Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 5/15/23: DeSantis Owns Trump In Iowa, Elon Bows To Turkey Censorhip, Zelensky Plots NATO Bombing, Feinstein Staff Covered Up Years, Jon Stewart Shreds CNN Townhall, MSNBC Shook, CNN Reporters In Tears

Episode Date: May 15, 2023

Krystal and Saagar discuss DeSantis's recent trip to Iowa, the DeSantis team reveals their plan to win, Elon bows to censorship demands of Erdogan's Turkey, Elon fans revolt over new Twitter CEO, Leaked documents show Zelensky plotted a NATO pipeline bombing, Germany applauded for sending 3 Billion dollars to Ukraine, the Dianne Feinstein Staff caught covering up her dementia for years, Jon Stewart shreds CNN for "rigging" Trump Townhall, Krystal looks into an MSNBC clip when guest Julian Castro says Biden should participate in debates, and Saagar looks at the CNN reporters in tears over the Trump Townhall.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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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. We have an extra amazing show.

Crystal Ball is back from her honeymoon and after a beautiful wedding. It's great to see you, Crystal. It is nice to be back. I enjoyed the time off. I'm sure. But it's always good to be back in the chair. So indeed, we do have a good show.

I had to work that in. Yes, you have to. Otherwise, people would be very disappointed in me. First show back. So lots of things going on to catch up on. First of all, Ron DeSantis looks set to launch any moment. And he kind of got a little one-up on Trump in iOS. So we'll tell you about that.

First good news cycle for him for a while, I would say. That's true. So we'll break that down. Also, Elon deciding to allow censorship of some content in Turkey ahead of a critical election. We also have some results from that election, so we'll tell you about that. New reporting, mainstream media a little bit late to the game, but adding on to what Sagar and I had already previously reported from those leaked documents about how far Zelensky is willing to go and the sort of audacious attacks that he wanted to engage in, but was short the long range missiles that we had failed to provide them. Now, the UK is providing him with those long range missiles, and we are already seeing some potential fallout from all of that.

We've also got a new report about just how far back the problems with Dianne Feinstein go and just how widespread the knowledge of this was on Capitol Hill and among journalists. I mean, you really can't make it up. You've got Jon Stewart weighing in on the big Trump town hall controversy debate, a big piece that I missed last week. So I'm excited to talk about that as well. So lots to get to this morning. But before we do any of that, we are very, very excited because we are getting super close to having a new set in here. That's right, everybody. The set is officially in production fabrication. We have seen the warehouse photos. We are clearing out

space here. We've got timelines and work contracts and all that stuff. So if you guys can help us out with the production of that new set, we'd deeply appreciate it. The biggest expense ever in the history of Breaking Points. And all of you really are a part of it. So as we said, any monthly, yearly, or lifetime members who sign up are especially helping us in our financial hour. And we are so excited to debut all of it to you. It really is like a level up in terms of what we're going to be able to offer everyone for the incoming 2024 election. Yes, that is right. Very excited about all of that. So breakingpoints.com if you are able. Let's start speaking of that 2024 election and all the fun plans, not only in the studio that we've been cooking up,

I think you guys are really going to enjoy some of the things that we're going to be able to offer you is Ron DeSantis. And DeSantis, for the first time in a long time, as you alluded to, had a pretty good news cycle for himself in Iowa. He visited Iowa officially under not a pretense of running for president, but it's pretty obvious what exactly is going on here. And he had especially some good moments on the trail where he was able to speak to multiple events and even show up Trump in the face of a cancellation. Let's take a listen to what he said. Thank you. Thank you so much, Congressman. Thank you for doing such a great job.

Some Republicans get into office and they basically act like potted plants. They don't want to lead. They worry about what the media is going to say about them. They just kind of hope to not have to make decisions until something they're actually forced to do it. I said, that's not what we're doing in Florida. We're going on offense in the state of Florida. I'm going to get out in front of issues. I'm going to be leading on issues. I don't care what the left says. I don't care what the media says. We are going to deliver big victories. And I'll tell you, when you're on offense, it's hard for them to keep up with you because they don't know what we're gonna do next. That is the core of the DeSantis pitch

is that Trump is about drama and I'm all about offense. I'm all about substance. I'm all about action. Now, obviously, we've been skeptical of that because unfortunately, I don't think a lot of Republican base actually wants action, offense, and they'd like the drama. That said, there are people out there who do like it. And he did get a standing ovation at multiple of these events. But really, the big show up of Trump in

Iowa, let's put this up there on the screen, is that after President Trump actually canceled a rally in Des Moines, citing, quote, possible dangerous weather, which, by the way, did not materialize, Ron DeSantis actually added an unscheduled stop in the very area that Trump had been scheduled to speak. Not only did he have a pit stop by basically embarrassing the former president by saying, I'm willing to come up whenever you said that you were going to, but then you bailed on this event, but he had spoken to two other events in Iowa while he was there. And this is just very classic retail politics.

Crystal. This is one of those where, and part of why I actually am sad to lose Iowa from the Democratic side, because Barack Obama would never be president without it. He visited, what is it, all 99 counties in Iowa, and he spent basically a year on the ground. Iowa is what made him. DeSantis is offering his playbook where he sees his path to a nomination, if possible at all, through victories in the early states. Don't forget that Trump did not win Iowa. He only got third place to Marco Rubio and to Ted Cruz before he eventually won the New Hampshire primary. So if DeSantis could have a victory in the Iowa caucuses over Trump, it would obviously just be

a titanic media event. And more importantly, I think it would give permission to other Republicans to vote for him because they're like, oh, well, maybe he actually could win this thing. Yeah. I mean, listen, we've been skeptical of Ron DeSantis for a long time, including when he was riding high, when some of the polls showed him beating Trump, because we always had this question mark of, OK, but how is he going to handle the national spotlight? OK, what is his actual case against Trump? And we also had seen with the Mar-a-Lago raid the way that when Trump is under fire from the justice system or the liberal media or anyone else, the way the base always rallies back to him. So we've long been skeptical. But I think if you're going to make

the best case that you can for Ron DeSantis, you would say, OK, he's placing a bet on people. They may still like Trump, but they are kind of tired of the chaos and they're ready to move on. That's the bet that he's placing. The one thing that I think he has in his corner right now is, you know, the media doesn't really want the primary to be over before it's ever began because that's less interesting for them. So the fact that they took this little one-upsmanship that he was able to have in Iowa and turned it into a whole national story, I think indicates that they do want little one-upsmanship that he was able to have in Iowa and turned it into a whole national story, I think indicates that they do want to kind of root for him in a way,

just so that they have an interesting, theoretically competitive primary on the Republican side to cover since they've already decided that they're going to just pretend the Democratic primary is not interesting for them at all. So he's got that going for him. And in a way, his path that he has mapped out in his mind and that consultants are leaking to the press now is kind of similar to the Barack Obama bet, which is that, OK, sure, the polls are what they are before people start voting. But if we can show some strength in these early states, and by the way, we think some of these early states are particularly good for us, then maybe that flips things. Maybe that changes the whole game

and we get a head full of steam. These other contenders, the Nikki Haley's, the Tim Scott's, the whoever's, they drop out, they coalesce, and that's our shot. And you can see he's placing a big bet on that. Go ahead and put this up on the screen from Politico. He's rolling out a major slate of Iowa endorsements. You know, a huge roster here, including more than half a dozen party leaders, state Senate presidents, Senate majority whip, assistant House majority leader, House majority leader, House speaker pro tempore. Is that how you say it? Pro tempore? Pro tempore. Pro tempore. There we go. House majority whip, assistant majority leader, et cetera, et cetera. So very impressive state level roster. And the other thing I would say is while DeSantis getting one over on Trump in this, you know, one Trump cancels the rally and DeSantis shows up, is this going to move the polls from a national perspective? No, but Iowa is different.

And people there locally do pay attention to these sorts of things. Retail politics and the grassroots do matter. So if he's able to show more dexterity there and more attention to the state, yeah, maybe that does pay off. Yeah, I agree with you. I mean, look, at the end of the day, like these types of endorsements and all that were dismissed very early on by the Hillary campaign around Obama and they didn't end up mattering. And a lot of people also forget this. Ted Cruz poured an enormous amount of resources into Iowa. Jeff Rowe, his campaign manager, who actually is now currently running the Never Back Down Super PAC backing Ron DeSantis, before that ran the Glenn Youngkin campaign, is famously established

like Cruz camps and poured all of his data and all of this into winning the Iowa caucuses. It still is probably the coup de grace of the entire Ted Cruz campaign from 2016. Well, he's got Iowa veterans in his camp who are backing him. They know how to play this game. Iowan famously, especially Republican voters there, they are not the mean Republican voter, as evidenced by the fact that they voted for Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, whereas in most of the other primaries, Trump not only won, but he won big. So I think that, you know, given the very, given the unique dynamics of the state, given the fact that they really do like to take their time, like get to know their politicians, if Trump does take them for granted, which it's very possible that he certainly could if DeSantis is going to go all in on the state, he could face a problem.

At the same time, what did I just say? He lost Iowa the first time. It just didn't matter. He still won New Hampshire and he still won Super Tuesday and he became a nominee very quickly after. Right. Well, that's the difference is the reason it worked out for Barack Obama is very specific to the Democratic side, which is that you had a lot of black voters in South Carolina who wanted to be with him, but didn't think that he had the, you know, the ability to overcome the Clinton machine. And once he demonstrated like, look, I can get these

white folks in Iowa to vote for me, then polls flipped dramatically, specifically among black voters in South Carolina. There are very few black voters that vote in the Republican primaries, and there just aren't that, there isn't that same dynamic that's obvious to see, at least in terms of the Republican primary. So that's why, you know, I continue to be skeptical here. But it was definitely a good, much better news cycle for him. He was certainly well received in the state of Iowa. I don't think there's any doubt that the Republican base overall has a lot of positive feelings towards him. They like him. If Trump wasn't there, I think he would be, you know, the odds on favorite, no doubt about it. But I still continue to believe that it's not going to

be enough to be the Trump alternative without making some sort of affirmative case that really lands with the Republican base against Trump or somehow Trump disappearing from the scene or completely melting down, of which we just see no sign. Yeah, let's put the last one up there on the screen, please, because what they show here is that they canceled the outdoor rally in Des Moines. But something that Ron DeSantis actually said on Saturday really is what resonated with a lot of people on the ground. He said that the Republicans must, quote, reject a culture of losing and embrace a positive vision for the future if they want to win in 2024. Quote, both Florida and Iowa show strong leadership and a bold agenda, can defeat the left in this country. There's no substitute for victory. We must reject the culture of losing that's

infected our party in recent years. The time for excuses is over. We've got to demonstrate the courage to lead and the strength to win. Now look, on his merits, I think he's right. I think that's a great pitch for maybe somebody like me. But all the evidence that we have, Crystal, this message basically only really resonates with college educated Republicans, of which there are a lot in Iowa, but of which nationally there are actually not a lot whenever it comes to the Republican base. Working class voters love Trump. Working class voters specifically who are new to the Republican Party, Trump-ish style voters especially especially love Trump, but then the more traditional Mitt Romney-type Republicans, they like Trump. They have affection for Trump.

They're willing to entertain more candidates. But unfortunately for DeSantis and for really anybody who's making their bet on that group, they really just, they don't, they're outnumbered almost dramatically by non-college educated white voters in the Republican Party. So look, once again, we could be totally wrong. It's very possible that a DeSantis-Iowa victory, if it were to materialize, would eventually give people permission in New Hampshire and in South Carolina and in Florida. Actually, Florida will be the real test, whether DeSantis can win in his own home state against Trump. That's basically the whole ballgame.

It's why Marco Rubio dropped out in 2016. It's why Ted Cruz was able to stay in the race because he did win the Texas primary. It's why John Kasich was able to win the Ohio primary. You have a case for doing that. So a lot of it is also a road to Florida from where it all starts in Iowa. DeSantis is making an intellectual case to the Republican base. He bet on, I'm going to have this policy rollout. That's why he wanted to wait until after the Florida legislative session was finished before he jumped into the presidential race. And that lands with some slice of the Republican base. There's no doubt about it. The Trump pitch is much more visceral. And today that visceral pitch is winning the day.

Will that change over time? I sort of doubt it because I think the landscape as we move forward is just going to continue to be, you know, what's going to happen in the documents probe? What's going to happen with the, you know, the Georgia Fulton County probe? What's happening with the special counsel? All of those things are going to continue to dominate the news. And I think you saw in that CNN town hall, you know, the way the base feels about anything, whether it has merit or not, that any sort of attack on Trump, as far as the Republican base goes, this is different from the general electorate, but in terms of the Republican base, it only makes Trump stronger. So I don't see

that dynamic really stopping. Yeah, I don't really see it changing or stopping either. But listen, who knows? You know, it could be wrong. And at the very least, it'll be interesting. Let's go to the second part here, which is a little bit interesting, and put this up there on the screen. This is the actual DeSantis theory of the case from Jonathan Martin over at Politico, why the DeSantis brain trust thinks that it actually can beat Trump. Now, what they effectively say here is they say, yes, they say, yes, we understand where the polls are going. We understand that this is something which looks like it shouldn't be feasible. But we have extensive internal polling and a gusher of money that they predict will come when DeSantis will enter the race. They point to the fact, Crystal, that DeSantis has a very, very high internal

approval rating amongst Republicans. In other wordsSantis has a very, very high internal approval rating amongst Republicans. In other words, he has a very high affection rating. They look at the unpopularity for Trump amongst voters that they find in Iowa, in New Hampshire, and elsewhere. They find, quote, 24% of Republicans have an unfavorable view of Trump, while only 14% of Iowa feel unfavorably towards DeSantis, perhaps most notable in their dominated caucuses. They say that DeSantis is viewed favorably by nearly 80% of who call themselves, quote, very conservative. And they point to the fact that DeSantis himself, at least on a personal level, doesn't seem to have the level of drama and the level of chaos. He does have a proven record. He genuinely is a winner. I mean,

won by almost 20 points in the gubernatorial election. There is zero arguing with that electorally. So really it comes down to Trump has a very, very high tail risk. We have high levels of affection. We will have gobs of money by the conservative billionaire class who want to see something, who want to see at least some alternative to Trump. And he's got his legal problems. It's basically a, I would say that they estimate it as the risk is high enough with Trump that somebody else has to try and be the alternative. The question is, is that are they right? Or are the odds really on their side? I would say no, like on a probabilistic scale, but reading this, I get it. I get where they're coming from.

But, you know, the risk is also very high for DeSantis on a personal level of this will humiliate him and basically relegate him to Chris Christie level status if he does lose. That could very well happen. And I have heard people coming out and saying, you know what, he should just take a pass. Like this is not panning out for him. The polls are sliding. Trump is like it's becoming increasingly clear. This is Trump's race to lose. It's like a foregone conclusion. But, you know, I have to say if I was him, I'd probably still take the shot because you just never know what's going to happen in politics.

You know, there is enough chaos in the air with these investigations. And Trump is an old man as well. God only knows what's going to happen with him. That if you don't jump now, you do probably miss your best window and your best opportunity. So, you know, is he even at a 50% chance? In my opinion, not even close. But I disagree with people who are saying like, it's so obvious that he should just stay out altogether because I don't know that he gets another window of opportunity that is as clear. He's riding at his highest that he's

ever going to ride right now. So if you don't take the shot now, you're probably going to miss your chance. New York Times has a piece that has some of these details. Let's go and put this up on the screen also about Iowa and their pitch and their thought of how this could all work out in DeSantis' favor. They also, though, include some of the downside risk and some of how the wheels have already come off before he's even gotten to the starting line. They say why Ron DeSantis is limping to the starting line. They describe his central electability pitch as MAGA without the mess, but they say that's been badly bruised. And specifically, they point to a book tour that was supposed to have introduced him nationally, but had a lot of missteps and called into question his readiness for the national stage. They point to his comments on

Ukraine and his comments on abortion as causing some turbulence in particular among the donor class. And it really highlights how he has a very difficult coalition to put together here because he's trying to appeal, number one, to sort of the most hard right ideological part of the Republican base with things like, you know, really stringent abortion restrictions. And he's also trying to appeal to the more moderate part of the Republican base that is done with Trump. And if you can't put all of those pieces together, you just don't have nearly enough to, you know to get over the 50 percent threshold, which is what you will likely need. So it shows just how tricky it is to hold those pieces together.

They've got a quote from a metals magnate who had given DeSantis $50,000 last year. He said, I was in the DeSantis camp, but he started opening his mouth and a lot of big donors said his views are not tolerable. This donor cited specifically abortion and Ukraine. There was reports of a couple of big donors who actually took meetings with Vivek Ramaswamy as well. So people are weighing their options now. Is Ron DeSantis going to have plenty of money? Yes. But again, I think what this underscores is the inherent tensions in groups of people, the very disparate groups of people that he is trying to put together to build this campaign. Exactly. How are you going to appease Ken Griffin, who hates Trump, hates

any Trumpian position on our conservative position on abortion and hates any conservative position on Ukraine, when at the same time you need his money to run because you also need to, if you're going to be the Republican nominee, win over people who are Trump voters. I just think it's a very, very difficult case. And also these donors, as you know, and as evidenced here, they're the most fickle people on earth. If you don't fet them constantly, then they go to somebody else. And actually this gets to a level of not even retail politics, but internal operational politics, which DeSantis by all accounts is bad at. I mean,

we've covered the stories here about how the guy who sat next to him for several years in the house said literally, quote, he's an a-hole because he didn't talk to him. You had other congressmen, you had that one congressman who knew him while he was in Washington, took a meeting with him, and then immediately after the meeting endorsed Trump because basically made it known. He's like, yeah, DeSantis was not one of the guys when he was in Congress. He didn't like to hang out with us. He wasn't particularly nice to us. Now he's coming to us and he wants our vote. And we're like, hey, we remember.

Whereas Trump would call me when I was in the hospital. He called me when I was sick. These are unfortunately like this is how politics runs. This is a game of human beings. And I even saw, you know, internal, some of these stories that are like, DeSantis A's have acknowledged, like, he needs to smile more and he needs to call people. It's like, listen, man, if you have to be told to call people and you're, if you're Eisenhower and you're one of the most popular figures in America, that's a different story. You can learn some of this game. But when you are the underdog, then you need to be doing all of this stuff. And not just now, you need to be doing this for 20 years. That's the Bill Clinton case. I think it's telling that he does better with endorsements in

a state like Iowa, where people don't really know him, than in his home state. There you go. I mean, in Florida, there was a landslide of endorsements towards Trump and like in a really pointed in your face F you kind of way where they were telling the press, you know, this guy, he told me to come to his like hurricane press conference and I was going to be there. And when I show up, they're like, nope, sorry, you can stand at the back. We don't want to say anything about you or have you up next to the governor. Like, what are you thinking with that? What do you think? And I would also say, I mean, that's on him.

That's also on his staff because that is a bad situation. You lose that endorsement. That's embarrassing in your home state. He also needs to get his facial expressions under control because some of these photos are, you know, Howard Dean scream level kind of bad. The bobblehead thing we played for you, that was probably the worst. But even out of this very good news cycle for him coming out of Iowa, positive reception, whatever, there are some photos that came out of there too that you're

like, oh, what are you like, what is your face doing right now? So, yeah. And these are things like you can't really retrain. I was about to say, people are going to be like, oh, you guys are being petty. No, I mean, listen, we have decades of politics to understand that all of these things, unfortunately, end up mattering sometimes more than a position on Ukraine. The scream literally took out Howard Dean, which is, you know, in retrospect, is insane considering some of the things he was saying about the Iraq war. Maybe those two things were combined. Who knows? These are all conspiracies from a long time ago. The point just is, is that with these, you know, ridiculous, you know, small charismatic moments in politics, some of those actually can end up mattering a hell of a lot combined with a mass media that's going to focus on these things. Yeah. So we will see. But DeSantis set apparently to launch very, very soon. Yeah. I think it'll come soon. Because the legislative season is up in Florida, all the accounts were he wanted to wait until it was done.

So he had had a bunch of check marks on things that he was getting done. So the moment it ends, basically, he's ready to roll. All the accounts say he's in it. He's in it, I guess, to run it, maybe to win it, and we'll see. Yes. All right, let's talk about Elon Musk, Twitter, and the Turkish elections. A lot going on. Am I sick of talking about Twitter?

Yes, I am. But they're keeping things that we have to cover. This part is important. This is actually incredibly important because it goes to the heart of what Elon has claimed he's doing over at Twitter, which he says he's a free speech absolutist. He said he was buying Twitter. I mean, he was sort of forced into it ultimately, but buying it to establish it as a beacon of free speech. And lo and behold, let's put this up on the screen. So Turkey just had elections. We'll give you those results in just a moment. The Turkish government

mere days before this critical and very close election, asked Twitter to censor certain content that was unfavorable to Erdogan. And Twitter just went ahead and complied. They say in response to legal process and to ensure Twitter remains available to the people of Turkey, we've taken action to restrict access to some content in Turkey today. So that's all the information we got. Iglesias here highlighting the Turkish government asked Twitter to censor its opponents right before an election and Elon Musk complied, should generate some interesting Twitter files reporting, he snarkily adds, to which Elon responds, did your brain fall out of your head? The choice is have Twitter throttled in its entirety or limit access to some tweets.

Which one do you want? Now, these choices are, you know, I guess difficult. You can either decide to go with the government censorship and do what the incumbent government wants, in effect, to impact the results of an election, something that Elon Musk and many others have been very critical of Twitter under Jack Dorsey engaging with the U.S. government in particular, but other governments as well. Well, here, Elon, who's supposed to be the beacon of free speech, just immediately caves and is extraordinarily defensive about it and doesn't even consider the possibility that, yeah, the principled thing to do would be, if that's really your choice, the principled thing would be to

allow Twitter to be taken down rather than just cede to the government's wishes. Ken Roth, who we've had on the show, said, too clever by half, Elon Musk just gave away the store by making clear he prioritizes Twitter's presence in a country over the platform's free speech principles. He's invited endless censorship demands to gain compliance. Governments will just threaten to expel Twitter. So now they know what they have to do. They'll just say, hey, we'll cut Twitter off and he will bend to their wishes. And then he continued, go ahead and put this next piece up on the screen. He says, what makes this even worse is that Musk tried to justify his acquiescence to censorship demands by saying people can change the law, allowing censorship, but Musk accepted censorship on the eve of today's

election, making it harder for people in Turkey to change the law. So listen, whatever Elon Musk is wanting to do with Twitter and what he's wanting to turn it into and whatever changes he wants to make from the Jack Dorsey era, I think we can all put to bed the idea that this is a committed free speech play because between this, between censorship in India, between taking off random journalists that piss him off. I mean, anyone I think at this point has to acknowledge that whatever is going on here, it is not at its core about free speech. Well, the core, the capriciousness of taking journalists you don't like off is one thing, but acquiescing to government demands is actually a whole other thing. And once again, I actually think this is a fine position if you don't bill yourself as a free speech platform. This is basically the position of YouTube, of Facebook, and of Google. They comply with local law. In fact, anytime you ask Apple, you're like, hey, why did you do this thing on behalf of the CCP? They're like, listen,

we do business in China. If you want to do business in China, you got to abide by Chinese law. I'm like, okay. I mean, I don't agree with that necessarily. I think that we should actually set standards to make it so that some companies don't do that. But at the end of the day, I think it's a defensible capitalist position. Yes. But this was not the reason why you said you were going to buy. This is not what we were told. And on a principal's level, like now he's in our world, quote, by free speech, I'm simply mean that which matches the law. I am against censorship that goes far beyond the law. If people want less free speech, they will ask the government to pass laws to that effect. A, that presumes that all governments are democracies, considering what we know about corruption around this world. That sounds pretty ridiculous. Now, in some cases,

it is true that democratic places like India genuinely do push censorship and they're probably vastly supported by the population. But to argue that in China, to argue that in Vietnam, to argue that in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, any of these other is ludicrous. There's no democracy. There are literal monarchies. I mean, and that is where I think that the, that is where Elon's position falls apart. I mean, and that is where I think that the that is where Elon's position falls apart. I mean, frankly, by this policy, the very thing which gave so much hope to social media, the Arab Spring, never would have happened because under that rule, they would have complied with the Mubarak government orders and they would have taken down Twitter. You know, maybe you wouldn't have had an Arab Spring at all. I mean, people forget, you know, before a lot of the U.S. government censorship regime was architected under ISIS because ISIS was very active on Twitter as a recruiting tool. And Twitter actually held up a free speech defense from 2000, probably like 13 or so from the very emergence of ISIS for at least a year or two for a while before they were able to comply. Now, once again, you know, this maybe was

right decision or not, but the very least that architecture was used to eventually build up the censorship regime after the Trump election in 2016. So look, there's no question about it. This is not a free speech position, period, zero at all, especially with the idea that if countries want it, then they'll get it. I'm like, first of all, it's not even true in our own country. We live in a pretty democratic place. Now imagine it in a place which is genuinely just full-scale authoritarian. Yes, and there was some information that came out from independent Turkish journalists about who exactly was being censored. Lo and behold, it was investigative journalists who were exposing things the Erdogan regime didn't like. In particular, there are a lot of questions about exactly what happened in that previous coup attempt.

This information was supposed to be released on Saturday. And lo and behold, that's when the censorship demand comes in and Twitter caves to it. I think there's a few more things to say about it. One is that it's particularly important in a country like Turkey, where almost all of the media has been bought by Erdogan allies. So there is very little independent media inside of that country. And so social media becomes all that much more important. That's number one. Number two, Elon has business dealings in Turkey with the Turkish government, as he does with the Indian government, as he does with many other governments around the world. Again, that is not illegal, but it calls into question, is your commitment to Twitter? Is

your commitment to free speech? Is your commitment to your broader business ventures and bottom line? Because those are all very different things that are going to result in very different outcomes. And then the last point to make here is that actually there's some indication that previous Twitter was better on these sorts of demands. This is from Judd Legum. He said in the six months following must take over, Twitter did not report a single request from governments in which the company refused to comply, whereas they did refuse to comply with three requests in the six months before must take over and five requests in the six months before that. Also, last month, Twitter stopped sharing the censorship demands that it even receives from governments. So by that metric, Twitter under Jack Dorsey was also was actually better at standing

up to these government censorship demands than the supposed free speech absolutist has been. Yeah, it's very, very foolish. And it's one of those where it really just doesn't make any sense. You know, this was flagged to us. Let's put this up there on the screen. You know, Jimmy Wales was the founder of Wikipedia, said what Wikipedia did. We stood strong for our principles and we fought this to the Supreme Court of Turkey and won. This is what it means to treat freedom of expression as a principle rather than a slogan. And that is, you know, that's basically it, which is he was like, okay, we're not going to comply.

Jimmy Wales and Wikipedia said, we're going to take this all the way to the Supreme Court of Turkey. And they actually won even in that country. So that proves that Elon could have fought this if he wanted to and basically just caved to the initial demand of the Erdogan regime. Maybe it honestly just came from confusion. He was like, oh, Erdogan is a dictator. We don't have any avenues, so we'll just go ahead and do what he wants.

Whereas others just looked at their legal team. They're like, okay, well, actually we can. We have some level of challenge here. And if we don't win, then we'll see what happens and we can make a decision. But at least challenge the order, especially in the middle of a goddamn election when it probably matters the most.

Yeah, and some of these government threats of like, oh, we're going to take the whole platform down if you don't comply, don't come to fruition, number one. In the case of Wikipedia did though, apparently Wikipedia was down in Turkey for years while this was being resolved, but they were committed to the principle. And since they fought it, guess what?

Other governments are going to be less likely to come to them with these demands because they know that they're not going to just instantly cave when you say, oh, take down your platform. They know they're not going to just instantly cave and acquiesce. As we've mentioned a few times, the reason this was so important right in this moment is because Turkey is in the midst of a hotly contested re-election fight for Erdogan. We do have some results here. Let's put this up on the screen from Reuters. That election is so close that it is actually headed now to a runoff. Neither of the candidates were able to achieve the 50 percent that would be needed in order to avoid a runoff. Now, Erdogan did outperform somewhat the polls. He has about a five point lead over his opponent, whose name I am sadly not even going to attempt to pronounce. But the reason that Erdogan was apparently in trouble here is because the economy has been trash.

They've had up to 80 percent inflation, so devastating levels of inflation. And then they also had that horrific, tragic earthquake. And obviously no one can control Mother Nature, but some of the construction projects that had been undertaken under Erdogan were really shoddily done. And so that contributed, some are saying, to the death toll. There was also a lot of consternation about the initial response not being aggressive or

effective enough. So that's why he was in and continues to be, you know, in such trouble here. There was a third candidate in this race. Of course, he'll be out now for the runoff. So they'll be head to head who that person who got like 5% of the vote, who they endorse is going to ultimately be very critical. But you can see how this is a game of inches. And so, you know, you take some critical journalists who are about to drop some significant reports off of social media and make it very difficult for the public to be aware of what's going on there, especially with the state meet with the local media in Turkey being basically state propaganda at this point. You see why these decisions really, really matter. I mean,

if you thought the Hunter Biden laptop situation was egregious, which of course we did, the level of censorship that's going on in Turkey is far and beyond that and far and more, far more critical in terms of potential election outcomes. Yeah, that's why it matters. Exactly. It actually arguably matters way more over there than it does even here, just because of the level of control that the state has over official communications. I think it's really a tragedy, you know, to bring these. Again, like you said, you have no idea how these things can go. But I do think that these platforms, the ability to express yourself and all that,

they matter the most in some of these, because they can make the biggest impact when you have zero voices of dissent. And that's part of why these governments are so obsessed with policing them at all times. Yeah, I think that's right. There's some other big news with regard to Twitter, which is that you will recall some time ago, many months ago, Elon did his little Twitter poll and said, should I step down as CEO? And yes, you should step down position one. But we hadn't gotten much movement there in terms of him moving aside. Well, we do now have a CEO who has officially been chosen. Her name is Linda Iaccarino. She works, she's a high level executive at NBC Universal in charge of basically bringing in

all of their advertising dollars. So she's very well versed in the world of advertising, in the world of corporate sponsors. That's where all her relationships allied, not so much on the tech side. And she's kind of coming in for criticism from all corners in terms of how she's likely to run Twitter, in terms of what her politics are. One of the things that really caught our eye is she actually interviewed Elon not that long ago. And she was pushing him on behalf of advertisers, corporations to reinstate this influence council so that, you know, corporate marketing heads could be in constant communication with Twitter and trying to push them and shape their decisions on things like content moderation. Elon here takes the principle of like, I don't think that'd be a great idea stance, but just listen to how she positions and frames her views. Take a listen to some of this. For example, you've said you probably shouldn't

tweet after 3 a.m. Well, I've got myself into... Probably good advice for all of us. I've got myself into trouble a few times. I'm very aware of those. So after 3 a.m., you travel all over the world. Lord knows how you handle time zones in space. Will you commit to be a little more specific and not tweet after 3 a.m.?

People in this room would like to see that. It will make them feel more confident. I will aspire to tweet less after 3 a.m. But, I mean, it is important that, you know, I mean, if I were to say, yes, you can influence me, that would be wrong. That would be very wrong. Because that would be a diminishment of freedom of speech.

But I want to be specific about influencing. It's more of an open feedback loop for the advertising experts in this room to help develop Twitter into a place where they will be excited about investing more money. It's totally cool to say that you want to have your advertising appear in certain places in Twitter and not in other places. But it is not cool to try to say what Twitter will do. And if that means losing advertising dollars, we lose it. But freedom of speech is paramount. Twitter 1.0

had a uh very well populated much loved influence council i know i don't uh i i think we need to change the name elon does not want to be influenced so the the influence council may not be coming back but instead he just decided to get one of the advertising executives to run the whole joint. I think it's just very clear what happened here. Bought it for $44 billion. He paid probably $15, $20 billion more than it was actually worth after the downturn. Now he's stuck with it. Couldn't get out of it after suing. And he had his fun. Tried Twitter blue. It was a disaster by all accounts. He's not bringing in more than a couple million dollars per month, which is not going to cover the $5 billion in revenue that they were already making per year

on advertising. And don't forget, the $5 billion revenue that they were making actually was not enough to turn a profit. They were still running at a loss. So they probably need to make $6 billion. Well, since he fired 90% of the staff or whatever, let's say it was less than that, because staff at the end of the day still was not some of the more significant operations that they were spending. So who do you turn to? You turn to the only other revenue that you can tap. You tried direct subscription.

It didn't work out. You gotta go back to the advertisers. If you're going to the advertisers, you gotta get a Madison Avenue beloved figure. Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. That's exactly what the Wall Street Journal and the business press are describing her as. Quote, meet Linda Iaccarino, Elon Musk's new Twitter CEO and the ad world's velvet hamper.

Billionaire bets the NBCUniversal executive with Madison Avenue ties will bring advertisers back to Twitter. And what do we learn from Linda Iaccarino? This is a long-term, long-time New York City kind of aligned Madison Avenue executive with deep ties to the media industry. They say she's regarded as a sales machine. The Velvet Hammer, because of her hard-nosed negotiation tactics, come wrapped in a friendly package. Ideologically, they say that she is aligned with Musk. I don't really know what that means for somebody who literally worked at NBC. But according to them, her track record,

she had a 2,000 plus advertising sales team and they have generated more than $100 billion in ad sales over the last 12 years, which is crazy for NBC Universal. Before that, she worked at Turner Broadcasting, Warner Brothers Discovery. She steered the company through decline in television. So this is a very, this is as like swampy as it gets, I think, whenever it comes to the ad business.

Not saying that necessarily in a bad term because that's kind of what you need if that's the way that you want to go. Now, is this the free speech executive? No. Not even a question. I mean, that's why it fits with the previous segment of like, is this a smart choice? If you're just looking at the bottom line,

I think it's a smart choice. Yeah, it's a great choice. Because they desperately need to bring advertisers back. She has deep relationships within the industry. She can call them up. She can schmooze them.

Things are going to be different. I've got your back. They tell a story, actually, in this Wall Street Journal article, just to give you a sense of how she would operate over at NBC Universal. There was some big placed, you know, expensive ad for, I think it was General Motors that ran during the Today Show, but it ran next to an advertisement that, you know, painted some negative picture of like lithium. And they thought it was, it was bad to have those two things together. So she immediately

calls up GM says, I'm going to make it right. We're going to run it again on the Today Show. So she's heightened sensitivity towards how these corporate executives and corporate advertisers are going to think about where their ads are and what it's put up next to. That's going to be her priority. She's going to tell them, I have your back. And as we've said from the beginning, there's a reason why all of these platforms are run from in a very similar way when it comes to content moderation. And it is not because of the government, actually. I mean, that's a piece of it. It's really overwhelmingly shaped by what are advertisers, what is corporate America going to be comfortable with? She's the expert at that. So again, is it

an intelligent business decision to try to lure advertisers back? Yes, I absolutely think so. It's not like Twitter is like a complicated tech play. They've got their platform. They know generally what they're doing. They don't need a tech expert. They need someone who's going to be competent and has these relationships in the ad world. Is that remotely what Elon promised when he purchased this platform? Of course not. Not remotely. And, you know, there's been a lot of reading the tea leaves of what her politics are. And ultimately, with someone like this, who's just, you know, at heart, like a hard charging capitalist executive, I don't know that the underlying what she thinks about stop the

steal or whatever actually matters because the bottom line is going to be the bottom line with this person. But there was a lot of upset to put this up on the screen among a lot of Elon Musk fans that she's very involved with the World Economic Forum. She chairs a committee there and has been involved for a number of years. And then on the other side, there was also upset from a lot of liberals and people on the left and some of the people that she follows and whose tweets she likes. I guess this is the part where maybe her politics theoretically are in line with Elon's, which is, you know, she follows people like Lin Wood and Sidney Powell and a lot of other right wing figures as well.

But again, I sort of think those pieces are a distraction from her core function, which is to make Twitter a place, once again, that is going to be comfy for advertisers and basically just bring it back to the old regime. People like this, their personal politics don't literally matter at all. In many ways, they are the ultimate chameleons. Whenever you're selling something, you don't sell $100 billion worth of ads without being at all things to all people. You can be conservative when you need to. You can be the biggest lib whenever you need to. That's probably, honestly, she was probably able to schmooze him. I mean, the other thing is for somebody like this, I don't know why you would leave a multi-billion dollar corporation to work for one of the most capricious people on the planet, who famously is hard charging with a

tremendous level of risk. I mean, I guess if you do turn it around, you look like a genius, but almost nobody else has been able to last. I mean, so many other people who have worked for Elon. For example, there's a reason you don't really know the names of the other, the junior executives at SpaceX or at Tesla. Elon is always the star at his companies. He'll work people into the ground.

He takes, I'm not gonna say he takes credit because he is intimately involved and works just as hard as all of them. But it is clear in all these companies, it's all about Elon. Yeah.

On the other hand, I never heard her name before and now I have. Yeah, fair. You know, she's the subject of a lot of news articles and a lot of speculation

and a lot of interest. And so, according to the Wall Street, that Wall Street Journal report, she was really miffed that she hadn't been promoted higher within NBCUniversal. There was a position that came open that she wasn't even considered for, and she was upset with that.

She made no secret of the fact that she wanted to be in a CEO position. So I guess she feels like this is her shot and has a lot of confidence in her ability to be able to turn things around, a lot of confidence in the relationships that she has in the ad world to try to bring those advertisers back to the platform. And so she's going to take her shot. She will take her shot. We will see how it all works out. Okay, let's go ahead to the next one on Ukraine. A really crazy piece of news that we want to spend a little bit of time on because it fits very neatly with some other news that you already heard here on Breaking Points where The Washington Post is just catching up with. Let's go and put this up there on the screen.

From The Drive, which is a fantastic publication. They say four Russian aircraft were shot down within their own borders. Now, there are, quote, multiple possibilities as to what brought these aircraft down. Most would mark a major change in Ukraine's counter air ability. So what they point to is that the Russian air force has allegedly had one of its worst days of the war in the year on Saturday. Details remain limited. It appears that Russia has lost two helicopters, a strike fighter and a fighter jet with no survivors. What makes quote this all troubling for the air force is that all of these losses happened in its own countries, areas not too far from the border with Ukraine.

All four of the aircraft came from well within Russian territory, opposite of northeastern Ukraine. A video shows one of the helicopters breaking up after what looks like a missile hits it near the town of Klinsky, 50 kilometers north of the Ukrainian border. Russia has now confirmed that some of these were shot down with all nine aboard and four down of the aircraft were killed. Moreover, some have claimed at least one and possibly both were extremely rare electronic warfare variants. So anyway, this is a big problem for the Russian aircraft and for the Russian Air Force. Now, what brought these things down? Initial claims suggested friendly fire had downed the aircraft in yet another case of fratricide by the Russian air defenses. But Russian authorities have begun hunts for, quote, saboteurs who were involved in the shootdowns, potentially partisans or Ukrainian special forces armed with manpads.

That war has increasingly come now to this area of Russia and could be involved in possible cross-border incidents. So what the drive says is that it's possible Ukrainian special forces and partisans managed to ambush these aircraft with these manpads. Now, they say if it not fracture size or manpads, Ukraine may have moved longer range surface to air missile systems closer to the Russian border and that these air defenses are exceedingly valuable to Ukraine and stretched across the country. These newer systems, which were provided from the West, including the Patriot missile systems and others, are thought to be rapidly dwindling. And this may be a change in the overall defense architecture. So once again, The Drive is a fantastic publication. They do a lot of air-specific analysis.

And the reason why I think it was important to highlight this crystal is that, as they say, losing air superiority, which they haven't had over Ukraine now for a long time, but at the very least, the ability to launch air attacks in combination with their cruise missiles and others has been a major strategic advantage for the Russians. Part of why the Ukrainians want these jets so badly, because they want to be able to do battle and strike Russia as well, which I guess they're at least open about, or at least to our policymakers.

But the point is, is that the escalation here by using US-provided weapon systems to shoot down stuff inside of Russia. Yes, by the way, it is headed to Ukraine, no question about it. Morally, not saying it isn't fair game. Only saying strategically this marks a major change in the war because if you start seeing major Russian assets not only get bombed but shot down inside of Russia, it could change the calculus for the level of force that the Russians are willing to and start to use.

That's right. And it also shows you just the constant creep of this war, our involvement in it, what the Ukrainians are willing to do, what they're willing to admit to doing. I mean, we saw that drone strike on the Kremlin, potential Putin assassination attempt. I should say that the Ukrainians deny this. They deny it. They're like, oh, we had nothing to do with it. They deny all of this. But I mean, early in the war, when there were reports of potentially strikes outside of Ukraine, this was a huge deal.

Now this sort of news comes and goes like it's nothing. But it shows you if indeed the Ukrainians were behind these attacks, it shows you how brazen they're willing to be and how much they are willing to push and continue to escalate. And as we previously reported, some of the more brazen plans of Zelensky and his advisers have been short-circuited just by the fact that they didn't have those longer-range missiles. Well, guess what? Britain has decided to send them now, long-range attack drones with a range of over 200 kilometers. So that opens up whole new possibilities for what they could do inside of Russia and whole new set of risks of, you know, potential dramatic escalation that could draw us even deeper into this conflict or lead to

horrific, you know, outcomes like Russia feeling forced into using a nuclear weapon. Not that I'm justifying if they ever did that, but feeling that their hand is forced in that sort of way. So this is a very dangerous set of circumstances. And as Sagar alluded to, one of the things that I think may be the most dramatic takeaway we had from those leaked documents was Zelensky plotting attacks and basically being unable to execute them just because we hadn't shipped him those longer range missiles. Well, the mainstream press is finally picking up on some of this reporting as well. I can put this up on the screen. This is from the Washington Post. Zelensky in private plots bold attacks inside of Russia. The leak shows U.S. intercepts reveal

the Ukrainian leader's aggressive instincts, a marked contrast to his public-facing image as the stoic statesman weathering Russia's brutal onslaught. So they picked up on the incident that we had inside. Those leaked documents from the documents, we were able to get a hold of. But the Washington Post has far more documents than we were even able to obtain. And they see a number of instances within those documents of Zelensky pushing really aggressive and bellicose action. Let me read this. Ukraine's leader has proposed going in an audacious direction, occupying Russian villages to gain leverage over Moscow, bombing a pipeline that transfers Russian oil to Hungary. Bombing a pipeline, huh?

Interesting. A NATO member privately pining for long-range missiles to hit targets inside Russian borders. The documents, which they say previously, not previously disclosed, they reveal a leader with aggressive instincts that sharply contrasts with his public image as the calm and stoic statesman weathering Russia's brutal onsite. The insights were gleaned through these intercepted digital communications at the level to which U.S. policymakers are forced to spy on Ukraine because they do not actually have any real insight into what he's doing.

Once again, we told you all of this about a month ago. Put this up there on the screen. There's a screenshot. That's our video that we did exactly on this one. And at the time, the reason that we did the story with the headline that we did was because we knew that it was so significant. Took the press a month to catch up.

They added a little bit of color. They had to do their witch hunt first for the leaker. Yeah, that's right. That was priority number one. First, we had to do the witch hunt for the leaker and brand him a white supremacist, gun-toting racist. Then we can able get to the news. But I'm not a defense of the guy.

Just saying that that's what they found more of a priority. The most newsworthy. Which is insane to me. Rather than possible World War III. Right. The leaker itself is the least interesting part of the entire story. The most important story are the docs, part of the entire story. The most important story are the docs to which they have decided to catch up to. I mean, look, it's clear as day.

You can see it right here. This is what he wants to do. And everyone always criticizes anyone who points this out as dangerous because they're like, well, wouldn't you? Yes, I would. I would if I were him. But we're the ones who are providing him with all the weapons. Yeah. So that means that we have a stake. Now, are you willing to have U.S.-provided weapons occupy a Russian village? Because that sounds like a pretty good pretext for the Russians to widen the war. Same thing whenever it comes to bombing and NATO. This is the other thing.

He literally is proposing bombing a pipeline which provides oil to a NATO country. That is not only an act of war, technically, that would be like an Article 5 level attack on the NATO and the United States. Don't ask me. Go and look at the way that the US and NATO were reacting whenever they were blaming Russia for bombing the Nord Stream pipeline, if suddenly that's all gone away. So they're floating these level of attacks which could very easily spiral into disaster. If it was just them on their own, go for it. Do what you want. Because at the end of the day, the risk is all yours. But it's not.

They've socialized the risks to all of us effectively. And so that means we have to have some level of concern. It's existential for them. It's not existential for us. That's the level of, this is why you can have empathy for somebody and also not necessarily want to put your entire nation or put aside the nation.

Let's say hundreds of billions of dollars more. Is it really worth it for the Dunboss? You know, I'm going back to reread one of my favorite books about World War I. And at the time, there was a lot of consternation about Alsace-Lorraine, a portion of France, which used to be Germany, which changed hands multiple times between the 900s and the 1800s. And the level of fervor and the hundreds of thousands of French and Germans who died over this scrap of land in the city of Strasbourg.

Was it really worth it? I mean, we're 100 years later. Who cares about Alsace-Lorraine? I'm sure the people there certainly do. But the generals and all them, they're like, no, no, no. It would dishonor France to give up a scrap of Alsace. And same vice versa for the Germans. It reminds me so much of the Donbass and the level of like insanity through which they were literally willing to risk the existence. I mean, in the German case, quite literally were willing to destroy their entire regime for a scrap of territory, which they only recently won back in the 1870s. It sounds insane when you talk about it now. Let's also, I mean, Ukraine has been destroyed. The number of people who have been killed, civilians and military age men, which by the way, now if you are a military age man, like even if you want to leave the country, you are banned from travel.

The economy has been decimated. I mean, this has been our desire for this war to continue in the foolish aim of weakening Russia has been devastating for this country. I mean, that at bottom is, this is just, it's a catastrophe for humanity. And the Russian losses are a catastrophe as well. You said something important, Sagar, which is that this war is existential for them. It's not for us. And that's exactly why Zelensky is so in his mind. Again, I don't blame him because I totally understand where he's coming from. I blame us. And that's exactly why Zelensky is so in his mind. Again, I don't blame him because I totally understand where he's coming from. I blame us. I blame our leadership. But he wants to make this war existential for us because that draws us into the conflict. And that makes it so that that is their best chance to actually take back all of the territory that has been lost to Russia.

So when he thinks about, you know, when we're thinking about an escalation and some sort of, you know, direct involvement with Russia, we're thinking that's a disaster. He's thinking that could be a positive in my favor because that could really strengthen my hand. So it just shows you how our interests are not the same. And, you know, if you are, have deep empathy for the Ukrainian people, which I, I truly, truly do, you have to want this war to be brought to a conclusion because this has been nothing but a disaster and a slaughter for everybody that is involved. Oh, yeah, absolutely. And look, I mean, so even by all accounts, they have expended tremendous amounts of men and material that is going to dry up eventually in the city of Bakhmut. I was just reading this morning. They're like, Ukraine makes gains, but Russia controls 90% of the city.

What? So you have poured tens of billions of dollars of Western aid into a battle where you still control less than 10% of the entire city. Now, the argument on the Ukrainian side is, well, we're killing a whole bunch of Russians. So they got millions of them. You're the ones with dwindling population and you have to literally close your borders in order to plug your holes. Russia has international allies. It's a great superpower. They've got an industrial base. They have nothing. Their city and economic base has been basically wiped out. I mean, using the World War I analogy, it literally is like, you've got Russia here, which is a great power status, its ability to have trade on the sea and have negotiations with other countries and draw from others as well as have its own base. And then you basically got

Ukraine, which is almost like a central power level one, which is expending in this existential conflict, but has vastly dwindling resources. Well, eventually in some side of World War I style conflict, the one that does not have the capacity to continue to wage war, both on a political and economic level, is the one that's going to fold and eventually lose. And so pouring all of your men and resources existentially into a conflict over Bachmut is insane. And we even know that from the leaked Pentagon documents that they're like, look, we don't think this is the right thing to do. It seems like it's a screw up. Look, I could be totally wrong. Maybe he's the greatest military genius since like Frederick the Great or Napoleon. All right. It's possible. He certainly pulled off the counteroffensive, but it is May 15th.

We continue to wait for what this counteroffensive is going to look like. And if that is the last one, well, he better play his cards right. Because if he doesn't, now what looks like Bakhmut, you're not even going to have the resources to try and do that again next year. The Russians will. They got plenty of money.

They got plenty of men. If they want to do conscription again, they certainly can. So keep that in mind. Bakhmut is like a smoking hole in the ground at this point. And it's still controlled 90% by the Russians. So, and we, we did warn against putting so much of his resources and focus into this battle, which is now the longest and bloodiest battle of this entire war, where again, they're making small gains, but this is according to the New York times too, by the way,

Russia still controls about 90% of the largely ruined city. So is that impacting their ability to even launch this, you know, much ballyhooed spring offensive that we haven't seen yet? I mean, it certainly would. It has to be having an impact. And the whole idea has been, all right, let them do the spring offensive and strengthen their hand. And then maybe we can talk about negotiations. But if the spring offensive doesn't come together or isn't very effective, then what we're going to hear is like, oh, well, now we have to do even more because their hand wasn't strengthened. Russia's in too strong of a position. Of course, if the spring offensive does go well, then they'll say, oh, the Ukrainians can win. We got to keep pushing. We got to keep going. So, so far up to this point, all roads have just

led to more war, more conflict, push peace negotiations off for another day. That's right. Okay, let's go to the second part here. One of my favorites in a long time. Everybody in the West is applauding Germany. Germans, they say, they have woken up to the criticism. They have decided we will provide Ukraine with more military aid. I said, oh, that's great.

You know, that's your, it's your continent. You actually have fought wars with Russia. You're the ones who have the most to lose. Maybe the more you give, the less we have to. Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. They have announced $3 billion in military aid for Ukraine ahead of the expected Zelensky visit. Now, that includes tanks, anti-aircraft systems, ammunition. Zelensky is expected to visit Germany for the very first time since the Russian invasion. Berlin says they want to show that Germany is serious in its support for Ukraine. Germany, quote, will provide all the help it can as long as it takes. I just want to, again, put this into perspective, how pathetic this is. From the largest power on the European continent, the largest economic powerhouse,

Germany, with its $3 billion, does not even match what the United Kingdom has given, does not come close to the level of military aid even provided by all the other EU institutions combined. And with their $3 billion is now 140th of what the United States has provided Ukraine in military aid. 140th in terms of we have provided $43 billion just in military aid. In some combination, it's been hundreds of billions in terms of explicit and implicit aid to Ukraine because all of us took a massive hit on our gas prices, on economic supply chain issues worldwide, but especially here in the US and on top of all of these other countries. But Germany, with its $3 billion, it's completely ridiculous, or 3 billion euros,

is completely ridiculous to consider this in any way something that's game-changing. Because what did I just lay out? The Ukrainians are pouring tens of billions of ammo and of weapons and material into Bakhmut. 3 billion is like a month on the Bakhmut front. There's no way it's gonna plug any of the holes that they need. And this

just shows you the titanic level of this conflict. If you want them to win, it would cost billions, like a billion, sorry, it would cost hundreds of billions of dollars, which we are not prepared to give. And the Ukrainians can barely cough, or the Germans and the French and all, they can barely cough up a billion or three. So then you only have one option, which is negotiation. Yeah. So it's probably easier to just get to that point sooner rather than expending billions, expending lives, and then eventually coming to that point anyways. Yeah. Well, in the Wall Street Journal had a report, put this next tweet up on the screen about how much we're really driving the train here. Because they say the story suggests a lot of Western European support for Ukraine is a performance for Washington more than a response to real security fears.

And in that context, Germany making a big show of their $3 billion contribution makes sense, because if we're the ones, and this is how it has appeared from the beginning, we're driving the train, the UK is our junior ally, junior, even more hawkish ally, by the way. And this whole thing has unfolded according to our plan and our wishes and our desires. So yeah, if you're Germany or France or whoever, you're like, okay, well, you're into this thing. Go ahead. You do it. We'll throw in a little bit when you pressure us and shame us into doing it, or Zelensky comes for a visit so that we can keep up appearances. But go ahead, Americans, and fund your conflict,

your proxy war that you apparently seem to be so into. Yeah, I agree. I mean, look, I probably would do the same thing if I were them. Like, why wouldn't you fund your massive welfare state whenever you can only throw a few billion or whatever into a conflict, which is genuinely important to you? It's just, you know, I always try and flip it around. If something was going on in Mexico, you really think the Germans would be spending X amount of their GDP and military aid to help us out? No, never. Go ask that. Go find out if you want to go in Google how much the Germans did in Afghanistan. Almost nothing. The only NATO ally which really helped us out at all was the UK, to which I will give them a tremendous amount of credit. They fought, died, fought very bravely. But the rest of them, you know, all these other countries,

they barely showed up. They had all these rules of engagement where they barely helped in the US campaign on Afghanistan. And that was when we were directly attacked and technically, you know, needed them. It was supposed to be some big NATO effort. You can go see, you know, in terms of the number of NATO advisors and troops. Once again, you know, you don't necessarily blame somebody for taking advantage of the situation. But just to show you, like, in quote-unquote our hour of need didn't show up all that well, of which a lot of people will tell you about. But Germany and France also, you know, at the beginning really didn't seem to agree with our approach either. So, you know, they were much more interested in negotiations and trying to avert this conflict to start with. They have been consistently more interested in, you know, bringing back together some sort of ceasefire negotiations.

So they don't even view this the same way that we do, which is why I think, you know, they're reluctant to give more than what they're pressured into doing because they don't even they don't even really agree with the direction that we've taken the conflict in. So then let them do it the way that they want to because it's their country and it's their land, and we barely have anything to do with it. Anyway, it is what it is. $3 billion. Congratulations to Berlin. All right, so we have some new reporting about just how far back the issues with Senator Dianne Feinstein go. Rolling Stone has a report here which just underscores a lot of people in D.C., all the media, they all knew that she was not doing this job, that her staffers were doing this job, that she was in severe cognitive decline for years and years. And it's only recently that

anyone has said anything about this. Put this up on the screen from Rolling Stone. Their headline is Feinstein's health crisis goes back farther than we knew. Staff for the high ranking Democrat have for years had a system to keep her from walking the halls of Congress alone. Sources tell Rolling Stone this was according to multiple sources, unbeknownst to Feinstein herself, they would have a staff member ready at any given moment to jump up and walk with her wherever she was going because they were so worried about what she would say to reporters or anyone else she stumbled across if she was left unsupervised. So a literal babysitting plan to make sure that she doesn't have any exchanges that are not watched over by some staff member or another. And as they say, the system has been

in place for years. This one former staffer who left in sort of a very tense, conflicted circumstances, he spoke on the record to Rolling Stone and says they won't let her leave by herself, but she doesn't even know it. They talk also in this piece about how obviously senators juggle a heavy schedule of votes, hearings and meetings on a wide range of subjects, momentary lapses and mix-ups about a topic are far from unheard of. But over the last several years, interviews with Feinstein devolved into confusion on a near daily basis. A familiar pattern would emerge. Feinstein would make an unexpected stance on a bill or policy position only for her staff to quickly follow up by email to correct the record.

Listen to this. It got to the point where reporters would pause before rushing to publish an otherwise newsworthy declaration because of the inevitability of staff reversing her statement. So what does that tell you? Every journalist who interacted with her over the past number of years and every staffer who was working for her over the past number of years knew exactly how bad it was. And they didn't say a word to you. They did not tell the voters of California or anyone else anything about what everybody knew was a complete open secret. Um, pearly, this former, uh, aggrieved staffer described office meetings were an issue to be discussed for several minutes only for Feinstein

to bring up the same topic later in the same meeting. And then staff would have to go over it again. Like they had never talked about it because this was all brand new to her. And this is really astonishing. They said they began to have to noticeably restructure around her mental limitations in 2019 because junior staff were making jokes about her cognitive decline. Interns were noticing it. So they made sure that there was no junior staff in meetings with her so that they could not see how bad it was. And they cut off any scheduled events after mid-afternoon. There's a quote in here where they say, her days are all bad days now. Now, this is sad to see in any human being. But what has been done, the lies in the cover up here to the American people is an absolute disgrace. Oh, it is a disgrace.

And, you know, I kept saying that Feinstein herself is a disgrace. But others are pointing out now at this point, she really may be so far gone that she has no limited ability over her faculties. And so it's at that level where she has no probable understanding of how bad her situation is. So she just doesn't know now at this point. At some point, she did certainly make a decision. And I do think that the ultimate authority lands with her. But now at this point, it lands with her family and it lands with her staff. I mean, at the very least with the staff, it's like, you need to just be very honest in these types of situations and be like, look, she can't do the job.

It's just not going to work. And they should have done that in 2019, pre-COVID. I mean, it's been over four years now of inauthentic representation for 40 million people from the state of California, which is the ultimate disgrace. She's 89 years old. She's got $200 million in the bank. She could retire peacefully with her grandchildren and family in a beautiful, you know, mansion in Napa. That's all anybody's asking here, right? That's all we're asking that you give up, which is what most people would dream for in their retirement, and yet refuses to stop clinging to power. And now, maybe at that point where she's angry, you know, and I think that you can actually kind of see that

in some of her commentary, where she wants to fight back with the press. She hates any suggestion that she should go or any of that. And at this point, I mean, you've got to have somebody responsible step in and call on her to resign, and nobody will do so. Ro Khanna got so much heat for doing it. I mean, Gavin Newsom needs to come out and just be like, look, I'm the governor. I can barely get anything done with this woman. Like, this is just not going to work. I can't do it anymore. But he can't do it

because of identity politics. What happened? Immediately, they suggested that Ro Khanna was anti-feminist, anti-woman for suggesting that. He's like, would he say the same thing about a woman? Yeah, I venture to say yes, actually. I do, especially for somebody who is this far gone. She's almost 90 years old, people. She's been in declining health now for four years. I do, especially for somebody who is this far gone. She's almost 90 years old, people. She's been in declining health now for four years. I mean, I said this in our last show, but the queen looked better two days before she died than five days before she showed up. And the queen could walk. You know, it's like, you know, this is craziness whenever you're looking at her. I was shocked.

We were on the editorial call when you were gone, when that photo come out. And I literally yelled out, the producers can, I said, you guys aren't gonna believe this. And I sent the photo and we're all like, oh my God, wow. Yeah. At what she looks like.

I mean, your eyes don't deceive you. Ro got a lot of heat for what he said, which he said the right thing and the obvious thing that everyone, by the way, everyone else on Capitol Hill has been thinking for years, not for days, months, weeks, for years they've been thinking this. He actually said, and he gets smeared as being sexist.

I know Ken Klippenstein got a lot of heat for putting the staffers on blast, but you don't want these senior level staffers in particular. Come on. No one elected you. No one voted for you to be making these decisions and put in this position of power you are first of all i mean what you're doing to her is egregious in and of itself because like you said i think at this point she's too far gone to even know how bad things are but what the lies that you're perpetrating on the american people is that is shameful that is truly

disgraceful and guess what there are a lot of jobs in Capitol Hill. You can get another job, okay? It's going to be all right. So, yeah, justice for Ken. Hashtag justice for Ken on this as well because I think he pointed out an important piece. And I think he sort of forced the hand of some of the media to report more on the dynamics that are going on here behind the scenes. And it just makes you wonder, with this incredibly aged group of senators in particular, but legislators in general, who else? What else are they hiding? What else do we not know about these people and the way that D.C. runs? Because apparently this was an open secret for years. And Nancy Pelosi will still get up there and lie to our faces that, you know, things are just fine and we shouldn't pressure her

to retire because it's sexist. This is a Republican problem, too. There was a guy, Thad Cochran. He had dementia and he very clearly was on his way out for years before he eventually did retire. I mean, he did the honorable thing and he did retire at the end of the day. After somebody finally reported on it. After people reported on it and people and even some of his staff were like, hey, man, like you got to go. Like, it's just not working out. And he's like, OK, all right, I'll finally relinquish it. But a lot of these guys, I mean, they just are so power hungry that they refuse to let go. Like, it's just not working out. And he's like, okay, all right, I'll finally relinquish it. But a lot of these guys, I mean, they just are so power hungry that they refuse to let go. So yeah, I really do vacillate as to how much responsibility lies in her hands. I think it's probably 2019, right on that edge where she had to have the level of self-knowledge at that point,

when she, you know, right when- It was right when she was running for re-election, probably. Running for re-election, and. Running for re-election. You should have had the level of knowledge to say, I'm at the end of my rope. I'm old. My husband is in declining health. It's time to go. And she made the decision to stay.

Then it's also shameful that the people around her decided to prop her up. Yeah. She's not a king, you know. She's an elected official. Yeah. You expect this behavior in the courts of Europe. You don't expect it from an elected politician. And Obama and Pelosi and co. rescued

her in that last reelect because the California Democratic Party had endorsed another candidate who had a very decent shot of unseating her and probably would have prevailed if the National Democrats, led by Obama, hadn't swooped in to her rescue. And now here we are. So we have a new contribution to the discourse over the CNN Trump town hall that we wanted to cover for you. This one is from John Stewart. Go ahead and put this up on the screen. He says, Dear TV, the problem with the Trump town hall wasn't platforming or a fragile siloed audience unable to be exposed to news where the opinions antithetical to their own. The problem was an event that was clearly negotiated to Trump's approval and owed to access. We promise. Good. So, sir, we are no longer fake news.

An enemy of the people. Let us prove it to you. We are fair and good and we'll do this however you would like. Just come back. I learned nothing from this town hall, he says, about Trump and his most ardent supporters that I haven't known since 2016. I learned a lot about CNN. I have to say, Sagar, I was a little surprised by how much of a freak out there was just over the idea of even having the town hall. I think there's a lot of things you could say about the way that it was conducted. I think, you know, the questions were questions that CNN's liberal audience wanted to hear, some of which needed to be asked, but which you were not going to get anything new. So the amount, and I think that point that Stuart makes here is really apt. The amount that you were going to gain from those particular lines of questions, you knew you weren't going to get him to admit

that the 2020 election wasn't rigged. You knew generally what he was going to say about E.G. and Carol, though, that was news. You had to get his reaction to that. Right. But the fact that they spent so much of their time on those topics that you knew you weren't going to gain any ground on, that you also know that, listen, you may want it to be otherwise. The Republican base doesn't care. And actually, they liked his response and they like where he stands. To me, that was the wasted opportunity and the place for critique of the way the town hall was conducted. The idea of, oh, you can't platform the former president who is very likely to be the Republican nominee again. I just, I will never understand that line of thinking whatsoever. Yeah. And actually Tara Palmieri had some great insight from an audience member.

Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen from Puck News inside the Trump CNN Thunderdome. So apparently the audience was actually told you're not allowed to boo, but you can applaud. You can cheer, which is definitely pretty weird. Because what she points out is that there were some people who were in the audience who definitely were not on board the Trump train who were cringing. Now, don't get us wrong. Many people in the audience did love Trump and were cheering at some of the things that he was saying. But it's very odd that they were basically told you can only have positive, it's like a positive vibes only side.

Right. Except it's at a political event. That one is very odd. CNN claims that they had no, that they agreed to no terms from Trump. I'm just, I'm not so sure it's true. Yeah. And I think also, I'm not sure if you were aware, Crystal, they were supposed to go for 90 minutes. They actually cut it short at 70 minutes of broadcast, which is insane.

Who does that? Right. When you have the foreign president. No, you push for more. Usually you wait until the guy cuts you off and then you're willing to go. Clearly the producers in the room were like, this is a disaster. This is not working out for us well at all. And they pulled out from the event.

I'm not sure, though, I necessarily agree with John. In terms of I learned nothing from this town hall about Trump. So I think CNN and Caitlyn spent way too long on Stop the Steal and on E. Jean Carroll's, actually 25 minutes by my count. That said, it still is important politically. We did get an answer on the debt ceiling, which is crazy. Trump spent a crazy amount of money while he was president and cut taxes for corporations and ballooned the deficit, says we've been spending too much money. I'm like, really? Because you cut taxes quite a bit while you're in office.

That seems pretty odd. Also, this is a criticism, I think, of the moderator. Somebody who actually knows anything about policy would have been like, what are you talking about? You ballooned the deficit by X amount while you were president. That's probably a good follow-up question. Second, on abortion. So I'm not sure if you saw his abortion answer. It was the most insane, all over the place answer that I have ever seen him give. He's like, well, I was honored to do it,

but I believe in the exceptions, the three exceptions. And also the Democrats are radical. And you're like, what? So are you proud of it or are you defending it? Do you agree with the ban or not? And he's like, well, we'll see. I don't know the particulars. Everybody's got an answer. He is twisting himself in knots. Yeah, it was horrible. It was a horrible answer of which politically will be a disaster for him.

And then finally on Ukraine, I mean, the Ukraine answer was incredibly important. The first time he's really said it in a CNN type setting and clearly, you know, showing his belief around negotiation and diplomacy. The point is, is that I actually think we did learn quite a bit politically. Also talking about this in my monologue. So preview, one of the dumbest reasons to say that platforming him was bad is that there is ample evidence to say that platforming him is the best thing you can do if you want him to lose. Like the abortion answer. They will be clipping, I was honored to overturn Roe versus Wade, and play it in every battleground state on repeat from now until election day. And they should. Same with the stop the steal answer. He's crazy. He actually believes it. So that's why I think,

look, politically, it was good for the Democrats. media wise. Yeah, man. I mean, when you interview Trump, like, sure, he's a loose cannon. You can't treat him, you know, whatever in the same way. But democratically, I didn't see any problem with it. I also think there's a lot of cope around what from Democrats. Yes. Around why Trump won in 2016. And one of the lines of cope is the media gave him too much attention. Right. And that ignores like, oh, and the Democrats ran a horrendous candidate that they rigged the primary to make sure that they got, who ran a horrendous campaign, who didn't even like really campaign and certainly didn't campaign effectively in the, you know, the blue wall states in the industrial Midwest, who was seen as being totally out of touch. All of those, like, that just gets totally swept under the rug. And it's like, well, they shouldn't have just,

they shouldn't have covered Trump so much and taken his rally so much. And look, I'm sure there's a lot of critique of the media in 2016. I'm not saying that they got it all right. But I also think that a lot of that is cope for some of the rot in the Democratic Party that contributed to that loss that they've never wanted to deal with. And so now their response to Trump isn't, OK, here's an effective way to combat him. Here's some of his insanity that is going to really turn people off. It's like, let's just pretend he's not there. It's like, guys, we're way past that point. This man was president of the United States. This man is way up in the polls. There is no, there is no chance that we can just like pretend he doesn't exist and hope that he goes away.

It's just not going to work. Clearly the Biden campaign at least agrees with your assessment saga that the more that Trump is the center of attention and the more Biden is not the center of attention, the better that is for them. That is the formula that they want. And so in a sense, CNN did with this exactly what the Biden campaign would want them to do, which is to put on display, you know, the worst of the Trump insanity. Trump, Biden had a great tweet afterwards, not saying he tweeted it. He was just like, the campaign tweeted out, it's simple, folks. You want four more years of that? If not, join me at joebiden.com. I was like, yeah, that's a great answer. It's like drama, not drama. Now,

I think there's a lot of criticisms of Biden and all that. I still think he has a lot of problems. And if you ran a policy-focused and anti-Trump campaign, that sounds better, but they've decided to go only in one direction. Okay, that's their perilous thing. That said, though, something that drives me nuts exactly about the analysis is, where do the voters factor in here? CNN showing an empty Trump podium didn't cause 65 million people to pull a lever for Trump. It's multifaceted. And Caitlyn actually said something which drove me insane. She said, you cannot say that on our air, Mr. President. And I remember being like, really? Did somebody elect the CNN? Like, is CNN now more important than the president of the United States? It's like, who are you to say you cannot say that

on our air, as if it's like the sacred air of CNN. Never seen any lies on the CNN platform before. They all feel this way. I have a clip of Stephanie Ruhle playing my monologue, which shows you the same thing about we're not going to talk about it at all. Nobody elected you people. You're just as sanctimonious and annoying as everybody else. In fact, you deserve each other. And that's why Trump went to CNN in the first place. He wanted to jab Fox and he wanted to go on the network and show that he could own them on their territory. And he won. I mean, the MAGA people loved that town hall. It was the best thing that has happened for them.

So I feel like everybody won from that. CNN got 3 million people to actually watch their crappy network. MAGA got all these moments of Trump owning CNN. And then the Biden campaign got all these clips that they can play on repeat. I guess Ron DeSantis lost. Yeah, well, actually, even he,

he only got mentioned one time that Trump actually went after him, which was kind of interesting too, considering that's a primary. That's another thing. But just the fact that the focus is all on Trump, that's a loss for DeSantis. I agree. The big failure, actually, from CNN was not drawing more contrast on policy vis-a-vis DeSantis and trying to tease out what the actual differences between the two are. If we ever get the chance to interview Trump or if we can ever line up something, that's one of the things I'll be hammering.

I'll be like, all right, so you said you're going to do this and Stanton actually did it, so why should anybody believe that you're going to do it? I don't think he's ever been asked a question in that form. And that's because most of the people who interview Trump are idiots or are playing to CNN's media columnists about small d democracy. As opposed to the actual voters who are making this decision. Anyway, I think that's what matters the most. Crystal, what are you taking a look at? An amazing moment on MSNBC. His host,

Chris Jansing, invited former 2020 presidential contender Julian Castro to weigh in on the 2024 Democratic primary. She didn't quite get what she was expecting from this former Obama cabinet official and card-carrying Democratic establishment member. Just take a listen. I'm not as confident as a lot of people in Washington and the Democratic establishment seem to be that Joe Biden is going to do well against Donald Trump. It is a little bit concerning. Yeah, I mean, I think it's worrisome when you have a president that does have a record on the economy and other things that folks can be proud of, that he can be proud of, and yet you have him polling either right about tied in the margin of error with Trump or behind Trump in the ABC News Washington Post poll a few days ago. And that's related to concerns that Democrats and some independents have with the president and something that has been unable to actually assuage the fears and the

doubts that Democrats have. You cannot ignore the fact that more than half of Democrats in several polls over the last year have said that they wanted somebody other than Joe Biden to run. And right now, I think that the Democratic establishment is sort of trying to wipe that away, to sweep that under the rug. I'll give you a good example of that. The DNC have a lot of respect for him, like a lot of the people there. But then deciding that there will be no primary, no debate, I think they actually need to give Joe Biden the chance to get out there and show the American people what he can do, that he can run that campaign and beat whoever runs in the primary, whoever those opponents are, even if it's just RFK Jr. and Marianne Williamson. I don't think

that they want to wait until the fall of 2024 to have those debates. Now, my favorite part of that whole clip is Janssen's audible shock at hearing Castro articulate the most basic and obvious facts, but facts that rarely, if ever, make it onto MSNBC's airwaves. His argument is, after all, indisputable. First of all, Castro points out diplomatically that it is pathetic, given Trump's venality, incompetence, and criminality, that Biden is at best tied with the man. Second, he makes the case that if Democrats are serious about actually beating Trump, a man they consider, or at least claim to consider, an existential threat, they better have a thoughtful process to assess every available candidate, or at the very least, to allow Biden to sharpen his skills as best he can

before he is up against the former president who still appears to fully have his wits about him. And finally, Castro points out that the DNC can't just sweep under the rug the fact that a majority of Democratic voters do in fact want a Joe Biden alternative. By the way, even among MSNBC's propaganda fed faithful, it is very likely that a majority of their audience agrees fully with Julian Castro here. After all, 79% of Biden's own 2020 voters want the Democratic Party to hold debates so that they can evaluate their alternatives. They actually believe in democracy. In fact, it's likely that the prevalence of this view gave Castro some level of comfort to bring up a point that is obvious to nearly everyone but somehow unheard of in MSNBC green rooms. Both Chris Jansing and Julian Castro actually bring some interesting history to this exchange.

So Jansing, you might recall, was the MSNBC host who famously looked like she was going to openly weep when Bernie Sanders dominated the Nevada caucuses. Remember this moment? These again are people who work on the strip within two and a half miles of the Bellagio, largely people of color. Of those, the majority are Latino, and they are clearly, at least from eyeballing it, strongly in favor of Bernie Sanders with Joe Biden coming in second. So while Chris does hold herself out as a neutral journalist, she has let the mask slip in a particularly obvious way about where her loyalties actually lie. Now Julian Castro is also kind of interesting. He's been willing to criticize Biden at times, especially on immigration and the border issues

that are central part of his political identity. But you might also recall that Castro pretty overtly called Biden too old to be president in the last election. Take a listen. That's a big difference because Barack Obama's vision was not to leave 10 million people uncovered. He wanted every single person in this country covered. My plan would do that. Your plan would not.

They do not have to buy in. They do not have to buy in. You just said that. You just said that two minutes ago. You just said two minutes ago that they would have to buy in. You said they would have to buy in. Are you forgetting what you said two minutes ago? Are you forgetting already what you said just two minutes ago? I mean, I can't believe that you said two minutes ago that they had to buy in and now you're saying they don't have to buy. You're forgetting that. Looks kind of prescient, doesn't it? Now, to be fair, last time around Castro's attacks on

Biden's age, they obviously didn't work. His decline didn't end up being a factor in the primary or at least not a significant one in the general election. It's worth remembering that because it could end up being a non-factor again. We should be honest about that. But that's not what the polls suggest today because Biden's a few years more infirm now. American people have had more of an opportunity to assess his fitness, and they have notably found it quite lacking. In 2020, Biden basically had the primary wrapped up for him by Clyburn, Obama, and co. after dismal performances in the first several states. And in the general election, he was able to use COVID as an excuse to stay off the campaign trail and was able to win based on people's feelings of disgust and exhaustion

towards the Trump chaos. Now, the landscape this time is quite different. His approval rating is already a lot lower. In fact, a recent Axios focus group found that Biden voters were not inclined to give him a pass. Every single participant indicated they wanted him to debate with one explaining specifically, quote, I want whoever is representing me as president to be able to put together thoughts and cohesive arguments without needing flashcards or something. Notably, coming off the heels of a rare moment of honesty breaking through MSNBC's DNC propaganda, Chris Jansing then decided to cover this focus group. But this time, she brought on a Biden senior aide to make sure she got the answer that she

actually wanted. First, listen to how she sets up this conversation. It's amazing. There are new questions today about whether President Biden should debate his 2024 Democratic primary challengers, even though they barely register in any polls. Barely register in the polls? Now, that is either complete ignorance or an outright lie. Marianne and RFK Jr. are both polling higher than the vast majority of the GOP contenders. So then Chris has the Axios reporter on to set up the focus group and brings in the Biden 2020 advisor to respond. Let's listen to how the Biden aide tries to spin all of this. I honestly do not think Tim Biden should reconsider on the debate piece because to the point that you made earlier, we have not seen an incumbent president running for reelection, having a debate with a major party opponent since the 1970s.

We don't see it, to be fair, never had a president of this age and we've never had a president with these kinds of questions about his age and mental acuity. Sure. And I think that's a fair question. And Biden has said it's a fair question. But the reality is debating people on the same side is actually not going to strengthen the candidate. It tends to weaken the candidate. When the president, let's be very honest, and we've talked about this on this show and over the past few years, he's actually done a lot for this country in the first few years and his first actually done a lot for this country in the first few years and his first 100 days, right? Obviously, there are going to be a lot of holdups in Congress

given the Republican majority right now, but he did have a very historic first two years. And so the president is going to prove some of these doubters wrong, get them to, you know, restore their confidence in him as they did in 2020 as he continues to communicate these policies and campaign across the country. So first of all, the fact that the process has been undemocratic in the past is no excuse for keeping an undemocratic process, especially in an age where this party, the Democratic Party, is all on their moral high horse about defending democracy. What a bunch of BS. Second of all, it's just ahistorical nonsense that primaries weaken a candidate. On the contrary, Trump and the Republicans had quite a raucous primary back in 2016, you may recall, and he won in the general election. Obama and Hillary had a raucous and at

times very personal primary in 2008. There is zero doubt in my mind that process sharpened Obama and convinced Americans that he was, in fact, ready for primetime and to become president of the United States. But even if you believe primaries do weaken a candidate, you should still support them. If you're trying to combat attacks on democracy by undermining democracy, that path still leads to authoritarianism and it should be rejected. And finally, if you're so confident

in Biden's accomplishments and his strength as a candidate, you should welcome the chance for him to prove to the American people just how ready for the job he is. Convince us. It's actually profoundly sad and distressing for the nation, the position we find ourselves in right now. Two old men that majorities don't want, refusing to subject themselves to the basics of the democratic process. All I can say is please keep the pressure up because while the DNC may not yield and actually host debates, it will at least

illuminate to some who've been drinking the Kool-Aid just how full of it and fragile the Democratic Party actually is. And lifting the partisan blinders from the eyes of more Americans, that is always a worthy project. Sagar, I thought it was pretty surprising. Julian Castro. I know. And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at breakingpoints.com. All right, Sagar, what are you looking at? Well, as we alluded to on Thursday's show, CNN's decision to host Trump for an election town hall with voters isn't going down so well for them with Democratic lawmakers, with liberals who watch CNN, and funnily enough,

with the vast majority of CNN's own employees. In fact, CNN's decision to host Trump, to me, indicates how systemically broken the entire media is and reveals exactly why independent media really has no choice but to be the future of news if you want even a minute chance of knowing what's actually going on. For those who don't know what I'm talking about, the background is simple. CNN decided to host Trump for the town hall, which was full of Republicans. Liberals were outraged by the fact that Caitlin Collins basically let him speak at all

and were especially disturbed at the sight of Republican voters cheering when Trump lashed out at his sexual assault accuser, E. Jean Carroll, and Caitlin Collins herself. MSNBC's Joe Scarborough said, it's the worst thing he's seen on TV since January 6th. Certainly something. But below the hollow outrage at Trump is a bigger meta question within media itself. The overwhelming consensus by the liberal press is that CNN made a

mistake by hosting Trump. The theory bearing it was irresponsible. In the eyes of the media, simply airing anything the former president and likely GOP nominee says is a disservice to democracy. Nobody summed up their view better than Stephanie Ruhle in the opening of her show on MSNBC right after the town hall ended. Let's take a listen. It is not news what happened tonight at 8 p.m. on another network, and there is no sense in fact-checking or replaying the highlights. We are not going to analyze the former president of the United States repeating lies, smears, and bigotry.

We have all heard it many, many times before. However, what we need to do tonight is solve for how news organizations will cover Donald J. Trump, the twice-impeached, indicted, liable for sex abuse, private citizen, if he does in fact win the Republican nomination. Sit and internalize what she's saying. It's not news what the former president is saying. It wasn't news when he wouldn't disavow Stop the Steal. And it wasn't news when he said the GOP should default if Biden doesn't negotiate? And it wasn't news when he gave the most incoherent answer possible on abortion policy or when he talked about the war in Ukraine?

The most insane thing about her monologue there is this, the lady is paid to do the news. How can you do the news and run a news network and be proud that you're not talking about the news? The crazy part is the vast majority of CNN insiders agreed with Stephanie Ruhle over their own network. Apparently, the vast majority of their insiders' employees were horrified by their act of journalism, no more so than their own media reporter, Oliver Darcy. He quite literally used his own CNN newsletter to go after his employer, CNN. He writes, quote, it is hard to see how America was served by the spectacle of lies aired on CNN Wednesday evening. His contention was that democracy was not served because Trump

was Trump and he was allowed to speak, quote, without challenge. Here, too, is a crazy belief by the media that when you interview a politician, you are supposed to fact check every single thing that comes out of their mouth. Where this insane belief came from, I have no idea. But to me, it is crystallized by something Collins said during this town hall. When Trump was saying the election was stolen and she challenged him to say, quote, you can't say that, Mr. President. Consider what she's saying there and what that type of criticism comes from. Who tells the former president what they can and cannot say? At the end of the day, it's only the voters. I disagree with many things that come out of Trump's mouth, and I think they are false. But I do not have the narcissism of the mainstream

media to tell him he cannot say it. And I carry this philosophy over whenever I interview Democratic politicians, too. I don't think anyone should have anything to do with that. If they want to say it, that's their right. It's other people's right to evaluate it for themselves. What I just described, by the way, is actual democracy. The news at its best has the job of contextualizing events and informing the public so they can make decisions for themselves. But somewhere along the way, it instead became a vehicle for telling people what to think instead of helping them to do so. That's what leads me to this conclusion. The internal CNN freakout over their act of journalism shows structurally why it cannot serve as a source of news for the broader public. They themselves can only stomach to show what serves their side, which in my opinion is

good. This means independent news is inevitable. Consider this. All Americans really want out of the news is to find out what's going on. Then maybe a little context without the flavor of telling you how to think. Do not mistake that with people like us who will tell you what we think. Explaining how I internalize something is very different than telling you to think the same as me. And it pops up in how interviews must be conducted. Do you know why I have so much faith in this style? Because it is tried and true throughout the long history of our republic. If our media had any brains, they would be doing as many Trump town halls and interviews as possible if you hate him, specifically on stop this deal and abortion. On both counts, Trump revealed he sits on the unpopular side of each issue. He clung to every single crackpot conspiracy theory

on how the election was stolen. The same theories his candidates were punished for at the ballot box in 2022. On abortion, he both was proud of repealing Roe and said it should be left up to the states. Good luck with that one at the ballot box. If the Democrats are smart, they're going to play that on loop 24-7. It puts them on the backside of two-thirds of the American people on the abortion issue. In other words, if liberals really want to win, they should elevate Trump as much as possible on the issues that he performs the worst at. In other words, they should simply treat Trump the same way we treat all politicians. Interview them, and then let Americans make up their minds for themselves.

Most Americans are good people. They do not like extremism, really, in any form. Whichever side seems the most crazy is usually the one who loses at the ballot box. And it's not that complicated. The news needs to stop pretending they have more power than they actually do. At the end of the day, the only people with the real power is you. When you vote and you make up your own mind, and the more news gets away from that, the more that they spell their inevitable demise. So that's really what my takeaway was.

Is, you know, I thought it was important to say... And if you want to hear my reaction to Sagar's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. Great to have you back, Crystal. We have a great show for everybody tomorrow, a big show, which we will reveal some details tomorrow. Nice little surprise about who our guests and all of that will be. But anyways, if you can help us and support our work here at BreakingPoints.com. Otherwise, we'll see you tomorrow with a big reveal. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight-loss camps for kids,

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