Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 7/20/21: Delta Scares Markets, Biden vs Facebook, Capitol Rioter Charged, Haiti Update, Dems 2022 Fears, Cash vs Culture, CNN's Streaming, Covid Skeptics, and More!

Episode Date: July 20, 2021

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What do we have, Crystal? Indeed, we do. We got Michael Brendan Doherty on today. He's going to be talking about vaccine hesitancy and if we actually want to get more people vaccinated, what would be the best approach? So I'm really excited to talk to him in depth about that. Really interesting stories this morning. The continuing tense battle between the White House and Facebook. What's going on there? First, a rioter sentenced from January 6th. We'll talk about whether we think that sentence was adequate or too much and where things go from here. Major update in Haiti. The U.S. has sort of switched horses there and is backing a different potential leader in that country. Also new fears among Democrats, both about 2022

and about 2024, especially if Kamala Harris is at the helm. But we wanted to start with a pretty significant stock market crash that happened yesterday. Yeah, this was a really big deal and actually coincides with a lot of elite mainstream discourse around the Delta variant, around fears, around pushing for more lockdown. So let's put this up there on the screen, which is that the S&P 500 yesterday fell the most since May, as investors grow increasingly concerned that the Delta variant will weigh in on the global economy. Now, look at the next one there, which is that the Dow Jones actually had its worst day since losing 2.2% on the index,

the most since October. And I think this is really important because I want to put this all in context for everybody. What's happening right now is a total elite panic. When we were planning the show, I was like, Crystal, I don't understand the cases. I mean, yeah, there's like, take a look at the moving average. There's a slight uptick. Yes, people are dying of the Delta variant. 99.7% of them are unvaccinated. And you look at that and you're like, how has this in the last week become this national conversation? So let's like actually go through it.

Here's a map. The New York Times map, the Daily Case Tracker. You can go and look. Look at the lack of red within the hotspots. Even where we do have hotspots, it's predominantly in places, I believe, with a less than, I think they have like a 30% vaccination rate, largely amongst the lower middle class, black, Hispanic, and white Americans. Pretty much the same story all across the United States. Yes,

the Sun Belt, where those populations disproportionately live. But when you see the uptick, even within the confirmed cases and more, the lack of deaths amongst the elderly, especially the elderly who are vaccinated, I don't understand where this top-down panic is coming from. I saw the Americans Physicians Association yesterday say that every child over two should be wearing a mask indoors. I'm like, this is insanity. And you pair that with LA County bringing back indoor mask mandates, again in violation of CDC guidance, which says that that's not recommended whatsoever.

And we're beginning to see this elite top-down driven narrative, which is what the stock market is now reacting to. And my fear is that this becomes a snowball, because we remember back to the early days of coronavirus. Is it all of those fed into one another? Now, look, I actually think that was justified in February of 2020. This time, though, given the media attention, I have to just think that this is because, frankly, there's not a lot of other stories going on. And B, which is that there are a lot of people having a lot of trouble just letting go of coronavirus restriction and letting a very modest increase in cases, you know, spur some very extreme behavior and proposals.

So first of all, it's always important to say, like, why bother covering the stock market, which, of course, we believe to be a graph of rich people's feelings. But rich people's feelings. This is why they run the country. Right. They tend to drive a lot of what happens in the United States of America. So that's why we wanted to dig into, like, well, what exactly is going on here? With regard to the Delta variant caseload, since Delta is now the sort of like primary spreading variant in the country at this point, I think there's a little bit

of confusion here that is somewhat deliberately fed by the media because coronavirus was great for ratings. But I also don't want to underplay the fact case numbers, new case numbers are up over the past 14 days by 198 percent. So that sounds really, really bad. Yes. And it is not good. Right. Don't like don't let me sugarcoat it here. It's not good, especially in places that have low vaccination rates. The case numbers are definitely spiking, as you saw on that map. Arkansas, Missouri, and Florida are the three places that are hardest hit right now. However, when you're talking about percentage change, it matters where you started. And the reality is we were doing really well before this current spike. So when you hear numbers like, oh my God, it's going up 198%, it's definitely something you want to watch, definitely something you want to pay attention to and think about

what's the right response and how do we get more people vaccinated? Because that's really the ball game now at this point beyond masking or social distancing or anything. It's really about getting people vaccinated because they are the ones, like 98%, who are getting COVID and getting hospitalized and ultimately dying from this. But you have to keep in mind that we were in a really good place. So even that dramatic of an increase still puts us in a pretty darn good place as compared to where we have been with the pandemic. Now, with regard to like, what is the stock market thinking about here? I think part of this is, for a lot of the pandemic last year,

you and I and a lot of other folks were like scratching our heads because it just kept going up and up and up. Especially in December, when the cases were sky high, as high as possible. How is this justified? And there hasn't really been any correction since then.

So I think part of this, yes, it's spurred by the fact that the caseload is going up, the fact that there are a couple localities that are flirting with some new restrictions. But I also think that there was sort of like this, the stock market had been over-exuberant for a long period of time and was probably due for a correction as well. However, it is really interesting, While most stocks overall were down yesterday, one of the things that was telling that indicates it's related to where the pandemic is right now is which stocks actually performed well. Chief among them, grocery stores, Kroger and places like that. Those stocks had a very good

day yesterday, which tells you that investors had on their mind, like, OK, if we do go back into lockdown procedures, what are the places, what are the stocks that are going to do really well, even if we do go back into that mode? Now, the other question is, is it realistic or is it likely that we're going to reenter a mass lockdown mode? I personally just don't see it. And I think there's a lot of I think there's a lot of fear mongering about this, particularly like, you know, the right is very anti lockdown. So when you see something like masking in L.A., like it's important to pay attention to and see where this is going. I just do not think that the public has any appetite for mass

lockdowns again. I don't think that you're going to see the Biden administration, whose central promise was return to normal, wanting to go back into full lockdown mode. So I'm highly skeptical that we're going to see another mass wave of lockdowns. Are you going to have individual localities, particularly in urban liberal places, places like LA, potentially places like New York, that institute some type of mask mandates or social distancing mandates or those sorts of things as we enter the fall, if caseloads continue to go up? Yes. Is it going to be anything like what we experienced before? I highly, highly, highly, highly doubt it.

I highly doubt it as well, but I am washing this filter through. And that's why I went ahead and I found this. Let's put it up there on the screen. This is from the Columbus Dispatch. So this is what's filtering through to local media and where local conversations are happening. The title for those who are listening is, With Delta Variant Looming, Could Poorly Vaccinated Ohio Face Return of Lockdowns and Masks? And what you have there is you have basically a speculative comment with several quotes from people inside the public health community and more who are pushing for mass lockdowns and more mandates. And what they point to is the fact that 70 percent of adult Ohioans won't be vaccinated until about May of 2022, given what the rates are there in Ohio. Now, all of that being said, that doesn't mean that you won't see some sort of resistance to this. I definitely think that will be the case. I don't think any red state in the country will

lock down. And Ohio's a red state. Well, yes. And that's why I thought this was significant, is to see this even floated in the Columbus dispatch. I thought, oh, wow, this actually is beginning to happen. It's an elite-driven conversation. LA brings back the indoor mask mandate. If New York and all of them, we could go back to kind of a weird two-tiered lockdown system for the states. I think this is all really bad. My biggest fear around this is what we were discussing yesterday, is if LA brings back mask mandates, it sends the message that getting vaccinated was pointless. The more that you bring back mask mandates, more lockdown procedures, and more, then what was the whole point? The whole point of getting the shot was so we didn't have to do this anymore. And I said it yesterday,

but requiring vaccinated Americans to continue lockdown procedure and mask mandates is asking those people who did what they were asked to do to have more regard for the health of the people who are unvaccinated. Those people decided to make a choice. There is nothing wrong with that. You're allowed to make a choice here in this country. That being said, you are at a higher risk of having a more severe case of COVID. And that's on you at this point. And it's the government policy is basically crafting this strange thing where they're like putting in authority and using it with the guise of we already made this public choice like to people. We told them you can either get vaccinated or not, and that is what's going to push us towards normalcy. Now we've generally reached that threshold.

We're at 49% of the total U.S. population of adults who are fully vaccinated. So I just worry about trickle-down effects, which could cause a lot more social chaos as we move forward. I'm just a lot more skeptical than you are that this is going to be widespread. I mean, there's not a single Republican politician in the entire country that's going to push any kind of lockdown measure, not at all. And the states that are facing the major spikes right now, they're all Republican states. I mean, it's Ohio is actually not really on that list. The big increases are in Florida, in Ron DeSantis, obviously,, and Missouri. Those are the top three states. You can see, if we can put that map back up on the screen, you can actually see exactly where they are.

And it's worth remembering what this map used to look like. I mean, it used to be the entire country looked the way that Missouri looks right now, basically. So Missouri, Arkansas, you see some outbreaks in Louisiana. You see Florida. You see a little bit Alabama, a little bit Mississippi. Those are all Republican states. There is not one governor of any of those states that is going to go back into full lockdown mode. I just don't see it. So are you going to have one-off things like L.A. where you've got, you know, a political

incentive, you have a large portion of the population that is very committed to like their pandemic era masking routine. Triple mask. Yeah. Yeah. You might have some one off things like that. Are you going to have massive like nationwide? I just don't see it. The Biden administration so far has shown to be pretty savvy about where Americans are with how they feel about lockdowns and where they are with regards to the pandemic and not wanting to be put in these like they have authoritarian instincts in other directions. We're about to talk about Facebook. And I actually think

that that is related to this story in that what they want to do is for any of these coronavirus hotspots and places where people aren't vaccinated, they want to say that's the fault of Facebook. It's the fault of misinformation. It's not on us. We didn't have anything to do with it. So look over there. That's going to be their response by and large. Joe Biden's central promise of his campaign, the only thing that he really ran on was we're going to get back to normal. So I'm highly skeptical that we're going to have mass lockdowns if the stock market was in fact reacting to the idea that we're going to have mass lockdowns, like these people are oftentimes idiots. Maybe it's a good time to buy,

is that what you're saying? You know, and I think there was a correction. This is all fake anyway, as we all know, there was like a correction that was waiting. But what does that even mean? So anyway, if this is all in response to, oh my God, I think we're going to have lockdowns again, I think that's a very overwrought way of thinking. I hope you're right. I could just be colored because I know the lunatics

that run this city and who live in this city who would love to bring back those mask mandates. Well, D.C. would be the type of place where you could see it. I'm going to see outdoor masking again within a week. I'm already ready for the next year. You're preparing for it. I'm preparing my constitution, going on Zillow, browsing compounds out in the woods, which is probably where I do it the most. Let's go ahead and let's look at what Joe

Biden had to say about the stock market drop yesterday. Let's take a listen. It turns out capitalism is alive and very well. We're making serious progress to ensure that it works the way it's supposed to work, for the good of the American people. So for all those predictions of doom and gloom six months in, here's where we stand. Record growth. Record job creation. Workers getting hard-earned breaks. Look, we brought this economy back from the brink, and we've designed our strategy not only to provide for a temporary boost, but to lay the foundation for a long-term boom that brings everyone along. So you can see they're, you know, not really reacting as big,

or reacting in the way exactly as you said, isn't that? Be like, look, we're going for the long-term boom, not setting doom and gloom expectations. That is really what their political valence needs to be within the race. I hope you're right, Crystal. I really do. Like you said, maybe the bankers and all, and me, are idiots. But watching that happen, I was like, oh my God, this could be some sort of slow roll feedback loop into at least trying again. And even that, I think, would diminish vaccine hesitancy, or it would increase vaccine hesitancy, diminish the case of the vaccine, and diminish public

confidence in a lot of these people, even more so, you know, we're already at rock bottom. All right, let's talk about Facebook. And this has to do more with Joe Biden during the same news conference, which is that he asked, we brought you the news that on Friday, whenever he was asked about Facebook, what's your message to Facebook? Biden explicitly said, Facebook is killing people. And I somehow found myself defending Facebook, being like, you know, sorry, that's actually not how it works. It turns out we have mass institutional distrust all across the United States. If you think of the numbers, it is stunning, Crystal.

I know we talk about it every day, but even then seeing it quantified is amazing. Only 49% of Americans are fully vaccinated. Like 56% have had one dose. That's 44% of adults in this country who said, nope, I'm not doing it. And if you think about how much the mainstream has said that you should get it, every Republican politician, the president of the United States, throwing the full force of the U.S. government, the medical community.

Sean Hannity was on there last night being like, go out and get the vaccine. I believe in it. You want to know how crazy things are? Sean Hannity is making sense these days. And Fox & Friends is being responsible. So that's where we're at right now.

And even then, 44% of people say, no, I'm not going to take it. Now, there's a variety of reasons for that. I actually don't think medical misinformation is the chief reason. I'll be very controversial and say this. I really think it comes down to a cost-benefit analysis, which we'll talk about with Michael Brendan-Doherty, and people like, I just don't trust you. And look, I see it organically in terms of comments whenever I talk about the vaccine and more people like experimental use.

And look, we could talk endlessly about why the efficacy at this point, hundreds of millions of people have taken maybe over a billion people have taken it and are completely fine. I mean, you know, in terms of the dropping numbers. But look, if you really, really think about it, it comes down to this. I don't trust you. And that is a core societal problem. And, you know, I think Biden maybe recognized this. He had to walk it back a little bit. Just take a listen, though, because he's still he's still leaning very heavily on the whole misinformation thing. Facebook isn't killing people. These 12 people are out there giving

misinformation. Anyone listening to it is getting hurt by it. It's killing people. It's bad information. My hope is that Facebook, instead of taking it personally, that somehow I'm saying Facebook is killing people, that they would do something about the misinformation, the outrageous misinformation about the vaccine. That's what I mean. So there you can see, you can see there, Chris, he's still leaning very heavily on the misinformation. I do think the White House continues to make a big mistake. Vaccinated or unvaccinated Americans are going to feel persecuted in terms of going after information sources that they may trust, number one. And

number two, which is that the best way to combat that misinformation is, like I said, go and find people who have credibility. Black Americans are the least likely in America to get vaccinated. Go find people amongst low institutional trust black Americans and have them go to the South and say, here's why I think you should do it. Same thing amongst lower middle class whites. Same thing amongst lower middle class Hispanics. And yet I don't see any actual creative thinking going on in the White House. They just want to cast their blame onto people who are posting on Facebook. Do I think those people on Facebook are responsible and, you know, are purveyors of misinformation?

Yeah. But, you know, misinformation only works whenever there's a deep foundation in order to play into it. Yeah, when there's a fundamental mistrust there that you can sort of prey on with your misinformation. This is people who already want a reason to not get the vaccine and to mistrust it. And then they have a story that backs it up. So you're just sort of like filling in the blanks for them. But the skepticism was there to start with. You know, I'm really surprised. I have not seen, and I know we've both been on the lookout for it. I just haven't seen much actual data and research about who, well, we know who's not getting vaccinated, but why? Like, we really haven't seen, there's a lot of guesswork and people, like, using whatever their political lens is to try to get inside of the minds of people who are unvaccinated. But I just haven't seen all that much in terms of concrete evidence of what strategies have worked so far, what the reluctance still is, what percent, because this is a big question for me. It's not clear to me.

It's like 44% who haven't gotten vaccinated at all so far. Yeah, correct. Somewhere around that for adults. What percentage of that is really hardened? Like hell no, there's no way no one's going to talk me into it. I'm not going to be convinced. I'd rather take the risk of getting coronavirus, et cetera. Like what percent is really hardcore and what percent is either persuadable or there's been some logistical hurdle or other reason they haven't gotten it where maybe they could be moved on the margins. Because from the little bit of data I've seen, I'm convinced that of that 44 percent, there's still a decent chunk that could be open to the vaccine if they didn't have a work

logistical hurdle or a child care logistical hurdle or whatever it is that is keeping them from going out and actually getting this vaccine. I'm convinced there's still a chunk that could be persuaded. There's some people you're just not gonna. I hope so. Bottom line. And that's that's what I'm saying, which is we got to shake things up and change things completely. I mean, I know it seemed cringe. I thought the Olivia Rodrigo thing was good. I'm like, you know, she's a 17-year-old, has a lot of fan base amongst people who are really young, Gen Z, like TikTok, all of that. I'm like, that's kind of exactly what I'm talking about here. We just go and find people who have credibility within groups who you are seeing.

It was hugely shared on Facebook, too. I have to say that driver's license song, I despise. Sorry, but I, when that song comes on, I really want to kill myself. Yeah, my girlfriend loves Elizabeth Rodrigo. It's so angsty and like, ooh. Yeah, I know.

She's like, something about, she sings about getting ice cream. I'm like, this chick is 17. She's 18 now, I think. Or 18, okay. But whatever. Look, it's not for me. Anyway, I'm not a target audience. I've already got my vaccine and I'm like, this chick is 17. She's 18 now, I think. Or 18. But whatever. Look, it's not for me. Anyway, I'm not a target audience.

I've already got my vaccine and I'm old. Exactly. Right. But. I'm still rocking out to Blink-182. I do think, I think you're right, though, that they identified a group, which is young people, who they think are still reachable. And tried to find someone who has some credibility within that group.

And that's not a bad strategy. Will it work or not? I just honestly, I don't know. I don't know that we have the data or the research to say, but it's certainly worth a try. When I see the Biden administration doing this Facebook stuff,

to me, it's a signal that they've given up, that they're looking for a scapegoat rather than a solution. That's what I really think this is about. This is about being able to say it's these 12 actors on Facebook spreading misinformation that are killing people, and it really has nothing to do with us, and there's really nothing we can do about it. Facebook will yell at you and will castigate you. Are they actually going to force Facebook to censor? They'll suggest this or that.

But I don't think this is actually about looking for some sort of action or solution or policy. I think this is about finding a scapegoat, which, by the way, is also what Facebook said, and I think they're kind of right about that. You know, and I got to tell you, I was pissed off yesterday. Before we play the Jen Psaki clip we're about to show you. She was asked whether the White House would ask Trump in order to cut a PSA to get vaccinated. And they were like, well, we don't

think we should have to invite him. Trump is a vain man. If Joe Biden called him up and was like, Trump, I need you to do this. I think personally he would do it. And B, you don't think that's worth it. I do. I think that, you know, Biden, if you really want to heal the soul of the nation and all that, call the guy who you defeated for president and just be like, look, Donald, we have our differences. I need you to cut this video. There are a lot of people who trust you. And then if Trump rejects him, then Trump is the jackass in that situation and they can leak it. But they're pulling it down

being like, oh, listen, yeah. Is it annoying you have to stroke the former president's ego in order to cut a PSA to go get vaccinated? Yeah, it is. And Trump is an extraordinarily vain guy. Well, he's the one who got elected. So whatever. He is what it is. He has a lot of credibility with millions of the people who won't get vaccinated. I think they should ask him. I don't know why it's so crazy. And, you know, the press, there's a lot of discussion around this, which is just a lot of wish casting. Everybody wants to say like, oh, it's all, you know, boomer whites who are not getting vaccinated who watch Fox News. There's some of that. But I mean, like I said, nobody seems to want to talk about the fact that black Americans are the least likely

to be vaccinated in the United States. And if they do, it's some like, oh, Tuskegee, whatever. Yeah, maybe, maybe. I definitely think that plays a part. But, you know, it's also been a long time. Maybe it doesn't have anything to even do with that. And it's just deep lack of institutional trust. Go and find people who are, I don't know, musicians, anyone, you know, a radio host, somebody like Charlemagne the God, right?

Ask him. Ask the Breakfast Club and all those people to cut those ads. But they don't want to. I mean, the last time Biden talked to Charlemagne, it didn't go so well. So I guess I understand why they wouldn't want to. But this is part of what I'm saying. If you really want to be the president, if you really want to put it all behind you, unite the country, if your actual goal is getting people vaccinated, call Trump tomorrow.

Call people who have deep credibility in the black community. Call people who have deep credibility amongst lower middle class Hispanic people. If you did that, lower middle class whites, Hispanics, blacks, all of whom disproportionately are likely to live in the South, not have access generally to organs of mainstream media and more, we would have a ton more people get vaxxed. But they don't want to do that. I'm actually skeptical whether that would really work.

I mean, we had, you know, Barack Obama. Who's more trusted? Like, there are a few people more trusted in the black community than Barack Obama who's come out and said the thing. But, look, I think all of it is worth a try, right? Even Trump. Remember, we saw that focus group. Granted, it was a Frank Luntz focus group, and apparently his stuff is all, like, completely invented nonsense, so I don't know why I'm citing it right now. But he talked to these Trump voters who were like, eh, if the president says we should get vaccinated, that doesn't really change our mind either.

I don't know that there's any politician who's really going to change that core. I do think I am convinced that there is some persuadable group within that 44 percent. And it may be disproportionately young people who are just looking at it like, yeah, I don't really feel at risk and I'm young and invincible and I don't feel like it. So there may I do think there's some persuadable group, but for the hardcore, like, hell no group, that ship has sailed. It's sailed over years

and decades of built-up institutional mistrust, which may be, you know, have come from different places depending on where you live and what race you are and what your personal experience with the medical system has been.

But look, all of this is worth a try because it is genuinely about saving lives and making sure that we can get back to some sense of normalcy without having to continue to look at these case numbers and be afraid. To your point, let's say 5% to 10% works. 10% of the 209 million adults, that's 2 million people. So if we got 10% more, that's a lot, right? I mean, and even five, that's a million. So a million extra people who don't have to worry about dying from COVID, or at the very least, you know, having the least amount of symptoms possible as variants come, I think that's pretty pretty good tradeoff, personally. And to your point about what the White House is doing, well, you know, they're opening, they're keeping the door open in terms of a war with Facebook. And that's literally their words. Let's take a listen

to what she said. I don't think we've taken any options off the table. That's up to Congress to determine how they want to proceed moving forward. But let me just note that we're not in a war or a battle with Facebook. We're in a battle with the virus. And the problem we're seeing that our Surgeon General elevated just last week is that disinformation traveling through a range of mediums. Some of them are a range of social media platforms. Some of them are media. Some of them are through the mouths of public officials.

That bad information, inaccurate information about vaccines is killing people. So there you go. We're keeping all options on the table, continuing the escalatory war. I do think, like you said, the best thing to do would be to try something else. And instead of they're trying to find a scapegoat, which I don't think is the right strategy, both in terms of trying to get people vaccinated. And I think people see through it. I think that there's a reason Biden had to walk that back. His people were saying, this is totally absurd,

and they're trying to de-platform everybody from every platform or whatever. That's completely ridiculous. It was pretty funny when Biden's like, I'm not trying to say Facebook is killing people. You literally said that. That is literally what you said. 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 another very interesting development yesterday you can put gl Glenn Greenwald's tweet up on the screen here. So we had the first January 6th rioter, a guy named Paul Hodgkins, who was sentenced on a felony guilty plea. What he pled guilty to was something like obstruction of congressional proceedings or something like that. Prosecutors wanted 18 months in prison. What he actually pled to and what he was sentenced to was eight months in prison. So here's, we can put Michael Tracy's tweet up on the screen, which has the details of what Paul Hodgkins did. So he

trespassed in the Capitol and then walking among the desks in the Senate chamber. He was wearing eye goggles. I'm not really sure why that's that relevant. He took a selfie-style photograph with his cell phone, walked down the Senate well, where a few feet away, several individuals were shouting, praying, and cheering using a bullhorn. He walked toward the individuals, remained standing with them while they continued commanding the attention of others. And then at about 3.15 p.m., he left the Senate chamber and he left the U.S. Capitol building. So there's a big conversation going on about whether this sentence is appropriate, given that Paul Hodgkin's, based on what we know, was nonviolent. I mean, look, according to the federal investigators who have all the cameras and the records,

I bet you if he was violent, they would have said so. Yes. So according to the federal prosecutors here, didn't attack anyone, didn't even deface any property. What he's accused of doing is entering the Capitol unlawfully and taking a selfie in the Senate gallery. So I really thought a lot about this one, Sagar, because I don't want to have a knee-jerk reaction to this stuff.

And I did think what happened on January 6th was horrendous. And I do think that people who were involved, especially people who were involved, and we saw some of the assaults on officers, the guy who was getting crushed in the door, all of that. There should be consequences for those actions that are commensurate with the actions that you took. However, you can't judge this one individual based on the awfulness of the day. You have to judge him on what his individual part was and what actions were taken.

So I tried in order to, you know, attempt to remove my own bias from the situation, because I'm obviously not particularly sympathetic to this group of people, I thought about, well, what if it was like a Black Lives Matter protester who went into a police station illegally that had already been, you know, broken open by another group of protesters and took a selfie and hung out for a while and then left? Would I think that that action merited eight months in prison? And the answer is no. You know, what are my principles? I don't believe in this system of, you know, mass incarceration that we have constructed. I don't believe that these sorts of,

like, you know, making a show of someone and sentencing them based on like the totality of the day. I don't I don't believe in that. That isn't core to my principles. So evaluating the situation through that lens, I have to say, like, this seems like this really seems like throwing the book at someone who was not ultimately violent in order to make a statement about the terrible nature of the day. And then the other thing here that I think is relevant is the government really wanted to paint this as domestic terror. Yes.

And, you know, the judge didn't really buy that. Again, ultimately what he pled to was obstruction of congressional proceedings or something of that nature. But the other thing that I really oppose is just casually throwing around this word terrorism and using it oftentimes as a justification for furthering mass incarceration, for increasing surveillance, and further empowering the national security state. And so, you know, that sort of approach of the government is also something that I find, you know, really troubling. No, I think you're right. And that was the problem that I kind of had with this. Look, it's actually pretty simple. Take the Black Lives Matter

protester, for example. If he wandered in to that, then no. Like, I don't think you deserve eight months in prison. If you threw a Molotov cocktail at a police station or you threw one at an actual police officer, yeah, I think you should go to jail probably for a while. And it doesn't take a difference. It doesn't take a brain in order to see that. And I think Americans would generally be on board. The troubling part here is that they tried to use the domestic terrorism. And while Paul Hodgkins ultimately got eight months in prison, they sought 18 months. That's a year and a half that the government was asking, saying January 6th was an act of

domestic terror and using that to color the specific actions. I'm not defending Paul Hodgkins. The guy looks like an idiot, frankly. I'll just say it plainly. In terms of wandering around, going in there, at the end of the day, he was in the new Capitol building for 25 minutes, according to the government himself. He walked in and he was like, whoa, this is crazy. Took a selfie and walked out. Didn't do anything else. If he defaced property, that's actually a different story. If you go in and you pulled something down and you ripped up a desk or you're a zip tie guy, or you're one of those people who was like trying to break through the glass or whatever with the vice president or whatever on the other side,

that's a whole other story, folks. That's actually completely different. If you're one of the ringleaders or one of those people who pushed through the barricade, knocked a female officer on the ground, that is completely different. But using, as you said, the totality of the event, and I think a lot of Americans justified outrage at what happened. And using that to throw the book at a guy like this, I think it also reveals a lot of ridiculous kind of posturing within the media. Which is that, frankly, outside of people on the left, it's basically you and Glenn Greenwald, Michael Tracy are talking about this.

And that's it. Everybody else is just silent. They're happy watching this guy march to prison. Let's be 100% honest. After all those looters got off in New York City, people were cheering all of that. And maybe even agree with that. I don't know.

It depends. I think some people at least deserve a misdemeanor charge. But if this is a Black Lives Matter protester, they would have raised hell to hell. I mean, there's no way it would have happened. We all know that. But let me flip that around, too, because I think the hypocrisy goes both ways. Because you have a lot of people on the right who are saying, this is way too much, and this is over the top, and he's a political prisoner, and all of this.

There's a lot of hypocrisy to go around. Come on, if this was Black Lives Matter protesters storming the Capitol, those very same people who are saying that, what's his name, Hodgkins? Hodgkins. That he's a political prisoner and he's being wrongfully prosecuted and all of this. They would say, build the jail on top of these people. They deserve to go away for life. I mean, you even see it in the commentary because a lot of the commentary from the right right now is like they should with the black lives matter protest they should have thrown the book at them well i think that everyone is sort of viewing this through their tribal partisan lens if your principle is lock them up then your principle here should be lock them up if your principle is

believe in restorative justice i think the mass incarceration state goes way too far that, you know, the government throwing around these charges of domestic terror for their own benefit, because that's the other thing, too, is the government really needs to make a show of we got the bad guys. We're throwing the book at them. Justice is being done, even though we know every step of the way, truly, the government failed on that day. So now they've got to overcompensate and show that they're getting the bad guys. The other thing is that, you know, a lot of we haven't seen a lot of the ringleaders who committed more of these serious crimes. We haven't seen them be charged. We haven't seen them certainly be sentenced at this point.

This was the first guilty felony plea that we've seen. So I think there's also some CYA here happening from the government where they feel like they need to make a show to the public that we did our job, we got the wrongdoers, we got the bad guys, and we're taking care of business, when the reality is that they failed from the start. And if they hadn't, none of this would ever have happened. You're 100% right. And, I mean, this is the real issue, and we'll push the button here,

which is why haven't those ringleaders come out? We've seen a lot of speculation online within the analyzing exactly what happened there, within the indictments, around the use of confidential informants. I'm not saying anything was organized or whatever. I, frankly, literally have no idea. But I do think it's important

that a lot of that stuff come to light and that as these things begin to move through the court system and we learn more, we already know that there was that one undercover MPD officer that was present there who he was like, I observed, you know, so-and-so. That was just one. And I mean, they would be idiots if they didn't have more.

Yeah, we also know that the kidnapping within that was just one and i mean they would be idiots if they didn't have more yeah we also know that the uh kidnapping plot that was disrupted in michigan with gretchen whitmer that they had at least 12 fbi informants the lead one of which now is in big i was gonna say by the way the most cringe photo i've ever seen was of that guy uh it was he's like took a gym selfie and yeah so so this FBI agent, this is a little bit of a sidebar. Sorry. We were looking at our illustrious brave men

and women of the FBI. The lead sort of witness for the government. Special agent in charge. Yeah, this guy, he's now been arrested and charged with domestic violence. It's like a domestic battery.

And entrapment, apparently, against somebody else. Yeah, so anyway, we know that the FBI infiltrated at least one three-percenter group in Michigan very extensively. So you would think

that there were probably some other government informants and agents involved. Now, I'm not saying that they were the ringleaders or that they're the ones that, like, catched this plot and pushed it,

but, I mean, we would like to know more, I guess is what I will say. We would like to know more. I'd like to know a lot more about those folks. Okay. Big story, big developments down in Haiti. And this whole story is fascinating for a lot of reasons. Of course, as you all know, President Jovenel Moise, who was recently assassinated in a plot that is wild and we are still learning the details of. The Haitian government says this dude in Florida wanted to become the president and he hired these mercenaries,

some of whom were Haitian-American, some of whom were Colombian. There's a lot going on there. But the piece I want to focus on today is there's been this power vacuum in the country. The prime minister, a guy named Claude Joseph, basically right after Moise is assassinated, tries to claim power and tries to claim international legitimacy and tries to take command. He's the one who asked the U.S. to send in troops, which is, of course, a horrific idea. Unfortunately, the Biden administration so far has said no, although they are leaving that potential option on the table, which is, you know, amazing. So initially, the U.S. and the international community backed this guy. And just to give

you a little bit more of the context, part of why there's such a question mark around who should take the place of Jovenel Moise is because Moise has been ruling by decree. He didn't call elections, even though he overstayed his term in office. We backed him in that, by the way, Trump did. And then Biden came right in and continued the same Trump policy of backing this essentially authoritarian strongman dictator ruling by decree and writing his own new constitution in Haiti. Because there were no elections, there are very few remaining elected leaders in the country. There are only 10 members of the Senate remaining out of supposed to be 30. And there are no other elected members of, I don't know if they call it the House or the representative, the lower body.

There's none because there were no elections. So they're all gone. The judiciary, a bunch of the judges resigned because of Moise overstaying his term. The chief justice in June died of coronavirus. And there are multiple versions of the Constitution. I was going to say, aren't there three versions of the Constitution? There are multiple versions of the Constitution. Three versions of the Constitution. There are multiple versions of the Constitution. In one of them, that chief justice who has now passed away because of COVID would have been the successor.

So that's why this is such a big question mark. And then, oh, let me add on one more layer, which is that Claude Joseph, who was the prime minister under Moise, He had just been terminated, essentially replaced, and a new guy was set to be sworn in as prime minister in the following week. So that's the state of affairs. So initially, Claude Joseph, country's leader in the aftermath. We can throw the New York Times tear sheet

up on the screen now. So reading for this now, Claude Joseph was a country's leader in the aftermath of Moise's assassination. He will hand power now to Ariel Henry and join a new unity government intended to keep Haiti stable. Haiti has become a baseball thrown among foreign diplomats. That's according to Joseph Lambert, the president of Haiti's Senate, adding that pressure from American diplomats was a major factor in the reshuffling of Haiti's leadership. So this new guy who's now going to take power, Ariel Henry, he was the one who was set to be sworn in as prime minister in the next

week. So initially, the so-called core group of foreign governments and international organizations that basically see themselves as running Haiti, which is outrageous, including the UN, the Organization of American States, consistently a bad actor, EU, the US, France, Spain, Canada, Germany, and Brazil. They had initially backed Joseph, and now they're throwing their weight behind this other guy,

Ariel Henry, who had been set to be sworn in as prime minister. And we really don't know, Sagar, why they switched horses like this. We have no indication of what made them decide that, you know, we should go from Claude Joseph, who was the prime minister but was going to be taken out, to this other dude. That's where things stand. incredibly telling and the times quotes a lot of Haitians who are very upset by the way that like why do we why are we the ones who were saying now we've decided we're done with this one we're going to pick this one now like why are we in the position to do that it's really hard because you also don't know who do these people have even democratic legitimacy like within Haiti there's actually literally no way of knowing I think some of it might have to do again, this is total speculation

but his government, Joseph's government, he's the one who's releasing all of the intel that we at least know about the assassination. And some of it has seemed pretty crazy. You know, mercenaries, Colombians, American doctors, DEA agents, FBI informants. FBI informants.

There's a lot going on here. And my thinking is, maybe they found out something, maybe like within his role, or like maybe he's not releasing something once again. But I think the core point stands. Let these people figure it out for themselves. And, you know, to be clear, it's not America here. It's like the entire international coalition, right? Oh, yes, the's like the European Union, Spain, Canada, Germany, Brazil called on Saturday for the formation of a consensual and inclusive

government. And so it does just seem like it's such a mess that a lot of international organizations, which have interests, at least in Haiti, are kind of manipulating and pulling the strings. Yeah. It's a really complicated situation. As they have for over 100 years. I mean, you know, I went through some of the history here, but backing dictators who were horrific and murderous because they're anti-communist, tossing out a democratically elected leader twice, John Bertrand Erstein, under Bush I and then Bush II. They both got a chance to back a coup against him.

And then with regards to Moise, I think this is really important. This is another New York Times tear sheet we can throw up on the screen. This is what I was alluding to. Both the Trump administration and the Biden administration backed this guy, even though he had what's described as an increasingly autocratic rule, even though there were massive protests in the streets against this dude because there were allegations of major corruption, of basically being in bed with the gangs that run much of the country at this point. And if I could read just these first couple of paragraphs, it says, as protesters hurled rocks outside Haiti's National Palace and set fires on the streets to demand President Jovenel Moise's resignation, President Trump invited him to Mar-a-Lago in 2019, posing cheerfully with him

in one of the club's ordnance entryways. But lest you think that this is a partisan attack, the very next paragraph, after members of Congress warned that Mr. Moise's anti-democratic abuses reminded them of the run up to the dictatorship that terrorized Haiti in decades past, that we supported as well. The Biden administration publicly threw its weight behind Mr. Moise's claim on power. So that was the state of affairs when Moise was assassinated. And now you have just a complete and utter mess. And you still have this core group, the U.S., the EU, the U.N., OAS, all trying to control the fate of the Haitian people that should be in the hands of the Haitian people. Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. And it looks like it's a continuing troubling situation. And I guess we'll keep an eye on it.

We will definitely keep an eye on it. All right. Another interesting development here. So Democrats starting to look towards 2022, wanting to hold on to control of the House, control of the Senate, which is obviously as narrow as it could possibly be. finding is that a lot of Democrats in more rural areas in particular and more Republican-leaning areas are doing their darndest to distance themselves from the terrible, terrible, toxic Democratic Party brand. Something I've been talking about for a very long time. For years now, it has been incredibly effective just to throw Nancy Pelosi in an ad. Basically since, what, 2010? At least since 2010, just throw Nancy Pelosi in an ad, run it against any candidate,

tie them to the National Democratic Party, and you're done. And what's interesting here is they point out, and I think this is true, that a lot of the policies of the Democratic Party on economics in particular at this point, very popular, right? We saw in 2020 minimum wage, $15 minimum wage passing easily in Florida at the same time the Democrats lose. To me, that's like the perfect instance of the distance between the terrible brand, which is filled with like contempt and condescension for most of the country, and some of the policies which are popular. I think the antitrust executive orders that Biden just passed, very popular. That's why Chuck Grassley backed it. That's exactly right.

Chuck Grassley and some other Republicans in the Farm Bureau, these are conservative groups. They got behind it. These are popular policies. I'm talking today in my monologue about the child tax credit, also extraordinarily popular across partisan divides. However, just to like spoiler alert here, this never works. Like trying to distance yourself from the very party that you're running in, it literally never works. I saw it when I was running for Congress in 2010.

A lot of people were trying this game of saying this Barack Obama guy, I don't know about him. And I'm different from all of these other people. I'm not like these other Democrats. There was a time in American politics where that was effective, where you could be a Kentucky Democrat or you could be a Ohio Democrat or whatever it is, that time has passed. All politics is national now. So if you don't like the Democratic Party brand, do something to change it. But you have no choice but to be married to these people and the voters are very much going to see it that way. I think that's the sad thing. And just to give you an idea of like where some real fear is, the Free Beacon actually wrote this story. Let's put it up there on the screen, which shows that a majority of marriage, this is according to Trafalgar, which a year ago was said was a joke,

but they actually were some of the most accurate of 2020. So there you go. Majority of Americans are not confident that Kamala Harris is ready for the presidency. And what we really do see within that is that normally vice presidential approvals will generally go kind of up because they don't really do anything. They're not really present before the public. Al Gore was just seen, you know, like, okay, you know, I don't mind Al Gore. Joe Biden, I mean, that's what made him popular in America. Before that, he had no public profile. But with Kamala Harris, it's pretty bad. I mean, it just says that the majority of Democratic respondents even will view her favorably, but it's still split. Forty-three percent of Democrats polled there said that they lack confidence in Harris. And generally what you're seeing here is that the lack of confidence, and we're using this as a proxy for political talent know, Tim Ryan, whose ad we're about to show

you, he's running for Senate in Ohio. They talk here about a Montana Democrat who is trying to shirk off, you know, the national profile. You're always going to have Kamala Harris around your neck. And that's really, I think, a big problem, especially if she were to ever be elevated to the top of the ticket. Just the lack of political talent, the sheer just like odiousness that comes through in a lot of her interviews will just be hung around the neck. And you saw that with Hillary. That's what happened with Hillary and the Democratic Party. That's kind of what I think would happen here with Kamala.

And the story, though, I do think is fascinating because, as you said, people always try. I'm from College Station, Texas. My congressman was Chet Edwards. He represented our county, which at one point had – or our district, which had George W. Bush's ranch, just so people have an idea of how conservative. It was like an R-plus-28 district. He represented it for 20 years. He lost by, I think, 30-something points in 2010 after winning re-election.

And he was beating, like, every single... Like, guys who would run against him. I can't remember his name. He was like, I'm a U.S. Marine. I deployed to Iraq. He'd beat him by, like, six points. It was amazing. That was probably AOC's fault, right?

Yeah, right. No, I mean... This is 2010. I actually want to make that point, which is that I know that a lot of people want to blame, like, AOC and S.Q.U.A.D. for defining Democratic Party in a way that's difficult to overcome in a state like Ohio or another place. But the reality is Democrats lost rural America a decade ago.

Yeah, literally in 2010. A decade ago. And this is another aside. The guy who was ag secretary at that time, Vilsack, is now ag secretary again and was, you know, great for big business and agribusiness and monopolies, not so great for small farmers. And I do think that is a small part of why Democrats lost rural America. But the bigger point was people like Pelosi and others within the party who look down their nose at a lot of the country. And I really don't even think it's particularly, and these numbers bear it out, like it's not even really particularly a policy issue. It's an attitude issue.

So you look at someone like Pelosi, who's incredibly wealthy, and as we are going to talk about in another segment over the weekend, got even more wildly wealthy during her time in office somehow because she's just such a genius at picking stocks, and who feels very distant and very out of touch from the reality that most Americans are facing. You have also a very clever strategy on the part of

Republicans to just focus on the cultural issues where Republicans are more aligned with rural America than Democrats are. And where, by the way, you don't really have to deliver anything. You can just say the right words and signal that you're on the right team. And that's been a very effective strategy on the Republican side. And Democrats have not. Democrats, rather than trying to win back voters, Max Alvarez always makes this point. They just look for a new state. They're like, Ohio's gone. Good luck, Ohio. We're done with you. What?

We're moving on to Arizona. We're going to pick up Arizona next. So, you know, forget you. We're moving away. Which, you've still got Sherrod Brown representing the state. Like, clearly some Democrat can still win in the state. Can Tim Ryan still win in the state of Ohio? No, he cannot.

Yeah, I don't think so. And this is funny. This is what they called out in the ad. In the entire three minutes of this ad. Tim Ryan never says the word. I am a Democrat running for the Senate in the state of Ohio, which Trump won by about eight points. Just look at this. I mean, it could be a Republican ad. No football coach puts a team out on the field without a game plan. And right now, our workers need a game plan. We're competing with countries around the world for jobs.

So in my mind, there's nothing more patriotic than investing in our team, our people, our workers. I'm not talking about handouts. I'm talking about being prepared to win. The outer strength of our country is a reflection of the inner strength of our citizens. Come on, Brady. Is this where Papa Bob used to work?

A place just like this, until he lost his job with thousands of others. How did they lose their job? Well, somewhere along the way, something broke. We forgot what made us successful in the first place. It can't be businesses versus workers. This is a partnership. But that partnership needs to be redefined. We

have to cut workers in on the deal. I'll work with anyone to rebuild our economy, but I will never sell out our workers. Is someone going to fix that? Well, we need to hit the reset button. We need to reimagine the entire thing. We need to invest in the businesses so they can create more jobs for even more workers. We need to step up our training in science and technology so the clean energy jobs come to Ohio today. We need to make huge investments into our public infrastructure, our roads, our bridges, our airports, broadband. We can actually revitalize manufacturing,

secure U.S. supply chains, and make things here. All right, I will say I'm calling for a moratorium on using your children in ads until we can figure out what the hell is going on. Complete shutdown on using kids. I mean, the kid is cute. I'm more just like, you know, I don't like having people use their kids in ads.

I think it's weird. So anyway, bottom line is three minutes of cringe there, but nowhere in those three minutes of cringe did he layer on the additional cringe that he's a Democrat. No, but that's important, though. I mean, you watch that and you're like, man, this could be like a Republican ad, honestly. I mean, outside of the word, just clean energy. And look, I don't think it's going to work. I think it's totally going to lose.

But it is a good example of kind of like how people are trying to pull this out. Sherrod Brown could teach a lot of people about how to do this. But honestly, the lesson from Sherrod is be legit since like 1997. That's right. That's all it is. Actually stand up for workers. And yeah, his whole thing, businesses versus workers, that's not the thing. It's like, well, actually, you do need some adversarial relations there.

But that's another story for another day. 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 podcast 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. So, Crystal, what are you taking a look at today? Well, like the stimulus checks before them, the child tax credit has officially reached meme status. So I got my first child tax credit payment today,

which means the government has officially paid me more child support than my baby daddy ever has. you can see it from the back So according to Vox, hashtag Child Tax Credit and hashtag Child Tax Credit 2021, those both went wild on TikTok with tens of millions of views each. As you may know, the child tax credit provides parents with $300 per child under six and $250 for kids six to 17. So if you've got three kids, you could be getting a max benefit of $900 per month. And that is real money. What's more, the credit is not just for low-income families. It starts phasing out at $150K for most married parents, which means that some 88% of children in 39 million households are going to benefit. That matters a lot. The fact that comfortably middle-class families will receive the benefit makes it much less likely that it's going to be welfare queen to death. So knowing all of that, it shouldn't be all that surprising that the sudden infusion of cash to

millions of moms and dads might provoke a bit of a sensation, especially when you consider that the people who will be helped the most by the money are also the people who have been the most routinely screwed over by a corporate-run government that consistently protects the interests of the wealthy over the many. What's interesting is that usually on this show, we think about culture and we think about material politics as being totally separate. Here, and also with the stimulus checks, you have a collision of culture with populist economics. The very visible and widespread nature of the program made it into a cultural moment, the type of thing that normal people are talking about in normal settings,

not just weirdos like us. And that is actually really powerful. In fact, cash politics as culture could be exactly the thing to combat these shiny objects and sectarian silliness of our typical culture war battles. Democrats are certainly betting on the power of cash. For now, the credit is temporary. Biden's COVID stimulus included just one year of funding for it. The proposed reconciliation package, they're talking about funding it through 2024. And that date, by the way, not an accident. Effectively, the Biden administration and congressional Democrats, they want to create

a kind of household financial cliff for the 2024 general election, forcing Republicans to either back making the tax credit permanent or get hit over the head repeatedly with the fact that they plan to take money out of the pockets of 39 million households, just as Biden, probably Biden, is running for reelection. So cement and endorse a big Biden win or take an extraordinarily unpopular position. That's going to be the choice offered to Republicans.

As one Dem strategist told the Daily Beast, I can all but guarantee you Democrats are going to tattoo it to their foreheads and not to do it would be criminal. So a sort of natural experiment is being set up. We know Republicans are going to run on being a bulwark against critical race theory, cancel culture, and cultural liberalism in general. They might dust off the old Tea Party era anti-deficit rhetoric too, but clearly the energy in the party at the grassroots level is pure culture war. And I may wish it were otherwise, but these cultural freakouts, they're pretty powerful. When politics has not worked for a

long time to actually improve material well-being, it collapses down to culture war. Which team pisses off the people I hate the most? Who can at least yell into the void in a way that I find satisfying rather than enraging? But I do think that Republicans forgot one important lesson from their near miss back in 2020. A lot has been made of Latino voters in particular shifting to the GOP. Puzzled journalists took themselves down to the Rio Grande Valley to find out what exactly was going on there. And one of the answers that they got was pretty straightforward. Residents got a stimulus check with Trump's name on it, and that seemed pretty good to them.

One former mayor told the Wall Street Journal that after the stimulus checks, he started to see memes of Latinos holding out their hands to Papa Trump for money. If we speak in the language of memes, he said, there were a lot of Trump as this fatherly figure who was going to help you. Not only that, Pelosi and the Democrats, they may well have been punished by voters for playing games with stimulus checks leading up to the election, something we talked about a lot at the time. And McConnell and the Senate Republicans may well have been punished by voters in Georgia for blocking another round of checks. These are all budding signs that cash politics could truly reign supreme. One hallmark of the neoliberal era has been making government policy as Byzantine and non-obvious as possible. Everything's means tested, everything's

loaded down with paperwork, and just frankly really confusing. Technocrats loved to create these programs and benefits that you didn't even really know you were receiving. Obamacare is a pretty good example of that. A whole lot of people benefit from the program without having any idea that they're actually benefiting from the program. So even when the government might actually be doing something for you, it can be kind of hard to tell or extremely onerous in order to claim that benefit. Checks are the polar opposite of that. They are in your face to the point of being a cultural sensation. And maybe just maybe fighting culture war with cash culture war

is exactly the way out of an endless sectarian hellscape. This is the test saga because it's going to be 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, aside from my own personal biases, one of the reasons that the initial success of this newly independent show meant so much to me is that it validated a thesis that Crystal and I have. That literally the largest market for news in America right now is for those Americans who hate the news.

It's out here on YouTube, on Spotify, or Apple Podcasts, or Substack that tens of millions of people turned away from the mainstream media to seek literally anything else that doesn't make them hate one another. That is why I was especially amused in the last few days when I saw twin pieces of news. One, that formerly MSNBC's Casey Hunt is leaving the 5am hour of that network for CNN. Two, CNN is planning the big launch of a new streaming platform. Now we laughed a bit about it yesterday because now they're entering the same game as us, but the details were unveiled yesterday, and it's just too good to let it pass by. CNN is announcing CNN+.

The most ambitious thing they've done since Ted Turner started the network, they say. Here's how they describe it. Quote, The new venture, called CNN Plus was formally announced on Monday morning. It will exist side by side with CNN's existing TV networks and will feature eight to 12 hours of live programming a day. Wow. That's what people ask for, right? Eight to 12 hours a day of more CNN. But it honestly gets worse. So much of the deals that CNN have signed, which say that it's live programming, can only be available on the cable news bundle. So that means it can only offer up new content centered around, quote, CNN's most promising talent, as well as, quote, a thriving community component for fans to connect directly with anchors and experts in real time. This is hilarious to me for a number of reasons,

because I will sit here and do something you very rarely will hear from me. CNN actually is good at something. That something is whenever some crazy stuff is happening, like riots on January 6th or last summer, a timely news conference like in the early days of coronavirus, car chases, You get the idea. The parts where they're not talking and they're showing you basically what is going on. That stuff is really valuable, actually, and pretty expensive to have resources all over the world.

It's the original selling point of CNN and of cable news generally. The problem for America happened whenever cable news executives realized that actually not that much stuff happens all the time, which demands live attention. So they had a whole bunch of airtimes that they have to fill in between lucrative advertisements. That's when hell was unleashed on us. The networks were raking in money on advertising.

So in between the ads, they built comparatively cheap studios in New York and Washington, and they just hired a bunch of people to talk and talk and talk. And fundamentally, the problem with cable news today is none of it is actually about the news. It's about inane and stupid commentary in between advertisements for gold, Viagra, or blood pressure medication. The only way to keep you hooked in between all of those ads is what is to dial up your blood pressure, tell you why the Democrats are the reincarnation of Satan, or why fascism is just around the corner after this ad.

That's how we lost our country. That's how we ended up with Trump and the tension in the air where millions of Americans hate each other at levels we've just never seen before. The tragic story of CNN is the story of America. What's worse is this. Now what they want to do is replicate all of that crap that they've pushed onto their boomer audiences and then bundle it up eight to 12 hours more per day and give it to you. There's just one problem. For once in their lives, they have to deal with a real market. Most people are captured by the news oligarchy. CNN, Fox, and MSNBC have a virtual monopoly in terms of TV news, which is available as part of

the cable news bundle, which is where tens of millions of people get their information, like it or not. Efforts to try and disrupt that are foolhardy at best, probably doomed because it's an old industry. But the people who get their news that way are old. And if you want to survive in streaming, you have to come out here and hack it with the big boys. And this is where we, all of you my friends, triumph. Out here on the internet, yeah, Google, Facebook, Twitter,

they control everything. But the old media players are irrelevant. And like us here at Breaking Points, they have to actually compete for your eyeballs and more importantly, your dollars. CNN is about to discover the real truth. People who cut the cord, people who aren't old and glued to their TV to tell them what to think, they freaking hate CNN, Fox, and MSNBC's idiotic commentary, which ruined our politics in the first place. And they will vote with their clicks

and their subscription dollars. I'm not saying it's perfect. Lots of people who I can't stand are making great live-ins out here in the independent ecosystem. But I will pretty much take any of the cringe segments on YouTube over the poison that CNN has been peddling now

for years. CNN is about to find out the hard way just how little people actually value their contributions to American life. They can't hide behind the fact that if you want to watch sports or if you want to watch live news, you're literally forced to watch them. Now they're competing out here with the rest of us. And honestly, I wish them luck in a devious kind of way, because I can't wait to watch it fail, as practically anything else rises up and beats them at their previously rigged game. And I think that's what it comes down to, Crystal, which is that... Joining us now, National Review's Michael Brendan-Doherty.

He's author of a new piece in National Review, where he's talking about how if you want to have people get vaccinated, that the unvaccinated cannot feel disrespected. This is part of a big thing that we've talked about in today's show about how exactly to reach people who have such low institutional trust and more. Michael, we really appreciate you joining us. Thanks, man. Thank you so much. It's a pleasure to be here. Absolutely. Let's just start off with this. What do you think are some of the pathologies that we have seen as to why about 44% of the U.S. population does not want to get vaccinated right now? Well, I mean, the overwhelming reason is the simplest reason, which is they don't fear COVID as much as they fear the vaccine. People who are enthusiasts for the vaccine may

find that very silly or innumerate or misinformed, but millions of people decided long before the vaccines were approved that COVID was overblown for them, that this was something that mainly affected people over 65. It wasn't very serious, especially for younger people who are generally healthy and fit. And so they don't want to take the risk of a vaccine, whatever that risk may be. They've been told there are very few adverse effects noticed but they worry about things like long-term effects and they know from their own reading and study that of course a new vaccine for a novel disease in the midst of a pandemic it can't have full fda approval uh it doesn't yet and it can't have long-term studies on its effects. And so many of

them are just making a calculation that they feel is completely rational, that they don't want to take this. And some would go further, and they feel that because public health officials have occasionally lied or misrepresented the truth about risks, that they've, you know, covered up potentially the lab leak theory and tried to censor that. They feel that there's, you know, many of them feel that there's something maybe a little underhanded or sinister at work in the vaccine effort. And they've also find, I think, what would cause me to write the piece was that in just talking to the vaccine skeptics in my own family, among my friends, I noticed that none of the public health apparatus was addressing their stated concerns, right? It would just be these kind of

messages about what we already know about the vaccines. And they're concerned about what we don't know. And they find it creepy that millions of dollars is being spent reaching out to them, and yet they're not being spoken to like adults with real concerns. And like I said in the piece, I think one thing that would go a long way towards reestablishing trust is just acknowledging some of the concerns. That it's normal to feel this way about a new vaccine. That it's normal to wonder about long-term side effects.

That no, we can't know with 100% certainty that there are no long-term effects from these vaccines, but you could try to explain in a medically plausible way why that's such a low probability event. Now, I suspect that that's something true and something public health officials could do, but it's beyond my competence as a pundit to do that. So it's on someone else to give this explanation. And I know for many people, it feels like lowering themselves to address people they deem to have made an irrational choice already. But if you want vaccines in arms, at this point point this is kind of what you have to do and if you if you treasure your your political animosities or your disdain

for people who don't have the vaccine more than the campaign to vaccine well maybe that's an indicator that you're not as afraid of a larger unvaccinated population being out there as you think you are maybe you're okay with it. Michael, you know, there's been a lot of focus on white conservative men in particular and the high levels of vaccine hesitancy there. If you look across, and this is something, a graphic that we showed a couple times now on the show, if you look across racial groups, it's actually African Americans overall who have the lowest vaccination rate. And there seems to be, you know, a sort of, you know, through line between what your income level is and what your education status is and whether or not you get vaccinated. Of course, African-Americans disproportionately lower income in this country. So the reasons that

you're giving here based on on your experience talking to people in your circle, your family, your friends, etc., do you think that those reasons are specific to sort of white conservatives, or do you think that they go across racial groups? Well, in general, I think the feeling that vax-resistant people or vax-hesitant people have that is common is this idea of, I don't fear COVID as much as I fear the vaccine, right? It's as simple and primal and elemental as that. But for different groups, there can be different mixtures of or different reasons for simple mistrust in public authority. Whether it's, you know, for maybe for white conservatives, they feel like, you know, they may feel like public health officials endorsed the BLM protests last summer when there were still restrictions on outdoor activity. And they may think these people really don't have my interests at heart in some fundamental way, and there's

something dishonest at work. For Black Americans, it may be an experience of something where they've heard about, you know, their mother or their sister seemingly being treated differently when she delivered a baby at a hospital than other patients. They may hear other stories of how black people are prescribed pain medication in different levels than white people. They may hear all this and just simply distrust the medical establishment or all establishments. And you have to speak to that as well in your public health messaging campaigns. You know, it's interesting, Michael, I saw, I bizarrely saw a lot of criticism against you from the, on this piece from a lot of people in the center left, um, who were like, if Michael was real, he'd be like, Tucker Carlson's full of it.

And he's killing people and the Fox news News Rupert Murdoch machine. I mean, I obviously know, I think your response is correct, but what do you say to those critics? Because maybe people are here saying the same thing, but you have a responsibility to call these people out. What do you make of the argument? Well, I think I disagree with Tucker, but among my friends and family, nobody even has a cable television subscription. They don't watch Tucker. They get their information from social media that it's shared laterally, usually across Instagram would be the most common thing. Like people sharing Instagram stories of someone having a strange adverse reaction and maybe a dissenting doctor that is hyping this up.

Maybe they follow, you know, Martin Kulldorff of Harvard, who was, you know, a pioneer in designing vaccine safety systems. And he's saying, well, not everyone has to get vaccinated. That's a bit of a superstition. So the sources of where they get their information are various. But the big thing is, I would say, this is a demand side issue. Average people aren't, it's not like misinformation comes through the internet and just hits them. It's they have a gut reaction, a gut feeling and response about whether the COVID itself is overblown or whether public health officials are being manipulative in some way. And they have this

fear, the fear of the unknown. And listen, they know, for instance, you know, people say like, okay, well just research the history of mRNA theory, which goes back 50 years. We've known theoretically that this should work for a very long time. And now it's here. And so you should

celebrate that. And they would just reasonably say like, yes, that's a theory on paper, but science is about empiricism. So this is a live experiment. And some of them, I mean, one of my best friends from high school said, I am willing to be the control group. And that's his attitude. So you have to address those fears first. And the misinformation would take care of itself.

Yeah. So, Michael, let me ask you on that. I think we're all on the same page that, you know, some of the comments from the Biden administration recently are deeply troubling and authoritarian. And the idea that the government is going to tell all the social media platforms that you can be like internet death penalty for this or that person at their choosing, not good, right? But let's put that aside, okay? Would it work? Let's say that, you know, the Biden administration goes and these 12 people that they keep talking about are spreading so much of the misinformation. Let's say they get them offline. They're no longer able to share whatever vaccine misinformation they're sharing, do you think that would work to help reduce the fears of some of the people who continue to be vaccine hesitant?

No. I mean, censorship is the thing that I hear most often about as setting off people's spidey sense that something is sinister about point. It totally increases their distrust. And like I said, what they want to hear are some of the most common things. So for instance, the US government runs the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting Site, VAERS. Its data is public. It's available for everyone.

And during this vaccination drive, there's just been this huge surge of reporting across it of adverse events. Now, this is something you don't have to be a doctor to enter an event. I mean, people have said they've turned into the Hulk or other things. There's some really silly stuff on there. But lots of vaccine skeptics look at that site. That's not misinformation. That's government-hosted information. And no one in the government is really contextualizing it for them. And so all that's left is for Alex Berenson or Tucker Carlson to give context to that information. MIT found in a study of people who dissented from public health during COVID that they tended to use the same exact data sets as proponents of

public health orthodoxy. They just interpreted it in a different way. And so my view is that to counter what you deem misinformation, you don't need censorship. You need patient contextualization. You need more information, better information. Censorship would have the exact opposite effect that they want. And so, Michael, I think this is where it kind of – we were having a debate on the show today, which is that to what extent, here's what I would say. My basic posit was this. I was like, instead of talking about Facebook, look at the actual populations, lower middle class, blacks, whites, and Hispanics.

Find people who have credibility within those groups and send them through the deep South or wherever, where you see hotspots and people with vaccinations. But what Crystal was rightly saying is, I don't know if it will work. We pointed to a past, it was a past Frank Luntz focus group. So take that with the biggest grain of salt you can find. But they were like, look, I support Trump, but if he told me to get vaccinated, I wouldn't do anything about it. Do you think that it wouldn't have any impact on my decision? Is there, is there a way for quote unquote influencers, people with credibility and more to message this, or is it more of a bottom up phenomenon that we're seeing? It's, I, it depends how those influencers go about it. You know, If it's something completely independent, where it's literally just a

well-known internet celebrity just volunteering their experience, maybe some of them don't get vaccinated, and then they get seriously ill, and they share that story, and it goes viral. That would be more effective than something that is branded as a government ad, because then it feels like that's taking advantage. I mean, what I think you'll find and what some studies are starting to indicate is that vaccine hesitant people, some of them do end up taking the vaccine. They really are telling the truth when they say they were waiting to see what would happen. And some of the key influencers for them turn out to be their GP, right?

They're a doctor they've known for years. And it's a problem for America because lots of people don't have a GP. And maybe one reason why the UK has had so much success in uptake is because the NHS system, whatever you want to say about it, people can find their GP and they can get information from someone they know that has a medical background. When they're just looking at Tony Fauci telling you that, you know, your three-year-old has to mask outdoors or something like that, I mean, you might just think like this is some kind of fraud is at work here.

Okay, guys, thanks for watching. That was a 15-minute preview of what will be a longer conversation available to all of our premium subscribers, which is we give them two long-form interviews a month. Michael is one of the perfect people to do that with. If you want to become a premium subscriber today, link is right down there in the description notes. Premium members, you'll get the long-form interview with Michael

a little bit later today. We love you all so much, and we will see you all on Thursday. Love you guys. See you Thursday. Thanks for listening to the show, guys. We really appreciate it. To help other people find the show, go ahead and leave us a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. It really helps other people find the show. As always, a special thank you to Supercast

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Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation. I'm also the girl behind voiceover, the movement that exploded in 2024. You might hear that term and think it's about celibacy, but to me, voiceover is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's flexible, it's about celibacy. But to me, voiceover is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's flexible, it's customizable, and it's a personal process. Singleness is not a waiting room.

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