all, Joe Biden pretended, at least on the campaign trail, that he was gonna fight to get all Americans healthcare through a public option. Now, that was never as good a solution as Medicare for All, of course. At least it was something. Now, we watch him surrender 15 million Americans to health care doom, and he doesn't have a single word to say about it.

I will close with this. Our country is facing a life expectancy calamity that is unlike anything happening anywhere else in the developed world. The Financial Times recently crunched some of the data, and they found that Americans on average have life expectancy as low as Blackpool, that is the most economically depressed town in all of England. What's more, while all countries saw life expectancy take a hit during COVID, the U.S. took a bigger hit and has failed to bounce back as other nations have done. Now, the causes of this are myriad, but I think in a way, the story of Medicaid unwinding tells you everything you really need to know.

In America, we don't actually value the lives of everyone, not even close. The country is run according to a radical, elite-driven ideology which says, your human worth is equal to your market worth, and which is then actively, intentionally sought to make every human of as little worth to the market as possible. And that sick amoral ideology leads Democrats and

Republicans alike to just accept these deaths as a matter of course. Republicans don't really even pretend to care. Democrats pretend to care, but will do nothing that is even remotely hard or counter to donor interest to try to deal with the problem. And so millions get tossed out in the healthcare cold, and our elite institutions barely even register a loss. And Zagar, I was thinking a lot with regard to these, you know, 15... And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. Just so everybody knows, for inevitable questions, we'll be sending a link in the email today to all of our premium subscribers where you can ask questions for the stream. So all of that is going to be lined up.

We're excited to bring you all the stream tomorrow. As a reminder, too, you can watch the full show on Spotify for premium members, breakingpoints.com. But I think that's it. We'll see you all tomorrow night. Primetime special, Trump on trial. Can't wait. It's going to be interesting. We'll see you then.

This is an iHeart Podcast.