Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 8/31/21: Afghanistan War Ends, Covid Hysteria, Mask Wars, Mass Evictions, The View Shakeup, Rachel Maddow's Future, China's Semiconductor Heist, Pentagon Power with Matt Taibbi, and More!

Episode Date: August 31, 2021

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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 Tuesday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed, we do. We got some COVID updates for you. An insane situation where a judge stripped a mother of her custody rights because she's not vaccinated. We'll tell you the details there. Also, the Department of Education is looking into whether civil rights are being violated

in these states that have banned schools from having mask mandates. We've got more numbers for you that are just brutal regarding the eviction moratorium, the ending of that, and how many families are actually in jeopardy. We also have an update for you on just how cringe the new view is going to be. You're definitely going to enjoy that. But we wanted to start with what is certainly the biggest story today, which is that our war in Afghanistan is officially over. Yeah, this is really, it's weird in order to be able to announce this. And I've seen, you know, much of the pushback is not actually over, etc. But it is.

The last American troops left Afghanistan yesterday. It's the first time in 20 years that American boots have not been on the ground there. And I personally think that that is a good thing. And the stunning way that it was announced really just hit home. It really did feel surreal when General McKenzie announced it yesterday. Let's take a listen to what he said. I'm here to announce the completion of our withdrawal from Afghanistan and the end of the military mission to evacuate American citizens, third country nationals, and vulnerable Afghans. The last C-17 lifted off from Hamad Karzai International Airport on August 30th this

afternoon at 3.29 p.m. East Coast time, and the last manned aircraft is now clearing the airspace above Afghanistan. We will soon release a photo of the last C-17 departing Afghanistan with Major General Chris Donahue and the U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan, Ross Wilson, aboard. While the military evacuation is complete, the diplomatic mission to ensure additional U.S. citizens and eligible Afghans who want to leave continues. And I know that you have heard, and I know that you're going to hear more about that from the State Department shortly. So for all of the chaos, Crystal, at the end of the day, it said Secretary Blinken yesterday said

that there's between 100 and 200, he said, near to 100 Americans left in the country who do want to get out. Now, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki was pressed specifically on this point. Do you have a plan in order to get those Americans out? They say, and we talked about this yesterday, about the diplomatic solution, that there is an agreement with the Taliban that people who have visas and people who are U.S. citizens will be allowed to leave the country on commercial air travel. Let's take a listen to what she said when she was pressed on that. You anticipated part of my next one because this ongoing conversation with the rest of the world about being able to get people out if they

want to leave. Is there any sense of how long Afghans who are trying to leave, who don't leave by tomorrow, are going to have to wait for further instruction or sense of whether or not they're going to be able to go? Well, I will tell you that there is ongoing, immediate, urgent conversations happening at a very high level with international partners now, and we hope to have more of an update on that in the coming days. There are different components of this, right? The airport operations, it may take some time to get that going, but we are working through a range of mechanisms so that there can be an ongoing efforts to move people out who are looking to depart Afghanistan. So that's the ultimate number that we have, approximately 100, between 100 and 200. At the

end of the day, 5,400 U.S. citizens were evacuated since August of 14th, and 114,000 people were airlifted out of the country. That's actually amazing. No, it is. We have to call it for what it is. Probably one of the most successful airlifts in American history. And really, look, nobody is defending necessarily the execution. I think that the images out of it are horrible and more. We have said both repeatedly that within the range of options that existed at the time that I don't really see a better way that they could have tried to quote unquote plan for it without even more disastrous add-on effects. And ultimately

where my North Star was with all this is preventing more deaths, both Afghan and in terms of American soldiers and service members. And, you know, 13 American service members lost their lives on the line in response in order to try and carry out this mission. And they're absolute heroes for what they did, looking people in the eye and processing hundreds of thousands of people. And so, you know, really thinking about them today. But sadly, Crystal, the war ended really as it began, which is that, you know, as the entire time that we were there, it was the young and the best of America and also the young of Afghanistan who paid the price for this. And this is what we saw, is that even on the very last day that there were muddling lies coming out of the Pentagon about that final drone strike action that we took in the city of Kabul. I'll put this up there on the screen.

It's a tear sheet. The New York Times, you know, saying a family says that 10 of its members were killed in this U.S. drone strike in Kabul, in which the U.S. military initially said that there were no civilian casualties whatsoever, and they were confident that they hit the target. And really, this is just emblematic of the entire war. The chaos, the children that were killed in this strike, the 13 American service members who are below the age of 31. 31 is the oldest person. The youngest was 20 years old. He was a little baby infant, and now he had his own child on the way who was killed in that ISIS attack at the Abbey Gate at Hamid Karzai International Airport. I just put those two things together, and that is why I can't help but just feel overwhelming relief.

The war is actually over. I was nine years old whenever we invaded Afghanistan. And so actually a privilege to be able to bring people the news today that it's finally over. Yeah, I mean, it's such a mixture of emotions to actually process the fact that it's done, that it's over. Our servicemen and women aren't going to be at risk. I can't say that these horrific, unconscionable drone strikes, which have continued to murder Afghan civilians, are going to end because they probably won't. They were, you know, increased under Obama, increased even further under Trump. And I don't see Biden taking a different course there whatsoever. But, you know, I think Lucas Kuntz said on Twitter that what he felt was a sense of grim relief. And I think that's probably about the best way to put it.

You can't feel happy when you look at, you know, what the situation in Afghanistan is going to be for the people there. You can't feel happy when you see 13 war servicemen and women killed. You can't feel happy when you see at least 10 war civilians murdered by American drone strikes. You can't feel happy about any of that. But can you look at the available options and say that overwhelmingly, this is the superior option? And by the way, it should have happened a long damn time ago. Yes, you can say all of that. And regarding that drone strike, there have been several drone strikes that are meant to retaliate against ISIS-K for their attack that killed our servicemen and women and also hundreds of Afghans, some of whom, by the way, were killed in crossfire of gunfire involving our soldiers and the ISIS attackers.

They haven't actually offered any direct evidence that they've gotten anyone. Or names. From ISIS. No names. And they've been asked multiple times, okay, so you say you got these targets, who'd you get? They won't say, which is very suspicious because if you got someone, certainly someone high level, you know they'd be crowing about that. They'd be bragging about that to us, to the international community, to everyone. And yet they haven't offered a single name of an actual ISIS target that they've hit. So be a little skeptical there.

On the other hand, we know for sure that this family of civilians was blown up and killed, including, I mean, little babies, the pictures of these children. It's just heartbreaking. And what survivors and neighbors there say is that this included seven children, an aid worker for an American charity organization, and a contractor with the U.S. military. So these were pro-American. These were people who were allied with us. Zamari Ahmadi, he worked for the charity organization Nutrition and Education International, providing food to the needy, was on his way home from work. I'm reading from the New York Times now, after dropping off colleagues on Sunday evening, according to relatives and colleagues interviewed in Kabul, as he pulled into the narrow street

where he lived with his three brothers and their families. The children, upon seeing his white Toyota Corolla pull in, they ran outside to greet him. Some clambered aboard the truck in the street, the car in the street. Others gathered around as he pulled the car into the courtyard of their home. And that is when the drone struck. So fitting that this is one of our last acts on the ground in Afghanistan. Unfortunately, that part is set to continue. But that's the reality. Our servicemen and women, disproportionately working class Americans being put at risk, used as pawns for 20 years because so many in the military industrial complex were on the take. Or our politicians were too cowardly to actually show and tell the American people the truth that this war was a failure, that it was lost many, many years ago, that the original objective

was achieved long ago, that the Taliban had offered to surrender. And also they offered to give up bin Laden early on in the conflict. I mean, all of these lies and misleading the American people for years and years and years. And this incredibly sad, tragic end is fitting for exactly how the 20 years unfolded. And I will say it again, all these people in the media who are so concerned now had nothing to say about any of that for years. Okay. The past year, all the major networks, they spent five minutes on Afghanistan, five minutes. And that's when civilian casualties were reaching all-time highs in terms of Afghan civilians. All they want is to get us back into war, is to stay there

forever, to help out their buddies in the military industrial complex, and you have to hand it to Joe Biden. They threw everything at him that they possibly could. And he stood strong and he did something that was very difficult and very ugly and forced the American people to see the truth of that conflict. And there is no doubt that it is ugly as hell. One of the lessons I learned from this is that the cowardly action is actually the easiest way in order to move forward in America. And that's a very terrifying thing. You get politically rewarded in Washington to continue a low-grade conflict in Afghanistan for us, a high-grade conflict for them. Record civilian amounts of casualties,

no, 20 Americans a year step on an IED, whatever, gets buried in the A7, A8 of the New York Times. Nobody knows their names. It just carries on. People carry around with the hole in their chest because somebody that they know is dead. And that's what the reality of the war was for years. And these people didn't care. And Joe Biden, Donald Trump, Obama, and Bush were the cowards. They're the ones who just said, all right, well, we're not actually going to try and win the war because we know what that looks like. That would take hundreds and rewarded for it. The media, they wouldn't care. Nobody would cover it. Even though Americans disproportionately wanted to leave Afghanistan, they were never going to do it. And people would always ask us, why? This is why. Because withdrawing is hellish. The war itself was also hell, but that hell was preferable for the people here in the establishment who established it.

They wanted to make sure that nobody saw the reality, the force that they had constructed in this country. That was really what this was all about. Same thing with the media. They didn't care about our servicemen and women. They didn't care about these Afghans. I mean, you know, we're talking about all this equipment before the show. I have been reading and writing up CIGAR reports, the Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction, for years. Nobody would ever cover it.

X amount of billion that we just gave away to the Taliban. A power grid that we built that the Taliban control. Gas station that we spent $300 million on. Roads that we built that the Taliban used in order to take over the country. You want to go? We can talk for a decade. Where was the discussion? The outrage over the equipment?

Nothing. You think this is the first time the Taliban have taken U.S. equipment? It's been happening for 20 years. The Afghan army themselves used to sell it to the Taliban or they would just give it to them whenever they threw up their hands

in a fake surrender. It was happening over and over again. And now you see this with Trump. Trump, I know, trying to capitalize on this, the original person, America First, Richard Hanania, points this out. And I love this. Let's put it up there on the screen, which is he puts out a statement yesterday in which he basically called for reinvading Afghanistan, saying that if we couldn't recover our military equipment, then we should go and get it. Basically saying that we should, here's what he says. All equipment should be demanded to be immediately returned to the United States. It includes every penny of the $85 billion.

If it's not handed, we should either go in with unequivocal military force and get it, or at least bomb the hell out of it. Nobody ever thought such stupidity as this feeble-brained withdrawal was possible. You know what that tells me? He was never actually hell out of it. Nobody ever thought such stupidity as this feeble-brained withdrawal was possible. You know what that tells me? He was never actually going to do it. There's no way that he would have been able to withstand the amount of pressure from the media and from these other people. There was no way of withdrawing with making sure all of our stuff was getting out.

It's just, you know, the hubris to think that you can lose a war and lose it exactly on your own terms in the exactly perfect manner with no civilian casualties and with no american casualties is crazy that's also the same mentality which led us to believe 150 000 troops yeah we can reconstruct the nation of iraq millions of people no big000 troops. Sure, we can reconstruct Afghanistan, a Stone Age country with no industrialization, which has been tribal for, I don't even know, you know, tens of thousands of years. This is exactly the type of thinking which led us to believe that we are far more capable beyond our means. And that is why it is with great relief

that I can say we are out of Afghanistan. Listen, I call on President Trump, please run for president in 2024 on a platform of reinvading Afghanistan to get our equipment. Please go ahead. See how that works out for you. It does just show you that the man never stood for anything. This was one of the things that he was at least seemed to be a little bit consistent on with regard to getting out of Iraq, getting out of Afghanistan, at least saying the words. And truly actually negotiating with the Taliban and starting the process. Great, thank you. Yes. But now you want to go in with overwhelming military force to get a jeep back? Are you insane? And I also have to say, this whole idea of, oh,

they're so well equipped now and they have all our stuff now, it's also a little overblown. There was a video I saw floating around yesterday of them surveying our helicopters, et cetera, et cetera. This equipment, the last thing that they did before they left was to render it completely inoperable. They don't have the parts. They don't have the know-how to run the helicopters. And oftentimes, they don't even have many pilots, many people who know how to operate this whatsoever. So did they get some of our shit? Yes, they did. Is it anything like what they're portraying here? No. The number Trump used, I think, was $89 billion.

That's the total amount of equipment that we gave for training and equipment to the Afghan military over the entirety of the conflict. Okay. So again, this is all, I'm not saying they didn't get some of our stuff. We shouldn't have been there. We shouldn't have been, you know, making it available to the Afghans and Taliban is getting our hands on it for years, as you said. But this is also a very wildly overblown storyline. And Mr. President, if you want us to go back and invade Afghanistan to get some jeeps like this is the most insane thing I've ever heard in my entire life. But it's also just perfectly emblematic of how so many people who claim to be against the forever wars, who were so unequivocal, we got to bring our troops home. When it came down to it and push came to shove, they were nowhere to be found or they flipped entirely. And suddenly finding literally any fig of a justification to stay there forever and ever and ever. Incredible to see.

No, it is. And you know what the worst part is? The media would probably reward him if he wanted to invade Afghanistan. They would. It was the only thing they praised him for. The only thing they would ever praise him for. I mean, this shows you it even goes beyond their partisanship. Left, right, Fox News, CNN, etc. When it comes to militarism, they all sing from the same tune. So it has been really something to see. But I mean, truly, truly the end of an era. It really is.

And like I said, it's hard to feel happy about how any of this has unfolded. But as Lucas Kunz put it, a sense of grim relief is probably the right way to phrase it. Yeah, that's right. There's another insane story we wanted to tell you about. This really, really pissed me off yesterday. Let's put this Washington Post hair sheet up on the screen. So this mom, her name is Rebecca Furlitt in Chicago. She has joint custody or had joint custody of her 11-year-old son with her

ex-husband. And she joined this Zoom call, which was just supposed to be about like child support and normal sort of issues that you have between former spouses and managing their arrangement with their children. The judge starts off the proceeding by asking her whether or not she's vaccinated. She responded she wasn't, explaining she's had adverse reactions to vaccines in the past and that a doctor had advised her against getting inoculated against the coronavirus, saying it poses a risk. Is that true or not? Who knows? The judge responds by stripping her of all her custody rights takes her son. I mean, this is bananas. Pretending that this is in the interest of the child to take the child away from their mother, this is completely bananas. And if there are any other extenuating circumstances or something,

listen, I leave it open that that is the case. But in terms of what the news is reporting, the Chicago Sun-Times is the first with the report, and now the Washington Post as well. This was really the only issue, okay? He starts the hearing by saying, hey, are you vaccinated? She says no, and he takes her kid. This is so insane and so outrageous and gets to the fact that, you know, COVID is one factor, and kid safety around the coronavirus is one factor to be weighed in. But there are a lot of things

that go into the well-being of a child besides their level of risk to this virus. So if this starts a trend, and the number of people I saw celebrating this online, like this was a good thing, this is psychotic. These Occupy Democrats people sent out this tweet saying, breaking, a judge revokes a Chicago mom's custody of her 11-year-old son after she admits she's unvaccinated. The dad is vaccinated and will retain custody until she is. Retweet if you support the judge's decision to put the child's safety before her mom's dangerous ignorance.

This had thousands and thousands of retweets of people who consider themselves to be liberal or progressive agreeing that this kid should be taken away from the mom for no other reason than her vaccination status. And again, if you're worried about the kid's well-being, you know what's good for kids? Being around their parents, being with mom. That's something that's good for kids. Yeah, and also, look, I mean, in my view, has lost the plot and is calling for universal masking amongst children, is that Delta is in no way more deadly or dangerous to children

than the original COVID. And so we already know that children, by and large large are not at risk of serious illness or death from this disease. That's regardless of infection. And so that is the, you know, that's what we have to consider in terms of why he is stripping this woman of her custody. And actually reading further in the report is even more dystopian, Crystal. The father did not bring this issue before the court. The father of this child was not like, she's not vaccinated. You need to give me this child. The judge unilaterally decided that he, as a condition of custody, was going to make this decision on behalf of the state to strip this woman of her custody rights over her own kid. And actually, I didn't know this, so thank you for the reporting here, which is that there

are now similar things going on in the U.S. court system. So here's what we have in terms of the roundup. Two judges in Ohio have ordered that some people receive the vaccine as a condition of their probation. Similarly, two Georgia judges are reducing sentences for offenders who get the vaccine. I guess that's one way to handle it. In New York, judges in the Bronx and Manhattan have actually ordered defendants to get a vaccine as part of their rehabilitation and as part of a condition for seeking bail, respectively. So the judge ruling in this case in Chicago is already kind of well-trodden ground in terms of the precedents being set that judges can say whether you're getting a vaccine or not. And this is where I just start to lose it.

Because look, both of us are vaccinated. We did a whole diatribe yesterday about why you should get vaccinated, about why even if you are a young person, that overall in the societal aggregate, it will decrease your chance of getting COVID. And yes, I know I did get COVID. if you are a young person, that overall in the societal aggregate, it will decrease your chance of getting COVID. And yes, I know I did get COVID, breakthrough COVID and all of that. But we should say, I was around you a lot and I did not get COVID. That's correct. Nobody in my family did. The vaccine worked, guys.

There you go. So, you know, who knows if you would have gotten it or not. So on the societal wide level, it reduces transmission, which makes it so that people who are old and elderly who are maybe not be vaccinated, they themselves could be, you know, very, very, very much facing death or hospitalization. And we also know that in elderly folks, especially, it reduces hospitalization and death to almost zero. That is exactly what we want. We want to try and turn this thing into both something that's less transmissible. And if you do get it, like for me, you're not going to feel good for a very few days, but here I am and I'm feeling fine. That is the most important thing

that we try to do. But we cannot reduce this to state mandates, especially through the court system. Whenever it comes and then interacts with the criminal justice system, that's even worse. Well, and this isn't just messing with, look, it's one level, which I also don't support when you're making a condition of probation, you're making a condition of bail and these sorts, that's just impacting you. Exactly. What gets me here is that the person who was harmed the most in all of this is her kid. I mean, this is heartbreaking. She talks about how, you know, she's sending him care packages.

He's been crying. Of course, he's upset. He's upset. And this was supposed to just be a normal sort of hearing that a lot of people who are divorced have been through. When you have kids, there's a question over child support, it was just supposed to be about that. And then out of the gates, he hits her with,

are you vaccinated? And takes away the kid. This is so insane. And the reason we want to call attention to it is because this is the first instance we know of where this has occurred. But given the level of support that this found in some corners of the internet, at least, and among, you know, liberal brain worms types, it would not be shocking to see this start to be a pattern across the country. And we cannot,

I mean, that's just, that's a horrific, horrific direction to go in. It fits in with, you know, the same attitude of you shouldn't get healthcare. If you're unvaccinated, you should be denied healthcare if you're unvaccinated. This is bananas. It's psychopathic. And you're not only harming the people themselves who are not vaccinated, you're also harming the people around them in this instance, specifically their children. It also makes me think of, you know, the conversation around schooling and shutting down schools and putting restrictions in place, et cetera. And especially last year, the only factor that was weighed in terms of children's well-being was risk of coronavirus, right? There was no sort of weight given to the burden and the challenges for kids

who, you know, don't have that support at home. Their parents are busy working. They may not have internet access. And you had millions of kids who just literally dropped out of school. And I'm not talking about high school kids. I'm talking about kindergartners who never showed up for kindergarten that were supposed to be there. What was the cost of that? There was no emphasis on the cost of mental health for kids who, you know, need that social structure where maybe school is like the most stable thing in their lives, where this is where they can go. School is very important for a lot of children. Yeah. School, where you can go and know that you're going to get two meals, where you know

you're going to have this structure, where you have people who are keeping an eye on you, making sure that things are going okay for you in your life. All of that safety net and support that we've built up as a society, which is wildly imperfect, but it is better than nothing, that was just taken away without a lot of analysis of what the costs of that were going to be. And I've said this before. Look, in the beginning, when we didn't know how dangerous this was for kids, it was understandable. It was really understandable. As a parent, it was this decision that I wanted my public school system to make. I was ready to pull my kids out. I actually pulled my kids out of public school the day before they decided to close the

schools because we just didn't know at that point. Now we know. Thank God the risk to children is very, very low, especially kids who don't have any other comorbidities, don't have immune systems that are compromised. The risk is extraordinarily low. That is great news. That needs to be taken into account. And these other costs and factors need to also be weighed. So in this one instance of the kid being taken from the mom over the vaccination status, I see that same sort of thinking where there's this assumption that the only thing that goes into a child's well-being is whether or not they have any coronavirus exposure whatsoever. And that's just an insane way to look at things. I completely agree. Look,

I mean, flu is actually dangerous. So is chickenpox. There's a lot of these stuff. Actually, a kid in my class when I was like five years old died from chickenpox. And it was horrible. I still remember him. Wow. Jesus, that's some other like as usual there was some other stuff going on had pneumonia at the same time health care system that's a whole you're gonna you're gonna take kids away from their parents because mom doesn't get the flu shot yeah I mean really that's actually I mean in terms of the deadliness in terms of uh in terms of transmission and more there the same argument could be made around that and as a a society, I think we should recognize that we should completely reject that thinking. And just to give you an idea, even Australia is beginning to back off a little bit in terms of their zero COVID policy.

Let's put this up there on the screen. Somebody's got to come to their senses. They say they're going to end their COVID zero policy. Quote, it's not a sustainable way to live. Heard from some angry Australians last time who supported their lockdown. Look, in one way, I do get it. Only 27% of Australians have been fully vaccinated. And, you know, the population there just seems a lot more compliant and willing to live with these restrictions. That being said, I think that this pushed a lot of people over the edge and they said, no, that's not it.

Now, in terms of the weather, the actual restrictions and all that will go down. I do think it is interesting though, that they have to come out and say, okay, fine guys, like we're not going to try and do zero COVID and that's how it should be. And just to stick with this, you know, I saw one of the most insane things yesterday from a teacher's union representative. Let's put this up there. The UTLA president, Cecilia Mayar Cruz, she was saying that learning loss is a myth. Quote, it's okay our babies may not have learned all their times tables. They know the difference between a riot and a protest, and they know the words insurrection and coup. Now look, even if you agree with this lady's politics, and if you are a supporter of unions, which I am a supporter of unions, you cannot look at this and say it is okay for children not to know their multiplications

timetables. We need to stop, as you said, Crystal, minimizing what it really means to have a loss of institutionalized schooling for well over a year. This is insanity. And, you know, look, and I'm not trying to go after the teachers unions or whatever here, although I think some of them have been very bad actors. More what I'm saying is, is that this kind of thinking is pervading a lot of people in elite circles

who have immense responsibility to actually make sure that children are okay. More and more, I'm convinced we're creating some sort of lost generation where it's like, what is going to happen? I was reading yesterday Amherst, which requires vaccination, still has their dining hall closed with total mask mandates. I'm like, this is crazy. And you can shout at me all you want. Oh, you know, communal dining is so important. Actually, yeah, I think so. You know, in terms of social development and more, I have no idea what the

societal externalities are going to be years from now because of what we did. But I know that nothing comes for free, that there's always a cost when it comes to these things. Yeah, no, that's exactly right. I mean, I have seen a number of takes that were like, well, actually, school's not that important. It's like, wait, what? Yeah, it is, though. And listen, there is a bigger conversation to be had in this country about schooling, about the way we go about it, about whether kids are really getting what they need, especially in the modern economy, to prepare them for success,

or whether they're just being, you know, created like a sheep mentality created in our children. And I am up for that whole conversation. But just to casually be like, actually, school, nah, we don't really need it. That's pretty radical. It's a pretty radical place to stand. We need school. Like, now you're one of those anarcho-libertarians who's going to do, what is that thing called, like unschooling, where you don't actually teach your kids?

You just let them live. Yeah. Anyway, we'll have that conversation another day because I may have some relatives. Some hot takes around unschooling. Some hot takes on that, but we won't get into that right now. The bottom line is, listen, the way our society is set up, is school in some instances babysitting for people? Do they have their lives structured around being able to send their kids? Yes. Yes, we do. Yes, we do.

Kids being at school allow parents to live their lives, allow them to work, allow them to provide for the family so that when the kids are at home, they can be with them and have time and resources to be able to spend with them and nourish them and help them grow. That is the way our society is structured. Also, that stability that is provided in that routine of going there every day, the social development, being with your friends, all of these things, even if you think that the education part of it is not that important, which I would definitely dispute, all of those things are really, really important, especially for kids who come from backgrounds that are a bit more challenged. So anyway, going forward, as I am praying that my own school district stays open in spite of the fact that they've already had a few coronavirus cases crop up. I hope that we will continue to weigh the cost of closing these schools down as much as we weighed, you know, the risks of infection from coronavirus because some of this calculus has been completely

insane. 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. Well, and that kind of brings us to our next segment here around masks and the federal government actually launching a new investigation. Let's put this up there on the screen from the Associated Press. So the Education Department has opened a civil rights investigation against five Republican-led states that bar mask mandates for schools. So

those states are Iowa, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Utah. Each one of those states have issued some different type of prohibition on mask requirements, and the Office of Civil Rights within the Department of Education is claiming this could prevent some children from safely attending school. The Education Secretary, Miguel Cardona, accused the states of, quote, putting politics over the health and education of students that they took an oath to serve. This, I don't know, Crystal, it gets to what we were just talking about previously around children, around the importance of schooling, around the fact that we know based upon studies out of Europe where they don't have

similar masking requirements, that we don't see an overall difference in infection amongst children, and again, considering the risk profile towards children and more around this particular disease, I just think this is completely ridiculous. We pointed towards that CDC study, which required or they point to towards masking in schools in which they didn't actually have sufficient control experiments around what alternatives like they do in other countries would look like. Different filtration systems, social distancing, keeping the windows open, all kinds of different things that you can do within schools in order to try and prevent transmission. And the fact that when you

do that, you don't see an overall, you know, change in transmission. And so opening up the Office of Civil Rights investigation and then, you know, trying to sue these people in court and saying that there's some sort of constitutional federal mandate on wearing masks in schools. I'm just very much against that. And one thing I've learned from this whole critical race theory debate

is that actually localism is a good thing. It's like actually- That's what they're taking away with the banning mask mandates. They're taking away the locals. I have a different view on this. That's a good point. First of all, let me—so the science on masking in schools, you're right, is unsettled.

And the fact that we don't know the answer of whether masking kids in schools helps at all at this point in the pandemic is insane. I don't know why there has been more curiosity about that. I don't know why there's been more curiosity about that. I don't know why there's been not been more research into it. There was one comprehensive study of like 80,000 kids or something in Georgia that isolated these different variables. Okay, what are the different things? Are they social distancing? Do they have ventilation systems? Are kids masking? It was the only study where they actually tried to isolate whether or not kids were masking as one variable. And that one study found that there was not a lot of impact. Okay. That doesn't mean masks don't work. It means that when you have kids and the mask is falling down and it's all day

and they're in classroom together and they may be wearing cloth masks or the mask may not fit that well. When you have real world conditions, they may not be as effective in kids as they are in adults. However, I am going to stand up for the conservative principle of localism in this case. It's insane these states that have banned local school districts from doing the things that they and their community think are going to be able to keep their kids safe. So look, at this point, this is an investigation. No one is getting sued yet, although already some of these mask mandate bans are being challenged in court in places like Florida and elsewhere. But I don't have any problem with looking into this as a potential civil rights violation because, listen, if you have a school where you have a number of kids who are immunocompromised, if I was a mom and my kid

had issues like that, immune system compromise, yeah, I would want, for extra safety's sake, the kids around them to be masked. So in this instance, again, I think because the science has been so unsettled, because we still have so few answers about what is actually going to keep kids the safest. And yes, the risk is relatively low, and thank God for that. But I think the best answer is to leave it up to these local school districts. And either I would completely oppose a national mandate that everybody wear masks, and I completely oppose these mandates that say you can't take those precautions to keep kids safe in their schools. It's a very tricky one because at the same time, I don't see any

investigation of California and New York and Louisiana, which have requirements of mask mandates in schools, right? So like the statewide mandates that you have to do it and opposed to taking away the local ability in order to take away the mask mandate as well. That's really nerves the implementation. Yeah, but nobody's being put at risk by requiring it. I mean, but you are right that there are— We just talked about costs. There are costs of having kids having to wear masks all day, but they're not being put at the same health risk, like direct health risk.

Right, I'm saying in this specific back pattern. But, you know, what we just talked about in terms of the societal costs, in terms of developmental. There's already actually a lot of dispute right now around developmental problems whenever you wear masks within a school. And that's why I just think this one is very tricky. I do see all the institutionalized power coming against the places that have banned it and not in the places that have enforced it. What, you know, the American Civil Liberties Union already filing a federal lawsuit over states' policy of forbidding mask mandates in the state of South Carolina. Now you have the federal government coming in there.

So, look, I agree, you know, and if we lived in a perfect world, but now whenever it comes to the implementation and the battles on it, I do think it becomes tricky in terms of, I don't see, you know, California, that's millions of children. So they actually reversed, and they aren't requiring local school districts. They're letting them make their own decisions. And I think across the board, that is the right approach. So the best thing you can do is leave it up to local communities. Is your local school board going to be perfect? Is it going to be perfectly representative? No. But at least those are the people that are most in touch with the sort of risk profile of what's appropriate to that community.

Because I think that's the other thing. And I saw there's actually a good New York Times piece about this recently. It's part of all these fights over masking mandates and different COVID restrictions and all of this is we don't have an agreement as a society about what our actual goal is. And, you know, when you look, even when you look internationally, like Australia has decided as a nation, even as they walk back from the zero COVID policy, they're more comfortable with more restrictions than we are as a country. Israel's taken a different approach. Other countries have different ways of doing that because they have a sort of different risk profile, different goals in mind. And so I really think the best approach here is to let communities kind of decide for themselves what's appropriate

for themselves, their kids, their community, what their goals are with regard to COVID and go from there. So state rules mandating masks in all schools don't support. State rules banning masks in schools I also think are completely insane. I'm going to stand up very strongly for that principle of localism, conservative principle of localism, that people in their local communities should be able to decide. Yeah, no, and I didn't know that about California. And I do think that they probably did it based upon pushback from the local level. So that is generally- They're conservative areas of California.

Any, yeah. People forget it, as we're going to see in the recall. We'll see. We'll see. Got my eyes peeled for all those people. I think Gavin's going to be okay. I'm just saying. I don't know. I think he's going down. You think he's going down? I do. All right. We've got another really undercover and incredibly significant story here. We brought you yesterday the news that Supreme Court did, in fact, as expected, strike down Joe Biden's

eviction moratorium, the new one. Now we have new numbers about exactly how many people are likely to be at risk here. We can throw this up on the screen. This is according to Goldman Sachs. They say 750,000 households could face essentially immediate eviction because of the moratorium being struck down. That's unless Congress acts or rental assistance funds are distributed faster. And when they say faster, it's like it needs to be immediate and it needs to be at a radically higher rate than what we've seen before. Next piece of information we have for you here is from the Washington Post. This is something that Jeff Stein tweeted out regarding the numbers of people who are already facing eviction and also how much of that rental assistance has gone out. So less than 11% of the $46.5 billion emergency rental assistance program first approved by Congress and then

President Donald Trump in December, less than 11% of that money has gone out. We talked about here how to, even after Biden does the eviction moratorium, the new one, and it's basically like, look, this is effectively a stalling tactic so that more of this money can get out the door. States and localities did not do any better in July than they did in June. They did not ramp up the relief funding for tenants and landlords whatsoever. So people are completely screwed. Washington Post says in the Atlanta area, I'm reading from their story now, thousands of eviction filings have already piled up in court, ready to be processed in New York, which has been terrible, terrible about getting rental relief funds out. Renters are

waiting months for rental assistance to arrive and running out of time. In North Dakota, a legal aid nonprofit has 10 attorneys to cover 70,000 square miles, and evictions are already far outpacing lawyers' ability to help. One more problem to layer on top of all of this is that rents have gone up significantly. So in June, the average rent for an apartment in America's 150 biggest metro areas hit 1,513. That is the highest ever recorded and an increase of 6.3% compared to the same time last year. So people who weren't able to afford the homes they were living in and are evicted are only going to find even more expensive properties that they are even more unable to afford going forward. It's a catastrophe. Congress is completely asleep on this. They haven't even tried. And look, I know they want to say, oh, the Republicans are going to be a problem. The

Republicans probably will be a problem. But you haven't even tried. So this is an absolutely disastrous and unconscionable situation that people are facing now. I think one of the things that struck me in this Axios report was that, look, you can actually prevent a late 2021 spike in evictions, not through any new legislation whatsoever, just through distributing the funds. Just get the money out. Just getting the money out on the books. That does solve all problems, actually, which is that the people who are behind on their rent and who were promised rent money will get that. The landlord who's behind in paying whoever they owe money to will also pay back.

It doesn't distort the rental market nearly as much. And I think this is just a failure of public policy all around, which is that it was a problem that we recognized, that we specifically distributed funds towards, and then completely failed to do that, and you started pitting people against each other. That's the part that really makes me the most upset here, because you really just see how if you take the rug out from under,

then yeah, people are going to start fighting, And then, you know, the eviction groups versus the landlord groups. And I get it. Like, I'm not standing for landlords or anything, but there are a lot of people who, you know, work in that or work as managers, superintendents or whatever. There's a lot of jobs. It's a huge industry as well. And the last thing I want to see is BlackRock go in and gobble up all these properties. So I just think that all we had to do was just do and execute the law that we passed. We didn't do that. And now a lot of people are facing the brink. And I have no confidence whatsoever that these funds are going to go out. That's the worst part, actually, which is that, you know, you can attach riders and things to bills to make it so

that Congress is required or sort of that the agencies are required to disperse these funds by X amount of date. No discussion here, right? Like, and again, this is just the money, like the money that already exists. The treasury department can call up the states and be like, what the hell are you doing? There are a lot of different ways in ways to incentivize states in order to implement the programs properly. Actually, a couple of people reach out to me who were, to me who had tried as landlords and both as tenants to try and apply for some of this, and they were all completely screwed in the whole system. So what are you supposed to do? I feel so much for those people. It's a total failure of government. It absolutely is. And in fairness, the Treasury

Department put out all kinds of guidance to say, look, if you guys are worried about red tape, if you're worried about us auditing you, like, don't worry about it. Just get the money out. And they've been trying to issue guidelines to help these states and localities to get the funds out. Obviously, the program was catastrophically designed from the beginning. It is not an easy thing to set up an entire bureaucracy if you're a town, if you're a city, if you're a state in order to get this money dispersed. But at this point, what the hell is the problem? I mean, New York hadn't even my recollection is in New York state. The entire state had not dispersed a single dollar as of the beginning of June.

Like, what are you doing? The number of people who are at risk just in that state alone. So it's a completely insane situation. It's a horrible situation. There are going to be huge costs and run-on effects for years to come for these family and their kids. And I don't know, you know, DC only cared about it for a hot second when it was in the news. Now that the news media has moved on to, you know, calling out Biden for not continuing wars forever. And there's very little interest in this story. There's they feel a little pressure to do anything, even though when they go back home, they're going to see the impact of, you know,

people out. Maybe they won't. Maybe they'll be in their gated communities and they won't see a thing. So it doesn't really affect them. That's a real problem, I guess. That's a lot more likely in terms of what's going to happen. Yeah, who they'll hear from is their BlackRock friends who are buying up these properties

in distress and making more money on it. So I guess that's part of the issue here. They'll be at a fundraiser in New York, even though they're a congressman from Tennessee, and then hear from the CEO of BlackRock, go back to their office and be like, you know, a constituent was telling me. And in a way, they are the real constituents.

Indeed. We have a somewhat less important story, but one we still wanted to bring to you this morning. Still important. Look, we, I personally, much to my chagrin, many millions of people watch The View every single day. I don't know who these people are, but it's an important source of information to those.

And so we got to cover these developments in the media industry. That's what we try and do here. So Meghan McCain has announced that she's departing The View. She's spending more time with her child. God bless her, her and her husband. And I hope that they find great happiness. It probably will be when you don't have to be on TV arguing with Whoopi and Joy Behar every single day. Probably a much better quality of life. Yes, that is true. So to replace her, The View is now floating a few new names for the conservative guest. And I could not have put together a more ridiculous list than what we have here. So let's put this up there on the screen. Rotating conservative co-hosts will include Condoleezza Rice, Mia Love, Carly Fiorina,

Alyssa Farah. Let's keep going. Put the next one up there. Essie Cupp, Ebony Williams, Mary Catherine Hamm, Cameron Eubanks, and Gretchen Carlson. So there's a lot to say there about Gretchen Carlson, but my personal favorite is Condoleezza Rice, is that in the middle of Afghanistan, in the middle of watching the 20-year project fall apart, of the forever war liars, of the people who held water for the establishment and pushed us to this horrific situation. She is going to get rewarded with a seat on The View? There's also just a general more like discussion to be had here around, look, and you guys know my own position here, but in terms of, if you're going to have a conservative voice on that show who's supposed to articulate the right, like, should you probably not have somebody on there who actually is a little bit more in line with the Republican

base? Like, Condoleezza Rice, Bia Love, and Carly Fiorina, as far as I know, every single one of them were completely against Trump. And I'm not saying this is like a stand for Trump or anything. I'm just saying, like, if you're going to have a show which is supposed to appeal to the vast millions or whatever, you should probably at least try and represent that perspective. As far as I know, it generally stands for the rest of the commentators that they picked for the seat. So all I can say is there's a lot of cringe awaiting for you in the 25th season of The View. I'm sure our friend Tim Dillon will have some great skits around all this.

Yeah, it actually is kind of interesting because one of the things in liberal media, there's like a very narrow band that you're allowed to occupy as a conservative and still be allowed to go on. I hate Trump and I agree with Joe Biden, but I'm, it's like, but I, I'm a, yeah, I'm fiscally conservative. I mean, they like Bill Kristol. There's a lot of these like fiscally conservative, but socially liberal types, which is terrible. That's fine. But like, it's not really fine. Well, I'm saying you can be that if you want, you don't represent very much of the country. Yeah. I mean, that's the thing is, that's why it's not fine, is that this is a very small slice of America

that is disproportionately overrepresented constantly in the media. And it's not just with the conservatives. Like, that's what they consider to be bipartisan, is like, you know, Claire McCaskill having a conversation with Joe Scarborough or something like that. That's the definition of bipartisan that they want. I do want to say as a personal note and disclaimer here, Essie and I were co-hosts at The Cycle back at MSNBC. She is a dear friend. I love her to pieces. She is excluded from this entire conversation about how cringe the list is. You can think of that what you will, but that's my own personal disclaimer here.

You know, one thing you have to say about Megan, and I know people feel a lot of ways about Megan, she's a great villain. Like, she played the part and the role very well, right? And some of her takes, I mean, on Afghanistan, ooh, terrible, right? I mean, definitely channeling her dad and his neocon views on all of that um but just in terms of sort of like television and making it spicy and um dramatic which is what seems to work for the view and seems to be what people tune in for i don't know she was very good at that that's the other thing that i find interesting about this list is some of these people are not like they're not Condi Rice is not just even taking her terrible policy out.

I mean, she's not a television person. Yeah, I think that's right. So there's all this, always this assumption that you can just take any prominent person and stick them in an anchor chair and they're going to be able to do the thing and make it entertaining. And so I think not only will her views be terrible and is it awful that someone who justified war criminals is being elevated to this platform, but I also just think that it's not going to be good TV. Yeah, I basically completely agree with you. And look, I don't know that much about the rest of the list

except for Condi, Mia Love. Or like Carly Fiorina. Yeah, Carly Fiorina. I mean, she did have that one moment, I guess, in the debate of whatever comes to this. I just can't get over Condoleezza Rice, and that's the major reason that I was like, we've got to cover this. This is the most cringe thing I've ever seen in my entire life. Like you said, both bad policy and bad TV. It's just—

It's also sort of embarrassing that they couldn't just pick one person. Yeah, I know. That's a good point. I mean, look, there are a lot. You can go on Fox or whatever, Daily Wire, etc. There are many women conservatives out there who I think could probably do the job just as well as Meghan McCain. And, you know, I think it just shows you that they want to try and have it both ways. And that's just not going to happen.

Yeah. Okay, so let me put you on the spot. If you had to pick one of these people that you think would do the best job in the chair, who do you think would be the best? Mary Catherine Hamm. She generally does a decent job on CNN. She's interesting. Yeah. And sometimes her takes are actually interesting. Yeah. I think that's a good, I think that's a pretty good. If on the list, that's who I would pick in order to do it, but you know, we'll see. Wow. You guys must really like listening to our voices.

While I know this is annoying, instead of making you listen to a Viagra commercial, when you're done, check out the other podcast I do with Marshall Kosloff called The Realignment. We talk a lot about the deeper issues that are changing, realigning in American society. You always need more Crystal and Saga in your daily lives. Take care, guys. All right, Crystal, what are you taking a look at?

Well, there is something major bubbling at MSNBC right now. So just a few weeks back, rumors started to emerge that their biggest star, Rachel Maddow, was considering moving on. The nation's preeminent Russiagator was reportedly ready for a little change of pace. Insiders told the Daily Beast that the grind of a nightly show for more than a decade had worn her down and that she was considering making the move to independent media, maybe something like podcasting. In a sign that she actually meant business, she even switched from her longtime agent to Ari Emanuel. Now, the rumors were credible, but you never really know whether these people are serious about leaving or just using leaks and rumors as a negotiating tactic. Looks here like she actually meant it, because while

MSNBC did manage to sign a new contract with Maddow, it came at a hefty price and with huge changes to her role at the network. So here are the details as we know them. Maddow's new contract will net her $30 million every year to stay at MSNBC through the 2024 election, a scintillating affair likely to pit Joe Biden's corpse against Donald Trump's lunatic culture war ravings. But I digress. That new contract also means the end of the Rachel Maddow show as it exists today. The show is going to run through the spring of 2022. That's less than a year from now. At that point, Maddow will move to an intermittent presence with the program that airs weekly, maybe only 30 times a year.

That is a whole lot less Maddow and a major problem for that cable news network. Now, some of the details, honestly, are a little bit sketchy because MSNBC is being very cagey here. As Eric Wemple points out over at the Washington Post, normally a big contract deal like this that would garner a big splashy press release. But so far, the PR team has said nothing. In fact, network executives have refused to comment on the record or even confirm this contract and the new terms at all. Put it all together and you get a picture of a desperate network willing to give Maddow anything she wants just to keep a tiny scrap of her presence.

It's kind of pathetic when you think about it. The end of the Maddow show represents a tectonic shift in cable news media and a possibly devastating blow for MSNBC. Even as ratings have cratered at that network across the board, people still show up for Maddow's Trump-Russia conspiracy hour. I mean, substance aside, you gotta hand it to her. She is one of a very, very few cable news hosts that anyone actually gives a shit about. In fact, I would posit that the list is basically two people long, Rachel Maddow and Tucker Carlson.

It's no accident that both are masters at playing into the most fevered conspiracies and basest instincts of their respective audiences. Just take a look, though, at MSNBC's ratings from a recent weekday. So here you can see it on the screen. MSNBC viewership jumps up almost 100,000 from 189 to 280 when Rachel comes on, and then immediately loses about the same amount of audience when she goes off. They don't have a single other personality on the

network that people make a point of tuning in for as appointment viewing. That's why she was able to extract so much money and so many concessions from them. They've literally got nothing else. Remember, prior to Trump, these networks were completely screwed. They just couldn't get people to tune in during the twilight years of the Obama presidency. Young people realized long ago that they would have a far more accurate view of world events by avoiding cable news altogether like the plague that it is. But these networks were gifted this incredible villain who leaned into the part and kept an exhausted nation tuned in night after night after night to see the latest ravings from the madman.

Russiagate, of course, was the perfect conspiracy drama. Every night introduced new plot elements, new characters, cliffhangers with the final dramatic ending where the wrongdoers were brought to justice always just around the corner. Unhinged conspiracy, but make it highbrow. With ratings elevated by that international spy mystery drama, one would have thought that some breakout star or another would have emerged. Someone who could carry the resistance lib torch after Maddow's eventual departure. But none did. MSNBC's mindless, repetitive drones were wholly interchangeable and predictable.

Not one distinguished themselves from the pack. And now in the Biden era, the network is more and more irrelevant. The bad man is gone, and Biden himself ranges from boring to disappointing. If you are a personality-driven horse race outlet, he just doesn't give you a whole lot to work with. And the network's paid warmongers have mostly panned the only actually good and courageous thing that he's done so far. It's sad that Maddow is being rewarded so richly for spinning a tangled web of conspiracies that has broken the brains of wine moms and the wine mom adjacent across America. It's even sadder that in a time of profound change, tumult, and uncertainty, this supposed bastion of progressive

politics really has nothing to say that anyone finds remotely interesting anyway. Instead, it's just a demented pipeline for well-intentioned suburbanites to be mainline propaganda from spooks, war criminals, and propagandists. Fed hours of programming to convince them that their neighbors in reality are little Hitlers in waiting. Maddow's show was the tentpole, propping up MSNBC's entire primetime lineup. May the entire Potemkin village collapse with her exit from the nightly scene, leaving her dull imitation scrambling and failing to recreate the magic. More likely, though, they'll just team up with CNN to will another Trump presidency into existence and keep the

boomer-fueled gravy train rolling. And Sagar, you know, it kind of went under the radar that her show is ending. 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, some of you may recall that in the video announcing Crystal and I were going independent, I mentioned one of the reasons we wanted to do so was so we didn't just have to chase views, but so we could focus on more substantive issues that belie the news cycle and our economy. I specifically pointed to semiconductors. As you all know, one of my personal obsessions. Because they are the electronic backbone of the new economy. He who controls semiconductors controls the future. Not quite true yet, but it will be, in my opinion. And that's what I want

to take you on a tour of today. One of the most brazen views yet into the corporate battles of the future, and a development which has immense implications for the future. They're calling it the semiconductor heist of the century. It's dramatic, I know, but once you learn the details, you'll be as outraged and as afraid as I am. So the company in question is known as ARM. They are widely regarded as the most important semiconductor intellectual property firm. Their IP is in cars, it's in Amazon, cell phones, AI, everything. Pretty much everything. Intel, Semi Analysis, they point towards clearly an important company, right? Now, as we have learned with the car shortage, the PS5 shortage, and more,

the entire US economy can grind to a halt without these things. Now, prior to 2016, ARM was a British-controlled company, but corporations are going to corporation, and in 2016 it was acquired by a Japanese firm, SoftBank. You probably know SoftBank from their storied roles in the drama behind WeWork and Uber, pouring Saudi cash into the startups to create the veneer of success, and eventually having the bottom foul out of both. SoftBank's plan to make ARM even more money is the same thing that they did with Uber. They wanted them to enter the Chinese

market. So in their infinite wisdom, they created a joint venture. It was called ARM Holdings, and they sold 51% to Chinese investors for $775 million. That, per Semi analysis, is a paltry sum, but it highlights what it means to do business in China. There's no such thing as independent business there. All Western businesses have to have Chinese partners. They are controlled at the behest of the Chinese state. And this is where things get really crazy. The Chinese branch of ARM, it holds much of ARM's intellectual property and designs for the next decade. Well, it's basically been stolen now by the Chinese with zero recourse. I'm really serious. The details are crazy, and

they highlight exactly why letting our most valuable technology go to China in the first place and why business entanglements there are untenable in the long run. In 2020, ARM and a bunch of investors found that the head of their China operation was using his control of the company to attract investments to his other firm. So, by a vote of 7-1, at the board level, they decided to boot him. There's just one problem. That CEO's name is on the Chinese license. So, despite the fact that the company wants him gone, Alan Wu, he's not going anywhere because he controls the license. So instead, under Chinese law, he's in control.

He fired executives who didn't side with him. He now has security that has kept representatives from his parent company out of the building. And now he's just taking it over. So this culminated this week when ARM China just held an event where they declared their independence. They have a new name. Now they say they are China They have a new name. Now they say they are China's largest CPU IP supplier. That is now independently operated as a Chinese-owned company. Now, critically, the technology that they preview and claim is their own, but really is just

the IP and resources of its old company, is now being used to deploy billions of cameras across China to fulfill their dream of a fully integrated technological surveillance state. Social credit score is everywhere, everywhere you go is tracked, your travel is restricted, and the state knows everything about everyone, all the way down to the DNA level. So that's it. It's over. They control the company now.

As semiconductor people are referring to it, it really is the heist of the century. But it's just the latest example of how China weaponizes Western greed to steal technology and resources only to further their own authoritarian ends. How many times are we going to have to learn the same lesson? Just in July, American investors lost hundreds of billions of dollars in China. Hundreds of billions. Not because the market went south, but because Chinese companies who went public on American stock exchanges, and then after collecting our money, the government there then cracked down on those companies to make sure that they fell in line. In essence, they IPO'd here, they stole billions of American dollars, and then they just

said, actually, never mind. They do it to everybody. Jack Ma, their own Jeff Bezos isn't even free. Everyone is controlled centrally by the state. They'll steal our money and they will smile while doing it. And the worst part is that we continue to let it happen. Money you can replace. Precious intellectual property, which will be used in AI and to run the future, that you actually can't. It takes decades of know-how and expertise to develop it. And now it's just gone. Let this serve once again as an example of how the greed of the corporate elite is not only making you less safe, it's making you more poor and vulnerable in the long run. The Chinese understand us much better than we seem to understand ourselves. In fact, they're much

smarter than us. After the SEC said that the Chinese companies who IPO'd in the United States would have to disclose more facts about their data, they said, okay, now all Chinese companies with precious data are restricted from IPOing in the United States. In other words, they are fine giving up short-term dollars if it makes them more vulnerable in the long run. Notice, look, I am not proposing a war with China. Here's what I'm saying. Our strategic technology, which we spent billions of dollars on developing, should probably be handled with care. That's it. But that's too radical for Wall Street.

Even the Wall Street Journal piece on investors losing billions, they had this line, quote, Many U.S. investors remain bullish on China's long-term prospects, despite what skeptics say is the difficulty of anticipating Xi Jinping's move. Why? Because, quote, they say they can't afford to miss out on the growth of the economy some investors think is on track to last this decade to overtake the U.S. as the world's biggest. That's it. It's all about money to them, and they don't care where they make it. I guess it's not their fault. That's their job, right? But it's actually our job to stand up and say, no, we're the public. This is our future. I just thought it was crazy, Chris,

where we talked a lot about these corporate takeovers and more. Joining us now, we have independent journalist Matt Taibbi has a great sub stack you all should be checking out if you haven't already. Great to see you, Matt. Good to see you, Matt. Good to see you both. How are you doing?

Very good. So your latest piece, you make the case that both parties are too corrupt to rescue with regards to the military-industrial complex, something I want to argue with you about in a moment. But first, I wanted to talk to you about an important point that you make in this piece. I'm just going to read from it for a moment. You say, under the influence of captured parties and the military's ubiquitous and extravagantly funded PR apparatus, America has itself redefined the nature of war. Armed conflict has gone from being an occasional unpleasant political necessity to the core

product line of the American corporation. Just expand on that a little bit because I think it gets to this important point of it's not an accident that we end up mired in these wars forever and facing these questions of like, oh, did we win? Did we lose? Well, the truth of the matter is the people who were propagating this war won. They won because they got billions and billions of dollars and their political allies won because they got lots and lots of campaign contributions and potential employment after they finish their quote-unquote public service. So just expand on that point for us, Matt. Yeah, I really think, I really believe after

covering a lot of stories on this subject across the last 20 years that you can trace a lot of what went wrong in Afghanistan to the fact that we have this continually expanding massive defense budget. We are continually expanding our footprint of bases overseas. We have 800 bases in 80 different countries. We have special forces operations in as many as 70 percent of the world's countries at any given time. And this is a direct consequence of there being so many bureaucratic actors who have an interest in there being a mission.

So when we have a situation like Afghanistan, we may have a limited mission at the beginning, which is either to go in and root out al-Qaeda or to get bin Laden. But once all those different bureaucratic actors within the Pentagon get their hands on the mission and they start saying things like, well, we've got to build roads, we've got to build a stable economy, we've got to build independent radio stations, next thing you know, you have this outgrowth of a mission that just never ends. And that's kind of the direction of where American

military conflicts go now. We're just built to create these occupations that don't have a definable mission and never end. Here's something that you write. I think we have a tear sheet. Let's put that up there on the screen just so people can see exactly what you wrote. We need new institutions free of Pentagon influence, probably starting with a new political party. It doesn't even matter so much what such a party would stand for ideologically, as long as it adheres to one basic principle, don't accept contractor money. Why is it, do you think, that a new party is necessary, given the events of the last couple of weeks and what we've seen in terms of how both parties were actually not just comfortable,

but exceedingly appreciative of forever war? Well, I mean, I developed that idea a long time ago. I did a story a couple of years ago about the inability of the Pentagon to conform with a legally mandated audit. It had been ordered back in 1992 to audit itself, and it's been putting it off ever since. It declared itself inaudible a couple of years ago. And when I talked to aides in Congress about this, they said, the reason we'll never get an audit of the Pentagon is because all of the relevant members of all the relevant committees depend on cash from the big five contractors. That will never end. And so because of that, we'll never be able to threaten the Pentagon with cutting off their funds,

which means we'll never be able to get them to do anything like do proper accounting. And so as long as you have the key committees taking money from these contractors, you're never going to get movement on key issues involving military policy. It's just not going to happen. And so as little as I think there is perspective for a third party to really have influence, we either have to get comfortable with the idea that these kinds of things are never going to end, or we have to figure out some way to get rid of corporate money in politics, and specifically this kind of money in politics. So you go through what was basically done to Bernie in the Democratic primary, of course, first in 2016 and then this time around, which is all true. And I do not claim that the prospect of sort of taking over the Democratic Party with a Sanders-like movement is an easy or clear-cut prospect whatsoever. But it seems like it has a track record of coming a

lot closer than a third party does at this point. And in fact, you could say on the Republican side that Trump did actually manage to do it. It just turned out that he was exactly the same as every other Republican and is now putting out statements saying we should reinvade Afghanistan to get our Jeeps back or some insanity like that. But they didn't know that at the time. OK, elites did not want this guy to win the Republican nomination. And he did it and was would have been able to remake the Republican nomination, and he did it and would have been able to remake the Republican Party in his image. So doesn't it seem a lot more likely that you could affect that kind of change through the Sanders or Trump direction than starting a whole third party from scratch,

which doesn't have a track record of success or anything close to it in the modern era? Yeah, I think it's possible. I think you could argue that there have been close calls also with somebody like Ross Perot, who was once leading in the polls. If Donald Trump had run as an independent, if Bernie Sanders, who is an independent, had run as an independent, we might have had a similar result. But overall, it doesn't really matter to me whether it comes from within the system or through a third party. The important thing is there has to be some kind of political institution that doesn't take the money. And whether that's from a billionaire who doesn't need the money,

like Donald Trump, running a campaign free of the dictates of donors, which actually did happen. You know, I mean, he did run the campaign that he wanted to run, or whether it's Bernie Sanders doing, you know, doing the kind of campaign that he did, which was based on the idea of not taking the money. And he ended up being the leading fundraiser, which was an extraordinary accomplishment. So the elements are there. And you add to that the voter sentiment, which is clearly in the direction of not doing these kinds of engagements anymore. There's there's something there. I mean, it's it's possible.

It just has it's a logistical thing that has to be worked out. Why do you think Joe Biden was able to do this thing? Why do you think he did this thing? And listen, Joe Biden increased the military budget. He's still doing drone strikes, murdering civilians. He's still bombing Syria. I mean, let's not pretend like he's an anti-imperialist now. But this is a very difficult thing to do.

The media threw everything at him. Deep state leaking against him with everything. All the women and the girls and the equipment and every angle that they could possibly think of. And yet he still held firm and ended the engagement when he said he was going to end the engagement. Why do you think that that is? Yeah, that's an interesting question. I think Afghanistan, you know, look, it's been 10 years since we had even a theoretical reason to be in Afghanistan. I mean, you know, once bin Laden was out of the picture, there was no logical reason for us to be there anymore. And it's been nothing but a catastrophe. And that war is no longer, you know, popular. It's a political loser

for every party. Donald Trump actually scored quite a significant amount of points by talking about ending it. I think it's just internally within the Pentagon and within DC, there was a lot of discussion like, look, we got to move on from this one. Even though there's still a lot of howling from the Bill Kristol types on TV about how we have to stay or we have to keep in the middle road idea, which is insane. And it's amazing that that's still popping up. I think that's more about making sure that we don't leave early in the next engagement than it is about realistically going back into Afghanistan. I think that it's just a propaganda reflex from these people. They know it's over in Afghanistan. The public is just not behind it anymore.

So what is, I think the most distressing part to me of this whole episode is it really showed me, Matt, and I'm curious what you think, because you covered it actually more at the time and I wasn't there, which is that actually the media is still very cool with Forever War. They still push it. The same assumptions, the same liars are elevated despite the fact that we knew they were lying all the way back since 2004. From a journalistic point of view, what has it been like to watch the media behave in this way and just show you about how almost fruitless it is, is that even with the public

behind this decision, or, you know, okay, fine, the theoretical decision, not the withdrawal, whatever, for the people out there who might get upset. But in general, to watch them not really move an inch, what does that tell us about how much work we have left to do? It's incredible how wide the dichotomy is between where the national media is on these issues and where the public is. And I think it's starkest with this issue. Maybe it's comparable with things like Wall Street reform, but this is the worst. I mean, the media was 100 percent all in on going into Iraq, you know, on both sides of the aisle. They went so far as to unhire Jesse Ventura and fire Phil Donahue to make sure that it was like total unanimity back then. And, you know, and on

Afghanistan, except for the, you know, the Afghanistan paper story, which was, I think, a fantastic piece of journalism that the Washington Post needs a lot of credit for sticking to. The press just isn't where the public is on this. If you traveled around the country in 2016, when Trump was actually scoring a lot of points talking about NATO and forever war, even though he was totally insincere, the press has never caught up to that sentiment. And I think that says a lot among other things about the influence that the Pentagon, the intelligence services still have over these big media companies. You just can't get booked on a big cable show if you have any kind of any war leanings at all.

And that's been true going back to the early 2000s, which I think is an amazing thing. Well, and Russiagate, as you have chronicled quite extensively, brought a lot of these people back and elevated them with a liberal to progressive audience in a way that when you have a situation like this turns out to be extraordinarily damaging. My last question for you, Matt, is, is it enough to end the contractor money in political campaigns? Because another one of the motivations is after you finish your quote unquote public service as a member of Congress, a lot of people, these people go and work in the defense industry or they go and sit on a board. So even if you're not getting campaign cash, there continues to be a monetary incentive to carry water for these people. Yeah, and I think we saw that pretty

graphically with Jay Johnson. He was appearing on television as the former DHS director, and it was conveniently left out that he is on the board of Raytheon currently, as he was talking about the middle ground as a realistic way of doing things. Yeah, look, that's obviously the same kind of problem that exists with financial services reform, which is that if you work in the relevant committee, if you work in the Armed Services Committee, if you work in Senate appropriations, especially armed services appropriations, you have a guaranteed seven-figure income the instant you leave Congress. You can go and sit on the boards of any one of those companies. And it's a plum job that a lot of these members of Congress go straight to. They end up being essentially permanent lobbyists. And it's also true of people in the Pentagon. That's become a major part of what military service is all about. If you rise high enough in the procurement side of the military, then you leave and you go to work for

Lockheed Martin or you go to work for BAE or Raytheon or whatever it is, and that's how you make your money. And yes, you're right. So there has to be something done about that. I don't know what it would be, like a longer wait period, but it's definitely a huge problem. Listen, I have a fairly radical view on this. I think these people should get a pension, and I think that should be it. I think we should take serious the idea that they're public servants. If you want to serve, this is part of what you agree to. This is part of the sacrifice that's required. I mean, think of what we ask, casually ask our servicemen and women to do. Asking you to just accept a government pension and that's it for the rest of your days, to me, doesn't seem like too much, too great of an ask.

That's right. It makes sense to me. Yeah, absolutely. Matt, always great to have you. Thank you so much, my friend. And everybody go check out his Substack. As always, if you haven't already, always great insights there. Thank you, man.

All right. Thanks, Crystal Sager. Take care. Take care. Thank you guys for watching. We really appreciate it. It's just been, look, it's a solemn show, I think, you know, to be able to bring Afghanistan, the Afghanistan news to everybody.

The war is actually over. And it means a lot that we have an ability in order to report it exactly the way that we want it to do. So thank you guys so much for your support. Link is down there in the description to become a premium subscriber today and all of that. It's just been really one of those episodes that crystallized to me, crystallized, why we do what we do here every day.

So thank you very much. And Crystal, I'm going to miss you. You'll be back next week, so nobody worry. Marshall will be here with me. It's going to be a great time. Taking a little time for the long weekend, guys. I'll be back here on Thursday. And you're going to be up on Monday for Labor Day as well.

That's right. We'll take labor. You'll be here in the studio with Marshall on Thursday, which will be a great show as well. Marshall always has great insights too. See you guys very soon. Enjoy. We love you.

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