Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 5/30/22: Uvalde Police Failures, Shooting Fallout, FBI's Nassar Coverup, Gun Control History, School Safety Industry, & More!
Episode Date: May 30, 2022Krystal and Saagar break down the Uvalde law enforcement failures, fallout from the Uvalde shooting, calls for assault weapons bans, Nassar coverup by FBI, Fox News dispute, gun control history, schoo...l safety industry, & a one year anniversary reflection!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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We have an amazing show for everybody today.
And, of course, it is Memorial Day, so we are thinking about those that we lost in all of the wars in American history.
So our thoughts very much with them and with our families today.
But, Crystal, what do we have today?
Lots of big updates continuing to come
out regarding that horrific mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas. I mean, every day that goes by,
we learn about more unconscionable failures, more lies that were told to us from the beginning,
actually some admissions of just how catastrophically bad the response was there.
So we'll get into all of that. There's also then the political fallout, politicians, how they are responding to that. The president and the first lady made a trip down to
Texas in response. We've got some new polling about gun safety measures and what the public
might support in that regard. Pretty interesting numbers. Yes, very interesting, I think. The
Parson breakdown is also a little bit surprising, maybe a little bit different than you would think.
We're also learning that the Justice Department is not going to charge those FBI agents who completely dropped the ball on that
Nassar investigation, pushing it off, allowing him to go on and continue to victimize women and
girls. Horrific outcome to this story. So we've got those details for you. And a little bit of
friendly fire between some Fox News personalities. We'll bring you that as well as there's a, you know, some people who
just want to say whatever law enforcement did, it's fine. Others are saying, hold on a second,
this was not good whatsoever. So we'll tell you about that. And also, guys, we are celebrating
a big anniversary here at Breaking Points. This week is one year since the launch
of the show. So we want to take a little bit of time, first of all, to say thank you to you guys
and also to tell you everything that we've tried to build this year, what our plans are going
forward. So we'll save that for the end of the show. But we did want to start with the very
latest from that mass shooting in Texas. Authorities now admitting
that law enforcement made the wrong call by waiting upwards of an hour to even try to breach
the door that those that the madman was behind locked into a classroom massacring children.
Let's take a listen to a little bit of that press conference from last week.
Hey, with the benefit of hindsight, hey, the benefit of, hey, stand by, stand by, hey,
stand by, hey, stand by, right? I've got it. I've got it. Okay. Hey, for the benefit of hindsight,
where I'm sitting now, of course it was not the right decision. It was the wrong decision, period.
There's no excuse for that.
Thank you for doing this, and I do hope you stay here and take as many questions as possible.
You say there were 19 officers gathered in the hallway or somewhere.
What efforts were made to try and break through that door?
You say it was locked.
What efforts were the officers making to try and break through either that door or another door to get inside that classroom? None at that time.
The on-scene commander at the time believed that it had transitioned from an active shooter
to a barricaded subject. So there were 19 cops standing outside of the door of those classrooms where those kids
were being murdered, where they were bleeding to death in desperate need of medical care.
They did not even try to breach the door. And as you see, I mean, they can't even defend it.
Yeah, they're just admitting it out loud. They can't even try to defend it.
Same guy who was super triumphant, you know, the day after. He's like, law enforcement.
Thank you to law enforcement.
He's also the one who lied to all of us, Crystal.
Steve McCraw.
He's the director of Texas Public Safety.
He said that there was an active shooter in Goward,
that there was a school resource officer who engaged that shooter.
What do we know now?
So resource officer's not even on the scene.
And that's just one.
I can't even keep track of all the lies now in this story.
But that one example of what the hell was happening with the school resource officer,
we literally got four different versions of the story.
First, the school resource officer was there on the scene.
He was chasing.
They exchanged gunfire.
Then he chased him into the building, but there was no gunfire.
Then, well, he didn't chase him into the building, but he was there.
And then finally we come to learn he wasn't even there at the school.
I mean, that's just one example of the lies that we were told about this thing from the beginning.
And so there's a little bit of a sense that they've realized they've screwed this thing up so badly that they can't do anything else but admit, yeah, maybe we should have gone in and not waited an hour.
And by the way, they would have waited longer.
Oh, yeah, that's right.
But the Border Patrol finally said, screw this.
We're going in, and we're taking this guy out.
Thank God for those guys. Seriously.
But because we've been lied to so much about this response,
I certainly don't feel like even now we have the whole story.
Various news outlets, and I'll get to this in just a minute, have been trying to piece together based on eyewitness accounts, videos that were posted online, surveillance footage, what the authorities are actually saying, trying to piece together the timeline of how and when this all went down.
And the details are just unconscionable. But, you know, maybe one of the
most honest things we heard out of all of the spin is the real reason they didn't go in. Why?
They were afraid that they were going to get shot. This is a spokesperson with the Texas
Department of Public Safety being pressed on CNN. Take a listen. Correct. The active shooter
situation, you want to stop the killing. You want to preserve life.
But also, one thing that, of course, the American people need to understand is that officers are making entry into this building.
They do not know where the gunman is.
They are hearing gunshots.
They are receiving gunshots.
At that point, if they proceeded any further not knowing where this suspect was at, they could have been shot, they could have been killed,
and at that point, that gunman would have the opportunity
to kill other people inside that school.
Everything else is just spit and rationalization.
They were scared. That's the bottom line.
They were afraid you're going to be going deep into your monologue,
which is that they violated the basic tenets of active shooter training.
They tell you no matter what, if you are the first person on the scene,
even if you were the only person on the scene, they say in no uncertain terms you have to put your life on the line in order to save children.
And, you know, I really hope.
Look, I put this out there, which is I'm sympathetic to anybody who doesn't want to do that.
But that's a decision to make before you become a cop, not after you become the cop. And federal agents basically have to mount a coup against
the on-site commander and say, you know what? You're full of it. We're all going in. And that
timeline you alluded to came out yesterday. Let's put this up there on the screen where they talk
about 78 long minutes. And this thing, guys, I mean, it is brutal to read because it just goes
minute by minute. It shows videos and it shows quotes of
police officers who are keeping parents out of the school. You have parents who are begging the
police officers in order to go in. They describe the multiple long minutes, somewhere around 40
minutes, Crystal, that 19 officers were in the hallway being held up before being able to go
inside. I mean, the one I just can't get out of my head is this little girl who's inside the classroom who makes three separate 911 calls in which she asks and says, please send the
police in. She can hear the police, ask them to come in. You know, also there's a report now that
actually from one of the children who was in the room, just to give you an idea of how screwed up
the situation is, is that they said, hey, if anybody needs help, yell help. Kid yells help.
Gunman is still alive, comes over and shoots that kid and actually kills him. So you have a botched
response, not only in terms of the initial contact, it is clear also that the holdup on that
costs lives. That's one of the spin that they're going to try and put out there. It's like, well,
everybody was already dead. Apparently that was the justification for the on-site commander. Now,
I did some digging into this on-site commander.
It is not the Uvalde Police Department.
Uvalde ISD, Independent School District,
has its own police department.
The chief of that police department,
which has six officers, yes, six,
basically very inexperienced,
that was the guy who was in charge,
and he's the one who made all these idiot calls and held up Border Patrol and all these other tactical units from even going on inside. So clearly he's, you know, not just a
fool. I mean, frankly, I think he should go to prison, but I don't know if the laws work that
way. Also, interesting side note, he actually was just elected to the city council, that dude.
Oh my God.
And I don't think he's been sworn in yet, but yeah, he's elected to the city council.
And while certainly the bulk of the blame
falls on him, since he made that decision, you know, making this excuse of, oh, it's not an
active shooter anymore. This is more akin to a hostage situation. And we just assumed everybody
was dead. Well, you're getting 911 calls in from the room. One little girl, as you mentioned
multiple times, but there were multiple phone calls placed from inside that room saying, please help us.
So you know for a fact there are people who are alive in that room.
Not to mention, I mean, God, the reports are so horrific to imagine.
One little girl who survived by smearing herself in the blood of her friends and pretending to be dead.
The friend she was laying on top of
was initially breathing. And then because the response was so long and she's unable to get
medical care, she died. I mean, you have kids who might have been saved who bled out on that
classroom floor because from that timeline, the gunman entered the building at 11.33. Two minutes later, three police officers enter.
They don't take him out until 12.50, an hour and 20 minutes.
And as you said, Sagar, their training guidance that they're supposed to be following, that they were well trained on.
And did, you know, very early.
Multiple recent active shooter drills this school
system had all the latest in terms of surveillance technology they had dedicated additional resources
to this school district police department six officers across all of their schools
the very first thing that that manual tells you is the number one goal is stop the killing. They say in no uncertain terms,
because of the nature of this response, because of how important it is that you stop the killing
of innocent civilians as quickly as possible, it is very likely you may be the only one on the scene.
Well, here they were lucky. They had three police officers there and still they don't act. That revelation that they did not even try to get in the door,
I just don't even know what to say about that.
And, you know, the one story I really can't get my head around is
there's that woman who was a mother who was placed in handcuffs,
who was placed in handcuffs by federal marshals on the scene.
Then she was, you know, let go.
Then she had time to run into the school. Well, it turns out she wasn't just some local mom. Crystal,
she heard about the shooting, drove 40 miles. So she had the time to drive, hear about the
shooting, drive 40 miles, get placed in handcuffs, get out of handcuffs, run into the school,
save her own kids. Well, I don't know what the hell these federal marshals are doing.
All during the time before this gunman is actually killed by police.
So you have now verified, by the way, a father was tased by police officers for trying to go get his own kids.
A mom was placed in handcuffs by federal marshals.
Also, these feds, you know, what are you doing?
Like, once again, you guys are on scene
keeping moms out of the school to go get their own kids because apparently you're not doing a
good enough job of that and also this gunman is still alive during this entire time well and
here's the thing the reason the parents were so desperate to go in and get is because they weren't
doing yeah they knew they could see it you know if you are actively engaged in trying to take this guy,
I can understand you don't want parents
coming in and interfering.
Of course, because it's not safe for them.
It confuses the situation.
But when you're standing around,
19 dudes in the hallway doing jack shit,
yeah, of course, if you're a parent,
of course you're going to do everything you can
to go in and get your kids.
And how about this detail that was also revealed?
So not only
is the school resource officer not exchanging gunfire with the gunman going in, not actually
there on site whatsoever. When he arrives, he chased a teacher that he was confused,
thought was the shooter, which also shows you, I mean, I don't know if you had a school resource
officer in your high school growing up. I did as well. I mean, he knew all of us. He was there
every day. We all had a relationship, but he certainly knew all the teachers. So there are I did, actually. call 911. That house was very close to the school. Apparently she used to work at the school too.
Immediately locked down. When you know you have a gunman on the loose within a mile of the school,
that should have been an immediate lockdown. So I have a question about that as well. I mean,
there is so much here still, I think that is being covered up and that we don't know.
We are learning more about concerning behavior from the gunman before all of this happened. Let's go ahead and put ABC News up on the screen. They say they spoke with over a dozen people who say the Texas gunman sent them concerning messages online in the days leading up to the shooting. we've covered, but he always seemed to be messaging a bunch of kind of random girls
and women that he barely knew, sending them pictures of this gun and saying things like,
I've got a surprise for you and I can't tell you yet.
Another thing that was really creepy that he kept telling people is, you know, if you
follow me or you add me, I'm going to make you famous.
Making some comments like that, threatened to rape people online.
I mean, all kinds of concerning behavior here ahead of this horrific shooting.
It's also come out that he had asked his sister to buy him a gun.
The sister had refused.
So clearly, you know, every interaction that people had with this dude,
they knew that there was something that was really off here.
Yeah, I mean, and look, you know, for the family, there's still a lot of questions here.
I mean, in terms of his personal interactions, it looks he clearly had a screwed up home life.
His mom was a drug addict.
His own grandma was trying to evict the mother.
But, you know, with the sister, apparently with his uncle, he'd been on hunting and shooting sprees.
You know, with that, there's still not a lot that's come out.
His own father has come out and said, oh, this is not who my little boy was. Like, yeah,
okay. In terms of
how the family is looking to spin it, and
I think those people have a lot to answer
for in terms of why exactly
there were no reports there. Same, you know,
this streaming, I don't know what this thing
is, Yubo? It's like a social
network for streamers. I'm showing my age
here. But basically, people
Ella tried to explain it to me. Okay, alright.
So there's gamers
and it's like a social network for
people who live stream gaming. Okay, you know,
makes, I guess, enough sense. But
he was meeting people on this website
and had told multiple of them
that he basically was planning on carrying out a school
shooting enough so that he was reported also
on the site, like users
who were gaming with him
reported some of his concerning behavior. So I also have a lot of questions for you, Beau. I'm
like, did you flag any of these to law enforcement? I mean, I think that the ultimate question here
is how well known was he to law enforcement prior to all of this? We know for certain that law
enforcement had visited his house on multiple occasions, given the fact that so many of these
school shooters have previous interactions,
or not even school shooters, mass shooters,
have previous interactions with law enforcement,
with the FBI, we have to know
whether they had an open file, a case, a tip,
anything that they can go back and they can crawl through.
So that's a major one that we have here.
And the final detail,
which is just so insane here on the police,
you found this, I can't even get my hand around this,
put it up there on the screen,
which is that officials say that law enforcement entities now across the state have actually been called in by the Uvalde police because not just to supplement their police
force, but to provide protection to the officers and the mayor following the heavy criticism and
the threats. And look, I'm not going to, you know, feed the beast here, but, you know, the actual incident commander on the scene
has not been seen in several days
since the actual response here.
And, you know, apparently he's receiving
a lot of heavy criticism and threats.
But, I mean, there's just a hell of a lot
of irony, Crystal,
that whenever they need help,
they have to call in the cavalry.
And again, I'm not endorsing anything. I don't think, you
know, look, let the process play out, et cetera, but just pretty amazing. It's like when they need
help, when they need support, oh yeah, then people are coming in order to guard them. But whenever
little kids needed them, oh, they're standing out in the hallway doing absolutely nothing.
Yeah. They're getting the backup that those kids never got.
I mean, I think we were talking before we started the show, and I will never be over
this.
And I think the reason this has touched such a nerve with the nation is not just because
of the horrific loss of these young lives, but the thought of how they were abandoned
by the people who were supposed to help
them. You know, there was one little girl who I was reading said to her family, you know,
why did they do this to us? We're good kids. There they are in the room hiding, calling 911.
Please help us. And no one for over an hour came to their rescue.
And it's just horrific.
It's just horrific.
There's just no other words to put to it.
I think that's right.
Let's go ahead and move on to the fallout segment because this is important.
This has touched such a nerve that there is overwhelming political pressure in Texas and across the nation of, hey, we need heads on the spike here in terms of who exactly is
responsible for abandoning these children. And the governor has now found himself especially
in a tough spot because he was on the dais praising law enforcement the day after saying,
we are so thankful to them. Steve McCraw is telling us all of these lies. Well,
now he's coming out and saying, look, I was misled. And just compare his tone from the beginning where he thanks law enforcement to the way that he's talking about now, just showing the overwhelming political pressure back in my home state in order to find the people who are responsible and hold them accountable.
Let's take a listen.
And let me emphasize something that I know you all know.
But the reality is as horrible as what happened.
It could have been worse.
The reason it was not worse is because law enforcement officials did what they do. They showed amazing courage
by running toward gunfire
for the singular purpose of trying to save lives.
And it is a fact
that because of their quick response,
getting on the scene,
being able to respond to the gunman and eliminate the gunman,
they were able to save lives.
Unfortunately, not enough.
Short answer, yes, I was misled.
I am livid about what happened.
I was on this very stage two days ago, and I was
telling the public information that had been told to me in a room just a few yards behind where
we're located right now. I wrote down hand notes in detail about what everybody in that room told me in sequential order about what happened.
And when I came out here on this stage and told the public what happened,
it was a recitation of what people in that room told me,
whether it be law enforcement officials or non-law enforcement officials, whatever the case may be.
And as everybody has learned, the information that I was given turned out in part to be inaccurate. And I'm absolutely livid about that. Major change in tone there, Crystal. You know,
the immediate thing, you know, being emotional there about law enforcement now saying I'm
absolutely livid. But listen, you know, it's nice to be livid, but what I want to know is what the hell are
you going to do about it?
And to be honest, this does not inspire confidence.
The next move, let's put this up there on the screen, which is that the Justice Department
is going to review the law enforcement response to the Uvalde mass shooting.
Now, I mean, that sounds nice, but what do you see there on the bottom ticker, which is that we're going to do an entire story today about how the Justice Department is not going to charge the FBI agents who didn't just botch but basically criminally covered up the Larry Nassar sexual abuse case.
I mean, do we really have faith that the Justice Department is actually going to be able to give any justice to the families here. I think this has to come down to every political level, both Uvalde, the ISD, the city council, along with the governor.
I mean, frankly, Steve McCraw should be fired, the Texas head of department safety.
I mean, he outright lied to Texas and to the American people about the school resource officer.
So either he needs to be fired for not vetting information properly before he delivers that,
or the person who gave him that needs to be fired.
I mean, at every level, both the cover-up, the response.
Also, I think every single one of these Border Patrol agents, have you not noticed,
not one of those guys has been interviewed yet on camera, and I think there's a reason for it, which is that-
It'd be pretty interesting to hear what they had to say.
So I can tell you, I tapped my network. I reached out to all the people that I know. And nobody's
willing to really go on the record and tell me what's going on. But the skinny of it was
essentially the contours of what has come out, which is that they got on the scene and they
were like, what the hell is going on here? And after a while, they were like, you know what?
This guy's a moron.
Screw him.
And they stormed in there, you know, had to go get the key because they realized there had not been a single attempt at breaching the door.
And they killed him within seconds of entering the door.
And by the way, not a single one of them actually was killed.
You know, they had a tactical shield, a ballistic shield.
All of that had been on scene for, you know, well into the time that they had been there.
And eventually they basically revolted against the incident commander.
So, again, I think the Border Patrol guys, you know, frankly, they need to come out and they need to speak.
The head of Border Patrol, I think this is a cover-up, frankly, by the administration also.
I mean, the Biden administration declined that first day, Crystal, Karine Jean-Pierre. She declined to issue any call against law enforcement in their initial, even when it was well aware within the country.
I mean, they're so afraid of being tagged.
It's like, oh, you're anti-cop.
You got the Republican governor of Texas trashing law enforcement.
This is far beyond politics.
This is way beyond. They're just so fearful of like, oh, what's the right going to say about this that they can't even find the obvious correct answer that basically everyone in the country is McLaughlin is tasked with providing, quote, an independent account of law enforcement actions and responses that day and to identify lessons learned and best practices to help first responders prepare for and respond to active shooter events.
We don't need to – I mean, we know the best practices already.
It's exactly what was laid out in that training manual.
I mean, sadly, post-column is part of what I'm going into my monologue as well. There's been a lot of money
spent by Congress to fund research into what the best response is. Because in Columbine,
there was a delay of about 20 minutes from the time that law enforcement arrived on the scene
until when they actually entered the school. And that 20 minutes was considered shocking and
unconscionable at the time. But also at the time, there was no fully developed protocol for this.
So they were making it up on the fly. After that, there have been federal funds spent hundreds of
millions of dollars to train, to develop and disseminate this training. So we know the lessons,
we don't need the lessons learned. We need accountability. And unfortunately, you know, the way that our laws are written and the way that the court has decided, law enforcement isn't actually under a duty to protect.
Yeah, I was just about to read that.
It's very unlikely that any of these people, I mean, the most accountability they may face is losing their job.
But in terms of any sort of criminal negligence,
I think it's highly, highly unlikely here. People forget the Supreme Court ruled in 2005
that police do not have a constitutional duty to protect anyone, which really raises a lot of
questions about the social contract whenever you're going to imbue somebody with an immense amount of power and with the ability to hold military-grade weapons
and automatic rifles and training
and all of this qualified immunity that we grant them.
I think that within the, I guess,
established social contract is,
you know, if somebody's shooting up a school,
you go in and try to kill that person.
And I think that what also is gonna be shown shown here is, you know, these parents don't have recourse.
It can't sue these cops for their lack of response.
You can't do really anything.
And the question now comes, like, what actual accountability can be done?
I think the fact that this Uvalde ISD guy still has his job is insane.
I mean, he should be immediately. It doesn't even,
there's not a question about it. The city council, the mayor, they should be going in,
name the three cops who sat on their ass outside of this and basically fire them. I mean, you are
well within your rights in order to do so. But a lot of what's happening here just reeks to me
of a coverup and they're waiting for the American public and the media and everybody to do so. But a lot of what's happening here just reeks to me of a cover-up, and they're
waiting for the American public and the media and everybody to move on so that they can issue their
stupid little report about, oh, here's exactly what—listen, I mean, we have the broad—it's
been a couple days. We have the broad context of what happened. The spirit of what happened,
we have a minute-by-minute account. We don't need a 500 page timeline about what's happened. Like we need people to be
fired, preferably if possible, to be prosecuted under the full extent of the law. I mean, what's
happened here is just an egregious like miscarriage, at least in the spirit of what justice is supposed
to be about and about what these people are supposed to be doing. Everything that takes time.
I mean, these delaying tactics are so typical. I mean, even the political response here in Washington, like, oh, we're going to go and we're going to try to work in a bipartisan manner.
No, the public energy is there right now.
The heat is on the issue right now.
You know what you need to do.
You know what kind of legislation would make a difference in terms of guns.
You know what is broadly supported by the American public.
We're going to talk about that shortly. And same with the response on the ground here in Texas. You know
at this point where the major failures lie. Sure, we would like to know the whole story. I still have
a lot of questions. I want to know where the freaking school resource officer was when he was
supposed to be at the school and they lied, you know, four different times to cover up what exactly
happened there. There were basic lies too to try to cover their asses about how, oh, he was the,
the shooter was wearing body armor, which was meant, I think, to offer an excuse for why they
weren't able to shoot and kill this guy to start with and why they were so fearful of engaging
with him because they felt like he was, well, it turned out that wasn't true as well. So
there are still a lot of questions here, but you're right. We know broadly where the
mass failures lie. They lie with the head of that, Uvalde School District Police Department,
who clearly made the call, hey, we're going to sit on our hands for an hour and let kids bleed
out on the classroom floor, try to keep even Border Patrol, who are there saying, what are
we doing? Why are we standing around here? Let's go in, trying even to prevent them from acting.
We know that.
We know where the lies came from, from the spokespeople here, from the leaders of the department.
So the fact that any of these people still have their jobs to me is completely insane.
The other piece we wanted to bring you is the president and the first lady did visit Uvalde to meet with families who have a little bit of that that we can show you.
You know, this is for those of you who are just listening.
This is the first lady laying a bouquet of flowers at the memorial there in front of
the Robb Elementary School sign, along with, you know, a lot of other flowers and pictures.
You can see some other local community members walking there and just contemplating this, what is really
something you will never be able to wrap your head around. So that's one part of the public
response. I said the nation almost overwhelmingly sees the failures of law enforcement, but that
didn't stop one of the two Texas senators from, you know, going to the mat to defend everything the police department did here, apparently.
So this is Senator John Cornyn.
He tweeted out,
Oh, split-second decisions? Tell me what part of
an hour and 20 minutes standing outside of a classroom door is a split-second decision here,
Sagar? I mean, that you can look at these facts and do anything other than say this was a complete
failure and just be honest with people about what everyone in the country can
clearly see is pretty remarkable. And he got, you know, absolutely dragged for this on Twitter,
rightfully so. Yeah, well, it's not just about Ted Cruz. I mean, to date, Governor Abbott is the only
high-ranking Texas official who has said anything about this. I mean, Ken Paxton, who just won his
primary for the Attorney General. And, you know, this is another thing I should emphasize that people don't know.
Our governor, Texas governor, is the least powerful governor in America.
Like, he has basically no authority.
The attorney general and the lieutenant governor are the people who run the state.
So Ken Paxton and the lieutenant governor are arguably a lot more powerful than Governor Abbott.
Nothing in terms of investigation,
what they're going to do, especially with the AG. They have wide-ranging authority in order to do an investigation, in order to look into what's happening. Technically, the actual boss is here.
I mean, the governor position in Texas is really very ceremonial. We all found that out whenever
one of those governors became president. Ted Cruz also has not said a word. John Cornyn, the only word he has said, has come out and said the second guessing and finger pointing like we talked about.
But, you know, where are our senators?
Why are our senators saying nothing here?
Also, Tony Gonzalez, the congressman from this area, I mean, by all measures, he was very much spinning the pro cop line at least the first couple of days.
And, you know, today—
He sounded like a spokesperson for them when he was on CNN with Jake Tapper.
Exactly.
He was coming out, and he was just saying, like, these ridiculous things.
And what I actually find very annoying is that what you find right now is that many people, media in other words—
and I guess this is fine, impressing these congressmen and representatives on gun control. Listen, they're from Texas. Texans don't want gun control. But what they
should be pressed on is why are you not holding these police officers to account? And I'm looking
here in the San Antonio press. Again, you can always count on the local guys to actually do
their jobs. In San Antonio media, Tony Gonzalez was finally, he was like, hey, why did
you give us this false report on the Uvalde school? He was like, oh, well, I was giving you the best
information I had at the time and all of this. Okay, that's fine. But you know, you as the
congressman from this area should be calling for an actual investigation. So I'm really repulsed
by the fact that nobody in the ranks of the Texas GOP
is standing up here and just standing up for these kids. I mean, these are little kids.
Like, you are their, not only their representative, you represent their parents. You know, look,
you know, if you do even support police and law enforcement and all of that, then you have to go
out of your way in order to make sure that the failures of that are called out and are
dealt with in a responsible manner. And so I just find it really disgusting here that nobody is
speaking up in Texas. And they're also leaving it to Beto. It's like, look, this isn't a Democrat,
Republican thing. I mean, I guess I sound crazy or something, but I think everyone can agree that
what happened here is messed up. So let's call for an investigation. I don't understand this.
Yeah, their knee-jerk reaction before they even knew the facts was we're going to praise the law.
In fact, I have yet to hear much talk about the teachers who risked their lives in this situation and tried to protect their students.
The instant knee-jerk reaction that we heard from Abbott before he even really knew what happened was they saved lives and they ran towards the bullets.
Well, that turns out not to be true whatsoever.
And, you know, I am all for pressing them on policy.
They want to talk about mental health and how that's agreed.
Like, Abbott needs to continue to be pressed about, okay, why are you then blocking funding for mental health resources in your own state. And I don't think it's true to say that Texans are against gun control across the board
because we're going to cover some polling that shows overwhelming bipartisan support
for some universal background checks, closing the gun show loophole,
even things like red flag law where if someone is deemed to be a threat to themselves or others,
they can be banned from owning a gun
for a certain period of time. Even those things have overwhelming bipartisan support. So yeah,
press them on that. But also, you know, when the cops screw up and they lie and they cover up,
I mean, they did everything wrong here with catastrophic consequences. And if you can't
just be honest about that, then you don't deserve to be in office, period. I completely agree with you.
Why don't we talk about what exactly is happening with gun politics? So legislation,
look, I mean, a vote allegedly is coming. We know it will very likely fail on the floor. I went
ahead and checked after our last show, four Republicans are open the door or
openly supportive. Is this in the Senate? In the Senate. Yeah. Obviously that's what matters,
right? In terms of what actually could pass. So only four Republicans are on record as either
for or open the door to any sort of regulation. The vast majority did not respond. So they're not
actually on record. And then about, yeah then about half have actually come out and said,
no, absolutely nothing. So that's where the numbers actually stand on that.
Now, in terms of the national calls, I was very interested to see that Kamala Harris,
kind of running point on this for the Biden administration, the most senior official
of the administration so far in terms of a policy response, puts up there on the screen,
Kamala Harris is demanding a ban
on assault weapons, say they have no place in a civil society. So obviously this is not told
by the president, but here's what she said in a direct quote. I do think it's quite noteworthy.
On the issue of gun control, I will say, as I've said countless times, we're not sitting around
waiting to figure it out. We're not looking for a vaccine. We know what works on this. It includes,
let's have an assault weapons ban. So she is the most senior official to go out and call for
the most maximalist effort of trying to ban an assault weapon. But obviously, that's just not
going to happen in our political reality, nor do I think it should happen personally. But in terms
of the polling, I'm going to be honest here. Things are far more where I would personally
stand. Let's put this up there on the screen, which is that this is the latest post-Uvalde
polling. Politico morning consult. Requiring background checks on all gun sales. 88%
strongly or somewhat support. 8% strongly or somewhat oppose. Net approval is plus 80.
Creating a national database with info about each gun sale, 75% strongly or somewhat
support, 18% strongly or somewhat oppose, net approval plus 57. Banning assault-style weapons,
67% strongly or somewhat support, 25% strongly or somewhat oppose, net approval plus 42.
Preventing sales of all firearms to people reported as dangerous to law
enforcement by a mental health provider, 84% strongly or somewhat support, 9% strongly or
somewhat opposed. Net approval is plus 75. Making private gun sales and sales of guns so subject to
background checks, 81%. That's got us net approval of plus 70. And then finally, requiring all gun owners to store their guns in a safe storage unit,
that's 77% strongly or somewhat support with a net approval there of plus 62.
So Americans actually feeling more on the side of doing some,
even some of the more maximalist actions here than actually we've seen in quite a long time.
I think the caveat is that's not how the political system works, number one. And number two, in the past, 538 actually wrote about this, which is that almost
always you'll see a temporary spike in support where the things revert to the mean within about
two weeks. So who knows about who are those things? There you go. The one that surprised me the most
looking at the partisan breakdown is even banning assault stylestyle weapons among Republicans, they're divided almost 50-50.
Yeah, that's interesting.
That definitely surprised me.
Anecdotally, you know, you guys, I talk about my dad a lot on this show,
and my dad has long been basically like a Second Amendment voter.
When I ran for Congress, the first thing he asked me is where I stood on the Second Amendment.
Not even killing.
When I told him what I was there, he's like, so where do you stand on the right to bear arms?
So this is like very ingrained in him.
He's very interested in guns.
He collects guns.
He's into target shooting.
He's a physicist.
He likes the mechanics, all of that stuff.
He's very into it.
And I asked him, I didn't put any spin on the ball.
I just asked him this weekend, like, you know, do you think there should be any changes?
And I know for a long time he's among the 90% that think we should have universal background check.
And as most gun owners are, he takes the responsibility very seriously.
Oh, he should, yeah.
He understands the weapons, the mechanics of them.
He stores them safely.
He is very responsible and has always ingrained that in me and my sisters as well. And this was the first time that he said to me,
I'm thinking that maybe he's like,
I've always been opposed to this in the past,
but I'm thinking maybe we should ban
these assault style weapons.
Now, here's what I will say.
Both the shooter at this elementary school
and in Buffalo used the same weapon, AR-15.
Now, mass shootings and school shootings in particular actually make up a very small percentage of the number of gun deaths in this country.
The bulk of the gun deaths in this country are suicide.
And handguns.
Handguns overwhelmingly constitute the bulk of the killings and the homicides and the suicides in this country. So that's why
I think that if you're going to have the most effective response, recognizing the bounds of
America's not going to totally get rid of our guns, like that's not going to happen. We have
400 million weapons, like there are some limits to how far things will go. But Nick Kristof actually
crunched the data about what
would be most effective overall in terms of the numbers in curbing gun deaths. And it's more
important to focus on who gets the weapon than what the weapon actually is. So if you have,
say, someone like my dad, who is an owner of an AR-15, you're going to be fine. My dad does not
own an AR-15, but I'm just saying if he
did, you're probably going to be fine because you have a responsible person who is statistically
very unlikely to have ultimately an issue. But when you look at the numbers, for example,
overwhelmingly, Americans age 18 to 20 account for 4% of the population, but 17% of those known
to have committed a murder. So that's why lifting the age to 21 can make a big difference.
Something as simple as the polling there we had on safe storage of guns, that can actually make a big difference.
Not only because then you're keeping them out of the hands of kids in the home, but also there are a lot of private weapons that are stolen out of the home.
That's right.
So that also prevents criminals from stealing weapons and being able to sell them on the
black market.
We talked about cracking down on straw purchases and having better data about which gun shops
are overwhelmingly selling weapons, firearms to people who are pretending to be the real
owners but are actually selling them on the black market.
And those guns overwhelmingly end up being used in crimes.
That can make a big difference.
30-day waiting periods, that can make a big difference.
So especially on things like suicide prevention and domestic violence,
just having fewer weapons in the home, having them locked up more carefully,
those are the sorts of things that can make a difference.
So personally, I'm not particularly opposed to an assault weapons ban.
But on the range of things that you can do in terms of total numbers of what would reduce gun deaths, I think it is one of the less effective measures that we can ultimately take.
I was going to say, yeah.
So we know this.
We banned assault weapons in 1994 to 2004.
Even the most maximalist people who defend the ban will tell you that it basically had
a negligible impact on crime, on murder, and that at best it may have, may have decreased
mass shootings.
But the problem is that because there's such a rare event that just one or two can skew
data in a completely different direction.
And that was also
before a lot of terrorists actually changed their tactics post-Mumbai shooting of 2008, which also
skews the data. So this is just one of those things where assault weapons ban on the merits,
like I said, any independent review, and I literally looked through all of them, at best,
all they can say, even the Washington Post's Glenn Kessler will tell you
the best thing that it could possibly say is it may have had a marginal impact on school shootings.
I'll guess I'll give the case against some of these, which I've heard. I spoke to some people
in the gun community, which is that part of the problem with maintaining a gun registry is that
then that was the precursor, actually, in Australia and in the UK to gun confiscation.
So they're like, well, if they know exactly how many weapons like every single person has,
then it's a lot easier for them to seize them and for the ATF in order to maintain a national registry
and use that and turn it over.
Well, I mean, I think that's a fair point.
I think that's paranoid.
I mean, come on.
It's not paranoid.
Listen, even if I wanted gun confiscation in this country, we both know that's not happening.
But it may happen 30 years from now.
We can't even get universal background checks.
Like, we are so far from gun confiscation.
But that's why they're actually opposed to universal background checks.
I asked.
I was like, hey, what am I missing?
What's wrong with a universal background check?
They're like, well, if you have a universal background check, then you have a universal registry.
So it's very difficult in order to write the legislation such that there would not exist a de facto registry.
Same on the red flag.
So actually, once again, I went and looked into the red flag law.
Red flag law in Florida since 2018 used over 2,200 times.
Now, in that, yeah, maybe.
But here's the thing.
We're talking about a constitutionally enshrined right by the Supreme Court, Crystal.
And by the way, it goes all the way back to 1886.
So we can talk not just about this court, but in that.
I'll be talking about that in my monologue.
Even this court recognizes that there are some limits on gun ownership.
So even though they are not where I am in terms of interpreting the Second Amendment,
no one thinks that you should be able to get whatever you want, whenever you want, with no checks,
with, you know, you're posting rape threats and death threats and AR-15s online, that it still
should be fine and cool to get one. I just think that, look, I think that in these crazy times,
somebody should give the case. And on the red flag law, for example, I actually had somebody
who contacted me. He turned in his own father under the Florida legislation for red flag laws.
He went to a mental health hospital. His father had suicidal
thoughts, depression, et cetera, goes through the process. He actually declared, I don't know,
cured, whatever. The mental health provider's like, okay, you're good now. You're doing better.
Well, now his dad wants to buy a gun and he actually can't do it because the Florida red
flag law won't release kind of whatever the process is under that. So again, we're talking
here about somebody has a constitutionally
enshrined right, and especially in the state of Florida, in order to do this. And you have the
state basically with the de facto ability in order to decide and adjudicate without any real due
process when and how you're able to exercise that right. But there is a due process. Yeah, but he's
still hating. Within red flag laws. And there's a set period of time. So this doesn't last forever.
I'm not sure exactly what the period of time is for Florida, but there is a set period of time. So this doesn't last forever. I'm not sure exactly what the period of time is for Florida.
But there is a set period of time.
It is not indefinite.
If you want to get a renew, you have to go back through the process.
Look, overwhelmingly, people look at, like, this guy's social media history and say, why didn't I – like, how is this guy who's clearly deranged able on his 18th birthday to go out and get two AR-15s?
I think most people look at that and say, this is insane. You know, most gun owners who, like my dad, take it very
seriously and make sure that they're, you know, that they're capable and they're competent with
their firearms. The idea that you can just go and get anything at any time with no training or understanding or ability or competence
is a danger to yourself.
It's a danger to others just of accidents happening.
So even the idea of, you know, if you want to be a gun owner, that's fine.
But you have to go through some sort of training process so that you're actually competent
with the firearm.
I think that's something else that would be reasonable to expect. So there's a lot of public sentiment. And there always is. I think you're
right that there's a spike certainly in support right now for some of these measures that will
likely back off, you know, in a number of weeks or a number of months. Some of these things,
though, are overwhelmingly popular all the time. And it is the case that
the money that is really, you know, the sort of from the gun lobby and the NRA organization,
that is the reason why you don't have some of these really obvious, very popular things,
background checks, closing the gun show, loophole, you know, requiring gun owners to store their guns
in a safe storage unit, why these things don't happen
is because of that corruption and that money ultimately. And because the people that you're
representing, and I appreciate you laying out the argument on their behalf, that they tend to be
single issue voters, whereas the people who are in favor of those gun safety measures, it's one of a
number of issues that they ultimately care about.
And that puts disproportionate influence in the hands of the people who are hard on the other side.
Yeah, absolutely.
Okay, let's talk about Larry Nassar, unfortunately.
We have to.
This is just one of those that really harkens back to what we had talked about in our B Block,
which is that they're kicking it over to the Justice Department to examine Uvalde.
How has the Justice Department handled their review of their behavior when it came to Russiagate
and also when it came to Larry Nassar?
Nassar is the king example of a nonpolitical case in which you really ask yourself,
what the hell is the point of having these people with all of this power?
And why are they never held to account?
So let's put this up there on the screen.
The very same day that they asked the Justice Department to look into Uvalde, the Justice Department,
quietly, of course, not taking advantage of what exactly the media environment is, comes out and
says they are standing by their decision not to charge the FBI agents who disregarded the
gymnastics allegations by the Olympic team that allowed Larry Nassar not only to assault them
continually, but to continue
to assault dozens of new women. And I'll just remind everyone, you have here a case in which
there were flags and interviews being done by FBI agents in 2015, who then did not record the case,
did not do anything about it, did not enforce or investigate Larry Nassar until a newspaper brought to light the allegations against him two years later.
Then make up statements and record that past interview two years later.
Speaking here specifically about Michaela Maroney, who these FBI agents I'm talking about made up things that she said to try
and cover their own ass, saying, no, no, no. We did an interview back in 2015. They didn't even
record it until after it all came out. Publicly, we know that one of the agents himself was trying
to get a job with USA Gymnastics and that he was in collusion, effectively, with the head of that
program in order to try and to cover up what was happening here.
I mean, it boggles the mind when we're talking about hundreds of little children. You know,
there's a common theme, little children failed here by law enforcement that were basically shunted aside for the career ambitions of these two FBI agents in the Indianapolis field office.
And the Justice Department has now had three times in order to make this right that they've looked back.
This was an additional external review of the case.
And they say, well, under the current guidelines, we simply cannot prosecute these agents.
I mean, he made false statements.
There are people sitting in jail for doing the exact same thing.
And this agent is being let off the hook, having clearly violated the law,
and worse, failed Michaela Maroney and Simone Biles.
I mean, not just, those are the household names.
The hundreds of young girls who were molested and abused by this man.
So I just think it's a, you know, if you think there's accountability by these people, I don't know what to tell you.
It is truly disgusting.
And you make the correct point, which is the Justice Department acknowledges that these agents lied.
They say it looks like they made false statements, but we don't have enough evidence to bring criminal charges. There's a quote here from a lawyer who represents some of the survivors of his abuse who said,
The continued failure by the Department of Justice to criminally charge the FBI agents, USA Gymnastics, and the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee officials who conspired to cover up the largest sex abuse scandal in the history of sport is incomprehensible.
And you have so many layers.
You have these FBI agents who delayed and covered up because they were interested in their own careers
and because just, I don't know, lazy and incompetent and the one wanted a job with USA Gymnastics.
You have that.
And then you have all of these higher-level bodies, USA Gymnastics and the U.S. Olympic Committee, who they wanted to sweep it under the rug because they just wanted to keep, you know, with their careers and with their industry and making money.
So all of these young girls were just, you know, grist for the mill for their industry.
And that's how they treated them. I mean, the courage that it took for
Michaela Maroney and Simone, all these women to come forward and acknowledge and expose
what had happened to them as young girls is extraordinary. And for that testimony to just
basically, I mean, Michaela Maroney made it clear. It was basically dismissed. I mean,
the FBI agent said to her, is that all? That's what they said to her. I can't believe, I mean,
once again, no accountability. Nobody pays the price for years and years and years of abuse that was completely preventable, could have been stopped. And the people, once again, who were supposed to
be the good guys, who were supposed to come in and enforce the law and stand up for the victims,
the survivors here, once again, they completely failed. They were interested in themselves not
doing the right thing. Yeah. And I do think it's important that we say, you know, the media
describes this as a botched investigation. It's not botched. It was criminally covered up by these agents who have, the FBI itself, remember Michael Flynn and
all that, you know, they went after these, I'm not defending the guy, but you know, they said
they went after him for a false statements charge. Same with, I think, Paul Manafort and
Rogers, whatever. I mean, my point being that when they want to, yeah, they'll charge that case
all day long, but oh, but here, no, we can't do that. It's one of our own. I think what's even grosser is they don't even release one of the agents
whose name was involved in this. Once again, I mean, these people get all the breaks in the world
while the gymnasts and all of them are the ones who are being abused. And by the current count,
between the time that they knew about it and the time they did anything about it,
there were 120 girls who were assaulted by Larry Nassar. 120. So just like Uvalde, 120 who pay the price after the actual
allegations. So, you know, we'll let Michaela Maroney speak for herself. She testified before
Congress back in September. Here's what she had to say. Most of you are probably aware I was
molested by the U.S. gymnastics national team and Olympic team
doctor Larry Nassar. And in actuality, he turned out to be more of a pedophile than he was a doctor.
What I'm trying to bring to your attention today is something incredibly disturbing and illegal.
After telling my entire story of abuse to the FBI in the summer of 2015, not only did the FBI not report my abuse, but when
they eventually documented my report 17 months later, they made entirely false
claims about what I said. After reading the Office of Inspector General's OIG
report, I was shocked and deeply disappointed at this narrative they
chose to fabricate. They chose to lie about
what I said and protect a serial child molester rather than protect not only me, but countless
others. You know, and Simone Biles, same thing. She had to come out and talk about this. I
recommend everybody go watch the Netflix documentary, Athlete A, that goes into the very, very beginning kind of of the initial reports against Nassar.
And this one concerns a lot more of USA Gymnastics and how exactly they covered up.
But at every institutional level, these girls were failed and just – all anybody wants is accountability here.
I think anybody can at least understand
if not forgive, you know, okay, somebody came forward.
But this is intentional, like brushing it past.
And also it's very clear there was some sexist,
like, we don't believe you.
You know, that was a huge part of what Nassar would do
is he'd be like, well, these girls,
they don't understand, like, this is a medical procedure.
And it took actually a female detective to be like,
I think this is bullshit
about what exactly he's talking about.
So a lot of male detectives didn't believe these clear victims of sexual assault.
And, I mean, I always think about that one dad who charged and tried to hurt Nassar at the trial.
I mean, there are hundreds of those dads out there now, kids who suffered under him, parents. This ruins people's lives
forever, and nobody's standing up for them. Disgusting. Disgusting. A little bit of a
noteworthy exchange over on Fox News, where we talked before about John Cornyn and his instinct
after everything that happened in Uvalde and the clear failures of law enforcement waiting for an hour before they did anything to save those kids in that room.
So on the one hand, there's an instinct at Fox News to sort of like back the blue.
Whatever the media is saying about the law enforcement, this must be fake news.
That side of the coin is represented by Lawrence Jones.
I think his title is like correspondent or something.
They sent him down to cover the shootings.
He actually used to fill in at Rising, so I know him a little bit.
I know you know him a little bit, too.
Yeah, I've met him a couple times.
Anyway, so I think they sent him down in Uvalde to cover these mass shootings.
And he's just going all in on the sort of law enforcement line. His original take was that the AP report,
they were the first ones to sort of expose
some of the lies here, was, quote, simply ridiculous.
So his instinct is, I gotta back the blue
and I gotta say this is fake news.
Meanwhile, Brian Kilmeade,
who listens to No Hero in general, in my view,
but is actually looking at the facts here
and is like, wait a second, there's major problems here.
And they get into a little bit of a back and forth on Fox News.
Let's take a look at that.
Yeah, they got injured as well.
Hey, Lawrence, a couple of things.
Again, Lawrence, I understand what you're saying.
I understand their questions and I think it's fair.
But again, the double thinking of that moment, I don't think it's fair at all.
Well, the thing is, if the attack unit is there really, they do go in right away. They do get the keys rather than blow open the door because it is
fortified, as you brought up yesterday. And it is harder to get through, as you mentioned, Pete.
They didn't have the training to get through. And the one thing to keep in mind, although the
shooting stopped and that's a that's a fine answer, the kids were bleeding. So the sooner you get in there, who knows what an EMT
could have been able to do had they got in there quicker. And they're not trained, essentially,
to handle this. And there's no excuse to leave that back door open. And there's no excuse to
come out with some fable that they were engaged by a resource officer that was armed when that is flat out fiction. That is that's not bad communication.
That is a lie. And Lawrence had tried to spin this as like, well, they're not that good at PR.
They're not that good at explaining. No, they flat out lied about what happened here.
Don't let your ideology or whatever spin you're getting from them
fool you about the numerous repeated lies
that were told about how all of this unfolded
and the excuses that they made.
Now we know they didn't even try to get in the door.
They're going back, oh, the door was fortified.
They didn't know how to get.
Border Patrol went and got a key.
They just hadn't asked.
They hadn't even tried to get, Border Patrol went and got a key. They just had an ass. They hadn't even tried to get through that door.
So that part is ultimately ridiculous.
And the idea that, oh, they're just, you know, they're cops, so they're talking isn't their thing.
PR is not their thing.
No, no, no, no, no.
This was very intentional, deceptive narrative that was laid out to try to cover their asses because they knew they fucked up. I would submit, actually, that they're very good at PR
and that they actually were able to promulgate their lies
for about 48 hours before the mass media actually realized.
Showed up, Greg Abbott was all in on it.
He was buying it.
Greg Abbott.
I mean, from what I remember,
so, I mean, you can go back and roll the tape.
The very first time that we talked about this,
one of, I forget who, said something along the lines of, there's a lot of questions here about law enforcement response.
Yes.
And I think I even said, I was like, look, I don't want to second guess or Monday morning quarterback, but I was like, I have a lot of questions about how exactly it went down. We said, we're going to reserve judgment, but we have a lot of questions.
I'll tell you privately, I was telling her, and I know you were telling me,
I was like, man, I was like, something went wrong here.
I was like, clearly this went bad.
The next day it was very clear, and that's what we led our show with then at the time.
But I think it took about 48, 72 hours before the mass media was willing to say,
hold on a second.
When I thought it was clear as day, the very first press conference
where Steve McCraw said that it took an hour in order to kill.
I was like, oh, my God.
I know this.
It violates every single thing that we know about terrorism and active shooting doctrine.
Like, across the world, there are, you know, the city of London has, like, flex squads such that if a mass shooting breaks out, they could kill the gunman in, like, seven minutes.
No matter where in the city that it actually happens. This is longstanding doctrine. And yet this guy survives for an hour. Like we
knew that this was a screw up. So anyway, I think they have plenty of PR on their side. It took a
long time, but eventually the lies just completely crumbled after journalists actually started
asking questions. So yeah, I mean, I think it's a shameful thing in order to say on national TV.
The first thing that was a red flag for me was
they were very fuzzy about what happened
before he went into the school.
Yeah, that's right.
Because that was my first thing.
How do you let this guy go in the school?
Because the first, remember, the first narrative was,
oh, they engaged him outside.
And even at one point, they tried to indicate
there were three officers who were exchanging fire.
I'm like, how in the world do you let this dude go in this?
So that was my first red flag.
And then a big red flag for me was later in that same day where they had been insisting he was wearing body armor.
He was wearing body armor.
That's why he was wearing body armor.
And then it comes out, well, it turns out he wasn't wearing body armor.
And that's when I said, okay, there is a lot more to this story.
But I think that the reason to show this clip is it is a parable about don't let your ideology get in the way of the facts, reality, just telling the truth based on what is completely obvious to everyone.
Because I think that's a very clear example of what is happening here.
He's like locked into this law enforcement can do no wrong.
And, you know, the news media is always lying.
And so with that as like his ideological lens, he's unable to just do the basics of his job.
I mean, he's not supposed to be like a commentator on the scene.
He's supposed to be reporting out the facts of the investigation based on his sources on the ground.
Clearly not performing too well in that TV right now.
This is what culture war brain does to you.
That's great.
When you're unable to just look at something with an objective lens.
I don't know.
I think that honestly these things harden me because it is a time.
The entire country, universal, right, left, are like screw these people who let these kids die.
That's a rare thing.
We actually shouldn't let go of that.
For all the talk about disagreement on gun control and the politics of it, everybody is united in their disgust and their want of something in order to happen at the very least to the people who screwed up this response.
So I'm going to take something away from that. We had one other little story we wanted to get
in here this morning. I know you all are very interested in the fabulous lives of Nancy Pelosi
and her husband. Apparently over the Memorial Day weekend, he was arrested for driving under
the influence. Go ahead and put this arrested for driving under the influence.
Go ahead and put this tear sheet up on the screen.
Daily Mail's headline.
They have the best.
Nancy Pelosi's millionaire husband, Paul, 82,
was arrested for DUI in Napa Valley
near the couple's vineyard.
I did not know that they own a vineyard.
Crashing his Porsche.
Of course.
Oh, he crashed it.
I didn't even know that.
Yeah, he crashed his Porsche.
Oh.
They booked him and he spent part of the night at least in jail too.
At 4.13 a.m.
Wow.
Outside the sprawling vineyard estate in St. Helena, Napa.
He's living large, isn't he?
Who among us hasn't crashed our car at 4 a.m.
Our Porsche at 4 a.m.
Our Porsche at 4 a.m.
Outside our vineyard.
Outside our custom vineyard in Napa.
While your speaker of the house wife is on the East Coast,
I also love her response where she basically said,
the speaker will not be commenting on this private matter
as she was on the East Coast at the time.
So kind of throwing her own husband under the bus,
being like, she was on the East Coast.
I would do the same thing in her shoes.
Listen, I have some sympathy. 82 years old. I saw this commented too. You know, when you're that
rich, you can't get somebody to drive you home. Like what's, what's going on here? There's a lot
of questions too about why he was out so late. I mean, was he coming back or he was near his own
vineyard? The sprawling estate will remind
everybody Paul Pelosi is the real money man, or at least was before she took office and is worth,
you know, well over $100 million. He's great on the stock market too, you know. Fantastic.
He's always making the right trades. Even at his age. It's really remarkable. Yeah. Even at his
age, he is somebody who has been making major bets, you know, all sorts of call options and more on tech stocks, defense stocks, that his wife is intimately involved and would know the details of.
I'm sure that's just a coincidence.
Yeah.
How they routinely beat the market.
I'm sure that's just a coincidence.
What I do love is that they clearly have pissed off all of their neighbors because all their neighbors are anonymously talking to the Daily Mail.
They're like, they always block the road with their blacked out SUVs.
They're all, it goes, another guy says,
this tracks more with the younger Paul.
He was always going to fundraisers and parties.
Quote, I don't like them very much or find them very interesting.
Imagine one of your neighbors saying that about you.
That's brutal.
It's so classic, though.
This is like some H-O-A vibes here.
There's some petty millionaire Napa stuff.
I'm here for it, to be honest.
So, yeah, I think it's pretty fascinating.
Paul booked for a DUI at 4 a.m. in the morning.
His wife basically throwing him under the bus,
crashing his own Porsche so early after he was arrested.
Just get an Uber, dude.
Yeah, that's what I don't get.
Throw the TMZ thing up on the screen.
Like I said, just to confirm, Nancy Pelosi was not there.
She was in Rhode Island giving a commencement speech for Brown University.
Anyway.
He's fine.
You know, he did crash the car.
He's fine.
But he seems like he's fine.
Just thought you guys might want a little update there.
Yeah, and luckily he didn't kill anybody or hurt anybody.
Yes.
So don't drink and drive.
That's the real PSA for this.
Very well said.
All right, Sagar, what are you looking at?
Well, something I've always found frustrating about the gun control debate is how little it has really changed in my lifetime.
Should people be allowed to own AR-15-style rifles or not?
Should we have more background checks or not?
Every once in a while, some ancillary issue pops up, bump stocks, ghost guns.
But at its core, the debate remains the same.
Should Americans have more or less access to semi-automatic rifles?
My own biases aside, what I always like to do in these situations, as I did during the Ukraine crisis,
is just take a step back and consider all of the history.
So let's go back to the founding of America.
Much has been written about the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
Ratified on December 15, 1791, was and reads in full the Second Amendment,
quote, a well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state. The right of
the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. The NRA and people like me like to
focus on the latter part. After well-regulated militia, people who favor gun control focus on
the first. So who's right?
Well, honestly, kind of both. The founders almost certainly did mean a well-regulated militia,
but by that they also meant all of us. Because in 1792, President George Washington signed the Second Militia Act, which declares every able-bodied white citizen, of course, between
the age of 18 to 45 should be enrolled in the militia and should thus be required to obtain a firearm in order to remain a citizen in good standing.
This smutties the waters.
So everybody was in the militia, but also everybody needed a gun.
The first hint at an individual right to bear arms arose in U.S. jurisprudence in 1822 in the state of Kentucky. Kentucky in 1813 passed a law
banning concealed weapons, which was interpreted by the state as banning swords that were concealed
inside of canes. This did not sit well with some citizens who brought a court case and won with the
state declaring that the law violated the right to bear arms as codified in the U.S. Constitution.
From there, things get very tricky in the U.S. Constitution. From there,
things get very tricky in the post-colonial period. A litany of states from Tennessee to Arkansas to Georgia struck down any attempts at restricting firearms, except there was one catch,
which is that they struck down firearm restrictions on white people. In fact,
as I researched this monologue, I found that the original and early
attempts at all gun control in the United States are extraordinarily racist in their origins.
At the same time that state courts in the South were guaranteeing the right of white citizens to
bear arms, they also were upholding and passing laws that allowed citizens to go into any black
person's home to search for weapons, to ban even free blacks from carrying arms,
and ensuring at every turn that black Americans
in no way had access to guns
to challenge the Southern status quo pre-Civil War.
The Civil War, of course, resolved the slavery question
for all time in America,
but it also prompted the first federal attempts
at defining gun rights in America.
It culminated in Presser
v. Illinois, 1886, which said it was a Second Amendment right of individuals, not militias,
based upon the interpretation that I've given above that unless restricted by the state,
it was the right of every American to purchase a firearm. That was later overturned in 2020,
and actually it took, or sorry, in 2010, where they actually took it further and said
that the right to bear arms stands under the 14th Amendment of the Constitution. But with the
standard of 1886 in place, we enter the paradigm of the modern era. Guns are now a right in America
as codified by the U.S. Supreme Court. So the debate then became what kind of guns? The modern
era struck with a vengeance as firearm technology evolved. When the debate then became what kind of guns? The modern era struck with a vengeance
as firearm technology evolved, when the nation was eventually shocked by the St. Valentine's Day
Massacre of 1929, when seven gangsters were shot to death in Chicago by associates of Al Capone
using Thompson submachine guns. That incident ignited a national discussion about guns,
what type of guns people should be allowed to own,
and it culminated in the first federal legislation of its kind for gun control,
the National Firearms Act of 1934, which established the Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms Agency
and put in place the first regulations on certain types of weapons, including taxation and later legislation,
which established the FFL system of purchasing and registering firearms.
From there, the next wave of gun control actually did not come until 1968.
It was after the high-profile assassinations of JFK, MLK, Bobby Kennedy, Malcolm X, and many more.
With the Gun Control Act of 1968,
the 68 Law was the first federally of its kind to stop felons, the mentally ill, and others from
purchasing guns, in addition to requiring serial numbers from that point forward on all guns to
impose regulation and licensing. Then, finally, after some brief dalliances with rolling back
some of those regulations and more, the most stringent and last large piece of legislation
that has passed was the famous Brady Bill. It was named after the press secretary of Ronald Reagan, who was wounded by John Hinckley. The Brady Bill, in conjunction with the 1994
assault weapons ban, created the National Instant Criminal Background Check System for when you buy
a gun. It also banned semi-automatic rifles from purchase for Americans from 1994 to 2004.
As I mentioned earlier, results are honestly pretty mixed on whether the assault
weapons ban did anything at all. A 2004 study by the Justice Department said it had a negligible
impact on crime and gun deaths. As far as mass shootings, they said it could have,
could have had an impact, but there isn't a lot of ways to know given how rare they are. And of
course, with regards to school shooting, the 1999 Columbine shooting still happened under the assault weapons ban.
That basically brings us to where we are today.
And again, why I find it so frustrating.
The maximalist position of the gun control side today is an assault weapons ban, which we literally already tried.
So do we not have any imagination in this country to try anything new? The confines
of our debate are simple. D.C. v. Heller in 2008 ruled unequivocally, quote,
the Second Amendment guarantees an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with
service in a militia and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes such as self-defense
within the home. Under that standard, which is not going to change, we have a few simple realities to face. Guns are not going anywhere. The most maximalist position of today
in gun control has already been tried, with no evidence that it actually worked. Again,
marginally, I have said sure, some background check systems are fine as long as they are not
used as a national database of firearms. But what really strikes me is those original attempts at gun control
and the spirit behind them.
There is a reason the Southerners
tried very hard to keep guns away,
not only from slaves, but free blacks.
And because, to me,
guns embody the spirit of individual autonomy
baked into the American idea
and our expansion across the frontier.
That when shit hits the fan,
the only person you can really count on is yourself.
Ask the parents in Uvalde, Texas, who had to storm past cops and were reluctant to kill a mass shooter
to save their own kids. And then ask yourself whether you don't want everything in your power
to ensure that in a similar situation, you can do what needs to be done. Because from where I'm
sitting here, just about the worst idea that we have is to give idiots in charge more power over us.
Especially power over our ability to take matters into our own hands if they fail us.
I was really interested, actually, in the history of gun control.
And if you want to hear my reaction to Sager's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com.
Crystal, what are you taking a look at?
Well, guys, after 19 children were
slaughtered in their classrooms along with their brave teachers, Republican elites were faced with
a bit of a difficult political predicament. All of their normal tools of distraction and deflection
in response to these repeated tragedies were kind of taken off the table. The American public is no
longer really impressed with the argument that you just shouldn't talk about policy changes in the wake of mass shootings.
Those mass shootings are so routine that to avoid such a conversation would preclude ever discussing how we might make the country safer.
And the normal argument from the right that we just need more good guys with guns also proved unworkable once we learned that 19 supposed good guys with guns stood outside of that classroom for an hour and did nothing,
not even attempting to breach the doors to come to the aid of those hiding in terror under tables
or smeared with the blood of their friends playing dead or bleeding out for lack of medical care on
the floor. So instead, they have overwhelmingly landed on this. One of the things that everyone
agreed is don't have all of these unlocked back doors.
Have one door into and out of the school and have that one door armed police officers at that door.
If that had happened, if those federal grants had gone to this school, when that psychopath arrived,
the armed police officers could have taken him out and we'd have 19 children and two teachers
still alive.
There is no complete solution. There's only a series of partial solutions.
We can't just throw labor at this. I hear impassioned pleas, Sean,
for an officer in every school in America. That's logistically unfeasible and mathematically
impossible. What we need to do is utilize smart technology. That's what's needed.
We need to install man traps.
This is something we've discussed in the past.
Back in 2018, I checked.
Man traps, a series of interlocking doors at the school entrance that are triggered by a tripwire.
The tripwire can be a gunshot, broken glass, a manual switch tossed by a school employee, and it traps the shooter like a rat.
And when he's trapped like a rat, we're buying time.
The most precious commodity these children can ever get is time to run, time to hide,
time to get away from this madman and his bullets.
It's tripwires.
It's man traps.
It's not labor.
It's not gun control. What we need now is a top to bottom security overhaul at schools all across our country.
Every building should have a single point of entry. There should be strong exterior fencing, metal detectors, and the use of new technology to make sure that no unauthorized individual can ever enter the school with a weapon.
We need booby traps or single entrances, ballistic blankets, TSA-style security checkpoints.
By the way, having multiple entrances is a pretty important thing for making sure kids can escape in a fire.
But the general idea is turn our schools into impenetrable military fortresses which can never be breached.
And listen, I am not against considering how to make our schools safer. In fact, in the wake of this tragedy, I was relieved, personally, thinking about the design of my son's public elementary school
where nearly all the classrooms have doors to the outside, providing a potential route of escape if the
unthinkable happens and a killer wanders their halls looking for an unlocked classroom door.
But there's a couple of problems with this whole discussion. First of all, when you focus only on
fortifying schools to the exclusion of any attempts to make society safer so that we can send our kids to school without fear. You accept that our schools are a battlefield. You resign yourself to a world
in which kindergartners, along with learning their letters, have to learn what to do and where to hide
if a lunatic with weapons of war comes to murder them and their friends. You admit that the adults
have thoroughly failed them, have failed to create a safe society for them.
So the best we can do is hope to thwart the killers once they've already arrived,
drilling children on how to survive the war.
But of course, the truth is, the adults have failed them.
No one can doubt that at this point,
which is why I'm not opposed to thinking through the safest school architecture protocols and technology.
But the other problem with this mode of thinking, with taking as a given that our places of learning should also be fortified as
places of combat, is that we've kind of already done it. We've already hardened the schools.
Congress has acted in a bipartisan manner, repeatedly, to appropriate hundreds of millions
of dollars over two decades to the twin goals of, number one, training the police to respond to active shooters in schools,
and number two, fortifying schools so that they will not be easy targets.
Evaldi's police and their school district, they were thoroughly up to date and fully funded on both police training and school hardening.
Fences, locked doors, school resource officers, state-of-the-art training.
In the end, none of it mattered.
I graduated high school back in 1999,-of-the-art training. In the end, none of it mattered. Now,
I graduated high school back in 1999, the last days of the old innocence. That was the year that two teenagers at Columbine High School murdered 12 of their classmates and one of their teachers
before turning the guns on themselves. Now, at Columbine, police responded to 911 calls almost
immediately, but then it took them another 20 excruciating minutes after they
were on the scene to actually enter the school and attempt to rescue terrorized students. That
response now seems kind of fantastic compared to what the cops in Uvalde did, honestly.
But in response to the horror of Columbine, Congress opened up the purse strings and they
funded millions in research and dissemination of new SWAT team trainings so that every police
department in the country would know exactly what
to do if faced with this nightmare scenario. The Evaldi Police Department was thoroughly
schooled in this federally funded post-Columbine active shooter response. In fact, that school
district had recently hosted two training days for law enforcement, including one that was just
two months ago. And the protocol the responding cops were meant to follow could not have been more clear.
The number one priority in the words of their training manual
is to, quote, stop the killing.
Officers' first priority is to move in
and confront the attacker.
It goes on to make clear
that if you are the first person on the scene,
you are not going to wait for backup.
Quote, in many cases,
that immediate response means a single
solo officer response until such time as other forces can arrive. The best hope that innocent
victims have is that officers immediately move into action to isolate, distract, or neutralize
the threat, even if that means one officer acting alone. Now, in case that wasn't clear enough, the training spells it out that if
you've got a problem with being the sole officer responding to that threat, you need to find another
line of work. Quote, a first responder unwilling to place the lives of the innocent above their own
safety should consider another career field. Now, we all know what happened, though, when it was time
to put all that training to the test. Cops cowered in the hallways for an hour without even attempting
to breach the door. More stood outside, handcuffing and tasing desperate parents who were begging them
to act. It took the Border Patrol finally overriding the local PD before the carnage
actually stopped. No matter how much training the good guys with guns had,
in the end, it was no match for human cowardice in the face of a madman with an AR-15.
But that's not all. Because Uvalde, like nearly every American school, has also been physically
fortified against exactly such a threat. Now, school hardening, that's a big business. So while
Congress couldn't pass even the most basic popular gun reforms,
they had no problem dishing out millions at the behest of industry lobbyists to this burgeoning profit center.
Bill Clinton passed tens of millions in dollars for school security.
George W. Bush sent $350 million to schools to hire on-site police and install security cameras and other fortifications.
Every Congress continues
these appropriations, fueling what has now become a multi-billion dollar industry with its own trade
convention and influence peddlers. Texas has actually gone even further. Following a school
shooting in Santa Fe that killed 10, Governor Greg Abbott passed $100 million in school security
funds, a portion of which flowed to Uvalde Consolidated School District to harden their
schools. They invested in perimeter fencing, in two-way radios, threat assessment teams at each school,
protocols like locking every classroom door.
They hired more police.
They invested in Social Sentinel, that's software which tracks students' social media
to evaluate any potential threats.
An app called Stop It for students to anonymously report bullying.
Raptor Visitor Management to scan and check visitor IDs against
sex offender registries and to guard against potential kidnapping threats. None of the
state-of-the-art tech stopped the murder of 19 babies. Now listen, just because those measures
failed Neuvaldi doesn't mean that they never work and should just be tossed down altogether. However,
there is no actual proof that what the school safety industry is selling actually works.
A comprehensive review by the National Association of School Psychologists was unable to identify any research that showed that these expensive security add-ons actually thwarted attacks or lessened the death count.
We have been hardening schools for two decades now.
The carnage has never stopped. In fact, last year saw a record-breaking number of school shootings, 230 plus.
That is double of the year prior.
The bottom line is this.
If we actually want to protect our kids, no amount of school hardening and good guys with guns and state-of-the-art training can substitute for preventing these horrors from occurring in the first place. If we are actually
serious about protecting the lives and innocence of our children, we will work to keep AR-15s out
of the hands of lunatics. We will pass universal health care so everyone struggling with mental
health issues can actually get health. And even more challenging, we will work to create a society
that produces fewer deranged or hate-fueled killers to begin with.
And again, Sagar, I don't want to say none of this stuff works.
However, I do think it is. And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue,
become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com.
All right, let's get to it.
We have a fun thing to talk about today.
It's May 30th.
We're heading in, obviously, I know it's a holiday weekend.
For some of you, we thought it was important to continue doing the show because we're coming up on our one-year anniversary, which is really just kind of incredible.
If you're a premium subscriber, we filmed a special kind of one-year recap for all of you.
But for those of us who watch and stick with the show, I think we owe it to you as well.
It's just amazing.
Obviously, we would never be here without you, Crystal.
And it's just fun to think back. I remember, I think we were doing a practice show,
Memorial Day weekend, exactly this time one year ago. And we were, it was like secret and we
couldn't exactly, we did multiple rehearsals and that's where we filmed some of our promotional
content, which we eventually posted. And you guys immediately were like, Hey, the audio here is
terrible. And because, you know, our premium subscribers showed up for us, we were able to pay
and have in an audio shout out to Steve, uh, who helps us out every day. It's just a fun time.
I can think to reflect on the growth of the show. As we come up here, I just checked this morning,
which is insane to me. Not one time in the last 365 days or 364 days have we dropped below the iTunes or Spotify
top 10 in politics news. There has not been one day that we've dropped below that, which is insane
to me. I mean, we came from the hill. I thought we'd be okay. We don't know. Ultimately, it was a
bet. And it has never dropped below the
top 10. If anything, the show has grown every single month that it has been on the air.
We have 800,000 some YouTube subscribers. It's just been overwhelming almost in terms of how
big the show got so quickly that it was reconstituted and just shows us why we want
to keep doing this, what we want to keep doing as we continue to grow the show.
Yeah.
There's a couple of things I want to say as we think about the first year.
First of all, I want to thank you for being such a great partner.
Thank you.
And there is no one that I would rather be on this journey with because as much as we, you know, I mean, we have disagreements right now over guns and all of these things. But we both have a bedrock belief that if we can't even engage with someone who we really know to be a good faith actor on areas that are difficult and challenging, like what hope is there for the country?
So we really believe in that, even though sometimes it would be more comfortable to just have someone next to me that is going to be like, amen, and just be preaching to the choir. And we know you guys,
that's something else that we're really proud of is that the audience has really different views
across the entire spectrum and shows up because they want to hear things that, yeah, they agree
with, but they also are open to being challenged. And that is so incredibly rare. And I want you to
know that we don't take that for granted. We really take it seriously. We really try our best
to, you know, even if you disagree with us, to try to thoroughly think through our arguments and push
and question ourselves. And I think the fact that we have someone else on the other side who's kind
of keeping us honest helps to make sure that that discipline is enforced.
So that's one thing. Another thing I want to say is that since leaving The Hill, which I feel really
grateful for having the opportunity to build there and learn there and, you know, and be able to
establish what the show really was in the core of it. But I think both of us have never felt more free. I mean, we are answerable
to no one but you guys. You know, we really, like, there is no other parameter. There is no
constraint. We're able to do the show in exactly the way that we want to be able to do it. And
we spend a lot of time, and I hope that this comes through to you guys, we spend a lot of time thinking about how we can provide, continue to build and provide the best product for you
possible. It sounds really hokey, but the fact that the show has succeeded and that there is
a space for independent media that doesn't quite fit in the box of a lot of different things,
that truly does give me hope for the
country and make me feel like, okay, there's something here to build on.
There's something here to work with.
And from the feedback you all have given us, it seems like that has provided a sort of
like comfort to you as well, that knowledge.
It's amazing.
You know, we do a podcast version of all of our partnership content that goes out on Saturday.
That partnership thing is now sometimes longer than our show,
which is amazing to me. So that's the thing. You guys showed up, not just for us, to build a beautiful desk. We replaced the bricks, bought the new cameras, all the new recording equipment.
We've got a full staff over there. We've got graphic designers who work on the show and make
sure that everything looks good. That's just the bedrock. And then from there, when we can cover
those expenses on top of the studio
and all of the other extraneous business expenses that we have to pay,
now we are able to partner with all of these great people.
So we have a graphic here.
Let's put this up there on the screen.
It's kind of like planets that circle here.
I mean, not just on top of Crystal and I's own personal projects,
like the realignment and Crystal Kyle and Friends.
Kyle Kalinsky is very gracious in putting some clips on our channel. Marshall's been doing these fantastic interviews. The Lever,
obviously, the very first ones, they've been doing original reporting. Status Coup with Jordan
Cheriton. And look, Jordan may have a left-leaning perspective, but the guy does good on the ground
reporting no matter what you might think of his own personal opinions. He did great clips for us
from the J.D. Vance rally,
had great clips there also with Nina Turner.
He had somebody down in Texas.
So we have great affiliate footage,
real news with Max Alvarez.
Matt Stoller's explainers on Monopolies and more
have been doing gangbusters here.
Yeah.
Not just in numbers, but having real world impact.
You know, he got me a spot to go and to testify to the FTC about the dangers of big tech and how exactly they can be working in conjunction with corporate media to stifle independent news. That just shows you. I literally was testifying before the FTC chairwoman, Lena Kahn. So this just shows you that you're helping build something
very special and very new. And as we enter year two, look, I mean, it's vanity to look at the
charts and all that, but we want to channel it into the correct angle, which is it's a tumultuous
time, it's a sad time, and it's a dangerous time. But there is not a reason to give up on the fact
that every day, the harder we work and the more people that we expand and more, that we actually can change the status quo.
You know, change feels like it's not happening and then it happens all at once.
So to that, we have a year two plan.
I showed this already to the premium people.
Let's put this up there on the screen.
Which, oh, sorry, this is the lifetime members one.
Actually, yeah, shout out to all of them.
We're going to give a special thank you.
We finally got the, yeah, special thank you to all of them.
They were really the foundation.
And to those of you who continue to sign up, like, I just want you to know how much we appreciate it, how much it helps fund our mission and to help build our mission.
And, of course, we have it here on the set, all of the plaques of all of your names, which you're a permanent part of, at the end of every show, including the credit section. Let's throw the next one up there just so I can show people.
This is some of the major goals that we have already identified for our premium members,
some of the things that we want to do. We want to add, number one, we want more on-the-ground
reporting resources. But to be frank, it is extraordinarily expensive, and it's not like
the economic downturn hasn't hurt us as well. We want to hire a new staff member to help expand our breaking points footprint. James,
producer James, has been doing a fantastic job, but the guy's getting stretched there.
Yeah, we just keep throwing more and more stuff at him. He doesn't complain, but he could use a
hand. He could use a hand. Live roadshow across America. We have some announcements coming very,
very soon. We already booked the first venue. Tickets are going to be going on sale. All the tickets, of course, are going first to the premium
subscribers and whatever's left will go to the general public. So if you are one of those people
who wants early access, that's the reason in order to sign up. We want to expand content
partnerships. We're constantly on the look. How many more people can we add on top of the
on the ground reporting resources just because we recognize both how much you guys love it
and how much it resonates
and is actually creating real on-the-ground impact.
And then finally, we want to continue to upgrade this studio.
We need to fix some of the lights in here,
which we have been told is extraordinarily difficult,
expensive, et cetera.
But listen, that's why we rely on all of you.
We understand how important production value is to all of you
to be able to share the show with your friends and with your family, not just some talking
guy who's on YouTube or whatever in their mother's basement. We never really considered
it until we started meeting people in the wild. And they were like, oh, well, we love
the, I mean, I heard it over and over and over again.
Yeah, that's one of the number one things we're told.
I never thought about it until I actually met some of the fans of our show in person.
Yeah, well, I mean, there is just this very, like, you know, if you're used to consuming mainstream news content,
and you're not used to watching YouTube shows, and you see something that has, you know, a more minimalist background or a more casual vibe to it,
then I think there is a natural instinct to be like, ah, that's not serious.
It's not real.
And so, I mean, this is not to besmirch that approach either.
It's just that our core offering has always been, in part, that we have a sort of different
production, a high-level production value so that you can share it with your friends
and family members who may not have exactly the same politics and that they will sort
of instinctively at least take it seriously from the jump.
And we've been told by you guys
that that's something that's important to you,
so we want to continue to build on that.
We've also kind of like, you know,
we came into this with this mindset of
the goal is to say screw you to the mainstream media,
which we still very much feel deep in our core.
However, we've also, I say, broadened our focus to actually provide a true alternative to the mainstream,
which is why we want to focus more on and why we've already added, you know,
more ability to break news through our partners at The Lever, through also our new partners,
Ryan Grimm, Ken Klippenstein at The Intercept, who do great reporting, particular foreign policy. And Ken is always getting incredible scoops because he actually
talks to rank-and-file workers or rank-and-file members of DHS, Border Patrol, State Department,
you name it. And also the on-the-ground reporting with Status Quo. So that does take resources,
and that is an area that we want to continue to build so that we can be as holistic in offering as we can be
to truly be a real one-stop sort of alternative shop for you.
Yeah, absolutely.
So look, guys, if you can help us out, join the journey.
We've got the premium link there.
You're obviously all of the benefits.
We have the extra shows.
We have the reaction to each other's monologues.
The AMAs.
The AMAs, all of that is important. But really, you're investing in we have the reaction to each other's monologues. The AMAs. All of that. The AMAs.
All of that is important.
But really, you're investing in our ability to continue to grow.
And look, we're not going to stop.
So honestly, in a way, we're only just getting started.
Thank you to everybody who's on the ride with us.
Thank you to all those premium people, those people who signed up on day one.
We will never forget you.
Yeah.
You guys changed our lives.
That's right.
You changed the show.
You made it so that we could actually do something.
And to all the people since then who signed up, you're only investing in something even bigger and better.
So thank you so much to all of you.
I mentioned this in the premium video, but I always think about I went to a concert once and a guy said,
thank you so much for sharing your hard-earned money with us to come see us.
And I think about that any time.
I know how hard you guys work. And I know how hard it is out there, inflation and all that.
I just can't tell you how much it means to us that you would be willing to entrust us
with your hard-earned dollars, because we know how much that means, especially in this time.
And look, it was a life-changing experience for us. Hopefully, it's been a life-changing
experience for you, and we're going to continue to try and make it that way.
So thank you all so much.
And we'll see you all tomorrow.
Love you guys.
See you back here tomorrow.
DNA test proves he is not the father. Now I'm taking the inheritance. We'll be 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 Boy Sober, the movement that exploded in 2024. You might hear that term and think it's about
celibacy, but to me, Boy Sober 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.