Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 5/17/22: PA Primaries, Elon's Twitter Threats, Legalized Bribery, UFO Hearings, WH Press Briefings, NATO Expansion, & More!

Episode Date: May 17, 2022

Krystal and Saagar examine the Pennsylvania Dem & GOP primaries, Elon Musk's Twitter turbulence, SCOTUS decision on campaign finance, UFO Congressional hearings, WHCA rigging, causes of violence, solar power industry, & the risks of NATO expansion!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/Trita Parsi: https://quincyinst.org/author/tparsi/ https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/biden-s-ukraine-russia-war-mission-creep-slippery-nuclear-slope-n1295205  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed, we do. A lot of big stories to get to this morning. First of all, it is primary day in both Pennsylvania and North Carolina with some of the most critical matchups actually happening today, especially on the Republican side. So we will give you all of the details there.

That's what we're going to start with. But also we have new comments from Elon Musk raising further doubts about whether he's actually going to go through this whole Twitter purchase thing. So we'll tell you about that. We have a new SCOTUS decision, which appears to be further enabling potential corruption of our elected officials.

So I will break that down for you. Sager is very excited because there is going to be a UFO hearing in the House. The first hearing on UFOs since 1970. Wait, I said the House. Is it the House or the Senate? It is in the House. It's in the subcommittee in the House Intelligence Committee. And it's going to be a big one from my inside sources. And another Sager special story. We had a whole meltdown in the White House press briefing room.

It is very interesting because it was this reporter who represents an African outlet who's never gotten called on, trying to break in and ask one question. And the, like, you know, sort of blue chip reporters in the front row all freaked down. He got threatened with expulsion. Crazy stuff, really, when you think about it and you think about people trying to ask questions on behalf of the citizens. We're also going to be joined by Dr. Trita Parsi. He's going to break down the very latest, and there are some new developments this morning with regards to Ukraine and Russia and NATO. But we wanted to start with the fact that it is primary day in Pennsylvania in particular. The marquee race here is on the Republican Senate side. So this is for an open seat. So Republicans and Democrats both have primaries, but it looks

very much like Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman is set to win on the Democratic side. On the Republican side, though, there is a lot of drama. So you've got a three-way race essentially now between Dr. Oz. You guys all know who he is, David McCormick, who's this like, you know, hedge fund dude. He was the CEO of Bridgewater Associates. His wife, Dina Powell, was in the Trump administration. And the late surging Kathy Barnett, who's kind of conservative media personality. And she has really sort of taken this race by storm. She's also backed up now by the Club for Growth. So she had been kind of shoestringing her campaign. Now she's got millions of dollars behind her. She has relatively high approval rating and she has been as close to tied in the polls. The very last poll

that came out, I'll show you in a minute, has Oz up a little bit, but her moving into second. Let's give you a little bit of a taste of what the final closing pitch that is being made from each of these candidates. Other conservatives know that I'm strong on the Second Amendment. Pat Nugent, Rick Perry, President Trump. But our Second Amendment is not just about hunting. It's about our constitutional right to protect ourselves from intruders or an overly intrusive government. So as your next U.S. Senator, I will fight for our constitutional rights. You know why he said that?

Because it's true. I risked my life for America, and I'd do it again in a heartbeat. I came home and helped create hundreds of Pennsylvania jobs. I'm a pro-life, pro-gun, America First conservative, and damn proud of it. Not only do I have a grasp on our own base, but I can go into every nook and cranny and take the votes that we need in order to really beat Fetterman in the general election. So let's go do this.

Kathy Barnett is a candidate for the people. On May 17th. I have to tell you, Sagar, as I dug into this yesterday, I kind of understood why Kathy Barnett was surging. I mean, she definitely has like the true MAGA vibes. She knows how to present. I mean, she's been a media figure. She knows how to present herself. She was a Fox News, not contributor, Dr. Oz, is seen sort of skeptically

by some of the true MAGA diehard faithful. You've got David McCormick, who's actually backed by some Trump figures. And of course, his wife had been in the Trump administration. And then you have Kathy Barnett, who definitely, and we'll get into some of the, you know, really out there things that she said, including backing up the, you know, rigged election conspiracies. Definitely feels like the sort of true MAGA candidate, even though she doesn't have Trump's blessing. It's a fascinating test of Trump's endorsement, the power of it, and how much all of this matters. So at the first, let's just take a look at the poll. This is the last poll to come out of the race.

Put it up there on the screen. This is from Emerson. It has Oz at 28%, Barnett at 24%, McCormick at 21%. And then a various- Barnett's kind of falling off. Exactly. And what's fascinating to me is that what happened is that Oz and McCormick have been beating each other up for months. Both have millions and millions of dollars behind them. Oz has been going after McCormick as CEO of Bridgewater Capital, calling him a pro-China

stooge, which is basically true, given his career and working for Ray Dalio. And then you have the CEO of Bridgewater and a guy who also recently moved to Pennsylvania calling Dr. Oz a carpetbagger, which is also kind of true, and saying that he's like a closet liberal because he did some segments on systemic racism and on gender identity and transition as recently as a couple of years ago on his show, basically saying he's like some liberal squish, but you also have a globalist hedge fund guy who's saying that. So you have high negatives and massive millions of negative ads against each other. Barnett kind of slipped in through the middle.

A lot of MAGA people were really turned off by the war between Oz and McCormick, and they're saying, well, she seems like more in tune with our base, which seems true in terms of some of her views. She is a longtime conservative activist, and she has an inspiring story about being, you know, she's a child of rape, and her mother was raped. Her mother was raped when she was 11 years old. 11 years old by somebody who was like 20. She was 12. I mean, it is an unbelievable story.

It's a great story, you know, in terms of her inspiring background and that. But, you know, at the same time, you know, this is somebody who is, let's just say, untested. And what's interesting to me is that Trump himself is freaking out because he endorsed Oz for one reason and one reason only. Because he's famous. He even says in pre-recorded robocalls, which you'll get to, he's like, he had a tremendously successful show. That's his only reason that he's endorsing Oz. But with the surge of Barnett and McCormick, he is coming out like hardcore against Kathy Barnett and against David McCormick. So let's put this up there on the screen. This is just the latest one that he put out at the time.

He said, Kathy Barnett will never be able to win the general election against the radical left Democrats. She has many things in her past which have not been properly explained or vetted. But if she is able to do so, she will have a wonderful future in the Republican Party. And I will be behind her all the way. Uh, what? But then he pivots, Dr. Oz is the only one who will be able to easily defeat the crazed lunatic Democrat in Pennsylvania. A vote for anyone else in the primary is a vote against victory in the fall. He clearly sees some of himself in Dr. Oz,

you know, I mean, because Trump also had positions in his, you know, he'd been a Planned Parenthood supporter, like he hadn't been this down the line doctrinaire conservative. So he sort of looks, I mean, Trump doesn't really care about ideology ultimately. So he sees that Oz has star power. And that's that. Ultimately, you know, these other people like McCormick and Barnett in particular who are like doing everything they can to prove they're the real Trump candidate. He doesn't really care about any of that. What he actually cares about is just like he sees some star power in Dr. Oz. The other attack on Oz, and I was looking through Kathy Barnett's Twitter presence as well. And what she routinely goes after him for his Turkish citizenship. So she said just yesterday when Mehmet, which again, they try to use his name, which sounds foreign and not, you know, normal Pennsylvania or whatever, should have been voting in the 2018 midterms.

He decided to skip it and vote in the Turkish elections. Now he wraps himself in Trump's endorsement. Couldn't even be bothered to help him hold the House and Senate in 2018. You know, posting videos of him speaking in different language. There's a lot of that going on, too. And if you look at his numbers, his approval rating with the Republican base, even though he's narrowly leading in these polls, his approval rating is actually a little bit underwater. Sky high. With the Republican base. So there is a lot of sort of ingrained skepticism of him because I think, you know, he hasn't always been the diehard MAGA conservative. And this race matters a lot, not just because of like, oh, what it says about Trump's hold on the party and these sorts of things. But listen, we've been sort of taking

it for granted that Republicans would likely pick up the Senate, but the path is not that easy. And this is one opportunity where this is right now a Republican held seat. It's open because of the retirement of Pat Toomey. And so this is when Democrats have a chance, if they nominate someone who's patently unelectable, potentially like Kathy Barnett, or who has high approval ratings and sort of depresses the Republican base like Dr. Oz, this is one where maybe Democrats

can actually pick off a Republican seat to offset a potential loss in the places that they're vulnerable are Nevada, Arizona and Georgia. So this is the bigger story that we've been talking about is, listen, this is Republicans election to lose. If they just ran sort of standard issue candidates and did nothing, they would have no problem winning. And instead, in some of these races, they're having a little bit of a 2010 type problem of potentially lining up behind candidates who, you know, are so out there that they're going to turn off people who otherwise would have been open to the Republican message. I think Oz or McCormick would very easily win in the Senate. Kathy, I have truly no idea. But what I think is hilarious to me is I have watched the MAGA warriors on Twitter turn against Dr. Oz, being like, he's a secret liberal. He was pro-gay marriage.

He was pro-abortion. Have you heard of a guy named Donald Trump who did all of those things before he became the Republican president? what has happened here, and it's disgusting, is that David McCormick used his connections of his wife, Dina Powell, who, by the way, runs ESG for Goldman Sachs after she left the Trump administration. Well, he used his hundreds of millions of dollars that he got from investing in China as a disciple of Ray Dalio, who is about as big of a China bootlicker as there is. He used that money to buy off MAGA Inc. At one point, Stephen Miller was working for him. Hope Hicks is still working for him. A ton of former Trump White House officials are all working for him. Why?

Because it's a grift, people. That's what they're trying to give him, the impromptu of MAGA, because he's willing to buy them off. Here's the key point. MAGA is whatever Trump says it is. That's it. I don't know how many times that we have to learn this lesson over and over again. You know why he likes Dr. Oz? Because he's famous. And let's put this up there

on the screen. He recorded a last-minute robocall, which is going out, and I love this. He says that it went out to GOP voters. He criticizes David McCormick as soft on China,

Kathy Barnett for wanting to erect an Obama statue. Somebody can riddle me that one. And is urging voters to support Oz tomorrow. Here's his justification. He's had a tremendously successful show. Right. Look, per conversations, Crystal in Mar-a-Lago,

he was lecturing a lot of people. He's like, you don't know how many little old ladies are out there who love Dr. Oz. And he's right. He said to, like, I think the women in particular like Dr. Oz or something like that. And I'm like, might be correct. I don't know. I think he's right. He said to, like, I think the women in particular, like Dr. Oz or something like that. I'm like, might be correct. I don't know.

I think he's right. Yeah. Also, he says about McCormick, good person, but he's an insider who absolutely sold us out to China, can't have that. And about Barnett, that's where he says the wanted to build a statue to Barack Hussein Obama. That's no good. These are not candidates who put America first. And actually, I saw Oz is running some ads trying to paint Kathy Barnett as like a Black Lives Matter supporter and like Barack Obama supporter, which is ridiculous. I mean, it was really

deceptively edited and unfair to her because she is definitely very consistently right wing, whatever else you can say about her. But so they're trying to do this weird thing of like taking some of her comments out of context to paint her like she's actually on the left. When, of course, the real problem with her is that her views are extremely fringe and may find some appeal in the Republican base. But in terms of a broader audience, it's going to be a bit of a hard sell. So it's going to be an interesting one. You know, I think there's a sense that Barnett has had a lot of momentum because she wasn't attacked till the very end, because she continued to have high favorability ranks. Apparently she quitted herself very well in the debates that they had, and that was part

of what contributed to her surge. Now she has money backing her in the Club for Growth. So this is another one of those like Trump versus Club for Growth situations as well. So it's going to be an interesting one to see how this shakes out. And our election analyst, Miles, that we had on yesterday also pointed out that McCormick, because of where he's from, and they put the name of the county that you're from on the ballot. Somebody needs to explain that to me. I didn't know they did that. But anyway, he seemed to think that that might help McCormick a little bit as well.

But in terms of the polls, it seems like McCormick has fallen off a bit. And now the race is really between Oz and Barnett, although you never know what's ultimately going to happen on Election Day. But there is more Republican action in the state of Pennsylvania because Kathy Barnett has been almost like running on a ticket with a lead over the next closest candidate, Congressman Lou Barletta, is that his name? Yes. Who actually had been like a longtime Trump supporter. One of the first people to endorse Trump. Right. So he was, so there was also a lot of upset over the fact that, you know, this is a guy who, when a lot of the Republican establishment was against Trump

and they were doing everything they could and Ted Cruz was doing whatever he was doing. This was a guy who actually backed Trump. But now, because Mastriano has this big lead, appears on the verge of victory and Trump's candidate in the Senate race appears to be on sort of shaky ground, Trump went ahead and jumped in and endorsed Mastriano so that at the very least, he's got his like sort of bets hedged

and he is almost guaranteed to get one win on the night, regardless of what happens over on the Senate side where things are a lot less certain. Right, absolutely. And here's the thing about Mastriano. Let's put this up there on the screen. He secured that Trump endorsement after Trump saw him surging because Trump wants to appear that he endorsed some of the leading candidates. And he's very aware of the Mastriano-Kathy Barnett alliance on the ticket. And if you do see Mastriano win, it's very possible then, right, that he could pull it off in the, or that both of them could pull it off. And that really makes it a totally open question. I mean, Josh Shapiro, who's the AG of the state of Pennsylvania,

already been elected to a statewide office. He's somebody who's very, you know, very milquetoast Democrat, easily somebody who could beat Mastriano in the gubernatorial election. Now, look, at the same time, you know, national politics are all that particularly matter. But as we've always learned, candidate quality really doesn't matter until it does. And by that, I mean, if there's somebody is completely outside of the fringe, then it does seem to matter. We saw that with Todd Akin. We saw that with, I forget the other guy. Roy Cooper. Indiana, 2012.

Oh, that dude. Donnelly? Was that his name? Yeah, Donnelly. I think that was his name. Anyway, so yeah, trip down memory lane in terms of how these things work. Yeah, but I mean, Roy Cooper is another example.

Like, Democrats had no business winning a Senate seat in Alabama, of all places. But that dude was so beyond the pale that people were like, yeah. Oh, yeah. Sorry. Roy Cooper is the governor of North Carolina. OK. Anyway, some of that is going on here. And it is funny, I mean, that Trump is endorsing Mastriano, but is trying to put down Barnett, even though they're basically the same candidate in terms of what they stand for and what their history is.

One thing I'll say, too, about the state-level races is I think abortion may be more significant because now, you know, with Roe being overturned, abortion is left to the state. So if you have somebody who's running in a swing state like Pennsylvania on a very extreme anti-abortion platform, which this dude Mastriano ultimately is, I think that becomes a problem as well. So yeah, if you have just like a sort of standard issue Dem versus this dude who's like way out there in terms of social issues, in terms of abortion, also in terms of, we're going to show you in just a minute, like he was not only at the Capitol on January 6th, he was like breaching the barricades on January 6th.

I mean, he is as mega conspiracy theory, like flirtation with QAnon as they come, as is Kathy Barnett. So if you have both of those candidates, you know, kind of leading the Republican ticket in Pennsylvania, you can see that being ultimately a big problem for them in terms of holding that seat. And again, just to put this in the national context, to win back the Senate, Republicans have got to pick up a seat in Georgia or Arizona or Nevada. And if Democrats are able to win this Pennsylvania Senate seat and flip this one, that means they have to pick up two of those seats. So that just makes things a little bit more difficult. All right. So we've been teasing you with, you know, some of the sort of fringe views that are held by Mastriano, the likely Republican gubernatorial nominee, and Kathy Barnett, who is surging in the Senate. Let's start with a little bit of Mastriano just

so you get a taste. So as I said, he has called for a heartbeat bill, a ban of abortion to three weeks. He's also, you know, was at the barricades. He promoted QAnon. We've got Barnett here marching with the Proud Boys on January 6th. Let's go ahead and go to the rest of Barnett's stuff here. She said all kinds of things about Obama. By the way, there was some new news this morning about her and being cozier with the Proud Boys than she wanted to admit. She went down the whole, you know, Obama, birtherism, Muslim, all that stuff.

Some real throwback hits here. She also said that it was okay to discriminate against Muslims. She compared Islam to Nazism. She said accepting homosexuality would lead to the accepting of incest and pedophilia. She called a transgender person deformed and demonic. Both of them all in on Stop the Steal. As I said, both of them there at January 6th. Kathy Barnett pictured like marching with Proud Boys,

who she said like, oh, I don't know anything about them. Well, audio just came out today or video of her being like, these are my friends. This dude actually, you know, was not only there, but appears to have breached the barricades. Anyway, they have all the most fringe views that you could possibly have within the Republican Party and lots of past comments that can be dug out and used to put them out of step with the mainstream of Pennsylvania.

And not only that, I mean, she doesn't even defend some of the crazy stuff that she said in the past. Look how flustered she gets. Let's take a listen. This says that Ophelia is a cornerstone of Islam. Yeah, no. I don't think that's me. I would never have said that. Perhaps there were some time-traveling hackers like the Joy

Reap situation that went back and tweeted things that she didn't really... Listen, if you said it, just say it. I feel differently now. I don't agree with what I said in the past. But yeah, to just be like, that couldn't be me. Come on. What is it?

This is the thing with Kathy Barnett. She's clearly just a completely untested person. I mean, look, from all the stuff I've seen, she put out these bizarre claims. For example, she was like, I was accepted to officer candidate school. It's like, wait, wait, wait. Hold on a second. What does that mean? Did you graduate from officer candidate school? So's like, whoa, wait, hold on a second. What does that mean? Did you graduate from an officer candidate school?

So the answer appears to be no. I mean, she's been clearly lying about some of her, lying or service or misrepresenting her service record. That's according to an analysis of her National Guard discharge paper. She said that she served in the military for over 10 years. Not really accurate if you look at the actual discharge from that.

She made it seem as if she was active duty. It's always a bit of a red flag when you have just basic lies about your bio. Madison Cawthorn had the same thing, and it should have been a real red flag. Well, she also said that she was like a professor, an associate professor, and then some universities said she's a professor in good standing but then would not clarify any of the years that she's been teaching there or any of the classes. So what is that supposed to to mean there's so many of these different little inconsistencies look i'm not going to pretend this stuff matters more what i'm pointing to is that when you are at

the highest level of politics and this is somebody who's going to be running and probably if she wins probably the most what probably the most high profile senate race in the country maybe second you know compared to whatever else is going to be going on, then you can't be acting like a fool like Sarah Palin in national television interviews like you just did in MSNBC interviews. Same with Doug Mastriano. I mean, these guys do these bizarre events where they hire security guards to, like, rough the press or, like, keep the press out. And it's like, what are you afraid of? You know, I mean, the thing about Trump was that he welcomed the press to come as close to him as possible and he would spar with them.

But they're all seemingly terrified of people who are recording their actual events. I just think it demonstrates the lack of candidate quality whenever you get really Trumpy. And look, here's the other thing with Mastriano. This guy is a full-blown stop the steal guy who wants to fire Pennsylvania election officials who certified the 2020 election. And I do think you should believe somebody like that whenever they say it, if they're possibly going to be the next governor of the state. Ask the people of Pennsylvania, do you agree with that decision? I found it interesting to watch how all of the candidates are handling

Stop the Steal. So McCormick is willing to really debase himself and be like, yeah, it was stolen. But I watched Oz yesterday in an interview, and he's like, yeah, we need voter ID. We don't accept the results. It's like, I understand why people don't trust the results. But they're like, OK, but do you think the election was stolen? He goes, look, I have to be careful here. We just need voter ID. So he won't even really come out and say it. I mean, honestly, that's probably the best way in order to handle something so patently ludicrous. But what I'm pointing to is that when you have Kathy and Doug willing to just go full board, that's going to be a political liability in the fall in an actual 50-50 state, just consider Trump almost won Pennsylvania.

I think it really is as close to a down the line state. It is the quintessential swing state. So this is not a gimme for Republicans. They could very easily screw this up. And you make a great point about Mastriano, which is that, listen, he hasn't just like rhetorically supported stop the Steal. He was involved in the process of trying to decertify the Pennsylvania election results and has been very adamant that, yeah, he wants to make these changes to basically take the vote out of your hands and put it in the hands of the legislature so that they can just decide which candidate they want to back. That's insane. And when you couple that with, you know, the extreme abortion positions, which are out of step with where the sort of Pennsylvania mainstream is as well.

And if you add to that, if you have him and Barnett at the top of the ticket, yeah, I think you could be putting the seat in jeopardy for for Republicans. And, you know, on the other side, Fetterman is tested. He's obviously been held in statewide office. He's got a pretty high approval rating. He's obviously got a pretty easy, even though he just suffered from a stroke, it still looks very much like he's going to kind of cruise to getting the Democratic nomination. He's got, you know, and he also kind of goes against Democratic type in terms of how he looks. He's this big, he's like, what, six foot seven or seven feet? He's like ridiculously tall. He's the mayor of a steel town. He knows how to talk to regular people. So he's no slouch in terms of being a good candidate for the Democrats as well. He's probably one of their better candidates that they're running across the country. So that's why all of this matters a lot and is

pretty interesting. There is one other race that I wanted to highlight for you that also is part of a broader trend, this one on the Democratic side. So there's an open seat in the Pittsburgh area and a state representative who's on the left, she So there's an open seat in the Pittsburgh area and a state representative who's on the left, she's like a Bernie supporter named Summer Lee, who I think we interviewed at Rising, but I'm not 100% sure. She and two other women, it was a very interesting story. She and two other women almost ran us like a slate and sort of, you know, pooled their resources and shocked everyone by taking out these establishment, like corrupt good old boys that were representing some key districts in Pennsylvania, one of them

being a district near Pittsburgh. So this sort of, they sort of came out of nowhere, surprised everybody, was able to win these seats. She's now been in the state house for a couple of terms now. So she decides she's going to run for this open congressional seat that's currently held by Mike Doyle, I think is the dude's name. And it looks very much like a kind of a walk in the park. She's up by, you know, like 30 points. It's getting close to election day. And then lo and behold, some of the same PACs that dropped millions of dollars on Nina Turner and smeared her as effectively an anti-Semite. Well, guess what? They're doing the same thing now to Summer Lee. Let's go ahead and put this tear sheet up on the screen.

It says, this is from Jewish Insider. They say echoes of Ohio 11 in heated Pittsburgh house race. They point out the fact that Summer Lee, if she's elected, she'd be Pennsylvania's first black congresswoman. Think about for a second what Democrats say in terms of supporting black women. And then when you actually have potential first black woman congressman from Pennsylvania, they are and their allies dumping millions of dollars to make sure that doesn't happen. This is a solid Democratic seat. Whoever wins the primary is ultimately going to be the member of Congress. So they're propping up this dude named Steve Irwin. He's an attorney, is a total sort of like corporatist centrist type. And it's not just,

it's two sort of pro-Israel PACs. One of them is a new PAC from AIPAC. And the other one is this DMFI, that Democrats, Democratic Majority for Israel PAC that was very influential in terms of Nina Turner's race. Let's go ahead and put this next tear sheet up on the screen. aren't really paying attention, the Democratic Party establishment is doing everything they can to defeat anyone who might be, you know, progressive, who might cause any problems from leadership and be anything but completely lockstep. Let's put this last piece up on the screen, this reporting from The Intercept from Akilah Lacey here about how two pro-Israel groups have spent close to $3 million to fight state rep Summer Lee's primary campaign and PA-12. Some of the people of the highest levels of Democratic Party politics have no idea what these groups are and what their political goals are.

So, Sauter, it's sort of like the Nina Turner race, not this cycle but last cycle, ended up being the model. Because Nina, very much like Summer, was up by 30 points on Chantel Brown. It looked like it was going to be a cakewalk. And then all of this money, specifically from these pro-Israel groups, flooded into the district. Some of the messaging was actually about Israel trying to paint Nina as an anti-Semite. But some of it had nothing to do with Israel ultimately, and it was surfacing her Biden comments and all of this. And it worked in that case, and it's been very effective here, too. There isn't a ton of public polling in this race right now.

But where Summer Lee was holding a comfortable double-digit lead, the very latest polling has her tied right now for the nomination. So this is the new playbook, and it's been very effective. Yeah, it's interesting to me because I remember this back in the day. There was a Democratic majority for Israel PAC with Paul Begala who was on the board, and he would just use it kind of as a cash cow in order to go after whichever candidate that he wants. I'm sure we'll talk about this on the Thursday show. It didn't make it in for today, but there's all that stuff going on in New York with the redistricting map getting struck down. It's fascinating. But you can also see who gets to get run against who, what's allowed, all of that, just previewing a little bit of that.

So I think it's a fascinating story in the inter-democratic wars as well. And, yeah, I mean, look, it worked once. Not just once. I think it's worked many times over. And I wonder if it's going to work this time around because this is going to have quite as much attention. But it still very much could sway voters. And there is a significant Jewish population in this district. There you go. And, yeah, I mean, again, I just want to underscore next time Democrats talk about how they center black women, they care about black women, all of this stuff.

Like, just remember, they are spending millions to prop up a white dude, you know, who happens to back their ideological agenda over what would be the first black woman congressman from Pennsylvania. Just showing you that all of their rhetoric, ultimately they are as ideological as it comes. It's all about just making sure that they're going to have a reliable vote to keep all of their 80-year-old asses in leadership and all of their consultant industrial complex grift going. And the very fact that you might have someone who might possibly have something to say that's critical of their leadership and can't 100% be counted on for every single vote to do whatever you tell them to do, they will do anything to make sure that doesn't happen. So that's one other thing to watch tonight. There we go. All right, let's move on to

this. Some dizzying comments here on Elon Musk in terms of breaking news this morning. Here's what we can report, which is that Elon says that he will only proceed with his $44 billion takeover of Twitter if Twitter can prove that less than 5% of its users are bots. So we explained a little bit of this yesterday, and let's put this up there on the screen. There was a big spat between Elon and Parag Agarwal. Parag put out a multi-post thread about determining spam bots and explaining his own proprietary methodology to determine that 5% or so of the people on Twitter are actually bots. Now, Elon replied to this with a literal poop emoji in terms of shitposting and replied to this, which I think is the crux of the matter.

So how do advertisers know what they're getting for their money? This is fundamental to the financial health of Twitter. Now, here's why it matters. Elon has very high revenue targets that he has to hit per promised things to his investors, who have now promised him tens of billions of dollars in his potential takeover of the company. And now we're in the closing due diligence phase where they're going through the books and Elon is like, okay, let's see if there actually is 5% or whatever of the users that are bots. Now, you can also couple that with the fact that Tesla's stock is down some 20-so percent in the last month, I believe. That Tesla stock is the predominance of Elon's wealth and also what he was borrowing against whenever it came to

the money that he was going to use in order to finance this entire deal. Also, all of his other investors are also venture capitalists and rich people who also rely on a complex margin lending system in order to access a lot of this capital. Now, here's the other thing. Elon gave an interview yesterday to the All In podcast. Let's put this up there on the screen. Now, here's what he was talking about. He says, the more questions I ask, the more my concerns grow. Could it be done at a lower price? Maybe. He continues, I was relying on public filings. So the reason that this matters is that he is saying and essentially accusing Twitter publicly of lying to him about the number of bots that are on the platform. And lying to the SEC.

And lying to the SEC, lying to investors, lying to the world, which, I mean, I believe that. I certainly believe that that's possible. Here's the thing about these fake statistics. They can, Parag's thread was, you know, creating this complex methodology and it just conveniently arrives around 5%. I'm like, listen, you know, the way and how you define a bot, you know, in terms of the posting schedule, et cetera, I'm sure can inflate it whichever way you want. Well, he also was trying to, because Elon had said, I'm going to do, we're going to take 100 random accounts and we're going to test it to see if they're bots and you guys should do the same. And so the other thing Parag was trying to do is say,

you can't do it with just publicly available data. You got to have what we have on the back end, because you may see an account that looks like it's like a first name and a string of numbers and it looks like, and they've got weird tweets and it looks like a bot. But when we look on the back end, there's good reason to believe that it's actually a real person. Right. So look, I have no idea. All right. The point is, is that, is this about bots or is this about negotiation? Obviously. I'm willing to bet that a lot of this is about negotiation. Let's put this up there on the screen for my friend Alex Cantruas. He says the Musk negotiation play playbook. Make offer. Agree to deal. Wait for market softness. Devalue the asset via public disparagement. Pay half. And guess what? It's working. Twitter stock is

significantly down in the process. And just looking at the transcript of the All In podcast, it's very interesting because Elon says, I'm still waiting for some sort of logical explanation for the number of fake or spam accounts on Twitter. Twitter is refusing to tell us, so this just seems like a strange thing. Jason Calacanis asked him specifically. They say, Elon, that life is a negotiation, so at a different price it might be a totally viable deal, correct? Elon, it is not out of the question, but the more questions I ask, the more my concerns are growing. At the end of the day, it has to be fixable within a reasonable timeframe without revenues collapsing along the way and all of that stuff. I really need

to see how these things are being calculated. It can't be some deep mystery that is more complex than the human soul. I think we can apply the scientific method and try to figure out what's really going on. So I think that in the context of the market crash, it makes a hell of a lot of sense in order to use whatever leverage that you can in order to close this deal at a much lower price. Elon not only has less capital available to him compared to how much he was worth just a month ago, but Twitter stock is also down significantly as well. And here's the other thing. What are these people going to do? Now, I said yesterday about the breakup fee. There's some interesting analysis. Stoller actually sent me a message this morning, which is that Musk, it's not his only problem. He actually has to pay that only if the financing falls

through or if regulators block the deal. But if he voluntarily walks away, he is actually theoretically on the hook for all $44 billion and can be sued in a Delaware chancery court. That was the same analysis given. Well, probably not, though, if he can credibly argue that they were lying. They lied in their public filings that he was basing his decision making on. Right. Right. Here's the thing. Look, we're not lawyers. We have no idea. And I bet you can contest this case all the way to the bank for billions and billions of dollars on both sides and legal. Yeah. So my guess would be that this is some sort of negotiating contract. Ben Thompson also had a newsletter out this morning from Stratechery.

He says the contract gives Twitter the right to force Elon to close the deal and to put up $27.5 billion of equity that he personally committed as long as his debt financing is available. So it does seem that Twitter has some leverage on their side. I would put this in the terms of the Musk playbook, in terms of publicly leveraging his immense popularity, brand, and megaphone in order to, you know, hammer the stock price and try and negotiate on the outside in order to bring the price down, maybe, you know, by a couple billion dollars, or maybe even more significantly than that, especially if he can prove some sort of lie in the SEC filings, which would then make them legally viable and bring that all the way down. All of this is really just a long way of saying that there's complicated stuff going on. And one thing to look past is this that producer James found.

Let's put this up there on the screen, which is that a longtime Elon Musk backer says that the Twitter deal will close at a lower price. That has impressive eyebrows. Exactly. Yeah, it really does. So this is Tim Draper. He's an early investor in both Tesla and SpaceX, and he co-founded a venture capital firm that's actually sinking $100 million into the bid. Here's what he said when he was asked about whether the Twitter deal will close at a lower price. He says, I think so. I think he's going to get a better deal because he found out, whatever, two-thirds of users are bots or something. So this is somebody who is committing

equity to the deal. We don't necessarily know how much he has, but at the very least, he's somebody who has his own money on the line, who's backing Elon's venture here, and all of this should be reviewed within that context. I got to say, this is probably the most exciting corporate takeover story that we've seen since the 80s in terms of all of the jockeying that's going on publicly. It's very dramatic. I mean, I don't think it's right that you should be able to—and he's done this in the past, like manipulate markets with his statements, especially intentionally. I mean, this is what he's been accused of and actually had a consent decree with the SEC about before. So it is a pattern of behavior that

I think is sort of gross. I mean, he did this even with the initial announcement where he didn't, where we learned that he was a 5% stakeholder or whatever it was. Yeah. And he wasn't, didn't file that disclosure with the SEC and was able to profit off of that delay and failure to file in time with his public comments, again, benefiting him. Listen, I have no idea what this dude's intent is. I definitely don't take him at his word. There's no way that the real problem here is the percent of bots on the platform.

And you know this because he's not even planning on using advertising revenue as the primary source of revenue moving forward. His plan, which many analysts have said is not feasible and is unrealistic, is to get way more users on the platform and then charge a subscription fee for a certain percent of those users, which, you know, that piece of it to me is not a bad direction to go in whatsoever. I think it would be a lot better if our social media networks, especially the ones critical to free

speech, were more dependent on treating you as the customer versus these, you know, advertisers and the sort of incentives that comes with just generating eyeballs for advertisers. So I don't mind that direction, but it just shows you that, you know, his business plan is not particularly dependent on whether he can jack up the price with advertisers or not. So ultimately, this is either a head fake to, you know, push a better negotiating position, try to get a better deal now that Twitter's stock is way down and now that his net value is way less. Or it could be

also ultimately, if he can prove that they have way more bots on the network than they were claiming, it could be an excuse to totally walk away from the thing and say, you know what, this is not feasible ultimately. Yeah. I really have no idea. I have no idea either. I do think that Twitter might be lying here, though. I mean, just in terms—not—okay, when I say lying, misrepresenting. I think that their methodology just seems so fake to me. I don't doubt that at all, but I also don't think that's a real answer. Oh, I don't think it's a real answer either. I'm also not going to shed a tear for any of these investors on either side of the other.

So anyway, we'll keep you guys updated in terms of what's happening. Indeed. Indeed. All right, so a pretty significant SCOTUS decision came down yesterday that I wanted to break down for you guys that has some possibly significant ramifications in terms of corruption and our political elites. Let's go ahead and throw the New York Times tear sheet up on the screen. They say Supreme Court rules for Ted Cruz in campaign finance case. The Texas senator challenged a federal law that put a $250,000 cap on repayments of candidates' loans to their campaigns using post-election contributions. So here's the sort of lead graph here. They say the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Senator Ted Cruz in a challenge to federal law that limits how political campaigns can repay candidates for money they lend their own campaigns. The ruling was the latest in a series of decisions dismantling various aspects

of campaign finance regulations on First Amendment grounds. Okay, so here's what happened. Ted Cruz sort of intended to challenge this thing. So he lent himself $260,000, and the maximum amount you're allowed to pay yourself back is $250,000 with the intent of taking this to the Supreme Court and saying this is unconstitutional. Right now, you can lend yourself money, but there are limitations on how much can be paid back and in what time frame. So in particular, you have only 20 days to get paid back. And the reason for that is it makes a lot of sense because once you're in office and you're not engaged in campaign, the money's not like going back in year

out for TV ads or whatever, then you have an opportunity if they're paying you directly to pay your loan back for donors to be directly contributing to your financial condition. Oh, wow. Rather than it being, you know, this is going to ads, this is going to mailers, this is going to a field program. No, no.

When they're paying you back, this is money that is going directly into your pocket. And previously, you actually had candidates who would not only pay themselves back, they would charge very high interest for that loan. So from Vox, there was a Democratic representative, Grace Napolitano, made herself a $150,000 loan to her campaign at 18% interest. And then she, so then she got paid back. She did eventually reduce the interest rate to 10%, which is still a high rate. So when she got paid back, it wasn't just that she was being made whole from this loan. She was also turning a profit from her donors. So you can see how this creates a problem in terms of potential corruption. Because again,

this money they're paying you back is not just going to the campaign. This is going directly in the politician's bank account. The dissent here from Kagan, by the way, it was a 6-3 decision along predictable partisan lines. Kagan wrote the dissent, and she kind of lays contribution. The money comes too late to aid in any of his campaign activities. All the money does is enrich the candidate personally at a time when he can return the favor by a vote, a contract, an appointment. It takes no political genius to see the heightened risk of corruption. And even Cruz's lawyer here a little bit gave up the game in the argument in front of the Supreme Court when the case was argued in January. Charles Cooper, a lawyer for Cruz, said in his campaign,

said contributors should be able to, quote, exercise the First Amendment right to associate with the winner and to hope that will result in the kind of influence and access that support for a candidate begets. So outright arguing, like, yeah, they should basically be able to pay for access and pay for influence. That's what the First Amendment is all about. So that's the long and short of what this thing is. Yeah. You know, it's funny. At the time of Amy Coney Barrett and all of that,

a point that we really tried to make on our show was, if you think this is all about abortion, that's what just the voters care about. In terms of what the people in this town care about, you're looking at it right here. And in terms of the support and all the public outrage, yeah, you're going to hear about it here. Sure, there's articles written about it. They'll maybe spend two or three minutes about this on cable news and how many people are really out there are going to think about it. It has immense ramifications. I mean, there is a longstanding principle with the

conservative court, Citizens United on forward in order to basically make it so that there are no legal, there are basically no legal strictures on campaign finance law. The ultimate goal, I believe, is the direct challenge to the McCain-Feingold bill and the actual contributions on individual donations. Now look, as long as transparency is there, the entire system is so corrupt and Byzantine, I would be in favor of a total wholesale just change to all this because I think the current system is totally nuts. But as an ideological project, I don't think you can mistake that this was not an accident. Cruz actually lent himself $260,000, even though he had $2 million throughout the course of his campaign and easily could have—by the way, his wife works for Goldman. He's personally a wealthy man. He didn't need to do any of this think, I believe before he was a senator, was one of the most successful Supreme Court lawyers, as in a person who argued cases before the Supreme Court in modern American history. So, you know, he's a legal mind in his own right

and very much had this on the target. But it wasn't for Cruz. It was to set the precedent. It was to strike down the law. And I think my main concern is not on the ultra-rich candidates or even the moderately rich candidates like a Ted Cruz. It's in the future when you have people who are strapped, pizza shop owners or whatever, refinance their house, take out a massive loan, eke out a win. Those people really need the money. And so when they go out dialing for dollars, the people they're dialing for and donating to their campaign have a lot more leverage over them in terms of answering to the donors. So in a weird and complex way, this actually makes it so that the people who are less rich are now going to be probably the most vulnerable to some sort of bribery. Right.

Although, listen, I mean most people – first of all, most of the candidates who run and win are rich. They're already rich, yeah. Second of all, you know, if you are not wealthy, you're going to have a difficult time plunking down $250K to put into your bank account. So you can very much see a world, though, where wealthy candidates routinely lend themselves huge amounts of money that they know they can get paid back with significant interest from donors once they're in office. Do they get the interest? Did we see that? No. So there was a 2001 law that basically put these limits into effect and made it so that you couldn't have the situation that Napolitana had of a big loan and a high interest rate.

But this SCOTUS ruling, you know, that totally takes that law effectively off the books. So now it's the Wild West again. Wow. Yeah. And so, yeah, so exactly. So, I mean, then you directly have a situation where candidates can use their campaign directly for their own profit. And, you know, that's just opening up one more avenue to very direct corruption that I think, you know, the American people can understand very clearly how this ultimately will work out. You know, I thought it

was, I think it's reasonable if you give people, you know, a certain amount of time, the law said 20 days to recoup that. That's, you know, a reasonable window where you're not really even in office yet. You haven't even really been sworn in yet. But now it's just completely open-ended. People can write you a personal check to go into your bank account effectively whenever they wish. And as you point out, you want to know why these people were really put on the court? This is a big part of why, to make sure that the interests of the wealthy and the interests of corporate America are always protected first and foremost. I always try to explain this just because I actually know a lot of the people who are involved. They care at the Chamber of

Commerce way more. Actually, they don't care about abortion at all. They're probably mostly pro-choice. What they care about is making sure that you could strike down administrative law in the Commerce Department. And I'm about to talk about this in my monologue, to make it so that solar importers can buy cheap panels from China and you have no recourse for your government to do anything about it and issue a decision. That's what they really care about. They care about striking down campaign finance law. You know, abortion, sure. That's to let people squabble about. But in terms of the actual business, boring laws, clauses on the commerce and stuff, this is the true ideological project for a lot of the American right. And as predicted, most people will go completely past this.

I'm glad we have a subscription model because I don't really care if this segment rates or not. But we're not stupid. I mean, if we were in the rating games specifically, there's really no reason to try and cover this because it's very hard to get people to actually care, especially when they believe that the country is already so corrupt. So this is just another example of how this all works. And, you know, I just expect this ideological project to continue on the court. Indeed. Okay, let's move on. Segment I'm very excited for. I try not to abuse everyone with UFO segments. There's been a lot going on behind the scenes. So let me try and set this up for you.

Over the last year or so, there's been a pretty significant move within Congress. Senator Marco Rubio and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand have been kind of at the forefront of this. Rubio is on the Senate Intelligence Committee. He was one of the initial people who pushed for transparency within the intel community around UFOs. Now, per what I've heard, he and many others have been very frustrated in terms of the intel community and their forthcomingness on some of the intelligence that lies within. Obviously, they had that landmark report, which came out about a year ago, which talked about several phenomena which were observed in which they had ruled out the explanation terrestrial. Okay, I should say this. They had ruled out a weather balloon or based upon wind patterns that it was something that was completely unexplained by modern phenomena.

Since then, the NDAA actually made it so that the US military and the Pentagon was required to set up an actual unit inside of the military in order to study the phenomenon. Their job is to compile reports and to interview subjects and others, consolidate all of the information, and then turn it over to Congress. Now, Congress has been very upset over the last six months or so, saying that the Pentagon and the military are dragging their feet. There's a culture of intimidation inside of the Pentagon, that there is a longstanding effort to basically continue the cover-ups that have been happening since the 1970s, in which it was a basic decision that we're going to shut down all of the actual interests in that phenomena. That is why the hearing today, which is the first on UFOs since 1970,

is an extraordinarily significant event. And the behind-the-scenes jockeying on this is just maddening. Let's put this up there on the screen. This is from Politico. I can't even believe this headline, Crystal. A skull-and-bones type vibe. Sky agencies grapple with how much to share at the UFO hearing. Oh, I have an idea. Whatever you're legally required to. What they actually point here is that Pentagon officials are under increasing pressure to carry out Congress's mandate to establish a permanent effort to coordinate research into the reports of highly advanced aircraft of unknown origin intruding into protected airspace. The law requires regular classified and public reports to oversight committees on new incidents involving UAPs or unidentified aerial phenomena, including previous information or investigations. But there is a tug of war amongst competing

factions inside the national security bureaucracy that will make it difficult for Congress to compel military branches, spy agencies, national laboratories, and others to come clean given the longstanding secrecy and stigma surrounding the issue. And what they point to and quote are several anonymous defense officials who are saying that inside the culture of secrecy remains and permeates. And I'll just say this, I was generally of the belief that if there was a crazy, world-changing conspiracy, that it would come out. I was like, ah, you know, I don't think they could keep it secret for that long. But then at the same time, we had all those crazy plots to assassinate Castro, Gulf of Tonkin.

Right. John F. Kennedy files remains up in the air. Yeah. If you watch Oliver Stone's documentary, you can come away with your own takeaway of what exactly happened that day in terms of the establishment of a conspiracy. And the more that I learn about this subject and see how the Pentagon has used longstanding tactics that we saw the CIA use

whenever it came to the torture program, destroying documents, obfuscating, even hacking Congress itself, that we've seen several 9-11 commission cover up, the Saudi thing doesn't get declassified until 20 years later, I've realized I'm detecting the same pattern in the way that the actual insiders inside the Pentagon are making sure that they cover up as much of this as possible. Now, per people I've spoken to, they expect there to be some sparks that fly in the hearing today.

I don't really know what that means in terms of the observation at least around the type of phenomena. I personally think the most interesting thing will be more revelations about the data. You guys will remember in that report they talked about several instances, specific number of instances in which they ruled out actual other ones. Also, there remains, according to people who know, Christopher Mellon, who was himself an Undersecretary of Defense, that there is a photo and videos that reside within the Pentagon, within the CIA on the classified system, which would blow everybody's mind. One of them that he describes, there are two pilots that are going side by side and that they had something that flew in between them. And it's actually a video which catches a glimpse of that and of them just absolutely freaking out.

Well, yeah, I know. I need to see that video, okay? And a lot of the sketches and things that have come out from these government documents. So that's just my way of setting up. It is a big day. I mean, you know, the first one since 1970. Yeah. And I think it's fascinating.

I mean— I'm curious what you think about the conspiracy aspect of it. Listen, I don't put anything past these people. I think your point about JFK is a really good one. Like, this is true deep state stuff because they were under a congressional mandate to release all of these documents that had been classified regarding Kennedy's assassination. And they just haven't done it. Yeah. It's been since 92. been classified regarding Kennedy's assassination and they just haven't done it. Yeah. You know,

since 92, it just happened that, you know, Biden put out on other things. Trump pushed it off. He made some excuse. Biden pushed off. Oh, it's because of coronavirus. We can't do it. It's like, Jesus Christ, like man has been dead for a long time now. Can we get some like actual transparency about what the government knows about what happened on that day. I think the Saudi connection on 9-11 is also really important, like very clear there was a cover up to avoid the American people really understanding the direct connect between the Saudi government and the plot and the hijackers. So yeah, I mean, they have this quote here from an official who says, they fetishize their secret society.

It's kind of a skull and bones type vibe. They take it seriously, but they have no accountability zero. There is a whole group of us that know in great detail this subject, a lot of which has not been reported to Congress because of security issues. So what's important about that is they're saying, no, actually, we do take it seriously. We have researched this in depth. We have information that has not been shared with Congress, let alone the public, but we don't want to say anything about it.

We want to keep it secret. And so will they have any qualms about hiding things that they know, not telling the truth, not being fully transparent the way that they are required by law to be. No, of course not. This is like routine for them. One of the things that you mentioned, Mellon, one of the things that he said should be asked publicly is if any of the reported aerial intrusions were also detected maneuvering through space. quote, if members can confirm UAP in space, they'll make history and help to eliminate an entire category of potential explanations having to do with atmospheric phenomena and things like Chinese lanterns or civilian drones.

So that seemed to me to be something significant to watch for, because as he's saying, if you confirm that these have been seen, you know, in space, not just in the sort of like civilian airspace, then you can rule out all of these other things that ultimately had been floated. Because the report that came out, it really was, the media covered it in sort of a disingenuous way to say like, oh, they ruled out extra treasure. Yeah, it's like, no, that's not what they said. They actually ruled out everything else,

but you can't rule that out. I mean, it's just impossible ultimately to rule out. So the fact that they ruled out all of the other potential phenomenon was actually very revealing. Yeah, and you know, the more I see about it, look, I think there's a couple explanations. Obviously, one is extraterrestrial. Let's put that aside. Well, what are the other ones? The other one is that it's foreign.

Now, it's possible. I think it's highly unlikely. The idea that China and Russia would be in possession of technology, which is almost 50 years outside of the development cycle of U.S. technology seems crazy to me. Another point- Especially given what we've seen of technological capabilities recently. Look at the Russian port. Look, and don't throw hypersonic missiles at me. Look, hypersonic missiles are well within our capability. We just have not developed them as of yet. It's not that we haven't known.

A great point that I have heard was that if you look at the SR-71 and other leaps and bounds of flight, their intellectual kind of background was present within the literature. So, for example, an atomic bomb was known to be possible before 1945. There is no science that exists, as we know, that could propel an aircraft at the speeds of which many of these UFOs have existed. Which would mean that the professors and physics and all these other people had not even theoretically come up with an explanation on paper for how this would work. As opposed to the actual material engineering that would require this to actually come to fruition. So that's why I don't think it's foreign or Russian or Chinese. Now, look, it could be a secret U.S. air program. Now, the report says that they've ruled out that it's a secret U.S. government program.

Yeah. But it's the U.S. government who's saying that, so I don't know. Right. But it's the U.S. government who's saying that, so I don't know. On that front, again, I just don't—it is true the SR-71 was a secret bird. I forget exactly what the spy plane, the U-2 spy plane, whatever, crashed over the Soviet Union in the 1960s that Francis Gary Powers was flying. Those were certainly major secret developments that were big leaps forward in technology. But again, you know, they were existed within the realm of possibility. It was more that engineering such a feat seemed astronomically expensive and very difficult. Here, we don't even know what type of engineering they were talking about. What they observed and what has

been publicly released defies physics as we understand it. Yeah, exactly. So I think your point is really important, which is that, yeah, previously, like, the physics could explain how you would get to this point. It was theoretically possible. They just hadn't figured out the materials and the engineering. And so that was the piece that they had to put together. But, like, the physics of it made some basic sense. Whereas here we don't have that, at least not to our knowledge. So listen, I have no idea,

but I don't trust anything any of these people say. And obviously they're perfectly comfortable lying and covering up and keeping their secrets within the deep state community. They've done that in a number of documented instances. So the fact that they're having these internal debates right now about, we going to tell them what we're supposed to tell them or not is very revealing. One last thing I want to say because I hear this all the time. This is just a distraction.

This is a distraction. This is for Space Force funding. Listen, read these reports and talk to any of these people involved. I'm going to be talking to Jeremy Corbell later. They had to get dragged kicking and screaming to the point where we could even get a smidge of information out. They don't want any of this out there. They want all of this in the secret. And by the way, as I've said before, if this was all a ploy for funding, then why would they do it at a time whenever there's never been more money for the

military industrial complex in modern history? Biden's like, give me $40 billion. Yeah, they're like, no, here's $100. How about more? Yeah. So anyway, I think if you know anything about defense budgeting, which I actually have spent way too much time studying, then you would know that they would have done this back in the 2010s during the sequestration period whenever they actually needed money

and they were firing a lot of people. Anyway, so that's a long way of saying that the distraction argument is very stupid from a lot of people. Anyway, so that's a long way of saying that the distraction argument is very stupid from a variety of Washington reasons. And also, if you just know anything about how the story has tracked, it's the people inside the programs themselves who have been like, man, this shit is crazy.

And have been coming out, talking about it. Commander David Fravor, Ryan Graves, other people like that who have made it known that what they saw was real, at least it was to them, that is documented within the U.S. military, and have forced the way for the last probably 20 years in order to get it to the point where somebody like me can't even talk about it and that you get to now hear your representatives and have some analysis of. Just dismissed as crazy.

Oh, well, they're still dismissed as crazy, but we'll get there. We remember. Let's move on to this next story, which is also very important. So this one, you guys know, I was in the White House Correspondents Association. I was a White House correspondent. And I try to bring you these inside stories to really show you how internally rigged the entire system is. Now, this story centers on an African reporter. His name is Simon Ateba. So let's put this up there on the screen. Simon Ateba works for Today News Africa. So a lot of people don't know this, but foreign reporters often come in and out of the briefing room, obviously, as we have reporters many places across the globe, in order to try and question the White House press secretary. Now, Simon actually interrupted the White House press briefing last Friday while an ABC News correspondent, Mary Bruce,

and Associated Press' Zeke Miller were talking. What Simon did is he shouted from the back row, asking that the back row get called on and that he specifically get called on. He has yet to be called on by the White House press secretary. Now, in response to that, the president of the White House Correspondents Association, Stephen Portnoy, sent him this email. I'm going to read this. Quote, your disruptive behavior at last Friday's briefing interrupted your colleagues and reflected poorly on the press corps. There is no right of any reporter to be called on by an official. Preventing your colleagues from asking their questions is no way to seek relief.

He warned that he would be suspended or expelled were he to repeat this behavior on Friday. We note you have been granted access as an associate member of our organization. With that comes as a responsibility to act in a collegial manner with your fellow WHCA members. Sit down and shut up, basically.

If you again demonstrate disrespect for your colleagues in the manner you did last Friday, the board will act on behalf of the collective. I am pasting Article 10 of our bylaws below for your reference. Now, here's what Simon said in response. I received the email with a heavy heart. I am a victim here. I am being unfairly by the WHCA. It is sad and it is heartbreaking. America is the greatest country in the world. I am a victim here. I am being unfairly by the WHCA. It is sad and it

is heartbreaking. America is the greatest country in the world. No country came as close. Here in the US, press freedom is respected, or so I thought, so I was made to believe. Okay, so here's the thing about Simon. I've heard he's pretty annoying for my friends who are in the press corps. And he interrupts you when you're speaking. And guess what? It's a free country. I was in the White House press corps. Jim Acosta cut me off a million times. You know what? I spoke louder so that I could get my question. How many times in the Trump days? Hunter Walker, he worked for Yahoo News. That guy used to scream about Stormy Daniels at like veterans events whenever Trump was talking. And guess what? I believe in a raucous White House press. I think screaming in the face of the president and asking him a question of whatever the hell you want with as many reporters present is a good thing and represents the best of America. But I remember Peter Alexander of NBC News, Kirsten Welker of NBC News, Caitlin Collins at CNN, Jim Acosta over at CNN, even Fox News reporters, people like John Roberts, who was over at Fox, Steve, I'm forgetting

his name, who works for Reuters, Jeff Mason, who also worked over at Reuters. All of these guys would scream at the top of their lungs in order to try and get Trump to answer questions. I think that's fine. They often cut each other off. It was a raucous environment there in the press briefing room to get Sarah Sanders to call on you. I tweeted this, actually. Let's put this up there on the screen. When I was in the White House Correspondents Association, people screamed like rabid banshees to get called on. And one time, one even played audio of crying migrant kids while an official was speaking. That was Olivia Nuzzi, by the way, who works over at New York Magazine. And I don't remember any of them being threatened with expulsion, probably because they worked for the mainstream media.

I don't think it's just that. I think it's the difference between it being Trump and it being Jen Psaki and Biden. Because, yeah, there it was like, you know, there was an understanding of these issues matter and it matters for the future of the country and to hell with decorum. Yeah. Which I totally agree with. I 100% agree with that. But now it's, oh, how could you do this to Jen Psaki? You're not being nice.

You're not playing by the rules. Get out of here. It is not the job of the White House Correspondents Association to police the way that the press corps tries to get itself called on. Now, I've also heard that Simon himself may be connected to some governments in Africa. And you know what? That is actually very common if you look at the Russian press corps or the Chinese press corps. So I don't particularly care. The reason why I'm speaking up on behalf of this guy is that just like that audio, that leaked audio that we played for you on our show, this is how they rig the game.

Who elected Zeke Miller, who's the head of the Associated Press correspondent, to decide when the briefing stops and starts? Who made it so that Stephen Portnoy gets to decide? By the way, I've said this before. I like Stephen. He was always very nice to me. He actually is a very conscientious reporter. And in general, he never comported himself this way. But I remember Jim Acosta, Brian Karam, and all of these people who screamed and screamed in order to get called on when the Trump was president and were never, not only not threatened with White House correspondent expulsion, Jim Acosta was defended by the WHCA when Trump tried to revoke his press pass. I support that. I think that anybody should be able to get a White

House press pass as long as they are semi-credentialed or even part of a media organization. That's one of the best things about America, that any random, basically random citizen or blogger can walk in there and ask a question if Jen Psaki gets called on you. This is about the fact that they are full of it and that press freedom to them is about rigging the game. It's about making it so that people like yours truly, our new media company, would never be able to get into that room and to ask a question of Jen Psaki. And if we were to comport ourselves the way that they did when Trump was president, they would kick your ass out of the room. So it's a completely rigged game. And, you know, from my sources on the inside, Simon is apparently the most unsympathetic character, but they're making an example out of him. Yeah. And to make sure that it's a message

to everybody else. The last thing I'll say is that the questions that get asked really matter. It really does matter. I mean, I think about, there are two examples that come immediately to mind. One is Ryan Grim being, as far as I know, the only person in that room still to ask the administration a question that was like pro-peace in terms of Ukraine and Russia. And the second one that we point to a lot of times is when Nancy Pelosi got asked about stock bans for members of Congress and their spouses and just like totally dismissive. Oh, it's the free market. Well, that comment was so revealing and so damaging that it really actually sparked some momentum to potentially get something done in terms of legislation. So it really matters what

questions get asked. This institution is such a throwback. It's so archaic in terms of how it's set up from the time when, you know, you had three news outlets that more or less spoke to all of America. It was a much more closed system. Now you have a much more, you know, sort of, you have all these different niche players and a much broader and more ideally democratic marketplace, but all of those players get shut out of the official channels of asking real people in power questions. Yeah, I think that's right. And I think that at the end of the day, if you really care about, look at this new media environment. There are companies like ours. There are huge new brands and all these things popping up all the time. The WHCA exists as a guild protectionist organization

to make sure that they rig the game whenever it comes to actually accessing the corridors of power. And at the end of the day, the White House has to respond to the spectacle of what the White House press briefing is and to respond to those questions. And I have said before, they prepare policy based upon those questions that they get. It's why it matters so much. And I also, I'm in such a unique position because I'm maybe one of the few who was inside and I have the liberty to speak out. If I spoke this way when we were working over at the Hill, that's never going to work. The Hill was a member of the WHCA. What are they going to do? The president will call whoever at

the Hill and say, hey, you better shut up or you're going to have some real problems going on. And also, if I wanted to, let's say I wanted to go work anywhere else, I mean, it would always be hanging over my head that, oh, you would be having problems getting into the WHCA or you're never going to be able to be elected or anything or somebody may not hire you. This is real ramifications for a lot of my friends who are still

inside the briefing room. Or they'll never sit with you for an interview. They'll never give you any sort of inside information that allows you to break stories to advance your career. There's a million ways

in which this is rigged. Game's rigged, people. All right, Crystal, what are you taking a look at? Well, guys, we are still learning all the details of the horrific mass shooting in Buffalo, New York, and are really just scratching the surface of what led an 18-year-old down the path of violent white supremacist ideology culminating in the hate-fueled massacre of innocent people. Already, though, Fox News is out there floating some of the dumbest possible explanations. It seems like these things have gotten so much worse since video games became so realistic

and so violent. Have you done research or, you know, learned that video games tend to just desensitize people to the actual results of pulling a trigger? This is such a classic, like a vintage conservative response as to almost be quaint. So once again, no, video games do not cause violent behavior. It turns out kids and adults alike are perfectly capable of distinguishing between video game violence and real life violence. And before you ask, this isn't about rap music or violent movies either. Not to be undone, however, Democratic Governor of New York Kathy Hochul is using this shooting to call for tech companies to engage in war censorship.

Here with me now is New York Governor Kathy Hochul. Governor, thank you so much for joining me. I'm sorry it's under these conditions. Can you first tell us what more you've learned about the shooter's motive and this purported manifesto? Well, this manifesto tells everything to us, and that is what's so bone-chilling about it, is that there is the ability for people to write and subscribe to such philosophies filled with hate, the white supremacist acts of terrorism that are being

fomented on social media, and to know that what this one individual did has been shared with the rest of the world, as well as the live streaming of this military-style execution that occurred in the streets of my hometown. And that is what is so fundamentally disturbing about this, that this is not just long time ago members of the KKK would sit in a hall and plot what they're going to do in their community. This spreads like a virus. platforms to examine their policies and to be able to look me in the eye and tell me that everything is being done that they can to make sure that this information is not spread. They have to be able to identify when information like this, the second it hits the platform, it needs to be taken down because this is spreading like wildfire. These theories that result in the radicalization of a young person sitting in their house

is deeply scary, and it's something that has to be dealt with. Now, it is true that this killer says that he was radicalized online. It is also true that hateful ideologies somehow managed to spread before there was 4chan. In fact, the Klan was quite adept at getting their message out through magazines and newspapers. And I personally would rather know what these violent extremists are up to and how they've arrived at their twisted views than to allow them to fester in the dark corners of the internet where no dissenting voices are around to challenge them whatsoever. In any case, begging tech oligarchs to claim more power is unlikely to be the answer to any of our society's

problems. Now, another common causal explanation has been the replacement rhetoric embraced by Republican media figures, including Tucker Carlson and Republican elected leaders. The basic play here is to talk in apocalyptic terms about declines in fertility rates, demographic change, and immigration, and to posit that this is all being done intentionally by Democratic elites in order to cement a permanent electoral majority. Now, I know that the left and all the little gatekeepers on Twitter become literally hysterical if you use the term replacement. If you suggest that the Democratic Party is trying to replace the current electorate, the voters now casting ballots, with new people, more obedient voters from the third world. But they become hysterical because that's what's

happening, actually. Let's just sayical because that's what's happening actually. Let's just say it, that's true. Let's say that again for emphasis because it is the secret to the entire immigration debate. Demographic change is the key to the Democratic Party's political ambitions. In other words, you're being replaced and there's nothing you can do about it. So shut up. I mean, they're trying to change the population of the United States. And they hate it when you say that because it's true.

Our country's being invaded by the rest of the world. I want you to state unequivocally the country's being stolen from American citizens as we watch. In political terms, this policy is called the Great Replacement, the replacement of legacy Americans with more obedient people from faraway countries. Replacement of legacy Americans with more obedient people from faraway countries. Replacement of legacy Americans with more obedient people from faraway countries. Listen, first of all, the scapegoating of immigrants, fear-mongering about your country being stolen from you by invaders, it's gross. It's hateful. It does, in fact, echo the replacement theory ideology which the Buffalo shooter says motivated him to kill. Second of all, this doesn't

honestly sound much different from the standard-issue conservative rhetoric that I have heard my entire life about this or that bad group threatening the white American way of life. It's pretty standard-issue Southern strategy type of stuff. Third, if this is actually the Democratic plan for electoral dominance, they are extremely shitty at it. After all, the only demographic group that Democrats actually improved with in 2020 was white men. If there is one Obama-era talking point which has been thoroughly discredited, it's that America's shifting demographics would automatically inure to the benefit of the Democratic Party. Finally, as far as I can tell, Tucker Carlson has two basic goals. Own and enrage

the libs and to convince people to vote for shitty Republican politicians who in no way deserve your support. In service of these two goals, he engages in all sorts of contemptible rhetoric that is no doubt bad for the country, even if you can't and should not draw a direct line between Tucker monologues and racist massacres. But frankly, I wish that our problems were as easy to solve as taking Tucker Carlson off the air, or censoring hate speech on the internet, or toning down the violence in video games. None of these really addresses any of the root causes of the scourge of hate and violence in our society. To really deal with this, we're going to have to go a lot deeper than a Tucker monologue. Now, one of the places to start that gets little mainstream discussion is the consistent relationship between our wars and interventions abroad and spikes in extremist violence at home. Now, it kind of makes some sense, right? You train a bunch

of young men to kill. You desensitize them to human life. You normalize violence. They experience a profound adrenaline rush, sense of camaraderie and shared purpose, all of which vanishes when they return home, many with injuries to either their body or their brain or both. Now, you layer on top of that the frequent abandonment of veterans after their service and the emasculation of struggling to reintegrate into society, and that leaves you with the potentially toxic brew. University of Chicago researcher Kathleen Ballou, author of the book Bring the War Home, has delved deep into the roots of the modern white power movement and finds that the particular brand of anti-government racist extremism that we've seen flare up since the 80s,

it actually came directly out of the failures and the violence of the Vietnam War. I think the thing that really brought these activists together was a shared experience of the Vietnam War. Now, for some of them, this had to do with literal combat in Vietnam. And for veterans and active duty troops that came into the movement in its early formation, that certainly was the case. But this story about the Vietnam War became something much bigger and broader and something that was open to people who didn't fight and open to women and open to younger activists. And the idea was sort of that the government was the site of betrayal, the site of all problems and a direct threat to their nation. So the Vietnam War was really the catalyst that brought

these activists together. And it also provided the uniforms, language, tactics, and weapons that escalated the impact of this movement over the years that followed. Now, what was even more fascinating to me, though, is that the most accurate predictor of racist hate movements is not cultural change. It's not poverty.

It's not video games or 4chan, for that matter, either. It's actually war. We can see that across the run of American history, the best predictor for surges in right-wing violent activity and militant activity, the best predictor is not poverty or immigration or reactionary mindset or the advances of communities of color.

The best predictor is the aftermath of warfare. We see surges in the Klan after the Civil War, after World War I, after World War II, after Korea, after Vietnam, and we're seeing one now with the global war on terror. I skipped the Gulf War, but of course the Gulf War fueled the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, which was carried out by a white power activist with other movement connections. And one thing to think about here is that this is really not just veterans. In fact, the research shows us, coming out of sociology, that all measures of violence are higher in the aftermath of warfare. So it isn't that war is creating violence

among these groups. It's that these groups, which use opportunistic recruitment and radicalization practices, are able to take advantage of this broader disaffection and violent tendency in society in those moments. And that's what really escalates their membership numbers and creates opportunities for violent impact. This connection between war and violence at home is not limited to America, of course, after all, the Nazi movement came directly out of the humiliation of World War I. Now, listen, I'm going to be very clear in saying two things. First of all, this is in no way to disparage all military veterans as racist thugs. Quite the contrary. These trends are about a very small fringe percentage of veterans and like-minded civilians. Second of all, as always, detailing

the sociological conditions that breed extremism in no way absolves the extremists themselves of culpability for their violent acts. The link between war abroad and violence at home, it does make some sense. Some of the white power leaders who came out of Vietnam spoke directly about how violence begets violence, explaining they couldn't really see the difference between the government sanctioned killings abroad and their ideological race war at home. According to Baloo, white power movement leader Louis Beam explained to a reporter who was disguised as a Klansman, quote, I knew the battle was not over. The mere fact that I had returned from Vietnam did not mean the war was over. It was going on right here see the difference.

Gives new meaning to the phrase forever war. For these dudes, killing commies and hating Jews and black people, well, that was all bundled up together. What's more, in the Vietnam War, as in our Reagan-era Cold War interventions, and as in Iraq and as in Afghanistan, little distinction was made between civilians and combatants. And if the government couldn't be counted on to finish the job, well, then these extremists would take it on themselves. I have no doubt that the reasons the U.S. stands out in terms of violence in general, mass shootings in particular, are complex and very multifaceted, but this connection between violent, hate-filled ideology and war is as relevant as ever, considering that plenty of our political class have launched headlong into a new Cold War with

Russia and that some seem to be pushing for even more than that. The ugly deeds we enlist Americans in abroad do not stay overseas. The dehumanization of innocent civilians is not bounded by oceans or by borders. And that's to say nothing of the billions in weapons that we're sending with zero accountability into the hands of God knows who in Ukraine. Something tells me you're not going to hear much about this research as the Senate votes this week on tens of billions more in weapons shipments. Sagar, you know, it's very easy, and I feel like liberals like to do this a lot. 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? If there's ever a time to have a conversation about energy, it's right now. Gas prices yesterday hit the all-time high. Again, electricity prices across the country are at record highs, with utility gas in particular acting as a major driver of inflation. Europe is talking about phasing out Russian oil and gas, which means there will be an increased competition on the global market for an even more finite source of petroleum products, meaning we're all likely to pay higher prices for years to come. So what

do we do about it? This is the ultimate question. It's one that modern establishment liberals have an answer for. We need renewables, they say. And I agree with that sentiment. But in that phrase, what they really mean is solar and wind power. Now, we have spoken here before. Solar and wind power are really awful sources of power in terms of reliability. Both solar and wind operate only at 25 to 30 percent of their total capacity, which means it's behind coal, natural gas, and nuclear power. Of those three, only one is renewable. It's nuclear. And yet, it is completely missing from the ideological conversation around renewable power. Their ideological opposition to

nuclear power has led to a wholesale endorsement of solar, with all of the consequences be damned, and is leading to a massive showdown here in the United States over trade policy. So let's put this on the screen. Right now, the solar industry in the United States is frozen. Why? Because we actually don't make almost any solar components in this country. It's nearly entirely imported from abroad. Surprise, surprise, the U.S. Commerce Department is now currently conducting an investigation into whether the industry and its supply chain is riddled with manipulative Chinese trade practices, which are using cutout companies in Southeast Asia to try and go around U.S. tariffs. The investigation, if it finds manipulative

Chinese trade practices, would put retroactive tariffs on panels imported, which is why the interim period, the entire industry is frozen. Now, rather than deal with the fact that we basically don't have a single part of the solar supply chain in America, what do you think that these people are doing? They are pressing the Biden administration to influence the investigation and allow solar installers in the U.S. to simply go forward with business for ideological reason, even if China does own the entire supply chain. Now, this is especially troubling for a number of reasons. Let's say solar is a better source of power than it actually is. And in effect, what states like California and others who are going all in on solar are saying is let's ditch American-made natural gas and nuclear. Let's put all of our eggs in a basket of technology, which we own almost 0% of the supply chain for and are entirely dependent on our adversary for.

If we got into a conflict with China in the future, or if we have trade objections 20 years from now, and we only have solar, what the hell are we supposed to do if we rely on them for all of the parts for our newfangled power? Well, they didn't think about that one. Worse, per a new report from the American Prospect, the trade group which reps the entire solar industry actually includes companies in it which benefit from Chinese slave labor. Now, SEIA, which is a solar organization, strongly disputes that characterization. Their communications director, who happens to be a major fan of breaking points, has disputed this. I am just going to say I read his explanation. I remain unconvinced by the semantics that he and his group are trying to portray the situation. The basic fact is this. Solar is not a great source of renewable power, except in a limited number of instances. Its lack of capacity

means that it has major surge problems, like ones that we have coming down the pipeline in California, Texas, and Indiana, meaning it will always require a higher capacity form of power to back it up. Right now, an establishment Democratic promise is that, well, we're just going to have excess capacity in batteries, except when you read further, they admit that the batteries don't exist yet, which means in practice to have unreliable solar power, you need natural gas plants to back up the grid in a time of crisis. Now that's really bad because not only is natural gas bad from a greenhouse gas emissions perspective, but when compared to renewable, right now it is historically expensive because it is priced by the global market and the

Russia crisis. This means, in a crunch, that consumers will get charged astronomically high prices that are also bad for the environment, all because Chinese-made solar panels are not up to the task. Now, don't believe me? Let's revisit the tale of the Indian Point nuclear power plant. Well, what happened here? New York Democrats worked hard to close the Indian Point nuclear power plant near New York City. Almost all of the replacement power that that plant was providing is now being produced by natural gas-fired plants,

which means that New York traded a clean renewable source of cheaper power for a more carbon-emitting one. Now, that really is not saving the environment. All of this is because major blue states like California and New York have passed major renewable targets in their state legislatures, which require a huge portion of their power to be provided by renewables. Again, I think that's a great sentiment. But this is also why they are pressing so hard for the Biden administration to waive the tariffs and the investigation because they do not care if it comes from China. If it's made and produces an immense amount of toxic waste in Southeast Asia, which it does, it still reduces U.S. resiliency. They don't care as long as it hits the targets. Their renewable goals, regardless of context, are all that matter to them. Now look, I'm not letting Republicans

off the hook. Part of the reason the Texas grid failed and is predicted to fail again is specifically because of an ideological commitment to natural gas and to lack of state investment. Texas equipment was not weatherized and thus was unable to flex during crisis. Guess what type of power is easily weatherized, has high capacity, and is easy to use and flex? Yeah, you guessed it. It's nuclear power. Yet, 54% of nuclear power, of Texas power, is generated by natural gas. Only 9% is generated by nuclear power. They get more than double the amount of power from coal than nuclear in the year 2022. That's insane. It's unjustifiable. And it's also ideological in its opposition.

Does nuclear have problems? Yeah. From what I can gather, it's mostly branding. People are deathly afraid of accidents based upon the way that the Soviet Union ran Chernobyl. And because of old-fashioned scares, but not the actual facts from the problems at Three Mile Island or at Fukushima. Nuclear is clean. It's renewable. It's American-made power

that is being willfully ignored by both sides to gouge your electric bills. Now, they are making us more prone to blackouts. They want to further sell this country out to China. And all of this is just a cause of culture war. A solution to our problem is staring us in the face. And because we are unable to see past pointing the finger at one another, we are getting weaker and less resilient by the day,

at least when the rolling blackouts come this summer. Do not say that you weren't warned. And when they do, no matter what part of the country you're in, remember, you are suffering and try to push better policy with your votes. I just, I cannot stand this ideology conversation in California. And if you want to hear my reaction to Sagar's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. Joining us now is the co-founder and executive director of the Quincy Institute, Dr. Trita Parsi. Great to see you, sir. Good to see you, sir. Good to have you, sir. So we wanted to get your view of the potential expansion of NATO to include Finland and Sweden.

Throw the second element, Colvin, that we have up on the screen here. So the very latest is both of these countries want to join, both Sweden and Finland. That is a dramatic shift from their posture of neutrality that has been in place for decades now. Most member, NATO member countries are good with this, ready to see it happen. But Turkey seems to have some reluctance to agree. And of course, it has to be unanimous to allow new member countries into NATO. So if you could just lay out sort of lay of the land, why this matters, what it means, and what the obstacles are here. Well, obviously this matters tremendously because if Sweden and Finland, and Finland in particular, joins, it means that the border with Russia expands another 800

miles or so, 810 miles, I believe. So what we're seeing here is a process in which the neutral space in Europe is essentially going extinct. Now you're with NATO or you're with Russia. And it's hard for me to see how that actually will make the region more stable and make the NATO countries, including the United States, more safe. That is not to say that this has not been caused by what Russia did, but with the invasion of Ukraine. But we are, you know, our actions have consequences as well. And an expansion of this kind has to be thought through very, very carefully. And if there's anything that characterizes what has been happening,

particularly in the Swedish case, is that it's been rushed through, it's been almost in a panic mode, and it's, in my view, at least in the Swedish case, not been particularly democratic. Now, the rest of the NATO countries have to have a say as well. You mentioned Turkey. Turkey is essentially trying to get something out of this. They're creating obstacles in order to get concessions from the Swedes in particular, who have been more welcoming of certain Kurdish opposition groups than the Turks have been happy with. So I think this is a typical tactic that Erdogan uses every once in a while

to make sure that he gets something. So I don't see that as being a long-term obstacle. But it may delay things, and it may delay things in a way that actually is relevant, because the Swedes have elections coming up in a couple of months. And it could delay it beyond that election. Yeah, I mean, Dr. Parsi, you yourself are a citizen in Sweden. So tell us, given your perspective, and explain a little bit to the audience, the things that we're being told in the U.S. press is, well, the Swedish people were against this, but now they're for this as a result of the Ukrainian invasion. I'm certain that isn't

our organic phenomena, but is it the entire story? Give us your perspective. It's a great question. Let me first separate Sweden and Finland. In the Finnish case, you've had a much more substantive debate. You just had a vote in the parliament earlier today, 188 to eight in favor of going in. And public opinion in Finland has switched dramatically in favor of going into NATO.

The case in Sweden is rather different. Public opinion has shifted, but it's shifted to roughly 52% in favor. The debate, in my view, has been rather weak and of the nature in which if you are raising any question marks, you're immediately cast as someone who's sympathetic to Putin.

I mean, in fact, it reminds me a little bit about the debate in the United States about the Iraq war back in 2003. And it's very, very uncommon to see this in Sweden. I mean, this is part of the reason I'm so shocked. Sweden's democracy has been tremendously strong and the debate has been high level. And in this case, it's not the case at all. I remember back in the 1990s when Sweden was going to potentially join the EU, there were extensive debates taking place. And it was followed by a referendum in which there was actually a vote by everyone in the country,

casting a vote whether they should join, but it was only a political and economic union that had no military dimension at all. Here we're talking about a major military alliance that breaks with more than 70 years of Swedish neutrality, and there's no vote, there's no referendum, and the debate has been forced through in a panic mode, which perhaps would have been justified if the Russians had managed to take Kyiv in three days, which of course was the fear in the beginning. But that's not been the case. Russia's objectives in Ukraine have by and large been defeated.

And the Ukrainians have very heroically defended their country. So the panic that would have been justified if the Russians had succeeded is not there. Yet it is panic, in my view, that has characterized much of the debate in Sweden on this issue. It's being rushed through. And even though no one is saying it in Washington publicly, privately, I'm hearing concerns about this as well, and question marks. Are we doing this a little bit too fast? How have we thought this through? Because at the end of the day, what is our vision for security in Europe after all of this? Are we going to be in a permanent enmity with Russia? Where do we want to take this? Those questions are not being asked.

I mean, it seems pretty clear that that is exactly the direction that you're going in as sort of a new Cold War with Russia. You know, there has been language about we don't want to give Putin an off ramp, that the goal here is not to secure a peace for Ukraine, but ultimately to weaken Russia. And to your point, you know, I sort of feel like, well, at least in Sweden, the debate might be bad, but at least one is happening. Here, it's being presented as a fait accompli. And obviously, there's major significant implications for the American public as well. So what do you think that people should be considering as they weigh whether we should agree to admit Sweden and Finland to NATO? Well, the question mark that is the most fundamental when it comes to adding any country to NATO is not whether it makes that country more safe. That's a decision they have to make when they make a decision whether to apply or not. The question we have to ask ourselves, is this going to make us and NATO as a whole

more safe, or is it going to increase the likelihood of a conflict? Now in the case of Sweden and Finland, and certainly in the case of Finland, we're talking about a country that actually has a very strong military, has a capacity of mobilizing 900,000 troops. In the Swedish case, they already got rid of their draft a couple of years ago, and they've reduced military spending, et cetera, and they're going to have to increase it in order for them to actually be a country that contributes to NATO's security. But all in all, those are critical questions that have to be taken in the context

of a very, very serious consideration as to whether this actually adds security in such a way that it overcompensates for the fact that we may actually be increasing the likelihood of conflict as well. I mean, we're adding 800 more miles of borders with Russia. And again, it's not a debate that seems to be taken very seriously, but it is an extremely serious decision that needs to be made. I think that in the context of our debate, and you wrote a little bit about this, let's put this up there on the screen on MSNBC, which, you know, certainly an interesting perspective over on that website. Then I think contrary to what they're used to hearing, you're saying that Biden and Russia's Ukraine war mission creep is an alarmingly slippery slope. Can you characterize the argument that you made there also in the context of NATO expansion?

Yes. So one of the things that I'm making in this article is to show that when you take a look at what's been happening in the position that we have taken on this war, from the beginning to now, we see an expansion of our objectives, as well as a direction in which the objectives are getting less and less precise. And this is something that unfortunately happens when you're successful. We have been successful because at the end of the day, the Russians have not been able to take Kiev or many other cities in Ukraine. And the Ukrainians have fought back very, very effectively. And this seems to have vetted our appetite.

So now we want more. And there's a parallel. This is what happened in Afghanistan. In Afghanistan, the objective originally was only to go in and take out al-Qaeda, punish them for having attacked the United States. Then, because that was so quick and successful, we dramatically changed the objective. Now we were going to turn Afghanistan into a new Switzerland. And that was an extremely ambitious and completely unachievable objective that set the stage for 20 years of failed warfare. We run the risk of doing the same thing here, in which adding and expanding

our objectives, making them less precise, actually makes success much more difficult and sets the stage for a much longer, perhaps endless conflict. The big difference, of course, is the Taliban did not have 6,000 nuclear weapons. Putin does. So we have to think this through much, much more carefully than we are right now. Having said that, I do want to also say this. I think there's been some clear signals from the Biden administration in which they have been attempting a de-escalation. When Austin is calling the Russian defense minister, as he did last week, and call for a ceasefire, that's the first time I heard the administration use that word for about five or six weeks. The question is, was that picked up by others in Washington? Because whenever the

administration is saying something escalatory, there's a chorus of people echoing it, expanding on it even further and create further political space for going in that direction. But when the Biden administration intentionally or unintentionally signaling some de-escalation, where is the chorus? Where are the people in Congress and elsewhere nodding their heads and say, yes, this is actually a good step. Let's try to de-escalate this conflict. We're not seeing that right now. And that worries me tremendously. Well, and you brought up the critical point, which is, yes, Russia's objectives have been frustrated in their invasion of Ukraine. However, this is still a nuclear superpower.

And in fact, with this discussion and contemplation of adding Sweden and Finland into NATO, Russian state TV commentator said when NATO bases appear in Sweden and Finland, Russia will have no choice but to neutralize the imbalance and new threat by deploying tactical nuclear weapons. What do you think we should make of that kind of language? Well, we see that Russian escalation has begun and our escalation, which then begets more Russian escalation. And the question is, do we have the strategic acumen in place here to make sure that we actually find a peaceful way out of this rather than just getting lost in an

escalatory cycle that can bring the end of civilization as we know it, mindful of the fact that the Russians have nuclear weapons and so do we. I mean, we have not been as close to a nuclear military confrontation since the Cuban Missile Crisis. And at least back then, there was a real effort to de-escalate. And the political atmosphere, I'm sure, was quite different than what it is right now, in which it seems to be dramatically geared more favorable towards further escalation. And everyone is just, I would say, emotionally taken by this, which is understandable. I mean,

what the Russians are doing in Ukraine, in my view, is absolutely horrible. It's illegal, in many ways very similar to to the U.S. invasion of Iraq. But we have to keep in mind that the objective has to be to put an end to the fighting and be able to get out of all of this in a way that, on the one hand, secures Ukraine's territorial integrity and independence, but also avoids nuclear war. Yep. Well, well said, sir. Yeah, indeed. And always important to keep in mind what the stakes here ultimately are. Great to have you, Dr. Parsi. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you guys so much for watching. We really appreciate it. Hit 800k yesterday. So thank you all so much. Hit the subscribe button if you haven't already. And look, we're coming up on our one year anniversary. Crystal and I have a special surprise for all of our premium subscribers and big announcements, which will all be revealed up there.

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