Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 7/12/21: National Security State, Biden Orders, Afghanistan, Rent Prices, Hunter's Art, Media Fails, Haiti Situation, GOP Future, and More!

Episode Date: July 12, 2021

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become a premium member today, which is available in the show notes. Enjoy the show, guys. Good morning, everybody. Happy Monday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Lots and lots of news to get to. Biden signed a big executive order that Matt Stoller is very excited about. With regards to antitrust, we're going to break down what you need to know there. Also going to cover how the media has been covering Afghanistan and what is actually going on the ground there. New indications that in addition to housing prices soaring, rent is now starting to go up through the roof. We've got all of the Hunter Biden news that you crave. Sarah's taking a look at Michael Avenatti. I'm taking a look at the latest developments in Haiti. We've got Jane

Koston on from The New York Times to give us a breakdown of what exactly happened at CPAC, what you need to know so you can avoid watching all of the cringe for yourself. But we wanted to start with some new developments with regards to the war on domestic terror. Yeah, there's been some new additions to the new war on domestic terror and some really troubling stuff when you start to look beneath the surface. So we talked about previously the Capitol Police getting $2 billion in additional funding, and we'll get to their expansion plans in a second. But just to give you an idea of what exactly is being expanded, what exactly is being bought here, let's put this up there on the screen. The Washington Times actually spotted this within a military appropriation. So the Capitol Police will be using an army surveillance system

on Americans to, quote, identify an emerging threat. And so this is technology that allowed U.S. troops fighting wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to monitor large areas 24-7 through extremely high-resolution cameras. Hmm, okay. So these are what we used on bases in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now, people are already discussing about the fact that privacy rights advocates in particular are talking about how the Capitol Police is now deploying extremely high-resolution cameras on what large area exactly? Well, we don't really know.

Here's the thing. In wartime application, the surveillance units were mounted on tethered blimps. The data would be stored, combined with other data, and then referenced to track individuals or groups across extremely large spaces. Now, the DHS, Department of Homeland Security, has actually used some of this technology here at home, but it's unclear exactly where. Well, now the Pentagon has actually approved a Capitol Police request for eight of these what they're called Persistent Surveillance System Ground Medium Units. It provides high-definition surveillance camera, and, Crystal, is enabled with night vision.

The system, according to the Pentagon, does not have facial recognition capabilities, only this particular system. Whether they are in possession of such a system, we don't know. And a reasonable person might say, okay, you know, the Capitol, it's that large. It's actually not that big. You really need eight of these different systems. It's just a very good example of what we discussed around this is not going towards the actual officers, which we're going to get to. This is going towards mass

surveillance technology, once again, which we use in Iraq and Afghanistan to track insurgents across the deserts via blimps. That's how crazy things are getting here at home. Well, we've been to the show before. We have seen the way that police departments were militarized across the country in bipartisan fashion. And the reason why there's a lot of incentive to push military technology into local police and now Capitol Police is because, number one, there's a lot of contractors who make this stuff, who make a lot of money on it. So there's always this incentive, oh, you definitely need this massive militarized surveillance technology that we can mount onto blimps and make sure we

monitor the entire DC area with night vision, et cetera, et cetera. So there's always an incentive to move in this direction, to push this totally unnecessary gear that is also happens to be an infringement on the rights of the people who are being surveilled. You have this push now to turn the Capitol Police, who failed in a Keystone Cops-like manner when it came to January 6th, turn them into like another FBI, basically. That's really what we're seeing here. And we're learning more and more about all of the agencies of government that weirdly have like these surveillance and investigatory powers that we

never knew that they had. So you have way more money going to the Capitol Police. You have an agency that dramatically failed on January 6th. They're being rewarded with more money, more power, more equipment so that they can, I guess, fail on an even larger scale next time around and seize even more power for themselves. This is how the cycle works over and over again. Y'all didn't need any surveillance technology. None of us needed any of this to know that there was a risk on January 6th. People were talking about it out in the open. Maybe if you'd been able to, like, get your riot shields and have enough people on the ground, none of this would have happened. So the idea that we need new laws, new equipment, new surveillance powers, any of that is just silly.

If they had just been prepared and actually done the job on that day, which, by the way, isn't about the individual officers, many of whom perform very bravely. This is about leadership and planning and taking seriously, not even the intelligence, the literal out in the open discussion of what they wanted to do on this day. And the big brother vibes continue to get really creepy. I mean, the FBI actually tweeted this out yesterday. Let's put this up there on the screen. Family members and peers are often best positioned to witness signs of mobilization to violence. Help prevent homegrown violent extremism. Visit GoUSA.gov to learn how to spot suspicious behaviors and report them to the FBI. Hashtag NatSec. I mean, this is straight Big Brother, like Stasi-level stuff.

They're encouraging people to spy on their family and report them. I still remember there was a great moment during the Joe Rogan episode when we were on, and Joe was like, wait, what does domestic extremism mean? And I was like, well, that's the $15, $20, $50 billion question there, isn't it, Joe? Because what does homegrown violent extremism mean? What does it mean for you to report on your family to the FBI? Does it mean liking a tweet, making fun of people? Oh, wait,

that's actually already happened. The Capitol Police has dispatched sheriff deputies to that left-wing podcaster's home who liked a tweet which was critical of AOC. This is where this type of stuff leads to. And even more, if you want to see how much these people are reaching, let's put this up there, which is that the FBI, the DOJ in their indictment against one of these Capitol rioters cited as evidence of planning that he had, and they put this seriously, this is not a joke, that he had a, quote, fully constructed Capitol Lego model, as in the Lego Capitol set, which by the way, I have. It's in a box. I haven't actually fully constructed it. But, I mean, that is the level of insanity

that we're getting to here, Crystal, which is that they are citing Legos as evidence of planning, look, the guy is probably a moron. Stormed on in there with a bunch of other morons, and you know what? He's going to pay the price, and he's going to go to jail.

It's like, to build your case against him, take the little photo of him inside the Capitol and be like, hey, you broke the law, dude. Sorry. Instead, they had to go through all these machinations and they went through his notebook. They get so nefarious that he had a Lego set. Yeah, it's like, oh, we had a Lego set right over there. It's like, what is going on here? And I mean, I shouldn't be laughing. This is serious stuff. Like, they're going to go into your house and they're going to say, oh, he's got the Legos in the corner.

It means he's a domestic violent extremist. I just I don't even know how they continue to beclown themselves in the way, except for the fact that they are getting away with this. The media is fully behind them. The Biden administration is full blown against this whole new war on domestic terror. And the further it goes, really really the scarier it all is. And like I said, the $2 billion appropriation that was given to the Capitol Police, it is gone now to expanding their offices and more, but they don't even have the money to pay their own cops, the actual cops in the building. Just the other day, let's put this up there, after the appropriation passed, Senator Patrick Leahy has to ask the Senate to pass an additional

$30 million in overtime for the Capitol Police. And I saw a big thread from Capitol Hill reporter Jake Sherman about how the Capitol Police is supposedly on the verge of bankruptcy after we just gave them $2 billion. So what are they doing? They're buying these blimp surveillance tech, and they're not even spending it on the actual beat cops in the building. It's on expanded offices. Just a reminder, in California and in Florida, that's what we showed you guys in our last show. They're planning field offices all across the country outside of Washington to, quote, track threats to lawmakers. It's just completely dystopian. So in that FBI tweet where they're asking you to spy on your family members, I looked up some of what the suspicious indicators are that they want you to look for.

And some of them are genuinely concerning, like illegally acquiring weapons and things like that. Sure. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that's a crime in and of itself. But then there are also things like purchasing tactical equipment. Okay. You're allowed to do that.

Yes. It's free country. Free country. You're allowed to purchase tactical equipment. You also have suspicious financial transactions. What does that mean? I don't know what that means. So they want you to go into your partner's Venmo history and be like... For example, yeah, unusual applications for increases of credit.

Guys, also in America, a lot of people have a lot of credit card debt. Yeah, but you want to... That is a scourge of America, but it's hardly an indicator of extremist activity. Okay. Disposing of personal assets or belongings in an unusual manner. Don't know what that means exactly. Unusual goodbyes. So check your trash.

Okay. Got it. So, I mean, it's just, it shows you, like, I think if you have this frame in your mind of you're looking for this everywhere, then you can see it everywhere. Right? It's like once you adopt that frame of like, well, why did he make that purchase? Well, why did they take out this credit line? Well, why did they say goodbye to me in that way? You can just see how this becomes incredibly invasive, especially when you have what makes it so is that you have a media that for years now

has been so invested in convincing people that everyone around them who doesn't agree with them politically is not just like a good faith person who happens to view the world a little differently, but is an active threat. And so when you couple a media and political climate that relentlessly convinces you that it's a sectarian nation, that people are extremists on both sides who don't just have political disagreements with you, but are actively either violent or want to destroy your way of life. And then you put a government agency out there saying, and you know what, you should be reporting these people. You should be paying attention. You should be sending them into the authorities, letting us know about these.

But that's that's where this ends up being incredibly dystopian and frankly disturbing. And that's the climate that's being created here. That's the climate that gets amplified when you have the Capitol police now being empowered as basically like another FBI being militarized in a way that we've seen was incredibly troubling and not ultimately serving the interest of community peace when those police units across the country were militarized. And we just keep seeing signs that we're moving more and more and more in this direction, which is why we cover this, because this goes to the core of what is the culture and what is the climate in this country? Are we going to be able to move together forward as like one unified nation? And all of these little things just serve to harden and heighten those sectarian divisions that make it very impossible, you know, nearly impossible for a democratic society to survive. I think that's really, really well said.

OK. I think that's really, really well said. OK, in maybe happier news, question mark here. President Biden signed a big executive order, made a big show of it, gave a speech, all aimed at curbing corporate power. And effectively, you know, it's a lot of the sort of antitrust position provisions that people like Matt Stoller have been looking closely at. We've got, I think, a New York Times article we can put up here with the headline, Biden urges more scrutiny of big businesses such as tech giants. But of course, our friend Matt Stoller had kind of the most extensive breakdown. This is his beat. He could not have been possibly more excited, both about the substance of the order and also what Biden said in the speech around the order. So let me give you Stoller's perspective. I think I'm a little more skeptical, although he puts plenty

of caveats in there, too. So Stoller effectively says, you know, in Biden's positioning of this speech, this is as significant a change in government orientation as we've seen since, like, Reagan and his anti-big government ideology. And it is true that if Biden is actually serious about having a new era in government where the federal government is committed to checking and curbing corporate power, investigating corporate abuses, investigating potential monopoly and antitrust abuses, that does mark an incredibly significant shift. And Stoller points to the presence of Lena Kahn, who's now FTC commissioner, who is someone who's been a real thought leader in terms of the antitrust movement. Biden has put some other good people in place that are very encouraging.

And some of the specifics here are good. So let me read to you a little bit of what Stoller says here. He says the order has three basic parts. The first is a policy statement, an assertion that the U.S. government is dedicated to fighting against corporate concentration. The second is that the White House is going to ride herd on government policymakers setting up a formal council with heads of most cabinet agencies and regulators to meet about competition. And the third is a list of 72 specific items, as well as reports that agencies are ordered or encouraged to enact according to their existing legal authority. Few of those, obviously, I'm not going to go through all 72 items.

Few of those are genuinely encouraging. So a couple of noteworthy ones, hearing aids have always been sold with a prescription, which allows, you know, an effectively monopoly to really jack up the prices. Now they're going to be sold over the counter, which allows, you know, an effectively monopoly to really jack up the prices. Now they're going to be sold over the counter, which should result in immediate significant cost savings. And, you know, as someone, my dad suffers from a lot of hearing loss. I know how expensive hearing aids are. I know this huge quality of life issue for a lot of people in general, but seniors especially. Another thing that I've heard a lot when I've been in rural America is farmers finding it very frustrating that they aren't allowed to either fix their own equipment,

again, because of monopoly, they have to take it to a John Deere or other, you know, authorized dealer. And even they can't go to their local, like, repair shop and have the, you know, the guy down the street, the guy in their neighborhood fix their equipment for them. That again has really increased prices, a right to repair for farm equipment and other machinery is also included in this. So those are the types of like specific, uh, specific provisions here that will have an immediate impact, but aren't like, you know, a broad scale, big picture change. The orientation of this thing is, hey, we're going to put the whole of federal government behind checking monopoly power and corporate power. And with that part, you know, Stoller is hopeful that there's

going to be a lot of follow through there. I guess I'm much more skeptical because I just haven't seen Joe Biden as a guy who that sort of significant change would require a lot of vision and it would require a lot of stick-to-itiveness. And you know the way that the federal bureaucracy works. You've got, it's a gigantic ship. It's very hard to turn. You have to be relentless and persistent. And by the way, if you're actually going to challenge corporate power, that means things are going to fundamentally change. You do have to occupy a sort of FDR type role of I welcome their hatred. I have there is nothing in Joe Biden's career to suggest that he ultimately has that in him. And then one other thing I'll say about this that is another troubling indicator is that a lot of the key staff positions have yet to be filled.

The head of antitrust at DOJ, still vacant. So if this is a gigantic priority and you have this big ideological commitment and this is a signal of turning the ship after 40 years, you'd think maybe you would have filled out those slots if this was really a top, top priority for you. Yeah, I think that's exactly what I was going to bring up. And actually, Matt notes that in his newsletter piece. And I do think overall, the orientation of the order is a good thing. But this is really where personnel is policy. And as he does point to, though, they have better personnel than we probably had in government in a long time. People like Lena Kahn, people like Tim Wu, who are actually some of the architects actually of this order itself. But everything is about follow through. Is the FTC actually going to do its job? One thing that I saw in there is an employer, Biden encourages the FTC to ban or limit non-compete agreements. Go ahead and sign me up for that one.

Yeah, absolutely. But again, this is a real thing. Well, and this is where, you know, as I was really trying to educate myself on this order and what it would actually do, it says things like, encourage this department to do X. We can't order it, right. You can't order it. So that's where it's a big wait and see. Okay, is there follow through here? Is there an actual push to do this? Stoller points out, the thing I mentioned about hearing aids, there's actually a bill passed by Congress to allow hearing aids to be sold over the counter several years back. I think it was

Elizabeth Warren pushed a bill. And the bureaucrats at the relevant agency just, they just didn't do it. They just said, we're going to ignore this and we're just not going to do it. So it requires like not just, hey, we encourage you to do this, but then you got to follow through and you got to make sure that there's a true ideological commitment to moving in a different direction, which is like you can't understate what a big deal that would actually be. No, I think you're absolutely right. And I do think that one encouraging sign is just some of the little below the belt stuff, which Matt points out, which I knew was a major issue and would have assumed, by the way, that Trump would have done something about and didn't do it. And Lena Kahn, actually, so this is something that we've actually interviewed a couple people about on Rising,

actually do care a lot about, which is that these cattle ranchers in the United States are consistently getting screwed. And the reason why is because the big four meatpackers are allowed to import three billion pounds of beef from Argentina, Uruguay, and Mexico. And they can sell it domestically labeled as product of the USA. Because government set standards, aka bought and paid for by the meatpacking industry, which allows packers to label imported cattle as product of the USA as long as it's processed in America, right? So all they have to do is get it here, process it here, done. This screws over domestic ranchers because, remember, actually right now they should be making a lot of money

because beef prices are actually really, really high. It was one of the highest meat prices in a really long time. But what's happening instead is that they're getting screwed because the made-in-the in the USA label is not the same thing or is confused as a product of the USA label. Yeah. This is something that actually the FTC right now or at the very least is cracking down on this is actually a major issue out west especially Montana all of that. We should have that guy back on.

We absolutely should. Actually yeah I forget who he is but we will go through and we'll find him. But these are the types of little things where American industry gets screwed repeatedly and which government has to be laser focused on because there's a multi-billion dollar industry. This doesn't necessarily correlate with the order. I'm just giving an example of what Lena Kahn and her FTC is looking at that has not even been looked at for years now. The Trump administration, the Obama administration, the Bush administration, all of them were in the hands of the big meat industry. And this is one of the first time people need to stand up for the people who actually raise

cattle here in the United States and actually do a much, much better job than people in South America. It really, it's just a tiny little glimpse into how our whole economy is rigged. And even the labeling standards themselves. Yeah. And Republicans have gotten very exercised about consolidation in big tech, which I get because it impacts almost every, you know, anybody who's online, impacts their lives, very tangible. Like people can kind of understand what's going on there and see that consolidation. But this type of consolidation has happened in almost every industry. And ag is one of them. One of the things that was actually really hopeful to see about the

response to this order was it was bipartisan. There was bipartisan opposition and there was bipartisan support. You had people like Chuck Grassley. You had the Farm Bureau, which is very conservative generally in their orientation, all come out in support of some of these provisions with regard to rural America. I would also say, look, this is a long game for Democrats in terms of winning back rural America. But these types of actions are things that because they do have profound bipartisan support and real world tangible impact on the lives of, you know, especially farmers and ranchers in rural America. It's a good start. You know, like if you want to win people back, this is a really good direction to ultimately go in. So, you know, I guess I'd say the other the thing that's good about it is some of the politics around antitrust haven't

been just ruined by like culture war and weird partisan bullshit because there have been heroes and villains on both sides of the aisle with regards to this. It isn't there isn't just like one partisan view that you can be for or against. Marco Rubio has been talking about the non-compete stuff. you do actually have a little bit of this, you know, cross-partisan consensus among a few people for something that is actually good, which, as you all know, is extraordinarily unusual. Usually when there's bipartisan agreement, it's in favor of wars or tax cuts or something else or regime change, right? Something else terrible, which we'll get to in a little bit. About to get to that. Right.

So hopeful indicators, but at this point, they're mostly just that, indicators. And we have to stay on top of making sure that they actually follow through, you know, in a way that, look, we were also hopeful about when they talked about lifting the vaccine patent protection. And that's just sort of like fallen by the wayside. Well, I've kind of said that, but given what was going to happen in the WTO, or yeah, the World Trade Organization, it was like, yeah, look, I mean, it's just because the Europeans also want to hold it up. It's like, that's it, game over. But there was no willingness to actually put any political capital on the line, use the many tools at our disposal to actually get this done. So do you have that kind of orientation or do you actually put some muscle into it and change the direction

of the federal government? If so, Stoller is 100% right that that would represent a profound shift in American politics from the trajectory of the past 40 years. So right now, we'll wait and see. We'll wait and see. You guys should sign up for his newsletter. We'll put the link down there in the description. Oh, 100%. He does really great work there, especially if you care about these issues, which truly are central to, you know, essentially everything about our markets right now. Hey, so remember how we told you how awesome premium membership was?

Well, here we are again to remind you that becoming a premium member means you don't have to listen to our constant pleas for you to subscribe. So what are you waiting for? Become a premium member today by going to BreakingPoints.com, which you can click on in the show notes. That's right. And, you know, speaking of regime change and some things there's been bipartisan support for, including usually the media part of the whole uniparty thing. Let's go ahead and put this up there from Alex Thompson. This really made me upset. So and let's keep this up there for a while. I want to read people the headlines just in case they're listening. These are what the Afghanistan headlines have looked like across

the major media in the last few weeks. After U.S. Bagram exit, Afghans face the Taliban alone. U.S. left Afghan airfield at night, didn't tell new commander. Top U.S. general in Afghanistan says we should be concerned about Taliban. More than 1,000 Afghan soldiers flee into Jikistan as Taliban extends control. Afghanistan neighbors raise alarm with Russia over Taliban advance. Fears of an al-Qaeda resurgence as UK troops are forced out of Afghanistan following US military withdrawal. What do you notice about every single one of those? Every single one of those is negative. Now, I'm not saying that none of them are true, but let's do the converse. So after U.S.-Bagram exit, Afghans face the Taliban alone.

What's the alternative? That we stay in Bagram forever? We've been in Bagram since I was a little child, okay? It's time to go. Same thing with Afghans face the Taliban alone and flee. We have spent 100 billion, yes, 100 billion on training, equipping the Afghan national security forces. And frankly, they're probably more inept than they are today than when we started because they're some of the most corrupt people on the planet. Now, you want to keep going down that list? It's like, oh, Taliban extends control. The Taliban are more powerful, more organized,

richer, and more politically savvy in 2021 than they were in the year 2001. I saw their foreign minister being like, we have no beef with China, what's happening to the Uyghurs, basically being like, don't invade us. So they're, listen, because of the drug money and because of a lot of the stuff that we've done over there, they're doing better than ever. And they're actually much more politically sophisticated. In every single one of those headlines is reflected what? That the U.S. should stay in Afghanistan forever. You know what's going to happen when you leave?

Yeah, it's going to suck for the Afghans. And you know what? They've had plenty of time. We spent a lot of money. And at this point, their future is in their hands. And I know that sounds extremely callous. But what is the alternative? And you found this clip. You're absolutely right. This is one of the only good things where this one of the only places where Biden is actually very good, really good. He's been good on this actually for a long time. And for all the MAGA people out there,

Trump talked at an extremely big game. And I think it does tell you a lot that Joe Biden is the person who's actually going to get U.S. troops out of Afghanistan. Here's what he said in a recent interview on Afghanistan when he was pressed by Margaret Brennan. But then don't you bear some responsibility for the outcome if the Taliban ends up back in control and women end up losing the rights? No, I don't. Look, are you telling me that we should go into China because go to war with China because what they're doing to the Uyghurs, a million Uyghurs out in the West in concentration camps? Is that what you're saying to me? It was your quote, sir.

I was asking you. No, I know. I gave you my I gave the answer. Do I bear responsibility? Zero responsibility. The responsibility I have is to protect America's national self-interest and not put our women and men in harm's way to try to solve every single problem in the world by use of force. That's my responsibility as president. And that's what I'll do as president. And he stuck to it. Thank you. And he stuck. Thank you, Joe Biden. To it. Yeah. You know,

it really, I mean, that framing right there is what you never hear. Show me a headline on that. Go ahead. From the U.S. press. And one of the things that we talk a lot about here is it's not just, is the story technically true or not? It's what does the media choose to put in front of you? So over those many 20 years while we were there, how much did you see about the negative side of us being there? What it did to us, the way that it has crippled Afghanistan in certain ways and allowed this corruption to continue and fester. This happens a lot of times, actually, when a rich country comes in with a lot of money and a lot of aid. On the one hand, of course, you want to help people

who are suffering. Everybody wants that. But it also can be crippling in terms of local institution building and allowing people to be able to have an army that's not going to just like run and hide until you can stand the minute that we're the minute that we exit. Like that story could actually be framed in the exact opposite way of like, my God, what were we doing there for 20 years? It's a great question. After all of this time of training these security forces, the minute that we're gone, they're like, you know, turning and running. That's an indictment of the fact that we were there for 20 years and ultimately accomplished so very little. So it's all about the way that the media chooses to frame this.

And when it comes to war and peace, when it comes to regime change, they always come at this from the pro-intervention, pro-military, pro-regime change point of view. Again, I'm not saying that these stories aren't accurate. They may be. I mean, they probably largely are, although some of them may not be because, you know, they're just oftentimes stenographers for whatever the national security state wants to put out there. One of them is U.S. General says. Oh, yeah, yeah. Go ahead and tell me what he says. Yeah, it's all about how are they framing it?

What are the questions that they're asking? What are they actually choosing to focus on? And those choices, editorial choices that are made can really shape the way that things are perceived by the American public. Now, what's astonishing here is even with the media consistently framing our presence in Afghanistan this way, the American public is still like, yeah, but it's way past time that we come home. So this is one where I really have to say kudos to Joe Biden, give him full credit because he was there on the campaign trail saying, no, I feel zero responsibility. My goal is to protect American interests, American people. We can't possibly be in every country around the world using force

to try to secure human rights. Yes, there are other tools at our disposal. And he has completely stuck to it to the point that it looks like we're going to be out of Afghanistan even earlier. Remember, the original deadline he set was by 9-11. Now it looks like we're going to be out of Afghanistan even earlier. Remember, the original deadline he set was by 9-11. Now it looks like we're going to be out even sooner than that. So this takes a lot. You can see the media's framing. It takes a lot as a president to stand up to that. Trump clearly didn't have what it took to stand up to the generals,

to face down the media on this exact question. And so you have to give Biden a lot of credit here for really sticking to his guns. Same generals, same playbook. Trump fell for it. Biden didn't. If you are a person who really believed that Trump was going to stand up for globalization, as I also once did, you should ask yourself, why did this happen? And the reason why is because if you don't actually care about something and if you don't actually want to stand up to the media scrutiny and stand up to the people in the room and be the only person, despite the fact that you represent the interests of 77 percent of the American people, then you're going to fail. That's how Bush, Obama and Trump all got played by the exact same playbook. And Joe Biden did not. And he deserves eternal credit for that.

And it's funny. You pull this. Just think about why did we go into Afghanistan in the first place? Here's a clip, George W. Bush, who was announcing our presence in Afghanistan in October of 2001, just three weeks after 9-11. Let's take a listen to what he said. I'm speaking to you today from the treaty room of the White House, a place where American presidents have worked for peace. We're a peaceful nation. Yet as we have learned so suddenly and so tragically,

there can be no peace in a world of sudden terror. In the face of today's new threat, the only way to pursue peace is to pursue those who threaten it. We did not ask for this mission, but we will fulfill it. And the mission there, Crystal, from the very beginning was root Al Qaeda out of Afghanistan. Okay, there were only about a thousand guys who were in Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. Actually wasn't that hard. Killed most of them in like a couple of weeks. And after that, now what? I saw the person who we propped up, Hamid Karzai, who recently was in an interview,

I think with the BBC, saying that the US failed and would not be welcome back in Afghanistan after we paid him and his brother billions of dollars and set up the little opium ring over there. It's just incredible to watch how it's all actually played out over the last 20 years. George W. Bush, of course, is the number one person to blame for not getting us out at that time. But many other successive presidents, you know, came in, said they were going to do something and do it and do it. And Biden is now set, as you said, the August deadline.

We'll put that up there, which is that he says all U.S. troops will be out of Afghanistan on August 31st, likely not to give the Taliban too much of a propaganda victory by going out on 9-11 in terms of retreat. And I thought that the White House, and you'll never rarely hear me say

this, I thought that Jen Psaki said it quite well, we are not going to have a mission accomplished moment because we did not accomplish what we wanted to in Afghanistan. And I think that America has been dying for that level of frankness from the White House and from the official press secretary for a long time. I did not think I would see this. I honestly thought we would be there until, I don't even know, until it was like in my mid-40s. We've been fed nothing but a pack of lies with regards to Afghanistan and across successive presidencies where they wanted to convince Americans. This was revealed in the Washington Post, Afghanistan papers, where they wanted to convince the American people that there was some sort of progress being made there, that there was, you know, that all of these lives and treasury and time and commitment, all of this stuff, that it was ultimately paying off. And, you know, I really,

really feel for the service members who served there, who may have been injured there, who may have watched their brothers and sisters killed there, and have to be looking at this and going, like, what was it for? Like, all those years where I was away from my family, where I was risking my life, where I was, you know, maybe getting PTSD and all of these things that I experienced, what was this ultimately for? And we were there far, far, far too long. And thank you, President Biden, for actually following through and getting us out. It is a long overdue, well, we focused on the rental side, too, with regard to eviction and risk in particular. But on housing prices, we've been focusing a lot on single family homes, the way that the prices there are being bid up by permanent capital. Well, this is also fueling a massive increase in rent prices. Great piece from Heather Long,

fantastic reporter over at The Washington Post, who is talking about now we're seeing rent prices. Great piece from Heather Long, fantastic reporter over at The Washington Post, who is talking about now we're seeing rent prices soar astronomically. So not only can you not afford to buy a home, but now you're going to be priced down of the rental market, too. They profile these two women, Lauren Campos. She opened the door to her Phoenix apartment last week to find a note stuck in the doorframe. Her rent was going up $400 a month. That was a 33% increase. She and her fiance read the letter in shock. The property management company gave them four days to decide whether to commit to stay or leave by the end of July. They spent the rest of the day pouring over apartment listings online only to realize they would either have to move or downsize from their two-bedroom place to a one-bedroom.

Nationwide, here's the stats. Rent prices are up 7.5%. Just this year, that's three times higher than normal. And analysts expect this trend to continue with rents climbing for the foreseeable future. In particular, demand for single-family homes and apartments in smaller cities that have less inventory have been leading this rent increase. Rents for single-family homes are growing at the fastest pace in 15 years. And this is interesting, too. You can see, put that tweet back up on the screen from Heather Long. What's fascinating is it's not actually the

big cities that are leading the growth in rental prices. In fact, some of the largest cities, San Francisco and New York, still seeing lower rents than pre-pandemic, although that appears to be rapidly shifting. But it's places like Stockton, Boise City, Vent are moving to, you know, with the PMC revaluating their lives, wanting to have more space, maybe being able to continue to work from home. They're moving there. The housing market is already crazy. And now the rental market is going nuts as well.

And when you think about people's quality of life and what they're able to afford to do in their lives, you know, these two women are not unique in feeling like they're actually moving backwards rather than what you always want to see in your life is like continual progress and we're moving forward and we're, you know, feeling more comfortable and able to get more space. Instead, people are having more and more

of their income going to housing, which really curtails what they're able to do in the rest of their life. And for a lot of people, puts them over the financial edge. Yeah, and actually what's really troubling is that as we've talked about how the housing market is crazy, the rental market can actually be crazier. And look, if this was just a story of people in D.C., San Francisco, and New York, that would be bad still as one of those residents. And by the way, let me tell you, this is true. Having recently been kicked out of my house

and having to rent a new place, it was astronomically more expensive than I expected. So you go and you take a look at what's going on. The rental market can actually outpace the housing market. This is actually really troubling because it's not just megacities, but it's in a lot of other places. And a lot of it is about coastal displacement.

And so, you know, they had a quote here from a guy named Michael Kobold. I thought this really crystallized just how terrible this is. He has been renting in Boise since he lost his home in the financial crisis of 2008. A year ago, he was paying $750 to rent a house with a big garage for his art studio. The rent has jumped to $1,450 just this month. He says he has no choice but to pay it. He brought in another roommate to have to split costs. Even with three of them now, money is tighter than it was before. Quote, if you leave, you're going to end up on the street. He's 69 years old. He says the problem is all these people from California are moving here.

They are paying for a house site unseen. I'm not blaming the people from California, but something is really going on here. And if you look at that chart, it's not major metropolitan areas. Stockton, Boise, Ventura, California, Phoenix, Fresno, Sacramento. I bet that you could go and take a look at this in places like Atlanta, places like Austin, places all across the Sun Belt where a lot of people are beginning to move. And you're going to continue to see, I think, this trend rise, especially also if you have people who are permanent capital types who are buying up more of these buildings. They can continue to jack up the prices. Remember, every aggregate increase in price is billions of dollars more on their bottom line. And so that's, you know, you can see this inside the story.

They actually talk about how private equity firm Blackstone just purchased a firm called Home Partners of America. It manages 17,000 rental homes for $6 billion. And JP Morgan for rent announced a deal last year to actually build more rental homes. And they're all targeting exactly where we see this increase, the West and the Southeast. That's where the biggest population boom is happening in the US. So if you're renting out there, I feel for you, man. I understand what's

going on. And if you continue to see the increase in price and more, it's going to be a big problem as we move forward. And these big corporations, private equity, they're ruthless. They don't care if you're out on the street. They're going to push up the rent as high as they can possibly get away with. They're going to squeeze every single dollar out of you. You also have an issue where it takes a while, of course, in normal times to build new housing stock, to build new apartment buildings. But especially right now, there's this backlog and there's all

these supply chain issues. So that's further making it difficult to build new housing stock, both for the rental market and also for the housing market. So ramifications here for a lot of people's lives who are struggling and wondering where they are going to be able to lay their heads at night. That's right. The rent is too damn high. I've been waiting a long time to say that. Bottom line there. That's true. Another story, I mean, it actually is an important story. I don't want to make fun of it too much, but it's really something. Let's not make fun of it. Let's present it exactly as it is. You might have heard that the son of the president, Hunter Biden, has recently gotten involved in art, art therapy, which he learned in rehab.

OK, you know, God bless. Wish him the best. The problem, though, is that Hunter is now selling some of his art and the sale of that art is grazing a lot of ethics questions. So, so much so, the White House is now getting involved. Let's put this up there from ABC News, which did a big investigation. White House officials are arranging confidential sales of Hunter Biden's art. Now, the arrangement is meant to prevent ethics questions, but it's also raised some. So a New York gallery owner is going to facilitate sales of Hunter Biden's original artwork. OK, well, the problem, though, is that the gallerist is going to independently set prices on the artwork.

He's going to keep the identity, though, of the buyers confidential, including from the president and the administration, at least according to him. He will be the sole person authorized to collect, reject and agree on offers. Burgess has agreed to reject any offer that seems unusual, including offers above the asking price. There's just one problem, though. Burgess has said that the Hunter Biden artwork could be priced anywhere from $75,000 to $500,000. And I saw a good quote here. This arrangement is problematic, to say the least. The best disinfectant would be to have a publicly open process.

The public could see who the purchases are, and then it would be incumbent upon the Bidens to bear the burden of saying whether it's a conflict of interest or not. Hmm, that seems like a really good idea. And so you literally have, let's put the next one up there. The White House is saying

that of course he has the right to pursue an artistic career just like any child of a president has the right to pursue a career. How old is he? He's like 50 years old. I remember. I think he's literally 50 years old.

I remember seeing something like this during the campaign. I'm like, just how dare they go after the child of a president. I'm like, look, when you're talking about Barron, who's a teenager, yeah, that's true. For everybody else, you're fair game. He's like a middle.

Ivanka, Don Jr., Hunter, you're all fair game. Hunter is old enough to be my dad, just to give you some context here around what exactly the child status of Mr. Hunter. I do want to say, once all laughs aside, this is serious business. And as the problem that we've always had is that most people are full of it whenever they talk about this thing. Jared Kushner's brother was literally hawking high value visas to Chinese investors. Ivanka Trump and Jared and Trump himself had all sorts of crazy conflicts of interest. I remember, you know, the one thing on the Ukraine call which made my stomach turn? Is when the Ukrainian president was like, Mr. President, we stay in Trump Tower.

I was like, no. It's disgusting. Yeah. Sorry, it's disgusting. Yeah. You can say all you want. Yeah, they promised to give all the money back. Okay, you know, show me the receipts.

But we're not even talking about Jared. And who is this? Jared's brother's wife is some model or something taking all this money. Once again, look, this is how money laundering works. I actually read an entire book called Boom. It's a book about the contemporary art market. The saddest part about what's happened to the art business is none of it is about art. It's about Saudi and Asian billionaires wanting to avoid taxes.

So what they do is they go to these auctions, they buy a hundred million dollar painting. They never even look at it. It stays inside of a vault in Switzerland. And this vault is just a warehouse where they transform one owner's account to the other account into the warehouse. As long as it doesn't leave, you don't have to pay any excise taxes.

It's all just a store of value. It's like a fake billionaire game that has nothing to do so fake with the act yeah it is it has nothing to do with the actual art itself so yeah uh we actually have a sot of the sorry we have a video sod is a little video uh it's a video editing term we have a video of what was it obama's ethics official walt schaub discussing this on cnn to give them credit for actually running this segment let's take a listen to exactly what he was saying. No, I mean, they have outsourced government ethics to an art dealer. She mentioned industry

standards. It's an industry that's notorious for money laundering. There's no standards in that industry. And the idea that they're going to flag any overly priced offers. Well, this is art that hasn't even been juried into a community art sale. How are they going to decide what's unreasonable when they've already priced it in the range of $75,000 to $500,000 for a first outing? This is just preposterous and very disappointing. I mean, there's a lot of layers to this. Hunter obviously has been profiting off of the fact that his last name is Biden for his

entire life. By his own admission. By his own admission, yeah. I mean, it's obvious to anyone who's looking at this, and look, that's not particularly, like, unique, you know. Ask Chelsea Clinton about her NBC News gig. Why is she on the board of Expedia? Right, so it's not like it's unusual, but that doesn't make it okay. And so the idea, or NBC News gig. Why is she on the board of Expedia? Right.

So it's not like it's unusual, but that doesn't make it okay. And so the idea, ask an aspiring artist about how easy it is to just step into the market and command a half a million dollars for your painting. It's ridiculous.

It's ridiculous. So all of the ethics experts are saying, at least the honest ones, are saying something that's very obvious. The answer to these sorts of corruption and accountability and transparency issues isn't to make it secret sales and then put all of this trust in this one art deal. We don't know anything about this person and whether they're trustworthy or not and, like, what they're into. Mr. Berger or something.

No idea, right? No, the answer is to actually have it completely transparent so everyone can see what the amounts were that were exchanged and who was buying that art and, you know, having a Hunter Biden as part of their collection so that then you can track and see if they receive any government favors, if there might be any reason why they have a particular interest in this one artist. It's a very obvious solution. And so, you know, as you were saying, everybody's a hypocrite on this. Like, the Republican, a lot of the rightists out there are saying, like, just imagine if Donald Trump had done this. And it's like, yeah, if he had done this, y'all wouldn't have said shit, right? There are very few people who are both,

were both willing to be like, there's a lot of corruption going on here and also willing to be like, you know, this is pretty shady and not really a great look over here, Biden White House, so what exactly are you doing? And that's the problem, which is that partisan warfare makes it so that nothing will actually happen and these buyers will remain confidential. This is a shady business, and the president's son being involved in it, the only possible way in order to ensure real transparency is,

okay, release the names. Release the names of the people who buy the art. If we know who buys the art, then we can see in the public domain, are they going to get special tax service? Are they going to get special preference from the government? Are they going to get a government contract? I mean, this is the easiest way on the planet in order to funnel money to the private hands of the president's family. And look, we already know from the Senate Intelligence Report on Hunter that Hunter routinely uses business connections in his last name, not just to profit himself, to pay for him and his uncle. And in some indications, there has been at least some indication that his father was at least somewhat aware of what he was

doing. He routinely used payments from the Chinese government and elsewhere, $100,000 slush funds and more to buy everybody MacBooks, Apple computers, that type of thing. You can go and read the report for yourself. But in terms of his spending behavior and more, it is not outside the realm of possibility whatsoever to see this type of corruption. This is generally how it works. And the fact that the White House is trying to keep it confidential should really tell you a lot about what's going on here. I mean, just imagine a hypothetical scenario like, OK, so this is being kept. This is all being kept secret and confidential.

Does that mean you're not allowed to display the artwork? That's right. Yeah. Right. You're supposed to keep it in hiding and secret down in the basement. You can only like look privately. Whoever buys it is going to put it on Instagram. Privately look at it. Right. I mean, just imagine a scenario where Biden goes out to a fundraiser at a top donor's house and there's a Hunter Biden painting hanging on the wall. You know, I mean, then what what of your confidentiality?

Then how does that influence you in terms of how you feel about this person who's raising a lot of money for you? And also, by the way, helped out your son in a fairly significant way. What does that do to your mental state? Does it make you more likely to do something for this individual? And look, these are all hypotheticals. But again, the best answer to this, an area that, you know, there are no amazing answers. But the best answer here is just for it all to be in public, for everybody to know who are these people, what are the amounts, so that government watchdogs can look and see if they end up getting any favors, if they're in industries that could benefit from sort of

government tax breaks, government contracts, any of that. And then we can all decide for ourselves whether this was purely, you know, for the love of the art or whether there were other influence games going on. Yeah, I saw a great tweet. It was Biden was like, none of my children are billionaires. And Ken Vogel of The New York Times was like, well, Hunter certainly tried. Hunter definitely tried. He really did try. Wow.

You guys must really like listening to our voices. Well, I know this is annoying. Instead of making you listen to a Viagra commercial, when you're done, check out the other podcasts I do with Marshall Kosloff called The Realignment. We talk a lot about the deeper issues that are changing, realigning in American society. You always need more Crystal and Saga in your daily lives. Take care, guys. Crystal, what are you taking a look at today?

So as the crisis in Haiti deepens, we are learning more about the shocking and still mysterious plot to assassinate President Jovenel Moise. And the origins of the plot are leading more and more to the Sunshine State. First, we learned of the alleged involvement of two Miami-area Haitian-Americans. We showed you here that video of the attack where someone with American-accented English is posing as a DEA agent. Then, we learned that a Florida-based security firm, CTU, had allegedly recruited the Haitian-American men along with 20-plus ex-Colombian soldiers. Now, according to bombshell revelations from Haiti's police chief, a Florida doctor named Christian Emmanuel Sanon may have been at the center of the plot. So Sanon reportedly planned the attack on Moise with the

intent of installing himself as president. How exactly he or any of his hired assassins thought any of this might work out is a bit of a mystery still. Sanan appeared to be in significant debt, making it difficult to finance what was a very expensive operation, with men being paid $3,000 per month. Some of the mercenaries involved reportedly said that they had originally intended to serve Moise an arrest warrant, take him to the presidential palace, and then somehow have Sanan installed. Obviously, that is not remotely what ended up happening. No one seems to have any idea what claim on the presidency this Dr. Sinan might have imagined himself to have. So anyway, that's where we are. A Haitian doctor in Florida hiring a Dural-based security firm

staffed mostly with Colombian soldiers to execute an unlikely coup d'etat. Clearly, still a lot of questions about what the hell happened and also why President Moise's security detail didn't offer any resistance whatsoever. Were they in on it, too? What we do know for certain is that Haiti is now descending into a political and humanitarian crisis. Moise, with U.S. backing, keep that in mind, had overstayed his term and was ruling by decree. Haiti has multiple constitutions. There are no clear successors. Most of the judiciary recently resigned en masse. And the head justice, one possible successor, died of COVID 19 days prior to the assassination.

So as all of this unfolds, Haiti faces a crisis, but the U.S. also faces some significant questions as well. Should we send in troops, as the acting prime minister has requested? What aid should we provide? And what should we do about the Haitians who are lining up at the U.S. embassy hoping to find sanctuary in this nation? Now, in order to understand the decisions that will confront the U.S., we need to understand more than just the events of the last week, because U.S. involvement in creating today's Haitian crisis goes way beyond the seeming involvement of a Miami-area security firm in Moise's assassination. In certain ways, Haiti's really an inspiration. Slaves brought to Haiti to work the sugar plantations, they threw off their colonial oppressors in the early 1800s in the most successful slave revolt in history.

But Western powers, they weren't done with her yet. To sum up the U.S. relationship, the world's first black Republican, Republic, we've consistently undermined, invaded, embargoed, fomented coups, and propped up dictators in whatever way we felt would best guarantee that America's elite could continue profiting in and exploiting Haiti whatever way that they saw fit. There was our refusal to recognize the nation at all for 60 years because southern plantation owners worried about their own slaves getting ideas and revolting. There was our nearly 20-year occupation led by Woodrow Wilson in order to steal Haiti's gold reserves and protect American business interests, such as the Haitian Americans Sugar Company. There was our propping up with weapons and money and troops,

the brutally murderous Duvalier dictators, Papa Doc and Baby Doc, because they were anti-communist. Who cares that they were destroying every potential democratic institution and brutally torturing and murdering their own people with death squads, so long as we could count on them to oppose the communists. There was Daddy Bush and George W. Bush both separately deposing the wildly popular left populist Jean Bertrand Aristide once again to protect U.S. business interests and continue an endless anti-left Cold War at any and every cost. A U.S. blockade of Haiti during the second

Bush administration further crippled the impoverished nation. Even Obama got in on the act. WikiLeaks revealed the Obama State Department, helmed by one Hillary Rodham Clinton, worked with contractors for Fruit of the Loom, Hanes, and Levi's to block a minimum wage hike that would have seen textile workers earn $5 per day instead of $3 per day. Got to keep those sweatshops going so our multinationals can add a few more millions to their profit margins. All of that history of repeated destabilization and regime change should weigh heavily

on our sense of obligation to the people of Haiti now. They have had their own terrible leaders, let's be clear, and corrupt dictators and kleptocratic elites. But we've certainly done our part to screw that country up. So what now? Sending in troops obviously seems like a disastrous idea given our history of invading the country and the very recent history of UN peacekeepers killing thousands with a

cholera outbreak and committing rampant sex crimes. Many Haitians would likely deeply resent a militarized American presence. As far as aid goes, of course we should help. But it's also easier said than done. Officials are corrupt, contractors can be corrupt, and the emphasis must be on not only easing immediate suffering, but also building long-term institutions of governance which are truly Hades and not some plaything of international businessmen or a handful of in-country elites. As for refugees,

of course, the very least we can do is to offer a safe refuge for those truly fleeing violence and poverty that U.S. elites helped to create over hundreds of years. The problem and the lesson from Haiti, of course, is that when U.S. elites engage in regime change and all of their other corporate protection schemes, the blowback always falls most heavily on the people, especially, of course, on the people of whatever nation we're messing with. But these costs also fall on our own working class. After all, they're the ones who are sent as soldiers to clean up the messes of American imperialism. And when our elites create refugee crises, all the costs of taking those refugees in are pushed on the working class communities

who generously accept these newcomers into their schools and into their neighborhoods. The question of whether sudden influxes of refugees depresses wages for lower skilled Americans, that evidence is mixed, but at least one study of the Mariel Boatlift found life was made more difficult for those lacking a high school degree when a sudden large influx of Cuban refugees was resettled in the Miami area. Now, it doesn't have to be this way, of course. Our economy does not have to be a zero-sum game, pitting native-born and immigrant workers against each other,

a game that corporate interests, love, and cynical politicians manipulate. The bottom line is this. We may not want to have any responsibility for the fate of the Haitian people. We may want to look the other way. But over the entire history of Haiti, from the revolution until today, we have put ourselves at the center of their affairs, co-creating its current chaos. One more lesson that no one needed in how our foreign meddling, coups, and embargoes always end in misery. Here's a crazy idea. How about we tax our meddling rich,

use the money to make life good for our own working class and for our new immigrants and refugees, and leave these countries the fuck alone to elect the leaders and set the policies that they want. And Sagar, as I was writing this... One more thing, I promise. Just wanted to make sure you knew

about my podcast with Kyle Kalinsky. It's called Crystal Kyle and Friends, where we do long-form interviews with people like Noam Chomsky, Cornel West, and Glenn Greenwald. You can listen on any podcast platform, or you can subscribe over on Substack to get the video a day early. We're going to stop bugging you now. Enjoy. All right, Sagar, what are you looking at?

Well, one of the core missions of this show is to explore the basic question of how do we get here? How do you get to a place millions of Americans cannot stand the sight of one another over political views? People literally get into fistfights over what type of hat the other is wearing and where it's considered somehow socially acceptable to get into prolonged debates on your cousin's Facebook page for sharing an opinion about something. There are a lot of reasons for why, but if I were to choose the biggest villain,

it would be the media, especially in the years where Donald Trump was president, where the media not only refused to depart from its mission of making people hate each other for more dollars, but worse, it actually threw out any pretense of journalistic integrity that they had in order to fulfill their sole mission of defeating Trump. Throwing out that integrity had far-reaching consequences, because it turns out we actually do need a mass media, which is in some way concerned or tethered to the truth. You want to know why most people won't get vaccinated? Because they don't trust institutions, and they especially don't trust the media when they're telling them what's going on. Why do people believe so many conspiracy theories? Well, number one, many of them are actually true.

Number two, because these so-called debunkers and purveyors of truth are full of it. If I were to crystallize a single episode of the Trump presidency that showed how morally repugnant and bankrupt these people are, it would be the 2017-2018 period where Michael Avenatti was present on our political scene. You might remember Avenatti as the lawyer of Stormy Daniels, a smarmy, bald, fast, and hard-talking guy who was all over cable news. It was obvious to anyone with a brain cell this dude was trouble, obviously a liar. And yet, because he might quote-unquote have the goods on Trump, everything was forgiven. Here's just a little taste of how much mass media slobbered all over him at the time.

Take a listen. He's Donald Trump's worst nightmare, Michael Avenatti. Joining us once again is Michael Avenatti. Let's bring in Michael Avenatti. Michael Avenatti. Michael Avenatti. Michael Avenatti, thank you very much. He's out there saving the country.

Don Meacham says he may be the savior of the republic. You are something of a folk hero now. I owe Michael Avenatti, thank you very much. He's out there saving the country. Don Meacham says he may be the savior of the republic. You are something of a folk hero now. I owe Michael Avenatti an apology. I've been saying enough already, Michael. I've seen you everywhere. What do you have left to say? I was wrong, brother. You have a lot to say.

I am just dying to hear what you think. These people all like you. I'm the only person right here. Donald Trump fears more than Robert Miller. We think you guys are the tip of the spear that's going to take down Donald Trump. Michael Avenatti is a beast. Okay that's true. He's a beast. I hand it to her and I hand it to Michael Avenatti. But he has a bigger calling here that being a lawyer is minimal compared to what he's doing.

No one has talked tougher directly to Donald Trump on TV than Michael Avenatti, and Donald Trump is afraid to mention his name. That's fascinating. God, I feel ill. You remember all that? It was while everyone thought that Avenatti's representation of Daniels would somehow miraculously lead to his removal from office because of a violation of campaign finance law. Now, it really does seem hilarious in retrospect, but the fever pitch in Washington was so high, everybody snorted what this guy was selling. And like what usually happens in that scenario, the fall from grace was rapid. Avenatti, it turned out, was a massive sack of fill in the

blank. He stole $300,000 from the very client who he represented that he thought was going to take down Trump. He was arrested for a clownish extortion scheme over Nike with a client where he said that he would leverage his media stardom to lob false accusations against the company and erase billions of dollars off of their stock price. My personal favorite, he was indicted for allegedly stealing $4 million in settlement money for a client of his who was a paraplegic.

You can look up the word human garbage in the dictionary. That picture would be very fitting with his right next to it. And it was so obvious from the beginning that this person was a sleazebag. He was peddling multiple false accusations, like that of Julie Swetnick against Brett Kavanaugh. And yet, they built him up into a godlike figure, not just in the clips I showed you. Brian Stelter literally said, Avenatti was a serious contender for the 2020 presidential race. Chris Silliza, right here on the screen, wrote, quote, President Michael Avenatti. Never say never.

Stephanie Rule of MSNBC repeatedly said on her program to Avenatti's face, the Democrats should learn something from you, Michael. For nearly a year, Avenatti was given probably a billion dollars worth of free advertising

across this country while he extorted his clients and lied to the public, all because he made Trump look bad. Even today, if you were to ask many of the suburban liberal wine moms what they think about Michael Avenatti, I bet you they would still have a favorable opinion of him. Why? Because MSNBC, they just disappeared him into the ether. After over 100 cable news interviews on their air, MSNBC dedicated all but two minutes to the sentencing of the man who they once hailed as the savior of the republic. Avenatti was reduced to tears, crying, begging the court to show mercy on him after extorting millions of dollars from clients and being caught for the fraud that he was.

So what can we learn? This isn't about Avenatti per se. It's about the perfect example of how during the Trump years, no matter how sleazy, no matter how transparently revolting, smarmy that you were, if you had a 1% chance of being detrimental to Trump, the media would give you everything. And by doing that, they sacrificed any remaining credibility they had with tens of millions of Americans. And now that they've lost our trust, they question, why do so many people not trust us? Those who don't, oh, they're the extremists.

They should be surveilled. Let me posit this. Maybe they're the extremists and we're the normal ones. It's amazing, Crystal, to go. Lots going on at CPAC over the weekend where President Donald Trump spoke. And there were some other interesting polling results and speeches that happened there. So here to discuss New York Times is Jane Koston. She's host of The Argument. Excellent podcast. Highly recommend you guys all subscribe. Link will be down there in the description. Jane, thank you so much for joining us. We really appreciate it.

Thank you so much for having me in person. Yeah, great friend of the show. It's been a long time. Yeah, I think you were one of my first or my last realignment guests in person. Yes. One of the last people I actually saw in the flesh. This is the first time I have ever seen you in person. So it's nice to know you exist in the real world. I do exist in the meat space as a human.

In the meat space. That's a very Joe Rogan-esque term. So, Jane, we want to discuss with you what happened at CPAC. We were actually just discussing before the segment. Actually, let's put this question before you, but we even do anything. Does CPAC matter? Should we pay attention to what happened with CPAC? Is it just, you know, the coalition of the faithful, the most faithful, the media building

it up? What do you think? CPAC is a performance, the same way any of these big conferences are performances. They're a performance for a very specific audience. This is like, this is not just for people who are fans of the band. This is for people who are stans of the band. So, but what people are performing is important. And you see that where you see, you know, Alex Berenson getting applause from the crowd for noticing that America hasn't reached 90% vaccination, which is something I think it's worth noting.

If Donald Trump were still president, people would be very excited at CPAC if we reach 90%. Yeah, that's right. Because it's, I think it's attempting to glom on that kind of anti-vaxxer or anti-anti-anti-vaxxer status onto a purely partisan decision point. That's interesting. But I think also it's worth noting that like this performance at CPAC and attempting to gain a name for yourself at CPAC, it is itself not very important. It will not change how people will perform in 2022 or 2024, which is, I think, very challenging for a lot of political reporters because you want something to do that's going to be something you could look back on in two years.

And be like, this was the canary in the coal mine. Yeah, exactly. It probably is, and it's probably just some canary. But CPAC, how people are performing and what they're saying at CPAC when you have Glenn Beck showing off like a Klan hood and then also a collection of Holocaust memorabilia offstage. Strange. Which is a strange decision point.

But again, like the themes of the Democrats are the real party of slavery and that this vaccine isn't trustworthy and you shouldn't trust the government, even though that you trusted the government a year ago because Donald Trump was in charge of the government. Trump has talked about the vaccine a lot. And Trump is the one who under whom these were developed. Exactly. Like this all happened. But it's I think CPAC, especially when a Democrat is in the White House, is always such an interesting event because it goes it becomes very quickly come and take it. When just last year it was like everything's amazing. The government is great. Our only problem are Democrats. And I think that when you see this rapid switching back and forth, it's such a clearly partisan event that attempting to glean like real importance from it, I think, is almost impossible. But again, what's being signaled matters here and how that signaling is working.

Well, and to your point, Rand Paul used to win the poll and stuff. Obviously, Rand Paul never ended up being president. In fact, you know, relatively poor performance in his presidential campaign, all of that. So those are good caveats to keep in mind. One of the things that we've tracked here, and I know others have tracked as well, is that Joe Biden himself seems to not be a particularly good villain. Right. Like, not the big applause lines. Did that continue to be the case at the CPAC,

where he wasn't the thing that was really animating the crowd? Right, right. The thing that was animating the crowd were things almost entirely disconnected from Joe Biden. Because I think that when you think about what is an effective enemy to the GOP,

it needs to be someone or something that seems purportedly more powerful than they are. Or that they can pretend is more powerful than they are. Because I've been thinking a lot about right now we're kind of having these dueling victim narratives because it's the most, you know, it's the most powerful idea in politics to be like, I'm the victim of you. You're very powerful. You're Goliath. I'm David. Even when you're a

governor or a senator and the person you're yelling about is like some lady on Twitter or something like that. And so Joe Biden doesn't really fulfill that role because you would have to, the idea, and, you know, whenever I talk about this online, people are like, but that's just classic fascism to pretend that someone is both an idiot and an all-knowing genius. And I'm like, I don't think the people who are thinking this have worked quite that far into this. Like, the reading that they've done, done, I'm going to argue is limited. But it is hard to say that Sleepy Joe is also part of this giant cabal of secret geniuses who will destroy your life as soon as they get a chance. I did see a couple of people try the Biden's America. It just didn't land.

No, I thought it was pretty amazing. And to your point, actually, we have this video of Lauren Boebert of what she was talking about. And I do think it actually crystallizes kind of where some of the energy is. Let's take a listen. We're here to tell government we don't want your benefits.

We don't want your welfare. Don't come knocking on my door with your Fauci outie. You leave us the hell alone. So some Sarah Palin kind of wannabe vibes there. Big time. But I mean, it's like this blend of Reagan libertarianism with, as you're saying, you know, this deep animation around the vaccine.

And yet people were pointing out this weekend, Trump also was trying to take credit for the vaccine in his press releases over the week. It's just like, well, where is it? Is this an area where like Trump is just dramatically out of step with his base? Or is it just pure unadulterated culture war in that because Biden is in charge, a lot of people are just, you know, antithetic or just opposed to it for this particular for this reason. And look, that gets a lot of applause. Yeah. And I regret to inform you, we've had this conversation many, many times that kind of the like government for good and populist. Yeah. I don't know how that's going right now. It's not going so well now as you can actually see that in the welfare. Yeah. In particular,

because you're like, hmm, I could have heard that speech in 96. Right. And in 81. Right. It's not going so well now, as you can see that in the welfare. Yeah. In particular, because you're like, hmm, I could have heard that speech in 96 and in 81. Right. And it's like it hasn't changed a lot. Yeah. Nothing has changed from that rhetoric, though, again, because that you could have had a host of people from Orin Cass on down talking about how government can be for good. Right. And about how we need to lift up the working class that has been demolished by the same housing restrictions you were just talking about. By a lot of these local and state issues. But you're not getting that. You're getting like government's the problem. The scariest words in the English language are I'm from the government, I'm here to help. Like, it's very Reagan-esque. Right after we were just kind of told by conservatism writ large that they

moved past Reagan and that this is a different time and the economy is different. And it turns out it's, it's, the economy is different. We are in a different time, but that same kind of rhetoric is incredibly effective when you have a Democrat in office. And especially when you have a party that exists. And I mean this whenever I say this, I always want to be careful that I don't mean this as a negative or a positive. But when you have a party like the Republican Party that operates best as reaction, as a reactionary party. That's true. I mean that when the Democratic Party does something, the Republican Party says no. Right. And that's basically where they find their most effectiveness.

And they can almost win the presidency. Yeah, you can almost. Yeah, exactly. And I think that, you know, you see that again when you go back to, what, thousands of years ago, 2013, you have the efforts to overturn the Affordable Care Act, repeal and replace, repeal and replace. And then Republicans get control of government and they're like, oh, this is way harder than we thought it would be. And then they've spent 10 years building

up like we're going to do it better. And then they're like, but we don't know how. Yeah, we don't know how. We really got we got very busy during that 10 years. There was there's a lot happening. And so you see this tension happening. And I think that that's why you see so much. One of the most challenging things about American politics right now is that you have a lot of people who do have a lot of power in their own specific areas. But national politics and national power is a very different beast. And so you have a lot of governors, for example, Ron DeSantis, who, you know, passing this social media legislation

that they are well aware of is going to die in court because of how that reacts to, you know, Section 230 and to surpassing law. But you have a lot of people who want that kind of national power, but they already have local power, but that's not quite enough. And so you see this idea of, I'm already have local power, but that's not quite enough. And so you see this idea

of I'm this incredibly powerful person, but I am putting myself in this position in which I appear to be less powerful because I'm reacting to national interests. I'm reacting to national powers. And I think it's really interesting because you see how, you know, what people are using their power for and what they aren't using their power for yeah People are using their power to send very strongly worded letters But they're also using their letter their power to you know attempt to pass legislation That's going to die in court and they know that all they care about is the discourse Right I care about is like how do I impact the national discourse?

And what sort of like attention can I draw to myself and that's not a Republican Party specific specific thing. No, it's a Republican and Democratic party thing. That's all politics is basically. Yeah. Which is, I think if you are a person who values politics as a vehicle to get a thing done, it's incredibly depressing. Even just like, I've been thinking a lot, Chris Arnaid wrote the fantastic book Dignity, and he's talked a lot about the people who don't vote. And we've had long conversations about that. And I was thinking about, like, how if I were a person living on the margins and, you know, I didn't vote because I didn't feel represented, how offended I would feel if I were told repeatedly by politicians that, like, what voters care most about is this thing that I have. I don't care about. What voters care most about is this thing that I have, I don't care about. What voters care most about is social media censorship. What voters care most about are these like specific issues that have

to do with defunding the police. Like if you're a voter or a non-voter on the margins and you're thinking like, I can't afford rent. I don't know where my closest grocery store is and I don't know how to get there and back and my neighborhood is unsafe but the cops just sit there and wait for someone to do something in front of them before they'll do anything and if I call the cops I don't know if they'll come and it just like it's extremely as a person who's interested in politics as a vehicle to do a thing and not just a vehicle to be on your show or have these conversations on the internet or in public or anywhere else, if you want politics to be about creating a society and fomenting that society,

it's a very depressing time. So let me let me say, first of all, I agree 100 percent with what you just said. But to play devil's advocate here and provide a counterpoint, Biden just signed these executive orders on antitrust, which we talked about here and provide a counterpoint. Biden just signed these executive orders on antitrust, which we talked about here and covered basically just going through what Matt Stoller has said about them. And one of the things that I did find really interesting is it was one area where there's potentially, if wielded in the right way and followed through, which is a gigantic if, could be truly transformational. And you had some Republicans, Chuck Grassley, also conservative groups like the Farm Bureau coming out and being like, yeah, we're actually for this.

We're into this. What did you make of that development? You know, Marco Rubio has been in on the non-compete stuff. He's been into pushing to end at least non-competes in some contexts and settings. So what do you think of that development and how that fits into this narrative? I think that it is, especially with regard to when you see people, and I disagree with a lot of people because I've had this conversation with Glenn Greenwald and others, where if you have, and I think a lot of people would argue,

that if you have people of competing ideologies, but they come together and they find support for one particular solution that would make them both happy, and they're like, well, that's great, we've come together, we found this thing. I have a lot of questions about where people are coming from on these particular issues. And I'll give you an example. When we talk about Amazon or social media companies,

you see a lot of criticism. But the criticism coming from Marco Rubio, for instance, if we go back, I think the last time I was on the show, we talked about Marco Rubio and pushing back on the unions, where his issue, he had no problem with Amazon asking people to urinate in bottles. He had a big problem with the fact

that Amazon might be mean to conservatives. With the woke HR department as the target of his ire. Exactly. And so you definitely have a moment where you see that this wasn't a union issue for him, it was a culture war issue. And if Amazon was like, you know what, we're going to add Ryan T. Anderson to our board, and we're just going to— Fly the flag. We're going to re-pivot to this very, you know, whenever you, search results will come with, like, we benefit back the blue or something like that.

But we're still going to mandate that our workers work 14 hours, 16 hours, 20 hour days and can be easily fired by text message. I think Marco Rubio would be like, okay, that's cool. I mean, all but said as much. That's true. And I think that that's something that comes as a concern to me. I think that there is a we have this tendency that when people agree with us on a thing that we're like, well, you must have come to the same ideological conclusions that I did. They probably didn't. It doesn't matter if it ends with Chuck Grassley and Joe Biden and AOC being like farmers should have a right to repair and we should break up the meatpacking monopoly. I think it really depends because I think that in certain scenarios, I would say that like, yeah, I think that would be great.

But it is worth thinking about what the knock on effects of such legislation will be. This is why I'm an extremely irritating person because I'm always just like, okay, but what happens then? And what happens then? I'm like every person in any horror movie, I'm the person who doesn't go in the basement. I never go in the basement. Or go into the woods at night. Let's ask a lot of questions.

What's that sound? Yeah, the sound is me leaving. And so I think that that's something where I'm like, yes, these people coming together with these very divergent interests, but they want this similar thing. I'm curious what they each think the knock-on effects of that thing will be. And clearly they see a political advantage in whatever those knock-on effects would be. And I am curious to see, like, how would those differ? Like, if you think that it would be a really good idea for this to happen because it'll benefit your political position, not necessarily benefit the world writ large. Because we all think our politics in some ways would benefit the world,

but probably not. Right. Yeah. And so I am very skeptical about when you see these different political groups coming together about a certain thing with a certain result. I'm curious to know what they each think the benefit to themselves will be. Always appreciated. Which is why we enjoy talking to you because you're such an interesting thinker. Jane, tell people about your podcast, who you have on, plug your thing, where can they find you? I'm at the New York Times. I host the podcast, The Argument. I've heard of them. Yeah, yeah. Contrary to popular belief, we're doing pretty okay. We're doing okay. Although we did

beat you recently, but it's okay. Thank you. Congratulations. Yeah, I saw that. I checked. I looked. It's a real Count of Monte Cristo in 20 years. I'll have dug up outside your apartment or something. I got you! It's called The Argument.

We have a lot of interesting conversations, including a lot of friends of the show, Matt Taibbi. That's right. We argued lengthily, and we'll probably do it again. This week's episode is about Biden receiving communion. It's very Catholic-centered,

if you're into that kind of thing. Okay. But we have a lot of interesting conversations. Sometimes it's really fun. Sometimes it's really hard, Sometimes it's really hard. But that's, I think, the most useful conversations to have.

I personally really enjoyed that episode you had with Michael Brendan-Dougherty. So I recommend people go listen to that one. We really love having you, Jane. Thank you so much. Thank you so much

for having me. Great to see you. You're very welcome. And to everybody else who is out there, thank you all for watching or listening. You can become

a premium subscriber today. Get the show one hour early. Breaking points premium. It's all down there in the description notes and screen. You can become a premium subscriber today to get the show one hour early. Breaking points premium. It's all down there in the description notes and screen. You guys know the drill. We love you, and we will see you all tomorrow. I thought you were going to say something else there. I thought you were going to say, like,

you get a shit ton of benefits. You know, you try not to cross on the show. I try, I try. Anyway, thanks for watching, guys. We'll be back tomorrow. See you then. Thanks for listening to the show, guys. We really appreciate it.

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