Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 6/27/23: Leaked Audio Trump Admits Classified Doc Possession, Putin Breaks Silence After Coup, Biden Confronted On Hunter, SCOTUS Wife Corruption, Blackrock CEO ESG, Fox Fires Tucker Staff, 1 Million Subs, Global Underclass Of AI

Episode Date: June 27, 2023

Krystal and Saagar discuss new leaked audio of Trump admitting to classified document possession, Putin and Prigozhin breaking their silence after failed coup, Biden denying US involvement in Russian coup, Zelensky saying no elections until end of war, Biden confronted on Hunter's lies, The View excusing the Hunter corruption, SCOTUS Justice's wife caught in corrupt deal, the Blackrock CEO ashamed of ESG, Fox firing Tucker's staff and promoting Jesse Waters, Krystal and Saagar celebrate the milestone of hitting 1 million subscribers, and we're joined by guest Josh Dzieza from The Verge on his story around the global underclass of human labor that's powering AI.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.

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And I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith. So listen to Everybody's Business 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 Good morning, everybody. Happy Tuesday. We have an amazing show for everybody today.

Extra amazing. Yes, extra amazing. Get to that in just a moment. Lots of big breaking news this morning. So we have the latest fallout, new comments from Putin on that whole attempted coup. Wasn't an attempted coup. We'll get into all of that. We also have some response from the White House with regards to new Hunter Biden allegations and interesting commentary from The View that we could not resist bringing to you as well. Big week for Supreme Court decisions.

Expecting some huge ones. We're going to preview those. This comes amid new allegations of corruption with regards to Justice Alito. Break that down for you. BlackRock, which has been a leader in so-called ESG, their CEO saying they're taking a step back from that, saying he's actually ashamed

of having been associated with it. So that's kind of interesting. Could have some big implications. Fox News totally reshuffling their primetime lineup after Tucker Carlson's firing slash exit. And excited for our guest today, Josh DeZiza, who is talking about the human costs of AI while we see just the tech part. There are actually a lot of human beings behind the scenes that make it all work. And so he has a new report on all of that. But we also have some big news here at Breaking Points. Guys, we did it. We did it. Million subs. One million. It happened. Actually, actually, we kind of shot by. We did

shoot by. It's kind of amazing. You guys really do step up though whenever, whenever. You know, here's the thing. We realized we never asked anybody to ever subscribe usually to a YouTube channel. We usually just do the premium sub ask. It's going to look really nice behind you, Crystal. I've already been warned that the plaque is 1.5 times bigger than the silver plaque. So it's going to be pretty sizable there. It's going to take up a whole shelf for sure.

Back there. Yeah, so as you can see, I think probably over... We'll have to figure it out. I don't know. But it's a good problem to have. It's a good problem to have whose head it will go behind. We're going to have some longer reflections on this milestone, what it means to us, what I hope it means to all of you guys who supported us along this journey. As of right now, we're at 1,002,163, which makes me happy because one of my greatest nightmares would be to cross the threshold.

Oh, right. And then dip below. It would be so embarrassing. So I feel comfy that we're going to be good to go from here the threshold. Oh, right. And then dip below. Yeah, that would be so embarrassing. So I feel comfy that we're going to be good to go from here on out. Well, don't encourage people. Don't give people any ideas. That is true. That is true.

I'm just manifesting my greatest fears here. But anyway, like I said, we're going to have more reflections on this later in the show, so stay tuned for that. A little bit of a retrospective that our amazing producers who helped us get to this spot put together for us. So we'll get to that towards the end of the show. But before we jump into the topics I just laid out for the day, we also just had some breaking news last night. You guys know, obviously, the latest Trump indictment has to do with his handling of those classified documents.

One of the key pieces of evidence that we know that investigators were able to obtain was a tape in which he was said to have been basically bragging about, hey, here's some classified documents. See these classified documents? And even go so far as to say, when I was president, I could have declassified these, but I didn't. They're still secret. They're still confidential. CNN was able to get their hands on that actual tape, on that recording. So we are able to listen to it this morning and get a sense of how that all went down. Let's take a listen. These are bad, sick people. That was your coup, you know, against you. Well, it started right at the beginning. Like when Milley's talking about,

oh, we're going to try to do a coup. They were trying to do that before you even were sworn in. That's right. Trying to overthrow your election. Well, with Milley, let me see that. I'll show you an example. He said that I wanted to attack Iran. Isn't it amazing? I have a big pile of papers. This thing just came out. Look. This was him. They presented me this. This is off the record, but they presented me this.

This was him. This was the Defense Department and him. We looked at some. This was him. This wasn't done by me. This was him. All sorts of stuff. Pages long. Let's see here. Isn't that amazing? This totally wins my case, you know.

Except it is highly confidential. This is secretive for me. Look at this. You're back. Hillary would print that out all the time. She'd send it to Anthony Weiner, the president. By the way, isn't that incredible? Yeah.

I was just saying, because we were talking about it. And he said, he wanted to attack Iran. He's in the picture. This was done by the military, given to me. I think we can probably, right? We'll have to see. Yeah, we'll have to try to figure out a... See, this president aren't going to be blessed.

No, I can't. But this is blessed. Now we have a problem. Isn't that interesting? Yeah. It's so cool. And you probably almost didn't believe me, but now you believe me.

No, I believe you. It's incredible, right? Hey, bring some Coke, Jim, please. So, I mean, it's classic Trump. That is the most vintage Trump. It took me right back. It's the most quintessential Trump that you can imagine, complete with the, like, Anthony Foyer.

Actually, my favorite was bring the Cokes in, please. I've literally witnessed the Diet Coke button more than a couple of times. If anybody is interested, that's exactly how they talk to him behind the scenes. They constantly have to be stroking his ego. So sycophantic. I mean, that part is humiliating for whoever that's now. It's just so embarrassing. But okay, so first of all, it's kind of hilarious because it's classic Trump. Second of all, I do find it ironic that he has this line in there where he's like, this totally wins my case, you know? And of course, he's talking about, he thinks that General Milley had claimed that Trump wanted to go to war with Iran. I don't know if that's true or not. I do know that

he took some very hawkish and provocative actions with regard to Iran, including pulling out of the nuclear deal, but we'll put that to the side. And what he's showing these individuals in his office purportedly are war plans that the Pentagon has developed for directly attacking Iran. Now, he seems to think that this means that Milley himself was directly in favor of attacking Iran. Maybe he was, maybe he wasn't. But he also seems to not understand that the Pentagon draws up plans for like literally every possibility and contingency. So anyway, I'm not saying that the Pentagon isn't hawkish with regard to Iran, but that piece is funny. But I mean, listen, it's just as devastating to his case as it was reported to be in the media. And that's really the key takeaway. He says,

these are classified secret documents. He says, I could have declassified them, but I didn't. You hear the papers literally shuffling in the background as he shows them around, tells people to take a look at them. So that's what we got. Yeah. And the biggest problem for Trump ultimately is that he admitted that they weren't declassified at the time. And, you know, the bigger problem is I've seen a lot of legal analysis around executive privilege, about the supreme power of the president, about the ability to declassify. But Trump has two problems on his side. Number one, whenever he was president, he tweeted that there was a declassification crystal. His Justice Department then argued in a court of law that that did not count, him simply waving

his hands and saying, these are declassified. They said that only declassification can happen through a formal review process. So number one, it undercuts his argument. Number two, and this is actually the biggest problem, is that remember, under the terms of the indictment, this is a very simple process crime, as in they said, these are classified documents. He can't contest now the classification regime on that based on the US government. It's possible this might go to the Supreme Court, but the Supreme Court is going to heavily rely on existing US government procedure and also under the Trump and the Biden administration. And then finally, in terms of the obstruction,

given the further tapes and evidence that we've seen here before, in terms of what was listed out in the indictment, about his ability also in the Fox News interview when he specifically admitted to holding on to some things after they were given over. That actually validates some of the obstruction charges. So Trump's best defense crystal is just political, is I'm being politically persecuted. This is a political prosecution. This is illegitimate and hoping that you can get somebody on that South Florida jury to agree. And let's be real. I mean, that is very much

a possibility or maybe a hung jury or a mistrial, something like that. But the issue, the biggest problem is that within the merits of the way that the raw is written, it is a very, very difficult case for him right now. And that tape is exactly why it's so hard. Probably his best chance to avoid these charges was for them to not be filed at all, for him to sort of bully or convince or control or persuade the Department of Justice to not file these indictments because, listen, based on the evidence that is available in the public sphere and, listen, he's entitled to mount his own defense and we'll hear what they have to say about it. They haven't said much about it thus far, but it looks like a pretty open and shut case. So that means that his most rational, logical strategy is the political to hope that he makes it back into the White House and is able to pardon himself. Just quickly before we jump into the latest with regards to Russia, there were a couple of other developments with regards to Trump and his potential legal trouble.

As we've been saying, this is probably not the last indictment that he is even going to face. There are continuing investigations both in Fulton County and also Jack Smith continues to investigate what happened on January 6th and fake elector schemes. With regards to that, you had half a dozen Secret Service agents I'm reading from NBC News right now who have testified before the grand jury that will decide whether to indict former President Trump for his alleged role in the January 6, 2021 riot at the Capitol. In addition to that, you also had a number of fake electors who took a deal for immunity in order to testify with regard to that January 6 probe as well. I've seen a lot of experts, I don't have any special knowledge of this, but I have seen a lot of experts who say that charges are very likely coming on this front as well. And, you know, that's before we even get into what's going on down in Fulton County, where I think charges are expected to.

So that's the lay of the land. The judge who was in charge of the documents case said the trial is set to start on August 14th. Hard to say what the ultimate timeline will be, how long this will all unfold. Certainly the Trump side is going to try to slow things down and keep things going as long as possible to try to get to the election before any of this is resolved. But, Sagar, that's what we know this morning. Yeah, that's what we know. And we'll keep everybody updated while this all goes on. But the tape itself is just more evidence of he's got some problems.

He's got some legal trouble at the very, very least. Okay, let's go ahead to the next part here. This is important. Putin has actually broken his silence, finally, on the Wagner coup and has given us a little bit more information about what the official response from the regime will be. Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. So here were some of the bullet points that were compiled here by an Estonian blogger. I have gone and I've looked at the official translation. It does look to be accurate.

So he says, quote, any attempts to start a mutiny will fail. Our mutiny would have been suppressed anyway. Perpetrators must have known this. By betraying their country, they also lied and forced others to kill their soldiers. All enemies abroad and national traitors wanted us to fight each other and they failed. The majority of Wagner commanders are patriots. They were used covertly against their brothers in arms. I have made steps now to avoid large bloodshed. This needed time, including letting those who made a mistake change their mind and see the consequences that this will lead to.

He's a nice guy. Interesting in terms of, well, it's interesting too about whether this was a negotiation or whether this was a very heavy hand that Putin made it known via Lukashenko to Prigozhin behind the scenes of, hey man, like you and everybody you're with, you're about to get vaporized. So it's like, is that something that you want to choose? Let's be very real here. I'm going to kill you and I'm going to kill your entire family. And that was why the FSB had opened that investigation against him. The reason why that this silence broke in and all of that, everybody's reading between the tea leaves, is that, let's put this up there, please, on the screen. The Financial Times had a decent write-up on this, is that at the same time,

though, Crystal, there have been signs of weakness from behind the Russian curtain. You've seen that the FSB dropped its investigation now. The FSB is a successor to the KGB. The security services dropped its investigation into Prokosian. That is very much seen almost as like, it's like a pass, right? He no longer is an active and a wanted criminal inside of Russia. There are reports now actually coming out this morning that Prokosian has actually landed in Minsk in Belarus, you know, verifying some of the exile reporting now that had come out there. Lukashenko and some of the behind the scenes in terms of how this will all happen is that it

seems that the Wagner forces themselves will then be drafted into the Russian administrative defense and come under the full command and control. So overall, this is a total loss for Prokosian. But then on the Putin side, he did have to give something. The man who challenged his authority and came within 200 kilometers has lived to see another day. Now, will he see a few more days?

We'll see. A lot more days? Will he see, will he live to the end of his days in a nice comfy bed? Personally, I doubt it. But still, I mean, if you are an oligarch,

people like Oleg Deripaska and others who have voiced not anti-war sentiments, but they've made, you know, kind of statements that cast in that direction, you got to feel a hell of a lot more emboldened now. Because previously they thought you were you're a dead man if you come somewhere even close to this. And you've literally had an armed mutiny and the man lived to tell the tale. Maybe. I mean, it's interesting because there are people who have, you know, been put in prison for posting anti-war sentiments on Facebook. Right. But then you have Prokofiev who, you know, directly challenging the Putin regime, marching to Moscow, and by the way, killing some number of Russian soldiers and downing planes in the process. Who was let off the hook? So you said this right away, Sagar, which is that very likely you're going to have a greater crackdown on dissent domestically because, you know, Putin is showing weakness right now and really can't afford that. I thought it was really interesting talking to Yegor

yesterday, his assessment for what it's worth. And he's, you know, he lives in Moscow. He's sort of socialist writer, thinker, analyst, et cetera. His view is in the short term, it won't really change anything. As you said, Sagar, Wagner is being incorporated into the Ministry of Defense, Prokosin is going away, Putin is reasserting control over more or less the entire military, although you still have the Chechens out there, so that's another matter. But he's more or less reasserting control. All of the top-level people, as far as we know, including Shoigu, who Prokosian really despised and had been going after relentlessly,

all of them seem to be keeping their jobs for now, as best we can tell. So short-term may not change a lot. Long-term, you know, is this the crack that ends the regime here? It's impossible to say. To go back to what Prokosian said in his 11-minute statement, which was kind of funny. I mean, first of all, he said that their march towards the Capitol and the way they were able to do this so effectively, and in his view, like barely any blood spilled, et cetera, was a masterclass. That was his words.

In the way that the assault on Kyiv should have gone from the beginning and the assault on Ukraine should have gone from the beginning. So he described the Wagner Group's actions there as a masterclass in military tactics. He also claimed somewhat unbelievably, quote, we didn't have the goal of toppling the existing regime, which is lawfully elected, as we have said many times. He didn't refer to Putin by name, though. Instead, he wanted to, quote, prevent the destruction of the paramilitary group and to hold to account those who, quote, with their unprofessional actions made a huge amount of mistakes during Russia's invasion of Ukraine. So, I mean, this is both a personal face-saving attempt and also an attempt for Putin to save face. Because, you know, if you are letting someone who directly threatened your regime off the hook, yeah, that's a pretty bad look here. So, tempted, face-saving all the way

around. Yeah, there's a lot of cope that I think that is happening. And yeah, like, let's be clear, in terms of the Ukraine counter-offensive, there has been no change currently to the status quo. Minor movements on the front line, but in terms of any major breakthrough or any of that, hasn't materialized. There hasn't been a mass defection in terms of Russian troops, and everything does currently seem to be on course. But extraordinary events have just happened, and that will shake Russia really to its core. And I think that in terms of Putin, this will validate his worst fears of all time. And I actually think a crackdown domestically, while that is likely, we may even see even more of a crackdown in the

military because their apparatchiks and political officers are loyal to Shogun and to Garisimov, even though those guys are terrible at their jobs and would never have risen to those level in the United States or any sort of meritocratic system. They're basically mafia bosses. The issue really for them is that whenever they are promoting people from within, they're largely loyal to the two of them. And those two have then been loyal to Putin. But Putin may come through and demand even more loyalty tests, I think, from the future. It's actually very much what Stalin did in the 1930s. It's one of the reasons the Russian army was not well prepared for what happened during the Nazi invasion. The Tsars did the same thing.

Almost any time there's some sort of rebellion from within the armed forces, they do usually a job of making it more political. But overall, that usually makes the force less good at actually fighting. Yeah, I mean, there are some signs that Ukraine was able to gain some ground while Russia was dealing with all of this. And, you know, I think it's entirely plausible that Russia suffers militarily just because the Wagner group was some of their more effective fighting forces. and some proportion of Wagner is going to be incorporated into the Ministry of Defense, but some proportion of it is just going to be done,

go home, et cetera. So, you know, we'll see how it all shakes out. I will say just getting some of the context from Yegor in terms at least of how he personally views this all unfolding domestically in Russia, Prokofiev had become a real social media sensation. And he had been propped up in some ways by Russian state media as this like patriot of the war, et cetera. But in his view, in Yegor's view, that support was really soft. And he described Prokosian as being high on his own farts, meaning he, you know, he was too big for his britches. He really overestimated how much support he had, thought he was a big man, thought he could pull this off. And then probably as he's marching down the road and he's not seeing, he's not encountering a lot of resistance,

but he's also not seeing the Russian national guard like rallying to his defense. He realized with his reportedly like 2,500 men that he had with him, there was no way in hell he was going to actually be able to take Moscow. There are also reports that, you know, there were some threats made to his family that may have been quite persuasive to him. And so that's what brings him to the negotiating table. I don't know if it was the right move for Putin to strike this deal with Prokofiev, because I do think that it reveals some real chinks in the armor here. But, you know, you just want to be really careful about being too certain about, oh, this spells the end of the regime and this is,

you know, weakness and now the Ukrainians are going to be able to counter, etc. Nobody really knows how it will all shake out. And so it's just best to, you know, look at the situation for what it is today and try to see what happens tomorrow going forward. You know, Peter Zion actually has always said it really well. He's like, look, the first year and a half, it's always a shit show. He's like, then, he's like, somehow they throw as many bodies as possible into the grinder and then they usually end up pulling it out. So if history is our guide, we seem to be currently in that shit show category.

We're in the shit show. Yeah, we are currently within that. Let's go to the next part here. President Biden trying to put away some concerns that the West may have had something to do with Prigozhin's coup effort. He was talking about it at the top of a White House event yesterday in his first public comments. Here's what he had to say. We had to make sure we gave Putin no excuse. Let me emphasize, we gave Putin no excuse to blame this on the West or to blame this on NATO. We made clear that we were not involved. We had nothing to do with it. This was part of a struggle within the Russian system.

Making clear we have nothing to do with it, Crystal. I mean, there hadn't been any reporting or whatever that we had. Of course, there was some of that about whether we had some information about the forthcoming coup, whether it was actually going to happen or not. But obviously, as we actually read earlier today in the show, Putin is still blaming the West and others for encouraging the military coup. Now, he probably is going to do that no matter what, whatever actually the details are. I do think it is interesting, though, to look and to see whether and how Putin will continue to message. Because I actually think it is a mistake to blame this on the West and not point out Prigozhin's actually

worst thing that he did, which is all intel currently indicates that whenever he was whining about not having enough ammunition and going after the defense ministry. He had all the ammo that he needed, and he was hoarding it so he could mount a coup. I mean, if you wanted a benefit for a public message, you're like, this guy literally took weapons that he could have been using to protect Russian lives and use them to mount a coup against our government that already failed. So that's something that if, you know, if the Russian regime were smart, I think that's what they would lean into and would message. You know, it's fascinating how this all went down as best as we understand it. So the reporting is

the U.S. knew in advance and chose to do nothing, which I think, you know, at least that's their line is that they did nothing. And there's no evidence to suggest otherwise. What would be open to that evidence if it presents itself? I think that was a wildly dangerous gamble, insanely dangerous gamble. And I think it's reflective of the attitude of a lot of the blob here in Washington. And we saw it expressed online from former Russian ambassador Michael McFaul as one example, that they were actively cheering for this war criminal mercenary maniac, head of a private army, to take control of a nuclear superpower. Like, that is insane. That is insane.

Listen, maybe he would dot his I's and cross his T's with regard to protecting the nuclear arsenal and not be wild and unhinged. But you have no idea. And so it looks like it worked out in the West's favor here. It looks like the gamble paid off. But how many of these gambles are we going to take? How many of these gambles have we already taken with regards to how we have approached this conflict? I just think it's absolutely insane. Now, with regards to the buildup to this moment, what Prokosin claimed, so I went through some of this context yesterday, but just to reiterate a bit, they were already, there was already lots of tension between Prokosin, Shoigu, and increasingly, you know, potentially with Putin as well, because Prokosin was just,

you know, he was really unleashed. He was extremely repeatedly critical of the Russian military leadership. Putin seemed to recognize they have somewhat of a problem here, so they were looking to curtail Wagner's power and to try to bring them under the umbrella of the Ministry of Defense, which means that Wagner's men would basically be under Shoigu, which to him was a real red line, apparently. So what he did, in addition to hoarding the ammo saga, apparently, to plan this, not totally not a coup, was claimed that there was a direct military attack on Wagner forces. There's no evidence to support that whatsoever, but that's what he used as his pretext. And he claimed in his 11-minute address that we talked about before that like, oh, we were totally, listen, we weren't happy about coming under the Ministry of Defense, but it was fine.

We were packing up our stuff. We were getting ready to leave. And then, you know, innocent us over here, they came and they attacked us. So what are we going to do? That was his claim of how all this started. But, yeah, I think our posture here was wildly irresponsible and downright terrifying. And we're just lucky that it worked out the way that it did. I've been mulling it over and thinking, I'm just, I do

think it was a tough gambit at the time. I genuinely don't know now what I've been thinking about in terms of the warning, but I do think, I think that this is a good opportunity about- Well, make the other case. So, okay. For what the administration- The case for not doing anything is you have no idea is that they're going to blame you already in the first place. And also, who would have ever actually thought they would get as far as they did, right? So they're like, hey, they'll piss Putin off, but nothing's really going to happen. So they never in their wildest dreams could have imagined that the Russians would be so incompetent to let them get 200 kilometers from Moscow. I understand in terms of that, but I'm thinking now on the back end, this is a perfect

opportunity for engagement to go to them and just be like, look, man, you just got humiliated in the national stage. Just call it, call it in Ukraine. We'll put pressure on the Ukrainians. Let's all just, we'll come together and we'll try it in the same, you can sail off in the sunset. You'll actually look better. You'll be stronger. You won't have as many problems. So, good question. Couldn't you have done that, though, once you have the intelligence, but before the attempted coup actually happens? It's possible.

To say, listen, you know this guy's a problem for you. We know he's planning this coup. Who knows how this is going to go? Let's, you know, let's get to the negotiating table before all of this unfolds. I think the problem is he probably would have just said, okay, that's nice. And then he would have taken the information and he would have chopped his head off and he would have been like, yeah, and he was a traitor or whatever to the regime.

And also the West was behind it, even though they're the ones who warned us about it. So I just don't know. Look, we are where we are. Where we are right now is I do think this is a good opportunity for Emmanuel Macron or somebody to get over there or to get on the phone with these people and just be like, look, you don't want to be in this situation.

Macron is actually even, he's probably the perfect one because he keeps saying Russia needs to be defeated but not destroyed in terms of the Putin regime. And Putin would see him at the very least as a credible person whenever it comes to this. And he would say, I can go to the West, I can go to Biden, I can go to the UK,

and I can go to all of them. And I can say that we can try and put some pressure here to try and bring this into a close. But you got to pull out, or you got to call it, or you got to give us something so that we can make sure that we keep this all temperature down. But without any sort of engagement like this, the most likely option and scenario from the Russians is to double, triple down and to try and achieve some sort of military victory to justify the current chaos and the problems and the cost of what's going on in Ukraine. That's what I think is a disaster. I think it's very likely that Putin sees the outcome

of this war as completely existential to him personally. And that's why, you know, it seems, I want to be hopeful that you could achieve some sort of a negotiated settlement in the near term, but it's hard for me to see. I mean, he's going to need some sort of face saving, some sort of way to back out of the corner that he's put himself in. And yeah, not a good, not a good set of facts. Absolutely. Let's go to the next part here on Ukraine. We're always, of course, paying attention to what also is happening with the Zelensky government and how they're handling themselves in terms of their democratic processes. Let's go ahead and put this up there.

What we're fighting for is democracy after all, right, Tucker? Well, President Zelensky is now saying that Ukraine will hold elections after the war ends. He says that elections in Ukraine can be held in 2024 only if martial law is ended by them. Martial law currently in effect under the Ukrainian constitution after the invasion of Russia. So the invasion by Russia, they say that Zelensky says, according to that constitution, no elections can even be held in the country while martial law remains in effect. He expressed hope that there would be priests in Ukraine next year and that life could return to normal. The next parliamentary elections would normally actually be held October of 2023, so coming up

here in the fall of 2023. And then this presidential election would take place in the spring of 2024. The Speaker of the Ukrainian Parliament actually said that the issue of parliamentary elections was, quote, not on the agenda since that according to law, they could not be held during martial law. Now, I'll say why I think that this is a mistake. We had an election here, a very important election here in the United States in the middle of our great Civil War in 1864, arguably the most important election ever in American history, because it affirmed actually at the time that this was a rebellion, that this was not something that was going to interfere with our democratic process.

You know, Lincoln, of course, you know, he suspended habeas corpus and he did a lot of stuff, which, you know, certainly doesn't look all that great in terms of democratic norms, but insisted on holding both the midterm elections and some of the gubernatorial elections from 1863 and then in 1864 as well. Even with the full knowledge, he believed he would lose. He believed up until, I forget what great victory happened. It's blanking. I think it's Sherman's March. Atlanta, that's what it was.

The seizure of Atlanta, I believe. That happened before the election or sometime around the election was that there was a thought and a knowledge within that government that they were going to lose. And that even, and that when they did lose, that the war aims, that because Lincoln was running at that time against General McClellan, who was much more of a peacenik and a Democrat who wanted to sign an agreement with the South, that they were like, not only are we going to lose, we're actually going to get somebody in office who is against everything that we're for. And they held the election anyway. And the reason why I think that's so important to think about is that, you know, Ukraine is in the midst of an external

threat and, you know, that is genuinely existential. They do have conquered territory, but it's not unprecedented, you know, for countries in the middle of wars and specifically democratic countries to hold elections at that time. So I understand, you know, the whole like constitution and all that, but I also do think it's a little bit convenient specifically also because Ukraine has taken a lot of steps to quash and to go after opposition parties, pro-Ukraine voices or pro-Russian voices and all of that within its country. At the end of the day, some sort of settlement here and the idea of Ukraine as a polity, as a sovereign nation, is they did have a significant Russian-speaking population. So if they want to make the case as being some sort of like multilingual, semi, you know,

like multinationality country that, you know, should survive and exist in the future, elections are a very key part of that, you know, in terms of democracy. Yeah, I think that's right. And I mean, the point of highlighting this story and this suspension of any sort of even semblance of democracy, which this is just the latest step in a number, as Agra was alluding to, of crackdowns on any sort of political parties that would voice any kind of dissent, corralling of media and all those sorts of actions, is not to demonize Ukraine. It's just to make sure that people aren't falling for the propaganda that this is, you know, perfect democracy

and what we're doing is really just standing up for democracy and that there aren't some warts involved with what's going on with the Ukrainian government as well. We just want people to be clear-eyed about what the real goals are here from the U.S., who we are really supporting, and what the actual reality within Ukraine is. I think that's it. Yeah, and you know what the real goals are here from the U.S., who we are really supporting, and what the actual reality within Ukraine is. I think that's it.

Yeah, and you know what the irony is? I think Zelensky would be elected. He's dramatically popular. Insanely popular as far as we can tell anyway. You know, before all of this, there were a lot of questions about corruption. Should this comedian even be in charge? All this stuff.

I mean- Remember him from the perfect phone call? He's a hero. Different from the media representation of him now. Inside of Ukraine, or at least what's left of Ukraine, this man is a hero. He probably would win like 90 something percent of the vote. I don't know why he wouldn't want to hold an election right now, but maybe there's some democratic stuff going on behind the scenes. Still thought it was important to bring everybody that story. Let's go ahead to the next part here. Hunter Biden, President Biden, making his very first comments on the Hunter Biden

plea agreement and all of the controversy around that since the release of the IRS whistleblower, the text and the allegations against him, asked specifically by a Fox News reporter as he was exiting a White House event, were you a liar, Mr. President, whenever you said that you didn't have any business dealings with Hunter? Here's what he had to say. Okay, so I know that's very difficult to hear. I also have deep sympathy for, I have been that person before and it's a very tough gig. So she was on the middle of a rope line

as President Biden was leaving, I think that's the East Room, and walking through the, walking to the Grand Hallway or whatever it's called. And while she was there, she said, did you lie? And all he said was no.

So that's the first public comment that he's made there. And she's saying, did you lie that you had never spoken to your son about his business dealings, right? Right. That's right. Did you lie about never speaking to Hunter about his business dealings? The reason why that that's important is that A, he took the chance only to answer that question in the middle of a very crowded room whenever there's a lot of noise. And he still refused to address it in any press podium. In terms of the reaction currently from the White House, they have still refused to give

any comment. And they were asked about it yesterday again, and they still are unable to provide any answer around ethics about President Biden, about his knowledge of the deal and the whistleblower. Here's what Karine Jean-Pierre had to say. If the president communicated to members of his family not to conduct business on White House grounds, can you tell us about any kinds of guardrails that are up? So look, I'm going to be, again, very mindful because this is all connected to a case that the DOJ is currently overseeing, so I'm not going to comment on that specifically. But as you know, and we have laid out very early on in this administration when it comes to ethics, when it comes to how we all kind of move about

and how we respect clearly the government ethics here. This administration has been incredibly transparent on that. This administration is very transparent and that is why the only thing that we have to say about corrupt business dealings, IRS whistleblowers, is he is his son. Did you notice that yesterday? Every time that

she was talking about it, she's like, this is his son. This is his son. They were like, are you going to ask him about it? And she said, no, I don't have any plans. How do you have no plans to ask him about it? You're getting up there and getting hammered every day, asking questions around a very specific government IRS whistleblower allegation of foreign corruption against our number one adversary on the global stage. And you have nothing to say about it. And then have a straight face say that you're the most transparent administration whatever in history. You're so ethical in your conduct.

I mean, it's just outrageous the way that they're trying to quash this, Crystal. Well, that's also a lie. Like, I don't know if she's like questioned Biden on it, but clearly they're but clearly. Yeah, obviously you talked about it. Right. So now you're lying extensively behind the scenes and how to handle it. It's also interesting. She mentioned that this is the subject, you know, that Hunter is the subject of an ongoing DOJ investigation because there had been some question about that. Hunter's lawyer actually said that the investigation was over. But the DOJ saying, no, no, no, we're still looking into some things. So she's seeming to at least agree with the DOJ that the investigation into Hunter

isn't over. So I found that interesting as well. But clearly, in terms of their press strategy, they are hoping that they can keep any questions about Hunter and his business dealings and any sort of potential linkages with the current president of the United States. They are hoping that they can corral this into partisan conservative media and make it easy to dismiss as just a smear tactic and political campaign tactic to damage the president before his reelection. That's what they're really hoping. And up till the past few days, they really were successful at that. There was no interest from the mainstream press about anything with regard to potential Hunter Biden business dealings. And frankly, there wasn't as much evidence of potential interplay between Joe Biden and Hunter Biden with regard to this Chinese business deal or anything else, I think it's going to be very difficult for them to keep this now corralled into partisan conservative press. And the reason is, I mean, we've already kind of seen the dam has broken. The fact that you had Karine Jean-Pierre facing difficult questions from CNN,

from NBC, from CBS, from basically every mainstream outlet that felt that they had kind of been played on this story, I think makes it difficult to imagine that they're actually going to be able to get through this whole incident without having to seriously respond to it, seriously deal with it, and without it, you know, dinging Biden in a lot of ways. This is where Democrats really, they do themselves no favors. Listen, a lot of, unfortunately, both parties in Washington seem to think that, you know, when it's their own side, that this sort of corruption is just par for the course. It's just part of how Washington operates and that they really don't feel bad about it.

They don't see any problem with that. They think that's just like the natural order of business. But rightly, the American people see it very, very differently. And so if you're going to run another campaign against Trump, which they're signaling that they want to run basically the same playbook as 2020, you know, it's the soul of the nation argument that he was making last time around. It's going to be a very similar playbook this time around as well. It hurts your credibility when you don't have clean hands. I mean, Trump is corrupt as hell. He's taking money right now directly from the Saudis through Live Golf.

His son-in-law is, you know, taking billions from them as well. There's other Gulf state entanglements, a development deal in Oman. Like, this is as, that's as corrupt as it gets. You undermine your ability to effectively make that case against Trump when you yourself have these kind of messy business dealings. Yeah. How are you going to talk with a straight face about Jared Kushner and corruption and return to normalcy and all of that and have one of the most transparently ridiculous and corrupt dealings in modern presidential history, excepting Trump, then you're just, you know, in many ways you're just as bad. And, you know, I want to emphasize what you said on the media front. These, they do look like fools. They, you know, all the hallmarks of Russian disinformation on the Russian lap, on the Hunter

Biden lap, Russian laptop, almost even I had a slip there myself, Hunter Biden laptop. They said it had all the hallmarks of Russian disinformation. Then they refuse to even report on the laptop until after the election itself, a form of, you know, election interference. Then after that, what do they do? They wait almost two something years in the Biden presidency until an actual government whistleblower has to come forward with cold, hard facts and evidence of text messages for them to actually ask him about it at the podium. And I think that's why I get pissed off at Crystal is because all of the evidence has been there since October of 2020, since the day the laptop came out. And Tony Bobulinski came out as well and verified the email talking about 10% for the big guy.

There has been a direct allegation that Biden was involved with the business dealings. He was never, never, to my knowledge, asked specifically about any of these allegations in any mainstream press interview, in any press conference that has come forward. And he's now running for re-election to president of the United States and now facing questions that have been known now in the public sphere for literally years and years. And in fact, even pre-laptop, Burisma and all of that has been known since 2000, what, 2018, I believe, since that came forward. So I do think it is a huge black mark on the press and their conduct with respect to this. Now, in terms of the press- Are they going to redeem themselves, Sagar?

No. Shit, will they redeem themselves? We just couldn't resist this particular bite, because this does sum up the way that the elite liberal press does feel about the Hunter Biden story. They're trying to spin it in every which way they can. Both Nicholas Kristof and now Anna Navarro over at The View have settled on the line, which is that the real story behind Hunter Biden is the love of a father between a son. Here's what she had to say. I've known Joe Biden since he was a senator for about 20 some years. I can't tell you how much his life has been marked by losing not one child, but two children. And once you've lost a child, I think you are absolutely determined. It's even more urgent. It's even a bigger issue

that you will not lose another one. The Hunter Biden story, the scandal, the this, the that, it's also the story of a father's love. And Joe Biden has never and will never give up on his son, Hunter, and will never treat him lesser than. And so he is a father first. Take it or leave it. That's who he is. That is part of his heart. There was 380 people at this dinner. It's not like Hunter was sitting at Merrick Garland's lap. It was a bunch of people. And I think part of the reason that Hunter Biden has been able to get out of addiction is because Joe Biden embraced him entirely the entire time when he was vice president, when he was candidate, when he was out of office, and now as president. Wow. So it's just all about fatherly love. I mean,

here's why people should be mad. You know, if you're a normal person and your dad is not the president of the United States or the vice president of the United States, you would have been locked up long ago. Your father's love wouldn't have been able to get you out of some terrible jams in our criminal justice system. And very likely you would be in a real hard way right now. You'd probably be bankrupt. Now, instead, his fatherly love effectively allowed Hunter to grift off of his name for his entire life to enable his addiction, to get out of scrapes, to literally act like a thug in these text messages, blackmailing foreign governments to pay him off, and then use that love now to try and shield yourself from legitimate questions around these dealings is the most disgusting form of cynicism that we have seen yet. And there's no, here's the

thing, you think Trump doesn't love his children? I'm sure he does. It's still gross. Well, maybe, I don't know. But some of them, love some of them. And, you know, that's not an excuse for acting bad. If anything, you know, having that has always been a problem. Like Bill Clinton's pardoning of Roger Clinton or Jimmy, what was his screw-up name's brother? Billy Carter, I think. That sounds right. I don't know. Whatever. Yeah. I mean, the point though is that it has always been called out as wrong and as bad whenever you use the public service in your office in order to barely Billy Carter. Yeah. In order to give benefits to the people who you are related to. I mean, I really think this clip is so revealing because she actually says up front, like, I've known Joe Biden for decades, and clearly that sense of personal friendship has, in addition to the partisan valence of this, but the fact that so many of these media figures know Joe Biden. They've known Joe Biden for years.

They have warm fuzzies about him. They have personal stories about him. And he is a good politician in terms of, I mean, this was a problem Bernie Sanders couldn't like throw a punch at him because he felt warmly towards Joe Biden. That is in some ways his superpower. And it's very common also in DC where you have all of these incestuous relationships. And then it colors the way that supposed journalists and analysts are able to cover events. So Anna Navarro makes what I think is a very common mistake here in New York of viewing this all through the most charitable possible lens because of her own personal relationship here. Whereas if you had the same set of facts with regards to

Donald Trump and Kushner or Ivanka or whatever, and you don't have the personal relationship and you don't have the partisan allyship, you'd have a very different commentary. You'd have a very different assessment of what that meant. Because instead of giving the absolute most charitable reading, you would give the absolute most nefarious reading. Now, you know, maybe you could say like, well, Trump has kind of proven himself to be a pretty nefarious actor. So some of that is fair. But Joe Biden has also proven over the long years of his tenure here in Washington to have a lot of to allow a lot of grifting off of his name. I mean, I'm talking from the very beginning. And I will never forget when

we had Ryan Graham on Rising. Yeah. Back in the early days. And he had like an encyclopedic knowledge of every documented corrupt business deal that was from his brother and his family members, his children, whatever, trading on the Biden name to try to personally enrich himself. So it's not like there's no track record of this stuff and it would come out of the blue. At the most, he was directly involved in these deals. He was getting the 10 percent. He was personally, you know, financially benefiting. There's a sort of a second possibility, which is that Hunter is also texted about, like Biden wasn't directly getting a cut, that he was secondarily benefiting from these business deal Hunter was doing by, you know, helping to fund his own lifestyle and whatever, you know, whatever he needed. That's a possibility.

But at the very least, it's clear he allowed his own son to trade off his name in a way that is highly detrimental to public trust and overtly corrupt. Like, if you can't admit that, then you just are not an honest actor. I 100% agree. I think it's disgusting. And I think it's, you know, it's even worse, I think, that only people like us will even be able to point this out. And, you know, we happily do segments here on Jared Kushner as well.

We do it all the time. But unfortunately, that's just not how our media ecosystem is. And that's really why the country is so broken. And it really is because of an attitude like that. Anyway, speaking of family members, corruption. Yeah. So we've got another story about Justice Alito and some shady dealings that our friends at The Intercept wrote up. Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen. This has to do actually with a business transaction of his wife. The headline here from The Intercept with journalist Daniel Bogoslaw here has the byline, Samuel Alito's wife leased land to an oil and gas firm while the justice fought the EPA. A deal made by Alito's wife with an energy company paints recent Supreme Court decisions on the environment

in a damning light. So here's the backstory. Alito's wife, who I believe inherited a fair amount from her family, decided to see if a 160-acre plot of land in Oklahoma would produce oil. In a lease filed with the Grady County clerk, the wife of Alito entered into an agreement with Citizen Energy 3 for revenue generated from oil and gas obtained from a plot of hardscrabble she inherited from her late father. They talked to ethics experts about, you know, the implications of this, which I do want to say I don't think there's quite as direct a connect here as there is with, like, the private jet allegations where you have him accepting private jet travel from this rich billionaire who immediately has multiple cases that come up in front of the

Supreme Court that Alito does not recuse himself from, et cetera. I don't think the connection is quite as direct here, but I think it speaks to an overall atmosphere, an overall permissive atmosphere and the types of financial entanglements that they almost see as just commonplace and par for the course. So they asked this Jeff Hauser, who's founder and director of the Revolving Door Project, about this financial arrangement. He said there need not be a specific case involving the drilling rights associated with a specific plot of land

for Alito to understand what outcomes in environmental cases would buttress his family's net wealth. Alito does not have to come across like a drunken Paul Thomas Anderson character gleefully confessing to drinking our collective milkshakes in order to be a real-life, run-of-the-mill political villain. Just to give you a sense of a few of the cases that are relevant to, you know, oil drilling, etc. In May, Alito penned a majority decision in Sackett

versus EPA, which radically scaled back the Clean Water Act. Prior to targeting the Clean Water Act, Alito had also joined the court's other conservative justices in attacking another set of EPA powers under the Clean Air Act in West Virginia versus EPA. That 2022 ruling gutted the EPA's ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. So listen, quite possible this is Alito's ideological leaning and that he would have made these decisions regardless of his own personal financial stake here. But even the appearance of corruption is a problem, especially when you're talking about the highest court of the land. They should be holding themselves to the highest of standards. And instead, they appear to have no standard whatsoever.

This is why I get very angry. I'm hearing from a lot of right-wing friends and they're like, why are you validating these attacks on the court? And I'm like, look, this isn't about abortion. This isn't about any of that. And by the way, if you want to uphold any of those decisions, it is then up to you to conduct yourself in the highest, most ethical manner so that everyone cannot accuse you of making a decision that did not have any financial interest to you. Remember Justice John Roberts' wife making some, what, $10 million acting as a legal recruiter? I mean, that's so obviously something that would benefit her.

I forgot about that one. That's so gross. That obviously would benefit her prospects as a recruiter if her freaking husband is the chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. Now, listen, maybe she'd make $5 million on the outside without him. But, you know, even the appearance of it is bad enough. And it's one of those where when you sign up for life, you need to sign up for a lifetime of holding yourself up to this ethical standard. If you want to leave and make a ton of money, be our guest. Nobody is stopping you. You're the ones you want to leave and make a ton of money, be our guest. Nobody is stopping you. You're the ones who want to have it both ways. The problem too is we are entering a

time of very divisive Supreme Court decisions where again, if you want to have legitimacy in the court, then you have to uphold yourself in a manner such that nobody can attack your standing. And let's give people an example here of some of these decisions. Put this up there on the screen, one of which I'm personally looking forward to the most. Affirmative action appears to be coming down this year. It's going to probably come down while you're away. Oh, that really makes me sad. Emily will hold up her hand. Well, you know, I guess it would be affirmative action, you know, to have somebody steal it again. All right. So affirmative action, very likely to go. Student loan forgiveness, very likely to be struck down at the high court.

There's an interesting case, I think, about religious liberty and gay rights that they are talking about here. And the right or the openness to the public to have to provide services to all customers kind of harkens back to the master cake, the bake shop and the wedding cake, one that was previously-

Yeah, I sort of felt like, I sort of felt like this had already been decided. I thought the same thing. Maybe I'm crazy. I was just like, I don't understand. How are we right back to the way place that we started? So this is on this specific one. It's about a Christian graphic artist in Colorado who wants to make wedding websites, but doesn't want to have to make wedding websites for gay couples. So, yeah, it just seems to me like identical to the Masterpiece Cake or whatever it was called. I think it was called Masterpiece. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, so that one is on the docket. Well, then why are they even hearing it? It's obvious. Whatever. You and I aren't lawyers,

and it seems like an open and shut one to me. Another one here is a religious rights case, another case that would end as a victory, case of a Christian mail carrier who refused to work on Sundays when he was required to deliver Amazon packages. Yeah, so that's an interesting one because there's actually a little more sort of partisan overlap there. So the expectation is that some of the liberal justices might vote in favor of that mail carrier as well because the view is that, you know, it's no excuse for an employer to say like, oh, it will cost us a little extra money for you to be able to uphold your, you know, to practice your religion. That's not a good excuse, at least as the courts have found before. So the expectation is there

may be actually some overlap there in terms of the judgment. But probably the single most important case for our future, Crystal, is the independent state legislature theory. Yeah. So, I mean, do you want to do a breakdown here? Yeah. let me take a crack at this one because I read deeply into it. All right, so this has to do with gerrymandering in North Carolina, where basically there was a conflict between the Republican state legislature and the congressional lines that they wanted to draw and the state Supreme Court, which struck down those congressional lines and said that they violated, that they were unconstitutional effectively. And so what the North Carolina legislature is arguing is the independent state – what do they call it? Independent state legislature theory, which is effectively that, listen, we get to say as a legislature how our elections are conducted and state courts have

nothing to do with it. They don't get to say this at all. This has always been a sort of fringe legal theory that is hung out there that Supreme Court has never once validated. Although there was a concurring opinion in the Bush v. Gore case where one of the justices did assert the independent state legislature theory. So there is that hanging out there, but overwhelmingly this has been kind of a fringe theory. Okay, why is this really important? It matters in terms of state voting rights. If your state constitution and the state courts can't protect, you know, your voting rights as just subject to the whims of whatever politicians are elected to the legislature, obviously that's kind of open

season. That could cause a lot of problems and cause a lot of problems pretty immediately. There's also a possibility that because this independent state legislature theory was floated last time in 2020 with some of the fake elector schemes and the idea that the legislatures didn't actually have to listen to the will of the people who they voted for in their state, they could appoint their own slate of electors. That's where that thinking all came from. So if the Supreme Court here sides with the independent state legislature theory, the idea is next time you have a close election, if the state goes one way and the legislature wants to go another way, you have legislatures that won't listen to the will of the people. Instead, we'll just say, yeah, you voted for Biden, but we actually want to seat

Trump electors. So we're just going to go ahead and do that. And the courts will have essentially validated that approach. Now, I want to say there are legal experts that don't think that would be the ramifications here, that don't think that would be the implications, but there's a real danger that we could be going down that path. Yeah, exactly. So that's why we wanted to flag it for everybody in terms of what coming down the path and why it could have a big impact on the future and all those questions that we had in 2020 about whether the alternative elector scheme and all of that was even possible or legal. So if they do rule this way, it actually could open the door for even more Supreme Court fights come 2024. All kinds of legal battles could ensue depending on what direction that goes in. So

in Sagar's absence, Emily and I will be covering all of these cases as they come down. But obviously with affirmative action, student loans, gay rights, voting rights, all of this potentially coming down very soon. It is going to be a pretty blockbuster set of days here. All right, let's get to this next story, which I just think is really interesting. All right, so there's been the whole thing going on about so-called ESG, which I completely understand if you have no idea what that is and you could not care less. But it basically is this idea that corporations and banks and funds and whatever, rather than just focusing exclusively on shareholder value, they're also going to incorporate these goals of conscious capitalism and trying to do better on environmental, social, and governance goals. Now, as I have

explained and we've discussed extensively in the past, there is a sort of right-wing critique of this, which is like about wokeism and they should just be maximizing shareholder value and how dare you insert your values into these business decisions. That's the like the Zacharoma-Swami argument. The argument that I make and others on the left make about ESG is that this is all fake corporate virtue signaling, that it's effectively greenwashing and you don't really mean any of it, including on your like fake diversity metrics or diversity trainings that you're doing, that all of it is, again, just sort of like surface level corporate virtue signaling. So one of the leaders in the whole ESG quote unquote movement has been the head of BlackRock, Larry Fink. So let's go ahead and put this up on the screen because he made some very interesting comments here about his view of ESG. He said at the Aspen Ideas Festival, gross, that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis' decision to pull $2 billion in assets had hurt his firm in 2022. And to be clear, DeSantis pulled those funds because of these ESG

woke concerns from the right. But he also made clear last year was his company's best with net flows of $200 billion from U.S. clients. So don't worry, guys, they're doing just fine. But what he said that was so interesting is, quote, I'm ashamed of being part of this conversation when I write these investment letters, which his investment letters are very closely watched and widely read, et cetera, it was never meant to be a political statement. They were written to identify long-term issues to our long-term investors. Then later in the conversation, he kind of walked back those comments. He was pressed on it and he said, I never said I was ashamed. He literally did say he was ashamed. I'm not ashamed. I do believe in conscientious capitalism. I'm not going to use

the word ESG because it's been misused by the far left and the far right. So Sagar, what do you think of this? Well, in the very same breath, he goes, instead, we'll talk about decarbonization. We'll talk about governance or social issues. So he basically just described ESG without using the term ESG. Look, I think ESG is a cancer for a variety of the reasons that you just said. I do actually believe it is a cover for a lot of woke BS and virtue signaling, which is genuinely bad because it's also stuff that is implemented in your name, even if you're invested in funds or stuff that you have no idea about. This isn't just for rich people, although predominantly, you know, some 40 something percent of Americans have a stock in their retirement portfolio. So you

inadvertently could be funding something that you don't agree with. So that's number one. Number two, though, in terms of the left critique that you're absolutely correct about, is how does Tesla not rank as an ESG company? Now, and then do you know the reason why? Well, Tesla doesn't and Exxon does or Shell Gas. It's literally because they game the scores around climate conscience. My favorite example was I believe this was Shell, was offloaded some mine to some African company, released it through a subsidiary. And by selling off something and decreasing their carbon score, upped their ESG score and was ranked as like some great company. Come on.

Oil and gas company is ranking higher than the biggest electric car company in the world. Ludicrous. So obviously the entire thing is fake. The problem that I see right now is that for a long time, one of the reasons why ESG was not pushed back by a lot of the capital class is they're doing really well. But right now, we're in a tech recession at the very least. And so the problem is that tech companies, of course, are going to rank very, very high on ESG. They don't really make anything, software as a service and all that very, very high stock price. The issue, though, is that the oil and gas companies, they're doing super well. So now we're in a place where investors actually have

to try and pick between ESG and making money. And when they do, they're like, well, this whole ESG thing, like maybe we'll just go with a few, maybe the S and the G, we'll go with that. I think that is the key point here, is that it was always fake. I mean, that's the thing. So it's fake, but it has had a real impact. And I think that's kind of what I want to emphasize. It's like there are genuine social problems that have been a result of ESG, like DEI programs that we've seen implemented. But again, those things are fake. We know they don't work. We won't.

It's just like a giveaway to the consultant class. Wow, that's so bad. I want to push back on. Listen, the consultant class already has a million grifts. DEI is just one of them, right? I want to push back on the idea that you asserted that it is in any way different that people would be supporting, you know, social goals or whatever with their funds accidentally that they don't actually support. That happens all the time. I mean, that's the reality of capital.

Do you think that people who have their money in a pension fund that supports, you know, some company that's like union busting and exploiting their labor? Like they don't support those values either. Yeah. So the fact that the default in capitalism is like ruthless exploitation and that's not seen as a problem. There's no pushback on that. There's no thought of like, oh, my God, people are supporting things with their money that they don't really actually support. You know, I just think that there's a lopsidedness to the conversation in terms of the, you know, the bottom line being the money making here. Put this up on the screen because I think this speaks to the virtue signaling piece.

BlackRock, one of their top folks in terms of running their ESG efforts, they actually became a whistleblower and were like, this is all bullshit greenwashing. All it does is give people like a happy, fuzzy feeling that, oh, corporate America can fix the problems and don't worry about it. They've got it and conscientious capitalism. It's the wave of the future and we're all going to be good to go. They said, this is nonsense. As you were saying, Sagar, they can easily game the system to make the numbers come out. So it looks like they're carbon neutral. It looks like they're meeting their environmental goals, whatever. But actually, research has showed that so-called ESG companies and funds actually do worse on environmentalism than non-ESG funds. So I

guess in that way, Sagar, you are right that they have, it has like actually been bad because they use this cloak in order to, you know, appear like they're doing all the right things and they're good on all these issues when in reality they're able to be even worse than the companies that are not pretending. Yeah, I think that's, no, I mean, I agree certainly on the latter. I think my point on the former though, is that, you know, just because you've never had representation doesn't mean it's a good thing. You know, I actually do. I don't think, well, in terms of pension fund example, like in terms of a pension fund having no say or whatever, I think they should, I think people should have more impact and have thought into the stuff that they're

investing in. This is one of my bigger problems a lot with index funds, the lack of governance around some of them. You know, I think I've done something on the past year about Bloomberg. You know, Bloomberg will include major Chinese multinational corporations that are industrial inside of its index fund that people invest in the index fund. They don't even have any idea. Yeah. How much research do people really do when they, you know, invest in ETs?

My point is, is that people should have the ability to not go on autopilot and have the U.S. economy basically auto invest in stuff that you don't not only don't agree with, but is also bad for the country. I mean, you have to be a freak weirdo like me to actually go and read the perspective. Sure. Well, I don't want to ascribe to you the views of like Vivek Ramaswamy. No, I don't agree. That would not be fair because it doesn't reflect, you know, what you actually think. But I think it's fair to say on the right, the concern only goes in one direction.

It's not this consistent, like we should have transparency and people should know what they're investing in. It's a value judgment about these particular things. And so DeSantis, for example, pulling funds from BlackRock, Ramaswamy setting up his own fund that is being used to force companies

to not care about these values, it's not that they want things to be neutral. It's that they have their own ideological agenda, that they want to be represented by corporate America, that they felt like used to be reflected by corporate America and, you know, is not 100% anymore. But ultimately, you know, my big takeaway from all of this is that it's very surface. It's a very surface level conversation. And I think that's reflected by the fact that Larry Fink, who has been a leader in talking about this and, you know, and creating this whole space, can so easily walk away from it and be like, yeah, we're not doing that anymore. I'm over it. I'm moving on. He says I'm ashamed, but I'm still going to talk about social governance. If this was such a core part, these are your values and your conscientious capitalism, whatever,

you wouldn't be freaked out by a few presidential candidates or whatever calling out wokeness and saying ESG and demonizing the phrase. Your core values, I think, would supersede that, but apparently not the case. There is no core value on Wall Street except the dollar. The dollar. The almighty dollar. All right. Let's get to the big changes at Fox News.

Post Tucker Carlson, they made a big announcement yesterday. I put this up on the screen. So they've got a reshuffling and an addition to their primetime lineup. So now the evening programming is going to go Laura Ingram. She was later in the evening. They're bumping her up to 7 p.m. Then filling in Tucker's slot, you have Jesse Waters. So that's the big announcement is that Jesse Waters is taking over for Tucker at 8.

Then you're going to have Sean Hannity staying at 9. And you have Gutfeld moving into primetime at 10 p.m. This comes as post-Tucker Fox News has been kind of struggling. Also, you know, MSNBC saw a big bump with the indictment news that they went all in on, and especially since CNN has sort of like lost faith with the liberal resistance types. So MSNBC has really benefited from that. However, Fox News has, and I think we have this, put this up on the screen, Fox News has regained their number one primetime spot.

But, Sagar, they still are down like a third in primetime viewership post-Tucker. So I think there's – I personally think it's unlikely that Jesse Waters is ever going to really, you know, how we feel about Tucker. I'm obviously not a fan for a whole variety of reasons. I'm also not a fan of Jesse Waters or literally any of the other people that I just mentioned. I think it's unlikely he's going to fill those shoes and be able to reclaim those ratings. I also just think that that type of cable news stardom, as we've discussed in the past, is really on its way out because people have other options.

Exactly. This just confirms what I really thought all along. They're purely in managed decline mode. They're not in the moonshot mode anymore. Tucker actually at the time was much more of a moonshot. They literally brought him out. He wasn't in the existing primetime lineup. They brought him in. They slotted him into the He wasn't in the existing primetime lineup. They brought him in,

slot him in into the A. Do you go straight from Weekend Fox and Friends? So he was on Fox and Friends, Weekend Fox and Friends, which is the true doldrums. Then was, I think he was slotted in at like six o'clock right in the middle of the O'Reilly mess. And then they moved him around,

you know, specifically also when Megyn Kelly left and to make him the APM. So the point though is that with Jesse Waters, this is a known quantity on the Fox News program. This is somebody who's literally been on for 20-something years who, look, I think he's had his shot now. And if he was going to be a star, he would have been a star already at this point. He was the anchor, I guess, of the five. And the problem is that by slotting him in there, you're basically just accepting, yep, we're going to drop by a third. And we're just going to roll with it. We're just going to keep going down this path. You know,

Waters, look, again, I think the guy, here's the thing about Jesse Waters. He's not original. There's nothing original about him. He's about as cookie cutter as Sean Hannity. He tries to borrow from some of the Tucker playbook to at least go in some interesting directions. And I think, unfortunately, you know, just in the long run long run, that's just not going to work for the cable news platform itself if you're thinking from the perspective of Murdoch, who's actually running it. But you've still got a multi-billion dollar enterprise on your hands. So you might as well just keep the trains on time running.

This is what MSNBC has done with Alex Wagner. This is now what they're doing over at Fox. I mean, over at CNN, they're basically not not even trying anymore to try and, you know, trying to get more people to watch, you know, whatever the hell is going on over there. So this is it. Like, this is what decline looks like. So in that way, I guess we should celebrate. I think it's interesting. Yeah. They're still going to have a lot of cultural power. Like, I don't want people to delude themselves about that. All of these networks are going to continue to have a lot of cultural power because the last people that will be

watching these shows are like the denizens of the city that we live in. And, you know, unfortunately, they have a lot of power. So it still matters a lot what is said on these airwaves. But, you know, the other piece is if you are someone who is original and, you know, creative and is saying things that aren't being said elsewhere. Number one, that's a risk for cable news. They like people who sound the same and are predictable in their, you know, who they're outraged at and how they portray things, et cetera. That's easier for them. It's easier for their audience to make sure that everybody's staying in line, easier for their political allies and their advertisers, et cetera. But also, like, if you are

going to take that shot of doing something different, there's just so many other places that you can go where you're going to be able to earn a good living. You're going to be able to have a lot more freedom, not have the bullshit that comes with being on cable news and having a corporate boss and the whims of your fate hanging, you know, by the arbitrary decisions of some random person in a C-suite. So, yeah, another sign of the times, more evidence that every single one of these cable news networks is looking at the writing on the wall. And they are saying that the best they can hope for is just to, you know, hold on to what they've got for as long as possible.

Right. And actually one major sign that things in terms of the Tucker direction are done, let's put this up there on the screen, sources apparently saying that Fox terminated all of Tucker's former staff. They still, though, want them remaining employees to continue working until mid-July. According to a former Tucker staffer, they say that they were told that they had to keep producing the Fox News Tonight show until the show ends in July, at which point they will be terminated. If they do not comply, then they will lose all of their severance in the meantime. So

pretty unceremonious in terms of getting kicked to the curb because they were seen as too loyal to the previous talent. I guess Jesse Waters will bring in his Waters world, you know, whatever the old guys from the O'Reilly staff to come and run it. So good luck, Jesse, I guess. I don't know if it's going to work out. All right, let's get to the big story of the day, which is, as we teased at the beginning,

we have officially hit one million subscribers. In fact, we kind of shot past it. Yeah, we certainly did. We gave ourselves a little bit of wiggle room here. Looks like we're right now at 1,000,000, 2,000, let me refresh here and make sure it's accurate. 1,000,000, 2,338. And we cannot say thank you enough to you guys for being here, for some of you from back rising days, coming on board right when we launched, and also for getting us over a million so we could give Sagar a proper send-off for wedding ceremony number one. I appreciate that very much, everybody, for stepping up, not just for me. I mean, this isn't even just about us. I think it's about everyone. I mean, we're in a very unique position. I've been thinking about this a lot, which is we,

Crystal, have not now built one channel to a million. We have built two channels to a million. And very few people in this life can say that they've done anything like that, specifically in four years, which I think is crazy. And, you know, it was a huge risk. There were multiple times where we didn't know if this was going to work. You know, should we leave? Should we not leave? There were multiple people who told us that we would be okay. But it's one thing to hear it on the end of a phone and one thing to actually see it materialize. And, you know, we were deeply worried about our ability to recoup the subscriber base that we had built over at the Hill. Obviously, that was delayed pretty soon, you know, after we launched. But again, it was a gamble. And it was one which ultimately did pay off, of which we're very lucky. And we owe

everybody who stepped up for us. And in a four-year period, actually exactly four years, I was looking back. I sent you that photo yesterday from June of 2019 was the first time that we were officially kind of hosting Rising Together. And that time we had 6,000 YouTube subscribers. 6,000 the day that we started over at The Hill. So I mean I basically count that as zero. We built that. The day we left was 1.35 million.

And then to be here four years later, almost to the day, having built two channels to a know, a testament really to the people who believe so much in the way that we do our show. And there are, you know, so many people who we've heard from, about 1 million who are like, I subscribed, I created like seven Gmail accounts, like I got my mom to subscribe, I got my dad to subscribe, my sister, whatever. I mean, that just shows us how much it means to you and to you, all of you. I mean, we're just so thankful. Our producers put this together, a little montage. Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. There you are. That's me, day one.

Checking out the old set. That was the original. That was the original one. There was you. You know, you could see there. First show wrapping. That was our New York show. Marshall and Kyle helped us out.

Oh, yeah, when we did the live stream. That was our first counterpoints. Adding counterpoints. That was our play button that arrived, actually, right when we launched, and then there we go. On the new set. Obviously, the brand new set. That's the journey.

There it is. There's the graphic, the official one million ticker. Sagar's brilliant foresight to actually record that. Actually, shout out to our social media guy. On his phone. I record it as well, but I did it in the most boomer way possible of using my phone to record the screen

on my laptop but yeah I want there's a lot I want to say I mean first of all as you were alluding to Sagar

the most painful part of leaving Rising was after I mean we worked really hard to build that channel and now to walk away from when we just

had not that long ago hit a million subscribers that was that hurt That definitely hurt. That was definitely one of the hardest parts of walking away from there. Because you hope that things are going to work out. But there was a real chance that we were never going to see that number again. And to do it on our own terms, to do it independent instead of under a corporate brand, it means so much more. And, you know, this show has shifted and changed a lot as the news has developed, as what you all have been looking for has changed. Thank you so much for sticking with us through all of that, whether it was the height of a political cycle, whether it was during COVID, whether it was during the Ukraine war, any of the crazy twists and turns of our politics that you all have shown up to hear what we have to say. I cannot say enough

how seriously we take that and how much it means to us. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I also want to say shout out to our whole crew that have been amazing. I mean, it's been a lot for everybody building the set. It's a lot of work. Figuring out the tech, figuring out the lights, figuring out the sound, all of that. And these guys have been, you know, working long hours to make this all look as great as it possibly can. We're still continuing to learn and tweak and grow on that front. And special shout out to our producers, Griffin and Mac. I said this to them privately, but I'll

say it publicly as well. It is no accident that we're able now to accelerate and achieve this milestone with them on board. And they haven't even been here a full year yet, but the impact that both of them have had on the show, on the level of professionalism, on what we're able to do and focus on because they have so much of the rest of the operation handled has truly been second to none. These guys are absolutely incredible. And so thank you guys out there. Thank you to Mac and Griffin. Thanks to all of you premium subscribers. YouTube subscribers are all playing your part in helping to fund their salaries, fund this operation, fund the new set, and get us to this point. Thank you. Yeah. The premiums in particular, you guys had our back

from day one. You gave us the confidence, the ability to invest continually in the show, to hire the best talent possible that we could find out there, and to find people who care as much about the show as you do. And that's what, that's what the two of us, we hammer home every day, which is like these – there are real people behind the screen. They care a lot about the show. They've invested in this. And every single one of us is going to work our asses off to make sure that they get the best possible experience that they deserve, that they paid for, and to be able to spread it to everyone that they possibly can. So, look, we never, ever, ever take anything that we do for granted. Some of this still doesn't even feel real,

you know, to look through. I swear I was just doing the show. We starting rising like yesterday. I can't believe it's been four years. Every time I look at the show now, it's still like, whoa, look at our set. I mean, yeah, look at this crazy set. Yeah, it's nuts, you know, to just let it all sink in.

So I don't want to be too self-indulgent or whatever about this, and that's why I think we should just focus the bulk of our thanks to everybody who has watched this. Sagar, you've got an end of the deal to hold up. That's right. So I said I would do it, and I will be back, my very first show. I'm probably going to be pretty jet-lagged, so forgive me.

I will be in full Indian garb and in sneakers. And maybe I'll even, while I'm in India, I'll tweet out some images and let people decide what the garb should be, which one I should go with. Yeah, I think I'll make it more of an experience. I'll let the premiums decide. How about that? I'll send it to Griffin.

I'll send everybody some options. You guys can decide what it's going to be. And that's what I'll do. I'll show up in the show. I made a commitment to everybody. Man, am I word. I've eaten a sock here on before. What else have I done?

I wore a hoodie with a suit, which is one of the most heinous things I've ever done. Crime against fashion. I'm ready to do it again, to wear my Indian garb with sneakers, which I don't think anyone should do. But people apparently wanted to see it. I'm told that was one of the main reasons

that many people subscribe. We will do what it takes. No shame here. I'll do anything. No shame in our game. Listen, if it makes people happy, then so be it. So that's what we care about the most here over at the show. That's it.

Thank you, guys. We appreciate you. Thank you, guys. We've got a great guest standing by. Let's get to it. Excited to speak with a new guest on the show today. We have Josh Jezza. He is Investigations Editor for The Verge, Excited to speak with a new guest on the show today. We have Josh Jezza.

He is Investigations Editor for The Verge, and he just wrote a fascinating new story in partnership with New York Magazine on the human costs of AI. Josh, great to have you. Thanks for having me. Yeah, it's our pleasure. Let's go ahead and put your piece up on the screen so folks can take a look at the tarot sheet here.

You were able to report on the human beings who are doing a lot of the legwork behind the AI that a lot of us are engaging with in our lives, sometimes without even realizing it. The headline here is, AI is a lot of work. As the technology becomes ubiquitous, a vast tasker underclass is emerging and not going anywhere. So just tell us a little bit about what you found. Yeah, so AI is trained on data, but before that can happen, humans need to go in and curate or label or sometimes tailor make that data. The system behind this data production or annotation,

as it's often called, is super opaque. There's data vendors, private companies, or platforms where people from all around the world do this work. They often don't know who they're working for. So I wanted to find out more about how that system works and how it's changed as AI has developed, as we've seen kind of the move toward these large language models like ChatGPT. Yeah. And so tell us a little bit about like how this will expand in the future as ChatGPT

and other LLMs become ubiquitous. We've seen the Google, I believe this Google AI chief came out and said, oh, we're going to come out with something soon that's going to crush ChatGPT and all of this. It's not all software. It's millions of humans, as you described. What does that look like? Yeah, so it looks like if you've, I'm sure you've done CAPTCHA before. The little prove you're not a robot thing. That's also data annotation. And so it's sort of a very sophisticated form of that,

at least the image labeling stuff. It's, you know, tracing outlines of traffic cones at a pixel level, frame by frame for self-driving cars. you know, tracing outlines of traffic cones at a pixel level, through frame by frame for self-driving cars. And then with text, it's chatting with chatbots and then critiquing their responses based on a bunch of different criteria. There's also elements of it where you're writing, you're sort of pretending to be the chatbot that, you know,

the engineers want to have, and you're giving good answers for questions, writing computer code if you want it to be able to program. And so that's all sort of the launch process. And there's a conception often that you just do this work, you do this work to sort of get started, and then the model is good enough that it doesn't need the humans anymore. What I found is that there's a growing recognition that it's not really how it works. One, you know, if you want to keep getting better AI,

you need more people doing new, often trickier forms of annotation. And then also, because these systems are really brittle, like they struggle in situations that aren't represented in their training data, whenever they're encountering something like that, or the world changes, or there's an event in the news that now people are talking about, you need humans to go in and sort of add more data, annotate the data, kind of keep these systems up to date.

And so one of the things that we're seeing is these systems are out in the world more, they're running into more of these edge cases and you need more humans kind of standing by to help them out. So you talk to some of the people who do this as their work. They don't even really call it jobs. You say they call themselves taskers. Like what is the day-to-day reality of existence for these individuals? It varies a lot. So I talked to, a lot of this work gets done on these kind of gig platform things

where you sign up and it's one of these things that offers work from home. You maybe take some tests that qualify you for certain tasks and there'll be some project that has some intrusive or executable code name

like Pillbox Bratwurst or something. It's something, is something, you know, maybe you're talking with a chatbot and it's there and you're getting paid a couple cents or maybe a few dollars for every task that you do. And you don't really know how long it's going to last. So if there's something that's paying well, people tend to just sort of do it as much as they can, work the longest hours they possibly can,

possibly stay up for days to do it. Because at some point, the data won't be needed anymore for a while anyway, and the project will end. And then you'll have to, you know, hopefully, in the best case scenario, you have to learn how to do a new task and start working on that. In the worst case, there's just nothing and then you're out of work for some unknown amount of time. Yeah, that was kind of my question, is that obviously this is a vulnerability, and since these people are all about automation and software, are they trying to automate these people out of existence, Josh?

Very, yeah, very much so. I mean, this data is also very expensive. Yeah. And so there's a lot of work being done to automate it. And if you look at the history of machine learning development, it's kind of always being automated away, but then it's also, you know, that doesn't mean that you don't need annotation anymore.

It just means you need a different type of annotation. So like the early image recognition stuff, you know, people went through and they labeled cats and dogs and airplanes and buses or whatever. That is all, you know. That's easy now. That's all automated away. But then it enables self-driving cars and that requires even more people doing even more technical and tricky annotation and labeling because the stakes are higher and the world is complicated. And trying to get a self-driving car to navigate

it is extremely difficult. So it seems to me like, I mean, the fear, some of the worries with AI and especially with, you know, some of the large language models is that it will automate out of existence a number of, at this point, you know, fairly well-paying white-collar jobs. Part of why I think there's been so much attention in the media is because it's sort of like an existential threat to the professional class that the media represents, which, you know, is an important story. It seems like what you're documenting here is it's not that jobs are going to go away.

It's that instead of having these white-collar jobs, that part might be automated out of existence. Instead, you're swapping these relatively well-paid jobs where you have some amount of power in your workplace, etc., and it's not just completely anonymous. You're not just completely in a vacuum alone crunching these tasks. For this sort of global underclass that has zero power in terms of what they're doing day-to-day, zero predictability, zero labor rights, certainly zero like union rights or ability to collectively organize. Is that kind of the bigger

picture of what you're getting at here? I think that's the risk. Yeah. And then I think that's why it's important to be aware that this is happening behind the scenes with these systems, because it's not going to be a robot comes and replaces you at your job. I think it will be something like this where maybe you're now part of this global digital assembly line and you do one piece of annotation and pass it off to some other system that goes somewhere else, some other human. No one knows who is where. And so it's quite difficult to push for better conditions. And you bear the cost of all the kind of precarity. You know, when there's no work, you're not getting paid. Yeah, I mean, this is the gig economy on steroids, basically.

You don't even know who your fellow taskers are. You have no connection with them, no communication with them whatsoever. The other part that really intrigued me, Josh, as you were talking about part of the annotating and training for the chatbots is like giving them examples of what are good answers. That doesn't sound easy. That sounds like it'd be tricky to do. That sounds like they're in a sense, straightforward. Like it seems like there would be a lot of subjective interpretations and judgment calls that would have to be made there. So talk about that and what the potential impacts there are. It's definitely really tricky because you're trying to sort of give these systems examples of what you want them to do,

but they don't always take the right lesson from it, I guess you could say. And so you need to, you know, at the simplest level, it's something like, here's an example of a question. Now I need to answer it accurately in sort of the right kind of style, sort of whatever else, you know, only containing information that's contained in the prompt or whatever. And then the system learns to mimic it, but maybe, you know, it doesn't actually learn how to fact check or, you know, think logically.

It just sort of learns how to sound really similar. You end up with these systems that, you know, are just like extremely good at sounding plausible, which is super dangerous. I mean, it has sometimes hilarious outcomes and potentially quite dangerous outcomes that these things are just extremely good bullshitters. And so that's a little bit what the risk is there. But it's also just difficult work. It's like you, it's sort of like,

it's kind of like taking a really tricky standardized test where it's like, it's by its nature subjective because it's language and you're critiquing some written text on a bunch of different criteria. But if it doesn't line up with however your, you know, third level employer is doing quality assurance, then you can get banned, and you don't really know why. Well, it was a really interesting interview, Josh.

I encourage everybody to go and read the piece. We're going to have a link down in the description. Buy the magazine, too, I guess, if all that stuff helps. And we appreciate your time, man. Thank you. Yeah, thanks, Josh. Great to talk to you. Thank you. Thank you guys so much for watching. We appreciate it.

The next time you see me, it'll be an Indian garb and in sneakers. I guess I'll be technically married. Not under any technical law, but I guess under higher law, right? That's the one that counts. Actually, what really counts is the happiness of my grandparents. So all are over 90 years old. They're very happy to be able to have this ceremony there. And I want to thank my fiance and her family also for making it work. It's not the easiest journey. So I've got a flight tonight to New Delhi. I'm excited, I guess, to be on it.

I'm going to miss everybody here on the show, but Emily's going to do a great job. And I'm really glad that we got to do a million together, Crystal. Congratulations to you. Congratulations to the whole Breaking Points community and family on a million subscribers. I am actually going to be in for Ryan tomorrow and then. So Emily and I are going to be doing a show tomorrow for CounterPoints and we'll be doing the show on Thursday as well.

So I will see you tomorrow and Sagar will see you whenever he decides to do that. I will. I'll be back. I think it's July, what, July 8th or something like that. Something like that. I'll be back. Don't worry about it.

Love you guys. We'll both see you soon. 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. Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation.

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