Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 6/26/23: Wagner Leader Exiled After Coup, Biden Admin Refuses Hunter Corruption Questions, Trump Lead Explodes, Yellowstone Train Derailment, Submarine, Meghan Markle, Behavioral Science Fraud, Moscow Eyewitness Russian Coup

Episode Date: June 26, 2023

Krystal and Saagar discuss the Wagner leader exiled to Belarus after attempted coup, the US knowing about Russian coup and keeping silent, the Biden admin refuses questions on Hunter corruption, Trump lead explodes post indictment, another train derailment in Yellowstone, East Palestine coverup exposed, US knew Day 1 Submarine exploded, James Cameron sounds off on Titanic Submarine, Meghan Markle rejected by Spotify/Netflix, a behavioral scientist exposed as a fraud, and an eyewitness in Moscow gives us his perspective on the attempted coup.To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. is irresponsible son, but I have DNA proof that could get the money back. Hold up. They could lose their family and millions of dollars? Yep. Find out how it ends by listening to the OK Storytime podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Camp Shane, one of America's longest running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. But there were some dark truths behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. Enter Camp Shame, an eight-part series examining the rise and fall of Camp Shane and the culture that fueled its decades-long success. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week

early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. and seeker of male validation. I'm also the girl behind Boy Sober, the movement that exploded in 2024. You might hear that term and think it's about celibacy, but to me, Boy Sober is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's flexible, it's customizable, and it's a personal process.

Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it. Listen to VoiceOver on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey guys, Ready or Not 2024 is here and we here at Breaking Points are already thinking of ways we can up our game for this critical election.

We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade the studio, add staff, give you guys the best independent coverage that is possible. If you like what we're all about, it just means the absolute world to have your support. But enough with that. Let's get to the show. Good morning, everybody. Happy Monday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed we do. We have the very latest everything we know about that crazy situation in Russia that we covered with Breaking News over the weekend.

So I'll break that down for you. We also have the White House getting pressed on new revelations about Hunter Biden and Joe Biden potentially involved in business deals. That is something that he swore had never happened. So we'll tell you all about that. We've got some new polling, both in the Republican primary and also for the general election, both of which are very interesting. As Trump and Christie and a bunch of others went to this Faith and Freedom Conference that was here in D.C. So we've got some highlights from that. A horrific train derailment. It looks like what happened in Yellowstone is that a bridge actually collapsed, spilling a bunch of toxic chemicals into a river there. So we'll break down for you everything we know there. And this one, we had to give you the final update on this.

The submersible that apparently imploded, killing everyone on board. Well, it turns out that the Navy knew that it had imploded from the beginning, didn't bother to share it with anyone, didn't tell the family either. So we have those details for you. Also excited to get a report from the ground in Moscow

about exactly what it was like to live through this, you know, aborted coup over the weekend where there were the Wagner Group was marching towards Moscow, got within 200 kilometers. So we're going to have our friend Yegor Kotkin on to talk about all of that. But before we get to any of that, Sagar. Yes. We have a situation unfolding here for Breaking Points, which is that Sagar is leaving after tomorrow's show for India for the first of two wedding ceremonies with your grandparents and relatives there. And we are tantalizingly close to a million subs. Do you have the official count this morning? Go ahead and pull that up for us. The official count as of right now is 997,728 at the exact moment of this reading.

So now, my friend, it is my understanding that you have made an ill-advised deal with the audience. I decided to cut a deal. If we can get to a million subs before you leave for the first of several wedding ceremonies. My initial impassioned wedding gift, you know, the good-natured plea did not work. So here's what I've decided to do. If we hit one million by tomorrow, Tuesday, at the end of the day, I'll cut it off. I'll even be generous and say I cut it off

at the end of Tuesday. That's only 2,000-some subs. I will do the show in full Indian dress garb, which I will purchase specially in India, while I am over there, the full regalia, and I will wear sneakers. So that's the deal that I'm willing to do. I sort of feel like it should be by tomorrow end of show. Maybe you're right.

What do you think? Because you're going to be like on a plane. That's true. Over the Atlantic. It's a night flight. At that time. Oh, okay. So you're not leaving until the evening.

I think it's like a 10 o'clock. No, maybe a 9 o'clock flight, something like that. So I'll know by the time I take off whether we hit or not. All right. I think we should make the deadline before your 9 o'clock flight. Okay, all right. 9 p.m. Eastern time. So while you're still in country, we have to hit a million subs.

There you go. All right. So as long as my feet are touching American soil. I feel like Emily would kind of low-key enjoy being in your spot and having your, like, stolen valor moment. Oh, that's fine. You know, we're in a beneficial position. I mean, I'll save some of the sappiness, but we are in a very unique and amazing position,

Crystal, of we already built one channel to a million, and this is the second one, which is not something a lot of people can say that they've done, and not something a lot of people will get the satisfaction of hitting twice. So the fact that we are even getting close to hitting it twice is something that I'm very proud of. The two of us are our entire team for even pulling that off. Well, I have to say, yeah, we'll save the roses until we won't count our chickens here until they're hatched because you never know. Things could still go sideways, but it'll mean a lot more this plaque than the last one because, you know, that was with the help of a whole corporate entity and being on like the corporate algorithm

and all that stuff. This one to build from scratch from literally subscriber zero on our own, that'll be really special. Absolutely. Excited. Help us get there, guys. Hit the subscribe button and, you know,

send Sagar off the proper way. Some people are getting their family members to do it. I'm not encouraging that. I'm just saying. I'm encouraging it. Some people are also creating fake Gmail accounts. It is what it is. I'm not going to sit here and violate terms of service. I'm just saying that's what I have heard that others are doing. Anyway, we love you. Premium subs in particular. I know a lot of you aren't even subbed because we send you the show. So just hit the subscribe button for us. Yeah, that's a good point. Okay. All right. Let's go ahead and get to the actual news of which, you know, we both didn't sleep very much over the weekend, captivated by this ongoing short aborted coup in Russia. Let's

go and put this up there on the screen. We want to give everybody the final details, or at least the interim details of what we know so far as why Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner group, decided to abort his crew after coming so close to Moscow and seemingly facing very little resistance. The Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, says, quote, there have been charges now dropped against Prigozhin. He will now leave Russia for Belarus. Wagner fighters who did not take part in the uprising will have to sign contracts with the Ministry of Defense and transfer their authority over to the Russian military. Wagner fighters who did take part will not be charged criminally. There is not currently any word on potential MOD leadership changes.

What he means by that, Crystal, is that the initial claim of Evgeny Prigozhin was that they have to have changes at the top of the defense ministry and that Sergei Shogu, who is the defense minister himself, needed to resign and be kicked out. Well, there has already been now a show of strength from Shogu and from Moscow since the beginning and the end of this aborted coup. Shogu made his very first public appearance actually last night inside of occupied Ukraine. So that was a message. He's not getting fired yet. He is living to tell, lives another day for now. As for Prigozhin, well, we don't really know where the hell he is. We had some video. This is the last public sighting. Guys, let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. This is actually Prigozhin leaving to cheers and an adulating crowd giving high fives and more of the city of Rostov-on-Don. Rostov-on-Don is the city of one million, the logistical hub for

the Russian military, and is very close to the Ukrainian border, one of the most strategic and important towns which Prigozhin was able to take with no resistance, barely any shots fired. The total death toll, look, nobody knows the exact count, but the official count, at least for now, is only 15 people. That's actually less than the 2016 coup against Erdogan in Turkey. And makes this, I mean, for a coup that captivated the world, had nuclear weapons and all that at stake, 15 people dying is extraordinarily low. I mean, it's less than probably a single hour or whatever on the front line inside of Ukraine. And so we

were left in this very bizarre situation. What was Yevgeny Prigozhin doing? Were his complaints against the Russian Ministry of Defense even legitimate? It doesn't appear that some of them were. It appears that some of them were. Some of them were lies. Some of them were. Why did he call it off so close in 24 hours? It seems, you know, in the update that you gave that the Belarusian president, Lukashenko, appears to be the guy who was able to broker this deal. What does this mean for Putin and his strength? So we're left with just tons of questions for an extremely bizarre event. We are starting to get more of a picture, too, of what precipitated this stunning turn of events. Part of what happened just before this is the Ministry of Defense was already putting pressure on the Wagner Group to try to rein them in, forcing new recruits to sign contracts with the Ministry of Defense directly. So that was

going to deny the Wagner Group new recruits. You know, to read the tea leaves a little bit, and so much of this is conjecture and, you know, none of it is, it's very, there's very little you can actually really rely on. But the expectation is that's part of what precipitated this and sort of pushed Prigozhin to the edge because he was having his base of power undercut. So it was like kind of a now or never moment. Also very hard to say what led to him then coming so close to Moscow and then backing down. There are some rumors that his family was being threatened. That was part of what pressure was being put to bear on him to come to some sort of a deal. And then the other piece of this is,

yeah, Shoigu, you know, still in place as of today. It would have been just far too humiliating, I think, for Putin to just bend to the whims and desires of this rogue head of a mercenary army. The big question everyone has is if you're Prokoshen, how can you trust the assurances that your life is going to be fine, that family's life is going to be fine, that you're not going to be arrested, that you're going to be able to live out the rest of your days, all of that, you know, I'm sure he probably has a lot of question marks in his mind about that. Shogu, you should start planting a garden and you should start only eating out of that and you should avoid windows. You should only stay in first story buildings. And if I were you, I would get my ass on a plane and go to Switzerland or somewhere, literally anywhere else on Earth outside of the Russian orbit, on top of everybody who

you have ever known and worked for, including like your dog walker or whatever, because they will kill them as evidence. Now, the issue I think that they have right now is that in terms of Putin, there is just no getting around how humiliating this is. Let's put this up there on the screen. These are images which, you know, you just simply can't get away from inside of Russia. On the right, you know, for those who are watching, we have literally like aircraft that were set on fire. And, you know, the chairman of the Committee of the Russian Defense says, oh, well, they didn't offend anyone and they didn't break anything.

It's complete lies. And everyone inside of Russia knows it's a lie because at this point, even inside Russia, the social media is circulating in terms of the roads that were dug up, Crystal. When you have to dig up your own road to protect the Capitol, you have to bomb your own infrastructure. You are not strong. That is the ultimate sign of weakness. And it also highlights Putin's greatest fear. Let's put this up there. This has long been reported around Vladimir Putin. He literally has sat by himself now for years, apparently, and just watches on repeat the images of Muammar Gaddafi being sodomized and killed in public in Benghazi after the Libyan civil war. He says, quote, Putin is in fear of being killed like

Gaddafi in a new Russian revolution as protests raise. Literally, the man's greatest fear is domestic instability and his personal losing power. This gets to some of the comments that he's made in the past, Crystal, where he has said things like one of the greatest tragedies in the history of Russia was the dissolution of the Soviet Union. It was very sad. Many of us gave our lives for this. This was a humiliation event for Russia that was fully then on display in the initial speech that everyone should recall, the speech that justified, the historical speech, in justifying the invasion of Ukraine, saying Ukraine is a fake nation. All the Baltics are a fake nation.

This was a Bolshevik stab in the back from the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk and all of this. Him putting himself in the context of history, his greatest fear is being Tsar Nicholas II. And, you know, for a variety of reasons, he seems to have recreated the exact same conditions. Tsar Nicholas famously initially almost lost grip on power during the Russo-Japanese War, and then it ultimately was, you know, taken out in the revolution of 1917. So he, by trying to avoid the fate of some of his predecessors, has apparently recreated very, very similar conditions. And of course, you know, Tsar Nicholas didn't have nukes. Putin does. And so that's what makes the situation even more insane and complex.

And this is, I don't think this is the end of instability in Russia. No. It's very much like, this very much could be the beginning. Unlikely that it's the end of instability. I mean, strong men depend on an aura of invincibility for their power. And even though this putsch has been put down before they even got to, got to Moscow. And even as we have to say, we don't really have any idea how the Russian public feels about any of this overall. Like if you were to do an accurate poll, do they view Prokhorov as a traitor? How do they feel about him? How do they feel about all of this? But there's no doubt that the cloak of invincibility has been pierced. And you can see that there was at least some sentiment in favor of this attempted coup.

Put this next piece up on the screen. This is the telegram reactions from the first message on top. You can see that's the Wagner leader, Prokosian, announcing his mutiny. Got 32,000 heart emojis, almost 14,000 thumbs up, 13,000 with the little like smiley face with the hearts around it, 9,000 of the applauding, 4,300 of the fire emoji. You know, you have to get down to 2,400 only gave the clown emoji, 844 gave the cursing angry emoji. The second piece is when he announced like, all right, just kidding, going back to the bases, withdrawing from the outskirts of Moscow. That's on the bottom. And the overwhelming reaction, 341,000 clown emojis, 102,000 thumbs down. So, you know, again, it's Telegram. Is this reflective of overall public sentiment? Should we read too much into

this? Absolutely not. But it's clear there was much more positive sentiment on Telegram in favor of the attempted coup than there was for the withdrawal. We did see some videos, one of which we showed you a little bit earlier, of him receiving sort of like adoring support from some amount of locals. And to me, Sagar, the very fact that he was able to say the unspeakable thing, which is that the war is built on lies, that Ukraine was not an imminent threat to us whatsoever, that these generals are out, you know, they're lying and they're out for their own glory. They're not here for the good of the Russian people, that he was able to say that and survive and sort of get away with it. I mean, that is, you know, you can't, that's a bridge you can't, or you can't put that toothpaste back in the tube. That's what I'm trying to say. Now, I want to be clear. Does

this mean like Putin's regime is going to crumble and it's going to fall? He's going to withdraw from Ukraine? No, we're not saying any of that, but this is the dawn of a new era and where we go from here, impossible to say. Exactly. I mean, we can look at a lot of parallels in Russian history. There've been a lot of failed coups in the history of Russia. In terms of the one I was talking about in 1917, there was the Russo-Japanese revolt. After the Russians lost the Russian-Japanese war, there was a huge amount of instability inside of Russia against the regime and democratic reforms were attempted. Unfortunately, Tsar Nicholas decided to renege on all of those and then launched the country into another disastrous war, which became more of a dictator and it launched against him. So this is where,

though, the actual conditions of Putin and his regime and what's actually going to happen, we really have no idea. But he very likely is going to take the same course. This is not a man who is going to buckle under pressure and say, you know what? It's obvious the invasion of Ukraine is the original sin here. There would be no problem if there was no Ukraine. So if he were smart, he'd be like, all right, let's call it. Let's call a peace conference. Let's try. Let's do something. Let's get our asses out of here and let me focus on actually consolidating. Yeah, which, you know, any reasonable person looking at this would do. But he's got too much in the game now because that would be humiliating for him.

And now he's a pariah. So what's he going to do? He could double down. Russian history, some of the most autocratic periods in all of Russian history came after immediate coup attempts or after assassination campaigns on the czar or the leaders of the regime. And the problem is that, of course, it may fall in the long run, but in the short time, that's still a lot of suffering. And that still actually means that Putin could technically, in the short term, become stronger inside of Russia and stronger in terms of his battlefield control. Do you think they will ever allow a pregogion to rise again in the short term become stronger inside of Russia and stronger in terms of his battlefield control. Do you think they will ever allow a pregogion to rise again in the military or some sort of Wagner group element? Never, you know, at this point. So if anything, his like apparatchiks in

the military and all of that will become even more emboldened. And for anybody who thinks that a apparatchik filled political Soviet or Russian military can't stand, well, they beat the army of Hitler. So it's not like without manpower and a lot of the to this attempted coup, insurrection, rebellion, whatever you want to call it, is the fact that the Russian military was itself weak. And so they sort of had to rely on Wagner. Wagner became one of their most effective fighting forces. And that's what allowed Prokofiev to rise in power. And even long before this all unfolded, he was incredibly routinely critical of the Ministry of Defense and Shoigu and other top leaders and was allowed to say it because they needed him. And so, as I said before,

this action came at the same time that they were actually trying to rein in his power because they had recognized that this had sort of gotten out of control. But it all starts with the, you know, strongman leader, any really world leader, giving up the monopoly on violence. That creates a very dangerous and chaotic situation. And because they needed him so much, because they had this weakness to begin with, that's how he's able to rise to this position where he was, you know, marching basically unimpeded towards Moscow before getting cold feet and taking this deal that was crafted by Belarus and Lukashenko. Yeah, well said. Let's go to the next part here about our own interest, I guess, in what was going on. Let's put this up there

on the screen. Turns out the U.S. actually, quote, suspected Progozhin was preparing to take military action against Russia. The intelligence community leaked this to their favorite publication, The New York Times. They say the information was considered both solid and alarming because of the possibility a major nuclear armed rival of the U.S. could descend into chaos. Yeah, you think? So American intelligence officials briefed senior military officials on Wednesday that they believed he was preparing to take military action against senior Russian defense officials. U.S. spy agencies had indication days earlier Progozhin was planning something and worked

to refine that material into a finished recessment. Unlike with the initial invasion, US officials declassified the intelligence and then released it to try to deter Mr. Putin from invading. Intel officials kept silent about Mr. Progozhin's plans. Officials felt if they said anything,

Putin could accuse them of orchestrating a coup and they clearly had little interest in helping Putin avoid a major embarrassing fracture in his support. Let's put the next one up there, please, on the screen. Also, Intel people leaking their favorite thing over to CNN. We've got that paragraph there. Intel officials actually had briefed congressional leaders known as the Gang of Eight earlier this week concerning Wagner movements and equipment buildups near Russia. Crystal, I'm curious what you think about this. I actually believe it was very irresponsible for them not to do the exact same thing

that they did during the Russian invasion. I'll tell everyone why. This will sound bad, but Prokosin versus Putin. So we kind of have to pick. And guess what? We have to prefer Putin. Prokosin is a bloodthirsty, war criminal, insane person, egomaniac. All of that applies to Putin too, but a little bit less. And whenever we look, I mean, look, you've said that before, you know, whenever you and I say we

oppose the invasion of Iraq, let's be real. What are we saying? We believe a genocidal dictator, a brutal man should have remained in power. I'm like, yeah, I think so I think that honestly would have been better off than the horrific chaos that ensued You know This is not a rosy and a nice choice that we have to make and actually some friends and I were talking in the middle Of the coup and we were thinking about prospective action Realistically, what would have happened if Wagner got close enough to Moscow to gain control of the nuclear arsenal? Almost certainly, Crystal, we would have had to do, if anybody doesn't know about the Boxer Rebellion inside of China, the Western powers actually interfered and invaded or

inserted themselves in the situation in that Boxer Rebellion, specifically to prop up the regime that was more friendly to its trading relationship. My point being that there almost certainly would have been some international action should Prigozhin have actually gotten close enough to gain control of the Russian nuclear arsenal. In my opinion, probably would have been Beijing. Beijing probably would have come in and just been like, we're taking over. We're in control now. In terms of Putin, they would have propped him up like some Mussolini type figure. But it could have been the West, almost certainly. These are disaster scenarios that we should have looked at. So look, I mean, instability in Russia is good to a point, but when we get to the point where somebody is 200 kilometers away from taking over

a nuclear arsenal, then I think it was very irresponsible for them to let this happen if they knew that it was going to for the very reason that, you know, what's going on in Ukraine is a sideshow in terms of our interests. Russian nukes in the hands of a genuine madman, that is a whole other level. Yes. Yeah. I 100% agree. Even the Pod Save Bros were like, you can't cheer for this brutal war criminal mercenary psychopath to take control. The first and the last thought has to be, what about the nukes? I mean, that's it. I wish that we could take into account a variety of other factors related to human life and what the Russian people deserve and what Ukrainian people deserve, et cetera. But when you're talking about a nuclear-armed superpower, the first and last consideration has to be what about the nukes?

And we know, with Putin, for all his many flaws, and not to say that this is any guarantee of what's going to happen in the future, we have not had a nuclear war. Hasn't used them yet, which, you know, is better off than— Prigozhin? Wild card. We don't know, right? We have no idea. So I 100% agree with you. And the thing is, it's not like they would have had to. So you referenced they should have done what they did before the Ukraine war invasion, where they announced publicly, here's our intelligence and here's our understanding of what's going to happen, trying to forestall these events, or at least trying to prepare everyone to muster some sort of defense for Ukraine.

You wouldn't have had to do that. I mean, they could have back-channeled to the Russians the intelligence that we had. Now, it's possible that Putin actually knew what was in the works. You know, it is possible that he- You don't have to be an idiot to know. Right. We've been looking at this guy for months, right? Well, and, you know, in those leaked documents, the discord leaks, they showed the U.S. had intercepted communications between senior Russian military leaders debating how to handle Prokosin's constant demands for more ammunition. They knew they were pushing him to the edge by basically putting Wagner under Shoigu, which one analyst described as an absolute no-go for Prokosin. So it's not like they were blind to the tensions here.

It's not like they were blind to the risks here. So it is actually possible that they knew something like this was in the works. They just were unable to figure out how to mobilize against it. But yes, the fact that the US decided to take this incredible gamble and cross their fingers and hope that you don't end up with this absolute madman and total chaos and Russia devolving into complete civil war,

that they decided to just let this all unfold and let the chips fall where they may, I think it's wildly, wildly irresponsible. And look, the gamble worked out for them. Yeah, they're right. Their hand is stronger. The Ukrainian hand is stronger. There's no doubt about it. Right. Ultimately, the way that this went down with Putin being humiliated and weakened but still in power is exactly the best case scenario for the Western alliance and Ukraine, who now faces a weakened opponent with some of their most hardened battle adversaries basically taken out of play. But there was no guarantee that this was going to be how this all shook out. Absolutely. I think you're right. And, you know, look, I get it. It's actually a very tough

situation if you're in that because, you know, they're not wrong, which is that Putin would have said, oh, like this is being orchestrated or whatever by by the West. They're saying that anyway. But exactly. That's what immediately when it launched, they were like, this is a puppet of the West and all that. It also, you know, it does raise kind of an interesting question is like, well, has the U.S. intelligence community ever had any communications with Prigogine? I mean, you know, I'm not going to rule it out or put it outside the realm of possibility. And that's another very interesting one as to like, what's going on here? Kind of reminds me of the assassination plot around President Diem in South Vietnam.

But the point is, is that the results could have been horrific and disastrous. And it was, even though it was a tough situation, and it is genuinely a tough call, if they knew about it and just did nothing, that was a choice by the US administration. We shouldn't forget that. Yeah, the last thing I do want to say on that point, because I think this is important,

is do I put it out of the realm of possibility that the U.S. had some hand behind the scenes? Of course not. Of course I don't put that out of the realm of possibility. But I see people very confidently asserting that that's what happened here. And you can't just like you can't just look at who benefits and say, oh, there must have been a role. There must not everything is about us, right? Russia is perfectly capable of having their own internal strife and conflict that is separate and apart from whatever our wishes and desires are. So again, I would just wait and see if there is any evidence of such plots that emerge before you just sort of fly off down a rabbit hole and accept this as fact when there's nothing

that indicates it thus far. Are you suggesting that we should be responsible and wait for facts? I mean, I thought we were in the takes business. Crazy idea. Just putting that out there. Pretty wild. Anyway. Let's go to the next one here. This was a huge story. Actually broke open on Thursday. We were going to do a breaking segment on it and that coup happened inside of Russia. What do you know? And so we're getting the details fully and took the time to actually read through all the documents here with respect to the allegations of an IRS whistleblower and Hunter Biden, whether he should have been criminally charged in that case after he was offered a plea by US prosecutors. Now, the White House was actually asked repeatedly about

this on Friday by multiple mainstream reporters who appear to have broken their, even they had to admit that this looked bad and had to press the White House on it. And the White House response is stunning in their silence and really in their obfuscation. Here's what happened. The president invited his son Hunter to the state dinner last night. I'm wondering if you could take us into the thinking and decision making of why the president decided to. I'm just not going to get into family discussion, personal family discussion. As you know, Hunter is his son. I'm just not going to get into this. If Hunter Biden wasn't the president's son, would he have invited someone who had just reached a plea agreement with federal prosecutors? A couple of things. Again, that's his son.

He's a family member. It is not uncommon for family members to attend events at the White House. Curly wouldn't answer James' question, though. Are you going to answer the question? Not a reasonable question to ask when the President of the United States was involved, as this message seems to suggest, in some sort of a coercive conversation for business dealing by his son. Is that something if he wasn't, then maybe you should tell us. Can you just remind us what your colleague said

from the White House counsel so we have it? I would refer you to them and they will share their statement with all of you. My question is about you stated that the president stands by his comment from the 2020 campaign that he never once discussed his son's overseas business dealings with his son. And you stood at that podium and you reaffirmed that. Is there anything that you can say with regard to this text message and what the president's son was alleging? Was the president there or not? I mean, have you spoken to the president about this? Have you asked him whether he was there with his son on July 30th? There was reporting earlier in the week that after the plea agreement was reached by Hunter Biden, that the president felt relieved that

that part of it was behind him. Is that true? I can't speak to that. I cannot speak to the president's mindset. Can't speak to it. Never asked him about it. Oh, why wouldn't you ask him about it? And for those who need a refresher, this text message is insane. Put this up there on the screen. This is a direct text from Hunter Biden. It's not even being disputed. Quote, I am sitting here with my father. We would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled. Tell the director, I would like to resolve this now before it gets out of hand. And now means tonight. Z, if I get a call or a text from anyone involved in this other than you, Zhang, or the chairman, I will make certain between the man sitting next to me and every person he knows, my ability to forever hold a grudge that you will not regret not following my direction.

I am sitting here waiting for the call with my father. I love the way at the end he just like strips any plausible to my ability. I love the way at the end, he just like strips any plausible to my ability. I am sitting here. Just to be clear, it's my father I'm referring to. This is Meghan McCain level my father in terms of joke. Let's go and put this up there on the screen. My friends over at the Free Beacon, personal friends of mine, Chuck Ross, Joseph Simonson, and Andrew Kerr put together a fantastic piece here called the 16 bombshells on the Hunter Biden from the IRS laptop. First and foremost was linking his father to this Chinese deal. People aren't actually as familiar with the CEFC China energy deal that Hunter was trying to

finance, but that's actually what all of this entails. The CEFC China energy deal into a multi-billion dollar investment and told Rosewood Seneca Partners, of which Hunter was a part of, also with John Kerry's stepson. Everybody's getting involved. The next thing that they pointed to is that Biden attended other business meetings, allegedly, with Hunter and with his Chinese business partners. What he said repeatedly is that they were at the Four Seasons Hotel. People were having lunch and stopped in. Hunter said, quote, I may be trying to start a company or try to do something with these guys. And could you? And he says, if I'm around. And he'd show up, referencing directly

his father. Furthermore, the FBI had authenticated Hunter Biden's laptop a year before you and I even knew it existed, after it had been turned into the computer not only did it have the hallmarks of Russian disinformation they knew it was true before even the press knew about it and still did not ever offer any proof or any of that my other personal favorites and some of the tawdry details. Hunter actually deducted hooker and sex club payments from his taxes. Classy thing to do. Obviously, the FBI division that investigated foreign spies directly was involved in the Biden probe. The investigation into Biden actually had some porn related origins because of some of the content that was on his laptop. Prosecutors wanted to charge Hunter with felonies, but he ended up with misdemeanor. So they specifically noted that per the level of tax evasion that he conducted, his business dealings, the text messages and more,

it was very clear that he had willfully went out of his way not to pay his taxes as evidenced by the prostitution write-offs. The Biden Department of Justice specifically actually blocked that investigation at multiple turns, according to the IRS whistleblower, and that the whistleblower's boss actually corroborated multiple other claims that were made. Hunter also currently does not have to, under the terms of his deal, pay taxes on $400,000 of income that he received from Burisma Holdings. Who out there in this world doesn't have to pay taxes on 400 grand? Can you imagine that? Imagine being in such a sweet deal you could trade off of your dad's name, get 400 grand, get a sweetheart deal, and then still not have to pay taxes on it. And then finally, Crystal, my personal favorite, agents wanted to search Hunter Biden's family homes, but were shot down due to the optics of the situation, according to these whistleblowers.

So, I mean, look, at every turn, we're seeing political interference here. And Hunter, you know, look, his defense is quite literally, I was a crack addict. And that's what he said. My father had no interest in this at the time, and I was in the midst of dealing with addiction. But Biden, at this point, he's got to prove it.

There's this clear allegation here made in these texts and through authenticated whistleblowers that have come before under oath before Congress. Multiple parts of this have been have been verified. The Biden family continues to brush this aside and say that this isn't even worth looking into. invited the guy to the freaking state dinner with the Indian prime minister the day after that he gets a plea deal before Congress and all of these text messages or plea deal before prosecutors. And this all comes out. So this is- If you were worried about optics, you might want to rethink that one. This is some of the most disgusting federal corruption that we have seen yet, just because of how naked it is and how much he actually just got off. Most of the time, just don't even investigate it. Here, they investigated

and gave him a little sweetheart deal. Yeah. I mean, listen, to be clear, this is coming from Republicans who had nothing to say when it was Jared Kushner. So hypocrisy, et cetera, et cetera, no doubt about it. But, you know, sometimes political attacks are also real. And clearly, the press feels like they have been humiliated. They were willing to cover for him to a point. And now when you have these kind of details, they have to ask him about. That's why in that clip we played, I mean, we were going through the list of it was CNN, it was New York Times, it was NBC, it was CBS. It was every mainstream outlet that felt like for their own sake of credibility, they had to ask something

on this. Now, listen, what do we know with regard to the text message? We know that Hunter was blatantly, brazenly using his name and his proximity to power. That would be his dad to try to score lucrative business deals. Now, the claim in the text is that Joe Biden was sitting right there. Biden has maintained he never even had a conversation with Hunter about any of his business deals. Now that claim, his spokespeople have been remarkably unwilling to reiterate at this point. They now will say like he wasn't involved, but they haven't gone so far to say once again that he didn't even speak to Hunter about those business deals. So the president

has a lot of questions to answer. You know, is that still true? Do you still maintain you had no conversations with him about it? Where were you on that day? Is it true that you were sitting next to him? Now, listen, it's also possible he was sitting there. He had no idea what his, you know, what his son in the throes of addiction was texting to this Chinese businessman. But this is way past the point that you can just brush it off. Because even if you accept the best case scenario that Joe Biden had nothing to do with this, this level of disgusting trading on your father's name to secure, you know, deals for yourself is grotesque, even if it's not, unfortunately, even if it's not illegal. Yeah, look, to be clear, I mean,

unfortunately, it's not illegal to say my father, my father, my father, and then shake down a foreign guy for millions of dollars. Guess what is illegal? Not paying your taxes. And he didn't even pay his taxes. I didn't even mention this that I have in previous segments. Remember this, Crystal, he owed $2.2 million in taxes, in back taxes that he was not able to pay and did not have financially. He had to go to a Democratic mega donor, Hollywood lawyer, to pay his taxes for him. And the guy gave it to him as a loan or whatever to avoid the federal gift tax. I mean, who amongst us has forgotten to pay our taxes, not had the money about it, then gone to a rich friend of our dad's to bail our asses out? And that's, by the way, one of the ways that

he's able to circumvent and go towards the misdemeanor charge is it's not like it's unpaid. It got paid. You know, I paid you guys what you needed. That was part of the coverup. Well, the fact that he had access to that money in the first place is itself evidence of political corruption. So, you know, I'm hopped up about this one just because it's so brazen. The level of shakedown that's happening here. I mean, look at that text message. He reads like a thug. You know, he's like, my dad is going to come and scream.

My dad's going to come and beat up your dad if you don't pay me millions of dollars. And hey, it worked. That's the craziest thing is all of this worked. He actually did get paid $100,000 from Burisma. He actually did raise tons of money through Rosemont Seneca Partners. Then his BHG Holdings Group inside of China, he, remember this, he says that he's no longer on the board of the Holdings Group inside of China. He still has a vested financial interest to this day, millions of dollars inside of China. The GOP report that came out in 2020

detailed multiple wire transfers up to the tunes of hundreds of thousands of dollars, of which Biden, Hunter Biden, and James Biden, Biden's brother, were literally using 100 grand as a slush fund to buy MacBook Pros for themselves and their relatives. I mean, it is as, and then the audacity to then write off some of your illicit, you know, like sex capades effectively on your taxes on top of all of that. So you can blame addiction and all of that all you want, but here's the truth. And you've always made this point. Most addicts, they get caught, you know, whenever they boost like a radio out of a car and they get their ass thrown in jail and they don't get second, third, fifth, 15th chances. They don't get the daddy bailing them out of prison.

Well, there's the proximity to power piece and knowing the right people. And there's the, you know, two-tier system of justice that oftentimes lets the wealthy off the hook. I mean, how many tax dodgers, how many wealthy tax dodgers never get any sort of enforcement action? And it is wrong. I am much more in favor of a law and order, white collar, tough on crime approach because overwhelmingly who the IRS goes after is the poor and the working poor and the working class. So unfortunately, the way that Hunter got away with this, like you said, like mischaracterizing these payments as loans, all of this sort of shenanigans, unfortunately, it is quite common and people do routinely get away with it, even when their daddy isn't the vice president. But, you know, in those instances, it's an attack on the integrity of our sort of like system of fairness and justice.

In this instance, it's also an attack on just the integrity of the office of the president of the United States and raises a lot of questions about, you know, potential malign influences and how this would impact his governance, which is incredibly serious. Yeah, I think that's look, that's all we can say about it. In terms of the further investigation, the GOP is going to be holding hearings. Let's put this up there on the screen. As I said, you know, Hunter appeared at the state dinner, and his father maintains the only reaction he has to the whole thing is, quote, that he loves his son. You would note, Crystal, as we will recall from the debate stage in 2020, he said he did nothing wrong, and I love my son.

Now it's just, I love my son after he's gotten- Drop that first part real quick. Part really bothers me too. It's basically emotional blackmail. Nobody doubts a parent doesn't love their child. Actually, the problem is you loved him so much that you let him get away with all this stuff under your nose. Oh, maybe you helped him out about it with a little bit of the 10% for the big guy. And in fact, if you were able to prove that you had nothing to do with it and that at the end of the day, this was basically parental malfeasance where you're like, I loved him too much to say anything. I think a lot of people could empathize with that,

but he refuses to tell us the truth about the very basics of the situation. Well, and I think this has gotten past the point now where he can just dodge questions on it forever. You know, if he ever does another mainstream interview again, if he ever subjects himself to any sort of a debate situation, whether it's in the Democratic primary or in the general election, he's going to have to answer difficult questions about this. I think it's gone past the point of him just being able to ignore it and get away with an answer like, I love my son. Yep, absolutely right. All right, guys, we have some new polling that we can share

with you this morning about where the Republican primary race stands and also where the general election, potential general election matchups stand. But this first piece up on the screen, this is a new NBC News poll that shows Donald Trump gaining pretty significantly from their last poll, which was done in April. So this was pre, the last poll was done pre-indictment, documents indictment. This one is done post-documents indictment. It shows Trump surging six points to take 51%, so a bare outright majority there. And perhaps even more difficult for Ron DeSantis, he actually dropped in the polls more than Trump rose. So you've got Trump at 51. You now have DeSantis at 22 percent. That is a nine point drop from April. And it really demonstrates, Sagar,

something that we have been theorizing, which is it's the more candidates that get in this race, the more difficult it is for DeSantis. You had Mike Pence go up a point. You have Chris Christie actually grabbing five percent of the vote at this point, outpolling at least in this particular poll, individuals like Nikki Haley and Tim Scott. But every one of those little, oh, a point up for Vivek Ramaswamy, oh, a point up for Nikki Haley, oh, five points for Chris Christie. That's not coming out of Trump. That's coming directly out of Ron DeSantis, which is why he has fallen off nine points

and is now sitting at 22% in this NBC News poll. Now, all caveats, you know, included here, important to remember. I would take all of this polling with a grain of salt. But I always think the direction of the polls is actually more instructive than the absolute numbers. And so the fact that this poll confirms what most, but not all, other polls have shown, that Trump within the Republican primary has, you know, at least maintained and probably expanded his lead is, you know, another sort of dire warning for DeSantis and the other hopefuls. Oh, you're absolutely right. I mean, I think the issue mainly is that people try to focus on one poll, but then they don't go into the direction. The

direction is a disaster. And the thing is, is that if it's one, okay. But every single one that we have gotten post-indictment shows a bump for Trump. Every single one that we have shown post DeSantis announcement shows either a slight increase or an overall drop as he continues to campaign. And in fact, where this was part of the issue with his overall launch, what you and I were saying, it's very rare that you're the center of the attention. You better make sure that it goes super well and that you dominate the airwaves. And the problem for DeSantis is he's not the former president. He's not the one getting indicted. And he's got nothing to do with

what's going on in Russia. So he's basically a sideshow as all other other campaigners are now though. We should note Let's put this up there, please on the screen the general election matchup that in this it's not like things are going all that Well for Trump it still shows Joe Biden at 49% and Trump at 45 But if you apply previous polling misses for Trump, that would basically have him virtually tied. The original crystalline saga rule was add four or four to five for any poll that involved the name Donald Trump, specifically in a general election. And if you do, they basically would show the two of them in a virtual tie, especially whenever you consider the razor thin margins in the electoral college. So by many accounts, like Trump, he may be weaker, you know, maybe, although we haven't seen all of the evidence just yet that at least enough for me

to convince that he's done. I don't think you can ever really get to that point. And then for DeSantis, I mean, the poll after poll after poll after poll that we have with likely GOP primary voters doesn't seem to be good for him overall since his campaign started. And indictment for Trump has just been the greatest political boon he could ever ask for. Yeah, and just to give people a sense of how much things have shifted away from DeSantis, back in January was actually, January, February was kind of the peak of his polling. Before he even got in the race, his average, I'm looking at RealClearPolitics, DeSantis' average was about 30%, and Trump was down under 50%. And when you're keeping Trump under 50%, you got a case you can

make there and say, you know, if I consolidate all of, you know, all these other people fall by the wayside, and I consolidate all of their six and seven point percentages that they're garnering here, then I can overtake him. The problem is now DeSantis' average sits at about 21%. So that's a nine point drop from where he was before he even got in the race. And, you know, since he got in, he's been more or less flat. He's a little bit down from where he was when he first jumped in the race, but not much. It's more or less even. But the case that the DeSantis people were making, you guys might recall, is before he got in the race, they were like, well, sure, he's only at 30% now. But once we get in and we start making the case, we haven't even tried to

start campaigning yet. So that obviously hasn't come to fruition, at least not yet. And in fact, the more people jump in the race, and we had a few more entrants last week. I think we had Will Hurd, a former congressman, jump into the race as well. Is he going to garner a lot of percentage points? No. But every one of these people, if they're even taking a single point, that's coming out of DeSantis' hide, not out of Trump. And so actually, the longer this goes on, the more the field fills out, the more people consolidate around Trump, the more these indictments sort of hard Republican GOP base support around him, and the more and more difficult this becomes.

You know, on the general election piece, one of DeSantis' arguments is that he's more electable, and right now the polls bear that out. I mean, I don't know if that holds, there's no guarantees, et cetera, but he has a case he can make here. But it's not clear that the Republican base, A, really cares about that. It's not clear that they really believe it because they've seen the way that polls have been wildly off before. Trump was at this confab of religious conservatives that was here in D.C. He gave a speech to what everyone is describing as basically like a rapturous crowd. Now, remember, this is these are this is the religious right. This is the group that supposedly he should be having some issues with because he's moderated a bit on abortion vis-a-vis Ron DeSantis.

Let's take a listen to how he handled that that issue in particular at this conference. As your president, I will continue to stand proudly for pro-life policies, just as I did for four strong years. That's why when I'm reelected, I will continue to fight against the demented late-term abortionists in the Democrat Party who believe in unlimited abortion on demand and even executing babies after birth. So it sounds to me like he's given the crowd there, which again, a religious right crowd, sounds to me like he's given them everything that they want and they are completely on board. So a lot of the critique of his abortion position is unwillingness to backs, for example, a national ban, something that Mike Pence has got on board with, or even calling, what was the word he used, Ron DeSantis' six-week ban? I think he said it was brutal,

something like that. Yes, correct. Harsh, harsh. Harsh, that's it. They don't seem too concerned about that. He seems to have found a way to message at least to the grassroots, maybe not the grass tops, that they are responding to. Yeah, let's put this one up on the screen too, just to evidence even more of what you're talking about, Crystal, which is that the faith in Trump dominated the religious conservative gathering. And specifically, it was Chris Christie who said he was trying to run for president to end Trump's political career, who was booed actually on the stage. Christie said, quote, you can boo all you want. But that just shows you ultimately that the case of Pence, of DeSantis, well, Pence in particular, of I'm the real religious conservative.

Guess what, dude? They like Trump more than they like you. And this is something where religious conservatives I think rightfully can say at the end of the day he is the one who got Roe versus Wade done. And, yeah, Pence, you're the one who wants to go further, all of that, but you don't have the same proven track record. So, you know, that case that a lot of these people were making against him,

I just don't see it right now. Yeah, I mean, Christie is, at least in this poll, is actually nipping at Pence's heels, which is interesting. I mean, listen, I think it speaks to the fact that is Christie going to get much higher

than like the 5% he's at right now? Maybe. I think he's probably got a max of like 10%. But it does show you that there is something to just being totally unabashed. I mean, Christie has been, I've always thought just on sheer political talent. I think Chris Christie is a very talented political actor and always has been. Um, and so the fact that he's willing to go in front of what is clearly a hostile crowd and just say what he thinks and put it out there like that, there is some small percentage of the GOP base that is responding to that show of strength right now. And maybe ultimately it's enough to weaken Trump, but it's hard for me to see that given where things stand today. But again, whether it's Chris Christie, whether it's Mike Pence, whether it's Vivek Ramaswamy, whether it's Nikki Haley, Tim Scott, Will Hurd,

Asa Hutchinson, what's the North Dakota governor? Doug Burgum. Burgum, yes. Any of these people, they're getting any of the vote. It's a problem for Ron DeSantis. And by the way, I just saw a piece this morning, Sagar, about how his early state strategy, which depends on Iowa and New Hampshire, still looking okay in Iowa. New Hampshire's kind of falling apart. And his super PAC isn't even running ads there.

Apparently he hasn't gotten traction on the ground and is struggling really to pick up speed in the Granite State. Yeah, because New Hampshire is Trump country. I mean, it's a white working class state. It's the one that he very first won in 2016. Far less religious than Iowa Catholics and evangelicals who vote in that primary. And yeah, look, it doesn't take a genius to look at the overall demographics and of the base that votes in there and say that the DeSantis case in New Hampshire actually relied a hell of a lot more on Iowa than it did rely on anything else. He needs to win Iowa. If he doesn't,

I think he's done. Yeah, absolutely. I kind of think he's done. All right. Yeah, it's possible. You never know what's going to happen. Let's get to a story that is, you know, really kind of shocking and very disturbing coming out of Montana. Put this up on the screen. So there was a freight train that was carrying hot asphalt and molten sulfur that derailed into a river, into Yellowstone River there in that state. Now, what it looks like happened, and NTSB is still investigating, is that actually the bridge itself collapsed. And that's what's caused this train derailment, spilling these toxic substances into the river there. This is a river that is, you know, really relied upon both in

terms of drinking water, also in terms of agriculture and irrigation. So this is, you know, very troubling. The government does not have a great track record, and we'll get into that in a minute of being honest about the risk to citizens of these type of toxic waste spills. Let me read you a little bit of this. They say the train cars were carrying hot asphalt and molten sulfur. Officials shut down drinking water intakes downstream while they evaluated the danger after the 6 a.m. accident. By the way, this happened on Saturday. An AP reporter witnessed a yellow substance coming out of some of the tank cars. They also have some conjecture here, and I think this was from some of the local reporting, about what caused this bridge to collapse. Because, I mean, that's an incredibly stunning and disturbing turn of events that this,

you know, part of our critical part of our infrastructure could just completely crumble and collapse like this. Apparently, Yellowstone River saw record flooding in 2022. That caused extensive damage to Yellowstone National Park and adjacent towns. Apparently, there have been repeated years of heavy river flows. The high water flow translates to high forces acting directly on the pier and importantly on the river bottom, this expert said. You can have erosion or scour that removes support from the foundation. High forces translate to a high likelihood of a structural or foundation failure that could act as a trigger to initiate the accident. We also know that there had been an old highway bridge that cars used to traverse that paralleled that railroad bridge. And they had actually taken that highway, old highway bridge

down because it was determined to be in imminent danger of failing. So it's right alongside this railroad bridge. They had taken that one down. And now you have the railroad bridge. They had taken that one down and now you have the railroad bridge completely collapsing. According to their reporting, not immediately clear when that bridge that collapsed was constructed or when it was last inspected. Let's go ahead, guys, and put these images up on the screen. We've got a little bit of video of someone who appears to be have been driving by the accident. And then we've got some overhead drone footage. You can see a number of these freight cars collapsed into the river. You can see there that yellow substance that reporters were saying they saw spilling out into this river. Now, some of the experts have

said that the type of material that spilled here shouldn't cause a problem because while it's kept in a sort of molten state within these tanker cars, once it hits the cold water, that it solidifies. So hopefully there shouldn't be much problem downstream. We will see if that is the case. Let's put these next images up on the screen so people can just get a sense of the catastrophe here. I mean, you can see just twisted metal and these freight cars collapsed into this beautiful scenic river there in Yellowstone. You can see the way that the bridge just completely collapsed and crumbled here. Thank God that no one was injured. I mean, I was thinking about the, you know, the engineers who were on board this

train and how terrifying and shocking this must have been for them. Thank God that no one was injured or lost their life, but still a deeply troubling situation with a lot of questions still, Sagar. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the issue, first of all, this is a disaster. This is one of my favorite places in the world. Love Yellowstone. It's one of the most, if anybody gets the opportunity, please do it. Also, I read a very troubling stat that the vast majority of people who visit Yellowstone don't even get out of their cars or just go to the visit. Go for, get out of the car and walk you know into non-designated just like little wooden areas with a sign actually go and explore it a little bit you know what it's one of the best places if you're physically ready for that because i've also heard horror stories of people

who like are not fit yeah and don't even bring water and are wearing like their you know sandals their crocs or whatever and they're like i gotta go for a hike i gotta give props to the national park service these people are they know exactly what they're doing it let me go for a hike. I gotta give props to the National Park Service. These people are, they know exactly what they're doing. It's funny, like when you hike the Grand Canyon, like three miles in, there's a lady who's like, hey, you got enough water? You good? They're like, where are you going?

You going that far? And then if you are going far, they'll be like, you don't have enough water to do that. They're like, you should turn around. I actually literally watched that happen. So shout out to the NPS. Yeah, for sure. I have a tragic story I won't even share,

but it's important to be careful, especially when heat is involved. Correct. Always be careful. The point, though, is that this is one of the most treasured national monuments. National Parks is an area that millions of Americans visit every year. Actually, more people are visiting it more than ever. And the problem that we have here is that the overall accountability into the railroads and to the current Rail Safety Act and the way that that is still being held up in Congress right now, mostly by conservative Republicans like Ted Cruz, as I understand it, is the main opposition to this entire thing. And it's a huge

issue because the initial East Palestine derailment obviously got a lot of attention. I think it should have. But the problem is that some of it is diminishing now over time and the energy around getting the actual rail industry regulated whenever they receive billions and billions and billions of dollars in subsidies from the federal government and then still basically are allowed to operate with impunity. That's the overall problem that we still are not taking our eye or we haven't taken our eye off, unfortunately, as a country. Yeah. And I have an East Palestine update that is pretty stunning that I want to get to in just a minute. But I want to say with this particular derailment and NTSB is still investigating, so we don't have all of the answers here, but it appears this raises a lot of

questions about our infrastructure and, you know, inspections. And listen, we have long known that we have a lot of crumbling infrastructure that needs to be tended to and rebuilt. And listen, we have long known that we have a lot of crumbling infrastructure that needs to be tended to and rebuilt. And so the fact that in a wealthy country such as ours, that you have bridges just collapsing from normal wear and tear, it's embarrassing. It's horrifying. It's terrifying because you have no idea what is the next one to go. I mean, actually, you know, there was a there's a critical bridge in Tennessee crossing Mississippi River that had to be closed on an emergency basis because engineers saw structural flaws that could lead to that collapsing. And it totally, you know, destroyed traffic and snarled

traffic there for months and months. We're just, you know, we have really, really underinvested in our own basic infrastructure. And I think that's an important story out of this one as well. You mentioned East Palestine. Go ahead and put this up on the screen. We just learned that, as you guys recall, the thing that led to all of this toxic fallout and disaster and potentially, you know, carcinogens and residents being incredibly sick and nauseous and headaches and all of the rest was they did this quote unquote controlled burn, which turned the whole train into this basically like bomb fireball that the citizens of that town in Ohio and really the whole region are still reckoning with the fallout from

and have never been able to get straight answers about exactly what risks there are to their health today and into the future. Well, we're now learning it looks like they may not have had to do that controlled burn at all. You had an owner of five of the toxic vinyl chloride cars that Norfolk Southern detonated over East Palestine said they told Norfolk Southern three different times they saw no evidence that vinyl chloride inside the cars was, quote, polymerizing and at risk of an uncontrolled explosion. Basically, the idea here is that Norfolk Southern was more interested in getting these cars off the track so that they could get back to business as usual and running their trains and turning their record-breaking profits and doing their stock buybacks and screwing their workers. They wanted to get back to that as soon as possible. So even though their, according to this testimony, was not an appearance that there was an imminent risk with regard to these cars. And in fact, the temperature,

and this is really critical, was going down. And this is something that the NTSB confirmed, or the EPA rather confirmed, the temperature was actually going down in those cars. That indicates they did not need to do this at all. They could have waited and it still would have been, you know, required cleanup, et cetera. But it would not have been nearly the risk to the local residents that this quote unquote controlled burn, which released all of this into the atmosphere and into the ground and into the water that that ended up being. Yeah, that controlled burn was what spread the contaminants really all over the place and was also highlighted by the residents. Obviously, we had like a genuine,

almost mushroom cloud-like situation that developed over the area. It asked a lot of questions about air quality. That's what a lot of people said. It was after that controlled burn that they saw their pets and others suffering. So that's why I just think it's very important that we never take our eye off the situation. And if that's true, basically what he's testified to there before the panel, well, I mean, then somebody needs to pay for that. Somebody needs to actually do a real analysis as pre and post as to what the damage specifically from this incident are and then actually find this company, get to the bottom of it as a public. It was one of those that flared up almost immediately, but has largely been forgotten since. Yeah, and I want to give credit to the folks at Status Coup because they have stayed all over it. And in fact, even before this testimony came out, they had obtained a recording of an EPA official who didn't know he was being recorded,

admitting that there was no evidence to support Norfolk Southern's decision to detonate those vinyl chloride cars. Quote, they did this to get the train lines open. That's according to a hazardous waste expert who listened to this leaked audio. But basically, this is what residents have suspected all along, that the controlled burn wasn't because it was the best way to deal with these hazardous chemicals, wasn't because they were concerned about their health and well-being. It was because Norfolk Southern wanted to get back to making money as quickly as possible. And apparently the EPA, it seems, may have had some knowledge of that. So it opens up a lot of

questions about, even more questions about exactly what was done here and the way that this town and their residents were effectively sacrificed to the whims of this company and their desire to continue earning their record profits. Yeah, absolutely. And look, can't take your eye off of it and will continue to be updated. The status quo guys are doing a really good job on this story. All right, guys, we had to cover this because we talked about the frigging submersible tragic situation. I don't want to downplay it, all the lives on board that were lost. But, you know, there were a lot of warnings in advance that perhaps the hull of this submersible, the Titan that was designed supposedly to go down and view

the wreckage of the Titanic and go, you know, really far underwater, that perhaps the materials this was constructed with were not sufficient for the immense amount of water pressure that comes to bear on these craft. So lo and behold, it turns out that the U.S. Navy apparently knew that the craft had spontaneously imploded and that all lives on board were lost. Even as everybody here and significantly around the world were wondering about whether these individuals were still alive, the families were wondering if they were still alive. There was a countdown on when their oxygen would run out. And there was a huge mustering of resources footed, by the way, by the U.S. taxpayer to try to locate and rescue any potential survivors here. Put this up on the screen because it's really something. So this is

after we had the news that, OK, they found a debris field. OK, it looks like it was an implosion. It looks like no one survived. The U.S. Navy heard what it believed was the Titan implosion days ago. Underwater microphones designed to spot enemy submarines first detected the Titan tragedy. So this is Wall Street Journal reporting that, again, we did not get access to until after they had found the debris field and said, looks like no one survived. Let me read you a little bit of this article. Soon as the sub lost communications, shortly after the submersibles' appearance on Sunday, the U.S. system detected what it suspected was the sound of an implosion near the debris site, discovered Thursday, and reported its findings to the Coast Guard commander on site, U.S. defense officials said. Now, here is their cope of why they didn't tell us or the families or the rescuers.

I mean, they say they told the Coast Guard that was commanding the rescue here, but the public certainly had no idea. They say the Navy couldn't say definitively the sound came from the Titan. Discovery did play a role, though, in narrowing the scope of the search for the vessel before its debris was discovered on Thursday. Now, to get specific, they say they shared their findings with the Coast Guard immediately, which led the search. The U.S. held off making public what noise it had detected because it wanted to ensure search and rescue operations continued and couldn't say for sure it was an implosion. The families were informed Thursday of the Navy's findings when the search and rescue team discovered the debris field, according to a U.S. defense official. So why did we wait 96 hours and string the entire U.S. public along on top of the media with this information? I just feel bad for the family.

I feel bad for them, too. And look, honestly, it kind of suspects what I thought. The first time somebody asked me about it, I said, there's no way these people are alive. They're obviously dead. Especially whenever you look at the safety mechanism. And that's actually what all the data indicates is that the contact was lost at 9,000 feet and the sound was heard at the exact moment of that by these U.S. Navy sensors. Unfortunately, it looks like they perished immediately. I guess one thing that you can keep in mind is that it happened at literally a hypersonic speed because of how far down they were.

I'm glad that's the way that they went. I agree. Of all the available options, it was instantaneous but horrifying. But part of the problem is that the whole public was left to basically imagine know, basically imagine a scenario where they're alive and they're together and they don't have a toilet or a bathroom and all this, when the preponderance of evidence at the time was like they're almost certainly dead.

Yeah. They should have informed the families privately and just said, look, also, there's a lot of questions. Did we share this with foreign governments? I mean, how many millions of dollars were spent on getting rescue equipment to the site? I know that there was a French piece of machinery that was on its way.

Multiple other governments were involved in sort of search and rescue. There was like an all hands on deck situation for people who were looking to try and to save this when the, you know, the stark reality was is that it's almost certainly over. And this is a debris recovery situation. Debris recovery is very different in terms of the level of money that you would spend, the resources, and then the family itself, you know, giving them false hope for four days. And also, you know, the mom, for example, of this 19-year-old, like, you gotta give their peace and just, like, giving people hope,

even for 96 hours. Like, she's never gonna forget about that, you know, that time where you could've just made it easier, you know, at the time and just been like, look, here's what we heard. It's almost certain. It'd be a miracle if we ever find out. It was truly cruel. And, you know, they went public with these alleged

banging noises. Yeah, that's the problem. That they were hearing that, you know, was giving people some modicum of hope that, oh, maybe that's the sound of the survivors ramming the submersible against the wreckage to try to attract attention or whatever. So they went public with that, but not the much more conclusive evidence that basically the moment that contact was lost, there was this sound that very much appeared to be really jerry-rigged together, the totally blasé attitude that the CEO of this company, who is expected to have perished aboard as well, that he took towards safety, the fact that they did not get it classed or inspected to make sure that it could withstand the extreme pressure of this level of deep sea diving, that they used materials, carbon fiber material that had never been tested before, that it was serious enough concerns that they had their own employee that

was a whistleblower, that they had experts in the field that were routinely writing the letters, expressing concerns about this. And listen, obviously, there's a level of risk anytime you engage in one of these types of extreme activities. But actually, the deep sea diving technology has existed for quite a while. The industry has been very proud to be relatively accident-free and completely fatality-free. So, you know, this now is a sort of black mark on the whole industry. James Cameron, director, who had done, he's a submersible expert and enthusiast. He actually designed his own craft for, I don't know if you guys remember this deep sea challenge that he did where he went way deeper than actually the Titanic was. He went to the deepest depths of the ocean in Mariana Trench. And he was sounding off about, you know, how tragic

and predictable ultimately the situation was as it unfolded. Let's take a listen to a little bit of what he had to say. Well, I've been down there many times. I know the wreck site very well, as does my friend Bob Ballard. I've been made 33 dives. I actually calculated that I've spent more time on the ship than the captain did back in the day. This is a mature art, and many people in the community were very concerned about this sub. And a number of the top players in the deep submergence engineering community even wrote letters to the company saying that what they were doing was too experimental to carry passengers and that needed to be certified and so on. So I'm struck by the similarity of the Titanic disaster itself, where the captain was repeatedly warned about ice ahead of his ship, and yet he steamed at full

speed into an ice field on a moonless night. And many people died as a result. So true. And I had not put that together. Well, of course he did. He's the master. Exactly. The parallels are incredibly eerie that all of these warnings, the, you know, the analogous iceberg, all of these warnings went completely unheeded and, you know, ends in disaster and tragedy.

Yeah, it is sad. I mean, but I think really I love Cameron, too, the way he's like, I've spent more time on the ship than the captain did. He's like, I've, you know, but at the same time, like, he's obviously right. And he even said, he's like, look, I understand what the guy was saying about regulation, but also, you know, we went to real engineering depths. I read even more about some of his criticisms, specifically of everything that OceanGate was doing. And at a very basic level, they were signed up for disaster years ago.

For example, they were using materials that are used for space travel, like carbon fiber, as opposed to different ones that they would have used because it was strong enough in space, but wasn't designed to actually withstand the amount of pressure that you will face at a deep sea. That's just such a basic engineering thing that was a cost-cutting maneuver and it's meant to be seen as high tech by the OceanGate CEO whenever he was building it. And ultimately, he put people's lives in danger. And multiple people who had been

on the sub previously, we played that before about somebody said it was a suicide mission. Others said that they felt dangerous and that they were cracking sounds one of the times that they'd been on. Funnily enough, Mr. Beast put out a text message. Apparently, he was invited on the Titanic submersible. I mean, you could see a world where Mr. Beast as part of the, one of his videos actually went on. So a lot of people dodged a bullet, you know, by at least knowing that this was dangerous, but some people didn't do enough research or, you know, they took the, they took the claims at face value. And it does seem that this was an open secret in the sub community that they were like, Hey, this is a real problem. And, you know, I didn't even know

this. I did not know that like we reached the depths of the Mariana Trench. The US Navy did it, or some guys did it in like 1950. So it's not like we haven't been doing this for a long time. Yeah, same. I was like, wow, that's crazy. So apparently we've had that capability for a long time. But that just means that if it's been that old,

how extraordinary it was to still do such a shoddy job of building this current thing and taking people out on it. You wanna hear something that's kind of sick? Apparently downloads of My Heart Will Go On from the Titanic soundtrack have really skyrocketed. It's a good song. And Netflix is bringing back the Titanic. Oh, good.

Line up next week. It's a great movie. People are morbid. People are morbid. I also saw some memes going around where it's like a 150 year timeline and it's like Titanic casualties and it spiked in 1912 and then waited until 2023 and then spiked up to four again. So look, sorry. Sorry for laughing. I had to. It's the internet. People are mean. All right, so what are we looking at? Well, it's hard to tell you why I cannot stand Meghan Markle so much. After all, there are a lot of know-nothing, attention-seeking former actresses in this world.

Part of it is because I do love the UK so much, and I think we effectively exported our worst cultural asset to hurt their royal family. And the other part of it, though, is the way that the media has always lapped up her obviously false claims and fed into her delusions of grandeur, which culminated in her and her husband, Prince Harry, officially leaving the royal family. Their departure was sold initially as principled. Meghan had allegedly been ostracized by the royal family because of her race, according to her.

And the British press was just too mean to her. But the reality of the situation after they left is actually clear. They left because she wasn't getting enough attention. The royals had rules. You could be a star, but you couldn't be bigger than the head royal, and you couldn't take positions or star in movies. Of course, as South Park has so hilariously put it, they just wanted privacy, right? Which is why they moved to California to set up shop at a production company. And a few years now into that production company, we're getting a very good view into how big of charlatans both Meghan and Harry really appear to be. A perfect view into big entertainment

companies, which are apparently dumb enough to feed these people's delusions of grandeur. First, we already brought you the news that Spotify is ending its relationship with Harry and Meghan. Reporting indicates that they were paid some $20 million for 12 episodes. And despite this astronomically high rate per episode, Meghan apparently could not find the time to actually conduct interviews herself and would have someone else do it. She would then edit in her voice

as if she was the one doing the interview. One of the craziest things I have ever heard. But there are even more details on the Spotify project which are just too good. Harry apparently reneged on many parts of his deal because he just had too hard of a time coming up with something to actually say. His ideas ranged from a podcast on veterans issues, to one on misinformation, to a point of view of someone new living in America. Quote, he at one point considered co-hosting a show with comedian Hasan Minhaj. My personal favorite anecdote was one serious Harry idea, where he would interview people like Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, and Mark Zuckerberg,

but effectively focus on only their childhood trauma. He also proposed interviewing Pope Francis about religion. Quote, in a show centered around fatherhood, and then a series covering societal matters like climate change. That's not everything, though. The couple also had a $100 million deal with Netflix, not only to sell their own personal story, but to come up with groundbreaking new series where they would be taken seriously. As creative types, they believed, quote, they were qualified to tackle the thorny topic of misinformation. Why?

Why is that? Because apparently they know a lot about the topic after having to deal with the British press. That's why. They totally were qualified to talk and produce an entire documentary about it. Luckily, I guess for all of us that were so lazy and so inept at actually getting the project off the ground, Netflix killed the deal. They also killed a so-called animated children's show that Meghan Markle was involved with, and they killed, quote, at least two TV ideas that the couple had pitched in the last year. I swear I'm not making this up. One was a project pitched by the couple, was described as, quote, Emily in Paris, but with a man. The other was, quote, a family-friendly TV show about a gay character

that was effectively derivative of the show Heartstopper. My personal favorite line is this from the new Wall Street Journal expose on the couple, quote, Archwell employees and associates say that the company often lacks direction, that its founders at times seem surprised by the work required to finish entertainment projects. Most potential initiatives follow a similar route. Big idea, subpar execution. Makes sense, especially if you never actually had to work hard a day in your life. But as much as I wish that this was just about awful Harry and Meghan and how bad they are, it's a story of giant entertainment companies showering the undeserving talent in cash. Harry and Meghan did

not get the idea to get Netflix to pay them a fat stack to come up with these ideas. They stole it from the real Duke and Duchess of turning yourself into a brand, Barack and Michelle Obama, who left office and almost immediately started signing insanely lucrative deals with the exact same companies, Spotify and Netflix. Yet a similar story has already played out there. Spotify did not renew its deal with the Obamas because they rightfully thought if you sign a deal with Obama, Obama would actually appear every once in a while

on a podcast. But they apparently don't want to do that. They want to produce content from behind the scenes that doesn't feature them as much because they are so special talent producers. A common theme is emerging here. People become famous, either through birth or public service,

then they turn themselves into a brand. Obama himself ceased being an actual man a very long time ago. He is a multi-million dollar deal, as is his wife, after the book Becoming Fame. Their job is to print as much cash in this lifetime as humanly possible, while maintaining an iron death grip on the control of the Democratic Party. Obama himself has not been all that adept at actually producing good content. His National Park series on Netflix was a huge flop, generated almost no buzz. I personally also found it odd. Why is an American president doing a series called National Parks and including parks about other countries? Whatever, I digress. The major takeaway from these two cases is how much money, leeway,

and cash that you can get when you are a cultural star with the right politics. Take people like us out of it. How insane is our current system? From comedy to politics to almost every sector of entertainment, there is an explosion of independent talent hustling, building real audiences, connections with millions of people across the globe. Now, some of them get paid, to be sure, but really only what, the top 0.01%? People like Joe Rogan, XQC, others, they hustled their way there for years before they got paid. People like Obama, Harry, and Meghan, they jumped the line, and they don't do any of the actual work. That's actually what drives me the craziest

about this. It's like you can quit the royal family. 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? There is an extraordinary scandal unfolding in the lucrative world of behavioral science. One of the stars of the field, Francesca Gino, is being accused of repeated outright fraud. And in a deliciously ironic twist, you really can't make this up, she is said to have faked results in a study about honesty. An incredible story, humiliating for her employer, that would be Harvard, the blue chip companies that sought out her services, the mainstream outlets that routinely quoted her,

and also further calls into question some of the blockbuster behavioral science findings of the past two decades. All right, so let me give you a little bit of backstory here. Behavioral scientists typically attempt to identify subtle prompts and tendencies that influence how human beings act. How do you encourage more organ donation or healthier eating or how do you get consumers to buy a particular product? It's essentially the study of shaping and manipulating human behavior without the subject really ever knowing what is happening. Over the past few decades, behavioral science has shot to prominence because it's obviously very valuable for corporations and governments to know the little psychological tricks that can keep you buying their goods or keep employees placated and supplicant or citizens compliant. Key research in the field, though, has already been called into question over the years due primarily to an inability to replicate many of the most blockbuster findings. So back in 2018, laboratories sought to recreate the results of 21 different studies in the field. They were only

able to do so in 13 instances. Now, this was no minor affair. As BuzzFeed reported at the time, quote, the eight papers that did not fully replicate, seven in the journal Science, one in Nature, have been cited hundreds of times in scientific literature, and many were widely covered by the media. But this is small potatoes compared to the new revelations. At issue is a 2012 paper authored by Gino and a number of other co-authors which relied on the results of three different studies. Those studies purported to show that people could be compelled to behave more honestly if they were able to demonstrate that some of the data used in the study had been tampered with and that that fake data had actually driven the results of that study and led to that finding. Now, the same group of crusading researchers, they had found manipulated data in one of the other studies that also drove that same blockbuster 2012 paper. So for those who are keeping track at home, two out of the three

honesty studies relied on dishonest information. But that's not all. The Data Colada folks have since published additional blogs revealing fabricated data in two other studies in which Dr. Gino was involved, and they are promising one more. This has caused an earthquake in the field. She was both a star and she collaborated widely with other researchers, all of whom are now wondering if the results of the studies they worked on with Dr. Gina were real or fake. And the New York Times quoted behavioral scientist Maurice Schweitzer as saying that the allegations are having large reverberations in the academic community because Dr. Gino is someone who has so many collaborators, so many articles, who is really a leading scholar

in the field. Dr. Gino herself has been placed on leave by her employer, Harvard University. It doesn't take an economics degree to understand the motivations in this field to create fake results. As the Chronicle of Higher Education put it, quote, her expertise has made her in demand as a consultant and speaker to some of the world's biggest companies and institutions. Bacardi, Google, Microsoft, Coca-Cola, Disney, Goldman Sachs, Honeywell, Novartis, Procter & Gamble, and the U.S. Air Force, Army, and Navy, and is a source to media outlets from The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal. According to her website, she has co-authored more than 135 academic articles and written books, including 2018's Rebel Talent, White Pays to Break the Rules at

Work and in Life. That's an interesting one, isn't it? She's also been named one of the world's 40 best business school professors under 40 and 50 most influential management thinkers. She is the type of expert who does TED Talks and is highly sought after for corporate conferences and the like. And in order to get people to continue buying your books and paying for you to speak at their conferences,

you've got to keep churning out attention-grabbing research, which is highly relevant to corporate America. And look, the study of human beings and our particular irrationalities, that is inherently interesting. It's also potentially gross. Where, after all, is the line between nudging or shaping behavior and manipulative psyops? What type of powerful psychological manipulations, for example, are being unleashed on our nation's teenagers to keep them addicted to their social media feeds, even as they are making them increasingly miserable? This is all big, big business. Banks and large corporations have taken to hiring their own in-house behavioral scientists to make

sure they are squeezing their customers and their workers for everything that they are worth. Bottom line, I guess we shouldn't be too shocked when the top researchers in the field of manipulation are caught engaging in their own manipulations. And this one, Sagar, is so humiliating. And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. As you know, guys, we've been doing extensive coverage of that aborted coup effort in Russia, and we're very excited now to get to talk to a resident of Moscow and a great friend, Yegor Kotkin. He is a great socialist thinker and writer. You can actually check him out on

Substack, and we'll post links for all of his writings and where you can support him via Bitcoin as well. But it's great to see you, my friend. Good to see you, man. Good to see you, guys. Good to see you, guys. Yeah, it's a pleasure. So while all of this was unfolding, you were there in Moscow watching it on Telegram, Twitter and all the other means. I mean, just take us through what this was like to live through for you. Literally under siege. No, actually, from the standpoint of a regular citizen, you might completely miss this. So, on Saturday, when most events unfolded, I just went out to the gym, went back, and if I

wasn't glued to Telegram channels and Twitter news, I wouldn't even notice that something is happening. My boyfriend, who travels much more than me, he noticed in some places he enters in Moscow there are some unusual activity more but again you could easily miss it because basically all events were happening mostly online and outside of Moscow. Moscow

didn't, if you do not anticipate this through the news coming to Moscow, you might completely miss it. And now people just joking that if someone went in the mountains on the weekend and now asking what happened, you can safely say nothing happened. Because it went back from the civil standpoint, it went back and it was almost nothing. But from the political, from political standpoint and historical standpoint, I mean, the picture is completely different, of course.

Yeah, so let's talk about that. Yegor, you brought up your mom before as a good view into how regular Russians are internalizing propaganda. So what is the view from your mother, from an average Russian media consumer, as to what the hell happened in this coup? Literally, the first thing I did, I called my mother at the start of the morning,

asked her what does she know. She didn't know nothing because urgent Putin message to the population was unplanned, was at 9 a.m. in Russia, so she missed it because she watched her news Friday evening, so no news yet. Then Saturday, Monday noon, she doesn't know what is going on because she didn't watch news yet. Putin's translation went mostly unnoticed for the most people. And then when I asked her again on Sunday, she said that official version is,

well, there was some kind of movement. It was not good, but they didn't hurt anybody. So put it, let them pass. And so explain to us what is the, you know, as best as you can, how do people largely feel about Prigozhin himself? How did they feel before this attempted coup? How do they feel after? Do they view him as a hero?

Do they view him as a traitor? Is it mixed? Is it complicated? What's your sense of that? Well, Prigozhin is mostly a media creature. He was propped by media in the last year because well, you have to understand how Russia operates to understand pre-Gorzhin phenomena.

Putin is, despite his public image, is actually a very indecisive leader and cowardly. So he loves to, all hard decisions, delegate to people below him or just wait it out when history already happened.

So when it was a stalemate in the Ukrainian war about a year ago happening, there was a vacuum, media vacuum, for some kind of leaders of this war who showed that Russia was doing something. And Prigozhin just took this place, and the media were happy, propaganda, criminal propaganda were happy to use it for this purpose. So they propped him here as not a mercenary leader, not a businessman, not a mafia man, but as a true Russian hero, patriot, and basically a spearhead of Russian invasion in Ukraine. And I think that people believed it. People believed it, of course.

And I think he got high on the smell of his own farts, as it's said. Because he started act like he's a public person. He's actually have a political base. I mean, yes, polls show he has up to 20% support from the Russian population, but this is what media push can give you. You see this in America all the time, like there was 20% of Bloomberg support in democratic primaries. Once you see it came into action, it disappears. So basically you have this manufactured support for Prigozhin,

but he believed that he actually had a political future. He started brawling openly with the Russian Ministry of Defense. And again, it was very opportune for him, because people who are supporting this war or even want this all to get over, which is the majority of the population, they sense that there is something wrong with Russian military, with Russian military leadership. So when Prigozhin started recording his viral videos, giving the ammo, giving the ammo, they thought that he might be the change for the better.

So again, it was everything was media done, and he was using only the lack of presence by the actual leaders of the military and Putin himself to use this opportunity. And so what is your... Yes. Well, I was going to ask, what is your assessment of what this will mean for the Putin regime going forward,

as best as anyone can say? Well, first I probably say what I think happened. It was not that much of a political act, I think, as much as we saw how things are being done in Putin's regime and have been done for 20 years just in open view for the first time, not under the rug. The rug got pulled away for a second. So I'm pretty sure that the Russian regime works exactly this way. There are forces of power, there are different clans who compete with each other for money,

for power, for state job, and so on. And Putin is their high arbiter. And there is a lot of threats, violent threats, going on under the rug usually. Right now we just saw this out in the open. But my sense that it wasn't nothing more than internal struggle that come out in the public political space. And Prigozhin did not probably expect the backlash he will get because people were not ready to see this internal kitchen outright on the public view because it became a historic moment. It became part of recorded history.

So he chickened out. But I think for Putin, it will be, for the time being, just fine. Because as the high arbiter of mafia clans, oligarch clans that divide Russia, he still worked out this thing just fine. So he managed to pull through some deal. What kind of deal, no one knows exactly, but he managed to do this. So he proved his usefulness for the people who backed this regime. Once again, it's the same way, but now in the public.

Usually it's going on under the rug. And I think the fact that it enters a space of public politics, it changes a lot, but it changes a lot in the long run. In the short run, it puts us in. I think that that is fascinating. Yegor, thank you so much. It's really invaluable for us

to have your insights today. So we're really grateful for you taking the time. Thank you, Yegor. And also taking the personal risk. Yeah, let's be real. This man is taking a risk. He's actually a hero. So if you want to support him, we'll have links in the description to all of that. So thank you very much, Yegor. We appreciate it. Thank you very much. Yeah, great to see you, my friend. Thank you guys so much for watching the show. We appreciate it. We've got a great interview with Marianne Williamson. It'll be dropping a little bit later today. We're excited

for that. And thank you to everybody who's been heeding the call on our subscribers. We're doing well. It actually looks like I might have to do that show in Indian garb. Let's do the official count. The official 998008. So we've got a couple hundred. It just changed. Yeah. Oh, it's 010, 11, 12. This is fun. It's fun to watch the live counter. So if you want to see me in full Indian dress garb and sneakers, humiliate myself, go ahead and subscribe to the show. Well, let's get to 1 million. Otherwise, we'll see you all tomorrow. Love you guys. See you tomorrow. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. But there were some dark truths behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children.

Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. Enter Camp Shame, an eight-part series examining the rise and fall of Camp Shane and the culture that fueled its decades-long success. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus.

So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. DNA test proves he is not the father. Now I'm taking the inheritance. Wait a minute, John. Who's not the father? Well, Sam, luckily, it's You're Not the Father Week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon. This author writes,

My father-in-law is trying to steal the family fortune worth millions from my son, even though it was promised to us. He's trying to give it to his irresponsible son, but I have DNA proof that could get the money back. Hold up. They could lose their family and millions of dollars? Yep. Find out how it ends by listening to the OK Storytime podcast

on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation. I'm also the girl behind Boy Sober, the movement that exploded in 2024. You might hear that term and think it's about celibacy, but to me, Boy Sober is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's flexible, it's customizable, and it's a personal process. Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it. Listen to VoiceOver on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast.