Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 7/22/21: FBI's Plot Exposed, Fauci vs Rand Paul, Ben & Jerry's, NSO Spyware Abuses, Frito-Lay Workers, Bezos's Space Trip, NPR Smears, Big Tech Dominance, and More!

Episode Date: July 22, 2021

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So what are you waiting for? Go to breakingpoints.com. Become a premium member today, which is available in the show notes. Enjoy the show, guys. Good morning, everybody. Happy Thursday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed, we do. Lots of sort of national security state type of stories that are incredibly fascinating. Of course, you guys have probably been following that big leak of all the journalists and heads of state, including Emmanuel Macron, who appear to have been spied on by this app that a lot of different governments have been able to buy that's created by an Israeli company. So we'll get into all of that. Workers have been on strike now for a while at Frito-Lay's new video

out that details some of the horrific conditions, including allegations that some workers committed suicide because the conditions were so horrific. Ben and Jerry's decided to stop selling ice cream in the occupied territories, and there has been a total freakout over that. Major blowup between Fauci and Rand Paul. We'll tell you who was right and who was wrong and all of that good stuff. We've also got Rachel Bovard in the show, her first appearance here. She actually came in the studio to talk about Facebook and antitrust and all of that. But we wanted to start with new details regarding that alleged kidnapping plot of Gretchen Whitmer. This was back in October, you'll recall, shortly before the election.

And there was a big press conference, allegations the FBI had disrupted this plot to kidnap Gretchen Whitmer. At the time, she was the focus of a lot of right wing ire because of her lockdown procedures, which were some of the most aggressive in the nation. We've been telling you for a while now that there were some indications that the very same tactics the FBI used during the war on terror to effectively radicalize and entrap young Muslim men seem to have been employed in this plot as well. BuzzFeed News, and we can throw this tear sheet up on the screen, BuzzFeed News has a fantastic new long read breakdown of exactly what we know about how this plot came to be. The journalists on this were Ken Bensinger and Jessica Garrison. Kudos to them for breaking down all the details here in a really effective way. And essentially, we already knew that there were more FBI informants, at least a dozen, than there were indicted co-conspirators in this alleged plot. grittier details about whether this plot would have even been a thing without the FBI going out of their way to encourage it, to incite it, to provide the money and the funding to get all

these people together so that they could create this plot that then the FBI with great fanfare goes and disrupts. So let's throw McKay Coppin's tweet here up on the screen that has some of the details, one of the quotes from this piece that BuzzFeed did. They say an examination of the case by BuzzFeed News reveals that some of those informants acting under the direction of the FBI played a far larger role than has previously been reported. Working in secret, they did more than just passively observe and report on the actions of the suspects, which is what you're supposed to do in these cases. Instead, they had a hand in nearly every aspect of the alleged plot, starting with its inception. The extent of their involvement raises questions as to whether there would have been a conspiracy without them. So again, not some right wing rag. This is a mainstream liberal oriented publication that is saying this may well have been set up by the FBI and would not have existed potentially based on the details that we're finding out without their encouragement and incitement and providing the funding and all of that. Yeah, there's a few more details. This is from Richard Hanania, who says, you know, as I said at the time, looks like this thing was fake. It appears that they were using the same type of tactics as in the war on terror

cases. So here are some of the details in this quote of what one of the informants was doing, just so you can get a sense of how integral they were. There's an Iraq war veteran who said to everybody at this meeting, listen, is everybody down with what's going on? If you're not down with a thought of kidnapping, someone else replied, don't sit here. The men planned for all kinds of obstacles, but there was one they didn't anticipate. The FBI had been listening in all along. That Iraq war vet for six months had been wearing a wire, gathering hundreds of hours of recording. He wasn't the only one.

A biker who had traveled from Wisconsin and joined the group was another informant. The man who'd advised them on where to put the explosives and offered to get them as much as the task would require. Also an undercover agent. So was a man in one of the other cars who said little and went by the name of Mark. So first time we're getting really specific details about just how integral all of these FBI informants, we already know there were at least a dozen involved, were in actually bringing this plot into something where the FBI could then come in and say, look, we disrupted this plot. And I want to be as extensive, I want to provide as much detail as possible because people need to understand this isn't us just talking. This is deep, deep involvement in terms of hatching this plot. So for example, this Iraq in terms of hatching this plot.

So, for example, this Iraq war vet, he seems to have been central. He was a government informant. He helped organize a series of meetings around the country where the plotters first met one another. The earliest notions of the plan took root, some of the people say. Then the informant paid for the hotel rooms and food as an incentive in order to get them to come. Then he became so deeply enmeshed in the plot that he rose to become second in command, encouraged the members to collaborate with potential suspects. He paid for the transportation of these people to the different meetings. And then he, as you could see in that quote that Crystal just read, he prodded the mastermind of the plot to advance his plan, then baited the trap that led to the arrest.

So look, this goes right up to the line of entrapment. If I was the defense of these gentlemen, looking at this, I would mount a pretty good entrapment defense. But the truth is, is that this is part of the very long war on terror. I began my career writing a lot about ISIS, the Islamic State, back in 2014 and more. And I remember reading some of the indictments. And they will put shivers up your spine because these are, look, it's easy because you're like, oh, these are terrorists. But you read a little bit more and you're like, some 18-year-old kid in the basement. He tweets out something like, glory to Allah, something. And then some anonymous count DMs him and is like, hey, brother, I'm with you.

They start talking for hours a day. This guy's a total loser. And he's sitting there. He talks to this guy for hours a day. He's a kind of mentor, trusted advisor. And he's like, we should do something. And he's like, yeah. He's like, we should buy tickets to Syria. And he's like sitting there. He talks to this guy for hours a day. He's a kind of mentor. Exactly. Trusted advisor. And he's like, we should do something. And he's like, yeah. He's like, we should buy tickets to Syria.

And he's like, yeah. He goes, do it. Go ahead and buy it. And he's like, okay. So he buys a ticket to Syria. And he's like, all right, brother, I'll meet you at the airport. And he's like, okay. So you come and you meet at the airport.

The moment you try and board that flight, they have intent. They say that, I forget, it's material support for terrorism. The moment you buy a flight and try and board a flight to Syria with the intent to travel to the Islamic State, boom, 25 to life. It's over. Same thing with a lot, there was a whole plot to attack a police station. And I remember, you know, the headline, you're like, oh my God, this is crazy. I think it was in Cincinnati.

You read further, they were like, they were like, you should buy a gun and then buy nails. And he's like, okay, where should I do that? They're like, this gun store. He's like, okay. So he goes to the gun store, buys a gun, brings it to his trunk. The moment he opens up the trunk, boom, feds come in, material support for terrorism, 25 to life. This is the same thing, except now it's expanding into domestic extremism, whatever the hell that means. I'm not saying these guys are good people, but here's the question. Were they going to do this crime if the government had not been involved? It looks pretty clear to me that they're not. And this goes for a long way back in the history of the FBI, back to Ruby Ridge and to Waco and big questions. And remember, those guys are Ruby Ridge in particular, Randy Weaver,

he got off in a court of law specifically because the jury was looking at what happened with the shotgun sale and more and said, look, I just don't think this whole thing would have happened if you guys hadn't prodded it. Well, you know, it's looking the same way here, Crystal. Well, and I think what you said is really important, which is like nobody is saying these are good dudes that you should be like friends with or like trust particularly or that they weren't up to anything nefarious here didn't have bad intent like we're not saying any of that about these individuals or some of the people who are prosecuted uh young muslim men during the war on terror but you have to understand that there are all these incentives embedded here to push the FBI and these confidential informants to basically push these young men into creating these plots and then disrupt them with a lot. This is how a lot of careers are made, number one. So there are individual personal incentives involved. Number

two, these informants are oftentimes either getting paid or their compensation is to let them off the hook for other legal trouble that they're in, which I'm going to get into that in a moment as well. And from the macro level, the sense among the public that there are all these plots out there and you're in grave danger and they're just one moment away from this horrific kidnapping plot going off and they're trying to spark a civil war or during the war on terror. It's like, oh my God, we just thank God that they disrupted this plot that was imminent to bomb the Herald Square subway stop in New York

and just imagine all the people that would have been injured. And so when you have people afraid, they are much easier to control and what does it justify? It justifies more surveillance. It justifies more power to these very agencies, more budget, more power, more power vested with the executive, all of those things. And again, careers are made and there are a lot of politicians who use the disruption of these plots, especially in New York City, go back and look at some of the characters involved there, use that to further their own career.

So there are a lot of incentives involved to try to hatch and create and then disrupt these sorts of plots. So we also have to ask ourselves, who were some of these informants that were involved? Just to give you a sense of who some of the incredible men and women that the FBI is working with to keep us safe from the bad guys.

So one of the primary informants who's already been called to testify and provide context to some of these recorded conversations. This guy was just arrested for domestic assault. So allegedly assaulted his wife. These details are from the Detroit News. I just saw it this morning, so we don't have a tear sheet for you. But here's some of the details of what his wife alleges he did. They arrived home from a swingers party. Trask got on top of her in their bed, then grabbed the side of her head and smashed it several times on the nightstand. She attempted

to grab his beard to free herself, and he began to choke her around the neck and throat with both hands, according to the affidavit. She ultimately grabbed his testicles, which ended the altercation. He then fled the home and was ultimately arrested. Oh, and by the way, this is the second of the FBI informants involved just in this one case that has been indicted. He's not just an informant. He's an FBI special agent. He was an informant, but he was also a special agent of the FBI. He's been working with them for a decade.

Okay. So these are the type of people who they're using, who again, have all kinds of, whether oftentimes they're getting paid or they're in some type of other legal trouble and they agree to cooperate with the FBI to get out of their own legal trouble to then go in and, you know, encourage these guys to come up with this plot to kidnap Gretchen Whitmer. The whole thing just completely stinks. Yeah, they're

not sending their best folks. And there's a broader political narrative to this, too. And look, it's uncomfortable to talk about this entire thing. It broke open October 8th, 2020. You might think of that as exactly one month before the presidential election in the state of Michigan involving a key swing state, which Donald Trump only won by like 10,000 votes in 2016. Look, you'd be a fool not to look at the political implications of this. And try and put yourself back in the political mindset of what was happening then. Gretchen Whitmer was, you know, persona non grata among the right. She was a media hero. Joe Biden specifically. Didn't she fly? I think she took a special charter jet to be considered for vice president. She was a big time person up at the DNC.

This became one of the biggest media stories of the month and really spawned a lot of the freak out, which then culminated, of course, on January 6th when there really was a real riot. But try to remember politically how she milked it at the time. Let's take a listen to what she said. When our leaders meet with, encourage, or fraternize with domestic terrorists, they legitimize their actions, and they are complicit. Hatred, bigotry, and violence have no place in the great state of Michigan. If you break the law or conspire to commit heinous acts of violence against anyone, we will find you, we will hold you accountable and we will

bring you to justice. I mean, there it is, Crystal, which is Gretchen Whitmer got a lot of political juice out of this. There were a lot of people in the state of Michigan who pointed to it as Trump extremism and all of that. And look, it just seems to me that as while these gentlemen may be odious and more, I do not think reading this evidence and reading so much of what they were involved in the plot that this would have happened if the FBI had not pushed them helped the Biden campaign in the state of Michigan, where ultimately it didn't win by that much. It was only a couple of points, I think about 150,000 votes. So, you know, you be the judge as to whether this had an impact. These climates of fear that are created around terror, you know, whether it was the war on terror, Muslim extremism, or whether it's now with domestic terrorism,

they are oftentimes used for political ends. And a perfect example I referenced before, the Herald Square bomber that we've talked to you about before, that disruption occurred days before the RNC. Oh, wow. That's right. Yeah. So, and again, big press. Oh, my God. Thank God we're kept safe from these bad guys. We got to stick with the person who's going to keep us safe and is going to be tough on these terrorists and make sure that we don't have another 9-11. This is a lot of how George W. Bush was ultimately reelected, was the sense among people of like, we have to be afraid. There's all these plots, all these nefarious actors out there. I remember seeing these reports of like they've identified terrorists in all 50 states and all of this stuff.

And empirically, I'm not just cherry picking here, like the journalists who have looked into each of these instances where people were prosecuted during the war on terror, a disproportionate number, these sorts of dynamics existed. You had oftentimes, you know, young Muslim man who was either impoverished at the margins of society. There were some instances where they were even developmentally disabled.

Those are the sorts of people who would be targeted. And then some FBI informant would come in and mentor them and encourage them. The Herald Square bombing, they showed them images of Abu Ghraib. Isn't this terrible? Isn't this horrible? Like, actually help them along the radicalization process and then push these plots. And all that climate of fear is used to justify certain political ends. So be very – that's why these stories are important because it's not just a one-off.

These are tactics that are used time after time after time. They're used to bolster political careers. They're used to justify further surveillance. They're used, you know, whether it's the Patriot Act or now the talk of, like, we need a new domestic terror law. You can see what's happened with the Capitol Police. Even though they totally screwed up everything on January 6th, we're going to give these people now more power, more budget. They're going to open field offices across the country. Don't be fooled by this.

Don't buy into their climate of fear. Yes. Are there problems with domestic? Of course, yes, there are. We've had that history for a long time in our country. Law enforcement already has all the tools that they need and more, as you can see here, to try to get in there and disrupt those plots. We should also be asking ourselves the question of if they had 12 informants involved in this, embedded in this, you know, three percenter

group in Michigan, then why the hell didn't they know what was going to happen on January 6th? And why weren't they able to disrupt that actual plot as well is a great question to ask here too. But this is all part of a bigger picture of the FBI, the way they operate. And it's bipartisan here. It's things that are convenient for the right, things that are convenient for liberals under the Biden era, and all of it needs to be called out. Absolutely. I do have one update for you, which was flagged by a friend of mine on the Capitol Police. So we brought you that story a couple of weeks ago about Capitol the Capitol Police is expanding all across the country, new offices, all of that. Well, I just found out why, Crystal. It turns out that by an act of Congress, the Freedom of

Information Act, the Freedom of Information Act does not apply to only one branch of government, the congressional branch of government, which means that what the feds can do is they can actually funnel some of their more controversial surveillance operations through the Capitol Police, which means they are not subject to the Freedom of Information Act requests from any of us. So they can launder a lot of what they want to do and hide from the public within the confines of the Capitol Police. And with the Capitol Police, you and I, we have no idea. That is why currently, we still don't know a lot about January 6th. The only transparency we have over Capitol Police

is what they have to publicly testify to before Congress, and that's only if Congress wants to call them to account. So there you go. It's a whole plot in order to keep you making sure that you don't know how those people are spending your money on surveillance. It's one of the most dystopian things I've ever heard. Wow, that's

wild. No idea about that. Yeah. Okay. Another interesting story here. I'm sure you guys probably follow this. This has been a personal pet peeve of mine, Dr. Fauci and more. And we'll say this at the top. Look, you don't have to like Rand Paul. It doesn't really matter what you think about Rand Paul. He does happen to be actually be a medical doctor, which makes him one of the better questioners of Dr. Fauci about gain of function research. To set up this clip, they had previously sparred in which Dr. Fauci repeatedly tried to define the stuff that the National Institute of Health was funding as not gain-of-function research. Therefore, he could repeatedly say it's not gain-of-function, we've never funded gain-of-function,

when in reality what they were funding is gain-of-function research by any reasonable definition of the term, which is enhancing viruses which will be more infectious towards humans to then study them. Again, this is what at the time was considered a legitimate research funding. This is something Dr. Fauci has bet on for his entire career. That previous sparring is important for context of this clip where Fauci continues to obfuscate. Let's take a listen to the full exchange. I want you to get all of it. Dr. Fauci, knowing that it is a crime to lie to Congress, do you wish to retract your statement of May 11th where you claimed that the NIH never funded gain-of-function research in Wuhan? Senator Paul, I have never lied before the Congress, and I do not retract that statement.

This paper that you're referring to was judged by qualified staff up and down the chain as not the that you're talking about. You're talking about the transmission of the virus. You're talking about the transmission of the virus. You're not saying that officially. You do not know what you are talking about. Okay, you get one person. Let's read from the NIH.

Can I answer the question? This is your definition that you guys wrote. It says that scientific research that increases the transmissibility among animals is gain of function. They took animal viruses that only occur in animals and they increased their transmissibility to humans. How you can say that is not gain of function? It is not. It's a dance and you're dancing around this because you're trying to obscure responsibility for four million

people dying around the world from a pandemic. And let's let's send Dr. Fauci. I have to. Well, now you're getting into something. If the point that you are making is that the the grant that was funded as a sub award from eco health to Wuhan created SARS-CoV-2 that's where you are getting let me finish we don't know well wait a minute it did come to the lab but all the evidence is pointing that it came from the lab you there will be responsibility for those who funded the lab, including yourself. I totally resent. This committee will allow the witness to respond.

I totally resent the lie that you are now propagating, Senator. Okay, let's be clear here. There's no lie that's being propagated. What's happening there is that Dr. Fauci is obfuscating the fact that he green-lid a grant to the EcoHealth Alliance for gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. What he's trying to do is play games and say that specific grant, there's no way that the specific viruses that they worked on under that one grant would have led to the COVID-19 pandemic.

As Rand Paul continues to say, nobody is saying that. What they are saying is that you funded this lab. This lab was doing work, which was all around enhancing bat coronaviruses. And that is what could have led to the COVID-19 pandemic as a result of an accidental lab leak. Nobody's even saying that this happened on purpose. But over and over again, he continues to play these definitional word games. And he has, I mean, look, being sassy back to U.S. Senator, sure, it can be funny. But I think we've even

done a segment where actually I think Fauci did own him. It was back on something about lockdowns or whatever. But on this particular case, what Fauci is betting on is that the media will have his back. And I thought Josh Rogin, journalist, we've had him here on the show, probably the best authority there on LabLeak, put it the best. Let's put his tweet up there because he puts it really well, which is, look, guys, it doesn't matter. Rand Paul was right. Fauci was wrong. The NIH was funding gain-of-function research in Wuhan, but the NIH pretended it didn't meet their, quote,

gain-of-function definition to avoid their own oversight mechanism. Sorry, not sorry, if that doesn't fit your favorite narrative. And there is basically no better way in order to put this. The sad part, though, Crystal, is that the media ate it up. How do you think that they all reported this? Look at this. CNBC, tear sheet. Let's put it up there. They're like, sorry, Senator Paul, you do not know what you were talking about. If anybody's lying here, Senator, it is you. This is where you know that Fauci is no longer actually a doctor,

and he's basically just a media star who exists to go on Rachel Maddow and more. He knew that that would be all over liberal primetime. And he was right. I hate to say it. The truth is, the media continues to gaslight and obfuscate all the facts on lab leak. And they, you know, they wrote it up as some triumphant Fauci v. Paul moment when the truth is, like I said, you don't have to like Rand Paul. Rand Paul was 100% correct in that clip. Let me just say that I would love to watch Rand Paul get owned in a way that was actually righteous. Nothing would give me like I'm cheering for someone to do that. But I have to admit in this case, and this is the thing. Nothing would give me like I'm cheering for someone to do that. But I have to admit in this case and this is the thing, the way that the thing that Josh Rogin tweeted is really important.

Why are they trying to obfuscate on this? And it's because gain of function research, not to get too technical here, but it's been controversial in the scientific community for a long time. There was a ban on funding this type of research under the Obama administration. Fauci himself actually published an op-ed in the Washington Post talking about how you really got to carefully weigh the cost and benefit of doing this type of research. So the NIH has these oversight mechanisms in place if you are doing or funding gain-of-function research. So that gives them an incentive to go out of their way to find a loophole to be able to say, well, this isn't precisely gain of function research. So in some ways, this argument is kind of stupid because they're literally arguing over the technical definition of gain of function research. It's like, you know, whose definition is right?

My definition that I used, Fauci's, that I used all these, like, legalese to try to get through the loophole to say this isn't gain-of-function research, or the, frankly, more broadly, widely understood definition of gain-of-function research. So it's kind of a distinction without a difference here. But for Fauci, it's there's a lot at stake because and for all a lot of scientists who've been involved in either doing this type of research or funding this type of research, there's a lot at was involved with funding and the origins of the pandemic, which also gives him an incentive, which he's continued to do, to downplay the possibility that it leaked from the lab. Now, he is at this point acknowledged, sure, it's possible, but we just played you the clip recently of him continuing to say, but I really think it's more likely that it, you know, was natural origin, zoonotic origin.

Those are the incentives that are in place for him. Now, look, are both of them, look, Rand Paul got a lot of love for this too. So let's not kid ourselves. Both of them are playing for the cameras. Both of them are playing to a certain constituency. And frankly, they're both very effective at knowing how to play that role and how to play that part ultimately. But it is important to understand the incentives that are involved here, the way that the most prominent public health official in the nation is trying to gaslight you, and the way that the media is happy to play along with all that. That is frankly where I'm the most disturbed, which is that Joe Biden, if he really wanted a

real lab leak investigation, you have to start with Dr. Fauci. That's why they want the WHO to do it, and they don't want to do it. Any U.S. government real investigation would find that Dr. Fauci has continually lied, or at the very least retracted some of his lies, has obfuscated before the Congress, misled on key facts, has protected his friend Dr. Peter Daszak, as Daszak himself thanked him, as we know, according to the Fauci emails, that Fauci himself was in possession of an email January of 2020, which said the virus is, quote, not consistent with evolutionary theory. I mean, the timeline of events here is so damning for him. And if any of it were to ever be really acknowledged by the

Biden administration or the U.S. government, Fauci would have to be fired. There's just no question as to how he has conducted himself. I'm talking no lockdowns, all that stuff aside, in terms of what he talked about on public health guidance. I'm speaking purely on origins of the coronavirus. He is not an honest actor. And the media is just doing his bidding the washington post wrote it up exactly the same way and i knew they would in the latest clash over the wuhan lab fauci tells senator rand paul you do not know what you are talking about senator and i guarantee you that was a pre-planned hit you can see how he got all sassy he wanted that clip to go viral the fauci's it was trending on twitter everyone's's like Fauci owns Rand Paul.

All these dunces who all their job is in order to clip stuff and then put it out there as some sort of propaganda. That's essentially what happened. And you're not going to hear the truth from most people who cover this. They're just going to be like, ha, see, we hate Rand and look at Fauci. He's the one with the real credibility. It's complicated, folks. I mean, here's the problem.

Rand Paul also was like super anti-mask, anti-lockdown all the way back in the day. I'm not saying these people. We got a big fundraising bum out of this, too. He came in with like a very, you know, preplanned like for his own media spectacle moment as well. There are no good. It's Washington. All right. You're going to get dirty.

I do. I do want to emphasize something that you said that I think is important, because sometimes in this conversation, you can get the impression. And I do think this is intentional on the part of Rand Paul and others that it's possible this particular research that Fauci funded directly led to the pandemic. That's not the case. And Fauci is accurate when he says, like, there's no way that this particular grant led to the coronavirus pandemic. And Rand does try to, like, when he makes that comment about, you know, millions of people, you're trying to escape culpability for millions of people dying in the coronavirus pandemic. It does try to make it sound a little bit like it was this specific research that led to the pandemic. So I just want to be really clear. That's not what I'm saying.

That's not what nobody's saying. That's not what you know. That's not what's being alleged here. The allegation is that Fauci was involved in funding gain of function research at this particular lab and is now trying to sort of gaslight to be totally like, we have nothing to do with this whatsoever. No, that's the issue. And look, if you want a real investigation of the origins of the coronavirus, then this is certainly something we have to go down that path. But as long as he continues to be the face of public health in the United States, we are not going to get it. And it is really a tragedy that the media is completely on his story because, and this is the point Josh Rogin always makes, which I think is so important. The scientific community's response to COVID has been to say we need $1.2 billion, 10 times more amount of funding for gain of function.

And they're going to start the Global Firearm Project. And they're going to start this and ramp it all the way up. They're calling for cooperation with China and all that. This is the worst possibility. If there's a possibility, we'll probably never know for sure at this point. The Chinese have destroyed all the evidence. We'll probably never know. But at this point, would you really want to bet? Let's say there's a 50% shot of which I would put a lot of money on. You're going to put 1.2 billion into more of this type of research? You said this before. We almost already know what we

need to know around the dangers of gain of function. Let's have a serious debate in this country. Gain of function or not. What are the strictures we're going to put around it? Are we going to allow liars like Fauci to define things out of the realm so then they don't have to meet reporting standards? I'm not for that. If we're going to have that, if our dollars are going to go towards it, we need the most

stringent reporting mechanisms required. But that's not what's happening here. Well, because the reality is the reason I say we already know what we need to know is whether or not the origins of this pandemic were from, you know, a lab leak. We do know that viruses leak out of labs regularly. When you're engaging this type of research, it seems to me from layman's perspective, there is much greater risk of sparking something that's really, really bad than there is of the ideas that you're trying to prevent something that is really, really bad. So, frankly, whether or not we ever get to the roots of how this pandemic started, I think we already know enough to know that gain-of-function research is extraordinarily dangerous, something that scientists, including Dr. Fauci, have long known and talked about. But this is proof positive that we should be going in a different direction. That's right. 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. Right. Okay. So we're only doing hot button issues today here on Breaking Points. Let's talk about Ben and Jerry's, the famous ice cream brand. They announced this started a firestorm here and in the Middle East. Let's put this up there on the screen. So Ben and Jerry's, they have decided to stop selling ice cream in Israeli-occupied territories. Now, for the politically correct way to say that, they're not going to sell any more ice cream in the West Bank from markets which are inside of the West Bank. So this is part of the BDS movement.

It's actually, as I understand it, not even really – because I know there's all these divisions within BDS. Like some people in BDS are like nothing with Israel whatsoever. This is straight up just like we're not going to sell ice cream in the West Bank. We will still sell ice cream in Israel. I think it's important, actually, a fact on this. That is an important distinction. And some people in BDS were somewhat critical saying like thank you, but also don't sell it in Israel. That's right. Yeah. Okay. So that there was criticism of them there. Now, look, they're an American company. They can do

whatever the hell they want. Well, there are some American politicians who don't agree with that, as long as Israeli politicians. So let's put this up there. And this is this really boils my blood. So we have here Yair Lapid. So Yair Lapid is the foreign minister of the state of Israel, a.k.a. like the Secretary of State. And please keep this up here for a while because I want to read from it. He says, quote, anti-BDS legislation in recent years. I plan on asking each of them to enforce these laws against Ben and Jerry's. They will not treat the state of Israel like this without a response.

So here's why it pisses me off. This is Israel, which we do have anti-BDS laws on the books in about 30 states. And by the way, if it ever gets to SCOTUS, there's no way in hell that it will ever stand up against our free speech provisions. But here you have the foreign minister of the state of Israel trying and interfering, essentially, going to 30 different states and asking them to enforce laws on the books to punish an American company for its stance on foreign policy in another state. And the reason I put it that way is, okay, you have an attachment to the state of Israel, that's fine. But here's the deal. No foreign country gets to tell us what our companies are going to say or not say. And even worse, no foreign country is going to police

what an American citizen is going to believe and state in terms of their politics in their homeland. Now, look, I go to Israel, I'm subject to their laws. I'm under their territory. In our country, you do not get to come and tell our people how to behave or not, no matter how you believe, what you believe about the way. You could be the biggest Zionist in the world. It doesn't matter. Which is that if you're an American citizen, this flies completely in the face of our politics, of our constitution, of our aspiration towards freedom of speech for all. And it really, really pissed me off because it's not just them. This is a full bore effort by the Israeli government. The U.S. ambassador. The Israeli ambassador to the United States from Israel, let's put this up there, Gilad Erdan, said the same thing. He says, in coordination,

I have sent a letter to 35 governors of U.S. states that have legislation against the BDS movement targeting Israel. I urge them to act against Ben and Jerry's decision to not sell its products in the east part of Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria. We will make clear to Ben and Jerry's it is an anti-Semitic decision that will have consequences. And this, again, is something which they do not get to define our domestic politics, how our laws are going to be enforced against companies. And it's just something, Crystal, that I don't care where you really fall on the political spectrum.

You can't be for this if you're an American and if you're freedom of speech. You cannot have foreign countries dictating to you how your own companies are going to behave themselves. I say this when it comes to China. I would say it when it comes to Russia. And I'll say it also whenever it comes to the state of Israel. Yes. And as you accurately pointed out, every single time these anti-BDS laws have been tested in court, they have been deemed unconstitutional. This recently happened actually with journalist Abby Martin in the state of Georgia. She was supposed to go and give a

university speech at a public university. As part of doing that and receiving an honorarium for speaking, she was supposed to sign some anti-BDS pledge. If you know anything about Abby Martin, she said, go F yourself and took it to court and won. Just like every single time these laws have been challenged, they have been deemed unconstitutional because they are clearly a violation of Americans' First Amendment rights in Texas. This is a case that Glenn Greenwald followed when he was at the Intercept. That's right. There was a woman who was a speech therapist. The state of Texas has a law that says if you're a public employee, then you have to sign this anti-BDS pledge.

Imagine telling someone like to be a teacher in your state, you have to sign a law saying you're not going to criticize this other country. Like what? Shameful. What is that? And again, when challenged in court, that ultimately was struck down. So they are demanding that American states enforce laws that are blatantly unconstitutional. And we would be remiss if we didn't point out that there were a lot of politicians who were happy to back them up in demanding things of American citizens and American state governments.

This is Senator Lankford, who was talking about who's calling on Israel, calling on states. Let's see, what does he say here? Biden thinks, okay. So he says, Ben and Jerry's has now decided they know more about Jerusalem than the Israelis. If Ben and Jerry's wants to have a meltdown and boycott Israel, okay, Oklahoma is ready to respond. Oklahoma has an anti-boycott of Israel law in place. We should immediately block the sale of all Ben and Jerry's in the state and in any state operated facility to align with our law. On the other side of this graphic, you can see what he said one day earlier where he was blasting Biden for his attacks on free speech. Biden thinks free speech is dangerous. Oklahomans don't need the Biden thought police telling us how to think and feel.

So just blatant hypocrisy one day apart. So day before he's like, yes, free speech, First Amendment, Biden don't trample on our rights. And the very next day, we should immediately block the sale of all Ben and Jerry's because they said something that I don't like. Yeah, really incredible. I mean, no, it shows you exactly the hypocrisy here. And look, U.S. politicians who are trying to censor an American company for their stance on foreign policy, that is just completely out of bounds. And it also delegitimizes anything that they say about like, we're not going to let Coca-Cola or whatever, you know, have a response on Georgia. I'm like, you're trying to go after Ben and Jerry's.

What is this for their this? And that's not even about America. This is in Israel. Look, if Ben and Jerry's wants to voluntarily give up its sales in the West Bank, why does it impact the people of Oklahoma whatsoever? Zero, nothing. Okay. I think they would rather their senator be working on something else. And this goes to a true critique, which Glenn always brings up, and I think he's correct. If you really believe in America first, and I actually do, I actually truly believe in America first, you cannot have foreign governments dictating to you what type of laws you're going to have on your books and enforce them against your own country's

companies. That just flies in the face of any sort of celebration of sovereignty, of borders, of nationalism, and of a unified people here in the United States. Nobody gets to tell us what to do, no matter who you are. And this is just something where the hubris to think that, I mean, I think it's amazing that they think they can get away with this and not have domestic, uh, domestic political pushback. I will bet this, which is that any American out there who does find out about this, no matter how they feel about Israel, it's going to be like, this is BS. I bet you they didn't even know about the BDS laws because a lot of these legislatures just pass them and it doesn't really get, um, publicized.

And I'm, I'm personally waiting for one of these things to go to SCOTUS because all of them deserve to get struck down tomorrow. It's in total violation of our Constitution. That is an interesting question of whether this is going to be a sort of Streisand effect, where once people learn that these laws are in the books, they're like, wait,

what? Actually, to this point, Abby Martin was on Joe Rogan's podcast and Joe had no idea. And she was explaining these anti BDS laws. He's like, this is bullshit. He's like, I've never heard of this in my life. He goes, this is the craziest thing I've ever heard. Why are you an American citizen and basically take a pledge to another country's government? What? In order to work or go give a speech or anything like that is, I think most people, if it's presented in a remotely fair way, would say that this is completely bananas. And that's why they, you know,

always just lead with this is, this is anti-Semitism. Actually, I wanted to add to the list of Israeli politicians who'd weighed in on this in this extraordinarily aggressive way. Israel's president, Isaac Herzog, called the boycott of Israel a new kind of terrorism on Wednesday because of what happened with Ben and Jerry, which, you know, it's there. There are two things about the Israeli government response here that are interesting. First of all, in that initial tweet from Yair Lapid that we had up on the screen, he says that they're boycotting Israel. Well, no, they're only not selling in the occupied territories. But it kind of gives up the game that in reality, Israel controls all of these spaces and sees it as their right to control

and locked all of these spaces. So that was very revealing. But the other thing here is that the Israeli government's line on BDS is simultaneously that it's not having any impact and it's pathetic and it's doomed to failure and we're getting more investment than ever before. So that's half of the reaction. And the other half of the reaction is a total and complete unhinged freak out. Those two things don't really fit together. If it's no big deal and it's not having a big impact, then why are you so freaked out?

And I think there is a concern that there will be a kind of moral reckoning and a snowball effect as, you know, these little instances here and there add up. And so that leads to this just over the top calling this terrorism and threatening American states and all of this stuff. It leads to this incredibly insane over the top reaction that I think, to your point, probably doesn't serve their interests ultimately in terms of American public opinion. And they really like let's also be really clear. The U.S. is really important in allowing Israel to maintain the status quo as it exists right now in that territory. I've tried to explain this to them, and they always get pissed whenever I say that.

As I'm like, listen, you guys are the ones who broke the bipartisan consensus on Israel in Washington. You guys were actually pretty good before the Iran deal. If you actually think about our domestic politics in 2013 and more in terms of both parties being pro-Israel. But I'm like, your prime minister came to our country in our Congress to badmouth and campaign against our president. And listen, I don't like Obama. I'm not like some big fan. It doesn't matter. You don't get to come to our country, opine and lobby in our politics against at the invitation of the opposition party. You aligned yourself with the Republican Party. You made yourself a part of the matter. Deal with the consequences. That's your fault. I've explained this to them a million times. They're like, you know, they always have

something. Oh, you don't understand, you know, all of this. And I'm like, listen, like you had really. Yeah, I spent a lot of time. I like Israel. By the way, Israeli government, I'm supposed to go to a wedding there in a couple of months. Please don't ban. Good luck, brother. Because of this segment, you are allowed to question and detain me at the airport. It would be annoying. But, you know, whatever. It's your country. But please don't ban me because my friend would be very upset. I have you know, it, it's amazing that they have the hubris, the government in particular, to think that they can do this. But I truly believe that the Rubicon moment for them is when Netanyahu came here in 2015

and he spoke at our Congress, lobbied against Obama. That opened up a whole bunch of mainstream Democratic politicians to say, hey, this is screwed up. You can't do this. And that was the door through which BDS and people like Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib and more have become a lot more. I'm not the mainstream necessarily, but let's be honest, in terms of the way that the Gaza thing was covered this time, it tilted a lot more in their direction than ever before. And I think that's the norm now in American politics.

And I think among young Americans, especially young progressives, there's just a it's very sort of morally clear on this issue. I mean, this is like the one issue where I saw the left come together post Bernie Sanders was like everybody was like, this is outrageous what's happening and we can't take our eye off the ball. So, on the other hand, Ned Price, what's his title? He's the spokesperson for the State Department. State Department, who's got a long and checkered history. CIA spokesman. Yeah. Spook. He was asked to respond to all of this, and, of course, he weren't deeply opposed to BDS, et cetera, et cetera. So the holders of power in institutional Washington, primarily the president and his administration, still towing the same old line on this stuff.

But you're right to point out there has been a definite opening and a shift in terms of how this conversation unfolds. And I do think that the Israelis are very sensitive and very sort of freaked out about that potential. I blame them. I think it's their fault. All right. This is some truly bombshell developments here. I don't know if you guys have been following this. So first we got reports that this Israeli cyber surveillance company, more Israel here, NSO Group, which has a product called Pegasus, which they've been selling to foreign governments and agencies like not the FBI, but the equivalent of the CIA in other countries, that that Pegasus app essentially allows you to hack into anyone's phone.

And you don't even have to, like, click on a link. If you just receive a message from this group, they can then get into your phone, see your messages, see your photos, all of your data is there. So there's long been questions about whether this group, NSO group, which Anita Dunn's, uh, uh, lobbying shop lobbies for, by the way, uh, anyway, whether they were actually policing the people they were selling this software to, to make sure it was being used appropriately. And, of course, they've always said, and they continue to say, yes, of course, we cut contracts if we find that they're abusing the software whatsoever, because this is incredibly, incredibly powerful, lets you into people's phones to see whatever you want. Well, here's the first news report.

Major Israeli cyber surveillance company NSO Group came under heightened scrutiny Sunday after an international alliance of news outlets reported that governments using this software targeted journalists, dissidents, and opposition politicians. By the way, the Israeli government is also facing renewed international pressure for allowing the company to do business with authoritarian regimes that use the spyware for purposes that go far afield of the company's stated aim, which is supposedly targeting terrorists and criminals. As the week has gone on, we have learned more about exactly who was allegedly targeted with this intense surveillance. So we already knew that journalists from countries including Azerbaijan, France, Hungary, India, and Morocco, it appeared that they had been hacked. But we also learned that heads of state appear to have been targeted by this software, which would again allow whoever is behind it to see everything that is going on their phone. This is from the Washington Post. Here's who's on the list.

Three sitting presidents. I think we have a tear sheet for this. France's Emmanuel Macron. Iraq's Barham Saleh. South Africa's, I'm going to screw up all these names, Cyril Ramaphosa. Three current prime ministers from Pakistan, Egypt, Morocco. Seven former prime ministers, and one king,

king of Morocco. So heads of state, prime ministers, a king, all these people targeted allegedly by this Pegasus software. And again, they denied, et cetera, et cetera. But Washington Post was able to go in and essentially they got this a list of phone numbers um this this leak was like a list of 50,000 phone numbers that were allegedly targeted by this surveillance software they were able through their own journalistic network to confirm that these numbers belong to people like Emmanuel Macron etc some of them even answer the phone right yeah and then um the way that they were able to confirm that these phone numbers appear to have been targeted is in some of the lower level people. I don't think they were able to do this with like the Kings and the prime ministers

and whatever that were targeted, but some of the journalists and activists and dissidents who were targeted, they were able to examine the phones and see that they had been targeted by this software. And that served as confirmation that this list is, in fact, accurate and that all of these individuals were being surveilled. Some of the other high-profile, one other high-profile case of people who were targeted by this Pegasus software is a lot of people that were around Jamal Khashoggi, so people who were close to Jamal Khashoggi. And we know that the Saudi government has purchased this software. It has a contract with NSO. So this is really scary for a lot of reasons. It's a combination of, you know, business and government, total intrusion into your life as we live so much of our lives on our phones. Journalists have to wonder, like, anything I'm sending here, even in encrypted apps, is not really private. How can I possibly do my job and not fear for my life if these authoritarian governments are able to track my every word and every movement?

Very scary, very scary indicator, not just of things to come, but of where things stand today, because by the way, this isn't the only company that is doing this sort of thing. Absolutely. To your point, which you previewed there, which is that this firm's got deep ties here in Washington. Biden's former campaign manager, Anita Dunn, who now works at

the White House and number two communications aid, well, she used to lobby for this firm. Let's put that up there from Kenneth Vogel. He found this, that NSO group was behind the spyware, Communications aid. Well, she used to lobby for this firm. So let's put that up there from Kenneth Vogel. He found this, that NSO Group was behind the spyware. Aid SKD Knickerbocker, which is Biden advisor Anita Dunn's firm for advice until late 2019. NSA Group also paid Beacon Global Strategies, which was started by Jeremy Bash. You might know him from MSNBC.

Well, until early 2020, he was on the payroll. It said that SKD Knickerbocker, Anita Dunn's firm, quote, provided communications and business strategy advice. So Biden's former campaign manager, right before taking the job, on the payroll for this firm. I'm not saying they had inside information or whatever, but it goes to show you these people weren't a joke. They knew what they were doing. You only pay SKD, Knickerbocker, and Beacon Global Strategies if you've got deep pockets and you need real defense for the military industrial complex. Well, you didn't need to have any inside info about, you know, just how widespread the abuse of this Pegasus software ultimately was. There have long been a lot of reports and a lot of questions about why are you selling this to the Saudis? You think they're going to use this in like a, you know, in a completely above board way?

They're famous for doing that. Yeah, and a lot of the countries that this was sold to, they keep their client list secret so that you can't know exactly which countries, but a lot of the countries that they were selling to, these were not like incredible bastions of democracy, authoritarian governments, that it's no surprise we're using this in ways that

it should not ultimately be used. This is a tremendous, tremendous amount of power being given to some very sketchy players around the globe. And this list of 50,000 cell phone numbers that was leaked that, you know, were allegedly targeted and surveilled. This is people across 600 government officials and politicians from 34 countries, and the names themselves were caught across 50 different countries. So this is around the globe. Journalists from the AP and the New York Times and CNN who were working overseas, their numbers were on this list. So really troubling, really widespread. And frankly, I think we're only going to learn more here about what exactly,

who exactly was targeted and what exactly this information was being used for. Yeah, I think there's still a lot, there's a lot still left to come out about this. Edward Snowden had said this is going to be one of the biggest leak investigations for a long time. And it's very possible there are troves of data on all these people, private communications and more, not just from the journalists, from the heads of state that could come out. It could be a whole WikiLeaks 2.0 thing. Yeah, and activists too. Activists too, which is really troubling.

And it goes to show we need a lot more regulation around this type of stuff. And by the way, Apple, what happened? Tim Apple told me that I have the most secure phone on Earth, right? And it's like, oh, we don't work with the FBI, but now apparently these Israelis know how to hack all our phones. And then they're willing to sell this data to some of the most nefarious people on the planet. So everybody take care of your phone.

Shout out to the one guy who once told me that I opened my phone password here on Rising. He's like, I know your password. You should change it. What's so scary about this, though, and the Apple thing is real because they've long touted their security procedures. And I do think they actually care about it more than other companies. But it didn't matter. Android, Apple, it didn't matter.

And the other thing that's really troubling here is there's not really anything you can do to protect yourself. Because, you know, a lot of these sorts of things, you have to get the sketchy text message. You have to actually click on the link for your phone to be infected. I never do. Don't do that. But the reports are you don't even have to do that. If you just receive the text message, you're already hosed. So there's, like, literally nothing you can do. There's no password

hygiene or any of that that you can use to protect yourself against that which is as evidenced by the fact that people like Emmanuel Macron, who I'm sure does what he can to keep his stuff protected, that even he would be vulnerable and again, doesn't matter if you're using

Signal or one of the other encrypted apps, still not protected, still not truly secret here. So that's what's so scary about it. There's like nothing you can do to protect yourself. There are all these rogue regimes out there that have this type of technology. You're going to use it against anyone that they don't happen to like who maybe does like a mean segment about them on a YouTube show when they want to go and like go to a wedding. Just let me go to my friend's wedding. Okay, please.

Very troubling. Yeah. Speaking of very troubling, I don't know if you guys have been following this. Workers, about 850 workers for Frito-Lay in Topeka, Kansas have been on strike now for a while and new, more and more details are coming out about the conditions that were facing these workers, which are completely outrageous, which led them to engage in this now multi-week strike. Let's take a look at a little bit of one of the most recent videos that came out talking about their plight. Company says we're shocked they went on strike. How are you shocked? Did you think that we would go to 90 hours before we would hit the streets?

Force overtime causes divorces. It caused people to kill themselves that used to work here. Okay, there have been several employees that have killed themselves, okay, that have worked here over the years. Okay, this is a continual thing. It destroys marriages, it destroys families. We have to do something with the suicide shifts because to work 12 hours and be off eight and work 12 hours, you got time, travel time and everything. I said, that's a safety risk. Imagine being an employee in here that has not

had a day off for five months. That is the reality of what you're seeing. That is the reality of why you're really seeing the picket over here. Four or five years ago, we had a guy and man, he was working all the time and he stopped off at a rest stop on i-70 and he fell asleep and you know he didn't wake up company wants to call it a squeeze shift it's it isn't squeezing about it it's suicide That is so cool. The point system is like totally. Yeah, and for those who are just listening, they had text up on the screen. More Perfect Union, by the way, guys, they do a great job.

That says that you have to earn points in order to get any time off. And in order to earn one point, you have to work 31 days straight in a row. So the details here are just stunningly horrific. NPR also talked about those squeeze shifts is what the company wants to call them, workers' comm suicide shifts. What that means is workers clock in for a 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. shift. Then they're forced to work four hours of overtime. So you're 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Then the company will turn you right around and bring you in at three o'clock in the morning. So you got eight hours to go home, shower, spend time with your kids, with your family, get some sleep and get back to work. Some of these workers say that they've worked every single day for five months straight. Okay, those are the type of conditions.

One worker, Mark McCarter, a 59-year-old palletizer and union steward at the plant, who's worked there for 37 years, he told Vice, it seems like I go to one funeral a year for someone who's had a heart attack at work or someone who went home to their barn and shot themselves in the head or hung themselves. Forced overtime interferes with your health and your household, leads to fights on the shop floor. Workers get in arguments because they're cranky and they're mad and they're exhausted. Others have spoken of divorces caused by the schedule, as they said in that video. And just to tell you that this isn't just like the workers aren't just making this up on a whole cloth. OSHA, Occupational Safety and Health Administration, right now investigating an incident that took

place in May at the facility. They've previously fined the plant for cases involving amputation and vehicular accidents. One of the things that was alleged by the workers said that they literally had someone drop dead at the plant, and management just took the person off and put someone else in their place and kept on going. I mean, these are insane conditions. No air conditioning, by the way, as the climate gets hotter and hotter and hotter. One person said at 7 a.m. our warehouse is 100 degrees.

You've got cooks in the kitchen on the fryers that are 130 or 140 degrees making chips. Meanwhile, the managers who are just sitting at their desk, well, they've got air conditioning, but these workers are sweating it out in 100 degree plus conditions. Absolutely outrageous that anyone is treated this way in America. It's totally nuts. And this is Topeka, Kansas. I mean, it gets hot, right? I mean, especially in the summer. I can't believe they don't have air conditioning. They were saying, some is it? No, it's not second. Third shift work is no joke. You know, people who work third shift are disproportionately more likely

to have heart disease, heart attacks. They have a higher rate of death. Working at those hours is not good for you. Like, period. I'm not saying that, you know, people have a choice or whatever, but intentionally putting people in a back-to-back stressful situation,

you are asking to die. Basically, if you're already on the brink, you're going to have a heart attack. That amount of stress on your body, it just can't happen. It doesn't work that way. And Frito-Lay, which is owned by PepsiCo, they had a banner year during the pandemic. They made more money than ever. They certainly did. The workers here say that they are dramatically understaffed.

That's what's leading to these insane hours and relentless work schedules that are leading to death and divorce and all sorts of other health effects that are truly horrendous. And, I mean, I think that just shows you everything about what happened over this past year. You had a few people who did extraordinarily well, better than they've ever done before. And you had a lot of people who were there in the factories, there in the hospitals, there in the restaurants, there trying to make this whole thing stay together and oftentimes getting nothing but pain and punishment for it. The workers, if you want to show solidarity with them, they're asking that you not purchase Frito-Lay products. They can go look at the type of chips that they make. It's Doritos and Fritos and maybe Cheetos. I don't know. Do they all rhyme? But anyway, look up the list of what sort of chips they're making there. The workers are asking. They don't always do that. The Amazon

workers who are unionizing didn't want people to boycott Amazon specifically, but these workers are asking for that. So keep that in mind if you want to show solidarity. That's right. And includes Taco Bell, too, for all those out there. 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. All right, Crystal, what are you taking a look at today?

Well, Jeff Bezos successfully concluded his trip to fake space, as I call it, and what I would be lacking in journalistic credibility if I did not describe as a penis shaped rocket. Freud might be able to tell us one day what that was all about. Anyway, the media swooned, delighting in the incredible accomplishment of our foremost global overlord spawning a thousand hot takes just like this. And I will, people will criticize what I'm about to say. The young man sitting there excited as he was, that's one less black kid on a corner somewhere getting ready to use a weapon. I'm sorry, what? I'm sure billionaire joyrides are exactly the thing to combat a nationwide spike in crime.

It was such an amazing day and such a bold accomplishment. Even Bezos' personal newspaper, The Washington Post, proclaimed it a bold success. Naturally, they invested significant journalistic resources in covering the historic day live, announcing in a big press release that they'd be joining up with Discovery Network to detail every moment. Upon landing, Bezos announced he was giving $100 million each to Jose Andres and Van Jones for some reason,

telling them they can do whatever they like philanthropically with that money. They could give it to their own charity or they could divide it up. Let me just say that if your commentary and activism are safe enough for Jeff Bezos to invest $100 million in, then might be time to rethink just how much anything you say or do actually challenges a single power structure. As the one and only Iron Meose Frimpong put it to me, the big problem is the narrative that the goal of all activism is

to get some rich asshole to give you money. Anyway, cool that a few people in our society have so much money that they can just casually decide which cable news pundits are worth $100 million investments and give them away like Oprah giving out cars. As for Bezos' comments upon landing, he took a lot of criticism, but unpopular opinion here. Personally, I loved them. I loved them because they were so unintentionally honest and really gave away the entire game. I also want to thank every Amazon employee and every Amazon customer because you guys paid for all this.

So seriously, for every Amazon customer out there and every Amazon employee, thank you from the bottom of my heart very much. It's very appreciated. In that one sentence, he really explained everything, didn't he? That all of the abuses of Amazon, the workers treated like disposable cogs and tracked like criminals, the wages stolen and the health robbed, the decimation of countless small businesses, the aggressive and illegal union busting, the drivers pushed so hard they couldn't even stop to go to the bathroom, all of it was about fueling the narcissism and ego of one man. There is no other goal. All of those human beings brutalized and towns crushed were

just vessels for Bezos to fulfill his ambition. Congratulations, everyone. You did it. And if that's not enough, there's also the small matter that while he commands so many of the nation's resources and has benefited from them more than any human being in history, he pays virtually nothing in taxes. And if that's also not enough, he also feels free to see government goodies, bailouts, breaks, and exemptions from labor law at every turn. He is the grifter to end all grifters. Worth noting here that Amazon has been paying big bucks to lobbyist Jeff Reschetti in the past few months, who just so happens to be the brother of longtime top Biden aide Steve Reschetti. Just a wacky coincidence there, guys. What a small world.

But while his fake space flight is over, Bezos is far from done. Oh no, Amazon's world domination was not enough. Jeff's got his eyes on a much bigger and even more dystopian goal. In an interview with MSNBC's own corporate overlord whisperer, Stephanie Ruhl, he had this to say about how we should go about fighting climate change. We need to take all heavy industry, all polluting industry, and move it into space and keep Earth as this beautiful gem of a planet that it is. Now, that's going to take decades and decades to achieve, but you have to start and big things start with small steps. I'm sorry, what? So your idea for dealing with the climate crisis isn't actually to change anything, but just to move it all into space? And this is accepted uncritically

by the media, but somehow the Green New Deal is insane and utopian, it actually makes perfect sense. As Dr. Seuss wrote in the Lorax, business is business, and business must grow. Now that the Earth has been used and abused, rather than doing anything differently, we could just move to a new market. A brave new world of exploitation awaits, brought to you by Amazon, Virgin Galactic, and Tesla. It is the answer to all of our prayers. Bezos' spaceflight was decades in the making.

In order for it all to come together, you needed decades of increasing inequality and a new gilded age that has funneled even more money to the tippy top than the last gilded age. You need years of privatization and corporate power becoming so normalized that no one is scandalized by private citizens engaging for ego aggrandizement in activities that are meant to be done for the collective good. You needed generations of selling off public goods and stripping away government capacity such that anyone could be wowed by billionaires repeating the accomplishments of government bureaucrats 60 years ago. It all had to go just right for this pinnacle moment of radical narcissism as a public spectacle funded by the exploitation of millions of workers. Bravo, everyone. Bravo. That moment when he was like, thanks to the Amazon workers.

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. Anyway, Tiger, what are you looking at? Well, a lot of people ask why we cover the media so much here at Breaking Points, and it isn't simply to dunk on them as fun as that is. It's because mass media sets the term for the debate. It's an incredibly media sets the term for the debate. It's an incredibly astute point you're going to hear later today from Rachel Bovard,

that the control of the narrative is everything. As we found out with the war in Iraq, with Russiagate, and more, something does not, in fact, have to be true in order to massively impact U.S. politics, U.S. policy, and literal weapons of war. Thus, now, in a time of relative political calm, at least on the surface level, the war over who is allowed to define the narrative and who is not is the great battle of the age. It's all fighting right now that leads up to the big one. Like with COVID, whatever the big event that comes next, those legitimized get to set the terms of

the debate then and the narrative. Those not legitimized get to set the terms of the debate then and the narrative. Those not legitimized will sit on the sidelines screaming into the void. It's with that mindset that I ask that you hold on as we delve into this story because it involves Ben Shapiro. Now, it's not a secret or a surprise to most of you. We're not big Ben Shapiro stands over here. We don't see eye to eye on a lot whenever it comes to domestic political economy. But that being said, he's an American citizen, and a lot of people like what he has to say. So who am I to decide whether he gets to make a living or not? Unfortunately, our friends over at NPR disagreed, and they wrote an embarrassing

but important hit job on Shapiro that is very important to delve into. The headline is this, outrage as a business model, how Ben Shapiro is using Facebook to build an empire. Now the headline blares. Okay, I already know where this one's going to go, but let's delve further. The piece opens by noting that Shapiro routinely beats mainstream media outlets on Facebook with the supposition that he practices outrage porn and that they do not. Obviously, that's absurd. The truth is that both of them practice outrage porn. But look, it's a free country. The complaint from NPR and much of the mainstream media is this. Only they are the ones who should be allowed to practice outrage porn. They must be able to set

the narrative, not anyone else. The canard that Facebook is rigged because Ben Shapiro and Dan Bongino do well there is something that has annoyed me for a long time. The reason Ben Shapiro and Dan Bongino do better on Facebook than liberal outlets is because literally the entire rest of the media ecosystem, except for Fox, is liberal. You don't have a lot of choices for left, or you have a ton of choices for left-leaning content. You don't have a lot of choices for left, or you have a ton of choices for left-leaning content. You don't have a lot of choices for right-wing content. Social media like Facebook and YouTube, thus, they do better on those specific platforms. It seems simple, and yet, over and over again, liberal outlets like NPR and now even the White House portray Facebook as some sort of conservative platform, which is patently ridiculous.

My particular favorite part is when NPR says that the Daily Wire, quote, doesn't normally include falsehoods, so they can't pin them as some misinformation site. Instead, they say this, quote, By only covering specific stories that bolster the conservative agenda, such as negative reports about socialist countries and polarizing ones about race and sexuality issues, and only including certain facts, readers will come away from the Daily Wire's content with the impression that the Republican politicians can do little wrong and cancel culture as amongst the nation's greatest threats. They then quote some so-called expert who says they tend not to provide context for information they're providing, and they end with this money quote. If you've stripped enough context away,

any piece of truth can become a piece of misinformation. This is the most insane definition of misinformation I've ever heard. If that's the standard, well, then the whole mainstream media is guilty of this in almost every post they write. They consistently lack context, leave out relevant bits in order to support their narrative. It's why I always say what they choose not to show you is more important than what they choose to show you. All of this is about power. And the more you look, the more absurd the critique gets. As journalist Matt Taibbi points out, NPR is literally

in the same game as Ben Shapiro. Look at the smattering of Matt Taibbi points out, NPR is literally in the same game as Ben Shapiro. Look at the smattering of articles Taibbi pulls together from recent NPR pieces, like black TikTok creators are on strike to protest a credit for their work, or geocaching while black, outdoor pastime reveals racism and bias, or my personal favorite, Tom Hanks is a non-racist. It's time for him to be anti-racist. Taibbi puts it particularly well, quote, NPR in the last year has committed itself to a sliver of a sliver of a sliver of the most moralizing, tenditious, humor-depriving, jargon-obsessed segment of American society. Yet, without any irony, yesterday's piece still has made a deadpan complaint about

Shapiro's habit of telling people what their opinion should be and speaking in buzzwords. They are just as guilty. They just want to be the only ones allowed to play the game. I don't know what the next big story will be. Maybe it's still COVID. Maybe something else. I know this. Our nation suffered greatly during the Trump years from having a boomlet for mainstream media. Their monopoly on discourse? We should fight like hell to maintain whatever little oases that we might have here in the independent sphere, even if we do not ideologically agree. Because if they can shut down one place, they can shut them all down. How good was that quote, Crystal, from the misinformation expert? Joining us now, policy director at the Conservative Partnership Institute, Rachel Bovard,

longtime friend of the show. It's good to see you, Rachel, in person. Great to see you guys. Glad to be here. We missed you. Okay, so the moment that all this happened down with the White House and Facebook, I was like, gotta call Rachel. We gotta get her perspective. You wrote an interesting piece in The Federalist. Let's put that up there on the screen about the White House bids for power and more. Just tell us a little bit about what the argument that you were making here. Biden administration admits to helping control what you're allowed to know. So this is something that I think longtime sort of skeptics of social media have been thinking, right? That, you know, anytime there's a sort of politically motivated censorship campaign that is coming from political actors.

But what we saw just last week was the White House basically very casually admit to doing this. And I think what was so striking about it is how casual it was. It was a very flippant mission, but also it's saying out loud what we have always known, which is the massive power of these speech platforms is irresistible to government. And that is the case for both parties because you saw Donald Trump do this, right? When you saw the protests going on and all the sort of statues being pulled down, he made a very aggressive effort to have Facebook remove that content as well. That's a great point. This is all about narrative control, right? And I think the other thing that was really interesting about it was that for Jen Psaki and the Biden White House to go after Facebook really is an admission of what these platforms are, right? They're not,

you know, yes, they're private entities, but they are also now central forums for our speech and controlling what happens there is central and important to achieving political goals. And so for her to say that out loud, I think, tells you what these platforms actually are, which is essential corridors of speech. I really like the way that you put that, and especially with the Trump example, because I think Republicans have been a lot politically smarter in framing their desire for control over these platforms as free speech, which is, you know, deeply American principle, and people can get behind that and they're anti-censorship. But actually, this is just a struggle for control.

And so what I've tried to say to people is like, OK, you might be cool. You might love Jen Psaki, think she's a queen. Right. You might love Joe Biden and be totally like, we got to crack down on this vaccine misinformation, et cetera, et cetera. Are you cool with Donald Trump if he gets back in office having that same power? Because one thing we know is once a power is claimed by the executive branch, it is never, ever relinquished. So speak a little bit more to that. And also, what do we actually know specifically about their engagement with Facebook and how much Facebook is listening to them. So what we know is that the White House is flagging what Jen Psaki called problematic posts. And what was interesting was to watch the evolution of this, because on Thursday,

it was just about vaccine misinformation. It was about 12 users on Facebook spreading whatever, 60 percent of the misinformation. We're flagging that. Facebook confirmed they've been in private meetings with the surgeon general. And that conversation, those conversations have been ongoing. He issued this 22 page guidance telling social media platforms to punish users that engage in this behavior. By Friday, that had evolved into the cross platform banning of users. If, you know, Jen Psaki very clearly said, if you're misbehaving on one platform, you should be banned on all the other platforms too. And it also evolved from just vaccine misinformation to narrative control, right? People combating the government narrative about COVID-19. And that tells you what this really is. And the power of these platforms is controlling the national narrative. And this is

sort of to take a philosophic bent to it. This goes back to what we have known for centuries, right? Control of the national narrative is central to controlling everything else, right? Direction of resources, capital, weapons, all of that is secondary to control of the narrative. And, you know, we lived through Iraq. We lived through weapons of mass destruction. That is the clearest example I can think of,

most recently anyway, the analog of controlling the national narrative, you know, which directs country action. That's where I got scared there, Rachel, is when, because for a long time, we both have seen this, which is like, look, you're de-platformed on Facebook, but you're still on Twitter. You know, you can still go on Gab or email or whatever. And she was just straight up like, if you're banned from one platform, you should ban from everything. And I was like, holy crap. I mean, that's across the Rubicon moment. And to your point about essential being speech

and all that, the question that always comes to my mind is, okay, well, now what? Like, what do we do about it? I know you and I are doing a panel this weekend and I sent you guys questions being like, like, actually though, what should be done? Is breaking up Facebook gonna do anything about this? Because it just seems that hold and ideological control and even if you do break up Facebook,

it seems to me Jen Psaki and Ron Klain would still call them and tell them what to do. I don't know. Like, what is there to be done here? No, it's a great question. And I think, you know, the premise for answering it starts with the fact that all of this power, this censorship control, speech control, it fact that all of this power, this censorship control, speech control, it's all downstream of market power. The only reason it's worthwhile for the government to engage with Facebook in this way is because it's as big as it is. It's because it has as much control as it does. And the example I use in the piece is, look, if Google controlled 30%

of the market, it's a much different question than them controlling 90% of the flow of information in America, because then Google can't co-opt the narrative and neither can the government by co-opting Google. So I think antitrust enforcement, robust antitrust enforcement, breaking up the market power of these companies is central to achieving this goal, but it's not enough to your point. So I think it also has to be linked with acknowledging the idea that the power that these companies companies have is all structural it's not just market power it's the control they have of the ad markets it's everything they do with your data it's the fact that their entire business model is built around the promotion of toxic content we all think that these platforms are just speech platforms but in reality they're just digital ad agencies their communications firms and

their their focus isn't your speech. It's about amplifying whatever makes them money. And so our public policy has to address both. It can't just be antitrust. It has to also be addressing the business model of these companies. And if they serve really as communication utilities that are essential to how we all live together at this point, do there need to be regulations around that? Right, because, I mean, one of the things we see is it's not like these platforms are content neutral, right?

With very few exceptions. You know, we certainly see it on YouTube. Whatever the algorithm decides to promote is going to, whoa, a lot of people are going to watch it. And whatever they decide to suppress, oh, weird, nobody watched this particular clip. Certainly Facebook, that's the case. So this idea that they're just like these neutral platforms to start with, I think, is really silly.

Let me ask you about this, though. We covered here Matt Stoller's piece about the antitrust executive orders coming out of the Biden administration. They put some decent people in place, Lena Kahn being primary among them, although in other key positions they haven't even put someone in, which kind of like suggests maybe they're not as serious about this new direction of the government as one may like them to be. But as someone who's looking at this from a conservative perspective, what did you think of some of those executive orders and this new direction that Biden at least claims to want to move the federal government in in terms of antitrust? So I'm glad there's a federal focus on this because, you know, what we've seen, you know, we talk a lot about the concentration of the tech markets, but anyone paying attention knows

concentration is everywhere. And that has been a specific choice of our policies. So I'm encouraged by the focus on it. From where I sit on the right of center, what I want is more antitrust enforcement. I think antitrust is superior in many ways to sort of a regulatory approach because it's due process. It's targeted. It's specific. You know, you have to go through a very serious investigation to get at the specific behaviors that are at issue. What I'm concerned about with the Biden order is that, you know, it talks a big game about antitrust enforcement, but it's just window dressing for a lot of sort of specially tailored special interest regulatory framework. That is what I don't want to see.

Give me an example there. Well, so instead of bringing more cases, right, more antitrust enforcement cases, you're getting regulations on industry, which we all know. And many, many of these agencies work with, you know, the already entrenched interest to entrench what they want over and above smaller competitors. That's my fear with regulation. It doesn't have to be that way, but in many times, many times it always is. And so I would love to see more enforcement cases brought, you know, through the FTC, through the DOJ's antitrust division, which doesn't have a head yet. Biden hasn't appointed anyone there. And that's the real sort of weapon of antitrust is that agency. If it goes in that direction, you will hear praise from me because I think that's the way to go. I think that's

important. I think, Rachel, here's the big question I also see. There's a lot of dreams about left-right alliance on this. I just don't see it. And the reason why is if you look at the Democrats who are calling for more Facebook regulation, the mainstream ones like Mark Warner, who else is else? Ed Markey. They want more censorship, right? They want to repeal Section 230 specifically because of more censorship. And if you see on the right, the people who want to repeal Section 230, it's to punish Facebook for censorship. How do you see the landscape there generally? This is the big issue, right? I think it's very difficult to find a bipartisan alliance.

It does exist in some cases. I do think there are actually really well-meaning people on the right and the left that are concerned about the economic power of these platforms, and that is the lens through which they view this problem. That is, I really think, a genuine effort. Where it completely goes off the rails is when you start to see on the left

people trying to push what I call woke antitrust where you try to enforce your antitrust with social goals in mind and then people on the right who were solely interested in just you know thinking of this as a speech problem and that these platforms must be punished. Those two ends of the spectrum are never going to agree and unfortunately at this moment in time I think are poisoning the efforts of sort of what this actual genuine effort is, which again, is combating the market power problem that I think is the root of everything else we're seeing. That's a good point. Ryan Grimm had some interesting reporting about a progressive caucus meeting that went off the

rails over allegations that Zoe Lofgren was effectively trying to throw a wrench, a monkey wrench, into the works of some of the antitrust legislation that was being worked on because she is in the pocket of Silicon Valley interests. And of course, she found that very offensive. But you know, you can look at the financial disclosures and decide for yourself. So with that in mind, who do you see as the good actors, the genuine actors who have more than just an interest in their own like partisan political power on both the left and the right in Congress right now? So I think, you know, the efforts of Congressman Ken Buck have been really instructive here. He's the Republican in the House that's

really been leading the bipartisan effort with David Cicilline on the antitrust subcommittee to try and address the market power of these platforms. Now, you saw some pushback against these bills when they were introduced from both the left and the right, and they weren't perfect, right? They didn't get it right immediately. But we forget that the legislative process is iterative. We haven't seen it in so long that we expect the outcome to be perfect in the beginning. And no, it's a process. You get to it in the end. What was fascinating was that he was opposed, you know, by some in his own party, but also by the Silicon Valley Democrats. There was a very significant alliance on that subcommittee of California Democrats led by Zoe Lofgren, who were just like gave sort of rhetorical headpats

to the legislation and then proceeded to knife it over, you know, 12 hours. And on the right, I think you have definitely people who are interested in protecting these companies as business interests. But what's so interesting to me about the right is that we are really reaping 30 years of not paying attention to business and to this issue. And we have no intellectual infrastructure to now grapple with what is happening. You know, the intellectual infrastructure that we have on the right around economics and around the really specifics of how these platforms operate is based on like reading some Friedrich Hayek and being like, regulation is bad. That's basically the whole of it. And, you know, it's really frustrating for people like me who are trying

to propose really good, you know, policy here that we just don't have anything. We have nothing to pull from. So I think what you're seeing on the right is a genuine concern with speech, but they don't have the sort of neural pathways to then be able to know how to go about addressing it effectively. Yeah, I think that's a really excellent point. Rachel, where can people find out more about you? All of that. So you can find me on Twitter at Rachel Bovard and all of my work

is posted at CPI.org. Awesome. We love it. Thanks for joining us, Rachel. We really appreciate it. Great to be back. For everybody else out there, you can become

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