Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 6/14/23: Trump Makes Courtroom Appearance, US Warned Ukraine About Nordstream, Report Wuhan Lab Worker First Infected, Reddit Goes Dark, Starbucks Pride Displays, Lowest Inflation In 2 Years, Espionage Act, Glenn Greenwald Interview

Episode Date: June 14, 2023

Ryan and Emily discuss Cornel West switching to Green Party, Trump making his courtroom appearance, the US warned Ukraine about Nordstream, a report that Wuhan Lab workers were the first infected, Reddit going dark amid protests, did Starbucks ban Pride Displays?, Inflation the lowest in 2 years, Journalists applauding the Espionage Act, and an in depth interview with Glenn Greenwald.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 Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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I'm Ryan Grim. I'm here with Emily Juchinsky. Emily, how you doing? Great. I'm so excited about the new set. How about you, Ryan? It's looking great. Please don't blame me for the Lennon book. Emily insisted on bringing that in. We do have some incredible news for this new set, and that is former President Trump was arraigned in Miami yesterday

on 37 counts of being a complete idiot. He is the first former president ever to be charged with this level of idiocy. We're gonna be talking about that pretty soon. We're also gonna talk about a lot of developments out of Ukraine, including news around the Nord Stream pipeline, that the Ukrainians were warned not to blow that thing up.

Apparently they didn't get that memo. The thing got blown up. Seems like it. Yeah, unfortunate how that happens. We're also going to talk about new news on Wuhan and the lab leak. Fascinating report from Matt Taibbi and Michael Schellenberger identifying three lab workers by name who were sickened in November 2019, which upends the wet market case that's always been made because the wet market case points to early 2020. So if you have cases coming

out of the Wuhan lab, as we knew about already, but now they've identified them by name. So we're going to talk about that later. What else we got? We're going to try to get to the bottom of some news that Starbucks has in some ways tried to downplay their support for Pride Month. Ryan, you're going to talk about inflation. I'm going to talk a little bit about the Espionage Act. And we're so excited to have the one and only Glenn Greenwald here to talk about all kinds of stuff. Actually, we're going to be covering some stuff out of the Middle East with Glenn. Yeah. But first, there's a piece of news that I think the mainstream media is not paying enough attention to that developed yesterday on Katie Halper's show that could actually change the course of the upcoming election and change the course of history. Let's roll this interview that Katie

Halper did with Cornel West. And you, of course, when you announced you were with the movement for the People's Party, the MPP, do you have an update about this? Oh, yes. No, that process is very much in movement, and I look forward to it. You know, I'll always have gratitude for the tremendous work of the volunteers of the People's Party and so forth. But there was so much going on internally, and therefore we had to be able to keep the focus where it the law and so we're we're still i'm still deeply committed to a broad coalition of sensibility and united front and so i invite variety of different organizations and includes people's party but i'm i'm certainly

moving in the not just for what look forward to being a part of the nomination process of the Green Party. And so Cornel West had initially launched his presidential campaign as a candidate of what's called the Movement for a People's Party, which wasn't much of a threat to the Democratic Party because the People's Party doesn't really have ballot access. There may be a couple of states where they have a path to ballot access. And so it would be more like Cornel West could do interviews and make speeches. But if people wanted to vote for him, they'd

basically have to write him in. The Greens, though, have much more infrastructure. And so this means that if he can win the Green Party primary, which is likely, but not guaranteed because the Greens are wild, then he will actually be on the ballot if he stays in through the general election. And how many votes were Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona decided by? Well, no, it's an important point. Infrastructure is the exact word that I was going to use. When you can plug into something that already exists, even if it's fairly minor compared to the two-party system that Republicans and Democrats have. That actually makes a difference that Hillary Clinton will insist that she lost because

of Russia, because of Jill Stein and Susan Sarandon in 2016. But in all seriousness, there's math that shows, not because so many people were stoked to maybe vote for Jill Stein, but because they really didn't want to vote for Hillary Clinton, they did peel off and they did end up casting bards for Jill Stein. Sometimes you stay home. All kinds of stuff can happen when you have another candidate in the race and when you have a really close race, as we've seen in the last couple of cycles, where, to your point, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and those electoral votes can be decided by such a slim margin. This actually really matters, especially somebody with a name recognition. And I can't think of a

Green Party candidate in recent memory who has the recognizability of Cornel West. Right. There hasn't been really since Ralph Nader, I would say. And it's really a humiliating blow to the People's Party as well, which had a lot of potential when it first launched. And it's kind of a lesson to organizations not to get bogged down in internecine warfare and so much drama. Because Cornel West specified with all of the internal things going on at the People's Party, I thought it was a better idea for me to go with the Greens. If the Greens are seen to be kind of a well-functioning organization compared to you, then you've got a lot of problems. Well, speaking of people with problems, let's transition to the big news out of Florida yesterday where former President Donald Trump was actually in a courtroom. He pleaded not guilty to all of those charges

against him and those sensitive documents, the classified document case. Again, he is the first U.S. president, either current or former, to be indicted with a criminal indictment on a federal level. This is from the BBC who had a reporter in the courtroom. Quote, he appeared somber and subdued in court, sitting in a dark suit and red tie with his arms crossed, which Ryan just mocked up so perfectly for everyone to see. This is the Trump lawyer says, quote, we most certainly enter a plea of not guilty. By the way, we should mention it is Donald Trump's 77th birthday today. In honor of Donald Trump's 77th birthday, I think, Ryan, we should roll probably the 77th funniest clip of Trump ever, which is from a speech he gave yesterday after appearing in court, which CNN

and MSNBC, by the way, refused to air because they said it would be just like a campaign ad. Well, people missed out because absolutely iconic moment, maybe even his epitaph. I like to picture him as entering his plea to the court with this right here. We can roll A5. I did everything right and they indicted me. Ryan, he loves this clip so much. I've already seen it like 10 times this morning. Maybe it can be my ringtone.

Oh, you should have it be your ringtone. I did everything right and they indicted me. And you pointed out earlier, it sounds like he's doing an impression of himself. It's like a Trump impersonator. It does. And again, there were videos. So basically, here's the timeline of events. Trump shows up in court, pleads not guilty. There's all kinds of sort of the usual media circus outside of the courtroom. He then goes, he's in the car, he starts posting to Truth Social things like, quote, one of the saddest days in the history of our country. We are a nation in decline.

That seems to have been something he posted while he was in the motorcade, leaving the courtroom, going to Trump National Doral. He then shows up, or maybe this was right after the courtroom. He goes to Versailles, so a Cuban spot in Little Havana starts meeting with Trump supporters. Prayed with them. He prayed with them. They sing happy birthday to him. And this is another thing that corporate press cut away from because they said it looked like a campaign ad. They didn't want people to see it. There's enough of this. I think Jake Tapper in particular pulled away from it and said, we've seen enough. And then he gives the speech later that evening which the CNN and MSNBC also don't cover because

again they say the usual sort of it's it's full of lies which I'm sure it was Nicole Wallace even asked them to take the VO which is like the kind of the b-roll playing in the background off because it was distracting from the brilliant words of the MSNBC commentators. It's like, come on. That's really rich coming from Nicole Wallace, who like lied from the podium during the Bush administration professionally. She did do that. I want to ask you about this one quote from Trump's lawyer who said outside,

quote, we are at a turning point in our nation's history. The targeting prosecution of a leading political opponent is the type of thing you see in dictatorships like Cuba and Venezuela. What is being done to President Trump should terrify all citizens of this country. I want to ask you about that in particular, because I think that's a preview of a huge part of the messaging strategy throughout the campaign. And in the primary as well, that Donald Trump is a target of something transformative in the country. Like if you are concerned, if you have that sort of hazy feeling that something's wrong in the United States, you need look no further than what's happening to Donald Trump. This is

the sort of pinnacle of America's transformation from republic to banana republic. And especially in places like Florida, he goes to Versailles right afterwards and Little Havana and starts making this argument. I think that's really interesting. I think there's definitely something, and I'll talk about this in my monologue, with the fact that he's actually, if he wins the primary, which he's the frontrunner right now, he's likely to face Joe Biden. It's Joe Biden who appointed the special counsel and Merrick Garland who ultimately has purview over the special counsel. I think that's an impactful, a consequential argument to take to the campaign trail. I think it's certainly the best argument that they have at this point. And I think that both things can be true. I think it is crossing some type of a Rubicon. And also, Trump just walked right into it. I think it was Cernovich's response,

one of the right-wing influencers, who said that they are unfairly targeting Trump, but also Trump walked right into this. Trump fell into a trap. However you want to describe it, you read that indictment, you're just shaking your head all the way through. You're like, how can a criminal be this stupid in the commission of his criminality? A, he had unilateral authority to declassify documents, yet caught a classified document charge. That's level of idiocy number one right there. Second, he was willing at one point, talking to his lawyers, to destroy the documents to try to get out of the jam he was in, which means he would no longer have the documents, which means he's okay not having the documents. Right. Which means just give them back, man. Right.

And then you're out of this. Then you're out of this. Then you're out of trouble. Even if you moved boxes around and did shenanigans for months, if you eventually gave the documents back, there's no way the prosecutors could come and say, well, he held on to these documents for longer than we would have liked. Therefore, we're going to launch the first prosecution of a former president. Like no way, I think, would they have gotten away with that. Only his actions in this case made it possible for them to do it. Now, I'm excited for a bigger case to come. I don't get excited about seeing a president get locked up over paperwork and classified document stuff.

Rather, I would like to see him prosecuted for a coup attempt or something bigger. Like, let's go to the heart of the system and actually battle it out there. Otherwise, I say leave it to the voters. No, I mean, obviously leave it to the voters is my position on that as well. Now, we should say there is no trial date yet set. It is still supposed to be handled by Eileen Cannon. It's on her docket. She's a federal district judge in South Florida, actually was appointed by Donald Trump. So there may be interesting developments in that case. And let's put up A3. This is a thread from Jonathan Turley,

who has actually really defended. He's a professor at the GW, George Washington University Law School. If you watch Fox, you'll see Jonathan Turley fairly frequently. He is sort of a defender of Donald Trump against the excesses of the, what would you say, like the intelligence community, the DOJ, the FBI over the last several years. Really cogent, I think, helpful arguments in many cases that you don't hear in corporate press, but that are actually like substantive and helpful. He says, though, that there's an ironic element to the pylon in these cases. With the cases in New York, two cases in New York, Miami and then one expected in Georgia, Trump's dance card is filling up fast. While federal cases are often given priority, the multiple fronts could reduce

the window for the federal trial. Why does that matter? Well, because we are six months out from actually being in a presidential year. The Republican primary has already started in earnest. What do you make of that point, Ryan? Great point. He's got so many charges. They don't have time to try them. And the other point that I think people are missing is that let's say by some miracle, you get through this trial, you get to the conviction phase. He's found guilty, which I think a jury of all Trump supporters would find him guilty in this case. Because there is, I feel like there's still a sanctity in the jury process and in the criminal justice system that people feel even as they might hold contradictory opinions about the nature of the republic, etc.

I do think even a Trump-impaneled jury, Trump-supporting panel jury would be like, yeah, you did this. You're guilty of at least some of these counts. But let's say that happens. There's then sentencing. So he's released awaiting sentencing. Then there's the appeals. And Eileen Cannon is going to allow him to go free, obviously, during the appeals process. And so as long as that's playing out, I think this just becomes a news event rather than something that puts him behind bars, even with a conviction, until the election. I don't see any way that this gets done before the election. But I mean, we'll see. You could save this clip and play it if he's getting hauled off in handcuffs before

the election. Yeah. Well, yeah, it doesn't seem like any of this is likely to be resolved before the election at all, which, again, to the other point about the potency of the campaign argument about being the target of the sort of transition to banana republic America, which, you know, if you think that we've become a banana republic, you may think that that started a long time before the Trump indictments. But if you don't think we've become a banana republic, that's another question. I'm going to get into a lot of this in our block later in the show, so I don't want to get too far deep in the weeds here. We do have a little more complaining from Trump, I think.

Yes. We rolled this, what was it, A2, I think. This is some more gripes from former President Donald Trump. Today, we witnessed the most evil and heinous abuse of power in the history of our country. Very sad thing to watch. A corrupt sitting president had his top political opponent arrested on fake and fabricated charges of which he and numerous other presidents would be guilty right in the middle of a presidential election in which he is losing very badly. This is called election interference and yet another attempt to rig and steal a presidential election. More importantly, it's a political persecution like something straight out of a

fascist or communist nation. This day will go down in infamy and Joe Biden will forever be remembered as not only the most corrupt president in the history of our country, but perhaps even more importantly, the president who together with a band of his closest thugs, misfits and Marxists tried to destroy American democracy. Marxist never sounds like natural coming out of it. It's always off a teleprompter. You know Trump thinks a lot about Marxism. On that note, let's roll a four. This is Marco Rubio making a connection sort of back to, again, this clear messaging that's, I think, probably potent with a certain swath of the

electorate, connecting the dots between all kinds of crazy things that people might see happening in their world and the indictment itself. You think this ends here? The next Republican president is going to be under tremendous pressure to bring charges and indict Joe Biden, his family, his crackhead son, whoever. The pressure is going to be extraordinary. They're going to turn us into—so we're decadent, and we're in decline because we thought we could do anything we wanted with our economy. We could send our jobs in factories overseas, break our politics, break our culture, break our society. We don't need parents. We don't need neighborhood. We don't need family anymore. All these crazy ideas, and now reality is catching up.

No doubt we are in some type of vicious cycle. We'll see. We'll see where it heads. We'll keep covering that. Moving on to Ukraine, extraordinarily reporting from the Wall Street Journal, if we can put this first up, which finds that according to the U.S. intelligence sources, the U.S. warned Ukraine, please do not attack the Nord Stream pipeline. This follows previous reporting that came from the Washington Post that said that a unidentified European intelligence service had told the United States, hey, look out, the Ukrainians are planning in June to rent a boat. Half a dozen of them are going to go blow up the Nord Stream pipeline in connection with this kind of NATO exercise that's going on.

We now know that that was the Netherlands, according to the Wall Street Journal. So Dutch intelligence told the U.S. intelligence, U.S. intelligence then relayed it to Germany. Now we know, according to these sources, that the U.S. also reached out to Ukraine and said, do not do this. And there's a fascinating line in the Wall Street Journal piece that says the United States asked its Ukrainian counterparts whether it was true that they were planning to blow up the Nord Stream pipeline. And the Wall Street Journal says it is not known what the response from the Ukrainians was. Did the Ukrainians feel like they had a green light at that point? despite whatever warnings were being given by the United States. The reporting is that they told them not to do it. They did it anyway.

Right. So are they a rogue client or was there some back channeling that maybe this is something that the United States is comfortable with? I think this is an absolutely huge report for so many reasons, because particularly what you just flagged, which is this is a quote from The Wall Street Journal report. Quote, it couldn't be determined how the Ukrainians responded. What do you mean it couldn't be determined how the Ukrainians responded? Because clearly this is a leak from the CIA to The Wall Street Journal. In other words, the CIA won't tell them. Exactly. But the CIA will tell them that they knew in advance of the plan, which gets to when we were talking about the Washington Post story not too

long ago, it really felt like American intel agencies trying to wash their hands of this and say, we know who it is. But in the process of saying we know who it was and it wasn't us, they're revealing that they may have been able to stop it. And I think this is connected with more big news. This is also from the Wall Street Journal. We can go ahead and put B2 up on the screen. Think about these two stories at the same time. Here's the headline. U.S. set to approve depleted uranium tank rounds for Ukraine. This is from the Journal. The Biden administration is expected to provide Ukraine with depleted uranium rounds following weeks of internal debate about how

to equip the Abrams tanks the U.S. is giving to Kyiv, U.S. officials said Monday. The proposal has been debated at the White House, where some officials have expressed concern that sending the rounds might open Washington to criticism that it was providing a weapon that may carry health and environmental risks. Okay, so more stuff headed over to Ukraine. And at the same time, we don't even know what was going on with the CIA and with Ukraine. Clearly we were not involved in their plans. When it came to blowing up the Nord Stream pipeline, we may have had knowledge and didn't stop it or per the Wall Street Journal's report, it said the CIA actually determined they couldn't take it seriously. They didn't think Ukraine had the capacity. That's an exact quote from here.

They didn't think Ukraine had the capacity to carry out such an attack. So we can be that ignorant of actually the country, the military operations of the country that we are sending so much equipment to. And these two headlines can appear basically side by side in a matter of days together. It's remarkable. But I think providing depleted uranium to a war effort in this part of the world would only matter if there's some type of significant agricultural production that goes on over there. Are you familiar with whether or not in Ukraine, in this area, do they grow much wheat or anything over there? Do they supply much to the global population? Because if not, I don't think the globe has much to worry about it. But if they do,

then maybe dropping depleted uranium rounds in the breadbasket of the world is not the most thought out plan. You'd think. You'd think. And yet, this is in the context of the spring offensive, which became a summer offensive. We were hearing spring offensive for so long, turns into a summer offensive. And so the argument from Ukraine, this is also in the general report, is that if you don't supply us with this heavy equipment now, then Russia is able to hold their own during the offensive. Offensive doesn't go as planned and you start losing support in Congress. Support from Congress starts to wane because it's not, the momentum has shifted. People are getting exhausted of the war. So you better

give us what we need now. But of course, this has been the argument at every point in the war. We need to go full in, pedal to the metal every step of the way, because if we don't, we're going to have to keep going pedal to the metal every step of the way, because if we don't, we're going to have to keep going pedal to the metal every step of the way. Yeah, and it has its own. Vicious cycle. Right. It has its own momentum and its own logic. If you're going to supply the tanks under pressure, you finally agree, okay, we're doing these tanks. Then if you only supply the kind of generic rounds, then they start to get wiped out by Russian forces. And so then you come back and

say, well, if you're supplying the tanks, then you've got to give us the depleted uranium rounds because the tanks aren't as effective if you don't give us those depleted uranium rounds. You do that, you're like, oh, well, we need air support for these because now we've got these multi-million dollar tanks that are just getting lit up all over the place. We don't want that. Now we need longer surface-to-air missiles because now we need to protect our air support. Now we need more land-to-land missiles because we need to reach further behind because we've got to defend against the artillery that are taking our tanks. And next thing you know, we've spent another couple hundred billion dollars moving

weapons over there. Yeah, exactly. And let's put B3 up on the screen because this is also important context. You have in Germany right now the biggest NATO drill, the biggest NATO military exercise, I'm reading from DW, quote, since the military alliance was formed in 1949, and Germany is serving as the host in the logistical hub. So this is happening right now from June 12th to June 23rd. 250 aircraft, up to 250, will be stationed across six military bases with 25 countries taking part. The U.S. alone is sending 100 aircraft across the Atlantic over to this drill.

And now here is a quote from someone at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, Torben Arnold. He says, quote, of course, this sends a clear signal saying that even though this airspace is extremely busy, they are prepared to say we will defend every centimeter of NATO territory, every centimeter of NATO territory. We've got Sweden about to join NATO probably in a month or so. And all of this like really, really, really fine line that is being towed, every fine line that's being towed with the equipment that keeps getting sent over, the intelligence reports that keep coming out is happening in the context of this really fragile ecosystem, NATO ecosystem, and

really fragile balance with two nuclear powers essentially engaged in a proxy war. However, there was a massive blow dealt to Russia yesterday with when Emily's favorite author, Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of the viral sensation, best-selling author, Eat, Pray, Love. Before virality was really a thing. Yes. She sold more than 12 million copies of this book, Eat, Pray, Love. And she's got a new one out that is set in Siberia in the 1990s. And amid pushback from Ukrainians that worried that the novel would somehow kind of glamorize or humanize Russia,

she has pulled it back, apologized. I don't know if she's going to reset it somewhere else or just hold back until she feels like the temperature has cooled down. And you can write a book about Russia, obviously raises all sorts of questions. Are we allowed to read Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, etc.? But this feels like the kind of thing you're going to get before a fever breaks. Like this feels like fever activity, like total delirium. You're saying this isn't rational and sane. Yeah, I think Elizabeth Gilbert can set her next story in Siberian Russia in 1990s, and it's not actually going to help the Russian war effort. That's my take. Well, actually, when I was reading the story, which is absurd, by the way, I think the message of Eat, Pray,

Love is largely terrible. The book is very readable. The film is very watchable as well. Julia Roberts does a great job. Busted. But this is an interesting little thing from the report. Gilbert announced she was pausing the project due to, from Politico, a massive outpouring of reactions from Ukrainian readers who worried the book would romanticize Russia at a time when the country is accused of committing war crimes.

Over the weekend, more than 500 people dished out one-star reviews on the Goodreads platform, while others reacted with frustration to the initial book announcement on Twitter. So there you have it. As soon as it starts hurting the bottom line because people flood Goodreads with one-star reviews, she yanks the book and puts out the statement about how it's potentially harmful to Ukraine during this war. And maybe Elizabeth Gilbert has enough money and is just really genuinely sensitive to the criticism. Either way, when you have a book coming out that's going to be flooded with one star reviews saying you're a Putin stooge,

it makes sense that she's like, hey, I don't think it makes sense. I shouldn't say it makes sense. But you can see the logic behind the publisher and Elizabeth Gilbert putting their heads together and saying, we need to, you know, rethink this whole thing. I feel like, though, for a book like that, no press is bad press. And I think she still would have sold a ton of copies and maybe even sold more copies because of the controversy. Because now I didn't know Elizabeth Gilbert had a new novel coming out about Russia or about set in Russia. Now I know.

Now maybe it's on my list when it eventually does come out. But so I feel like this is more cultural pressure than it is commercial pressure because I don't think she would have – I don't think this would have hurt her commercially. I think she still gets booked on fresh air, et cetera. Well, that's a really good point. I think it's the cultural pressure that creates the commercial pressure in the sense that Elizabeth Gilbert, there's this, it's a very real thing with cancel culture where people know that like no press is bad press and something will suddenly get a ton of attention. Like look at Joe Rogan thriving, no matter how much the corporate press tries to say that he's a bigot and a conspiracy theorist and a crazy person.

It doesn't matter. He does just fine. But if you run in Manhattan literary circles, then the cancel culture is very real because the people who are responsive to it are going to be the ones that make it uncomfortable for you in those spaces. And maybe on Fresh Air, maybe at the politics and prose tour that you wanted to go on. That's where it becomes problematic. And to somebody like Elizabeth Gilbert, who already has enough money, what hurts at this point is sort of taking away this,

taking some stuff out of the virtue signal deposit bank. That's like the worst thing that can happen to you, not withdrawing from the actual bank account. I don't know. The whole thing's mystifying. We should put Eat, Pray, Love on this show. Yes, that's right. I don't know. The whole thing's mystifying. We should put Eat, Pray, Love on the show. Yes, that's right. I don't know.

I actually have a copy. Well, we have a big news, a big report to go through that was newsbroken just yesterday by Matt Taibbi and Michael Schellenberger over on their sub stacks at Public and Racket, both great publications. This is a huge development, I think, and we're going to learn more about it, it seems like, as the week goes on. Ryan, I'm super curious to're going to learn more about it, it seems like, as the week goes on. Ryan, I'm super curious to get your reaction to the news they broke. Here's the crux of it. According to multiple U.S. government officials interviewed as part of a lengthy

investigation by Public and Racket, the first people infected by the virus, by COVID-19, patients zero, included Ben Hu, a researcher who led the Wuhan Institute of Virology's gain-of-function research on SARS-like coronaviruses, which increases the infectiousness of the viruses. Sources within the U.S. government say that three of the earliest people to become infected with SARS-CoV-2 were Ben Hu, Yu Ping, and Yan Xu, all members of the Wuhan lab, expected to have leaked the pandemic virus. They were working with the closest relatives of SARS-CoV-2 and inserting gain-of-function features unique to it. You followed the story really closely. The Intercept has done some of the best reporting on the potential for the lab leak.

What do you make of the scoop here from Schellenberger and Taibbi? Yeah, it was nice of them to credit us with some of that reporting in their piece. And I want to shade my comments here for people who don't regularly watch the show, because I think people who normally do probably have a lot of this context and probably already trust both Matt Taibbi and or Michael Schellenberger. There's an enormous number of people who don't. And I've had my debates with Schellenberger, and I think he's an interesting person to engage with, but I'm not going to take what he says as like gospel. So let's start from that perspective, but go through what he found. So they have government sources that are saying that the

three people that were infected in November 2019 were Ben Hu, Yu Ping, and Yan Zhu. And like you said, Ben Hu is kind of the top protege of the woman who ran the WIV. And if it can be confirmed that Ben Hu was the first or among the first people infected, that is a game changer. Smoke and gun. Now, there's a lot of reason, and this is back to the people who might have some skepticism, there's a lot of reason to believe that this is true. One is that in May of 2021, the Wall Street Journal reported that according to U.S. intelligence sources,

three Wuhan lab workers were sickened in November 2019. So we have known, at least, that the intelligence community believed that to be a fact since May 2021. If you look at the timeline and if you look at the source, the Wall Street Journal, Murdoch paper, it seems possible that those are Trump administration officials who had access to that information. And even though they were out of office by January 2021, May is close enough that they may have been the sources of this information. And so the left then, Democrats, are going to have some skepticism about that. But we do know that there were intelligence reports at the time that said three workers. Now, were those workers that picked it up at, say, the wet market and then came to work? And, you know, COVID was everywhere in Wuhan, not just at the wet market. And so there were still those questions outstanding.

If it turns out now the wet market was January and February, December, January, February, that there was this outbreak there. So November doesn't make sense. You can't go back in time. However, let's say it was already spreading in November. It depends who those workers are. If it's confirmed that it was these three workers who were working directly on the SARS-CoV, like SARS-like chimeric viruses. That's a huge development and really backs up all of that previous reporting. The other key point, I think, and good on Schellenberger for including this, he wrote that, he and Tlaiby wrote that other news outlets have been circling this. Yes. And we often, as reporters, you know, it's called hearing footsteps in the business.

We hear footsteps, and sometimes you move your pieces a little bit further because you hear those footsteps. Usually, reporters don't include that, but I like the transparency of that. Because now we're going to find out, okay, is that true? And can these other outlets,

the Times of London, by the way, has done some really interesting reporting on this right? Can those other outlets land this same scoop because there there is going to be soon testimony? that the administration is giving to Congress there other and there are other reports that are supposed to be coming and Schellenberg and TBR shining a spotlight those. So are they going to come out? So I think if you're somebody who's super skeptical of both Taibbi and Schellenberger, you can just wait a couple days.

A couple days. Because they have kind of put out on the line, we believe that this isn't the last you'll hear about this. Yes. So they have a source, they say, who was asked how certain they were that these were the identities of the three Lujan Institute of Virology scientists who developed symptoms consistent with COVID-19 in the fall of 2019. When they asked, we were told, quote, 100 percent. Another thing to note from the report from Matt, Mike, and then Alex Gutentag, the third reporter on the byline,

is next week, the DNI is expected to release previously classified material which may include the names of the three scientists who were the likely among the first to be sickened by SARS-CoV-2. So keep that in mind that they expect, based on their reporting, the Director of National Intelligence next week to release a report that actually names the three scientists involved. They also have a source saying they're 100% certain those are the three scientists. And the Times of London quotes an anonymous U.S. State Department investigator. This was on Saturday. Quote, it has been increasingly clear that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was involved in the creation, promulgation and cover up of the COVID-19 pandemic. One thing I like about their report is they're on to a similar line that we've talked about a little bit, which is why do you have

Anthony Fauci continuing to sort of try with Francis Collins to steer the media's and the public's attention away from the EcoHealth Alliance grant? Why do you have them trying to discredit the lab leak theory when, for instance, the United States government really does see China as a hostile foreign adversary especially the Trump administration there's no like that it wasn't as though he was like really soft and easy on on China and never really missed a rhetorical opportunity to bluster for the most part so why would they step away from that well because if we can establish these connections to the Wuhan Institute of Virology which look very

very clear at this point. They quote an expert saying the Ben Hu thing is a real smoking gun. I completely agree with that. And if you establish that connection, then man, it's bad for the United States government because it looks like we may have had a role. We may have had a role in funding it, in funding research that was being done sloppily without proper oversight. They show a video actually from the Wuhan Institute of Virology and I think Ben Hu actually in the public and racket report from Chinese state media before the pandemic where nobody is wearing proper protective gear. You can watch the video at that public post, and they're just messing around with vials, like, without even goggles,

like, without even, like, the poor protection, like, goggles and, like, a thin mask, like, not even that. And so if you can imagine being, for instance, Mike Pompeo, Secretary of State, Donald Trump, President, Trump administration in general, sort of being opposed to the permanent bureaucratic state at places like the NIH and the people like Anthony Fauci over the course of your presidency and getting intelligence reports like we know at this point. The CIA, Mike Pompeo, the State Department, they seem to have known since the very beginning, and Pompeo would say this, it has always been clear through the intelligence that the lab

leak was plausible, if not likely. And imagine you're getting those briefings, you're Trump and you're Pompeo or whomever else, and you're the one that's overseeing Fauci and you realize that he may be invested in some sort of cover-up just to cover his own butt because there was our money, taxpayer money, was being sent over there without any oversight

at all, basically, and could have been involved in a leak from the lab because there was no oversight. Yeah, and ideologically, too, he was, Fauci's a huge champion of gain-of-function research and pushed back against the pause. Last point, the public racket article includes comments from Alina Chan, who we've had on our show, is one of the first and most prominent kind of skeptics of the natural origin theory, wrote a book on it. And so I think for people who are curious about this, I think her kind of validation of this story, I think, is important. Absolutely.

We've got some Reddit news. We do have some Reddit news. So over at Reddit, you may have noticed if you're headed over there that a bunch of the subreddits have gone dark. So let's, first of all, the basics as I understand it, you tell me what you understand about this. Reddit for many years did not have an app. They didn't have a phone app. And so people developed apps for it, which is a very Reddit type of thing to do. It's a community-driven bottom-up. They call it the front page of the internet. But to me, other than Wikipedia, it's the most successful kind of broadly moderated community kind of radical anarchist expression of a utopian vision of the internet. And so you had a bunch of different companies that then, that made apps that people

have been, have been using and they relied on access to Reddit's API to build that app. Now Reddit is charging. They say they're going to start charging these companies for this API in ways that the companies say will put them out of business, but in ways that Reddit says are just necessary to cover their own costs of hosting and that sort of thing. And so subreddits, about 3,500 subreddits in total

are going dark. They're protesting this by making their communities private because of the charges. So those third-party app developers that Reddit has said Reddits in total are going dark. They're protesting this by making their communities private because of the charges. So those third-party app developers that Reddit has said are just absolutely necessary. The mods over on those subreddits have said they're making the communities private for 48 hours. So that means about 3,500 of those subreddits are going to be inaccessible. And those are five of the 10 most popular communities on the site, period. So that's rgaming, raw, rmusic, rtodayilearned, and rpix.

Each have memberships of more than 30 million people. 30 million people. I'm not a big Redditor at all. I rarely use Reddit. But last night, I was making tacos. And I was looking at some— Taco Tuesday, huh? It was Taco Tuesday. Yeah, I was making tacos and I was looking at some... Taco Tuesday. It was Taco Tuesday.

Yeah, I was making tacos for Taco Tuesday and I was looking for recipes and I only, this is actually what happened, I only had mozzarella cheese and I turned, as one does, to Reddit for some ideas about how to make mozzarella cheese work really well in tacos. And please don't flame me in the comments. I'm so sorry, but it's all I had. And I went over to Reddit, and two Reddits that I clicked on that were offered helpful information were dark.

And you know what? It was awesome, because I just had this sense of like, this is the cool thing about Reddit. It's the cool thing, like you said, about Wikipedia, that there's still this grassroots element to it, and you really can stick it to the man if you're a Reddit mod

and you're just like, you're a mod on a subreddit, a really popular subreddit. That's absolutely fantastic. That's a very cool expression of power. And it seems, by the way, third-party apps, Apollo, Reddit is fun,

Sync, and Red Planet, Reddit is saying that it's absolutely necessary. They say it's multi-million, they spend multi-millions of dollars on hosting fees and they need to be fairly paid if they're going to keep supporting these apps. Quote, our pricing is based on usage levels that we measure to be comparable to our own costs. I'm sure they have, there's some like mathematical legitimacy to that, but I think what's so cool about seeing the the subreddits and the mods go dark is that they're showing

Reddit actually what the real market value of those apps is because their consumers demand them. Yeah, I love that you got you got stopped from crossing the Reddit picket line in your effort to find mozzarella cheese tips. It's funny. What'd you end up doing? I just used mozzarella cheese with no fancy tips at all. I just put it on the tacos. I'm sure it was fine. It was totally fine. How bad could it be? No, it was fine. But again, I didn't even realize this was happening because this was before I started the show prep really in earnest. And so I wasn't trying to cross the pig line. But that said, when that happened, I was like, this is actually really cool because this does matter to Reddit.

If people are getting blocked out by the mods that their platform empowers. What is central to Reddit's business model right now is that they have people who volunteer as mods and keep these platforms in good shape by Reddit standards. They're relying on free voluntary labor and that free voluntary labor is saying no. Interesting thing to think about is did you follow the report recently, a couple weeks or maybe months ago at this point, about Alexis Ohanian stepping down from the board of Reddit. And so for people who didn't follow this, Alexis is a co-founder of Reddit, kind of founder. Also, trivia, married to Serena Williams. That's his real claim to fame. And when he announced he was stepping down from his role in the company, he said he wanted to be able to look his children in the eye

and said he did everything to advance the cause of equity. And so he didn't want to be the white guy who was sitting in the seat that ought to be held by a black woman or black man. And so he said, I'm going to leave the board as long as my replacement is, I think it was a black woman, maybe a black person of either gender, I can't quite remember. But it raises the question of, did he see this train wreck coming?

Like, did he, and kind of, did that contribute to his interest in being like, you know what, this is going to be a mess. Let me step aside here. Whether or not he did or didn't, it does point to this phenomenon that, and there's a name for it, people in the comments might know for it, but it was coined around a time that black men mostly, I think it was all black men, started winning mayoral elections in the 1960s and 1970s just as deindustrialization was kind of ripping the guts out of cities. And another example of the phenomenon is that just as medical doctor salaries kind of plateau and then start to decline slightly, that's when medical schools start letting in lots of women. So as soon as things start to take a turn and become more difficult, that's when white men are like, all right, you know what? Let's let everybody in here. So it may be a total coincidence, but it seems like another example of that

phenomenon at work. That is really interesting. And Reddit as an example of sort of disruption post-2016, I would say disruption in the tech community in general, when you had platforms like Reddit, like Facebook, like Twitter. Twitter is another really good example of this being run very differently because there was a different set of pressures, or actually there was a lack of pressures relative to what there is now on those platforms, has caused, I think, whether these things are directly connected to that or not, the heightened business pressures because you have way more government oversight post-2016 for various reasons, some of which are good and some of which are bad. I think that's really caused a lot of tension and strain inside.

I saw a post on Twitter that tried to explain this phenomenon as, this is like 9-11 for the worst person that you know. Which, okay, points for being funny, but I don't think that's quite fair to Reddit. And I really am rooting for Reddit and Redditors to kind of resolve this and keep the site thriving. Yeah, no, absolutely. Even if that was a pretty funny quip. Absolutely. Two things can be true at the same time. Speaking of things that we're trying to figure out whether or not they're true. Starbucks is reportedly, we can put this first element up on the screen from the New Republic. The New Republic reported that Starbucks denied its union's allegations of a ban on pride, a ban on pride decorations,

essentially. This is something we also saw allegedly happen over at Target. But originally, the story was that it was way more heavily, the New Republic was reporting way more heavily on the side of the union's allegations being credible. The Starbucks union, their original headline, I think, was actually that Starbucks banned pride decorations, comma, according to union. You can go back to the URL, actually, because URLs are forever. Yes. And the URL is Starbucks take down pride decorations disgusting cave far right. There you go. And then it's like Mad Libs. Right. And so then the story was updated when Starbucks came out and said, look, we're this is not our policy. We're not

we're not stopping pride decorators from being put up. However, that produced a response from the union, which was the original source of this claim, saying that even if there isn't a corporate directive that has been launched, it is the functional policy that they're seeing on the ground. Let's just roll one. This is one typical kind of post that's come from Starbucks union members. What are we looking at here? Well, those are our pride flags. We have had them up every year for, I don't know, as long as I've worked here. This is the first year that no one hung them up and they're just sitting in the bathroom. So why are those in this bucket right here instead of hanging up during Pride Month

in a Starbucks? Well, Starbucks says that it's unsafe. We don't have a ladder to be able to hang them up properly. So we're just not going to hang them up this year. And so Starbucks has had these hanging up in the lobby before this year, correct? Every year for as long as I've worked here, which is five or six years. That's really crazy. Okay, can I just say quickly, without having a lot of context, because that's a local sort of set of allegations that neither of us has talked to the people

involved, what's kind of amusing, I don't know if amusing is the right word, I don't want to trivialize anything, but if this is the first year that that local Starbucks has unionized, and they're saying it's unsafe to put up the pride decorations, there's actually a possibility that the store is scared of the union in some sense if they're putting workers in unsafe working conditions and they don't have the right kind of ladder. I'm not saying that's what happened, but I'm saying that that also could be a layer to this. It may or may not be, but quickly that was my first thought when I saw it

because a lot of these Starbucks unions are within a year of existence existence. Yes. There are many layers to this, no doubt. So let's read Starbucks spokesperson Andrew Trull's comment to the New Republic. He said, we unwaveringly support the LGBTQIA2 plus community. There has been no change to any policy on this matter. And we continue to encourage our store leaders to celebrate with their communities, including for U.S. Pride Month in June. We're deeply concerned by false information that is being spread, especially as it relates to our inclusive store environments, our company culture, and the benefits we offer our partners, that is a reference to a previous claim that the Starbucks union had made that said that Starbucks had changed its gender-affirming health insurance policy to push back against the union. Starbucks says that's just simply not true, that perhaps somebody had a bad insurance experience, but there has been no change in that policy. Starbucks union, you can find their account on Twitter. They're putting out a bunch of different cases of workers saying that they've tried to put up pride decorations and been told not to,

either because it breaks the uniformity of stores, that there's been a regional directive. There's a lot of claims and counterclaims flying back and forth. My sense is that this might also be related to the climate that has the kind of pushing back in a way that isn't reflective of a corporate directive, but that maybe corporate is okay with? What's your sense of how this is unfolding? You know, it wasn't until we were talking before the show and you advanced that explanation that I could make sense of why this is so confused regionally, that, you know, there are probably different places, like there are different targets. And we heard some regional discrepancies in how Target was enforcing the way that it had

perhaps moved its pride displays after the, like, tucking swimsuit controversy erupted and the boycott started. That, you know, in the South, for instance, or in the Midwest, that Target had moved some of its pride displays in ways that it may not have in California and New York or something to that extent. Although you heard that the Burlington Target may have. These are all just like anecdotes, but it shows that it's possible sort of on a regional level, people who get complaints, even in Burlington, you know, you can have a conservative family or two that complains in Burlington, you know, you can have a conservative family or two that complains in Burlington. And to the point where the manager says, you know, the cost benefit analysis here, it's worth it to just pop this in the back for us. And so people

are just sort of making those decisions without any overarching corporate directive. That's entirely possible. That makes the most sense to me that on a regional level, these pressures and sensitivities are different. And what you're having is people respond to them that way as opposed to overall. Hunter Schwartz had an interesting little report where he actually took the top 10, mostly from the Fortune 50, and gauged who actually changed their logo to pride and from last year to this year and found that it actually was like basically the same like there was no difference Wall Street Journal showed they had they had a headline that said companies quiet diversity and sustainability talk amid the culture war and actually have a chart of earnings calls where executives

mentioned quote ESG DE DEI, environmental, social, and governments, diversity, equity, inclusion, or sustainability verbatim in their earnings calls over the recent quarters. And you do see a dip. It's still higher than what it was in 2018, so still higher post-2020. But I think there is something going on post-Bud Light, post-Target, where companies are extra sensitive and just realize that in the same way they were sensitive in 2020, because these companies, these guys don't believe anything. They're not red or blue, they're green. And so they ultimately side with money.

So in 2020, where you see all of a sudden all of these corporations start giving money to open Marxist organizations like Black Lives Matter, Global Foundation, which none of them supported Marxism. Are you telling me that's insane that these like massive corporatists were just like happy to bankroll Marxism? No, they saw it as an advertisement. They saw it as a way to like rehab their public relations or to prehab their public relations. And in the same way they were sensitive to the political climate then, they're sensitive to the political climate now.

Yeah. And one thing that is really interesting too about this case is what it shows about some elements of today's union movement. So what we can clearly say for sure is that this is not directly about wages and benefits so that the very traditional kind of bread and butter and nuts and bolts union movement was Collective bargaining to increase, you know Increase your wages increase your benefits also workplace safety. And so I think a lot of this is is being kind of Understood as part of safety and the idea of feeling safe and comfortable at work. And so I think that's how workers are understanding this as related to working conditions rather

than just as fighting a culture war within their own corporation, though it is also that, which is just an interesting kind of statement and reflection on where kind of the labor movement is, particularly among young people today. Yeah, Katie Herzog had a good point on Twitter yesterday where she was responding to a poll that found increasing opposition to trans participation in women's sports and just made the point that like the T of the LGBT is most corporations use the full pride flag, not just the rainbow colors, but also with the pink and blue and white, if not even like more detailed flags in that. People walk in and see that. That does feel divisive to them because that feels like you're saying, you know, I necessarily, by shopping at the Starbucks,

I'm not just looking at the flag that, you know, I saw people posing with when Obergefell was handed down. But I'm seeing something that implies, you know, about books and classrooms and kids sports and bathrooms and locker rooms, et cetera. And when you you graft that package onto the other one, I think that's where you start to see the consensus break down and people feel like when they walk into that, it is much more controversial in many parts of the country. And that's, I think, exactly what you see happening with Bud Light and with Target, where most of the country has very little opposition to gay marriage, to same-sex relationships, period. It's the tea that makes them feel a little less comfortable with the full thing. And that has actually increased. And that's interesting. And

I think that's probably what companies are experiencing. And one final point is Starbucks was really accused. There's a Jacobin article I reference a lot where they quote, I think this was in Missouri, they quote a Starbucks worker who was trying to unionize as saying they felt like they were being forced to work as unpaid social workers or untrained social workers. And the safety question is so interesting because that's where these things clash. And if you're considering gender affirming care, gender affirming sort of ideological policies at Starbucks as a part of safety, that also comes into clash with, for instance, the bathroom policy that really did force Starbucks workers to act as untrained social workers and put them in situations. I mean, I saw it with my own eyes. I got locked into a Starbucks,

but I was fine. It was the workers who were having to confront somebody who the police had to lock into the Starbucks in order to calm. Right, and the whole time you're thinking, I don't get paid enough for this. I'm not trained for this and I don't get paid enough for this. 100%. People could help us out, though, because this shouldn't be a he said, she said. The question is, is Starbucks still allowing for pride decorations in stores? So if you are going to Starbucks or you work at Starbucks,

just let us know in the comments what city or town you're talking about and whether or not you're seeing any decorations. That's right. Ryan, you are going to be breaking down for us right here some of the new numbers on inflation. A little bit of good news is how a lot of people are interpreting it. A lot of conversation about where the rate hikes go from here. But I always find it really helpful when you take these numbers and make them intelligible.

So what have you got today? Yeah, let's take a look at these inflation numbers. You can put up this first tear sheet. So the headline news coming out of this was basically inflation cooling to its lowest reading in two years, down to 4% year over year. And so I think it's fun to just take a look at where prices are flattening and where prices are still going up, and then think about what that tells us about our priors when it comes to both monetary policy, interest rate policy, and fiscal policy, relating back to the checks that were cut, the child tax credit, the American Rescue Plan,

the IRA, all of these things that we were warned was going to cause runaway inflation. Larry Summers said that you're going to need 10 percent unemployment for several years in order to kind of tame the inflation that came from the American Rescue Plan, which he described as a cataclysmic kind of policy disaster. He could not have been proven more wrong more quickly than he was. Doesn't mean he won't be invited on air to continue Opining on on the way that people need to be driven into into misery in order to bring down inflation But so if you go to the Bureau of Labor Statistics You can find you know, very detailed breakdowns around, you know

Where prices are going up and where and whether or, which reminds me of this funny, Emily, did you see the back and forth with, who's the Elon Musk flunky? David Sachs. David Sachs and Matt Iglesias. Sachs looked at an employment report and said that, wait, 399,000 jobs added? How's this possible? Everywhere I look, people are getting laid off. And Iglesias is like, it's in column two if you want to check out where jobs are going up, which people immediately pointed out was just like that kind of perhaps apocryphal quote

about Nixon from a Manhattan socialite who was like, how could Nixon have won? I don't know anybody who voted for him. It's like, yeah, it is true that tech is losing some jobs, but there are people that are hiring elsewhere. And so I printed out this table on prices that are moving up and down. If you take out food and energy, you still have a pretty cool inflation number, I think, roughly around 5.3% year over year, which is you want it to be lower than that, but that's not ruining the country. And I think it's, and we should be careful about getting too excited about the energy prices coming down because Mohammed bin Salman, in order to finance all of his different acquisitions, has said he's going to jack up gas prices and also probably to hurt Biden. So 2024, we're probably

going to see higher gas prices. And that's going to, that's going to impact these numbers that you're seeing. But the biggest crisis is still here. and that's in what they call shelter. And so that's both rent and mortgages. That's 8% year over year. So if you're seeing prices at the grocery store, used car prices down 4%, you're glad to see that those things are becoming more affordable, egg prices coming down. But if you're still seeing 8% year overyear increases in housing prices, that's a crisis. And then the other big jump that you see is in what they call transportation services. That's 10.2% year-over-year.

And that's everything from Uber, other ride shares, which you can see. Everybody understands those are getting more expensive Train fares bus fares, but also airline fares like you've seen The cost of air of airplane tickets just soaring over you so that that's that's taking a huge chunk out of you But and then a food away from home 8.3% so in other words like going out to eat is is costing you a lot but food at home down under under six percent So those are the things that are that people are still, you know, really feeling according to the data So what what's your read on as you just go around the world?

Where the where inflation is compared to where it was a year ago. You know, that's why I really don't like... What are you looking at? What's your point today? Well, by now, you've heard a lot about the Espionage Act recently in light of Donald Trump's indictment by Special Counsel Jack Smith. Many of you have known a great deal about this World War I era legislation for years, following the cases of Eugene Debs, the Rosenbergs, and all the way up to Julian Assange. Donald Trump is not a whistleblower or a journalist or a foreign agent. He didn't

leak a military report to the press for the betterment of the nation, nor did he hand out anti-war flyers. He is the former president of the United States, accused of stowing away boxes and boxes of some of the most sensitive, accused of stowing away boxes and boxes of some of the most sensitive U.S. national security secrets. So there's Ali Velshi over on MSNBC making the Trump comparison within all that historical context that we've been hearing so much about recently. He says Trump is different, therefore the implication is, well, maybe it's okay. Well, let's remember the Espionage Act is basically a blunt force instrument of the security state to punish enemies of their agenda basically at the drop of a hat.

That's what the historical context really shows. As you may know, 31 of Trump's 37 new charges were brought under the Espionage Act by Jack Smith. As Eli Lake wrote in the Free Press this week, quote, this is his headline, Trump probably broke the law, but that law shouldn't exist. Probably is an important word there. We actually haven't heard much from Trump's defense team in the last few days. It would hardly be shocking to learn the indictment was built by excluding maybe some key context, given our DOJ's history of making similar decisions when it comes to Trump-related FISA warrants, FISA warrants

for instance. But who knows? Not me, certainly not anyone else in the media, and that's okay. In terms of whether Trump's conduct was dumb, dangerous, and a violation of this specific law, the current evidence suggests the answer to every single one of those questions is yes. But two things can be true at once. Trump's conduct was dumb and silly, and so was the Biden administration's. Why? Well, Eli Lake makes a lot of good points. Some of them are critical. Here comes the what about segment. What about Joe Biden? What about Hillary Clinton? Isn't it facile and partisan whataboutisms to not just admit Trump is corrupt rather than pointing elsewhere. Well,

first, nobody needs to admit Trump is corrupt. He basically campaigned on being corrupt. And second, as Andy McCarthy pointed out on Fox this week, the law is basically whataboutism. You're always weighing precedent, meaning what about this person? What about that person? This is exactly the argument James Comey made when he announced the FBI would not pursue charges against Hillary Clinton in 2016. This is an exact quote from his statement the day he announced he wasn't going to bring charges. Quote, although there is evidence of potential violation of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information, our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case. Prosecutors necessarily weigh a number of factors before bringing charges. There are obvious considerations

like the strength of the evidence, especially regarding intent. Responsible decisions also consider the context of a person's actions and how similar situations have been handled in the past. Intent, by the way, is pretty key in the Trump indictment. This exact statement could be extended, the Comey statement, to Joe Biden's trove of around 20 to 30 classified documents that were located last year, some of which contained very sensitive information about Iran, Ukraine, and more. Clearly, you could make the case he was in violation of the Espionage Act, or there's pretty strong evidence he was in violation of the Espionage Act, or there's pretty strong evidence he was in violation of the Espionage Act. And yes, Trump is charged with having many more documents, and he's also charged with obstruction. That absolutely makes his case more serious,

although Clinton could possibly have been hit with obstruction charges too. But if you're going to charge one president with Espionage Act violations that another could be charged with, and likely won't, given what happened with Clinton, for instance. You don't have the moral high ground when it comes to, quote, the rule of law, which James Comey has been talking about all over the media recently. Worse yet, this is exactly the point about the espionage act. It is a blunt force instrument the security state clings to. The Obama administration used it to seize James Rosen's emails and target many others many times over. This is why the journalists reflexively siding with Smith here, because they hate Trump, are playing an incredibly dangerous game.

The Espionage Act exists to punish them. It's so intentionally broad, it can be used to do whatever the feds want with it when they want to. Obama suffered little repercussions for his abuses of the Espionage Act, but journalists and whistleblowers did. The more the media cheers Smith and Merrick Garland and Biden on, the more power this law will continue to have over them. We are joined now by Glenn Greenwald, my former colleague over at The Intercept and the host of System Update. That's the name of the show over at Rumble. We're going to talk about his interview in a moment that he did with RFK Jr., particularly a fascinating and revealing exchange with RFK Jr. over his policy on Israel and how it compares to his policy as it relates to Ukraine. But first, I wanted to get you on the big news from yesterday. Trump turning himself in for

idiotically holding on to all of these documents when the government's trying to get them back. Emily and I were just going through what I think is my dream scenario, and I wanted to get your take on this. And it would be that the thing is punted past the election. Trump is convicted on these Espionage Act claims. It then goes to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court rules the Espionage Act unconstitutional and ditches the entire law so that they can free Trump. I'm curious for your take on these Espionage Act charges, and also, would that be a dream scenario? I mean, anything that undoes the Espionage Act, to me, would be a huge gift to the United States. The idea that this law is one of the most repressive on the books,

one of the most unconstitutional, flagrantly repressive laws, has been something that has been kind of gospel in left-level politics for decades. It goes back to 1917. Woodrow Wilson enacted it with the explicit purpose of criminalizing people who dissented from his desire to involve the U.S. in the European war and World War I. And many socialists like Eugene Debs and others were prosecuted on the grounds that essentially opposing the U.S. war policy meant they were aiding and abetting other countries and acting as agents of those countries. And then that was the law that was unearthed

during the Obama years to start attacking whistleblowers at a record pace. And the reason is because it's a law that basically ensures the government can win. That was the law that Daniel Ellsberg was tried under. He intended to go on the stand and argue to a jury of his peers that yes, he leaked the Pentagon Papers, but it was justified for him to do so because the government had no right to conceal it in the first place.

And the judge immediately shut it down and said, under the Espionage Act, it doesn't matter what your motive is. It's a strict liability statute. And that's what makes it such a horrifically powerful weapon in the hands of the government. And there is an irony that the Trump administration prosecuted Julian Assange under this and others. Trump cheered Snowden's prosecution under it, and now Trump himself faces prosecution under this law. But a principal civil libertarian, somebody who has worked, for example, at the ACLU, would have no choice but to say, in all instances where this law is applied, it's an unjust outcome. Yeah, I think that's very well said. One of Trump's attorneys previewed, I think, a pretty potent line of argumentation they're going to be making in defense of this indictment or in defense against this indictment. Yesterday outside the courthouse, she said, basically, this is starting to make the U.S. look like Cuba and Venezuela, and this is our transformation towards a banana republic.

As you point out, Glenn, this is a 1917 era law that was sort of immediately used to prosecute people on political grounds after being enacted. How do you think that argument is going to work for the Trump team? Do you see it where you have Joe Biden actually prosecuting the front runner in the Republican nomination, not necessarily like a Eugene Debs figure, but like the Republican front runner here. Do you see that along the lines of the argument the defense attorney is making there? How do you think this goes for them? Well, there's a huge irony here in terms of my own trajectory and my own career and belief system, which is I watched President Obama immunize the entire CIA and all Bush officials for any

prosecution for war on terror crimes, including torture. And there was a consensus in the Washington media and political class when he did that, that he did the right thing, just like Nixon did the right thing when, Ford did the right thing when pardoning Nixon on the grounds that, oh, only banana republics prosecute former presidents by subsequent administrations. And my argument at the time was no, actually what happens in a banana republic is there's a two-tiered system of justice, one for elites and one for everybody else. And not prosecuting war on terror criminals

is what would make us this kind of banana republic. And now here we are finally a person with power seemingly being prosecuted. But for me, the problem becomes it's still selective. It's selective in a different way. Clearly, Trump is an enemy of the political establishment in the way that, say, others who did similar or worse things like David Petraeus and Leon Panetta and arguably Hillary Clinton was not, and they did not spend a single second in jail.

They weren't charged with Espionage Act violations. And so I do think there's a highly political element to that. And just imagine if we watched what's happening in the United States happening in one of the designated bad countries where a current president imprisons or his administration is trying to imprison his leading opponent heading into an election where all polls show that opponent is leading, we would immediately say that's proof of despotism. Like when Vladimir Putin presided over Navalny's corruption charges, that was what was said. And it's hard to distinguish,

I think, what's going on here. I think that's especially true in light of the fact that Clinton actually could have also had the obstruction charges, not just the Espionage Act violations, but potentially obstruction charges too. Yeah. I mean, she lied to the government. She said there was no classified information. Having ever gone over her service, she repeated that multiple times to investigators and it turned out to be false. I'm curious if you put Trump on the couch, how he wound up in this situation. Like for somebody who has talked so frequently about the deep state coming after him, like this is basically his number one argument that he's been making for, you know, because you were judged by who your enemies are and he's like,

look at who my enemies are. They want to destroy me. Therefore, I must be doing something right. What about that did not get internalized for him? Because if you believe that they're coming to get you, just give the boxes back. Like, that's the part that has me head scratching about, like, the way that this unfolded. How do you think about why Trump, you know, because for Hillary Clinton, I think Hillary Clinton knew she was not going to be put in prison. So you can explain why she would be shady about and be willing to lie to these prosecutors because like they're not coming to get her. Like they want the documents back. They don't like that she's using this server, but she's pretty confident that they're not actually going to put her in prison.

And that confidence was borne out by Comey's decision, not the prosecutor. Trump, though, shouldn't have that same confidence. Like, they really are coming after him. So it almost feels like for the kind of movement that he's leading, why wasn't he more careful? It's a good question. I think the best analogy, and I know this seems odd because it's impossible to extract all this from its ideological baggage, is what happened in Brazil with Lula da Silva, where I obviously played a big role in those events, so I have pretty up-close insight.

Lula never believed that he would be in prison because he was a two-term president, beloved on the international stage. He left office with an 86% approval rating. And at exactly this point, the analogous point in the election cycle for Brazil, one year before the 2018 presidential election, in 2017, when he was leading all polls, they came and they charged him with multiple corruption crimes, arrested him, and sentenced him to 11 years in prison. And when that happened, he began to view all of the people responsible for that with such disdain that he no longer recognized their legitimacy. The lead prosecutor in Lula's case ran for Congress and won, got the biggest vote total in his state, and they just removed him from Congress on some concocted corruption

ground. And now they're looking to do the same with the judge who presided over the case, who's now a senator. So this vengeance factor, when you spend time in jail, is very high. This is, you know, you're talking about an establishment that twice impeached Donald Trump, that has now indicted him twice, that makes no secret about their desire to put him into prison. And so, yes, you can, on the one hand, say, well, he should therefore be even more careful and not hand them weapons to use against him. On the other hand, I think when you feel genuinely persecuted by unjust authority, which is definitely how he and a lot of his supporters feel, and I

think with good reason. Remember, Chuck Schumer warned him this would happen. If you challenge the CIA, they'll get, they have six different ways to get back at you. And that's what has been happening throughout his presidency with Russiagate and now these impeachments and now these indictments. I think there's this kind of sense that I'm just not going to play ball with these people. I'm not going to recognize the legitimacy of their demands for these documents back because they're out to get me no matter what I do. And war is the only, the only way to go about this. It's important to take Chuck Schumer both literally and seriously. Yes, yes.

Yeah. He was not kidding. It was the most amazing moment of candor I've ever seen from a top-level Washington official. Yeah, so pivoting to your interview with RFK Jr. recently, actually, we'll just play this clip, and to set it up, you asked him basically,

why is it that you're skeptical about funding for the war in Ukraine because of the needs of people here at home, but not the same for Israel? So let's roll that clip here. Why are we in the United States transferring billions of dollars of aid each year to a country, Israel, whose citizens in a lot of ways enjoy better standards of living than a lot of the ways American citizens live. What is your argument for why we should send so much money to Israel but not to Ukraine? Well, I mean, historically, that argument has been that Israel is a model democracy in the Mideast. It's the only democracy in the Mideast. And as a democracy, it's a model for peacekeeping. And there's never been a time in history when a democracy has gone to war with another democracy. So I think our policy in the United States

should be to support the growth of democracies around the world. But that was the argument for going into invading Iraq. We're going to spread democracy in the Middle East. That's the argument for supporting the Ukrainians, which is the Ukrainians are a democracy and Russia is an autocracy. And Glenn, I agree with you. And I do think there's a difference between what we did in Iraq, which is imposing a U.S. system, which I don't think was really democracy at the point of a gun, and going in on a preemptive war, which we've never done in our history, on a pretext in which we lied to the American public about weapons of mass destruction and our policy of assisting an existing democracy in the Mideast that has had a long relationship with our country and a long and supportive relationship with our country. But I think you raised some important points. I think it probably at this point in history, Israel is, you know, is much better able to take care of itself than it was in the past. And we need to look at all those things.

That was a long clip, but I wanted to play all the way to the end of it because it's a remarkable moment in an interview where you kind of see him think through the position. And by the end of it, he's like, actually, you know what, Glenn, maybe Israel is ready to stand up on its own two feet and we should reduce the amount of spending we're there, which is an incredible turnaround from just days earlier where he had denounced his friend Roger Waters over Israel-related tweets, concerts, etc. Were you surprised at the way, at the kind of arc of his answer there? Yes and no. I mean, this is what I took away from the interview. Obviously, a lot of people were angry about his extreme pro-Israel narrative, which is way beyond what even Democratic

members of Congress will say. They're much better at pretending to care about Palestinians than he bothered to do. And other people were angry about his views on China, essentially saying we're doing to China exactly what we're doing to Russia, namely baselessly and stupidly provoking them with encirclement physically around their country. But although I didn't like his answers on Israel up until that point, what I find so fascinating about him, Ryan, is that if you look at his life, you know, you can't find a more charmed life to be an establishment figure. He had two uncles who were senators from the Democratic Party,

or rather his father and an uncle were senators. His other uncle was the president. He comes from this beloved Democratic Party dynasty. He's married to a very popular actress in Hollywood. He's wealthy. He's well-known. He's famous. And what has clearly happened, you know, he was a longtime establishment Democrat. He supported and endorsed Hillary Clinton over Barack Obama. That's how much of an ingrained in the establishment he was in 2008. And we've all had those moments where we kind of become radicalized when we realize in an issue that we know a lot about that the establishment is lying to us. And we start

thinking, well, if they're lying to us about this, maybe I've been propagandized and deceived in other areas as well. He had the same answer on Russiagate. I had previously said he was a supporter of Russiagate. His campaign contacted me and said they didn't think that was fair. But he said, no, you're right. I was a supporter of Russiagate because I got duped by the propaganda. And once I started hearing people in the context of COVID tell me, oh, vaccine skepticism means you're a Kremlin agent, I started realizing, wait a minute, how is this actually being used? And then the more I looked into it, then I read the journal report, I saw that I had been deceived. And a lot of that comes from COVID radicalism. And I think that has made him somebody, even at the age of 68, who is now starting to really question a lot of things he's long been

conditioned to believe and is very willing to be open-minded and hear arguments against even his most core convictions in a way that I find very rare. First of all, I've never seen that in an interview before, but also very encouraging. More than any particular policy view, I think that character trait of being intellectually humble, of realizing some of your views may be grounded in unthought-through propaganda, is an incredibly valuable one to have in a major presidential candidate. Yeah, not to mention a willingness to sort of work through them actually on air, not behind closed doors in the proverbial smoke-filled back room. I think that's like a huge distinction as well.

Do you get the sense, I remember when Justice Democrats tried to cobble together that Ukraine letter and ended up retracting it, what was that, like six months ago at this point? Do you get the sense, Glenn, that this switch, that Ukraine perhaps is a window into an awakening for other Democrats? Because it seems to me like the Democratic establishment's clinging to their narrative on Ukraine is similar to their clinging to their narrative on Israel. But for people outside of the Democratic establishment, they see that doubling down and they wonder why they would be doubling down. So do you get the sense that he might be representative of other Democratic voters? I think so. You know, I think the interesting thing, I mean, of course we've had politicians before, this isn't the first time, say, oh, I was wrong.

But usually it's because they're forced to. Like Hillary Clinton running for president in 2008 was required to say, I got the Iraq war wrong and apologize, so was John Kerry, because the voters demanded that. What RFK Jr. is doing is something that is likely to expel him from his political and social circles,

saying, I got Russiagate wrong by being too gullible about it. And I don't believe the war in Ukraine is a just war that we ought to be pursuing and involved in the United States in. And I think when someone makes those kinds of admissions against their own interests, that's when you can believe more in the authenticity of those convictions. So the question of how much space is there in the Democratic Party to start opposing Biden's bellicose rhetoric about Ukraine and fighting the Russians until the end after a year and a half now of all this fighting and killing with no one in sight, I think it's a very interesting one. The problem, of course, was that no Democrat, not AOC, not Ilhan Omar,

not Cori Bush, none of them voted no on that original bill. They all lined up unanimously and said, yes, we support the Biden war policy in Ukraine. And that eliminated the space for, you know, liberal pundits, even left wing pundits to kind of start arguing against the war because no one in the Democratic Party was doing that. If RFK Jr. can create space and have debates and be seen and be heard, as I think he will be, and start articulating this case, I do think there's some latent, you know, kind of hesitation or resistance, if you will, to this fact that we're

now involved in yet another war, an endless war with no one in sight that is increasingly dangerous. And I think the rhetoric and the argument around the spending money over there while not spending it here is really powerful and resonates in a kind of common sense way. But what I actually love about it is that it will eventually force the government to make the real case for why it's spending that money overseas, because this is not charity. We're not shelling money out to Israel, we're not spending money in Ukraine or other military bases around the world because of our benevolence, because we just have generous feelings towards the

rest of the world. The Empire has very specific and distinct advantages to the homeland and so it's not as if when you spend money in Ukraine, you don't have money to spend here in the United States. The United States can borrow it well. The United States has a Federal Reserve. And 70%, 80% of that money that we allegedly send to Ukraine never leaves Northern Virginia or suburban Maryland anyway. And so it would be fun to see the government have to actually make that argument, say that, no, don't worry, it's not charity. We're not supporting Israel just because we love the only democracy in the Middle East,

which is so offensive to Iraq and Lebanon. Come on, man, they have elections. Why do we keep, we even went to war to make Iraq a democracy. Stop with this. Call it one of three. None of them are very functional. But that's not why we're supporting Israel. We're supporting Israel because we want a beachhead in the Middle East for our geopolitics. Yeah, I mean, how can you say that a government like the United States that is the biggest sponsor of the Saudi despots and of Egyptian authoritarians and countries all over the world actually cares about spreading democracy. The thing that really interested me, Ryan, is there's space, obviously, in the Republican Party for opposing the war in Ukraine. Trump is doing that, for example. But a lot of people dismiss that and say, well, conservatives don't want to fight Russia

because their real goal is to fight China. What RFK said was he sees China and Russia in exactly the same way. We have 800 foreign bases all around the world while China has one. We're encircling them in Guam and Australia and Japan and South Korea with nuclear-tipped missiles aimed at Chinese cities and nuclear-capable B-52s buzzing over their head. Biden was the first president to say, I will go to war with China over Taiwan. And his argument is the people who are paying for this neoconservative, warmongering mentality, not just in Russia, but also in China and in general, are the American people who are suffering at home because all their money is going, as you say, to lobbyists in Northern Virginia and Maryland, or to the coffers of Vladimir Zelensky and Israeli military agencies and increasingly arms dealers to prepare for war with China.

And it doesn't benefit anybody. And the people who pay the most are the American people. I think that is a very powerful argument if you make it consistently. Yeah, that's right. Because exactly, because if you have to make the argument that the empire actually is beneficial to the United States, then the question is, well, who? Who's it helping here in the United States? Because, you know, the regular person in America is saying, I'm not seeing it. Now, if you look at the kind of median income and housing values

in Northern Virginia, then things are going quite well. But if you're looking at the rest of the country, you know, not so much. Yeah, the confluence of Ukraine and China is really interesting because that's the test, right? There are really good reasons, I think, to be wary of where a relationship with China could go in a million different directions. But the capture of the conservative movement by the defense industry is really going to be put to a test. It's one thing to oppose Ukraine. It's another to see where that policy evolves on China. And the last question for me, on the Democratic Party, it is interesting to think about where this is going. My sense on Ukraine is that they just seem to be hoping that this just goes away,

that maybe this spring offensive is the end and then there's some type of kind of, no, there won't be a negotiated peace you know, peace where they sign paperwork, but it just, the war basically peters out and it, and, and the lines get frozen where they are. And then, then they don't have to take a stand on this, on this question anymore. But then, then you have the question of China, like you said, like how, how bellicose and confrontational are they going to be? Where, doesn't seem to be energy for kind of an anti-war movement within the Democratic Party. Where do you see it going? Yeah, and the big question is why not, right? I mean, why are neocons from the Bush and Cheney era almost entirely now embedded within the Democratic Party?

They're not just anti-Trump. They're anti-Republican Party and pro-Democratic Party. They perceive, I think correctly, the Democratic Party is the better vehicle for the fulfillment of their foreign policy agenda, which is always about increasing and seeking out confrontation and war. And the question is, why is there no space

in mainstream liberal left discourse to raise these issues? There's a lot of energy that goes into the trans debate and the culture war, but almost none. There's no one almost ever who talks about foreign policy and war in the U.S. security state any longer. And this is what excites me the most about RFK Jr.'s candidacy is that I think he will be kind of a thorn in the side,

like your reminder that these values are values that people who identify as American liberals are supposed to embrace. And the question becomes, why is it that, you know, nobody seems to mind within the Democratic Party that Biden is not just devoted to endless war with Russia over Ukraine after President Obama repeatedly said Ukraine is not a vital interest to the United States. We should not risk confrontation with Russia over who governs eastern Ukraine or Crimea. That was Obama's emphatically stated view. And also, why is Biden so willing, seemingly, to flirt with the possibility of war with China, which would be, you know, ensure the immediate extinction of the human race? And I think the problem has been the

left flank of the Democratic Party, like AOC and the squad and Bernie have been very focused on the culture war. Bernie kind of always still focused on some of the economic policies on which he typically focuses. But that has left a huge hole for people, leaders in the Democratic Party, including on the left wing, to talk about these issues. And I do, to Emily's question, think that RFK Jr. has a very significant space to kind of drive through there and become the person who reawakens a lot of those lurking sentiments. Yeah, because I think that's right.

And I think Bernie, the squad, broadly the Democratic left, have just wanted to put their heads down and focus on domestic stuff. Some of it culture stuff, some of it class stuff. But just, and maybe it has something to do with Russia and the way that Russiagate unfolded makes them even less interested in getting entangled in that because there's no advantage in a Democratic primary. But maybe RFK Jr. shows that there is a constituency in Mary Ann Williamson.

Quickly on that, one of the best MLK speeches ever was when he delivered in Riverside Church in Harlem exactly a year to the day before he was murdered. And his argument was he apologized for not focusing enough on the Vietnam War until later than others did because he realized there's no way to extricate American empire and militarism and imperialism from the domestic agenda. They go hand in hand. You cannot win one without winning the other. And this attempt by these kind of new Democrats to say, well, we can just let the CIA and the FBI go. We don't really think they're our enemies. Wars, as long as we're not sending American troops or something Americans will tolerate, it's not going to work because it shapes the priority and character of the U.S. government in fundamental ways that means that the U.S. government will be geared toward these kind of corporatist and imperialist policies. There's no way to separate those.

That's the real culture war. Yeah, I think that's exactly right. Because you're trying to, and trying to be a progressive party within the empire is going to, has so many contradictions embedded in it. And, you know, MLK was pulling those apart in that speech. And if you don't, you just become part of the machine. Yeah, and I mean, I once heard about this, but the time the establishment really turned against Martin Luther King was when he began becoming an outspoken opponent to the Vietnam War.

They were okay, not all of them obviously, but kind of the liberal establishment, the New York Times and the like, were okay with the racial justice agenda and the Civil Rights Act and the like. That was what Lyndon Johnson ended up doing. It became a Democratic Party cause. But when he started saying,

we have to stop the war in Vietnam, the U.S. is the greatest purveyor of violence on the planet, the New York Times, the Washington Post, liberal opinion makers really went after him because that's what becomes uniquely threatening. Mm-hmm. Yeah, good piece on that by Zed Jelani. If you Google Zed Jelani MLK and intercept,

his great piece on that will come up. Glenn, last question, what do you think of the new set? Let me check that out. First of all, you already lied and told me that the last question was the last question, so I'm already a little contaminated. Can't trust him. Let me see, can we, I'm only seeing myself. I have to see the set. Oh, you already lied and told me that the last question was the last question. So I'm already a little contaminated. Let me see.

I'm only seeing myself. I have to see the set. Oh, you can't see the set. Gay aesthetic critique. I'll announce it on Twitter. I'll send you a pic. Actually, I think it's very looking good. I like the color scheme.

I like how gigantic I am. So, yeah, I have nothing but positive feedback so far. You're like an Easter Island head I hover above you guys it's very it's very positive very intimidating

back here well we couldn't think of a better guest for our first day on the new set than Glenn Greenwald go watch System Update

over on Rumble it's fantastic subscribe on Locals Glenn thank you so much for joining great to be with you guys thanks for for having me. Have a good day. That'll do it for the first episode of Counterpoints over here on the new set. Thanks,

everybody, for bearing with any technical difficulties, but I think it was pretty smooth, we think. It went great, and that's a huge testament to all the hard work Griffin and Mac, the production team, Colvin, everyone has been putting into this new set. They've been working over the weekends, at nights, literally building this, putting it together for many, many months behind the scenes. We are enormously grateful to them for all of that. And one thing I wanted to say just to wrap up the show, Glenn's point, I mean, one thing to underscore, it's absurd that Joe Biden should not have to confront these arguments, whether they're made by RFK Jr. or Marianne Williamson, on a debate stage on pressing issues like Ukraine, like Israel, like everything. The idea that the man is just going to skate to a second term

without actually having to confront anybody on a debate stage I think is ridiculous. It's so wild because a Democrat could challenge him in a serious way. I think RFK Jr. is going to have a ceiling. Marianne Williamson has a ceiling. But the opening is very much there for somebody if they would take it. But it feels like it's a situation where if you challenge Biden and you beat him, you become president. But if you challenge him and lose, you'll be driven out of the Democratic Party. And it shows that so many members of the Democratic Party who are in good

standing value their good standing more even than their ambition to become president of the Democratic Party who were in good standing value their good standing more even than their ambition to become president of the United States, which is just an incredible comment. It's why basically only Bernie Sanders ran against Hillary Clinton in 2016 when that was ripe for the taking. And on that point, we stand with James Van Der Beek, which as we close out the show, I will just say, man, you know what I love about James Van Der Beek and Crystal and you, Ryan, is that you guys work so hard and do a fantastic work. But at the end of the day, you love your kids more than anything. And you show, I think it's especially important to show people my age how you can make that happen. So congratulations to both you and James Van Der Beek.

What's Van Der Beek's relation to kids or whatever? Homesteading, has a ton of kids. His social media is just all of... I'm going to start following this guy. He seems like a big deal. I had to basically explain what a big deal James Van Der Beek was to Ryan. And I shared a very embarrassing story about my crush on James Van Der Beek in middle school with the team. I'm not going to share it here,

but needless to say, I was a big fan. I think you just shared it. No, I didn't. It involves an iPod video. Anyway, on that note, thank you so much for tuning in to the first edition of CounterPoints here on our new set.

Thank you to the team. Thank you so much to all the premium subscribers for making this possible. You can watch the full show, start to finish, no interruptions, if you are a premium subscriber over here on CounterPoint. We appreciate it. Hope everyone has a good week. We do. See you later. Over the years of making my true crime podcast, Helen Gone, I've learned no town is too small for murder.

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