Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 6/21/22: Russia vs NATO, Gas Prices, Hillary Comments, Lorenz Demoted, TikTok Lies, Economic Shift, French Elections, & More!

Episode Date: June 21, 2022

Krystal and Saagar discuss tensions between Russia and NATO, Biden's gas price plans, GOP Sen. candidate Eric Greitens' new ad, Hillary's midterm advice, Taylor Lorenz demoted, TikTok lies, economic realignment, and French elections!To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/To listen to Breaking Points as a podcast, check them out on Apple and SpotifyApple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/breaking-points-with-krystal-and-saagar/id1570045623 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4Kbsy61zJSzPxNZZ3PKbXl Merch: https://breaking-points.myshopify.com/New Yorker Feature: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-rise-of-the-internets-creative-middle-class Daniel Nichanian: https://boltsmag.org/  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Cable news is ripping us apart, dividing the nation, making it impossible to function as a society and to know what is true and what is false. The good news is that they're failing and they know it. That is why we're building something new. Be part of creating a new, better, healthier, and more trustworthy mainstream by becoming a Breaking Points premium member today at BreakingPoints.com. Your hard-earned money is going to help us build for the midterms and the upcoming presidential election so we can provide unparalleled coverage of what is sure to be one of the most pivotal moments in American history. So what are you waiting for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed we do. Lots to get to this morning. First of all, Biden still in this will he or won't he after months of contemplation whether

they might do something on the federal gas tax. I will tell you about that. Also, a quite shocking ad coming out of the Republican Senate primary in Missouri from the candidate who is now the frontrunner in spite of allegations that he has abused both his ex-wife and his children. So we will tell you about all of that as well. Hillary Clinton, for some reason, being asked how Democrats can win in spite of the fact that, you know, maybe not the best person to go to advice for how to win elections. But, OK, we'll hear what she has to say. Taylor Lorenz getting a demotion at The Washington Post. Talk to you about that. Sagar's looking at TikTok. I am looking at whether the economy as we know it is completely ending.

And we have a great guest on to break down the French election results, which were pretty stunning. But we wanted to start with some very significant developments with regards to Russia's war in Ukraine. Yeah, this is really being underplayed by the Western press, frankly, because I don't think they understand the exact mechanics involved. Let's get and put this on the screen. So, Russia is currently threatening retaliation against the country of Lithuania, who is banning goods of transit to Kaliningrad. So, for those who aren't familiar with the geography of Eastern Europe, Kaliningrad is an enclave of Russia on the Baltic Sea, through which they have not necessarily a treaty, but an understanding with Lithuania and more that they will be able to transport goods by rail across the country of Lithuania

to its own sovereign territory in Kaliningrad. This was a hard-won concession all throughout the breakup of the Soviet Union. It's a longtime outpost of the Russian Navy, and it's considered Russian territory, obviously, both by longstanding precedent and more. Now, currently, Lithuania is banning the transit of goods between Russian territories. So we're not talking about Russia transporting something to somewhere else. We're talking about Russia transporting something to its own sovereign territory. Now, the reason that this matters is that Lithuania is banning some of these goods on the basis that they claim that the goods have been sanctioned by the European Union. Lithuania is both a member of the EU, but more importantly for our purposes,

is a member of the NATO alliance. And so whenever they ban these Russian goods and transit, this would directly implicate the security of the United States. In terms of Russia, they are claiming an outrageous breach both of precedent, but also saying that this is a direct meddling by NATO in its internal affairs, which, you know, on the propaganda campaign, on what they're saying both on television in Russia and within the Duma, this is some of the highest rhetoric that we have seen. So Dmitry Peskov says this, quote, this is an illegal move, quote, this decision is unprecedented. It is a violation of everything. We consider this illegal. The situation is more than serious. We need a serious, in-depth analysis in order to work out our response.

And the foreign ministry said that Vilnius must reverse the, quote, openly hostile move if the cargo transit between the Kaliningrad region and the rest of Russian Federation via Lithuania is not fully restored in the future. Russia reserves the right to take actions to protect its national interests. So that obviously is the highest escalation there of the future. Russia reserves the right to take actions to protect its national interests. So that obviously is the highest escalation there of the discussion. The Lithuanians say that their hands are tied. They're like, look, the Moscow is spreading fake news. They are the ones who are just implementing the sanctions regime has been put in by the EU. They claim that their hands are tied. Their hands are not tied. Okay. They could let the goods transit if they wanted to. And I think that this is especially escalatory on our part, Crystal, because this is Lithuania. It is a member of the NATO alliance. It does directly implicate what

the Russians would consider their internal national security affairs. And this could actually be a real jump off point in terms of where a foreign escalation outside of Ukraine and the direct impact on all of us could see some, it could, this is where we could see the flashpoint. And frankly, the press here is really not covering it all. This is a European story, despite major implications for everybody. Yeah, I think that's right. And there are two things you have to separate out. There's the reality reality and then there's the symbolism of it. So the reality is, number one, at least according to Lithuania, they are not blocking all goods. They're blocking maybe 50 percent of what's going there.

It's still iron and steel. It's still a lot. Reportedly, there is mass panic buying in the city of Kaliningrad because people are concerned they're not going to be able to get basic goods, foods, medicines, etc. Now, the reality is Russia has already said they're going to be able to circumvent this semi-blockade, whatever you want to call it, by shipping goods by sea. But in terms of, you know, a sense of a real attack on their sovereign territory, and clearly this rhetoric coming out of Russia is meant not only to signal their extreme displeasure, but also to galvanize their population

against this type of act. This is really disastrous. And of course, Lithuania is saying, hey, look, we're just doing what you guys told us to do. We're just implementing the sanctions that all European nations are on board with. Well, that's not a great situation either, because that also directly implicates us and our Western allies. So it is for sure a dangerous escalatory situation. And you never know where these flashpoints are going to come. You never know whether they're going to fizzle out, whether the Russians are just chest beating and they're going to back down, how this all works out. But it seems wildly unnecessary and inflammatory to engage in even, you know, even if we grant that this is a partial blockade, it seems wildly irresponsible and escalatory to do.

Yeah, I think that that's really just the way to put it. And just to give you an idea, you know, Ukraine is actually supporting this. So the foreign minister of Ukraine actually put out a statement saying Russia has no right to threaten Lithuania. Moscow has only itself to blame for the consequences of its unprovoked and unjustified invasion of Ukraine. We commend Lithuania's principled stand and stand firmly by our Lithuanian friends. Obviously, the Baltic allies are the ones who are prompting most per capita in terms of GDP weapons into Ukraine. And frankly, they're the ones, you know, having been former Soviet Union states and members of NATO, where you're probably going to see the most amount of support

both on a domestic political level and from a foreign policy perspective. As this is something I've really been trying to warn from the beginning, which is that, remember, NATO is all of us. You know, it's not just the United States. As much as we may have a policy, the policy of Germany directly implicates us, the policy of the UK, and yes, have a policy, the policy of Germany directly implicates us, the policy of the UK, and yes, now the policy of the Baltic states. So Lithuania, tiny country, you know, less probably, I don't know the exact population exactly, but their foreign policy has direct implications on us if there were to ever be an attack. Now, do I think an attack is coming? No. As you said, Russia currently is using a ferry system in order to get its goods to Kaliningrad. But the fact that this is spilling over directly

outside of Ukraine and having a sanctions policy, which per Russian policy would be considered internal meddling in their affairs, I think it's a problem. And it also raises questions as to how things would work with Poland, which is also, frankly, a much stronger NATO ally, as well as all of the rest, in addition to both Sweden and Finland, which are continuing their bid both for EU membership, or sorry, for NATO membership, and Ukraine actually also in pursuing its bid for EU membership, which they say that they will be able to fast track. And at the same time, you know, we're seeing considerations and statements, again, not 100% noticed by the American press, but these are very important comments. Let's put this up there on the screen.

This is from NATO Chief Jens Stoltenberg. Here's what he says, quote, the war in Ukraine could last for years, he said in an interview with the daily German newspaper Bild while he was reiterating calls for Western countries to provide long-term support for Kyiv. Here's what he says, quote, We must be prepared for this to last four years. We must not weaken in our support of Ukraine, even if the costs are high, not only in terms of military support, but also because of rising energy and food prices. And I think that this is the next phase of the way that the West is going to try and sell it, which is their domestic populations are starting to get fed up. We have $5 gas here in the US. It does not even compare to what gas prices are

in Europe. And in Europe, they're not just seeing the type of inflation that we're seeing at the gas pump, Crystal. They are seeing it in terms of their energy bills. Because people need to understand, Italy and Germany have been cut off by Russian pipelines for natural gas to the extent of 40% in Italy's case, 60% in Germany. At the same time, an LNG export hub here in the United States exploded. It won't be able to deliver LNG for a minimum of 90 days. So prices in Europe went up 17% just in a single day in terms of electricity. So that is a preview of what is to come. And I just think that the longer that the war continues, the longer that there is not any peace process, you know, frankly, the Russians, the Russians too, nobody's stopping them from also actually trying to ask for peace. And then also on the Ukrainians, if we don't set up the chessboard

in the correct way, we're going to see more Kaliningrad type incidents, which could have escalatory problems on the part of the entire West, both the EU and the NATO alliance. So I think this is why we're spending some time on this this morning. At this point, the sanctions regime is making me feel insane because, I mean, we're literally sanctioning our own people and devastating developing world, the global South nation. I mean, the level of famine and hunger that we are sparking in parts of the world to just like casually hand wave that like, you know, the costs are high, but we got to keep going like that's nothing. And then the reality is the sanctions have completely backfired. So you've imposed all this pain and austerity

on your own populations and on vulnerable populations around the entire globe. Meanwhile, Putin has never gotten more revenue than right now. Let's stick on this point. He made $100 billion, Crystal. That's more than they needed to fund the entire war in Ukraine. Literally, record-breaking oil profits. Literally. I mean, because, directly because of our sanctions.

Are ordinary Russian people hurting? Yes. Was that the goal? To starve out some, poor working class Russian who had nothing to do with this? And by the way, all of these actions, and this was predictable from the beginning, and in fact, we did predict it from the beginning. What is Putin telling his domestic population? He's saying the West is out to get you. They want to destroy Russia. And then we say, hey, we're launching all-out economic warfare to destroy

Russia. That plays right into his hand. He and his cronies, they are not suffering one bit. And we're going to talk about some of his comments later in an important speech last week that I think shows, demonstrates how sort of comfortable he's feeling right now from an economic perspective. Meanwhile, this is rallying ordinary Russians to his side, proving his point. So all of this has been a disaster. I mean, listen, if it was actually working, right, if the Ukrainians were winning, if this wasn't like an effective sanction on our own populations and a subsidy, by the way, to the Chinese middle class. Yes. And at the expense of our own middle class, if it was actually bleeding Russia dry and impacting their ability to wage this war, okay, we could have a debate about it. I still have issues with it,

but there would be a reasonable debate there. At this point, what is the case for continuing in the same direction? I just genuinely don't understand. We discussed this yesterday with Peter Zayhan. I, again, think it's worth emphasizing. Russia made $100 billion in just 100 days post the sanctions regime, and Russia has now become the single largest supplier of oil to the country of China,

even surpassing Saudi Arabia because they're willing to sell it at a discount rate at the current global market in addition to India. So we have created a discount market for the Chinese and the Indians, I guess props to them. They're getting a nice deal on oil. At the same time, our country is paying outrageous sums for oil and gas in addition to the entire unified West. And then the Russian military Putin war machine is enriched to a historic degree. They have plenty of money in order to conduct the war. The counter to what we're saying is, yeah, Kristallnager, but it's going to take a couple of years for those sanctions to kick in. Okay, so as the NATO chief says, you want us to pay for three years? And again, okay, let's say it was working on the battlefield,

but we don't currently have indications of that. Let's put this up there on the screen. You know, Ukraine is really suffering right now in the faltering defense of Severnodonetsk. Apologies, Ukrainians. And they are rushing troops there to try and reinforce. But as we pointed out previously, the Ukrainians are losing, and I'm talking killed in action, almost 200 people a day. They're suffering between 500 to 1,000 casualties a day in terms of wounded. They say, look, it's fine. We have a million guys.

We have another 2 million that we can call up. But seeing reports here, and this is always a problem, some of these guys have barely had six weeks of basic training before they're even sent to the front line. So you don't necessarily have the best troops. Of course, Russia also has conscripts. They have problems. They've suffered probably 10,000 to 20,000 casualties as well. They're not giving us the numbers. But their ability in order to continue the grinding war of attrition is certainly able to outlast the current Ukrainian defenses. And same with the oil prices. Because, yes, a sanctions regime will hurt the Russian oil economy. In a couple of years, they're not going to be able to get the parts in order to update their systems or keep maintenance. But Ukraine's

got to last three years for that to happen. You want to subject this nation to a war for three years? I mean, the Ukrainians can decide to. And to be honest, it's not like Zelensky is trying to do anything in terms of peace. Let's be very clear about that too. Yeah, but we have to ask ourselves why that is. Yeah, I agree. I mean, I think that that has a lot to do with the posture and positioning of their largest patron, overwhelmingly largest patron, us, the United States of America. I agree with you. I mean, we shouldn't really pretend that this is anything other than a true proxy war between the U.S. and Russia. So, look, what Russia's doing right now is more or less easy for them. They're basically sitting back, shelling these areas, kind of holding their positions, making steady progress in the eastern part of Ukraine.

And I saw some credible analysis that said basically, like, their strategy right now is to do that, which is very sustainable for them, while they rebuild their own troops and rebuild their own capabilities. And then what? So what Russia is probably thinking is they suffered, you know, humiliating defeats in the early phase of this war, no doubt about it. The more maximalist aims of their goals, I think, are basically off the table. So what they're working to do now is to regain some leverage. I mean, that's what you see with the really unconscionable food blockade that they're engaging in. It is horrific. It is absolutely horrific. That's one part of their strategy, the cutting off of natural gas to Italy. So that sort of retaliatory economic warfare, that's part of their strategy to try to gain some leverage in whenever the end state negotiations occur. And then trying to rebuild some of their military capacity and gain ground in eastern Ukraine.

That's the other part of their strategy likely to try to gain some leverage over the end state of these negotiations. But I don't know how we can look at in particular our economic approach, our economic warfare approach to this conflict and say that this has been successful. Yeah, it has been a failure. Because it has had the exact opposite effect of what everybody in D.C. told us it was going to do. It has, like, undoubtedly at this point, it has strengthened his hand. It's just impossible to see it otherwise. Yeah, and at the same time, Putin, completely defiant. Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. You know, he's mocking President Biden and the West over the so-called Putin inflation

at the so-called Russian Davos. And his quotes here are very directly going after President Biden, even though he did not name him. He said with U.S. officials regularly referring to the Putin's price hike, he said, quote, they already call inflation with my name. He also suggested the current generation in Russia has the same fate as the Russian 17th century Peter the Great in terms of how he sees himself returning and strengthening territory. And he said of the Putin price hike in particular, he said, who is this for? Who believes this? So if you see the speech that Putin is giving, he's mocking President Biden to his domestic population. But I think it's also worth spending a little bit of

time in terms of what the rest of what he said, which is he's casting himself as Peter the Great, returning directly to Russian imperial ambitions of the days of the Tsars, just like in that initial speech before he launched the invasion of Ukraine. And he's painting that very much to the domestic population of Russia, who, by all accounts, currently support him. I mean, there's no—yes, there were protests in Russia. Hasn't been a protest in a long time, to be honest. We covered them all at the time. Certainly a certain segment. And the Western press was very enthusiastic.

Yeah, I thought it was great. Yeah, and if there were more, I feel confident we'd be hearing about them. Oh, absolutely. So I think that the domestic populace has probably been ground down. The Russian opposition cannot really credibly, from what I have seen, even the Russian opposition is painted in a very difficult corner because they oppose the war, but they are unable to get around the domestic populace who is asking them, yeah, but the West wants to wage economic war on us. So they are in a very, very tricky situation. Even if Navalny was out of prison, he would find it hard. And he's actually given interviews in the past specifically about how one of the biggest obstacles to him is that Putin is able to weaponize like Western, at least not aggression, obviously, but Western attitudes towards Russia and how Navalny himself by being painted as like

this Western figure finds it difficult to operate actually in Russian circles. So I think the fact that Putin is mocking us, that mocking President Biden continues to speak as if he's the next Peter the Great. And also the actions, as I talked about in my monologue previously, you don't cut off Germany and Italy if you need the cash. If you really need that cash in order to keep the war going, you're not going to do anything about it. Ruble is having its best year of any currency on the globe. And at the same time. They actually are in a position now where the ruble is so strong that they're worried

they actually need to weaken it a little bit. They need to bring the value down because it's causing other problems for them. He made some other comments here that I think are worth highlighting as well. They show that he, you know, after, I think, some genuine concern probably from him and his regime at the beginning of us launching these extraordinary sanctions, he seems to feel pretty comfortable with where they are. And like we just said, I mean, the numbers bear out that for him personally and his regime, they're good for now. He says the people behind sanctions didn't manage to take Russia by storm. The state worked professionally.

Citizens were united and responsible. Gloomy predictions about the Russian economy's future didn't come true. True. The economic blitzkrieg against Russia never had any chance of success. And the weaponry of sanctions is a double-edged sword, which, of course, is a not very veiled threat. European countries dealt a serious blow to their own economy all on their own. Hard to deny that. He claims the EU will lose $400 billion from the sanctions. No idea whether that's true. The EU has lost its

political sovereignty. He goes on to say its elites are dancing to someone else's tune, harming their own population. Europeans and European businesses' real interests are totally ignored and swept aside. So yeah, I mean, he seems pretty cocky, frankly, about exactly how they have weathered the sanctioned storm. And I was talking to Yegor and he was telling me that in terms of the sort of Russian domestic population, after a lot of angst and anxiety and deep concern about how this was going to affect people. And I think, I mean, it definitely has hit ordinary Russian citizens much harder than the regime. But he said at this point, the Russian war on Ukraine has somewhat faded to the background of public life. There isn't the same level of anxiety about what this is going

to mean and what this is going to do. So, you know, this is Putin basically saying, listen, I'm fine. You're not hurting me. We're good to go for the long haul and working both through military action and through, again, much of which is unconscionable, the food blockade, whatever, but to gain leverage so that they are in a stronger position ultimately to negotiate. So the longer that this goes on, the more that there's a grinding stalemate on the battlefield or continued Russian advances on the battlefield, the more desperate that global populations become. And again, this hits the global south the hardest because our sanctions on Russian banks make it basically impossible

for those nations, even if they want to, to be able to buy Russian grain and fertilizer. And we already had regions that were decimated by the climate crisis that were already struggling with crop yields in these years. So you have a massive food crisis in part because of Russia's unconscionable actions and then in part because of our response to the war. So that's where we are. It's a lot of misery. And not that this would be easy to bring to a close or anything like that, but I think everybody should be interested in trying to do what they can to push this thing to an end

through a negotiated settlement so that there can be peace in Ukraine, so that it's not the whole story of inflation, but it is part of it at this point. So we can start to get prices under control and most importantly, so we can start to get prices under control and, most importantly, so we can avoid a conflict with a nuclear superpower because that would be a good thing to do. And domestically, well, President Biden, they're sticking to Putin's price hike. The White House

Twitter feed, I just looked at it, for the last three days has been tweeting almost nothing but Putin's price hike. We put together a supercut just to show you how cringeworthy it is whenever they're trying to sell this to the general population. Let's take a listen. I'm doing everything in my power to blunt Putin's gas price hike. Today's inflation report confirmed what America's already know. Putin's price hike is hitting America hard. Let me start. Let me start with the Putin price hike. So because of the actions we've taken to address the Putin price hike, we are in a better place than we were. You know, Putin, Putin's price hike, inflation. We expect March CPI headline inflation to be extraordinarily elevated due to Putin's price hike. We have to address the Putin price hike, gas hike.

It has, since he started amassing troops earlier this year, the price at the pump has gone up 75 cents. We're doing everything we can to minimize the Putin price hike at home. You know, you can barely make it up, Crystal. It's just they never end Putin's price hike over and over and at home. You know, you can barely make it up, Crystal. It's just they never end Putin's price hike over and over and over again. And, you know, we're about to talk about this in the gas block, but who's buying this?

Like, Putin is mocking you over it. And I guess, look, you know, we shouldn't take that as affirmation, but it just seems to be a joke both to the American people, to the, probably the West, obviously to our adversary, Vladimir Putin. And it's not landing. And it really just absolves President Biden of any responsibility

to do anything about the inflation that we face here. And that's the part, too, is, I mean, I think it is fair to say at this point that there is no doubt the war in Ukraine is one contributing factor to inflation, both food prices and gas prices in particular. But the way that they act like they have no control, they have no say, no agency over their own government's policy. I mean, this is one area when it comes to foreign policy where, first of all, the president has obviously a lot of bandwidth to act on his own. And second of all, where you've had an almost unanimous bipartisan consensus about our actions, our economic warfare with regard to Russia. And so they act like this is just a one-way street. And again, Putin is taking direct action

in terms of the food blockade that is in and of itself wrong and damaging. But they just act like, oh, we can't do it. We have nothing to do with this. We can't do anything about it. When in fact, they've taken extraordinary action. You know, we continue to, I think we just sent like our 12th package of arms. So we are directly involved in this conflict. So to pretend like Putin's price, like nothing we can do is also extraordinarily disingenuous. Well, the media isn't making anything. The media is not making things. This is actually very interesting.

So FAIR, they do phenomenal media analysis, took a look at the way that the media covered Russia's invasion of Ukraine versus our own invasion of Iraq. And lo and behold, the way that the media has covered these two invasion stories, invasion wars, has been radically different. Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen. So what they did is they examined the front page of the New York Times from April 1st to April 30th, 2022, and compared that to May 1 to May 31st, 2003. So this is like the exact same point in these two wars, the Iraq war and Russia's war on Ukraine. And they found incredibly disparate coverage. The media has covered Russia's war on Ukraine dramatically more than they covered our own country's invasion of Iraq. I mean, it should be the complete opposite since our country invading Iraq inherently is, you know, directly about our citizens. Not to say Ukraine, what is happening there doesn't matter.

Obviously, we've covered it a lot, too. But this disparity is insane. So to give you the numbers, Times front page had 179 stories in that one month time frame on Ukraine. 79 of those were, so 179 stories on the Times front page and 79 of those concerned the Ukraine invasion. So 79 out of 179, that's 44%. All but three were located at the top of the page where editors, of course, put the stories they consider to be most important. Fully 75% of all top-of-the-page stories were about the Ukraine war. Not a single day went by without a Ukraine story being published on the top of the page. And on 14 different days, only stories about Ukraine were published on the front page. So really overwhelming

front page, top-of-the- page coverage by the New York Times. On the other hand, so 44% of the front page has been Ukraine during this time period. When it was the Iraq invasion, only 18% of the front page stories were about the Iraq invasion. Only 41, 32 of those were at the top of the page with nine below. And only 25% of all top of the page stories were dedicated to the Iraq war. There's a lot more here too. In particular, they get into how much the Times covered stories of civilian deaths when it came to Ukraine versus our invasion of Iraq. They said that 14 of those front page stories in that one month talked about civilian deaths as a result of the Russian invasion. All of those were at the top of the page.

When it came to Iraq, there was only one story about the civilian deaths that were being caused by our own military. So 14 top of the page stories in one month about civilian deaths. And listen, civilian deaths deserve coverage. I'm not saying those shouldn't have been covered. What I'm saying is when it came to our own civilian body count in Iraq, one story. That was it. Yeah, and I just think, look, for those who are like, why are you drawing on moral equivalence, all of that, the Iraq war matters on such a meta level that it's difficult to underscore. I will always remember, there's a

quote where George W. Bush in 2006 was pressing Putin on instituting democratic reforms. At the time, nobody really knew how things were going to work out with Putin. He was the mayor of St. Petersburg. He seemed like this all over the place politician. He was the very first person in order to call George W. Bush after 9-11 and to express sympathy. He also visited Crawford Ranch in November of 2001. There were a lot of theories that Putin was going to be an ally. He eventually turned against the West completely in 2007. But 2006 was a great preview, which is that George W. Bush said, you need to institute more democratic reforms. And he said, he actually speaks great English, but through an interpreter, he said, we do not want the type of democracy that we see you've given to the people of Iraq.

And I have also seen this also. So I've spoken with people who have, you know, engaged into these bilateral talks with the Chinese. And one of the things that always comes up is that our Taiwan, not military ambassadors, but like attaches, whatever the diplomatic thing is, they'll have bilaterals with their Chinese counterparts. And every single time, they're like, hey, you shouldn't do anything in Taiwan. They're like, oh, yeah, what about Iraq? Tell us about Iraq. Tell us about Iraq. They bring it up constantly. The North Koreans do the same thing.

Every single time, they will have a negotiation with them. We're like, hey, listen, you give up your nukes, your country is going to prosper. They're like, oh, yeah, how did that work out for Muammar Gaddafi? Because he gave up his nukes in 2003, and then you decapitated him, and he got sodomized on television before he was killed and his country was bombed. He's like, so we have no incentive in order to trust you. They also always bring up Saddam Hussein. Their point, apparently, to the negotiators is, well, if Saddam

actually had nukes, it would have been better off whenever you invaded him. The point that I think we're always coming down to is the rest of the world has not forgotten about Iraq, even if a lot of other people have. And in terms of media coverage and more, whenever the Russians and the rest of the world or India, China, and others that aren't buying necessarily all of the West, they remember all of this very vividly. So if we don't have a genuine, honest accounting, especially when you have the people in America who are pushing hardest for war with Russia and more or whatever, under the guise of a no-fly zone and all of that, those are the people who beat the drum for the Iraq war. Shouldn't that

count for something in terms of their analysis, like a real accounting of what went wrong the last time that we listened to them? So that's why I think media coverage on this is dramatically important. And I've made the case before, I really do believe this. It matters more on foreign policy than anything else because the world is a big place. We're not there on the ground in Ukraine or in Iraq or in Afghanistan. So we are really dependent on the media to shape our worldview of both what's happening and what matters. And so imagine if instead of this number of stories about the civilian suffering in Ukraine, imagine we had that about, oh, maybe Palestine or maybe Yemen. Let's take Yemen as a great example, because then when Biden is going hand in hand on bended knee

to MBS to beg them for more oil production, people would be able to see the false morality of thinking that that is somehow better doing business with that regime than the Russian regime. And it's clearly, you know, clearly these are both nefarious regimes that are doing bad things in the world. But we're blinded to what's happening in Yemen because, you know, I'm not saying they never cover it, but is it anything like what we see with Ukraine coverage? Of course not. And so, yes, that really shapes the way people feel about these countries, the way that people think that we should ultimately respond. Afghanistan is the perfect example because you're talking about literally the same country. And when it came to Biden ending the war, there was overwhelming coverage about the civilian population and their pain and their suffering and how we needed to be there for them.

We needed to basically stay forever, keep this war going forever so that we could protect the civilian population. gone and they've moved on and we, by denying them their own central bank reserves, are helping to contribute to mass hunger of all the countries on the planet. Afghanistan is one of the worst in terms of hunger and starvation right now. We are directly complicit. Not a peep. Where are the stories of civilian humanitarian heartache on the front page of the New York Times over that? So that's why these comparisons really matter. And it's just extraordinary that when our own country invaded a sovereign nation on false pretenses, they did not cover it nearly as much or the civilian toll hardly at all. The contrast between how they're covering the Ukraine work, it is night and day. It really is. No, that's right.

All right, guys. Some new comments from President Biden about gas and about how things are going. And this comes against the backdrop of, we'll get to this in just a minute, but this guy is so slow to react. I mean, he really, like, not just on gas prices, on student loan debt relief. I mean, he floats these things he agonizes over for months and it's like jesus christ you're like either do it or don't i don't know what you're doing with these trial balloons and getting people hopeful and anxious and fighting about it and then you just do nothing so in any case here's the latest from president biden about

how he's thinking about our current situation in In time, my dear mother used to have an expression. If anything lousy, something good will happen if you look hard enough for it. We have a chance here to make a fundamental turn toward renewable energy, electric vehicles, and not just electric vehicles, but across the board. And that's something we should be, my team is going to be sitting down with the CEOs

of the major oil companies this week and try to get an explanation how they justify making $35 billion in the first quarter. Are you planning to sit down with oil and gas CEOs, Mr. President? Why is that, sir? Because my team's going to do it. Okay. But you did that with retailers and logistics companies and consumer companies. Because I haven't already done. I mean, there's a few mean, there's a few things.

It's not good enough for you to sit down? What are you doing? To point you here. I mean, that's number one is like, you know, first of all, I think it's extraordinarily weak that your only action with regards to the oil and gas companies is first they sent out a strongly worded letter. Oh, I'm sure.

And then you can't even, as the president, sit down directly and press them to their faces. Drag their asses before Congress. Like, you know, get through the January 6th thing and drag their asses before Congress and make them explain what they're doing. Okay? Push aggressively for a windfall profits tax. I mean, there are so much more that he could be doing. The impotence of just like, oh, my team's going to meet with them and I sent out a strongly worded

letter. Okay. With regards to also, he's not wrong that this should be the moment when we say, hey guys, left, right, center, we got to get through this current crisis, but we got to make sure we're never in this situation again. Galvanize the American people around a nuclear Green New Deal, whatever it is. Yes, aggressively move us towards this future. But you're not doing that. I mean, you can say like, oh, we're going to make lemonade out of lemons like my mom always said or whatever. But you're not actually doing that. The de facto policy of the administration has been we're all just going to pay $5 for gas.

If you happen to be able to afford a $115,000 vehicle for Tesla, good for you. That's basically it. That's the de facto policy. So when he's saying something good will happen, a chance to make fundamental turn towards renewable energy, that's only for people who are already wealthy. Yeah, he's clearly, because they're not doing it, talking about government strategy to make that affordable, accessible, and a reality for people. Yeah, the only impact's going to be like a few more upper middle class people will be able to buy Teslas. Might be able to buy Tesla or a plug-in hybrid or whatever. And look, if you can afford it, go for it. Honestly, I love electric cars. I think they're sweet and I think they're super cool. But

the problem that I have with this is that I think Biden is doing tremendous damage to the cause for renewable energy because he's basically telling poor people, yeah, you're just going to starve and we're not going to do anything for you in the interim period. So they have no choice but to say, okay, screw it. Then we need to drill as much as possible for oil and gas and to have as much oil and gas and plentiful as possible because we don't have any trust in the elites in order to allay our actual cost increase, which is true. I mean, I don't know how you can not look at this current situation and not see that. So I think he's doing a tremendous damage to a cause I deeply care about, which is electric vehicles and the case

for renewable energy, which is genuinely cost effective and makes America stronger and more resilient. And second, you know, okay, even on oil, I have a real problem with dragging them before Congress and not doing. Look, we know the problem as you lay it out on Bill Maher, which is we have a Wall Street imbalance from the oil companies. We can fix it today with the Strategic Petroleum Reserve by buying at a certain reserve price. There's all sorts of things that Biden can do. He has the authority under the 1975—I lower it for the case of oil in the interim in order to at least not have price disparity across the country. And all they can come up with, this is the really egregious part, let's throw this on the screen, is that he may have a decision

on the federal gas tax holiday. Now look, here's the problem with the gas tax holiday. First of all, most gas taxes are state and local. They have nothing to do with the feds. If they did repeal or pause the fed gas tax, it would be 18 cents a gallon. That may have made a difference in the past. I'm not saying that that won't save some people around this country some money. However, that also is a de facto surrender because the gas tax actually pays for a lot of environmental regulation. I'm not saying everybody should have to pay more, but what I'm saying is that the feds could actually do something on the front end of supply and go into the market and reduce the price a hell of a lot more than 18 cents a gallon by not pursuing some idiotic, ham-handed pause because, okay, then what?

Are we just not going to fund? Like, how are we going to fund, first of all, the stuff that the gas tax genuinely does pay for? Many of the states who have repealed their gas tax have much more of an impact. Like Pennsylvania, for example, has like a 60-cent gas tax. Georgia has actually repealed its gas tax, but they all have balanced budget amendments, et cetera. But whenever I see this, actually, I've even seen, we had Skanda Amarnath on our show. He's like, this is so dumb because you're just, you're basically taking away from the cause without dealing with any of the supply at the front. And then here's the thing, Crystal, they won't even do it. They're considering it. Yeah. And they have been considering it, per Jeff Stein, for four months. Okay, guys,

figure it out. All right. Do it. Don't do it. I think it is a little bit complicated because you can see the case. All right. Let's just give people a little bit of relief. Let's do something. This is something we can do. But to your point, this is a way of avoiding having to directly confront what is an incredibly powerful and moneyed interest in this nation. Because ultimately, you know, this is a way to sort of signal to consumers that you're doing something for them. But in reality, just basically keep the status quo. I mean, ultimately, this is a subsidy to a further subsidy to the oil and gas companies that have been screwing us over. So that's why this is the only thing they can sort of come to of like,

maybe we'll do this. And supply and demand being what they are, if you do reduce the price, you're likely to have more people driving more miles, which is just going to lift the price again. I have no problem even with people driving more miles. I would love to reduce the price, but we have to do so in a way that actually solves the problem. Because then when does the pause go away? I'm not even really, I would like them to do something, right? I'm not even really opposed to this. It's just,

it's dramatically inferior to other things they could be doing, number one. And number two, the hand wringing about everything is just driving me insane. This presidency, yes, has been hit with a lot of crises, thing after thing after thing, no doubt about it. And they dither on everything. I just don't think you can deny the fact that they are so behind the curve. And, you know, again, on the student loan debt relief, it's the same story. How many months have they been playing with the idea of floating numbers, maybe we'll means test it at this level, maybe we'll do 10,000, maybe we won't do it at all. It's like, I mean, just from a political perspective, this is so stupid. Either do it or don't do it.

But don't float this, get people's hopes up, and then sit around and do what for months and months while this hangs out there. So they also say in the same CNN article that they're still thinking about the student loan debt relief. And they promise they may have an answer sometime soon. We heard that from him before. Remember, didn't he say before, like, next week I'm going to decide. That was like two months ago. It's a total, their lack of ability to respond in a, you know, any sort of an appropriate timeframe, let alone anticipate things that are coming at them is absolutely pathetic. The baby formula

crisis, another perfect example, right? You knew about it and you waited until newborns were in desperate straits of having to be admitted to the ICU before you did a damn thing about it. So yeah, it's pathetic. And we got to show this, that they're also considering doing something which would only further increase the price of oil. Let's put this up there on the screen because these people are idiots. Currently, the US is in talks with the European allies to put price caps on Russian oil that they're willing to buy. This is from the European Union. Now, what have we learned throughout this entire thing about when the West tries to pull away from Russian oil?

What happens, Crystal? The Russians say, okay, we'll sell it to you at that discounted price, and then we're going to make a killing by raising the global price, then you are simply going to increase the incentive to the Russians to only export even more oil to the Chinese and the Indians while pushing up the price for your own citizens. Because let's say they do cap Russian oil. Great. Well, they got to buy the rest of it from somewhere, you know, where that's going to be here or, you know, Venezuela or some other country, which also affects the global price of oil. So all they're doing is dithering currently on gas and then considering more idiotic moves

in order to make us all pay for even more. I mean, it would probably skyrocket the crude oil price to like 200 or something dollars a barrel, which is insanity. The expert here says, so this article says Russia, for example, could retaliate by holding oil from the market, which is insanity. The expert here says, so this article says Russia, for example, could retaliate by holding oil from the market, which again, we read to you some of Putin's comments, threatening all sorts of action, you know, in retaliation for our actions against them. So they could retaliate by holding oil from the market. That could immediately drive prices higher as the world's oil producers have very little spare capacity after years of underinvestment in oil fields and refineries.

And then they quote an expert here who says every time there's talk about sanctions, the price goes up. I also think it's funny that just at a meta level, these same neoliberal economists, if you floated price controls with regards to – Oh, they would freak out. Oh, you're stupid. You're like a knuckle drag. You don't understand economics. But then suddenly when it comes to like punishing Putin, then it's like, huh, maybe we should do price controls. How about that? We're truly being run by geniuses. Speaking of geniuses, let's talk about Eric Greitens in the state of Missouri. Almost certainly to be the next senator from that state. And that is a grim reality. He

put out a new ad, which has actually been taken off of Facebook, Twitter, and others. Let's see if YouTube penalizes us for doing the news and just showing you something which is newsworthy. Let's take a listen to his new ad called Rhino Hunting. Eric Greitens, Navy SEAL. And today, we're going rhino hunting. The rhino feeds on corruption and is marked by the stripes of cowardice. Join the MAGA crew. Get a rhino hunting permit. There's no bagging limit, no tagging limit, and it doesn't expire until we save our country. Oh, something vaguely sociopathic and evil about that gentleman.

Crystal, so there's a lot to say. Number one, I thought you were going hunting, so why did you breach a door and clear it? Right. It's a military operation. Going to some suburban house. So I have some questions about what exactly the symbolism of that is supposed to mean. Also, why do you just bust into the house? They didn't actually kill any rhinos.

So it wasn't even a successful hunt. Now, beyond the symbolism and the idiocy of it, there's a lot to say, which is that I think Eric knows exactly what he's doing. He obviously has been credibly accused of assault by his wife and of his own children. He is clearly a psychopath, alleged psychopath, lawyers. If you look at how he behaved in his affair with that hairdresser, taking weird photos of her in his basement and threatening blackmail, this is why he was forced to resign as governor in the first place. That and corruption scandals. Don't forget about that.

Don't forget. I forget exactly what he did, but he used his campaign. Anyway, he violated charity donor list for campaign fundraising. And there were other issues which violates campaign finance law directly. That's ultimately what then Attorney General Josh Hawley got him basically dead to rights on, forced him to resign. So he has now rehabilitated his career by going all in on Stop the Steal. He's a favorite of Steve Bannon, of many of the MAGA right, goes in Arizona, talking about the Arizona that, look, frankly, you and I are talking about it. Everybody in the media is like, this is disgusting, an escalation of rhetoric, which it certainly is. But as we saw with Trump, the more you get hated by the media, the better that is for you in a Republican primary.

Yeah. This is what happens when your entire political movement boils down to triggering the libs. Yeah. I mean, it kind of works. That's what you get. Yeah. I mean, it kind of works. That's what you get. Yeah. I mean, the more that liberal media is, you know, outraged and running their garments and tearing their hat, which I understood the ad is disturbing and weird and bizarre. I mean, and just like cringeworthy also. So I'm definitely on team. This ad is terrible. But yeah, when your

whole politics is like triggering the libs is the way to get ahead, this will probably be successful. No, I think it certainly will. And you also look at the polling. So that's on the screen, which is that Eric is doing pretty well here in the primary in terms of where things stand. He's got 24% right now. Schmidt is at 21%. Hartzler is at 18%. Now, Trump has not yet come in, but I think it's very noteworthy that the last three polls out of this primary all have Eric Greitens up on an average of 3.5, but he was up by nine points just a month ago, up six points in the Hill's latest Emerson poll. That just shows you that he is, I wouldn't say he's a lock, but I think he's pretty damn close. I also do want to

say this because I think it matters. Let's throw this on the screen. Eric is not even technically a Navy SEAL. The Navy SEALs did not let him back in after he resigned in disgrace. And in fact, the Navy would not let him back into active duty service at all. It's not even really clear whether Eric Greitens is still even in the Navy. I do wonder what the Navy SEAL and the special operations community think of him. Even whenever he was running, there was some grumbling that he was portraying himself as like some big badass who had been on a bunch of missions and tours and really wasn't the case at all, even though he branded himself as such.

I guess he wouldn't be the first guy in the SEAL teams or whatever in order to do that. But from what I hear, the people who are legit and did like 12 tours and all that, they think he's completely full of it. But at the end of the day, Crystal, things are working out pretty well for Mr. Eric. And Trump himself has taken notice. Put this on the screen. We brought this back to you a few months ago, Things are working out pretty well for Mr. Eric. And Trump himself has taken notice. Put this on the screen. We brought this back to you a few months ago,

which is that Trump is really leading towards endorsing Eric Greitens just as he endorsed Doug Mastriano, specifically because Eric talks about how he would be Mitch McConnell's nightmare. He specifically said, no more rhinos. I'm not voting for Mitch McConnell. And he continues these ads.

He continues the Stop the Steal campaign and more. He's endeared himself dramatically to Trump. He actually met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago. I think that if Eric is leading, going into the primary, which all indications currently say that he is, I think that Trump is going to endorse him. And then I think he's going to be the next senator from that state. It seems likely. That last article, they say Trump remarked that Greitens was performing well, most important quality for him, and told the former governor he had an open mind about who he may support. According to a person familiar with the discussion, Greitens was later invited to attend an event held by the pro-Trump super PAC the next day on the grounds of Mar-a-Lago. So, yeah, I mean, this is a person who just a few years ago was in complete disgrace after this scandal broke about how he had her blindfolded and tied up, took some blackmail naked picture of this woman he was having an affair with.

Something that, by the way, not only has that woman said, but his ex-wife has also confirmed. Right. has that woman said, but his ex-wife has also confirmed. And then the latest allegations that came out of court proceedings, this wasn't like some liberal media invented, this came directly from his ex-wife in court proceedings over custody of their children, revealed allegations of physical abuse against both her and the children. And he had been leading in the polls. That caused him to fall behind into second and third place, depending on the poll. And now, yeah, he's risen back up. And listen, Missouri is a conservative state at this point. Very likely that whoever the Republican nominee is, especially in this year, ends up being the senator from this state. But if there was anyone that Democrats could beat,

it would be Eric Greitens. I mean, you were putting up the weakest candidate that you possibly could. And we've seen in other instances, I mean, Todd Akin in Missouri, where this does end up, voters take a look and say, you know what, I want nothing to do with that. Or what's his face? Why do I always forget his name? Roy Moore. Yeah, Roy Moore. Same deal in even redder state where Democrats are able to take advantage of someone who has significant unacceptable scandals. Democrats have, I think, a strong candidate in Lucas Kuntz, but he also is facing a very

difficult primary against some like heiress, wealthy heiress lady. It's like, you know, sort of establishment aligned. So we'll see what ultimately happens here. But it's a real, I think it is a very revealing statement on what plays in the Republican Party now, what motivates the base, and what it looks like when your whole project just collapses down to, like, what you're in opposition to, you know, like the more that the media hates you, the better it is for you. And it doesn't matter if there's like a legitimate reason for them to be criticizing. It doesn't matter.

We're not going to pretend and say like, oh, this ad is so bad, like people will come to their senses. I'm like, no, the more that the media, frankly, the more that we talk about it and say it's irresponsible or whatever, the Washington Post is like, this is horrific. The more that the tech companies take it off, the better it's going to be for Mr. Eric down there. But it's still noteworthy, just from an analytical point of view. I'm like, this is where politics are

trending, people, so buckle up. Buckle up. Buckle up for this next segment, too, because I know you're excited to hear what Hillary Rodham Clinton has to say about politics. She did a big interview with Financial Times. Lots of it was cringeworthy, including there was a section where she was talking about Putin, and she was, like, very upset about his manspreading, which I thought, of all the things you're going to be upset with Putin about, that's the one. Of course she is. That's the one we're going to lean into.

But the piece that really caught people's attention, and we can go ahead, we got the tear sheet, we can put it up on the screen, is she was asked, and again, I have no idea why you would ask this lady this question other than to do the polar opposite of what she says, but she was asked about Democrats and how best to win elections.

So this writer says, I say that Democrats seem to be going out of their way to lose elections by elevating activist causes, notably the transgender debate, which are relevant only to a small minority. What sense does it make to depict J.K. Rowling as a fascist? To my surprise, Clinton shares the premise of my question, quote, we are standing on the precipice of losing our democracy and everything that everybody else cares about then goes out the window, she says. Look, the most important thing is to win the next election. The alternative is so frightening that whatever does not help you win should not be a priority. And she named checks defund the police because, of course, that's the

go-to boogeyman for all of these people. I mean, listen, however you feel about transgender issues, however you feel about defund the police. First of all, I would say that outside of the activist community, this is not the focus of what Democrats are talking about right now, by and large. Yeah, it's not 2020 anymore. But number two, like we were talking about this. At this point, what does AOC saying Latinx have to do with your gas prices? I mean, it's just so mind-numbingly stupid to think that that's the biggest problem that Joe Biden is facing right now. It is very clear. The issue Joe Biden is facing is you have like 75% of the country that says we're on the wrong track.

You've got massive inflation. You've got people struggling to put food on their table and put gas in their gas tanks. It is that simple. And you cannot blame the left for any of that. Your dude is in charge. So if you want to point fingers, look to him. But once again, I don't know why we're asking Miss, like, I don't know if I should campaign in Michigan for advice on winning elections. Oh, absolutely.

And I think it's also fascinating that, you know, she engages in this, like, we are about to lose our democracy, the precipice, all of that. Well, who actually scores well whenever you talk about democracy? This poll is so funny. Let's throw this on the screen. This is the latest poll from Fox News. And yes, I know it's from Fox, but it's not like their polling division has anything. It's generally pretty good. They say, well, which party is trying to win and preserve democracy? And they say that Republicans, by a margin, yes, of only one vote, actually cares about preserving American democracy.

It's even worse. They say, who would do a better job of preserving American democracy? Okay. So they say, well, it's a virtual tie within the actual American people. And also, don't forget this. Remember the K&S rule of polling. You should generally add plus seven whenever it comes to a Republican, given how we saw the 2020 election results unfold. Both the margin of error, which they are tied in in this actual poll, and the general trend to undersample at the very least Trump Republicans or Trump-type support. It is likely that the Republicans actually do come out ahead on preservation of American democracy.

So what does that tell you? You can't on the one hand say that preserving, we're on the precipice of losing our democracy. The only thing that matters is to win the election. And then turn around and look at the issues that people care about and say, yeah, those aren't the issues you should care about. And we're not going to do anything about those issues. Right. If you actually think the stakes of this election are existential, which, you know, we've talked about the people who are the dude in Pennsylvania has a chance to, you know, appoint a secretary. Like these are these are not good things, right? If you genuinely think that this election is existential,

then deliver for the American people so they want to vote for you. How about that? And number two, I mean, so much of it, and I know Hillary is not at least the actual head of the Democratic Party anymore, even though she still has a lot of sway, apparently, and still gets asked questions like this. But you also can't say that the stakes are existential and then prop up candidates who, in Republican primaries, who are, you know, die hard, stop the Steelers, and play with fire like

that. And again, Pennsylvania is the perfect example there. So everything about this is so silly and disconnected and condescending and just absurd that, again, the only reason to ask her this question is to do the polar opposite of what she's saying. She's not wrong that Democrats do need to win elections if they, you know, do actually care about this. But I just don't think that she knows a damn thing about winning elections. I mean, that's actually what it comes down to. That's why I don't really know why it was even worth, like, sitting down for her in such a long spread. As you said, also, the idea that she thinks one of the biggest problems with Putin is that he was manspreading, that actually really ties back to that monologue you did

about how she really does typify the tipping point of modern feminism and turning people against it. That poll result actually that we cited has only been affirmed even more recently, which is that older males, older white males specifically, are actually more comfortable with the idea of feminism than younger white males today in 2022. Because younger white males, I mean, I don't want to say it was only Hillary Clinton, but if you're a younger male, male Democrat or Republican and you're told feminism is like making sure Hillary Clinton can be president of the United States, you might feel like this may not be for me. And not only that, but like if you're on the other side of that, if you were a Bernie Sanders supporter in the Democratic primary, that you're a sexist and you're anti-feminist. Like anyway, go back and watch my monologue for fuller thoughts on that topic,

because I do think it is a very interesting and illustrative trend that is worth digging into. Oh, absolutely. I think she's absolutely at the center of it. And I think that Hillary, the fact that she talks this way in this apocalyptic language, and then that the Republicans are actually beating them whenever it comes to the genuine polling results, that tells you a lot about the actual political efficacy of her argument and then of the Democratic establishment today. Okay. Indeed. Let's talk about Taylor Lorenz. We've been saving this one. Another feminist here. I've been relishing bringing this all to you. We have two important Taylor updates. And I just want to say at the top, like, why do we focus on Taylor beyond her

lies, obfuscations, shoddy reporting. She is the symbol of new journalism, of the way that younger journalists in these elite institutions behave. They abandon all pretense of fairness. They use their positions in order to directly target their political opponents. And then they lie, obfuscate, and violate basic journalistic ethics whenever they do so. And then when they get called on it, they accuse you of harassing them. They weaponize the well-meaning language of inclusivity and of harassment in order to get these elite institutions in order to bend to their will, thereby destroying what made them great in the first place. Well, we have some news on that. Let's put this up there on the screen. As a result of Taylor Lorenza's shoddy reporting by saying that she

had contacted two YouTubers, despite the fact that she hadn't, then trying to throw her editor under the bus, she has now been demoted from the feature staff to the technology team. Furthermore, the number two editor at the Washington Post has been asked to review all of her articles before publication. That is about as much of a professional slap as it gets in the business, which is when I worked as a journalist, of course, you had editors and more who would sign off on your work. Nobody was combing through being like, are you sure this is true? All of this, my bosses had trust in me that anything that I was filing for publication was done in basis with the ethics and of both professionally and of the institution. So to have it so that all your work has to get reviewed

line by line before it goes up by a top editor, that doesn't happen in these newsrooms without major cause. Now, look, they claim the Post continues to say it was an editor's fault that they said that Taylor had contacted these people. But it's not just about that. This is about the doxing also of the libs of TikTok, the way that she continues to comport herself on social media, which is just like horrifically embarrassing for her personally, but also for the broader institution that she's attached. I mean, remember, she worked over at the New York Times, and she trashed the Times on her way out for not letting her be more unhinged and vocal enough online.

That's basically the direct reason for why she left. And she still got hired by Jeff Bezos' newspaper, the number two newspaper in the country. Yeah, she thinks of herself as a brand rather than as a journalist. And that's fine. You can be a brand. And she still got hired by Jeff Bezos' newspaper, the number two newspaper in the country. Yeah. She thinks of herself as a brand. Yeah, that's right. Rather than as a journalist. And that's fine.

You can be a brand, but then don't go work at one of these papers. Right. And the other problem with her journalism, as we've talked about before, is it's often, like, thinly disguised opinion. Yeah. Like, meant to prove a point. Like remember when she quote unquote reported on the end of the Nina Jankowicz, like whatever their, you know, ministry of truth thing was called. I still can't remember. It was like something real dystopian. A word of disinformation or whatever. Yeah, that's it. Disinformation, governor and sport. Her angle wasn't like, you know, just telling the facts of, okay, they decided they got pushed back and this, you know, they decided that this wasn't really worth it.

And they're putting a pause on it, which is a good scoop that she got. Instead, it was some tangled ideological narrative about how, you know, there was a coordinated bullying smear campaign against Nina Jankowicz that was, you know, led by a right wing mob and all this stuff. And it was clearly projection of how she feels. You know, she put Nina Jankowicz in the role of how Taylor feels that she's mistreated online and these coordinated attacks. You're like, coordinated attacks? It's just Twitter. And by the way, it's, as I said at the time, like, it's not a bad thing for the administration to be responsive to public criticism. Yeah, that's a great point. Which, by the way, did not just come exclusively from the right.

There was plenty of right-wing critics, but there was, you know, free speech organizations. There were people like myself on the left. There were all kinds of people who were concerned about this. And even mainstream reporters who were like, what even is this and why can't you explain it properly? Oh, we've talked about that before, which is that, look, if you want to be an op-ed writer, be my guest. There's nothing wrong with that. You know, the world needs them, I guess. Look, there's obviously an elite liberal market for people who would read Taylor's columns. Yes.

That's genuinely fine. But don't be reporting, quote unquote, for the newsroom and egregiously violating journalistic standards and ethics. And also, this is how she behaves on a more personal level. Let's show this on the screen. So Matt Iglesias tweets out, some personal news. I have contracted the novel coronavirus. Frankly, I think the virus should respect Father's Day more than this. FYI, all future typos are due to long COVID. Okay. I mean, funny, I guess. Dad joke. All right.

Taylor replies, I'm glad it's a joke for you, Matt, and that you're lucky enough to get access to great care. For those who have had their lives destroyed by the virus and who have had loved ones die or suffer with LC, it's not funny. Hope you can have a little bit more empathy, especially today. And I actually loved even more is a guy replied to her and goes,

hey, Taylor, I literally was in a 40-day coma as a result of COVID. Can I joke about long COVID? Because I thought it was funny. Please tell us who has the permission to do this. And she's like, well, you can joke about it because you're somebody afflicted. But somebody who's not afflicted should. First of all, long COVID. I'm not going to say it's fake, but I think it has a high incidence of fakery online for both, you know, claiming some sort of victimhood status and masking some what I think are some serious mental issues that are going on.

I think long COVID is real. I think there's been insufficient research into what it is, what it means, the extent of it, et cetera. But what Taylor, I mean, God, just lighten up. And like she acts like, oh, she's the queen of empathy. Okay. We see that in your reporting. Right. I mean, that was the one that, you know, the one that really pissed me off was the way

that she went after legal Bytes and that umbrella guy, and actually by extension, the entire independent media ecosystem in the wake of the Depp-Herd trial. Because she did this whole article about how basically these creators were just grifters. This was the implication of her quote-unquote reporting that these creators were just grifters who just jumped on to the next hot thing, which wasn't remotely true. I mean, Legal Bytes does legal analysis. That's what she does. She's a great channel. Previously, you know, pop culture sort of legal trials that pop into the mainstream because it's a good way to illustrate these legal principles and people are interested in it. So, okay, what's wrong with that? Nothing. And she slammed directly in the piece, the lack of journalistic standards in the

very piece where she is so sloppily violating journalistic standards that the reporting was her own colleagues were completely enraged and disgusted because this is someone who has an extraordinarily large profile, who was brought in as this sort of like star reporter, and then engages in these really sloppy techniques that just reflect poorly on the whole organization. And, you know, I got to say, I wasn't that into the DeptHard trial like while it was happening. But since then, you know, I've watched some videos. The amount of actually good information on YouTube is stunning. I'm learning this about everything. If I want to learn about my health, I go to YouTube.

If I want to learn about whatever, some of the smartest people who convey information are all on YouTube bypassing all of the traditional means of communication. So, you know, I even, I sent you that video about that guy who caught NBC editing the Amber Heard's most recent interview. You want to learn that from the media?

This is, these people are experienced and they know what they're talking about. This is part of what came out, I think, in my appearance on Bill Maher. Oh, yeah. Because we kind of, you know, I just don't consume a lot of like cable news. I really don't consume cable news at all. Yeah, I don't watch it, period. So, you know, my information diet is a lot of alternative media and then it's print media, you know. And so it was sort of stunning to me the holes in the timeline of what had happened

during the COVID crash and what the policies were and how we got to where we ultimately are. But it does just show you how sort of shallow a lot of the mainstream, quote unquote, reporting and narrative is, that if you actually do want to go deep on a topic, which we do oftentimes, especially on things that are developing and we're trying to wrap our heads around. We spent 30 minutes on Ukraine today. You're going to get way more from an in-depth YouTube channel or podcast than you are from many other places. Oh, absolutely. All right, Sokka, what are you looking at? I've covered the dangers

of TikTok here for a long time. Leaving aside its technology, whether it's good for people's brains or not, is a basic fact. The most used app by American teenagers, and increasingly every American, is not only from China, but directly controlled by China. The Trump administration was too incompetent to actually follow through on a ban. The Biden administration is too captured by the powerful China lobby to actually do anything about it, and would probably fall for the fake criticism that banning TikTok is racist against Chinese people. But for years, the TikTok lobby has said people like me are crazy, that the TikTok US has a different data server than its Chinese parent company ByteDance, and that their data is not accessed by the parent company. Now, that is really dumb.

Why would a company who owns one of the most valuable technology platforms on planet Earth not use it for commercial reasons? But now we finally have the truth. ByteDance and TikTok's lobbyists were lying the entire time. And we know because of some great new reporting at BuzzFeed News. BuzzFeed was provided with 14 statements, recordings from nine different TikTok employees that indicate engineers in China had direct access to U.S. data between September of 2021 to January of 2022 at the very least. That directly contradicts sworn testimony by TikTok executives before Congress that a U.S.-based team was the one

who decided who got access to their data, when and during an independent process. The magnitude of the lies that TikTok told really are stunning, given the recordings that BuzzFeed has. In one instance, they literally have a member of the TikTok trust and safety team saying, quote, everything is seen in China. In another meeting, they refer to their Chinese bosses as the, quote, master admin who has, quote, access to everything. When TikTok was confronted by this, here's what they had to say, quote, we know we're among the most scrutinized platforms from a security standpoint. We aim to remove any doubt about the security of U.S. user data. That's why we hire experts in their fields,

continually work to validate our security standards, and bring in reputable, independent third parties to test our defenses. In other words, it's freaking true. And they know their product is so addictive, most of you won't care, and will keep using it. I honestly don't mind at this point. I get it. It seems fun. Truly, it actually is not on you to answer these questions. It's on the government to keep people safe. And by that measure, it is obvious beyond a shadow of a doubt that TikTok should be banned immediately. The algorithm is not that hard to do. They were just the first to market. It can

easily be replicated within a year of going away. It would have a major replacement. We already saw that in India, where it was banned not that long ago. But I think I should also address some of the most common arguments on why it should be banned. First I hear is this. What, do you only care when American companies steal people's data and have access to it? That is a fair point, but there's a critical difference. There's a huge difference between Facebook, the corporation, and the U.S. government. Facebook, Google, Apple, Twitter, other tech companies, yes, they have been caught by Snowden working in some form with the NSA, but they still have legal rights under U.S. law. Apple literally told the FBI to screw off

and that they would not open the phone of a terrorist. Facebook, Google, Twitter, and others at least require a subpoena signed off by a judge before they will turn your data over to the government. In China, none of that exists. There's no court system. If they want something, they take it. There's no burden of proof. If you're the son, the daughter of somebody who works in the U.S. government or military, they 100% beyond a shadow of a doubt are pulling your data to glean even the tiniest bit of information. Second is this. Let's say you don't care about privacy. Well, I think that if we're going to ruin our culture, then our people should be at least the ones who are doing it.

In China, their TikTok is not like ours. They have major restrictions on when children can use it, and the content they incentivize and push on their population is highly regulated. All of their TikTok celebrates achievements in math, science, music, literature, and other areas that are deemed necessary to the state and to the progress of the Chinese people. To be clear, I 100% do not want the U.S. government to do that. But I also don't want the Chinese government artificially pushing narratives from gender ideology to excessive entertainment on our populace for a soft power gain of trying to weaken the American youth.

If we're going to poison our youth's mind, promote fat culture and other stupid stuff, at least let it be known it is being done for commercial American profit, not at the explicit behest of a U.S. adversary that wants to hurt the U.S. population. There's only one way to guarantee that outcome, and that is to ban TikTok to see if the exact same type of content is promoted. Personally, I do not actually think it would change that much, to be honest. But let's say it's 5% to 10%. Screw it. It's still worth it. Third is the final argument, which is Americans should be free to say whatever they want in America. TikTok has documented instances of censoring content on their platform that is critical of the CCP, of Hong Kong protesters, or of Uyghur genocide. In this country, you should

be able to say whatever the hell you want about America, China, about whomever within the bounds of the First Amendment. And then fourth, and actually finally, is the basic issue of fairness. Right now, Google, Facebook, Twitter, and many others, U.S. technology companies are banned in China. Why should they get away with banning our flagship tech companies when one of theirs explodes in popularities here in the United States? We can make a deal with them, I guess. You can stay here if you let us in there. That's not going to happen, and we all know it. This backwards relationship is typical of all of our trading relations with China. The bottom line, though, is the chief reason the Biden administration has leaked that they don't want to do this is because they're afraid of being

called racist. They are so afraid, in fact, they recently shut down the China-focused anti-spying program, out of concern that it was being applied in a racist fashion. This is after multiple documented instances of Chinese citizens coming to the United States, gaining access to cutting-edge R&D programs or secret U.S. government-backed science programs, and then sending data back to Beijing. In fact, after the Biden administration closed the China initiative, their own Justice Department was still forced to charge a pair of Chinese researchers for trying to steal proprietary mRNA technology and send it back to China. The Chinese themselves have a term for this. It's called Baizhou. Baizhou roughly translates to white liberal progressive views, which are, quote, obsessed with political correctness and who are ignorant, arrogant Westerners who, quote, pity the rest of the world and think they

are saviors. I have an idea. Let's just prove them wrong. Let's prove that we are at least as smart as they are. And let's just ban TikTok now. Now, I'm not stupid. I know it's not going to happen, Crystal. But look. And if you want to hear my reaction to Sagar's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. Crystal, what are you taking a look at? Well, guys, we seem to be standing at a true precipice, a real turning point in political, economic, and world affairs. Surrounded by chaos and uncertainty with really only one thing seemingly certain. The future is going to look nothing like the past. And that future is coming at us really fast.

The recent regimes of frothing easy money from the Fed or the U.S. being the sole superpower and of capital above all else as the only possible economic model, it looks increasingly likely that all of that might be ending. It's much harder to say what comes next, of course. I'm going to explore each of those topics over the next few shows, but I want to start today with this question. Is the economy as we know it over? So here's the backstory. You guys know some of this. In the last decade, the Fed has taken extraordinary actions twice to rescue the stock market, once during the housing crash and once during COVID. In both instances, as the market

plummeted, the Fed swooped in, injecting trillions of dollars in order to backstop losses in the stock market and during the COVID crisis, also in debt markets as well. Those actions were undertaken for really understandable reasons, but they've had massive consequences on our economic life. Now, it helps to visualize how unusual those actions have been. So take a look at that chart that's on the top of your screen. You can see for most of the entire history of the Fed, the Fed didn't really own a lot of stuff, didn't have a lot of assets on their balance sheet. Then with the housing crisis, you can see that little orange line jump up significantly before continuing a slow and steady rise through most of the 2010s. Then we go through a period of leveling off and then begin

to even decline as the Fed began the long march down from its massive spending spree. But lo and behold, COVID hits, the market tanks, and the Fed leaps into action once again, swelling its balance sheet to the equivalent of over a third of the U.S. economy. Now, listen, there are complicated mechanics here, but the basics are really pretty simple. Fed used trillions of dollars to prop up the prices of basically every class of asset that rich people hold. It also fueled a huge boom in the housing market where prices have escalated at insane rates with one very notable setback in 2008 and 2009. In addition to pouring money into the markets, the Fed has also, more or less, kept interest rates at zero for the entire last decade. This bottoming out of interest rates was actually the culmination of four decades of lowering rates and fits and starts. So we've been inching our way towards the current easy money froth for more or less the entire neoliberal era. Those low rates led to the mass availability of cheap credit.

That's not inherently necessarily a bad thing. In fact, at a time when we desperately need to upgrade our infrastructure, transition to green energy, invest in universal health care, education, and generally set ourselves up for a new century of innovation and climate-friendly growth, cheap interest rates could have fueled a bonanza of a long-term, thoughtful investment that might have paid dividends for generations. Instead of doing that, we got Uber and a hundred different Uber spinoffs, most of which were actually unprofitable and could only persist in their business models, which often undercut stable middle-class employment, by the way, through the mass availability of cheap credit and venture capital's willingness to indefinitely subsidize their losses.

The expectation was that eventually, if they had a massive enough customer base, one day they could make it profitable. Derek Thompson, who we're talking to on Thursday, has a phenomenal article out, and we're looking forward to speaking with him on that, as he writes in a piece called The End of the Millennial Lifestyle Subsidy. In 2019, if you woke up on a Casper mattress, worked out with a Peloton, Ubered to a WeWork, ordered DoorDash for lunch, took a Lyft home, made a Blue Apron meal, and ordered ice cream via Postmates, you interacted with eight companies that collectively lost about $15 billion in one year. And subsidies for gig work? That was actually on the better end of what our economy actually did with all of this easy money. Entire books have been written on the way Fed policy shaped our economy, fueling inequality as those who owned assets got richer and richer and everyone else was left behind, creating an illusion of affluence as consumers and companies

access cheap credit and consume subsidized services. It contributed to the financialization of pretty much everything. Companies could borrow money cheaply and were rewarded for funneling it directly to their investors through stock buybacks or lending it out at higher rates, so that rather than investing in production, labor, or innovation, they were really just feeding money into a loop with no real economic gain. It also floated zombie companies who lost money every year but kept lurching forward like the undead on a merry-go-round of cheap credit. And of course, it created speculative manias like the crypto bubble, NFTs, meme stocks, and the like as retail investors at the tail end of the cycle were convinced that they'd be fools to miss out on all the good times.

The last part, by the way, is almost exactly what happened in the buildup to the stock market crash of 1929, as stock market gambling went mainstream. Regular consumers were pulled into the market buying stocks on margin. Disaster ultimately ensued, of course. They were assured at every turn they couldn't possibly lose because betting on the stock market going up forever was a bet on the very promise of America. Now, the overall effect of the past decade has been to make our economy considerably more fake. Fake prices, fake asset bubbles, fake billionaires, fake companies, fake let's go brand and meme coins. Restoring some sense of actual connection to real economic value, connecting

prices to reality is ultimately necessary. But that doesn't mean it's not going to be extremely painful in the meantime. Nor is it clear that the Fed will actually even go through with it. If the markets go full 1929 crash, are they really going to keep pushing the rates higher and unloading assets off the balance sheet? Should they? There are literally no good answers here. Every choice at this juncture involves a lot of pain. And I would be lying to you if I told you I know exactly how this is going to play out, how it's going to change your life, other than some really specific things that seem pretty clear. Mortgage rates already spiking at record rates. Those subsidized companies are getting real with what it actually costs to have a human hand-delivered Doritos to your door.

And we are very likely to have a full-on recession with all of its attendant misery and ultimately death. The real horror of this situation is the people who got rich from the Fed policy, they're also going to be the people in position to profit like vultures from all of that pain, scooping up even more assets, consolidating more monopolies as homeowners are foreclosed on and small businesses go under. And those who got in on the tail end of the boom, thinking it was their turn to get ahead, they are going to be crushed. And only time will tell whether or not we are too far gone down the path of financialization, zombie companies, pumping up schemes, and venture delusions to ever make it back to reality.

I really feel like we are at this moment of complete reality. And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. So joining us now to break down the results of the French legislative elections, and also, of course, most importantly, what they mean for all of us, is Daniel Nishanyan. He is the editor-in-chief of Bolts Magazine.

Great to see you, Daniel. It's great to be back. Thanks for having me. We have your preliminary tweet, and I don't know if some of these results have shifted, but let's go ahead and put this up on the screen. So, likely break down a full new French parliament going off of Le Monde France. Macron, he's of course the incumbent president. He got about 249 seats, that's about 102 down from where he was. The left coalition got 155. That's a major gain, but not everything that they wanted. The right, quite surprisingly, the right got 71. And then Le Pen's party, which is the sort of far right party,

they surged quite surprisingly to around 89. So the overall result is Macron is blocked from getting a majority. This, I understand, is quite extraordinary in recent French history. So talk us through those results and what the likely implications are. Right. That's right. And I understand it can be a bit confusing to navigate those four camps. And the numbers you saw there are almost identical to what was announced a couple of hours later as the final results. So, you know, in recent French history, and by that I mean the past 40 years, 50 years,

it's been very much a left versus right, left versus right camps that are facing one another, and one or the other got a majority. But now that we have seen a fragmentation of the parties in France, you know, much like we're seeing in many other countries in Europe, to some extent in the U.S. as well, that's become much more obviously complicated. And for the first time, this is the weakest that a plurality party has been in the current French regime. And so we're really on unprecedented grounds right now as to what the Macron party, which technically has a plurality but is quite far from the majority, is going to do to be able to govern because you can't really do anything in France without the parliament in terms of passing laws or in terms of really passing anything. And they don't necessarily have a clear other ally that is

willing to enter a formal pact with them. So the most that we're going to see in the coming months, coming year, is going to be very informal minority government with informal moments of on specific bills, specific tax, getting to a majority. You know, there's a lot of results to unpack here. But the big one, again, is that the incumbent president, Emmanuel Macron, expected to have a very strong majority and everything sort of collapsed in the course of a month or two. And they find themselves unable right now to govern with any sort of stability. What should we make of the Le Pen party results? How much does that match in the general, the previous election? What does it mean in terms of governance for that party to have so many seats? It really can't be understated how much that is the main headline,

the main takeaway in this election is the fact that Le Pen's party got 89 seats. So, you know, in some way, they're still very, very far away from a majority. So that could be taken as a sign of weakness from maybe outside of the context. But as you may have seen in the tweet that started the segment, they had eight seats in the parliament that just preceded this one. And that's where they've always been. Now, you know, we have all heard of Le Pen for so long. They've obviously been a very strong party in France. And they always, for many, for at least 10, 15 years, have been stabilized around 20, 25 percent of the vote.

What really changed right now is that France has a two-round system, where in the second round you need to get a majority of all votes cast to actually get a seat in parliament. You know, you need to get a majority of the votes because it's a two-round runoff. And that's been a huge obstacle to the far right because all of the other parties have effectively formed what in France is called the Republican Front to block the far right from getting 50 percent. So they all sort of coalesce around whoever the alternative to Le Pen's party is. And that's what unprecedentedly in French recent history just imploded this week.

And that just entirely just went out of the window just like that. And they went from eight seats to 89 suddenly. And in many, many constituencies, many, many districts, Le Pen's party got 55, 60, sometimes 65% of the vote as the voters of the eliminated parties just didn't coalesce against the far right. And that, you know, obviously is a very, very, very big change in French politics. Got it. What do you attribute that to?

Right. So, you know, what really changed over the past eight, nine days, that's very new. You know, there's obviously been a very slow erosion of the so-called republican front over the past 20 30 years you know and i'm not going to do the whole history of every every small change that happened to that republican front what really changed over the past eight days is that the mac home camp which you know is a center center-right uh force right now found itself against the left coalition, an unexpectedly strong left coalition that didn't exist two months ago and managed to form a coalition and find itself in a runoff in, you know, the vast majority of districts, often against the Macron party. And the party of

Macron decided as their main strategy to opt for, to effectively co-opt the language of the Republican front that it's used against the far right, against the left coalition. Starting to say things like, we need to have a Republican front against the left coalition. Starting to say, calling for a barrage, a shield against the left coalition. And, you know, this created some tensions even within the president's party. But saying that the left and the far right are equivalent to one another in terms of the threat that they pose to the republic. The president said a week ago that you need to vote for the republic, meaning for his party, effectively casting all of his opposition in the anti-republican camp. And that just automatically erodes everywhere the ability of voters to think

of Le Pen's party as a specific threat to, you know, the rest of the democratic debate and contributed greatly over the past week to imploding that anti-Le Pen front. The other thing, Daniel, I was curious about, and I know you're not supposed to ask a question you don't know the answer to, but I genuinely don't know the answer to this because I don't have a sophisticated understanding of French politics or the mechanics of the French legislative branch. But because Macron was unable to win an outright majority, does that make it likely that his policies will be pulled more to the right? Because I read some analysis that most likely partners that he is going to find on some of his legislative initiatives in particular,

like lifting the retirement age, are going to come even more to the right of where his party is situated. So do you think that the end effect of this is to actually pull Macron's party even in his legislative agenda even more to the right? Probably, but it's a slight unknown right now because in some ways, the Macron party ended up so weak, even weaker than the final polls indicated, that the addition of his party and the traditional conservative party, which is called the Republicans in France as well, so easy enough from an American standpoint. Their addition barely gets to a majority, and the Republican Party doesn't have particular incentives right now to help Macron's party

because they want, it's easier to be in the opposition, and they certainly will not form an actual coalition. It is true that on text by text, bill by bill, when it comes down to voting things, the president's party is going to look to its right, it's going to look to Republican Party to get to majority on certain texts. That's just where it is. And that's, you know, to some degree, that's in part because the ideological ties between

Emmanuel Macron and the conservatives are already quite strong. You know, in some ways they might be pulled to the right on specific amendments, but it's not like fundamentally changing the fabric of what the president's priorities are, especially when it comes to economic issues, as you just mentioned, Christel, and that's something I know we've discussed in the past. One of his main planks that he ran on is to raise the retirement age in France. That's obviously something that conservatives will find to their, they will find it, they like it if they want to. But it's just that explosive reform in the context of French politics, given how easily

social movements start, labor movements start in France, that for a government to do that, suffer from such a position of weakness, would just be very surprising at this stage, as opposed to just being unable to do much at all. And then lastly, Daniel, what do you think this rebuke of Macron is about? Because also, I mean, obviously he won re-election and pretty easily, but at least as an outside observer and listening to your analysis, that seemed more of a vote against Le Pen than it was affirmatively a vote for Macron. And then this is really quite a stunning rebuke of him and of his party and of the direction he's been taking this country. So what do you put at the core of that rebuke in terms of voters' concerns?

Right. I mean, you know, there's so much happening here. And it really gets to what we were talking about earlier, the fact that Macron got such, well, got a fairly strong victory against Le Pen, though a much weaker one than five years ago in the presidential election, was in part a symptom of how strong the Republican front, as I was explaining, still was two months ago, and especially in the context of a presidential election. He only got 25 percent in the first round, which was actually quite weak. And we're seeing some of the same forces we're seeing elsewhere, right? We're seeing a very strong left opposition to Macron, angered in part by some of the policies that we were

just discussing on wanting to weaken the retirement system right now, or at least weaken the pension system. And we're seeing a lot of anger. We've seen a lot of angers over the past five years on health policies, right? Some know, some of the same conversations we've seen in the United States, but maybe at a different scale. You know, a lot of divide between the urban vote and the rural vote and the suburban vote, and maybe the president's strength in France is that he sort of is at a mediocre level everywhere,

rather than quite particularly strong in one place or another, which, you know, the left has been stronger in urban areas, the far right or conservatives in more rural areas. And the same factors of economic instability. And Macron, between the presidential election and the parliamentary election, frankly, he really thought he was going to get a majority. This was not supposed to happen. This was not supposed to be competitive.

And he made, as prime minister, he installed someone with very little experience in politics, with a more technocratic background, again, leaning into his propensity of trying to centralize power and thinking he was going to have a very easy time for five years. And, you know, all of these are things that I think from an American perspective, we can see why there is from both the left and the right opposition to that sort of way of governing. Yeah, indeed. We definitely see it here. It's really just a step, man. Saw it just in Colombia as well.

You know, some of these trends seem to be significant across really around the globe. So, Daniel, thank you so much for breaking this down and helping us to understand it. Thanks, Daniel. Awesome. Thanks for having me. Our pleasure. Thank you guys so much for watching. Really appreciate it. As for all the premium subscribers, the announcement, it's coming Thursday. We've been assured. It's finally done.

We filled out the forms. It's happening. All right. For all of your support and more, it means a lot. As we said yesterday, you going on Bill Maher was like a great affirmation of what we do. I've never been happier in order to do the show exactly the way that we do. And it's awesome just meeting people out in the wild and hearing what the show means to them. So thank you for all the premium people who support us and who really just help support our vision because we could not do it without you. Love you guys. And we will see y'all back here on Thursday.

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