Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 6/12/23: Krystal and Saagar React To Trump Indictment, Trump AG Defends "Damning" Indictments, Trump Opponents Bend The Knee, FBI Informant: Biden Took 5 Million Bribe, Zuckerberg Admits Covid Censorship Failures, Las Vegas UFO Hoax, End of the Unabomber

Episode Date: June 12, 2023

Krystal and Saagar discuss their new studio reveal, the facts of the Trump indictment, Trump's former AG Bill Bar defending the indictment, Trump's response, Trump's 2024 opponents defending him, Trump's explosive leads in primary polls, an FBI informant claiming Biden took 5 million bribe as VP, Zuckerberg in an interview admits to Covid Censorship failures, Saagar looks into the recent UFO incidents to parse fact from fiction, Krystal looks into the legacy of the Unabomber after his death.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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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It is a very exciting day indeed. And of course, there's a lot of news going on as well. There's that whole Trump getting indicted situation. We do have the charges that were unsealed. We're going to go through those, break them down for you, give you our reaction analysis, but also probably more importantly, the reaction analysis of his opponents, of even some of his former allies who are looking at this and going, not good, not good. So we've got all of that. And we've also have polling on how the American people are feeling about these charges in the initial phases. We're also going to cover some new questions about President Biden and his relationship with

Burisma and some allegations that he received payments with regard to that relationship. We also have new comments that were quite noteworthy from Mark Zuckerberg about their choices during the pandemic with regard to COVID quote unquote misinformation. But we got to start with the big news for us here personally, which is all of this that's going on, which is very exciting and very much thanks to you all for making this brand new, beautiful, amazing set possible. That's right. So we thanked all of our premium subscribers on Thursday. We gave them a view of the set. But now it's time to thank the podcast listeners

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Let us know what you think about all of it. So with all of that being said, let's get to the reason we are actually here, which is to talk about the news. And, of course, there is huge news. President Trump once again indicted. We found out that he was indicted. We covered that a little bit on Thursday. But that indictment, the details of it was unsealed on Friday. So, you know, overall, there are 31 counts of willful retention of classified national security information,

five counts of obstruction of justice, one count of conspiracy to obstruct justice. He did have a co-conspirator, someone who worked as a basically like personal valet alongside of him, Walt Notta, who was involved in some of the conspiracy and obstruction charges. Special Counsel Jack Smith talked about the charges and what they entailed a little bit on Friday. Let's take a listen to that. Today, an indictment was unsealed, charging Donald J. Trump with felony violations of our national security laws, as well as participating in a conspiracy to obstruct justice. This indictment was voted by a grand jury of citizens in the Southern District of Florida,

and I invite everyone to read it in full to understand the scope and the gravity of the crimes charged. The men and women of the United States intelligence community and our armed forces dedicate their lives to protecting our nation and its people. Our laws that protect national defense information are critical to the safety and security of the United States, and they must be enforced. The details of the indictment were fairly damning. Not great. And, you know, I mean, a lot of this was details that we had already received from various news media outlets. But to see it all compiled and the narrative laid out, you know, I mean, it's pretty compelling.

There were a lot of images of where the classified documents were stored. And those in and of themselves were kind of shocking. Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen. I mean, this dude had boxes stuffed like everywhere at Mar-a-Lago, including in a bathroom next to a shower, like literally right next to the commode. At one point, the boxes were stacked. They were in a ballroom. They were in a ballroom. They were in various storage rooms. They were being carted all around the property by his aides, who, you know, did not have, of course, the proper classification,

not that they should have been there in the first place. So just the imagery of it, a lot of people were reacting to. Put this next piece up on the screen. NBC News compiled, you know, what they considered to be the top 11 takeaways from the Trump classified documents indictment. First of all, important to note, these charges are in Florida. And the judge that has so far been assigned to the case is someone who has taken some favor, is a Trump appointee, has taken some favorable decisions towards Trump. And of course, you would expect a jury in South Florida to be perhaps more favorable towards him than a jury in Washington, D.C. So that part is important to note to start with.

But there's a couple of anecdotes in here, Sagar, about Trump. They have him on tape talking about how these documents are classified. I could have declassified them when I was president, but now I can't. And he's like waving them around to some guy who's writing a book about him. There's another instance where he's showing some maps to someone who's involved with his PAC. Apparently, people think this was actually Kid Rock that he was showing these, again, classified maps to. So you have that. You have details here about the level of secretness of the information.

And this wasn't, you know't things that were over classified. We're talking about some of the most sensitive information that the US government has, including information, and this is the language from the indictment, regarding defense and weapons capabilities of both the US and foreign countries, US nuclear programs, potential vulnerabilities of the US and its allies, and plans for a possible retaliation in response to a foreign attack. You've got staffers documented freaking out about having to shift the documents around. And one instance where they open up the door to one of the rooms where these boxes are being stored and they've all spilled out on the floor. You've got Trump suggesting to his lawyers that they shouldn't, quote, play ball with the

grand jury subpoena and even saying to one of them, isn't it better if there are no documents? Basically suggesting like, let's just lie and say we don't have anything. subpoena and even saying to one of them, isn't it better if there are no documents? Basically suggesting like, let's just lie and say we don't have anything. That same lawyer, and this is Evan Corcoran, also recounted that Trump sort of suggested to him that he take the classified documents to his hotel room. And if there was anything that was really serious, he made a plucking motion, like just pluck it out, just take it out of there. And perhaps the most, I don't know, remarkable, just incredible Trumpian moment contained in this indictment is of course, during his first campaign, he was all over Hillary Clinton, lock her up over her own mishandling of classified information, but apparently multiple

times to his lawyers, he was talking about what a great job her lawyer did. Why? Because that lawyer took the blame and claimed that he was the one who deleted the 30,000 emails. Again, basically suggesting to his own lawyers, like, why don't y'all lie on my behalf and take the heat for me? That's part of the issue. He's already, two of his lawyers have already left his legal team almost immediately after the indictment. That particular quote you're alluding to is amazing. Quote, as president, I could have declassified it. Now I can't, but it's still a secret. Yeah, the staffer responded, now we have a problem.

Literally direct, now we have a problem. I also love, you know, with that map, he just said, I shouldn't even be showing this to you and don't get too close to the map. I'm still personally bound by an off-the-record agreement, but let me just say this. Almost anybody who's stepped into the Oval Office, including other reporters, see, I can report on what other reporters have told me on background. And let's just say pretty much everybody who was

inside the Oval Office whenever they were covering President Trump got to read some secret letters from Kim Jong-un and got to hear a very long diatribe about how secret they were, how the South Koreans hadn't even read them, and how in many cases had top secret literal stamps on the top of said documents. It's not the only top secret thing that most people who got to step into the Oval Office at that time, who were members of the media, got to see. Just to give a little bit of a preview as a former White House correspondent who also interacted with Trump at that time. Overall, I went ahead and I read the

documents, Crystal. The most important thing to me was the level of detail that they went in, into which the government went out of its way to go ahead and give him the opportunity to give them back. So you had 11 months, multiple opportunities, the subpoena to provide the documents back, the voluntary giving it back, voluntarily making sure that you didn't voluntarily then taking steps to go around said voluntary disclosure to then get to the point where they have the tapes, the investigation, the raid, and then even an open question as to today as to whether said documents are even still not yet all in the possession of the government. And look, I mean, we're going to talk today about Biden, about the charges against him, about selective prosecution. I think in some cases, a lot of that is fair.

But look, the charge has now been brought. So at this point, it's a political case. I think that's probably the best case against said indictment. But on the merits itself, this is a huge problem for Trump. There's just no getting around it. And most people who even who are supporters of him, who are anti-Russiagate, they agree with that. Like, look, you know, the only real attack against this is the same one Hillary did. It's like, you can't prosecute me.

I'm above the law. I'm the candidate, you know, and all that, which rightfully at the time, we all said, no, you're not above the law. Everyone is a private citizen. That's right. I don't even know what defense they'll be able to muster in terms of a court of law because the details here are so damning about the number of documents, the level of classification of the documents, the willful retention of the documents. So this wasn't like, you know, part of the justification for not prosecuting Hillary, which, you know, I think I disagree with. But part of the justification was they couldn't prove that she willfully retained the documents. It's quite clear Trump knows he has them, knows he shouldn't have them, and he's trying to cover it up. Then one of the defenses that they had floated to the media was, oh, well, he declassified all this stuff when he was president. So no problem.

Right. First of all, the statute doesn't technically say that the documents have to be classified. But even putting that aside, you literally have him on tape saying, as president, I could have declassified it. Now I can't. This is still a secret. Yeah, now we have a problem. The staffer responds laughing as you quote it like he's on tape admitting to the crime and undercutting the only defense that I ever heard them really muster for the details of this case. So if you take who this person is, the fact that it is Donald Trump out of it, like if anyone should be prosecuted for willful retention of classified documents and

obstruction in, you know, in attempts to retrieve those classified documents, it would be this man. Judging by the number, the level of classification, the clear attempts at obstruction, the open admission that what he was doing was wrong, knowledge that what he was doing was wrong. So this is all a major problem for him. And one thing people are pointing to this morning as well is, you know, part of how they got him so dead to rights was his own lawyer took a lot of contemporaneous notes, including like voice memos on his phone and writing down notes about after every meeting with Trump, what was said and what he said in response. And the Justice Department successfully

was able to overcome attorney-client privilege in order to obtain those memos and obtain those contemporaneous notes. And that clearly informs a lot of this and a lot of the details that are at play here. But yeah, on the merits of it, the fact that his own allies, the best they can muster in defense of him is the like, what about Hillary? What about Biden? That's like the best case they can make for him. I haven't really heard anyone try to defend him on the merits because frankly, I just don't think that you can. Now, we'll wait and hear what their side of the story is. But given the facts that are at play

here, again, much of which has been reported, but to see it all laid out is pretty stunning. It's a pretty damning case. Yeah. And so to give everybody an update, Tuesday is when he will actually be present in court in Miami. And at 8.15 p.m., the president will be giving a press conference. We're going to give people some coverage after said press conference in order to break some of that down for you. So you can go ahead and await that eagerly, but that's basically all we have. And in terms of though people, like as I alluded to, even those who defended President Trump on Russiagate, you know, actual staunch allies from the DOJ, including his own attorney general, well, even they think that this is a

prosecutable case. Yeah. I mean, anyone with a shred of honesty has to admit that this indictment is pretty damning. So you've got a former attorney general, Bill Barr, who of course was by Trump's side through thick and thin for quite a while and was a vociferous defender of him, probably his foremost defender in terms of Russiagate charges and the whole Mueller report and all of that. He also saw this indictment as quite damning. Let's take a listen to a little bit of what he had to say. And I think the counts under the Espionage Act that he willfully retained those documents are solid counts.

Now I do think we have to wait and see what the defense says and what proves to be true. But I do think that even half what Andy McCarthy said, which is if even half of it is true, then he's toast. I mean, it's a it's a pretty it's a very detailed indictment and it's very, very damning. And this idea of presenting Trump as a victim here, a victim of a witch hunt is ridiculous. He goes on to talk about, and this is something he refers to Andrew McCarthy, and we're going to talk about that op-ed as well, but I mean, this is not, you know, liberals going after him or the fake news media. A lot of this information came from his own people. Yes. So that's part of what makes this so devastating.

Yeah, I completely agree. And people need to really internalize that. Like, the reason that we have curated the list of people we're showing you, including Bill Barr and the next one, Jonathan Turley, is these were some of the staunchest critics of the Russiagate investigation. I want to be clear too. I actually agreed with them on almost all of Russiagate, on UkraineGate, on the impeach, both impeachments, all of the analysis from really all of the people that we are bringing to you. And the reason why for them to come around and say that is just to show you, like, these people have genuine credentials, a skeptical of the FBI, skeptical of law enforcement. I mean, look, you're talking to two people here who do not trust these people literally at all.

And as I said, I think there's an open question about, you know, overall legitimacy and politics and all of that, of which it's a nuanced, difficult conversation. You have one person who obviously shouldn't be above the law even when you're president of the United States. I thought Hillary should have been prosecuted for what she did. And so then for Trump to turn around and do effectively the same thing, you have to remain legally consistent. So that is also what Jonathan Turley really breaks down in this clip

that he brought on Fox News, quote-unquote Fox's favorite legal analyst. Here's what he had to say. No, it is an extremely damning indictment. You know, there are indictments that are sometimes called narrative or speaking indictments. These are indictments that are really meant to make a point as to the depth of the evidence. There are some indictments that are just bare bones. This is not. The special counsel knew that there would be a lot of people who were going to allege that the Department of Justice was acting in a biased or politically motivated way. This is clearly an indictment that was drafted to answer those questions. It's overwhelming in details. And, you know, the Trump team should not fool itself.

These are hits below the waterline. These are witnesses who apparently testified under oath, gave statements to federal investigators, both of which can be criminally charged if they're false. What do you think, Crystal? I mean, he breaks it down pretty well. And that's also what I had to take away whenever I was reading the indictment. I was actually on a plane when it happened. It was

funny. Everybody landed and turned on their phone. Everyone was like, oh, I start hearing people's whispering and all that. But I went through and I read it almost immediately. You know, the quotes, the facts of the case, the timeline, all of which that they lay out. And look, the feds are not above lying. Of course, the issue is that they have a lot of documentation. Now, of course, Trump and his legal team can challenge the timeline, the documentation, and all that. But they have not done so from the very beginning. Their justification is, I was president. I had the power to declassify.

Thus, this entire thing is a selective and illegal prosecution. Continues to be the line he's going with. Well, that's because literally on the merits, you know, legally, in terms of what you can present before this court, they've already taken a shot at you on that within the indictment itself. Yeah. He is attempting to make a political argument against what is fundamentally a legal case against him, which let's be honest is pretty airtight. Yeah. And pretty open and shut. If it was anyone other than Trump. And, you know, I read one analysis from a conservative writer who was saying, put yourself in Jack Smith's shoes. Let's say he didn't really want to prosecute Trump. Like,

Trump gave him no choice. Yes, when you have the evidence in front of you. When you have this amount of evidence and you have this, you know, this wasn't an oopsie. I, you know, made a mistake. Let me do everything I can to try to get the documents back to you. This was intentional attempt to conceal information, having people move boxes around. And let's remember too, and Ryan made this point when, you know, we covered the initial breaking news about Trump being indicted. Mar-a-Lago was like a nest of spies. I mean, Chinese spies have been caught trying to obtain access to the property. There's probably no foreign government with a significant spy agency

on the planet that hasn't tried to infiltrate this place. And the boxes were casually stored all around in easily accessible areas. So again, if anyone should be charged with these types of crimes, President Trump, former President Trump should be charged with these types of crimes. And, you know, I agree with the view that no one can be above the law. And the the level of obstruction here and the level of willful retention is really something. We have one more for you. This is Andrew McCarthy, who, you know, was really adamantly opposed to the investigations with regard to Russiagate. He wrote a book called Ball of Collusion, the plot to rig an election and destroy presidency. So this is not some like liberal media figure. And he wrote an op-ed, put this up on the screen. We've got some of the details here. He says it's, and this is to the

point. So his, his headline is why Trump's witch hunt cries ring hollow in face of DOJ indictment. And he takes head on the argument that's being made of selective prosecution. Hillary should have been indicted. Therefore, Trump should not be indicted. And he says it's not that Trump is owed a pass. It's that every official who's entrusted with the access to nation secrets and who then betrays that trust by willful law violations and cover ups should be prosecuted. Every single one. And none of them has any business to your power.

The lesson of the Hillary Clinton precedent is that Joe Biden should be investigated and prosecuted, every single one, and none of them has any business to your power. The lesson of the Hillary Clinton precedent is that Joe Biden should be investigated and prosecuted. That's how the scales of justice are evened out. The fix for a two-tier justice system is not equal injustice under the law. And I think that's well said. Now, listen, I do think there are some differences between this case and Hillary Clinton, especially in terms of the level of classification and the clear documentation about the obstruction and the cover-up and all of that stuff. There are clear differences here, too, between what we know about Joe Biden

and his retention of documents. Same thing with Mike Pence. It appears, based on what we know, and this can always be proven otherwise, that when they found out they had documents they shouldn't have, they immediately cooperated. And if Trump had done the same, I genuinely think he would be fine. But because he over months and months and months

made it so difficult for them that they had to actually execute a raid on Mar-a-Lago and that they still do not have confidence, they even have everything at this point, that's what forces the hand and makes it so this prosecution is basically inevitable. I think you're right, Crystal. Why don't we talk about Trump's response? Yeah, so we have a couple of responses at this point from the former president, one that he had apparently pre-taped in anticipation of being indicted on these charges. Like let's take a listen to that. We're a nation in decline and yet they go after a popular president, a president that got more votes than

any sitting president in the history of our country by far, and did much better the second time in the election than the first, and they go after him on a boxes hoax, just like the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax, and all of the others. This has been going on for seven years. They can't stop because it's election interference at the highest level. There's never been anything like what's happened. I'm an innocent man. I'm an innocent person. They had the Mueller hoax, the Mueller report, and that came out. No collusion after two and a half years That was set up by Hillary Clinton and Democrats. But this is what they do.

This is what they do so well. If they would devote their energies to honesty and integrity, it would be a lot better for our country. They could do a lot better. They could do a lot of great things. Our country is going to hell. And they come after Donald Trump, weaponizing the Justice Department, weaponizing the FBI. We can't let this continue to go on because it's ripping our country to

shreds. We have such big problems and this shouldn't be one of them. It's a hoax. So reaching there for a very familiar playbook, right? Like his allies, there's no attempt to actually refute the evidence that's provided here. It's just, this is yet another hoax. This is yet another witch hunt. This is coming from my political adversaries and enemies. So this was the initial response. Again, it was like a pre-taped video in front of that portrait. He gave another response. He was immediately sort of out on the campaign trail, speaking to Republican audiences. And he reached for another part of his playbook, which is to demonize the people who were involved, their character personally.

Here he is talking a little bit about special counsel Jack Smith. Take a listen. And his wife is even more of a Trump hater. I wish her a lot of luck, but he's a bad Trump hater and she's a Trump hater. And you shouldn't put people like that in. And, you know, the people looking at Biden is a very nice man. They looked at Mike Pence. He had classified documents. No problem.

So it's the, you know, what about them? It's the this is a witch hunt. It's the let me attack the character of the people who are going after me. And, you know, none of the like direct response the character of the people who are going after me and you know none of the like direct response to any of the evidence here and let's be honest like this with his core fans and it works oh and not even just his core fans the overwhelming majority of the republican base i'm talking like 90 this is going to be a successful argument we're going to break all this down for everyone and i thought this is why uh i actually think that the muller investigation

russiagate and all that did such damage to the credibility of the DOJ. And also with the Hillary Clinton investigation, all of that did so much damage to the Republican base because they were like, look, we have no trust in your institutional capability. People like us have, you know, made entire careers now actually looking through this evidence, trying to break it down for people to understand why that was bad. So then you can't make people, you know, you can't change their preconceived notions where we're like, well, yeah, on this one, it is different. But, you know, if you're a casual consumer out there and you already view this as political, specifically the entire institution as political, then why should you have any faith in their ability at all? You know, and look, I mean, also with the DOJ,

why are we choosing someone whose wife did a documentary on Michelle Obama? That's definitely weird. Like, she made the, now, listen, you know, is he unimpeachable? I have no idea. You know, the way that people used to talk about Mueller and, oh, he's the greatest straight shooter to ever live. I'm like, well, you know, it's like, I don't really think that is the case for anybody. There's a lot of hero worship of these guys. I have, that's my thing.

I don't know why we have to sit here and be like, I'm going to be the defender of Jack Smith's honor. If you were to tell me dispassionately the guy's wife made a documentary about Michelle, I'd be like, yeah, maybe choose somebody else. You know, like maybe you have somebody who didn't go that. Why are you even giving them ammunition? That does not, though, you know, change some of the facts within the indictment. And, you know, I'm eager. I want to hear a defense from the president and from his team. I'm like, look, present it. This is your day in court. Like you have a chance. But, you know, unfortunately, that's not what they've been able to offer up so far. Politically, though, I will never leave even if I am convicted. Yeah,

exactly. As if any of us would need to know that. Quote, look, if I would have left, I would have left prior to the original race in 2016. That was a rough one. In theory, that was not doable. But he said that the harsh criticisms at Jack Smith, he says these are, quote, thugs and degenerates who are after me. He said he would not be convicted, did not anticipate taking a plea deal, though he left open the possibility of doing so, quote, where they would pay me some damages in terms of whether he would have to pardon himself should he win the presidency in 2024. He says, quote, I do not think I will ever have to. I didn't do anything wrong. As far as his indictment and all of that, he just says nobody wants to be indicted. I don't care that my poll numbers went up by a lot. I think you do. I don't want to be indicted. I've never been indicted. I went through my whole life. Now I get indicted every two months.

Quote, it's been political. That's another issue, I think, whenever it comes to the man. This is part of what we talked about so much during the Alvin Bragg investigation. We were like, this is the flimsiest, stupidest one in order to bring against Trump. When you literally had this one really hanging over his head. In many ways, Alvin Bragg, you know, comes back to my previous point. Alvin Bragg, Russiagate, Mueller, Hillary, every single one of those investigations in the eyes of the public does make this look more capital P political, maybe even than it is.

But unfortunately for them, they're going to have to live with that. You know, we do live in a democracy. Yeah. I mean, we have two questions here, right? There's the legal question in which it looks to be a pretty airtight case right now. Again, we'll hear what they have to say, but so far we haven't gotten any sort of reasonable defense from the president or his team that makes a whole lot of sense. Okay. So there's the legal question on the political question, you know, with the Republican electorate, no doubt that he will,

they're already persuaded that this is a witch hunt and it really wouldn't matter what facts Jack Smith was able to lay out. Like that, that case has already opened and shut for them. They think any attack on Trump is coming from bad faith actors. And you see this even in the DeSantis Trump fight where DeSantis has to be so careful about the way he couches his criticism so they can't just be dismissed as like, you sound like a Democrat now. And that is the way that the Republican base has been trained to view every single attack on Trump. Now, there are real questions about how this timeline is going to play out because, you know, we haven't even gotten to trial on the original Alvin Bragg charges.

This is a complex case. It is likely that Trump's team is going to throw up all kinds of roadblocks to try to drag this thing out. And so it is very likely that we don't have a resolution to this case on the legal front until after the election. Very possible. Which is, I mean, listen, putting the clearly damning facts aside, it is just an extraordinary set of circumstances that you have the former president running against the current president. The current president's Department of Justice is prosecuting the former president and his chief rival in the midst of a presidential campaign. There's just no doubt about it that that is an unprecedented and extraordinary set of circumstances and that

these are uncharted waters. So you do have the specter of still having these charges hanging over Trump as we go into Election Day without a resolution. And this becoming very existential for him in terms of his own personal freedom. And he is already framing the campaign in those sorts of existential terms. Now, Trump always frames his campaigns in existential terms. But he's overtly saying to his supporters, this is a, quote, final battle, that this is like the last front in their war to destroy their enemies, et cetera, et cetera. And so, you know, the results of Election Day could matter. Obviously, they're going to matter a lot for the future of the country, but they could also matter very directly for whether

former President Trump is going to end up in prison behind bars because these are serious charges and they could very much lead to that outcome. I'm really glad that you laid out the timeline for everybody because this is not going to be quick. I believe, and from people I've spoken to, there are going to be multiple Supreme Court level cases that will arise here about Presidential Records Act, about the way that these things are governed, executive privilege. The president and his team have to go through the normal legal process from a federal judge to the appellate court up to the Supreme Court. You can have expedited review, then you have to go through the normal trial, you're gonna

have discovery. This could take a hell of a long time. We don't know even if the DOJ is gonna be able to push that. And then also, they're gonna have to run up against the political barrier of prosecuting the chief opponent, likely opponent, to the current president of the United States. But politically, as you alluded to, the GOP current candidates, they're also in a tough spot. What the hell do we say about this? I mean, this is exactly what we, not to pat ourselves on the back too much, but this is what we predicted.

When we saw the way the Mar-a-Lago raid went down and the fact that they immediately came out, all of his would-be rivals, and bent the knee to his framing of events. And you'll recall Ron DeSantis like waited a couple days and he caught hell for not immediately coming out to Trump's defense. So I guess many of them sort of learned that lesson and they're coming out. You know, DeSantis was much quicker to make a statement here and, you know, once again, takes Trump's side. His rival, the guy he's trying to defeat, he takes his side in this whole battle. Let's take a listen a little bit of what Ron DeSantis had to say. My view was, well, gee, you know, as a naval officer, if I would have taken classified to my apartment, I would have been court-martialed in a New York minute. And yet they seem to not care about that. And is there a different standard for a Democrat

secretary of state versus a former Republican president? I think there needs to be one standard of justice in this country. Let's enforce it on everybody and make sure we all know the rules. You can't have one faction of society weaponizing the power of the state against factions that it doesn't like. So he's trying to be a little bit careful there, right? He does acknowledge that if he, when he was in the military, had done something similar, it would have been a big problem for him. But ultimately, he goes directly to the favorite talking point of Trump's allies, which is the, what about Hillary? What about Biden, et cetera? Yeah, exactly. And he even tweeted out, the weaponization of federal law enforcement represents a mortal threat to free society. We for years witnessed an uneven

application of the law, depending on the political affiliation. Why so zealous in pursuing Trump yet so passive about Hillary for, uh, dissent about Hillary or Hunter, the DeSantis administration will restore rule of law in this country. It's like, so Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Hillary, Trump, all 2016 vibes, and that's why I should be president. Now, on the merits, look, he probably would do a better job than Trump in actually reforming the Justice Department. In terms of politics, yeah, it's a huge issue because every single candidate is now litigating a set of facts around their chief opponent. And there really is, politically, as you know, Crystal,

you never want to be talking about somebody else. You want to be talking about you and your vision for the country. You do not want to be on the grounds of talking about some set third party. We can do that. We're the news. We're political analysts.

We're not actually at the center of the story. But that's not the story that you're trying to do when you're saying that's why you should vote for me. It's exactly just actually, if anything, it gives Trump even more power, which we see in a lot of the polling that we'll be getting to soon. Trump is the central issue in the Republican primary. And he's in a lot of ways the central issue in the country. And it's in a lot of ways the worst thing about having Trump dominate our politics. And so, you know, every candidate in the Republican primary is forced into this impossible position of either backing him up or opposing him, which is an even worse position to be in.

But there's just no beating being actually Donald Trump, right? Like the best stance you can take on the issue of Trump is literally being Donald Trump within the Republican primary. And that's why I, I mean, I just basically think this primary is over before it's begun, because this piece of, you know, this indictment is probably not the last indictment. We're going to have all kinds of news about this going through the court system and what are the motions and what else is uncovered and what's Trump saying about it. So this tiny window of time that we had where candidates were launching, they were getting a little bit of media coverage and trying to make the most of that and maybe getting a couple point bump in the poll. It's basically done. So this is the landscape that all of them are facing. We put together, you know, a few other responses that are kind of like across the gamut of how other Republicans are dealing with this within the primary. Let's take a listen to the other responses. And today, what we see is a justice system where the scales are weighted.

But today, I'm calling on the attorney general to stand before the American people and explain why this was necessary in his words. Attorney General Merrick Garland, stop hiding behind the special counsel and stand before the American people and explain why this indictment went forward. I disagree with the allegations. I just think I do not believe those allegations because of, I think, the intellectual dishonesty in that indictment. So I think the federal court is actually, I think, based on the precedent of the Clinton

sock drawer case, where effectively Judge Jackson said that it is at the president's, her language, not mine, sole discretion as to what is and is not covered as a presidential record. And Vivek has gone probably the furthest of anyone. He immediately came out and said, if I was president, I'd pardon Trump instantly. Smart. Right. He gets on the record right away. And, you know, he is even willing to say, I don't agree with the allegations at all. I mean, he's the he's the one who's willing to go the furthest out on a limb, potentially positioning himself maybe for a cabinet secretary position or just to be, you know, a favorite of the Republican base and whatever sort of accolades and opportunities that brings you. But even Mike Pence, you know, he did make some sort of like tepid, vague criticism of Trump with regard to these charges. But what he's really trying to do is position himself to also be on Trump's side on this,

even though in other areas, you know, with regards to January 6th, et cetera, he's been willing to be critical of Trump. But it just shows you that there is a real limit to how far people feel like. Yeah, because people don't care about this. We're about to talk about the polling. But, you know, it's clear. Republicans, some Republicans, not most, but some actually were pissed off about what Trump did on January 6th. On the documents case, this is a open and shut, like politically has absolutely no impact. Doesn't mean it's not important. It certainly is, but just politically, that's how it's being internalized. And it's not a, it is not a surprise that the two candidates who pull some of the worst in the entire Republican Party,

they're the only ones who are even willing to be critical of Trump here on the documents case, Asa Hutchinson and Governor Chris Christie, here's what they had to say. You are calling on Donald Trump to end his campaign in the wake of this second indictment. Why? For the good of the country and for the good of the office of presidency, this is unprecedented that we have a former president criminally charged for mishandling classified information. So everyone wants to blame the prosecutors. And look, I think the prosecution, DOJ, is at fault for not charging Hillary Clinton. It's at fault for what happened in the Russia investigation because it undercut people's

faith and confidence in the system. But each case has to be looked at on its own merits. And the facts that are laid out here are damning in terms of Donald Trump's conduct. And that's what I think we as a party should be looking at. So look, Chris Christie, Asa Hutchinson, as I alluded to, there are already some of literally not only the lowest polling, but also the highest level of people who said they will not even consider them to be president. This and I mean, and again, the issue is crystal every whenever they speak, it's basically indistinguishable from CNN and MSNBC primetime

programming. Well, the Republican base hates those people. The reason why Mike Pence and DeSantis and Vivek are all being smart politically is that in the eyes of the Republican base, this is an illegitimate prosecution. If you want to win their votes in a primary, even being considered as president of the United States, that's exactly what you have to do. Yeah, but you're not going to beat Trump by it. No, you're not. I agree with you. I mean, it's just like, if your goal is to be in good with the Republican base, get some, you know, Fox News or Newsmax or whatever, like, contributorship, or position yourself maybe for a cabinet post in a future Trump administration, you're doing the right thing. If you're trying to win the Republican primary, it doesn't matter what you say. It's not going to work out.

I mean, Trump is just such like this just shows, I think, to everyone what a dominant controlling force Trump is in the Republican primary, for sure. But in American politics overall. And, you know, he is the dividing line. So it's it's not a great landscape for them. You know, listen, with Asa Hutchinson, I don't really understand his play, to be honest with you. I don't really have a great feel for the Asa career or where he's going with this or what he wants. Maybe he wants to be on CNN. Maybe he just, you know, is a man of conscience and feels like this is my responsibility

and I believe in this party and the principles and I want to say my piece, you know, whatever, come what may. Chris Christie is in the race because he wants to be a wrecking ball. And he's unafraid. You know, he launched with a very vigorous attack against Trump. He may be have a large enough ego to delude himself into thinking that this could work out for him. But his primary goal here is to try to annihilate Trump the way he annihilated Marco Rubio and potentially like a kamikaze mission. So if that's your goal, then, you know, this makes some sense. And he already has lost the favor of the Republican base. CNN, MSNBC, NBC, mainstream press, and corporate America, than to try to walk back over the bridge to the conservative media ecosystem

because that ship has ultimately sailed. So I understand from all of their perspectives what they're doing, and it may make sense for them in terms of their future career prospects. None of it is gonna work out for any of them to be president of the United States. Absolutely not, and that is a great segue to the polling that we have so far.

We have a snapshot of the Republican race in terms of how it's all looking. Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen for the overall GOP primary from CBS News and YouGov in their latest poll, which kind of just tells you everything, doesn't it? This was done from June 7th to June 11th. Some of it was pre-indictment, but the polls overall just underscore how much of the base loves Trump. Right now, 2024 Republican nomination, who would you vote for today? By the way, this polling is amongst likely GOP primary voters. 1% Trump, 23% DeSantis, 4% Tim Scott, 4% Mike Pence, 3% Nikki Haley. So the drop-off from DeSantis obviously is pretty precipitous. And it just shows you he's the only even genuine contender against Trump. But the next one that we're about to show you, let's put this up there

on the screen. This just really is the whole ballgame to me. It's kind of what I was just talking about. Who are you not considering? Number one, Chris Christie, 79%. Doug Burgum, 73%. Asa Hutchinson, 73. Larry Elder, 61. Pence, 60. Haley, 57. Ramaswamy, 56. Tim Scott, 42. DeSantis, 27. Trump, 14. Literally only three candidates, Tim Scott, Ron DeSantis, and Donald Trump, are even not have a majority of Republican voters say that they won't consider them for president. So I mean, what, I guess, Tim Scott mania, everybody, you know, if you really hate Trump and DeSantis, you should all, I guess, endorse Tim Scott. But even he's at 42% not being considered. It's DeSantis and Trump. And to the extent that DeSantis has a shot at all, every single one of the people I just read would have

to drop out and endorse him. And even if they did, most people still love Trump. So it's like, he's got a 61% lead here in the overall national polling. Even Vivek Ramaswamy, the endless amount of kissing Trump and kissing up to him. He gets a lot of media coverage too. He gets a ton of media coverage. But here's the issue. Little CNN interview here, Don Lemon viral clip there. None of that is even close to the level of Trump being able to dominate our

politics. And before that, his overall level of name ID. I was thinking about what you were saying during the previous block that we were doing. And there's a powerful concept in war, or if you think about this as a battle, is choosing the ground that you fight on is more important, if anything, than the actual fight itself. It predetermines almost all the outcomes from that forward. That is Trump's overall strength. He selects and chooses the ground and says, no, you come fight with me over here. You're like, no, no, no. I want to fight over here. He's like, yeah, I know, but I'm weak over there. I have the high ground on this. The inability is basically everyone is

doing like shooting up here at this hill. He's shooting down, which is defensive position. That's something that you exactly want to be. And then if he does feel like he's losing, he moves to another hill like over here and you have to follow him over there. Nobody is actually in control except for Trump in this circumstance. And that is why the polls overall reflect this. Now, here's the thing. I do want to be fair. That's GOP voters. Many people who are not primary voters, yeah, some of them do support the Trump indictment. Let's put this up there on the screen. This was a snap poll from ABC News. They say pluralities of Americans support the second Trump indictment, but they say that the charges are politically motivated. And so nearly half, 48%, they say Trump should have been charged in the

case. 35%, mostly Republican base said that he shouldn't have. 17% say, quote, I don't know. But unsurprisingly, you see that Republicans remain most loyal to Trump. Quote, 67% saying the former president, current front runner, should not have been charged at all. Independents at 45% saying he should not have been charged. And a solid majority, Crystal, say this is a politically motivated investigation. And you know why that's so powerful? Trump has now made it so that any indictment, in his own words, shooting a man on Fifth Avenue and people would support me, it's because the attacks, so many of the illegitimate attacks against him make it so that it's impossible to discern what is legitimate and what is not for a lot of people who are even

sympathetic to the man. Yeah, that's all absolutely the case. And, you know, to me, it's been pretty clear for a while the way this would all play into his hands in terms of the Republican primary base. I mean, it just strengthens their commitment to him. It makes everything about him. It makes it impossible for people to break through, makes it impossible for Ron DeSantis in particular to try to prosecute his case and lay out why he should be president and fight on the ground that he would like to fight on. And not that it's even totally clear to me what that ground is at this point, but it makes all of that thoroughly impossible. I mean, the CBS News poll, those are Biden RFK numbers. And that's with, you know, RFK Jr. getting like no press attention and DeSantis is being propped up by Fox News. Rupert Murdoch overtly told him, like, we're going to have your back.

They have done everything they can to prop this guy up. And it's to no avail. With regard to the general election, it's a lot muddier to me. My inclination is that it is actually a problem for Trump in terms of the general election. And it's an assist to Joe Biden. Why? Because we all know, I mean, Joe Biden launched his presidential campaign. And I think he still hasn't even gone out on the campaign trail. I think he has a rally scheduled this week. This

is his first one since he announced. His team tries to keep him hidden. We all know the reason why, because he can't stand up to scrutiny. He doesn't do an effective job on the stump. He stumbles all over himself. It's always like one inch from disaster the whole time. How did he win last time? Because he didn't have to do all that much. Trump was out there making a fool of himself on COVID and doing his thing and being ridiculous. Biden had the excuse of the pandemic to not go out and campaign in person. And so if these indictments keep coming and the news media is caught up, as understandably, listen, I'm not even saying they shouldn't cover this stuff because this is actually really important and it really is, you know, quite historic and

all that stuff. That's going to be the focus of media attention. Biden doesn't really have to promise or say anything other than like, I'm not going to be in prison. And it's, you know, that's all he really has to do to position himself to get reelected here. In terms of a general election audience, you know, I think people's views on Trump are so hardened that it's very hard to imagine even with the damning nature of this indictment. It's not like anyone is surprised by any of this. I can imagine very few people really changing their opinions of Trump over this. But for those who in focus groups are telling pollsters like, you know, I voted for Biden last time. This time I might just stay home. This time I might vote third party. I'm just not really feeling it. This may be the reminder of the

chaos and general like insanity of the Trump era that forces them to once again go, well, I guess Biden is the lesser of the two evils. And I guess it is worth going and pulling the lever for him, even though I, you know, I'm not happy with what he has done in office. I agree with you. I think people should remember, you know, with Trump, it's the overall exhaustion and actually not the set of facts. So on the set of facts, they can be like, yeah, I could see that. But they're like, man, I'm sick of this. I'm just and that's what January 6th leads into that. And the more here's the other thing. The feds have still have the ongoing January 6th investigation. Crystal, if they prosecute him for that, then we and every other news outlet in the country is forced to cover the prosecution, which only drums into the heads of the American people. Remember that one event that you all hate

or that most of you hate? But I hate this type of politics as you do you, because I'm like, oh, what, are we going to sit here in January of 2023 and talk about January of 2021? But yeah, apparently, or January 2024, three years almost, that's the ground that they want to fight on. That's the ground that Trump himself kind of shot himself in the foot in many ways because he likes fighting on that as well. He's like, no, the election wasn't stolen.

It drives people absolutely crazy as we saw in the midterm election. So overall, I do think it's going to remain an issue for him if anything, because it just feeds into exhaustion. The counter to that is, is that there is probably a ceiling to the level of whether people can care before they start to tune out. Trump did still win some 70 something million votes in the 2020 election after a lot of what happened, investigation and the exhaustion. So people do also and are willing to tune it out dramatically if they think an issue is more important. So it's

all going to come down to turnout, as they say. I mean, he tried to do a Keystone Cops coup. So it's understandable people are going to think about that and want to talk about that and want to consider that in terms of whether they want to put this guy back in a position of power. And we certainly saw how that weighed on the decision making of midterm voters and the results of the last midterm elections. The last thing I'll say in terms of, you know, this particular polling, which I think is interesting, too, is just there's such a distance between the way the Republican electorate feels about January 6th, feels about these classified documents, feels about even the Alvin Bragg charges and the way that the rest of the country feels about it. So they asked voters, so is it a national

security risk if Trump kept nuclear and military documents? And this was a CBS News poll. Only 38% of likely GOP primary voters say yes. And that 38%, probably they don't really believe that he kept that stuff. They're not going to buy it. So you can basically like, even though they acknowledge if he kept those sort of things, yes, it was a problem. They don't really think that he kept those things. 80% of the rest of the country says this is a real problem. This is a real national security issue. This is serious. This is a real, you know, this is a real thing. So when you have this wild gulf between the way that the Republican base feels about a key issue that's going to dominate our politics and the way that the rest of the electorate feels about it. It creates a real

political issue for Trump. And this is the path that Ron Klain all those months ago laid out for Joe Biden to get elected, which is like, he's going to have a low approval rating. People aren't going to be in love with him. They're not going to be in love with what he did. They're not going to be in love with how the country did, but they're going to look at the alternative and say, I got no other choice. That's right. Let's talk a little bit about Joe, about Joe Biden. Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. On the very same day, actually, of the indictment, the GOP Oversight Committee, members of that came out and told us this. This is from Anna Paulina Luna,

who's a member of that committee. She says, quote, in shock after leaving GOP Oversight Committee meeting today, the FBI, quote, has an informant who brought forward information. President Biden received a $5 million bribe from a foreign national while he was vice president of the United States in the Obama administration. Quote, they stated that they were afraid that the informant would be killed if they were unmasked. On Thursday, there will be a hearing to hold FBI director in the contempt of Congress. There will no more corruption shall be tolerated. All of this traces back to this whistleblower that allegedly had come forward, which was revealed by the GOP Oversight Committee a month ago. Let's go ahead and put this up there, please, on the screen. All of it was disclosed to Fox News. What they say is that their documents proving in the FBI that the informant has come forward involving this criminal scheme between

President Biden, a foreign national, some of which traces back to the Burisma investigation. This letter was brought forward from Representative Comer and Senator Grassley, the joint members of the committees, House Oversight and Senate, who are looking into the investigations of the FBI itself. Now, what they say is that it includes a precise description of how this scheme was employed as well as its purpose. The issue is that we just don't have all of the details around this. And look, I think people should remain skeptical. However, we also know that the FBI has refused to generate the quote, FD-1023 form,

which details alleged said arrangement involving this exchange of money for policy decisions. The reason that Congressman Luna had brought up before bringing the FBI director and holding him in contempt of Congress was specifically because they have provided a set of subpoena to the FBI, which has not yet materialized. So the reason we have to speak in generalities right now is we don't have the document and they haven't told us anything else about it. Assuming the extent here is basically there is an informant who brought this forward to the FBI. This is according to Congress. This is an informant. He came to the

FBI, $5 million bribery scheme. We don't know anything else about it. That's it. So I think it's important to put a pin in this one and keep your eye on it, but there's also good reason to maintain your skepticism. Not because we think Joe Biden isn't corrupt or, you know, wouldn't take money or whatever. But this is coming from this is like secondhand reporting of secondhand sources. And it's clearly coming from, you know, people who are adversarial to Joe Biden, his Republican political opponents who are on this GOP weaponization of government committee. So it's important to keep those facts in mind. With regard to the actual tip, it came apparently a couple years ago. There's some indication that it had already been investigated. So that's one piece. The other piece is the source didn't have

direct knowledge of the payment. The source said that they had been told about the payment. So that's why I say it's like secondhand of a secondhand account. And so that's why, you know, I think it's important to mention that this information is out there. It's circulating on Capitol Hill. Certainly a lot of conservatives think that, you know, this is something and it certainly should be investigated. And this is something that needs to be looked into. But we are a long way from having all of the facts locked down on what exactly happened here. So the exact date of the form is June 30, 2020.

The FBI interview described the source as, quote, highly credible. That form, though, this is what people need to know, the FD-1023 form, is used by agents to record unverified reporting from confidential human sources. So it is not under you know, under oath. It is something that's made by a confidential informant and they use it as an intelligence gathering tool. It is said to document information that's then told to the FBI agent. Now, as I said, some of this, at least some of the contours that have come forward, is that this involves $5 million paid by an executive of a Ukrainian natural gas company, the Burisma, who we have all, I think, are well familiar with, according to the secondhand reporting of this confidential source

to the president. And overall, I mean, look, I, as you do, believe that some shady stuff happened with Burisma. And I do not think that the Biden family was above taking bribes from foreign governments, given so much of the material that has come forward, with Hunter, his holding companies, their relationships to the Chinese government, the level of money he was moving around. And that's where his personal life does come into play, which is the reason why he needed access to millions and millions and millions of dollars was burning it all on drugs and in all these insane different schemes, flying around and booking high-level European hookers. Costs money, apparently.

And that's why he needed access to said funds. In that, we have to go back to the original 2020. Just as much as I hate talking about January 6th, this too, you have to feel like you've put on several hats from years ago, Tony Bobulinski, who was the recipient of said email from Hunter Biden, in which they discussed this, quote, 10% to the big guy that Hunter had laid out, in which he effectively said that he was holding 10% for some alleged big guy, of which I don't think it takes a genius to surmise, could be his father, the president of the United States currently, and then the vice president. Now, also though, we know from Ben Schreckinger's reporting over at Politico of the level of how Hunter and Biden's

brother, James, were involved in all kinds of insane schemes to use Biden's position, Hunter himself also positioning himself. So nobody is saying here that Biden is not corrupt and that this investigation has not borne fruit, only that so far we don't have any of the details. I do believe that the FBI should make this form available to Congress simply because it's a matter of immense public interest. Their argument is, well, oh, well, we can't be making forms that have, of an investigation that's been closed. We can't make that public because it's unfair to the people who are, you know, who are being investigated. But because these people are such high level public officials with so much power, I think we should have a different standard. They're not

private citizens. Like the information is so immensely important and we've already broken that, you know, with the Hillary Clinton investigation, with the Trump investigations, it should come forward and the people should be able to make up their minds for themselves. Yeah. There's a few reasons why I maintain skepticism here, which is Jamie Comer, who is involved in all of this and is on the House Oversight Committee. He was asked directly, did President Biden commit crimes? Right. And what his response was, he did things that should have been crimes. This would be directly a crime.

Right. Right? So there's that, number one. Number two, it's important to imagine that this allegation was coming out about some politician that you actually like and the way that you would view it. So what do we have? We have his political opponents recounting to an allied political media organization information on a form that was unverified and that was secondhand. So should it be investigated? Yes. It absolutely should be investigated.

We should see the form. We should know everything that we can possibly know about it. And if there's there, there, he should be prosecuted. But there's a lot of reason to hold off on coming to firm conclusions about what exactly the details are here and what exactly happened because of the political motivation of the people who are bringing this information forward. We're going to keep everybody updated throughout. We will be tracking this investigation, seeing what Congressman Comer had to say. We want the release of that form, and transparency in general is always a good thing. Let's go to the next part here. This is absolutely fascinating moment. Mark Zuckerberg was back on

the Lex Friedman podcast. And there was an interesting moment where Lex asked him about COVID misinformation and also just overall efforts for censorship. We will recall that when Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, Facebook, Instagram, for the normal people who are out there, when he was interviewed on the Joe Rogan experience, detailed that moment whenever the FBI had come forward and said, hey, something is coming. You should be ready. He talked about, openly admitted that they deranked the Hunter Biden laptop story on their platform, which in my opinion is worse than what Twitter did because there's no, like, how do you know when something is deranked or not? He was like, yeah, we openly shadow banned it. Yeah. It's like, so you could share it, but nobody would see it. And it's like, well, that's pretty odd. Okay. Within that Zuckerberg though, had a fascinating admission around COVID misinformation and censorship that his own platform enacted while the pandemic was going on, talking about

how the establishment actually got a lot of facts wrong. Here's what he had to say in that interview. So misinformation, I think, has been a really tricky one because there are things that are kind of obviously false, right, that are maybe factual um but may not be harmful um since like all right are you gonna censor someone for just being wrong it's you know if there's no kind of harm implication of what they're doing i think that that's there's there's a bunch of real kind of issues and challenges there but then i think that there are other places where it is, you know, just take some of the stuff around COVID earlier on in the pandemic where there were, you know, real health implications, but there hadn't been time to fully vet a bunch of facts and asked for a bunch of things to be censored that in retrospect ended up being more debatable or true. And that stuff is really tough, right? It really undermines trust in that. And the problem I always have with Zuckerberg is he says the right things.

Yeah, look, we got it wrong. But then whenever it comes down to it, he always buckles. And isn't it an impossible situation in many respects? He is literally the CEO of this massive platform with foreign governments constantly demanding censorship and then his own activist employee base, which also demands it. In my opinion, he originally had it correct. Zuckerberg used to hold up Facebook as the paragon of free speech and said, I am a Jew. I am of a family that was affected by the Holocaust. I will not censor Holocaust denial. In many ways, it's one of the most courageous free speech positions that you can take. And he took a lot of heat for it. And then two years later, he was like, yeah, you know what? We are going to

censor Holocaust denial. I mean, that was it. Like from people who I have spoken to who literally were involved in the process, many of whom believed in free speech, it was a breaking moment for them because they used to hold that up to advertisers and say, our Jewish CEO literally says, this is a principle of which we will abide by and we will not fold on. And then he folded. And unfortunately, he also folded crystal right in the midst of the 2020 election of taking down Trump's account off of Facebook, setting up this fake oversight board around what, oh, we're going to kick it to the oversight board. And then the oversight board was like, dude, you're a private company. You make the call. And then he did. He was like, okay, Trump's account is back. And we're like, what? This is all this insane, quasi-judicious process.

So I guess I am on several minds. And we have Jack Dorsey on the show today. So I'm excited to talk to him about it. Yeah. I have no doubt in my mind, Jack believed in free speech. I also have no doubt in my mind, free speech is not provided under Jack's leadership.

Maybe that is just simply a function of a private company in today's world. That's it. Yeah. I mean, look at the number of advertisers now. I don't, Twitter has not been free speech under Elon Musk either. But how much has his advertising revenue been cut by like 60% or something? I mean, advertisers fled when they were worried about what content would be on the

platform. And of course they did because they don't want their brand to be next to whatever, you know, Holocaust nihilism or whatever. So this is the reason why if you believe that these social media platforms are critical infrastructure for democracy, they should be insulated from the profit incentive and they should not be run by a handful of billionaires. Like there's just no other way around it. Good billionaire, bad billionaire, in-between billionaire, smart billionaire, stupid, It doesn't matter. Ultimately, they're all playing by the same rules because they're all subject to the same basic landscape. And so that's why the decision-making looks so similar. Why over time, they've all converged to very similar decision-making. It's all because of the, you know,

the profit-making and it's, I don't even think like the activist employees or whatever are really the thing. It's the advertisers. It's the money. If you're going to make money in these companies, you're going to listen to what the advertisers have to say. And that's basically the bottom line here. With regard to COVID, part of why I found these comments so interesting and why I continue to find this topic so interesting is because COVID was such a critical stress test and test case of principles, because on the one hand, if you have information that is wrong, incorrect, you know, misleading, whatever, it could genuinely be dangerous, right? On the other hand, you have a situation where the facts were wildly unsettled, where there was a portrayal of facts from the government that was at times misleading, at times outright lies, at times they mistakenly got things wrong.

This was all in flux. And so to think that – to think the government is going to get it right all at once is foolish. Yes. And then to think that these tech platforms are going to be able to adjudicate all of this in real time is complete insanity. And so that's why even with something that was truly as sensitive and potentially as dangerous as, quote unquote, COVID misinformation, why it would have been a much better approach to have a light touch and why people would have had a lot more, you know, I mean, trust is broken in like every institution anyway, but this certainly did not help the case. And it reminds me of, you know, the polling about CNN and where a lot of trust was lost with regards to CNN. It wasn't actually as much on their

Trump coverage. It was on the way that they handled COVID and people felt like, all right, I'm out of here. Like I'm, I'm done. I'm moving on. So I think there was, at that, it's easy to forget with the passage of time how raw and nervous and on edge everyone was, especially at the beginning of COVID. There was such a critical period where institutions could have risen to the challenge. And, you know, Zuckerberg and Meta were not alone in missing the mark. No, absolutely not. And that's why, you know, once again, I actually have some personal admiration for him. I'm like, listen, you know, Zuck, he's not shooting himself full of TRT and having his midlife crisis like Jeff Bezos. He's actually the Chad Zuck.

He's participating in jujitsu competitions. He remains fit. He's married. He has kids. You know, he seems principled sometimes whenever he talks, but you've got to judge these people based on their actions. And look, on almost every metric, he actually has failed. And I think it's a good stress test, as you said, of you can have a guy who literally believes you shouldn't censor Holocaust denial. And two years later, after Apple nukes, you know, iOS, whatever, the ability for Facebook targets advertising is like, well, I'm running a hundred. He's running not even a hundred billion, I think bigger company, something like a $200 billion company. He's one of the richest men literally on planet earth. He's got to protect. It's not even about

his own bag at that point. He's got employees, stockholders, all this other stuff. At the end of the day, these people's responsibility is to the company bottom line. Literally, that's what they say as CEO. Well, they're always going to act on behalf of that. If you have a majority advertising supported thing, then ultimately, that's why the decision tree comes back to it. It's why also you and I designed our business so that we can have this big, beautiful studio and not have to worry about advertising. Because if advertising pulled, well, guess what? That's not what paid for this. It was actually our premium subscribers. But at scale, is that even possible? Don't know. I genuinely

don't know if that's even possible. That's right. All right, Sagar, what are you looking at? Well, it's been a big week for the UFO phenomenon, to which I've seen more public interest than I have in a long time. Anytime there's so much information breaking all at once, it's always important to review the facts and separate them for people as they think about it, or at the very least think that we should get to the bottom of some of the recent events. Now, as far as UFOs go in the last week or so, there have been two major stories which we have covered here on Breaking Points, and I'm going to separate these into two categories. One is the former intelligence official, David Grush, came forward with an extraordinary claim. The United States government is in possession of multiple alien spacecraft. They have lied to the American people and Congress

for decades. This is further backed up by multiple intel officials coming forward to Michael Schellenberger, supporting his claims. I believe these stories are of the utmost importance. I'm going to circle back to them, I promise. But another story that got a lot of attention is this recent event in Las Vegas, Nevada. Police body camera footage and a 911 call ignited immense public interest after a family and a teenager specifically called 911 to report the sighting of an alien being in his backyard. The reason these claims even received any attention at all is because police officers and body camera footage revealed lights in the sky around Vegas at the same time, and officers in their footage are shown mystified by what they saw. If you missed it, nine feet, ten foot, I don't know.

They look like aliens to us. Big eyes. They have big eyes, like I can't explain it. And big mouth. They're tiny eyes, and they're not human. They're 100% not human. Okay. Well, the ADZO investigators obtaining video as officers then responded to the call you just heard. You'll see the officers also saw something in the sky that night. But the big question is, what was it? And is it all connected? It's almost midnight on May 1st when a Las Vegas Metro police officer's body cam catches this.

Something flashing low in the sky. 911 emergency. Minutes later. There's like an eight-foot person beside it. And another one's inside. And it has big eyes. It's looking at us. And it's still there. Minutes later, someone calls 911, reporting two large figures in their backyard. The 8 News Now investigator is obtaining another officer's video as he's sent to the Northwest Valley home. By now, it's more than an hour after that bright light. Officers meeting up with the caller and his family. What'd you see? It was like a, it was like a big creature. A big creature?

Yeah, like a long, tiny top. I'm not going to BS you guys. One of my partners said they saw something fall out of the sky too, so that's why I'm kind of curious. Did you see anything land in your backyard? They see like a big, that's what they say. They see like a big, like a big something with light. Police walk into the backyard to investigate, but Metro blacked out that part of the video because it's considered private property. Now, of course, there are a few questions. Number one, since when has the police blurred out

an entire backyard because it's private property? That's one of the craziest things I've ever heard. But also, come on, man. You saw a nine or a 10-foot alien being you didn't whip out your phone camera? Luckily, the kid himself who was featured in the video came forward in a YouTube video with some more information. Now, since that witness from the video is a teenager, I'm not going to try and be too mean. But the most important thing that he supposedly revealed

is this image. Okay, so per his telling, that perfect circle is what was imprinted in his backyard. Now, as UFO journalist James Fox indicated in his review, quote, I have an open mind, but let's be honest, that looks like something that was scratched with a shoe. The explanation as to why they did not whip out their cell phones to record their alleged encounter with alien beings in their backyard is they were afraid, which is somewhat reasonable. And furthermore, Las Vegas-based and famed UFO journalist George Knapp is also on the case, and he provided us with this update. Eight News Now investigators have spoken with family members multiple times in the past four weeks, but each of the three times we accepted their invitation to do an interview,

they didn't answer the door or their phone. These are some of the claims they've made in other public forums. Multiple family members backed up the story in an initial police report we obtained. Angel says they heard the patter of multiple feet in the yard. They later heard footsteps on their roof. They saw one of the eight-foot-tall creatures climb behind the controls of a large front loader stored in the yard, as if trying to engage it. He got a good look at one of the creatures, he said, a greenish-grayish being with large eyes and long legs. He says he could hear its deep breaths. And when he locked eyes, he was in essence frozen in place, couldn't move in the middle of the yard

where the object had crashed and vanished. A circular impression was left in the soil. Okay. So they've been avoiding interview requests despite agreeing to them on the one hand explanation out there is that they want to remain anonymous and shown attention, but then they also, one of the alleged witnesses is starring a YouTube channel and calls it Alien Society 51. I'm not going to dismiss it yet entirely. There was still ring doorbell footage that captured the sound of a thud. The officer body camera footage showed an object falling out of the sky. Another independent journalist who spoke with the family says he does believe that they

saw something. So look, we'll wait for further information. For me personally, I am actually less convinced after the release of the witness YouTube video than the initial weirdness of that body cam footage getting blacked out. We will await further investigation amongst questions about potential cover-up in Vegas by police officers. And as some have pointed out, given that we still have a total blackout on the actual Las Vegas mass shooting, it's not like you can really trust the word of authorities that are from there. The reason I spent some time on this is to show I and many interested who are in this topic don't just believe everything that gets put out there. In fact, most of what's put out there,

I disregard almost entirely. Every once in a while, a strange one will pop up that's on the fence, like this one, and up that's on the fence, like this one. And it's incumbent on those who do believe, people like Dave Grush and want more investigation, to show public skepticism as well. And I'm going to end it

by just saying this. Take a look. What you can see is that people who are interested in the topic and want transparency on the government have in possession both documents and materials-wise.

So I will end with hope. Focus less on individual stories and more on the allegations of government conspiracies that can either be proven or disproven based entirely on whether congressional leaders actually take this issue seriously and give us transparency. The House of Representatives now says they will investigate the allegations of Dave Grush and we'll have hearings. It's not much, but it is a start. Maybe it'll be the start of something big. And if you want to hear my reaction to Sager's monologue, become a premium subscriber

today at BreakingPoints.com. Crystal, what are you taking a look at? Anarcho-eco-terrorist Ted Kaczynski, whose mail bombs terrified and captivated the nation, killed himself in his jail cell over the weekend. He was 81 years old, serving out a life sentence for his numerous violent crimes. Now, the so-called Unabomber killed three and injured an additional 23 in a series of 16 explosions that he set between the years 1978 and 1995. He was actually caught after arranging a deal with the New York Times and the Washington Post to publish his anti-modernity manifesto. It was titled Industrial Society and Its Future. Kaczynski's brother recognized Ted's writing style, and then he turned over his brother to

the FBI. His death, though, is of more than just historical relevance, because Ted's Screed, which was published nearly three decades ago, has recently found a modern audience. Tucker Carlson and Arizona Senate candidate Blake Masters, they recently cited his ideas approvingly, seemingly reflecting an online Zoomer zeitgeist of embracing Kaczynski and calling themselves Tedpil. So what led to the current interest in his writings and in his ideology? Well, core concepts in the manifesto, they actually feel pretty familiar today. The basic idea is that technology is destroying the world and has made mankind a slave to its whims. Kaczynski argues that, quote, the industrial revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race.

The system does not and cannot exist to satisfy human needs. Instead, it is human behavior that has to be modified to fit the needs of the system. This system, he says, has turned human beings into, quote, engineered products and mere cogs in the social machine. He argues the only hope for reversing this cataclysm is through societal collapse and revolution, which he hoped to spark through his mail bombs or at least to call attention to his ideas. And you have to say on that count, he was kind of successful. It's easy to see how Kaczynski's ideas would land with a modern audience, especially among young people who have only ever experienced a world where the majority of their most intimate interactions are mediated through some tech platform or another. There's a whole subgenre of TikTok devoted to Kaczynski

Stanning, where depressed zoomers pine for a return to a wilderness that, frankly, they've barely ever experienced. It's filled with links to articles about microplastics, memes about suburban sprawl, and lamentations about low T levels. Separated by decades from the visceral horror of the killings and the terror that ordinary Americans felt just opening up their mailboxes, you're left with a radicalism for mass consumption. After all, who among us hasn't harbored an off-the-grid fantasy where we toss our smartphones into a lake, swear to never sign into another godforsaken Zoom call, rescue our children from robloxia, and figure out how to make our way in the wilderness to

be the masters of our own fates in the mold of our ancient ancestors. Sounds kind of appealing as we sit in our air-conditioned room with the whole world and every modern convenience right at our fingertips. In fact, you could easily argue that Kaczynski's analysis of the ills of modernity and threat of tech is actually at the peak of its relevance. After all, we just watched humanity be ravaged and our individual freedom further curtailed by a pandemic that was, in all likelihood, unleashed by an arrogant scientific establishment. Last week, the entire East Coast was smothered by smoke drifting from unprecedented wildfires that are a predictable consequence of the human-driven climate catastrophe. He also writes compellingly about the dangers of AI. He wrote, quote, As society and the problems that face it become more and more complex, and as machines become more and more intelligent, people will let machines make more and more of their decisions

for them, simply because machine-made decisions will bring better results than man-made ones. Eventually, a stage may be reached at which the decisions necessary to keep the system running will be so complex that human beings will be incapable of making them intelligently. At that stage, the machines will be in effective control. We already have tech, which even its own architects do not understand, churning out results that they cannot predict. It's impossible to argue that tech is actually in service of humanity when we don't even know what the tech is up to underneath its shiny, public-facing veneer. Just last week, Apple released its Vision Pro Mixed Reality headset, which is intended to bring all of your screens

into your immediate field of vision without even having to look down at a smartphone or TV or iPad or other device. Who knows whether it's ever going to reach widespread adoption, but it's one more invention designed to make us more disconnected from the environment we are actually in and the people we are actually around and become more reliant on the machines. Now, the niche hero worship of Kaczynski is obviously unsettling, given that he was a killer and a terrorist. His Zoomer fans feel the sting of disaffection, but lack the personal or societal means to do a whole lot about it. Their self-aware impotence on display as they use the new hottest tech platform to pine for the destruction of all technology and a return to the wild. Ted is admired with this group because he didn't just complain about modernity, he

actually did the thing, lived off the grid survival life. And with so much time removed, his violence feels distant enough to just be a useful element of an edgy, radical online persona. Ironically, it's the very story that our algorithm-boosted tech of today has incentivized a generation to tell about themselves, be edgy, be radical, be extreme, to get boosted in the algorithm. The Ted Stans who hate tech were cultivated by the very tech that they posture as despising. Of course, Kaczynski himself in a lot of ways was the cultural product of modernity. The boy genius with the freakish mathematical

aptitude swept up at the tender age of 16, shipped off to Harvard, where he would be fast-tracked into elite society so that his market-desirable intellect could be put to use by the government, and where he would be experimented on as part of the CIA's MKUltra project. When he became a terrorist, his exploits were packaged into digestible bites for a mass news media audience that was just getting a taste for the 24-hour news cycle. Kaczynski argued that the unbearable weight of the current system would eventually come crashing down. Now, nothing quite so apocalyptic has happened, but post-pandemic, we have certainly seen a dramatic reordering of human priorities. We've seen people move to find a quality of life which more adequately nourishes their soul and

their families. We have seen workers demanding accommodations to their new lifestyles rather than just sliding back into the old ways in which work life was everything. We've seen historic support for worker-empowering labor movement and worker-sparking grassroots movements to establish power and autonomy in their workplaces. These are all reformist attempts to reclaim the power that Ted argued the modern world had stripped from us all. We should witness those attempts and we should be encouraged because for me personally, I would like to find a way to promote human thriving and empowerment and protect the natural environment without having to give up antibiotics and air conditioning and maybe without indiscriminately murdering random people. So Ted, complicated figure saga. Those are some of my thoughts.

Yeah. And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. That's it for us. Thank you guys so much for watching. We hope you like

the new studio, the interview. We just want to say thank you again to the YouTube subscribers, the premium subscribers, the podcast listeners. They built this studio, Crystal.

You guys made it happen. Yeah. All right. We have an incredible show for everybody tomorrow. We've got RFK Jr. on the show. We've got James Van Der Beek on the show as well. And we will see you all tomorrow. See you all tomorrow. I'm Clayton English.

I'm Greg Lott. And this is season two of the War on Drugs podcast. Yes, sir. Last year, a lot of the problems of the drug war. This year, a lot of the biggest names in music and sports. This kind of star-stud in a little bit, man. We met them at their homes. We met them at their recording studios.

Stories matter, and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Over the years of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone, I've learned no town is too small for murder.

I'm Katherine Townsend. I've heard from hundreds of people across the country with an unsolved murder in their community. I was calling about the murder of my husband. The murderer is still out there. Each week, I investigate a new case. If there is a case we should hear about, call 678-744-6145.

Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Sometimes as dads, I think we're too hard on ourselves. We get down on ourselves on not being able to, you know, we're the providers. But we also have to learn to take care of ourselves. A wrap-away, you got to pray for yourself as well as for everybody else, but never forget yourself. Self-love made me a better dad because I realized my worth. Never stop being a dad. That's dedication. Find out more at fatherhood.gov. Brought to you by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and

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