Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 6/28/22: Abortion Chaos, Privacy Battles, Inflation Impacts, Uvalde Police, Maddow Replacement, Pentagon Experiments, & More!

Episode Date: June 28, 2022

Krystal and Saagar talk about abortion chaos across states, tech surveillance data, Dems inaction on Roe, inflation of July 4th goods, Uvalde police harassment, Giuliani assault hoax, Maddow replacement, rogue SCOTUS, Biden's oil backfire, and Pentagon mind control experiments with Tara Palmeri!To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/To listen to Breaking Points as a podcast, check them out on Apple and SpotifyApple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/breaking-points-with-krystal-and-saagar/id1570045623 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4Kbsy61zJSzPxNZZ3PKbXl Merch: https://breaking-points.myshopify.com/Tara Palmeri: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSq_qt5zy6Ihttps://youtu.be/2fDAOFgye1Mhttps://puck.news/author/tara-palmeri/  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Cable news is ripping us apart, dividing the nation, making it impossible to function as a society and to know what is true and what is false. The good news is that they're failing and they know it. That is why we're building something new. Be part of creating a new, better, healthier, and more trustworthy mainstream by becoming a Breaking Points premium member today at BreakingPoints.com. Your hard-earned money is going to help us build for the midterms and the upcoming presidential election so we can provide unparalleled coverage of what is sure to be one of the most pivotal moments in American history. So what are you waiting for? Go to BreakingPoints.com to help us out. Good morning, everybody.

Happy Tuesday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed we do. Lots of big stories as the fallout continues from that momentous decision from the Supreme Court overturning Roe versus Wade. We're going to talk to you about political implications. There's actually a tech angle to this. Yeah, that's right. I had no idea. Very interesting. Right. I mean, so if you have abortion completely

criminalized in these states, what are tech apps going to do that are tracking your location, some of them tracking your menstrual cycle? It's crazy implications here. States are kind of in chaos right now. A lot of lawsuits going on as to when these trigger ban laws take effect. So we'll break all of that down for you. We also have new numbers about inflation and just how much it is going to cost you at your 4th of July barbecue. or if you are on the market for a car. These numbers, pretty stunning, honestly. We also have some, feels like every day we learn something new and horrifying about exactly what went down with that Uvalde massacre, warning signs in advance. Now, the mom that we brought you before who actually went in and saved her kids against

the wishes of the cops, she said she's being harassed by the police now. That's what they have time to do. Complete insanity. Also, a couple of lighter stories. Rudy Giuliani says he was assaulted in a grocery store. The tape tells a little bit of a different story. That's one way of putting it. Yeah, and we also have the latest news about, we now know, who the successor to Rachel Maddow at MSNBC is going to be.

So we have all of that news for you. But we did want to start with the sort of state by state fallout from the Roe versus Wade decision. The first piece here is Louisiana is one of these states that has a trigger law into effect. They have some of the most sort of extreme abortion laws or anti-abortion laws on the books. Here's the very latest, put this up on the screen. So a court has actually blocked enforcement of that state's trigger law that outlaws abortion. It says the lawsuit, the details here are that the lawsuit against the trigger law challenges the constitutionality with regards to the state, the state constitutionality of what it describes as, quote, vague trigger laws.

Basically, the only exception in Louisiana's trigger law is saving the life of the mother. So no exceptions for rape or for incest, as some states have. It was passed in 2006. It was actually updated through a bill by a Democratic senator that made abortion illegal with no exceptions for rape and incest. So right now in the state, you've got three, at least one of Louisiana's remaining three abortion clinics says they are going to resume performing the procedure after this judge is temporarily blocking enforcement. Meanwhile, the Republican attorney general, Jeff Landry, says his office is fully prepared to defend the state's trigger law. So that's one state. You also have in Wisconsin, where you have a Democratic governor, you have kind of a different

situation. The Democratic governor of Wisconsin vowing to grant clemency to doctors charged under the state's abortion ban. Now, this just shows you what's going on in Wisconsin kind of shows you how complex the picture is with regards to what the laws are on the books in all of these states. In Wisconsin, there is still a law on the books from 1849 that bans most abortions. So there's a big question. OK, are we enforcing this? Are we not enforcing this right now? We have a Democratic governor. What if we have a Republican governor? They're up for reelection right now. So right now that Wisconsin governor, a Democrat saying, listen, this law is on the books, but we are not going to enforce it. We have a number of other

states in similar situations. Go ahead and put this New York Times article up on the screen. So you've got Florida. They are weighing a request from health care providers to temporarily block the state's new ban. In California, they are trying to move forward with putting a constitutional amendment on the ballot to explicitly protect abortion rights. In Utah, you actually have a similar situation as you have in Louisiana. A judge, they also have a trigger law in the books. A judge is granted a restraining order that will temporarily block Utah's abortion trigger law for 14 days. Of course, you know, this is just a temporary order, just like in Louisiana. The judge who put on this temporary injunction has scheduled another hearing a couple of weeks to determine whether or not it should stand and also said that the case is likely to go all the way to the Utah Supreme Court. Similar lawsuits unfolding in Ohio.

You also have similar lawsuits in Idaho and Texas. So the picture right now across the states is extraordinarily confused. Of course, you know, women who were seeking abortions, they don't know if it's effect or not, whether they're consistent with the state's constitutions or not, what the status of all these lawsuits are. So right now it is a very chaotic picture. Yeah, absolutely. I think the reason we wanted to start with this is because it just reinforces something you said yesterday, which has really struck with me. We're living in a new era. And in a new era, well, we have to resolve all sorts of new political questions. That abortion law in Wisconsin is a great example because it actually makes performing an abortion a felony punishable by up to one to six years in prison. So this means that new laws, especially ones where they're either 50-50 or they are overwhelmingly more evangelical of a population, restrictive on abortion, are going

to have to codify new laws and challenge them in the courts. And this is going to drag on, I think, for years to come. Because beyond just the trigger laws, the exceptions are going to get litigated to high hell in almost every single one of these states. You're also going to have to answer very complicated interstate laws. So North Dakota is an example where I believe they also had a trigger law. Well, now they're going to be moving that clinic that was in North Dakota. There's not that many people in North Dakota, but they're going to move that across the state line, like right across the border in Minnesota where it's permissible. And so then there's questions as to what exactly the North Dakota legislature will try and if they will do any sort of legislation around it. At the same

time, we talked about yesterday, the pills in the mail, about the ability in order to order that, whether that itself will be illegal. That also raises questions as to the U.S. Postal Service and how it will be abiding by this decision on top of private companies like FedEx, UPS. I mean, the mess that has now been evolved onto the national scene is, again, these are all potential flashpoints, fights, political fights that had not really been happened in the United States for over 50 years. And we're just living in a completely different country than in the 1970s. So I just think that it's very important to understand that these fights, while yes, will remain localized, what have we all learned about politics in the social media age, and especially all politics is national, which is that when you have a red state in Alabama or

Mississippi and they have a law on the books, that becomes the national flashpoint for everybody. These fights don't stay localized. And a lot of people all across the country are reading these stories, either in blue states, red states, and more, and having to resolve and decide questions around abortion that they just haven't really had to think about. So I think it does enter into a new paradigm of politics right now. Yeah. So the Supreme Court overturning Roe, I guess it settled certain questions and has opened a whole Pandora's box of new questions. I mean, another one that is a real open question is whether states can pass these laws that a couple of states at least are contemplating that would

say, not only can you not get an abortion in this state, but you aren't allowed to travel across state lines to get an abortion somewhere else. And we're going to go after people who aid you in that effort. And of course, we know a number of corporations have come out and said, hey, we're going to provide travel vouchers to our employees if they need to travel across state lines to get an abortion. So is that going to be acceptable? Kavanaugh seemed to indicate, you know, he didn't like that. He didn't want to go there. But that's not law, right? But that's not law. Exactly. So that doesn't prevent states from passing these sorts of laws and testing just how far they can go. And some

of these red states will absolutely do that. To your point about all of this being national, it's not just that the most extremist versions of these provisions on the books in places like Texas, Missouri, places like Louisiana are going to be fought at a national level. It's also that you have Republicans in Congress and leaders of the Republican Party like Mike Pence pushing national legislation. So, I mean, it is literally national in the fact that you are now going to have a fight over whether, you know, the loss of Mississippi should be basically the loss of the land. And that is definitely going to be the next phase in the battle. You know, I want to move on to this next piece because this is truly some dystopian shit

that we're talking about right now. When you now are thinking about, OK, abortion is illegal. It's it's criminalized. All right. Well, all of these apps that you have on your phone that are tracking like your every movement, your every search term, your every message, a third of women track their menstrual cycles on their phone. That data, is that now going to be given to law enforcement to prosecute people and to build a case against people who are providing abortions or traveling across lines or helping women travel across lines, provide abortions? Well, Motherboard, this is part of ICE, they asked the biggest tech and social media companies in the world, put this up on the screen. Okay, so they asked them if they will give cops what they describe as abortion data. Now, that's not just like, you know, sending a message like, hey, Susie, I'm going to get an abortion. It's also, what's your

location? Are you close to a clinic? What's your menstrual data? What are you searching for online? Not a one of them would answer their request about whether or not they would provide this information to law enforcement. Give you a sense of some of the companies that they contacted here just so you can wrap your head around the kind of data that these companies have access to. Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, TikTok, Google, Amazon, Discord, Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile. They also contacted financially focused companies, including Binance, Kraken. I don't even know what that is. Cash App, Coinbase, Venmo. Motherboard contacted Uber. They contacted Lyft. So think again. You're getting a car at a location. They have all that data of where you are and what you're doing and where you're going. None of these companies, not one,

answered the question. And this is really disturbing and really troubling. I mean, it just shows you how invasive this new paradigm ultimately is. decision, not specifically with regard to abortions, but with regards to health data and keeping that, you know, any sort of data relevant to your health and personal care outside of the reach of law enforcement and to try to give you some privacy. So far, obviously, that hasn't passed. But Senator Elizabeth Warren has been trying to move a piece of legislation aimed to ban the sale of location and health data outside of some limited circumstances. Because the other thing is, what people may not realize is that a lot of this data from these companies, even without law enforcement request, is already available for sale and easily obtainable. So I do have one update this morning, which is that the most popular app for women to track their periods has said

they'll hand over that data. They don't even need a warrant. Yeah, that they'll just hand it over if law enforcement asks for it. And this is a very popular app. It's actually the number one app being downloaded on the App Store over the weekend that women use to track their menstrual cycles. And they're saying, yeah, we would hand it over. We don't need a warrant. So it's called Stardust Period Tracker is the name of that app. Don't download that app. It's my personal recommendation because this is just insanity.

It's extraordinarily dystopian, this invasion of privacy. It's interesting, too, to think about it, because I hadn't even considered the privacy ramifications. Let's throw this up there on the screen. I went back and read this. It was actually a very interesting interview by Caitlin Chin. She's a strategic technologies program person over at CSIS, which is usually a national security think tank. But she raised, actually, and called specifically about technology companies and their basically cooperation with the government. So she raises this. From January to June of 2020 alone, Apple, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft received over 112,000 legal requests to access data from federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies

and fulfilled about 85% of those requests. And in recent years, federal law enforcement and others have purchased smartphone geolocation data from data brokers without a warrant or a court order, which they have used to track unlawful activity, which is leading to arrests or deportations. Now, everybody seems fine with that whenever it comes to drug trafficking, murder. I know the health data. I think people have used Fitbits and stuff in murder cases to prove whenever somebody's heartbeat began to stop. In the military, people will look at Strava data to try and check where troops are and their running routes. But this does raise a lot of questions around exactly your right to privacy.

And the fact is, is that the digital regime that we have, I've highlighted this on TikTok, but that's just to China. I mean, from a national point of view, you don't have a lot of control over this data and you really are putting your trust in Apple. I mean, even Apple, the gold standard supposedly in the technology community of privacy, I mean, their hands are mostly tied under case law,

which is if something is illegal in a state, they mostly have to abide by a court order or they could face being shut down within that state. Again, pointing to new questions, unresolved, raising things that had not been raised before, prompting questions also about regulatory regime. I was reading here about the FTC. The FTC actually, as part of the regulatory regime, could make a determination on whether such sharing of data is possible or not by these companies. So then that sets up a fight between the feds and the state that could also go up to the Supreme Court and, of course, would lead to major political questions around President Biden, a future possible President Trump, DeSantis, whomever, who's going to have to answer that question, both to the religious right and to all of America. Like, hey, are you going to use your

government and say that you are going to allow these companies in order to cooperate with these type of requests or not? So raises thorny questions on the digital privacy side. You know, I hadn't considered the menstrual cycle, the tracking apps. I'll confess at first I was like, this seems kind of crazy. But after understanding and seeing that piece where they say they would very freely share the data, then I could obviously understand why a lot of the women who use these apps and others are, you know, they're putting enormously sensitive private data and information over to what is basically a private company. And these are things where they don't have full control over that. They have your name, email, geolocation data, possibly. Just going to say this, you know, Apple has that new feature. If you have an iPhone, ask app not to track. I click that thing like nobody's business. Yes, definitely. Yeah, take control. Look, I think this is a good reminder, which is there are signal protocol, end-to-end encryption, and many of these things. I'm not going to say you're 100% safe.

And most of the time, if some feds or a foreign government wants to target you, I listened to Gavin DeBecker on Joe Rogan's podcast. He said basically all you need is a cell phone number. But for the vast majority of private citizens, there are steps that you can take in order to make sure that you're not being tracked. There's like DuckDuckGo, Brave Browser, all these types of different things. There's VPNs like ExpressVPN and others that are commercially available to others. There are steps a lot of people can take. But, you know, I think that you should just be able to use the web and not have to be kind of paranoid in order to make sure that you're worried about your data. Not have to be terrified that you're, you know, you're like, because it's not just, I mean, people aren't just tracking their menstrual cycles.

They're tracking their sexual activity. All kinds of stuff is happening. You know, your phone knows where you are. Your Uber app knows where you went. I mean, your Google searches. you that before you even announce it to really anyone your computer and your phone know that you're pregnant start serving you ads for like that's baby diapers and shit like that because they are able to glean from your search history like hey you need some prenatal vitamins yeah like you need a cradle oh you start exactly before you have told anyone, before your closest friends and family know, these people know.

So it is it's extraordinarily invasive. And I mean, I do think it's just a window into the broader issues with our tech regime. Like you said, some of the solutions that have been offered are constraining tech companies, social media platforms, et cetera, to only collect the data that is actually necessary for them to perform the services that they need. Yeah. Because right now, you are the product. So they are incentivized to collect everything they possibly can on you, both so that they can serve you ads and make money off of that and so that they can package your data and sell it to third parties so that they can then sell you ads. So the fact that you are actually not the consumer, you're the product, and your information is being packaged and sold and they're profiting off of it, that's kind of the core of the issue here. So there is our proposals to limit companies, like I said,

so they can only track the data that is actually necessary for them to perform their services. There's also proposals to make it so that just like on Apple, when you get those messages like, do you want to let this app track your location or not, that would make it much clearer to consumers what they were agreeing to and what they were signing up for so that they have some transparency, so that they have at least the ability to take more control over their digital privacy. But, yeah, this one, really dystopian, this particular development and something I had not fully thought through until they started asking these tech companies, so what are you going to do with this data? None of them had anything to say except the one that was like, yeah, we'll hand it over. No problem. Not an issue. Yeah. Let's talk a little bit more about the politics. Kamala Harris

had a big sit down interview yesterday with Dana Bash. And, you know, I think a lot of Democrats, we talked yesterday about how a lot of the Democratic base is really waking up to just how failed Democrats have been over the past 50 years in preparing for this moment. Or even consider, you know, the Biden administration kind of got a little bit of a head start on this since the draft was leaked. We all knew this was coming. They had quite a bit of time to prepare some kind of a response and they got nothing. You know, any idea that anyone puts forward of, hey, let's get rid of the filibuster, let's codify a row.

Hey, how about we, you know, what about we could put something Elizabeth Warren said we could put clinics on federal lands? What about these justices that lied during their confirmation hearings? Shouldn't we do something about that? One after another, it's just like, oh, we're really upset and give us $15. Are you going to do anything? Yeah, no, not so much. Here's one example of that with Kamala Harris and Dana Bash. Can the administration expand abortion access or abortion services on federal land? Meaning,

provide the access on federal land that might be in and around states that ban abortion? I think that what is most important right now is that we ensure that the restrictions that the states are trying to put up that would prohibit a woman from exercising what we still maintain is her right, that we do everything we can to empower women to not only seek but to receive the care where it is available. Is federal land one of those options? I mean, it's not right now what we are discussing, but I will say that when I think about what is happening in terms of the states,

we have to also recognize, Dana, that we are 130-odd days away from an election, which is going to include Senate races, right? Part of the issue here is that the court has acted, now Congress needs to act. But we, if you count the votes, don't appear to have the votes in the Senate. Well, what do you think of that, Crystal? I mean, personally, I think it's an idea that is worth exploring. And, you know, to the broader point, issue on idea after idea after idea, they just say, no, we can't do that. Now we won't do that.

And yet they somehow want the Democratic base to believe that if you put them back in power in the fall, that things are going to be different. And there's just no evidence whatsoever that that's the case. So you can't send out these fundraising myths of send us $15 so we can protect Roe and so that we can overturn this horrible precedent. And then every idea that's brought to you, you shoot it down for one reason or another, or you say, as she did there, not even, look, I'd respect it more if they said, no, I don't think that's a good idea for X and Y and Z reason. No, it's, eh, we're not even really thinking about that. Yeah. Well, I mean, on that particular proposal, I'm pretty sure it would just get defunded and there's no way that it would get funded by the Senate.

So I do think that the core point around the Senate is important. But look, I mean, to the point that we talked about earlier, there is no actual real plan that I've seen from the Democrats yet beyond give us some money. And to do that, you're going to have to win elections. And you need to look. I honestly don't think it would be that difficult. I mean, Louisiana, for example, does have that pro-life governor, John Bel Edwards. I don't actually see anybody even talking about that, even though he's a Democrat, which is kind of mystifying to me. Same whenever it comes on terms of codifying it at a national level. I mean, that really, they need to present a plan. They've talked previously. I mean, actually, you know, I guess Elizabeth Warren is the only person I've even said this or seen say this saying, hey, we need to pick

up these two seats, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, that would give us enough votes in order to end the filibuster in the case of this particular vote. And we could do that. But I haven't heard that yet from President Biden. If you believe in that, then you should run on it. So this is there's a lot of dishonesty, I think, that is happening. On the political fallout point from the right, as we predicted and as I previewed yesterday, let's put this up there on the screen. Here in Virginia, Abigail Spanberger in a district, which we'll talk about in a second, which is very much a toss-up for the Democrats. She was running in a very tight race. Yassili Vega, who's the Republican nominee against Abigail Spanberger, here's what she had to say at an event in Stafford County.

She said, quote, I've actually heard it's harder for a woman to get pregnant if she's been raped. Have you heard that? She was asked this. And then she responded, well, maybe because there's so much going on in the body. I don't know. I haven't, you know, seen any studies. I'm processing what you're saying. It wouldn't surprise me. It's not something that's happening organically. You're forcing it. The individual is not.

Oh, my God. I can't even continue reading this, which just, look. Todd Akin vibes. Yeah, Todd Akin vibes. It just shows you the spot that a lot of these people are in. They have to juggle extraordinarily religious voters at the primary level and also not sound freaking crazy. I mean, this is something where, look, it doesn't take a genius or a reproductive health expert in order to tell you that there's no validity to what she's saying, but it is a preview of exactly the problems that the GOP will face down ballot now

for a long time. And it exactly shows you, there's no claim on this show that's going to lead to some blue wave come November. But put this up there in terms of the Cook political report and their toss-up races. Spanberger is right there in the toss-up category. There are 23 races that are right on the edge. Henry Cuellar's district was an example. Spanberger there. Crystal, you were telling me that she's still probably going to win this Republican lady, given what's happened with redistricting.

But who knows? I looked into it. I mean, yeah, who knows? It's actually my district now. I've been redistricted into this one. So it's a choice of a former CIA op and and uh this lady who was actually a cop oh good yeah this all came up um because she brought up the fact seeming again to downplay that getting pregnant from rape was a thing she's like i've only dealt with one instance like this in my

career in law enforcement and that's what led to this exchange where however she's talking to is like yeah what do you think about that? Is that like is it less common? And then she goes, well, I haven't seen any studies. But, yeah, it kind of makes sense to me. Anyway, it's a D plus one district. That means that the district votes on average one point more Democratic than the nation as a whole. I would say that's going to be very tough sledding in this particular year. Now, listen, you always have an advantage when you're incumbent and you have another advantage when you have your opponent saying things like this. But I will also say that at the congressional level, at the House level, it's very hard to break apart from sort of whatever the national trends are.

Now, if it's a Senate candidate like Todd Akin was, for example, gubernatorial candidates, a statewide race, you've got more media, you've got more money, you've got more media attention, like, you know, earned media, then candidate quality and some of the crazy things they're saying can make more of a difference. At the House level, it's hard. It's mostly just people are voting based on whatever the national wins are. It really doesn't matter how people position themselves, what they're

saying, et cetera, et cetera. So I think it's going to be tough for Abigail Spanberger, but ultimately we'll see. I mean, one of the other races that is going to be really critical here is the, I mean, there's a few of them. I actually think the gubernatorial races, it's going to be really interesting to see how this impacts things at the state level, because there are such clear stakes in this fight now since it has been kicked to the state level. So Pennsylvania, perfect example. You have Republicans have nominated someone who is extreme on everything, including abortion, you know, wants to ban it outright in a swing state. And so far,

the race has been pretty close. The Democrat Josh Shapiro has been up by a few points, but more or less inside the margin of error. So this is one that, you know, if it was, if there wasn't Roe and if Republicans had nominated someone who was more moderate, they would probably win this seat. Now you'd have to say that Democrats will probably win this seat. And again, the stakes are quite high, not only for abortion, but also, as we've discussed on Stop the Steal Insanity, where this dude is a total nut job on those issues as well and would be able to appoint a secretary of state. So I think at the gubernatorial level, you may see more of a shift towards Democrats candidate by candidate than you see at the federal level and certainly at the House level where it's hard to distinguish yourself. It's interesting, too, to think about this in the Obama context, which is, what is it, 1,000 state legislature seats went Republican under Barack Obama. People really do forget this, but the country became very red at the state level

under Obama as part of that backlash. He was always fine in terms of getting himself elected, but for down ballot, it was kind of a disaster, both House, Senate, and especially the state. Yes, it was a disaster for every other level of the Democratic Party. And if you consider the state legislature, Republicans do have a major advantage. They've been concentrating a lot of their efforts there for decades now. So this actually brings me back to the FedSoc point I made yesterday. The organizing level on that down ballot in terms of fundraising, knowledge, attention here in Washington seems very, very lacking compared to the GOP effort. Well, and I do want to go back to, you know, the discussion we were having about Kamala Harris and Joe Biden and, you know, all like, yes, there are barriers to them doing everything they would or

could or should do and what the base wants them to do. But contrast their posture versus the Republican posture. The Republicans didn't look at the polling or the, you know, what numbers they had at that moment in the House or the Senate of State legislation, say, ah, nothing we can do. And even now they're not saying, eh, we won, nothing more we can do. They find a way to get done what they want to get done. Democrats have this, first of all, they have an allergy to governing, right? Second of all, they have, and Obama's notorious have this, first of all, they have an allergy to governing, right? Second of all, they have, and Obama's notorious for this, they have this view of politics like it's totally static. Like nothing can move.

Minds can't be, arms can't be twisted. Nobody's minds can be changed. Like the votes are what the votes are, and that's that. And, you know, if we've got the filibuster in place today, there's nothing we can do about it. And they they have this idea that they are completely powerless to change the dynamics of the political landscape. with abortion, but Clarence Thomas, Justice Thomas, in his concurring opinion said, hey, I think we should come for marriage equality and contraception and gay intimacy next. Okay, well, what's stopping you Democrats from codifying gay marriage into law? I mean, that would be a very tough vote for Republicans. How would Republicans fall on that in the Senate? Sure. Yeah, I honestly have no idea. Yeah. I don't either. And it's very possible that you actually could get to 60 votes for gay marriage in the Senate because of how much the politics have shifted on that issue.

And if you don't, then you have, you know, in stone where these people actually stand on an issue that they don't really want to say anything about. So just as one example of something that they could potentially do that is not going to do anything about abortion right, but at least it will help to protect another existing right that very much seems to be on the table now. So I'm just, I'm not impressed with their feigned impotence, their total lack of creativity, their unwillingness to sort of rise up and meet the moment, and their constant, constant obsession with basically finding excuses to do absolutely nothing. Well, speaking of the national wins and more, keeping an eye on inflation. And look, it's always better to try and connect it to something that everybody's going to experience in their daily life. So let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen.

July 4th barbecue season is here. People are getting ready. And the inflation index on this, we did this in Thanksgiving, and I remember being shocked at the numbers then. Now we're talking about July 4th. Well, the price, it will be up as much as 36%. It is led by beef, but grocery costs for the Independence Day party are rising the most since the Farm Bureau began even tracking all of the data. So ground beef prices are up 36%. Chicken breast has actually also gone up by an entire third. People can expect to spend 17% more on food across the board for the barbecue, the biggest increase since people began tracking. And in 2021, the cost of the Independence Day

cookout actually declined by about 1%. But since then, obviously things have skyrocketed. They can't blame this one on Putin. And when you look at it, it really is insane. So ground beef, chicken, both above 30. Pork and beans also up at 33%. Center cut pork chops, 31%. Fresh squeezed lemonade, 22%. How is lemonade up? 20%. What's happening? Potato salad, 20%. Hamburger buns, 16%. Vanilla ice cream, 10%. 13-ounce bag of chocolate chip cookies, 7%. Strawberries are down 60%. Wow, I feel bad for the strawberry farmers. I don't know what's going on there. Sliced cheese is actually down 13. I guess that's a good thing, depending on what type of cheese they are buying. And potato chips are relatively flat.

So not sure what's going on in the lemonade markets. I should do a deep dive into exactly what's going on there. But I do think that just focusing on the most basic areas of life where stuff is getting more expensive is something that our government lacks. And, you know, you and I have noticed with great interest, our airline segments are doing phenomenally. And I was like, huh, you know, like, why? Like, why are people so interested? Anytime I see something unexpected pop, I'm like, wow, that's interesting. And I think it's because a lot of people are flying. You know, yesterday was a TSA record over the last two years. And like, hey, this shit is crazy. This is crazy. The stuff is canceled all the time.

I saw a story of a guy who was connecting via Europe. Air Canada just canceled his connection. They said, oh, you have another flight two days from now. And they're not taking phone and there's a three-hour line at the airport. That's nuts. I mean, in terms of the disruption to daily life, people are going to visit their parents.

People are flying internationally. People are finally going on vacation for the first time. It's a total disaster. Lots of reports about honeymoon couples who had booked travel and they're losing one, two, three whole days in order to travel. Nightmares. This is not a well-ordered society. And another area where I'm looking at this is cars. Let's throw this up there on the screen. The cost to finance a new car right now is at $600 a month. And auto shoppers are actually going to have to pay even more because of the Federal Reserve rate hike. So new car prices not only are up 13% and used car up 16%, according to the latest data, but the 0.75 basis pump, the 75 basis point bump is actually going to

increase the average auto loan to 5% over 70 months, meaning that just for a basic average car, you're paying $650 per month. Then you consider gas. I've already run the numbers on that. Depending on where you live, it's anywhere between $250 to $300 a month. So now you're looking at a thousand bucks if you consider insurance, depending on the type of car, and more, let's call it $200 maybe, you know, on average, depending on who you are, family, all of it. If you have a family, you're especially those. But if you're a single person, I mean, now we're talking about $1,250 just for a basic brand new car or even for a used car. Yeah. That's a lot of money.

The used car numbers are not much lower. $546 for used cars versus $656 for new cars. I mean, since when has that ever happened in history in terms of the used car? I tell you, look, my Jeep just got into an accident. And they're like, oh, yeah, it's going to take a long time in order to try and fix this. There's no parts for all of this. The bills are astronaut. Luckily, insurance is covering it

because some lady came and hit the Jeep. But look, I mean, this is, it's difficult for people who are out there. Not everybody can afford it. Also, you know, just try going without a car for like an entire month while you're waiting for it to get fixed in the shop. Yeah, I mean, impossible,

especially given the shit status of public transit in almost all of the country, like New York is like the only exception. I think it's really important to underscore with regards to the cost of financing a vehicle. This is the intent, the explicit intent of the Fed lifting rates. This is what they want. This is their goal. And again, I mean, we've discussed this, but it's so important to underscore that because our political system has failed and is unable to deal with some of the other underlying

issues, the supply chain issues, because Biden's committed to keeping the war in Ukraine going forever, it all falls to the Fed and what the Fed can do and what they're being pushed to do by Biden and by Republicans have the same desires is to make it much more difficult for you to do things like buy a car, buy a house, to hit your bank account, okay?

To lower your wages. I mean, they explicitly said this, to lower your wages and to hike unemployment. We did that segment about how Larry Summers is saying we need 10% unemployment for a year. 10%! Casually! That's more than triple what it is. Like you're not talking about millions of people's lives and livelihoods. And as you always rightly point out, people will literally die because of that pain and depression from losing their livelihood.

This is the sign that the policy that they are trying to implement here, the goal of it, which is to hurt you, is working. And the really scary thing, though, is that it may not even work to get inflation under control because, as I just said, there are a lot of other factors that are going in. And in fact, the stimulus that was given to the American people, which as I pointed out to Bill Maher, was much less than what was given

to Wall Street and corporate America. But the stimulus that was given to working class people, that's mostly burned off. I mean, we haven't had a new stimulus program in what, 15 months? It's been a long time. People's bank accounts are down. Credit card debt is as high as it has ever been in history.

So we are now dealing with a problem that doesn't exist. And the other things that are festering that are keeping inflation high, we're doing nothing about. Look, again, to go back to democratic impotence here, yes, in certain ways they have political constraints. There's no doubt about it. But just take the example of after the stock market crash in 1929, Congress held a series of hearings called the Pecora hearings where they investigated Wall Street to see how the hell this happened. And lo and behold, it wasn't just, oh, the all-knowing market and it had a hiccup, whatever. There were wrongdoers there who were intentionally fleecing regular people, getting them into the stock market. They introduced, oh, you can buy this on margin, just outright fleecing consumers, lying to them about what the risks were, and then betting on the other side. This is exactly the same thing that happened

in the housing financial and in the crash there as well, where they knew these were bad investments. They're betting on the other side of it and screwing over the very customers that they claim to be serving. This all came out in the PCOR hearings. Guess what? Politics isn't static. When the public learned the way that they had been screwed over, There was a massive outcry for financial regulation. because there was something exposed that was so deeply shocking and outrageous to the public that they would not let the politicians stand by and do nothing. Where is that energy now? Where's that energy now to do something about this? So even if you don't have the votes right at the second, that doesn't mean that you cannot do anything, that you're completely helpless, that you can't move things forward.

And especially, listen, the power of the bully pulpit is very powerful. If you call these corporate CEOs who are intentionally hiking up their prices because they can, because they're monopolists, you haul them before Congress, you call them to account, that in and of itself cools things down in terms of corporations jacking up prices because they don't want to be the next one that is the subject of a public ire. Yeah, nearly one third of inflation is actually expectations. So being able in order to set expectations in a different direction by the government, you know, either talking specifically about what they're going to do or calling people out or even looking at ways in order to ease supply. I mean, I think it's telling that it took children starving from lack of baby formula for the government to invoke the BPA. And that took

months. But look, it's not as dire, but it's still bad when people can barely afford to live and to work. I mean, I'm looking at an article that just came out this morning about all of the macro data tells us that people are cutting back significantly on quality of life expenses. They're pulling their kids out of summer camps or not pursuing activities that are extracurriculars for their children, driving less, cutting off of any sort of – cutting down any sort of vacation that had already been planned, eating out less. Look, you don't have a right to eat out, but it's nice for people. It eases the burden sometimes whenever you want to. Sometimes it's fun in order to change things up on a Saturday. So those are the first things in order to go for a lot of people. And the cost of eggs even is up 75%

in a year. That's crazy. You consider all of these price increases on the aggregate. And at the end of the day, when you're looking at your credit card bill, you know, another thing I was going to tell people, go and look at some of your old Amazon purchases or past purchases from like five years ago on basics, like paper towels, and you'll be shocked at how much more you're paying. And it's like people can see that they feel it viscerally. That is if Biden, I would be I would be talking about gas and cars and food every single day. That's all I would spend my time on. And yet, I mean, I'm doing a whole monologue on this. They're proposing yet another inflationary move in order to stick it

to Russia, which is probably not even going to work. I can't get my minds around these politicians. I don't know what they do all day. I really don't. Yeah, and they have the American people ready to hear this message. Yes. About Wall Street speculation, about corporate America. Anything. Greed, and it's not the whole picture, but it's a part of the picture.

So tell that story, call them to account, do something instead of just saying, eh, what can we do? The baby formula thing is interesting because, you know, up to a point they were dragging their, oh, there's not much we can do and blah, blah, blah. And then once it got to a point, oh, guess what? They figured out how to do something. Isn't that interesting?

Oh, yeah. You do almost love to see it. Okay, let's talk about Uvalde. You can't make some of these things up. Unbelievable. The cops have comported themselves in a nearly criminal, I'll protect myself from the lawyers, way of not moving towards the target, taking him downne out and looked terrible for these people. And one of the first people to really show us how feckless and terrible their response was, was a Uvalde mom who was working on a nearby farm 40 minutes away, heard about the shooting, drove to the shooting, was able to was put in handcuffs by police officers because she wanted to rush in to go save her children, taken out of handcuffs, rushed into the building, got her children,

got them out all before the police actually went and killed the gunman. And by them, I mean Border Patrol, who basically told the on-seat commander, like, hey, screw you. We're going in there. We're going to kill this guy. Well, this mother continues to be a hero because she's going to speak out. The police threatened her and told her not to speak out to the media. She did it anyway. She is now being harassed by local police officers in her town. Let's take a listen to what she talked about with Fox San Antonio. Gomez claims she's been faced with scrutiny from law enforcement at her own home. The other night we were exercising and we had a cop parked at the corner flickering us with his headlights. Due to incidents like this, Gomez said she has separated from her boys. Just so my sons don't feel like they have to watch cops passing by, stopping, parking.

She has been protesting along with other community members in Uvalde Town Square, asking for UCISD Police Chief Pete Arredondo to be fired. Her goal now is to file a lawsuit. The fact that he wasn't fired immediately based upon whatever it is, hours of video from testimony such as from Anjali. I mean, you had to separate yourself from your own kids who you had to go save. The police officers didn't save because they're harassing you at your house because you have the audacity to speak out to the media, to tell the world, to tell Texas how exactly they screwed up.

This is exactly what happened in the immediate aftermath whenever reporters tried to come to the Uvalde City Council and ask questions. City Council locked the doors of a public building, called the police, the same police officers, by the way, who were involved in this thing, and the police officers were like, hey, just so you know, you have to get off the sidewalk. Otherwise, we're going to arrest you for criminal trespassing.

It's like, what do you guys do? And they all, of course, are like decked out in their G.I. Joe, you know, outfits while they're kicking journalists off of this. And they're big, tough guys driving past her house, flashing their lights and harassing her. You can't even make it up. I don't know where they, I mean, this is most disgraceful. Where did these people get off? You can imagine it. And remember, she was the one who was also, they threatened her with legal action for speaking out and they threatened her. She had some, uh, some criminal violation from like a decade ago. Um, they threatened to say that this would be a violation of her probation if she didn't shut up and stop

talking to the media. It really is unbelievable. And it is also unbelievable that Arredondo is not fired. I mean, they gave him a leave of absence, but really? How is that possible? Everything that we've learned, it is as bad for him as it could possibly be. And I am still not anywhere near convinced that we know the whole of the story yet. I agree. There's still more there. They are from the governor on down to the city council where freaking Arredondo is a member now. They're doing everything they can to make sure the public doesn't get access to what actually happened on that day.

I mean, they're hiding the body camera footage, any surveillance footage, any records, all of it. They are trying to keep a secret so that we as the public are not able to actually find out for ourselves what happened on that day. And we just have to trust whatever their latest version of the story is, which changes on a near daily basis. Yeah. And continually, look, we continue to learn more. Let's throw this up there on the screen. You know, online users on that Yubo app, the live streaming app where this gunman spent a lot of time, say they reported the behavior and that there was little effect.

Now, I don't know if this is on the app. I don't know if this is on law enforcement, but we remain and still have a lot of questions because you had several users who tell news organizations then and tell them now that he was acting like a and tell them now that he was acting like a real weirdo and that he would threaten other people, that he would shoot up their schools. He literally said that multiple times on this app. I mean, was there no flag?

Did the app not tell Texas? Did the app not tell the FBI? If they did know, do they have that in their records? These are all great questions. I just point to a colossal failure of leadership right now from the state. Whoever this mom is should have Texas Rangers posted out of her house at all times. She should be guaranteed safety by the governor, by the attorney general. There should be a major investigation by the Texas state legislature, by the Texas attorney general. The governor himself should guarantee to the citizens of Uvalde that absolutely nothing will go uncovered. And there's just a cover-up to a degree which is difficult to fathom. I mean, this mom, she's a hero. She doesn't care, clearly. She's like, screw you. But how many

people have that luxury? They're already threatening her. How many other teachers, moms, and others who saw things are going to be intimidated in this community? So I can't get you. Even the so-called heroes, Steve McCraw, that guy who came out and said, yeah, within three minutes, they could have stopped it. He's the same guy who lied to all of us the day after the shooting. He's the same guy who lied to the governor. Why should we believe you?

Now you're trying to just cover your own ass. He should be fired. Listen, unless he can prove he was lied to and that he didn't lie to all of us, screw you. Your head should be on the chopping block too. Agreed. All of them. Agreed.

On the app thing, I want you to consider this. There's a story this morning that if you post on Facebook that you will send people abortion pills, immediately flagged and taken down. Really? Immediately. Oh, wow. And yet on Yubo, apparently, you can say you're going to shoot up a school and crickets. They do nothing. I mean, listen, obviously, you know, as a show, we are very much against social media censorship.

But when you're talking about threats of violence, that's a different deal. That's never been within the bounds of the first one. No, 100%. So, I mean, the fact that this guy was routinely and users complained about him and they said they kept trying to kick him out of their groups and he would come back. And I think he got banned one time and he was able to come back in on the same account. Like this guy, there were so many red flags about this dude carrying around a bag of dead cats, having violent interactions with his mother, asking people around him if they would buy him a gun before he even turned 18. There were so many red flags here and nothing was done about it whatsoever. Unfortunately, that's very correct.

Okay, let's go ahead and move on and talk about my favorite story that we're doing today. Rudy Giuliani. He doesn't disappoint. We haven't seen him in a long time. The last time he was on the national stage, there was makeup dribbling down from his dyed hair on his sideburns while he was telling us all about voter fraud. America's mayor, you know, very, we thought it was an unceremonious end for his national career, but he's back. And the reason he's back is Rudy was recently in a Staten Island grocery store. Let's go and put this up there on the screen. He says that a grocery store worker was arrested on Sunday after hitting the former mayor while he campaigned for his son. He had said in an interview that the man said, you are going to kill women. Now,

that sounds terrible. You know, I don't want to see any public official get hit in public. You know, obviously somebody who assaults anyone should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. However, video of the incident really calls into question Giuliani's version of events. So let's go ahead and watch this actual video. Here we have, you can see Rudy. He's got his back to the camera. That was it. That's actually literally it for those of you who are just watching. We're talking about a simple tap on the back. And then whoever his associate is, is there rubbing it. Now he's sending his security goons kind of after him. Now, I don't think you should touch people in public, but I'm about as one one thousandth as, I guess, notorious as Rudy. And I've had much worse interactions in public with people.

And guess what? That's not assault, okay? Some people are weird and you're a public person. And guess what? He's probably been dealing with that for 40 years. But he has gone as far, Crystal, to say it felt like a shot. It felt like a shot in the back. He said it hit him like a boulder, nearly knocked him out.

He actually said if he wasn't in such great shape, he might have died, Sagar. This was serious. I've met Rudy, and let's just say he's not in the best shape. Oh, my God. So he was actually, to this credit, over at Newsmax, even Greg Kelly, he was like, I'm going to be honest, man. This doesn't look that bad. Let's take a listen to that.

I've got to be honest. It doesn't look that bad, but I understand that looks can be deceiving. You know, that that was that was the woman who was rubbing my back, not the guy who hit me. You're watching. So the woman, that woman gave a statement to the police. The guy hit me so hard that she herself almost fell from the reverberation of it she's a city worker there's a second grade detective that that's that's the lady who uh helped me all right good now that makes sense uh so you know giliani is standing by it uh even newsmax is like come on on, dude. It doesn't look that.

He tapped you on the back. That's not assault. I mean, just suck it up. I love how he's like, the reverberations. Almost knocked down the woman next to him. It was like a shot.

What are you talking about? Oh, my God. It's amazing. It's amazing. Then they charge this guy. Now, apparently, after the video emerged, they have, I guess, lessened the charges, but he's still— Look, I think you should probably be fired.

I mean, you know, I don't think you should be touching your customers like this. If I was a business, you know, making political points about politicians, whatever. But should you be fired? I mean, sorry, should you be taken into custody and charged with assault? Charged with assault? Come on. It's insane. Especially in New York.

You guys don't have bigger problems right now in new york city come on staten island too like people are very you know they're very mouthy that's yeah that's what they're known for yes this is rudy giuliani is very mouthy i've interviewed him personally i'm sure you had we we did this together didn't yeah we did and i also had to do one anyway that's all yeah yeah yeah so what we were forced to do over at the hill this man i mean has he always is this always who he's been has he changed people who know him and who worked for him say that he has changed uh i know some people who worked uh for him back in when did he run for president was it 2008 and then he was yeah it was 2008 um actually biden

back when he was decent on the stump uh one of his best burns against Giuliani, he was like, there's only three things that come out of Rudy Giuliani's mouth. Noun, a verb, and 9-11. That was pretty good. I got to give it to him. So, yeah, that was back whenever he could speak in 2008. So, anyway, Biden, I remember, once made that crack against Giuliani. Giuliani had a very, you know, unceremonious career. Obviously, he was very popular as a mayor, but then things began to fade out. And then he started having a lot of these public antics. In my view, things were,

where things started to get crazy is he started his own security firm and he started working for all kinds of crazy foreign governments. That's right. The Kazakhs and like, you know, he was always flying abroad. This is how he got involved with the The Kazakhs and he was always flying abroad. This is how he got involved with the Ukrainians. He was always taking all his foreign cash through some security advisory firm making millions of dollars trading off of his name. And then he got hooked up with Roger Ailes back in 2015

and he started working with Trump for the Trump campaign. So anyway, him and Trump obviously go way, way back. I mean, remember when Rudy was representing Trump as a lawyer on television? Yeah. It was like right during the Mueller report and all of that. Yeah, just a very, it's honestly pathetic. Yeah, it really is.

I have the details about what the charges are against that worker. His name is Daniel Gill. He had been charged with second degree assault based on Rudy's characterization of the events. That's a felony that he could get multiple years in prison for. Yeah. Okay. Prosecutors later reduced the charges to third degree assault, which is a misdemeanor, third degree menacing, and second degree harassment, which is still preposterous if you look at that video. So ridiculous situation. The reason Giuliani is kind of out and about right

now is his son is actually running for governor of New York in the Republican primary, which I think is coming up here pretty soon. I have no idea what his chances are in the Republican primary. I think he was doing pretty well in the primary, wasn't he? I believe his son is doing well in the primary. But it's New York. So, yeah. Are you likely to win the general election? Yeah, not so much.

But anyway, that's why he's out and about at the ShopRite risking his life from, you know, menacing supermarket workers. It's just like what a pathetic thing to do. Brush it off. You know, even – I remember when Trump got charged on the stage. And, you like, what a pathetic thing to do. Brush it off. You know, even, I remember when Trump got charged on the stage and, you know, it was like, whatever.

It's just one of those things where if you have a security detail, especially, guy taps you on the back, just like, get over it. Again, I'm not saying it's a good thing.

Remember when Jill Biden and Simone Sanders like took out some Oh, that's right. I think Simone Sanders wrestled somebody to the ground. Yeah, that was crazy. Yeah, that was crazy. I forgot about Sanders wrestled somebody to the ground. Yeah, that was crazy.

Yeah, that was crazy. I forgot about that. Anyway, I'm sort of grateful for Rudy Giuliani because I have so enjoyed watching this story play out. Fair enough. All right,

we got one more for you. So we've been tracking with great interest what was going to happen with Rachel Maddow's time slot over at MSNBC because, I mean, she really is

the tentpole of that network. She is, I think, she really is the tentpole of that network. She is, I think, the only anchor on the network who really is consistently able to deliver any significant ratings. You know, the numbers always bump up when she's on. We've tracked how she took, like, a little hiatus and numbers fell off a cliff, like, cratered by, like, a third the second that she stepped off. So big question

as cable news enters a kind of like no man's land in terms of what they're doing going forward, who was going to fill her shoes? Well, we now have an answer. Go ahead and put this up on the screens from the New York Times. Alex Wagner is going to succeed Rachel Maddow at MSNBC. MSNBC's president, they say, said Ms. Wagner's experience covering politics would be crucial as the network prepared to cover the midterm elections. Now, there's a few things that's interesting here. I mean, first of all, Alex was at MSNBC when I was at MSNBC, and she was actually fired at the same time as I was fired because they were, at that point, it was the dog days of the Obama administration. They thought, oh, we need to shift to compete more directly with CNN. We've gone too

far left. We've got to get these opinion people out of here. So we need to bring in Chuck Todd and the NBC News personalities to right the ship, and we've got to get Brian Williams back in the anchor chair and all that stuff. So she was part of that. Now she is being brought back, and she's been filling in as like a sort of substitute host at a time when I think, again, they're trying to make that same move because it's at a similar time where Trump's gone, ratings are down, and CNN is doing the same sort of reset of, oh, we got to reestablish ourselves as like the credible journalists. And so what they said here about Alex, Rashida Jones, who's the president of NBC or MSNBC, I don't remember what her title is. She says, this is

not a show where our hair's on fire and we're yelling past each other and we're creating these manufactured moments of tension. I really want the takeaway from the show to be a better understanding of what's happening in the world. She also said to Vanity Fair, I'm not looking for someone to come in and mimic Rachel's performance or success, which is immediately like, let's set the bar low. Rachel's been doing this for a long time. It takes time to build an audience. Our metric isn't Rachel's numbers or bust. It's more about how do we continue to add to the conversation? How do we get unique new voices to add to the conversation? So basically an admission there that Alex is not that well known. She's not, doesn't have certainly legions of fans. She definitely doesn't have the same pull that

Rachel Maddow, whatever you think of her, has. Alex is definitely, you know, I mean, she's a liberal or I don't know if she'd call herself progressive or what, but she's not as sort of overtly ideological as Rachel is. So to put her in a primetime slot is – it's kind of an odd choice, I think. But she also – Alex is very well-connected. So her husband was a White House chef. Yeah, to Obama. Who became very – they became very close to the Obamas. Interesting.

So it never hurts to have a lot of like political connections when you're trying to get these kind of jobs. Who wants to bet her first interview is gonna be Michelle? I know that one. We all know it, people. She'll get definitely one of the Obamas

will be on the first show, would be my prediction. And she starts August 16th, by the way. Look, there's so much to say in terms of lack of talent, in terms of how they're marketing it. They're like, she's the first Asian. Who cares? Okay. Nobody cares. Are you good or not? And by all metrics, the answer seems to be no. I mean, look, I've said before my own personal experience. She was incredibly rude in the White House press corps, thinking that her show,

The Circus, was more important than all of the rest of us who were showing up to do our jobs. The Circus on Showtime, to be clear, which, you know, you can say what you want about the quality of that program and of some of the people who appear on it with regularity and how exactly they're doing in the media business. In general, I just look at this as a complete dud. You know, Even the coverage of her announcement, there was no major fanfare. I mean, we are talking about the second most coveted slot in all of cable television. And the fact is, is that it landed with almost nothing. There was no celebration and there was no real discussion. And the fact that that happened shows you that the people who are the

real media critics who know enough to say, this is a terrible choice, this is bad for ratings, even within their framework, this is not somebody who's going to do well, consider that MSNBC's current strategy is four hours of Morning Joe in the morning. Four hours. That's the only thing they have going for them. They also have to admit that Peacock is failing from a news perspective. I'm not talking about the entertainment content, which is that they are constantly pushing both Chris Hayes, Mehdi Hassan, and all those other programs on their Peacock streaming service, which by all accounts and current indications are not doing well at all. All of this just demonstrates that cable is dying, that they are in a very, very precarious place. At the same time, don't underestimate how much power they have. They have an incredible amount of power when it comes to the political system, setting the conversation, keeping everybody in Washington, the right people watch it,

so to speak. I always talk about Morning Joe. I have a walk my dog at 6.30 a.m. Every television in the window is Morning Joe. I can't imagine turning that on when I first wake up, but hey, whatever. And I think that it's important when I first wake up, but hey, whatever. And I think that it's important to understand both its power, but also the divergence of the internet. And the business minds understand a couple of years from now, they are going to have to renegotiate their contracts with the cable carriers. That's where they make the vast majority of their income. And come that time, we are really going to see how much they're actually worth a real reassessment. And that is the lifeline that is keeping this entire fake industry afloat because it's the rigged oligopoly, essentially. They don't really have to compete with the

internet. But a decade or so from now, it is going to come. And I'm really looking forward to that. It is fascinating, too, that even just from a business perspective, they don't even consider pulling someone from someone who's, like, successful in independent media. It doesn't even occur to them. Yeah, that's true. You know, and so, like, to recycle Alex Wagner back in, who, I mean, listen, she's perfectly, like, comfortable as an anchor. You know, she's pretty quick on her feet. Like I said, she's certainly got, you know, access and well-connected

to be able to get big interviews and that sort of stuff. But, you know, you could literally plug her in on any hour of any day and, you know,

she's not, she's not known for anything in particular. She doesn't have a follow. She doesn't have a fan base. She doesn't have any sort of like real sort of

cultural cachet or anything she's bringing. She's just, you know, she's kind of a standard issue anchor. So the fact that they're already saying basically like, yeah, we don't expect her to get Rachel's numbers. It's pretty telling. I mean, they just, it was very clear they didn't have anyone in-house who could fill the shoes. And when they tried, you know, it didn't work and fell off a cliff. So it seems to me like they are going in the same direction that CNN is of saying, oh, we're going to be the real journalists now and we're going to reel it in and we're going to be substantive and all this stuff. Well, they try. Last time they tried this, we know what happened. Trump came on the scene and whoever, you know, had the most deranged take about Russiagate or whatever, those were the people that got the highest ratings. As usual.

Yeah. And so they're going to go through that same, it's going to be that same cycle all over again with MSNBC, with CNN. We know how this, how this movie ultimately plays. Yeah, that's right. Crystal, what are you taking a look at? Folks, we've got a big problem with the Supreme Court, and the dismantling of abortion rights is really just the beginning. The court has gone rogue, imposing an eye-watering ideological agenda at breakneck speed with nothing restraining it whatsoever. The court of judicial modesty that Chief Justice Roberts supposedly attempted to lead is dead. In that court, the goal was to push up against the bounds of public acceptance, notching conservative wins, but never completely overturning the apple cart.

Any notion that the court would be restrained by concerns over its own legitimacy, that's also history. The Roe decision is stunningly unpopular and, of course, flies in the face of respect for long-held precedent. But the ideologues with the majority on this court have an agenda, and they don't really care about anything other than enacting it. We're actually still waiting on what might ultimately be the most damaging decision of this term. The court is likely to block the Environmental Protection Agency from setting limits on carbon emissions pursuant to the Clean Air Act, devastating our ability to address the climate crisis in anything approaching a meaningful way. The impact of the decisions of this court, they're going to reverberate for generations,

locking in corporate power, blocking new programs to benefit the working class, locking in dramatically unpopular culture war victories, as in the case of guns and abortion, and generally making it impossible to govern at a time when the country desperately needs some governing. The basic problem is this. The idealized notion of the Supreme Court is that it serves as an institutional guardian of every American's rights, a body which is intentionally removed from the whims of the majority so it can more readily protect the rights of the minority when called upon to do so. But the current court does not serve this purpose at all. Instead, it is a political weapon of last resort for enshrining political victories which would not be possible at the ballot box,

the culmination of a multi-decade political project to accomplish exactly that. Conservatives have lost the public debate on guns and abortion and climate and unions and gay rights. But with control of the court, they can still wield immense power on all of those issues. Public will be damned. Now, add to this picture the anti-democratic nature of the Senate via rural state power, the House via gerrymandering, the Electoral College via just sheer bizarre stupidity, and state houses also via gerrymandering and disproportionate rural power, and you do have a real crisis of democracy on your hands.

The court's problems are much deeper than this moment, however. In fact, the court's current regressive and reactionary posture is really quite consistent with how it's behaved for much of its history. At multiple times in American history, presidents have been forced to check the court's power through threats, or by reforming the court, or just by straight-up ignoring their terrible rulings in order to restore some balance to our democracy.

Without periodically beating back the power of the court, unaccountable justices routinely spin out horrendous decisions. Just think about Dred Scott, which said black people had, quote, no rights which the white man was bound to respect, or Korematsu, which backed Japanese internment, Plessy v. Ferguson, which ended Reconstruction and ushered in Jim Crow, Citizens United, which opened the floodgates on legalized political bribery, or this latest decision, Dobbs, which will similarly go down in history as a black mark on the Supreme Court. So here is a little bit of that history. Under Abraham Lincoln, the court was so reactionary and racist that Lincoln literally just ignored them. In order to end slavery and uphold rights of Black Americans, Lincoln and the Republican Party outright rejected the concept of

judicial supremacy, arguing that it was ultimately up to the American people to interpret the meaning of the Constitution and the rights which it conferred. In his 1860 inaugural address, Lincoln declared, quote, if the policy of the government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made, the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their government into the hands of that eminent tribunal. According to Matt Karp at Jacobin, Lincoln and his allies then proceeded to pack the court, reorganize the judiciary, and blatantly reject the court's decisions, passing laws in direct contradiction to Dred Scott and the other pro-slavery precedents which the court had set. As Karp writes, it's no accident that, quote, the greatest democratic expansion in U.S. political history, the era of emancipation and reconstruction, demanded a direct political attack on the power of the Supreme Court.

And it's also no accident that as the court reasserted itself and grew in strength, the great promise of the Reconstruction era was aborted and the segregationist Jim Crow era began, kick-started by, of course, the court's decision in Plessy v. Ferguson. FDR was similarly forced into battle against the court in order to confront the crises of his time and secure some positive rights for the American people. The nation, of course, at that time was in danger of coming apart thanks to the Great Depression. But FDR faced a court so dominated by pro-corporate ideologues that they struck down a New York law limiting bakery work to 10 hours per day. They argued, I kid you not, that the law violated the rights of workers who wanted to labor more. This era, the so-called Lochner Court, named for that bakery decision, routinely struck down FDR's New Deal legislation that conferred material support and labor power to working class Americans.

Eventually, after the court narrowly ruled that the federal government could regulate labor relations, FDR effectively declared war on the court, telling the American people, quote, in effect, four justices ruled that the right under a private contract to exact a pound of flesh was more sacred than the main objectives of the Constitution to establish an enduring nation. The court has been acting not as a judicial body, but as a policymaking body. We have therefore reached the point as a nation where we must take action to save the Constitution from the court and the court from itself. FDR's credible threat to pack the court, it worked. In the game of chicken, the overwhelmingly popular FDR won, setting the stage for the greatest era of American growth, labor power, and shared prosperity in this

country's history. We are at a similar moment now. Justices are behaving like kings and queens, disregarding all but their personal political agendas. And the American people are clamoring for a Lincoln-style or FDR-style reckoning with the Supreme Court. Remember, even before the dramatically unpopular overturning of Roe, the court was already held in historically low regard. Only 25% of the country says they Roe, the court was already held in historically low regard. Only 25% of the country says they have confidence in the court, numbers which reflect the disgust of Democrats, Republicans, and independents alike. What's more, Politico actually just polled a range of court reform ideas, and every single one, even the supposedly radical

notion of packing the court, enjoys net support. Term limits are supported by 62% and opposed by only 23%. So that's a net support of plus 39. Court packing is at plus seven net support. Age caps plus 35. A judicial code of ethics, which is insane they don't already have, is plus 54. Balancing the court with equal numbers of Dems, Republicans, and Independents is plus 23. I would personally add one to that list. Impeach some justices. Several of these justices lied under oath to the public and to lawmakers in order to obtain their positions, knowingly hiding a secret agenda from public scrutiny. Two senators, Manchin and Collins, a Democrat and Republican, have both accused Justice Kavanaugh of lying to them about how he would rule on Roe.

Collins has also accused Justice Gorsuch of the same, saying in a statement, quote, This decision is inconsistent with what Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh said in their testimony and their meetings with me, where they both were insistent on the importance of supporting longstanding precedents that the country has relied upon. Now, I think everyone who believed these justices were complete fools, but that doesn't mean we should normalize letting justices lie under oath in order to obtain effectively unlimited power. We have a process in place for dealing with this kind of betrayal of the public trust, and it is called impeachment. Now, some of these ideas would, of course, require legislative action, which is only possible if you get rid of the filibuster. Some would require supermajority,

which Democrats aren't anywhere near winning, since they love nothing more than to give up before they've even begun. But it's also worth noting from the history that in the case of FDR, it didn't even take actual reform, just the credible threat, in order for the court to get its act together. Let's learn from history and follow the examples of Lincoln and FDR. Let's put the court in its place in service of protecting our rights rather than standing by us. It uses its anti-democratic nature to lock in rule by the powerful. Reforming the court is the first step in retaking our democracy and making our country work again for the majority. And Sagar, I think a lot of the corporate rulings that are about... And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue,

become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. All right, Sagar, what are you looking at? Well, when our country is roiled by abortion politics, our president is abroad conferring with our allies at the G7 to confront a problem. Our sanctions against Russia are not working as well as they were intended. Let's revisit this for the last time. The emotional frenzy when the regime moved against Russia with promises that even taking them off of the swift banking system would destroy their economy. News item after news item about this being banned, being banned, this company was being pulled out, that company's pulling out. It was not unreasonable, given what was promised by the West, to expect that the Russian economy would economically collapse with its removal from the international banking system, the effective isolation of its

people, and especially the West's pledge to boycott its oil. That was the promise at the time, right? Well, look, it's been several months now. And the effective admission by the New York Times, even by the Biden administration and others, is that our strategy has been a failure. As noted many times so far, Russia has posted an all-time high in oil profits, more than they have ever made in their history. The ruble remains one of the strongest currencies of the year relative to others. And while the Russian economy is projected to contract by 8-10%, the vast majority of that downside is hitting the Russian consumer, not the Putin war machine. At the same time, as we covered yesterday, the Russian war machine is actually doing better than ever. It just took a strategic city in eastern Ukraine, it continues to shell

major port cities, it continues its barbaric airstrikes against Ukrainian civilian population in Kyiv. All of this is known to Western leaders, and so they're further pulling out the stops against Russia banning gold exports, which are its second largest outside of oil, and also a new round of potential oil sanctions. There's just one catch. Like the original ban, the current plan proposed by Biden, and apparently agreed to by the G7, is perhaps one of the dumbest ever conceived. Biden and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen are proposing a price cap on Russian oil to hamstring their exports. Now, in effect, they are trying to form a buyer's cartel, dictating the price of oil that they and others will continue to pay for oil to try and

deny Putin excess profits that the boycott is producing. There's one problem. The reason Putin is raking billions of oil profits in is because of the dynamics of a global oil market. Just because the West buys less oil doesn't matter. The Chinese and the Indians are, of course, buying Russian oil at a discount and still at a higher price, though, than before. Meanwhile, the West is paying all-time highs for gas with no end in sight. The current Biden plan is as follows. The West will set a maximum cap on Russian oil. Now, that sounds really nice, but how does supply and demand work? If we are the only ones willing to pay X and they can get a higher price from Y, well, they're going to sell it to Y. So to try and circumvent that, they are envisioning a world where the West can guarantee a cheaper price of oil than the Russians at the discounted rate for the Chinese and the Indians to buy.

One problem, though, as we're all finding out, there is only a finite amount of oil for us all to consume with our current infrastructure. Yes, we could pump all day with refinery capacity in the West where it is and the inability of Europeans and others to plan for the future. Where is this mystery oil going to come from? In effect, here is what would happen. A Russian price cap will mean we will need to make more of our oil supply available to the Chinese and the Indians at a lower price for them. In economics, there is no such thing as a free lunch. The person who is paying for that lunch will be you, me, and the rest of the West. It really does not take a genius to figure this out,

which is why the global price of oil went up on the proposal of this plan. In fact, if China and India need to replace their oil with Russian oil on the current supply, it will spike the barrel price to $200 a barrel. Right now, it's at $112. Imagine what that means at the pump. We're talking about $7 a gallon nationally here in the United States. All predicated on the idea this will even be agreed to by the Chinese and the Indians. In the case of the Chinese, they're not doing it just to make a tidy profit, also to stick it to the West and support the Russian effort. The bottom line

is this. A price cap will only work if you have total control over supply and demand. We have neither. This is a half-assed measure which will only certainly increase the price of oil for us here at home, and the Russians would then probably still find a way to make money. Look, I'm not opposed to sanctions or tariffs or any other proposals, as long as they actually work. But the current sanctions are hurting our people much more than they're hurting the Russian war machine, who are actually winning on the battlefield right now. Even this so-called default by Russia that you're reading about on its debt, read the fine print, people. Russia has plenty of money to pay its debts. We just cut them off on their ability to pay them. It's not a true default. If it was a true default, investors

would actually be able to sue the government in English or US courts. But legally, and lawyers are looking at this right now, they're in a tricky spot because Russia could prove in court it has the means to pay. Even the effect of the default won't be as monumental when they last actually defaulted on their debt in 1918 after the Bolshevik Revolution.

The simple truth in oil is that just like the situations with Iran and Venezuela, there is only so much you can do to minimize its use on the global market when it's a commodity that everyone on earth uses. Iran has been in the oil business since 1979. They're doing fine. Yes, their people are suffering. The Venezuelans are suffering too, but their regime is also fine because of oil. That's how it goes. We can accept that oil sanctions will have a marginal impact at best, or we can keep throwing everything at the wall and increase the pain and suffering here at home.

Maybe I'm callous, but how much longer should Americans pay $5 a gallon or potentially more to secure the integrity of eastern Ukraine? Seriously, how many square miles of territory is worth one more month or one more year of suffering for all of us? Someone should explain this to us in very clear terms as to why it is worth tremendous economic pain and more, not only to the consumer, but to all of the regular inputs that oil prices increase, which increase overall inflation in what is already looking like a recessionary economy. Biden and the West's handling of this crisis so far has meant sanctioning of our citizens,

the reversion of European countries to coal-fired power plants, all to ensure political ends which are not working. This strategy has been a disaster. It is time to try something different. We need to change our incentive structure for the Ukrainians and the Russians to bring an end to this conflict

and bring back Russian oil online to the global market. If we don't, we're in for a world of hurt. Sadly, that is exactly where the system is headed for right now. I mean, it really doesn't take a genius. You know, I'm reading this thing. I'm like, oh, global price gap. I wonder how that's going to work. And if you want to hear my reaction to Sager's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. Joining us now is Tara Palmieri of Puck News, but for our purposes, friend of the show who's done some great work on Jeffrey Epstein and more,

has a very interesting new documentary out for Discovery+. It's titled Dr. Delirium and the Edgewood Experiments. Let's take a listen to the preview, and then Tara, let's talk all about it. You feel the effects of the agent? It was moving. Delirium was produced experimentally. They had no idea what the drug was going to do to us.

They just moved the monkey out of the way and put me in there behind it. The mission was to find a drug that would produce incapacitation. We had millions of dollars to work with and I built the program around that. Next question. The effects of a psychochemical become apparent. We brought over Nazi chemists to work in our labs. They had to do what they were told back in Europe. All I heard, the doctors that were standing around, turn it off, Turn it off. Because I was taking too much. Look, I've got regrets about a number of things I've done.

That would not apply to the work I did at Edgewood. I thought I did a pretty good job with that. very interesting tara so tell us why did you gravitate towards the story uh how do you get interested in it and then how did the documentary kind of come to be right so this is just like a horrifying piece of our history um using human, young servicemen as essentially human guinea pigs, right? This was during the Cold War, and America was desperate to get ahead of Russia in terms of its warfare, and they believed that mind control and chemical warfare was the future. So Edgewood Arsenal, which is right outside of D.C., it's our premier chemical testing site. They would sort of lure these young servicemen, either taking some time off from Vietnam where many of them served or just away

from their regular duties to come for a few months and be tested on. They had to sign all these documents, these classified documents. They can never speak about it. It was a secrecy oath for so many years and they were just put in gas chambers, gas masks. They were not testing on them like, you know, chemicals like, you know, Agent Orange or Sarin. They were testing things to see if they could change their brains, if they could change their minds. And these were not like, this wasn't like LSD or mushrooms or a drug that's enjoyable. They were trying BZ, which is like even street druggies

don't want this drug. Like it's just not an enjoyable trip. It's like one of the worst trips of your life. And the remarkable thing to me is that for so many years, the military just brushed these guys under the rugs. They denied their VA complaints. They basically said they were crazy.

They couldn't speak up about it because they signed secrecy oaths. And, you know, now they're adults. They're grown men at the end of their career. They just want some recognition for what they did. And this was really like at the height of the CIA, Sidney Gottlieb, you know, period of time with like Project Climax when they were, you know, drugging Johns with LSD. And there was a lot of experimentation going on. In fact, like LSD was brought to this country by the CIA. And these were just like good country boys in their 20s who didn't know that they were in for the trip of their life. And they

still, some of them say they wake up in the middle of the night with nightmares. They still can't get past those months, the haze that they experienced. And then the worst part about all of it, sorry, I don't mean to go too much into it, but the worst part about it, at that time in the Cold War, after we tried these Nazi doctors, the Nuremberg trials, there was a fight. It's called Project Paperclip because it was a paperclip in their visa to get them on our side as chemical scientists. And so many of these Nazi doctors at Nuremberg, and you see this in the documentary, were actually brought over from Germany to conduct test studies on our own soldiers. It's just, so it's an incredibly horrifying story, an abuse of power. And they

kept these 7000 young servicemen quiet because they made them sign secrecy oaths that were literally in effect until the late 80s. Wow. How long was this going on and how did the public catch wind of it? 20 years. And it was amazing. There ended up being some hearings and it was mainly about the CIA and what Sidney Gottlieb was doing, just drugging everyone with LSD. One of the main test subjects, which you learn about in the documentary,

ends up killing himself and his wife. The effects, the psychological effects of these drugs were unreal. They did no follow-up. Like if you were signing up to be, you know, for a clinical trial, you would expect follow-up, right? Especially when it's the government. And they didn't follow up. Like if you were signing up to be, you know, for a clinical trial, you would expect follow up, right? Especially when it's the government. And they didn't follow up with

these people at all. And their lives became so derailed. And I think that's one of the most heartbreaking parts of this. And they just sued the government recently. And I believe that there are still some questions about how they'll be compensated, but mainly they just want some sort of recognition. They want to be recognized as test vets that, sadly for them, the chemicals that they used are not used in warfare. So they feel a bit like this 20-year period of time where they offered their bodies out, basically. Right. It was kind of not.

Let's stick on that then. So have they not received any compensation from the VA? Have any congressmen, is anybody speaking up on their behalf or? Yeah, go ahead. We're still working on that right now, actually. It's they still haven't gotten proper recognition. You know, they're working with Congress right now to just at least acknowledge their VA benefits are still in question. It's really sad that they have to spend the last years of their life fighting for VA benefits. Right. Um, I think

they would also like to be compensated in addition to that. I mean, a lot of them had problems holding down jobs, keeping relationships. Um, they, they cite like divorces, nervous breakdowns. And the worst part about it was that they couldn't go to their doctors and say, Hey, when I was in my twenties, I was used as part of these experiments. And, um, by the way, the video and the documentary is all classified footage of the experiments. Many, we actually have some of the test vets watch the experiments from when they were younger, their classified videos that are now like seen for the first time. And it is chilling. And you can just, I mean, every single one of them broke down into tears, seeing themselves being manipulated and abused like that. I mean, it's just wildly, wildly unethical. Yeah. There's still so much to be done. And I know this was happening from

the 1950s to 1970s. You know, there were, the CIA was out of control then under the guise of the, of the cold war. And we've seen stories about it. But it's never really been connected to the military and how they, too, took advantage of so many, you know, in this race for arms and how they really haven't been held accountable for it. Do you think something like this could happen today? Because I think that's the bigger question is, as you said, this is, you know, a horrifying story, massive abuse of power, massive cover up, kept secret for decades and decades, only revealed under pressure. Those who were subjected to this Nazi drug experimentation still fighting for benefits. I mean, do we have safeguards in place so that we could be assured that something this horrific wouldn't happen again? That's a really good question, Crystal. And in fact, like there are still,

there's, I mean, that's part of our military. It's to constantly be experimenting, right? So many of these camps are known for their kind of experimentations. We're in the process right now of creating like post PTSD super soldiers, right? Or creating soldiers that have like implantations in their brains to make them the perfect shot or to be able to not even have to use their hands or their bodies to be, you know, literal like machines, like military machines. And this is happening right now. And there's always going to be that ethical line and there's going to be the push to cross it. Right. And that's just part of like the arms race. It's just like

something that so much of that work is classified and that's why it's hard. And I just hope that through knowing what happened with the Edgewood experiments, that we can prevent something like this from happening again and that there are safeguards and that these people aren't sworn to secrecy oaths for their entire lives. But it's absolutely still happening again. It is just a fact of modern warfare. Wow. Yeah. Well, Tara, thank you so much for highlighting this. I've always respected your ability to highlight stories, you know, from this to Jeffrey Epstein and more. I encourage everybody to go check out the documentary and to check out your work. We're Puck News subscribers here over at Breaking Point. So thank you very much for joining us.

Appreciate it. Absolutely. Thank you guys very much for joining us. Appreciate it. Absolutely. Thank you guys so much for watching. We really appreciate it. Premium subs, keep selling those tickets. You're doing a great job. Thank you so much. We deeply, deeply appreciate it. The presale is going to continue up until Thursday. So you guys get the first access to all of those. If you want early access to the tickets, go ahead and sign up. Yeah, it's been fun, Crystal. We're watching the numbers tick up. We're proving to the world, to the industry, BP can sell tickets. In the meantime, we'll see you guys on Thursday. Love you guys. See you here Thursday. This is an iHeart Podcast.