Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 5/22/23: Debt Talks COLLAPSE, Biden Caves On F16 Jets For Ukraine, DeSantis Secret Donor Call, Tim Scott and Chris Christie Set To Announce, Epstein Blackmailed Bill Gates, Pelosi Hides Feinstein Sickness, Used Car Prices, Migrant Hoax

Episode Date: May 22, 2023

Krystal and Saagar discuss the details of the Debt Talks collapsing as default looks likely, Biden caves on sending F16 Fighter Jets to aid Ukraine, the Media lies about Ukraine's defeat in Bakhmut, DeSantis trashes Trump in Secret Donor Call, is 2016 repeating itself as Tim Scott and Chris Christie are set to announce presidential runs, Epstein blackmailed Bill Gates over an affair with a bridge player, the Pelosi family helping hide Feinstein's brain inflammations to aid their own political goals in California, Saagar looks into Used Car prices bankrupting the Middle Class, and Krystal looks into how Fox News got tricked by a migrant homeless hoax.To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/To listen to Breaking Points as a podcast, check them out on Apple and SpotifyApple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/breaking-points-with-krystal-and-saagar/id1570045623 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4Kbsy61zJSzPxNZZ3PKbXl Merch: https://breaking-points.myshopify.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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and we here at Breaking Points are already thinking of ways we can up our game for this critical election. We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade the studio, add staff, give you guys the best independent coverage that is possible. If you like what we're all about, it just means the absolute world to have your support. But enough with We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed, we do. Lots of stuff happening today and this week, both in terms of foreign affairs and here domestically. So first and foremost, debt ceiling negotiations that seemed like they were going, then they broke down. Now they're back. We'll tell you the very latest of everything we know there. It's a very obviously chaotic and uncertain situation. Also, surprise, surprise, Joe Biden caved on F-16s to Zelensky,

called it here, unfortunately. So we'll tell you the details about that, what he was saying in the past and what he is saying now. We got a bunch of new contenders jumping into the GOP race this week as well, some of them a little bit surprising. So we have those details. We also have some new details about Epstein and Bill Gates, questions about whether or not he tried to blackmail him. It looks like he did. And we have revelations about Dianne Feinstein being even more ill and in even worse health than we even knew about. So really sad and really kind of enraging details there regarding Nancy Pelosi, why she's propping up Dianne Feinstein. We have some answers there as well. Before we get to any of that, though, thank you so much to all of the premium subscribers

who signed up last week. We're getting super close to getting our new set. We're getting pictures all the time. It looks absolutely beautiful. We've got it scheduled. We're getting updates. And we are going to have an exclusive reveal for premium subscribers. So stay tuned for that as well. That's right.

Keep that in mind for the exclusive reveal. And our plan has always been we're going to have big, big interviews with the new studio. We really want to make our mark on the scene. And luckily enough, RFK Jr. actually just reached out. Crystal wants to come back on. Not only that, we'll have Marianne on as well during that week. And we are working right now on getting another candidate, a major candidate, also at the desk. So I know that it's something so important to everyone out there about having these big, big interviews. And yeah, I'm excited. Yeah. Unfortunately, this desk, it's just like,

looks a little awkward with three people. As much as we love it. It looks great with two people. I think it looks really nice. But when we have one, and I really want to be able to have two people on the set at least and have it look really nice. And the new set is going to be that way. So it'll be a great venue for more big interviews. I actually, so Bobby Kennedy texted me and encouraged me to share some of the exchange with all of you, our audience. First of all, he said how grateful he was to be on the show. And he said, this is the kind of exchange I had at the dinner table every night growing up. I had fun and I'd love to come back. I know he's got a big trip to the border planned. You know, I got a lot of questions for him there, as I'm sure you do as well. So maybe we'll get him on the schedule for once he gets back for that. But

super thanks to him. And, you know, just a super nice guy. Classy guy. Yeah. All right. Let's get to it. All right. So debt ceiling, a lot of developments, as I indicated before, it looked like things were progressing. Then there was a complete blow up. Former President Trump weighed in in a not that helpful way to say Republicans shouldn't back down an inch. House Freedom Caucus also concerned that they're not getting enough out of the negotiations. So things broke down. But we do have a plan today for Biden and McCarthy to meet. Biden made some comments while he was in Japan about how he is viewing this negotiation.

Let's take a listen to that. Before I left for this trip, I met with all four congressional leaders and we agreed the only way to move forward was in a bipartisan agreement. I've done my part. We put forward a proposal that cuts spending by more than a trillion dollars, on top of the nearly $3 trillion in deficit reduction that I previously proposed through the combination of spending cuts and new revenues. Now it's time for the other side to move from their extreme positions because much of what they've already proposed is simply, quite frankly, unacceptable. And so let me be clear. I'm not going to agree to a deal that protects, for example, a $30 billion tax break for the oil industry, which made $200 billion

last year. They don't need an incentive of another $30 billion, while putting health care of 21 million Americans at risk by going after Medicaid. I'm not going to agree to a deal that protects $200 billion in excess payments for pharmaceutical industries and refusing to count that while cutting over 100,000 school teachers and assistance jobs, 30,000 law enforcement officers, jobs cut across the entire United States of America. I'm not going to agree to a deal that protects wealthy tax sheets and crypto traders while putting food assistance at risk for nearly 100, well, I assume nearly 1 million Americans. So you can see some of how he is taking out his position saying, look, these guys won't even put new revenues on the table, oil subsidies, stripping those away, any sort of closing of loopholes.

They won't consider any of that. And meanwhile, they want to take away assistance from the neediest Americans. He also made some comments about one of the sort of plan B options that has been floated by a lot and that progressives like Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and others have been pushing for the president to go forward with, which is invoking the 14th Amendment, basically saying, listen, this whole debt ceiling nonsense is unconstitutional. We're going to go ahead and spend and borrow the money that we need to based on what was appropriated in Congress. Biden, you know, not totally taking it off the table, but they've been sort of from the White House pouring cold water on that idea. Let's take a listen to what he had to say there.

I'm looking at the 14th Amendment as to whether or not we have the authority. I think we have the authority. The question is, could it be done and invoked in time that it would not be appealed and, as a consequence, passed the date in question and still the fall of the debt? That's a question that I think is unresolved. So not saying he's saying, listen, I think we have the authority, but in terms of it working its way through the courts, it's probably going to be challenged. I'm not sure that that's the best option. And the reporting behind the scenes also suggests that even though you do have, you know, a number of progressive senators in particular pushing for that, the White House seems to be very nervous about

actually invoking it and going that route. You know, the other thing is that I'm realizing and have spoken to some of the people who are involved in this is that one of the things with the 14th Amendment is if you were going to do it, you actually probably should do it before the expiry of the debt ceiling. Because if you try and do it after the expiry of the debt ceiling, what ends up happening is you're going to have the crash, then you're going to have even more uncertainty. You're going to remove some of the incentive to negotiate with Kevin McCarthy and all that to come to a legal or at least a solution that was previously accepted by the markets. And you're going to have to take it to the Supreme Court, which then if they tank, it will go even more down.

And then you have to go back to the table. And you're basically extending the painful period of markets and negotiations. The flip side of that is, so on the 14th amendment, the bet, if you were to invoke it, would be that the courts are more interested in protecting capital than they are siding with their partisan brethren, because obviously it's conservative, Republican, Supreme Court. So if you did this beforehand, which I'm inclined to say, like, if you were going to go this way, you should have just done it from the beginning. No, we're not negotiating. We're doing clean debt ceiling or invoking the 14th Amendment because it's my power to do this whole thing is nonsense and have have done that from the beginning. Part of perhaps a rationale for waiting is that you

actually do want that pressure to be put on the Supreme Court. So it's like Chief Justice John Roberts, do you really want to be the dude that crashes the entire global economy? Whereas if you haven't breached the debt ceiling yet, that gives them some comfort to take the partisan side, kick it back to Congress and not have the sort of blood on their hands of being the ones most directly causing a potential global financial catastrophe. So there are some sort of rational, logical reasons to wait. But, you know, I am doubtful. I personally think that they should invoke the 14th Amendment. I think they should go in the direction of that or mint the coin or premium bonds,

like one of the workarounds, because otherwise you are negotiating with economic terrorists and you're going to be forced to do this every single time the debt ceiling comes up again and you have a Democratic president and a Republican House or Senate. So you are creating a future in which these this sort of brinksmanship is going to be the norm with potentially, again, completely catastrophic consequences as we laid out last week. So that's why I really think you need, what they really should have done is when they had full control, they should have gotten rid of the debt ceiling. That was what they really should have done. But now that we are where we are,

we have got to make it so that this type of brinkmanship is not the norm in Washington as it is becoming. I was going to say the biggest, probably the most foolish thing that was done was when Biden, Schumer, and Pelosi did not pass a clean debt ceiling during the lame duck. I have no idea why they didn't do it. There really was no good reason as why they shouldn't have. They should have gotten, when they had full control, they should have gotten rid of the debt ceiling altogether. And you know why they didn't want to do it? Because they wanted just to avoid a temporary headline before the midterms that they ended up doing pretty well in to be like, Democrats raise the, you know, whatever to eliminate debt ceiling to Googleplex or something

like that, because you technically have a need to put a number. But the idea and actually, I think the correct number was to put a number that was so high it was effectively unprintable. And thus we would describe it in such a way that it wouldn't hit home like a quadrillion dollars or something like that. Anyway, look, the mistake that they made was that they didn't do it. Now they're in that position where it's done. This is basically it. And we're in it now. And Biden and McCarthy are now set to meet at some point today. Let's put this up there on the screen. This is after crystal negotiations broke down over the weekend. The problem of the details on this, though, are very wishy-washy.

Like, we're not exactly quite sure where the major sticking parts are. So we have some indications. Yeah. So top line, Republicans want there to be a total drop in discretionary spending in nominal terms. Yes. Biden has floated, OK, how about if we have a drop in spending if you account for inflation? So number one, like top line, those are very different starting points. And you also have Biden setting spending caps for two years. Republicans want to set them for six years. So you have a difference in the top line number that's quite significant. And then you have a difference in the timeframe. But perhaps even trickier are some of the details here. Republicans want to actually increase military spending. Remember at the beginning they were floating low.

Maybe we'll cut them. No, that's not happening. They want to increase military spending. That means they have to cut even more from things that benefit, you know, a social safety net programs effectively. Obviously, that is a real problem for Biden and for the Democrats, many of whom and not just like the furthest left, but a large chunk of whom have expressed deep unhappiness and an unwillingness to go along with a deal that would make deep cuts to those programs. So that's a major issue. You also have the fact, as I mentioned before, Republicans completely unwilling to put any sort of, you know, closing the carried interest loophole, rolling back some of the Trump tax cuts for the richest among us, rolling back oil company subsidies. They will not put any new revenues on the table.

So you just have some really pretty hard ideological differences here that are difficult to see how they're resolved. You also had former President Trump weighing in, saying basically, like, don't give an inch and willing to blow up the whole thing. You have the House Freedom Caucus, who are the ones that, you know, pushed this whole brinksmanship to start with. And it's almost like Kevin McCarthy, the hostage shaker, is also being held hostage by the House Freedom Caucus. It's kind of the dynamic that's going on here. So he has to make sure whatever deal he strikes is going to be acceptable to the furthest right faction of his caucus, because otherwise, his ass and his speakership is on the line here, too.

This is actually something where people need to understand. McCarthy does not care either way. He probably would just do a clean debt ceiling if it was personally up to him. But that's not really what is on the table. What people don't understand is that McCarthy, even if he wanted to, could not sign a deal without the Freedom Caucus and without the Chip Roys and all of them of the world. Because not only could they tank the deal, they can also tank his speakership. And actually, this is why I actually think that the current way that this is being negotiated is a mistake. McCarthy does not have the power. He only has the power over some portion of the GOP caucus. They need to get the Freedom Caucus guys, Chip Roy and all those other people who are in there, because otherwise you're going to

possibly negotiate a deal which will just get killed. The other thing is that a friend was explaining to me, the way that the House has been set up under GOP rule, not only could McCarthy and all of them not be able to get their votes, they wouldn't even be able to get it out of the rules committee. So if people remember, GOP had to acquiesce to allowing a lot of these guys into the influential rules committee, which advances legislation to the floor. They would not even let him do that. So there are multiple blocks that are basically built within that effectively between five to 10 members of the, of the house are the only people who are, you really are negotiating with in this current

exchange, at least on the Republican side. And let's look, whatever you want to say about that. I don't really agree with them on a lot, but they believe deeply ideologically. We have to massively slash government spending. They actually, They actually probably are people who would be okay with the military spending cuts and all that. The negotiation compromises, they're like, as long as we get our nominal, we don't care. So then you've got the balance that you've effectively explained where we would have an increase in military spending and then a decrease in overall other discretionary spending, which is a very, very tiny portion of government spending. And then finally, what I think is absolutely 100% dead and gone is the IRS. I think IRS funding is

gone. I don't see any way that that will possibly come to the table. And there's also probably not all of the IRA, the Inflation Reduction Act, but portions of the Inflation Reduction Act, which are dead and gone too. Well, and here's the thing with the IRS, you know, you say, okay, we're going to cut some of this new spending on the IRS. That actually blows up the deficit. That creates a bigger hole that you have to fill with other cuts. Why? Because money spent on additional IRS agents to go after the wealthiest, that actually increases revenue. So for every dollar you spend on IRS agents, it actually increases revenue in by more than that dollar. So their, you know, ideological crusade against this new funding of the IRS, that actually makes it so that the deficit is even worse and the debt situation is even worse.

And so it creates the need for necessitates additional discretionary spending cuts and makes things actually even more difficult. So that's why it's hard to see how these pieces come together. And is Joe Biden and, you know, the other Democrats who backed the Inflation Reduction Act, are they just going to stand by, watch the thing gutted? I don't know. It seems to me like maybe none of the potential outcomes seems likely to me. All of them seem like I don't know how this is going to come together. Obviously, something is going to happen. Somehow we're going to end up, you know, dealing with this situation. We always have in the past at least, so fingers crossed. But at today,

I feel like maybe the discharge petition route maybe is the most likely because just to remind people how that works, if you could get all Democrats and five Republicans to sign on to a discharge petition in the House for a clean debt ceiling increase or something approximating it, then you can bypass that House Freedom Caucus Stacked Rules Committee. You can bypass Speaker McCarthy. You can bring something to the floor of the House to vote on and move forward. And then, you know, then it has to pass the Senate and you got to get, you know, 10 Republicans over there to go along with you as well, which is not easy either. But if you had, I think if you had a massive, catastrophic stock market crash, maybe that would apply enough pressure on people that they're all right. We just got to move forward

with something here. We cannot afford to let the economy totally tank. That's what I would say. I would say status quo, we're probably going to default. Most likely, I would say more than 50% current status quo. I think that the entire game changes when there is a default. So if there is a default, at least in name only, uncertainty in the markets, you see a 20% drop in the S&P 500. That's when people start to freak out and people's principles go out the window. But knowing these Freedom Caucus guys haven't seen and covered these people for a while, I don't think they're going to be the first. Well, here's the other thing. I think Biden and the Democrats are going to be the first people to buckle and we're going to see massive sequestration or something like that across

the board. You may be right, because the other thing is that some of these people like psychopathically don't really care if you lose your job and your life is ruined as long as it's bad for Joe Biden personally. And so tanking the economy under his watch, they look at that and, well, that's too bad. But, you know, it's bad for him politically and maybe it hands us more power next election cycle. A lot of these people are craven enough to think that way. So it definitely does put more pressure on the Democratic side because they're, you know, they're in charge in the White House if you have a massive crash. So we'll see how this all goes. Let's just put this last piece up on the screen. As we mentioned before, they are set to meet. Biden and McCarthy are set to meet today. They spoke by phone

on Sunday. McCarthy was upbeat, they say, told reporters at the Capitol the call with Biden was productive and that the on again, off again negotiations between his staff and White House representatives are focused on spending cuts. So we'll keep you updated. And just a reminder, somewhere around June 1st is when the stuff hits the fan. So we are mere days away at this point. I think it's time for everybody to really sit up and pay attention, because as we laid out for you last week about the potential doomsday scenarios, this is nothing to mess around with. No, certainly. I mean, it will affect everybody's retirement portfolios. It could even affect some of the banks and cause a liquidity crisis. It could cause all kinds of crazy things. Nobody knows. Nobody really has any idea how any

of it would happen. And yeah, that could create extraordinary pressure. And at this point, until there is some sort of crash, I actually don't know if there will be a major movement. Okay, let's go ahead and let's talk about Ukraine. Massive updates in Ukraine after the G7 summit in Hiroshima. President Zelensky made an appearance with President Biden. President Biden reversing longstanding U.S. policy, policy that he himself set only a couple of months ago about no F-16s to Ukraine. Now, the initial announcement is that they will be training Ukrainian pilots on the F-16 platform with possible delivery in the months to come. Here is what President Biden had to say.

Let's take a listen. You know, my private meeting with President Zelensky after the G7 meeting and with his staff, I told him the United States, together with our allies and partners, is going to begin training Ukrainian pilots in fourth generation fighter aircraft, including F-16s. It is for them. I have a flat assurance from Zelensky that they will not use it to go on and move into Russian geographic territory. Got a flat assurance. I guess you could take that to the bank, right? Right? Well, it's interesting.

Let's go and put this up there on the screen. January from 2023, just four months ago, President Biden walking across the South Lawn at the White House. On his return, a reporter shouts out, will you give F-16s to Ukraine? He says no. He then follows up in an interview with CBS News' David Muir, where he explained very cogently why he did not think that Ukraine needed F-16 fighter jets, why he thought that the risk was too high, why he wanted to avoid World War III. And he had, quote, discussed the issue, quote, very carefully with his allies. Now, people need to remember this about the F-16s.

Even if the U.S. doesn't provide the F-16s to Ukraine. Because it is our plane, we have to sign off on any export from any NATO ally or any ally actually that has them before they sell them. We get like a first right of refusal effectively on any such deal. So of course, since it's our plane, our permission, we're the decision maker, even if we're not the ones who technically give them to them. The decision from the top has always been there's no way because they would likely use them at least in air-to-air combat with Russia, and it could easily bleed over onto Russian territory. Now, the other one, which is obvious to all of us, is what qualifies. Because according to the Russians, Crimea is Russian territory. Now, according to us

and according to Ukraine, it's disputed or it's straight up Ukrainian. Well, what does that mean? And what do we also know? We know from our own reporting here at Breaking Points, whenever we had our hands on those initial Pentagon documents, put this the CIA and the U.S. Intelligence Committee believes that Ukrainian President Zelensky wants long-range missiles and wants fighter jets specifically so he can strike deep inside of Russia. And if you're one of those NAFO idiots, and if you think that we're lying, the Washington Post reported it too. It talked about, what did they say, Crystal, the aggressive behind the

scenes presence. This was like five days ago, right before this announcement. So look, there is no reason to believe Zelensky literally at all. All of the things that he wants to do behind the scenes are right out here in the open because of those leaked documents. Three months ago, we made the decision not to provide them for him because of documents like this, where we're like, no, he's probably going to use it to strike Russia. But now, apparently, you can just take his word to the bank, the government, which has bombed the Crimean Bridge, which has assassinated people on Russian soil, which may have had a hand in the Nord Stream pipeline bombing, and then consistently deny, oh, and then the most recent Kremlin attack. Right.

They drone-struck the Kremlin. Allegedly denied it. Literally like a couple of days ago, right? And so I already know that people are like, how can you blame? I don't blame them. Nobody is blaming them. If I were them, I would be begging for F-16s,

I'd be calling for no-fly zone, all of that. Russia is the aggressor. There's no question. If they're using it just in a defensive capacity, that would be great. But there's a reason that President Biden and his advisors and many others did not want to do any of this, technically everybody's acting in their best interests and all that in the eyes of each other's allies, but could easily lead to a different situation. And we specifically, our own reporting, our own raw documents show not only does he want

to strike inside Crimea, he wants to strike deep inside of established Russian territory, supply bases, and all of that with a US provided, NATO provided platform and US provided and NATO provided munitions. This literally was exactly what they told us they were going to avoid from day one, Crystal. Now they've reversed themselves completely on a dime and are expecting us all just not to pay attention to, this is probably the most significant action outside of the Patriot missiles since the decision on the no-fly zone. And I listened to Jake Sullivan try to explain why now and why not before.

He was in an interview with Jake Tapper. And, of course, Tapper's push was, like, to the hawkish side. Like, well, why didn't you give him Souter? Which, frankly, if you are going to give him at all, it's actually a reasonable question. Even though, you know, I object to the fact that media is always pushing in the hawkish direction rather than like, what the hell are you doing here? What are you thinking? Why has your thinking changed so much that previously you said no. And now suddenly you're sure I'm sure it's going to be no problem whatsoever. Zelensky, of course, he wouldn't strike on Russian soil when we already

know they are. I mean, Biden, I can't believe that he is this naive or foolish to think that really they're going to hold to their word and only defensive purposes, et cetera, because we already know that they have not held to that whatsoever. And to your point, Sagar, like I don't blame them whatsoever. I blame our leadership primarily because we are the ones that are driving this train. So Sullivan had no coherent response for why now and why not earlier. And it just comes back to that quote, like, you know, over a long enough time horizon, Zelensky gets everything that he wants. Yes. What's he going to push for next? You know, what's going to be the next step forward that eventually six months from now,

that's going to be a flat no now. And six months from now, Biden will be, okay, sure, here you go. No problem. Where does, how does this thing ultimately end? This is extremely dangerous. We know it's extremely dangerous based on the actions that Slensky's already taken and from the leaked intercepts that we know what he is pushing for even more aggressive action behind the scenes. We've just are handing him a whole set of tools to engage in even more dangerous, even more escalatory action that could draw us even more directly into the conflict. And if you think Russia sees any difference between us directly providing F-16s and our allies, some ally providing them and us providing the training, you're a fool. Well, because we're the ones who have to rubber stamp it.

Okay, ask yourself this. What's a Russian allied nation? If Tajikistan bombed a US base in Afghanistan with a Russian plane, we're going to blame Tajikistan, we're going to blame Russia. All right, use your brain here. So this is part of the problem where the idea and the decision matrix that I keep reading behind the scenes is, well, we provided them with X and the Russians didn't do anything. And then we provided them with Y and the Russians didn't do anything. So if we provide them with this, we just believe that they won't do anything. And it's one of those where it's like, you're right until you're wrong. And then the risk of being wrong is so high that everyone could die and we could embroil in a massive conflict.

And I also don't even accept that the Russians didn't do anything because, I mean, they had a draft. They called up a bunch of men. I mean, they have, you know, they went back to hitting Kiev. Like they actually have done things and escalated in response to what they perceive as escalations from us and from the Ukrainians. So what's what's the next step up the escalation ladder from their perspective? And when do we get to a point where we accept, OK, this risk is way too high? To me, we are long past that. Well, what's so stupid about it in my mind, and I already know the Ukrainian people, whatever these people will get very angry with what I'm saying, is all of this is over a scrap of Eastern Ukraine. How in any world is this worth it in any way to all of our core national interests? We would never risk nuclear conflict over a scrap of disputed territory that has

changed hand multiple times over the last several centuries. For what? I mean, it's like, what possible benefit are we getting out of this? Well, because they don't see it as over a scrap of land. Oh, I'm sorry. It's about democracy. Well, then they, I mean, that's nonsense too. They don't see it as being, oh, it's this great war between democracy and authoritarianism. They see it as part of this, you know, global sort of like Cold War and hot war in Ukraine. They have said outright, you know, they want to weaken Russia. They want to they hope Putin will be deposed and pushed down over all of this. At the beginning of this conflict, there were several times where they openly admitted what the real aims and goals were because they don't want a Russia and China

alliance that can, you know, really rival us as superpowers in the world. So that's the real goal here. I mean, whatever you think of this conflict, don't believe any of the happy talk about, oh, this is about democracy or about this is about Ukrainian sovereign, you know, territorial disputes or whatever. That's what this is really all about. And we're all just like pawns and playthings in their game. It worked out real well in South Vietnam. And for President Zelensky, we shouldn't forget that what was the one thing that he begged the American people for whenever he was here in Washington and then frankly demanded publicly that we give him F-16s.

He always gets what he wants. Here's what he had to say at the time. We don't have the fighter jets to deal with it, to counteract the Russian hits. And we really need this and really appeal to the president that they could start training Ukrainian pilots. And President Biden told me that it would be worked upon. And I believe that the United States will give us the opportunity to defend our skies. He was right. He made that prediction only three months ago. Yeah, outside of the no-fly zone, not one person could point me one thing that he didn't get eventually from what he wanted. And on top of that, actually, let's go to the next part here because it's so important, Crystal, is that this comes on the heels of a major loss for Ukraine.

Although many people apparently are trying to spin it differently. head of the Wagner Group, President Putin, have all come out and said that the eight-month struggle between Russia and Ukraine over the strategic city of Bakhmut is now over and that they are claiming full control of Bakhmut. Now, President Zelensky, to be clear, is denying this. Let's go and put the next one up there on the screen. He was asked about it while he was in Hiroshima. He said, quote, though, that Russia's had fully controls the city, or sorry, he denied that Russia fully controlled the city, but then said that there's nothing left but dead Russians who are in the city and that Bakhmut is only in our hearts because it has all been completely destroyed. Now on that, I don't think there is any dispute, But I am really beginning to feel like I'm losing my mind here, Crystal,

because Zelensky poured billions of dollars of ammunition and artillery into this battle. The theory was, well, we're going to keep killing as many Russians as possible. We're on the defensive. They're on the offensive. We can bleed them dry. This will be our stand. I mean, am I the only guy who remembers that he literally bought a brought a Brockmutt flag to Washington that was signed by the guys? That's how important this victory was. Like it was there was their battle of the bulge. Like it was their big turn point. I mean, look, and I don't say this with relish. They just lost a major battle of attrition. Now, everyone in the media is trying to spin it, and they're like, oh, this is actually a Pyrrhic victory for Russia.

Maybe. I mean, certainly they lost a ton of people taking the city. I'm not saying it's to their benefit really at all. I mean, I don't think any of these people should be dying anyways. But there's a reason that they were fighting over this city in the first place. David Sachs actually had a pretty good summary. Number one, Bakhbut is a regional transport and logistics hub. It gives Russia now access to roads and to rail, and it places larger cities with an easier range of Russian artillery, which is exactly why Zelensky and his government didn't

want them to take it in the first place. Number two, it has unique defensive fortifications. They have a network of subterranean salt mines and tunnels, 100 miles, which is what contributed a lot to its defensibility. And it provides an underground complex to stockpile weapons, munitions, and equipment, other lines of defense. But Bakhmut may have been very unique for Ukraine. The idea also is what I just pointed out. This was their moral stand. This was their like our big thing. Now look, let's caveat it with this. This all could be part of a feint, right? They lose Bachmut. They're pretending to be on the back foot. And this is all in the, you know, gearing up for a major spring counteroffensive like what they had last year. I want to be very clear. It very possibly could be something like

that. But one other theory that is out there is that Russia actually may have used Bakhmut as a trap crystal to lure Ukrainian troops and generals, causing them huge casualties and possibly imperiling their ability for the counteroff offensive. And you know why I'm thinking that or why I think that there is some credence because U.S. generals told them this months ago. Put this up there on the screen. This is from CNN. OK. And it shows you, you know, the laundering of the deep state press. But they're like the U.S. and its allies want Ukraine to change its battle tactics in the spring because they are pointing out that the Ukrainians have poured massive amounts of our US taxpayer provided aid into this battle. They lost a ton of people. It's been a brutal war of attrition. And at the end of the day, Russia has an industrial base

and can draft as many people as it wants. And Ukraine is a wiped out country with no industrial base, no currency, completely propped up by the U.S. and the Western allies, basically at the charity of our taxpayers. They have nothing. And they would fold instantly as opposed to where the Russians are. So if you look at the long-term prospects on this, this is not a good sign. It's not good for them. This is what the U.S. was trying to persuade them. It's basically like, look, y'all, a war of attrition, this is not a good landscape for you because Russia has massive industrial capacity. And if we were going to go all in with Ukraine in a war of attrition, we would be ramping up industrial capacity. Obviously, we're not doing that. We're just

drawing down the stockpiles that we already have. So you have both sides in this Bakhmut battle claiming that their goal is basically to turn it into a meat grinder for the other side and to, you know, wear them down so that they're in a stronger position here for whatever offensive or whatever action is to come. But that cannot, you know, so even though Ukrainians are saying like, oh, this was our goal all along, which is to wear down the Russians so that we're in a stronger position. But, you know, ultimately you have to say the side that won the battle probably is likely to have taken fewer losses, is likely to be in the stronger position moving forward,

certainly has won a prize that is of some strategic value in terms of how the conflict unfolds. And then the other thing that is wild to me, I mean, keep in mind, this was the longest and bloodiest battle of the whole war. This has been going on for months. Yeah, eight months now. The amount of manpower, the amount of deaths, the amount of material that was used here is quite astonishing. So now for the media to buy the line of like, oh, it's really no big deal.

Pyrrhic victory, no problem. I mean, that's just, that has to be dishonest. That is like really obviously dishonest that they've been talking about this for months. They've I saw headlines even last week. They were like the Ukrainians are doing well. They're gaining ground, et cetera. Read it here. And then, you know, and then days later, it's like, well, it looks like they lost. But it's no big deal. Don't worry about it. Everything is still going according to plan. So it also, I think, reveals a lot of media dishonesty as well. I mean, it is stunning, actually, to behold. And, you know, I mean, even now I'm reading

they're like, as the buck slips, Ukrainian forces push to encircle the city. You know, they're doing their best to try and retake some of the ground. So, of course, look, it's not over. Now they want to make the Russians suffer because they're going to have to hold the city after they took it. And it would be a bad look, of course, if they were able to. So I'm not saying that the battle is over or any of that in any way. More though, they are the ones who spent thousands of men, billions of dollars of ammo and of artillery on defending this city. So then you can't turn around and tell us that this was some major

strategic victory, apparently, for Ukraine. I mean, that's insane. And where's that spring offensive we've been hearing so much about, too? On that one, I have no idea. But I do know this, they probably spent a hell of a lot of ammo and artillery on this battle that our generals were like, hey, you shouldn't do this because it's going to bleed away from that. And we don't have billions more dollars to send you. You know, our Congress, we're in the middle of a debt ceiling fight. There ain't another 50 billion coming your way. Which could be the reason why Biden caves at this point for F-16s. Yeah, I think you might be right.

I mean, and this is always the logic as pointed out by our friend, Branko Marcetic, which is if Ukraine is doing poorly, you know, just lost the battle of Bakhmut, it's all right, we got to back them up so that they can gain leverage, so that they're in a better position for whatever negotiations may theoretically come down the line. And if they're doing well, then it's like, oh, look, they can win. Let's give them more so that they can, you know, just take back their territory altogether. Both roads lead to us sending more, doing more, escalating more. And it just appears to be an endless cycle. So no way to know if that's the reason why F-16s have been proffered at this particular juncture. But I don't think it's

crazy to imagine that either. There we go. Who knows? We'll keep everybody updated. All right. So let's turn to domestic politics and a huge week and some ways one of the biggest weeks yet in terms of the Republican primary. Let's start with Trump's primary rival here, Ron DeSantis. He just had a pretty revealing call with donors. Put this up on the screen where he made his strongest case yet against Trump. Now, let's just pause for a moment and note the grotesqueness of American politics where your most sort of direct and honest comments come to a bunch of billionaire donor class elites. But that is the reality that we live in here. The headline is Biden and me, DeSantis privately tells donors Trump can't win in a phone call with top donors. The Florida governor took his most direct shots yet at Donald Trump. He is expected to officially enter the presidential race, this article says,

next week. That would be this week he is expected to enter the race. Let me give you some of the quotes from this call, which, by the way, a New York Times reporter was on. So, you know, certainly intentionally there as well. He said that there were only three, quote, credible candidates in the race, quote, you have basically three people at this point that are credible in this whole thing, Biden, Trump, and me. And I think of those three, two have a chance to get elected president, Biden and me. Based on all the data in the swing states, which is not great for the former president and probably insurmountable because people are not going to change their view of him. He is expected to file paperwork ahead of another donor meeting in Miami, which is happening on May 25th. Today is May 22nd. So you can see it's probably going to be

like Tuesday, Wednesday. He's also likely to release a video that will coincide with that official entrance in the week. And it is very intentional that he is launching and then doing this big donor meeting down in Miami. He wants to have this big financial show of force going into the race. But noteworthy, Sagar, in this call, he really didn't talk much about issues, especially some of the issues that have been upsetting to the donor class, that would be Ukraine and abortion in particular. Instead, he's really leaning into his electability argument of, listen, how do we feel about Trump? People hate him. The views on him are hardened. I'm the guy that can win. I'm the one who's

credible to defeat Biden in 2024. And so that's why you should be on my team. I mean, I think it's a good case. I think he might even be right. The only problem are the pesky GOP voters who have to decide in the primary. And we've talked about this before. This ain't gonna be a great test as to my theory that Republicans, as far as I can tell, don't care about electability or at the very least care much more about the person that they like than they do about electability because of the past track record where they said, we don't really like McCain. We don't agree with him on a lot, but we'll vote for him because they tell us he's going to get elected. We're like, okay. And then 2012, we hate Obama. We hate him so much. Our heart wants to go with Bachman. Our heart

wants to go with Sarah Palin. Our heart wants to, but the elites tell us Mitt Romney. So we're like, okay, we'll do Mitt Romney. And he loses too. And then they're like, you know what? We're done. We're not listening. We're going with Trump. He's going to lose. He's going to lose. He's going to lose. Like we love him anyway. And then he won. And so you can see from that why a lot of people have a tremendous amount of faith, not only in Trump, but dismiss a lot of the electability concerns because they heard it for so long. They literally went with their heart and they actually got what they wanted. Well, and I think it also shows you, unsurprisingly, the way the interests of the donor class and the interests of the base do not necessarily align. For the base, do they really expect to get anything out of Washington,

whether it's Trump or Biden or whoever, you know, who is there at the White House? They don't really expect these people to be able to improve their lives. With Trump, they feel like at least they get the fight and the, you know, triggering the libs that sort of bolsters them and, you know, is something that they enjoy to watch unfold. Well, the donor class, they do expect to get something out of the occupant of the White House. They want to get their tax cuts. They want to get their breaks. They want to get their subsidies. They want to get that special treatment that they are well and accustomed to. So for them, yeah, electability is kind of everything because they want to buy in on the winning ticket so they can get whatever goodies it is that they want to

further fatten their own bottom lines. So there is a real divide in terms of the interest of these two groups of people. On the electability piece, I mean, maybe he's right and maybe he's not, because certainly that six-week abortion ban is going to be in every Democratic ad if you were the nominee going into the fall. And we've seen the way that that has turned into an extremely potent issue for Democrats in election after election after election. So, you know, I think it's to me, it's very up in the air. Which of these men is more electable? We don't have an element for it, but there was a focus group, the results of which were just published this morning of voters who voted for Trump in 2016 and then voted for Biden in 2020. And basically everybody in the group hates both of them. Biden, they offered up were, you know, weak, tired, like the things that you would expect.

But when you asked about Trump, the emotions were even stronger. It was like terrified, horrible, right? Horrifying. These are not the exact words, but you can get the sense of like, one was like, I'm not really crazy about this guy and I'm not sure he's up to it. And this one, it was like, this is a horror show and we absolutely can't go back there. So of that group of people, you still had a majority saying, yeah, I'm not crazy about Biden, but I'm going to stick with them. You had, I think, three who were going to go back to Trump. And you had three out of the 15 who were like, I'm either not going to vote or maybe I'll vote for a third party. This is the electability argument that the Biden team has always banked on, which is lesser of two evils. You may not like me. You may not

want me to run, but you don't want to go back to this guy Trump either. And, you know, that's what they're hoping is going to work out for them. The one thing that I will say with regard to that focus group, I mean, number one, you're talking about 15 people. So always take it with a grain of salt. Number two, Biden needed all 15 of those in order to defeat Trump last time around. So if you're losing six of those 15, to third-party candidates or to Donald Trump, I'm not positive that math works out for him because don't forget, this was a very close race that came down to, you know, tens of thousands of votes in a handful of states.

It was not a landslide. The other problem for DeSantis is that even though I do believe he would be a strong general election candidate, I'm not sure that he would win, but I do think that he would be strong just because he would be stripped of some of the stop the steal nonsense. And he would at least at the very least have to contest only on abortion. And I'm not saying that he wouldn't lose that, too. But I think it would be stronger ground, whereas Trump has to deal with both of them. Well, the problem, though, is that to coalesce all these people together, he needs the entire pop never Trump coalition, maybe not Trump coalition, and some of the Trump coalition.

And what's the issue? Put this up there on the screen. Many Republicans who are in the party at the elite level don't necessarily think he can do it. We're about to talk about Chris Christie and Tim Scott and Vivek Ramaswamy and Nikki Haley and Chris Sununu and Asa Hutchinson. And apparently this guy, North Dakota Governor Doug Bergen wants to run. Literally never heard of before. Never even heard of this guy. Apparently he wants to run. Glenn Youngkin just put out a video which makes him look like he might run, even though he says he might not run.

A lot of people are itching for that lane because it's one of those, why not me? Why shouldn't I be the alternative to Trump? Why should we all coalesce around DeSantis? Don't forget this either. The Republican Party does not have the Obama equivalent of the Democrats. The Democrats had Obama who was willing to, who called Buttigieg and Klobuchar and was like, hey, you guys are going to get out of here. It's over. You're dropping out of the race. You're endorsing Biden. And they said, okay, we're going to do it. And because that made it very, very easy for him to come in and to, you know, be Bernie on Super Tuesday. Well, the split field from 2016, we literally had a movie where this all played out, Crystal. Republican party officials desperately wanted John Kasich,

Ted Cruz, and Marco Rubio. They were like, all but one of you needs to drop out. We need to coalesce around a Trump alternative. And not one of them would do it. And nobody is strong enough in the party, like Romney, who had no credibility. McCain was barely alive. None of them had any of the credibility to call them and be like, you need to drop out. So there's no figure, there's no forcing function. And as long as a lot of them have donors and at least one delusional billionaire to back your campaign, you're good to go. You can just keep running. So I think that it's the same tragedy or it was a tragedy of errors, like comedy of errors and prisoners dilemma that happened in 2016, which is playing out exactly the same way now.

Yeah. Let's move to this next piece of some of the candidates who are jumping in this week, because I think you're exactly right. DeSantis' really only shot was if he was strong enough, a Trump alternative to clear the field of everybody else and have everybody coalesce behind him. That dream is dead. You now have put this up on the screen. Tim Scott has made it official, filing to run for president in 2024. We're going to get a big speech from him. Expectation is heavy on sort of biographical details.

Tim Scott is embracing the like movement conservative, Reagan-esque type messaging. His advisors were telling reporters they don't feel like they need to make a contrast with Trump because it's so obvious. I'm not sure who it's obvious to, but anyway, that's their bet is that they don't actually have to go after Trump. He can just talk about his own thing and his up from poverty, by the bootstrap story, and have this sort of positive, optimistic message and avoid criticizing Trump or really any

of the other candidates. That's the bet that he is making. You know, we had a reporter on here last week just to play like devil's advocate in favor of Tim Scott, who said that the Trump people tell her that they are actually more worried about Tim Scott than you might think, that he unites a lot of factions of conservatives and is this very, you know, likable, effective politician. And so they feel like there may be more juice behind him than you might think. He also has a significant amount of money behind him, too. He's already launched a six million dollar ad campaign in key presidential primary states that happened on Friday. And he is scheduled to announce actually today. So we'll get a sense of what that speech

is and the details that are inside of it. And, you know, let's be real, too, like the Tim Scott play is also to lean into sort of like conservative identity politics, similar to Nikki Haley, his fellow South Carolinian. Lean into the biography, you know, inspire it. Very inspiring biography. Lean into identity while also pretending like you don't really care about identity and it doesn't matter, and hope that that's enough alone without going directly, without kicking sideways at Trump. And at the same time, you got Chris Christie, put this up there on the screen, New Hampshire media reporting multiple sources of direct knowledge telling me Chris Christie will be announcing a run for president in the coming days. The campaign will focus on New

Hampshire and will have a financial backing of Mets owner Steve Cohen, amongst other. Remember when I was talking about delusional billionaires there? That's where it's coming from. Well, let me say with Chris Christie, I don't think, well, Chris Christie may be delusional enough to believe that he can win the Republican primary and be president. But what he laid out is basically like, I can be the solution to this prisoner's dilemma. All you people are too afraid to attract Donald Trump. And frankly, for good reason, because it's never worked out well for anyone on the Republican side who came at Donald Trump. They always end up weakened, and he always ends up stronger. Yep.

So Christie thinks enough of his rhetorical jousting abilities to try to do to Donald Trump what he did to Marco Rubio famously back in 2016. So I think his theory and what the billionaires backing him are hoping is that he can be like a guided missile aimed right at Trump to try to blow him up and make room and possibility for the other candidates. Now, do I think that that's going to work out? Probably not. But it actually is more of a it makes more sense to me than some of the other folks that are in the race. At least he has like an idea of what his purpose is and doesn't really have an expectation. At least the people that are backing him don't really have an expectation that he'll end up being the guy. You know what it actually kind of hit home for me is I was like, if Chris Christie runs and he's

going to be on the debate stage, I don't see any way that Trump would come to the debate because he would just be like, why would I put myself in a situation where I'm going to take incoming attacks? Exactly. I'm already the number one. And actually, then if DeSantis shows up, he looks like he's one of this other band of like, merry people, like nine other candidates who are all just talking about Trump without Trump even at the attendance. Why would you even go? I mean, look, maybe he'll go just because he can't stand the media attention of him not going. But at the same time, it's like he's threatened and he's thought about it before. Vivek Ramaswamy, too, just to show people about how

many billionaires and others are out there shopping, put this up there. Rupert Murdoch actually just met with Vivek Ramaswamy in late April in New York, according to two people. One person described it as a getting to know you session, where Murdoch often meets with rising political figures. Look, what do you take away from that? It's that these guys, they're craven in the way that they only care about what's good for them. They are incredibly fickle. So first, Murdoch was all in on DeSantis. And he's like, well, maybe you can't win. So they're willing to just pull the plug from you. They don't have the level of organic support and all that. And without that, when

their ability to just shift and walk away, possibly from DeSantis and go to somebody else, apparently Ken Griffin is another billionaire who's thinking a lot like this. Well, if those are the people who you are entirely reliant on, you're in a bad situation. Yeah, they, the billionaire class, I mean, they are just ideological in terms of what it means for their own bottom line, by and large. Right. And so, yeah, they're happy to play the field. They don't have any loyalty. They want to get on the team of whoever's going to be the winner who can give them those, you know, special goodies or whatever it is they want out of the White House. So yeah, there's no loyalty there. And I think that DeSantis has shown enough weakness that the field is now very large. The piece about the debates, it's so, you know, I think you're 100% correct. Trump is going to

look at this and say, why would I open myself up to these attacks when I'm over 50 percent in the polls? I don't need to do that. DeSantis has been a very cloistered candidate, is starting to open himself up and take more interviews and, you know, sort of get into the fray a bit more. But he also hasn't performed all that well when he is in the mix. So you could very easily see him saying, you know what, this isn't really worth it for me either. And on the Democratic side, obviously, Joe Biden and DNC have already said we're not having a primary, we're having a coronation, we're not doing any debates, forget about it. And meanwhile, you've got like 80% of the country that are like, we don't want either of these two guys who are both, you know, past their prime to the extent they had a

prime that we wanted to, you know, to reckon with. So it's a very depressing and dispiriting state of the country, state of our democracy that we face coming into this election cycle where basically everyone is just betting on being slightly better than the other guy that the entire public hates. They don't feel any sort of pressure to hold themselves out to any sort of process of democratic accountability. And it's just a really sad, pathetic state of affairs that we face at the moment. Oh, absolutely. In terms of democracy, it's awful. And it just shows you how the system

really needs to change, but it's not going to. My main takeaway, though, is that it really is 2016 all over again. It may not be 16 candidates, but really as evidenced by what happened in 2016, Kasich and Cruz alone were enough to split the anti-Trump vote to guarantee Trump the nomination. It only took two, you know, semi-viable candidates. And let's be real, Kasich was tiny. Even Kasich was like nothing compared to Cruz, but he was just enough to make sure that he would be able to. Yeah, exactly. Chris Sununu is kind of a similar type candidate to Kasich. Yes.

Who's the governor of New Hampshire. And they love him in that state. Exactly. He's one of the highest rated approval rating governors in the entire country as a Republican in the state of New Hampshire, which has been voting blue of late. And so very likely that he would win the New Hampshire primary, which is early on. And, you know, I mean, it just,

even someone like that can take a chunk out of what DeSantis would need because what's his bet? His bet is let me win the early states. Need to win Iowa, need to win New Hampshire. Got to win Iowa, got to win New Hampshire. And so if you have one of those taken off the table by someone and then you have the vote super divided in Iowa, Iowa where there is a strong evangelical contingent of Mike, you know, like Mike Pence also and might

have a lot of loyalties there as well. It makes the math very difficult for him. And and I do think his electability case to the donor set has taken a bit of a beating as well from his stumbles on Ukraine, where he was kind of all over the place, from his extreme positioning on abortion. You know, they're also remember these are these are businessmen. They're looking at the fight with Disney or like, brother, what'd you get yourself into? And I'm not sure we're really with you and on your side in this one. So they're looking at that, too, very negatively. You guys probably saw the news that Disney decided to pull out this like multi-billion dollar development in the state of Florida. Thousands of employees that aren't going to locate there over their fight and dispute in a legal battle with Ron DeSantis. So

there's a lot of messiness here as he's set to launch just this week. There you go. All right. That's where the lay of the land is. Okay, let's go to the next one here. Not surprising, but I guess stunning just to see it all out in the open, plain English, put it up there on the screen. Jeffrey Epstein appeared to threaten Bill Gates over Microsoft co-founder's affair with a Russian bridge player. So a lot of interesting characters at the center of this story. Basically, this goes back to 2013, where Bill Gates apparently, sorry, 2010. Bill Gates apparently is obsessed with the game Bridge, like the card game. He met a Russian girl who was

in her 20s, who was apparently very good at Bridge. They ended up having an affair. She founded an organization where she wanted to teach other people how to play bridge and spread the game of bridge. She asked Bill Gates for money. Gates apparently turned her down. Then Epstein somehow inserted himself into the mix. He ended up meeting this girl. This is all post-sex conviction, by the way, by Epstein, an eventual release. He's a registered sex offender at this time. What he does is he apparently backs some of her charity. And then she says,

I want to go to coding school. And Epstein, she lets us drop in a meeting with Epstein. Epstein says, okay, I'll foot the bill for it. So this all appears to be, you know, this is the state of affairs. Well, then Epstein wants to start some sort of multi-billion dollar charity fund with J.P. Morgan and Chase. It would be like some grand big fund with multiple billionaires would donate to, and he would be the kind of executive director of.

By the way, by doing so, he would have earned millions of dollars a year in fees for serving as the, you know, executive director of. By the way, by doing so, he would have earned millions of dollars a year in fees for serving as the executive director of said fund. Gates and people around Gates turn him down. They say, no, we're not interested. Well, this apparently pissed off Epstein. So Epstein then sent an email to Bill Gates where he tried to get Gates to reimburse him for the cost of sending this Russian bridge player to the coding school. Basically a subtle hint of, hey man, if you don't donate to my fund, I will expose that you had this previous affair. Now combine this, Crystal, with past reporting and allegations by Gates' ex-wife that he would often complain about his marriage and would even go to him for advice to Epstein. So it's not outside the realm of possibility that Epstein not only knew about this because Gates had mentioned it, but he was aware of multiple other affairs that Bill Gates had conducted while he was married previously to his ex-wife.

And then finally, probably the most insane part of all of this is that days before Epstein died, again, days before he died in 2019, he changed his will and actually named Bill Gates's right-hand man as the backup executor without ever talking to him. That backup right-hand man says Epstein did not discuss that idea with him beforehand, and that he declined to serve. Quote, he says, he couldn't have listed Bill because that would have been too obvious, so he chose me. I have come to believe it was a retaliatory move against Bill Gates, as in it was like a shot across the bow about how close their relationship was. To tie him into everything.

And to tie him into everything. So I think that the rabbit hole goes. It's wild. In terms of how deep the rabbit hole goes, this is just the surface. And it is confirmation of what all of us suspected, that he would get elites into compromised positions by inviting them to his island, flying them on the plane and making them feel like everything was cool. And then using

that information to blackmail them in business transactions. This is it. It's clear as day. He used information that he gleaned from his personal relationships and extramarital affairs that would have been publicly embarrassing and used it directly in terms of a business relationship. Yeah. This is clear cut. Yeah. And then the only question is whether there were also governments like our own and or Israel. Exactly.

That also would have found that sort of compromising information on the wealthiest, most powerful people on the planet useful to their ends as well, which is the other part of this that, you this that I think we've all long suspected. But yeah, this was what he did. He would make you feel like, he would do everything to make you feel like he was your best friend. Even we got the details from the Wall Street Journal.

They've been on it in terms of this recent reporting that he would make people feel like they were his number one friend. He'd figure out what type of sushi they wanted, what were their little needs that they had that they needed met, you know, Noam Chomsky and whatever this account transfer was, like whatever problem you had, Jeffrey Epstein was going to be there for you to try to make it go away. And he was going to invite you to all these, you know, glamorous gatherings, et cetera, et cetera. And everybody was in the club. So what's the problem

here? If he's being accepted by Bill Gates and all these other billionaires, then surely it's fine for you to associate with him as well. And then whatever compromising information he could get on you, you know, from being at his parties, being on his jet, being on his island, from knowing about your affairs or whatever it is, then he would weaponize to try to get from you whatever it was that he wanted. So you can see the game here. I mean, you see this Les Wexner, who was his primary benefactor, obviously, and probably the primary source likely of Epstein's wealth and his ability to live like a billionaire himself, even though there isn't a lot of record of him having a lot of big clients

that would really justify this type of lifestyle. Very similar dynamic there as well. And then it is quite a tantalizing and bizarre detail that it was literally days before he died, however you want to make of that, that he changes the executor, the backup executor on his will. That is a pretty extraordinary detail there. What is clear to me is that,

what is very clear and obvious to me about what's happening is that somebody who has access to a whole lot of Epstein information leaked it all to the Wall Street Journal. And they have been doing drip, drip, drip reporting about the Noam Chomsky meeting. They did the Larry Summers story originally, and I don't think it takes much of a genius

to figure this out. I think it was the U.S. Virgin Islands because the U.S. Virgin Islands has an ongoing suit with Epstein against Epstein's estate, not only for the victims, but to expose some of his dealing. Clearly, they have access to his calendars and to his emails and to some other things

and other information that has not come out publicly. That now is being deployed in the press, most likely as an effort to try and get the Epstein estate to settle or at the very least pay them whatever they want in terms of that suit. Now, I actually am against it. I just want this information published. And this is my message to the U.S. Virgin Islands and others. Get your bag, but also publish everything you got.

Because this is such a matter of public interest now. You know, because this is only scratching the surface in terms of the wealthiest, most powerful men. We need to know more about the governments, like Ayyub Barak, the Israeli prime minister, who slept over at his house constantly, or Bill Clinton and the number of times that he flew on the jet. I mean, that's the other thing that it becomes so crazy when you're reading this, is the amount of times that they were just flying casually on each other's private

jets from different destinations, and the idea that they didn't know each other, obviously, deeply and intimately whenever the calendar shows that they met dozens of times. I mean, you know, we even showed that former Obama lawyer who had met many times with Epstein, who then went to go work as a top lawyer, I think, for Goldman Sachs. I mean, there were several other meetings and things that have taken place, which it's very difficult to explain. And this lawsuit, I think, has the keys to a lot more info about him. Yeah. Well, they just started looking at subpoena Elon Musk as well. Right. So, I mean, it really is crazy the number of people that he,

in the highest echelons of society, was able to associate and ingratiate himself with. Yeah. It really is astonishing. I mean, you just look at these reports and you're like, was there any elite in the world that didn't end up having some sort of Jeffrey Epstein connection? The only answer is no. Yes. So anyway, we'll see where the Wall Street Journal drops next.

But this Bill Gates piece is pretty extraordinary. All right, we have some more details about Dianne Feinstein, oldest serving member of the Senate currently, who is in very poor health, who is facing calls to resign, who is clearly unable to really perform the very basics of her job. There has been reporting for years now about how her memory has been fading as she ages and how she's been in decline that appear to have been accelerated by this bout of shingles that they had previously acknowledged there were some complications with. Well, we are getting a sense now of exactly what those complications were, and they are quite dire. Let's put this up on the screen from the BBC. Senator Dianne Feinstein suffered brain inflammation as a complication of shingles. She had encephalitis. She contracted encephalitis. That is a type of brain inflammation. She also developed Ramsey-Hunt syndrome that can cause that facial paralysis that you are seeing

there. They put out a statement that the encephalitis, I'm talking about Feinstein's office, the encephalitis resolved itself, but she continues to deal with Ramsey-Hunt syndrome. Let me just read you a little bit of this article so that you can see the technical medical details. She did return on May 10th after nearly three months of absence. She'd been admitted to the hospital after being diagnosed with shingles in late February. Her spokesman told the BBC on Thursday that she previously disclosed she had several complications related to her shingles diagnosis. And those complications included Ramsey-Hunt syndrome and encephalitis. It continued while this encephalitis resolved itself. She still has that Ramsey-Hunt syndrome

she's dealing with. Her aide's statement contradicted the senator's own remarks on Thursday. According to CNN, the network quoted Ms. Feinstein herself as denying she had encephalitis, saying, quote, it really has never been diagnosed properly and it was a really bad flu. It can result in symptoms including personality changes, seizures, confusion, and problems with sight or hearing, according to the Mayo Clinic. So her health and her ability to capacity to perform the most basic functions of this job already engraved out, just further degraded by the health complications that she is class, Nancy Pelosi in particular, but a bunch of California Democratic elites are using her as a pawn to get their own way in terms of politics. And it is just, obviously, it's just grotesque at this point. Yeah, well, that is the part where I thought

we should spend time because this shows you how craven and repulsive these people are. They are literally willing. Let's put this up there are. Yes. They are literally willing. Let's put this up there on the screen. They are literally willing. Nancy Pelosi has deployed her own daughter who literally does not work for Dianne Feinstein in any way to be the primary caregiver and to shepherd her away from the media. Now, it is clear here that what they are trying to do is drag her base literally across the finish line, regardless of her mental faculties, because if she were to resign from office, Crystal, Governor Gavin Newsom has said that he would appoint a black woman. And if that black woman who currently would be very likely to be appointed

is Barbara Lee, who is running for the Senate against Adam Schiff. And guess what? Pelosi endorsed Adam Schiff. Therefore, if her and her henchwoman, her daughter, allow Feinstein to go, then it's very likely that their chosen Adam Schiff candidate will not be the next senator because whoever gets appointed to the seat very obviously would have a better leg up in the overall primary. I mean, look, am I wrong here? Or is that not the most obvious thing about what's going on? The moment you learn it's Christine Pelosi, Pelosi's daughter, rolling her around the Capitol. It's not Christine Pelosi. I'm sorry.

Nancy Corrine Proud is her name. It's her oldest daughter. But yes. I apologize. I apologize. Still a Pelosi daughter. Yeah, Pelosi daughter. Who's rolling her around the Capitol.

How can you possibly think, like, this is not what's going on here? Well, and you will recall when Congressman Ro Khanna, also of California, began publicly calling for Feinstein's resignation. Remember what the Pelosi people said to the press and what Pelosi said? Number one, she called him sexist, which is disgusting. Number two, they insinuated that he was the one with the political motives because he supports Barbara Lee. I don't know if he's publicly endorsed her or not, but, you know, they're clearly more ideologically aligned. He likes Katie Porter, Barbara Lee more than he likes Adam Schiff. And so they accused him of having the ideological and political motive here. Well, that was clearly projection. I mean,

they're the ones who are, this is elder abuse at this point, propping up Feinstein and at great risk to her own health and, you know, survival, length of survival to come to D.C. and face this kind of intense media scrutiny and, you know, long schedule when she should be at home recovering and enjoying the last years of her life. So it really is disgusting to see the way that they are toying with, you know, the people of the country, toying with their own constituents in California, hamstringing the work of the Senate. And also this woman that they, you know, really pretend to revere. This is incredibly damaging for her. And just in very no doctor would recommend that she go and serve in her capacity as U.S. senator right now because she is so clearly not up to the rigors of that job. Yeah, well, I actually even read more about how many, unfortunately, many of the people who Feinstein still at this point is able to recognize and to trust are all gone. Her former chief of

staff, he's gone. Her husband died very recently, that was a big blow. But he was one of the only people who very likely could have been like, hey Diane, it's time to hang it up. Like, we gotta go. And she won't do it. Her own kids, and apparently, but also Pelosi and others who could do it just won't. And so I think it's obvious, I think it's very obvious

what the game is here. All to get frickin' Adam Schiff as senator. I mean, that is gross. On every level, it is so gross. This person that you consider to be a friend and you're doing this to her in service of your own political agenda. And that's the thing. Why else would her daughter be the one chauffeuring her around? There's no other reason.

Yeah. Especially whenever you're- They're very close for a long time. No, no. Okay. Okay? Yeah, she just appeared out of nowhere just to wheel her around the Capitol. I don't believe it.

I don't believe it for a second. All right, Tiger, what are you looking at? Well, in retrospect, probably the most insane thing that ever happened during the pandemic had nothing to do with lockdowns. It was simple and one we will be telling our kids about 25 years from now. Used cars went up in value. The sky actually did turn green. I myself benefited from it.

My Jeep was involved in an accident. Mechanic looked me dead in the eyes after fixing it. He said, you would be an idiot not to sell this the day I took it out of the shop because it would never be worth that much again. By my estimation, he saved me like $5,000, which I needed after losing that exact amount on BlockFi after it went bankrupt. So I owe him one. Outside of my own personal experience though, the car market is one of the most important in the United States to the average consumer. The wild swings that have happened within it actually tell us a lot about the modern economy. And to understand exactly where we are, take a look at

this chart. As you can see, prices were relatively flat during the zero interest rate period of 2010 to 2020. And then they absolutely lost their minds. Used cars spiked to 45% above inflation during the pandemic before falling to below 14% below inflation before again last month spiking 7%. On top of these crazy swings in used car prices, though, is a steady trend which is awful for everyone. All goods and services, as you can see, remain up 5% from the previous average with new car prices right there with them. The question of why those new cars not only remain up but may not go down anytime soon is a fascinating one.

This investigation sought to get to the bottom of. One expert who runs a car app that monitors prices across many dealerships actually explained it this way. Automaker factories shut down during COVID. When they spun back up, there's a huge shortage of semiconductors. With that shortage, they then prioritize their most expensive models over cheap cars. This way, the only ones that get produced actually make them a big profit. Then though, when they get to the dealer, the dealer takes advantage of the shortage and the premium product

goes even higher by racking up the price more than they ever could have dreamed before 2019. One government estimate actually found that auto dealers make up anywhere between one-third and two-thirds of all new car inflation that consumers are experiencing. It must be a good line of work if you can get it. These car dealers are printing money all throughout the pandemic. And now, as you can see from the chart before you, they continue to do so, largely because they have discovered their game. They're going after wealthy clients who have a ton of money post-pandemic and in many cases can pay straight cash. They don't have to worry about a car payment.

This, of course, reduces the number of people who can even consider a new car, given that the current average price for a new vehicle hovers around a whopping $50,000. This is what makes used car price so powerful. They make up more than two-thirds of the entire car market. But I've got bad news, too, for everyone on that front. The share of used vehicles for sale today in the U.S. today below $20,000 remains near the bottom. To put it in perspective, more than 60% of used cars sold before 2019 were below 20 grand. Today, that number is 30%. In fact, a new analysis finds, quote, even the average seven-year-old vehicle with 75,000 miles on it is selling for more than $20,000. The current average selling price of a used car is some $28,381, which feels crazy to say out loud.

In my head, that's what a new car should sell for. Yet, here we are. This underscores, again, just how much the backs of the poor and the middle class are against the wall. A sizable portion of the US population is quite literally a blown tire away from bankruptcy with very little options if they get in even a slight pickle where you need a new vehicle other than the one which you are driving. Really what this underscores is the death of entry ease in the country. There are no more starter homes because the average price of a home is $436,000. That's 32% increase in two years. The average mortgage payment is now $2,300 per month. That's 30 grand a year after taxes.

Of course, that includes shelter. So if you abide by the rule that mortgage payments should be no more than, let's say, a third of your take-home pay, it really means your take-home pay needs to be like 90 grand. Now, average household income in the U.S. is $75,000, which means that for most people, they responsibly probably should not buy a house in this current environment. Roll in a car payment to that. Per bank rate data, the average car payment today is

between $500 and $700 per month. Not only that, car insurance rates have skyrocketed lately, adding an additional $2,000 per year on average. The total of what I call the existence tax is actually getting to a point where even on average income, it is getting straight up uncomfortable. And I will end with this. The way that economists and even people like us sometimes talk about inflation and overall prices, it really misses a mark. You got core CPI, core inflation, all that stuff. It misses this point. Certain prices are just more important than others. The price of housing, the price of a car, the price of gas, the price of food, healthcare. Those matter more than any others. They're burned into our everyday ability to survive. And when we start seeing not only

inflation in those areas, but inflation and wild swings that vary more than the prices of random consumer goods like TVs, then we have a really screwed up economy. And funnily enough, the overall fix to this is probably pretty simple. We just need more cars. We have so much demand, not enough supply. The reason for our lack of supply is because of financialization within the car industry and current government subsidies, which are for electric vehicles, definitely cool, and obviously for the future, but still remain prohibitively expensive. The number one target for our government policymakers should be cost and standard of living. All else should flow from that decision matrix.

Instead, we got the worst of both worlds. You got runaway free market capitalism combined with government incentives that are doing very little to scratch any of the surface. We have a building problem and we need to get to work on this yesterday. $28,000 for the average price. And if you want to hear my reaction to Sager's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. Crystal, what are you taking a look at? Well, guys, the story had everything to make it catnip for right-wing media. According to the New York Post, about 2,000 homeless veterans had been kicked out of an upstate New York hotel

called the Crossroads in order to free up space for migrant asylum seekers. Now, the head of that nonprofit group, Sharon Tony Finch, relayed the harrowing tale to the New York Post. She said, one of the vets called me on Sunday. He told me he had to leave because the hotel said the extended stay is not available. Then I got another call. We didn't waste any time, the advocate said. That's when we started on Monday to organize when and where to move them all. I am glad you called me today, she told the Post.

Last night, I was crying. Now, the conservative media ecosystem quickly picked up the story. They ran wild with it. A columnist at the Post said Joe Biden should, quote, burn in hell for this. Fox News in particular, of course, they leaned in heavily to this too-perfect tale of illegal immigrants supplanting men who had served our country on outnumbered. host said the incident proved Biden was a liar when he said God bless the troops and that he's quote more concerned about the needs of the UN about the World Economic Forum than he is about his own American citizens. Just one little tiny problem. Turned out the whole thing was a complete hoax cooked up by a right wing Jussie Smollett to fan the flames of the nation's media fueled culture wars. A local paper, the Mid-Hudson News, actually exposed the entire scam. First, they did the most basic act of journalism, which either Fox or the New York Post could have done before running with a story that had

absolutely no backing. They called the hotel that was supposedly at the center of this veterans booted for migrants story, found they denied every aspect of it completely. The hotel did actually have some asylum seekers as guests, but no one had been kicked out for them. And in fact, they had plenty of rooms available to accommodate veterans or anyone else who wanted to stay there. A second hotel in Fishkill, New York, where the veterans were supposedly relocated, also denied the basics of the story. Next, you had a Republican state lawmaker who had taken up the mantle of advocating for these supposedly displaced veterans, admitted to the paper that appeared the whole story was fake after the head of that nonprofit, originally quoted by the Post, was unable to

produce any evidence of his veracity and then ultimately ghosted him. And to put the final nail in the coffin here, the paper then identified homeless men who'd been recruited by that nonprofit head, Sharon Tony Finch, with food, alcohol, and the promise of a cash payment to lie and pretend that they were the men who had been kicked out of the hotel. According to the Mid Hudson News, one of the men said Finch told them they were going to a meeting where she would be explaining how they'd been kicked out of a hotel to make room for migrants, she told us to act like we were the veterans that had been displaced. And she told us that if asked, we were supposed to say we had been kicked out, and Sharon found us rooms in Fishkill.

He also noted that men who were unwilling to answer were told to respond with, I am too traumatized to talk about it if asked. In the end, this lady did not even give these men the $200 cash payment she had lured them with. Now, after Fox spent hours flogging the story in emotional language, they attempted to clean up their mess with a couple of short corrections. You can bet millions of people who heard the original story, they will never hear that it all turned out to be complete and utter hoax. Workers for the hotel at the center of the lie, they had been besieged by irate phone calls and physical threats. Now, the sad thing is this wasn't even close to the

only national culture war story that was revealed as a hoax just in the last week. A Senate candidate who had claimed that he witnessed child sex trafficking while working at an adult bookstore, he was forced to retract his story and admit he had lied. In a sworn affidavit after being charged with making a false statement, he confessed, quote, on April 9th, 2022, I went to work at the mistress. When I arrived at work, I noticed a young girl and an elderly male in the store near the ATM. I immediately recognized this as an opportunity to potentially obtain traction for my political career. He continues, I used the opportunity to take photographs of a child and send it to my followers. This is a topic of serious concern amongst my voter base, and I intentionally brought attention to a situation that simply did not occur.

It goes on to express regret for slandering an investigating law enforcement officer, potentially endangering the child that he photographed, and causing cops to spend hundreds of hours investigating what was a fake crime. There was also a viral video incident involving a supposedly racist Karen fighting over a rental bike with a group of young black men. She was accused by famous civil rights attorney Ben Crump of attempting to steal the bike from these young black men. He wrote on Instagram, this is Crump, quote, she grossly tried to weaponize her tears to paint this man as a threat. This is exactly the type of behavior that has endangered so many black men in the past.

Well, turns out the instant judgment might have been exactly backwards. This nurse, who was six months pregnant, provided receipts to the independent showing she had paid for the bike in question, a fact that was not shown in the video, which led to her being smeared nationally as a racist and also being put on leave from her job as a nurse.

According to her lawyer, she paid for the bike, was then heckled and harassed by the young men who physically pushed her and the bike back into the docking station, causing it to relock. One of the men, which you can see in the video, then covered up the QR code on the bike rack to prohibit her from checking that bike out again. So instead of a racist Karen,

this video might actually show the tail end of a pregnant nurse being mocked, harassed, and intimidated by a group of young men. Now, we didn't cover any of these stories. Not because we're such geniuses that we can intuitively spot every fake the instant it hits the partisan press, but because we try not to do news analysis by anecdote. After all, let's say that the racist Karen incident was true. Does one white lady being fragile and manipulative really tell us anything more broadly about the country? Factually grounded anecdotes,

they can be useful to help give color to established facts, data policy, or they can also be useful to help formulate a hypothesis that you then test. But on their own, they're mostly just propaganda, mostly emotional manipulation. Unfortunately, too, we have become a nation of easy marks. Millions of culture war poison brains just primed for the next viral video or anecdote to confirm what we think we already know, with media ghouls ready to cherry pick stories to reinforce our elaborate mind palaces and fame-hungry charlatans ready to outright concoct narratives that are tailor-made to draw us in with irresistible culture war bait. Pundits and influencers ready to pounce in order to boost

their own clout too. And this is all before AI-generated deep fakes thoroughly flood the zone, making it even more difficult to separate fact from fiction. Be wary of these two perfect culture war flashpoint stories. Reject the news outlets that routinely traffic in them. And be especially skeptical when a story matches up with your existing worldview a little bit too perfectly. This homeless veterans... And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. Thank you guys so much for watching. We really appreciate it. Crystal, you're going to be out tomorrow. Yeah, that's right. Subscribe today at BreakingPoints.com. on Wednesday on CounterPoint, so we're doing a little switcheroo. As you guys always wanted, you wanted multiple switcheroos, so there it is. We've got the...

We aim to please here. We've got the bro show, we've got the girl... What is it? The girl show? Whatever you guys want to call it. Ladies' Day. Ladies' Hour.

All right. So we'll see you guys tomorrow, me and Ryan. Thank you for everybody who's been signing up. Premium, we really appreciate it helping us as we approach our new set, new studio,

new vision for Breaking Points, BreakingPoints.com. Otherwise, we'll see you soon. I think everything that might have dropped in 95 has been labeled the golden years of hip-hop. It's Black Music Month, and We Need to Talk is tapping in. I'm Nyla Simone, breaking down lyrics, amplifying voices, and digging into the culture that shaped the soundtrack of our lives. Like, that's what's really important, and that's what stands out, is that our music changes people's lives for the better. Let's talk about the music that our lives. Like that's what's really important. And that's what stands out is that our music changes people's lives for the

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