Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 9/27/22: Russian Resistance, Global Markets, Worker Strikes, Insider Journalism, Fed Policy, Glenn Greenwald, & More!

Episode Date: September 27, 2022

Krystal and Saagar look at the violent Russian resistance, global recession fears, worker strikes, Matt Gaetz investigation, NYT's Biden propaganda, insider journalism, Fed's mistake, & Glenn Greenwald on Snowden obtaining Russian citizenship!To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/To listen to Breaking Points as a podcast, check them out on Apple and SpotifyApple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/breaking-points-with-krystal-and-saagar/id1570045623 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4Kbsy61zJSzPxNZZ3PKbXl Merch: https://breaking-points.myshopify.com/Chicago Tickets: https://www.axs.com/events/449151/breaking-points-live-tickets Glenn Greenwald: https://greenwald.substack.com/  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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in American history. So what are you waiting for? Go to BreakingPoints.com to help us out. Good morning, everybody. Happy Tuesday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed we do. Lots of new developments this morning. Lots of reports coming out of Russia about the response of their domestic population to that mobilization announced by Putin. And also we have a domestic response here. More aid that is going through. So we'll break all of those details down for you. We also have a new look at a potential

recession, a little bit more of a global look. Something interesting is happening. Every single currency around the world almost literally has fallen against the dollar. That'll make it very difficult for a lot of countries to repay their debts. And there's a particularly interesting situation unfolding in the UK that we'll break down for you there. Also, new strikes developing, including food service workers at San Francisco Airport, almost all uniformly on strike. So passengers there, you know, without any sort of food accommodations as workers protest over working conditions, in particular understaffing. So we'll break that down for you. New developments in that investigation into Matt Gaetz, the Department of Justice now saying they do not have enough to charge him.

So that seems to be the end of that. We will talk to you about, you know, the media coverage of that, what all unfolded and what exactly it all means. We've also got a big old screw-up, I think it's fair to say, for the New York Times. Definitely some pro-Biden propaganda. Straight propaganda. Bad enough that a lot of people were taking notice. Yes. Yes. Many people

taking notice. A few sub-tweets out there that were notable. Also, I think, fingers crossed, we're going to have a great friend of the show, Glenn Greenwald, on to talk about Edward Snowden being granted Russian citizenship. If we can't get Glenn, then we'll just cover it ourselves. But I think he's going to be able to join us in the show this morning, which we are very excited about.

So before we get to any of that, however, a couple of announcements. Our usual two, first of all, live show. Live show, October 15th. Buy tickets. We're coming. I don't have much more we can sell. It's going to be an amazing show. As always, we've got some great stuff planned. We learned some things from Atlanta. I think people

are really going to enjoy it. So the tickets are on sale and the link is in the description. Number two, CounterPoints. They did a phenomenal job on Friday. And as a, you know, basically a reward for expansion and more, we're putting the discount 10% on the annual subscription, so it's going to be 10% off. That really helps fund our expansion, helps fund CounterPoints and many of the other partners and other people that we're going to be bringing onto the show to support all of them and continue growing. So with that, let's get to the show. Indeed. So we're trying to sort through all of the reports that are coming out of Russia and figure out exactly what is going on there, which, as we've said a million times, whether it's Russia or Iran or other places,

it's very hard to really have a sense of what's going on there. But you're getting increasing media reports and social media videos coming out that shows a huge response, reaction against the mobilization and also increasingly violent response and reaction against the mobilization. Let's go ahead and put this first piece up on the screen. From the Wall Street Journal, they say Russian military recruitment centers are being attacked amid mobilization pushback. They also say lines remain at the border as fighting-age men look to leave, and amid reports, some are turned back. The lead of the story says resistance against Russia's mobilization for its war in Ukraine

took an increasingly violent turn on Monday. Two recruitment centers came under attack. Borders remained clogged with fighting-age men who were trying to leave amid reports. Some were turning back. Reports multiplied over the weekend that Russian border guards were turning back some men who were seeking to leave the country, citing laws on mobilization. Again, these are sort of unconfirmed reports at this point, but they say those reports are escalating. They also say that some, actually, a Russian state news agency is reporting that Russian citizens who are subject to that

mobilization order were stopped on the border with Russia and Kazakhstan. They were told they needed to seek permission from the military registration and enlistment office before they could cross the borders. So a lot that is going on there. They also say they had one analyst here who was sort of making a prediction about whether they're going to keep the borders open or not. And basically what he said is, look, if it takes several days, it's going to be tolerated. They're going to let people leave because the idea is basically, okay, we'll let the troublemakers go and leave the others who are more obedient, more quiet, more passive. But if it continues, this flight of military-age men out of the country for a longer time, then the question of closing the borders will arise. Yeah, I mean, they're in a tough spot. And actually, I think this really does just show you

how these, the amount of dissent, you can't cover up everything in the age of the internet. Like, photos are just going to leak out. We have several things that we're going to be playing for everyone throughout this show. And for those who are just listening, we'll do a good job of describing them. But every place, a border crossing that you look, you're looking at multi-hour wait times. Like, we're going to show you one a little bit later with Georgia. Kazakhstan is a 12-hour line. It usually takes 30 minutes to cross into Kazakhstan. So almost every border crossing, they're both being, you know, searched to make sure that they're not subject to the

mobilization order. And then even then there's mega long lines. And clearly whenever this is, every time we have seen that, you know,, regardless of ideology, if you have mass fleeing, they will only tolerate it to a certain point. And if it starts to look like a threat to the regime or a threat to their war effort, they're going to cut that off, which is going to lead to even more dissent, Crystal. And I don't want to pretend that the entire Russian population is against this. There are probably plenty of compliant Russians. People are happy. There were definitely some mobilizations and rallies to support the mobilization. I'm not going to pretend that those don't exist.

But the point is, is that, you know, a critical level of dissent does not actually have to be that high to cause some serious social strife. That's true. I think that's what we're trying to highlight here. Yeah, and what it seems—what seems to be happening is you still have, you've had really broad support within Russia for this war. You know, overwhelmingly the population basically, you know, buys the Kremlin line. They believe that the Ukrainians are under, were under siege and that this is a noble thing to come and liberate them. It seems that the majority of Russians have sort of bought into that view of the war.

But that's very different saying like, oh, sure, I support this idea in abstract. That's very different than like, I am willing to go and fight and die for this cause, or I am willing to send my son to go and fight and die for this cause. So I think domestically, it's very easy for you to imagine a similar response here in the U.S. where citizens might buy largely into the government propaganda. But then when it comes to their doorstep, they have a feeling of like, okay, that's terrible for the Ukrainians, but why is this really my problem? And so I think that is some of the sentiment that you're seeing, even as we covered yesterday in some of the, you know, far flung, more remote regions of Russia, where the citizenry is largely supportive of the Kremlin, largely supportive of Putin, when it comes to their day to day and what

it means for their lives to send their men over into this war, it becomes a very, very different deal. And so, you know, we're getting increasing reports of this has really become quite a trend, these attacks on military enlistment centers. I think, and it's kind of hard to get accurate counts, and the numbers have been a little bit all over the place, but I think since September 21st, that's when Putin announced this mobilization, you've had something like 12 attacks on these enlistment recruitment centers. We have a VO of, let's go ahead and put this up. This was a shooting actually. So actual violence in a recruitment center. And this is a, you know, sort of more remote region of Russia. We took the shooting on that actually.

What's that? But we said we took the shooting out. Yeah, we didn't show the shooting. We just showed people fleeing. And the person who was shot there is reportedly in critical condition. This is in southeastern Siberia. So you see, you know, actual violence. The reports are that the individual who did this was upset because one of his friends, who he did not think should be mobilized, was subjected to the draft. And he was apparently, you know, really beside himself about that. We've got another one we can show you here. Let's go ahead and show this VO. This is somebody who barricaded the door of the military enlistment office and then threw at least five Molotov cocktails into the building. So this was, you know, a violent protest action.

And again, this appears to be occurring with increasing regularity at these enlistment offices. We can show you some protests that have been unfolding in Dagestan. That's a border region of Russia, southern tip of Russia near the Georgia and Azerbaijan border. And you can see, I mean, it's kind of hard to tell everything that's going on here, but clearly chaos, resistance, clashes with police. There's a lot of women involved here. Dagestan is a largely Muslim population. So those are a few of the videos that we see coming out. And I will tell you this morning, of course, everything you see on social media, like you should take with a grain of salt, you should be skeptical of it. But there are a few things that are noteworthy this morning

of new, you know, new draftees, new conscripts who are basically about to be sent to the front lines right now. Right. With little retraining who are, you know, sort of stunned at the lack of equipment that they've been given, you know, that they really have basically been given like a gun and a uniform and sent out there. So again, this is all just social media reports, unconfirmed, but an interesting potential window into what's happening. And just, you know, for openness, like a lot of what we're flagging to you comes from our friend Yegor Kotkin, who's in Moscow and in Russia. So he's vetting some of the video, you know, as opposed to whatever's not real. But, you know, of course, always take everything with a grain of

salt. And, you know, we're trying to present the biggest, most nuanced picture here, which is that obvious multifaceted. One of the things that strikes me is I don't really understand why the Russians are like the same over the last hundred years. Like World War I, troops get drafted. It's a chaos. They get sent to the front line with no supplies. World War II, troops get drafted, conscripted. They get sent to the front line with no supplies. 2022, they get drafted. Discripted, they get sent to the front line with no supplies. 2022, they get

drafted, disastrous war, they get sent to the front line with no supply. It's like, and the same strategy, it's like across ideology, across kingdoms, you know, like kingdoms, socialism, and now this. It's the exact same story. I genuinely think it's totally nuts. But let's go and put this next one up there on the screen. A very stark admission from President Putin admitting mobilization errors publicly. He says, quote, there are cases when the decree has been in Russia on their own social media networks about people with no military experience who are either too old or disabled who are getting called up incorrectly. And so a quote-unquote partial mobilization, a lot of these edge cases, you would see like an old man with gray hair. We even pointed out some of them and some of the people who are fleeing, people who are literally disabled. And then there's videos of them having to say goodbye to their parents, like having to report

to the mobilization center. Those are the ones like really tugging at the heartstrings. For President Putin to admit an error publicly in Russia, that shows you to the level of like social consternation that this has now risen to. Well, because if they aren't strictly adhering to the criteria that they laid out, which we should be clear, that criteria is not actually in the mobilization order, but the way that Putin presented that this has been presented as it's only going to be people with who they call reservists. But these are basically people with any sort of prior military experience between these ages, you know, that they set these criteria. And then if you personally know or are a person who does not fall on that criteria and you're getting drafted, well, that's terrifying for everyone because then, number one, you have in your face like they lied about what this is. And number two, then you say, oh, no one is safe. No one is exempt from this thing.

Anyone could be drafted at a moment's notice. So you could see how this would be tremendously destabilizing for the entire country, where then you really feel like anyone, any man I know in my life is basically at risk now. I don't think there's another way to describe it. It really is just totally nuts about what's happening. Let's put the next one up there. This is from the, yeah, so this is the pedestrian line at the Russian-Georgian border. And the voice on the video can be heard saying that the waiting time is now nine hours, nine hours in order to cross in the Russian-Georgian border. As I said, the Kazakh border time now is 12 hours. So it's just chaos inside of Russia. And there's a lot of people who, I think rightfully, as you

point out, the decree, I mean, they're trying to only call up people with military experience, but it doesn't say that. Also, partial mobilization, all of the military analysts that we've quoted in all here do not expect this to, quote unquote, turn the tide. Maybe it will, but maybe it won't. And if it doesn't, well you're looking at full mobilization it's like so you're gonna fully draft people inside is this just phase one is the question i mean it's a reasonable question too absolutely not like i said it has happened many times in russian history so if you if your grandfather your great-grandfather died in the second world war which odds are like the majority of russian men who were born sometime to be, like, 20 or something years old probably did die in the Second World War.

Like, you have deep, like, I generally avoid mental health language, like, trauma societally, but I think when, like, 70% of kids who are born between a couple of years do get killed, that does leave some sort of, like, generational mark. Lasting society, for sure. Everybody has a relative who was killed in the Second World War, either, you know, a mom or a grandma, sister, something like that, or a great grandfather, an uncle, a photo. Like these are not things that just get long forgotten. So that plus Afghanistan, long, long scar, I think, on society in Russia. And this is hearkening back to that. And it puts Putin in a dangerous place where

he's betting his regime, his legacy, all of it on that. He's willing to risk the most social strife that we've seen in Russia for what, over a decade since the protests in like 2000, I think 2014 or so. This is the most that the world has been antagonistic towards Russia. So he's really got problems on all sides in Russian society. Yeah, and I mean, one thing we definitely know is that he really didn't want to take this step. I mean, that's why it wasn't taken from the beginning. That's why this was soft-pedaled as,

oh, this is totally not a war. It's just this little special military operation. Don't worry about it. I'm going to keep inaugurating Ferris wheels and we'll just go about life as usual. So it's a sign of how few options he felt he had that he went forward with this because likely had some awareness of the likely backlash that would be attendant here. And you also have, you know, we focused almost solely on the new conscripts, you also have people who signed up for short-term tours who thought they would be out in the field for four to six months. All of those contracts have now been extended.

So it's a stop-loss policy as well. I mean, that's also saying if you think you're like, okay, well, I can go serve for six months and earn some extra cash, and then you're stuck there indefinitely. So, I mean, that's a major societal stressor as well. I also think it's important to take note of these numbers. Now, of course, it's going to take a significant amount of time even to obtain the 300,000 number that they put out there. But keep in mind the original force that had been massed at Ukraine's borders, that was 190,000 troops roughly. So when you're talking about 300,000 bodies, and again, they didn't limit themselves actually to that number. But even if you're just quote unquote talking about 300,000 bodies, that's a huge, huge increase in the forces that they have there on the ground. So, you know, it is it does seem really like they're just using these guys as cannon fodder. That's a desperate move that they're,

you know, out of options and basically losing. And so back to against a wall, Putin took this tremendous domestic political risk to really, really sort of destroy this separation between the war and civilian life that he had worked so hard to maintain. I really feel terrible for them. You know, people who are protesting this seriously have some major, major courage. And look, you know, we're going to see how it works out. But I feel really terrible for a lot of young Russians who, you know, I can't imagine having to be put in this position. And also the Ukrainians, you know, having to look at this and just be like, oh man, like it's not just ending. It's going to get a lot worse. And that's always what war ends up being. Let's go to the next one. This is a crazy story. So I dug deep into this,

and let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. So it leaked out yesterday that the new funding bill for Congress has snuck in more than $12 billion more in Ukraine-related aid. Now, the reason why this whole story is convoluted is that right now, we're actually on the verge of a government shutdown at the end of the week. Most of the people I spoke to don't expect any actual shutdown to happen, but the new legislation wasn't released actually until yesterday night, Crystal. And it's a funding package to basically avert the government shutdown and push it out through December 16th. Why December 16th? Because they like to push it out until after the election so they can all go home and they can campaign for reelection. Now, what's happening though is that this is normal stuff,

right? They need to put disaster relief funding, like DEA funding. Actually, Chuck Schumer got fooled into like trying to appropriate new money to a drug that literally doesn't exist. So that's funny. We could do a whole story on that later. What's that one? It's called Rainbow Fentanyl. It's a hilarious story in its own right. So we can continue down the line of all of these normal government functions that have to be funded, et cetera. And then $12 billion check for Ukraine sn Snuck in there. Absolutely no debate. Nothing. And no even real clarity right now as to what type of aid that this actually is. Just another blank check.

Like I said, I have dug as deep as I can. It's effectively a blank check to the administration. And the crazy thing about these types of aid that we continue to give the president is it is literally up to his sole discretionary authority. So we have certain types of aid that we are giving to Ukraine. There's humanitarian aid, there's military aid, and then there's economic aid. Economically, we've basically eliminated their debt and backstopped their entire financial system and central bank. Humanitarian, we continue to give the majority of the humanitarian aid to Ukraine. And also, you know, refugee camps, all that. I generally don't have a problem with that. It's the military aid where I'm like, this is crazy because it has no restrictions whatsoever. Right now, we still don't even know the dollar amount of the actual military aid

of this $12 billion that will be spent. And it continues to be completely up to the Biden administration as to what type of, quote unquote, offensive weapons that we're going to be giving. It literally lies with him as to whether Ukraine gets basically anything that the U.S. military has its hands on. Oh, you want to strike into Crimea? That's up to Biden. And this is why I think it's so dangerous, which is that in a way we have such a broken system because if it were up to Congress, let's be honest, they probably would give them even more offensive weapons. There's no debate whatsoever. And it just shows you how broken the system is to imagine that Biden's 80-year-old

heart is the only thing that gets to decide how he feels that day as to what type of weapon system gets shipped to ukraine and possibly could escalate the conflict there it's just a nuts way in order to run this thing zero absolutely zero like review there's no rand paul uh inspector general remember what rand paul was like look i'm not even gonna vote against this aid just have an inspector general to track where it goes. Nope. Can't even have that. No question.

People acted like that was a crazy idea. I mean, it's been over six months now. You know, remember that CBS News report that we covered about how only 30% or whatever of the weapons were reaching the front line in the beginnings of the war? They're like, oh, so they eventually took that report down because they're like, well, now apparently it's more. I'm like, yeah, but in the first couple of months, I would still like to know what happened to the other 70. So where did it all go? Okay, so let's do a follow-up report. Like, okay, what's the percentage now?

We've seen precious little reporting on that front. I don't think it's an accident that these funding bills, I mean, every single time we've had another funding package, and I really have completely lost count of how many there have been at this point, it is so hard to even find news reports about them. These are significant. I mean, I can't think of anything more important for the public to know about and debate the details of, because as you're pointing to, Sagar, the details here really, really matter, which is something the administration, you know, fortunately has seemed to understand, and they've been reluctant to give Zelensky everything last thing that he wants. But again, we're just wishing and hoping that Biden continues to exercise some kind of restraint

in terms of the longer range missiles here. And there's a reason why it is not covered extensively and not subject to public debate, which is that, you know, the public is not super keen at this point, we covered that polling, on continuing to send this amount of aid, this amount of weapons, especially when you compare to, you know, our European allies and the amounts that they are sending. So the way that they get around that, rather than actually covering it and having a debate and, you know, treating it like an active piece of democracy, which it should be, is just to kind of bury the news and hope nobody

really notices, which has basically worked so far. Absolutely. Let me just read people what it sounds like in the law. This is the law. This would be the law of the land if this thing passes. For any additional amount of Operation and Maintenance Army, $654 million will remain available until September 30, 2023 to respond to the situation in Ukraine and for related expenses. That's it. That's $600 million. And it's paragraph after paragraph after paragraph. Just like that.

Yeah, just like that. Wow. My personal favorite is it's like on the Space Force. They're like a piece of appropriations to the Space Force for Ukraine-related aid. And I'm like, wait, hold on. Like, what's going on with the Space Force? I'm like, satellite-type stuff that we don't know about? Again, zero transparency, zero release to the general public.

And you can go through and you can read, I mean, through every single one of these things. As I said, even, you know, to me, having read through it, it's still not clear. On the missiles, the way it reads, for missile-related procurement, for missile-related procurement, $445 million to be available to the Department of Defense until September 23, 2025, pushing it out several years. Basically, like, here's this pot of money. Spend it however you want, however you see fit. I think it's very important for people to really understand

the dramatic amount of power that they were just handing the executive branch in this situation. And it's dangerous. And no debate, I mean, in terms of overall aid, the $12 billion alone is more than every single country on earth has given to Ukraine, including the combined European Union. To the only country that even comes close is the UK. In terms of military aid, the new military appropriations, if they do reach $6 billion or so, which is just half

of this, will also be more than every single. So the supplemental $12 billion to reach $6 billion or so, which is just half of this, will also be more than every single other. So the supplemental $12 billion to the $44 that we've already appropriated is like, I believe, about seven to 10 times larger than every single other entity, not just country, entity that exists. That's outrageous. We covered that poll from the Concerned Veterans of America. Americans are fine sending money to Ukraine, especially humanitarian aid. Oh, yeah. Americans are completely fine shipping money to Ukraine. They just want the Europeans to step up. The only counter I've heard is like, yeah, but percent GDP, Estonia.

Estonia is like this big. It's smaller than a national park on the East coast. That doesn't mean like to say that percent GDP is what matters and not overall, especially when overall is such a massive, a massive overlay compared to every single other nation. I just think it's totally outrageous in order to argue this. I get that the Europeans are dealing with energy crisis and all that, but they're the ones who have to deal with this. It's their border, not ours. Well, let me also say that, you know, at least with the military aid, you can say, well, the Ukrainians have deployed it effectively. I mean, it really was put up or shut up time for Zelensky. He put up, they had a, you know, a very effective offensive action. That's why Putin is

on his back foot. Now, I think that we are in a very dangerous, in a certain way, situation now as well, where the risk of some sort of use of a nuclear weapon, tactical, quote unquote, or some sort of a test has probably never been higher because he is so stressed and is, you know, backed into such a corner. But the piece that we also have never really assessed, whether this worked the way it was intended, whether it's accomplishing our goals, whether it's hobbling our populations, is the economic sanctions. I mean, again, you talk about areas where there has been precious little journalism. Producer James did send us a story this morning that was really good. I was reading it. Yeah, that was about the effectiveness or lack thereof of these sanctions from Foreign Affairs.

And basically they say, you know, a lot of the initial expectations of these sanctions did not pan out. And yes, this is, you know, stressed the Russian economy. There's no doubt about it. But it's having massive boomerang effects, especially in the global south. And so it has not had the impact that was laid out. And it's come at tremendous sacrifice, you know, of our population, the European populations, but again, most of all, with reverberating effects in the global South. So there's never been a reassessment of like, okay, did this work out? Are we doing the right things? Are we accomplishing our goals? It's just

been full steam ahead, no looking back. And that's another area where there was no debate. It was done extraordinarily suddenly. And quickly. Yes. And there continues to be no debate over, you know, now this is just the status quo. And that's the problem always with sanctions is once they're in place, they almost never get rolled back because no one ever goes back and said, then it's the status quo. It just is what it is. No one wants to like go soft on the bad guy country. And so they just stay in place indefinitely, even if they are backfiring, even if they are not accomplishing your goals, even if they are hurting your own population.

It's another area where there has just been absolutely no discussion, absolutely no debate, and next to no journalism on the subject. Yeah, very unfortunate. Okay. All right, guys. Next piece we wanted to take journalism on the subject. Yeah, very unfortunate. Okay. All right, guys. Next piece we wanted to take a look at here. This is really interesting, digging into some of the economic numbers. Let's go ahead and put this first piece up on the screen. This is what really sort of sparked this conversation for us anyway.

Every single major currency, this is from Joe Weisenthal, is lower against the dollar today, except the ones that haven't started trading yet. So I don't want to get too much in the weeds here so that eyes glaze over. But effectively, what is going on is because our Federal Reserve is hiking interest rates, that is causing massive ripple effects throughout the world economy. And in particular, this is a problem for countries that have a lot of dollar-denominated debt or that rely on a lot of imports from around the world because the dollar continues to be the global reserve currency. It continues to, like, 40% of the world's transactions are done in dollars. So when the Federal Reserve increases their rate, it usually increases interest rates throughout our economy. That tends to make the dollar stronger. That attracts investment capital from investors abroad seeking

higher returns on bonds and interest rate. Not necessarily a bad thing for us, but for the rest of the world, now it costs them more to do basically anything. And again, this is especially a problem for places that have a lot of dollar-denominated debt or that have to import things like food, like basic or fuel, basic items. Now everything is more expensive. And this becomes an issue for us as well because obviously the economy is incredibly globally integrated. So it's not like we're this little island

and we can protect ourselves from what's going on around the world. So that's why this is something to really pay attention to. I was reading an article and there was an economist here who put it this way. Central banks, of course, have purely domestic mandates. However, because economies are more interdependent than they have ever been and so closer cooperation is needed, I don't think central banks can have the luxury of not thinking about what is happening abroad.

This has been particularly a dramatic story in the UK. Let's go ahead and put this piece up on the screen. You've got the Bank of England saying they won't hesitate to hike rates because they are very nearly in crisis after the pound fell to a historic low against the dollar. Now, they have something that is a little bit different going on there, because not only do they have the impact of our Federal Reserve Bank hiking rates, but their issue seems to be more directly related to the domestic political situation there, which is that the new prime minister announced this massive package of tax cuts, largely for the rich and for corporations, including such populist moves as lifting the cap on banker bonuses.

Sounds like what the UK needs. It really is a total throwback kind of policy. I mean, it's quite astonishing when you read the details here. But I think Liz Truss kind of expected the market to be like, yay, tax cuts. And there was instead essentially a meltdown because they worried so much about the financial position of the country with taking so much revenue out of the budget with these huge tax cuts. So that's a big part of the story of why they're having such an issue right now. And actually, it's going to have major problems for them on inflation because part of the thing is that a strong pound made it so that imports were less expensive. Whenever the pound is cheaper with regard to the dollar, then the imports become more expensive, which means that British companies are going to

have to raise prices to compensate for higher costs, which puts pressure on inflation, which is already at the 40-year high in Britain. So they have some serious economic troubles. It's related, like you said, to the fiscal policy. But the fact is, is that all currencies globally are having problems with regards to the dollar. And the strong dollar as it is, it's not necessarily here, we actually have low inflation compared to a lot of other nations because a strong dollar means when we are importing goods. Cheaper for us. They're cheaper for us. And that helps keep our own inflation in check. to the monologue you gave yesterday, Sagar, about how when you have countries where their population is stressed out because of food prices or fuel prices or housing prices or whatever it is,

you are more likely to have a lot of instability, a lot of chaos. And, you know, these things don't just stay in one place. If you have, you know, if you have a country collapse and you have massive migrant flows, guess what? That can really have a big impact on your politics and your economy and everything else here at home. And because the economy is so interconnected, you know, the problems over in other places don't necessarily stay in those places. So it is a complicated story.

Liz Truss is a fool in my opinion. She really is coming back full back to Thatcher and she just misunderstands like the European moment. If you look at what just happened in Italy, Sweden, what's happening in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, everything we've pointed to, it's clear what's going on. You have major economic stress and that is leading to massive social turmoil. She's instead just pivoting back to Thatcherite. I believe it's the first tax cut in the UK since 1972. And at the same time, it has 40-year high inflation and also what else? Massive energy prices, which are a result of a foreign conflict. So she's digging down to kind of like to what she was raised in, I guess.

But there's no real answer. I was seeing Ross Douthat talk about this yesterday. She is setting the stage for probably an eventual labor victory and then for the re-rise of UKIP-style populism, which led to Brexit. And that's going to leave the island in chaos for no reason whenever she could just be a forward-looking thinker. And instead, it's like we've seen a reversion past the gains that I thought we'd seen with Theresa May

and with Boris Johnson's governments. I mean, I cannot imagine anything more tone deaf than lifting the cap on banker bonus. When energy prices are so high for like small businesses and pubs in the UK, which are all needing either closing or on the verge of laying people off. Like you found this yesterday, this underscores like how tone deaf this is, put this up there, which is that in the UK, most people's mortgages reset every two to five years. So that means 1.4 million homeowners in Britain are soon going to see a massive monthly payment spike, which they did not expect at all, Crystal. I don't really know why fixed rate mortgages don't exist in the UK. That's an interesting question kind of in its own right, but that's just the system that they have over there. So when you have a reset every two to five

years, well, I don't think anybody thinks that rates are going to come down two years from now. That means a huge portion of the UK public is about to pay a ton more in mortgages and in energy costs to heat set homes. Like the fixed costs that these people have are going to go up by like 20, 30%. that's crazy when you also consider i mean think about how much of their income already goes to taxes so like their disposable income just took a huge haircut for events that are totally out of their control right up to the government and the answer from the government is how about we cut taxes for the wealthy how about that would that help you that feel good so crazy let's make sure those

bankers are getting what they deserve i'm all all right. It really is wild. I mean, when I dug into the details of it yesterday, I was actually shocked because it did feel like such a throwback. I mean, then again, it's not all that different from what Trump did when he was in office with the Paul Ryan suite of tax cuts, but it is pretty wild to look at. And, you know, you've had markets that are really in turmoil around the world. And typically, you know, usually in any country, there's sort of like a double-edged sword, like when their currency is strong, it's good for some groups and bad for other groups. And when it's weak, it's, you know, vice versa. Typically, when your currency is weak, you can sort of offset the problem because, oh, then your exports are more in demand because they're comparatively inexpensive.

And so you can sort of like make up for it by shipping more goods around the world. But because you have either recession or mounting fears of recession in a lot of quarters of the globe, you also have decreased demand in a lot of places. So that's not really helping them out at this point. So in any case, it's just another sort of sign of the precarity of the global financial system and of, you know, with a lot of potential ramifications for our own economy here at home. And I'm going to take a look at more of that in my monologue today and a lot of new signs that the Fed policy is really going too far too fast and could cause a severe recession here at home. So we're going to take a look at that as well. At the same time, there continues to be mounting worker protests and worker strikes. This one was really quite interesting to me. Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen. You've got a thousand

fast food workers that have started an open-ended strike at San Francisco International Airport in protest of understaffing. Travelers, they say, should plan to bring their own food. This is a statement from the union that represents these workers. As workers are on strike at virtually every food and beverage outlet within the airport. I saw some video that the union shared of, you know, true to their word, almost everything shut down. The few locations that still had food and workers, you know, available to serve customers, there were massive lines of people waiting. At the same time, you've got other labor protests. These are mostly with flight attendants that have spread to 21 other airports.

Those are starting today. And overall, I don't know if you guys remember this from last year, we covered it quite extensively at the time. We had what was called striketober, where you had a bunch of labor unrest. It was really the beginning of this sort of like new wave of unionization and grassroots mobilization that has continued through to this year. Looks like we're facing another significant uptick in strikes coming into the fall. Let's go ahead and put this report up from The Guardian. They say, thousands of workers around the U.S. are going on strike or threatening to do so heading into October amid a recent surge of labor action activity in America in just one month before

crucial midterm elections. Let me give you the numbers here because, you know, it's one thing to anecdotally like something high profile. Oh, my God, a thousand workers on strike at the airport. But according to the labor action tracker that's kept by Cornell University, strikes in 2022 have significantly outpaced strikes in 2021. So in the first six months of 2022, we've had 180 strikes that have involved 78,000 workers. That compares to, in the first six months of last year, 102 strikes involving just 26,500 workers. So 78,000 workers versus 26,500 workers. And strikes appear to be escalating as we head into the fall. So it truly is a new era, the most sort of active era of both labor organizing, worker protest, and worker strikes that I have experienced in my lifetime. Yeah, it's actually crazy. And, you know, Producer James sent us this morning that 21 more airports are going to be going on strike, Crystal.

So these are protests, not necessarily strikes. And it's mostly the flight attendants who are protesting there. So, yeah, I mean, there continues to be. I mean, I can't blame them. If the traveler experience at the airports is at all representative of what the worker experience is, can you imagine? Like, it's one thing when you have to go there for the flight and experience the chaos. When you're there working every single day and, you know, dealing with, like, people who are stressed and harried and then you're understaffed and you're underpaid. I'm sure it's a nightmare scenario. It really does also just expose how big the

problem is at a very structural level, which is that we have a pilot shortage, which is basically fake. It's a financial scheme of our own making from bailing out the airlines, forced retirements early, and then licensure problems. I've just noticed this at every step. So pilot shortage, flight attendants as well. These people are getting treated terribly. In many cases, their schedules get changed. Their understaffing is either causing them to be overworked, underpaid. They're completely neglected whenever their conditions are being considered. Then you also consider like the people, we already have a labor shortage in terms of people working fast food and all that. I mean, if you've ever been in an airport, like people who are working

or who are trying to get fast food or food, you know, on time or whatever at an airport, or if you've ever been in a Starbucks line at an airport at like 6 a.m. Airports do not bring out the best in humanity. When you watch people lined up, there's like an hour long line at a Starbucks at 6 a.m. Airports do not bring out the best in humanity. No, yeah. It's like when you watch people lined up, there's like an hour-long line at a Starbucks at 6 a.m. I'm not speaking from personal experience, of course. There are some very frayed emotions in the crowd. Yeah.

Especially, they're like, I got to catch my flight in 30 minutes. Is my caramel macchiato going to be ready on time? Like, I've seen literally people like crazy outbursts. So I don't blame these people at all. So it just underscores to me about like how much of critical parts of our society neglected, financialized, and in chaos for no reasons, like multifaceted reasons that mostly have to do with greed of industry. And then where's Pete Buttigieg, you know, at the same time, like our transportation secretary is like out fundraising while our airports

are literally in chaos. The 21 people or 21 airports, you have labor protests that are being planned, even in London. You know, it's not just us, like the whole industry is in chaos. I've flown, you know, a decent amount over the last two years and it's just, it's complete, like you can just feel that things are not

right. And they should, even though passenger, Crystal, are basically the same. The passenger number's back. It's just the airports, the TSA lines, and everything else is complete chaos. Total mess. Yeah, it's something that the railroaders have been underscoring, which is that, and by the way, you know, in spite of the mission accomplished rhetoric, still very much a possibility of railroad workers going on strike because the tentative agreement that was struck doesn't provide a whole lot more to them. It's not really that much more of an improvement. And what they're saying is like, yes, look, this is about us and our quality of life, being able to see our families, being able to go to doctor's appointments,

being able to get sick and not be penalized for it and all of those things. But there's also a deeper issue here of like the reason we are so overburdened is because these companies in search of profit have really stripped things down to the bare bones. That's a problem for us. But in all of this, you know, air of talk of supply chain breakdowns, like that's a problem for the country as a whole. These are the companies that are really making the supply chain so brittle and so fragile and fragile and so ultimately dysfunctional. Like that's what it comes down to. And then you see the workers who are getting the short end of the stick here. And so even though they, you know, they they strip their staff like it's like 30

percent over the past decade or something crazy like that. And then they just expect all the other workers to pick up the slack. That's how this thing is running with like, you know, bubble gum and shoestring effectively to keep it going. A critical, critical, critical part of our infrastructure that farmers depend on for getting their products to market that, you know, wastewater treatment facilities depend on to get the chemicals they need, that regular consumers depend on, that regular computers depend on. And we've left it to the whims of these companies. And so ultimately, the workers, again, they're fighting for themselves, but they're also fighting to say, like, this is a problem for all of us. And I think that comes through, especially when you see these essential workers who really

carried the weight during the pandemic, kept the country running. And they're saying, look, guys, we're not in a good position here for us personally. And that means that the whole country is in a bad position ultimately. Yeah, no, I think that's exactly the right way to put it. And yeah, it just demonstrates to me, like, it's all in chaos for no particular reason. And for all of the national politics, like, oh, you know, January 6th, et cetera, like this is the biggest story and always has been over the last year. It really is. I'm very ignored basically by that. I mean, it takes the railway guys almost going on strike

for people to take notice and have three minutes of airtime, but like that's about it. Right. And to give it extremely skewed coverage too, by the way, to cover it late and very poorly. Absolutely. Okay. Let's move on. This is an important story, and one that we covered pretty extensively at the time. So I think it's important for people to get an update, which really is contra to the mainstream narrative. And let's put this up there on the screen. From the Washington Post, career prosecutors at the Department of Justice have recommended to leadership no charges for Matt Gaetz in the sex trafficking probe. So you all remember in November 2021, the story broke

from the New York Times based on sources within the DOJ that Gaetz was under investigation for sex trafficking, specifically of a 17-year-old girl. Now, the way that the theory was is that Gates had had sex with a 17-year-old girl who was part of a group of other girls who Gates and his scummy friend, like Joel Greenberg, who also happened to be some sort of tax official, I think in Seminole County in Florida, had taken these women on a vacation to the Bahamas. Now, the reason that that would be sex trafficking

is that if you transport anybody who's under the age of 18 across state lines and out of the country for any purpose, basically, and you have sex with them, that is basically sex trafficking. Now, according to what we know from the facts available at this point, the girl was actually 18 years old when that happened, that trip to the Bahamas. That's what set off ring, alarm rings. So they were like, oh, well, what if this girl was 17 and had traveled under cross state lines prior to that? That was part of the investigation. Well, what the investigators now say is that they've been, A, unable to determine if any of that actually happened, but B, that two of the main witnesses who they were lying on in the case are said to be unreliable, specifically this Mr. Greenberg. Greenberg apparently had been

flipped by the feds to provide information on Matt Gaetz, but his credibility is the main charge on which this would rest if they were to go forward with a prosecution against him. Additionally, you'll also remember this. The way this all came to light was not only the leak about Gates. It's so freaking weird. Exactly. It's about blackmail. So let's go ahead and put this next one up there on the screen. And Gates, to be fair, was ridiculed about this.

It seems that he was correct, which is that there was, at the same time, there was a man named Stephen Alford, who was a real estate developer, who went to Don Gates, the father of Matt Gates, and said, you need to pay me $25 million or I'm going to expose your son as a sex trafficker. Because Mr. Alford had somehow gleaned that Gates was under investigation for sex trafficking. Now, this was the counter. He said he could provide a pardon for Gaetz. He was claiming that he could get a pardon from President Trump.

I don't know why some random real estate developer would be able to get a pardon and not the congressman. It seems like Gaetz might have a better connect. Whatever. All right. Anyway. He came to him and said, pay me $25 million or I'm going to expose you and I can get a pardon for yourself.

And then somehow this missing FBI agent in Iran was... That also... He also said he had information based on that missing FBI agent in Iran. He was going to use the $25 million, not for himself, but to rescue this guy in Iran. Anyway. Very confusing. It does turn out to be true.

He was prosecuted. He was convicted of blackmailing Don Gates, and he has been sentenced last week to five years in prison for the attempted extortion of the congressman. And so, you know, I'm not a big fan of Matt Gates over here, but it does look, Crystal, like he was completely railroaded by the FBI and the DOJ, who leaked selectively salacious details of the case against him, basically tried him in the court of public opinion. And, you know, at the end of the day, like he's not getting prosecuted because the people who were alleging all of these like

heinous things against him clearly also have an ax to grind and were themselves untrustworthy. Now, could the congressman have avoided all of this by not frequently going to parties with hookers and 18-year-old girls when he's in his mid-30s and he's a member of Congress? Yeah, he definitely could have. It's a scumbag behavior, but that's not illegal. His good buddy here, Joel Greenberg, was indicted on sex trafficking of a child and financially supporting people in exchange for sex, at least of one of whom was an underage girl. And he's the one who flipped. And the reason that they say he's not credible is because he basically, like, admits to being a liar. Right. And then the other person they said that this would rely on is the girl, I guess now woman, herself.

And for reasons they don't get into, they say that she also had credibility issues. So one thing that's interesting to me is that the leaks about this came out during the Trump administration. And now it's the Biden administration that actually is like, we're not going to charge. Well, I think it's because it became a cause celeb amongst all these congressmen. So Nancy Pelosi had alluded to it. Look, Gates is obviously an odious guy, right? And I think we can—everyone, even his supporters, can admit that. And I actually think that relates to potentially why—because you see this with people who are real assholes, which Gates, he is.

We have personal experience in that regard. People, I would not be surprised if it was actually people who are sort of in his circle. Yeah. Oh, his colleagues hate him too. Yeah, they hate him. I mean, he's a very unlikable person. So you often see anytime there's a chance to like stick the knife in somebody like that, that's when you get these kind of like leaks and like, you know, people trying to basically take you down. So it wouldn't surprise me if that, I'm not justifying that. I'm just saying like, when I look at the fact that the leaks actually came out of the Trump administration DOJ, it wouldn't surprise me if it was actually people who know him and hate him who are in those general circles. Certainly true. So, I mean, and I just, I think we should underscore that, though, which is, put this

up there, which is that, you know, the reporting on this came from the Times. It was leaks from the highest levels of the DOJ, all to reporters who had Russiagate leaks and more. And, you know, this is the issue with selective leaks out of the Department of Justice against their political op, no matter what it comes from and for who, and people do deserve due process, being, you know, odious and annoying and every other adjective I can think of on top of participating in lecherous behavior, unbecoming of a public official. At the end of the day, that is not illegal. And it was made to be,

he was made out to be a literal sex trafficker, such that his own colleagues like Eric Swalwell, Nancy Pelosi, and others were frequently attacking him as such. Now, you could call him a scumbag. I think that's probably fair. And then, you know, what all the, in terms of the details that have come out and this, but it is important and it is wrong, you know, the way that I think that he was treated on this as much as it pains me to say it. But that's, look, people need to be treated equally in our system. Do you think that the media, given the leaks, because to me, that's actually the bigger issue than, I mean, if you're a journalist and you're handed this story. I don't think it's the journalist's fault. I think it's the leakers. I blame the DOJ. I do not blame the people who

are publishing. I mean, what they reported ultimately about him being a subject to, like, investigate was accurate. And if you're given that story, I don't think you can, like, sit on it. So yeah, to me, it's the leakers that is really the problem here. Yeah, I completely agree. And I do think it was wrong, what they did to him. All right, let's move on. New York Times. More media coverage here. Speaking of the New York Times, this is an important story because it actually just demonstrates how propaganda gets recycled, used by the people of power, and everybody glans hands each other. So there was an interesting story in the New York Times on the front page of the paper yesterday. Let's put this up there on the screen. The title, factory jobs are booming Like It's the 1970s. Subquote, U.S. manufacturing is experiencing a rebound.

Companies are adding workers amid high consumer demand for products. Now, the lead of this story makes it seem like there's some major transformation of the U.S. economy. He said, quote, Ever since American manufacturing entered a long stretch of automation, every recession has led to losses. But the recovery has been different. American manufacturers have now added enough jobs to regain all that they shed, and then some. So when he says that factory jobs are booming, really what they're saying, Crystal, is after the artificial recession of 2020 induced by COVID lockdowns, that all of the jobs that were artificially lost as a result of lockdown are now back to pre-pandemic levels. Now, it's not a boom if you revert to the baseline. That

would be like saying that we've been booming because gas prices are back to 2019 levels. It's like, no, no, no, that's the goal. That's what you want is in order to normalize post-crisis. So they write this whole long story. And by the way, that's a fine story too. You could use the headline, factory jobs return to 2020 levels. Everyone would be like, okay, well, that's not though what they're claiming. That's not some massive remaking of the economy. They are claiming that the spike that we see, if you cut it off at the right point, is the same as a boom of U.S. manufacturing

since the 1970s. Now, they correctly point out that the reason that factory jobs, quote-unquote, are coming back after the artificial recession of 2020 is, yes, consumer demand exists, supply chain problems, all of that. But to cast it as some sort of massive transformation of the U.S. economy is just completely incorrect. And yet, this is being seized on by the administration and pushed out as propaganda for how they're like the greatest people to ever hold the Oval Office. White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain immediately, let's put this up there, quote, he says of the story, not an accident, not happenstance, the consequence of a Biden-Harris economic plan with, quote, made in America at its heart. Now, look, again, you could claim we recovered, we're doing well, we have more ground to make. But again, the story and the way it's

cast just completely belie the facts on the ground. And our friend Jeff Stein, in a bit of a subtweet, put this out, and I won't speak on his behalf. I'll just Jeff Stein, in a bit of a subtweet, put this out, and I won't speak on his behalf. I'll just say this. This is all he tweeted. He tweeted out the actual US manufacturing graph since the 1970s. I mean, for those who are just listening, you can see that from 1940 to 2020, that we have seen a massive drop off from the 1970s to 1980s period. Now compare the boom for those who are watching of the precipitous increase from the 1970 baseline to where things ended in the 1980s. And then take a look once again at how we have just renormalized to a 2020 baseline after the terrible year of the COVID pandemic. It's just plain as day to describe like some sort of quote boom, when in reality, the precipitous drop from 1980 to 2020, or just 2022 remains the real manufacturing story. I just don't think you can describe this as anything else

than complete propaganda crystal for the White House on behalf of the New York Times, like basically rewriting economic history. It's just wrong. It's a wrong story. There's a lot you can look into with this graph, too. I mean, the way it— That graph is a story of America. It really is. The way that it falls off't know, PNTR is Permanent Normal Trade Relations with China. Basically, lowered tariffs on China allowed Chinese entry into the WTO and effectively destroyed the American manufacturing industry.

All industry, especially cars and several others. Yep. And, I mean, it's not the only story. There also is the story of automation where you need fewer workers to do the amount of work. That's part of it. NAFTA and these trade deals are another part of it. But when you look at this graph, that year 2000 really does seem to stand out in terms of the massive decimation of, you know, of the factories of America. And then, you know, that leads to then you've got the financial crash that creates another massive drop off in the graph here.

And then lo and behold, you get, you know, Trumpism and you get like a lot of chaos in our political system. And, you know, anyone looking like neutral observer looking from the outside, it's pretty clear what happened here. But yeah, to paint the return of the factory jobs that had just like gone away during the pandemic as some sort of massive reimagining of the economy is just really quite farcical. The Biden administration has done a few things that I think will overall be beneficial. I think, you know, provisions that they put into place of, like, the government has to—they sort of hardened some of the rules about the government having to buy products that are made in America. There are some provisions, I think, in the Inflation Reduction Act that might be useful. The CHIPS Act, certainly specifically with regards to semiconductors, hopefully is going to pay off and be useful.

But to claim mission accomplished victory here is really quite something. And for the New York Times to frame it in this way as like booming like the 1970s. Well, in the 1970s, you had, look, thousands of persons. So there it's up at 19 and now it's down at 13. I mean, this is you could, again, say we've come back to baseline. You could say a lot of things. We also know, like, if this happened under Trump, it'd be like, economy returns. It's just complete BS. They could have reported the entire story without the frame that they needed to overreach. And ultimately, that's what they did. Anybody who knows, you know, anybody who can read a chart knows that it's completely farcical and ridiculous. But I thought it was important that we pointed out, A, because the discussion of why manufacturing dropped in the U.S. and where we actually are is a very important story. I would love for us to boom like the 1970s

and go all the way back up. That would require like a trillion dollar investment, completely rechanging our trade laws, changing our foreign policy. There's so much that it would need. Real industrial policy on a nationwide scale, not just specific to one little industry. We are like barely dipping our toes in any of that at this point. 100% correct. All right, Saga, what are you looking at? Well, if you were to ask me what I love most about this job, at a basic level, it's really just helping people fill in the blanks to fundamental truths that they obviously know to be true. Washington is corrupt. The media is biased.

It's one of those things that we all know, but those who don't live or work here have very trouble finding specific examples. If those who don't believe those things actually ever had to confront them, it would be game over for them. Today, it's about the media and a subject that I've covered before. The perverse, disgusting, and common practice of so-called flagship journalists in this country not only cozying up to people in power, but actively covering for them. One of the open secrets in Washington over the last 40 years was the friendship and relationship between NPR Supreme Court reporter Nina Totenberg and the now-late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Totenberg worked at NPR and has worked there since 1975. Over the years, she's broken some of the biggest scoops in the history of the Supreme Court.

The story that Ronald Reagan was going to appoint Justice William Rehnquist as Chief Justice. She broke the story that one of Reagan's appointees had submitted to smoking weed in the 1960s. Big deal at the time. The biggest story of all was Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill in the 1990s. She's considered a massive star, an icon, yet beneath it was an open secret. As she was breaking big stories, she was good friends with the people that she covered that burst to the fore in the year 2000. Totenberg's wedding was literally presided over Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Everyone thought it was weird, but her defenders said, hey, if you call that into question your journalistic ethics, you're a sexist. Even then, it was a potent attack, so official Washington just moved on. At least until now. 22 years later, Totenberg is nearly

80 years old, Ginsburg is dead, and now some people are finally willing to say, yeah, you know, that was all pretty messed up. And what's even crazier is she has no shame about the whole situation. She recently published a book called Dinners with Ruth, in which she goes through her 40-year friendship with the late justice, openly admits, as the Politico editor Michael Schaefer writes, that she had inside knowledge about Ginsburg's health, that she did not report to the nation. Totenberg revealed that during the COVID lockdown, the only place that RBG would go to break quarantine was Totenberg's house for a weekly Saturday dinner. In July of 2020, she was so weak,

she could not even climb upstairs. She could not make it through a meal without falling asleep, and she had to wear gloves to cover up massive bruises on her hands as a result of IVs that she needed. Totenberg writes that RBG openly acknowledged her own mortality and thought she was going to die near the end. And all of this is a painful memory, one friend of another. The problem, though, is during that period, she did not report one word of these things she knew to be true. So when she died, when RBG died, the world was shocked.

Nobody knew how sick she really was, except for her medical team and her closest friend, who just so happened to be the country's premier Supreme Court reporter. If Totenberg wanted to just be her friend, that's fine. Then resign from your job and focus on that. Yet she continues, then and now, to maintain she did absolutely nothing wrong. There was nothing untoward about her relationship with RBG, when we now know that she sat on one of the biggest stories in the political world. It gets worse. Her own personal conduct is one matter. The bigger problem was NPR knew about it for 40 years and didn't say anything,

till RBG was dead. The outlet finally acknowledged in September 2020 they probably should have revealed the friendship earlier. It was never once even disclosed, though, to NPR listeners or readers, and also was well known to those on the inside in the newsroom. Again, this was not reckoned with once until RBG was actually gone. The story and the impact of the insider connection was then revealed. What I found most funny was the reaction of one NPR listener. He put two and two together when Totenberg finally did fess up to her friendship with Ginsburg,

and he wrote in, quote, the story about her long friendship with RBG makes me very uncomfortable. As far as I'm concerned, both women practice their professions with integrity, an old-time value that is being questioned these days. The thing is, though, how much of this social incestuousness exists in DC? Yes, how much indeed? The truth is, Totenberg-style relationships between political reporters and the people they cover is probably exactly the same today, probably just less bipartisan and skewed a little bit more towards Democrats. All of this, I guess, would be okay if people would just admit it. The issue, though, remains one that plagued Totenberg. The DC press want us to believe they're just calling balls and strikes. Anyone with a brain, though, knows this complete and total BS.

Despite rings of evidence to the contrary, they will scream it at you until they're blue in the face. I guess the only silver lining is that because of the internet, people finally have alternatives. And I'm just going to end by pointing to how this problem has not been fixed at all. And if anything, at an institutional level, is really getting worse. Because I am a former member, I pay attention to the White House Correspondents Association. So I took interest when they announced that because Caitlin Collins is headed to the mornings on CNN, in 2024, Politico's Eugene Daniels will helm the organization. Well, insider Washington news, I guess, unless you know like I do, that Daniels has long been a woke and annoying force at Politico who is going to head up the WHCA

in the middle of what I'm sure is to be a pretty consequential election, whichever way it goes. The Daily Beast reported that Daniels frequently clashed with his friend of our show, Tara Palmieri, when she was over there, because he wanted, quote, more social justice issues to be at the forefront of their coverage. Worse, Daniels is apparently known inside the political newsroom for, quote, friendly coverage and intimate relationships with the Vice President Kamala Harris and those around her. If you peruse the byline, you see all sorts of hagiographic treatment of one of the worst politicians in Washington. This type of personal advocacy journalism, it's just Nina Totenberg syndrome by another name. Insider treatment.

Letting bias bleed into supposedly straight news coverage, and all of us are just supposed to say, it's totally fine. Well, I'm here to say, it's actually not fine. It's disgusting. It's blatantly corrupt. And not only that, anyone cares when the eventual death of the mainstream media does come, we will look back on the people like this and we'll know exactly why it happened. I thought it was important to also point to the future. That's Eugene Daniels. And if you want to hear my reaction to Sagar's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. Crystal, what are you taking a look at? Well, guys, there's a pretty wild moment on CNBC the

other day as a Wharton professor of finance, Jeremy Siegel, absolutely lost it over Fed Reserve Chair Jerome Powell's latest press conference and the total unwillingness of the business press to question his actions at all. Take a listen. I think we're giving Powell, honestly, we're giving him too much of a, you know, oh good, he's standing against inflation. We're giving him too much praise. I mean, listen, the Fed has just, you know, executed the last two years one of the biggest policy mistakes in the 110-year history of the Fed by staying so easy when everything was booming and pointing to, my God, inflation is going to be a terrible problem. And now, oh, yeah, we did goof badly there, which he never really admitted. I mean, he still blames some things on Ukraine and,

you know, Putin and the supplies, even though oil is way below that level, way beyond that. And now we're saying, oh, my God, he's the God that's going to stop inflation and he's going to crush the wages, which have not kept, which have fallen behind inflation by three, four or five percent. You can't have cost push inflation when you're lagging inflation. You can't blame wages for inflation when they're two, three, four or five percent behind inflation. I mean, he said the other day, putting the burden on the on these working people, on the employed people. That's I mean, what is it? And every other commodity price is going down. The Fed chair gave you no indication the other day that they're stopping anytime soon. That's right. And that's why the stock market has cracked this week.

He gave no indication that, I mean, if he would have just said, I see some favorable sign, like housing prices are not rising and actually they're falling, or some little thing that our policies are working. He admitted, you know, there's long lags. Well, if he keeps as tight as he is, look at every market indicator, the dollar, the commodities, real rates, the money supply, everything is showing one of the tightest feds or intentions of feds that we've ever had. So what he says,? He says it works with the lag. Well, if he stays this way through 2023, you can, you know, make sure that there's a major recession on the other side. So I want to break this clip down for you. But the TLDR is this. Siegel is absolutely convinced

that without dramatically changing course, the Fed will trigger a severe recession and absolutely destroy working class people. He believes they are making the mistake of a century and is desperately attempting to sound the alarm. So let's start with the first part of what the professor says when he complains that everyone is treating Jerome Powell like he's some kind of god, not even questioning whether he's charting the right course. And another part of his appearance, he also blows his top at the fact that not a single reporter bothered to ask him a tough question. Certainly no one asked about whether regular people might be hurt by Powell's attempts to crush their wages and spike unemployment. This in spite of the fact that, according to Siegel, the Fed just executed one of the worst mistakes in the 110-year history of the

Fed. This deferential posture from supposed journalists comes from two places, basically. First, there's an ugly bipartisan consensus now which has taken hold of Washington that it's those pesky workers and their wages that are primarily to blame for inflation, and that the only answer is for Powell to go full Volcker and tank the economy. Now, this benefits corporate America, which is irritated by the fact that right now, with the labor market tight, workers have started to organize to strike and, in general, to demand better conditions. Ken Klippenstein reports that some executives are outright admitting that they hope Fed policy will discipline workers into accepting the shitty deals that they've had to put up with for decades. One real estate CEO openly admitted that, quote, a recession could be good for the commercial real estate business

if it comes with the level of unemployment that puts employers back in the driver's seat and allows them to get all their employees back into the office. Second, there's an even uglier trend to just accept the pronouncements of the Fed as if they are being handed down from on high. In this view, the Fed policymakers are just quants analyzing data and calling balls and strikes. This is absurd. Monetary policy is just as subject to politics, ideological capture, and just human beings making big mistakes as any other body. They should be questioned.

They should be questioned vigorously. And the public should feel empowered to have an opinion on Fed policy since few things more directly impact their lives. But the language around monetary policy has been made intentionally opaque and confusing to keep that rogue element, the people, from feeling like they understand enough in order to have a say. Which brings me to another piece of the professor's commentary here, where he absolutely trashes the idea that wages are to blame for inflation. Let's listen to that part. We're saying, oh my God, he's the God that's going to stop inflation and he's going to crush the wages, which have fallen behind inflation by 3%, 4%, 5%. You can't have cost-push inflation when you're lagging inflation. You can't blame wages for inflation when they're 2%, 3%, 4%, 5% behind inflation.

Why is he putting the burden on these working people, on the employed people? That's, I mean, what is it? And every other commodity price is going down. Here, he explodes a gigantic Washington myth that the real problem with inflation is that costs are up. Translation, workers are earning too much. This is nonsense. Yes, wages have gone up. Not nearly enough to keep up with the cost of inflation.

It's not the workers who need to be disciplined. It's the corporations which have used inflation as an excuse to jack up their prices and gain massive profit margins. When you account for inflation, real wages have declined. They have gone down every single month since April of 2021. Let me show you what wages look like this year. That top blue line you see there, that's prices. They have gone up and up. Wages before inflation, what economists would call nominal wages, they go up as well, but not nearly as fast as prices. That leaves real wages,

that would be the dark red line that you see there, actually going down. Once you consider rising prices, average workers have gotten a pay cut every single month for more than a year. So as the professor asked, how does it make any sense to blame wages for inflation when wages have done nothing ultimately but decline? Another key part of Siegel's argument here is that the Fed is admitting that what they are doing will take a while to fully hit, but they are still fully moving full steam ahead anyway, knowing that they could easily overshoot and trigger an absolute catastrophe. Here's that portion. He admitted, you know, there's long legs. Well, if he keeps as tight as he is, look at every market

indicator, the dollar, the commodities, real rates, the money supply, everything is showing one of the tightest Feds or intentions of Feds that we've ever had. So what? He says it works with the lag. Well, if he stays this way through 2023, you can, you know, make sure that there's a major recession on the other side. A major recession on the other side. Here's a few of the indicators that Siegel mentions that he implores Powell to take a look at. He points to the Dow, which fell massively on Friday, continued its slide on Monday as well.

It's not just the U.S. markets, though. Global markets also plunged, as Powell showed no sign whatsoever of easing up on the Fed's aggressive moves. Siegel mentions commodities, and here we can take a look at the oil markets, where prices have continued to fall down to a nine-month low. Now, of course, it's a very good thing if it translates to what you pay at the pump. But as we know, oil prices and gas prices

at the pump don't move in anything close to lockstep. Siegel's point is that if your goal is a soft landing to curb inflation without triggering a recession, the warning lights are flashing red that you are already overshooting the mark. And yet the Fed is just continuing aggressively in the same direction. In another portion of the interview, he talks about the housing market downturn, the fact that you have now millions of new workers and jobs with GDP actually going down, all signs that the hawkish Fed policy is really starting to bite and that it may already be too late to avoid the major recession that the press

professor is urgently warning about. This appearance was so remarkable to me because the words of warning being sounded here are so incredibly rare to be heard anywhere, or at least those voices of dissent so rarely really get a hearing. We would all do well to listen. Pretty remarkable moment there on CNBC. And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. Joining us now is great friend, very special friend, the original friend, perhaps the best friend of the show, Glenn Greenwald. It's great to see you, sir. Thank you very much for joining us. Yeah, thank you. I accept all of those titles. I think they're all appropriate, and I appreciate the invitation.

It's nice to see your face and be the subject of your mockery again, Glenn. Always a pleasure. It's been far, far too long. One of the reasons we wanted to talk to you, Glenn, on top of just checking in in general, let's put this up there on the screen. President Putin yesterday granted Russian citizenship to Edward Snowden. Now, there's been a lot made of this by the U.S. media as some evidence that Snowden himself is like further a traitor, as if he himself should be pushed to the front line by Putin. What did you make of this move and then the general treatment by the Western media of this obvious stunt by Putin? So first of all, just look at the framing of this, like Putin grants citizenship to Snowden. This happens all the time whenever the U.S. media wants you to hate a particular country.

They start personalizing everything to the leader. When we wanted to invade Iraq, it ceased being Iraq did this, Iraq did that. Everything was Saddam did this. Same with the war in Yugoslavia. It was no longer Serbia does this. It was Milose Serbia does this. It was Milosevic does this. They always personalize it on a particular leader as though now Putin is sitting in the immigration office as an immigration clerk reviewing Snowden's application for citizenship and stamping it approved.

Of course, it's done in the name of Putin. So many documents are signed by Joe Biden that he wouldn't have the capability to even read, let alone analyze and process. But that's already the framing. Snowden has lived in Russia for nine years now. He lives there with his American wife and their two young toddlers. And the reason they're there, of course, is because the U.S. government has made clear that if he steps one inch outside of Russia, they will arrest him and prosecute him and imprison him for the rest of his life under the Espionage Act of 1917. So all this is is the natural byproduct of living in a country for a long enough time. I've lived in Brazil 17 years. I'm eligible for citizenship with my family.

And yet the American media tried to depict this as some cunning move on the part of Putin. And worse, some sinister evidence that it means Snowden all along was a Russian spy. I want to pick back up on Snowden, but first I actually want to ask you more about that point about like personalizing the governments, because I think that's interesting because I actually try to, when we're covering Russia, talk about the Kremlin or talk about Putin versus Russia as a whole, because when you're dealing with a basically authoritarian system, I sort of want to intentionally separate out the ordinary citizens who may or may not support what's going on or may or may not understand what's going on versus the leadership, like the elites who are actually, you know, running the show. Do you think there's an

argument for that? Or like, how do you see those things in the language there and its importance? Yeah, I mean, for sure, Russia is an authoritarian and an autocratic regime. A lot of countries in the world are, but it's also a complex country of 70 million people or so. It has all kinds of different power centers and factions and competing interests. The same is true, you know, of almost any country that you talk about, where there's this extremely exaggerated attempt to depict it as this totalitarian regime when maybe North Korea and a handful of other small countries really are appropriately characterized that way. There's all kinds of interest in Russia.

There's lots of divided public opinions. Putin does have a lot of support, as does the war in Ukraine. Maybe that's because of our propagandized media. Surely that is part of it. But I think it's just so overly simplified the way that the Western media ends up talking about the countries that we're supposed to hate. Yeah, I think that's true. Very important. I wanted to get your response to what Snowden himself tweeted in response.

He said, after years of separation from our parents, my wife and I have no desire to be separated from our sons. After two years of waiting, nearly 10 years of exile, a little stability will make a difference for my family. I pray for privacy for them and for us all. I mean, I think this is the key point, Crystal, is let's go back and just remember, because before this obsession with Russia completely consumed American discourse in 2014, every major media outlet fought to publish and report on the Snowden documents, and virtually every major media outlet throughout the West did so. Obviously, The Guardian and The Washington Post won a Pulitzer for it, but The New York Times fought for those documents. I remember getting badgered by all the reporters for access to the archive.

Globo in Brazil, Le Monde in France, El Mundo in Spain, all over the Western world. People were competing to be able to report these documents because they revealed an incredibly newsworthy story, which was especially here in the United States, many of the spying programs that were instituted that were on terror and then increased radically under the Obama administration were found by courts to be unconstitutional and illegal. So what American would be so surf-like in their mentality as to believe that that's not a positive thing? And yet in response to that the u.s government has done nothing but try to imprison snowden for eight years and as he says he has a family an american wife american children he's always said he wanted to come back to the united states and

so yes he does need stability because he can't leave that country and citizenship is a way that gives him and his family that stability into trying to depict it as something nefarious on his part when in reality the fault lies with the Obama administration that went after whistleblowers using this 100-year-old repressive statute more than any other administration in history I think is really misguided. And Glenn, when you pointed out on the Washington Post,

which I thought was completely crazy, was that they described Snowden as just a intelligence leaker, which was floated by Matt Taibbi, but also described him as, quote, who considers himself a whistleblower. And as you pointed out, Fett, it's especially weird because they shared that Pulitzer Prize for helping report on some of the Snowden documents at the time and considered it worthy not that long ago in 2014. I mean, the Washington Post could not heap enough praise on themselves and their courage for the work they did on Snowden documents, when in reality, the Washington Post was too scared to even allow their reporters to go visit Snowden in Hong Kong the way Laura Poitras and I did. The story kind of fell into their lap. He never chose to work with them, but they exploited those documents

to their benefit. And the amazing thing is, Sagar, two years afterward, when the New York Times was calling for Snowden to be pardoned, the Washington Post editorialized against a pardon for their own source, advocating that their own source be in prison. And their argument was that Snowden's documents weren't just about domestic spying, but also spying on other countries. But let's remember all of the choices that were made about which Snowden documents would be concealed and which ones would be published weren't made by Snowden, but were made by the newspapers with whom he worked. And the Washington Post did more than any other media outlet,

way more than I did, in publishing documents about how the U.S. was spying on other countries. So it was they who revealed those secrets, not Snowden, and then turned around and used their own behavior as a way of arguing that he shouldn't get a pardon. Where do you think that this ideological positioning of the Washington Post comes from? Does it represent a break with past traditions or a continuation of a long tradition that perhaps

was temporarily broken so that they could bask in the limelight of prizes from reporting on the certain documents? So I've never been somebody who thought that the corporate media is quote unquote liberal, nor did I ever think they were conservative. I believe the ideology of the corporate media is pro-establishment. And in particular, they're particularly deferential when it comes to the U.S. security state. And all the stories that we've seen over the last 20 years that received so much criticism from the Iraq War to Russiagate to the 2008 financial crisis were all about these media outlets being completely subservient to ruling elite power centers. And the reason why media

outlets dislike Snowden and Assange and so many people like them, even though those people are the ones enabling journalists to do the job they claim they're there to do, is because their sources inside the CIA and the FBI and the Justice Department and the White House hate Snowden and Assange, and therefore they just reflect reflexively those same biases. That is what these media outlets are for. Right. And I mean, what's the future here for Snowden and just by the Biden administration? I saw, I don't know if you saw this yesterday, Glenn, but the White House referred all questions on Snowden's citizen to the DOJ, indicating that the prosecution in the current policy continues under this administration, which was considered, I mean, extreme even at the

time under the Obama administration when they were also in charge. Yeah, let me just use your question, Sagar, to make two points that are actually related. One is that this whole idea of Snowden being in Russia and the way they use that to suggest he was a Russian spy. Let's remember that he didn't choose in the first instance to go to Moscow. He went to Hong Kong and he was there when he contacted us. And at the time, you can go back and read the same stories from the same outlets. We're accusing him of being a Chinese spy. Why, if he were a Russian spy, would he have gone to Hong Kong and called us there instead of to Moscow in the first instance? But the more important point is, when he left Hong Kong, he was trying to get, everybody

knows, to Ecuador and Bolivia, where he was going to ask for and receive asylum the way Ecuador had given asylum to Assange. And he had to transit through Moscow on his way to Havana. And the Obama administration, led by Joe Biden, did everything possible to block him from leaving Moscow. Ben Rhodes boasted, bragged in his own book, about he called the Cubans and said, if you want us to lift this embargo,

if you want to have better relations with us, you better not do anything to help Edward Snowden get out of Moscow. because if you do, there'll be no political space to do it. The reason he's in Russia isn't because he chose to be. It's because the Obama administration forced him to be, precisely so that they could turn around and get morons to think, oh, well, if he's in Russia, he must be a Kremlin spy. And that is the problem, is it was the Trump administration considering actively pardoning Snowden. I think it was one of Trump's more cowardly moves not to have done that. The reason he didn't was because the second impeachment trial was

hanging over his head. And Marco Rubio and Lindsey Graham made clear, and Mitch McConnell, if you pardon Snowden, we're gonna vote for your own impeachment. But he didn't. And now the Biden administration was a part of the Obama administration is continuing this repressive attack on whistleblowers that led to Snowden not being able to come back to the United States in the first place. Yeah, I had never heard that before, Glenn, that there was a threat from Rubio and Graham and some of the more like hawkish pro-security state Republicans to potentially vote to convict Trump in that impeachment hearing over Snowden. Just explain that a little bit more to me because that's a new piece of information for me.

Yeah. So obviously, I was somebody who was working very actively, both publicly advocating, but also in private, doing everything they could to secure a pardon for both Assange and Snowden, Snowden being my source and Assange being someone I regard as heroic. And there was real movement inside the Trump administration to give particularly Snowden a pardon. It came much closer to Snowden than they did to Assange. And if you think about it, why would they have initiated an impeachment proceeding against a president who within a couple of weeks was on his way out? And the reason, Crystal, was that they were very afraid that on his way out,

Trump was going to do a bunch of stuff, including not just giving pardons to Snowden and Assange, but also declassify all kinds of documents he had been threatening to declassify about the CIA, about the Kennedy assassination. And the only leverage they had against Trump doing what they considered crazy stuff on his way out was the second impeachment trial. And they explicitly communicated to Trump, multiple Republican kind of hawkish senators did, that if you do what we know you're thinking about doing, what Rand Paul and Matt Gates and others were encouraging him to do, which was pardon Snowden, that will severely jeopardize your chances of getting out of this impeachment trial with an acquittal. And that was the kind of sword of Damocles hanging over his head during that transition. All right. Does that relate to

the documents that he then takes to Mar-a-Lago? Because there's some reporting that the documents that he took there were, you know, related to Russiagate. They were things that, you know, he had flirted with declassifying before, but didn't for whatever reason. Do you know if there's a connect there? What I know for sure is that Trump was threatening to declassify all of those documents relating to Russiagate because Trump believes, I think, with a lot of validity, that there were crimes committed or at least ethical transgressions committed during the 2016 election to create and manufacture Russiagate. It came out of the CIA. And I don't know exactly which documents he took. Nobody really knows exactly which documents he took. But it certainly seems to align with everything I knew at the time,

which was that Trump wanted those documents public, had the power to declassify them, and now his defense is that he did. I'm not saying that those are the only documents he took. He probably took a bunch, being Trump, just kind of did it all recklessly. But I would think there's certainly a relationship between his belief that documents were being hidden that should be seen and his decision to remove a lot of documents out of the White House tomorrow. Yeah, that that corresponds with some of the reporting that Ken Klippenstein, for example, has has been doing. Well, we covered a lot more ground than I even expected us to get to. A lot of interesting revelations there. Glenn, it's genuinely great to see you.

Great to see you, sir. Thank you. Yeah. Congrats on your success. Always happy to come back anytime. Absolutely. Thanks very genuinely great to see you. Thank you so much. Great to see you, sir. Thank you. Yeah, congrats on your success. Always happy to come back anytime. Absolutely. Thank you. Thanks very much. See you guys. Alright, guys. Thank you so much for watching. We really appreciate it. As we said, tickets are on sale for Chicago

live show October 15th. Come see us. Link is in the description. If you want to help us fund the expansion, we've got the CounterPoints discount going on right now. 10% off. Otherwise, we've got great content for you on Wednesday, full show for you on Thursday, and counterpoints for you on Friday. I love being able to see that.

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