Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 7/27/21: Jan 6th Derangement, Privacy Wars, Frito-Lay Workers, Donziger Case, Trump grifting, 2024 Outlook, Fauci's Plan, Private Equity, and More!

Episode Date: July 27, 2021

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We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed, we do. Lots of updates for you today. We've got an update on what big tech is doing that you may be very concerned about. We're certainly very concerned about it. An update on that Frito-Lay strike. Workers did ratify a contract. We'll give you the details of that. Steven Donziger, who has been completely persecuted by Chevron, he won that landmark award against the oil giant for polluting the Amazon rainforest, and they've been trying to destroy him ever since. Update in his case. Some news about where exactly Trump is spending his money, if he's spending it at all, or whether he's just stockpiling it for a future presidential run rather than, say, doing anything with it that he promised the people that he raised it from. No surprises there. But we wanted to start with the absolute obsession

with what is going on with the January 6th commission. Yeah, that's right. And it's interesting. We had a moment yesterday. We were planning for the show. Crystal went to the front page of CNN and every single article was January 6th, January 6th commission, Adam Kissinger, all of this. And I just can't imagine caring that much about this commission. But the reason that we have to focus on this story is because the ramifications of the derangement around January 6th are now having far reaching consequences into all of our everyday lives, concerns about privacy, and so much more. So let's put this up there on the screen, which is that Facebook and tech giants are to target attacker manifestos and far-right militias in a database.

Now look, there's no sympathy here for attacker manifestos or far-right militias. However, the problem here is that what they are saying is that until now, something called the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism Database has focused on videos and images from terrorist groups on the United Nations list, namely things like the Islamic State, Al-Qaeda, and the Taliban. Over the next few months, however, the group is going to add attacker manifestos and others that are flagged by something called the UN Initiative Tech Against Terrorism. And we'll use lists from intelligence-sharing groups that are developed by Five Eyes. If you don't know what Five Eyes is, Five Eyes is the intelligence-sharing network between the United States and four of its closest allies.

It's called the Five Eyes Network, includes Australia, includes the United Kingdom. But all of that, it goes to show that they are using the firms, including Twitter, including Google, including YouTube, including all of the big tech platforms, and compiling all of this stuff into a single database. And I want you guys to remember that you don't have to have any sympathy for the Proud Boys or the Three Percenters or all these people. I think, you know, mostly like terrible people. That being said, there's always a question. Who gets to define domestic extremism? And in almost all of these cases, we have seen the definition continue to be applied in places where it absolutely has no business. There's a huge difference between a bona fide actual militia member and then some idiot who tweets something and he doesn't even know.

Or you might recall I did that whole thing on Rising about the Jeopardy contestant, I forget his name, who gave the symbol for a three, something like this, or whatever, because he'd won three games. Yeah, somebody can go ahead and screen grab that. Go ahead and try and tar me as a white supremacist. He puts a three, hands him up to say he won three games, and then he was denounced as a white supremacist,

oath-keeper, sympathizer, or something. He's like, I think his name was Kelly something, and he was like, I have no idea what you are talking about. And yet former Jeopardy contestants came out. They said he had to apologize. The show had to. This is just continually moving in that direction. And so I think that this database is very troubling.

And don't forget, it literally includes, I mean, Reddit, Snapchat, Instagram, Verizon Media, LinkedIn, Dropbox. I mean, almost the entire infrastructure of the modern internet being used in such a way that domestic extremism, I guess, is how it starts. But that definition being up to the United States government, well, we've seen now what the United States government wants to push that definition in a direction where they can criminalize American citizens. Well, and keep in mind, guys, this is not like theoretical that the number of people in groups, et cetera, can rapidly expand. Remember during the Trump administration, he wanted to tag Antifa and their activity as domestic terrorism. Under the Biden administration, obviously the focus is on these sort of right-wing militia groups or white supremacist groups. But you know what it reminded me of, Sagar, that we covered here is Jen Psaki made that comment that we were all like, wait,

what? The other week where she said that they really needed to figure out why if someone gets banned from one platform that they really should be banned from all the platforms. That's right. And I was like, well, that's weird. Like, not only are you having the government involved in who gets banned from what platform, but you also now, if you mess up on one platform, you're going to get banned from all the platforms? How does that even work? And then this database appears to be how that would work because that's the whole idea here is that the companies collaborate through these databases to expose like certain content or certain individuals that a direct connection between the U.S. government and other governments and all of the tech companies collaborating to define who gets to exist online, who gets to speak online, and who doesn't. And again, you can despise three percenters and Proud Boys and all of that. I am also not fine of them whatsoever. But you got to be comfortable with, if you're

comfortable with it under Biden, you also got to be comfortable with it under a Donald Trump administration. And to tie this back to 1-6, you know, that moment, which was terrible to watch, it was quite shocking to us and to the nation writ large, that is now being used to perpetuate the power of the national security state to further expand their powers. And you see increasing collaboration now between government and between these tech monopolists to control speech on the internet. That's a very troubling trend that everybody should be paying attention to. No, that's right. And this goes even farther than just speech. They also include Airbnb and MailChimp. So we're talking about the very infrastructure of

the internet in terms of being able to send email, having file sharing services, being able to book something on Airbnb, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, even Verizon Media, LinkedIn. I mean it goes up and down the entire chain, you know, of what it means to be an internet user. And we need to put all this into perspective. As he said, everybody was horrified by January 6th. You can go watch our Rising show from January 7th. I couldn't believe it. I blame Trump 100%.

It was one of those things where you couldn't even believe what you were seeing. I remember watching it happen, and I was just so angry at so many people who had played into this conspiracy and just sparked a lot of people, you know, who had nothing better to do. A lot of them were losers just to go and to storm the Capitol. We need to put it in perspective, though. It wasn't 9-11. It wasn't something like that. It can be a historical event without being the historical event. And, you know, Glenn Greenwald, you know, in his typical way, I think that he put this particularly well. Liberals need 1-6 to be some momentous event because it gives them purpose and vindication.

Journalists need it because for many, it was the most exciting and scary thing they ever did. The security state loves it because it's what justifies their power and budget. That's really the one. Acting as if 1-6 was some sort of serious insurrection is pitiful. None of the defendants has been charged with sedition, fomenting insurrection, attempted murder, or anything like that because it wasn't. It was a protest that turned into a three-hour riot. Two of the four people who died on 1-6 were Trump supporters who dropped dead of heart attacks. Another was a Trump supporter who died of a speed overdose.

The fourth was an unarmed Trump supporter shot point-blank the neck, and still by an armed agent of the state. Babbling over and over about 1-6 is how Democrats in Congress distract attention from all the things they're not providing, how journalists try to keep people paying attention, and how the FBI and CIA keeps people scared. It will never end for them. And I think that that is exactly and very well said by Glenn, because once again, you can believe and you can see that what happened on January 6th was terrible. It was an important day in American history. It probably should be, in asterisks, on Trump for the rest of his life. You can also say it wasn't the most momentous event in modern American history. And those two things can and should live side by side,

especially in a society. If you really want to move on, if you really want to see, you know, make sure that this stuff doesn't happen again, then let's go and take a look at some of the bigger structural problems in our country that make some crazy people. And, you know, I've talked endlessly about the ProPublica profile. The Obama voter, the guy who died of a heart attack on January 6th, who they believe is from Alabama, union person, lost his job, started, you know, sought hope in Trump, had his job shipped to China. Let's talk about that. But nobody seems to want to.

I think that's the biggest problem we have. My monologue today is about the fact that because those very conditions that led to Donald Trump have remained unaddressed, we are very likely to either get Donald Trump again, which is a very real possibility, or potentially someone even worse than him. On that point, Glenn's last point about how Democrats love the 1-6 Commission and talking about 1-6 because it distracts from everything else that they're not providing to the people. That is really key. And by the way, it's not conjecture. Do you guys remember a little while back, Ryan Grimm had this report at The Intercept of leaked audio of Joe Manchin talking to billionaire donors, and he told them flat out, Joe Manchin is standing in the way of any sort of filibuster reform or change, whatever.

Doing that would enable Democrats to do a whole lot more and deliver on a lot more of their promises. He told those donors, hey, look, why don't you talk to some of these Republicans and tell them to flip their vote on the 1-6 Commission? Because then I can give something to the base and show them like, oh, look, we don't need filibuster reform. We don't need health care. We don't need to do these other things because at least you got your 1-6 commission. Okay? This is blatant. It's been explicitly laid out by Joe Manchin.

I promise you he is not the only one who is thinking in these terms. So look, Sagar and I spend almost every show trying to actually talk about the issues that led to an event like 1-6, that led to the political system and structure that we have right now. Those are really, really important questions. They may be the most important questions facing this country right now. This commission, everybody in D.C. knows this is meant to be theater. It's meant to be a messaging tactic. It's meant to be a partisan way to show that Republicans are white supremacist allies, etc. It's all surface-level theater. They are not going to uncover one thing that you do not already know about the general contours of what happened on that day. Oh, and by the way, one of the things I would actually like to know, which is how many FBI agents were new, like who knew what and who was actually in the building on that day who were actually government agents, that they have absolutely no interest or

curiosity about whatsoever. And let me further say that if you do genuinely care for earnest reasons, which I think a lot of people do, about this commission and about their findings, you ought to really be outraged about some of the people that they are involving in this commission. If we can put this tear sheet up about the CIA dude. So they picked this guy who was a CIA, former CIA inspector general, which already I'm sort of like, my eyebrows are raised. But then an independent report found that this dude retaliated against a whistleblower. So you're the CIA inspector general. You are supposed to be the person that whistleblowers can go to and get protection. And instead, when this whistleblower came to this dude, he retaliated against him, essentially forced him out of the agency, stripped his security clearance, and

aggressively went after him and tried to sort of shame him and expose him as some wrongdoer. Again, this is an independent report, publicly reported that this guy directly retaliated against a whistleblower. So if you are someone who actually cares about this commission getting to some sort of facts and, you know, exposing what really went on in the planning and who knew what and when and why they were so unprepared for the day, etc., the very dude who should be handling this kind of sensitive information coming in and protecting new whistleblowers with regard to what happened on January 6th has a documented history of retaliating against these very sorts of courageous people. So I don't know what to tell you. That is an insane choice to me. This, you know, only basically Yahoo News even picked up

this connection and the fact that, hey, maybe this guy isn't the right choice for this commission. People should really be outraged about this who genuinely care about getting to any answers on that. A hundred percent. And, you know, the first thing we had accidentally showed you, Eric, go ahead and put that Columbia Journalism Review thing up on the screen. Look, I wish that you were hearing at least some sort of skepticism from the media. But what we see here, Columbia Journalism Review, the gold standard in terms of media critique, says the absurd coverage of the January 6th committee. And we were like, oh, wow, they actually did something good. But if you read it, it's basically saying that the media has been too, what is it, too sympathetic to Republicans or not been strong

enough in condemning their stall war, you know, stalling of the, their stalling of the actual January 6th commission. So their entire thing is that the media is not taking January 6th seriously enough. Hence, that's the absurd coverage. And not taking the Democrat side aggressively enough. Look, I don't doubt that Chuck Todd's coverage of this is moronic, whatever he's out there saying. Chuck Todd is cringe across the board. I did find this amusing because I was like, oh, maybe they're also saying like, hey guys, there's other stuff going on. No, no, no. They're just saying you're not aggressively like cheerleading hard enough for the Democratic Party and you're not being hard. You're not going all in enough on the January 6th commission.

So it's funny. There was one other thing we wanted to show you, which is also revealing for a number of reasons, which is the approval rating of various Republicans who some of whom are involved in this commission is back and's back and forth, and some of whom aren't. If we can put that up on the screen. It's the Axios one. Yeah. Yeah. So you see here, most popular- Net favorability. ... figure in the party right now outside of Donald Trump himself is Donald Trump Jr. Depressing. Number two is Ron DeSantis. We've seen the way that his star has really risen within the GOP. Kevin McCarthy is plus 24.

Two things I found really interesting here is the media's other fixation has been Marjorie Taylor Greene. There's articles about her, segments about her, this one member of Congress every single day. And the whole idea and the reason that the media spins this narrative is they say, well, she's phenomenally popular among the GOP base. And she's really the future of what the party is going to look like. She's only a plus eight. Right. So not nearly as popular, even as Kevin McCarthy, who I don't think of as being like a rock star within the party. Put that back up on the screen, though. And the other one that's noteworthy here is Liz Cheney, who is on the commission, is at minus 43.

And the thing that we've seen with Liz Cheney and with other of the Republicans who have decided to be against Trump, even as they have terrible policies almost like completely across the board. Liz Cheney, obviously, like all of her politics completely suck, except for this one small area where she's like, we probably shouldn't, you know, like storm the Capitol and lie about the election being stolen. It's like the only narrow area of agreement with her. Wildly popular among Democrats, though. Same thing with Mitt Romney. We saw that in Utah, too. Way more popular with Democrats. Higher approval rating amongst Democrats and Republicans. With Democrats than with Republicans. And it once again just shows you the way that Trump has become this singular issue in America, where everything else, you can be like a war criminal who was into

torturing Iraqis or whatever. And if you were willing to be like, but I don't like Trump, then Democrats will love you, Republicans will hate you, and there you go. Yeah, Trump is the only dividing line in American politics. Kevin McCarthy actually talked about this yesterday. Let's put him up there on the screen. They were asking him. He called both Adam Kissinger and Liz Cheney, quote, Pelosi Republicans. And I saw a bunch of Hill reporters who were outraged because they're like, does he not know about their conservative voting records? And I was like, you idiots.

I'm like, are you still living in like 2013? There's only one issue amongst Republicans. Are you with Trump or not? And if you're not, then you're basically not in the mainstream of the Republican Party. You can just ask me if you want to know how that's working out. Are you a Pelosi Republican now, Sager? I don't know. I'm just one of those people who can't stand anybody. And what's funny, though, is that the ultimate goal, or the ultimate test, are you with him or not? That's the only

test that actually matters. That's not just me saying that. The actual voters are the ones who are saying that. And a lot of people just need to get wise about what the Republican Party is right now. It's about fealty to Trump. If you're not with Trump, then you're out. If you are, then you're in. And I wish it wasn't that way. This is why I don't really defend them or talk about them very much, because I don't have a lot of affinity for something which acts this way.

But we have to be very honest about what it is, including the people who are in it, people like Liz Cheney and Adam Kissinger. They should just admit it. They're not, they're not Republicans today. That's just how it is. And Democrats are basically the mirror image of that, which is they also are completely defined by Donald Trump

and whether you're with him or against him. And so it doesn't matter what Mitt Romney or Liz Cheney or Adam Kinzinger or any of these people, Bill Kristol, what any of them, what their actual issue positions or histories or the horrors that they have wrought on American society, none of that matters if they're willing to say the orange man is bad. So this is how, I mean, Trump has really, our political system already really kind of sucked. He made it all so much worse by completely pushing any sort of policy or issue focused differences, like the battle of ideas that a democracy is supposed to be all about.

It's just become a cult of personality on one side and a cult of like an anti-cult of personality on the other side or however you want to put that. 100%. It's very, very sad. Another interesting story with regard to big tech here that our friend Rachel Bovard is highlighting. This is a fascinating story. I've seen some of it bubble up from some of my more Catholic friends.

So let's put this up there on the screen. So basically what happened is there was this Catholic priest. Now the Catholic priest, his name was Jeffrey Burrell, he resigned his post as General Secretary of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in the wake of some new reporting. Please keep this up there because I want people to understand. What happened is that there's a Catholic news outlet called The Pillar. Now, The Pillar published a pretty bombshell accusation against the priest, Mr. Jeffrey Burrell, saying that he was using the gay dating app Grindr. And now how they were able to determine this is what our friend Rachel has done some investigation here. is that the pillar used, and I'm reading, quote, anonymous geolocation data collected from Grindr

to locate, identify, track, and out the priest. Now, this is really crazy because, as what Rachel shows you, is that this shows the largely lawless realm of data brokerage, where your minute, minute individual details can be bought, sold, repackaged, and de-anonymized by private actors for various ends. So what Rachel points to is that the pillar, the Catholic news outlet, is not saying how exactly it got this anonymous data. But the likely chain of custody is that the data from Grindr was sold anonymously to a data broker, then somebody bought the data from Grindr was sold anonymously to a data broker, then somebody bought the data brokerage.

And what you can do is you can cross-reference location data from Grindr with other publicly available information that can reveal your identity. So what they did in this particular case, and this is what they wrote, quote, a mobile device correlated to Burel emitted app data signals from the location based hookup grinder on a daily basis during parts of 2018, 2019, and 2020. So even though they didn't have his name, they could correlate the data showing that the phone had also been represented at Catholic Bishop staff residencies, headquarters, meetings attended by Burel, as well as his family's lake house, the homes of his family members, and at an apartment that listed Burel as a resident. So in other words, they showed that you can use supposedly

anonymous and freely available data to track an individual's movements and reveal their identity. And I think the way that she puts this is really well, which is that basically you are not anonymous. Your data is not anonymous as long as somebody has it out for you and knows how to use a spreadsheet. If you have a decent data science background and you can go and cross-reference and you know somebody's using an app and you know that, you know, based on publicly available information where they live, maybe two or three places where they might be, it's actually not that hard to figure out what exactly is going on. And I mean, no matter how you feel about the priest, I mean, listen, you know, it's up to Catholics to police themselves. But what this does show me and what Rachel is pointing to is that your data is not anonymous, even close to

how many people in big tech are telling you that it is. So that's the driving home to it. I wanted to bring it to all of you just because I thought it was completely insane. It was beginning to be used this way. I mean, imagine how many other different ways. It's a wild story. Honestly, I would not have realized that this type of specific data would be just available on the open market. I think it's really important to point out, like,

Rachel is Catholic. She is, you know, socially conservative on a number of issues. But she sees the danger of having this type of data just out there for sale. I mean, who wants to have all of their private information conversations? You know, if you have some kind of their private information, conversations? You know, if you have some kind of embarrassing, like, weird sex kink or if you have embarrassing medical condition, whatever it is. Like, do you want all of that to be potentially available to the wider world for use, you know, to be weaponized against you by sketchy journalistic outlets? I don't know anything about the pillar, whether they're sketchy or not, but to me, this is a very sketchy thing to engage in. So that is really the danger here. And yeah, the way that they were able to do this is because they got these app data signals from Grindr, and then they were able to see that that phone was going to Burrell's family lake house, the homes of his family members, an apartment that listed him as a resident.

To the church staff residences, they were able to say, ah, we know who this is. We got you. And then write the whole thing up. And, I mean, really, look, whatever you think of this guy, they've definitely destroyed his entire life. Oh, he's done. He's, you know, had to resign. He was up for a prominent position, et cetera, et cetera. And look, he was laid a double life. He's obviously a hypocrite between what he was espousing when he was preaching and what he was actually doing with his personal life.

But the bigger issue here is do you want any blogger, news outlet, whoever, to be able to have this kind of information about you to use against you or even more nefarious characters than that? I don't think any of us wants to live in that world. And look, I would actually defend the pillar. I think that the reporting is fine. What I get sketched out by is what Rachel points to, which is you don't know if there's some anonymous third party with an agenda. Now look, I generally err on the side of if it's newsworthy, you should publish it. But more what I'm afraid of are, what did we see in the Harvey Weinstein case? What have we seen with these recent NSO leaks? Like, there are a lot of sketchy private intelligence groups out there who, let's say, Exxon, who we're doing,

or sorry, Chevron, who we're doing a segment on, you know, has a bone to pick with us. They've got billions of dollars. They can hire private investigators to go and compile our geolocation data, and then they could go sell it to some mainstream CNN or MSNBC or whatever who hates our guts because we talk about their failures, and then they could report it on us. I mean, it's a free country. They can do that. It's more about a question of, do you want some private group to be able to do that in the first place? And I would say absolutely not. Rachel's been talking a lot about data privacy, how Congress needs to come in, step in, and ensure some rights for Americans whenever it comes to this. Andrew Yang was kind of ahead of his time.

He talked a lot about this as well. I think this is a perfect highlighting situation on how dystopian this gets real quickly. Yeah, well, with regard to the pillar, there's no allegation here that he was hurting anyone or harming anyone with his actions. So to me, the idea that this is newsworthy, I just don't see exposing the private details of someone's life that are not hurting or harming anyone. I just don't see that as newsworthy, is what I would say. Because you're right, look, people publish all kinds of newsworthy information that comes, derives from all kinds of quote unquote sketchy sources. That happens all the time. It's fine to do. But again, is a really newsworthy number one. And number two, bigger

issue being that this type of data is available and Congress is doing absolutely nothing about it. That's what it is. 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. Wanted to bring you an update on the workers who've been striking at Frito-Lay in Topeka, Kansas over the past, I think it's been three weeks now, they have reached a contract deal. Let me give you some of the details here because it's a little tough to swallow, frankly.

I mean, what these workers have been protesting on, you guys probably know, is primarily the insane work schedules that so many of them have. Working for months on end without a single day off. These shifts that they call suicide shifts where you work 12 hours, then you get just eight hours on and you have to be back in the middle of the night at like 3 a.m. to do the next shift. And again, not having a choice in this. You're being forced to work these overtime hours. You're being forced to come back. People were getting divorced. There were reports that some had even committed suicide because these type of hours and this type of stress on your body, I mean, this just takes a toll you cannot even imagine.

So that's why hundreds of workers at this plant had taken it upon themselves to go on strike and demand something approaching humane working conditions. And they also said, you know, they haven't really gotten significant pay raises in years and years. Meanwhile, Frito-Lay, which is owned by PepsiCo, banner year last year, massive amounts of profits, their net revenue in the quarter surged 20% to $19.2 billion from a year earlier. So huge amount of profits coming in, and this is how they're treating their workers. So in the contract that they now have agreed to, it guarantees workers one day off a week, one day off a week. And it does away with forcing workers to take those suicide ships and gives a very small wage increase. Frito-Lay said the new two-year contract includes a 4% wage increase for all job classifications

and, quote, additional opportunities for the union to have input into staffing and overtime. New York Times, and I think we have either a chair sheet or a tweet we can put up there on the screen from Stephen Greenhouse, a great reporter over at the New York Times, and I think we have either a chair sheet or a tweet we can put up there on the screen from Stephen Greenhouse, a great reporter over at the New York Times. So one warehouse worker that they interviewed for this article, who's been at the plant for roughly two decades, said there was, quote, more disappointment retaliation from the company, said many workers who crossed the picket line or voted to approve the contract did so out of need, quote, a lot of people had to vote yes because they were running out of money and didn't have insurance. So on the one hand, you have to celebrate. This took a lot of courage to step out, to go on strike. They won significant concessions that are going to make their lives

better, right? It's, you know, at least you're getting one day off of work a week. At least you're not having to do those horrific suicide shifts. But my God, the fact that you have to go on strike for three weeks and, you know, lose the money that comes from working those jobs and really put yourself out there and be fearful of retaliation, which these companies do over and over again, just to get one day off of work a week. And by the way, mandatory overtime still in place. So it's, you know, it's a real sad statement on where worker power is in this country. And fact that even with winning these concessions, ultimately they were sort of forced back in because people just can't go for a long period of time without getting paid, without having that health insurance. And so the pressure increases

and increases and increases on the workers themselves until you have to take whatever contract deal they're willing to offer you. That's what a warehouse worker told the New York Times. He said, quote, a lot of people had to vote yes because they were run out of money and they didn't have insurance. And you could see here that they had not had an increase in hourly pay of more than 20 to 40 cents in the past six to eight years. So peg that against inflation, right? I mean, that's just completely crazy.

And to your point, they said that Pepsi, Mountain Dew, and Doritos, its net revenue in the quarter surged by 20.5% to $ the factory floor, which doesn't have air conditioning. Nothing about that in the contract. And there's a video done by More Perfect Union about a particular worker there who was electrocuted and was not supported whatsoever by this guy. Electrocuted on the job. Let's take a listen. Let's take a listen. It's a longer video, but I want to make sure you guys get all of this. Let's take a listen. Let's take a listen. It's a longer video, but I want to make sure you guys get all this. Let's go. I was, I had to call off the next day as a sick day. I told you I was in pain. I told you it hurts when I walk. And it was like, okay, you know, are you going to be here tomorrow? I was a site lead, and I know what that entails. You're a leadership of the whole warehouse, so if you have to fill in, you have to fill in.

I asked for some type of relief, period, because I was still obligated to work, like picking cases and unloading trucks or rotating product on a forklift. I asked for a chair that I could sit in that would make me more comfortable while I'm doing my office work. They denied it.

You're either 100% or you can't work. It just felt like they was just trying to push me out. Eventually I got an MRI by my primary doctor and he showed that I had two herniated discs in my back. And he was like, you shouldn't be doing anything. They can only fix it with surgery. And my husband still had to work two of the discs in my neck because they were bulging into my spinal cord.

I wasn't getting enough fluid to my brain. If I didn't have the surgery, the doctor said any small fall or accident or something like that and I would have been paralyzed from the neck down or dead. I still have to have surgery on my lower lumbar spine. From the moment that he couldn't work anymore and needed short-term disability, Frito-Lay abandoned us. I had to file for short-term disability

and then long-term disability. Got approved for long-term disability, but that was months later. So no income coming in. That's a picture of the car. We were driving. They require you to go to the doctor so many times, and the doctor has to say that you're in this condition

over and over and over. But guess what? You don't have any insurance anymore through PepsiCo slash Frito-Lay because they cut you off. I had to pay for that out of pocket too. Didn't have the money to do that. So guess what? I borrowed money or used credit cards or whatever I could. I even took money out of my kids. Oh man, that's, I got no words on that one. It's thoroughly, Oh, man.

That's, I got no words on that one. It's thoroughly, I mean, it's evil. Like, that's really the word for it. Think of how much money Frito-Lay's is making. Think of how much of his life. Brandon, who is, by the way, a military service veteran. Yes. Who served this country.

Who was, by all accounts, you know, incredible worker at the plant. He was a site lead. Yeah, he was supervisor, right? Gave so much of his life to these people. He gets electrocuted. He pushed a button at the loading dock. Right. Gets electrocuted, is disabled, possibly permanently. And not only do they, you know, immediately push him out, cut him off push him out cut him off no help for him no help for the family but then they actually sent spies to track him and his family his kids playing his wife doing lawn work all this recorded and revealed through discovery process because brandon is uh suing the company, and all to try to prove,

oh, he's not really as hurt as he says that he is. Instead of, just do what's right. Just do what's right for this family. That's it. It's not hard. Instead of trying to prove like, oh, we don't really need to pay. It's not really our fault. You're not really that hurt. Just, I mean, they absolutely destroyed this man's life and have done nothing, nothing to help him. It's thoroughly unconscionable. No, it really is. And you can just see here where he was denied medical care. According to him, he was stalked by company agents just to cover our legal basis. Frito says that that's not true. And, you know, they're all contesting this stuff in court. But look, if you want to help this you know, they're all contesting this stuff in court.

But look, if you want to help this guy out, we're going to have a link down there in description for him and his wife. They have a GoFundMe. I just checked. They got $65,000 out of a $70,000 goal. I'm going to be giving some after this video. I encourage you guys all to do the same because we've got to step up at least for, you know, when somebody, nobody else can. And I'm not saying this is the right system in America, but this is all we've got to step up at least for when nobody else can. And I'm not saying this is the right system in America, but this is all we've got. It's disgusting that Brandon and his family would have to resort to GoFundMe in a wealthy and successful nation like ours, that that's the system we have is completely insane,

but that is the system that we have. So if you're able, consider helping out Brandon and his family because they have suffered so much and they have a tough road ahead of them still. That's right. We have another unconscionable situation. Speaking of corporate malfeasance. Yeah, bring you an update on probably a lot of you have been following the case of Steven Donziger. For those of you who haven't, he was the human rights lawyer who won a huge award for indigenous people down in Ecuador against Chevron. Multi-billion dollar settlement, quite historic because Chevron polluted the Amazon rainforest there, destroyed the lives literally of indigenous people in this community. Massive incidents of cancer and all their land

completely ruined all of that. So in a very, very, very rare win for indigenous people, Stephen Donziger is part of this case, able to win the settlement against Chevron. And ever since then, they have made it their mission to destroy him. They actually had a campaign against him that internally was revealed as the demonized Donziger campaign to sort of paint him as like some corrupt, horrible person, et cetera, et cetera. And unfortunately, the U.S. legal system has basically gone along with all of this. So the latest situation is he was being charged with contempt for some minor discovery dispute between him and Chevron, the type sentence that has ever been issued for this type of offense is, I think, two months in prison. That's it. Okay. So this is a minor offense in the most extreme case. We're talking about two months in prison. Well, he has been now incarcerated incarcerated in his home, so on home arrest, for 720 days. The verdict just came back in this

supposed case, which I'll tell you in a minute why it's complete, you know, Chevron show trial. He's found guilty, sentenced to six months in prison, again, for contempt, okay? Which even if, and, you know, I think it's pretty flimsy, which Chevron and the court is arguing here, but looked at the details and were like, we're, no. Yeah, they're like, we're not doing this. We're not doing this whatsoever. So you would think that would be the end of the case, but no. They got another private prosecutor who happens to have all these ties to Chevron to go forward with the case. Oh, and then the judge who issued this ruling and sentence also happens to be a leader in the

Federalist Society, which is funded by Chevron. So Chevron has their hands in the judicial system at every level with regards to this case. Donziger is going to appeal, but this is a completely just blatant, outrageous miscarriage of justice. He's effectively a political, a sort of like corporate political prisoner now for more than 720 days. It boggles the mind that this goes on. And the last thing I'll say is the Biden administration could do something about this, but so far they haven't. Nobody's done anything about this. And I just want people to realize that the contempt of court charge is one of them is refusing to obey a court order to turn over his laptop and cell phone as evidence. He says that doing so would violate his legal client's privacy. this stems from the fact that he secured a $9.5 billion judgment against Chevron in Ecuador,

which is still the largest human rights and environmental court judgment in history. Now, then a U.S. court ruled that the judgment was unenforceable because it was obtained, according to them, by fraud and racketeering. And then all of that stemmed from an investigation into Donziger, who has now lived two years under house arrest. So look, I think anybody can take a look at this and say that what's happened here is pretty ridiculous. The government wasn't even going to prosecute him. Private prosecutors were involved. He's been inside, locked in his house for two years, which is completely nuts for a contempt of court case and still might have to serve six months in jail.

Now, the appeals process and all that is going to play itself out, but he's still locked up in a New York City apartment, which he hasn't left in a long time. Mentally, that's not such a good place to be. Stephen seems to be with it, but I can tell you I probably wouldn't be if I was in a similar situation. I completely agree with that. And, I mean, just think about this. Chevron drove to extinction five different indigenous nations in Ecuador, okay? Poisoned the land, gave people cancer. They still haven't paid the judgment that was found against them. I mean, there's been no

accountability for them. And for Stephen Donziger, who at the very, like, again, I think the charges are completely bogus. But even if you take the most malicious reading of it, like failed to turn over his laptop, is in prison now for more than two years, potentially facing six months more. And this is, it just exposes what this is really about. He was able in this very rare instance to achieve some small modicum of accountability against one of these oil giants who think that they rule the world and they will never forget it and they will do everything they can to make an example of him so that in the future, lawyers who think about taking this case, they got to look at Steven Donziger and what's, you know, what they've done to his life and go, do I want that for myself? You know, they've already succeeded in their mission of making

the example of him and creating a deterrent so that other high-level human rights lawyers won't take on similar cases, won't push quite as hard, won't fight quite as aggressively for people who have been wronged by these oil giants. And those people exist all over this planet, by the way. So just an absolute miscarriage of justice. The fact that this has been allowed to persist within the American judicial system is a disgusting outrage and a crime in and of itself. Absolutely. And I hate to do this, but to cover our legal bases, Chevron is like, no, we didn't do that. And actually, Donziger manufactured the evidence, pressured judges, and ghost-writ the final judgment in the case. That's up for dispute. You can ask Donziger about that if you want to. Okay. Okay.

All right. I hate to do it. Okay. Next quick. Thank you. Trump. All right. Let's put this up there on the screen. So Trump's got a new PAC. It has raised $75 million this year. But so far, the group has not put any money into pushing for the 2020 ballot reviews that he raised the money for. This is from The Washington Post. I'm so surprised. This is from the Washington Post. I'm so surprised. This is shocking. The group has not devoted funds to help finance the ongoing ballot review in Arizona or to push for similar

endeavors in other states. So you guys might have heard all about the Arizona audit and the Georgia audit and all this stuff. Even Trump has been talking about it. Well, he's not helping fund it. So instead, the Save America Leadership Pack, and by the way, these packs, they have basically zero limits on how you can spend that money, has paid for some of the former president's travel, legal costs, staff, along with expenses. And the pack has held on to a lot of its cash. is that, I love this sentence, even as he tracks attempts by his allies to cast doubt on the integrity of last year's election, Trump has been uninterested in personally bankrolling the efforts, relying on other entities and supporters to fund the endeavors. The tactic allows Trump to build up a war chest to use in the 2022 midterms on behalf of candidates that he favors and to stockpile cash for another potential White House run. So meanwhile, the audit in Arizona, which has cost millions of dollars and is being paid for primarily by nonprofit entities, mostly funded, it seems, by former Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne, a lawsuit, and seeking a Fulton County has

also been financed by small dollar donations, and he has yet to do anything with it. And this is what Pedro Gonzalez, who we've had on the show before, he's a right winger, okay? He's not some never Trump person, has pointed out that this is all a grift, is that millions of people believed Trump when he said the election was stolen. Now, I think that isn't true, but those people don't listen to me. They listen to Trump. That's their right. It's their money. But what bugs me is when he raises millions and millions of dollars and then touts all of these audits, giving them legitimacy so that people throw money at groups which are then funding the audits and he doesn't put his own cash on the line. That's how you know whether it's real or not. Trump

himself is funding it. Otherwise, it's all just about ginning up the base and all that to continue to keep his claims going and money funneling into his pocket so he can use it for however he wants. And what's that going to be? I mean, you know, campaigning against Liz Cheney in Wyoming, campaigning against Lisa Murkowski in Alaska. I think people should pay real attention here to what exactly Trump himself is spending his money on. And it has nothing to do with any of these so-called audits that are going on, even though that is where the energy of the entire base is. It's a total scam that he's running on millions of people. Yeah, it really is disgusting. And, you know, abusing the trust that he has with this large group of people who, for whatever reason, believed in him, trusted him, gravitated towards him, still puts undying faith in him when he says, well, you need money to fight against the stolen election.

They pony up. Some of them, you know, it's comfortable for them. They can afford it. I'm sure there's plenty of people who kicked in their 10 or 20 bucks for whom it was a real stretch to give this money as well. No, no, no. This happens a lot. People's social security checks and stuff go toward this stuff. And really thought that, you know, the election was stolen and he's going to use this money to make sure we're going to set it right. And instead he's using it basically to like fly around and do with it whatever he wants, stockpile it for a future run or to, you know, make his enemies mad or embarrass them in the midterm elections. It really is disgusting.

And the way that he routinely lies to his base and takes advantage of the trust that he's placed into him is one of the things that really disgusts me the most about him. Your point about look at what they're actually doing with the money rather than whatever they're saying is, I think, a really apt one. It reminds me of when all the Stop the Steal stuff originally happened. And we kept saying, look at the law. Look at what they're actually doing legally. Forget about the press conferences and the tweets and the whatever. Look at what they're actually doing with their time. Look at the actual lawsuits that they filed in court and what they allege and what they're able to actually prove, right? Look at the actions versus the Twitter feed. And I feel very much the same way here. He does not actually, he definitely doesn't believe the

election is going to be overturned, doesn't believe that the election was stolen. He's using this as a rhetorical device to keep people energized so that he can run again in 2024. That's really what it is. And maybe even not. Maybe it's just to fund his travel and his political stuff all the way up until 2023. And then he's like, actually, I'm not going to run. But then he's got millions of dollars in the bank. He can bankroll whomever he wants.

Yeah, well, and you wouldn't be shocked to learn that, you know, a lot of this is being funneled to consulting companies of this friend or that friend or this child or relative or whatever. Certainly would not be the first time that would happen. There is not a lot of, there are not a lot of strictures on how he is allowed to spend this money. He can basically do whatever he wants. And besides fundraising, just so you guys know, if anybody's out there who does donate to this stuff, Trump has been renting the massive trove of data that his campaign amassed to other candidates in exchange for a share of their fundraising revenue, which could ultimately prove another valuable cash flow for him. So not only is he taking people's money based on fighting the election

results, but he's then taking your data. So he's taking your money and then he's taking your data and then renting that out to other candidates who he supports in exchange for their fundraising revenue to raise even more money. So it's not even one of those cases where if you're not paying for it, you are the product. You are paying for it and you are the product. He did do one good thing, though, that I want to give him credit for. Oh, yeah? What's that? I don't know if you remember this. Ken Clevenstein, of course, pointed this out on Twitter.

George P. Bush down in Texas. Oh, I saw this. Yeah, yeah. Debased himself. He, like, embarrassed himself. He'd be like, my family may hate Trump, but I love Trump. I have unyielding loyalty to him. Well, Trump just endorsed against him in his race for a Texas AG. Endorsed Ken Paxton. Not that I like Ken Paxton either.

But as Ken pointed out, his one redeeming quality is how much he despises the Bush dynasty to the bitter end. That's true. Well, and that is the thing with him. I do think a big part of why people like him is because he hates all of the right people. There's a lot of power in that and drives him absolutely crazy. The bad thing is that the very people that he goes after the most aggressively, those are also the people who became the most prominent and got the most money and accumulated the most power during his presidency. So it may feel good to see him throwing those bombs at people. I enjoy it myself occasionally.

But the reality is it's had the exact opposite effect that you would actually want it to. Yeah, it really just makes me sad. It makes me upset, too. I remember I've talked about it before, about this. This is when Limbaugh was still alive. It was around before January 6th. And there was this guy who called into a showbaugh was still alive. It was around like January, before January 6th. And there was this guy who called into a show. He was like in tears. He was like, I would die for Trump. He's like, why aren't these Republicans doing anything? Like this election was stolen from

him. And he's like, I've been putting all my money. And he literally is like breaking down, an emotional breakdown. You can make fun of him if you want to. I choose to see like person alienated from society, old maybe, believes only Trump for somebody else. And in that situation, Trump is the one to blame, right? And Limbaugh, frankly, for pushing some of this stuff and allowing that. And that's what causes this mass flow of social security cash all the way into the Trump campaign coffers. And if you believe the election was stolen, if you believe that, would you not want Trump then to be fighting all out and funding these efforts? He's not doing it, which tells you what exactly is going on. Yep. Very well said.

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. Yeah, okay. Crystal, what are you taking a look at today? Well, Trump chronicler and self-refessed book salesman Michael Wolff is out with a New York Times op-ed explaining why he is absolutely convinced that Donald Trump will in fact run again for president in 2024. So Wolf writes that, for Democrats who seem exiled to Mar-a-Lago, stripped of his key social media platforms,

and facing determined prosecutors, his future may seem risable, if not pathetic. But this is Donald Trump, always ready to strike back harder than he has been struck, to blame anyone but himself, to silence any doubts with the sound of his own voice, to take what he believes is his, and most of all, to seize all available attention, sound the alarm. Guys, I buy it. Trump has a clear and unchallenged grip on the Republican Party, as we've been talking about today. The nomination, it's his for the taking. What politician, when faced with such a clear path, ever walks away? And this, of course, is not just any politician. This is the narcissist to end all narcissists, Donald J. Trump himself.

If he is alive and if he is in decent health, Donald Trump will likely run for president. And what's more, he will likely win. Not because Biden is doddering, although he is, or because Kamala is unserious, although she is, but because the conditions in this country are perfect for a Trump-like figure. And Biden appears to be unwilling to do what is necessary to change that reality. So take yourself out, if you can, for a moment, of the political specifics of these particular Democrats or these particular Republicans. Zoom out to the macro level. Pretend you are considering the political conditions in a foreign country and ask yourself this. What type of conditions create fertile ground for demagogues

and would-be strongmen, conmen who opposes populists but are in bed with elites? The answer is obvious. The worse things get, the more fertile the ground for those types of political figures. When sectarian conflicts dominate, when crime rises, when addiction abounds, when the gulf between the haves and the have-nots is an insurmountable chasm, do you think that this landscape leads to a reasoned and nuanced dialogue? To resounding confidence in established networks of political power? Of course it doesn't. It results in voters hurling the biggest FU that they can possibly find,

and Trump is the biggest FU available. The sad truth is that Trump both made everything worse and also stands to benefit from everything being worse. It's an ideal situation for him and a sort of hell for everyone else. He oversaw a pandemic response that decimated the working class's finances, their medical health, their mental health, while also adding trillions to the wealth of the mega-billionaire class and consolidating the power

of political and financial monopolists. That response accelerated precisely the same trends that made Trump an appealing choice to some segment of the electorate in the first place. And by 2024, he might well be able to recapture that 2016 magic. So consider a few metrics here. We saw back in 2016 that the number of opioid deaths in a region correlated with the amount of Trump support. Well, guess what, folks?

Addiction is worse than it has ever been. Overdose deaths skyrocketed in 2020 during the pandemic, claiming some 94,000 lives. That was a 30% year-over-year increase. Not good. We also saw in 2016 that places with severe economic distress and job loss were more likely to vote for Trump. Trump bested Hillary by spectacular margins in the places most ravaged by offshoring or most fearful of coming job loss from automation. Of course, 2020 saw a horrific economic toll due to the pandemic and attendant lockdowns. But there are long-lasting effects that are likely to be more profound and ultimately much more dire. Monopolists like Amazon, they grew by leaps and bounds, turning in record-breaking profits and feasting off the

carcasses of destroyed small businesses, plenty of which are never going to return. What Walmart did to downtowns, Amazon is now doing to the suburban mallscape at a pace that accelerated like, say, a dick-shaped rocket during the pandemic. The pandemic also pushed more companies toward automation, another source of job loss and erosion of worker power. In a World Economic Survey of 300 companies, 43% said they were turning to automation in order to hire fewer humans. An IMF working paper found that this job automation in manufacturing, retail, and the service sector would put inequality, which is already at record levels, in overdrive. Yes, folks, this economic anxiety does fuel Trumpism. Finally, a nationwide crime surge plays right into Trump's law and order, I alone will fix it messaging that was so powerful

back in 2016. In 2024, urban violence may well sub in for build that wall as the demagogue's issue of choice. It's hard to say exactly what is fueling this nationwide increase in violence. Surely a year of lockdown misery did not help. Nor does record-breaking temperatures when research shows that the hotter the day, the more violence results. But we all know that Trump is going to blame Democrat-run cities and Black Lives Matter activists, and that the messaging is going to land with plenty of voters who are justifiably concerned about their own personal safety. Finally, just like in 2015, you got a media flat on its back, desperate for something

to rescue it from its ratings collapse and cultural irrelevance. They may want to resist Trump's allure right now, but I promise you, they will be dying to hang on his every utterance, feigning outrage at his every act in a symbiotic relationship that is great for Trump and is great for the punditry class and is terrible for America. Now, none of this is inevitable. It's not too late for Biden to right the ship, but it would take a dramatic turnabout of the sort that he has never shown an appetite for. It would take a truly FDR-like performance. Also, look, Trump himself is kind of a mess with a ton of baggage and an obsession

with pretending he was robbed in 2020. But the underlying trends are very worrying. Matt Lewis actually has a good piece up at the Daily Beast that delves into the epidemic of loneliness in America and how much it fuels the Trump movement. He points out that in the 2016 GOP primary, Trump found the strongest support in places where people were socially atomized and lonely. In Trump, they found a community. They found an in-group that made them feel some sense of purpose and connection.

He writes in that piece, human beings, especially those who feel marginalized, they want to belong to something. And as our geographic communities atomize and religious service attendance dwindles, this emotional void is even more pronounced and ripe for exploitation. Folks, capitalism has bled our communities dry and attempts to measure meaning in profit and loss margins. That leaves us desperate and vulnerable, and we have never been a lonelier or more disconnected nation than we are right now. Conditions are ripe. As

Michael Wolff said, sound the alarm. It's really just hit me yesterday, Sagar, as I was thinking about all of these trends that we've been tracking. One more thing, I promise. Just wanted to make sure you knew about my podcast with Kyle Kalinsky. It's called Crystal Kyle and Friends, where we do long form interviews with people like Noam Chomsky, Cornel West, and Glenn Greenwald. You can listen on any podcast platform, or you can subscribe over on Substack to get the video a day early. We're going to stop bugging you now. Enjoy. All right, Sagar, what are you looking at? Well, every time I see Dr. Fauci before Congress lying about gain-of-function research and his own possible role in starting the pandemic, I really find myself asking,

how the hell does this guy get away with it? Intellectually, I know the answer. Fauci was built up by cable news as the hero, while Trump was the villain. The Democratic base loves him, Democratic senators thus protect him, and the media stays silent, hoping all of us will just move on from questions around gain-of-function research. But as time marches on, as more evidence rolls in supporting the lab leak hypothesis, the more outwardly transparent Fauci has been in his lies and in his ultimate aims as to why he covered up his own involvement in funding the Wuhan lab in the first place. For those who aren't entirely familiar, here is a very brief reminder.

Dr. Fauci is the head of the NIAID. The NIAID is the largest granting organization in public health. Fauci greenlit a grant from the NIAID to a group called EcoHealth Alliance, which then funded the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which was conducting something called gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses. Gain-of-function research basically means engineering viruses to be more powerful than they are naturally, with the theory being that the research will allow scientists to be prepared in case that virus ever naturally mutates and becomes more powerful in the future, and then we could fight it. From research, that's the theory. Evidence from Fauci's own emails shows that as early as January of 2020,

researchers found that coronavirus is, quote, not consistent with evolutionary theory. But for a variety of reasons, the media and the public health community covered up questions about the lab leak theory to both own Trump, but for the public health people to conceal their own role in possibly sparking this entire pandemic. But concealing their own role was not everything. The problem for the public health community is if the lab leak theory turns out to be true, it would dry up their entire funding architecture. Now, the NIAD is the largest granting institution in public

health. Fauci controls the money roll. So he and everyone else who gets the money needs to keep this gravy train going. Hence why Fauci made a fool out of himself before Congress recently when he lied and he twisted his words repeatedly when being pressed by Dr. Rand Paul. Let's take a listen to that again in case you missed it. And you're dancing around this because you're trying to obscure responsibility for 4 million people dying around the world from a pandemic. And let's let Dr. Fauci. I have to.

Well, now you're getting into something. If the point that you are making is that the grant that was funded as a subaward from EcoHealth to Wuhan created SARS-CoV-2. That's where you are getting. Let me finish. We don't know. We don't know if it did come from the lab, but all the evidence is pointing that it came from the lab. And there will be responsibility for those who funded the lab, including yourself. I totally resent the lie that you are now propagating, Senator,

because if you look at the viruses that were used in the experiments that were given in the annual reports that were published in the literature, it is molecularly impossible. No one's saying those viruses caused it. Fauci, as Rand Paul says, is obscuring the truth. Nobody is saying the EcoHealth Alliance grant itself is what caused the pandemic. Only we were funding a lab where some shady research was going on. Now, Fauci continues to hide behind word games to claim he never funded gain-of-function research,

that the specific grant can't be responsible for COVID, and more, to protect his end goal, more funding for gain-of-function research in the future. And if you want to see how bonkers he really is, take a listen to this. It was from Sunday, a little-noticed clip, when Jake Tapper actually pressed Fauci on whether he's going to continue to push funding to the Wuhan lab. We were trying to find out how you can prevent this from happening again.

But going forward, like a peer review is looking, those are doctors and scientists looking at the work of doctors and scientists without kind of factoring in the fact that you have an oppressive Chinese government that won't allow transparency going forward. Are you still confident? Going forward, we are always going to be very, very careful, go through all kinds of review, including the risk benefit ratio. So, I mean, if your question, Jake, is looking forward, are going to be very careful about the research that we do, well, we have always been very careful, and looking forward, we will continue to be very careful in what we do.

Translation, we will continue to fund a lab known to be cited for multiple safety violations. We will continue to circumvent our own reporting protocols and will ignore the mounting evidence that COVID-19 likely came from the Wuhan lab. At first, I couldn't really understand all of this. Why is he so adamant? But then a New York Times story dropped yesterday, and it puts the entire thing into perspective.

Fauci's master plan to respond to future pandemics is to ask Congress for billions more dollars to create, quote, prototype vaccines against 20 families of viruses. The theory bearing that more research can create the underlying technology such that when a future virus emerges, vaccine production can be sped up. Now, whether this requires gain-of-function research or not, it's unclear to me right now at this time of the writing. But the underlying power structure tells me everything I need to know. Fauci is asking Congress to give him, the NIAID, the NIH, billions more dollars to dole out to university grants and research

and more at the exact time that compelling evidence exists right now that Fauci himself personally reversed U.S. government policy on funding gain-of-function research and further that he has lied, obfuscated, and manipulated the media away from the truth surrounding his own granting projects. I have no idea whether this program is a good idea or not. Maybe it is, maybe not. But I know that I sure as hell do not trust Dr. Anthony Fauci and Francis Collins, the head of the NIH, two figures who may have been intimately involved in developing dangerous gain-of-function research to spearhead any future pandemic preparedness. I think we've had enough from them both. In America,

always follow the simple maxim, follow the money. In this case, the money stems from a power-obsessed Dr. Fauci protecting his reputation and the funding scheme of all of his friends, gaslighting the media and the public into making people believe he is some kind of hero, then using that hero status to increase his power in the scientific community and get even more dollars into his pockets that he gets to dole out on researching God knows what. I have an idea. Before Congress hands Fauci billions of dollars to spend on whatever the hell he wants, as if that didn't end badly the first time, how about we have a Wuhan commission? Declassify everything

related to the Wuhan lab, gain-of-function research, the EcoHealth Alliance. If they find he's clean, so be it. Give him the money. But if they give him the money without probing his past, then I fear we will all be a hell of a lot less safer than we are right now. And really, Crystal, it takes following the story for months and months to be able to put it all together. All right, we got a great guest to talk about where we are with the infrastructure package and who is looking to profit off of building our nation's infrastructure. Executive Editor at The American Prospect, David Dayen. Great to see you, David.

Good to see you, David. Good to be here. First time. Yeah, absolutely. Welcome to Breaking Points. New old friend of the show. So talk to us first about just where we are with the bipartisan infrastructure package. Seemed like it was close and ready to go. And now it sort hear things like that. It's completely done except for the part about mass transit, highways, bridges, broadband and wages. So except for everything, they've got it covered. So I don't know exactly where we're going to be. I know there's sort of a soft deadline in the next 24 to 48 hours. One of the problems is that Democrats need to know whether this bill is going to go before they run their budget resolution, which will be the prelude to the reconciliation bill bill because that bill has a number attached to it. The idea is if the bipartisan bill happens, then the reconciliation

bill will be at three point five trillion. But if it doesn't happen, they will fold all of that spending into the reconciliation bill. And you simply need to know ahead of time what the upper limit for spending is on that reconciliation bill in order to pass the budget resolution that sets the stage. So that's why Schumer, I think, has been speeding up this or trying to speed up this process. And that's going to come to a head pretty soon. One of the things that you've been pointing to and we wanted to cover is specifically how private equity is eyeing some of the benefits within this bill. Can you go through what we have? We have one of them specifically. It's the second tariff sheet that we built here. Go ahead and put that up there on the screen. Eyeing federal

infrastructure, windfall, private equity, courts, public utilities. Tell us about that, David. Yeah, well, this was a great piece by our new writing fellow, Lee Harris, who talked to this company called Bernhard Capital that has for a little while now tried to approach mid-sized cities, usually poor cities in the southeast that have crumbling infrastructure systems and offer them a deal, say, we'll front you a bunch of money. All you have to do is give us a long term lease on your public power or water system and let us run it for 30 years, 75 years and keep all the profits. So this is a considered strategy on the part of Bernhard Capital and perhaps other private equity firms. And the particulars, particularly of the bipartisan infrastructure bill, might facilitate that because one of the so-called payfors in that bill is public-private partnerships

and something called asset recycling. Public-private partnerships just means exactly what I said, leasing out the management and operations of a public asset, an infrastructure asset like a utility or a water system or something like that, there will be incentives, I guess, in the bill for that. And the other asset recycling is essentially selling off older infrastructure to pay for newer infrastructure. And I guess the way this would work in the federal bill is that there would be an incentive for a city to sell off their water system the way that that Bernhard Capital wants. And this this the federal government would give a small incentive cash incentive to pay for a new highway in that in that city, they would just give 10 percent, you know, as a boost to the money that the city is going to generate by selling off their own infrastructure. And what you get in that process is the potential for higher rates in terms of whether it's rate paying and utilities or toll roads or things like that.

You lose Democratic control over that asset, often maintenance sags, labor sags, because now it's a for profit business and any cuts to the spending side show up in the profit side. So it's really, really dangerous. And it's easily the most dangerous part of this bipartisan package. Well, and Trump had proposed something similar, as you pointed out. And there were a lot of voices raised in upset over that proposal when it came from Trump. Haven't heard much concern this time around. And it strikes me as relevant to another piece that you all just published about how Joe Biden defanged the left by basically giving them access,

but then not really doing any of the things that they wanted him to do. Just talk about that a little bit. Yeah, Alex Salmon wrote that piece for our upcoming issue. We released it on Monday. So, but yeah, I wouldn't characterize it as similar to the Trump proposal. I would characterize it as the same as the Trump proposal. This is what infrastructure was, who was Donald Trump's infrastructure guy, who was praising the bipartisan infrastructure framework and saying that things like the Tennessee Valley Authority were, quote, historical aberrations that that the federal government should never get involved in publicly providing these kinds of assets. So this is really very, very similar.

And you have this situation where the professional groups on the left have been very tied in to discussions and access with the Biden White House. And that has been seen as a way to placate those groups who have then, it's not like they're being told to censor themselves or not like they're being told to quiet any kind of dissension. They're just doing it. They're just doing it on their own. It's a form of, I guess, self-censorship. So that is going to make it difficult to see real changes on the progressive side. Now, I mean, you know, the Biden White House contains multitudes, and there have been some advances, some very good, I think, progressive advances in certain areas. But until there's sort of a sustained outcry and real pressure from the left, I think that's going to inevitably be limited. Yeah, well, then the only pressure is coming from like private equity and corporate America and conservative Democrats.

This is you end up with, you know with dystopian things like asset recycling. David, thank you so much for your terrific reporting on this and for being on the show today. We appreciate it. Thanks, David. All right. Thanks a lot. Our pleasure. Okay, guys.

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