Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 9/30/21: Biden MIA, Biden Covid Polls, Marine Jailed, VA Gov Update, YouTube Crackdown, Media's Dying Breath, The View's Secrets, Steven Donziger Speaks, and More!

Episode Date: September 30, 2021

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This is an iHeart Podcast. I've seen a lot of stuff over 30 years, you know, some very despicable crime and things that are kind of tough to wrap your head around. And this ranks right up there in the pantheon of Rhode Island fraudsters. I've always been told I'm a really good listener, right? And I maximized that while I was lying. Listen to Deep Cover, The Truth About Sarah on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What up, y'all?

This your main man Memphis Bleak right here, host of Rock Solid Podcast. June is Black Music Month, so what better way to celebrate than listening to my exclusive conversation with my bro, Ja Rule. The one thing they can't stop you or take away from you is knowledge. So whatever I went through while I was down in prison for two years, through that process, learn, learn from. Check out this exclusive episode with Ja Rule on Rock Solid. Open your free iHeartRadio app, search Rock Solid, and listen now.

I also want to address the Tonys. On a recent episode of Checking In with Michelle Williams, I open up about feeling snubbed by the Tony Awards. Do I? I was never mad. I was disappointed because I had high hopes. To hear this and more on disappointment and protecting your peace, listen to Checking In with Michelle Williams from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey guys, thanks for listening to Breaking Points with Crystal and Sagar. We're going to be totally upfront with you. We took a big risk going independent. To make this work, we need your support to beat the corporate media. CNN, Fox, MSNBC, they are ripping this country apart. They We'll see you next time. today, where you get to watch and listen to the entire show ad-free and uncut an hour early before everyone else. You get to hear our reactions to each other's monologues. You get to participate in weekly Ask Me Anythings, and you don't need to hear our annoying voices pitching you like I am right now. So what are you waiting for? Go to BreakingPoints.com, become a premium member today, which is available in the show notes. Enjoy the show, guys. Good morning, everybody. Happy Thursday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed, we do. Lots of interesting stuff to get to. Of course, big week in D.C. We'll bring you

all the latest there to start the show. We also have some new polls that continue to spell a lot of trouble for Joe Biden. Now you have a majority of Americans who do not trust what he is telling them on the coronavirus. That's a bad sign. Update for you on that Marine officer. We brought you some of his comments previously, very critical of the leadership in the military. He's now in jail. So we're going to talk to you about all of that. New polls in the Virginia governor's race, a feisty debate that we'll break down for you with some very interesting and cringe comments. YouTube further cracking down on some well-known personalities, not just removing their content, but removing their entire channels altogether. Got Steven Donziger on.

He is set to be sentenced tomorrow. This man has been persecuted by a judicial system, a process that has been run by ExxonMobil. It is absolutely outrageous. There is a possibility that he will start serving jail time tomorrow. So we're going to get an update from him on what he expects and, you know, just exactly what's going to happen going forward. I know he has some big updates on his case as well. But we did want to start with where we are. Today is supposed to be the big day that that bipartisan infrastructure deal is supposedly going to get voted on. However, as of this morning, looks certainly unlikely it's going to pass.

And I would say very unlikely that it is actually going to be brought up for a vote at all because progressives have remained very cohesive and very strong in saying we are not going to vote for this thing. Republicans are not coming to the rescue of the corporatist Democrats. So if it did come up for a vote, it would go down. But here's the latest thinking that we know from Speaker Pelosi. This is from Jake Sherman. Let's throw this tweet up on the screen. So he says, this is relatively new. Pelosi says she wants legislative language for reconciliation before the infrastructure package gets a vote. That's different than what she was saying yesterday, the day before, etc. She was saying this is going to come up on Thursday. He also says, Pelosi also brought up my tweet from earlier this morning, confirmed that she does indeed

have the authority to unilaterally delay the vote. What he's referring to there is something that we talked about also. Remember, the whole reason that the infrastructure package was supposed to be voted on this week is because she came to this deal with Gottheimer and all of his crew saying, all right, all right, all right, we'll consider the infrastructure package on Monday, September 27th. But we told you at the time, she left herself all the wiggle room in the world. First of all, the language wasn't, it has to come up for a vote. It was, we'll consider it. Next, and most importantly, there was a caveat in there that she can just pull it if she doesn't want to ultimately have the vote. So that seems like where things stand today. Progressives have

held firm. They have the numbers to vote down this package. Pelosi does not like to bring bills to the floor that are going to lose. So I would say it is unlikely, though not impossible, that the infrastructure bill gets a vote today. And so now we are kind of in, you know, nowhere land moving forward with negotiations continuing. And we'll see ultimately what happens here. The other piece of this that, you know, continues to be the major question mark is what is Kirsten Sinema going to do? And she has really emerged.

I mean, Manchin is a problem, obviously, but Sinema has really emerged as the problem child here because she won't even say what it is that she wants. Manchin is at least out there putting out statements, talking about, you know, here's what I don't like about it. And that gives you something to work with. Sinema has not really given us anything to work with in terms of what she might be able to support for a reconciliation package. So progressives and normal Democrats extraordinarily frustrated with her. Jen Psaki yesterday got a question about whether President Biden feels progressives

can trust Manchin and Sinema. Let's take a listen to what she had to say. Based on the conversations that he's had with Senator Manchin and Senator Sinema, since we know that there have been plenty of them, does he feel that progressives can trust them to support the bigger package? Well, I can't speak for what members of the Progressive Caucus feel will make them confident about the path forward on reconciliation. Does the president feel that the progressives can trust Manchin and Sinema? I'm not going to speak for what they think they require to get the vote across the finish line. They can speak to that. I'll let them do that. So basically, the White

House can't speak to anything. They have not been central players in any of this. They're basically just sitting there with their hands on their, you know, they basically are sitting there doing nothing. Like absolutely nothing. Pelosi and Schumer and Sinema and Manchin, everybody was there. And guess what? Nothing happened yesterday. In fact, things went so poorly. After Manchin met with them, I think for the fourth time in the last three days, he put out a four-paragraph statement where he said he's not down with trillions of dollars,

wants means testings on some of the most important programs within them, then said that the spending is out of control, and said in an interview after his statement, they asked him, oh, well, Pelosi needs bill text tomorrow. And he basically said, oh, that's just not going to happen. So he actually became more entrenched in his position. Although I would say nothing he really put out yesterday was any different from what he's been saying all along. He's just like reiterating. Exactly. And showing that he's still in the same place. He's still in the same place after the president has apparently been lobbying him. Okay. Sinema, like you said, has actually become worse than useless and has just entrenched even more in her position, not really putting anything out there. And just to give you an idea of how far up the how far Biden's head is up a certain place.

Axios described how the White House sees this entire negotiation. Let's put this up there for my friend Joe Simonson. So they point out accurately that Biden sees himself as somebody who's just going to let the Democrats play it out. Quote, he's not going to beg. His view is you're Democrats, you're with the president or you're not. He's from a generation of politicians for whom party loyalty is automatic. He's confident Speaker Pelosi will deliver, and he believes he'll ultimately get a big win. They even describe him within Crystal in the next paragraph as channeling LBJ. And this is once again one of

my particular pet peeves because LBJ never would have let these type of negotiations play out in this kind of anarchic process. He would have inserted himself many times, actually twisted arms, seen what he could get past, and never would have let it come to such a public failure point. I've got an LBJ book right behind me. And you go and you take a look at everything that he's done. The president has not even spoken publicly on this matter now in a couple of days. Put out a lengthy statement yesterday after all of his various meetings with Pelosi and with Schumer and with Manchin and whomever. And guess

what? Nothing. He just said, both sides are figuring it out. This is democracy. We believe the Build Back Better plan will pass. Oh, yeah? Well, there's no evidence that any of that has come to pass. And I know it might sound repetitive at this point, but it is just remarkable to me that the man who made a 40-year career in the United States Senate is completely unable to deliver or predict that this was obviously going to happen. And now, staring down the barrel of a colossal legislative failure, not being able to pass it in time. At the time, we have a twin debt crisis. When we have the debt ceiling, there's no movement whatsoever there from the White House. Actually, the only thing Biden has done is say, no, don't change the Senate rules in order to deal with it. Let me take one solution

off the table. Yeah. Bringing us much closer to the edge of default. People I know on Capitol Hill are terrified. I mean, I think this is actually the B story, which could end up dominating the entire news. I mean, we're talking about an actual B story, which could end up dominating the entire news. I mean, we're talking about an actual default. Nobody actually knows what would happen. But, you know, capital markets, the Dow Jones, everything, everything would crash for a period of like over a week. It would be a momentary economic crisis, the least of which we need right now, given the fact that, you know, we're crawling our way out of this delta hole. So, yeah, the Biden presidency is really a complete disaster.

And when we're looking at it all together, you've got the players like Sinema and Manchin. What's interesting too, to me, is that the progressives have actually, they haven't just held, they're actually growing their ranks. I'm not sure why. I'm curious why you think, because they don't just have support from within their own caucus. A lot of the Cory Bookers of the world and the moderate to left, more like cultural left Democrats, they're all in on saying, no, you know what, Joe Manchin, screw you, which I find pretty interesting. I mean, John Yarmuth, who is, he's, I think, would self-describe as progressive, but he's definitely an establishment Democrat. I mean, Pelosi made him chair of the House Budget Committee. He yesterday tweeted that Kyrsten Sinema needs to grow up. So I think

there's a lot of times the way that these things play out, there can be a personal dimension to it because these are human beings. And I honestly think that they are utterly frustrated and disgusted with Kyrsten Sinema right now. And I think that that animus is part of what has helped to grow their ranks. I also think you see actually a fair amount of mainstream media support for the progressive position, not uniform, but you see some sort of normal establishment. But, you know, the moderates are the ones who are being really unreasonable here. The progressives are there saying, like, tell us what your position is. We will negotiate with you. I mean, there has been some language about three and a half is already the negotiated position. But the reality is it's clear that progressives have some room that they would be willing to negotiate. And they just can't get anything from these people, Kyrsten Sinema in particular. Here's a Politico tear sheet that makes that point

specifically. During a private meeting with the president, Sinema made clear she's still not on board with the $3.5 trillion social spending plan, and this is the key detail, she's hesitant to even engage on some of the specifics until the infrastructure package passes the House. Now, that's unreasonable. You won't even talk about what your position might be until you get your way with the infrastructure package. So that's why they're at this impasse. Now, listen, I will say, obviously, this week was supposed to be the week when it all came together. It's clearly not going to be the week when it all came together. It's clearly not going to be the week when it all comes together.

That doesn't mean that it is over. You know, in some ways, getting through this day when you had the promised vote and that deal that Pelosi made with Gottheimer and co. is kind of behind us and off the table. That gives them more time to try to work this out, to try to bring these parties together and come up ultimately with something. And that may well still happen, but it's impossible tofriendly Democrats getting extraordinarily frustrated with Manchin and Sinema in particular, here's Senator Durbin being pretty clear about how he feels about all of this. Let's take a listen. Well, I tell you, Joe's made a number of statements. He's my friend. I respect him.

And I've tried my best to sit down for a few minutes and talk to him about this. But I would say to him we can't delay these things. Simply delaying them is just inviting a bad result to be honest with you. You know we are one heartbeat away from losing the majority in the United States Senate and I've been in the Senate long enough to see that happen. So I would urge Joe if you believe there's value and merit to the programs in the reconciliation bill, don't wait. Do it now. So for someone like Senator Durbin to call out on TV, Joe Manchin, that's significant. And putting in those stark terms, which he's totally right about. Yeah, I mean, remember Ted Kennedy?

Extraordinarily old, right? This is a bunch of people like mostly in their 70s and 80s. Anything can happen. The actuarial tables are very much against them. Every moment they waste risks, catastrophe risks, nothing more happening whatsoever in the Biden administration. And so it continues to be perplexing that they chose this strategy to start with. It continues to be perplexing that Biden is MIA, nowhere to be found. Sure, he's having these meetings. He doesn't seem to be making any progress with that. And so at this point, wildly unclear what is ultimately going to happen. But the one thing that is quite clear this morning is that that planned infrastructure

vote is either not going to happen or it is going to fail. So there will be no bipartisan infrastructure deal getting passed today. Both of that is a huge failure for Biden. And, you know, I'm not even that optimistic here that anything could come in the future just because it seems clear to me that Sinema's only goal, it's not, like you're saying, policy-oriented. She just loves being in the news as opposition. And I was just looking today, her approval rating in Arizona is plus seven over plus four for Mark Kelly. Low among Democrats, but high amongst whom? Republicans. Yeah. And

especially, Crystal, amongst those Trump-Biden voters, as in the John McCain Republicans who voted consistently for McCain. They're actual deficit hawks. They believe very much in norms and all this. They seem to love what she's doing here. She's playing directly to them. Now, would she survive a primary challenge today? Probably not. But here's the other question that you're putting to me. Does she even care? Because it surely seems like she doesn't. It really seems like all she cares about is how much money she can make in the private sector when she's out of the Senate. And so if that's your incentive, look, she's playing it exactly right. She'll be able to cash into the tune of millions of dollars. She'll be set. And she doesn't have to worry

about whether Democrats are pissed with her. I mean, her approval rating among Democrats was in the 50s. Yeah, it's low. For a sitting senator, that is really a problem. And for sure, she would be vulnerable to a primary to her left. And you wouldn't even need someone who's like, you know, squad type left. You just have a normal Democrat. She would, that normal Democrat would get a lot of support in a primary, but I'm not sure that she cares.

I think she's looking past the Senate. I think she's looking at these corporations that are sending her tons of money into her campaign bank account. And that may be where her priorities are. And that's what makes this thing so difficult because you have no leverage over a person like that. None whatsoever.

No, it's true. And she's incredibly intransigent. Everybody I've talked to within the process says you basically just can't get anything out of her. And when you put that all together, you're basically staring at a point where the Biden presidency is once again about to be dealt a really big blow. And as much as you want to blame Manchin, Sinema, and them, he is ultimately responsible.

And it's a big screw-up for him. And the American people are beginning to take notice. Let's get to this polling segment. I mean, when we take a look at how the mighty have fallen here with Biden, and particularly this graph that Axios has put together, it is stunning. So you can see that a great deal and a fair amount of trust in Joe Biden's ability to provide accurate COVID-19 information was in the high 50s whenever he took office back in January. It starts to dip a little bit after he takes the oath of office. That's how it always goes. Partisanship begins to kick in. But the gulf between the two is clearly there,

especially back in May. The reason why is that May was a time of a lot of vaccinations, Delta, all of that. Delta begins to plunge. Immediately, his I don't trust numbers and a great deal of fair amount of trust numbers begin to plunge, but he's still ahead. He's still above that 50% mark. But Crystal, after September, right around mid-August and more, it crosses the threshold. It begins to get tied. And today stands at 53% of the public saying not very much, none at all, in Joe Biden's ability to provide accurate COVID-19 information, only 45%. So that actual cross is probably the single most important figure of his entire presidency, even more so than his approval rating. Something that we noticed during the Trump administration, especially during the vote, a lot of people didn't like Trump. He had a very low

approval rating in the 30s. A lot of people still voted for him. Why? Because if you dug deeper, trust in his ability to make the economy stronger. Biden's actually been underwater on that economy number since basically he started out at 50% on the day he swore the oath. Since then, it's been a disaster. It's like mid-40s, sometimes even the 30s. But what was saving Biden, let's be honest, why did Biden get elected? It was because of COVID and his ability to handle COVID. The lower the trust figure goes on that ability in order to convey trustful information, and you don't have the economy thing in the back pocket the way that Trump did, it's going to be really bad. And just to give you guys an example,

latest YouGov poll, Biden has still not recovered from that large slump. Put Ryan Gerduski's tweet up there on the screen. This is just the hard approve, disapprove. Overall is 40-49. So he has a nine-point gap there in his approve, disapproval rating. The important figures are going to be the independent number, where it's 34% approve, 56%. And even amongst people who voted for Biden, it's 81-13. Now, you might say that's good, bad. The Trump figure was almost always in the 90s just because he had such a high level of approval within his own base. I'm also paying quick attention to the Hispanic number there, Crystal, at 41% approve, 43% disapprove. So not having that in a core constituency, which he only won by two-thirds

to one-third last time, and which of course the GOP won at least some margins in, it's really bad. I think you put it all together, especially with the vote. People are asking the question, what are you doing here? You were elected for one reason, COVID. Also, you promised us all the social programs and that you were going to pass it through your legislative genius. That ain't happening. So now what? Here was the core promise of Biden. Here were his strengths. One was just that people liked him. Yes. They liked him. They did trust him. He was an empathetic. They felt like, yeah, they felt like, look, he's not perfect, but he's and he's not always like totally articulate or totally with it even. But I feel like he's a good guy.

I feel like he's going to tell me what's really going on as opposed to Trump, which like is a maniac and you never know what you're going to get with him. He was this sort of steadying, calming force that people did feel a lot of empathy for and just sort of liked on a personal level. So when you see those numbers around just do I, not do I trust you even to be effective or get things done, but I just trust you not to lie to me, to be straight with me, that's a pretty damaging sign. And then, you know, the other piece of his promise was basically through the return to normalcy thing was that I'm going to be a steady hand. You're not going to have chaos in Washington. And yet, what do we see? We see a lot of manifesting competence. We do see, you know, a lot of chaos in Washington and the same sort of brinksmanship and insanity that people were, frankly, tired of. And, you know, some of it is, look, obviously the Republicans are obnoxious, obviously Manchin and Sinema are obnoxious. But as we've been saying, a big part of this does fall to Biden. And I really think when he decided that he wanted to slow down and he wanted to get this bipartisan deal and he wanted to strip that apart from the social spending, that's when things really started to go off the rails.

And that's how we find ourselves now with these cascading crises. The one thing they did manage, it looks like, to do is they are going to pass the continuing resolution on the budget. That's to fund the government. The government is not going to shut down today. So that's one thing. But if we hit the debt ceiling, it might. Congratulations. But, you know, we've got two weeks until the debt ceiling hits. That's right. So you can breathe, you know, for a couple nights here before we're back at the brink once again. Of course, as I said yesterday, they should just mint the coin and be done with the debt ceiling altogether. But on the polling, the only good thing I can say, and we can put this 538 graphic up on the screen. So this is obviously

the average of polls from 538. They've got him today at a 49 percent disapproval and about a 45 percent approval. So still underwater by four points there. The one thing I can say is it's kind of evened out, you know, for a while. And this really started during the Afghanistan withdrawal, which he took a big hit on from the media for a while. He was kind of in free fall there and it was hard to say where things would level out. The one good thing you can say is things have kind of leveled out, but they've leveled out with him significantly underwater. And that's, again, that's not cherry picking. That's in an average of polls where he effectively stands today. And oh, by the way, we should also add in that, as we know from the last election, the polls tend to be skewed in favor of Democrats. So it is very possible that the actual reality picture looks even worse than that average of polls by a few points.

And always take the enthusiasm number in there. So how many people out there are like, yeah, I like Joe Biden. He's doing an all right job. Are you going to go and vote for him in the 2000 or vote to affirm him in 2022? No. A lot of those people are just going to stay home. How many people out there are like, I hate Joe Biden, or I hate what this, or I'm just really pissed off. I thought you were going to fix it. You said you were going to come in. I'm still under lockdown,

or things aren't back to normal, or hey, the gas prices are high, even though they generally don't have anything to do with that. And they're going to go out and they're going to vote. I mean, it's really remarkable. I was out in California recently. I saw gas prices like $5 a gallon. I was like, this is insane. $5 a gallon? And like I've said previously, that pretty much has nothing to do with the president. It has to do with OPEC and it has to do with supply. But I would be remiss if I did not say that what the administration's problem is they are not talking to those types of issues if they're talking at all. They are really just completely MIA. Jen Psaki is probably one of the most unlikable people I've ever seen in my entire life, despite whatever the media wants to tell you. People need to hear from their president.

Yeah, I heard you. Yeah. Biden is the only person on his entire staff, especially the vice president, who has any connection whatsoever with the American people. And he's also the person who speaks the least in terms of what's happening there. I put it all together. I just see them completely spiraling down the drain. Now, look, could he still win? Yeah. I mean, of course. Like Obama also had a very, very tough first year in office, you know, bad poll numbers, all of that. But the lack of energy, vitality, knowing that Trump is in the wing, seeing the energized Republican base, I just see doom, you know, across all fronts. Yeah, I think, look, people feel really pessimistic right now. I mean, that's just the bottom line. They're frustrated, right? We're supposed to be done with COVID. And yet parents are having to deal with my kid was exposed to COVID at school. Now they're back home again. We're still, you know, wearing masks, still having to worry, still having to deal with this thing that we thought we should be done with now. And some of that's Biden's fault. Some of it's not his fault. But that's the reality of where we stand. And then you see this, you know, frustrating debate in Washington that I think, frankly, a lot of people have just tuned out. And it does contribute to this overall sense of a country in permanent decline. Like we can't even do the very basics of avoiding crises and avoiding brinksmanship and passing things like prescription drug reform that have 80 to 90 percent support. And you just look at that and you're like, Jesus Christ, like it's not – it doesn't matter who I put in office. Like, you know, maybe I voted for Trump last time.

I thought he was going to shake things up. That sucked. This time it's like, all right, well, let's put this old guy in charge instead of the other old guy. Maybe that will change things. Maybe he knows how this town actually works. That doesn't seem to be working out. And, you know, I think people just feel incredibly frustrated and pessimistic about the direction of the country. And look, part of that isn't Biden's fault. And part of it is Biden's fault because he has chosen an incredibly tactically stupid way of approaching his presidency. He's chosen to not assertively

be in front of the American people, making the case, inspiring them, calling them to a greater purpose as, you know, one country and as Americans. And so that's, I think, why we find ourselves where he finds himself today. And that is a very ugly place in terms of heading into midterm elections and just in terms of like forgetting about the politics and the horse race part. It's just a depressing state of affairs that it doesn't seem to matter who the American people elect. Change election after change election after change election, and you seem to end up always back in the same exact place. So I think those numbers of his approval rating and really that number around trust to even just provide accurate information, it's pretty damning. Very damning. Hey, so remember how we told you how

awesome premium membership was? Well, here we are again to remind you that becoming a premium member means you don't have to listen to our constant pleas for you to subscribe. So what are you waiting for? Become a premium member today by going to breakingpoints.com, which you can click on in the show notes. You know, let's get to this other segment, which, you know, elites and people who actually face trouble. I was thinking a lot about our show yesterday about how so many people in power escape, you know, escape any accountability while the people who may say something or, you know, at the lowest levels, they're always the ones that face it. And this is the perfect example, which is you guys might remember Lieutenant Colonel Stu

Scheller. He had that viral video, which he criticized both Joe Biden, but really all the military brass for their failures on Afghanistan. Well, let's put this up there on the screen for military.com. Lieutenant Colonel Schiller is now in jail awaiting charges for Article 32 preliminary hearing. Now, here's the thing. According to the own spokesperson of the U.S. Marine Corps, quote, the time, date, and location of the proceedings have not been determined, meaning he is now in jail for an indeterminate amount of time. They even said, quote, there are no specific charges or initiated against the

colonel. Instead, the hearing is to consider whether charges of contempt towards officers and all of that should be recommended to his commander for action. So he is awaiting a preliminary hearing in order to determine whether charges should even be brought against him. And in that time, he is being held in confinement for an indeterminate period of time, which is completely ridiculous. And if you guys don't know what we're talking about, here's a snippet from the video itself of him calling out his superior officers. Let's take a listen. I want to say this very strongly.

I have been fighting for 17 years. I am willing to throw it all away to say to my senior leaders, I demand accountability. on the battlefield let someone down, that service member has always rose to the occasion, done extraordinary things. People are upset because their senior leaders let them down and none of them are raising their hands and accepting accountability or saying, we messed this up. What I'll say is, and from my position, potentially all those people did die in vain if we don't have senior leaders that own up and raise their hand and say, we did not do this well in the end. Without that, we just keep repeating the same mistakes. Here's the thing too, Crystal, Lieutenant Colonel Scheller, I do want to be transparent. He posted a video from an abandoned bus in a second video. It was bizarre, to say the least. That being said,

the Marine Corps says they're confining him for his own safety, saying basically, oh, his mental well-being or whatever is in check, and we have to do all of that. And look, whatever you think of the guy or not, it isn't really about him. He is being held in jail for an indeterminate period of time for calling out his superior officers. And just so people know for what he was calling for, General Miley yesterday in a classified hearing told congressmen that, quote, the military was not to blame. And he blamed the State Department for the botched evacuation in Afghanistan. Zero accountability. Zero accountability for his lies, for the withdrawal, and more. So maybe the lieutenant colonel, even if he's a little crazy,

maybe the crazy guy is way more correct about this entire situation than the general in chief. Well, and it's also a matter of two sets of rules. Again and again, we see the same thing play out. This man, you know, parts of what he said, I probably agree with. Parts of what he said,

I probably don't agree with. That's not really the point. But he's being punished while the people who lied to the American people over decades and who are set to go and get richer than ever if they're not already cashing in,

nothing happens to them. No, exactly. Nothing happens to them. Even with the very specific example that we've tracked here very closely of that drone strike that murdered an entire Afghan family and their little babies and the dad who was an aid worker working for an American nonprofit. Is there going to be any account of is anybody going to be in the brig for that one? No, they've already said absolutely not. No accountability. No one's going to be punished. We're just going to move on. Oops. At least we admitted our mistakes. Aren't you happy? Aren't you proud of us? That's been the story of the war in Afghanistan, the war in Iraq.

It's been the story of America, frankly. I mean, this is what we keep on tracking. The people who commit the crimes, the elites who commit the crimes, they never face justice. In fact, they become richer and more famous and more esteemed than ever. You can see them on primetime on any one of the cable news networks. And the people who are the whistleblowers who dare to speak out and say, hey, you know, how about some accountability here? They're the ones that get the book thrown at them. And if you don't believe me, hey, why don't you, you know, we're going to talk to Steven Donziger about what that looks like. Look at what's

being done to Julian Assange. Look at what's been done to Edward Snowden. Look at what they tried to do to Glenn Greenwald. Every single time you have someone who dares to say, how about accountability? They will build the jail on top of you for daring to say those words. And so, look, I do want to throw in, maybe there's something going on here we don't know about. The second video was a little bit less coherent, I would say, than the first video. Clearly, this man has been through a lot, just like so many of our servicemen and women have been put through the ringer with, you know, these elites in the military pretending like this is all costless and that there's no burden placed on our men and women. But to me, this goes to the core of this failure of any kind of accountability for elites. And that is a deep problem in this society. And you talk about eroding our democracy, eroding the fabric of the nation.

Like, how can you believe in a place where there's no accountability at the top, where there's never any instance of justice for the people who are running this place. And to that point, I mean, we have General Miley asked specifically about that drone strike under oath. And do you think he takes responsibility? Go ahead and take a listen. And General Miley, on September 1st, three days later, you described it as a righteous strike. People that were not supposed to be killed were killed and you described it as a righteous strike. Yeah, if you go back and look at the full quote what i said was we followed the procedures i had every reason to believe that um that we followed our procedures at that point in time

we knew that there were civilians killed we knew there were non-combatants and there was uh collateral yes you said were others killed yes who were they we don't know we're trying to sort through all that right that's exactly what I said. That's right. Because I believed. Kill people we should know. I believe that the target that we were aiming at. I believe the target we were aiming at was. Okay, I have three more minutes.

Is he a general or a lawyer? What is he? Yeah. Oh, well, what I actually said. No, you said it was a righteous strike. You said it was righteous. Okay, so did you lie or do you not know? Would you have an apology? Oh, you're not going to get fired. Of course it was righteous. Okay, so did you lie or do you not know? Would you have an apology?

Oh, you're not going to get fired. Of course not, right? Let alone be thrown in the brig. You had no role in that. Oh, are you going to go and do an investigation into how this happened? Oh, no, that's not going to happen at all. We already know that because the person who works for him, General McKenzie, U.S. Central Command, has already come out and said, yeah, it was a mistake. Didn't work.

But nobody's going to face any consequences. Lieutenant Colonel Schiller, yeah, he's in jail. Oh, are there any charges against him? No. Did he mistakenly kill anybody in a drone strike? No. Did he lie to the American people about Afghanistan for 20 years? No.

Oh, he's in jail for an indeterminate period of time. Yeah. This is the problem here. I mean, we covered the extensive amount of lies that these guys told in their testimony before the Senate. And I was repulsed by it for two reasons. Number one, that they just feel so comfortable lying under oath repeatedly. And two is the media just laps it up. They're like, oh, General McKenzie says this. President Biden, what's your response?

Once again, who do we elect here? Do we elect the general or do we elect the president? And that's the issue. These guys have so much power. They know exactly how to wire the media. The media and many partisan actors are also willing to jump on whomever says what and use it for whatever is convenient in the moment. I mean, these people are some of the most conniving and ruthless in all of Washington. And as you pointed out yesterday, they're not good at fighting wars. They're not good at what they're supposed to do. But playing the game here, making themselves rich, making themselves make sure that they escape zero accountability. Oh, they're real good at that. Yeah. They're master fighters, warriors on that front. Finding those sources of political power, being able to cash in after the fact.

They're very, very good at that. But I think anyone who looks at this and thinks about a system where on the one hand you have an Afghan family murdered and no accountability. And on the other hand, you have a Marine officer who spoke out. I know he, I'm sure he knew that there would be likely consequences for that. And he's in jail with no charges for an indeterminate amount of time. Somebody tell me that's fair.

Somebody explain to me how that's fair. There you go. We wanted to bring you an update on the Virginia governor's race, which is coming to a close here shortly. Actually, Glenn Youngkin and Terry McAuliffe had their final debate this week. This race, just to remind you guys,

the reason why this matters, first of all, it's my home state, so it's always very important. But more importantly, the gubernatorial race in Virginia, it happens in these off years, and it gives you a sense of where is the national mood. It has been a pretty reliable bellwether of what is to come in future elections. So I've seen

a little bit in the media of people saying, well, people may take lessons from this, but they really shouldn't. Well, if you look at history, actually this race is a pretty decent predictor of trends. And as of today, it is a lot more, it's a lot closer than Democrats want it to be and for them to be comfortable. So as I mentioned, Youngkin and McAuliffe had a fairly feisty debate together here this week. I watched it because I hate myself, but I love you. And so I wanted to be able to convey to you what happened without you having to actually watch it. However, I did want to show you one of the more cringe parts that says a lot about the constituents that both of these men are playing to. They're both going after this sort of like Northern Virginia suburban and exurban voter. Take a listen to how Terry McAuliffe

sought to appeal to that group of people. ...economy from a Republican governor that had a gigantic deficit. And I left a huge surplus when I left office. And that's the reason why so many Republicans have endorsed me. Over two dozen prominent Republicans. Tonight, I have the leading conservative in America here, Bill Kristol, who has endorsed my campaign for governor. I have delegate Dave Ramadan, one of the most conservative. The leading conservative in America, Bill Kristol. He also bragged about having the support of like a George W. Bush finance chair or something like that. The whole thing is very cringe. You guys know, if you've watched any of my commentary on Virginia, Virginia is like a cautionary tale for the Democratic Party leaning into this suburban liberal vote.

Because, yeah, it's been very successful at moving Virginia into the Democratic column. Right now, all of their elected officials are Democrats. The House and the Senate in the state are Democratic. But you end up, you know, bragging about your support from Bill Kristol. And then not only that, there was a whole part of this debate where they were jockeying to say who was less likely to overturn right to work, which, of course, anti-union legislation. So a lot of very—McAuliffe was trashing the size of the reconciliation deal, a lot of very cringe posturing for this suburban and exurban population from both of them. I think we actually have McAuliffe's comments we can throw up there on the screen about the reconciliation bill, just to give

you another sense, says the $3.5 trillion reconciliation price tag is too high. Both of them angling for this liberal voter that tends to be socially liberal and fiscally conservative. Youngkin trying to conceal some of his comments on abortion, certainly trying to distance himself from Donald Trump, McAuliffe trying to tie him to Trump. And that's effectively what's going on in this race right now. 100%. And beneath all of that, guess who's getting real skittish here? Let's put this up there from Politico. People inside the White House are getting very afraid.

White House sweats over McAuliffe. And increasingly, as you say, they can deny all they want about how this isn't a bellwether. It's obviously a bellwether. Predicted the Tea Party. It's predicted a lot. And just watching the state go from purple to blue has been pretty instructive if you want to look at the rest of the country and national voting patterns. So just over a month before Election Day, the DNC is now looking to spend $5 million extra dollars in addition to what they'd already budgeted for Virginia, specifically because they say a loss to Glenn Youngkin in an off-cycle governor's race would be a domino effect, with Democrats panicking, thinking that it is 2009 all over again when they lost that gubernatorial race,

and it spelled doom for the state houses and for the Tea Party wave of 2010. And that is exactly what seems to be going on here. I mean, look, as we have said, looking at the polls is incredibly difficult. Sometimes they're off, sometimes they're on. In general, I would say, with Trump and with COVID and all of that, I'm going to bet on the off. And when they of that, I'm going to bet on the off. And when they're off, I'm going to bet on underestimating Republican support. So right now, it seems that Terry McAuliffe has some sort of a lead, but Glenn Youngkin always within that slight margin of error. You pointed this. We have a Roanoke College poll. Let's put it up there on the screen, which shows McAuliffe with a seven-point lead over Glenn

Youngkin, but critically, Crystal, 9% actually undecided in the race, which is relatively high in a partisan election like this one. Now, if you think about that, his approval rating, as in his favorability rating, is a 50%. Terry McAuliffe. He has that support. He has the ability to not actually rise that much higher because he's such a known quantity. Whereas Youngkin has 20% of people who just have no opinion about him whatsoever. So I think he's still got a lot more malleability to him. The entire election is going to be, is he Trumpy or not? I think that's the entire thing that it's going to fold on. I think you're right. And so on the one hand, he's undefined. That gives him potential if he defines himself in a positive way that Virginians, you know, this exurban and suburban population

really resonates with. On the other hand, there's a lot of room here for the Democrats to come in and define him as like, you're basically electing Donald Trump here and let me show you his worst comments and let me show you the picture of him hugging Trump or whatever they have that they can drop on this guy. The Roanoke College poll you just showed there, that's been one of the better poll results for McAuliffe recently. A lot of the other polls that have come out have shown the race much, much closer. And all of them have consistently shown one big problem for Democrats, which is lack of enthusiasm. Republicans are much more energized to vote in this race than Democrats are. Now, what I will say is, on the one hand, we saw a similar dynamic in California. Democrats were not excited. They were freaking out. You know, Gavin Newsom was very worried that Democrats were going to show up to keep him in office.

And at the end, he was able to effectively define Larry Elder and freak people out. And they showed up at the polls, and he did very well and outperformed the polls, which is something unusual that we don't normally see for Democrats. So it's a possibility that that happens. On the other hand, Larry Elder was much more inflammatory and much more divisive and much more outspoken. And you had a many, many years of him being a conservative talk radio host where you could pick from any number of sort of outrageous fringe comments, especially with regards to the California public. Glenn Youngkin is a much better stylistic fit for Virginia. He is this, you know, private equity dude.

He comes off as a mild-mannered businessman, which not my cup of tea. Neither is Terry McCullough for that regard. They're kind of similar in that way. Actually, they present in a similar way. But for these suburban voters, he does not feel like he's scary. Yeah. He feels like mild-mannered businessman dude. He played one of his ads.

And so that, I think, is why he's been hanging in here and making this race very close. And to show you how close the race is, Cook Political Report, which is kind of the gold standard in rating these races, and they get a lot right in terms of how races ultimately fall, they recently moved this race from Leans Dem to Tossup. So you can see here, Cook Political Report shifts Virginia governor's race to Tossup. And they cite a number of polls here that have Glenn Youngkin either leading or very close. There's also been a consistent theme with all of the polls that have come out where when you look at registered voters, Terry McAuliffe tends to do a little better. And when you look at likely voters, he tends to do a little bit worse. Again, that speaks to that enthusiasm issue. So big question for Democrats. Without Donald Trump actually on the ballot, can they freak their voters out enough to get them to show up for someone who is as uninspiring as Terry McAuliffe ultimately is?

And that is the question this race turns on ultimately. That's the ultimate question. I guess if I was a betting person, look, I think we were trying to manage both sides of the expectations. On the one hand, we have the Gavin Newsom thing. So we know it works real well. Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, make it as Trumpy as possible. But, you know, Glenn Youngkin is not Larry Elder, so it's much harder to define him. And on the other hand, we've got the enthusiasm gap. We know that Republicans are a lot more mobilized right now. Biden's approval rating is a disaster across the country. And also specifically within that population of those suburban voters, they never really liked Joe. They just hated Trump.

So it all turns on which of the factors is going to be the most motivating. Glenn Youngkin out there talking about prices in the grocery store, gas prices, and really, he's just kind of a civil guy. Like, he doesn't seem particularly offensive, which, you know, that's kind of exactly what you need in order to win over these kind of John McCain-type voters, now that I keep thinking about it. So, I'm really of two minds here, Crystal. I don't know which way it's going to turn. I think the national mood is everything. That's what we know. We know that everything, all politics is national now. Even, you know, running for dog catcher or whatever.

You better have a position on Trump and most people are going to vote based upon what you think about it. And I would say that the national mood right now, probably trending in Youngkin's favor. Probably. Given the reconciliation, given COVID, all of that.

In general, that might be the case. In Virginia, I don't think that's the case. Maybe you're right. And so you could see very clearly in this debate, Terry McAuliffe wants to nationalize the race. Glenn Youngkin wants to make it about the specifics of me versus Terry McAuliffe. And so the fact that politics tends to, in the end, be nationalized, I actually think cuts in favor of Terry McAuliffe because,

look at this, Biden didn't win Virginia by a little bit. He won it by like 10 points. You know, I mean, this is a state that he did quite well in. There's very little interest outside of the Republican base in this, like, stop the steal insanity. Youngkin has said enough on, quote unquote, election integrity to make himself vulnerable on that front. So if I had to guess, I would say ultimately these suburban voters are freaked out enough by his associations with Trump to ultimately show up at the polls. We're also talking about a set of voters that's very reliable in terms of ultimately coming out to vote, whether they're excited or not. That would be where I would place my bets today. But the fact that it's so uncertain and that Democrats are nervous about it to this extent is telling in and of itself. I think that's exactly right. Okay, let's get to YouTube. This is going to do us no favors with the YouTube gods,

so I usually save this to the end. But just so you guys know, we've been having demonetization hell, and this is part of it, which is that the censorship regime, which is essentially beginning to be put into place under the guise of COVID, is extraordinarily troubling. And I'll say at the top, I don't have a lot of sympathy for some will be removing altogether the channels, videos, and more aggressively, not just about the COVID vaccine, but against all vaccines generally. That includes people like Robert Kennedy Jr., many other prominent. They say that they've traced the source of a lot of anti-vax content towards these particular creators. But the language through which they justify this policy crystal is always what we have to look at. Under what guise are you saying that this has to be true? Michael Tracy actually pointed this out quite well. Let's put

this on the screen. So what Tracy points to, and you go within the YouTube announcement, is that they say, as with our COVID guidelines, we consulted with local and international health organizations and experts in developing these policies. Our guidance on vaccine side effects maps to public vaccine resources provided by health authorities backed by medical consensus. So the important point here is that they are pointing to, quote, medical consensus as the burden through which they are going to go and then remove content. Not just remove content, but effectively banish you from their platform. Do I cry for Robert Kennedy Jr., Robert RFK Jr.? No. I think he's one of the most pernicious actors in the entire space,

and I know all the anti-vaxxers will hate me for it. But I don't really care. It's not about him specifically. I'm not speaking out on behalf of him. I'm pointing to the fact that it was medical consensus not that long ago in this country that the lab leak hypothesis was a complete farce and completely without merit. And under this guise, lab leak videos, many of which I have done here, many of which I did at Rising, could be removed. They could be removed under a medical consensus.

Same thing whenever it comes to masks back in February of 2020. The medical consensus at the time with the experts said that masks don't work. And then they changed their mind. That's okay. It happens. You know, it's all good. But remember, the standards that we enforce here and under the guise and the language of all of that, it matters a lot.

And so, yes, I know this will definitely not help us in our goal and making sure that this show has as big a reach as possible, but you can't help but look at this and not be afraid under the guise of which they're trying to enforce this, given the fact that, once again, you can have no sympathy for those people who are impacted. Look at the policy itself and say, this is a big problem. This is a very significant escalation because what you're seeing with these anti-vax activists, as with how they're described, they're not just taking down the content that's

problematic. They're saying you're off the platform altogether. That's a significant escalation here. And I think what you're pointing to is two things. Number one, you trust YouTube to be the arbiters of science and medicine and fact, because I certainly don't. Not only, you know, would I not trust any sort of single person or entity to serve as the gatekeeper of truth and fiction, but YouTube is a capitalistic enterprise with their own interests at stake. And you don't think that they're going to, you know, lean into what they see as in their political and more important profit-making interests? Of course they are. Of course they are. So we're not talking about like theymaking interest? Of course they are. Of course they are.

So we're not talking about like they're a disinterested party here. Of course they're an interested party. And so that inserts bias into the process from the start. Second of all, as you're pointing to, sometimes there's a clear medical consensus and sometimes there's not. Sometimes there's a debate. Sometimes there's an initial consensus that turns out to be wrong. On math, a great example. Lab leak, another great example. Okay? And sometimes those things are sort of intentionally fueled, as was with lab leak, to cover the tracks of people who may have been complicit. And sometimes it's just genuinely, it looked like the research was heading in this direction. This is what we thought. We've got new research in. It's better. Here's where we are now. I'll give you a perfect example that's playing out right now. And I know you guys can relate to this because COVID is still relatively new. There's still a lot of question marks about what are, in fact, the best mitigation strategies, what works in public settings, what works in school

settings. And we still don't have the answers to a lot of those questions. So even on something like mask wearing in schools and whether that is effective at stopping the spread, there are some studies that say yes, and there are some studies that say it's not really that effective. There is no medical consensus today. Another perfect example that we have covered closely and that has been playing out in the public sphere. Booster shots. Are booster shots necessary? Are they necessary for the general population? Are they necessary for the elderly population? Are they necessary for really no one? There's a lot of conflicting information there. There was data that came out of Israel that say, hey, this was useful for elderly people, at least for some period of time. There was a group of scientists who came out and said, you know, for the general population, this is really not necessary. And then

you have some within the Biden administration who said, look, I think everybody may as well go get and get the booster shot. There is no set medical consensus on booster shots today. So YouTube, how are you going to deal with that? You know, and this is not an uncommon thing. So they put this language like it's going to be really cut and dry. And in certain extreme examples, like if you're just saying vaccines don't work, obviously there's a medical consensus against that notion. But there are a lot more very borderline cases. And then what this all ends up doing is it's not really going to lead to more accurate information being put out. What it means is they're going to crush independent creators. I mean, if you're a new channel starting out today and you don't already have a following,

it is so much harder. It's virtually impossible to get going and build the audience that was possible, you know, just a few years ago and certainly 10 years ago. It's just not the same open platform that it used to be. They explicitly say that they want to recommend now what they call trusted news sources. That means places like CNN and The New York Times, etc., that we know have been caught in plenty of lies and misinformation and medical inaccuracies, but they don't care when it's their quote-unquote trusted news sources. Then it's okay.

So it really does make it much more difficult for independent voices and creators to be able to break through, build an audience, build a platform, and provide information to the public, which is what YouTube was supposed to be all about. I mean, look at us. We cover the news, and I keep talking about this, but I will not stop until I see some sort of fix. Sometimes the news is bad. Yesterday, we covered R. Kelly, and it was really gross. And that segment was demonetized, not suitable for advertisers, even after a human review. When we covered 9-11, those segments were demonetized. Whenever we cover Jeffrey Epstein, those segments are demonetized. Whenever, I could go on and on. Any controversial subject, vaccines now, anything on vaccines, absolute demonetization.

Now, if you were us of a couple of years ago, what do you do? We are lucky. We have our premium subscribers. We know we can cover whatever we want. And if a segment gets demonetized, so be it. Some people out there, they're not like that. They have to rely on the ad dollars in order to float themselves. We kind of snuck through under the radar at the Hill because we had this corporate brand over us. So we were treated differently. I mean, there's no doubt we see it like the way that we were treated there versus now that we're independent, it's definitely a different world. So we have the direct comparison there. And I do think that's part of how we were able to find success and ultimately break through. But if you're just getting started and you're, you know, you have something to say and you have something

to contribute, forget about it. It's very, very difficult on YouTube. And again, that's what the platform was supposed to be all about from the beginning. And then the other piece of this is, of course, some of the worst actors are never satisfied. It's never enough for them that there's more censorship. We can throw this tweet up on the screen of Andy Slavitt, who says, okay, YouTube eliminated misinformation on vaccines. Facebook, you're a move. So it's never enough. They always want more and more and more censorship, which is just, you know, it's not the direction that you want to go in in a free society. I'll just say that. And it's kind of giving up on believing that you can ultimately win the debate.

Well, it matters because Andy Slavitt was working at the White House as of like a couple of weeks ago as their COVID response director. And he was one of the people inside the White House who, if you guys remember when they were pushing Jen Psaki to come out there, call Facebook out and say, Facebook, you need to do exactly what we tell you to do. And not only that, if you're banned from one platform, you should be banned from all platforms. Do you remember that? That's the official policy of the United States government. And now they are now pushing that whenever it comes to YouTube. And like I said, do I have sympathy for the individual actors who were affected by this particular policy? No, I don't. I think they should rot in hell, specifically RFK Jr. But that doesn't mean

that the policy itself cannot be applied broadly in these edge cases, which are going to stifle debate. And look, moderation at this scale is incredibly difficult. And that is why whenever it starts to become public, we all need to come up with a set of rules which we can agree on, and that this is enforced fairly, and this is not. Whether it should be involved with government, Congress, whatever, that's all for debate. But that actually is a debate that we really need to have in this country. Indeed.

Wow, you guys must really like listening to our voices. While I know this is annoying, instead of making you listen to a Viagra commercial, when you're done, check out the other podcast I do with Marshall Kosloff called The Realignment. We talk a lot about the deeper issues that are changing, realigning in American society. You always need more Crystal and Sagar

in your daily lives. Take care, guys. Sagar, what are you looking at today? Creating this show, this podcast, with Crystal and seeing its wild success has been one of the greatest accomplishments of my life. And when I sit after the show and I see the millions of people

that we're reaching on various platforms, or I see your messages, or we meet you guys on the street, I feel alive knowing that there are actually a lot of people out there who want to watch the news and afterwards not want to kill your neighbor or gouge out your own eyes. But beyond the personal achievement, I also sometimes think about it this way. What we have built here together, you and us, is I really mean the audience who backed us all the way. It's something that people and media have been trying to do for a long time.

Billions of dollars in venture capital have been thrown at companies who promised to be news for millennials. BuzzFeed, Mike.com, remember AM2DM on Twitter, all those cringy Facebook watch shows just a few years ago? They were all fake astroturfed efforts at basically repackaging mainstream BS news and then trying to sell it to you as one of your own. Today, we've actually got a great view into just how colossally stupid, naive, and ultimately weak the biggest players in the corporate media game are. It all starts with a column from the great

Ben Smith of the New York Times. Ironically enough, he blew the lid off a company called Ozzy. Ozzy, Ozzy, I don't know how to pronounce it. Don't much care. Smith revealed that in February of 2021, Ozzy Media was in final stages to raise $40 million from Goldman Sachs. Now, during the fundraising call, they had a strange interaction with someone who purported to be an executive at YouTube. They felt really strangely about it, so they contacted that person they thought they had just met with. They discovered he had no idea what they were talking

about. The voice on the other end of the phone that they thought was a YouTube executive was not that at all. It was the C-E-C-O-O of Ozy Media trying to trick them. One of the most brazen, possibly illegal things I've ever heard. But really it revealed the tip of the iceberg of such an obviously fake media company, which seduced some of the top levels of the entire media business. Smith reveals that OZ, founded by the aforementioned CEO named Samir Rao, COO and CEO Carlos Watson, formerly of Goldman Sachs and Mike.com, it's a total fakery. They sold the idea of a millennial media company in 2013.

They raised their initial millions of dollars from Laureen Powell Jobs, the widow of Steve Jobs, Silicon Valley capitalist Ron Conway, as well as David Drummond. He was the chief legal officer of Google. Huge heavy hitters in this space. In 2014, they even raised money from Axel Springer. That's a huge media conglomerate in Germany that just bought Politico for a billion dollars. They raised $35 million from Mark Lazzari. He's a hedge fund manager. He's a co-owner of the Milwaukee Bucks. They raised money from the Ford Foundation, who wanted to support a black-owned media company, with a total valuation in April of 2020

at $159 million, based on $89 million raised. Think about that. It's actually pretty impressive, right? Take a look at the numbers, though, that these so-called sophisticated media investors believed. In 2019, OZ claimed it had 50 million monthly unique users. Just to give you an idea, if that were true, it would be one of the most successful digital media click-based companies ever, like Vox, Vice, or Craigslist. But as Ben points out, if you take a look at their com score data, they were only getting 230,000 in June and 479,000 in July. That is half of what we get here on Breaking Points in a single day whenever we have a show.

Or look at this. They claim they had 20 million subscribers to their email newsletters. If that were true, it would be the most successful email news business on planet Earth. But my all-time favorite is the terrain I know very well, YouTube, where OZ has marketed itself as a, quote, fastest growing talk show in YouTube history. Well, as Crystal has pointed out here, they have videos like this, where you have 90K views, but only 12 likes and a single comment. They have videos with a million views, but fewer than 100 comments. Mitch Ween's what? We all know watching this what that means. It's all a fugazi. It's completely fake. And yet the most sophisticated

investors bought it to the tune of $90 million. Even better, all of the so-called elites in media bought it too. PBS gave them a show. They had an interview show with Hulu. They had a show on the Oprah Winfrey Network that even won an Emmy in the news discussion and analysis section. They hired star reporters like BBC's Katie Kaye, who was often on Morning Joe. Freaking NPR put the CEO of O.Z. Carlos Watson on their board of directors. And Stephen Colbert once introduced him on his show as a, quote, media mogul. The best part is even after all of this was revealed to the Ford Foundation, one of the largest progressive nonprofits in America,

they said they still believe in OZ because, quote, in an increasingly diverse world, it's no coincidence a company with co-founders of black and Indian descent would be so successful. Amazing. Identity politics is so powerful to these people. Even if you trick them when taking their own money, they'll still defend you in the pages of the New York Times.

Incredible. And now Ozy claims that the New York Times piece was a hit job. They've placed their COO, who faked being a YouTube executive, on actual leave this time. But the lesson is this. The most sophisticated people in media, both the executives and the investors, they're complete idiots who fell for this nonsense. That's great news for us. media, both the executives and the investors, they're complete idiots who fell for this nonsense.

That's great news for us because they are willing to spend all their money, all their resources, just for the promise that somebody somewhere can propagandize to you. But here's what they don't realize, and we do. The only way to reach young people is to expose the lies, the failure of the elite class that already manufactures the current iteration of news. No amount of money spent on a vibey website or a vibey video can dupe actual people into what they are selling. CNN is trying desperately to reach millennials with a new streaming network called CNN+. NBC News is launching shows on Peacock because they see nearly 22% of Americans get their news via streaming right here on YouTube. But what they'll never understand is that people turn here to YouTube and elsewhere to other emerging creators specifically to get away from the garbage that those people have been peddling.

Their idiocy and noxiousness is to our benefit. It shows us that as powerful as mainstream media has a hold on the country and the boomer mind, that in the end, the future is actually right here, folks. Whatever comes next can only come from the outside. And I really can't wait to see that reality. It's pretty amazing, Crystal. I love this story. They spent nine... One more thing, I promise.

Just wanted to make sure you knew about my podcast with Kyle Kalinsky. It's called Crystal, Kyle and Friends, where we do long form interviews with people like Noam Chomsky, Cornel West and Glenn Greenwald. You can listen on any podcast platform or you can subscribe over on Substack to get the video a day early. We're going to stop bugging you now. Enjoy. Crystal, what are you taking a look at? Well, I got another media story for you, folks. What the hell is going on over at The View? So last week, the ladies of The View, they were

hyping a big interview with Vice President Kamala Harris. And indeed, as they say in the biz, it was a huge get. Kamala just doesn't give a lot of interviews. And when she doesn't, they don't typically go all that well. There's plenty to press her on, in particular, the treatment of Haitians at the border, given that by her own previous definition, the Biden administration's actions have been unconstitutional. Immigration is also supposed to be her main portfolio item. After all, I know you'll be shocked to learn I'm not a huge consumer of The View, but I was planning on checking out that interview after the fact to see if anything interesting happened. And indeed, something very interesting did happen.

Shortly before the vice president's interview was set to begin, this little scene unfolded on set. Two of you to step off for a second. Okay. And we're gonna bring you back later. Have to leave. Yes. And we'll tell you why. More information later, it's a tease. We'll tell you why in a couple of minutes. So shall I introduce the vice president? Yes. Okay, so vice president. No. Okay, shall we dance? Let's do a tap dance. Since this is going to be a major news story any minute now. Yeah. What happened is that Sonny and Anna both apparently tested positive for COVID.

No matter how hard we try, these things happen. They probably have a breakthrough case and they'll be okay, I'm sure, because they're both vaccinated up the wazoo, you know, a lot of vaccines. So halfway through the show, Sonny Hostin and Anna Navarro are informed they've tested positive for COVID. Joy and that other lady are then left scrambling for something to do while the crew backstage gets Vice President Harris set for a remote interview. That interview with the Vice President ultimately lasts like eight minutes, involves about three actual questions, and is generally a pointless waste of time, a lot less compelling than the chaos and drama which had already unfolded. I have a lot of questions here. Chief among them, why in the world are you getting

back COVID results in the middle of a live show? Surely, with an interview of this level and knowing how paranoid both the U team and certainly the White House are about COVID exposures, you must have gotten this test done with ample time to make sure your hosts and everyone else who would be around the vice president were pandemic-free. Then things got even stranger. It turns out, Sonny and Anna, they didn't in fact even have COVID. After the initial positive result and their dramatic mid-show departure, they were given multiple additional tests that all found them to be COVID negative. So by chance, somehow, both received false positives in the middle of a live show.

And not just any false positives. The White House required the host be administered PCR tests. That's the gold standard in COVID detection. I did a little research on this, dear viewers, and it turns out that false positives and PCR tests are basically not a thing. Now, the PCR tests are very sensitive. They can detect trace amounts of the virus at the very beginning or very tail end of illness, even registering small amounts of dead virus. But if you got a positive result, you had some COVID in your system. So we're being told that not just one, but two hosts received stunningly rare false positives and were taken out of commission just long enough to create a lot of drama and tank the VP interview. What an

incredible series of coincidences. On Monday, the show's executive producer came on purportedly to explain what happened, but didn't actually explain anything at all. Even worse, it turned out not to be true later on. Well, that's better if it was true, but not that it was. Yeah, it was that there was false positives. That it was false positives. Yes, that it was false positives. So it was unfortunate that mistakes were made, but I can confidently say that we have a very vigorous safety protocols that everyone is regularly tested.

And I'm just so relieved that you guys are healthy, that everyone is healthy, and nobody was ever in danger. Mistakes were made. by who? What were the mistakes? Doesn't say. Now, the last part of the story is reported yesterday by Oliver Darcy at CNN is that reportedly the vice president's office has not been able to get any answers out of them either. According to Darcy, the view had given an all clear to the White House on Thursday night before the interview, indicating that all of the host's PCR tests had come back negative. So the vice president's team was allegedly very confused and taken aback when

suddenly mid-show these positive COVID tests suddenly emerged. Crazy. Darcy writes that, according to a person familiar with the matter, the view has not been forthcoming with the vice president's office, leaving Harris's staff deeply concerned about what actually happened. Look guys, I know this is not the most important story in the world, but this whole thing does not add up. Some piece of the puzzle is being hidden here. One more incident to add to the list where we are clearly not getting the full story from our supposed truth-tellers. And look, Kamala Harris is vice president, and she certainly believes she might be the nation's next president. The press has precious

little access to her. I want to know why one of the few opportunities to ask her some questions got so incredibly bungled and shortchanged by an incredible cascading series of coincidences. But isn't it nice how well this worked out for all the players involved? The view got some dramatic programming fueling interest, certainly fueling ratings. The vice president got to technically do a big interview on a challenging week for the administration, but it only lasted eight minutes. The questions were easy with no time for follow-up, and the substance of our interview was utterly drowned out by the bizarre chaos that played out instead. A cynical person might even say that this could not have possibly worked out better for the view and for the vice president if they had planned it.

So what do you think, Sagar? What do you think happened? 100% convinced it's a false. All right, we have a really important guest that I wanted to make sure that we spoke with today. If you've been following our reporting here and our interviews here, Steven Donziger has been just aggressively prosecuted and persecuted by Chevron.

He won a gigantic historic settlement against that oil company for their poisoning of indigenous people. He is now facing sentencing in his criminal conviction for contempt of court. He was found guilty. It's a misdemeanor charge. It should be nothing. He also, look, to my reading of the facts, isn't even guilty of contempt of court. The whole situation is completely insane. He's been held in home confinement for over two years now for the tiniest of alleged infractions. So he's facing sentencing tomorrow. Here's Steven Donziger.

Steven, so great to see you. So great to have you this morning. Thanks for having me. Can you just give us an update on how you're doing, number one, and what you're expecting to happen tomorrow? Sure. Well, today is my 786th day in home detention with an ankle brace. I live in a two-bedroom apartment in Manhattan. And I helped one of the lawyers who helped indigenous peoples in Ecuador win a $9.5 billion judgment against Chevron. The company has launched a massive retaliation

campaign against me, which included a demand that I turn over my computer and cell phone to Chevron, which is unheard of, and turn over my entire confidential case file. I appealed the order. And while it was on appeal, a US judge locked me up, claiming I was in contempt of court. It's now been over two years. I was tried in a misdemeanor case without a jury while I was on home detention. The judge, who's a member of the Federalist Society with Chevron funds, found me guilty of misdemeanor contempt of court. I contest that. I don't think I'm guilty in the least.

But she's going to sentence me tomorrow here in federal court in Manhattan, and she can put me into prison for up to six months. I hope it doesn't happen. We're asking for her to release me with time served because the longest sentence given any lawyer in U.S. history in New York since the federal court was founded in 1789 is 90 days of home confinement. And I've been here now, as I said, 787 days. So, you know, we're hoping she'll do the right thing. We're going in in good faith and we're going to ask her to release me. So 787 days in your house, and now you're facing up to six months

in a federal prison, all for a contempt of court charge. And here's the thing I don't really understand, Stephen. You haven't faced a jury at any time in this. At no point have the facts of your case been actually presented to people. How does this happen? How does this work? Well, I think there's a lot of things happening to me that normally would not happen and should not happen according to our laws and our constitution. Among them, I believe I do have a right to a jury. I mean, I was first sued by Chevron for fraud in an underlying racketeering case, civil racketeering case, after the U.S. attorney rejected it and refused to prosecute me. It was based on false evidence from a paid Chevron witness that I supposedly bribed the judge in Ecuador. There was no evidence

that that happened. The witness later ended up lying. But the judge, Lewis Kaplan, who's a former tobacco industry lawyer, convicted me without a jury in a civil case of trying to defraud Chevron. He then imposed millions of dollars of fines on me, basically bankrupted me. Chevron cleaned out my bank account, so I'm dependent on my wife and my defense fund to survive at this point.

And he then appointed this other judge, a friend of his, Preska, who's a member of the Federalist Society, to try my criminal contempt case. And she locked me up pretrial. That's never happened to a person in U.S. history on a federal misdemeanor charge, someone with no criminal record like me. There's a lot of irregular things. which, as you know, is required in a criminal case in the United States, by saying she would not sentence me to more than six months in prison, which makes it a Class B misdemeanor, which literally is the most minor possible offense in the federal criminal code.

So she avoided a jury, you know, and I think that's not right given that I'm facing prison. But, you know, Chevron kind of tricked up the system here. And the other notable feature that is just shocking to me is Judge Kaplan, when he charged you with criminal contempt, his charges were rejected by the SDMI, the U.S. attorney here in Manhattan. He then appointed a private law firm to prosecute me, Seward and Kissel. And it turns out this law firm has Chevron as a client. So essentially, I'm being prosecuted by Chevron. And this is scary. This is bigger than me, because this is basically the first corporate prosecution in US history. And people need to

pay attention because I think this is the playbook for the fossil fuel industry to go after lawyers and activists who are successful in their advocacy and holding these big polluters accountable. You know, it's to prosecute you directly if they cannot convince the normal federal prosecutor to take up the case. And, you know, it can happen through these contempt charges where judges can appoint private prosecutors, but you're not supposed to appoint someone who's conflicted or someone who has an interest in the outcome.

So this is extraordinary. So when you ask about a jury, you know, I feel like my rights have been denied. Just this week, by the way, the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention issued an extraordinary ruling basically demanding the U.S. government release me immediately and pay me compensation because of this arbitrary deprivation of my liberty. So people are paying attention. We have 68 Nobel laureates who've demanded my release. Now these five international jurors from the United Nations, you know, this has, I think, become an embarrassment to the United States of America for our federal judiciary. It's wrong on so many levels. And I'm demanding that Judge Prescott release me tomorrow and allow

me to take off my ankle bracelet for the first time in, you know, two years and two months. Has there been any response from U.S. authorities to the U.N. ruling? It's extraordinary you ask. You know, basically, there's been no response and there's really been no engagement. I mean, the ruling has been transmitted to the United States government through the State Department. But, you know, I think I said this on an earlier interview with you guys. I mean, Joe Biden needs to step up. I mean, you can't, you know, do good things on the climate issue while human rights lawyers who deal with polluters are being locked up in your own country. So the U.S. government has not responded. By the way, this is dangerous because

under the Trump administration, there was virtually no engagement at all with international legal bodies. Joe Biden came into office saying he was going to fix that and engage on human rights issues. And here's a major human rights issue on U.S. soil. And so far, the Department of Justice and the State Department, as far as we can tell, have ignored this decision, which, by the way, legally obligates the United States. I mean, this is based on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights. These are international human rights treaties signed by the United States, and their provisions have the effect of binding domestic law in the United States. So you can't just say, oh, this is some

international. This is based on U.S. domestic law, based on these human rights treaties. So our view is they're obligated to release me, and they're also obligated to compensate me monetarily for the deprivation of my liberty, the loss of income, and all the other damages me and my family have suffered over the last two plus years. So we're going to pursue this, and if Judge Prescott doesn't release me tomorrow, we're going to pursue all possible avenues, obviously an appeal, plus we are going directly to the Biden administration, to the Department of Justice, to demand full implementation of this incredible decision. By the way, it's all, you know, the United Nations, you know, human rights bodies almost never rule against the United States on

human rights issues. This historically has been known as a country where the rule of law is respected. So this is just an extraordinary turn of events. The language they use is incredible. They call the facts in my case appalling. They criticize Judge Kaplan and charge me, Judge Prescott, who locked me up as displaying an appalling lack of objectivity and impartiality. And again, it's an embarrassment. You know, I'm embarrassed to be for our country that someone is being treated this way, a human rights lawyer. I'm also, you know, personally agreed because it's me, I'm the person

and I can't even walk outside my apartment without court permission. I have a 15 year old son. I can't be a full father to him. He's just started his third year of school while I'm in home detention wearing an ankle bracelet. I just spent my third straight birthday, you know, locked up in my home.

I mean, for a misdemeanor, okay, this is obvious retaliation. It's being orchestrated by Chevron, by a Chevron law firm from behind the scenes because they face huge financial risk from the Ecuador pollution judgment, by the way, which we won successfully, been affirmed by 28 different appellate judges down in Ecuador in 2011. And they're just coming after me to both disable my advocacy,

but also to send, in my view, a message of intimidation to other human rights lawyers and other human rights advocates who would even think about holding big polluters accountable. So this is, this implicates everybody. It implicates advocacy in our country. It implicates what society we want to live in. And I'm asking people for support, okay? Support for me personally, my family, and for the principles we all hold dear that we can live in a free democratic society. You know, we're having a rally at 8.30 in the morning, by the way, for those of your listeners and viewers who live in the New York area, please come. It's the federal courthouse in lower Manhattan at 8.30. There's going to be a

great group of speakers and then we're all going to go into court and bear witness in Judge Prescott's courtroom at 10 a.m. to see what she decides to do with my sentencing. Steve, either tomorrow, just to be clear, you may be going to federal prison or you may be able to leave your house for the first time in almost 800 days. Is that what we're looking at? And what is your expectation, knowing that at every turn they've thrown things at you that you never could have imagined? Well, that's a great question. And I don't know what's going to happen tomorrow. I wish I did. It's stressful not knowing. You know, stressful knowing I'll be there with my son, my wife, my sister and family members and supporters, and I'm going to walk into that courthouse and I don't

know if I'm coming out. You know, I mean, she could literally step me back in the courtroom on a misdemeanor. Again, by the way, there's never been a lawyer who spent even one day in jail for this offense level in U.S. history. OK, so it would be extraordinarily, I think, inappropriate, not to mention cruel, to lock me up tomorrow. But, you know, the way this case has gone, I'm always obviously hoping for the best and maintain optimism, but I am prepared for anything. And psychologically, you know, I've put myself in a position where if that does happen, I expect to be able to deal with it. But obviously, I don't want to go to prison. I, you know, I really need to get back to my life, my work, to my human rights advocacy. And, you know, even if I'm guilty of these offenses,

and again, I don't believe I am, and we have a great appeal. But even if I'm guilty, don't you think, you know, two years and two months of home confinement is enough punishment for a misdemeanor contempt charge where I was in good faith protecting the confidential information of my clients, indigenous groups in Ecuador who had been poisoned for 50 years by Chevron's pollution. And isn't it ironic that it's the human rights lawyer who's facing prison, whereas the Chevron and Texaco executives who made the decision to dump literally 16 billion gallons of cancer-causing toxic waste, can just live with impunity. I mean, what is that about? So, you know, we have some serious issues, I think, to think about through this case, but on a personal level, we're really hoping for the best, and we're really going

to go in there in good faith and ask Judge Prescott to reach for her better angels and release me with time served. We're certainly hoping for the best, too. We're going to watch with great interest what happens tomorrow. What's been done to you is unconscionable. As you just said, you know, it's an incredible personal burden and affront to you. But it also exposes that so often in our society, you have elites who commit flagrant, destructive crimes and face no accountability. And the ones who seek to hold them to account, they're the ones that are punished. Your primary example of that. Stephen, thank you for spending a little bit of time with us today. We're grateful for it. Can I just mention one very quick thing, which is if people want to learn more or help, please go to our website.

It's called freedonziger.com. We have a defense fund. If you can help, great. But just sign up. Join our campaign. We have thousands of people. And I really appreciate the opportunity to share my perspective with you guys. The link in there.

Yeah, we'll put the link in the description as well. Stephen, thank you so much. We're cheering for you. Thank you, Stephen. Thanks a lot, guys. Take care. Our're cheering for you. Thank you, Stephen. Thanks a lot, guys. Take care. Our pleasure. Thank you guys so much for watching.

Those of you who already watched the show, our YouTube segment and more, you know what we're dealing with here in terms of demonetization, being able to cover the news, covering whatever exactly we want. We can only do it with your support. There's absolutely no way in order to keep the business going by just relying on YouTube revenue. So we rely on you. The premium link is right there in description, and we appreciate you all so much. Also, I have an exciting announcement, which is that we have a new partnership with The Daily Poster, of course, started by David

Sirota. We're going to have a regular weekly segment with them breaking some of their latest stories. You guys know we already rely on them a lot because they are always doing journalism that is falling under the radar, especially looking at corruption. I know they have a great new story about Josh Gottheimer and exactly why he so opposed this reconciliation bill, the money that's being put into his bank account, his campaign bank account, I should say, for the moment anyway, and how he's one of the top recipients of Wall Street cash. So we're going to have a weekly segment with them. Those are going to post every Friday. So you guys know normally we don't have a full show on Friday.

Those segments will go up on Friday. So we're really, really excited about that. And they're going to feature those segments in their newsletter that goes out to their audience. So a little bit of, you know, cross promotion, but we've long loved supporting and highlighting the work that David and his team are doing over there at Daily Poster. They definitely deserve your support if you're able to give it. So super excited for that first segment to drop tomorrow. So look for that. And we'll have lots more for you this weekend as well. Love you guys so much. And we'll see

you back here next week. Thanks for listening to the show, guys. We really appreciate it. To help other people find the show, go ahead and leave us a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. It really helps other people find the show. As always, a special thank you to Supercast for powering our premium membership.

If you want to find out more, go to crystalandsager.com. I've seen a lot of stuff over 30 years, you know, some very despicable crime and things that are kind of tough to wrap your head around. And this ranks right up there in the pantheon of Rhode Island fraudsters. I've always been told I'm a really good listener, right? And I maximized that while I was lying. Listen to Deep Cover, The Truth About Sarah on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Williams, I open up about feeling snubbed by the Tony Awards. Do I? I was never mad. I was disappointed because I had high hopes. To hear this and more on disappointment and protecting your peace, listen to Checking In with Michelle Williams from the Black Effect Podcast Network

on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What up, y'all? This your main man Memphis Bleak right here, host of Rock Solid Podcast. Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. While I was down in prison for two years. Through that process, learn. Learn from me. Check out this exclusive episode with Ja Rule on Rock Solid. Open your free iHeartRadio app, search Rock Solid, and listen now. This is an iHeart Podcast.