Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 5/9/23: Was TX Shooter A White Supremacist, Buttigieg Fails On Airline Meltdowns, Gain of Function Research Gets More Funding, Kamala In Charge Of AI Regulation, CA Reparations, LGBTQ Book Bans, Gun Control, Ken Klippenstein on Disinformation Agency

Episode Date: May 9, 2023

Saagar and Emily discuss the facts surrounding the TX mass shooter, Emily and Saagar debate if Hispanics can be white nationalists, Buttigieg and Biden fail no weak airline regulations, Trump endorses Eat Palestine Rail Safety bill, Fauci and Biden double down on funding for "gain of function" research, Kamala being put in charge of AI regulation, Khan Academy using AI to change tutoring, California approving Reparations, Emily looks into certain "LGBTQ" books that are being banned, Saagar looks into the stats on Gun Control and Mass Shootings, and we're joined in studio by Ken Klippenstein to discuss his new piece in The Intercept on the Pentagon's Disinformation Agency. (Ken's article: https://theintercept.com/2023/05/05/foreign-malign-influence-center-disinformation/)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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Listen to VoiceOver on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Before we get started, I just wanted to say thank you all so much to the premium subscribers who've been helping us out, building the new set, supporting our work over here. If you are able, breakingpoints.com. We love all our monthly, yearly, and lifetime members who are helping us out. And also,

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It's a joke. Oh, he planned it. Also, you scared the hell out of me with your good morning. It was so absurdly loud. See, you don't understand. We've got to turn it on whenever we're starting here at this hour. This is what I try to tell people. Whenever you do this gig, you've got to bring the energy. And I know that that's what is for everybody at home. So since my conservative critics all think I'm a leftist anyway,

I will be trying to bring the leftist perspective. I'm going to do my best. Emily, just maintain the hard right position and we'll give everybody as balanced of a view as possible. I did tell everyone we're going to have the most ambitious crossovers of all time here on the Breaking Points channel. We've never done it before, by the way. We have never done it before. We've never done it before. I feel like we have. We've done a couple podcasts and stuff together. We're old friends, so I think it'll work out. So we got a bunch of topics that we're going to be discussing today. Obviously, the horrific shooting in Allen, Texas. We're going to break down everything that we know about the shooter. There's been a little bit of a controversy around whether the information that we have is true or not. We're going to give you all of the details possible just so you can know where things stand

and what possible takeaways we can have. We'll talk a little bit about the media, about whether Hispanics can be white supremacists. What a 2023 topic. Not something that we'd ever thought to be discussed. Secretary Buttigieg woke up from a three-year coma. He's decided to try and do something about airlines. We'll tell you a little bit about that one. There's some lab leak news, which just seriously, it's one of those where you can't even believe it's real. But it is real.

And we will break all of that down for you. AI. We've been trying to stay on top of this story, Emily. I know you guys have been looking at it too. We know it's going to change everything. This is one where AI and education in particular, we're seeing massive disruption and somehow we've decided Kamala Harris should be in charge. So yeah. What could go wrong? Well, we put the artificial intelligence in charge of the artificial intelligence. That's right. Yeah. That's a good, that's a good, I like that. All right. So reparations also, since it's just the two of us, we. Yeah, that's a good, that's a good, I like that. All right, so reparations also.

Since it's just the two of us, we're like, hey, why don't we pick one of the hottest topics in social science, California deciding, possibly trying to pass reparations. We're going to tell you what we know about that. Emily's taking a look at the New York Magazine, Education. I will not say gay, a new cover. And I'm going to be looking at gun control and talking about facts, fiction. We also have Ken Klippenstein, who is in the show today. He's got a great new story about new disinformation initiatives that are popping up all across

the U.S. government. Ken has done some of the absolute, like the best groundwork, I think, in terms of exposing the disinformation industrial complex, if you will. And so we are going to get into all of that. But let's start with Allen, Texas. So we didn't touch it yesterday because we're still in a developing situation. We didn't really know much about it. Now, of course, it's become a major national story, not just because of the horrific tragedy that's happened and the victims, but now it's sparking a meta conversation around not only guns, which I'll be talking about in my monologue, but also about, you know, white identity politics, far right, the motives of said shooting, the way that this media treatment is happening. First, just some on the ground facts, the initial reaction

from a breaking news reporter, an NBC affiliate. Here's what he had to say. Now, authorities report the first gunfire came in around 3.30 Saturday afternoon. That's when witnesses say a man dressed in black, wearing body armor, looking similar to a police officer, began walking through the mall property here, firing indiscriminately, sending thousands of people running for cover. Authorities tell us a police officer that was responding to an unrelated call heard that gunfire and ran towards the sound, immediately engaging the gunman, shooting and killing him. But in the moments before police arrived, we are told that hundreds did whatever they could inside this property to survive.

So we ran to the back, barricaded it with some concrete bricks, and then right then on the security camera, thank God we went in the back at that time. We saw him walk right by, masked up, fake police outfit on. There you go. Allen, Texas, the initial reaction, you know, kudos to the police officer not taking a page out of the Uvalde playbook, running towards the sound of gunfire, actually doing his job. So questions now, Emily, after a couple of days, who is this guy? And there were some initial reports about how we knew the name of the shooter. His name is Mauricio Garcia. But then there were media reports about how he had been inspired by possible white identity politics. Now, before we get to said tattoos and alleged social media profiles and all of that. Let's start with what we actually know.

Let's put this up there on the screen from the Washington Post. This was actually released also by investigators. These are verified facts from the investigators who are on the scene. They say not only were they investigating the Texas gunman's, quote, alleged white supremacist ties, but they have now confirmed that Mr. Garcia, Mauricio Garcia, joined the army, the US Army, in June of 2008, but was, quote, terminated three months later for some sort of mental health condition. Three months, obviously, not that long of a time to be separated. Didn't even qualify for his initial training before he went ahead and got separated. So in terms of the

verified facts, we know that the gunman's name was Mauricio Garcia. We know that he was 33 years old. We also know that he lived somewhere in the Dallas area. Now, from that point on, it's all coming down to some breadcrumbs that were possibly left online. And the reason that I'm saying this kind of in a more trepidatious manner, Emily, is because it has sparked a bit of concern as to whether, quote, this is some sort of psyop or not. Now, I'm going to withhold my judgment for now, and I'm just going to show you what people are reacting to. Just a warning, these are, you know, these are really terrible images, but let's go and put these up there on the screen. Initial images that were taken off of a Russian social media website.

I'm not even going to try and tell you the name. Something like Odoklasinitsky, I think I did that pretty well. The second largest social media site in Russia where the alleged shooter was posting. On those profile, he apparently had a profile or allegedly had a profile where he had no connections, no friends, and was almost using it as some sort of personal diary. On the left, you can actually see a vest, a bulletproof vest with the RWDS logo that was on it. That stands for Right Wing Death Squad. That's something that's been appropriated by far-right groups here in the United States. In the middle, obviously, you can see two fresh SS tattoos and a swastika hearkening to the Nazi era, as well as a Texas tattoo that

was on the shoulder. A very odd meme that he actually posted, which is certainly a discourse igniter saying Latino children have two different paths. One of them is to, quote, act black, and the other one is to become a white supremacist and also posting a YouTube account. The YouTube account was live last time I looked at it, and I'm not going to lie. I mean, anytime you see any of these, these people are straight up freaks, you know, wearing masks and pulling it down and just acting in a really, really bizarre manner. So Emily, I want to get your reaction to this because the initial take that I've been able to see so far from the Tim Pools of the world and several other people who are out there is that this all seems a bit too convenient.

A, number one, these images were unearthed by Bellingcat, which is certainly an organization with, I think it's fair to say, a more neoliberal bent on the Ukraine. They're taking money from the CIA. Yeah, so it's a group that has been connected to the State Department and the U.S. government. We're not above some conspiracy minds here. On the other hand, whenever we look at this, we see tattoos, including a Dallas tattoo that's on the shooter's hand, compared to one taken from the scene that was released there. Those do appear to match.

The name, it seems to match. In terms of the details that were released, we know that the right-wing death squad was included on the shooter's vest that included in the photo here. So what is your take on this? Like, A, do you think that it rings true, possibly true? Again, I'm trying to withhold my judgment and look at it dispassionately. I can see why people have questions about this as to how it was unearthed and how, quote unquote, it looks a little bit too convenient. But at the same time, so many of the details do appear to add up here on the social media profile. Well, I think the likely answer is probably the, I mean, the less suspect answer. It's probably

just most likely that this is one of the very many mentally ill, mentally struggling people in this country who chose to act out this expression of their personal anguish in an incredibly tragic and awful way. And that's really not that hard for me to believe. And I mean, of course, it's not. It happens every week. And in terms of the identity question, well, I mean, this is, again, also not that hard to believe because people's minds are swimming in garbage. So like this idea that you can come up with a Hispanic formulation for white supremacy in the media, I think we have this as an element. Um, it's, it's the last element in this block. You can see side by side here, Washington post wall street journal headline showing put a,

they're up on the screen. Yeah. Thanks. Um, yeah. So you can see white by side here, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal headline showing. Let's go and put A8 there up on the screen. Yeah. Please. Thank you. Thanks, Sagar. Yeah. So you can see white supremacist views after eight killed. And this is on both of these.

I think it was on both of the front pages of the print editions yesterday, too. Yes. And that is, again, it's misleading. It's out of context because if you don't know that the shooter is Hispanic, you have a completely different takeaway. At the same time, you have a guy with SS tattoos. And a swastika. And a swastika. And a lot of strange tattoos, a lot of strange beliefs.

But given the sort of worldview that we're all swimming in right now, I don't think it's particularly strange to imagine that a confused and mentally ill person would get involved in an ideology like that. Right. So Elon apparently jumping on the train here. Let's go and put this up there on the screen. A redheaded libertarian tweeting out that, quote, it's a psyop and it's not even good about questions around how exactly this guy's social media profile was posted. He says, quote, this gets weirder by the moment. So again, I think I just want to spend some time and look at this. And given the fact that we have photos, a face reveal by the gunman, which appears to match the person, we have the age, the way that this profile was actually found, you can actually go check it for yourself, was by searching for the verified birthday of said person.

Now, the question is, why is this weirdo freak posting on the Russian social media website? Well, apparently, this Russian social media website has zero content moderation. One of the reasons that Garcia has had problems with previous social media platforms in the past is he kept getting booted off of Facebook and of normal U.S with previous social media platforms in the past is he kept getting booted off of Facebook and of normal US-based social media companies because he was posting like weird Hitlerized propaganda and Nazi-inspired stuff. So that is a plausible explanation as to why he would be keeping some sort of odd video diary. I guess the only other theory that is out there is that this is some sort of plan. And I mean, look, I guess it's technically

possible. We should wait all of the facts that arise as to what we're going to see that the investigators release, whether they verify that these are social media profiles. I should say there are some social, there are some company or news organizations which claim that they have verified that this social media profile does belong to this gunman. Now, once again, it is certainly possible. One of the breadcrumbs that we had met was that the investigators had seized the laptop and the computer and the cell phone of the gunman. And they were the ones actually who initially said, it looks like he was into some crazy stuff, which is what prompted some of the investigation.

So anyway, I think this is all just a long way for me of saying of, if you are out there and you are skeptical around this, I can tell you, like I spent hours of my life digging in, seeing like where the social media profile came from, the verifiability, given the hand tattoos and all of that. The alternative explanations just don't pass the smell test to me.

One of them was that this is some cartel-related gun incident. The thing is that the victims of this shooting, one is like a Korean family of four. By the way, the only surviving person of that family is a six-year-old child. And there's a GoFundMe. Let's go and put the GoFundMe in the link here if we can. We have an Indian woman, for example, who was killed. It appears to be just completely indiscriminate. So in terms of victims, why the cartel thing wouldn't make sense. Not saying that there aren't innocent people who haven't been killed in cartel-related violence, but I'm saying like there doesn't even appear to be any link on this at all. We have the investigators themselves

saying that this is some sort of, you know, instigated attack by somebody with, you know, far-right views. And then on top of all of that, you know, from what we can see, again, in terms of the details, while I understand that this certainly will be used by people who, you know, have a bone to pick on gun control, I'm doing my own monologue on this, or, you know, who want to say that, you know, white supremacy or whatever is the biggest problem that we face in the country, that doesn't necessarily negate some of the facts around the case. And I think that in general, instead, what we should try to do is have a productive conversation, not just to talk just about mental health, to honor some of the victims, including the small children, three-year-old at one point, who was killed in this, and then try and arrive at some sort of consensus as to who and what and what we can do about this as we move forward.

Just to also show you, I know that there were some questions around the mugshot of this person. Let's go and put this up there on the screen because this is what a lot of the initial confusion was around. So the two mugshots that you can see there on the right were mugshots that were distributed on social media that appeared to match the name of the gunman. Now, those were never released by law enforcement. And so people were like, hey, the tattoos or whatever that were on this alleged gunman's social media profile don't match the mugshots that had been released or not released, that were initially distributed online. Now, this is also, I think, is also a very long-winded way of pointing out, don't believe everything you see on the internet. That's why it took, you know, like, we do this for a living, Emily, and we're sitting

there spending, again, literally hours being like, okay, what's actually been released by the police? This, the name, the ties, and right-wing death squad. Okay, that's what we know. Now, what was released from social media by a belling cat, which, you know, is definitely suspect organization. Okay. Now just because released by them doesn't mean I'm going to dismiss it. It just means I'm going to scrutinize it. It's like, okay, so I got this and this, I'm trying to match this up. And then where's the confusion coming from? I get where the confusion is coming from. Uh, put that all together. To me, it appears

to be the social media, the legitimate social media profile, media profile of the shooter. All of that said, all the questions as to whether he was some plant, people were like, oh, his tattoos are fresh and all that. Listen, I mean, I think sometimes we try to apply a rational mindset to a psychotic killer. These people are freaks. Like, no mentally sane person murders eight innocent people in cold blood for no reason and then blogs and posts about it. And it's not going to make sense to you if they do. Yeah, it will never make any sense. And actually, the most disturbing part when you watch it, if anybody who's ever watched videos of truly mentally ill people or schizophrenics that they create, it's just like you, the reason why it's so foreign to us is because it's another planet. It's another world. That's kind of how I felt consuming this

man's content. Well, and I mean, it strikes me as we're talking about it, that this is not, this is a meta story because it's also a story about how we get the news now and that you have all of these people like, listen, one of the best documentaries the last 10 years is Don't F with Cats. It's so good. Okay. But you have a situation like that playing out on a micro level every single day. And every time there's a horrible tragedy like this. I mean, imagine in all honesty, if 9-11 had happened with Twitter. Yeah. Just like imagine. And so the alternative where you have total monopolized corporate media, not great. But what we have right now is not great either. It's a mix between the two. And it makes it really hard for us to litigate the truth in

these circumstances without also getting bogged down in divisive, painful, and untrue politics at certain times. Yes. Okay. So let's go to the next part here, which is more of a meta-conversation. Can Hispanics be white nationalists? Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. The rise of white nationalists to Hispanic sisters written by Axios. This was kind of being passed around in a way where people were joking about the headline. I will admit that it does sound ridiculous when you say it.

And yet, at the same time, we have to try and break it up. And this is actually why I think so many of our labels around all of this doesn't make any sense at all. Like, can you be a white nationalist Hispanic? It's like, well, one of the interesting things is because I am from Texas and I actually know third, fourth and fifth generation Hispanics is that the term white Hispanic does exist. And then you have people who have or are of Mexican descent, but whose families have lived in Texas since before Texans came, but through intermarriage and all that ethnically identify as white. And so what do you do with that? I mean, you know, I think in terms of our like box checks and all that, And this is also why I think all of our racial obsessiveness is ridiculous. I am effectively just coming around to instead of can Hispanics

be white nationalists, can Hispanics or anyone else be far right? And I just think that that's a much easier and cleaner way of discussing it. Like, like what it's like to me, the idea, you know, here's the other thing when you put it that way, can Hispanics be fascist? I mean, have you ever read the history of fascism? You know, where did all the Nazis go, people? You know, it's not that hard to figure. Where were the last vestiges of like far right dictatorships, you know, throughout the world? It doesn't take a genius whenever you put it that way.

And also, you know, there's all these questions about like why you even be inspired by the SS or the Nazi regime. Like once again, you know, many of these, you know, Latin American military dictatorships took direct inspiration actually from the, in some cases actually worked with the Nazis. Many of them even borrowed some of their ideology. Even the, many people don't know this, even the Nazis themselves, like the SS, for example, had divisions and people who are within it who were not German and who were not even Aryan. You had like Serbian, like Slobs who were members of the, why? Because they bought into some, you know, whatever the crazy ideology was. And it was actually kind of a controversy within the SS at the time. My point being is like people who are crazy murderous, you know, crazy murderous fascists are not always the most ideologically consistent.

And so to me, I think it is easier to discuss and look at it as can Hispanics, can blacks, can Indians, can anyone be quote unquote far right, can be inspired by fascist, non-democratic politics, be racially discriminatory? Yes. I think that's actually a very easy answer. Well, and I mean, it depends on their definition of white nationalism, which is used all of the time in the super inflated sense. And now, of course, in this case, it looks like it hasn't been applied in an inflated sense. It looks like there's a legitimate case that this is somebody who believed he had an ideological formulation that allowed for Hispanics, as he says in his own meme. Yeah, he put his own meme in there.

It's his own meme to be white nationalist. So if he thinks he can come to that irrational ideological formulation, by all means. To your point, though, by all means, that sounds like white nationalism to me. But to your point, it is what Axios seemed to be doing with that article. And what you see on these front pages is this attempt to make it sound like something is extremely widespread when it is, in fact, a very small, small percentage of the population. It doesn't mean that that can't be a dangerous, mobilized, animated percentage of the population. But we know right now that the establishment is inflating these definitions in order very specifically to justify surveillance of people who have

dissenting viewpoints. And so I think it's an interesting conversation, right? And we could sit here and talk about, you know, what constitutes Hispanic white nationalism all day. But when I see it coming from the press like this, again, we can't have an honest conversation about it because what they're trying to do is just say, well, we actually need to surveil all of you because, look, he's going to go to Russian social media. Yes. This is also why it is difficult. This is also why I hate racial terminology in the United States. Yeah. Typical definition, I think, according to the U.S. Census, is somebody who is a person of Cuban, Mexican, Puerto Rican, South or Central American or other Spanish descent.

Now, as Hispanics and people who are of, quote, Hispanic or Latino origin like to like to look at, for example, if you are from Spain. Yeah. I mean, the odds are you are white and a mix of like more. Now, are you Hispanic? I guess, you know, under our definition, are you a Spanish American? Like once again, this is where it starts to break apart. And then through our race kind of obsessed media, they'll say like that person somehow has something in common with someone who is from Puerto Rico. It's like, well, yeah, maybe 500 years ago, not today, or same thing with Puerto Rico versus somebody from Colombia who barely has just as much in common with somebody who is from Honduras. So like, just because you speak the same language doesn't mean actually that anything is going on. Have you ever been to Central America? I mean,

even within Central America, you have a tremendous amount of ethnic diversity and cultural practices. They don't, they're not all the same. And I think that's why whenever I think in and consider, you know, all of this, it just is easier to actually take that element out of it and say, can anyone who is on the internet be inspired by far right ideology, far left ideology? Yes, actually, it seems it's quite clear. And so anyway, I think this is more of a meta conversation around how we can all discuss this without seeming like we want to blow our brains out. And it is a nuance and interesting question around ethnicity, around race, around identification, and around what multiracial heterogeneous societies look like. I mean, 150 years ago, if we were here in Washington, D.C.,

and we said that Irish people were white, you know, white Presbyterians would be like, what are you talking? You're crazy. No, they're not. You know, they're different. Or then if you, not even that long ago, if you said that, for example, Italians were white. Again, the Irish people would be like, no, we're not. We had nothing in common with them. A hundred years ago, this all sounds ridiculous. So that's my point, is that these things can evolve. And in reality, like, it's more on us to try and make sense of this. And the last thing I guess I want to say is sometimes the semantics of the conversation themselves are so ridiculous because we haven't even spent enough time, media and even here now, just honestly, honoring some of the victims. Some of these people were, I mean, Korean-American family has been massacred.

You got an orphan child. You got three-year-olds who were killed. You have not only immigrants, but people who were born and raised here, who were murdered in cold blood, their lives taken and ruined. And, you know, one of the alleged things that was said by the shooter was when media always celebrates the people who was a shooter, they all, they can't help themselves. The people who get killed never get as much attention. He literally said that in one of his alleged social media musings. So, you know, and sometimes, you know, it comes to the question of like, should we even be talking about this person? But because it has become such like a

metacultural talking point, I almost feel like we have no choice. But it's always difficult. Every single time one of these happens and it is a horrific tragedy. At the same time, Emily, Secretary Pete Buttigieg woke up, like I said, from a three-year coma. He said, you know what?

Airlift travel has been so awful basically since the beginning of my administration and of my tenure. So I've decided to finally do something about it. Now that things actually have been more normalized and didn't do a goddamn thing during the entire worst part of the crisis. I guess better late than never.

President Biden apparently woke up to it. This is always my issue too with people like Buttigieg and Biden. You people don't even to it. This is always my issue, too, with people like Buttigieg and Biden. You people don't even fly commercial. You guys are flying private. That's why you have no idea how bad it is out there. And it's not just for business travelers or people like me who fly a lot. It's like the families who were screwed on Southwest. Those are the people I feel for the most, people who plan vacations or honeymoons, and they saved up all this money through COVID. And you lose one day out of seven, that's your hard-earned vacation time, man. It's not a joke. I've watched people melt down in airport. I feel terrible for them,

brides going on their honeymoons and things like that. Anyway, so here's Secretary Buttigieg and President Biden talking a little bit about how they're going to fix it. Let's take a listen. The FAA and Department of Transportation are doing our part, but airlines need to accept their fundamental responsibility to better serve passengers. When they don't, we are here to enforce passenger rights and hold airlines accountable. In just over two years, this administration has delivered some of the most significant gains in airline passenger protections in decades. We have stepped up enforcement, rules, and transparency. We've empowered passengers with better information. We've helped get a billion dollars in refunds and counting back to passengers. And we have secured enforceable commitments around

customer service that didn't exist just a year ago. But there's more. Last fall, the Department of Transportation proposed a rule that will be finalized this year. If finalized as proposed, it would require airlines to show you the full ticket price upfront before you purchase it, including fees for baggage, for internet, for changing your seat. And I'm proud to announce two critical steps that my administration is taking to protect American air passengers.

First, we just launched a new website, flightsright.gov, flightsright.gov. It features a dashboard we created last fall to give travelers more transparency in the airline's compensation policies. So if it's the airline's fault and your flight was canceled or delayed, you can check the dashboard to see how the airline should be compensating you. He has the name behind him. Yeah, just so people don't know, we're just listening. It's actually flightrights.gov, not flightsright.gov. You'll be shocked to learn.

Flightsright.gov, that actually doesn't make any sense. Anyway, so what are these proposed rules? Again, they're not even the new regulations going into effect. They're just proposals. Let's go and put them up there on the screen. That will require airlines to compensate air travelers and cover their meals in hotel rooms if they are stranded for reasons within the airline control, and would be in addition to the ticket refunds when the airline is at fault for the flight that is being canceled or delayed. Basically, these are the exact same protections that exist within the European Union. The problem is that they, A, are writing the new rules, don't have a precise date for when they expect to finish, quote, but indicate they are working to quickly publish a notice that is required to get the

process started. So not only did they wait two and a half years into their administration, Emily, they didn't even finish the job of the proposal whenever they did the press conference, and they have no update as to when they will be done. Listen, you know, I have, with Buttigieg, his level of incompetence, his lack of seriousness, it is so angering to me just because he was the chosen one. Yeah. It's like, sorry, it's like, you were, you are supposed to be Mr. McKinsey, Mr. I get things done. Yeah. I was only a small town mayor, but I have much more potential. He thought that the office of management and budget was beneath him. He said, I want to be a secretary. I want to be a member of the cabinet. Give me transportation. And the reason why it's clear is he didn't actually want to do anything. He just wanted to fly around and cut ribbons and do nothing. And it turns out this is the first time in probably 50 years, the transportation secretary

is one of the most important people in our government, not only because of the infrastructure bill, but also because of the very basics like this. Two and a half years, and they're still not even doing what they said that they're going to do. This is all literally just like some checkbox for a press conference. And their out-of-stepness on this is just, it's humiliating from a basic governance perspective. This is actually some stuff that the Trump administration would do. This actually reminds me of how the Trump administration used to govern. Well, but that's what I think is even doubly infuriating about it, is that you have Pete Buttigieg play acting Mr. Secretary on the camera when I went back and looked at what he said around the Southwest debacle. Ro Khanna was out there tweeting at the time, Bernie and I had, six months ago, told you guys to ratchet up fines and penalties on these airlines.

And so why is that important? Because right now, when he's saying that they don't have a finalized plan or date for the rest of this, well, that six month gap, how many people got crunched in it? Now, whatever, how many months this is going to be, how many people are going to get crunched in it again? They don't want to actually do anything. They want to play act and have tough press conferences so that they can come out and say, this administration has been very tough on the airlines. No, you haven't. Yeah. And that's like, listen, I have flown several times since the Southwest meltdown. I actually was in Austin days after the Southwest meltdown. I was caught in the Southwest meltdown. Really? Oh, I didn't know that. I was because of Milwaukee, D.C. It's a great route. That's right. I remember seeing all the bags and there were all these people lined up

to get their bag. And again, we're in the middle of vacation. These poor people are lined up for hours trying to get their own luggage. Imagine having to stand in line with the privilege of reclaiming your own luggage after you already missed your flight. I was in the airport at that time. It was a complete nightmare. Personally, no people who had to drive hours and hours. I'd heard so many stories. It's six months, almost six months now, since that happened. And this is the first substantive thing you're doing? And oh, and by the way, the FAA melted down too

in between. Oh, and by the way, we also had two near-miss crashes on the tarmac. Right. Actually, yeah, I don't know what's going on. I was also in Austin the morning that that near-miss happened. Oh my God, it's you.

Maybe I'm the Jonah, I guess, as they say in Master and Commander, my favorite movie. But put that all together and you see that the spirit that he brought to this interview from about a year ago, it's still exactly the same. He's still just a completely do nothing figure. Here's what he had to say then. What about those lawmakers like Bernie Sanders, Democrats, in addition to him, who make the case that that $50 billion, that came with strings attached, and that the airlines, when they do cancel on folks, when they do have, you know, folks waiting on the tarmac for X amount of hours, they should be fined heavily. Well, that's part of what we do as a department. Look, our preferred outcome is that the passenger

doesn't have this problem in the first place. But when we find that an airline is, for example, failing to issue prompt refunds or in some other way, not treating passengers fairly, we will act. As a matter of fact, a few months ago, we issued the stiffest fine in the history of our consumer protection program. And we have ongoing investigations about other practices. Again, we want things to go well, but when they don't, we will act. When they don't, we will act. That's a complete lie. You guys want to know when we did our segment about that? July 25th, 2022. It took him 10 months just to get to the point where he's doing what they were asking him to do at that point. How many, literally hundreds of billions of lost productivity hours, costs of nightmare has been now, you know, inflicted upon the American and global consumer. Like this is once again, I want to say their

rules are not even going into place. We are, it's May 9th. Summer holidays are right around the corner. Me personally, I've got like eight flights I've got coming up in the next three months. I'm currently actually calculated around a 20% screw up rate, which is way higher than it used to be. It used to be that the delay rate and all that was around like 12, 15%, which is still way too high in my opinion. But, you know, it was fine. Flying recently has just been a total nightmare. And it is also causing a lot of people to incur costs that they never would have before. I know a lot of people who are eating $200, $300, $400, $500 in charges for paying

for direct flights simply because they have no faith that they'll be able to get their connection. And then that's what rich people can do. And now, you know, whenever you don't, okay, now you're sleeping in a hotel for overnight, you know, if you miss your flight. Oh, now you're in line with a bunch of people. So anyway, you look at this and it's just like the lack of basic competence, which they promised us for the record, is out the window. That was what Biden was building back.

He was building back better. But you know, I mean, when people are, why do people fly? Well, because they have funerals to go to, they have birthdays to go to, they have special occasions, they have things that they've saved up, they're hard-earned money for, and this is what our system looks like. And I think the really sad thing at the end of the day is that we are both over-regulated and under-regulated. And what does that amount to? We are just very poorly regulated. We are poorly regulated, but the airlines are richer than ever. So don't worry. They're doing great. They're buying back those stocks. Yes, they are buying stock back and we are paying them for their privilege. What a country. It's an amazing country.

Let's go to the next part here. Actually, some decent news that we very rarely get to talk about here on the show. Let's go and put this up there on the screen. We had a big endorsement last night from former President Donald Trump on Truth Social. We had a big endorsement last night from former President Donald Trump on Truth Social. He says, quote, Crooked Joe Biden has still not visited the incredible patriots of East Palestine. Mayor Pete couldn't get out there fast enough, but that's okay. Our movement will be their voice. We will never forget them. J.D. Vance has been working hard in the Senate to make sure nothing like this ever happens again. That's why it's so important for Congress to pass his Railway Safety Act.

J.D.'s terrific bill has my complete and total endorsement. Now, the reason why this is such a big deal is that this might be one of the few bipartisan areas in modern history where we might actually be able to get something done. Because don't forget, only two months ago, President Biden endorsed the same bill. Put this up there on the screen. Statement from President Biden on the Bipartisan Railway Safety Act of 2023. That was almost immediately released, not only by J.D. Vance, but we also had Sherrod Brown, who was on there. We had John Fetterman. We had the senators from Pennsylvania. We had a literal, almost equal parts Democrat and Republican bill, Emily, something you almost never see. On stuff like this, especially. Especially on stuff like this. But now we're set up for a major Titanic fight. Hopefully we'll be able to talk to Senator Vance on our Thursday show a little bit about this. But what we have to get to the bottom of

here is the question of will the corporate Republicans and corporate Democrats acquiesce to this bill after heavy lobbying by the railway industry? Because this is where it is a crazy bipartisan nature to regulate them on this front, but also the caucus of people who have taken millions of dollars in donations from the railway industry is both right and left. We already know the Republican chairman of the House Transportation Committee doesn't even want this bill to go forward. Oh, the House. Yeah, that's right. I think it's Troy Nels. Yeah. And the reason why is, oh, shocker, libertarian, at least whenever it comes to corporate issues, has long been a beneficiary of donations from the industry. There are Democrats, too, who have taken a lot of this

money. And the major block right now is getting the institutional support of right and left behind this bill when we have the crazy situation where the leading candidates in the 2024 race, the literal president of the United States and the ex-president of the United States are endorsing said bill. Why is this thing not passing tomorrow? There's no reason that it shouldn't be on the floor right now. The only reason it's not is because people like Mitch McConnell and John Thune, corporate Republicans, probably some corporate Democrats, too, that are in there are not letting this thing actually come to the floor. And then even then, corporate Republicans who are in the House of Representatives who are holding it up saying that they wouldn't pass it. You know, why are they standing against Trump?

That should be the question. Actually, yeah, but we'll see. Media doesn't want to talk about it in that context, obviously. But you get you have the heads of both parties, the heads of both parties, as you just mentioned, the former president, the sitting president. But more than that, they're the heads of their respective parties who are in favor of this bill. And I mean, they're what National Review editorialized against the bill. John Thune has come out, who's a real industry guy and said, oh, gosh, no, we don't want to overregulate this industry. We were

talking about this just earlier. It's true that there are burdensome, overly burdensome regulations in rail. It's also true, though, that there's incredibly lenient and lax regulations in rail. And this bill is a perfectly reasonable stopgap measure until we can completely go back to the drawing board, which is essentially what has to happen at this point, because both of those excess regulations and lax regulations are carve-outs from the industry. That's all you need to know at the end of the day. Where it's over-regulated, why is that? Well, it's in many cases because really the big guys know they can hurt any other competitor by screwing around with regulations. And where it's under-regulated, well, obvious, I don't even need to explain why they would want something to be underregulated, although you might have to explain it to National Review because they say, well, it's not in

their market interest to be underregulated, to which you obviously would reply. Yeah. They have a freaking monopoly. Totally ridiculous. Exactly. Thank you for saying that, which is that, you know, it's in their interest because they have a monopoly. And we also should remember that these have not been responsible corporate entities. Their profits

have gone up by billions of dollars in the last decade at the same time that they've been fighting for fighting against paid sick leave, sick time and vacation time for their hardworking employees, that they've also poured said profits back into the purchase of their stock so that the stock buybacks have made up a massive portion of their balance sheet at the very time that they should have been investing in infrastructure and in technology, which would have prevented possibly the train derailment in East Palestine. But at the very least, look at other countries, look at even China. Look at even China. You know, the amount of money that they pour into their railway infrastructure. I'm not

saying we all need passenger high-speed rail. I'm just saying, like, if we're going to have rail through which we move dangerous chemicals, maybe we should make sure that they don't spill all the time. It turns out we have 1, thousand train derailments or something like that per on an annual basis here in the U.S. Compare that on a per capita per mile versus other countries. And they are laughing at the rest of us. And it's because we don't properly regulate these monopolies. They have to choose. Either we have a totally free market whenever it comes to railroads, which, by the way, is not possible. There are entire populist episodes in this entire country, in the past of our country, specifically around railroads, monopolies. We're talking about John D. Rockefeller and the power of the railroads and the gouging rates and all that. We literally

had this fight before. And we won, actually. The people won against the monopolists whenever it came to that. Now, though, we seem to have forgotten that lesson. And in the context also of what's happening with the airlines, you know, basically the new transportation monopolized infrastructure. It's like we haven't learned anything. The consumer always loses. Infrastructure is, yes. The infrastructure is the most basic function of a government. It's like safety, infrastructure, the combination of both of them. And we, to like bridge both of these segments between airlines and rail, we cannot even do the most basic things despite being one of the wealthiest countries to ever exist on the face of the earth, one of the

most technologically advanced societies to ever exist on the face of the earth. We cannot use all of these amazing resources that we have to do basic things anymore. And it's completely tragic. Right. It really is sad. Anyway, look, good news. Trump endorsed it. So let's get this goddamn thing done. It's huge news. And we'll keep people safe. It genuinely will keep people safe. Yes. It actually, it literally, A, could save lives. B, maybe we'll all be a little bit better off knowing the chemicals and I bought it be accidentally spilling and that big, big billionaire railroad executives won't be getting fat paychecks while cats are literally dropping dead in East Palestine.

We haven't forgotten about that story. We're going to continue to keep up on it. Like I said, hopefully we'll be able to get Senator Vance, we're working on it right now, in the show on Thursday to discuss the bill. Let's go ahead and talk about the lab leak theory. So this is one where, of course, you guys know you can't get enough lab leak here. And for me, you and Ryan are just like the lab leak. Because here's the thing. For me, originally, it was where did COVID come from? Yeah, that's layer one. But layer two is, well, what is this multibillion dollar infrastructure that exists for funding labs? That's actually a second layer. Third layer is, wait, this multibillion dollar infrastructure funded by the U.S. government is completely unregulated, unsafe, and has been propagated by maniacs like Dr. Fauci and ideologues

who believe that genetically engineering dangerous viruses is going to make us more safe. Then you peel the layer back even more, and you find out that it all traces back to the 2001 anthrax attack in October. And then you go a deeper level and find out that we never actually solved that so-called attack or release or whatever you want to call it. And that there are some still very sketchy questions that multi-billions of dollars were printed off of. Basically, we had almost a Patriot Act level of revolution in the sphere of biodefense. Well, it was literally part of the Patriot Act level of revolution in the sphere of biodefense. Well, it was literally part of the Patriot Act. No, I know, but I'm saying it got no attention.

Yeah, yeah. Everybody knows about the overreaches of the Patriot Act, of the dangers, of the billions of dollars spent on fake TSA screening. Nobody ever asked any questions, including me, until 2021, basically, when we were talking about lab leak in 2020, to say, like, where did all of this come from? So, like, whenever you start to peel back the layers, you just see this, like, vast infrastructure of basically Jurassic Park playing out on a mass human scale. And the craziest part is, you know, using the Jurassic Park analogy. It's like, we just had the dinosaurs escape from

the cage, and all of us know the dinosaurs escaped from the cage. And the answer from the scientific establishment is, let's give Amgen, I think that's the company, even more money so they can genetically engineer even more vicious dinosaurs. And that's the way that we're going to do that. Don't you dare say we shouldn't be engineering these dinosaurs, because if you do, you are an enemy of science itself. And you're an enemy of science itself. So let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. Scientists currently linked to the Wuhan lab are back in business because the U.S. is renewing a grant for natural origins research to EcoHealth Alliance. Now, I've talked about this previously,

but this is actually a new grant, quote, from EcoHealth Alliance. We have a lot of human serum samples in freezers around Southeast Asia. They will provide clues. We are resuming, as of this month, the funding of the EcoHealth Alliance with gain-of-function research in Southeast Asia, the very same group that was funding the Wuhan lab. Under the current terms of the grant, they will receive approximately $600,000 for the next four years to continue work on, quote, bat origin coronaviruses. It is committed, however, to not subcontract its work to China. Instead, it will just focus on Southeast Asia. And by the way, this isn't just existing samples. Collecting new virus samples from the wild to engage in recombination,

aka gain of function research. Still headed by Dr. Peter Daszak. For those who don't need the reminder or who need the reminder, Dr. Peter Daszak was not only the conduit between Dr. Fauci and the Wuhan lab for funding, he was also, Emily, a member of the World Health Organization team investigating lab leak, where they came to the conclusion that it was not a lab leak. The way Dr. Daszak arrived at this conclusion, by the way, is he asked the Chinese and they said it was not a lab leak.

And whenever, even 60 Minutes was like, are you just taking the words for the Chinese? He's a British guy. And he's like, well, what else can we do? And I'm like, you know, I don't know, like circumstantial evidence, actually subpoenaing records within the WHO and your own organization. No, no, we can't do any of that. Okay. I like how you did him sort of as Mrs. Doubtfire. Yeah. Well, that's what was necessary. He actually is a clownish figure. I don't just mean that. I guess I do mean it in a very mean way. Yeah, anyway, you should go watch the interview if you're interested.

Well, the audacity, though, of Peter Daszak is, like, unrelenting and somehow remarkable. It is. That's why. He shouldn't be able to show his face in public after what he did, and yet he's being quoted with this, like, very arrogant take. Like, well, we're very glad to resume this type of blah, blah, blah. It also reminds me, too, of how badly the media has done a job here. So, for example, if everybody remembers Valerie Plame, this was the household name in the mid-2000s. And the reason why is that she was a CIA agent.

She was married to this ambassador. And the ambassador was linked to the yellow cake uranium story. The point that I'm making is that— You've got the Bob Novak book behind you. That's right. I've got the Bob Novak book behind you. That's right. I've got the Bob Novak book behind me. Back in the mid-2000s, after Iraq WMD, the media actually did their job and said, A, how did we get this so wrong? I'm not saying that they didn't apologize completely, but they at least investigated. And household names were

people who were intimately involved in the cover-up of Iraq WMD, from the intelligence officials to people like Scooter Libby, like Valerie Plame. All of these were characters who Americans could tell you about because they knew the chain of events which led to the false story about WMD in Iraq, which led ultimately to the invasion. If you are not online and consume our content

or the Joe Rogan podcast or whatever, you don't know who Peter Daszak is. Sure, you know who Fauci is, but you don't know some of the secondary and frankly, most important characters in this story. Let's go and put the next one up there on the screen, Richard Ebright, who once again, I want to give Richard a shout out. He is the Board of Governors, Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Rutgers. But the thing is, is that Richard has been on the forefront of biosafety and pushing back against this vast behemoth for decades. I've cited him before. I found a quote of him, Scientific American, back in 2007, pushing back against biodefense research in the post-anthrax world. So probably we owe, like if there was ever a Cassandra around

this, like it's Richard. And he has also been on the forefront of this from the beginning. And as he currently points out there, despite possibly having caused a pandemic and definitely having repeatedly and gravely violated terms of a U.S. government grants and contracts totaling more than $57.8 million. And that's another thing that I want to emphasize. Not all of what we're funding, EcoHealth Alliance, has to do with gain of function. Some of it actually traces back to what I alluded to, this shady national biodefense thing, which is housed within the same, you know, WMD office inside of the Pentagon, that we know nothing about these agencies. They're basically black holes that have been operating with impunity now for 20 years. And the only reason that we even

know anything about it is, oh, they've caused one of the worst pandemics that the world has ever known. Well, yeah, there's that. And there's also this question of like the media knows that this stuff exists. And Ken and Ken segment will talk a little bit about this. Like they know it exists. They don't ask any questions about it because partially if you do ask money, that we couldn't talk about as a conspiracy theorist. shield themselves impenetrably from criticism. We'll have sort of independent media talking about this, but basically nobody else gives it airtime because the government itself will collude with the Pentagon, with the media to make, shut down any questions of it, or to at the very least ostracize you and cast you as a crazy person if you happen to have questions about, to your point,

Sagar. They'll even tell you how important this research is. Well, if it's so important, then maybe you should have a little bit of transparency. Well said. We talked a lot here about AI regulation, what AI regulation might and should look like. I've done monologues, so has Crystal, about how we balance free speech concerns and political correctness with the genuine fear that technological development will overpass us and could possibly supplant us. So, of course, what you want whenever we're talking about AI regulation, Emily, is the best and the brightest who are involved. And because of that, it seems that the White House is taking heed. They're taking heed about how seriously they want to

take this issue. And so they put Kamala Harris in charge, which is fantastic. Let's go and put this up there on the screen. They say Biden and Harris are meeting with CEOs about AI risks. They met with the heads of Google, Microsoft, and two other companies developing artificial intelligence as they are rolling out their initiatives meant to ensure the rapidly evolving technology improves lives without putting people's lives at risk. During that, we had this weird and bizarre drop-in by President Biden into the meeting, which was totally just a non-planned drop-in, right? We always have cameramen pointing at the door with subtitles that are ready whenever somebody does drop into a meeting. President Biden came in. Here's what he had to say about AI. So a lot of platitudes. Still not really sure what's happening.

I'm curious what you make of all this. Well, I was going to say, we should just pause there. And he was asking industry leaders. That's like going to a bunch of railway barons and saying, I'm really curious. I want you to tell us what we need to do to protect the people from this. And so that in and of itself is amusing. But it actually reminded me as we were talking, I did an interview with Nita Farahani recently, who's super interesting, has that new book, Battle for Your Brain, out.

She actually said she was on a commission on bioethics in the Obama administration. Trump dissolves the commission. She said to me, I was incredibly surprised that President Biden, who our commission met with under the Obama administration, didn't, after he took office, create his own council or commission, despite the fact that there had been this gap during the Trump administration. And so, again, we have our leaders being caught completely flat-footed by the fact that GPT, obviously, it took a lot of people by storm. A lot of people weren't prepared for how quickly it was going to move. It is now the fastest-growing social media platform of all time. Like, if you

look at the chart, it's just nuts. You have like Facebook, Twitter, right? Yeah. In terms of daily, it's insane how quickly it caught on. But again, when you are going to talk to industry leaders and ask them to protect the consumer, that's how you get caught flat footed because they think they're fine. And the arrogance of the AI industry has been, there's been cracks in it. And we've covered that. You've covered that a lot, that you have a lot of people who are in the industry who are like Hinton, who have recently left the industry, who have different opinions about this. Well, why did he leave Google? Because he didn't think he could be an effective advocate for the protections that people need inside Google. And I think that's when you see the president turning to Microsoft and Google,

appointing, actually, it's a pretty fitting appointment for Kamala Harris because in some ways she really is the champion of artificial intelligence in a very literal sense. The funny problem to have talked about this with regulation is, of course, Microsoft and Google will want regulation and licenses for people who are new entrants. Because what they want to do is they want to come and they want to roll up the existing AI market, incorporate it into their search and battle it out against each other. And then basically what they would want is regulate all of their up and coming competitors. I'm not saying the regulation is an answer. I'm saying that their type of regulation that they appear to like the most is one which definitely would be a helping hand to the monopolist. Whereas let's say we had proper antitrust legislation on the books. Here's some interesting history for everybody involved. Microsoft. Microsoft

was actually sued under the Clinton administration for antitrust. Now that suit itself, even though it was dropped by the Bush administration, Microsoft felt compelled not to enter certain markets at that time, specifically because they were concerned that by doing so, they might add to the monopolistic argument and to the case that was being brought against them by the DOJ. So once again, not even a successful case, just the pressure of political pressure itself was enough to make sure that they didn't get involved. Now, let's say that we had proper AI legislation or even monopoly legislation on the books. Google not even is allowed to get into AI, not even allowed to try and pursue AGI whenever it comes to their search products. Same with Microsoft. You know, these companies would be so big that they wouldn't even be considering it.

Well, imagine that world, a world where chat GPT and OpenAI remain open instead of $10 billion, multi-billion dollar companies who are partnering with existing corporate giants. Now we have a startup, a brand new competitor. And then we have all these other different startups and competitors that might actually revolutionize search and change things where Google at the very least would be able to have to pay for it, or maybe they're not even blocked by that. We could have a different licensing regime. We have to go back and think about the web. And if we think AI is as revolutionary as the web, what went wrong with the web? I mean, one of the things that went wrong is if we think about 1998 being on the internet, we're all having an awesome time. It's super cool. People are checking out different websites.

They're like, have you checked out this website, that website? It hadn't been rolled up yet. And, you know, Yahoo and all these other directories, they weren't even really search. It was more like a list of cool websites that were around there. There were genuine communities. There was a serious free speech. And there was the idea, this will lead to, you know, all these great ideas and creativity and freedom. And then what happened? It got corporatized. It got rolled up effectively, both by Google, by Facebook, by Twitter.

And the vast majority of web traffic and our experience on the web happens through portals of, let's say, like five to 10 different websites. That actually is what was the opposite of what people predicted in kind of the early days of the kind of crypto libertarianism that sprung up from the early 1990s internet. Why would we choose, Emily, to go down and do

the exact same thing whenever it comes to AI? We would never choose to do that. No, we wouldn't. But this headline might give you some answers. This is from June 22nd, 2021. So it is a couple of years ago in Washington Post, Biden administration full of officials who worked for prominent tech companies. The ties are most prominent at the White House where 13 aides, some of them with the ear of the president have previously worked for Google, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Lyft, Microsoft, Twitter, or Uber. That's pretty much the answer to the question because, um, the way that Washington works is when you do have the ear of the president, you know, it's known that you may have had ties to the industry or whatever, but it runs on like goodwill. And if you have built up this bank of goodwill, you've been a loyal

foot soldier to the president. Your friends at Google, your former co-workers are chirping in your ear about how it's actually going to be a disaster if you regulate it. We're going to fall behind China, which has very heavily regulated AI and is developing it. And there are all these national security concerns. If you have that person chirping in your ear and you go tell the president that, your message gets priority over any other message. And so it's not just that people are paying cash bribes, obviously, but it's more that you have the influence and you have the amplified voice over everybody else. And so Biden coming to them and saying, you know, Kamala Harris said the same thing. They said, you have ethical

obligations here. What you're doing could be very dangerous. Great. What are you doing? Joe Biden does not understand artificial intelligence. I would be surprised. I mean, I barely do. The whole point is that we need real experts who don't have any stake in the companies to be making the legislation not the other way around. Which actually brings me to the next point and some really interesting news, actually. Sal Khan of Khan Academy, let's go and put this up there on the screen, is actually piloting a version of ChatGPT called KhanMingo. And it's a new tool trained to act as a tutor and a teacher's assistant. It's a really interesting managed version of the OpenAI platform that, quote, can help guide students in their studies, not enable them to cheat. A pilot currently running with a handful

of schools and districts trying to test the software. The thing is about Sal Khan and Khan Academy is obviously they revolutionized initial tutoring with YouTube videos. I remember, you know, even watching some of those videos back when I was going through late high school and throughout college and a lot of STEM people I know were just absolutely obsessed with it. And with Wolfram Alpha, you know, things and, and, uh, brands like this by looking at it and, uh, how he is developing this technology, what they're trying to do is have, like they say, engage in conversation even with voices of literary characters to serve as debate partners to guide students through math problems to help debug code. And I wanted to pair this, I think, with the previous one, because one of the places where I see the most hope, Emily, is in helping revolutionize education. Because education is

bogged down by bureaucracy and busy work through pop quizzes and BS. It's all fake, and we all know it. We're talking about online homework assignments. Did you take Intro to Econ, those econ courses? I don't know anything about the economy. Okay, well- The answer is actually no. I'm sure someone will clip that out. Anybody who's ever taken Intro to Macroeconomics or whatever, this is all sanitized homework

that you're doing on a computer program that your university has licensed and that you're not learning anything. They're like, they are very basic questions where they, you know, they, they code in some ways that you can't cheat. And it's all just checkbox. Same with statistics. If I remember my statistics, statistics courses where the quizzes and all that, it was just nonsense. Like it wasn't conceptually getting to anything. What I hope is that AI will destroy all busy work because it would be ridiculous to even assign it when you know it was so easily cheated on. And instead, in my statistics classes or macroeconomics classes, instead of doing box checks from textbooks, we'd be like, what is GDP? Why does it matter? You can ask Hillary Clinton.

Yeah. The AI. No, I'm saying we wouldn't in the course. I'm sitting there, laptop close, sitting with a professor like explain this to me in terms that I can understand in a real dialogue instead of six, 700 people in a classroom, all looking at some stupid PowerPoint, everyone fake taking notes and then fake doing homework. And we're all just, you know, gaming our GPA so we can go work at McKinsey afterwards. Like this, this, this is why it's like, I want that dead and gone. And from what I've heard with the destruction of Chegg, bringing back in-person essays written by hand. I love that. Love that. Like courses and stuff

written by hand, Emily, and removing busy work and bringing back Socratic discussion in classroom, we might actually learn something. It's amazing, actually. Yeah, well, that's the thing. Like there's doom and gloom about generative AI. This is what I'm happy about. This is good stuff. Walter Russell Mead had a great piece in Tablet yesterday.

I don't know if you read it. It's called You Are Not Destined to Live in Quiet Times. And the way he frames it is like, listen, the reality here, in the same way that this is the reality in the Oppenheimer era, is that this is a massive rate of change. It's happening over the course of your lifetime, whether you like it or not. And so that means some of it's going to be really, really dangerous. And some of it can be harnessed and channeled for the good of mankind. When you look at generative AI and you look at the state of our education

system, which we're going to be talking about a little later in the show. You posted last week the crazy history scores for eighth graders plummeting in the United States. Well, how much history homework do students do that is rendered basically completely useless if you send them home in a world with chat GPT? They can get 100% on that stuff. So like their radical change is going to have to happen right now, no matter what. And if we can actually come to the question of education with a new mindset, because we are being forced by a stupid robot to prevent kids from cheating, then by all means, like bring it on. That sounds great. I mean, and the questions that they include in these history exams are just so stupid and they really do not help anyone in any way. It's just rote memorization. So I've pulled up, for example, from the APUSH exam,

the AP US History exam. Here are some samples from the free response questions, okay? So they will give quotes and they'll say, you know, to respond to different excerpts, describe a major difference between this excerpt and another expert's historical interpretations of the New Deal, or briefly explain how one event or development from 1932 to 1945 is not explicitly mentioned in excerpts that could be used to support an argument. This is an argument published in the 1930s around the New Deal. This leads to just rote memorization. And rote memorization is just the worst possible thing that you could try and give people. Other examples that I've seen is they'll be like, here are four, which of these reasons is why America abolished slavery?

You can't multiple choice that. It's like, it's a multifaceted question which requires us all sitting down and reading a range of different books from the original perspective to the postmodern perspective and reconciling which has validity and not historically. And all of us would come up with a different answer. Why was America founded in the first? Why did America ditch the Articles of Confederation? We all have these stupid history

textbook answers. It's much more complicated than that. But well, yeah, and this is the lesson of the Articles of Confederation is not that there was another constitution named the Articles of Confederation. And that's what history teaches you to memorize as opposed to like you actually truly internalizing what happened. It's like, well, we had this idea. We fought a revolution to have less power in the hands of the federal government. Maybe we took it too far. And then there was a rebellion. And then in the context of that, we said, okay, we're going to have a constitutional convention and we're going to try and figure this thing out, which was very different from the original conception. That's pretty interesting whenever you kind of get into it a little bit. And then how we arrived

at the bill of rights and the constitution and all this stuff that we eventually all lived under now for over 250 years. That's a story where you might actually get kids to look up rather than like you just said, well, well, we had this thing and then we ditched it 13 years later. used we all still sing that what's the song like the school of rocks oh the yeah we forget what it's called both of us are public school kids mostly i used to just like mercilessly mock homeschool kids obviously because i still do i'm a bully uh yeah no they deserve it in many cases and we're speaking we're speaking as people who know a lot of homeschool kids uh but that said when i talk to them now and realize how much better their education were than what I got, not everyone. But when I talk to them, it just like blows my mind and I feel like I lost out on something.

And so if we can, because if the robot forces us to educate ourselves in a way that makes us better regulators of robots in the future, future generations have more civic mindedness, more Socratic learning. I'm not optimistic, but to your point, Sagar, if anything pushes us to that, it's this. Yeah, I hope that it does. This actually is what college education in America used to look like pre basically bureaucratization post 1945. There are a lot of interesting reasons as to why that happened, money probably being number one. And if there is one hope as to how we can escape it, this is what it is. Let's go to the last part here. Had to throw this in because Emily is here, a resident culture war expert, I think. Let's go and put this up there on the screen. A California reparations panel has okayed a state apology and payments.

Can they put apology first? Yes, that's right. Yeah, it's kind of funny. They say, let's go ahead and get into it here a little bit. California's reparations task force has voted Saturday to approve recommendations on how the state may compensate and apologize to black residents for generations of harm caused by discriminatory policies. The nine-member committee convened two years ago has given final approval at this meeting in Oakland to a list of proposals that now go to state lawmakers to consider for reparations legislation. Barbara Lee is actually co-sponsoring this bill in Congress to study restitution proposals for African Americans. Reparations are not only morally justifiable, they say, but they have the potential to address longstanding racial disparities. One of the recommendations included here in the legislation, Emily, is payments apparently up to a million dollars in some cases per resident. Now, I think this is always a hot topic. It's one people feel

very strongly about. And it's one where I think it really bears scrutiny in terms of not just black Americans. How do all Americans generally feel about this issue? The polling on it is actually quite complicated. One of the better approximations that I try to come to is affirmative action. So affirmative action effectively is like an in-kind acknowledgement of an in-kind acknowledgement of discrimination and of, it's almost like in-kind reparations. Can we agree on that definition? I think that's fair. Let's go ahead and put this up there. That's the explicit ambition of its creators. Right. I agree. And so yet in California, remember this, in 2020, the same time that the so-called Reparations Council was formed,

well, guys, on a voter level, 57% of Californians, some 10 million people, voted against affirmative action. They voted against bringing affirmative action back in college admissions. So I think that this is a great approximator of how Californians, some of the most liberal, democratic-minded people in the country, even they don't agree with affirmative action. And there, we're talking about in-kind effective racial benefits within the state system. Now we're talking about straight-up cash. Now, again, whenever it comes to the polling on this issue, it is somewhat complicated. We had our team do a good job here. Let's go and put E3 up there, please, on the screen. To the best of our ability, whenever it

comes to the view of reparations and all that, some 77% of black Americans compared with 18% of white Americans do support reparations specifically for the descendants of enslaved people. All of US adults though, the answer comes to no, 68%, and yes, at 30%. For white Americans, it's 80, and then 18 for yes. Black Americans, it's 17, no, 77, yes. Hispanic Americans, 58, 39. Asian Americans, 65, no. 33. Amongst age groups, it's actually, unsurprisingly, kind of split up. 52, 45 for ages 18 to 29.

The majority, but slight majority, saying no, who are younger. 30 to 49, 63 to 34, 74, 24, 81, and 18. Now, in terms of the general polling here, there's some changes whenever it comes to income, which I find kind of interesting. So if you ask lower income Americans, the slight majority are still against, 54 versus 42. Middle income Americans, it's 74 and 24, and upper income Americans, 72 and 27. So lower income Americans, it's 74 and 24 and upper income Americans, 72 and 27. So lower American, lower income Americans, more kind of on board with reparations, middle and upper, uh, middle-class Americans, uh, generally against it. So I think it's important to put in the context of, in general, this is a quote unquote divisive policy on the merits. Just whenever you

look at it in terms of California itself, they have already rejected and voted against this effective type of policy. So then the question is, is that, is this solving the problem that we want to solve? And the problem that we want to solve is that we have had racial discrimination in this country that has manifested itself in economic disparity. Now, what is the best way to do that? If you were to look at this policy, you would posit then that solving racial discrimination through economic inequities that have manifested is to have direct cash payments of some X sum to specifically black Americans with a acknowledgement that what has happened there is obviously a moral crime and must be rectified. However, and I would posit this, and this is my kind of view of this. I wish Crystal was here. I'd like to hear also what she had to say.

We need more white people in this conversation. You're right. That's right. But, and actually though, that's what it gets to is at the end of the day, we are talking about taxpayer money. We are talking about a democratic problem, a small d democratic problem. So we all do kind of get a say as to how we want to address rights and wrongs that are all been done in our name. And the way that I've always looked at it is this. If you look at the lower income Americans that I referenced, they disproportionately include Hispanic, black, and lower class white Americans. The wage gap between lower income white, Hispanic, and black Americans is effectively marginal. racial inequity, one of the best things that you can do is just simply help all poor people. Because what will happen is that you will both increase the livelihood, the opportunity, and the disparity of past wrongs that were done, yes, specifically only to black Americans,

but you will also, at the same time, help lower income Hispanic and white Americans. And instead of pitting said groups against each other, you income Hispanic and white Americans. And instead of pitting said groups against each other, you actually end up helping everybody. Now, of course, this is better, easier said than done. It involves possibly minimum wage increases. Maybe it involves cash transfers. Maybe it involves tax credits, a variety of myriad different ways that we could go about this. But that's kind of the framework where I'm coming at it from. And I would say also that the framework that I'm coming at it from is dramatically more politically popular. And why does political popularity matter? Because we live in a democracy. We don't live in a unilateral dictatorship. I'm curious what you

think. You know, I think two things are absolutely true and they can be true at the same time. One, that generational wealth disparities are very real and are very directly and obviously the result of explicit white supremacist discrimination policies that were baked into our constitutional system for far too long. On the other hand, I think it's also true that there's no way to meet out a reparations policy with a semblance of justice because at the end of the day, proving this is going to be extremely difficult in a country where everyone is so mixed and has been mixed for years and years and years and years. So what justifies why one person, there are people who are, we're getting into like the grossness, the just absolutely repulsive, one drop, disgusting type racial science at a certain point, because what justifies somebody who is completely white, probably looks like me, who's able to trace their ancestry back to slavery. And California does directly redlining in this proposal that you get X number of money up a

certain year. For each year, you were affected by redlining policy in California. Probably easier to prove, and it can probably be proved more directly than slavery itself. But you're then going to take from Hispanic taxpayers money and give them. You may be forced to give them to people who look exactly like me and whose family has been in this country long enough to have been, for instance, likely on many sides of this conflict. This is exactly why I think that trying to parse all of this is so ludicrous. And once again, I would say I am not against helping poor black people or all poor people in this country. In fact, though, and this is why, you know, trying to parse this and I've never necessarily wanted to, but I think, you know, possibly are forced to, is, you know what? There's better evidence to say that the worst economic hit that ever happened to black Americans was the 2008 recession. Actually, the greatest wipeout

of black wealth in the history of the United States happened in 2008. It actually was not, you know, necessarily redlining policies from Jim Crow as we're discussing repulsive of that bait. I'm not even necessarily comparing apples to oranges. What I'm saying though is that whenever we talk then about addressing, you know, black wealth and making it so that we can restore people to some sort of equality, not necessarily in terms of outcome, but in terms of opportunity, I would again then have to come back to the idea that we should look at the policies, the actual policies that led to the wealth disparity that we are right now, some of which include Jim Crow, but also now we're

talking about 2008, which was a universalist kind of screw you to middle class and to poor people. And then say, well, is there some way you can normalize opportunity here across the board? Yeah. And by doing so, in general, as I've always come back to, I recommend Matt Brunegg, if anybody wants to go and look at it, has frequently looked at where actual wealth gaps are. My perfect personal favorite statistic

is you'll often hear in the media, like the white and the black wealth gap. Well, the truth is, sadly, is that the wealth gap between white and black Americans on an overall basis, the vast majority of that gap is between the top 10% of white people and the top 10% of black people, as in the top 10% earners of whites out-earn dramatically the top 10% of black. But if you take the median earner between whites and blacks, Hispanics and others. Like I said, the gap between those on a wage level is really not that big. And so if you want to help the most amount

of people, increasing an overall wage in the economy has the actual benefit that we all come to. Well, and we can't even have honest conversations about what's happened with entitlements and welfare state. And I know that gets into really hairy stuff, but Thomas Sowell can talk about this. Walter Williams can write about this. And they get cast as like white supremacists for raising some entirely legitimate questions about whether white liberals have wrecked the black community with well-intentioned but harmful policies that don't have, for instance, that aren't temporary enough, that aren't with the right incentives. And a lot of our audience probably disagrees with me on that. All I'm saying, though, is that we cannot even talk about the government structures

that in some ways have been contributing to this. And I think very clearly, because it's just you get knocked down as a bigot or whatever, even if you're a black economist, like a celebrated black economist for having that conversation. And again, the theme of the whole episode today is that we can't even perform basic functions as a society because we are so bogged down in these tribal divisions. Correct. Well, we do have one update, though, for you whenever it comes to these reparations. They probably are not going to happen. Let's go and put this up there on the screen. Despite the fact that they have been proposed and all of that, even the San Francisco gate here is saying, quote, why they are likely

doomed. One of the reasons why is that they say, whenever Francisco gate here is saying, quote, why they are likely doomed. One of the reasons why is that they say, whenever seen as way to make amends, the task force has spent the last two years. However, the package that is being discussed, even in terms of San Francisco is some sort of one-time payments and all of that, even if they are formally adopted, never go into effect, is because of the U.S. Supreme Court. What they say is that the simplest form in terms of benefits is likely dead upon arrival because the idea of a particular race getting payments would almost immediately and certainly get struck down. This is Gabriel Chin, who is a law professor quoted from the UC Davis. Most likely to be at play would be the Equal Protections Clause in the 14th Amendment,

which I was specifically speaking out, which said that any policy that soar people by racial categories known as racial classifications are typically seen as a violation of the Equal Protection Clause unless governments can provide, quote, a strong justification for them. So very likely, even if this were to try and to go into effect, it would face blockage at the U.S. Supreme Court. But who knows? We never know where we will get in terms of that. And even if they don't get implemented, the fact that they're on the table, I think, bore the discussion that we tried to handle sensitively here at Breaking Point. So, Emily, what are you taking a look at? Well, just yesterday, there was a flurry of headlines about Republican efforts to, quote, ban books.

New York Magazine rolled out a new cover story on the topic with an unintentionally hilarious image showing the words, quote, I will not say gay, written over and over and over again on a chalkboard. This is a great place to start. Notice the wording from the magazine in this tweet about the story, quoteote, convinced schools are brainwashing kids to be left wingers. Conservatives are seizing control of the American classroom. This is somewhat amusing because the story's author, Jonathan Chait, is forced to concede some three quarters of the way through his piece that, yes, schools now instruct students to abide by the values of political liberalism on a wide scale. So wide as is the scale, as Chait himself mentions, the country's largest teachers union is explicitly working to include critical race theory, for instance, in curricula from pre-K

through 12th grade, pre-K. That's literally in his article. So right there, he's dispelled the myth of his own premise that Republicans are fantasizing about some left-wing takeover of education. It's not a fantasy. They are correct that it's happening. But whether it's good or bad is actually the question. This is the case with the corporate media narrative on this topic time and time again. Hilariously, the New York Times reported last month that a billionaire DeSantis donor was cooling on the governor in part because of these alleged book bans in Florida. The media spin is straight from the Democratic Party talking points, and it's both incredibly stupid and incredibly powerful. It is, of course, literally true that Republicans want to ban some books from school libraries.

It is true that some legislative proposals would target books that are probably fine for those libraries. What's missing is the context about, one, what's in the targeted books, and two, that random legislators introduce imperfect and crazy bills that go absolutely nowhere every single day and the media doesn't act like they represent a real threat unless it's convenient for the left. Indiana Republican Governor Eric Holcomb signed one of these book-banning bills just yesterday. Here's how Gannett's Indy Star reported on that. Quote, The first part of that, by the way, is democratizing school libraries. for, quote, educational purposes if felony charges arose against them for making available

books that are harmful to minors. The first part of that, by the way, is democratizing school libraries, small d. But the, quote, harmful to minder standard is thankfully a very high bar for litigation, according to Indiana's code. The book would need to contain, quote, nudity, sexual content or sadomasochistic abuse, a persuasiveness for minors to engage in sexual activities, offensive content to community standards for adults considering what's suitable to minors to see, content void of, quote, serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for kids. Now, those things are all broad enough that they're open for interpretation, but they're

not crazy guidelines as a starting point. So what prompted all of this? Well, as in many states around the country, the book Genderqueer freaked parents out. Why? The book is full of nude cartoon teenagers having intercourse, giving each other oral sex, and more. Really, it is.

Indiana's ACLU trumpeted Genderqueer as the state's most challenged book of 2022 in a Sunday tweet. They're not making the argument that they think they are. In fact, PEN America's data shows, quote, Gender Queer is the most challenged book nationwide last fall, was the most challenged book, followed by a book called Flamer. In other words, the so-called bans are targeting legitimately inappropriate material. You can see it on the screen if you're not watching and you're listening. Essentially, it's what I described earlier, cartoon teenagers, nude, having sex with each other, talking about extremely sexually explicit things. According to Axios,

now Biden's campaign has evidence that pinning book bans on the GOP is polling really well for Democrats. So expect to hear way more about these book bans in the next year and a half. And here's where it's important to just cut out the nonsense. The media will blame Republicans for stoking this culture war battle while ignoring, for instance, Muslim parents in Dearborn fighting against genderqueer and then the teachers unions fighting against those parents to implement debunked history or genderqueer or bring the 1619 Project to their community and put it in their public schools. But the left stokes this cultural war by putting porn in middle school and high school libraries, a critical race theory for five-year-olds, then defending it with the ACLU

and with unions. The right's pushback is nowhere near perfect, but if we're going to wrap it into this, quote, book-ban narrative and make it sound like this is all just about censoring Toni Morrison. We're making everything so much worse. As Sager pointed out last week, history scores are plummeting among American students. It'd be really easy for the unions and special interest groups to just cede the point on these glaringly inappropriate books and move on. That's so easy to do. They put those books there. They can get them out. But because these institutions are captured by mediocre ideologues, they'll cling to the porn, rile up parents with good and bad consequences, and do a really, really bad job actually teaching students. And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at breakingpoints.com

Okay, inevitably after almost every single mass shooting, we hear the same response from our media and the democratic establishment. Need more gun control? Gun control is the only answer. President Biden is nearly on repeat with it after a spate of mass shootings in recent months, and you get basically the same treatment from the media. I want to also acknowledge that a lot of people who watch the show probably agree with that. But something I've always tried so hard to emphasize here is it's just not that easy. If it was, then we would have done it already. It's not a matter of the NRA or the gun lobby.

It has to do with our constitution, the Second Amendment, a right to self-defense, and ultimately a level of authority that we are willing to provide our government over our lives. In my estimation, the gun debate has amounted to this. Mass shootings are seen uniquely, maybe rightfully, as the most visible, sick, and American unique phenomenon. That has been conflated though somehow publicly with all gun violence in the eyes of the non-gun

owning public. So let's start with a review of what I've always touched on in the past. Mass shootings, what are they and what are they not? If you don't follow this much, you probably would be forgiven for thinking that mass shooting statistics cited by the media entail school shootings or the shootings that just occurred, like at the mall in Allen, Texas. The actual definition, though, is actually up to the government. And when the government is involved, then you already know that politics is involved. President Obama actually forced the FBI in 2013 to adopt this definition, a single attack in which three or more victims are killed.

On its face, I guess it sounds reasonable, but is it? Consider U.S. firearm homicides and the type that they are involved in. Mass shooting accounts for only 0.1% of all deaths. Sadly, the vast majority of homicides, especially those that involve three or more people, are those that involve a family member or an acquaintance or by an intimate partner. A stranger killing another stranger is only about 25% of all homicide, and that is almost all crime. Furthermore, what weapons do they use? When we hear calls for gun control, they are obviously focusing on assault weapons bans. Here too, data is important. Handguns alone account for 56% of all homicides. If you include

their involvement with a rifle, you would actually add a further 24%. A so-called handgun ban is really the only type of ban which would work somewhat, and nobody proposes that. Why? Because it's completely unconstitutional. In fact, as I have laid here before, there's absolutely zero statistical evidence to say that an assault weapons ban would have any impact whatsoever on mass shootings. The other pet policy proposal of the establishment and the media is a high-capacity magazine ban, the theory being that shooters would need to pause and to reload. This would allow first responders critical moments as well as reduce the initial amount of deaths. Again, though, here's the thing. There is no statistical evidence on a societal wide scale that this would

have any impact on mass shootings. I want to provide empathy for people who think all of this stuff will work because I really do understand how one could be led to believe it. It takes an undue amount of research for the average citizen to see the actual facts surrounding this issue. The facts aside, I think what the gun debate does more than anything is show how much we are talking past each other and how little that we really understand our own countrymen. Gun ownership is probably one of the best single signifiers in America today for party identification. Consider this map side by side from 2016. On the left is what the Electoral College would look like if only people who didn't own a gun were voters.

As you can see, every single state, save for one, would go for Hillary. On the right is what the map would look like if only people who voted who had guns had in 2016. Trump would win all but one state. That about says it all, doesn't it? Gun owners and non-gun owners are completely at odds politically. But what I would argue is it's downstream from culture.

For the non-gun owners, guns are inexorably linked to violence, both by the state and by criminals, including mass shootings. Connotations around them are dark, better left unsaid, in most cases outside the realm of polite society. Banning them seems just like the easiest option. Any discussion of the Second Amendment sounds ludicrous to this person. For gun owners, it's the opposite. Guns certainly are linked to violence, but there are also other things that have nothing to do with violence, like hunting or bonding with family members, recreation as a tool, sometimes self-defense. Much of this too comes from a rural

and an urban divide. When you're out in the middle of the country or 45 minutes from authorities, possibly without cell service, the ability to defend yourself either from another person or from a wild animal actually becomes very much more acute compared to a city where the response time is less than 10 minutes from authorities and people are literally everywhere. In these cases, you can see why the other

would react viscerally around the gun debate to each other and how the lived reality of both on a day-to-day basis clashes so hard with others. Personally, I think it's important to look at things this way, and especially to the metropolitan group, who overwhelmingly hold the view of more gun control. When you say things like the Second Amendment shouldn't apply today because there's no way that the founders could have predicted AR-style rifles or high-capacity magazines,

it actually kind of opens up some dangerous ground legally. Imagine if someone stated that because the internet didn't exist in 1787, that freedom of speech or freedom of the press should not apply there, or that the Fourth Amendment right to search and seizure did not apply to cars because they also are newer inventions. In both cases, it would be ridiculous because we understand the Constitution as a set of principles laid out to apply to a dynamic and changing nation, which we can rely on to give us even in the face of unprecedented societal and technological change. Now, to the extent that there is a policy solution, it must come from a deeper and multifaceted understanding of the problem, from loneliness,

identity politics, and the litany of social ills that seem to have manifest in this sick freak in Texas. In other words, it won't be easy, but that doesn't mean that we still don't have to deal with it. So that's always where I come on the gun issue. And if you want to hear my reaction to Sager's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. Joining us now is Ken Klippenstein. He's a great partner of us. He's also a reporter over at The Intercept. It's great to see you, man. Hey, good to be with you guys. Ken, you've been at the forefront of reporting on this disinformation industrial complex.

You came out with a brand new bombshell story. Let's go and put it up there on the screen. Quote, the government created a new disinformation office to oversee all the other ones. And you reveal here some new offices inside of the Pentagon that are tasked with, quote unquote, overseeing disinformation.

So tell us about these dystopian Orwellian agencies being funded in our name, Ken. Okay, so we want to start with dystopian. Let's talk about the one in the Pentagon because I dearly love the name of that. Okay. It's called the Influence and Perception Management Office. Yeah. This is a term that harkens back to the Reagan administration. I think under his CIA, he had a perception management office.

I think the goal was to kind of try to influence the coverage of the Iran Contra, or the Contras in Nicaragua. That's right. Right. And so now they've stood that up in the Pentagon. What's interesting about these agencies that they're working on now is that they're not just disinformation agencies. I found out in the course of the supporting that, for example, in the Department of Homeland

Security, there are nearly half a dozen counter disinformation offices. So now they're creating ones to oversee the ones that they already have within the agencies and departments. And so what I found in this story with the Foreign Malign Influence Office, that's overseeing the ones that are overseeing all the various agency and departmental efforts. And so this is in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which has access to the full suite of intelligence across all components of the intelligence community So this is really a significant elevation of their efforts

Got it Well And can we talk about what these offices are? Authorized to do because that's part of what you get into in the piece and can make a big difference as to you know Whether something is nefarious or whether it's just the Pentagon being the Pentagon and doing what it does There's actually indications that they have pretty serious authority and capabilities in these offices. What are they authorized to do? Yeah, so what was unprecedented about the FMIC is that instead of just having access to that specific agency or that specific department,

they have full sweeping access to all relevant intelligence that they deem pertinent to disinformation. And so particularly after our story on which you had us on to discuss, and I appreciate that very much, about the DHS efforts, it feels like there was a big rebrand on the part of the federal government to say this is about foreign disinformation. Yes. But when you talk to experts about it, in the age of the internet, it's really hard to differentiate between foreign and disinformation. So let's get into that.

And that's intentionally what they do. But when you talk to experts about it, in the age of the internet, it's really hard to differentiate between foreign and dependent. Let's get into that. That's why— That's intentionally what—they do that. They blur the line intentionally so that they can sweep Americans into the Hamilton 69 dashboard. If we're like, oh, well, we're talking about Russian disinformation. It's like, well, all of a sudden now we're talking about Facebook. Then we're actually talking about election ads. We're talking about Jill Stein.

Or Jill Stein. One of the things you pointed out that still annoys the crap out of me was that they were going after criticism of the Afghan withdrawal as disinformation. For example, do you have any more concrete examples you could share with the audience just to put this all into perspective? Why should people be afraid? Like, why should we care if the government is regulating disinformation? Yeah, so to give you guys a brief timeline of these counter-disinformation efforts, It began with 2016, the Russian active measures campaign. I mentioned in the story, Rand Corporation report, which is the most detailed one to date, that actually looked at the hard data and said, okay, what

practical effect did the Russian propaganda campaign have? And they take a very dim view of it. Bear in mind, this is a Pentagon funded think tank, very respected, not the kind of like, you know, highly politicized thing you'd expect from the think tank world generally. And they say that while there were Russian efforts, they had almost no practical effect. They were very disorganized, extremely incompetent. All the sorts of terms that you think of when we look at how they're executing the war in Ukraine, it looks like that's how they carried out this propaganda campaign. And so to take that very negative view of it and compare with that, this full court press on the part of the federal

government, the national security state to respond to this. It just seems like very disproportionate to the threat. And there's also an interesting media aspect to this, which is that, you know, as you put, we're actually talking about Crystal and Kyle's wedding. This is in the budget, right? Like this, this is in the federal budget. Yeah, this was not a classified. I mean, I've had stories based on classified documents and stuff that's not supposed to be public. But this was around for months. Yes, that's the other thing.

The Foreign Malign Influence Center had been debated for years now publicly, and nobody covered it. Nobody covered it. Nobody's even considering what the potential dangers here are, Ken. I mean, as we watch this behemoth expand, we've had Jacob Siegel on the show to talk about the disinformation industrial complex. We've had you on the show. You and Lee Fong's reporting about the government. It never seems to actually stop anything. Or am I wrong? Are lawmakers actually waking up to this fact?

Are they looking into what's changing? Or are they just changing their tactics and rebranding them in different ways? So the previous story that we had on the, that focused on the DHS efforts, particularly the countering foreign influence office, not to be confused with the foreign influence task force of the FBI. There's so much overlap between these different entities. The main effect that it's appeared to have so far, to be completely candid with you, is to cause them to drive it underground and become more secretive and disclose less about it. Because you'll recall, the quadrennial Department of Homeland Security review came out just a week ago. Bear in mind, like six years past the date that they were supposed to release it.

And I had originally been leaked in my first story a draft copy of what that was. They stripped virtually all mention of any of this from the quadrennial review that ended up coming out. That's like their big strategy document saying, this is what we're gonna do with the department going forward. Right, I mean, yeah, go ahead, Emily. Well, I was gonna say, I mean, it's just insane

that they appoint themselves with these massive powers and then they also, they just strip away any semblance of transparency whatsoever. So it exists, but you have absolutely no access to what they're doing. They didn't even announce the FMRC. These are multi-million dollar— Do we know some of the individuals who are in charge? I mean, we got that—remember the czar or whatever her name was? Nina Jankowicz.

Nina Jankowicz, that's right. Who, by the way, still has— America's sweetheart. She still has an open invitation. I've invited her many times to come on the show. We'll keep Ken away. Yeah. I've invited her.

I will give her as much time as she wants to speak. Ken, do we know any of the figures who were involved here? Yeah, there's a former senior CIA official who was, I think, one of the top officials for the analytics section of the CIA. There's the case officers that were operating on the are operating on the ground and they're the ones that analyze the intelligence. And so I think reading the tea leaves there, that means they really are going to be collating, gathering and, you know, putting together all of this information from these various agencies that exist, you know, all over the federal government at this point to respond to this. That's remarkable. Ken, fantastic job on the reporting. We're happy to support some of the work

that you're doing with The Intercept and all of that and have you here on our show. You've always been at the forefront of this and we will continue. So thank you very much, sir. Appreciate it. Emily, thank you for being a great co-host with me. It was a very ambitious crossover.

This concludes today's edition of Fascist live with Regis and Kelly. Fascist points. Fascist points. I'm sure the haters will crawl out of the wood Kelly. Fascist points. Fascist points. I'm sure the haters will crawl out of the woodwork. It's okay. We love our haters

as much as we love our lovers, I guess. Is that the way you would say it? To be clear, though, I am Regis and you are Kelly. There you go. I am Kelly.

Maybe you're Kathy. I fully embrace that role. We love you guys. Thank you very much. CounterPoints is going to be on tomorrow for our normal show and I'll be back here with Ryan on Thursday. Much love to Crystal on her honeymoon. We miss her very much dearly. Thank you very much. CounterPoints is going to be on tomorrow for our normal show, and I'll be back here with Ryan on Thursday.

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