Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 9/20/21: Fed Rally, Drone Strike Admission, Beto's Back, Booster Update, Amazon Towns, Border Crisis, Hillary Lawyer Indicted, Russiagate Lies with Glenn Greenwald, and More!

Episode Date: September 20, 2021

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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. Lots of interesting stories to get to. So you all know we've been tracking that drone strike in Afghanistan that the government was claiming took out a very important ISIS-K target. They are now even admitting that they killed a family, civilians, children, and an aid worker for the U.S. working for a nonprofit out in California. So we're going to bring you up to speed on all of that. Also, there's a potential new entrant into the Texas gubernatorial race,

one Beto O'Rourke. Kill me. Lots to say about that. Also, some polling to show you whether or not he might have a chance. Also, they polled on Matthew McConaughey. I don't know if he's still thinking about it or not, but we'll get into that. I know you are always very excited about all the McConaughey news. Some updates on a key advisory panel,

basically telling the Biden administration, we don't think the general population does need booster shots. And a big update that just came across this morning about vaccines and children. An incredible op-ed in Bloomberg. Just, I don't know what to say about it with regards to Amazon, so we'll bring you the details there. We've also got Glenn Greenwald on to talk Russiagate. Latest updates on that. But we wanted to start with this big rally that was supposed to be happening in the city this weekend. Justice for J6. This is a group of right-wing Trump supporters who wanted to protest in support of those who had been arrested with regards to January 6th riot.

So the media was really hyping this thing up. They were trying to freak everybody out that this was going to be January 6th all over again. Capitol basically militarized. They put back up the fencing around the Capitol complex. Here's a little taste of how the media was hyping this thing up. This is from CNN. They say, revive fears of political violence. Grip Capitol Hill ahead of right-wing rally. You know, it's funny. If you actually read through this article, Sagar, which unfortunately I did, they mention within the very article an intelligence memo that says a whole 300 people. Oh, wow. Whoa. Lock down the whole city for that one, guys. Here's a little

taste of how MSNBC was covering this big right-wing rally with up to 300 people attending. Let's throw this tweet from Drew Holden up on the screen. You can see Maddow there on the left. She says, Capitol locks down ahead of rally for jailed Trump rioters. Trump voices support. I think later on, Trump actually told people that it was a setup and was discouraging them from attending, as were other prominent right-wing figures. Ari Melber, similar. DC on alert, as MAGA fans, plot, whatever. So, general freakout. I mean, basically, Sagar, they were praying for something to happen.

They were. Because January 6th is the only thing that anyone has paid attention to from these cable news outlets this year. Their ratings have fallen off a cliff. They haven't been able to get anything going post-January 6th, so they were really, really hoping that something crazy and terrible would happen here, but it didn't really work out as planned. Didn't work out at all, and they were hyping this thing up so much that the Capitol Police actually requested the National Guard ahead of time. They brought in and mobilized

their entire force. D.C. was on a state of lockdown. They deputized state and local officials so they could add to their ranks. And you know, I brought you guys this news even on Thursday morning when I was walking the dog before the show, I saw this line of dump trucks that were coming in that were all going to be ringed around the Capitol

in order to protect from like suicide bombs or whatever. This is what they do only in very rare circumstances like the inauguration or when the Israeli prime minister or somebody comes to town. So the absolute biggest guns. What happened exactly? Well, we've got some photos and footage from that rally. Let's put this up there on the screen. Perhaps no photo best encompasses the day more than this one. For our people who are just listening, it shows how attendance at the January 6th rally is almost all press. There are very few actual attendees.

On the screen ahead of you, you see people in press jackets, cameras, the backpacks, all of the different paraphernalia, the press badges, the cops. The only people you don't see are any actual protesters. And that was pretty much typical for the entire day. Let's put this next one up there, which shows the exact same thing. It shows a single protester there with an American flag who is surrounded by, I don't know, maybe a dozen or so press. The headline on this story, police and media outnumber protesters marching in support of January 6th rioters in Washington, D.C. It is just one of the most hilarious outcomes for this entire thing because they needed this. Oh, yeah, this is another one which has been making the rounds. I'll preface it by I don't know who these gentlemen are.

But again, for our listeners, these were some attendees who were there. It's about five different gentlemen with high-cropped hair who look like they might be. A little fed-ish. They have some fed vibes, if you might say. For the people who are watching, you can see exactly what I'm talking about. They've all got the same sort of high and tight haircut. They've got haircut, sunglasses. It very much. They've all got like the same sort of high and tight haircut. Haircut, sunglasses.

It very much is one of those, like the meme, it's like, how do you do, fellow kids? Like fellow protesters. Just dudes hanging out who are totally not working for the federal government. Even, Crystal, there was an instance in which a cop came up to a protester and they found a gun on him. And he was like, I'm a cop, I'm a cop. He's like, I'm undercover. That was right. The only, like, attempted arrest was an undercover cop. They're like, they're looking at a gun. And he was like, I'm a cop. I'm a cop. He's like, I'm undercover.

It was like the only time he got arrested was an undercover cop. They're like, get a gun. And they're like, it's a cop. He's a cop. That's actually what's happening here. So yeah, the feds, the undercovers. I saw them everywhere. You know, unmarked vehicles and everybody all around town.

And this is what they got. We got more feds, more cops and more media than we did actual protesters. And it's a fitting end, really. I mean, we were under semi-military occupation here, even actually exactly where we're standing for, what, $500 million. I keep making billion. $500 million on that deployment of all of those thousands of National Guardsmen with the fencing. And it was a semi-militarized zone like Baghdad for several months. Again, for no reason, except for some fake QAnon rally in March,

then that disbanded. But the moment that some cranks are going to go and organize a protest, are we both supposed to go on lockdown every single time? Crystal, I have seen, I've lived here for 11 years or so. I have seen protests, bigger protests outside the Burmese embassy than what happened here. Are we supposed to, like, how can we live this way? And that's really the issue here.

And we've got some video you can watch of the Capitol Police leaving the scene, just so you can really get a feel. They are all suited up. They've got the riot shields. They're in full militarized riot gear, marching away from this scene. And what you're pointing to is, look, it's sort of hilarious because the media got so excited about this and that it was just such a complete dead. I do want to say, organizers claim there were a few hundred people there. Picture didn't really look like it. I don't know if those few hundred included all the press that was there. Anyway, certainly not even thousands of people. Certainly nothing to really be concerned about here. Why is this an issue other than that it's sort of funny how hilariously wrong the media got after overhyping this thing as much as they possibly could? It's exactly what you're saying.

Like, if even a few dozen protesters is enough to justify calling in the National Guard and locking down the Capitol, erecting a whole fence around it, who knows how much this whole thing cost? This level of militarized police that we're going to deputize all these people as federal agents. We're going to get the FBI and undercover cops on the ground. I mean, if a few dozen protesters justify that type of militarized response, it's a very scary precedent because that just means they can basically do whatever they want in the name of security anytime. And this really, it shouldn't be like a partisan right-left thing. Obviously, I'm not big on the cause that they were out supporting here, but we saw the same tactics used in the war on terror. The deep state wants to terrorize you for their own ends and purposes. It allows them to keep control. It

allows them to gain more power. Many Democrats, people like Adam Schiff, have been very supportive of we need new domestic extremism laws. We need to give them more power, more resources. And then the other piece of this is like, where was any of this seriousness on actual January 6th when it would have mattered, when there were all kinds of indications that there was a potential for a breach of the Capitol? People were talking about it openly. You didn't even need secret classified intelligence to see what was being discussed on open social media channels. So that's the other piece of this is all of this extreme militarized response and lockdown at this point is also just like a CYA to try to like cover themselves for their failures of the past, failures which they are now using to justify

more money, more resources, more power. And it remains a question. I mean, we already know from that single indictment that came out in the court documents that there was at least one police officer who was undercover and was observing people on January 6th. I'm not saying it was organized, but here's the thing. I mean, we've seen, and Glenn Greenwald has talked a lot about this, which is that a lot of the high-level, unnamed conspirators have still yet to come out and have yet to be charged in terms of what was happening with the rally. So you put all of that together. And zero media curiosity about any of that. Not a word. Yeah, the New York Times Justice Department, nowhere to be found whenever Russiagate charges go against a Hillary Clinton person or whenever we're talking about this. They could find that out in a day if they wanted to. That's actually the biggest problem that we really have within all of this inquiry. You can both say, like, that was terrible.

That was one of the worst. I mean, it was a horrific image. It was a bad day for the country. Obviously, you know, it was Trump inciting these people to try and go and, you know, decertify the election. All of that can be true. It can be literally crazy and also not be, the single worst day on earth or justify this whole new domestic war on terror, which is exactly what all of this is really in the service of doing. And you're pointing to it correctly, which is, look, once you have normalized this level of response to the most minor of protests, what does that mean whenever it's time to really protest?

What about a new war, a new anti-war movement? Would that be branded as domestic? Like, absolutely. They would have now the ability, the precedent, and more for the Capitol Police and for all of these people in order to come out and completely surveil you. Remember also that the Capitol Police is opening offices in San Francisco, or sorry, in California and across the country. Why? In order to monitor threats to the people who are their members. Well, how does that actually manifest itself? Like that lefty podcast guy, what did he do?

He liked a tweet which said something about confronting AOC, and he was visited by California sheriff deputies at his house who were saying that he was threatening the life of AOC, and he was visited by California sheriff deputies at his house who were saying that he was threatening the life of AOC. Now, look, she didn't necessarily have anything to do with it, but how many of those have repeated itself across the last couple of months? The Capitol Police also, as I would remind everybody, is not subject to FOIA, to the Freedom of Information Act, because Congress has exempted itself from that. And that is why they're going to bury a lot of intelligence product

inside of that organization because they don't want any of us to ever let it see the light of day. This is exactly the type of behind-the-scenes stuff that you should be really worried about. And the last part of this story is, of course, after this incredibly embarrassing turnout, did the media fess up?

Like, okay, guys, didn't turn out to be all that we thought, and sorry for freaking you out and over-hyping this thing. No, no, no, of course not. They somehow found a way to still justify how their coverage was really important and really needed. Here's a Rolling Stone piece. This is amazing. The Justice for J6 rally wasn't a joke. It was a warning. And I don't even, I mean, I actually read this article and tried to follow the logic and it's impossible to follow. It's like, sure, there weren't many people there, but there were a few random candidates for Congress who showed up and sure, no Republican elected officials showed up, but they didn't need to because this is already baked into the Republican Party. This is a warning of

whatever. Anyway, so a lot of tortured logic to try to justify like, no, guys, it really was as scary as we said it was going to be. And then this is amazing. Brian Stelter tweeted out, great friend of the show, I would say. Yes, friend of the show. Even though it was a dud, small crowd at Capitol protests is still the lead story on Sunday's WAPO front page. Why? Because as the story's lead says, it was, quote, the most anticipated visit by right-wing activists to the nation's Capitol since a mob stormed the U.S. Capitol on 1-6. So you see what they did there. They were the ones anticipating it. And then they used that as a justification to be like, see, we still have to cover. It was still really, really important. So they trying to frame this as some sort of world historical event, which then justifies a world historical response. That's exactly what they want. And that's actually why it really pisses me off because they want – the January 6th is the best thing that ever happened to these people.

And they want violence. They want it to be some sort of, like, horrific brawl. They wanted the same thing in Afghanistan. It's all they want is to return to the high. These are the highest ratings these people had seen in 10 years. Was January 6th, the election, all of that, COVID. It was the best thing that ever happened to them. And don't ever let them tell you otherwise. And all they want is a return exactly to that, and that's exactly what's wrong with the news business in the first place.

Indeed. All right, more things that are wrong with the news business. Actually, we should give credit to New York Times journalism here because they forced the government to have to acknowledge that this drone strike was just murdering innocent civilians. Right. So, well, you guys will recall we brought you that New York Times investigation where they actually went and got the security camera video of the person who was the target of the drone strike, who was a past U.S. aid worker, who had applied actually for a U.S. visa. His family, small children, they were killed actually in that strike because the drone came almost exactly at the time when he rocked out of the car and they were running towards it.

Now, General McKenzie, the head of U.S. Central Command, came out and openly acknowledged that this strike was a, quote, mistake. Don't worry, though, there won't be any consequences. Let's take a listen to what he said. Having thoroughly reviewed the findings of the investigation and the supporting analysis by interagency partners, I am now convinced that as many as 10 civilians, including up to seven children, were tragically killed in that strike. Moreover, we now assess that it is unlikely that the vehicle and those who died were associated with ISIS-K or were a direct threat to U.S. forces. I offer my profound condolences to the family and friends of those who were killed. This strike was taken in the earnest belief that it would prevent an imminent threat to our forces and the evacuees at the

airport, but it was a mistake, and I offer my sincere apology. As the combatant commander, I am fully responsible for this strike and its tragic outcome. Well, I've begun with the most important findings of our investigation. And Crystal, just so you know, a further statement from the Pentagon made it absolutely certain, this is what they said, let's put this up there on the screen, which is that there will be no disciplinary action expected in the drone strike that killed 10 civilians, including seven children in Afghanistan. There's a lot to be said here. Number one, it basically took a bulletproof investigation from the Times

in order to show that this was a complete lie from the beginning. Number two, think about the conditions of this strike. We had people on the ground. We'd been in that country for 20 years. We knew the grid of Kabul because we used to occupy it. In terms of what the government has told us for years about drone strike, we'll probably never have as much visibility into an on-the-ground situation as what we did, as what was happening at that time. And it still was a total and complete disaster in terms of who we hit, why we hit, etc. Now think about the thousands more in Yemen, tribal regions of Pakistan.

Somalia. Somalia, Mali, Niger, shall I go on? Now we start to understand that when these people tell us something, it ain't always sometimes on the level. And maybe, maybe, just maybe, if we had been paying attention to this for the last, I don't know, 20 years, the righteous anger of the American people at this strike, which I fully support, would also have maybe got us out of these wars in the first place. Yeah, well, there is a lot to that. I mean, it's almost like, is it, I guess, it's progress that at least they're admitting it? Because for years and years, I went and looked up

the numbers. There have been over 13,000 drone strikes in Afghanistan that we know about. How much transparency do we have into who was actually killed in those drone strikes next to nothing. Next to nothing. This was a rare instance where because it was in Kabul and because the media was very interested in that moment in painting the Biden administration in a bad light, which they deserve to be in this instance, they actually did the digging to figure out what happened.

And it truly was a superb piece of journalism. Going back, viewing the security cameras as this aid worker went about the day, his day, pressing the government and the military about, okay, what did you think was going on? Who did you think this person actually was? And ultimately tracking it down to the courtyard of his house, whereas he pulls his white Toyota into the courtyard and his kids, their sort of daily ritual was to run out and jump into the car to greet daddy. That's when the drone strike hits. And then I just have to remind you the way that they lied about this too,

because in order to convince people, they would never say from the beginning what ISIS target they hit. And by the way, there was another drone strike that they still have not said what ISIS target they hit in that one either. So have some skepticism there as well. But from the beginning, they wouldn't say who they hit. So instantly you're going, hmm, I've got some major questions about this. Also, why are you doing drone strikes in the middle of a busy residential area in Kabul that you know is a busy residential area in Kabul. And part of how they justified this and tried to snow people is by saying, oh, there were secondary explosions, meaning there were explosives in the car, so we know we got the right guy. Total, complete lie. The only thing in that car, other than this man and his babies, were canisters of water. That's what was in the back of this car.

So it is so revealing of the way that we operated in Afghanistan and the entire region now for literally decades. And here's the other thing as well. There are other instances where we know civilians were massacred and murdered. We know the wedding party that was drone-striked killed 37 civilians. We know we bombed a hospital that was run by Doctors Without Borders, killing 42. We gave their family members, their surviving family members, $6,000 in reparations for that. But has there been any accountability for any of these horrific atrocities? No. And that's what he said. No disciplinary action. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Milley, said this was a, quote, righteous strike. The president defended it.

The White House touted it. It was supposed to make them look strong. And this, like I said, this is just one out of many. I'm not minimizing it whatsoever. But it is very fitting that this would be the very last act of the U.S. military in Afghanistan, at least for the time being, that it would be a complete and total lie. And the Pentagon, the highest levels of the Pentagon, General McKenzie and the chairman lied to us. They put out that BS statement. They also, they need to fully account and explain, I know this will never happen, but they need to come out and say, what was the intel? Why exactly did you strike this person? What, so what they've said so far is that he was in a car and he went to a bunch of places

and saw unusual amount of male activity that was detected. So that's the bar? That's what's enough? You know, you can also, you know, I hear from these people all the time, ISR, you know, our ISR capabilities, you wouldn't believe it. So you're not able to distinguish bomb-making materials from water jugs, which were what was in his trunk? That seems pretty troubling to me, and actually makes me question a lot of the stuff that was happening back in Iraq during the anti-ISIS campaign,

whenever people would push for, hey, what's the proof? What do you have? And they said, oh, we got this. We got this on camera. And you look at this, apparently, you know, it's 2021. It's been five years since that war. I assume the technology is supposed to have gotten better. And they completely and totally flubbed this one. And flub erases the people who actually died. But even worse, look, 13 of our people were killed in a suicide bomb as a result of this. We actually should go get the people who are responsible. And so by killing a U.S.-backed civilian and his family, that's not justice for the actual service members who were killed in this strike. So it's just a total, it dishonors their memory. It kills these people. It's just

a complete, it makes me so mad at the entire military and chain of command on this one. Well, and we all know why they went on such flimsy intelligence just to kill someone, anyone, so that they could say, we got an ISIS-K target. They were, they didn't want the bad news cycle. I mean, they just, we just lost servicemen and women, dozens of Afghan civilians murdered by suicide bomber and the resulting firefight. And so they wanted a positive news cycle of this righteous strike. We took out the bad guys. So they went on extraordinarily flimsy intelligence, obviously, and just murdered someone

so that they could satisfy the news media's bloodlust. And it was the only positive news cycle that they got out of Afghanistan. It's also no accident that, you know, most of these drone strikes go unreported, uninvestigated. This one they happen to look into in part because they were invested in making the Biden administration look bad at this point. But yeah, I mean, it's very clear why they did it. They did it because they wanted to get a good news cycle. I mean, imagine how disgusting and psychopathic that ultimately is.

It's really horrendous. And then the other piece of this and why it's such a tragic and fitting end to this entire war is no one wants to say this, but the Taliban had a lot of popular support and the Afghan army and the U.S. lost a lot of popular support exactly because of these types of actions. I mean, if you know someone who got murdered at a wedding by an American bomb, how do you think you're going to feel about your occupiers? So the fact that we had so many civilian casualties, quote unquote, collateral damage throughout this war is a big part of what ultimately hobbled our effort there overall. Now, look, I mean, I think we shouldn't have been there for more than a very short period to start with. I don't think we ever should have been occupiers in that country. That was never the stated goal going in. We were never like, let's go in and nation build and build democracy. It was after we failed to get bin Laden at the

beginning. We turned down the Taliban on their offer to turn him over. Then we're sort of stuck there in the country, like having to figure out some way to claim that it's a win. Even after Bin Laden is killed, then in Pakistan, we still have to continue to justify all this expenditure and all this money and grip that's ultimately here. But this is the reality of what this war was effectively from day one. Yeah, it was. And look, and this is the one thing on Biden, buck stops with him because he absolutely greenlit that strike. And the White House needs to answer the questions. The chairman needs to answer a question. The fact that there's no disciplinary action is completely shameful. 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. All right, let's switch gears here to my home state of Texas, where there's been some troubling news. One Beto O'Rourke is making his comeback to the stage.

Let's put this up there on the screen. I knew it was gonna happen. I knew he would run. Sources say Beto plans Texas comeback in the governor's race. Texas political operators tell Axios. So what does that mean? Number one, Beto was, to my memory, in 2018, he was the highest, the biggest fundraising Senate candidate in modern American history. Juggernaut. history raised absolute tens of millions of dollars. Came within 2% of actually beating Ted Cruz.

Now, there's a lot going on there. Ted Cruz is a uniquely unpopular political figure, to say the least, within the state of Texas. Viscerally disliked in Texas and around the world. Far more disliked than Governor Greg Abbott. Currently, that being said, there's COVID going on right now. There's actually a lot of consternation. Also, even since 2018, Texas has changed dramatically. I mean, the hundreds of thousands of people who have moved there from California and in New York. I mean, the influx into Austin alone could easily make it and change the demographics of the state.

You also saw, though, that Latinos who are voting, you know, voted at a different rate for Donald Trump. A lot of that seems to be holding. If you look at some of the polling data in terms of Hispanic support specifically within Texas for the Trump administration or as a corollary against Biden. Also, Beto is the guy who wants to literally take people's guns away. So that was a position that he took after his failed Senate bid. Good luck in my home state with that position. He's the one who went all in on like, we're going to send people door to door to get your guns. Yeah, he was the one. He's like, damn right, we're going to come take your guns. I remember being like, good luck, man. You'll never get elected to Texas. Yeah, I'm sure that's not

going to come up during this race whatsoever. But you guys happen to remember that the media loved this guy, even though he was full of nothing, had no substance whatsoever. He was completely inexperienced. At best, he's like a child who curses for affect in order to make his case. A 48-year-old child. He's literally a 48-year-old child. Also happens to be married to somebody who's worth hundreds of millions of dollars, but whatever.

So you put that all together, and it's going to be fun because the media is going to do what it always does. Now, I actually do think a Democrat – well, I'll get to this – could possibly come close in the state of Texas. is just a completely poll-tested, almost San Francisco, New York vision of what a Texas liberal should be, as opposed to what an actual Texas Democrat who could win the state would look like. Now, people seem to forget this, but our last Democratic governor, her name was Ann Richards, and she was one of those ranch girls. She's awesome. She was actually kind of cool. I don't even particularly like her, but I mean, her affect and all of that was something we shall not see her like again.

But take a look exactly at the polling of what this looks like. And you'll see exactly the only person who really seems to have a shot here. So this is a recent Dallas Morning News poll from the University of Texas, Tyler, as well. It shows actually Matthew McConaughey as the only candidate who might be able to best Governor Abbott. 44-35 for Matthew McConaughey, 35 for Abbott. But then, for Beto, it actually shows Abbott at 42 and Beto at 37. Add in some of the other ones. It shows Abbott at 70, Huffines at 15, Abbott at 65, Allen West, who's the chairman of the Republican Party of Texas at 20, Ken Paxton actually 43, Bush 28, Guzman at five. That would be if Abbott doesn't run.

So they're testing Republican primary potential contenders there. He seems safe against all of them. Right. Beto has such like angsty Gen X vibes. Yeah. Oh, God. You know, it's interesting because he was sort of at the leading edge of understanding the shift in the base of the Democratic Party. Part of why he was able to perform so well in that race against Ted Cruz is that he really excited white liberals. Yep. That worked out extraordinarily well for him nationally in terms of fundraising, in terms of media. Worked out pretty well for him in the state of Texas, which, as you always point out, is increasingly becoming a suburban state.

So he leaned into that and those people were really, really excited about him. Now you have to look at these poll numbers and say, look, this is before, not that Beto has like an amazing image right now at this point, but this is before any attack ads are run reminding people of his comments about guns or anything else. So it's pretty hard to move up from where he is right now. The other thing that was interesting to me, though, was just how large of a swing vote there seems to be in Texas. Because, I mean, just the difference between McConaughey and Beto versus, you know, I think if you polled another Democrat, they'd be even lower than Beto at this point just because of his name recognition, how much he does have support among a certain segment of the public there.

There's an electorate that is actually up for grabs. And so it goes against this idea that everything's completely hardened and it just is what it is and no campaigning or no can and nothing matters, no issue set matters, et cetera, et cetera. I think especially at the state level, if Abbott has a bad year, if COVID, you know, continues to spike and they're having problems there, schools have, you know, issues, like if you have situations like that, or remember what happened last winter, there was a big freeze and the Texas power grid just like completely shit the bed. And you had people literally freezing to death in their homes. And he was, you know, and the Texas power grid just like completely shit the bed. And you had people literally freezing to death in their homes. And he was, you know, very ineffective in terms of dealing with that crisis. And they have not done anything, to my knowledge, to winterize the grid or make sure that doesn't happen again.

So if you have a situation like that and then you have a Democrat, not necessarily like Beto, but maybe like Matthew McConaughey or somebody else, who is inoffensive to a large swath of voters, or kind of undefined politically and doesn't have a big record that you can use against him, then I think you ultimately have a shot. Even with McConaughey, though, I'm skeptical because these early numbers are good for him, but that's, again, before he's defined, before he's asked any questions, before he's in a debate, before he says anything that can really be used against him in a negative ad in this sort of situation. So I think it's still tough sledding for Democrats at this point in Texas, especially since, as you point out,

part of what they were banking on in terms of moving Texas into the blue column was that the Latino vote would continue to show up for them. And not just stay at the level that it was, but it would continue to move into their column. That they would get more new voters registered. That they would be able to really bank on that. And the Latino population in Texas is very young. So as they come of age and be able to vote, they thought, oh, this is a great growing demographic on our side. It's not working out quite the way or at least not quite at the pace that they thought it ultimately would. Right. I will say one thing that layers on top of all this, it's that recent abortion law.

So that actually is something that could mobilize some Democratic turnout. And that's the one thing that could possibly change the game. I mean, I've been talking with people who know the state better than obviously I haven't lived there in a while. But what it is is that there are enough of those people who registered Democrat back in 2018 for Beto were kind of activated within the Texas Democratic Party. Add in the hundreds of thousands from California and from New York who are actually one of, the rare case of the actual like socially liberal, but kind of fiscally conservative voter, as in they've moved from California and New York because of the taxes. Let's all be honest about what was exactly going on there. Plus, you know, cheaper land, cheaper houses, et cetera. But socially, they remain pretty rock hard liberal, which means that this Texas abortion law could be something,

again, I want to say could, that could mobilize Democratic turnout at a higher level. At the same time, a lot of evangelicals, I grew up with a lot of them, who this is the crowning jewel, achievement, right? So they might come out in support of Governor Abbott. And I think one thing that does overlay all of this, people don't seem to realize Governor of Texas is one of the most powerless positions in the entire nation. I always try to tell people this during the race. The people who created our state

made it so the legislature can't meet more than once every two years because they don't want more laws to be passed. And they specifically did not invest very much power in the governor and the executive himself because they didn't want him to be able to do anything. It's literally baked into the Constitution. And it happens to be one of the reasons George W. Bush was so ill-prepared for the presidency, because it was the only job that he held before. The lieutenant governor's race is actually a lot more important

if you care about the day-to-day running. But that's my own personal diatribe. Good political springboard, though. Exactly. Beto was able to become governor of Texas. Oh, it'd be huge. He'd run for president. Yeah, then he'd run for president again. And maybe this time possibly would have a better shot at it. It is incredible to think back about his trajectory. I mean, this guy was. Failed congressman. Yeah, but he was so sought after. Remember when he went to Iowa and he's standing on the media's freaking out. He had at the beginning of his presidential campaign.

Obama people went to go work for him. They did. That's right. General Malley Dillon, who ends up with Biden on the winning case. She started with Beto. They bet on, I mean, Obama sort of tacitly was betting on this guy. That's what you can tell by where the staff was going. Truly.

I know. And he is also one of these people who has that annoying, like he sort of like patterned speech after Obama, too, which I find to be the most irritating thing in the entire world. But he had a massive flood of donations at the beginning. Remember, who was it that was making the case that was like, oh, Bernie's got to be worried about young people flocking to Beto O'Rourke? Oh, I forgot about that. Instead, right? I mean, you know, hottest take of all time. And then he just, people actually listened to him on a debate stage and they were like, nah, no, I don't think so. Yeah, I don't think he ever got more than a couple points in the polls.

Remember also whenever he was standing up on everything? On the camera. For no reason. He was constantly standing. He was getting his disgusting feet. His Vanity Fair profile. Born to be in it. His Oprah Winfrey Times Square interview. Some of the greatest hits

were reliving there. Incredible times, incredible times. All right, let's get to another piece of very important news, which is on the booster shot. This is something we've been covering very closely. There's been a lot of bureaucratic warfare here in Washington. So recall, a couple of weeks ago, Biden administration, President Biden himself, comes out and says, we are recommending booster shots for every American six months after they've been fully vaccinated. Huge policy change. Immediately, we begin to see pushback within the FDA itself. There's rancor.

There's clear and leaked stories in the New York Times saying, actually, some people within the administration and the FDA specifically reject that claim. Then two high-level FDA officials themselves put in their resignations. They say they're leaving in a couple of months. Then, Crystal, they sign on to a public letter in a medical journal coming out against the administration's own booster policy. Now, the FDA panel, let's put this up there on the screen, has gone ahead and recommended Pfizer's COVID booster doses for people who are 65 and older, but rejected third shots for the general population. I think this is an incredibly important story because it shows to you the fact that getting ahead of your skis on public messaging and then having to pull back

just creates more confusion, more questions. It actually probably does more in order to boost people's fears that they're never going to have to knock at a booster or whatever. And it just projects a general level of complete and total incompetence whenever it comes to this. And that really is beginning to seem what it looks like because we don't even have the full evidence that we necessarily need on the booster that we even see. This is from the New York Times. Let's put this up there. I think they meant this as some sort of affirming thing. Quote, researchers in Israel reported that a third dose of the Pfizer biotech COVID vaccine can enhance protection in adults older than 60 for at least 12 days. A result that is unsurprising and does not indicate long-term benefit.

12 days? And only for adults 60 and older. That's not even for the general population. So, uh, why? And remember, these are free, and, you know, Pfizer has been pushing for boosters for the entire general population for a long time. I can't help but wonder what's going on there. But to have it so starkly laid out, and again, I think the New York Times meant it.

Like, see, you get 12 whole, I'm like, 12 days? I'm like, that's all you're getting here? 12 days? Is that really worth it in terms of the money? I mean, look, I just think, again, and I think I'm going to do something on this tomorrow, just the whole way that we have had our discussion about this, about the future, the indemnity of COVID and more, it's just a total disaster. And I think that this just, again, goes to show that these public health people,

they are always trying to project themselves onto the public, being like, where's the public? Let's try and message this. Oh, we got to scare them. Oh, we got to get ahead of this and talk about boosters. When the science doesn't necessarily even back up the booster shot that we even see. So you put it all together, I do think it's a big disaster. And a lot of people have a lot of questions. You know, some people don't know.

Should I take it? Should I not? What am I supposed to do? Coming up on that six-month mark, what exactly is going on? Yeah, and it's not that this is, that having a third booster shot is like a high risk for you. It just seems like, based on the data, which is limited at this point, by the way, it's just not really worth it. There are concerns about fueling vaccine hesitancy because it plays

into this narrative that like, this is really just about making these companies a bunch of money. And in fact, the CNBC article was kind of incredible to read because they include in there this line after it's like the panel voted down giving the booster shots to everyone. They said, Pfizer stock closed down 1.3% while shares of BioNTech fell 3.6%. There you go. Very revealing. Very revealing about what some of the real motivations were here. And so, yeah, I think you had this dynamic where the political people, and I include Fauci as effectively a politician at this point,

the political people thought this will be a way to give people even more comfort, make them feel even better. And there's some data out of Israel that says it might be a good thing. Who knows? But let's just go for it. And then the actual scientists and the two that resigned at the FDA, they were high level in the vaccine division. Exactly. So in the relevant division, they were like, this is really not a good look and we don't feel comfortable staying here, which would have been a huge story under the Trump administration. So when they all get together and this advisory panel votes about requiring boosters or pushing boosters to the general population, it wasn't close. They voted against it 16 to 2.

So it really does show you that the Biden administration thought this was the right move politically, but clearly the scientific community did not agree and did not ultimately back them up, which is significant for an administration that's constantly said, we're going to follow the science, we're going to follow the science. And, you know, their base is very interested in following the science. There are literally like yard signs out across Washington, D.C. saying, we trust the science, follow the science, we love Dr. Fauci, all of that. So it is a pretty revealing and significant moment. There was another piece of news, highly significant, that came across this morning that I wanted to bring to you guys, and

I'm just reading for The New York Times right now. COVID vaccine prompts a strong immune response in younger children, Pfizer says. So vaccinated kids age 5 to 11 showed evidence of protection against the virus. Now that data is going to be reviewed by the FDA before children can be inoculated. This to me is a much more important direction to go in because, yes, kids have much lower likelihood of severe disease from coronavirus and much lower likelihood of death from coronavirus. But you still have a lot of parents, I include myself in this, who are anxious to see their kids protected against this thing. Having that population also inoculated is also going to do a huge service in terms of

limiting the spread to other unvaccinated populations. So this is encouraging news based on what we know. What they found so far is that it's been shown to be safe and highly effective. That news should help ease anxiety. And effectively, what they found is that there are very low risks in terms of negative health consequences for young children, five and older, and that that immune response that you expect to see from the vaccine is triggered. They haven't actually done the research to show how effective it's going to be against protecting against any infection, severe disease, and ultimately death. But it shows it's safe. It shows it seems to be doing what it's indicated to do. And so now that will go to the FDA and

the FDA will evaluate it, which is very encouraging. It's been weird to me that they've been really pushing the booster direction, which seems like it's not going to do anything. And being sort of lackadaisical and slow on getting this approved so that children can be protected here as well. So encouraging news on that front. Yeah. And then once you get to that point, parents who want their children to be vaccinated can. Probably millions will do so, and that will only increase our overall herd immunity. Exactly. Which will make it what? So that we can all go back to normal. And so I think that that is really, I mean, personally, I think we should have been doing that for a long time.

But what it is is that all of this comes together. I think the Biden administration got way over their skis on the booster. Now they're having to roll it back. The unclarity of their position feeds into this narrative of chaos. They tried to get ahead of that with their vaccine mandate in terms of large employers. We'll still see. But as we continue to see in the polling, he is underwater on COVID. Now, as you point to, people are not going to remember now. In 2022, they're going to remember what exactly the situation is then. And if it were him, what he needs to do is try to make sure not to embrace necessarily a COVID zero policy, but to try and make it so that, A, you reach herd immunity.

Well, it's possible anyway. In terms of he wants to burst, you reach herd immunity. Well, it's possible. Anyway, in terms of he wants to burst the overall number of immunity, number one. And number two, needs clarity from the public on what the overall end goal is. So that, I think, is his most important thing that he needs to do. If people feel more comfortable next year, they feel safer. They will vote for him. I agree. If they feel like my kid's going to be able to go to school and they're not going to get pulled out for quarantine every other week, which I can tell you as an all-in soccer mom, that's all that parents are talking about is like, has your kid been quarantined yet? And how long are they out? And where'd you go to get the test? In my little town in King George County, they just had to do a free clinic for parents to get their kids tested so they could go back to school. And that's another thing that's really irritating to me is that the tests you have to use to prove to the school that your kid is safe to go back after they've had a positive COVID exposure, that sucker costs like $100. Yes, yeah. There's even if you aren't worried about your kids getting really, really sick, there are major life disruptions that are happening right now that are deeply unsettling to people.

And in the same way, I have compassion for people who, you know, feel like they've been screwed over by every institution that they've ever even thought to trust. I also have compassion for people who are like one in 500 Americans have died of covid and I'm freaked And I'm wearing the double mask, and I want everybody I know to be vaccinated. And sure, I'll go in on the booster shot. So anyway, that's the latest. Booster shots look like they, for the general population, don't make a lot of sense. It's looking like they're moving forward with vaccines for children 5 and up. And that's where we are. There we are.

All right. Another, we could not let this one go. Bloomberg, a guy named Connorson, who is an opinion writer at Bloomberg and founder of something called Peachtree Creek Investments, which I'm sure does wonderful things, wrote this incredible op-ed that says, Factory towns will lift the working class. Plentiful new jobs at higher wages in places with cheaper housing. Sounds like a solution to inequality, Sagar. I mean, I saw someone on Twitter like, did Jeff Bezos actually write this? Or, I mean, it certainly sounds, or maybe Jay Carney was the one that spent this one. This is pure neoliberal brain.

Oh, it's insane. And by the way, they said the same thing about Walmart, just so people know. They're like, Walmart's going to come in way, they said the same thing about Walmart, just so people know. Walmart's going to come in and they're going to drive prices low, and that's going to make it so that everybody in small-town America can actually follow their dream of opening a small business which doesn't compete with Walmart. I went and looked at this guy's Twitter feed. He's still making that case about Walmart.

There you go. See? That's what I'm saying. How has Walmart been for your town? It's decimated every other opportunity. It's meant so that workers' only option is to work at the giant monopolist. I mean, this is the sort of thinking of, like, a coal baron in the 1920s. Like, let's just give them script and get it over with. And this is the problem, which is that, you know, on the actual, like, if you look at the actual GDP in the very short term, he could be right. But what does we know about Amazon's practice of hiring people? So if Amazon's the only game in town all across rural America, and rural America's only economic value becomes its proximity to other places, as in the only economic value that the town has is that it's in between two different big cities, meaning it's a decent distribution hub or whatever. Well, then Amazon is the only game in town, and they have a lot of power over your life.

Now, if you're not in a union and you have no discernible ability to push back, you are 100% at the mercy of Amazon. And what did we learn in that New York Times story about how Amazon treats its warehouse employees? They specifically do not see them as on track for upper management. They specifically want to force them out of the company. They have policies which kind of turn and burn through people in terms of advancement. So yeah, maybe you work 15, 18 hours an hour. Maybe you'll have that for a couple of years. What about whenever you come to the end of that cycle? Now what are you supposed to do? There's nothing else in town. So that's supposed to lift the working class?

There's no stability here. Yeah. Watch that movie. Oh, wait, go ahead. The way people are treated, I mean, they're just, they're not treated like human beings. You're literally put on like a three-year time clock when you get a job as a warehouse worker at one of these Amazon fulfillment centers, you are never seen as like potential manager material, which is actually Walmart is even better in that regard. Yeah, they are. They promote out of the associates, right?

On promoting associates into management, and some even make it all the way to, you know, executive levels down in Bentonville. Amazon, polar opposite philosophy. They view their workers as disposable commodities. In fact, there's been some hand-wringing at the executive year levels recently because they recognize they're basically burning through the entire eligible American workforce and are worried about having enough people with enough bodily fitness to be able to do these jobs, which are extraordinarily demanding and hard on your body. And they just push people and push people and push people, track their every single movement with these little wearable devices that, by the way, will tell you when you're off task

and also might just send you a notice that you're fired because you didn't get that device or whatever loaded up quickly enough. So that's reality for the working class at Amazon, not to mention the sort of reporting that has come out about, you know, not being able to take bathroom breaks, having to pee in bottles, just the total dehumanizing aspect of work at Amazon. So, yeah, and this is the other piece. Yeah, you might be making 15 bucks an hour. That's actually lower than the industry standard for warehouse workers. So you're talking about people getting paid less for the same job being done other places. You're talking about a place that is as hostile to unions and any sort of worker powers you could possibly be. And then

if you care about small town vitality, that's the other piece of this, even zooming out from the individual worker. If these towns are wholly dependent on Amazon, first of all, again, we've seen the way this works around history. The entire government becomes captured by Amazon. Every politician lives or dies by how close they are to Amazon and how much money they're getting for their campaigns from Amazon, they will give away everything that Amazon wants to, you know, this giant corporation. And then when Amazon decides like, oh, well, this workforce maybe is getting

a little too many ideas in their head, they might unionize or they decide, oh, there's a slightly more efficient logistics hub 10 miles over, then your town is completely closed. It's dead. And we've seen, we saw the way this worked with the Amazon HQ2 competition too. The way these states and cities threw billions of dollars at this very wealthy corporation to try to lure them to their town.

When you have giant monopolies controlling everything like this, that is the end game is everybody's fighting for the privilege of having this, you know, this giant in their town where they can then exploit their own people because the other alternative is basically you have nothing. That's the problem, right? Which is that if you have this giant behemoth, which is already the second largest employer in the United States, and then they become, look, it's already the future. I can see it. I mean, in my neighborhood, we have one of those new grocery stores where you just scan your Amazon app and you can go and pick stuff up off the shelf and you just walk right out.

I mean, this is what they want to do. They want to monopolize and control the grocery distribution market, the actual shopping experience. We read recently that Amazon is thinking about moving into shopping malls because they're like, well, some people still want the tactile experience. So by going, they've already destroyed the mall essentially. Now they're going to go move back into that mall at dirt cheap prices and put whatever they need there. And a lot of what they want to put in the malls isn't even customer-facing. It's fulfillment centers.

There you go. They've got cheap, big spaces that are empty that have been destroyed by them that they can now take advantage of for their logistics hubs. Some of it is disruption. That's fine. But really, again, it has to come down to the fact that whenever you become the second-largest employer of people in the United States and you have control over millions of lives, and then you have people like this pushing for many, even tens of millions of people to make it the de facto employer maybe of working class people in America, then it becomes a bit of a matter for the public. And that is what those people are the most virulently anti-union. They want total and 100% control over their entire workforce. And if that's going to be the case,

then it has to be the public that has to protect them. That's what worker protection really is all about. And we have this in the context of a couple of interesting updates there on the unionization front. Let's go ahead and put this one up there on the screen. After weeks of strikes and protests, Nabisco workers voted to ratify that new contract and end their strike. You'll recall that we brought one of those striking workers here on the show. And that new agreement calls for a $0.60 per hour wage increase each year for four years, a $5K bonus for employees, and it blocks their planned health care cuts. So that's what these people get, even when you fight. Now imagine, think about how Amazon would have handled this situation. And it blocks their planned health care cuts. So that's what these people get, even when you fight.

Now imagine, you know, this is, think about how Amazon would have handled this situation. Yeah, they just would have fired everybody. You get a preview of what is coming to a town near you. Yeah, no, that's exactly right. When you have a union, you have the ability to at least fight for a shot. A little bit. To roll back the health care cuts, to get some kind of a guaranteed salary in place. That's what you're really talking about here, because if these Nabisco workers weren't unionized, there's no chance at even these modest gains. So congratulations to them.

Solidarity they showed across the country was incredible. I also want to really praise More Perfect Union that's been doing phenomenal work in highlighting some of these struggles. Our next update comes from them as well about a group of Starbucks workers in Buffalo who are trying to unionize right now. And of course, Starbucks is pretty incredible. You know, you'd think that this wouldn't be that big of a deal. It's like 20 stores in Buffalo that they're trying to unionize. They have gone so far as to fly into town. Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz and also North American executive vice president, they've come into Buffalo and like just hanging out at the stores like, we just want to hear from you guys about how things are going. Let's have a meeting and hear

your concerns. That's how serious they're taking it, is they are bringing in their very highest level, their CEO, to come and be like, we're just worried about you guys. We want to hear from you all. So that's part of their sort of anti-union push here because what the workers are telling More Perfect Union is that, of course, this is very intimidating. Like the CEO of the company is there looking over your shoulder about what you're doing and what you're up to. That's extraordinarily intimidating. Another piece of their plan is they have applied to the NLRB, the National Labor Relations Board, which is the governing body that sort of oversees these union elections. They want to expand the bargaining unit, so the unit, the number of stores that would be unionized to include all of the stores in Buffalo. This would do a couple of things.

First of all, because organizers haven't been working with those stores, they have more to do to convince those employees and talk to them and communicate with them and just to be able to organize. Second of all, and this is really important, this is a delaying tactic to push these elections off down the road. Now, in the service industry, turnover is really high. So the more that you can delay and push things off, the harder it is for organizers because you have workers who are leaving, who are quitting, who are coming in. So you're constantly having to, all right, this one who was a supporter is gone. Now we've got this new person. Let's talk to them. Let's educate them. Let's get them bought in on this concept of solidarity. off entirely. And then, of course, they're doing what Amazon and all these companies do, which would be illegal, by the way, if the PRO Act were to be passed, which is having these mandatory anti-union, quote unquote, listening sessions that workers have to go to and hear

their sort of corporate arguments against unionization. Those are being run by a classic well-known union busting law firm. So they are going all out to make sure that this unionization effort does not take hold in Buffalo. And it's interesting to see. I don't know if it's just because More Perfect Union and some other outlets are doing a little bit more journalism around these labor struggles across the country and efforts to unionize. But it does seem like there's an uptick right now and that workers are asserting themselves more, especially within the service industry. Well, the reason why is because there's a labor shortage. And look, you know, I've heard a lot of conservative criticism about how that has to do with unemployment benefits. But we've actually seen from all of the data that a

lot of the places which preemptively cut extra unemployment off actually had no impact whatsoever in boosting the services. They did worse. Exactly. They did worse than the states that didn't cut off the benefits. I maintain that the number one reason is that a lot of people who had to work in the service industry or Uber drivers were like, after a year and a half, were like, yeah, you know, that sucked. That just wasn't fun. Yeah. And I wasn't fun. And I don't want to go back.

And a lot of people, I mean, you played that thing about Laura Ingraham basically wanting to force them back into a job so that you can eat. Right. I'm personally against that. So you know what it is. Her guess was like, starve them like dogs. Give your little mask off there, guys.

Turn it down a little bit. I think it's just incredibly revealing that the previous system is just something that isn't going to work for people. And that has happened in a lot of people's lives where you work or you fall into a habit or something. And once you get disconnected from it, you're like, yeah, you know what? I don't want to do it anymore. And just because that isn't good for the people who get served by the servant class doesn't mean that it's not good for all of us. So I actually think that's part of what's behind some of this unionization drive is that we probably have the best situation in a long time for individual workers themselves, for bargaining

power at the very individual level over what the wages they can demand, the hours they're willing to work from that. So that gives me a little bit of hope. Yeah, indeed. 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? Well, this morning we are seeing shocking images at the southern border as thousands of Haitian migrants wait in squalid conditions underneath of a bridge, hoping to be granted asylum status so that they can remain in the U.S.

Now, this is obviously an emotional issue, and it's about as politically charged as they come. I'm going to try to just purely stick to the facts here to set up what is going on and why it is happening. So the images of this crisis are truly terrible, and the conditions are reportedly even worse. You've got about 14,000 plus migrants. They've all crowded under this bridge in Del Rio, Texas. They're awaiting processing. There's no running water here. Some have actually been rushed to the hospital for dehydration after passing out in the dusty triple-digit heat. A few scattered porta-potties don't come close to meeting the sanitation needs of the thousands who have gathered.

Young children, babies, pregnant mothers, they are all sleeping there on the trash-strewn ground. Now, some of the thousands who are arriving are coming more or less directly from Haiti via Mexico. A majority, however, fled to countries like Chile or Brazil years ago and are arriving at our borders now, in part because COVID has made opportunities limited in those countries, and in part because they're counting on Biden's compassion. Now, those betting on a soft-hearted Biden are pretty likely to be disappointed. His administration has maintained and defended some of the tough Trump-era provisions which were put in place back under his administration. Now, in some ways, Biden has created a sort of worst-of-all-worlds. His softer rhetoric has encouraged hope for migrants who make the long trek only to face the same hardline policies that

they would have met under Trump. In particular, the Biden administration continued mass rapid expulsions of immigrants under Title 42. That is a Trump-era regulation that permitted mass deportations of migrants due to COVID concerns. Under that provision, migrants could be kicked out before having a chance to apply for asylum. Now, this provision is highly controversial and it's potentially illegal. A judge just days ago barred the Biden administration from continuing to use it. That injunction, however, will not go into effect for 14 days. In the meantime, Biden's DHS is using Title 42 to execute mass deportations of these Haitian refugees. DHS is running four flights per day, although the number of migrants on those flights is unknown.

This represents a major reversal of previous policy. Removal flights to Haiti had actually been suspended following that nation's most recent earthquake, a recognition of the utterly desperate circumstances on the ground in that island nation. Now, we covered, of course, the fallout from the assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moise. Even prior to Moise's murder, Haiti was wracked with violence as criminal drug gangs, fueled by our own war on drugs, ruled the streets of Port-au-Prince and other cities. Haiti is the most impoverished nation in the Western Hemisphere. The U.S. has, of course, exploited Haiti since its birth. We've screwed up their political system, too. We propped up brutal murdering dictators because they were anti-communist. We overthrew popular reformists

because they had a few too many leftist ideas. This poverty and violence has been exacerbated even further by a massive earthquake which just struck that country. Of course, that nation also never fully recovered from the devastating earthquake that hit it back in 2010. And on top of everything else, climate change has brought repeated droughts and deadly storms, devastating farmers and making it nearly impossible to get by. So that is the reality here. Crime, violence, poverty, political chaos, hopelessness, complete desperation. The Biden administration did have compassion for Haitians and what they've suffered until, I guess, it was politically inconvenient.

Now, this crisis has revealed basically everyone's hypocrisy and blind spots. Republicans have certainly not given Biden any credit for continuing Trump's border wall construction or defending pandemic-based mass expulsions. That's to say nothing of the hypocrisy resulting from the fact that if these refugees were fleeing an island nation located just a few hundred miles from Haiti, Republicans would be celebrating those migrants as heroes and welcoming them with open arms. I'm talking, of course, about the way Cubans are treated as actual human beings by Republican leaders, as opposed to virtually all other immigrants. On the other hand, Democrats trash Trump for his border policies, but they have been

largely and conspicuously silent as Biden has embraced some of the same cruelty, dysfunction, and yes, kids in cages policies as Trump. Have you heard any elected leaders calling Biden a fascist or calling out Biden's concentration camps? Biden himself pledged to be different and Kamala Harris specifically pledged to eliminate the Title 42 pandemic policies now being used to justify these mass expulsions. She actually signed on to a blistering letter to Trump's DHS secretary stating that, quote, a public health crisis does not give the executive branch a free pass to violate constitutional rights, nor does it give the executive branch permission to operate outside of the law. No word from Vice President Harris on whether or

not she believes her own administration to be violating constitutional rights and operating outside of the law today. Now look, it's not an accident that Biden has chosen to continue some of the same policies as Trump. As long as we fail to marshal the resources and the political will to actually create an orderly and humane immigration system, these constant crises will keep erupting to the benefit of the most reactionary forces. You can just look at Fox News' Biden-era programming choices if you want to see what that looks at. At the core of the dysfunction is a court system overwhelmed, a backlog of 1.4 million cases. That is a record high.

That means if you let people enter the U.S. before their asylum cases have been adjudicated, they might be waiting years in this country before they ever have a court date. In that time, lives are established, children are born, local ties are created, and it then becomes very, very hard to deport people who have established those sorts of community ties. If you take the other tactic of holding people in detention centers, you enrich a bunch of private prison companies, and you end up incarcerating people indefinitely who might be legitimate refugees. Trump's remain-in-Mexico policy had political benefits in an out-of-sight, out-of-mind sort of way, but was also very cruel. Migrants lived by the thousands in squalid and dangerous tent camps with no ability to work, preyed upon

by criminals and by gangs. Now look, for me personally, I believe in a generous, but not limitless, immigration policy with clear rules and clear timelines. We are complicit in screwing up the world, and as a wealthy nation, we also have a high moral obligation. But we are also a nation state, with a right to determine who enters our borders. Clearly, and this should be nonpartisan, we need to massively ramp up our judicial capacity to handle the current and incoming influx so that migrants can't exploit that long multi-year lag time that is now the norm. Now, as you know, I also believe it's critical to make sure the native-born working class has living wages and health care and a basic floor of dignity

underneath of them so we can avoid the sort of zero-sum thinking and reality that can pit our indigenous working class against these new immigrants. Look, one thing I know here for sure is that hoping conditions improve or that the media doesn't pay attention, that is a fool's errand. With climate change crushing livelihoods and fueling resource wars, our borders will continue to be inundated with desperate people clinging to whatever hopeful rumors that they happen to see on WhatsApp. 15,000 Haitians under a bridge is nothing compared to what future years are very likely to bring. If this is a test of the inevitable future to come, we have failed our own people and we have failed these migrants in every possible way. And it is incredible, Sagar, how little you hear. Kamala Harris said this was unconstitutional, what's happening now.

And that was at the height of the pandemic. 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?

Once upon a time, you guys might remember, this entire country's political establishment and media and politics were driven by a central question. Did Donald Trump, our newly elected president, conspire with the Russian government to win the 2016 presidential election? Hours of cable news appearances and special counsels and impeachment wasted potential later. The answer to that question was definitely no. And as the dust settled, it actually became clear that instead, a massive fraud had been perpetrated on the American people. That their intelligence services, their political class, their media had wasted two entire years of their lives. I, like many of you, thought there would never be any accountability. Recall, many of the actors involved were pushed the Iraq war. And a small taste of justice,

though, came Friday, which reminded me of just how completely insane the last five years were and how unhinged Washington became in those years. As with all things Russiagate, the details are tedious. But if you stick with me, there is a bigger point to be made. Special Counsel Robert Durham, he was appointed by Bill Barr to investigate the origins of the Russia investigation. He indicted Democratic cybersecurity lawyer Michael Sussman with making false statements to the FBI about his role as a Clinton campaign operative in feeding the media a story about a connection between the Trump Organization and a corrupt Russian bank. Now, this false statement was made in September 2016 when Sussman met with the thenBI General Counsel James Baker, Sussman portrayed himself as a well-meaning citizen concerned about Trump and his connections to Russia,

when in reality, he was being paid by the Clinton campaign. Furthermore, the investigation revealed that whenever he presented those claims to the FBI, they didn't even believe the allegations at the time themselves, and they were working with the tech executives to potentially falsify evidence pointing to a Russian connection.

Andy McCarthy of National Review described it this way, quote, In a nutshell, people closely connected to the Clinton campaign use privileged access to non-public information for political purposes. They concoct it into a political narrative they know is baseless, but can be convincingly spun to suggest Trump is in cahoots with Putin. They then simultaneously peddle that storyline to the media and the FBI, the latter of which opens an investigation of Trump because the Clinton team, in this instance, Sussman misrepresents its intentions. The key part is not only was a Clinton op to start an FBI investigation just revealed, but that the media liars who peddled these theories are finally revealed too. Franklin Foer, who's a longtime Washington journalist, he was the first to publish this

in a question headline, outlining the so-called evidence. The new indictment, though, reveals that before Foer hit publish on that story, he literally sent it for review to Fusion GPS, which was the firm which was pushing the Steele dossier and who invented many of the Russia allegations in the first place. Here's how it all comes full circle. Right after Ford publishes that article, which was essentially written for him by the Clinton folks, what does Clinton do? She then releases a statement saying that computer scientists have apparently uncovered a covert server linking the Trump organization to a Russian-based bank. Invent a story, plant the story, call attention to the story. It's a time-honored tradition in Washington. You might also remember it from the war in Iraq.

Now, even though Clinton lost, the story still wouldn't die. It laid dormant, and the diehards would never let it go. Two years later, after it saw some life breathed into it after the New York Times revealed that they'd investigated at the time and couldn't find any evidence so they didn't publish, diehard Russiagators saw that as evidence of a cover-up, and they used it to talk about, once again, on cable news. Here's our old friend Rachel Maddow citing that story credulously two years later. Russian interference in our election. There have been specific questions raised as to whether Alphabank might have been involved in surreptitious contacts between the Trump campaign and Russia while the attack was underway. You might remember that ultimately sort of baffling reporting about unexplained communications during the election between computer servers in Russia linked to Alphabank and a computer server in Trump Tower

linked to the Trump Organization. Very interesting reporting. Ultimately, it's open-ended. We don't have any... Around the same time, MSNBC's Chris Hayes had Franklin Foer, who was the author himself of that article, and Natasha Bertrand, who herself built her career on peddling BS Russiagate allegations on. Natasha says, what else do you need in terms of evidence? Take a listen. Remember the hysteria at the time. I mean, what more evidence do you need? It's very, very obvious, and it's really Occam's razor here. The fact that we still have not been able to rule out the idea that this was a covert communication channel two years after

the fact. The fact that no one has come forth with a plausible explanation for why this was happening, for why AlphaBank was one of three organizations communicating with the Trump server in those months leading up to the election is just completely remarkable. And I think the fact that Frank's story got overlooked or criticized as much as it did, and the fact that now it's being revisited and you have the editor of the New York Times saying that there, you know, was a story there, just shows the lack of imagination. Look, personally, I would die happy if I never had to use the words Steele dossier or Russiagate ever again. The entire thing, even at the time, was a colossal bore.

But I learned the details in the same way I had to learn the details of yellow cake uranium and the country of Niger during the Iraq War. Because understanding the precise mechanisms that were used to manipulate the media and the public in order to launch one of the most outlandish public conspiracies in modern memory is, in fact, very important. The hallmarks for nearly every past and future scandal are evident here. And yes, it seems we have some measure of justice in this case, but the real criminals are the media themselves who elevated all of this to such a level of public consciousness and for wasting two years of our lives. The tragedy is even today, there are probably millions of people who believe that this story is true. True to form, Maddow dismissed the entire recent indictment on her show

and stood by her coverage after it came to light. These people will never apologize, and the only real justice that we will ever have is to never trust any of them again. It's amazing, Crystal. You see all of this stuff come out. You see the actual indictment. You see how all of these people were working with all of these. Joining us now, we have Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and sub stacker extraordinaire, friend of the show, Glenn Greenwald. Great to see you, Glenn. Good to see you, Glenn. You guys, thanks for inviting me. Of course. Sagar actually just delivered a monologue about the Durham indictment of this Democratic lawyer Sussman over at Perkins Coie. Just explain to the audience what you think is

so significant about this. I think there are two aspects to it. One is the fact that this is not a Republican Justice Department, but a Justice Department supervised by Joe Biden's Attorney General Merrick Garland, who approved of this indictment specifically and explicitly stating that the Trump Alpha Bank story that the media spread so aggressively in the middle of 2016 and even beyond is a fraud, that the FBI concluded very early on that there was no evidence to suggest this was some kind of nefarious or clandestine connection. And yet you have the reporters responsible for having spread it like Franklin Foer and Natasha Bertrand and Rachel Maddow and Chris Hayes, who not only have

thrived in the wake of doing that, but also who haven't bothered at all to even address this indictment. Rachel Maddow did one segment about it before the indictment even came out, when nobody knew what it said, where she kind of maligned the indictment and dismissed it as insignificant. But the parts of it that debunk their reporting is something that they've just completely ignored. They haven't even acknowledged that the story they pushed, according to the Biden administration, is completely false. But I think the much more important part of the story is the window it provides into how Clinton operatives worked hand in hand with friendly media outlets. It was, according to the indictment, this Clinton lawyer, Michael Sussman, who worked with these researchers and was told by them that the data

wasn't good enough to disseminate the story. And yet he did it anyway. He fed it to Frank Foer at Slate, who's now at The Atlantic. And then Hillary Clinton is the one who elevated it by pretending that she learned about it for the first time in Slate, when in fact, it was her lawyers working with Fusion GPS, who worked for Hillary Clinton, who contracted Christopher Steele, responsible for concocting the whole story. And the worst part might be that we learned for the first time that Franklin Ford took his marching orders from Fusion GPS. They were the one who said, okay, Frank, it's time to get moving, like kind of snapping their fingers. And then not only did he obey, but he sent them the draft of his story

to get approval from the Clinton operatives who were manufacturing and engineering the entire thing. So you get a view into how this journalistic corruption drove the scammier parts of Russiagate for so long. Yeah, it's completely insane when you look at the details. And Glenn, as you point out, the indictments so far in terms of what we've been revealed, both on Sussman, on the Carter Page FISA warrant as well, reveal actually, frankly, in our view, like more corruption on that view or on the origins of the investigation than really in what they built up as this grand conspiracy. Can you speak to the Carter Page situation as well? Yeah, so this is the second. I mean, technically, the FBI lawyer who pled guilty in January wasn't indicted. It wasn't necessary because he pled guilty, but he pled guilty to a very serious crime, which was, as you may recall, in 2016, after Carter Page had worked with the Trump campaign,

the FBI convinced the FISA court to issue warrants to allow them to spy in the most invasive way possible on this American citizen, Carter Page, by claiming there was evidence to believe he was an agent of the Russian government. They read his emails, they listened to his phone calls pursuant to these warrants. And as it turned out, according to Robert Mueller, there was no evidence to establish that Carter Page was ever an agent of the Russian government. And beyond that, the FBI altered documents and lied to the FISA court in order to get it. So as you say, Sagar, the most important thing here, in my view,

is that there were indictments, obviously, on the other side of the equation from Robert Mueller, but almost all of those were crimes committed during the investigation. The accusation that spawned the investigation was that American citizens had criminally conspired with Russia to interfere in the 2016 election. And the grand total of Americans indicted for that crime, the one that started all of Russiagate, that spawned Mueller, is zero. So I think what you're seeing is that the real criminality and the real corruption was not on the side of those who supposedly conspired with Russia because Mueller said he couldn't find evidence to establish that conspiracy. It was on the side of those who

in secret propagated this conspiracy theory and drowned our politics in it for the next four years. And Glenn, I think it's really important to drill down on this media piece that you highlighted that was so revealing with Frank Forer, who's effectively through Fusion GPS, taking his marching orders directly from the Hillary Clinton campaign. And by the way, this is not like only Democrats do this. This is routinely how what is now effectively partisan media operates. Can you lay out for people what are the incentives for, quote unquote, journalists to operate in this sort of manner as effectively stenographers, either of politicians, political campaigns or deep state actors? Well, I mean, look, on the one hand, you know, it is true that as a journalist, you need to get your information from somewhere. And oftentimes

you need to rely on sources who have kind of shady or partisan or less than benevolent motives. And that might even be partisan operatives. Sometimes people doing partisan research or opposition research for a political party or a candidate actually does obtain information in the public interest and wants to feed it to you as a journalist, even if it's for their own den, it still helps you do reporting. But you have to be very careful that when you're dealing with people like that, that you don't end up as their pawns, that you can use them as your source. And you can get information from them that you think is necessary to enable your reporting. But what you never want to do is turn into their servants with the hope that

they're going to keep feeding you. And that instead of doing your job as a journalist, you end up carrying out their agenda as a partisan operative. And clearly, you know, the Clinton world is extremely experienced. They've dominated liberal politics for, you know, two or three decades from the early 1990s through 2016, when Hillary Clinton ran, that's almost three decades. And they're very adept at cultivating these journalists who are very subservient to them because they know there are so many rewards for doing the bidding of the Clintons. And that combined with the fact that there were just so many true believers who thought their role as journalists wasn't to do reporting, but to feed Donald Trump, completely corrupted the profession in ways that I don't think it's recovered. It certainly hasn't. One of the things I learned really from you, because I wasn't around at the

time, was about how the Atlantic, who is currently being headed by Jeffrey Goldberg, who himself was one of the chief architects of manufacturing consent for the Iraq war, then became one of the hotbeds of Russiagate conspiracism at the highest level, where Natasha Bertrand, who you mentioned, and Franklin Ford both worked at during the height of Russiagate. Can you draw the connection between Iraq and Russiagate? Because it does just go to show how all the mechanisms are still in place. Yeah, I mean, Matt Taibbi has said that Russiagate is the WMD of our generation from the perspective of media failure. Now, obviously, if you say that, people react and say Russiagate didn't result in the destruction of a country of 26 million people and a war and all of that. So

no one's saying the impact was worse or similar. people are saying when map taibi says that and people like me ratify it is that the same media tactics of corruption deceit and propaganda were employed so just begin with the fact that there's an enormous amount of overlap between the leading russia gators and those who were the people who were pushing the lies about Saddam Hussein, either that he was searching for nuclear weapons, had weapons of mass destruction, was in an alliance with al-Qaeda. That's why so many of these Republicans like the Lincoln Project, the Never Trump people, Bill Kristol, David Frum, who became the leading Russiagators were also the leaders of the lies about the Iraq war, because

the tactics were exactly the same. The propaganda techniques were exactly the same. And the thing that amazes me so much is that if you look at who the worst offenders were for helping the Bush and Cheney administration deceive Americans about Saddam Hussein in leading Americans to war, it was the people who then ended up getting most rewarded. And Jeffrey Goldberg is the best example because he was at the New Yorker, one of the most influential liberal outlets, and published two articles in 2002 claiming that Saddam Hussein had WMDs and more harmfully that he was in an alliance with Osama bin Laden, who just less than a year earlier had attacked the United States through 9-11.

So you can imagine how inflammatory that was. And instead of going off in disgrace and getting fired and shunned from journalistic circles for the profound lies that he told, he got promoted to one of the most powerful and important positions in all of journalism as a reward for his lies, which is being editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, and then use that position to elevate almost every person who led the lies that were in Russiagate. We're talking about this Trump-Alpha Bank story. The two journalists who pushed it most were Franklin Foer and Natasha Bertrand, and both ended up being hired by Jeffrey Goldberg at the Atlantic as a reward for the lies that they told. Obviously, MSNBC or Rachel Maddow, who pushed the Steele dossier, she just got rewarded with a $30 million a year contract. And so what you're seeing is this perverse incentive scheme,

both in Iraq and Rush Brigade, where the journalists who do the most shameless lying on behalf of the security state and the correct political interests of the time are the ones who are rewarded, not despite their lies, but because of them. You mentioned that there were a lot of journalists who, sure, the career incentives were good, but they also were true believers. And they really came to see it as it's my job to help defeat Donald Trump versus just to be a sort of neutral actor here and portray the world as it actually exists. And certainly Donald Trump had some unique personality traits that made him a useful villain. I mean, he's very and he sort of leaned into that. Right. He's very useful for the Democratic Party

and for these journalists, ultimately to convince people that, you know, he was a unique evil and that effectively any sort of tactics were justified to try to defeat this man both in 2016 and 2020. Do you think that they'll be able to repeat that if Trump doesn't run again, if we have whether it's Ron DeSantis, or maybe it'll be Trump Jr., who knows? If you have another Republican put in that slot, do you think they'll be as effective at sort of demonizing them and using them in the way that they were able to effectively use Donald Trump, much to their own, you know, ratings and personal, professional success. They're definitely going to try. I mean, if you look at what the number one

priority, the number one media and political project of kind of the Russia gatewaying of the media and the political ecosystem is, is to keep Trumpism alive. That's why they insist on calling what happened on January 6th an insurrection. It's why they've issued multiple Homeland Security warnings throughout this year, claiming that Trump supporters are going to engage in all kinds of violence that never end up coming to fruition. You saw it this weekend, where CNN and MSNc never stopped talking about this rally that not one single maga person that i knew had even heard of you know they would go to like jim jordan they'd be like are you going to this justice for you know january 6th defendant

rally and he would be like what are you talking about like no one knew what it was but they it was the the media that had such an interest in propping it up. And of course, 50 people ended up showing up. Probably most of them were like feds and people undercover. And they were wildly outnumbered just by the uniform feds and the number of journalists who were there. So keeping Trumpism alive is incredibly important, both for media ratings, but also to keep your levels high so that the Democratic Party doesn't have to run on a positive agenda like they didn't do in 2020, but instead just saying, vote for us because we're the only ones standing in the way between you and these scary people.

But the question of whether if you get a kind of more traditionally behaved politician like Josh Hawley or Ron DeSantis or any of them, whether they'll be able to do that as much and as effectively as when you have Donald Trump, who's so wildly outside the box comportmentally, is an open question. But it's also an open question. Let's remember, Trump was actually, despite all that, a successful politician. He defeated the Clinton machine in 2016, despite everyone lined up against him. And in 2020, despite the worst possible conditions

you can have as an incumbent, a collapsing economy, joblessness prices, and a pandemic, he almost won in 2020. So the other question is, if you don't have Trump there and you have a less charismatic figure, will they have even more success kind of scaring and demonizing people against voting for them? That remains to be seen. It really does. You know, one of the things I've always appreciated is just drawing the links of what the policy, like there are actual implications for this madness. It's not just a media frenzy. We covered how the Russia is now counted as the number one foreign threat by Democratic primary voters. And it's a relatively recent phenomenon. Another thing that you've pointed to recently is about how huge swaths of the Democratic base support not just censorship,

but all out censorship within big tech and using it as an instrument on civil discourse. So I think one of the things I just want you to highlight is about how this coverage has real world consequences, both on policy, but on the populace. Like many people, for better or worse, are shaped by the elite forces that control what people see and what they don't. You know, there's a article today in The Atlantic by David Frum, who really has become a hero to American liberalism. He's one of the most, you know, kind of beloved pundits. His books twice went on the New York Times bestseller list exclusively because liberals bought them. He, of course, also is at the Atlantic. And he wrote a story today saying that the Democratic

Party can't go too far to the left and become the party of Bernie or AOC. It needs to make sure it appeases what he calls the never Trump contingent, as though that's the most important kind of swing voters, which is him and Bill Kristol and Steve Schmidt and like four other five people who work in media corporations. And that's it. But that's his project is to make the Democratic Party kind of remake it into the eyes of what neoconservatives want it to be. And it's working. We hope you guys enjoy that interview. If you want to see the rest of it, our premium subscribers, they get two long formform interviews a month.

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Listen to the BIN News This Hour podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I think everything that might have dropped in 95 has been labeled the golden years of hip-hop. It's Black Music Month and We Need to Talk is tapping in. I'm Nyla Simone, breaking down lyrics, amplifying voices, and digging into the culture that shaped the soundtrack of our lives. Like, that's what's really important and that's what stands out is that our music changes people's lives for the better. Let's talk about the music that moves us. To hear this and more on how music and culture collide, listen to

We Need to Talk from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I know a lot of cops. They get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to

a future where the answer will always be no. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. Listen to Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast.