Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 5/2/23:'Godfather Of AI' Says SHUT IT DOWN, DeSantis Freaks Over Guantanamo Allegations, 2023 Bank Failures, Leaked Tucker Video, Covid Natural Origin, Commercial Debt Bomb, James Fox "Moment of Contact"

Episode Date: May 2, 2023

Krystal and Saagar discuss Biden blinking on the Debt standoff with McCarthy, the 'Godfather Of AI" making public calls to shut down development, Republicans develop their first AI political attack ad, ChatGPT nukes Chegg's 'Homework' Business, DeSantis freaks when questioned over allegations he took part in torture at Guantanamo, how the Disney lawsuit is a dangerous corporate power grab, revelations that the 2023 bank failures are bigger than 2008, JP Morgan and Jamie Dimon become way too big to fail with purchase of First Republic, polls show that Americans overwhelmingly blame the Media for the country's division, leaked video from Tucker shows him shredding Fox Nation live streaming, Vice News being weeks from bankruptcy, Saagar looks into how the Covid natural origin theories fall apart, Krystal looks into the Commercial Property Debt Bomb that could destroy the economy, and we're joined by filmmaker James Fox to discuss his documentary "Moment of Contact" and reveal new video evidence concerning a potential alien encounter in Brazil.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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Happy Tuesday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed we do. We have breaking news this morning with regards to the debt ceiling. We will break down those developments for you as a deadline approaches incredibly quickly, more quickly than we were really expecting. Also, some new, quite troubling warnings about AI from people who have worked on it, who know a lot about it. So we will break all of that down for you. We're going to review DeSantis' international struggles and the way

that was covered by the media as his fight with Disney seems to escalate. We've got fallout from what we covered yesterday, the second largest bank failure in history. What is that going to mean going forward? We've got new numbers on trust in the media. You will not be shocked. And my personal favorite block today, some leaked audio from Tucker Carlson before he left Fox News, which is rather entertaining and revealing and all of those good things. Also, the collapse of Vice. Can't forget about that one. Yeah, that's right, which is pretty wild.

I mean, Vice was like the news outlet to be between them and BuzzFeed News. I've got a lot to say about that. Both collapsing. I know. It is wild. And also, I know Sagar is very excited to talk to you. James Fox, who is a filmmaker behind Moment of Contact, which I watched last night and which two watched previously and is very interesting. So excited to talk to him as well. But we did want to start with that big breaking news with regards to the debt ceiling. Yeah, that's right. Let's go and put it up there

on the screen, guys. This is just a very important update for everybody. The president actually called Speaker McCarthy yesterday while he was traveling abroad in Israel. And President Biden asked McCarthy to meet. The date of the meeting has been set now for May 9th. Now, the reason that that call is so important is because it came just basically about 20 or 30 minutes after the Treasury Department officially advised all of us on the day that the actual debt limit will be hit. Let's go and put this up there on the screen. Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen saying that the U.S. could hit the debt ceiling by June 1st. That is a lot earlier than a lot of initial projections.

If we parse her letter, Crystal, something that she said that it could be basically plus or minus a few weeks if they don't exhaust so-called extraordinary measures, but saying that that is basically the deadline as to when the U.S. would likely default on its debt. It also, just because so much of this, while we may not technically default or not, there is an expectations game where if the Secretary of the Treasury says it's June 1st, then Wall Street will act like it's June 1st. So even if you technically have a day or two left, like that's the day, though, that the

market will likely crash. Gotcha. And that could mean then disaster. So what does that mean for everybody? Obviously, Biden blinked. He kept saying, I'm not going to negotiate. I'm not going to negotiate. It's like, okay, well, you called Speaker McCarthy. Now we're negotiating. He has called in all four congressional leaders. So Mitch McConnell will be there. Chuck Schumer will be there. And Hakeem Jeffries will be there as well. They're going to try and strike some sort of bargain. Reporting currently indicating, Crystal, that Mitch McConnell wants to stay out of it. I don't really believe that

for a second. There's got to be some sort of Jekyll and Hyde situation going on behind the scenes. But almost certainly a deal of some kind is going to get struck. At least that's what I think. Just because Biden, he kept saying he wouldn't negotiate. And this is kind of what I was saying earlier, too. It's so stupid. It's like, look, obviously, we're all going to negotiate. So let's just start negotiating. We will see now, though, where that goes. Here's part of the issue, scheduling-wise. So we got a month. OK. But President Biden's going to be gone for a week. He's leaving the country for almost nine days. And he only works like three hours a day. He only works three hours a day. and he's going to Japan and Australia.

So he's going to be tired. Yeah. So we can add that in there. So really, we've got like 20 days to actually get this done. And not only do we need a bargain, we need to not only have the negotiation, it's got to pass the House and then pass the Senate and then get signed by the president. What are we going to do? I think the president has played this extremely poorly.

Yes. If you say you're not going to negotiate, then don't negotiate with terrorists. I mean, and that's what they are holding the economy hostage at a time that things are very precarious. I mean, we just literally had the largest bank failure, second largest bank failure in history. When you add together these three bank failures that we've had in a very short period of time is actually larger by dollar amount than what we had in 2008. So that's just to underscore the precarity of the economy as the Fed continues raising interest rates. And you want to play games with this debt ceiling.

This is where the fact that Biden is this like norm abiding institutionalist becomes a disaster, becomes a potential global disaster, becomes a disaster for regular people, becomes a disaster for the economy. He shouldn't negotiate. He should stick to his guns. He should take one of the extraordinary measures. He at least should not take those off the table because that's the only thing he has to put pressure on the Republicans who are taking, in my opinion, an unconscionable position here. And so, you know, I think he blinked. I think it shows incredible weakness. And I also think it's part and parcel with the fact that with Ron Klain out as chief of staff and with Jeffrey Zients in, Biden has made this very clear, like pivot towards the center or towards the right.

I would say that this is, you know, part of that, the idea that we're going back to the Obama days and we're going to have some kind of grand bargain or sequestration or whatever. I just think it's incredibly weak in that he's really mishandled it. I think he has mishandled it in two ways, as you said. You know, you're either going to do the extraordinary measures to say, screw you, or you should have been negotiating now for months and not even let the turmoil happen. But you're almost trying to have it both ways by trying to appear tough but then also buckling.

So it's like, dude, you've got to choose one. You know, which way are we going down here? So, look, we'll all see. We Which way are we going down here? So look, we'll all see. We'll keep you guys updated. It matters for all of us, the US economy, stock portfolios, and all of that. So make sure that you keep that in mind. And we just wanted to give everybody a quick update on what unbelievably is the biggest news. Also, we did want to say to all of you, thank you all so much to those of you who have been signing up for premium memberships, who've been helping us out as we are building the new studio. We showed everybody the lights there.

I did receive some troubling news, Crystal. The monthly members feel as if they're being left out. So let's all be very clear. We love the monthlies. We have no favorites. We were only shouting out yearly and lifetime because that helps in terms of cash flow realizing at this moment. But the idea that we don't love and appreciate you is ridiculous. Yes, exactly.

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but keep all of that in mind and just know to all of you and to all of the existing monthly, yearly, and lifetime members, we love you very, very dearly. Especially to those who can help us in this time just because you guys, we're all on a ride together. And I think it's really cool, especially in the context of BuzzFeed is dead. FiveThirtyEight is dead. Now Vice is going bankrupt. I mean, which is dead. FiveThirtyEight is dead. Now Vice is going bankrupt, which is insane. I don't think I would be sitting at this desk if it wasn't for Shane Smith's Vice guide to North Korea. And we're going to avoid all the mistakes that they made over there.

Trying to learn from the pitfalls of the past, for sure. But, I mean, it does create a real, you know, you don't cheer for anyone certainly to lose their job. But it does show you there's a real opening in the media landscape. That's right. And a real void to be filled at a moment when, you know, we're heading into yet another critical presidential election where a lot of people who maybe aren't normal political consumers are starting to dip their toe in the water, starting to think about, OK, what do I think about these issues? Where do I stand with regards to this election? And we would love to have a setup where we can welcome them and they feel like it's the level of professionalism that they

could get in other places as well. Exactly right. And we are also very happy to be able to just take, what, one or two minutes out of our day here rather than have the new studio brought to you by Pfizer or any of the other- We would never do that. Brought to you by First Mutual Bank or First Republic Bank, maybe God forbid. Everything would be brought to you by Chase at this point since they own the entire world. Brought to you by Chase.

The manscaped Chase studio. Or it could be the Breaking Point studio entirely funded by all of you. So we love you and we thank you all very much. Let's get to the news here on artificial intelligence. Absolutely extraordinary development yesterday. Let's put this up there on the screen. The quote-unquote godfather of AI has left Google and is now warning of dangers ahead. The so-called godfather of AI's name is Jeffrey Hinton. He's actually a scientist in his 70s who has been working in the AI field since

the 1970s, Crystal. His company was actually bought by and acquired by Google in 2012, and he's been at the forefront of AI development now for decades. He actually won the Turing Award along with some colleagues, which is basically considered the Nobel Prize of computing. Now, within that, what is Dr. Hinton saying? Dr. Hinton is warning that bad actors could use AI to supplant humanity, possibly. He is warning that the previous idea, which he thought was far-fetched, which is that AI could at one point

match human intelligence and even go beyond, is much closer than is previously known. He quit Google specifically because he wanted the ability to speak out, not just against the company, but against AI development and call for better regulation around it. But really what opened my eyes was he sees this as a race to the bottom because he believed while working at Google that they were taking their best steps to responsibly develop this product. But then what

changed everything? Microsoft's partnership with OpenAI and the integration of ChatGPT into the Bing search system. That has lit a fire inside of Google for the first competition really that they faced in what, decades, you know, in the history of the entire company. Basically, ever since they created AdWords, they've been printing money over there and they've always enjoyed basically a monopoly on search. For the very first time, they believe that they have an existential threat to their business, which means they are much more likely to discard any safeguards that they might have in place and go forward in developing technology, which you can't take it away. Once you go forward, it's in the system and it's out in the sphere,

and then other countries could use it. He's also especially concerned, Crystal, about the use of AI robots in combat, something that he currently sees as inevitable too. Yeah. In fact, he spent his career avoiding, he actually went and worked in Canada for part of his career because he wanted to avoid taking any Pentagon funding for AI because he's very opposed to these systems being used on the battlefield, which shows you this is, I think, a principled person, number one. Number two, I really recommend people read through not just this one, but we're going to highlight a few warnings from other people who are serious, thoughtful experts in the subject. And even if you think what Dr. Hinton is saying and what some of the

others are saying is overwrought, if there is a 1% chance that they are correct, we have to take dramatic action. I mean, some of these experts are warning this could literally be the end of humanity. Now, is that like guaranteed? No. Do I have any way really of assessing whether that's overriding or not? I don't know. If there's even a 1%, if there's even a 0.1% chance that they're correct, we should be taking dramatic action. So that's the frame within which I'm viewing all of these comments and all of this analysis. Let me read you a few of his words just to give you a sense of him and what he's arguing

specifically. He says that he consoles himself for his involvement in developing this AI with the normal excuse, if I hadn't done it, somebody else would have. It is hard to see how you can prevent the bad actors from using it for bad things. Maybe what's going on in these systems, he goes on to say, is actually better than what is going on in the brain. The idea that this stuff could get smarter than people, a few people believe that. But most people thought it was way off. I thought it was way off.

I thought it was 30 to 50 years or even longer away. Obviously, I no longer think that. He compares the development of the state to basically a nuclear arms race and says it should be handled in at least as a gross of a manner, but also points out that it's actually more difficult to deal with than that because, you know, there are telltale signs when a country like, you know, North Korea, Iran, whoever, is developing a nuclear weapon. There are ways for us to see. This would be a lot easier to hide. So even if you have some sort of a global agreement to shut down the development of this AI until we can, you know, get our wrap our hands around it at the very least, to be able to police that would be extraordinarily and extraordinarily difficult.

They say, unlike with nuclear weapons, there's no way of knowing whether companies or countries are working on the technology in secret. The best hope is the world's leading scientists to collaborate on ways of controlling the technology. He goes on to say, I don't think they should scale this up more until they have understood whether they can control it. And that's one of the key pieces here is with these large language models. Even the people who are developing the technology don't really fully understand what's going on under the hood because you sort of turn this thing loose and feed it all of this information from, you know, the web and other sources. And then you let it go and do its thing. And so that's why you end up with Sydney, the, the big chat bot sort of going rogue and professing her quote unquote love to Kevin Roos, this New York Times reporter. These are not behaviors that the

people who designed this AI expected Sydney to engage in. So it just shows you that even the people who are the experts in the field who are developing the technology right now, even they don't really know what's going on under the surface and what sort of results it could ultimately lead to. Yeah, I think that's a really important point. It's also there are several canaries in the coal mine who now look a lot better and were treated than at the time. One of them is Blake Lemoine. Let's put this up there on the screen.

He's that former Google engineer who actually went viral about a year ago whenever he went on the record with the Washington Post to warn that Google's language system had come to life and achieved sentience. He was actually widely mocked at the time, not going to deny, definitely has some interesting personal beliefs, religious, but hey, it's a free country. And one of the things though that he says is he worked on, you know, so-called AI ethics. He's a longtime engineer and he was absolutely convinced that sentience and some sort of feeling had been achieved by the system and that it was being hidden by Google. Now, here's the thing. At the time, everybody thought he was kind of crazy, as I said, alluding to his own personal religious issues. But the point is that now if the so-called godfather of AI, the Nobel Prize winning in

computing, a decades-long Google employee and one of the heads of the program is now coming out and vindicating at least somewhat what Blake Lemoine was saying in that article. I think we have to take it a lot more seriously, Crystal. Yeah. And, you know, it gets into these technical discussions about, OK, what is sentience technically and how would you test? I mean, the old test used to be, could you have a conversation with this thing and not know that? It wasn't human. Well, you know, we've clearly like we've flown by that and He argues that in a sense the question of sentience is kind of a distraction because whether or not it has self-awareness May not be the most relevant question in terms of what it means for humanity and what it means for the world and how it Behaves in the world. So he says, I don't like playing those word games with regards to

whether or not it's sentient, but if it makes some people feel better, use the right vocabulary. Okay, fine. Whatever floats your boat. What it comes down to is that we aren't spending enough time on transparency or model understandability. I'm of the opinion that we could be using the scientific investigative tools that psychology has come up with to understand human cognition, both to understand existing AI systems and to develop ones that are more easily controllable and understandable. That gets to what I was saying before about how even the people that are developing these things don't really understand what's going on underneath the hood and what sort of results that will end up with the AI achieving. He also talks about the fact, and I think this is really important, that what

we have seen as a public, that is not the furthest bleeding edge of where this technology is. So he says by the time the public learns about an AI product, the companies who built it, they've vetted their PR story, they've consulted with their lawyers, they've potentially lobbied regulators to get preferential legislation passed. Says that's one of the things I always dislike. Tech companies will try to get legislation passed that will govern technology that regulators do not yet know even exists. So that's the game that they're playing in Washington. He goes on to say they still have far more advanced tech that they have not made publicly available. The system he was playing with when he came to the conclusion this thing

has some sort of sentient awareness, he describes it as heavily multimodal, not just incorporating images but incorporating sounds, giving it access to the Google Books API, that stands for Application Programming Index, giving it access to essentially every API backend that Google had and allowing it to just gain an understanding of it all. That's the one that I was like, you know this thing? This thing's awake, and they haven't let the public play with that one yet. But BARD, which is the Google AI, is kind of a simplified version of that, so it still has a lot of the kind of liveliness of that model. So as much as what we've seen publicly is sort of mind blowing and a little bit terrifying, what these companies have that

they haven't turned loose to the public is, you know, orders of magnitude more advanced. So what's going on there? You know, what's going on underneath the hood there? What are the implications of that? I don't think there's a person on the planet who can really say with certainty. Yeah, I think you're absolutely correct. There's another important point. It's kind of like with computers. By the time it's off the assembly line, it's completely obsolete relative to what they're developing in, let's say, Apple Labs or inside of Microsoft or any of these other places.

It's probably two to three years out of date. That's the case with any mass-consumable technology. And especially in the realm of software, what is completely experimental versus what is being shipped is huge, like massively apart. And anyway, I think we should really heed his words, the godfather of AI, and I think this will remain one of the biggest stories in the world. Now, also in terms of politics, it has already come into the political system. A lot of people didn't notice, but the GOP's Republican response to President Biden's reelection was actually done with AI-generated images. And we have some of that that we can play for you. Let's take a listen. This just in, we can now call you let's take a listen this just in we can

now call the 2024 presidential race for joe biden this morning an emboldened china invades taiwan financial markets are in free fall as 500 regional banks have shuttered their doors border agents were overrun by a surge of 80,000 illegals yesterday evening. Officials closed the city of San Francisco this morning, citing the escalating crime and fentanyl crisis. Who's in charge here? It feels like the train is coming off the tracks. So that was an AI-generated ad. Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen, guys. These were AI-created images that showed Biden and Kamala Harris celebrating at the Election Day party, reports about international domestic guys. These were AI-created images that showed Biden and Kamala Harris celebrating

at the Election Day party, reports about international domestic crises. These images were actually used through both, I think, either MidJourney or Dolly 2. Now, these are obviously things that we have seen be used in the creative system, but this is the thing about this type of technology. Anybody can use it. And it was done exactly so that they could have a rapid response ad almost immediately after it was done. And, like, who can deny? Look, like, those – it was quicker than Photoshop. And, you know, put the merits or whatever of the ad aside. It makes it come to life more when you have that type of imagery that you can look at and that you connect with and that you can bring into reality more rather than just a Photoshopped image

or a past Getty image that somebody is usually using. And this technology, to me, seems to have really developed quickly. I mean, from when we were first playing with Dolly and then you get these weird images, like hellscape dystopian images that you can tell right away were, you know, created by AI. These, if you pause the video, you can see some of those telltale signs. I saw people pointing out like one of the, AI has some trouble with human hands in particular. In that first scene, I think it's Biden at like the inauguration where you can tell his hands are like a little freaky if you look at it. And then the other thing, it can't do teeth properly.

It puts way too many teeth in people's mouths. And there's an image of him and Kamala Harris where both of them have way too many teeth, which actually serves to make them look more sort of villainous and evil in the ad, in my opinion. Like a cartoon, basically. Yeah, it makes them, yeah, it's sort of caricature-ish.

But what it made me realize is when you string all of these images together in sequence, you don't have time to really process what exactly about it is off. So you don't really have time to immediately have that trigger of, oh, this was AI generated. So that was revelatory for me, but also the fact that, yeah, this is already, this isn't, we're not talking about something that's far off in the future. We're talking about something that is here right now. And we have a couple other stories that, you know, serve to make that point as well.

Oh, yeah. I mean, look, I just think it's important for people to see, like, it's here now. It's over. Like, the 2024 election is now going to be, at least in part, the AI election. And that's going to change a lot of things. And speaking of change, we're going to get to one now of my favorite stories, which does make me very hopeful about AI. So when I was in college, there was this book company called Chegg, where you could rent your textbooks and everybody was doing it because at least it was cheaper than the goddamn bookstore. However, Chegg since then has expanded almost dramatically. I guess I don't want

to get sued by anybody here. Let's just say that they have internal products which help students on quizzes, exams, and other things for standard curricula. Some people have called it cheating. Some people, educators, have called it a place which is basically legalized cheating, and they have been printing money ever since. Their stock has been a longtime profitable company. Well, in a fascinating new filing, let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen, guys. They say this, quote, in the first part of the year, we saw no noticeable impact from ChatGPT on our new account growth, and we were meeting expectations on new signups. However, since March, we have seen a significant spike in student interest in ChatGPT, and we now believe it is having an impact on our new customer growth rate. That line alone sent the stock tumbling 37%, Crystal, 37%. Now, keep in mind,

Chegg is a $12 billion company. It was literally actually on the cover of Forbes magazine in 2021. The cover said this, this $12 billion company is getting rich off students cheating their way through COVID. Now, once again, they said it, not me. Now, what they say is that the Chegg study program, which was $15 a month that you can buy from Chegg, was one of those that you could subscribe to. It was basically a subscription product, which, you know, you could get essay prompts and other standardized curricula and students and others who had either filled out prompts before, and in some cases, people who work at Che out prompts for, and in some cases, people who work at Chegg basically helping richer kids or at least kids with money easily more make

their way through college. Well, what do we know now though, which is that ChatGPT has disrupted so much, not only of the way that kids cheat, but of the way that educators are working their way around cheating. And that's why I actually still believe ChatGPT could save education. Wrote, stupid, busy work has always been the bane of the existence. It was only created because of bureaucracy and the need to box check and all that. Now we have to get back to a place of in-person essays, which require spontaneity and thinking, which you can't, you know, you're handwritten, you can't use a computer. By the way, there's a lot of evidence.

You can go listen to Dr. Andrew Huberman's podcast about why handwriting something out is much better for you than typing. Take it from a guy who probably has terrible handwriting and actually doesn't write anything down. I still do think that there's a big role for that, especially whenever you're trying to learn and absorb information. But second, and probably most important, is it's bringing back in-person discussion inside of classes. I remember, I'm sure you do as well, being some of those gen ed classes

with four or 500 people. It's like, what are we doing here? This is, you know, we're all in a box checking some BS gen ed requirement. The guy doesn't want to be here. He's like some adjunct getting paid like $1,000 a semester eating ramen in his apartment. Everybody in the class doesn't want to be here. He's like some adjunct getting paid like $1,000 a semester eating ramen in his apartment. Everybody in the class doesn't want to be here. Everyone is just fake doing the reading.

It's all BS, except everybody in the room is taking out hundreds of thousands of dollars or whatever in student debt. So let's get away from that. Let's actually learn something. Let's have a discussion. And I think everybody, especially me, I can think back to the classes where I learned the most were ones where we did almost no busy work, very few essays. We just sit there and talked. And so I still think about my favorite professor ever. I don't remember any of the assessments.

All I remember is sitting there and having my mind blown by this guy who is just lobbing like intellectual bombs at us. And I'm like, I've never thought about something like that. And it still sticks with me, you know, to this day. Yeah, I mean, personally, I was like really good at the rote like memorization. Of course, that's not necessarily a good thing though, right? But you're a hundred percent correct. The courses I remember

and the things that I actually like retain from college had nothing to do with any of that. And I do think that there is a possibility that chat GPT and other, you know, AI sort of forces a rethink of education in a way that could be revitalizing and could ultimately be beneficial. But this also to me just shows, you know, now it's disrupting the cheating industry, the multibillion dollar cheating industry apparently. It shows you how quick the uptake is. It shows you how many people have already figured out ways to work this into their life to, you know, do whatever it is that they needed to be done. And, you know, it's clobbering this Chegg, but that's not the only company that is already anticipating that there are going to be huge impacts from this technology. And that's the

other piece of it. I mean, we talked about the warnings, some of them quite dire, some of them quite terrifying of what this AI could mean for all of humanity. There's also a lot of concern about what it could mean just in terms of employment and social disruption and how many millions of jobs could potentially be lost. And I know the COPE is always like, oh, well, people just use AI to help enhance the work that they're doing, maybe in some instances, but there's no doubt about it that that level of intelligent and ability to have automation could crush a lot of industries, could crush a lot of white collar work, which is ironic because a lot of the concern was about more blue collar or even service sector work. Now the real threat is in any sort of white collar industry where, you know, an AI could at least make the first pass for paralegals, accountants, all sorts of things that could be directly impacted by this. And again, not in the like long off distant future.

I'm talking like right now. Very, very soon imminent already happening. Yep. Keep it in mind, folks. It's just so funny, too, that the very first industry that ChatGPT appears to have nuked is effectively the privatized cheating program, which, look, you never know where these disruptions will come. And I think it's the first shoe to drop of many. Personally, again, I think it's a good thing. It's not really no offense to Chegg. It's more about the system that Chegg was architected to try and help. It was all crap in the first place. So like,

let's get to the point where you're just learning how to think. That's probably the most important thing you can learn in college if you're in liberal arts. On the math side and engineering now, that's actually completely different. But even there, a lot of the rote memorization quizzes and all of that, if you're cheating on it, then are you really learning what you're supposed to anyway? There's got to be a better way. I've always thought that, you know, both my parents and education, a lot of people have long been frustrated by curriculum and bureaucracy and all of the different, you know, ways that we got to where we are. And this is an opportunity to just be like, enough, let's start something new. So I really hope that we get there. We will keep watching it because I think this is one thing that could profoundly impact our entire society and civilization so

we'll keep our eye on it closely all right uh let's talk about Ron DeSantis was traveling overseas we brought you a little bit of that and you know it's funny because originally the media was really they were very bullish on Ron DeSantis conservative media was really excited about Ron DeSantis, really sort of propping him up. We know Rupert Murdoch over at Fox News and with his whole empire told Ron DeSantis, like, we're going to be all in for you guys. The trip did not appear to go too well for him. Now, I want to say these are headlines that were compiled by a Trump operative. Yes.

However, I can confirm from my own perusal of the news that the coverage of his overseas trip was almost, I don't know if I saw a single positive report from it. No. It's hard to think of one. So put this up on the screen. This is a compilation of some of the headlines that the Trump campaign is flagging about his trip overseas. Politico says, Ron DeTedius, DeSantis underwhelms Britain's business chiefs. The Independent says Ron DeSantis critics gloat over brutal reviews of his UK trip. Horrendous, low wattage board. NBC News. I think he's in trouble. Growing number of Ron DeSantis donors and allies hope for a shakeup. Newsweek. Ron DeSantis' presidential ambitions endure another

bumpy week. Roll call. What is Ron DeSantis da-doing? Intelligencer. All of Ron DeSantis' crimes against good etiquette. I'm sure Sagar would be very interested in that one. Yes, I should. Media. I watch Ron DeSantis

loses his shit yelling at reporter over torch allegations. We're going to show you that one. Rishi Sunak avoids Ron DeSantis on his UK visit. The list goes on. Republican mega-donor

withdraws support. Watch DeSantis does that weird bobblehead thing. Jason Miller to Newsmax. DeSantis running into a buzzsaw. Right now, Ron DeSantis lacks the killer spirit. After stumbles at home, he heads abroad to find his footing. That's probably the most even-handed one. That was from the New York Times. Ron DeSantis just lost another donor. Trump tossed DeSantis by 46 points. Fox News poll, Trump still top 2024 Republican preference. DeSantis is slipping. So not exactly what he was hoping for from his big, you know, very intentional international trip where he wanted to portray himself as a statesman. Many aspiring presidential candidates will do this sort of thing. The idea is that it's going to help voters imagine you in that role as being commander in chief and meeting with foreign leaders and dignitaries, etc.

If that was the goal, I don't think that this worked out for him too well. No, I don't think so. I also think it's a stupid custom. You know, people always do it. Like Romney went to London. Remember that? And he pissed off the Brits during the London Olympics. I don't remember that.

Oh, I do vaguely remember that. Yeah, that's right. Obama went to, I think it was Munich or Berlin maybe. And anyway, so he went to Berlin. And everyone's like, oh my, you know, a bunch of Germans showed up. And he's like, wow, the world loves Obama. It turns out that that's not actually any important metric in terms of being president. The custom probably dates back to Nixon.

The idea that Nixon was like this elder statesman probably dates back to Nixon, the idea that Nixon was like this elder statesman. That's where people get the idea that it should come from. I personally don't think it really matters at all. I'm not saying global experience doesn't matter, but in terms of electability, which is the... I can imagine a case being made that the Obama trip actually did help him because, I mean, he was, you know, this junior senator. He'd, like, spent three minutes in the Senate. And his whole appeal, especially within the Democratic primary, but also in the general election, was very foreign policy-based, you know, criticizing both Hillary Clinton and then ultimately John McCain for the Iraq War.

So I could see in that instance how it may have been beneficial for him. And I'm sure, I don't remember specifically, I'm sure he got glowing media coverage for it as well. So I can imagine how that sort of burnished his credentials. But if that was the goal for Ron DeSantis, he clearly didn't achieve it. Absolutely. Also, as you referenced, and this is the thing I keep coming away with DeSantis. DeSantis, the biggest news that he made when he was in Japan for his trip was having his bizarre, weird bobblehead response whenever he was asked about the polls vis-a-vis Trump. What that actually just showed to me is I'm like, dude, you don't really seem to do well under pressure. Same thing here. So the

Guantanamo allegations around DeSantis have been flying around for a while. Who knows whether they're true or not? You know, like actually to DeSantis' credit, he's like, this is coming from a detainee. You think they wouldn't want to make news? Maybe, maybe not. We know that he served there at Leaf for some time. The thing is, though, is wouldn't you be prepared for the question? And from what comes in this response, I think what you're going to see is I think he's been dealing with the C-League for a long time. And if he were to ever become president, this would be the easiest question you would ever get. And clearly, he gets flustered and he doesn't handle the pressure all that well. Let's take a listen to his response. Governor, during your time at Guantanamo, did you put the same incident?

No, no, not at all. That's BS. No, totally, totally BS. Did you say you were president during those meetings? Who said that? Detainees have told us. How would they know me? Okay, think about that. Do you honestly believe that's credible? So this is 2006.

I'm a junior officer. Do you honestly think that they would have remembered me from Adam? Of course not. They're just trying to get into the news because they know people like you will consume it because it fits your preordained narrative that you're trying to spin. Focus on the facts. What did you think, Crystal? I mean, I could see how some right-wing accounts might spin that.

Yeah, they were like, oh, we own. I didn't see it. I saw them get pretty flustered. The thing is with Trump is Trump had a remarkable ability to laugh at them, and then if they were really going to push it, he would be like he would be like excuse me excuse me and really own them I watched it happen several times it seems insecure just to me because I think it comes out guns blazing out of the gate he does never try to disarm sometimes with he with humor which is really just an underlying confidence issue I think whenever you're dealing with this yeah he's got thin skin and he gets ruffled easily. He does.

I mean, that's what it looks like to me. And, you know, never let him see you sweat. And clearly on this trip he had two instances at least where people with, you know, pretty obvious questions, things that have been floating around the press, his poll numbers in particular, where he gets, he reacts emotionally. And that's not something you ever want to do. I mean, really, that's a good lesson. Like, in life, you want to keep control of your emotions so that you are playing on your own ground and not letting people control you and get under your skin in that regard.

I do think the substance here matters, though, because DeSantis, we will never know exactly what DeSantis was involved in. The allegations are that he was involved in torture, in force feeding in particular of prisoners, that he was at least there viewing this. There were multiple detainees, which I'll remind you, the overwhelming majority of Guantanamo Bay detainees were never charged with anything. Many of them were just swept up, deemed enemy combatants, and they never brought them to any sort of trial because they couldn't actually find charges that would stick. So important to keep that in mind in terms of who the detainees are. There were quite a large number who said they recalled his face being present, at least, while they were being force-fed.

And he was there at a time that was really the worst. Let's put this up on the screen from Miami Herald. There's been multiple reports about, you know, what involvement he had at Guantanamo. This is Miami Herald. Their headline is very intimate knowledge. What Ron DeSantis saw while serving at Guantanamo. One of the things that they point out, the time period when he was serving there was one of the most tumultuous and most truly horrifying in the history of Guantanamo, which is really saying a lot. You had deaths of three detainees during that time. You had clashes with guards ruling the facility.

You had restraint chairs introduced during that time during the height of a massive hunger strike facilitating the force feeding of prisoners. As I said, this wasn't just like one detainee that said they were called him. It was a fairly significant number. Nobody has been able to fully confirm that. I don't think there's any doubt that he would have been well aware of all of these things that were going on while he was there as a JAG officer at the facility. And then the most important piece is, I think he came away from that experience, you know, seeing the torture or at least being aware of the torture and the deaths and the clashes and the totally unconstitutional

and unconscionable treatment of these, quote unquote, enemy combatants, this fake designation and all of those horrors. And he came away and was a very strident defender of it. I think that's important in terms of who he is, what his judgment is, his view of the world, his view of our responsibilities internationally and the way that we should treat human beings. So regardless of whatever his involvement technically was, to me, the most important point is that he was there during the height of some of the worst abuses and he came away and was incredibly aggressive and strident in defending it. Well, and that's another point about strength

where if you were going to answer that question, and if you still believe that, you're like, listen, I did my job while I was there. I never tortured anybody. This is fake news. Next question. It's one of those where, again, you're just coming at it from a position where it seems to me that he either appears like he wants to try

and always own the person but doesn't necessarily do it, or it comes from a position of genuinely being rattled by it. Either, I think both are lack of self-confidence, which is very important if you're going to run for office. Yeah. So there you go. Out of 780 individuals that went through Guantanamo since it opened, only 32 remain there. Eleven of those have been charged with a crime. I mean, this is a stain on America. It's a stain on every administration since the Bush administration,

including the Bush administration, that they have not been able to close down this facility. And I find it a real stain on his judgment and his career that he continued to defend what he saw up close and personal. The stupidest thing about Guantanamo, let me just say this, is that the reason you can't charge these guys with a crime, even though in some cases they are dead to rights guilty, is because they were tortured and we violated their rights. If we ever put them on trial, they could get off, but we couldn't use any of the information that we gleaned against them in a court of law, which is what FBI agents who were there at the time said.

They said, don't do this because by doing this, we can't prosecute them. And now it's inadmissible. And now you have a case where you literally have a 9-11 mastermind sitting in a cell and you can't charge him in a U.S. court. And you're going through some BS military tribunal trial, which doesn't make any sense, even though, of course, if you're going to prosecute him, he has protections under U.S. law. It was all foreseen at the time in 2001.

So you can thank George W. Bush and Dick Cheney and all the other idiots who said that there was clear and present danger. And it's 2023, and we still have a goddamn mess on our hands. So thank you, George W. Bush, for doing this. At the same time, we have new developments in terms of the fight between Ron DeSantis and Disney. We told you before, so you guys probably remember the backstory here. Disney came out against the so-called, don't say gay bill, put on a statement. Ron DeSantis and his allies reacted against that. This was, you know, him standing up to the woke corporation. And I think this thing has escalated way beyond what he would have liked. Like the rest of the country has moved on and he's still stuck now in this battle against a, you know, multinational, gigantic, behemoth company that happens to be incredibly central to the economy in Florida.

So he's picked a very large fight here. Disney is now suing DeSantis because they, before this Reedy Creek Improvement Board that they had control over, before this got turned over to DeSantis allies, they really kind of, you know, worked him over. They put out their notice that they were going to have a meeting. They did it twice, which is what you're required to do under law. They had this meeting. And the last act of the board before the DeSantis allies took it over was to hand control effectively to Disney and sign this gigantic development deal. Now the DeSantis people have come in. They're saying, no, no, no, we're going to roll back this deal. There's some legislation that is involved as well. And so Disney is saying, all right,

we're going to sue you. Now, I did a monologue before saying basically, listen, between Trump attacking DeSantis, DeSantis on this mess that he's created, Disney being a gigantic corporation, like there's really no one to root for here in my personal opinion. But the way that Disney crafted this lawsuit is something we should actually take a close look at. And some of the reporting on is kind of troubling. And you shouldn't, if you're, you know, on the political left or if you're just concerned about corporate power, you shouldn't necessarily be cheering for Disney to succeed in this lawsuit. But this analysis up from Slate, which is a sort of left liberal publication. This is Mark Joseph Stern. He's probably as big a lib

as it gets on these issues. I just want people to know. Yes, it's important to know who this person is and the perspective they're coming from. And he says, why I can't root for Disney's lawsuit against Ron DeSantis. I'm going to read you some of these specifics here, but the TLDR is that they have taken this very expansionist view that would hand a lot of power to states to quash and to courts to quash any sort of like labor law regulations. This is going, this is a throwback to the, one of the worst eras of the Supreme Court, if not the worst era of the Supreme Court, the Lochner era, where they used contract law to try to quash things like minimum wage legislation or, you know, minimum workday legislation, things that were beneficial

for labor. They tried to say, no, no, no, the contract clause in the Constitution says that you can't have any of these sort of regulations coming in to protect labor. Now, this has been left aside in terms of jurisprudence for more than 100 years that Disney is reaching back to. And a lot of other plaintiffs are reaching back to because they see the incredibly pro-corporation, right-word swing of the court, and they are hoping to bring back some of this Lochner-era jurisprudence. So let me read you a little bit of the analysis here. They say, this case is more about contract law than free expression, and by invoking the Constitution's Contracts Clause and leaning on it so heavily,

Disney is playing with fire. There's a reason this provision has sat moribund for nearly a century, interpreted broadly, it could give courts immense power to help corporations and employers escape regulation. The federal judiciary should not be handed another open-ended invitation to halt progress at the behest of the unscrupulous and powerful, which free speech gestures aside is what this is. Goes on to discuss how this became what he describes as a tool of mischief during the Lochner era. That was a period from the 1890s to the 30s when the Supreme Court routinely invalidated health, safety, and economic regulations.

The clause fit neatly into the court's conception of a constitutional liberty of contract that sharply limited state oversight of the marketplace. During this period, for instance, SCOTUS repeatedly used the contracts clause to preserve private monopolies over the water supply, preventing local governments from constructing their own waterworks, struck down a Kansas law enacted during a financial panic that let mortgage holders stay in their homes for several months after foreclosure. And as I said before, this is now being used, you know, to try to get around eviction moratorium, to try to get around rent stabilization laws, to try to get around wage increases. They're again arguing that this violates the contracts clause and this Disney suit fits into that matrix. This isn't, they're not arguing on free speech grounds. They're not even just arguing on like, you know, this was wrongly rolled back, this development deal that we put into place

and which was rightfully signed into law. They're not arguing any of that. They're going for this much larger, much broader, potentially much wider implications contracts clause argument. That's why, though, that it was always important to take a step back. And people were like,

I want to own DeSantis by supporting Disney and vice versa. Again, whatever you think about the merits, here's what was happening down there. Disney was running not just a magic kingdom, but a literal kingdom in Florida. They had the ability to tax themselves, the police force. They literally had almost total control over this town.

And it was effectively like a sovereign area akin to almost like a tribal nation inside the United States. Except it was a multi-billion dollar corporation. Now you need to ask yourself, are you okay with that? Because the previous times in American history when we had that were things like

Henry Ford's factory town, which was so wonderful because you could pay your rent to Henry Ford using your Ford bucks. Coal mining towns. Yeah, coal mining towns that then followed the Ford model. And you basically had people

in quasi indentured servitude and or slavery up until really like the 1920s and 30s whenever people rejected this in the height of the Great Depression. So the point is, like, do you want some sort of legal architecture to be allowed to exist? This also comes back to the crux of the Disney lawsuit. In the brief, they say Disney's First Amendment rights were violated. This comes from, you have to take a step back and say, well, hold on a second.

Do Disney employees have a right to freedom of speech? Absolutely. Does Disney, the corporation, have a right to free speech? In my opinion, no. I don't think any corporation should have a right to free speech because I don't think corporations are people. I don't think that they should be treated in any way in the same law. And that is actually where the crux of all of this comes down to. It's about power and it's about the fact that you can even listen. I'd support people's freedom of expression and a speech, but I just used a key word there, which is people, not corporations. Cause then it comes down to the idea that we, the people can't tell corporations what they can and cannot do, which

is the very basics of how civil governments govern commerce itself. Well, there's no doubt the Supreme Court disagrees with you. I know that. And with me on that. And that's one of the ironies here is that the conservative project that Ron DeSantis has long been a part of has stacked the judiciary with judges who look very favorably on Disney and other gigantic corporations having mass amounts of power and having, you know, complete personhood rights and complete free speech rights, et cetera. So that makes it,

you know, less likely that DeSantis is going to succeed here because again, this is the, the judicial picks have always been sold to the conservative base based on social issues. But as we've talked about before, I mean, a lot of the real game is about corporate power and about curbing labor power. And so that's the court system that this goes into. The last piece of this is this is the latest development. There is a countersuit now that Reedy Creek Improvement Board that used to be stacked with Disney people and is now stacked with DeSantis people. They are counter suing Disney. Put this up on the screen from CNN. They say DeSantis aligned board votes to sue Disney. The chair of this now called Central Florida Tourism Oversight District Board of Supervisors, that's the new name for this thing, says since Disney sued us, yes, we didn't sue

Disney. Disney sued us. We have no choice now but to respond. Yes, we will seek justice in our own backyard. So that's the very latest. I have no idea how the law will, how this will play out in terms of the legal, you know, decisions that are likely to come down here. But I think these are all important pieces to keep in mind. Yes, that's right. So let's talk a little bit about First Republic Bank. Yes. So yesterday we brought you the pretty shocking news that we were living through the second largest bank failure in history. So that's kind of a big deal.

And we now can bring you some more numbers about just how significant the turmoil in the banking sector of these past few months has really been. Put this up on the screen from the New York Times, they crunched the numbers and they found that the failed banks this year were actually bigger than 25 that crumbled back in 2008. And you can see it's pretty close. If you're looking at this bar chart, they just, these three banks that just failed just barely, you know, managed to surpass the 25 that failed last time around. They said the three banks held a total of $532 billion in assets. That's more than the $526 billion when adjusted for inflation, held by the 25 banks that collapsed in 2008 at the height of the global financial crisis. You will recall the implosion of Washington Mutual that year, as well as the investment

banks Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearnss was followed by failures throughout the banking system. And between 2008 and 2015, there were actually more than 500 federally insured banks that failed. Most of them were small or mid-sized regional banks, and most of them were absorbed into other institutions. And, you know, Washington Mutual itself, which was heavily involved in risky mortgages and became the largest bank to fail in history, was sold to JPMorgan Chase, just as First Republic has now been sold to JPMorgan Chase, which has made this bank an absolute giant. It is now by far one of the largest banks in the entire world. Jamie Dimon, as we discussed yesterday, is like one of the most powerful people in the world now. Ever since we had the 2008 crash, banks have only gotten bigger

and bigger and bigger. I think the number I saw is that JPMorgan Chase is now twice the size that it was before the crash happened. So the whole idea of we're going to end too big to fail, etc., didn't work out that way. Yeah, too big to fail is now policy. I mean, I said this yesterday, but having the numbers is nuts. JP Morgan, $3.2 trillion. Bank of America, $2.42 trillion. Citibank, $1.77 trillion. Wells Fargo, $1.72 trillion. The drop-off from the big four down to the U.S. bank is over a billion dollars. From their point, you get to $ billion, then PNC Bank is 500 billion, Trust Bank, 546, Goldman, 487, Capital One, 453, and TD Bank, 387. So the reality is, is it's exponential, the growth whenever it comes to the biggest banks in the US. And in fact,

we really just have four banks in this country that can control the vast majority of assets, which means that if any one of those four goes down, then you're looking at 2008 on steroids. And I just think that the headline there is something that we should all really internalize. The three failed banks, bigger than the 25 that crumbled in 2008. Now, we're not saying that this is 2008. It's not the same level of contagion. It's not the same level of systemic risk to the banking system. It's not going to have the same cascading effects. What we are showing you, though, is that the precarity within the economy is probably bigger than people think and that we could just be one or two events away from a possible 2008

environment. And even if we're not, the system that we have right now, if 08 ever hits again, do you really believe the regulators are totally doing their jobs? And if one of these big four goes down, one of these, the Bank of America, the JPMorgan Chase, the Citibank, Wells Fargo, we have four guys who are in charge of those. If just one of them, 25 know, the Bank of Americas, the JPMorgan Chase, the Citibank, Wells Fargo. We have four guys who are in charge of this. Just one of them, 25 percent, makes a decision, one in four chance. You could crash the entire U.S. economy. And it would be bigger than 2008 in terms of the bailouts that would need to be done and in terms of the risk that it poses to all of us. Yeah.

No, that's right. There were a couple other pieces we wanted to bring you here. So part of the issue that we discussed extensively in the wake of Silicon Valley Bank collapsing is, you know, what should be the FDIC and deposit insurance levels? 250K is in theory what it was, but when Silicon Valley Bank collapsed instantly, the government came in and said, no, no, no, we're actually going to backstop all deposits. So that raised a host of questions about, okay, well, you're doing that for everybody. What does that mean? Do we need to adjust the system going forward? And put this next piece up on the screen. The FDIC just issued their own report. This is written up in American

Banker, a publication I frankly did not know exists, but do now. They say FDIC recommends higher deposit insurance for business accounts. So they considered three different approaches. One is unlimited deposit insurance, basically make what they did at Silicon Valley Bank, make that the law of the land and have premium increases to reflect the fact that actually now all deposits and all values are going to be backstopped by the federal government. They said that particular idea could be a bad idea because it could encourage sort of risky behavior on the part of banks and depositors, etc. They were worried about moral hazard there. I'm sure also the banks don't really want to pay those premiums.

That would create a fund large enough to be able to backstop the entire deposits of the entire country. So that was one idea that they put off the table. The other is to keep the status quo, 250K for everybody, and it is what it is. They felt that because of some of the challenges that we saw with Silicon Valley Bank, that that doesn't adequately address run risk. So they felt that that was not the best way to go. So the third way that they propose here is targeting deposit insurance for business accounts so that you could have greater coverage for business accounts without all the moral hazard unlimited insurance introduces yielding what they describe as substantial financial stability benefits relative to their costs. So they're

trying to say, okay, so for most regular depositors, it'll stay at 250K for business accounts. They would presumably have to pay some sort of surcharge, and they would have a higher level, not unlimited, but a higher level of deposit threshold that would be covered. Yeah, look, I definitely support that. You know what the problem is, though, is that when you give somebody something for free, then why are they going to pay for it? So imagine that. We came out and said, hey, don't worry about it. All FDIC things are benefited. And everyone's like, okay, cool. we came out and said, hey, don't worry about it. All FDIC things are benefit. And everyone's like, okay, cool.

So they got the benefit and they didn't have to pay for it. So why would they pay for it? And even if they do pay for it, we will all pay for it. They're the ones who are going to raise the rates because of their risky behavior. You know, there should be a better system that is put in place where the cost is not put on to the consumer or the small business, Crystal, somebody like you're in my account, instead of something like the banks and their profits that they are allowed to take in the first place. So I think this whole system is totally backwards for who gets to pay and who doesn't. And it's just still highlights to me like how unfair the entire system really is through all of that. You know, also, though, in terms of the Federal Reserve,

at least some questions are being asked. I'll put this up there on the screen. Jerome Powell actually could face more opposition as these Fed choices are getting tougher. The Biden administration is set to nominate a new person to the overall governance board, Crystal. And at the very least, policymakers are asking questions about the interest rates.

Yeah, now that their banker buddies are in trouble, they're starting to think like, maybe we've done enough rate hikes. Good point. Right. So anyway, at least they are doing something, but they're not doing something because any of us are suffering. It's because their bank boys are failing. Yeah. And they're still expecting to, they're meeting this week. The expectation is very much they'll move forward with a 25 basis point hike. And then after that, you have really split views. You have some, what's called, you know, hawks who want to continue hiking rates at a very aggressive clip, given the fact that inflation continues to be relatively high, although the pace has come down somewhat. And then you have some doves who are like, you know, we've already kind of broken some

pretty significant things in the economy by lifting the rates because the interest rate risk was at the core of the failure of all three of these very significant sized banks. So they're saying, listen, we already broke some stuff. Maybe we should cool it here and wait for things to settle and see how it's all going. So that will be a fight that's playing out at the Fed over the coming months. At the same time, you know, I think one of the important stories coming out of the handling of First Republic's failure is, once again, JPMorgan Chase getting much, much larger and becoming an absolute giant. It has been on this path for quite some time. This makes Jamie Dimon incredibly, significantly important. Financial Times had a good report on this.

They note, put this up on the screen, they note that all deposits were taken over by J.P. Morgan. That means the U.S. government did not have to declare the bank a systemic risk to protect those larger deposits over 250K. J.P. Morgan, though, they secured a loss sharing agreement. So they capture, you know, whatever upside there is, but they have some loss sharing agreement to avoid the downside. They described that as a crucial sweetener for the buyer. And although top Biden administration officials played a less prominent role in the negotiations than in the failure of Silicon Valley Bank, the deal came together after heated discussions between Washington and Wall

Street. And they note that Dimon had a direct line to Biden through his contacts in Washington. And I would wager a guess that Jamie Dimon always has a direct line to Joe Biden because he is in some ways as powerful or more so than the president of the United States at this point. They also talk, they quote Ian Katz at Capital Alpha Partners, who warns that as the dust settles, there may be increasing political opposition to this deal. Why? Because in ordinary times, regulators never would have approved JPMorgan Chase buying a bank of the size of First Republic because they are already over the limit of having more than 10 percent of all of American deposits residing with their bank. They were already over that limit. So if they had just come and said, we're going to buy First

Republic, regulators would have said, no way, you're already over the limit. We're not doing it. And so they say they never would have received regulatory approval to purchase a healthy bank of that size. They will now get bigger due to their role as savior of last resort. I mean, we have effectively made JPMorgan Chase like a quasi-governmental institution and handing them perks that are involved with them, looking for them to clean up messes that are made in the banking system in other places. And that is an extraordinary role that they have been put in. Jamie Dimon struck a defiant tone in reaction to all of this. They write, he said, we have capabilities to help our clients who happen to be cities, schools, states, hospitals, governments.

We bank countries and we bank the IMF. We bank the World Bank. You need large, successful banks. And anyone who thinks that would be good for the U.S. to not have that should call me directly. I guess we need to get his phone number. Yeah, please reach out, Jamie. And look to not have that should call me directly, I guess. We need to get his phone number, though. Yeah, please reach out, Jamie. And look, we have a visualization. Go ahead and put this up there on the screen that people can look at. Just look at this. I mean, this is what we're talking about here. No, this is before this acquisition, which is going to add another

additional trillion dollars, roughly, to this number that you see here. Exactly. So now JPMorgan is not only the biggest bank in America, it is bigger by orders of magnitude than the previous largest bank, which is Bank of America, which is already huge at 2.4 trillion, which is also bigger than Citigroup at 1.7. Like I was saying about earlier, put those four together. We're talking about the vast majority of the U.S. economy in the hands of these four banks. It's been a total failure of too big to fail. The entire 2008 thesis that the vast majority of Americans came away with is we're never going to let this happen again because we will never be forced to have bailouts. And instead, we have actually made it more likely that if we ever do face a risk, that we will have to go in and bail these banks

out, which is what a, what a thing, you know, travel back in time 15 years ago and try and tell them that that's how everything was going to work out. They would have told you that you were nuts, that we're never going to let that happen, but we did let it happen. And we actually made it worse, you know, in many, many respects, which I think is really sad, you know, to consider about how much populist energy came out from 2008, Occupy Wall Street, and so much of that. And really what it ended up with is a more precarious financial system than ever. Just final point to underscore this, put this last piece up on the screen. This was from Forbes.

They write, with First Republic takeover, J.P. Morgan is America's most globally systemically important bank. Their acquisition makes it that. It has an asset size now of over $4.2 trillion. That dwarfs now its next competitor, Bank of America. It will now rank number five after four Chinese globally systemically important banks and it's now more than twice the size it was in 2006. So, you know, this author opines clearly the too big to fail problem in the U.S. not only alive and well, now an even bigger problem for the financial industry in the American government. Some analysts have stated the first Republic bank failure is idiosyncratic. Three banks have failed in the U.S. in less than two months. They are amongst the largest bank failures in U.S. history.

This is serious and the last thing that I'll say for everybody to reflect on is the fact that, you know, this transaction, which once again makes JPMorgan Chase basically a quasi-governmental institution, because Lord knows we are not letting that ship go under. No way. And the U.S. government is backstopping any potential risk and losses here of JPMorgan Chase. This is all done over a weekend. It's done very quickly. There is no public input or democratic ability to dissent. And that's the world that we are living in. Yeah. Morgan, Jamie Dimon is now basically the new Andrew Mellon. If you guys, we don't have enough time today for me to go into it, but you should go and look him up. He was both one of the richest men in the country and the banker, Secretary of the Treasury of the United States. He eventually went to prison,

which is kind of inspiring. But eventually, well, after the Great Depression, we kind of woke up to what was going on there. But in the 20s, he was basically a god king here in the U.S., almost exactly 100 years ago, coincidentally. So who knows? Maybe history will repeat itself. We also have our eye on tomorrow's World Press Freedom Day, and there are some new numbers out that reveal the way the American people feel about our free press here in the U.S., and none of these numbers are going to surprise you, but it's always interesting to dig into the specifics. Let's put this first piece up on the screen. This is from the AP. And the question here is,

is the news media doing more to increase political divisions in the U.S., decrease political divisions, or does it not have any impact? And 74% of Americans say that it increases divisions. I want to meet this 6% that says it decreases divisions. 18% say it has no impact. So this is an overwhelming indictment of the press and of what they're doing. You know, it's gets to the core of Matt Taibbi's book on this subject that effectively the media's whole job and how they fill a 24-hour news cycle now is to convince you that your fellow American is the gravest threat to you and your security and your way of life and people obviously here seeing through the game. Yeah, I'm glad that they do. And we've always known this. I say I've

told this story before, but I met a guy once who made many billions of dollars and he said, always bet on charts. And whenever I think about the success of this show, and not just this show, so many of the other independent shows that are out there, and you put them all together and the viewership is many orders of magnitude, you know, combined, and let's say the total three cable news media,

it comes back to this chart. You know, always bet on trust in the mainstream media. And then the fact is, is that the vast majority of Americans not only don't like the news, they actively blame the news for dividing the nation. And I think everyone in this country can have some sort of personal experience for both right and left to think back to. Think about a grandma, one of those people

who's got a TV installed in the kitchen just so they can watch Fox all day. I wish I was joking. There are a lot more people than you might think who have literally done that, who can recite to you almost word for word, you know, what's whatever the scandal of the day is. But then also think about, you know, somebody screaming in somebody's face over holding up a sign for somebody that they don't disagree with or going out of their way to prompt a public confrontation over something, which again is fueled almost entirely by the news media and by social media or any of those things that has surfaced up to them. And just think like, is any of this necessary?

Because I don't think it is. And one of the things that I think we can come away with is that if you do talk to one another, most people on a very, very basic level are not the caricatures that they seem. Most are far more multifaceted and nuanced and understanding than anybody would ever think than if they watch the news where they currently are. And I do think it is at least heartening, even though many people are still locked into the system, that most people do at the very least understand that. Now, I can understand that. I think most humans can both understand that and be victim to it. So try to minimize the victimization as much as possible

and instead have that understanding as you go through your life. Well, because I also think there's a real tendency of people to see media as a problem, but not their particular media. Yeah. It's like when people hate Congress, but then they like their congressman. Yeah. Hold on a second. Yeah, exactly. So it's like if you're an MSNBC watcher, you're like, well, they're not the problem. It's Fox News. And if you're a Fox News, why you're like, well, Fox isn't the issue. It's those morons over at MSNBC. And it also, it's always funny to me when they portray themselves as not being mainstream media, when it's like, you are the largest cable news network. Whatever you were when you were a scrappy upstart, you were not that

anymore. You were definitely part of the mainstream press of America. You won't be surprised to learn also Republicans had a less favorable view of the media, although there were a lot of negative views of the media to be had on all partisan identifications. Put this next piece up on the screen. So here the question is, is the news media hurting democracy? 61% of Republicans said yes. 23% of Democrats said yes. 36% of independents. Now, there has been a, I think, ever in my entire life, there's always been a trend of

Republicans being more skeptical of the media and feeling like their views and perspectives and cultural values weren't reflected in the mainstream press. But I also don't think there's any doubt about the fact that that has't reflected in the mainstream press. But I also don't think there's any doubt about the fact that that has escalated in the Trump years. And that, you know, you also now have Democrats that feel similarly frustrated with the press. There are a lot of Democrats who feel like the news media propped up Donald Trump for ratings back in 2016. They have all sorts of issues with the press as well. So you do have those numbers inching up. You also have overwhelming concern about quote-unquote misinformation. I suspect that there's a lot

of different definitions and understandings of what misinformation might be, but put this up on the screen. 90% saying that misinformation is a problem. Only 10% saying that it is not a problem. I agree with that 90% when you look at, you know, you look at Russiagate hoax, for example. You look over at Fox. It depends on your definition. Yeah, you look over at Fox News, the way they clearly knew Stop the Steal was a lie,

but they went forward with, like, pushing on their network anyway. So I agree misinformation is a problem, but I doubt that I agree with everything that that 90% defines as misinformation would be my guess. Exactly. It's like when you ask Republicans and Democrats, is democracy a problem? And they all say yes. And they go, who's the problem?

And they say Democrats. They're like pointing at each other. Hold on a second. We're talking past each other. The next one, too, is important. Put this up there around social media. When you see a news story on social media, you quote, expected to be accurate, only 66% say yes. 33% say that's

inaccurate. We got to get that inaccurate number up. Yeah, for sure. Especially given AI that we've been discussing, like you all need to get a whole lot more skeptical immediately right now. So look, I think what you can really take away is Americans are very unhappy with the news media. They're unhappy for a variety of different reasons. But unhappiness is opportunity for everybody who's involved. That's part of what we're trying to do here. That's part of what a lot of people are trying to do all over the internet.

And overall, I think that's a good thing because what it does is fill in a void that exists and that has been artificially almost propped up in any other business which wasn't as fake this long ago would have died. Now, unfortunately, for a variety of cultural and economic reasons, it hasn't been. But that just makes the fight, I think,

even more important, considering that the news, by and large, is the medium through which people experience civic life and politics. I don't think it should be that way, but it is. And so that just makes their importance even higher whenever it comes to policy and the way that people interact with each other on a day-to-day basis. I sometimes people see people like in traffic who have bumper stickers. They're like, if you're a liberal, like here's the bird. And I just want to be like, dude,

like what compelled you to go out and to buy that sticker and to peel it off and put it on your car and have some smug thing or, you know, vice versa, opposite. And I'm always just like, what's going on in your life where you thought that this is like an appropriate thing to do and behave as an adult? Yeah. It's very odd. It doesn't come from, it's not a natural thing. It's one of those where that came from somewhere and I don't think it's a good thing. Yeah, it's like you're putting a bumper sticker on your car that's like, I hate half of the country.

It's like, why? Why are you doing this? It doesn't seem very healthy for you. Just drive the car, man. Just go to work. Drive to something that you enjoy. Or lady. You should see some of these woke ladies that I live around, some of the signs that these people have in their windows.

It could crack you up. Anyway, I think it's important for people to know it's not a natural human thing. It comes from somewhere, and we can change it. And it hasn't always been this way, so that's a good thing. Yes. Inspiring. Let's go to the next one. Two important stories, first about Tucker, but also about Vice News and some breaking news, I guess we can say, about what's going on over there.

So with respect to Tucker, a video has now come out being leaked to Media Matters. Lots of speculation around who leaked this video. Was it somebody who works at Fox? Most likely. Was it Fox management to try and make him look bad? I find it very humorous. Basically what you're seeing here is a behind-the-scenes video where producers are telling Tucker he has to wear a sweater during an interview with Andrew Tate. Tucker doesn't want to wear the sweater because it's going to appear on his primetime show.

And I think this is a great view for a couple of things. Crystal, you and I have worked with such producers and others. This is a good view I want everybody to take away from this. You can get paid $25 million, but when your check gets signed by somebody else, you're still an employee. You're like inside of a system. You're not the king or even the queen. You're not in charge in the way that you should be

and most people think that you are. You're inside of this apparatus. He's dissatisfied in this clip with Fox Nation. He's upset about the website. He's upset about the way that they're talking to him. And Fox Nation is their streaming platform. Their which form we good luck To them right and and these streaming platforms. There's no transparency wrong

So you have no idea how they're actually fairing and I think Tucker sort of gives up the game there He gives up the game on how well it's doing it also really just gives up the game on you could be the number one star On cable news media, but people are still telling those people what to do take a listen I don't want to be a slave to Fox nation, which I don't think that many people watch anyway. We're going to, because I, you know, I'm like a representative of the American media now. Speaking to an exile in Romania and welcoming him back into the brotherhood of journalists. Yeah, it would help us out if you wore a sweater, though, because we asked him not to wear a suit. Like he was panicking about it. it to look official. I don't want it to be like bro talk.

And I, you know what I mean? Yeah, but the majority of it, like if we go like 45 minutes, it's going to be for Fox Nation. But nobody's going to watch it on Fox Nation. Nobody watches Fox Nation because the site sucks. So I'd really like to just put the dump the whole thing on YouTube. But anyway, that's just my view I'm just frustrated with in it's hard to use that site I don't know why they're not fixing it it's driving me insane and they're like making like lifetime movies but they don't they don't work on the

infrastructure of the site like what it's crazy and it drives me crazy because it's like we're doing all this extra. And it drives me crazy because it's like we're doing all this extra work and no one can find it. It's unbelievable, actually. We're doing our part. We're like working like animals to produce all this content and the people in charge of it, whoever that guy's, whatever his name is, like they're ignoring the fact that the site doesn't work. And it's, I think it's like a betrayal of our efforts. That's how I feel. So I, of course I resent it. Here's the worst our efforts. That's how I feel. So, of course, I resent it. Here's the worst part.

He ended up wearing the sweater. He wore the sweater. You know, and that tells you so much. It's like when you work for somebody, they're telling you how to dress. Nobody tells us what to wear. I wear these suits because I like them. You wear what you like because you like it and because it's how you feel like it. And think about it. That's the number one star in cable.

What are they telling the other people? Is that how they talk down to everyone? And the arrogance too of that producer about, here's the thing, who gives a shit what he wears? Does it matter at all, like in any way? No, it's all fake. And the point that he makes too is also so great. He's like, yeah, why does this site suck?

Why are they making these idiot, they're doing like a bible study with ainsley uh but the site doesn't work and if if his stuff isn't getting watched on fox nation no one's stuff was getting watched on fox nation which is why there's no way that fox news managed to link this because this is too embarrassing you think so yeah they don't want to reveal that no one watches Fox Nation and that the website sucks. And then he's like, this is a waste of my time. No one is watching it here. There's, I think, one point in the conversation

where he's like, I want to put the thing up on YouTube because then people will actually watch it. He's not an idiot. But, I mean, yeah. To me, the piece that is so revelatory and not surprising having been in this industry is like, yeah, you can be the number one rated host. You can, you know, be world famous, et cetera, et cetera. But if they want you to wear a sweater, you're going to wear a fricking sweater. And if you

don't think that applies to like putting Tucker aside, if you don't think that applies to all of these hosts and what they cover and how they cover it and what they look like while they do it and who they're nice to and who they're mean to, like, you're a fool. And at the end of the day, they decided, you know, that Tucker was more trouble than he's worth. I agree with that assessment. And they decided to turf him for a variety of reasons. But, yeah, it's – I guess the last thing to say about this is all of these networks know that their numbers are falling. They know their business model is fading. They know they've got like some sort of limited track.

Well, you know, it'll drag out for a long time and they'll still have cultural relevance for a long time. I don't want to diminish that, but they're all trying to figure out how do we make some sort of a digital play so we can like get a younger audience and keep this thing going. And every single one of these efforts has been a catastrophe. Clearly Fox Nation is a catastrophe. Fox Nation, CNN Plus is a catastrophe. We don't know the numbers of Peacock, but it's obviously a catastrophe as well because they're behemoth. They don't know how to create content that people want to see. They don't know how to create content that people want to see. They don't know how to create a platform that people want to engage with. And so they're just like dying a slow death by a thousand cuts.

Yep, absolutely. Watch that clip if you ever want to know why we will never work for these people ever again. Why really a major animating thing. That's how it works behind the scenes, guys. They try and tell you what to do and it's some stupid ass segment. And you're like, what do you do? What's wrong in your brain that you would even think that that is real? And that's up and down the chain for the entire industry.

Let's go to the next one here, which is some stunning news that broke yesterday. Let's put it up there on the screen. Vice is said to be headed for bankruptcy. The company, once valued at $5.7 billion, is struggling to find a buyer this year, has an incredible amount of debt. The news comes immediately after they fired several people in their D.C. bureau and are cutting costs across the board. This is a company which raised money from Disney, which raised money from private equity, in 2017 was valued at a full 5.7, and quote, by today, most accounts, it is worth only a tiny fraction of that. In the event of bankruptcy, their largest debt holder would end up controlling the company. They said that they're operating normally in Vices currently and are trying to run an auction to sell the company over the next 45-day period.

But clearly, they are in dire, dire financial straits. So there are only two ways that this ends. Somebody buys it for absolute pennies on the dollar, very unlikely actually, because their burn rate is high. They've got the building in Williamsburg. They've got all these costs in terms of shows and other contracts that they signed up for. They've got massive salaries or had them at one point on the books. And this is really sad to me on a personal level. BuzzFeed, I'm going to be honest, I thought it was hilarious whenever they went down. I thought it was funny with Gawker went down. Vice was – it really inspired me to get into the business.

They were some of the forefront pioneers on YouTube, developing and finding stories, telling them in a way that I and many people my age and millions of people want to consume. I will absolutely never, ever forget watching the Vice Guide to North Korea. I had never seen anything like it. I think that came out in 2006 or 2007. And then watching, you know, some of their Libyan stuff, Liberia. They did like a ride-along with ISIS. Yes, I remember that one too, the Syrian civil war coverage that they did. It was incredible.

And look, I mean, there's a lot of mistakes that were made there. Ideology and business on top. But it's sad. It's sad to watch it. And some great stars were born out of us. It's hard to, I mean, you can't forget. This thing was a giant. It was seen as this, like, sexy media upstart.

Everybody was, all the traditional media outlets were like, how do we replicate this? What they're doing is astonishing. And part of the problem is the things that you're talking about that they did, or like the ISIS ride along or whatever, no established network would do that because it's way too risky. And nor should they, honestly, because you're like really putting people's lives at risk. And so that's the sort of thing that they couldn't really scale. And so, yeah, they went down a sort of like typical like left liberal, more identity type of track in terms of their ideology. They became much less unique and I think much less provocative, risk taking.

And, you know, it's also part of this broader shift that we're seeing where all of these outlets that were giants in the 2010s, it's over. It's just totally over. The amount of funding and cash that was being thrown at BuzzFeed and Mike and Vice and all of these companies, the valuations they were able to achieve, it was insane. And now, you know, the business, the ideology has shifted, the business models have shifted. And so whatever they were doing at that point, now that you have ad revenue specifically right now has really taken a hit. And this is part of the whole tech session conversation as well. All of these companies that were kind of struggling along, that was it for them. There's a great documentary.

I might do a monologue on this because I've never forgotten it. It came out in 2011. I watched it at the time, and I watch it probably every few years since then. It's called Page One. And it's about the New York Times and specifically their media critic, David Carr, as they're navigating the internet. At the time, this came out, again, 12, 13 years ago now, there's a scene where Shane Smith is facing off against david carr

and in it david carr was a media critic who is now dead and shane is basically super arrogant he's like we're doing what you people have never done before like we're going to the places we are the new media you're the old media all this stuff and david is like hey we've had people in africa since 1960 like shut shut up basically he tells them shut the F up actually. He curses in the video. And the arrogance that was exuding was correct if you're thinking about it in the mind of Shane Smith at the time. He's like I'm doing stuff you guys are never going to do. I'm the new media.

I'm taking over the internet, all of this. But at the end of the day, 12, 13 years later, the New York Times is frankly more profitable than ever before. They actually won. They beat Vice because they hired a lot of the people who used to work at Vice who were any good on top of Vox and others. And now Vice is on the verge of bankruptcy. There's a story there to be told about what went wrong for so many of these companies. Fundamentally, I think it was business. I think they got in league with the big, you know, HBOs and all these other people of the world that got away from their roots. They let ideology seep in. They started building large buildings in downtown Brooklyn, which nobody asked for. And instead, they never played it safe. They tried to do a tech model of get big fast.

And by doing that, they took on tech risk without any of the tech upside. It turns out we're all in the same media business, which is a game of inches. You kind of have to be brutal. You kind of have to be very risk-averse, and you have to think 10, 15, 20, 100 years or so in the future. And you can't have that huge overhead of legacy media. That's just not going to,

you're not going to be able to do that in the digital age. And many of these companies really bet on the social media monetization. Many of them bet originally on Facebook being huge. I mean, Facebook has moved away. First of all, Facebook is like, there's not much left content that does well there at all anymore. When it's, it's hard to, like, it's easy to forget that that used to be the place for Upworthy and Mike and all of this, like, left liberal content was huge on the platform. They're moving away from politics altogether. They changed their algorithm to really like screw you

on monetization long ago. That took out some of these players. But I think now we're seeing also with, you know, Twitter is more abundant. It's not nearly what it used to be already. And so that is changing the underlying business dynamics as well. And Ben Smith, formerly of BuzzFeed, was talking to Ryan over on his podcast about the fact that, you know, some of these, it's like some of these throwback players are coming back. People are looking at like building out their homepage again, which is something that, you know, this has been a long time. People are going back to like Drudge Report and these news aggregators because using Twitter to surface this stuff is just not as effective anymore. And the newsletter business, obviously, with Substack, Semaphore, which has been Smith's new outlet, Puck News, right?

That newsletter business, which is, again, email-based, it's this legacy technology that's been with us for a long time. That's coming back into play as well. So it's pretty wild to see the evolution that's happening in real time. Yeah. I really might do that monologue. We're going to talk to Ben Smith on Thursday. We'll probably release it sometime on the weekend just because it's going to be not in the main show, but there's a lot to be said about his book, about that era and so much of what went wrong, but also about what we can learn from them. People like you and I who are on the forefront. I don't want to be, I don't want somebody on YouTube who's young 10 years from now

being like, look at Sagar and Crystal. Here's one of the mistakes they made. Idiots. Yeah, it's like they got arrogant. It's a real risk. Yeah, it is. And I think about it all the time. But I suspect that Shane was not thinking about that, though.

Whenever he was, I mean, you know, yesterday, Crystal. They were so high-flying, all these people getting these billion-dollar valuations. But yesterday, Crystal, you and I, our show, that's probably the biggest show we've ever done in terms of our YouTube and on podcasts together, if you combine it. If not the biggest, maybe the second largest biggest. But we're still sitting here being like, man, you've got to take it easy. You've got to be careful. You've got to make sure that you don't go into crazy debt to build a new studio. Everything you want to do is cash flow.

These are not the decisions that they were making then at the time. So if anything, you know, we have learned something. All right, so what are you looking at? Well, last week I did a monologue that many of you appreciated, summing up what I hope to be the final monologues on LabLeak. The evidence is so overwhelming at this point for the positive case that COVID leaked from the Wuhan lab in 2019 that you, in my opinion, have to be a dolt not to believe it. Unsurprisingly, though, many dolts include mainstream media

and, worse, top officials in public health. So I just thought it'd be fun to just check in on all of them and see how they're dealing with this new reality. The first is a very quick update about a farce that I brought all of you a few weeks ago when the Atlantic mounted a last ditch effort to defend the natural origin hypothesis. The latest cope theory was that an infected raccoon dog meat was the genesis of COVID because an infected dog sample was found at the Wuhan wet market. What they of course neglected to tell you is that that sample came from early 2020 when COVID was already swamping the entire city of

Wuhan and that there isn't a scrap of genetic evidence to say that the dog is where it all began. They also failed to tell you that the leading scientists pushing that theory were involved in a lab leak themselves and were involved in the original cover-up of the lab leak theory with Dr. Fauci in January 2020. Interesting how that works, huh? Well, the funniest thing has happened since then. The theory from the Atlantic was so flimsy and useless that the scientific study it was based on had to issue a mea culpa update that even the New York Times is feeling compelled to

publish. Headline, scientists revisit data on raccoon dogs and COVID stressing the unknown. Subhead, after analyzing genetic data swabbed from a Wuhan market in early 2020, a virologist said it was unclear if animals for sale there had been infected. The new study and the analysis around it is completely humiliating for the Atlantic and all of those who clung to this last-ditch natural origin effort. In fact, the findings vindicate those who believe in a lab leak

because the real analysis shows this. It wasn't just raccoon dog meat that had COVID on it. It turns out COVID and viral samples were all over meat samples everywhere in the market in early 2020, indicating COVID did not come from the Wuhan wet market, but instead humans were depositing viral material over everything they were breathing on. Since the wet market is the only real natural origin theory, it instead shows that humans brought COVID to the market. If humans brought it there, it had to come from somewhere. That somewhere is the Wuhan lab a few miles away. It really doesn't take a genius to

figure all this out. As you might be wondering, did the Atlantic issue correction at all? No, of course not. Days after Catherine Wu's loser of a scoop, she was still touting the raccoon dog theory as some sort of slam dunk. And as of this writing, she has not yet addressed her embarrassing mishap or apologized for spreading dangerous misinformation, which might've led people to falsely believe

in the natural origin hypothesis. Catherine Wu, though, isn't the only one still clinging to the natural origin theory. Ryan and Emily did a great job of looking back at Dr. Fauci's lies during the pandemic and his pathetic defense of them today in the New York Times. But the part that actually stuck out to me was his cope on lab leak and how he seems to pretend he was always open to the idea and in no way did anything to make sure that people wouldn't believe it during the critical period of early 2020.

Throughout the interview, Fauci plays several tricks to try and obscure a lab leak and the risks that they pose then and in the future. For example, he says, quote, it wasn't an engineered virus. Somebody went out into the field. Let's say they got infected, came back to the lab and then spread it out to other people. That ain't a lab leak strictly speaking That's a natural occurrence Really is it isn't a natural occurrence if you pay somebody to go deep inside of a cave and they get bitten by a bat Or some other creature that humans never would have encountered naturally and would then have that person spread said disease

Is that really natural and when the interviewer challenges Fauci that obviously that research would have been the cause, he pivots and he says actually the interviewer is wrong for saying that if he were Fauci he would have had trouble sleeping at night over potential lab leaks. He replies quote, I sleep fine. Remember this work was done in order to be able to help us prepare for the next outbreak. From there, he launches into a spirited defense of gain-of-function research, how it has made us so much safer. He simultaneously claims that we never funded gain-of-function at the Wuhan lab, and that gain-of-function

research is essential and was essential to helping with COVID. His evidence is the mRNA COVID vaccine, which the merits of the vaccine and its efficacy aside today, of which there are questions with respect to how it was even sold to the global public, the evidence of gain-of-function research, especially at the lab and others, is what contributed to it.

That is bunk, according to people who are in the field themselves. Finally, Fauci ends by saying, the lesson from COVID is not we need better guidelines around gain of function, we need billions of dollars more instead, according to him, to be spent, quote, preparing for the next pandemic.

He was never once stopping to consider that his so-called preparedness is what led to all of this in the first place. And I know so much of this feels like beating a dead horse, but this interview was published just five days ago. The raccoon dog theory is as recent as just a few weeks ago. The latest research debunking it, a few days old. I've come to the conclusion

that I really don't want to let this die because inquiry into the origin of COVID for me has turned into an intellectual journey where we have discovered the colossally dangerous network of labs across this earth that have likely spawned diseases that may be the death of all of us. We already know things like Lyme disease, Ebola, and COVID. Those are the ones where there is at least some evidence that they came from a lab. But as recent inquiries have

shown, they're not going to stop. They keep wanting to do more and more and more. And it seems to me that to save humanity, we probably need to stop the people who are claiming to do research in the name of saving humanity. I've been attacked by the scientific community over this, Crystal. They're like, you don't understand what you're talking about. And it's like, well, actually- And if you want to hear my reaction to Sagar's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at breakingpoints.com. Crystal, what are you taking a look at? Well, guys, yesterday in the wake of the second largest bank failure in history,

we told you that so far the collapse doesn't appear to be causing a larger contagion, but that didn't mean there weren't still warning signs on the horizon. Specifically, Warren Buffett's business partner, Charlie Munger, is sounding the alarm over the U.S. commercial property market. A lot of real estate isn't so good anymore, Munger said. We have a lot of troubled office buildings, a lot of troubled shopping centers, a lot of troubled other properties. There's a lot of agony out there. This was an interview with the Financial Times. He went on to say American banks were, quote, full of bad loans due to the decline of that market.

That got me wondering, just how bad could it be? And the answer looks, frankly, pretty calamitous. In fact, a recent report from Morgan Stanley warns that the commercial real estate crash could put the 2008 housing crash to shame. That report points to three factors that are combining right now to decimate that market. First, COVID dramatically accelerated a remote or hybrid work trend, which has left many office parks virtual ghost towns. In the faraway distant land of 2018, less than 6% of the workforce was remote. Today, that number stands at 26%. So more than a quarter of the nation's workers are fully remote. What's more, 66% of employees work from home at least some of the time. This is an extraordinary sea change in how we do business, which obviously has dramatic

repercussions for office needs. What's being described as an office apocalypse has meant that less than half of all offices are currently occupied. That is compared to 95% occupancy rate pre-pandemic. Just think of Amazon spiking their big plans for HQ2 in Northern Virginia to do the tech downturn and the work remote revolution. Think of all those downtowns that have emptied out as office workers stay home or put in only a couple of days at the office. What is the value of that idle, vacant office space, which for logistical and often zoning reasons, is not really convertible to anything else, at least not easily? Second, just as the Fed's interest rate hikes have spiked mortgage

rates, putting a freeze on the housing market, that same dynamic is also spiking rates for commercial real estate as well. And this comes at the worst possible time due to the third factor mentioned in the Morgan Stanley analysis. The entire sector is facing what's being described as a refinancing wall, wherein more than half of the $2.9 trillion market is set to come due by the end of 2025. That is just around the corner, when borrowers, already hobbled by remote work trends, go to refinance and find themselves hit with multi-point higher mortgage rates. How are they going to swing it? Many will not. That is the bottom line. And plenty could default before they even get to that point.

Needless to say, when you're talking about a $1.5 trillion wall of debt, it is no small matter. In fact, analysts are predicting that office and retail property valuations could plummet by 40%. And as if looming massive defaults and 40% drop in valuations isn't bad enough, 70% of that debt is held by banks. So going back to Munger's dire warning here about banks holding a lot't bad enough, 70% of that debt is held by banks. So going back to Munger's dire warning here about banks holding a lot of bad loans, if anything, he understates the case. And it's not just any banks that are up to their eyeballs in very shaky real estate loans. It's specifically small and medium-sized banks, which account for some 80% of this type of lending. These banks have already been put on shaky ground by the depositor flight to giants like JPMorgan Chase. How many will be sent over a cliff when we run face first into that $1.5 trillion wall of debt? Now, like Signature, Silicon Valley Bank, and First Republic,

banks with a lot of commercial real estate loans on their books are subject to a lot of interest rate risk. So as the Fed continues to hike rates in what has been an extraordinary death march to strangle workers and crush wages, they could well be tightening the noose around the necks of many more small and medium-sized banks who will face a reckoning over just the next few years. And sure enough, the Fed is meeting again this week

to consider their next steps. Now, they've already engaged in the most aggressive program of rate hikes in four decades, ever since the Volcker era. They are expected to continue hiking rates. This time, a quarter point rate rise is expected. What happens after that meeting is really anyone's guess. Some Fed officials believe that rate hikes should continue to be hiked, should continue aggressively. Consequences to workers and to the economy be damned. Others are ready to press pause. Meanwhile, two-thirds of economists view a recession as likely. Rate hikes have already started to break things in the economy and in

the banking sector. No one should have any confidence that they actually know what's going to happen if they continue down this path. So that's basically the landscape. Not very pretty. Wall of debt made more crushing by rising rates with a new post-pandemic reality that is not going back anytime soon, if ever. And as we approach this reckoning, having watched what happened with Silicon Valley Bank, we now know the federal government effectively considers all banks too big to fail. How many bailouts might we be on the hook for as they desperately scramble to sell off the pieces in a collapse? How much more gigantic will the big boys and especially JPMorgan Chase become? What sort of contagion could result from a more widespread banking crisis? And how

much socialism for the rich is the American public really willing to accept? As I dug into these numbers, Sagar, you know, as a little sort of casual comment from Charlie Munger, it looks really bad. And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. Joining us now is filmmaker James Fox. He's got a new documentary out, Moment of Contact. It's been out for a little while. He was on the Joe Rogan Experience,

and it details an extraordinary incident in Brazil from the 1990s. James, we're very excited to have you join our show and to talk to you. Thank you so much. Thank you guys for having me on. I really appreciate it. Absolutely. Yeah, it's our pleasure.

Let's put the poster up there on the screen for those who are interested. And I do encourage everyone to go out and to rent the documentary, to watch the documentary wherever it's available. Moments of Contact, the Roswell of Brazil. James, for those who didn't see you on the Joe Rogan Experience,

can you just describe a little bit about what you find and investigate in the documentary about the so-called Roswell incident in Brazil, Varginha? Yeah, so it's funny. It's like, it's one of those cases where people that are familiar with my work, I've been on Joe Rogan before with a film I did called The Phenomenon. I worked a little bit with former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Podesta and a handful of others, both Republicans and Democrats.

And so I sort of developed a level of credibility that I never, as a citizen, never had before. So I really went out on a limb making this documentary because this is about an alleged UFO crash that happened in 1996 in Varginha, Brazil, in the state of Minas Gerais, which is about four or five hours to the north of Sao Paulo. And I knew Joe Rogan heard about the case like a number of times. He had some of his guests talking about it. We had sent him links. The level of skepticism is warranted, and I understand that. But all I ask people is that suspend judgment and just listen to the evidence of the people that were there, the firsthand eyewitness testimony from military officers, from firemen, from doctors, from civilians, lawyers. It's absolutely mind-bending.

And what you're left with is something truly extraordinary took place in Virginia, Brazil, January 20th, January 1996. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I watched the film last night. And what was most persuasive to me was the fact that you had so many witnesses. And these aren't like, you know, UFO buffs who are deep in the space, or it's not just like one one-off person who you could dismiss as a kook. These are just like regular Brazilian people, families, kids, business people, whatever, who are telling you about what they saw and experienced on that day. The part that I actually find kind of the hardest to believe is the fact that the Brazilian military and working in conjunction with the U.S. military are able to marshal this response so effectively and so quickly and to shut everything down. Like that level of competence and international

coordination was actually the part that I was part that I found the hardest to believe. What did you think? You know, I don't blame you one bit. I actually had people like Leslie Kane, who was one of the contributing editors to the New York Times story that exposed the secret Pentagon UFO program in December of 2017. It was Helene Cooper, Leslie Payne, and Ralph Blumenthal. Anyway, Leslie was like, ooh, are you sure you want to report on this case? I said, Leslie, I've known Leslie for quite some time. I said, Leslie, I think there's a lot to it. I really do. And long story short, she reached into her deep contacts. She went public with this about two weeks ago, Intel contacts off the record, and they told her that it happened.

So the fact that she's come forward and said that, and I've talked to other people like Lou Elizondo, who's also said to me, I learned that this happened during my time at ATIB. Yeah. Let's – for those, James, who aren't familiar with the acronyms, with Lou Elizondo and all this, even with Virginia, no, no, it's completely fine. Let's just describe the timeline of January 1996 about what witnesses report in the film. You don't have to give away everything from the film, but the broad contours, the Brazilian and the US military response, alleged response, and then some of what you've been able to uncover with new reporting, which we're going to get to in a little bit. Yes. So let me just quickly finish what I was just saying in terms of the U.S. involvement.

I've been investigating this case for 12 years. A lot of other people that have investigated in Brazil a lot longer than me. And during that 12-year investigation, I was going back and forth to Brazil countless times, a month each time. I was completely unaware that there was any American involvement. I actually learned that on the last trip just a year and a half, two years ago. So I'll quickly tell you that every military person that we met with, and they're all featured in the film at some point, particularly in the credits at the end, all said the Americans were involved. And while we were there the last time, this was really was shocking, was that the flight, military flight control officer. Now, when you're in the fire department, you're also military. When you're in the police department,

you're also military. When you're a flight radar control officer who monitors airplanes that come in and out of Brazil, you're also military. And this guy, Carlos Feres, F-E-R-E-S, came forward on the record saying that he was in charge that night and saw the United States Air Force plane come in without authorization from the Brazilian government. It came in and it landed directly. This is on the record. You can go and look it up. It came in and it landed in Campinas, Campinas without any Brazilian authorization.

He kept saying USAF. I was like, USAF? What's this guy talking about? United States Air Force. So it landed in Campinas and we have testimony from the military base ESA from people that were there that went on the record that said they drove these creatures to Campinas on that date.

So we have testimony from military personnel on the ground, some civilians and doctors and lawyers about this incident. And then we have confirmation from the flight control officer, who's also part of the military, who said he saw the flight come in. And it's truly extraordinary. So let me say that in and around the town of Virginia, Brazil, January 1996, you had farmers, you had truckers, you had professors, one in particular, Carlos Sousa, who's also an ultralight pilot, who witnessed a cylindrical, sort of cigar-shaped object about the size, a little bigger than a really big school bus. It was metallic. It didn't have any wings. It didn't have any exhaust vents or visible means of propulsion. It was just a cylindrical-shaped object with a gash in the side of it

that looked like it was in trouble. We film a number of witnesses that saw this in the middle of the night, and it was just struggling to stay. According to the witnesses, it was struggling. It looked like it was going down, but struggling. And then eventually there was a witness at a place called Maialini Farm

on the outskirts of Varginha that saw it impact the ground. up there uh military arrived he was met at gunpoint to leave the area never once did carlos de sauzza think that i just witnessed something that crashed potentially from another world he thought it was some super secret government craft he had no idea. A few days later, there were reports in the town of these like four feet tall. I know this sounds crazy. Believe me, I do. But these are very credible and lots of reports coming in about entities that have brown skin, no hair, oily, big, big red eyes, ridges on the forehead, spindly, weak, frightened, and scared, cowering, non-threatening. And these reports came in from fire department, from police department, from local civilians. I mean, one of the most incredible accounts is from three girls in broad daylight that came within 8 to 10 feet of this creature.

It's truly remarkable. And reportedly, you know, what you report on in the film is that one individual who was charged with capturing these things and, you know, actually had it reportedly in his arms, he ends up dying in a mysterious way thereafter. Can you speak to, I understand you've learned a little bit more about what might have happened there. So this is an ongoing investigation. And just last week, we got a hold of the two forensic pathologists who worked on the deceased military officer doing the autopsy. And they're coming forward for the first time. Now they're providing a very detailed, long form autopsy report that Leslie Kane is actually having translated medically,

professionally, because it's very technical. And, but they gave us brief statements that we're going to share that I've just shared with you. I was going to, I was going to share with Joe Rogan, but we just forgot. We didn't get to it. So I'm handing these to you. These are brief statements with translations and you could play them directly from the horse's mouth, from the forensic pathologist who did work on the deceased military officer. Great. We have some of those clips here. For those who are listening, I encourage you to come watch us on YouTube because we have subtitles. Let's take a listen. É a primeira vez que eu faço um depoimento em relação ao caso de Xerésio, que poderia ter um movimento, de fato, com algum ser extraterrestre, com a distância, pelo diferenciado discurso que ele coloca em relação a essa questão da baqueteira, que ele já tem uma experiência de mais de 70 anos. So, what's more, we're seeing there, James, there's longer video, of course, which I'm sure you'll put in a future film

But one of the points that is being taken away is that these pathologists describe a bacteria that's never been seen before on earth and of killing a person who ended up transporting these creatures and Alluding also to ET and kind of the light at the end of a second Can you translate some of that for us as to the big takeaways? I get the chills. As someone who's been looking into this case for 12 years, and I know that Marco Leal, my Brazilian counterpart, has been doing it much longer than I have,

the fact that we've got these guys, and I tell you, I literally was doing Zoom calls a couple days leading up to going on Joe Rogan, begging and pleading with these doctors to come forward. And one doctor said, hey, if this, if he comes forward, I'll come forward with him. We'll do it together, power in numbers. And then ultimately they did. And they provided us with long form. But basically what they're saying was in their entire career, they've never seen anything like this bacterial infection that killed a perfectly healthy 23 year old military police

officer and they said that they threw the i even interviewed we even interviewed dr cesario who worked on him while he was alive he said i threw the kitchen sink at him and this nothing was working and this bacteria it was just a it they didn't never see anything like it. So they took samples, which I know that they're going to have more details on about this type of bacteria. But those are just the initial statements that they're making. And again, I have to remind your audience,

this is an ongoing investigation. I'm not going to put this in another film. I'm going to put it out to the general public immediately because I think that this is a story that could prove once and for all, could settle the debate once and for all whether these things are real or not. Because we have a case, unlike Roswell, that's so recent that the vast majority of people and witnesses are still alive and they're coming forward right now in droves. Yeah. I mean, James, my takeaway from this was either an alien craft landed in

Virginia, Brazil in 1996, or somebody escaped from some crazy bio lab with an unknown strain of bacteria or something that then the US government and the Brazilian military hopped in and it created some very strange disturbances in the town of which many of these people never forget. I mean, you can tell from the documentary, this is a traumatic experience. None of these people wanted to come forward. In many cases, you describe having to go through and solicit and beg people to come forward. Can you talk a little bit about that? Absolutely.

While we're on the subject matter of crash material, just before we get into this, your audience just has to hear this, okay? This is the recently passed, excuse me while I put my old man glasses on, UAP legislation by Senator Gillibrand and Marco Rubio, Gallego, and Gallagher also contributed to this. But in any case, this just passed, signed into law, the UAP legislation. I'm going to read you one of the bits of text, and I'm going to ask your audience what prompted this. Okay, here we go. Any activity or program by a department or agency of the federal government or contractor of such a department or agency relating to unidentified anomalous phenomena, including with respect to material retrieval,

material analysis, reverse engineering, research and development, detection and tracking. They talk about potentially crashed materials, like covered UFOs. The legislation's right here. You can go read it. And they're providing whistleblowers, protection. And James, are you hopeful that some of these DC-based efforts on Capitol Hill will lead to increased transparency and more information? Well, so everybody thinks that there was this sudden epiphany by the. government to provide Joe Public with far more data on the phenomenon. That's not what happened. What happened was there were a couple of insiders like Christopher Mellon,

former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, and Lew, who ran the AATIP program, and a handful of others decided, wow, the level of secrecy is ridiculous. We are going to find a loophole, walk some evidence out of the Pentagon, which is what happened, and directly onto the front page of the New York Times. Now, the problem is the government can't put the genie back in the bottle. Okay? So the intelligence agency, when I met with Senator Harry Reid, former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid about this topic,

he said that when he launched the UAP task force, it was called, it went from OSAP to AATIP, Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program. He said that the intelligence agencies were digging in their heels. They were fighting, kicking, scratching, and biting. They didn't want this. And I suspect the same thing is occurring right now. However, what I'm doing and what many others are doing, we're meeting with the Intel folks on the inside that have already gone to testify to Arrow, which is run by Sean Kirkpatrick. That's the new UAP

task force. And they're going on camera with people like myself. And I've gotten a number of them on camera already. And they're disclosing not the classified parts, but what they've disclosed basically behind closed doors. In other words, I'm providing the names of the programs. I'm providing the names of the individuals involved with the programs, the locations of these programs. And in fact, if you get me the classifications, I can walk you in the door. So the clearances. So if the government is not going to release it, we're going to release this to the public so they'll know that this is going on.

So we're just trying to force the government. And look, there's a lot of elected officials like Senator Gillibrand and Rubio, Mark Warner, Gallego, Gallego, Andre Carson, that are really batting for us, that are really there. They need our support, but they but they're going to bat. They're not trying to cover this up. They're trying to actually get this open. But the intelligence agencies are being very difficult. There's nothing in it for them to share what they have.

And there's a lot of amazing photographic evidence just behind that wall that we're talking about as well. It's so frustrating, James. I feel the same way that you do. I hear the exact same thing. And the overwhelming thing that I hear from inside the Intel community is they're terrified because they just don't know what's going on. And they don't want to admit that to all of us. They're terrified. That's exactly right. So, you know, I just talked to Christopher Mellon, who's also got a clearances, who's seen the satellite data,

photographic evidence. And he said, well, I'm only talking about it because Ratcliffe talked about it, but I'll tell you right now, it's amazing. And I said, Christopher, please, because I'm friends with Christopher. Can you give me a little more? He's like, well, if you imagine like full 4K of craft, it's about as good as that.

And it's just behind that level of secrecy. So it's only a matter of time where some of that stuff's coming out. I'm very confident. It's just a that level of secrecy. So it's only a matter of time where some of that stuff's coming out. I'm very confident. It's just a matter of when. Wow. We can only hope. James, is there anything you want to say to the audience before we let you get out of here?

Well, I would say if you check out Moment of Contact and you still feel nothing absolutely extraordinary took place in January of 1996 in Virginia, Brazil. Chicken parmigiana dinner on me. All right. I love it. People can go and watch the documentary. Follow him at James Fox. Was it James C. Fox on Twitter, I believe? Yeah, it's at James C. Fox.

There you go. He's a madman. He just opened up his DMs. I don't know why anybody would do that. I know. Good luck to you, James. Thank you so much for having me on. Thank you, sir sir great to have you welcome back anytime

thank you man I love talking to that guy really interesting subject thank you guys so much for supporting us for all of the monthly yearly

and lifetime members who have been helping us with our new studio and have been signing up for our mission we're very excited we've been having

absolute gangbuster days here over at Breaking Points which is kind of amazing because it's not even like there's some major tentacle news organization We're very excited. We've been having absolute gangbuster days here over at Breaking Points, which is kind of amazing because it's not even like there's some major tentacle news organization. We're not under the heat of the presidential election yet. There's not, I mean, yeah. Yeah, it's pretty awesome. Vice is dying.

BuzzFeed is dead. Many of the new media companies which are supposed to define the 2010s are literally bankrupt. Meanwhile, things here are better than ever. I suspect the same for many of our friends in independent media. It's a great time. It's a great time to be in this game, and we couldn't be in it without all of you. We love you. We have a great CounterPoint show for everybody tomorrow, and we will see you all on Thursday. DNA test proves he is not the father. Now I'm taking the inheritance. Wait a minute, John. Who's not the father?

Well, Sam, luckily, it's your Not the Father Week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon. This author writes, My father-in-law is trying to steal the family fortune worth millions from my son, even though it was promised to us. He's trying to give it to his irresponsible son, but I have DNA proof that could get the money back. Hold up. They could lose their family and millions of dollars. Yep. Find out how it ends by listening to the OK Storytime podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation. I'm also the girl behind voiceover, the movement that exploded in 2024. You might hear that term and think it's about celibacy, but to me, voiceover is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's flexible, it's customizable, and it's a personal process. Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it. Listen to VoiceOver on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast.