Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 7/8/21: FBI Informants, Trump's Latest Grift, NSA Spying, Assange Case, Haiti Chaos, Corruption, Wealth Transfers, NYC Results, and More!

Episode Date: July 8, 2021

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in weekly Ask Me Anythings, and you don't need to hear our annoying voices pitching you like I am right now. 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. A lot of great stories to cover. We actually had a hard time choosing this morning. There's a very important update in Julian Assange's case. Some information about whether the NSA was actually spying on Tucker Carlson. Donald Trump filed a bunch of lawsuits. We'll get into the nitty gritty of whether those mean anything other than another grift. Haiti's president assassinated.

What is going on there and what's going to come next for that country? Great favorite of ours, Maximilian Alvarez, is actually going to be here in the flesh in the studio to break down the implications of that NYC mayoral race. But we wanted to start with some new details about what exactly happened on January 6th, what the government is doing to prosecute the people that were involved and some incredibly revealing details here in this Washington Post article. Let's go ahead and throw this up on the screen. So the headline here is about how this dude was using a Virginia Bible study group as a way to, like, meet and plan violent events, as is according to the government prosecutors here. But they kind of buried the lead in this story because one of the underlying debates about what exactly happened on January 6th

revolves around whether there were any government agents who were there. FBI informants, undercover police, those sorts of things. And you've had this kind of bad faith narrative all the way around. You had Tucker Carlson and others on the right suggesting like maybe this was totally an inside job planned by government informants. We have no indication that that's the case. But then the response to that on the left is to say this is ridiculous. There was not a single government agent. Our amazing security services and police would never do such a thing. Well, turns out in this indictment, there was at least one undercover agent who was present at January 6th, according to the records here and his own

testimony. Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen, this tweet that reveals some of the details. Essentially, he says on or about January 18th, this undercover cop had the following conversation with the defendant here saying, hey, brother, were you masked up in the Capitol? Yeah, thoroughly. Why? Well, I keep hearing about good people getting hunted down for this shit. Just paranoid. There's more here indicating that this undercover police officer was there at January 6th. And to me, Sagar, this provides kind of fodder for both sides. Because for people on the right, you say, look, see, there were government agents involved. Now, does this mean

that they planned January 6th and it was all an inside job? No, it doesn't. But it does give credence to the idea that, yeah, there were FBI informants involved or at least undercover police involved, government agents involved, which, frankly, it'd be shocking if there weren't. Like, it'd be kind of an abdication of duty if there weren't. And we knew there were indications that they had infiltrated some of the three percenter groups, etc., etc. On the left, you look at this and go, hey, if you knew enough to have undercover agents on the scene, why the hell weren't you able to stop these events? What's going on? Obviously, you had enough intelligence and enough indications to be there on the ground.

Obviously, you had at least some agents embedded into these groups. So why weren't you able to stop this madness from happening on January 6th? So that's what we know right now. That's exactly. And look, we have now very clear cut proof that there was at least one admitted now in this indictment, a government agent who was embedded within this group. This is in Freedom Plaza. The way we know this is from testimony, which is this is a quote. Later that afternoon, the MPD-UCE observed Duong kneeling by a marble fence on the west terrace of the U.S. Capitol building, past the line of police officers, construction scaffolding, which were in place on January 6, 2021.

The location was observed as known to be within a restricted zone. Dong and the MPD-UCE undercover agent exchanged greetings to one another but did not communicate further. He did not appear to be acting or interacting with anyone else. So what does that tell you? Which is that they had eyes on this person who is now being indicted, eyes so much so that they were actually present at Freedom Plaza and within the restricted zone of the Capitol. And like you said, that actually raises a lot of questions, which is that, hmm, so you had a government agent there, but, so you knew to put government agents in there, but not enough in order to actually have enough troops or enough police in order to do anything

about it. Or working riot shields. Or working riot shields. Or working riot shields. Remember that when we were all locked on a bus or something? Ultimately, I think this is the media story more than anything, which is that, you know, Tucker and a few others came out and were like, hey, they're government agents, January 6th. Of course, you know, he's a provocateur and he pushed it as far as he could go.

But as we'll get to later on, specifically the Tucker NSA story, everybody's like, oh, that is not a single government agent. This is outrageous. This is ludicrous. Okay, well, now we got pretty much smoking gun proof that at least one was there. Did they organize and direct it? I don't know. There's no evidence in order to indicate that. Were they there? Yes, we actually know that, at least in a single case, that they were there. I think that's really important. And put it all in the context of a broader grab by the Capitol Police. Let's throw that New York Times thing back up there on the screen, which is that the Capitol Police is now going to open branches in California

and in Florida to expand field offices outside of Washington to track threats to lawmakers. Okay, what the hell does this mean? Plan is to open several additional regional field offices as the department is charged with protecting Congress, transforming itself in the aftermath of the attack. So they're basically turning themselves into some quasi-secret service-like organization. Why? Because the Capitol Police just got billions of dollars appropriated to them by bipartisan legislatures there in order to protect the lawmakers. And what does that ultimately mean? More field offices, more surveillance. Do you remember the case of the sheriff deputies going to the left-wing podcaster's house who tweeted something about AOC at the behest of the Capitol Police. The Capitol Police dispatched sheriff deputies in California to a left-wing podcaster

who had liked a tweet that they said was threatening. It was not threatening in any way towards AOC. Liked a tweet. That was it. That's all he did. Now think about this. Expanding their positions in California and in Florida, as well as across the country, more interagency cooperation. It means police surveillance state.

This is what we saw with the post office. The post office is now working with the behest of people like the Capitol Police in order to surveil disinformation and extremism moving through the postal system remember that one of the easiest ways that people get slapped with federal crimes is mail fraud that's actually it's like a classic I think that's what they got Al Capone on and pretty much everybody's guilty of mail fraud so the post office is something that well is that you can do both right so it's like it's mail and tax fraud it's like a joke within the FBI they're like oh just hit them with mail fraud and so mail fraud and you a joke within the FBI. They're like, oh, just hit them with mail fraud.

And so mail fraud and, you know, abusing the Postal Service or abusing the wire system and more, these are like two classics that they always try to use in order to go after people. And I really see this fusion of everything coming together. Ultimately, I think it's just a story of media, which is that they hate Tucker and they hate the people who brought this up. And look, I get it. I understand why. But that doesn't mean that you should abdicate responsibility. As you said, The Washington Post completely buried the lead. They have a whole story here about how some Vietnamese guy is being charged with coming in and the Bible study cover group.

The real story is buried within. It's just like deep communication with an undercover DC police officer who's there sitting with him on January 6th. This is the first concrete indication that we have that there were undercover agents on the scene. And again, like I said, look, if you are looking at this from a level-headed perspective as someone who was deeply upset by what happened on January 6th, I think the logical question is, well, what the hell? If you were new enough to be there, looks like you infiltrated some of these groups, why weren't you prepared? Those are the questions that the media should be asking. Okay, how many agents were there? What was their

involvement? And by the way, I want to say we have no indication that any government agents were involved in pushing forward or plotting any of these attacks. That's right. So let's just be clear about that. war on terror and the tactics that were used to entrap young Muslim men, mostly, a lot of that involved essentially encouraging them to create these plots, pushing them forward, even providing money and support in order to create these plots that they could then disrupt. So it's not like these are actions that are told, oh, they would never do that. That's crazy. They'd never be involved. Also, with that kidnapping attempt on Gretchen Whitmer, we know that government agents were

involved and had infiltrated that group and were involved in some of the pushing forward of that plot as well. So, again, we have no evidence that that's the case. And I want to be really clear about that. Nor should we be completely dismissive of the idea that government agents would ever do such a thing, because we know not even from like 10 years ago history, from last fall history, that this is totally within the purview of something that they are capable of, that they engage in routinely. And so this is an issue that we need to continue to focus on. With regard to the expansion of the Capitol Police, I mean, it's just a classic story of they failed on this day. They utterly, completely failed, Keystone Cop style. They had all the resources they needed.

They had all the manpower they needed. They had all the intelligence they needed, which, again, this reporting just supports the fact that they had all the intelligence that they needed to disrupt what happened on January 6th, which was horrific and was traumatic for the entire nation. And yet they didn't. So their failure is rewarded with more money, with an expansion of power, with more field offices. I mean, this is bananas. This is totally insane. This is the definition of failing up. It's the definition of how the security state, it's heads they win, tails we lose. If they're able to disrupt the plot, then they say, look at how great we did. This is amazing. Give us even more money so we can do this even more. If they fail, then it's, hey, we got to have more resources. We got to expand our operations. We need more money and we need more power. And so that's how the security state and the surveillance of American citizens and anyone else they feel like just continues to expand and expand and expand.

And there are very few voices out there, basically, I mean, almost none in Congress who are consistent in applying these principles. You have a select few who will speak out on these issues, whether it's with regards to the right or the left. Most people just only care about this when it's affecting their side in a negative way. No, you're right. And I think the media really are just bag handlers at this point for the security services. And if you want to see what we're talking about, the histrionics, both of us found, I mean, I just find this so disgusting. Let's put this up there on the screen from Vice News.

So Vice went and did a profile on all these reporters who survived the deadly Capitol, sorry, no, the Capitol riot. Whenever they say deadly, the only person who was killed there was actually a protester. But what you can see is some won't go back into the building. Several have sought therapy to deal with the trauma. So many are not sleeping well. And my particular favorite was this guy who says, it's my office, the building I love most in the effing world. I used to call the Capitol my girlfriend.

I've devoted 15 years of my goddamn life to that building, said freelance reporter Matt Laszlo choking up. Now I don't want to be there. These people are making the entire story about themselves. And look, I get it. It was probably pretty scary. That being said, you didn't live through 9-11. 3,000 people didn't die. And what it is, is that so many of them are saying within, I am so, so angry and I want to see accountability. And listen, I do too. But you know what? I'm not a Capitol Hill beat reporter. It's not my job to go and wish for, what's it called, for actual outcomes. Maybe this is why

they're all so obsessed with the January 6th commission. I think ultimately what it is, they're making the story about themselves. They're making it about their own experience. And I don't want to diminish, I think it probably was pretty terrifying. And if they had to go through therapy and all that, God with you, I feel very bad for you. But creating the story about yourself and also making it so that it colors your ability to objectively cover this issue, that's not forgivable. You can't do this. I think it's an extension of how cosseted and fragile. Oh, yeah.

That's it. Again, I co-sign the idea. I'm sure this, if I was there, I'm sure I would have been scared. I'm sure I would have been terrified. Maybe I would have had to undergo some therapy. I don't know. But there's been this instinct throughout the Trump era to make the story about the persecution of the media themselves. And you can see how silly this is. And this is something that, you know, has been brought up recently in light. And we're

going to talk about some developments in Julian Assange's case. But think about what he's been put through. He put his life on the line and has been destroyed by the U.S. government in order to publish the secrets of the powerful and hold them to account. OK, and you don't hear a peep from any of these fraudulent so-called journalists about the gravest threat to press freedom in the world right now, certainly with regards to the United States. And yet, you know, when it's Jim Acosta getting like a mean something said to him by Donald Trump, which I don't support that. There's endless news, a whole the attacks on the press, et cetera, et cetera. So that's what I see. This is an extension of is the sort of like fragility of the U.S. press corps, their desire to put themselves at the center of the story as if they're the victims of what's going on in the country right now, which,

you know, not to like personalize this to whoever was at the Capitol that day, because I don't know exactly who was there, what their role in these various stories are. But look, the U.S. media shares a lot of the blame in the country being in a place right now where something as horrific as January 6th could happen. The lies that they've told, the way that they've carried water for the powerful. There's never any self-examination about that. And I think that's why both of us, when we see these sorts of comments about like, the Capitol was my girlfriend, whatever, it's, you just kind of roll your eyes because it seems really silly in light of the real trauma that so

many Americans are going through every day, needlessly, because of a lot of those people who were there in the Capitol that day. Not just the media, but I'm talking about members of Congress as well. And again, this, I do not condone in any way what happened in January. We were both completely. Go watch the show on January 7th. Go see how we acted. Okay. But yeah, this isn't about you guys. That's the bottom line. Exactly. It's not about you. And you know, even worse, they're ruining one of my favorite museums here in D.C. It's really pissing me off. Let's put this up there.

Andy Kim, he was a congressman. He wore a blue suit while he was cleaning up the Capitol. And, look, thank you, congressman, for cleaning up the Capitol. Very nice of you. Apparently it turned into a thing. The Smithsonian Museum has asked the congressman for the blue suit that he wore while cleaning up the Capitol for a little exhibit that they're doing. Am I against an exhibit on January 6th? No. Put it in there.

I don't care. But the suit. And then this guy, this congressman, is out there being like, this is the suit. Generations from now, people will see my suit and say, oh, this is the suit that was worn on this. I'm like, oh, my God. This is insanity. What is happening here? Like, am I the only person who is capable of saying what happened on January 6th was bad and is also not like 9-11?

Is that insane? And I think that most rational people are going about their days and are just seeing this over and over. It's been six months, right? So they did all these six months later segments on cable news and more. The histrionics over all of this is just putting us in such a bad place. And I know that this can sound callous, but here's the deal. We are in the midst of gigantic infrastructure negotiations that are happening right now. You know, when we see where you did

a piece on the rise of ultra billionaire wealth higher than it's ever been. We've saw recently about Exxon manipulating the payfors within the where is the car? I mean, there is no not an iota of the same level of coverage within any of this. There's actually some interesting stuff going on with the midterms right now. The GOP is having some real fun down in Arizona in terms of shooting themselves in the face. These are all good stories. And I would support coverage of all of that. But this is ultimately what captures the attention to nobody's benefit. Well, and again, I would say January 6th is a very important symptom of a lot of horrific underlying problems that the media and the political class are complicit in. So if they were going to cover it in a real way and get to the

root of that, I would be fully supportive because I do actually think that's important. And I do actually think that there is a scary trend now of election after election, one side thinking like it was stolen, it was rigged, this was unfair, this is fraudulent. I mean, I think those are significant and troubling trends. But the fact of the matter is when you have coverage like this that's like, oh, look at me, and that's what this story is really about, you know you're not getting a real look at those deeper level issues that can lead to those sorts of horrific outbreaks of violence and collective insanity. I mean, collective delusion, which is essentially what you had on that day. It doesn't deny any personal agency to the people who were there and did whatever they did. But anytime you see these big societal trends, you have to say, like, what's going on under the surface here?

When you see mass addiction crisis, this past year is going to be the worst on record. When you see suicide spiking, when you see young people literally dying, you've got to get to the root of like, something is going horribly wrong here. And what role did we play in that? Hey, what role did our political class play in that? And let's not just make this like a partisan game here where we only see the evil of one side or the other side. They don't have any interest in doing that. They'd rather write these stories about how the Capitol was their girlfriend and now they're so sad. 100%. The only useful piece I ever read on January 6th, I've talked about it before, the ProPublica profile of the guy who had a heart attack whenever he was storming the Capitol, who voted for Obama in 2012, lived in Alabama, lost his job,

used to actually work at a union was somebody who worked in a factory and slowly became radicalized believed in Trump and more that I was like okay I get it

I get that I don't remember if it was ProPublica or somebody else who did the they looked into okay who was actually there

oh that's right who was actually there and because there was this question of you know there's always this question of like was it race

was it economic anxiety as if these things can't all be a toxic stew that leads to this event? And they looked at how an overwhelming percent had had some kind of like stressful financial hardship, whether it was bankruptcy or a disproportionate number had tax liens put on them. And they were the sort of financial events, too, that would create, you know, we put so much shame on people when they have a financial failure or when they're poor, when they can't make it, when they're not able to keep up that illusion of like middle class or upper middle class prosperity. And a lot of those these events were exactly that sort of they'd had a business failure. They'd had something repossessed. They'd had to declare bankruptcy. they had a tax lien. And it wasn't everybody,

but there was a disproportionate number who had suffered those kinds of events based on who's been indicted and publicly connected with the events of January 6th. So reporting like that, important, interesting. It's actually useful. Right, useful. You can do something with that reporting. That's just like, you know, condemnation, which, OK, that's fine. But once you get past your moral outrage, if you actually want to address the problems that lead you to this place, you've got to get to that deeper level. And there's precious little of that going on. Right. No, that is absolutely right. Let's move

on just so nobody thinks that this is some like crazy right wing show or whatever. Let's now talk about Trump's lawsuit against social media companies. He made a big announcement yesterday. Let's take a listen. Thank you very much, Brooke. I appreciate that. Thank you, everybody. I just want to say that I stand before you this morning to announce a very important and very beautiful, I think, development for our freedom and our freedom of speech, and that goes to all Americans. Today, in conjunction with the America First Policy Institute, I'm filing as the lead class representative a major class action lawsuit against the big tech giants,

including Facebook, Google, and Twitter, as well as their CEOs, Mark Zuckerberg, Sundar Pichai, and Jack Dorsey. Three real nice guys. We're asking the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida to order an immediate halt to social media companies' illegal, shameful censorship of the American people. And that's exactly what they are doing. All right. So there's a lot going on there. Nailing Sundar Pichai's name just for context he used to

call me sager and a lot of indians would get very upset they're like why don't you why don't you correct him i was like dude he's the president also literally really want to call you sager yeah i know i don't really get it uh your name is really not that i don't think it's that hard but ask substitute teachers growing up in texas Apparently it's very difficult. But we kept it long there for a very specific purpose. He says, we're filing a lawsuit here in Florida. Okay, that's important because let's put this up there from Brad Heath, which is Trump's Facebook lawsuit is filed in Florida. Facebook's terms of service requires any claim, cause of action, or dispute you have against us to be filed in federal court in Northern California or San Mateo County State Court.

The Trump Twitter lawsuit is also filed in Florida. Twitter's Terms of Service says, quote, All disputes related to these Terms of Service will be brought solely in the federal or state courts located in San Francisco County. Oh, so these are BS lawsuits which are probably going to get thrown out in the federal or state courts located in San Francisco County. Oh, so these are BS lawsuits, which are probably going to get thrown out in the first place. Not even filed in the right jurisdiction. So what's going on here? Oh, like many things related to Trump, it's a BS grift.

Let's put this up there, which is that it turns out the website where the team says that people can join Trump's class action lawsuit goes to the America First Policy Institute website. That site allows people to donate and to join their email list. So why is that important? Institute, which is a multi-million dollar organization headed up by a former libertarian who worked for Rick Perry, which includes the likes of Larry Kudlow on its distinguished scholars and more, and is essentially a front for what turned into actual Trumpian economics, which was just a bunch of normal Reagan BS. So what does this all actually mean? In conjunction with the American First Policy Institute, they have filed a lawsuit going nowhere, absolutely not even filed in the right jurisdiction. And now they're going to make millions of dollars off of it. That's what

pisses me off. There are a lot of people out there who got a text message last night from Trump saying President Trump is firing and filing a lawsuit. Go ahead and donate right now. There are a lot of boomers who look and listen, I do not want to denigrate these people because there is such an instinct to be like, screw them. They're idiots. They lose their money. It's on them. No, that's not true. It's on leaders and others who have the trust of these people in order to responsibly use it. And what they are doing is they are setting up false hope and really setting up a situation where they're going to make millions of dollars and nothing is going to actually happen to any of these companies. If you want

something to happen to these companies, you should check out Republican Ken Buck of Colorado as a ranking GOP member on the antitrust subcommittee. He was actually working with Democrats in order to force some new laws and has been fighting with some GOP people. That's interesting. That's actually something real. This is not real. And this is going to get 15 to 20 times more coverage. And by the way, having covered Trump for many years, let me tell you something. The people who he hires in order to pursue his lawsuits are some of the biggest idiots on the planet. I have watched these people fail at the Supreme Court on the census. I watched them fail on DACA. Basically, every high-, right? Yeah, I think that's it. The Bill Cosby guy. I mean, I have watched these people flounder and fail at almost every high profile legal thing that they have ever tried in the U.S. Supreme Court and on the stage. They routinely would forget to file something or public comment or whatever. Absolute D minus level team is who you are probably backing

here if you support this lawsuit. And I know I'm getting animated, but I just think about so many people out there who are rightfully outraged about censorship or more. And, you know, both of us spoke out about Twitter banning Trump and more. Yeah. It's not like I'm a supporter or whatever of these people, but watching him take people's money and funnel it even worse to people like the America First Policy Institute who are actively working against their interests. Really pisses me off watching this all happen. It actually made me sad looking at the response and the replies on Twitter from his fans to this lawsuit. Because they all were like, yes, this is why we love you.

Thank you for standing up to them, et cetera, et cetera. And like you said, it's easy to dismiss people. Oh, you're so stupid to fall to them, et cetera, et cetera. And like you said, you know, it's easy to dismiss people. Oh, you're so stupid to fall for this, et cetera, et cetera. But it really this is maybe the thing. There are a lot of things to make me mad about Trump. But this is one of the things that really upsets me the most is that having the trust of a large group of people who many of whom have been shit on time and time again and then abusing that is a really disgusting thing. And this is far from the first time and time again. And then abusing that is a really disgusting thing. And this is far from the first time, of course. This is a straight up PR stunt and a grift. We also,

you know, when we were at Rising Way, we had Pedro Gonzalez on, who is a believer in the policies of Trump. I mean, many things that I don't support whatsoever, but who actually believed in the principles that Trump ran on in 2016 and has exposed a lot of the way that money given by Trump supporters has been, you know, used and squandered and given to causes that they never thought. So perfect example time back into January 6th is, you know, when the stop the steal was going on, people were donating all this money. Oh, yeah. Two hundred fifty million dollars. Thinking that they were giving money to like back his lawsuits and overturn the election, whatever tiny sliver of that went to actual legal battles, all of which were handled in the most like embarrassing and disgraceful way, as we covered thoroughly on rising as well with like, you know, embarrassing

players involved. I'm sure you guys remember all of that. Most of the money they basically did with whatever they wanted. They could pay their consultants. They could pay their kids, pay for, you know, hotel stays, all of this stuff. They can do anything they want. And it's the same thing here. If you read the fine print, there's no requirement that the money that you give is going to go specifically to these class action lawsuits whatsoever. It's an attempt to get more emails. It's an attempt to get more emails.

It's an attempt to get more money in the door. So that's what's going on here. It's a pattern we've seen play out time and time again. Same thing with Georgia. There were a lot of efforts to like, let's raise lots of money for these Georgia Senate races, that precious little of that. And that wasn't just Trump. I think Cruz was involved in that. A lot of different people got in on that one that they'd say we're raising money to stop the Democrats in Georgia. They'd send the tiniest sliver of the money to Georgia, and most of it would go into their own PACs and super PACs to use for their own purpose. So this is just another sort of PR political stunt and grift from the former president. Will this segment matter? Will people watch this and say, oh, I'm not going to support this? Probably not. But you know what? People should know the truth. And if you have somebody out there who's excited about this, maybe send

this to them. Send them and tell them to go investigate for themselves. Read the fine print and more. Because I've watched too many people, especially who are old, get suckered time and time again. Or the build, what was the wall funding thing? Yeah, the build the wall. Oh yeah, I remember that. And you know, people were viciously attacked for pointing out that those guys were complete grifters. Oh, turns out that that's all what the entire thing was the whole time. So I think the entire thing really is a disgrace. Like you said, when you have the trust of a large number of people, it is your responsibility to actually at least act and fight on their behalf if that's what you purport to do. And that is just not what's happening. And it's a real issue. Yeah, it's true. Exactly. That seriously, like, serious people care about and that you should actually seriously care about and to handle it in just this way for your own monetary fun and purposes is disgraceful.

If you're on the right, go check out Rachel Bovard, who's got the Internet Accountability Project. Go check out Ken Buck, the congressman from Colorado. All of these people are doing great work. Some of them have on the – Rachel we've had on the show. I'm sure we'll have her on soon. Same with Ken. Stoller is on the look, but he's happy to work with people on the right. Very principled guy.

There are many people out there. Serious people who are thinking about stuff. This is not what's happening. 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. Okay, so I don't even know how to do the abrupt transition towards this. Let's stick with just the facts regarding what happened with Tucker Carlson and the NSA.

So we will remember that Tucker leveled an explosive charge last week saying that this show has learned that the NSA, the Biden administration, has been spying on this show and was planning to leak my emails to journalists. That was the substantive charge which was leveled. Now, when we covered it, here's what we said. We said there is no evidence for it or against it. What we did make fun of was all of the liberal journalists who said this is ridiculous. It's not even true. There's no way that any of this would ever happen. There's no way the NSA would spy on Tucker. Now that is very quickly to change to, well, so what if they did? Because here are the details that we've learned. Let's put this up there. Jonathan Suano at Axios, he's a great reporter. Tucker Carlson sought Putin interview at the time of spying claim. Here are the details. Tucker Carlson was talking to U.S.-based Kremlin

intermediaries about setting up an interview with Vladimir Putin shortly before the Fox News host accused the National Security Agency of spying on him. Those sources, according to Axios, said U.S. government officials learned about Carlson's efforts to secure the Putin interview. Carlson then learned the government was aware of his outreach and that the basis of his extraordinary accusation. Now, here's the key part. Axios has not confirmed whether any communications from Carlson have been intercepted, and if so, why? So Tucker's core claim that the government has spied on his emails and has leaked them to journalists, that part has not been confirmed. What has been confirmed is this, is that the NSA and the U.S. government

became aware of Tucker's conversations with Kremlin intermediaries regarding an effort to interview Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia, on Fox News. And so, this is extraordinarily important. Let's throw up Jonathan Swan's tweet. The NSA, when faced with these specific facts, has declined to comment and refers Axios back to that agency statement earlier, which was carefully worded. Now, remember this. In that statement, they said Tucker Carlson is not any, is not, and has never been a target of the investigation. And as we noted here with regards to that statement, it doesn't matter if you're a target. Incidental collection of communications with foreign adversaries means that you can be incidentally collected as a U.S. citizen on that.

Now, within the government, Tucker, he addressed this on his show last night, should have been identified as U.S. Journalist One, as in his identity should have been masked, and nobody in the government should have been aware that he was in communication about trying to get an interview with Vladimir Putin. Well, what has happened is somewhere along the discovery value chain, Tucker Carlson's identity was unmasked within the United States government. Whether it was intentional or not, no indication. However, several questions arise. Who unmasked this? This is actually against the law. Why did his name come to be revealed? Did the government actually leak the details of that per Tucker's accusation to journalists in terms of his ability to try and

get an interview with Putin. And the last thing I'll say on this, you can hate Putin and you can hate Tucker. Guess what? Journalists interview Putin all the time. Chris Wallace, actually, I think he won a Pulitzer Prize or he won an award. NBC News interviewed him three weeks ago. Oh, good. By the way, that's a good thing. So this is not like, how could you want to interview Putin? Interviewing Putin is good, especially having Western journalists or any journalists, frankly, interview Putin is always good. I love it whenever he does those like two hour things where he sits there and takes questions. I support these things, even if many of these are stews. You know why? Because it's important to know how your adversaries are

thinking. And it's especially important to have Western journalists challenge them, maybe not even necessarily on human rights or whatever. I would personally love to see an interview between Tucker and Putin. Interviewing Putin is not a crime. American journalists are not have to interview pre-approved world leaders. We can interview, by the way, if Kim Jong-un would give me an interview, I would fly to Pyongyang tomorrow. Right. Okay. So if you're listening to Pyongyang tomorrow. Right. Okay? So if you're listening, please make that happen. Even though you know these people are going to lie to you, of course. It doesn't matter.

But the understanding what it is that they want to put out in the world is very interesting and revelatory. I mean, the fact that we're even having to discuss whether it's okay to interview a head of state is silly to start with. So, I mean, look, we don't know all the details yet, but here's very much what it looks like happened. And again, this is not totally backed up yet, and speculation, but based on the reporting,

based on the NSA's weird non-denial, it looks like Tucker was trying to get this interview, was going through these intermediaries, that he maybe wasn't directly targeted. It was probably incidental collection of these intermediaries were being surveilled. His communications are picked up as part of that. And then as you're pointing out, the big question here is how and why was his identity unmasked? Because this is one of supposed to be one of the really important protections for American citizens who might get caught up in these what they call incidental collections, where, again, you're not the target, but the government is still monitoring your

communications because you happen to be talking to someone who's a target. That doesn't mean that you're doing anything wrong or should be surveilled at all. You just happen to be in communication with someone that they're monitoring. So one of the really important protections here is that if that happens to you, your identity is supposed to be secret and protected and masked. Clearly somewhere along the way, if Tucker's story turns out to be,

you know, anything approaching true, his identity was unmasked. Yeah, it was unmasked. You're only supposed, that's only supposed to be permitted if it's necessary to understand the intelligence. So in very specific cases. Now, one of the things that we learned through Michael Flynn and rushing and all this crap is that unmasking is way more casually done and way more routine than we ever thought and that it ever should have been. So some of these bureaucrats may think nothing of putting in unmasking requests, and they seem to be granted relatively casually, which is a problem in and of itself.

And so, yeah, it's a very serious charge that our government was monitoring the communications of a prominent U.S. journalist, whatever you think of Tucker Carlson, that's, yeah, that's a big issue. And, you know, the fact that people can't take off their, like, feelings, they can't put aside their feelings about this person and just see it on the basis of principle and fact is really extraordinarily telling. And the fact that, you know, this is another, this is like the first story we did about the FBI informants. This is ridiculous. It's like, well, we don't have the

evidence yet, but to say it's just ridiculous and not be curious about it is silly. Same thing here. The government monitors communications of all kinds of people all the time, totally routinely. What company was it that Edward Snowden tweeted down? It was like Microsoft was saying, this is completely routine that the government is asking us for data of U.S. persons. OK, so to be like, there's no way they would have done that again. It's just so flippant to not be curious at all, to totally dismiss it and to just just knee jerk back up whatever the story of the security state is here, especially after the NSA put out that super weird like, well, we didn't target Tucker Carlson statement. That was instant red flag there. If Rachel Maddow had been spied on by the NSA under Trump, I would be absolutely outraged.

Absolutely. And I think everybody else should be too. But I also know that the media would be 100% behind her. And in this particular case, look, this recently came out. The Trump DOJ actually went to the mat to try and, I think, seize some emails from New York Times reporters and the Washington Post, and they put a gag order on them while that was all happening. Yeah. So that people in the Times and the Post, they only recently revealed this because they weren't legally allowed to. That's outrageous. You don't get to read journalists' emails. Absolutely freaking not. But you know what? They had a whole expose on that, and they talked that agency are taking, unmasking his emails. And then, according to Tucker, trying to leak against him to say that he's some sort of Russian stooge for trying to interview Putin. Yeah.

That is some like 1960s Hoover level stuff here in terms of using government agencies in order to gather information and then plant damaging information in the press. It is a scandal of the highest order. That part we don't have any proof of. Yeah, it's not confirmed, but I'm telling you, it's true. That's bad. Leaking, but again, you should be curious. I'm very curious. I would love to know.

Let's not just dismiss it out of hand as if they would never do such a thing. Oh, my God, they never do that. They do this kind of crap all the time. Hoover-esque is a term for a reason. Give me a break. I think why maybe we're able to react to this and feel very much like, yeah, if Trump was doing this to Rachel Maddow or other journalists, of course, we'd be consistently outraged. I just don't see this as a partisan issue because I'm under no illusions that Trump was better or Biden is worse or Biden is better

or Obama. Like there may be gradations of infractions here, but every president takes whatever power is available to them and uses and abuses it. And especially post 9-11 when there was a gigantic security state power grab, like we've never rolled that back. And so I just see this as whatever president, whether it's a Democrat or Republican, is in power clearly feels free to use and abuse these powers. No, no question whatsoever. So we have actually speaking within this vein. Yeah. Update on the case of Julian Assange.

Yeah. So this is really this is really important to remind you guys. Assange is in prison right now in the UK and the U.S. government is trying to extradite him to face charges of espionage. It's important to give you a little bit of the context here. So remember, under the Obama administration, they really wanted to go after Assange and they essentially Eric Holder and the Obama administration felt that they couldn't charge him. They couldn't figure out this New York Times problem. How do we charge Julian Assange and destroy him the way that we want to, but not also implicate New York Times or any other journalistic outlet? They couldn't figure that out. Trump come into office and they take a more aggressive stance and they go after Assange on this idea that he helped Chelsea Manning hack into the documents, which is ridiculous for a lot of reasons that I won't get into. But also a lot of journalists help their source to be able to

protect their communications and they provide them that sort of support. So again, it's not clear that you're not criminalizing all of journalism, even if Assange was tangentially involved in helping to hack this password. But Chelsea Manning had access to all of these documents, did not need Julian Assange's help. literally zero mainstream U.S. outlets that covered the fact that one of the U.S. government's key witnesses in this just admitted that he completely lied and made up his story. This guy is a known criminal, known pedophile, and invented this story so that he could escape prosecution for some of his other crimes. So that part of the case totally fell apart. The initial hearing, which, you know, again, this started in the Trump administration, but the Biden administration has continued to seek Assange's extradition. At the initial extradition hearing, the judge said, no,

we're not going to extradite Julian Assange, not because we disagree with the merits of the case against him, which was important and not good, but because we're worried about his psychological health. We think he's at extreme risk of suicide, especially because we know how it is in U.S. prisons, and it's horrific, especially in Supermax prisons where he's likely to be held, because he's being charged with this national security crime. So, that brings me to the update. The U.S. government has now given the U.K. assurances that number one, Julian will not be held under the strictest maximum security conditions. And I'm

reading for The Wall Street Journal now, if extradited to the U.S., they're also saying we're not going to put him in a supermax prison. They also have given assurances that Julian Assange would be permitted to serve any jail time if he's convicted in his native Australia. Now, there's some important caveats to even those assurances, which should be seen in light of they had to address these concerns in order, this is an attempt by the U.S. government to continue to get Julian extradited so that they can try to convict him in the U.S. and send him to prison for breaking down exactly what the kind of caveats are. So they said that they wouldn't impose these special administrative measures, which is isolation effectively and these other sort of like extreme tactics that are used in U.S. prisons during pretrial confinement or in prison if he's convicted. But they didn't say they wouldn't hold him in administrative segregation or other forms of isolation. So that's an important caveat. They said that he'll receive clinical and psychological treatment. They also said he would not be imprisoned at a Supermax in

California unless he committed a future act that met the test for designation. So again, kind of a big loophole there. And then with regards to him serving any time if convicted in Australia, that would only happen after every appeal and everything was exhausted. So that means if he faces trial in the U.S., you all know how long these cases can drag out, years and years, before he'd ever been sent back to Australia. I mean, the bottom line of all of this is Julian Assange should be free today. The Biden administration has it in their power to drop these charges right now, release Julian, allow him to be free, and actually make good on all of their hollow. Yeah, it's funny, a lot of media stories today, which is that the Indian press, per Glenn Greenwald, is one of the only places currently that will be reporting about some of these details, about the pullback of the lawsuit and more.

To this time, there's still not anything in the New York Times or more, even though some of their own reporters on a personal level have been like, hey, look, I'm a national security reporter. If you prosecute him, they can prosecute me. Yeah, they've said this. I've heard them say this and they've even written so publicly, but not one of them has done a story on it yet. So I think that tells you a lot. Yeah. And it's disgusting how they'll go out there and be, oh, freedom of the press. And we're so offended by Trump. You can't say anything about the, you know, the attacks, the verbal attacks on journalists. If you don't talk about this, if you don't care about this, I mean, this is a direct attack on freedom of the press, a direct attack on the First Amendment. And all that, and you all know,

I interviewed Julian's father and his brother last week for Crystal Collins Friends. All that they want is the Biden administration to go back to the position of the Obama administration, the Obama-Biden administration, when they recognized we can't charge Assange without implicating all of journalism. That's all they're asking for. Don't continue this Trump-era prosecution. Go back to what you're thinking was under Barack Obama. That's all that they're asking for. And it of Haiti was assassinated in what looks like some sort of like hit squad raid. It's unclear who exactly was behind it. What is going on here, Crystal? I know you went down the rabbit hole. So Haiti is a fascinating, both inspiring and tragic country that, of course, the U.S. has had deep involvement in up through the 2000s under

George W. Bush, which is perhaps a story for another day, but is relevant here. The country's been in crisis for a while. It's been in political crisis essentially ever since we, it appears, helped to depose Aristide back in 2004. The current president, a guy named Jovenel Moise, who was just assassinated, we don't know who did it. And I wouldn't trust a lot of the information coming out from the police chief and others on the scene because essentially everyone is corrupted there. There's massive gang problem in the country. There's indications that Moise himself was complicit in some of the activities in the gang or supported by these gangs. He also had overstayed his term in office and was unilaterally rewriting the Constitution, implicated in all kinds of corruption and

scandals and violent scandals as well. So let's not say that this was a good guy or a good president whatsoever. However, it has plunged Haiti into even further crisis. So no one is celebrating the death of this man. Let's go ahead and throw the tear sheet up on the screen that we have here that some of the mercenaries who were involved in this assassination have been killed, that others are in custody. We don't really have any indication of who they are or why they did this. Some of this, shockingly, was caught on video. And it's really bizarre. It looks like pretending to be a drug enforcement agency operation. The theory is that they say this, and we'll play the video in just a

second, in order to get the bodyguards to stand down because DEA activity in Haiti is apparently fairly common. So they're used to hearing people with American accents saying, this is the DEA, stand down. So you hear that on this video. Other reports, again, coming from government officials, say that some of the perpetrators, some of the murderers here were speaking Spanish. So make of that whatever you will. The first lady has also been critically wounded.

She's been flown to Florida for treatment. She is alive and stable, but they say in critical condition. Let's take a listen to that video where you can hear American accent and English declaring this a DEA operation. Of course, the DEA denies this and seems very unlikely that it was a DEA operation. Let's take a listen. This is a DEA homoerotic search. Let's just watch it again, you guys. We don't buy a gun. Yes, we have a rule. Yeah, that's wild.

Yeah, and there's other videos out there where you hear, you know, repeated gunfire. A lot of this, at least the sounds of it, caught on video. So again, this is an incredibly impoverished country that has been screwed over time and time again since its founding, since its independence. I think the only successful slave revolt in history, they gained their independence from France. They actually defeated Napoleon in order to gain their independence. But they were then consistently discriminated against. The U.S. took 60 years to represent them. First black republic in the world. France, after their independence, levies these millions of dollars and say, like, you owe us because you

stole our colonial shit and threatened them with war. So put them in debt from the beginning. And there's been just, you know, cycles of U.S. intervention, again, deposing popular leaders like Aristide. You've had horrible dictators like Papa Doc and Baby Doc who ruled by violence. You've had U.S. embargoes that have kept the people poor and impoverished. And then on top of everything, you've had natural disasters, hurricane, earthquake that they still haven't been able to recover from. So it was already kind of a lawless and violent situation. And now, again, with the assassination of Jovenel Moise,

you just have further instability, total power vacuum. The guy who says he's in charge now, Joseph is his last name, is the nation's sixth prime minister in the last four years. He says he's now in charge, but he actually had already, Moise had already replaced him. There was a new dude who was supposed to be sworn in next week. So that just gives you another indication of how completely uncertain things are on this island where the people have suffered so incredibly much. And again, according to him, these were mercenaries. So they were saying that the gunmen, you know, with American accents or more, they think that a lot of these people were hired killers, which actually would be even crazier. Yeah, so who hired them?

Right, who hired them? Why? I mean, who are they? There's actually a lot of interesting law around mercenaries and hired guns and all this of what exactly happens in the third world. And I think there is something that is very much going on here right now. But when I heard that audio, I was like, this is totally nuts. Some of the speculation is actually it could be drug-related for cartels and stuff in terms of South Florida.

So, look, there's no indication necessarily. It looks like there's plenty of domestic reasons for people to be involved here, but very messy and sad situation. Yeah, I mean, it looks from all indications that he was in bed with a lot of, you know, horrific murderous thugs. Yeah. And, you know, depended, the allegations are that he was dependent on these gangs which control a lot of Haiti and especially a lot of Port-au-Prince. And so who knows who this could have been, what sort of vendetta they might have had and why, who hired these killers and ultimately plunged this country into even further chaos. And it's also sad that, you know, the U.S. only like this, this chaos and lawlessness, 600 miles or so from Miami

has been going on and, you know, no one here has, has really paid that much attention. So I think that's another sad story here is how we've just allowed this to fester at best. And at worst, we've been involved in helping to plunge the country into chaos. So we'll keep an eye on this story because I think that it's far from over as we get more details and also find out not only who may have been involved,

but also who's going to take over and what this means for the political situation down in Haiti. 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. Crystal, what are you taking a look at today? The greatest wealth transfer in modern history has begun. So proclaimed a recent Wall Street Journal article on how boomers, having stockpiled the largest trove of wealth of any generation in history, they're now spending it, donating it, and passing it to their heirs. Here's the journal with that report, quote, baby boomers and older Americans have spent decades accumulating an enormous stockpile of money. At the end of this year's first quarter, Americans aged 70 and above had a net worth of nearly $35 trillion, according to Federal Reserve data. That amounts to 27% of all U.S. wealth, up from 20% just three decades ago. Now they have started parceling it out to their heirs and others, unleashing a torrent of economic activity, including buying homes, starting businesses, and giving to charity. So this wealth transfer is

shaping today's economy, and it's going to influence the soaring heights of American inequality for generations to come. You can see what I mean by focusing in on the here and now and its impact on the housing market. The housing market, of course, is insane. As you know, if you've been watching this show, and that insanity is driven by a few different factors. You've got the PMC moving to smaller cities and suburbs in search of a kind of life reset. You've got a shortage of construction supplies that are delaying new housing construction. You've got permanent capital rushing into the market to make a buck by turning America into a land of renters. But part of the story is also this wealth transfer, which is making home ownership

possible for a lucky class of young Americans who are recipients of gifts from parents and grandparents. According, again, to the Wall Street Journal, in this highly charged and speculative market, the majority of home buyers have to put down at least 20 percent of the cost of the home up front. That is near historical records and is a tremendous amount, of course, for a young couple. Unless, of course, mom and dad or grandma and grandpa can help out. One mortgage broker estimated at least half of his first-time buyers were getting gifts to make that possible. Another indicator? Well, the percentage of first-time buyers younger than 35 with a boomer cosigner more than doubled over the past couple decades. This is a perfect example of how having help in wealth creation from your parents locks in a cycle of prosperity.

In America, the surest way to build that solidly middle-class life and nest egg has been through home ownership. You might be slaving away in the wage earner's rat race never really getting ahead, but at least if you got a house in a decent neighborhood, you're likely to end up with an asset that has significant value that can be borrowed against or sold to cash in the gains or passed eventually to your own children. Your mortgage payments are being used

to build your own wealth rather than rent payments, which go to enrich the landlord class. In fact, racist housing policies, which kept black families from owning homes or which kept them in ghettos where prices could never appreciate, is one of the most significant reasons why black wealth has remained stuck at zero. During the Civil War, when much of black America was still enslaved, black wealth was a measly 0.5 percent of total national wealth. Today, that number has only barely increased to about 1.5%. That just gives you a sense of how powerful the impact of being locked out

of housing wealth accumulation has been as those around you benefit from the leg up of intergenerational wealth. Homeownership though is just one really good and really clear example of how even a little bit of generational wealth can compound quickly and thoroughly separate a society into the haves and the have-nots, especially a society like ours, where the rules have been written by the rich to

make sure that they keep all their shit. Because of course, some of today's millennials will receive much more than just help with their student loans or a housing down payment. Large fortunes will be bequeathed to the heirs of the 0.1% locking in new family dynasties. And the current loophole-ridden system of taxation means that much of this wealth was never taxed and will never be taxed. If that's allowed to move forward with the world historic levels of dynastic wealth, which are set to be passed forward,

it will be impossible to roll back. Democratic societies cannot survive this overwhelming stratification. Eventually the pitchforks are gonna come. And would you looky here, already the wealth of the very tippy top cannot survive this overwhelming stratification. Eventually, the pitchforks are going to come. And would you looky here, already the wealth of the very tippy top has exceeded the heights of the Gilded Age. So guys, it's now no longer accurate

to say we're headed to a new Gilded Age. We're there. And it's even more extreme than the last one was. It doesn't have to be this way, though. There is a very simple solution. Just tax this shit. Do it now. President Biden has proposed some relatively modest changes as part of his infrastructure and reconciliation to be this way, though. There is a very simple solution. Just tax this shit. Do it now. President

Biden has proposed some relatively modest changes as part of his infrastructure and reconciliation plans. So generally, a little bit of context here, the way tax law works is when you sell an asset, you pay taxes on the full amount of the gains. But a loophole in the law allows people to pass those assets on to their heirs. And then when the heirs sell, they only pay taxes on the gains that occurred after the original owner's death. All of the wealth from that asset that accumulated over the life of the deceased, that will never ever be taxed. To make matters worse, the capital gains rate has been kept low so that even the portion of the gains which is taxed is taxed at a much lower rate than wages are. Biden's proposed closing that loophole with a $1 million exemption plus

$250K for residences. He also wants to raise the capital gains tax rate. Now, in an ideal world, those changes would be coupled with a much larger estate tax that kicks in at much lower levels. Trump made this dynastic wealth loophole much greater during his term. Thank you, Mr. President. I'd throw a wealth tax in too so you don't have to wait until death for the rich to pay anything into the public treasury. But with this much money at stake, literally, again, the largest fortune in history, you can bet that those with the power and the money will fight like hell to make sure every aspect of the status quo is preserved. Already, a bipartisan group of senators has voiced their objections to even President Biden's inadequate proposals. And that's the asymmetry of class warfare for you, because the rich don't need any changes to the law to continue to win. The status quo automatically perpetuates inequality generation after generation, locking in our new gilded age dominated by dynastic wealth and financial royalists.

The greatest wealth transfer in history is just one more scheme to rob the working class of their shot at the American dream. And Sagar, I think this is one of those underlying trends. 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 where we do long-form interviews with people like Noam Chomsky, Cornel West, and Glenn Greenwald. You can listen on any podcast platform, or you can subscribe over on Substack to get the video a day early. We're going to stop bugging you now. Enjoy. All right, Sagar, what are you looking at? Well, one of the things that drives me the most insane things about Congress is not just how filthy rich so many of these politicians are,

but the fact that the closer you look, the more it seems that so many of them got or are staying filthy rich so many of these politicians are. But the fact that the closer you look, the more it seems that so many of them got or are staying filthy rich not through good, honest work, but from occupying the very positions of power that they're elected to. I know it shouldn't be a surprise, it's actually a tale as old as time, to leverage your power to enrich yourself. But it still makes me enraged. And while this is absolutely a bipartisan story, there are of course places we should focus on. In my opinion, those at the very top of institutions themselves should be held to the highest standards. I thought it was pretty outrageous when Donald Trump was president,

and he literally owned hotels where foreign leaders would stay. And unlike other hypocrites, I think it's outrageous that Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House, maintains one of the most active stock trading portfolios in Congress when you look closely that puts other corruption to shame. Just a note, all of the information here is publicly available through the Stock Act. The problem, though, is the media doesn't want to cover it. Luckily, our friend Unusual Whales over on Twitter, he has it covered. He dug into the data and he found some truly stunning results. The first trade that he looked at was this. In late May and early June, Nancy Pelosi bought several hundred thousands of dollars worth of highly leveraged options on Apple, Amazon, and NVDA stock.

Now, again, these aren't normal stock trades. These are leveraged options, meaning that the payouts are much higher, but the risk is high as well. I'll spare you the nitty-gritty details, but suffice it to say that this is the equivalent of more like a casino-level bet, not necessarily a well-considered investment. That is, unless you have good information. And lo and behold, there's a lot of interesting details when you start to dig into it. Her June 3rd trade, noted by Unusual Whales, was an NVDA. NVDA, you may not know, is a semiconductor and chip manufacturing company. And it just so happened

that not only is that stock splitting, but that the trade was made five days before the U.S. Senate approved billions of dollars for U.S. semiconductor manufacturing. Now look, I'm a huge fan of that bill. I'm a big supporter of the American semiconductor industry. But the appearance of corruption undercuts confidence that this is being done for the right reasons. And look, it's public information. Everybody did kind of know that bill was going to pass. But here's the problem. I shouldn't even have a question in my mind that the woman who is third in line for presidential succession is trading on possibly non-public information

and enriching herself to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Look closer, and you've got to be amazed at how well she's done. Unusual Whales notes this. Pelosi's one-year June 2020 to June 2021 results are 56%. Yeah, 56. That's a full 20% more than the Dow Jones Industrial Average or the S&P 500. There are hedge funds on Wall Street that promise and don't deliver results like that. So the question remains, what does she know that we do not?

She can deny all she wants and look to cover my legal bases. I'm not insinuating anything illegal. Maybe it's all perfectly legal. Maybe she and her husband are the world's greatest investors. But the appearance alone of such a statistically significant result itself is damaging to democracy. Consider one of the trades that I mentioned earlier. Pelosi buys Amazon stock options in late May. Okay, I guess I see it. Amazon's a blue chip stock, right? A lot of people would bet on it. But you may have missed this bombshell news that crossed the wire this week.

The Pentagon is canceling a $10 billion deal that it signed with Microsoft after protests from Amazon. And critically, it is opening the deal to solicit bids from both Microsoft and Amazon, likely to split it some way 50-50. Meaning, Amazon just went from zero part of the deal to potentially billions of dollars in government contracts. Now, did the Speaker of the House know about this? Who knows? I can't tell you that. She doesn't have to answer to anyone under oath. And to get her dead to rights, you'd have to be able to prove that she knew and traded on that information, which would be nearly impossible to get. The point, again, is this. The appearance alone is enough.

This woman and her husband are already worth tens of millions of dollars. They've made plenty. If they want to be private citizens and play the market, be my guest. It's a free country. But call me old-fashioned. I think public service should be about serving the public. And if you're playing the market, not just buying and selling stocks, but buying highly leveraged options, maybe I'm not so crazy when I ask what the hell is going on here.

No Speaker of the House, no President, no person in the highest levels of office should have this level of active trading when they are in the midst of affecting U.S. policy at one of the most tumultuous times in modern economic history. And I just think it's totally nuts, Crystal. All right, joining us now, we are very lucky to have one of our great friends, editor-in-chief of The Real News, Maximilian Alvarez, the one and only. Great to see you, my friend. Good to see you, Max. It has been way too long since we've been together. We were trying to figure out, was it like back during the Democratic primary? Yeah,

probably the last time that we did one of those shows. Which feels like 40 lifetimes ago. A million years ago, yeah. It's beautiful to see you in person. We want to get to some of the amazing work that you've been doing on the ground in Wisconsin. And by the way, everybody go and sub to The Real News on YouTube. We're going to put the link in the description because Max is doing phenomenal work over there, along with a great team of journalists that deserve your support. But I want to get your thoughts on this New York City primary race. We finally have the results now.

It took long enough. But Eric Adams, who, you know, ran, he positioned himself as this, like, populist champion of the working class. And in fact, the black and brown working class in New York did back him largely. But I think Ross Barkin put it really well. He's been covering this in a great way and we can throw his piece up on the screen there. Yes, he's unquestionably the mayor of the working class. He's also unquestionably the mayor of Real Street, Wall Street and Capitol. So Max, I thought you'd be the perfect person to provide insight into how those two things can happen. It's quite the

coalition, but I think it's a really important point, right? That like, how can you actually signal to both of these constituencies, right, under one sort of candidate. And I mean, I think that in a lot of ways, Eric Adams as a person, you know, as a former police officer, as someone who, you know, very much was strict and disciplined on his messaging throughout the campaign, focusing on a crime wave that the media was all too happy to bolster. Not that it's coming from nowhere, right? But it's, you know But it was something that he was able to kind of stick with throughout the election cycle. And I think that for the working class folks, there are a couple of important factors here. Adams did net quite a few big endorsements from

labor unions, right? And I think that what he represents for a lot of interested parties is kind of a new embodiment of the old New York machine politics, where people's faith in him is largely in his ability to make backroom deals, to pull levers of power that they normally feel they have no access to. So I imagine that a lot of labor unions felt like this is at least a guy who knows how to get things done. If we can get him to listen to us, we may get something out of this. But I think that as a lot of rank-and-file and pro-rank-and-file democracy movements in the labor movement have kind of signaled, as with labor's value on the shop floor, right, the strongest weapon that labor has is to withhold its labor. In the same way, labor unions, like, big political influence

could come from withholding endorsements. A lot of labor unions are not willing to do that because they're playing so far behind. So they make the compromises that they do by endorsing folks like Eric Adams, hoping that, in fact, he'll kind of scratch their backs if they scratch his. Labor unions have tried this before in New York, and they've been burned by a number of different really just, of the labor movement kind of doing the best it can with what it's got, but not being willing to really wield its influence. In a place like New York, a heavily unionized city, the fact that labor unions are not willing to do that is very concerning. Then there's also the kind of issue of police.

I think that the left especially, but all of us kind of really need to think long and hard about what it means for black and brown and working class folks who do want more police, right? Or who are afraid of things like the crime wave, like what that means in their daily lives. And I think that Eric Adams did tap into that. I can say till I'm blue in the face that that crime wave is in large part a media, you know, like a creation. It doesn't mean that people don't feel it. It doesn't mean that it's coming from nowhere. Murder rate is higher since 1995.

It's not a media creation to say it's the highest since 1995. In terms of reporting and all of that, murder is actually one of the most reported crimes because there's literally a dead body. This is where I get a little bit frustrated. You have been somebody who I think has always been very honest about what exactly is happening here. So how do you square the fact, like what happened with Eric Adams?

And I've actually said this with Crystal. People are trying to paint too much of a brush. Larry Krasner also won in Philadelphia. So it's not like, and Chase Abudin's probably going to get recalled, and he's probably going to win. And India Walton, who's basically half defund the police, just won in Buffalo. So it is not like a—but that being said, crime is a problem, especially nationally. How do you think this is going to square for the progressive movement when you can't even win in a place like New York City?

Like Philly aside, Buffalo, great. But it's such a beacon in terms of the politics that it does seem to be a significant blow. It is a significant blow. It's going to be. I mean I think that anyone who says it's not is, especially in black and brown communities, do respond to kind of things like media coverage of the crime wave. And then a candidate like Eric Adams, who is able to both say that he's going to address it, but also signal because of his past that, you know, he would do it the right way, right? That he was a police reformer, right? That

he would make sure that policing, which still a lot of working class communities do rely on, right, would be done in a more equitable and just way, right? We're largely kind of taking that on faith. But here's where I think like the really important point is, you guys know that like, you know, we've discussed this before, like I covered the Amazon union drive investment, right? There were a lot of Amazon workers after that who said like, look, a union sounded great, but the fact is that Bessemer is still a deindustrialized town

that is twice the national poverty rate. A $15 wage at Amazon is still one of the best things that we can get. And you really had people who were in a situation of choosing between the devil they knew and the devil they didn't, right? Most of them didn't know what it would mean to be in a union. And most of them knew very, very well what it meant to be on the knife's edge of keeping a roof over their head.

I bring that comparison up because most working class people in this country have only ever known what it feels like to live under siege, right? And we make decisions like from that position. In the abstract, the notion that more union density in this country would lead to higher wages, more workplace democracy, and would lift the floor for everyone is still largely theoretical because we haven't had it in so long. Most people don't know. Same goes for the police argument. I think there's a lot of connective tissue here where folks living in kind of underserved communities where you do see a lot of crime have only ever known, like, the police as a potential solution to make them safe. Right? Even if the police do not always make them safe.

Right? Right. Even if the police do not always make them safe. Right. I mean, it's the one thing that they know that can keep crime from impeding their abilities to live the lives that they want. They don't know what it means to live in a society where a more economically just system can actually kind of improve their life quality. We're trying to make these high level philosophical, theoretical arguments to a group of people who has to live in the here and now, right? Who, because they're under siege in that way, has to live for today and tomorrow and the immediate future. When I talked about India Walton, who's the first socialist candidate to win a mayoral election in a major city in like since the 60s because apparently they don't count Bernie Sanders. Burlington's not a major city, I guess. It's a town. But it is

actually, it's pretty small. It's a nice town. Very nice town. I like Vermont. But you know, the last, so before India Walton, the last mayor of a major city who was a socialist was in Milwaukee and was considered, they called themselves sewer socialists, which was supposed to be derogatory at first because the other sort of like cool socialists were like, why are you guys talking about your awesome sewer system all the time? But this was actually very successful because it was concrete. It was like, no, no, we are delivering real services that are important to you in the here and now. And so the philosophy of the sewer socialists was to connect really

tangibly to like the needs and concerns of working class people in the here and now, and to push to the side some of the higher level rhetoric or more revolutionary rhetoric. It was really about meeting those needs. And so in this weird way, I see a connection between Eric Adams' run, which was very concrete. I'm going to make you feel personal physical safety in your daily lives today. And also India Walton, who was very effective at addressing concerns over gentrification and people not having access to the opportunity. And also just, you know, this guy has been there forever. It's kind of corrupt and like people are done with him. So in these mayoral races in particular, so much of it is we think in terms of ideology, because that's what we think about. And we all have an ideology. We care a lot

about it. And it means a lot to us. But a lot of this is not particularly ideal ideological. It's like, who do I actually think is going to fight for me? Who's going to be capable of making those deals and being able to deliver for me in the here and now? There's a place on the left for people who are doing that high-level theoretical thing. That's really, really important. But I do think that Eric Adams' election says something about the inability of the left to make their high-level ideas concrete for people in the here and now. And we should also say, you know, that the left shot themselves in the face five different ways in this race. Diane Morales turns out to be total fraud that, like, collapses. And then we're left with people like Scott Stringer and Maya Wiley who are the left.

I mean, these are people who, like, supported Hillary Clinton. MSNBC analysts. These are, these are people who like supported Hillary Clinton. So it's not like we really had a candidate we were pulling for here to start with. No, I think that's exactly right. I mean, like, um, the race itself was, uh, from the jump, a sign of the left's institutional powerlessness. Right. And I think that, um, this connects to something that I know that you guys have been talking about a lot right like when I was traveling around Wisconsin for the real news I remember being in podunk you know like kind of a motel uh with the minimal wi-fi connection but I was watching kind of the conversations that y'all were having with and about Joe Rogan and

about the the left um and kind of especially kind of what we call the online left's kind of proclivity for, I don't know, canceling or kind of judging people in sort of a discourse-based way. I think this connects to kind of the question that we're talking about here. Yeah. I don't think one of the arguments I've constantly been making to people is that it's not like there's something ideologically germane to the left that makes us more willing to cancel people or to try to direct politics through things like Twitter and stuff like that. That's just the only realm that most people who have left politics feel like they have any impact on the world. Yeah, that's true, actually. It frankly is. It is. left politics feel like they have any impact on the women, right? Yeah, that's true, actually. Because we don't have... Frankly is. It is.

I mean, like, and not to kind of short shrift, right, the advances we're making in the labor movement, you know, the important kind of folks who are running for local offices to try to have that real tangible impact on their communities while holding true to their leftist principles. But in comparison to the Democratic machine and Republicans, like, we're exceedingly far behind, right? But in comparison to the Democratic machine and Republicans, we're exceedingly far behind. And so when you don't have other avenues to sort of challenge or channel that political energy to bear tangible results, if you do see some tangible results in people changing their opinions because a lot of people on Twitter got mad at them or someone getting fired for a bad take, if that is the one realm in which you feel some sort of power to shape the world that you live in, that's what you're going to focus on. And the left really needs to kind of inject that energy into the labor movement, into

community organizing, into building the kind of broad, local, state-by-state infrastructure that the Republicans have done exceedingly well at doing. I just saw a headline. I have no idea whether this is true or whatever. But it was like, QAnon's going after the school boards. And I was like, oh, shit, if they're doing that, that's actually bad. Because that's actually a good idea. So we should be doing more of that.

Max, I do want to talk to you about your trip to Wisconsin. You found this really fascinating coalition in rural Wisconsin that's trying to push back against these gigantic factory farms, hog farms in particular. Talk to us a little bit about that, and I want to play a little bit of the clip that we have. For sure. Thank you. I really appreciate it because this is a project that's really near and dear to my heart, and it's something that we're really excited about. The Real News is teaming up with In These Times for this large investigative project called the Wisconsin Idea, which is mainly focusing on the changing political terrain

in rural Wisconsin, right? Which everyone knows, you know, like has been largely abandoned by both parties in a lot of instances, right? You still see a lot of Trump flags when you're driving around rural Wisconsin, which we were doing. We were going all over the state.

But you also see, I think, real fertile ground for kind of cross-ideological coalitions fighting in common cause against things that they know are bad for them and their communities. What we're focusing on this month are, you know, three rural counties in the western side of the state that are trying to fight off the construction of these massive industrial hog farms, right? Owned by Smithfield Foods, own, you know, joint venture with Cumberland LLC, the Roath Feeder Pig CAFO, or Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation in Crawford County. There's a lot of important politics going on in these struggles. And you're seeing folks from the left, folks from the right,

folks who don't really consider themselves very political, in fact, kind of coming together and say, we don't want these massive, polluting, local economy-destroying, local community-upending hog farms to be placed in our communities. And what they're finding, going back to what we were just talking about, is that through decades of state legislation, their ability to kind of have a say in their local communities has been stripped by the state, and with the help of kind of big ag lobbyists and stuff like that. And you saw a very, like, pointed example of this in Polk County, Wisconsin,

where community members voted to put a moratorium on the construction of this massive 26,000 head hog farm that again, they know is going to pollute the waterways. It's going to smell like literal crap, right? It's going to produce a lot of like millions upon millions and gallons of pig feces that's going to run off into the rivers. That's going to poison the air. It's going to make a lot of the water undrinkable. It's going to tank property values. It's going to affect everybody, right? You're seeing kind of this interesting coalition of people coming together and saying, we don't want this here. And when they voted to put, you know, moratorium and when they voted to try to regulate in a moderate way, the construction

of this hog farm, they were, the county board of supervisors was slapped with a kind of threatening letter saying that they would be charged with federal crimes if they voted yes for this, right? And so you really see the two different legal systems highlighted in rural parts of the country where these international entities, because like in the Smithfield hog farm, all that meat's going to China. Of course. Right? And it's making like Polk County the toilet,

not providing like real economic stimulus. And it's really sad. We have a bit of a clip from your recent trip down there. Let's take a listen to that. People need to raise their voices about this. People need to recognize that there are folks all around this community who are fighting for not just like their land, their air and their water, but I mean their community as such. You put this massive CAFO here that's going to destroy kind of all the kind of shared common resources that people here depend on. What's going to be

left of the community? What's going to be left of the community, right? What's going to be left of the land. And that damage is going to stay for a long fucking time. Max doing incredible work on the ground in Wisconsin. You guys are always focused on things that no one else is paying attention to, but are really driving what's happening in politics writ large. Give them a follow over there at The Real News. Support the work that they're doing in every way that you can. We'll have a link down in the description. So great to see you. We appreciate you.

Thank you, Max. Likewise. Thanks, guys. Yeah, really appreciate it. Everybody, thank you all so much for watching or listening. We really appreciate it. You guys can become a premium subscriber today, listen to the entire show an hour early, and watch it as well. That's right down there in the description link. And we will see you all next Monday. Have a good weekend, everybody. Have a great weekend, guys. See you on Monday.

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Over the years of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone, our premium membership. If you want to find out more, go to crystalandsauger.com. Over the years of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone, I've learned no town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've heard from hundreds of people across the country with an unsolved murder in their community. I was calling about the murder of my husband. The murderer is still out there. Each week, I investigate a new case. If there is a case we should hear about, call 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I've seen a lot of stuff over 30 years, you know. Some very despicable crime and things that are kind of tough to wrap your head around. And this ranks right up there in the pantheon of Rhode Island fraudsters.

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