Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 8/2/21: Eviction Moratorium, Media Misinformation, DC Mayor Exposed, Lincoln Project Grifting, Nina Turner, Vaccines, Congressmen Fighting Big Tech, and More!

Episode Date: August 2, 2021

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Listen to VoiceOver on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey guys, thanks for listening to Breaking Points with Crystal and Sagar. We're gonna be totally upfront with you. We took a big risk going independent. To make this work, we need your support to beat the corporate media.

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ad-free and uncut an hour early before everyone else. You get to hear our reactions to each other's monologues. You get to participate 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 Monday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed, we do. We actually got two members of Congress on, a Republican and a Democrat, who've been working together on some antitrust stuff. So that should be really interesting to dig into to see what the possibilities are, if they're actually on the same page with regard

to what they want to do. We got an update for you on Lincoln Project grifting, as well as some liberal mask hypocrisy, good old-fashioned stuff. Also, update on media misinformation and how the New York Times, Washington Post, and some of the most prominent outlets in the entire country have been hurting the case for vaccines dramatically. But we wanted to start with what is frankly, in my opinion, one of the most shameful and unconscionable acts I have seen come out of D.C. in a long, long time. OK, so here is the context. You all know that the CDC under the Trump administration, he pushed an eviction moratorium that expired over the weekend. OK, so the courts were uncomfortable with this moratorium for a while and it actually went up

to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court allowed it to stand, but said, listen, if you're going to extend this any longer, you're going to have to go through Congress. You have to pass an act of Congress. You've got to go through Congress. It was basically Brett Kavanaugh who sort of pushed that idea of like, look, okay, we'll let you go this far through July 31st, but if you're going to go through any further, you've got to go through Congress. Well, we've known that for a month. Has the Biden administration done anything? No, they have not. Nothing. So approximately three minutes before this thing was set to expire, they go to the House and say, oh, guys, the eviction moratorium, it's going to expire. And guess what? We've got 15 million Americans who are behind on

their who live in households that are behind on their rent, 4 million who say they might be in danger of getting evicted. We've got the Delta variant surging, and we'll get into more of that later in the show. Maybe y'all should do something about this eviction moratorium, okay? Let's throw this tear sheet from CNN up on the screen. Well, Democrats put up the most pathetic, perfunctory theater around attempting to pass this eviction moratorium. I got to read you this quote from Nancy Pelosi because this is insane. Basically, what happened is they went in and asked for unanimous consent to pass this eviction moratorium. Of course, not a single Republican gives a shit that the eviction moratorium is ending. So immediately,

one Republican says, no, I object to the unanimous consent vote, meaning I'm not going to let you do this just on a voice vote with everybody agreeing. And I said, oh, those bad old Republicans, they're standing in the way. Too bad we're all going home on vacation. So here's what Pelosi, here's what Pelosi, the Speaker of the House, said. She said, we only learned of this yesterday. There was not enough time to socialize it within our caucus as well as to build a consensus necessary. Okay, you got that? First of all, shame on Joe Biden and his administration for not paying a lick of attention to this until it was way, way too late. Second of all, shame on all of these

Democrats for also not paying a lick of attention to this. You didn't know there wasn't enough time. We have known that this was going to end. For over a month, yeah. We knew for over a month that the court said you had to do it through Congress. We've known since the beginning of the program that this is when it was set to end. What are you talking about? So just an unconscionable situation. They're trying to pretend like it's just the Republicans' fault when the truth of the matter is, and we'll get to this in a moment, the Democrats, there are plenty of Democrats who also don't want to extend this as well. You also have this rental assistance program that was passed. The money was appropriated,

has been a total failure in terms of getting the money out the door. I think we have a Washington Post tear sheet that shows just how pathetic a failure that program was, which we have known and covered for months now. This was not a secret. We have known this. About $50 billion has been appropriated. Only about $3 billion has gone out. According to this Washington Post report, they've been doing a good job tracking this. Just 36 out of more than 400 states and counties have spent even half of the money. New York State hasn't spent a penny, and they've gotten over $800 million just in the first round of funds that were appropriated. Total disaster that could have been averted. All the information you needed was there, and they just decided not to do anything. Yeah, they did not. They only spent $3 billion out of the $25 billion that were appropriated from Congress in December.

So that means over the last six months, they've only spent $3 billion. And there was a second round of appropriations in the Biden bill that brought the total up to $50 billion, and they've only spent $3 billion. So think about that once again, which is that they're so terrible at this. If they have the money. They just haven't been able to put it out. And while they were dithering, people were on the brink. And now they're facing eviction. And now they're saying that they can't even pass or an extension of the moratorium.

And once again, legally, it actually was pretty dicey for the CDC just to come in and basically supersede all of housing law and be like, it's over. I think all of us are okay with that. And, you know, in a, in a major, major situation, but the court stepped in and said, Hey, look, like, we're not saying this isn't a good idea, but Congress, you guys should probably step in and do something about it. And please just how's that possible? Everybody has known this was going to happen. We knew about it. Right. So we knew about it, but apparently they didn't. And the best part is I want to explain a little bit more of the legislative mechanics. So whenever somebody objects to unanimous consent, it means they can't just pass it by a voice vote, right? So instead, what she's saying is, well, they're blaming the Republicans for object, well, one Republican, I guess,

for objecting to the voice vote on the unanimous consent order, which only means that they would have to call a vote. And what she is saying is, is that they didn't want to call a vote. Now, implicitly, it could be that there were some Democrats who wanted to vote against it or would have voted for that extension. If that's the case, hey, let's loot their names, right? Let's learn also all the Republicans, everybody, make them vote. But this is how they hide behind legislative mechanics, by blaming somebody for objecting to the order than necessarily actually calling for a vote. They never even wanted to bring it to the floor. And I think that that's really what makes this thing so ridiculous. The best part is Pelosi's top lieutenant said, we'll revisit it after the break.

Well, okay, right now it's actually pretty unclear how long that break is going to last. Could be a couple weeks, could be like six weeks. Now, six weeks from now, when people are evicted, what does it matter if you come in and you pass a renewed moratorium? Are you going to put people back in their house? How about maybe we punish these agencies or some of these other people and say, hey, like, why are you doing such a terrible job of distributing any of this money? I mean, if you were qualified for rent assistance, didn't get it, and are now going to be evicted, you have a pretty good case against the government that it's their fault for that you just got kicked out on your ass. I mean, what is happening here? It's a total breakdown of government, basically all the way up and down the chain.

And look, I feel for, you know, even people have contacted us about the smaller landlords and all those people. Seriously, 100%. And that's why I supported this rental assistance thing. That's why the government should, you know, step in, be like, look, it's a pandemic right now. Let's figure this thing out, pay that, and then we can settle debts later. But this is just pitting people against each other. The small landlord has no choice. The

renter also doesn't have a choice. And then the government comes in, doesn't give them money, lets the thing expire, and just screws everybody. It's the worst situation all the way around. Well, and here's what this all reveals too. All they ever cared about was the theater of it. All they ever cared about was having the talking point of, oh, look how much help we gave that $50 billion in rental assistance went out the door. Aren't we so amazing? And, oh, we really tried to extend the eviction moratorium, but those bad old Republicans, they blocked it. You control the presidency, the Senate and the House. Okay. yes, the Republicans suck. Not a single one of them cares about this at all.

But you didn't even try. You didn't even try to have a voice vote. You waited till the last second. You want to pretend like, oh, who could have known that this was going to happen? Give me a break. This data, all of this data. We have covered every single piece of this data from the number of people who were behind on the rent to the fact that this assistance was not going out, to the fact that this eviction moratorium

was set to end. And by the way, there were a lot of loopholes, even during the eviction moratorium, that allowed landlords to push people out. But it's about to be far, far worse. This is an absolute and complete disaster. And the design of that program was so flawed from the start because they pushed it to states and to local governments who were not set up for this. Some of them did a decent job. Some of them did a horrific job. And not a single dollar has gone out the door in so many jurisdictions across the country where you have people who were hurt by the pandemic, no fault of their own, who fully qualified for this assistance, and they are getting absolutely no help because the federal government kicked this down to the states and the localities

and hoped that they would be able to effectively implement a program. We know how hard some of these states and municipalities have been hit as well and how many things that they're struggling to keep up with. Some of them created this insane amount of paperwork that no one could possibly be able to get through. Some of them just weren't able to come up with a program whatsoever that worked at all or contracted with other nonprofits in the local area that failed at their job. I mean, again, everyone knew this was going on and did nothing to stop it. So there is one group who seems to at least somewhat care. Cori Bush and other members of the squad, they have been camping out outside the Capitol to raise awareness, demanding that their colleagues come back to try to pass an eviction moratorium. I want to give them credit for being seemingly the only ones who even care at all. But again, the question always is with them, what are you going to do about it? Okay, you're going to write a strongly worded letter again and have it ignored again? Or are you actually going to say, we are not voting for any of your priorities until we get an eviction

moratorium? We're not voting for your stupid infrastructure bill. We're not voting for any of the must-pass legislation. Nothing. You will not have our vote until we get serious and pass an extension of the eviction moratorium. Are you going to do that? They aren't saying that so far. And there was a very disheartening exchange between Cori Bush, Congresswoman Bush, and Max Blumenthal, where he's trying to press her on how hard she's going to be willing to go here, given how not hard they've gone in the past on any of these things. Let's take a listen to a bit of that exchange. No, no. So first, one thing that was said last

night, which is something that's very true, and I wish we would have talked about that this was where your conversation was going, because we're talking about the rally court tonight. And I really would love to keep the conversation on what's happening i feel like it's all related to health care and and it absolutely is but this is the thing what was said last night is that this bill medicare for all is not no there's no person on the squad whose bill that is that is bernie sanders bill in the Senate. It is Pramila Jayapal's bill in the House. It is not our bill.

We cannot make that bill come to the floor. There is nothing that we can do legally to get the bill to the floor. We have conversations. But Pelosi could have brought the bill to the floor. We're good here. Thank you. I'm sorry, Matt. We're fine at this. Why can't she answer the question? We're here to talk about the eviction. But I feel like it's all about good here. Thank you. I'm sorry, Matt. We're fine at this. Why can't she

answer the question? We're here to talk about the eviction. But I feel like it's all about healthcare. Thank you. Really appreciate it. We're here for a reason. It's about the more time. So you could see her staff were the ones who said, were some staffers, organizers, whatever, stepped in there to shut the interview down. They didn't like that she was

actually getting pressed on. How hard are you going to go? Right. And Max is 100% right. Health care is very relevant to the conversation. We've also covered the data here about the way that evictions help to spread coronavirus. So entirely germane to the conversation, also germane to the conversation of like, look, you're out here. That's great. Like, that's awesome that you're actually willing to call some attention to this and be serious about this is a problem and something we care about but don't pretend like you're impotent don't pretend like you have no power don't pretend like you can't that you have no tools at your disposal to actually force some kind of action some kind of flashpoint sometimes some kind of

fight like don't pretend that you don't have that ability and are just choosing not to exercise it here. So, like I said, pretty disheartening exchange in terms of any sort of hope that these folks are going to really use the power that they have to get something done. It's just really shocking from a coalitional point of view, because what the Tea Party did in 2010 and 2011 is they came in and they were like, okay, well, there's enough of us where we can block anything we want and we actually will. And they made John Boehner's life hell, complete hell on earth. They tanked multiple debt deals and whatever that the Obama administration had passed. They forced votes on like the debt ceiling. I'm not saying I agree with many of these things,

but they did get it done. And they frankly had harder margins than the Democrats have right now. They only have a three-house vote majority. I'll give it to Congressman Ro Khanna, who we'll have on the show tomorrow. We're going to be talking to him a little bit. He actually is at least telling the truth about his own caucus in a more recent interview about this. Let's take a listen to what he had to say. A lot of people, millions of Americans potentially are going to be upended when this moratorium lapses. I'm just going to be blunt. There's more than frustration. There is outrage at what happened today. Cori Bush, who has been

unhoused, spoke so eloquently about why we need to extend the moratorium so people aren't this week, coming week, kicked out of their homes. Maxine Waters had a bill to extend it. We said we could extend it, if not till the end of the year, at least a few months. And the leadership has refused to bring it for a vote. And the reason they're not bringing it for a vote is that some Democrats privately have tried to kill this bill because of special interests of realtors and other groups. That's the key point right there at the end. Some Democrats did not want to extend this moratorium because of pressure from special interests. And again, like you said, these small landlords, like they're stuck between a rock and a hard place too. Like everybody has

been failed by this. First and foremost, the tenants who are screwed and are facing eviction and all, there are a few things that are more traumatic and upending and create a downward spiral in someone's life than being unhoused, than not having a place to, you don't have an address, the instability. If you have kids, like it's one of the hardest things to be able to recover from. It can set people in a downward spiral. Remember, we also covered people who were living in this like, you know, short-term stay motel who were living there essentially permanently. Many of them talked about how they had had a home before the financial crash. And then once they lost that home, downward spiral, downward spiral. That's what millions of Americans are facing right now. And because these people only cared

about the theater, only cared about having a talking point about how great and how generous they were and how effective they were, they didn't really care that the eviction moratorium was coming to an end. They didn't leverage any sort of serious political power to try to get anything done here. And now, you know, this is where we are. It's very unlikely that they're going to get their act together to do anything. Everybody's home on break. You know, there's a few squad members at the Capitol trying to raise awareness around this. Oh, and the latest, I forgot, the very latest development is now Nancy Pelosi and House leadership, Democratic House leadership, put out a statement saying, oh, actually, Biden administration, this is on you. We want you to

have the CDC extend the eviction moratorium, which what would happen if they did that? Okay, they'd do it. It would immediately go to the courts. It's possible that you could have a sort of temporary stay and allow it to allow the moratorium to go forward while it's being settled in the courts. But ultimately, we know the Supreme Court is going to rule. So that's only a temporary fix at best. At worst, the courts immediately step in and say, no, no, no, you got to go through Congress. I think it should be through Congress. Why do we want these agencies coming in deciding how landlord housing law is being decided? This is their job.

And instead, they would rather be on vacation. Like, let that really sink in. They're all on vacation. They're all doing fundraisers. They're all out there. Some of them are maybe pretending to do some constituent meetings. But right now, in the mid-off-year election, this is prime money-in-the-bank time. This is when you go home, you glad-hand all the rich people in your district,

you get the $2,500 checks, you rack it all up so that next year, whenever you're running, you don't have to do as much of it. This is like prime Congress thing. And so they'll never give this time up. This is when all the Hamptons fundraisers are. All that stuff happens in August. Everything's in August. They're all like flying all across the country, most of the time not even in their own district necessarily, raising this money.

And while they're raising money, 15 million of basically the most vulnerable people in the country are getting completely screwed. And listen, these are the people least likely to be vaccinated also. If you take a look at the charts on who exactly is not getting the vaccine. So it's a health risk both to themselves, but also to other people. These are also people. Look, I mean, I've talked about this. Once you're disconnected from institutions, it's over. I mean, in terms of trying to get somebody back from the brink back into a house, it almost never works out that way. Back into a job, back into any sort of normal. It can happen on the margins, but in the aggregate, once you're out, it's out.

You're out. And we found this out the hard way in 2008. Once you start losing bank accounts, connection to the financial system, connection to work, it's done. One of the things that you can best have done, and we talked a lot about this in the beginning, we have a bottom-up economy, which is that all they had to do is put cash in people's hands, which we almost tried to do, apparently, with the rental assistance. Then the landlord gets paid. Then the landlord can pay his mortgage, so the bank gets paid. And that way, 10 years later, we don't have to bail out the bank. And now, instead, looks like what's going to happen?

Now the landlord's been screwed. These small landlords, they're totally hosed. So what are they going to do? They're probably almost going to either bankrupt them or default on their mortgage, may have to refinance, all that stuff. So those guys, enough of them go broke on something like this. Then the bank is like, hey, Congress, we need you to bail us out. And now these people are homeless. It's like, what a stupid situation.

The other very clear impact here too will be the small landlords can't hold on. They lose their properties. Oh, guess who's there to sweep in? Right. You've got BlackRock. You've got these other financial giants who are dying to, you know, buy up all of the single family homes and other rental properties so they can be America's landlords. This just accelerates that process no problem kick out pick the tenants out that property and um yes one more great american monopoly begins of these financial behemoths being everyone's landlords it never needed to be this way and now it is and there's a lot of people's fault for that and yes there are many republicans at fault there's also you know the white house is

in charge here there's all three branches of government and not a lot is happening. Feigned impotence. Their feigned impotence just enrages me so much. You control everything and you're still pretending like you can do nothing. The one last thing I'll say on this is this also pairs with the fact that, you know, housing prices have skyrocketed. And rental, for a while, rents were staying pretty stagnant. Even some cities that were hard hit by COVID, rents had decreased. Well, those days are over. Rent is now skyrocketing as well. So if you are behind on your rent, you get evicted from your place, you're not going to be able to find another place.

It's going to be tough. It's going to be really tough because those prices keep going up and up and up. So it is truly a dire situation, one that was entirely preventable and one of the most shameful things I have ever seen out of Washington. And that is a pretty damn high bar. Yeah, I think that's right. All right. Let's move on to how the media is covering themselves in glory, really. It's a scary time. Let's be honest, right? The Delta variant, nobody really knows what to believe. Many people got vaccinated. People are like, wait, is it not working? You're seeing all these headlines. The media's job is to tell you what's going on. And some people, for reasons I won't understand, still really trust the media. And they look at them, and the media is telling them,

you should be really afraid. Now the CDC is bringing back its mask mandate. And I think there's a lot of problems with that. But still, you know, it's the CDC. It's like when you see it in a movie, you're like, I'm supposed to trust it. And we are seeing a total and complete breakdown of reliable and good information coming from the CDC, coming from the media, so much so that we have a total and complete cluster. Let's CDC, coming from the media, so much so that we have a total and complete cluster. Let's throw this up by the media, because I thought they actually did a pretty good job here. NBC News, The New York Times, and The Washington Post all independently called out on the same day for horribly irresponsible framing of COVID cases in

fully vaccinated people. And let's give you an example. Ken Delanian, who is a world star idiot over at NBC, CIA scribe, decided to start writing about COVID. So here's what he says. Exclusive, at least 125,000 fully vaccinated Americans tested positive for COVID. Oh my God, that's scary. 125,000 out of how many? 145 million? 150 million Americans? It's one of these things where when you think about it statistically, you're like, wait, that's actually nothing. Also, how many of those people got hospitalized and died? Oh, so you have a 99.999% chance of survival from any sort of breakthrough case if you're fully vaccinated, and you have a 99.996% chance of not being hospitalized? Oh, sounds pretty good odds to me. These people are basically trying to scare someone for no reason.

The same thing happened at the Washington Post, which is their headline was essentially the same thing. They said, quote, CDC shows three-fourths of people infected in Massachusetts COVID-19 outbreak were vaccinated. Now, once again, they point to vaccination rates and even the cases without talking about hospitalization and death. All those people in that Massachusetts story, none of them died. Four of them were hospitalized out of hundreds. And by the way, this was an area with very high vaccination rates. So guess what? If there's very high vaccination rates, then you're going to have a high percentage of vaccinated people who are the ones getting it.

That doesn't mean the vaccine doesn't work. And it's all intentionally scaremongering. It's pure fearmongering. For profit. Fearmongering for profit. And it is the best gift that they could ever give to anti-vaxxers. That's the worst part. And I want to show you how bad things are.

The White House is calling out the New York Times. So put this up there and keep it up for a little while. Ben Wakana, this guy is the strategic communications director for the White House COVID-19 task force, quote tweets the New York Times. For those who are listening, the New York Times says the Delta variant is as contagious as chickenpox, may be spread by vaccinated people as easily as the unvaccinated. And Ben Wright really points out in all caps, vaccinated people do not transmit the virus at the same rate as unvaccinated people. If you fail to include that context, you are doing it wrong. So things are so bad that the New York Times is exaggerating so much that the White House itself is saying, all right, everybody,

hold on a second here, okay? That is the level of insanity that we've reached. And so I alluded to these figures, but let me underscore them. Please throw up Andrew Kaczynski's tweet. Less than 0.1% of vaccinated Americans have been infected with COVID-19. 0.004% have been hospitalized. 0.001% have died. So let that sink in. 99.996% chance not be hospitalized. 99.999% chance of not dying. The people who are dying, who've been vaccinated, mostly people severely immunocompromised, had lot of problems going on. So and most of them are elderly, too.

So already on the brink, comorbidities. Everybody knows that side of the story. This is this is what bothers me the most. The media is essentially saying and building up, trying to build the case for the mask mandate and all this by undermining the case for the vaccine itself. If you're unvaccinated, and I have a whole monologue on this about who are these people who are not vaccinated. I went and I dug into the data from the Kaiser Family Foundation. The number one reason for not getting the vaccine is it's too new and I'm going to wait and see. Now, if you're in the wait and see crowd and you're not hearing this responsible reporting around dying and infections and you're in the wait and see crowd and you're not hearing this responsible reporting around

dying and infections and you're seeing, oh, I can still get infected with COVID and the media is not telling me that infection is not the same thing as hospitalization and death. Well, why the hell am I going to get this vaccine? I'll just get COVID and have the antibodies or whatever. And it's like, guys, it's, I mean, they're blowing a massive hole in this, so much so that even, again, even the White House, who I think has gone way too far in embracing some of this public health guidance, even they are saying this is a total disaster, how the media has handled themselves this weekend. Yeah, because their interest is in people feeling pretty good about the state of the country and that we're on the upswing.

And that is the truth of the matter. And you're right to say, look, this is a scary moment. People are trying to figure out what's going on, what the risk is to themselves. Going through this whole process again of reassessing, like, okay, where am I going to run? My kids are going to go on play. What's going to happen with school? Open all this stuff. Like, I get that that is very fraught and very tense.

And this crap makes it all so much worse. To me, the most irresponsible one was the framing of this Massachusetts study and just putting out there without any of the surrounding context that more vaccinated people were getting COVID than unvaccinated. If you're just looking at that as just a headline, you're thinking, wait a second. So if I get vaccinated, I'm more likely to get coronavirus? That is the polar opposite of reality. And we know that that is the case. I mean, we've had how many hundreds of millions, possibly billions of people worldwide who've gotten this vaccine now. We know the data around what happens. You are dramatically less likely to get COVID. If you do get COVID in these rare instances of breakthrough cases, you are even more dramatically less likely to be hospitalized. And the chance of people scaremongering for profit and clicks should be completely ashamed of themselves. And by the way, hey, Twitter, where's their, you know, misinformation label? Where's their ban? Where's them being entered into the, you know, dystopian social media database where they all coordinate to give you the Internet death penalty?

Where's all of that? You know, they jumped to when there was like some bad Hunter Biden story before the election. But this stuff coming from sources that are considered so trusted is completely disgraceful. And it also really does show you the double standard, because if some, you know, right wing nut job on YouTube had put this out, they probably would have gotten it. They were video would have been demonetized, taken down, possibly kicked off Twitter, all that stuff. But because it's The Washington Post, New York Times, NBC News, they're just like, well, it's not great. But think about that Washington Post headline. Think about The Washington Post headline.

Imagine some anti-vax guy on YouTube is like, you're more likely to get it if you get the vaccine than not. YouTube would look at that and be like, hey, this person is. But it's the same thing. It's the exact same thing. It just so happens that these people are establishment. Also, I just want to say by the White House's own standard, these people should be removed from all of social media. Right. They've been spreading COVID-19 misinformation. They shouldn't be on Twitter. You know, by all rights, by Twitter's own standards, Twitter should have taken that down or at the very least labeled it misinformation, but they're not going to do it. And I would be remiss if I didn't say this was happening at a time of terrible ratings for the media.

Frankly, Delta is the best goddamn thing that ever happened to them. They miss Trump so much. They have been trying to make him happen. It just refuses to stop, start. They try on CNN, all of this. Delta is the best thing that could have happened because now they need to gin you up so you have a reason to watch again. Try and think back to the early days of the pandemic. I, like many of you, I don't even have cable. And I had to go out there, try and find it on YouTube. I was trying to live stream the press conferences. You know, it was a scary time.

We didn't know anything. I, you know, I remember a time when I was like, hey, this Dr. Fauci guy, you know, let's hear what he has to say. Yeah. And it was important. It was like Deborah Birx. They have this guidance, 15 days to stop the spread. I'm sitting there glued to my TV. That's big business for people. They made multi, hundreds of millions of dollars whenever you were afraid and you were sitting there in your house

and you're just sitting there clicking. And now that they've got people conditioned to that, but they're losing people on the margins, they need it to come back. That's what leads to these irresponsible stories. Because I bet you that Ken Delaney story got a lot of traffic. There are a lot of wine moms out there who are like, oh my God, you know, 125,000 people. That's so many. They don't know anything about the statistics. I've seen a lot of discussion around children. I mean, if I don't once again read a story about how, oh, this like obscure case in which a child who had all of these horrific health problems, I'm not diminishing this, died from COVID. Yeah. I'm so sorry for those people. And if you know somebody about there, I don is not at risk from Delta or from COVID of serious illness

or death any more so than any other like random childhood illness. The media reporting on this, I saw the New York Times or CBS News say COVID is more infectious than Ebola. And I was like, oh, yeah. I mean, Ebola spreads through blood and, you know, like blood and literal bodily fluids. Yes. COVID spreads through the air. It is more infectious than COVID. I mean, infectious than Ebola. You're right. Why would you put that in there? That doesn't mean anything. It's also dramatically less lethal. I mean, that was always the thing. Right. That was the thing that was initially scary about COVID is like, if you have Ebola, there's no mystery that you have Ebola. If you have Ebola, you're going to die.

Your entire insides are coming out of you. And there's no like, oh, let me go to the store. You know, I mean, that's what from the beginning was worrisome about COVID. But you got to put that in perspective of like, OK, well, what's the death rate? And oh, by the way, if you get vaccinated, you're going to be fine. So why don't you go out and freaking get vaccinated? There you go. Yeah, it's, I mean, the reporting on this has just been so maddening. Because you're watching it shape public policy.

And we're about to get to that. In terms of how exactly it is forcing people's hands. Some of these mayors and more. I do believe they are acting in self-interest. And we're about to talk about that. But at the same time, Crystal, I live in, you know, I've talked about this in the heart of, like, Wine Mom America, amongst all these upper middle class rich white people. And they're all masking again. All of them are wearing the masks.

And, you know, I went to a movie this weekend, and a guy complained to the manager that people were being sat side by side in and these are in one of those new movie theaters where there's like a lot of space between you and he and i complained to the manager i heard him say well what about the people who take off their masks when they're eating popcorn he's like why are you guys still i i swear i swear to god this all happened yesterday if you're It was like, don't go to a movie. Just stay home. Like, just do yourself a favor. You don't need the stress.

If you're that panicked, just stay home. But, yeah, I mean, it's this kind of like, I don't know, it's this self-sustaining system where the media needs the traffic. And so they produce these fear-mongering headlines at least. Sometimes the stories are just as bad. Sometimes the stories have the context, but oftentimes people don't really pass the scare-mongering headlines. So you put that out there, you create all this fear, and a group of people who have embraced their pandemic responsibility as part of their identity and who just are freaked out and want themselves and their family to be safe. It creates this public pressure for the politicians to do something to keep us safe. And then you end up with bad public policy that the politicians themselves, as we are about to explain, know that is not really necessary, is not really called for, is not really appropriate in their own lives.

They're not really following what they're telling the public that they got to do. And so it's this horrific spiral. And you always have to keep in mind that the media's interest in all of this is to keep you as freaked out as possible. That doesn't mean that there's nothing to fear here. That doesn't mean that we shouldn't be taking Delta seriously, seeing what the data is, seeing where it leads. But we also know what the answer is. The answer is get vaccinated. The answer is let's figure out how we can get more people, encourage them, like give them confidence to go out and get vaccinated. And stories like these do the exact opposite of that end solution.

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by going to breakingpoints.com, which you can click on in the show notes. So let's talk about the D.C. No, we've teased like five times now. My wonderful mayor, who we love so much reinstated our mask mandate here in the city of washington after pressure from the cdc despite the fact that we have had two coronavirus deaths in the last two weeks yes that's correct and we actually have a very high vaccination rate so she bows to pressure i was just reading this thing by

nassim Taleb about the tyranny of a vocal minority, which is that even though the majority of people may not want something, that if a minority is intransigent enough, that policy will actually be dictated to them just so they don't scream anymore. That's kind of how I would classify this situation. So this D.C. mayor says, yeah, it's actually super important, basically describes all elite rule in America. But if you were to think about this D.C. mayor, she says she's doing this for there on the screen. She officiated a maskless indoor wedding after the reinstated mask mandate. Now, some of you might have been confused because right before the mask mandate went into effect, Friday evening, she actually held a fancy birthday

party indoors where some celebrities were present and people were saying, oh, well, she's not even doing it before her mask mandate. It turns out that even after the mask mandate, she violated fewer than 24 hours after that. She went ahead and officiated a wedding at the Line DC, which is a hotel here in Washington, great hotel, by the way, and a wedding reception which featured hundreds of unmasked guests served by dozens of waitstaff. Now, there's actually a photo of her at that reception not wearing the mask indoors. Only one person at her table, as far as I can tell, is wearing a mask. This is a person who just recently had the authority to impose this mask mandate. Why is it exactly that Mayor Bowser is violating the guidance that she thinks is important for the rest of us here in

this city? And then she had the gall to lie about it. Let's put this up there, which is that we have actually no first, first I'll show you the photo of her at her birthday party. Let's go ahead and put that up there. Um, we have with Dave Chappelle. Shout out to Dave. Nothing against him. But here's the thing. Now, in fairness, this one does appear to be outside. Yeah. Birthday party, I think, was outside.

Oh, actually, it was both. It was both indoor and outdoor. Oh, okay. But yeah, that's the best part. The mayor's office says, quote, on Saturday, July 31st, Mayor Bowser officiated an outdoor rooftop wedding ceremony, followed by an indoor dinner. The mayor wore a mask indoors in compliance with the mandate, except that the literal photo shows her not wearing the mask.

Here's what she says. If Mayor Bowser was photographed indoors, it was taken during the indoor dinner whenever she was eating or drinking. So again, let's get to the craziness of all of this. Wear a mask inside. But if you're in eating or drinking, then you don't have to wear it. So apparently the virus just magically disappears whenever you're eating or drinking. That's nice of it. No, yeah, very, very thoughtful. Thank you, virus, for doing that.

All I'm trying to get at is that these people clearly don't believe that this indoor mask mandate means anything. So why do the rest of us have to do it? Rules for us and not for them. It is just peak hypocrisy. I'll let you do the Chicago bear thing because I think it's so funny. But it's just like this is happening all across the country. Yeah, that's exactly right. So the wedding was officiated.

She officiated the wedding. That part was on the rooftop. Yeah, that's exactly right. So the wedding was officiated. She officiated the wedding. That part was on the rooftop. The reception is inside. And she's clearly pictured there without a mask when she's not eating or drinking. Yes. Look, I think that's...

I actually think that's fine. Fine, right? Like, I think we should be able to make those choices at this point, especially as she's vaccinated, we're vaccinated. Like, if you know the people around you, she probably knew everybody she's vaccinated, we're vaccinated. Like if you know the people around you, she probably knew everybody she's sitting at the table with and felt comfortable

and that is fine. But don't go and impose these health restrictions that you know are bogus, that you know are, you know, are not necessary, that know, we're at a point where, look, if you didn't haven't gotten vaccinated, you're making a choice and that's on you. OK, don't ask us to care more about the people's health, as you said, Sagar, than they care for themselves. So this hypocrisy really makes all of it just appear as what it is, which is this sort of like public health theater. You know, the virus doesn't go away when you're eating. The virus doesn't go away when you're drinking. So if it's that serious, then I guess we shouldn't be eating and drinking together

in these sort of settings. You can't have, and this has been the problem from the beginning, you can't have these weird provisions that don't make sense to people because then, number one, when the restrictions are necessary, they're not going to follow your guidance because they're going to go, wait a second, well, why are the, remember this in New York, why are the bars and restaurants open but schools closed? Like, what's going on with that? That doesn't make any sense. Yeah, the answer is money, right? The answer is money. Here's a good example. Chicago decided they're going to delay their new restrictions because they don't want to screw up Lollapalooza. Once again, we got a big revenue maker for our

city. So I guess public health be damned. And then they're going to, you know, then they're going to act like, OK, once we put these things in place, this is this is totally not this is serious. And we'll probably have segments of, you know, people shaming people for not wearing masks, et cetera, et cetera. And look, I get the frustration. I really do understand the frustration when you look at your fellow citizens and you're like, why won't you just do the thing? Like, we know what to do. Just freaking do the thing. I do get that frustration.

But, you know, we're also that doesn't mean that we should be imposing these restrictions on everyone. We certainly shouldn't be going to lockdowns. You know, another thing, another hot topic, the vaccine mandate. Like, I think that it would be a disastrous idea as well, even though it's actually more popular than I expected it would be. But the backlash you would have from people, I think, would be so, you know, catastrophically extreme. And it once again is a band-aid. Like, you're not dealing with the reasons that people aren't getting vaccinated in the first place, which, as you said, and you're going to talk about more. I mean, these are people who are screwed over by the health care system, people who are afraid of, are afraid they are,

in fact, going to get charged for the vaccine and have some catastrophic bill that they can't afford, which is not a fear without basis in America, by the way. That's a big component here. People who are worried about, you know, having symptoms and having to miss work or having to miss work just to get the vaccine itself, you have this whole cascade of reasons why people may not be getting vaccinated.

So let's focus on that and stop pretending like you really think that all these restrictions are necessary when clearly your hypocritical behavior says otherwise. Yeah. And it's really, it's important always to call these things out. We did, you know, Gavin Newsom and Steve Adler, I think the mayor of Austin, whenever he was in Cancun. And he was like, hey, you know, stay in your house. This is not a time for relaxation, I think was his exact words. Or there's so many of them. You can't even count. It's like the mayor of Denver got on a flight. Andrew Cuomo and his Thanksgiving plans.

It's almost all of them. Give people the ability to act as you do. People can make a choice. You know, even if somebody at your table is not vaccinated, that's on them. It's not on you. If you're protected, why do you care? And if they don't want to do it, you know what? It's not your business. At the end of the day, it's a on you. If you're protected, why do you care? And if they don't want to do it, you know what? It's not your business.

At the end of the day, it's a free country. People are not giving enough agency to the actual people who these guidelines affect. And also, what's so dumb about this is that D.C. already had a high vaccination rate. As I said, hospitalizations completely fine. ICUs, you know, they've got more beds than ever. And then there's been two coronavirus deaths here in the last two weeks. It makes complete and it's complete and utter nonsense. The idea that we needed a mask mandate in the first place. And yet the mayor herself imposes one and then violates it shortly thereafter, just showing you that none of

it was really that necessary in the first place. Yeah. If you are vaccinated, you're good. I mean, that's really the bottom line. If you're vaccinated, you're good. Your chances of even getting so low, your chances of being hospitalized even lower, your chances of dying as close to zero as it could possibly get. That is the moral of the story of both of the past two segments, is if you're vaccinated, you're good.

If you're not, maybe go get vaccinated. Okay, another story with an important update here for you. Our friends at the Lincoln Project, you may have thought that the project was dead, that the dream was dead. But in fact, Sagar, the dream is still alive. We covered, I really think we were some of the first to cover over at Rising, the scandal involving John Weaver and his attempt to groom all of these young men, some of them dramatically under the age, promising jobs and political favors and all this sort of stuff. Well documented. Okay, so massive scandal. The media ignored for forever. Everybody else at the Lincoln

Project, you know, there was a lot of email traffic revealed that they sure seemed to know what was going on for a long time before they ever acknowledged it, before they ever got John Weaver out of that organization. Well, they are back to some significant fundraising receipts. Let's throw this tweet up on the screen from Rob Pyers, who followed this closely. So their FEC report shows that they have gotten $5 million in over the past quarter. That is quite a significant amount, $4.8 million. They did have massive operating expenses and legal bills. Interesting. Not surprising there. So if you're giving to the Lincoln Project at this point, you're basically just paying and legal bills. Interesting. Not surprising there. So if you're giving to the

Lincoln Project at this point, you're basically just paying their legal bills. They spent $1.3 million on nonpolitical media buys. That's like PR, essentially, for themselves. Spent $1.1 million on their streaming services, whatever that is, and paid over $964,000 on their legal fees, $610,000 on communication consulting, again, PR essentially. Outside of that, the biggest recipient of Lincoln Project Cash was Impartial Partners. That is an anonymously registered Albany, New York LLC that formed in May that is, Rob puts it, probably, definitely not a vehicle for someone wishing to accumulate generational wealth. That's the thing with them too, is like if you look down the list, it's not just the money that's going to their founders in terms of direct payments and salary. There's also this whole slew of consulting firms that they're paying that are also often affiliated with these same dudes.

Exactly. Owned by them. From the beginning, it's been an insular project in order to enrich themselves. Reed Gallen, one of the members there, 410K. Ron Steslow, 324K. Ben Howe, 250K. 173K to Nate Nesbitt, all the way down the line to Steve Schmidt. We had that whole thread, you know, animated there just so you could see exactly what was happening. I also, they paid a lot of money. Let me just add this one also to Tara Setmeyer. Remember her? She's the one that made that. She was the head of Acronym that made the Shadow app that was so successful in Iowa. So I can see why they'd be paying her big bucks at this point.

She's really effective there. Only in America do you get to fail all the way up to the very top and make millions of dollars doing it. They point out also that. I guess she was successful though if their goal was to, you know, in pumping up Pete Buttigieg, who now is Mr. Secretary of Transportation. And Glenn Greenwald points out, Rick Wilson, you guys might remember him, of the Lincoln Project. Well, GoFundMe just deleted his 2018 GoFundMe campaign

where he raised all of this money for a film that he never made since 2018. They quietly deleted the page. They ignored questions. Why are we pointing any of this out? It's not just a dunk. It's that there are a lot of well-meaning people who did not like Trump and who gave the Lincoln Project money because they felt like the Lincoln Project was fighting back against him. Then Trump lost. And then they had to figure out how they were going to keep going forward. They're like, our mission is to destroy the Republican Party. And I'm like, you know,

something tells me this isn't about never Trumpers taking down Trump. This is something else. So they reinvented this whole new cause about why they need to survive, stamping out Trumpism, and they're raising millions of dollars off of maybe misguided but well-meaning people who want to make a political difference and feel that this group is doing something. And our goal in all of this has just been to show you, look, they're taking your money, giving it to themselves, spending it on their legal bills, and basically, as Reid put it, taking everything down, grabbing everything that isn't nailed down on the way out. And it's just like the Trump PAC. So don't let anybody say that we're just

targeting that. Last week, we covered the Trump PAC and how he raised all this money on Stop the Steal, hasn't spent a dime of it challenging any election results, audits, is letting well-meaning people fund it themselves or give him money to basically do whatever the hell he wants. This is a bipartisan issue. But part of the problem that we have is the Washington Post will write a whole story about the Trump PAC. And look, of course, he is the former president, all of that. But this was an enormously influential in elite media circles, essentially Democratic PAC, which has enriched these people to the tune of millions of dollars. And, you know, the Free Beacon put this particularly well, put this tariff sheet up there. Lincoln Project co-founder John John Weaver, paid off his $1.4 million mortgage 27 years ahead of schedule. 27 years ahead of schedule. Must be really nice, right? In order to just pay off your house so

quickly. That's a dream of a lot of Americans. We just covered the fact that the eviction moratorium, and this is the man who was allegedly, for Mr. Weaver's lawyers, out there grooming men as young as like 15 years old. Isn't he going to allegedly? Didn't he admit to some of this stuff? He admitted to some of it. I think he denies it. Look, I'm just covering my faces.

You know? It's like, but our friend Ryan Gerduski revealed this entire grooming campaign, which was then revealed in the New York Times and more. And you can just see how all of this, it continues to perpetuate. Even now, Trump is gone. Trump himself continues to get it. But the whole point of Trump's grifting is that there became an entire cottage industry of other grifters grifting off of the desire to end his grift. So it's like, where do you turn for any hopeful story here? I don't really know what to say. By the way, if you're a leftist like me, these guys are a particular problem because they're the ones who really push Joe Biden. They're the ones most aggressively out there on MSNBC saying like, oh, the left of the party is terrible and they're the reason for anything bad that ever happens. Bill Kristol, who's not a Lincoln Project guy, but he's sort of like Lincoln Project adjacent. Similar ilk, right, of never Trump is out there right now pushing Chantel Brown over Nina Turner, which I'm about to talk about. So it's not without, it's not consequence free. As you said, all these people who really genuinely, you know, believed in these guys and thought they were going to help get Trump out of office,

gave a lot of money to them, put a lot of hope in them. And that's the thing too, is, I mean, you might be able to say something if at least their ads were effective. But they didn't. We know from the data that they were the worst ads that were out there in terms of actually persuading people. It was another, like, I mean, this was like a real, I guess, innovation in terms of grift. We're going to make ads that aren't actually about persuasion, aren't actually about winning the election. They're about catering to this base that is already a million percent with us and making them feel good. That's what these ads are going to be about. That's what they did. That's what they made millions of dollars. I think they raised a hundred million dollars in the last cycle. Okay.

Millions and millions of dollars made all these guys rich. And then after the election was over, they also turned around, and I guess that's what the streaming services thing was. They were like, we're going to become a media giant. Yeah, they want to become a podcasting company, like Pod Save America. That they already have these platforms on MSNBC in particular, but also CNN, and are making all this kind of money with their books and all that stuff. Now we're going to also, we want to have our own media platform so we can further our influence.

And I guess they're in the project of rebuilding themselves to the point where that might be a possibility. Yeah, it really is just disgraceful. And it just shows you how so much of politics ends up becoming a grift and having such pernicious impacts on so many well-meaning people out there

who think one way or the other. And then other here in DC getting rich, paying for their second house, paying for their boats, whatever. 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?

So guys, tomorrow is a big day in the battle between the corrupt corporate establishment of the Democratic Party and the insurgent left. Nina Turner is on the ballot in an Ohio congressional special election to fill the seat that was vacated by Marsha Fudge when she was confirmed to head the Department of Housing and Urban Development. So there's going to be something like 13 candidates on the ballot,

but Turner's primary competitor is Chantel Brown. She is the chair of the Democratic Party of Cuyahoga County, and she is also a county councilwoman. Brown has won the backing of luminaries like Hillary Clinton, Jim Clyburn, and the Congressional Black Caucus. Nina Turner has the support of Bernie Sanders, Cornel West, and the Squad. Both also have plenty of local backers and high-profile local endorsements. Here's a little taste of what it sounded like as their surrogates made the case. And you need to find people to send to Washington who can sit down and turn their one vote into two. Amen. down and turn their one vote into a two vote.

Man! You don't do that by spewing vinegar. No, no. You got to be spewing honey. It's a campaign of profound love. And justice is what love looks like in public, just like tenderness is what love feels like in private. And Nina Turner is a great wave in an ocean. She comes from a black people

who have been chronically hated for 400 years, but exemplifies levels of love that make her a love warrior. And that's why we can say to some of our brothers and sisters who are part of the corporate wing of the Democratic Party with their milquetoast neoliberalism, we say we want vision, integrity. We want to focus on the least of these, the poor, the working class, everyday people. Dr. West there, truly a national treasure. So let's dig in a little bit on exactly what kind of a candidate the establishment has lined up behind here with Chantel Brown. Well, typically corrupt kind, of course. In fact,

the Daily Poster just revealed that Brown is facing a potential state ethics probe over millions of dollars of contracts that she routed to companies affiliated with her romantic partner and with campaign donors. Here is that report. Brown, who had pledged to recuse herself as necessary from contracts involving her partner Mark Perkins, had used her position as Cuyahoga County Commissioner to help steer $17 million in contracts to PERC. PERC was founded with Perkins' uncle, but is now owned by the Stefani family, who have long established business ties to the Perkins family and who have supported Brown's campaigns for office. They intercepted the initial reporting on those corrupt dealings, so very much credit to them. Of course, none of this is any issue at all for the wing of the party that endorsed Brown. Actually, the fact that she plays by the typical

establishment rules of corrupt politics, that's part of the reason why they're supporting her so confidently. They know Chantel Brown is not going to cause them any trouble whatsoever. Her own ethical lapses serve as a sort of insurance policy that she'll reliably tow the Democratic Party line and look the other way on any of their corrupt dealings. And consequently, quite an interesting coalition has gone all in for Brown. It's horseshoe theory politics except for corrupt neoliberals and corrupt Reaganites. A pro-Israel PAC that has been influential in other races against progressives has dropped hundreds of thousands of dollars in ads for Brown. Their largest donor is an oil and gas executive.

Corporate-backed Third Way also got in on the action with a major digital ad buy of around a quarter of a million dollars attacking Nina. So Brown's major attack against Turner is that she is not sufficiently loyal to the Democratic Party. Personally, not sure how that's a bad thing. But anyway, this hit on Nina is especially ironic, given that Brown has won the backing of quite a few Republicans. Major Trump donor Robert Kraft has helped fund the pro-Israel PAC spending. A former Republican party chair, finance execs in a Cleveland area, real estate exec, and more. They're all helping to finance Brown's campaign. Not to be undone, Bill Kristol has been especially vocal in his support of Chantel Brown as well. Apparently, it's fine to make common cause with Republicans, especially

the pro-war crime wing of the party. No one questions your sacred Democratic Party loyalty then. Come to think of it, you can trash the Democratic Party as much as you want from the right, and it's really not a problem at all. But God help you if you critique the party from the left or are caught in a room with, say, Susan Sarandon. They will move heaven and earth to destroy you. Big Pharma, which of course hates Nina's position on Medicare for All, they've also been lining up to support Brown. Weeks after Nina launched an ad focused on her support for single-payer health care, pharma lobbyists and their allies, they got together in Washington to throw a big old fundraiser for Chantel Brown. Jim Clyburn himself, of course,

is a top recipient of big pharma cash. Now, the ads they've run against Nina Turner have really been something as well. Even as a coalition of Republicans, corporate Democrats, and economic royalists back Brown, they've somehow tried to paint Nina to the electric as not being progressive enough because they know that Nina's actual policy positions are in fact extremely popular in the district. So the pro-Israel PAC I mentioned, they sent out a truly scurrilous attack mailer suggesting that Nina somehow doesn't support lifting the minimum wage, universal health care, or immigration reform. This is all nonsense, of course. But they are all in to defeat Nina. And chances are good, we don't even know the half of it, because history suggests these people would do absolutely

anything to crush the left. They rigged the primary for Hillary in 2016. Obama and Bill Clinton intervened following 2016 to make sure that no Sanders-aligned forces could get a foothold at the DNC or in the party apparatus. When a pro-Bernie Slate, you'll recall this, won party offices in Nevada, the entire Democratic Party staff quit rather than work with them. Don't even get me started on whatever the hell happened in Iowa in 2020 with the shadow app. The whole conspiracy to take down Alex Morse also comes to mind. But it's not just national politics where Democrats resort to extreme tactics to guarantee that no one with the mind of their own survives. When Bernie was first elected mayor in Burlington, remember this? The equivalent of the city council effectively defunded the mayor's office so that he would have

to lean on volunteers to conduct city business until he was able to run his own slate of candidates and secure some supporters on that council. Or right now in Buffalo, the city council is debating abolishing the position of mayor altogether. Just so happens that an outsider socialist named India Walton just won the Democratic primary and is poised to become mayor. Can't have that. Look, I know some of you doubt that Nina is going to be different. You've been disappointed by the squad and by Bernie, and you wonder if she's really going to stay true to her word and to fight, whether she'd truly be a threat to the establishment. You also know that I've known Nina for a long time. I consider her a dear friend. I've seen

her heart and her tenacity up close. There is zero doubt that I am as biased as they come when it comes to Nina Turner. But don't take my word for it. Just look at the overwhelming show of force coming from the corporate side of the ledger. They will do anything to destroy Nina. No lie is too brazen. No money is too dirty. All because she's a good person who actually might do what's right instead of just unthinkingly towing the party line. They think she's dangerous. We'll actually might do what's right instead of just unthinkingly towing the party line. They think she's dangerous. We'll see if they have the power to destroy her like they did to Bernie. And Zagre, this is really quite a marquee race here. And I think 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, I know everybody, I'm sorry, another coronavirus monologue by Sagar, but I feel the issue is too important to let go. And as we move forward in our collective government media hysteria, the worst pathologies of our civil discourse are being revealed for what they are. My emotions have been high, admittedly, you may not live in a large urban area, is that the whims and the tastes and the opinions of the people who live in urban megacities are

the ones you should worry about the most because they govern the entire country. That's why when I saw a clip from CNN's Don Lemon finally just saying the quiet part out loud, I really started to worry because I secretly, secretly, I know this is the inclination of most elite liberals. I don't know. I'm sure a lot of people are not going to agree with this, but don't get the vaccine. You can't go to the supermarket. Don't have the vaccine. You don't show it. Can't go to the ballgame. Don't have the vaccine. Can't go to work. You don't have a vaccine. Can't come here. No shirt, no shoes, no service. That's where I think we should be right now, because we continue to waste our breath on people who are just not going to change. They're, you know, the circular logic. They just

keep going back and saying, well, it's my freedom. It's whatever. I'm free. Well, your kid's not free to give other kids meningitis in schools. You got to take a vaccine to do that. You got to take vaccines in order to be employed. So what is the big deal? And all these people were saying, I don't want to put this stuff in my body. They're out drinking on the weekend and putting other substances in their bodies. That's way worse for them than a vaccine.

So come on, let's be real. There's a lot to consider there. Maybe you agree with Don Lemon. The Israeli and French governments essentially adopted that policy. And to be fair, it did increase vaccine uptake in those countries. But more what struck me is the callousness towards the unvaccinated, largely because it seems that a huge canard has taken hold of a lot of these people. They are assuming the only group of people in America who are not vaccinated are white Republican Trump supporters. And yet, as we have been saying, till we're blue in the face, the real situation is a lot more complicated. Of the 30% or more of US adult population who has not yet received a single dose of the COVID vaccine, there are

basically two distinct groups. So let's take a look. One group says no way, no matter what, no matter what, we're getting this shot. This group is disproportionately more likely to be white, rural, evangelical Christian, politically conservative. But there's a second group. Those are what we call wait and see Americans. They tend to disproportionately be younger, black, Latino, and even politically identify as Democrats. So think back to what Don Lemon is saying. Let's just mandate vaccines to live everyday life. Because he is not smart, what he doesn't realize is that in the places where he actually lives, like New York City, those around him who are unvaccinated are most likely to be

black, Hispanic, a Democrat, or a young person. Exactly the type he claims to speak on behalf of all of the time. Exactly the constituency he supposedly cares about. So let's dig into that population. Those people on the fence. The idea behind Don Lemon's little speech is that this is the only thing that will work, right? Yeah, it's actually completely wrong. Go to the Kaiser Family Foundation's most recent survey of unvaccinated Americans and their attitudes. Of all unvaccinated Americans, including the second group of Americans who say they're open to the shot, 31% say they will do so if full FDA approval comes. 23% say a vaccine lottery of a million dollars would work. 17% say a mobile vaccine clinic would change their mind. 13% say

free child care to help them deal in case of side effects would help them. In other words, making it easier, giving people an incentive to get the shot. Now let's look at the mandates. Let's see how they feel. The number one reason why people aren't vaccinated is obvious. They think it's too new. For others, they're worried about the side effects. They simply just don't want to do it. My point is this. They don't trust the government. So any government vaccine mandate is almost certain to harden people's unwillingness. But okay, as many people said, don't let the government do it. Make it a workplace thing or a private enforcement. Once again, thanks to the Kaiser Family Foundation, we know what would happen. If an employer required an unvaccinated American to take the vaccine,

42% of people said they would suck it up and do it. So in the short term, you would see an uptick. But more than half of the rest of the respondents said, no, I would literally leave my job. So then consider the situation. We have a group of people who don't trust the government, who would leave their job if required to get a vaccine, and who then are barred from most public places of public gathering. But the enforcement would also be at the state level because we live in America, and you simply can't do this on the federal level in this country. We would have a mass underclass of unvaccinated Americans, even more disconnected from society. We would have no connections to their life to encourage them to do anything.

Can you think of a worse policy than what Lemon is advocating? All of this for a disease where if you're fully vaccinated, you have a 99.999% chance of not dying from COVID and a 99.996% chance of not being hospitalized. Sheer insanity. The reality, like with all things in America, is we're all in this together. Lots of people of lots of stripes and parties don't trust our institutions. It's probably the biggest problem we face as a society.

And instead of a callous disregard for that lack of trust, or even trying to understand which is what Lemon's entire job is, he's giving a sanctimonious speech on cable TV to advance the culture wars. If you ask me, that's the real cancer. It's what really should be banned if we have a chance of actually making it out of this thing. Crystal, I went deep into the data here, and the unvaccinated data... Joining us now, Congressmen David Cicilline and Congressman Ken Buck. They're the two ranking members, chairman and ranking member over there at the House Antitrust Committee, two very important gentlemen who we've been fascinated by on the show. So let's put this CNBC tear sheet. This is what has caught really our attention, which is a bipartisan effort

to rein in big tech, to look at antitrust in a new way. Congressman Cicilline, I'll start with you. This is a story which has, frankly, given a lot of people some hope that Congress might actually be able to get something done. Talk to us a little bit about how the two of you were able to come together and have, or at least work together in working to rein in big tech and to look at antitrust companies in a new way? Well, thanks for having us. It has been a great pleasure to work with Ken Buck, who's the ranking member of the subcommittee. And we began to look at the power of these large technology platforms, the real monopoly power they had in the last Congress. And we decided to embark on a comprehensive

study, a real investigation of the digital marketplace. We did it in a bipartisan way. We spent 16 months studying this marketplace. We had seven congressional hearings, collected 1.3 million internal documents and communications, 38 submissions from 60 antitrust experts, interviews from about 240 market participants. So it was a very thorough investigation. We generated a 450-page report, which we found that these companies were really monopolies, that you were using their monopoly power to crush competitors, to harm small businesses, to harm innovation, to hurt consumers and workers. And then we set forth to develop some recommendations on how to fix it.

We didn't agree on everything, but I think we recognized that this was something that required congressional action. These tech companies have too much power, and only by working together would we be successful. And I think, you know, Ken and I don't agree on a lot of things, but we did find this one area of antitrust where we knew we had to work together for the benefit of the American people. And I think we, you know, this is one place in the Congress of the United States where Republicans and Democrats in a sustained way have worked together. We generated our first set of bills that all passed out of the Judiciary Committee in a bipartisan way and expect them to be on the floor in the fall. Yeah, it's something we've been following closely here.

And Congressman Buck, I wonder if you could explain in your own words, like what your biggest concerns with big tech are, because sometimes we hear Democrats and Republicans both complaining about big tech, but they seem to be complaining about different things. Oftentimes, you know, some progressive members are worried about power, worried about monopoly. And then you hear Republicans mostly concerned about just the censorship rules being applied more disproportionately to conservatives, something I would dispute, but we'll just allow it for the moment, more disproportionately to conservatives. So do you feel like you and Congressman Cicilline and others on the committee essentially agree and what the problems are with big tech? I do. And let me just back up a second. I think it's really important to

recognize Chairman Cicilline's leadership on this investigation. The entire time he consulted and was open to suggestions on witnesses and other things. I think it's amazing. And this is what happens so often in Congress and is rarely reported. And I'm glad that we are able to explain this on the show. My primary concerns with big tech are the fact that they crush competition. I strongly believe that the only way for America to remain the strongest economy in the world is to make sure that we continue to innovate. And these four companies that we're focused on, Apple, Amazon, Facebook, and Google, are crushing competition, not allowing startups to really grow and compete in the marketplace. And if that happens, we have to be concerned about China, about the European Union, about other competitors. And we really can't afford it as a country. We have to

keep an eye on our national debt. We have to keep an eye on other issues. And the only way to do that is to grow our economy. And these companies are really crushing our ability to grow our economy. I also am concerned about censorship, but my primary concern is the concern about innovation. It's really interesting. You know, Congressman Cicilline, one of the things is a lot of people saw the headline. They said, oh, antitrust bills. What do these bills actually do? Can you lay out for us what these bills are actually trying to target

and the exact enforcement mechanisms within them that could correct some of the problems that you say there are? Sure. So the bills basically restore competition in the digital marketplace. So for example, the first bill, the American Innovation and Choice Online Act prohibits discriminatory conduct by the dominant platform so that they can't self-preference their own goods and services and really pick winners and losers. The second bill is the Platform Competition and Opportunity Act, which prevents or shifts the burden, I should say, of proving that a merger should go forward to the acquiring party if it would, in fact, entrench the market power of the platform or reduce

competition. The Ending Platforms Monopoly Act would eliminate the ability of a dominant platform to both be a marketplace and also sell goods and services on that marketplace, which has an inherent conflict of interest which really can't be resolved. The Access Act will help promote competition by requiring data portability and interoperability. So if you don't like a platform because you don't think it has the right choices for you or protects your privacy, you can move to another platform easily without any friction. That's a good competitive solution. And finally, the Merger Filing Fee Modernization

Act is a bill that will make sure that our antitrust agencies have the resources they need to vigorously enforce antitrust. But by and large, what the bills do really kind of in simple terms is they make sure that you can't engage in anti-competitive behavior to crush and acquire competitors, to promote competition. And Ken is absolutely right. You know, competition is the heart and soul of free enterprise, of the American economic system. Without competition, you don't have innovation. You have a reduction in quality. You don't have consumer choice. So we need to restore competition.

Congress has sort of fallen down on the job for decades now, particularly in the large digital marketplace. So, Congressman Buck, it seems to me a couple of those, Amazon in particular, would be pretty unhappy about. In particular, you know, the one about you can't both run the marketplace and then sell goods in that marketplace. Of course, that's something that they do routinely. There are also allegations that they'll even pick and choose the data, see what products are succeeding really effectively on their platform, and then copy those same products, something that's been alleged in the European context at least. Take us into sort of behind the scenes. How much pressure is Amazon putting on you all, on other members of your committee? How much money are they spending and what is their argument that they're making to people? Well, all four of these companies are not very pleased with this.

I think that David and I have created a full employment act for lobbyists in Washington, D.C. And I have to tell you, it's rare that they bother stopping by my office. But when they do, I remind them that I took an oath to the Constitution. I didn't take an oath to Amazon or Apple or Facebook or Google. My oath is to make sure that we're doing everything we can to strengthen America and make this country as strong as possible. And so I've heard a lot of my friends that have been contacted by these companies, but understand also there are companies on the other side. There are companies who want to compete with these giants and can't compete with them, and they are supporting these bills. And so there is a balance.

It's not necessarily a fair balance, but there is a balance of interest in Washington, D.C. when it comes to these bills. Yeah, unfortunately, you know, Amazon, Google, Facebook, Twitter, these are the guys who have all the money. So they're the ones who can throw the most cash around into people's campaigns. And we've seen how that works before.

Congressman Buck, I'm also curious, though. Do you think that some of these companies are natural monopolies and that they should be effectively regulated the way that we regulate public utilities? It seems to me, especially in the case of these social media companies, of course, a lot of the benefit comes from the fact that it's not just you on there. It's all your friends, your neighbors, the people you went to high school with and grew up with in whatever town you're from. Is there an argument here that these are actually natural monopolies in the same way that public utilities are? Yeah, and I don't believe that they are. I think that another Facebook could be created very easily and I think compete in that market space. Same with Twitter, which isn't, you know, obviously Parler is competing with Twitter and I think Parler will get up and running again. I think it's essential that we don't do that.

So often with public utilities commissions, they are captured by the very industries they're supposed to be regulating. And I think what David and I are trying to do is create competition in the marketplace so we don't have to create a federal utility commission. You start to get into speech issues and privacy issues that the federal government just shouldn't be involved in. It's much better to allow two companies to compete with each other or three or four or five companies to compete with each other. When the cable industry was opened up, you got Fox News and MSNBC and CNN and a variety of opinions. And I think the same thing will happen when we have several Facebooks competing against each other. Congressman Cicilline, I do have one question here, which is about talking about the bills coming to the floor in the fall. Do you have an action in terms of like, how we'll see it move

forward from there? Do you have partners in the Senate that you're working towards? What is the future of the legislation look like? Yeah, I mean, first, we absolutely have partners in the Senate. Our counterparts led by Senator Klobuchar, Senator Lee, and others have been working on versions of the House bill, and I think you'll see those coming forward very soon. But we've had, you know, we work very closely with our counterparts in the Senate. There's tremendous interest in reigning in big tech in the Senate as well. And, you know, the question Crystal asked about the power of these companies to spread money around, this of course is one of the challenges we face. With tremendous economic power often comes tremendous political power, which is one of the reasons we don't like monopolies in America.

And so we're battling the four most gigantic companies in the history of the world. And they have billions and billions and billions of reasons to protect the status quo, to protect the ecosystem that allows them to engage in anti-competitive behavior that favors their own goods and services and generates extraordinary profits. So they're going to fight hard against these reforms, against bringing competition back into the space. But as Ken said, we have hundreds of thousands of small businesses on our side that are suffering the consequences of their monopoly power, consumers, workers, innovators. So we're going to prevail, even though they're going to spend a lot of money and try to stop it because it's the right thing to do. There's bipartisan support to do it.

We're working now through our caucuses, kind of member by member, to make sure they understand the urgency of this, understand what we discovered in our investigation after 16 months of study. You know, most members of Congress weren't involved in the investigation or the crafting of these bills. So we want to make sure we get them caught up to speed. But I think when members learn the harm that the monopoly part of these technology platforms are producing, everyone will get on board and will pass these bills out of the House and send them over to the Senate. Congressman Cicilline, one more for you on a different issue. As you know, the eviction moratorium just expired.

That was keeping millions of Americans in their homes. There's something like 15 million Americans that live in places that are behind on their rent. House is on a session right now. Should you all come back and work on trying to pass another eviction moratorium, especially since that rental assistance that was appropriated? We know a tiny percentage of that has gone out to actually help tenants and help landlords. Yeah, absolutely. Many of us have asked that we come back immediately to have a vote to extend the moratorium. The reality is there's about $45 billion that we've

already appropriated. I think less than $4 billion has been used. So also states need to get the money out. It's available to both tenants and landlords. So, you know, the frustrating part is we appropriated the money, but it hasn't gotten out. And as this pandemic is now seeing a significant increase because of the Delta variant, the last thing we should do is have people being removed or evicted from their homes. So we have to have a solution. The CDC ought to immediately extend the moratorium. There is no court decision that says they can't do that. And so if we have to litigate that, we can litigate it. But in the interim, at least people will be safe. And then Congress will have an opportunity to extend it. Why did this come down in the last minute? I mean, the Biden administration didn't say anything

until two days before it was set to expire. Yeah, I mean, it's unclear to me why it was this late. I think there was some expectation that the CDC was going to do it. I'm not sure why they decided not to, but they have the authority to, in my view, they should just extend it and Congress should be prepared to take a vote immediately to make sure we extend it at least to the end of the year. Gentlemen, we really appreciate both of your time. We know it's hard to get not just one congressman, but two at the same time and actually agreeing on something.

Very rare for us to see. We appreciate it very much. Thank you. Thanks, guys. Have a good one. Thanks for having us. Thank you. Thanks, everybody, for watching. I hope you guys really enjoyed that interview.

We have another congressman on the show. It's the week of congressmen here on Breaking Points. Tomorrow, Congressman Ro Khanna. You guys can become a premium subscriber today. Link down there in the description. We cannot appreciate your guys' support so much. All of the improvements that we've been making here. I mentioned it yesterday a little bit on Twitter.

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