Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - Stories of Week 6/5: Uvalde Coverup, CNN Shift, Depp-Heard, Baby Formula, Starbucks Workers, & More!

Episode Date: June 10, 2022

Krystal and Saagar talk about the Uvalde coverup, CNN shifts, Lorenz smears, Depp-Heard trial, baby formula crisis, Starbucks unionization, Jan 6 hearings, DC corruption, & more!To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/To listen to Breaking Points as a podcast, check them out on Apple and SpotifyApple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/breaking-points-with-krystal-and-saagar/id1570045623 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4Kbsy61zJSzPxNZZ3PKbXl Merch: https://breaking-points.myshopify.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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money is going to help us build for the midterms and the upcoming presidential election so we can provide unparalleled coverage of what is sure to be one of the most pivotal moments in American history. So what are you waiting for? Go to breakingpoints.com to help us out. Good morning, everybody. Happy Monday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed, we do. Lots of big developments this morning. You would think that we at this point would basically know what happened in Uvalde. But we don't. More revelations of more lies coming out. We will update you on all of that.

Also, some fairly significant developments with regards to Ukraine. Putin issuing a warning about those long-range missiles that we are planning to send over there. We'll give you those details as well. Also, the Biden administration making some big moves to try to plug that Russian-sized hole in the oil market, both with regards to Venezuela and also Saudi Arabia. We also have big developments in the Pennsylvania Senate race on both sides of that equation. McCormick went ahead and conceded,

so we do have a Republican nominee now. Dr. Oz on the other side. John Fetterman, there are increasing questions about the status of his health and how he has handled that whole situation. We also have some insight into CNN, including some bombshell reporting from one and only Sagar and Jetty. Some personal details. I'll reveal that later. Hashtag personal news about CNN. Don't worry, he's not going there or anything like that. It is interesting, imagine. Big development Sagar is leaving Breaking Points, going to CNN. No, that's not what's happening.

We also have on a woman who's a lawyer and a YouTuber. She goes by LegalBytes on YouTube. And she found herself in the middle of this crazy Taylor Lorenz story. Taylor lied about her in a column, basically smearing YouTubers who covered the Depp Herd trial. Crazy. So excited to talk to her as well. But we wanted to start with the very latest out of Uvalde. Stunning revelations from that mom. guys probably remember. She was the one who shows up at the school. Yes. She wants to go in.

The cops outside handcuff her. Okay, handcuff a mom. She then sort of talks her way out of that. They agree to take the cuffs off. She manages to get around them, jump the fence, go into the school, get her two kids. And now for the first time, she is speaking to the press. Let's take a listen to what she has to say. Arrest you because you're being very uncooperative. I said, well, you're going to have to arrest me because I'm going in there.

And I'm telling you right now, I don't see none of y'all in there. Y'all are standing with snipers and y'all are far away. If y'all don't go in there, I'm going in there. He immediately put me in cuffs. She says after Uvalde police officers told marshals to uncuff Gomez, she ran towards the school. As soon as they uncuffed me, I jumped that first gate fence. And once I jumped it, I went to my son's class and I knocked on the door. And I remember the teacher saying, I'm like, hey, they're already, they're already bulge cutting the fence to get me. She's like, you think we have time to get out? I said, you'll have time. I'm going to run for my other son. Once she was assured her son was okay,

Gomez ran to get her other child, encountering more officers who tried to stop her. So I start yelling and I'm being a cooperative and I'm like, well, y'all aren't doing, what are y'all doing? Y'all need to be in here. Give me your vest. Somebody give me a vest. And if anything, they were being more aggressive on us parents that were willing to go in there. And like I told one of the officers, I don't need you to protect me. Get away from me. I don't need your protection. If anything, I need you to go in there with me to go protect my kids.

And if anything, they were being more aggressive on us. They were more pertain on keeping us back than getting into that school. So she also reveals that she, you know, wandered those hallways getting both of her kids. She says she didn't see police officers in the hallway. Right. So even this story about, oh, we were there and there were 19 of us, that's in serious doubt at this point. That's number one. Number two, this woman is clearly amazing.

She is incredibly courageous, obviously, you know, even just to speak to the press at this point, because put this next piece up on the screen. They threatened her with an obstruction of justice charge. She is on probation from some charge from a decade ago. And they told her, the police, that if she keeps talking to the media, they will hit her with an obstruction of justice charge and potential violation of her probation. Yeah, do it. Go ahead and violate her. See how it's going to work out for you. I mean, it's just unbelievable. They couldn't do anything when it came to taking out this mass murderer who was killing their children,

but they'll handcuff a mom and threaten to hit her with charges? Disgusting. And by the way, one other note on this mom, I don't, those of you who are watching can see in the background, she's kind of like in a field there and there's equipment moving around. She's actually a farm worker. She had come straight from work to her kids for the sort of end of the year school ceremony. She said she originally didn't want to take a picture with them because she was all dirty and dusty from the field, but they insisted she has this photo of her with her kids that morning. And then she'd gone back to work when she heard this was all happening and, you know, sped back to the school. But

it's just unbelievable how they seem to have literally lied about every single thing that happened on that day. Yeah. And the cover up here is just unbelievable. Whenever you consider not only they threatened her, they're in full-fledged hiding. Let's put this up there on the screen. You know, reporters down in Texas are continuing to try and get interviews with that guy, Pete Arredondo, who was the Uvalde CISD police chief who made the call not to go in. And now City Hall is locking its doors during business hours, declining to provide any public records to all reporters. And Uvalde CISD falsely had said that the first school board meeting since the incident was going to be closed to the public. So what they continue to do is try to make it so that it is

impossible to hold these people to account. And remember, this guy, Pete Arradondo, the Uvalde CISD police chief, he also was recently sworn in as a member of the city council. He is refusing to speak to the press. You know, he was confronted by CNN outside of his house, and he just said, look, I don't have anything to say. In terms of his communication, Crystal, with the Texas Department of Public Safety and the FBI, they say he's been uncooperative. Or they've said, we've had some communication, which to which to me reads like yeah he's talking through his lawyer i mean he's in he's in hiding and uh he's even apparently uvalde pd has called in other cops in the area to protect them so they want protection uh protection that they weren't willing to give you know to these children and i think that what shines through

out of all of this is that the uvalde, people of Uvalde are furious. Yes. Not just the mom, but, you know, quoted in almost every story are people who are nearby or who are residents of the town. And they say straight up, these people are cowards. They call them absolute cowards. They think that this guy, Pete Arredondo, needs to go. He's trying to wait this out. He wants you all to forget that this ever happened and to try and get absorbed into a meta conversation about gun control. And we're going to talk about that, you know, later on in this block, but let's stay focused still on the incident. Yeah. There's a lot that's come out too about how there was a lot of public

mistrust of this police force even before this incident. There are people quoted who said, you know, basically you call with some sort of disturbance, you want help. They're not reliable in terms of showing up. So there was already mistrust here. And, you know, obviously, Arredondo has a lot to answer for. But, you know, I don't think he's the only one to blame here, which is why the city officials are helping to basically complete his vanishing act. I mean, that's the way that they phrase it in this article. They say that, you know, he was the city officials have assisted in his vanishing act. They canceled a previously scheduled public ceremony Tuesday, instead swore

him in in secret for his latest role on the city council, locking city hall doors during business hours, declining to provide any public records to reporters. The chief of the city police force, so a different dude, a guy named Daniel Rodriguez, he's declined to answer questions about his officer's response to the shooting. A Uvalde CISD, that's the school district official, told a reporter falsely that the first school board meeting since the incident would be closed to the public. At the special meeting Friday, an agenda item allowed the board to terminate Arradondo. The board declined to do so. So are the most, the largest number of questions for this guy, Arradondo, who's in total hiding? Yes. Are there many more questions to go around for everybody who stood by? I mean, we still are not getting a straight answer here about what unfolded on this day,

who is culpable, who made the decisions and what this all looked like. Because it also, another question that's been raised is why he maintained control of the situation as like, you know, the top dog in charge of the response when the local police force responds and they had more experience dealing with these sort of mass shooting incidents. Why didn't they take command? So still a lot of questions here. We also have another eyewitness account to add another piece to the puzzle of what actually happened, since we clearly cannot get a single straight

answer for anyone who was supposedly in charge. Go ahead and put this next piece up on the screen. This is from a man who works as a funeral attendant at that funeral parlor that is across the street from the school. He says he encountered the gunman and tried to go after the shooter, but he was held back again by police. The account he tells is really chilling here. He saw the murderer crash his truck in that ditch. He goes over, you know, saying, hey, man, are you okay? And the guy looks at him with what he describes as this sort of chilling look in his eyes. But at that point, he just thinks, oh, he's dazed. He just wrecked his truck.

So he's still, you know, saying, hey, are you all right? What's going on? And then he sees him reach in his truck, get the AR-15, and turn around. And that's when Cody Bersagno is the name of this funeral attendant, tries to run. He slips and falls. His coworker is there. He says to him, like, he's got a gun. He takes off running. So they both managed to get away while the killer is firing at them, misses luckily all of those shots. So he goes back into the funeral parlor, calls his wife, says, bring me my gun. She gets there with the gun at about the same time that the police

are arriving and responding. He tries to go in and the police hold him back and say, you can't, you can't, you can't. Now, listen, if you're the police and you're there and you're actually responding, I understand why you're not going to let a civilian interfere and you doing your job and getting done what needs to be done. But, of course, they were not doing that. And the incredibly, incredibly sad end of this is Briseño now is he's digging the graves for these children who were murdered. And he says he feels guilty. And this is his quote.

I feel guilty, man, because I couldn't stop him. He was shooting at the windows and I didn't have my gun on me. So, again, I mean, something that actually Kyle said to me, which I think is the truest thing about this whole situation is, if you had had just random civilians off the street responding to this incident, you would have had a better response than from these supposedly trained professionals who were just complete cowards. This is the perfect evidence that you have the guy here. And his immediate thought is, oh, we need to go. He calls his wife. He's like, bring me my gun.

We need to go in. He's ready to go in. He's ready to volunteer his life in order to save children. As, again, you would hope that any police officer on the scene would do. And not even hope. It is written in their training. It is written explicitly. If you are the first person, you are going to confront the gunman. If this makes you uncomfortable, choose another line of work. It may require you having you to sacrifice

your life. That is why we have a social contract where you get all this military gear and all this money and these great benefits and societies like benefits and society's thanks and all that. There's supposed to be a two-way deal here. And I just think all these people, every person, the incident commander, Uvalde PD. Because here's the thing, too. Uvalde PD and city council at this point, we saw the Uvalde PD trying to throw those journalists off of the sidewalk. They're all engaged in cover-up. Exactly.

It's a complete cover up. These people need to be, I look, I don't know how exactly the system would work, but with the state can obviously move in and just be like, all right, like, you know, you've all the PD like disbanded. How do any of these people still have their jobs? How are they not all under investigation right now? That, I mean, at this board meeting that they don't remove Aradon, I mean, he completely failed at the task. Like, you had one job, and you completely failed, and that they just, you know,

they do this board meeting, and they try to make sure no press can be there, and they keep him on. I don't know what to say. I don't know what to say. There really is just, I don't know. It's a cover-up of immense proportion. We're going to continue covering it. A lot of people are trying to move on from this story. Pete Arradondo wants us to move on from this story. It's just not going to happen. It's an egregious crime. This is a very interesting development. The new bosses at CNN clearly walk in and are like, what kind of shit show did we just purchase over here? Let's put this up there on the screen. Their new boss actually taking aim at something that drives me crazy in cable news, which is that the new boss

says that CNN needs to abide by a new breaking news standard and says that they are overusing the breaking news banner across its network and cable news writ large. He says, quote, we are truth tellers focused on informing, not alarming our viewers who have already seen far less of the breaking news banner across our programming. He says he agrees with complaints from both inside and outside the organization

that the network uses the breaking news banner. It has become a fixture on every channel and the network and that its impact has become lost on the audience. We always joke about this. Whenever you're watching Fox News, they're like, they have the music and like, and they're like, it's Fox News alert. It's 11 p.m. here on the East Coast. You're like, why is this a Fox News alert? Why? Same with, it's like breaking news. President Biden about to speak. Why is that breaking? What does that mean? Or it'll be breaking news, something that happened like three days ago. We have breaking news here. Four days ago. What are you talking about? Further, we're further

breaking coverage of the ongoing, hold on a second, because breaking and ongoing don't have the same connotation. It has become something that is intrinsic to cable news. Roger Ailes' fault, actually, in terms of making sure that this all happened in the first place. Zucker did not pioneer this. Zucker did not pioneer this, but he stuck to it. A lot of people did. And CNN now the first people to kind of step back. And, you know, the New York Times wrote it up in an interesting way,

which is that the new bosses over at CNN are very, very aware of the problems that they have. Let's put this up there on the screen, which is that this new guy, Chris Licht, and the Discovery CEO are trying to undo many of the damages that Jeff Zucker put in, you know, beyond just the breaking news issues. They're pointing to the fact they had to deal with the Chris Cuomo cover-up. They had to deal, obviously, with Zucker and his mistress and all

that cover-up. They had to deal with the CNN Plus disaster and just shut it down completely in some of the first days of actually owning this thing. But more important, they had to shut down, you know, the snarky headlines, like the immediate fact checks in the print. They're like, that stuff is over. They're like, we're done in terms of that. And then I somehow had a personal experience because I watched, I said in this,

what they said is political shows are trying to book more conservative voices and producers have been urged to ignore Twitter backlash from the far right and the far left. And this made a lot of sense because on Sunday, I'm minding my own business, and I get a text message from some producer over at CNN asking, would you be able to join our panel in New York City at 9 p.m.? I was like, no. I was like, I don't do cable news unless there's a really good reason, given exactly what we do here.

So you want me to waste my time and skip my own show to go up to New York to appear on your stupid-ass panel? Random CNN panel. Yeah, random CNN panel with CNN's greatest analysts that they can pay over there for like a five minute hit where, and we were talking about this, where clearly

a hit, by the way, is with lingo for appearance in television, for me to appear on your panel where they'll be like, you're a racist

and a scumbag. Do you have a response? And I'll be like, well, do I have, you know, some time? And they're like, no, we have to go to commercial.

That's your response. Thanks for joining us. Yeah, thanks for joining us, Sagar. Really appreciate you taking the train to New York and all of this in order to make that happen. So as much as I personally would love to go on there

and really tell them how it is, if I ever get the opportunity to do something like Brian Stelter's show or something like that as one-on-one, I would absolutely do that just to call him out to his face. But something like this, it's like, they're clearly just scrambling to try and get somebody on there.

So the TLDR is I said no, obviously, so I could be here with you beautiful people here on this show. And look, I don't think it's going to work, but, and they really have their work cut out for them. I can understand that why they reached out to you because, I mean, you are kind of like a unicorn in that you have these right of center views on certain issues, but you haven't just completely lost your mind and gone down some conspiracy rabbit hole. So I can understand why they would want – plus they just see our numbers and they're like, we want some of that. Yeah, we want some of that.

Yeah, so I get why they reach out to you. I mean, I'll tell you, spoiler alert, this is what's going to happen with CNN because this is exactly what happened with MSNBC when I was there and when I got canceled, ultimately. They brought in a new president. He looked around. Some of this has to do with what they think is going to work from a revenue perspective. Some of it has to do with what they think will make them comfortable in their social circles. And so new NBC News president comes in. He says, all this opinion stuff has to go. We're going to put in the NBC News, quote unquote, personalities. You might call them lack of personalities. And we're going to lean into our journalism,

and we're going to be down the middle, and that's what we're going to do. So he puts in people like Kate Snow. He gives Chuck Todd his daily show, like all this stuff. Brilliant, amazing moves. So they go in this direction. And then what happens? Trump. Trump happens.

And guess which shows performed the best? The ones that were willing to be the most opinionated and the most sort of deranged and outrageous. Those were the ones that got the best ratings. And so, you know, they were even thinking of getting rid of Lawrence O'Donnell, who's the 10 p.m. primetime slot. But they couldn't because his ratings were some of the best on the network. So ultimately, they, you know, that whole plan of we're going to be down the middle, we're going to use our journalists, et cetera, gets tossed out the window because ultimately what what's sold in the Trump era was Trump derangement. And so they leaned into whoever was doing that thing and satisfying the audience's desire for

that. And it's going to be the same thing with CNN because ultimately, look, their ratings are terrible right now. So right now it's easy for them to say, we're going to go back to this down the middle reporting and they're imagining, oh, that'll open us up to a broader audience and we won't just have this niche. But there is no mass broad audience for news anymore. And you don't have, because of structural reasons in cable news, the ability to actually do something that would be good and, like, honest and that people would like and that is different and challenges corporate power in any way. Like there's just, they can't do that. And so what they're going to, what's going to happen is we're going to get back into the presidential election season, which is going to happen sooner than any of you all think it is going to. Trump's going to be back in the scene. That's what's

going to break. And they're going to go right back to where they were. That's what's going to happen. You're absolutely correct. The moment that Trump announces, by the way, there's actually some rumors that he might announce before the midterms. This summer, yeah. He might announce before the midterms in order to preempt any efforts to try and replace him in order to take a complete hold on the GOP field. It's going to be all Trump all the time. They're going to go right back to what rates with their crazy resistance boomer audience. Just because those people turned out, they can't resist Trump. Something about Trump has rotted these people's brains where they will watch anything about how he's bad or whatever the next drama is with him. And we will all be subjected to the same insanity that we were

over the last four years. I don't know if we can do it again, but we'll be here on Breaking Points. Indeed. Indeed. Watching it all unfold. All right, guys. So last week, we covered the conclusion of the Depp-Herd trial. Yes. And as she does, Taylor Lorenzo, The Washington Post, had to put her take on what all of this meant. What she decided to focus on was the content creators who covered the trial and who got a lot of views and did very well because there was a lot of public interest in the trial, and it was not really covered extensively in the mainstream media. Taylor decided this was somehow really nefarious. Oh, okay. So not only does she do this in her column, but then she has to lie about having reached out to some of these content creators for comment and saying, well, they didn't respond, when in reality, she had just never bothered to reach out to them whatsoever. In the end, the Washington

Post has to issue this long, at first it was called a correction, then it was so lengthy, they had to turn it into an editor's note about how, oh, we said we reached out, but we really didn't. And actually, we reached out to this one on social media, and they didn't get back to us. Okay, so all of that being said, we decided to have one of those content creators on to tell her side of the story here after being smeared and lied about by Taylor Lorenz in the Washington Post. Alita Majeka is a content creator on YouTube. Her channel is called Legal Bites. She does legal analysis. Go ahead and put her channel up on the screen there. She does all sorts of legal analysis, including extensive coverage of the Depp Heard trial. And she joins us now. Great to meet you, Alita. Yeah, good to see you. Hi. So nice to meet you guys. Yeah, of course. Listen, before we

get into the Taylor stuff, I'd just love for you to set up, you know, your conception of your channel and what you're doing over there. Because one of the things that, there were a lot of things that sort of irritated me about the framing from Taylor. but one of the things that irritated me is she seemed to indicate that you would like completely switch your channel around to cover this trial when in reality, I mean, your channel is focused on legal issues. So it seemed to me like it was a very natural fit that you would lean into something that had obviously a lot of public attention. So why don't you go ahead and set that up for us, Alita? Thank you. Yeah, I started the channel around two years ago. I'm a licensed attorney. I'm licensed in California and DC. And the whole point of this channel is to explain the law one bite at a time. That's always been the

motto, if you will, of the channel. And that's what I do. I take current events, pop culture, et cetera, and I break down the law so that people can understand it in more digestible kind of bite-sized ways. Well, that's great. And I think that people need that. And the attack, Alita, on you by Taylor appeared to be that you were somehow grifting by focusing and covering this trial.

So first of all, maybe just tell us like how you decided to start covering the trial. I mean, obviously there was a ton of public interest and you were filling a niche, something that, you know, we happen to do over here. I don't think that that's a crime either, but tell us about how you kind of came to the trial, decided to start covering it, and then we'll get into what the exact post said about you. Yeah. So this wasn't the first time that I've live streamed a trial, at least. Well, this is the first time on my channel, but the first one was the Kyle Rittenhouse trial, which was over on Rakeda Law's channel. He invited a bunch of us YouTube lawyers onto his channel to basically do exactly the same thing, to live stream it from gavel to gavel,

give our commentary, give our thoughts, the good, the bad, the ugly, and basically go from there. So I had that experience already. And when I came across this case, it was maybe about a month before the trial began. And I was very interested in not only just the underlying facts of the case were very interesting, but I also saw a community that was very, very skeptical and not trusting of the mainstream media because of its treatment of this case already for years. Years people had been frustrated with the media's treatment of the case. So I figured this was a very interesting case to take a look at. I wanted to look at it myself, not rely on the headlines because I had learned from the Rittenhouse trial, seeing for myself what the trial was like, and then seeing what the headlines were like coming out of that, and that there was a vast difference from what they saw versus what I saw. So I wanted to cover it from gavel to gavel

on my channel with a bunch of other YouTube lawyers and other professionals, by the way. I had a nurse, I had two psychologists, I had a behavioral analyst, I had a bunch of people on the channel to basically give their takes from a professional and personal perspective. And so that was what I decided that I wanted to do. I started covering it three weeks to a month before the trial began, long before it was ever clear that it was going to become like this global phenomenon that it became. Wow. Yeah. And you know what? Even if you had realized there was this need and then jumped on it once it already—that's fine. There's nothing wrong with that. ethics and they're just, the whole point is like, oh, they're just chasing the money, as if the mainstream press doesn't have their own incentives and money-making ventures backing them. And also, ironically, in this piece that's in part about how YouTubers don't have journalistic

ethics, Taylor Lorenz herself violates journalistic ethics by lying about whether or not she reached out for comment to you and another content creator. So talk to us through that part of the story from your perspective. So what happened was I saw that she had published the article. And to be honest, I wasn't following her. I was vaguely familiar with her before this, but not really only just surrounding some sort of vague, I guess, controversies, you could say. But other than that, I really didn't know one thing about her beyond that. Didn't really have too many opinions about her, to be honest. But somebody had tagged me on Twitter and said,

hey, you've got an article that's about you and it's not great. And this had already happened a couple of times. People have been talking about LawTube, so to speak, and other content creators in the context of this trial. So I was like, okay, you know, more shade, whatever. But I took a look at it and I saw that she had, she said that she had reached out for comment. And I was like, I mean, I've gotten a lot of emails in the last couple of months. Like things have been pretty crazy, but let me, let me double check my email just to see if she, like other journalists reached out to me. I looked for her first name, her last name, Washington Post. I saw nothing. There was nothing in my email indicating any kind of professional

that was reaching out to me for comment. So I tweeted about it and I said, you know, I don't think this is accurate, but, you know, okay. And then I saw that the other content creator that was in the same paragraph as me, that umbrella guy, you know, he and I follow each other also because he's been one of the most active and most prominent in the Justice for Johnny me, that umbrella guy. You know, he and I follow each other also because he's been one of the most active and most prominent in the Justice for Johnny Depp community

for years. And so he said the same thing. So I was like, okay, so it's not just me. I'm not missing something. So then I get a direct message from her on Twitter saying, hey, I'm so sorry. Here's my phone number. You can reach out to me.

And I was like, okay, well, you referenced the information that you got about me from this Business Insider article. That article also mentioned that I'm living overseas. So it feels very disingenuous for you to give me your phone number for me to reach out to you if you know that I'm overseas, because obviously you have definitely read that article if you're referencing it. So then I guess about 10 minutes later, she also DMed my Instagram account as well. So several iterations of corrections later, then I see, well, I guess before that, one of the first corrections was, I guess, the stealth edit of removing that parenthetical saying that she had reached out to us. And then there was the

correction, of course, that said, you know, we removed that parenthetical, there was an error, blah, blah, blah. And then there was another correction after that saying, well, we didn't reach out to that umbrella guy, but we did reach out to Alita Majeika for, you know, through Instagram. When that was actually the last place where she tried to reach out to me after she had reached out on Twitter privately after I had already called her out. So we have your tweet, guys. Go ahead and put this up on the screen that has this final editor's note. And you say, what? At Washington Post, I will say this again.

I was not reached out to by Taylor Runs for comment until after my tweet below. She reached out to me by Instagram DM after she did on Twitter. both DMs were sent to me after I called her out here. Please stop lying and take the L. And I'll just read the editor's note here so people can see how extensive this is. And I want to make sure that I have the timeline right here too, Alita. So first, they just, once you guys call them out, they just sort of stealth delete the we reached out to them for comment, which violates their own standards.

They realize they violated their own standards and this is becoming a thing. Then they issue this correction, which then they make into an editor's note, which still is not correct. What it says is the first published version of the story stated incorrectly that internet influencers Alina Majeka

and that umbrella guy had been contacted for comment before publication. In fact, only Majeka was asked via Instagram. And you say that's not true. After the story was published, the post continued to seek comment from Majeka via social media and queried that umbrella guy for the first time. During that process, the post removed the incorrect statement but didn't note its removal. That's a violation of our corrections policy. So this turned out to a complete mess. You know, I mean, listen, why is it worth like sort of going into the details of the, you know, the life of the story and the various corrections that were issued? What do you think is the broader point here, Alita? Well, I mean, as you mentioned before, it is ironic that this whole point of this

article was to say how mainstream media is no longer being turned to by the people because you have these influencers on TikTok and on YouTube who are suddenly pivoting their content to make a buck. They're clout chasing. They're just covering this because they want to increase their followers, increase their subscribers, that kind of stuff. And the subtext seems to be that this is dangerous because misinformation is a big deal. And who's there to fact check these dangerous influencers? When in reality, I'm just asking for fair reporting on this thing. And the truth of the matter is that when it comes to my followers,

when it comes to me making any kind of a factual assertion to my followers and my subscribers, I have a community that is actually very well versed in the underlying facts. So if I get something wrong, they call me out on it. So I would expect nothing less than of someone who is purporting to be someone who is a guardian of misinformation as well. Yeah. I mean, it sounds to me, I mean, look, I wasn't super into this trial, but if I was, I would have watched you. I don't know why I would have to turn into these tabloids or whatever. It sounds like you're doing a much better job than a lot of these people. And we didn't just want to talk about this. I was actually curious for your reaction to Amber Heard's attorney's first

interview over on CNN. She blames social media for the verdict. Let's take a listen. We're going to get your reaction afterwards. Is there any way to see this verdict in any other way than the jury simply did not believe Amber? You know, there's no question that influence was there. It's kind of strange because it was a mixed verdict as well, which suggested that they did believe at least some. And it seems we would call that messy more than inconsistent, I think, but possibly that. But I think really what happens here is it is kind of a throwback to an earlier time when it was automatic than when a woman said, I have been the victim of domestic violence. She's just not believed. Oh, Johnny, we know Johnny, he would never do that.

And that's kind of what we got here. Now, remember that we had another trial back in the UK. Same issues. Lots more evidence came in on that one. And what Mr. Depp's team apparently learned from that is this time demonize Amber and suppress as much evidence as you can. Your reaction, Alita, what do you think? Well, if she's trying to point to social

media and TikTok and YouTube as to blame for anything in this trial, I would simply point to Amber Heard's legal team because they were the ones that brought in all of the hashtags as evidence through their expert, through one of their data experts. And the jury arguably would not have known of the Amber Turd hashtag, the Justice for Johnny Depp hashtag, or any of the others if it had not been for their questioning of their own direct examination of their own expert witness. So, you know, an argument can be made that it's very difficult, of course, for the jury to stay away from the public, to stay away from the news, to stay away from social media on a case like this, because this case, of course, was everywhere all around

the world. But, you know, and we've had conversations on my channel also with me and other attorneys about just how much we trust jurors to follow the rules of a particular case. But call me naive, but I do think that at the very least, the majority of those jurors probably took those rules to heart and really did their best to stay away from the media coverage of this case while it was pending because they're giving up a month and a half to two months of their lives for this case. And they understand the high stakes and the money and the life that is at stake between these two parties and the importance of the allegations involved.

So typically, it's my opinion that a jury is going to pay attention to that and take that very seriously. Yeah. The other part of Taylor's article is she sort of insinuates that, you know, this decision was wrongly made or it was the wrong decision. And she uses, you know, your sort of monetary incentives to frame like, oh, they were coming in on this one side because that was where the money was. And there's kind of an insinuation in there that that may have influenced the outcome of the trial, as Amber Heard's attorney says there, more directly. But there's no even attempt to engage with any of the legal analysis. It's all just sort of a smearing of the motives and a raising of nefarious intent rather than actually dealing with the legal specifics of the case, which I'm not a lawyer. I didn't follow this case at all. So I have no opinion whatsoever

whether this was wrongly or rightly decided. I genuinely don't know and am agnostic. But I did want to ask you, Alita, because the case that was made on the other side that I saw prominently among a lot of liberals, though not uniformly, was that this was a sort of blow for survivors of domestic abuse, that people were going to feel like they couldn't speak out when they suffered from abuse and that it would kind of chill

the ability of women to come, or anyone who suffers from sexual, from physical violence in a relationship to be able to come forward. What did you make of that argument? Do you think there's any merit to that? Well, I think that there's always going to be a concern one way or another about that coming out of a trial like this. But I do think, I mean, well, number one, as far as the argument that all of these channels, including my own, are overwhelmingly pro-Johnny Depp, I can't speak to other channels, but I can

say that for my channel, the panel of lawyers that I had, the vast majority of them came into this trial knowing little to nothing about the underlying facts or the arguments in the case. And actually in the first couple of days, they said to me at the end of the trial day, they said on air, they were like, I don't think he's going to win because defamation cases are very difficult for any public figure to win. And this one, he has a huge, huge mountain to climb. And I remember telling them, I knew a lot of the underlying facts because I had been spending the last month researching it. And I told them, I said, just wait, just wait and watch. And one by one, they all started to end up in Johnny Depp's camp just because of the facts that were laid out in

front of them. And they all play devil's advocate because these are all practicing lawyers, licensed attorneys that are in the habit of poking and prodding both sides of a particular argument, especially when it comes to litigation or a trial. So as far as that is concerned, I very much push against that. And I think that that is just another example of someone who has decided to write about my coverage of this trial without actually looking at the content that's on my channel. But as for the other aspects, you know,

the Justice for Johnny Depp community, what I have noticed is that there are a lot of domestic violence survivors, both male and female. And I think that what this message actually sends is that the male domestic violence survivors now have a chance of having their voices heard. Because, you know, statistically speaking, I think that it's true, women do make up a larger portion of domestic violence survivors from what I have heard and what I have seen. However, men still make up a certain portion of that. And men have a tendency to not be believed even more than women because of all kinds of stigma around gender, masculinity, femininity, all of those kinds of things. So I think that if anything, this sends more of a signal

that men have a fighting chance, possibly, maybe. And when it comes to Amber Heard, she is not a representative of domestic violence survivors. She is a representative of someone who is trying to defraud the experience of real legitimate domestic violence survivors. And she should be placed in a category all on her own. I think that's really interesting. So last thing, I know that you have a charity stream that you're doing for Children's Hospital. Why don't you shout that out before we let you go? Yeah, so on June 11th on my channel, I will be hosting, along with Rick

Hogue of Hogue Law, another YouTube lawyer. So we will be hosting on my channel a charity stream for the Children's Hospital of Los Angeles. That is one of the two charities that Amber Heard was supposed to donate her entire $7 million divorce settlement from Johnny Depp. Half of it was supposed to go to the ACLU, half of it to Children's Hospital of Los Angeles. So they were kind of wrong, you could say. Exactly, they were sidestepped in this whole thing. So one of the things that we wanted to do

is to sort of give back for all of the love and appreciation that we've gotten from viewers and whatnot is to sort of give back for this charity stream. So we'll be hosting it on June 11th, and I'm really looking forward to having a bunch of people show up. Great idea. Awesome. Well, it's great to talk to you. And by the way, I watched some, not all, of your content, and it seemed to me like you were really trying to evaluate the issues in a fair-minded kind of a way. People should go and look at your channel, Legal Bytes, for themselves

and judge what they think of your content. We encourage people to do that. Thank you so much, Alita, for taking the time. It's great to meet you. Thank you, Alita. Thank you. Thank you guys so much for watching. We really appreciate it.

Tomorrow's the official one-year anniversary, one year since we actually did a show and all that. I know a lot of one-year stuff. We've got some announcements that are coming tomorrow. Thank you all to everybody so much for the support. It just absolutely means the world. Link is down in the description, and we will see you all tomorrow. Love y'all. See you tomorrow.

Let's move on here. Baby formula. This is a story, obviously, we've been keeping a lot of eyes on. Praise President Biden for invoking the Defense Production Act. But the timeline that's coming out of the administration right now, I'm not saying they didn't end up doing the right thing, is really shocking. I mean, it just is a complete indictment of the Biden administration. President Biden admitted on camera that he knew about the baby formula crisis back in April and did not really do anything about it until public pressure erupted in the month of May. Here he is talking a couple of days ago. Here's the deal. I became aware of this problem sometime in early April about how intense it was.

And so we did everything in our power from that point on. And that's all I can tell you right now. And we're going to continue to do it till we get the job. What about that early April? Early April. I mean, that's a long time. So why didn't you do anything about it? Did you order anything to do anything about it? And here's, we actually know the answer. The answer is no, because the White House has said, well, first the White House, Brian Deese said, we've known about this since February. Okay. Well, why didn't you do anything about it? Then Biden says, well, I found out about it in April. Okay. Well, why didn't you do anything about it? And they say, well, we did do something about it. We invoked the Defense Production Act. Yeah. In May. So a

month later, after you find out about it. And yeah, let's be honest. It only happened because they passed the Ukraine bill and people were like, hey, we have 44 billion to send to Ukraine, but we don't have baby formula to send to kids. And then Congress enacted, people like us were talking about it. It's not just us. I mean, it was a huge thing for the entire country was just horrified at the idea of tiny little infants

not being able to have their food. But here's the thing. When you continue to look at all of the administration officials, this is a massive failure of government. You have not only the president, the president is at the top. Like he's not even supposed to necessarily know about this stuff.

His staff is supposed to bring it to his attention. And more importantly, he's supposed to order his staff to do something. Well, Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo is on TV over the weekend. She admits the same thing. I've known about since April. But honestly, the response we're about to play for you is worse because I didn't, she says, I didn't just know about it until April. I'm not involved in anything regarding it right now.

Let's take a listen. President Biden this week said he didn't learn about the severity of the infant formula shortage until April, but problems first emerged back at the Abbott plant back in October of 2021. An industry executive said they knew how bad this could get when the plant closed in February. You're the secretary of commerce. When did you first learn of this problem? I first learned about it, you know, a couple of months ago. So this is a difficult issue.

But yes, probably April. I'm not involved in the administration's response here, I should say. But I think they're doing a very good job. Well, why are you not involved with that? Because actually, the Commerce Committee in Congress and the Commerce Department has an immense amount of power over the baby formula. This is just, again, perfect example. You have here the secretary who says, yeah, I found out about it, but you know, whatever. I didn't really have anything to do with it. Well, wait, why don't

you have anything to do with it? Because the Commerce Department has a lot of regulatory authority over the actual baby formula. And then also, why are you not involved in a whole of government approach with the FDA and the CDC in order to get this plant spinning again. I mean, this really was just a complete crisis of government because it just showed us that things have to get so bad that little kids are starving and parents are driving eight to nine hours, different stores. Trying to import European baby formula. Trying to import illegally until the government makes it okay. Also, again, why are you not involved in the administration's response? You know, people don't realize this.

The Commerce Department has immense power over international trade, tariffs, all that stuff. That's under congressional jurisdiction of the Commerce Department. So she's telling us she has no authority over importing European baby formula. That's BS. I mean, maybe the military is moving it, but you should be heavily involved. Also in the future, you know, now that American parents are getting European baby formula, let's make it permanent. Yeah. You know, let the American, look, this is the first time where I'll be like, let Americans compete. Because from what I can tell, European baby formula is way better than ours. Well, and also just to give you a little peek behind the curtain here in Washington, DC, this is a person who, you know, the powers that be in this town are very hot on.

Oh, yeah. Very high on her. They love her. They think of her for higher office in the future, even sometimes being floated for, like, president. It's crazy to me. So the fact that, you know, she's completely absent from duty here that, you know, and not doing a good job at her actual job, that has no bearing on whether or not she'll be elevated to the next highest level. She's already in a position of great power here. This also really gets to a core failing of the Biden administration that I'm not particularly surprised by, but I think a lot of people are. One of the promises of his campaign

was the grownups will be back in charge, that it won't be the chaos of the Trump years. We'll have people who know what they're doing back in power, run an efficient administration. And so, listen, you may not want everything that we're going to do. You may not be on board. You may want more. You may want less. But at least it's going to be competently managed. That has turned out to be completely false. And by the way, you know, some of the reporting that now that the wheels have come off this administration so clearly and his approval rating is down, you know, at Trump or below Trump in certain instances, young people are discussing with this administration, there's starting to be

all these leaks and all these insider reports about like what's going wrong and what Biden thinks about it. And one of the things that he complained about was that he hadn't been notified by his staff about the baby formula crisis sooner when it came to their attention in February. Or, you know, could have even been before that because you did, as Jake Tapper points out there, you did have this whistleblower early on talking about the lack of safety standards and potential problems at this Abbott Laboratories plant. So you have an initial failure, which still has to be on the president. He's the one that assembled this group of staffers around himself. But so you have this initial failure of staff to notify the president at all or do anything about it. And then even once he is notified in early April, it takes this massive public outcry and, you know, the news,

the media finally writing stories about these babies who are in dire trouble and in some terrible instances, even having to be admitted to the hospital to get the nutrition that they need and moms who are desperate and at their wits end doing everything they can, spending all day going from, you know, store to store to try to find the formula that's going to work for their babies. It took all of that before they finally said, you know, we could actually do something about this. And it's a bigger problem for the administration because the critique of them that they are just purely sort of reactive, that they are always behind the times, that they are catching up a few months later to things that have been hurting the American people for months. I just think that that's completely indisputable. Yes. And I think it

goes very much against the core hope that a lot of people had for this administration. Oh, absolutely, Crystal. I mean, look, this was their basic promise is we will get those vaccines out, you know, easily. That's why I thought they, I just did not anticipate how incompetent these idiots are. It's mystifying. I mean, even on gas right now, I mean, look, I've been watching it. We are very, very close to $5 national average. The gas price went up 5% in just the last week. It only needs to go up by two and we're at five nationally. Nobody apparently in the White House seems to be talking about that. Yeah. Oh, cool, you're allowing Venezuela to export to Europe. Big deal.

You know, that is not going to replace the lost gas stock, especially given the current demand. Nothing's happening. And there's real consequences. Let's put this up there on the screen. You know, Abbott, a couple of days ago, Abbott Nutrition just restarted the baby formula production. But, you know, everybody knows this. From production to actually going to the shelf, it takes a long time. And it's not a joke. I have been reading some horrific stories. There's one

in the New York Times that just came out yesterday about how many newborns who spend time in the NICU, they need specialized formula because this is the thing. It's not just replacement level. It might be for some, for some babies. some of these people who have allergies and whose babies are in, can you imagine having like a six month old premium or pre preemie baby in the NICU? And they're like, you need this baby formula to keep your baby alive. And you can't get it anymore. People freaking out. They're driving hundreds of miles to go get this stuff. Well, the thing I worry about, too, is, you know, we're in a new era now. And I wonder if the baby formula crisis is just the beginning of many. I mean, it's not even the beginning.

We've already had crises. They just haven't been in the, like, sole source of nutrition for the most vulnerable population in the entire country. But I really think that we are in a kind of new normal here with the global realignments that are happening, with the way that the climate crisis is making food stocks and farming much more precarious, the sort of follow-on effects that we have from that, the follow-on effects that we have from this war, which is not ending anytime soon. And so when you see the government so behind the curve and so unable to respond in anything approaching a timely or urgent fashion and still trying to sort of pass the buck in terms of, their own blame in not getting on top of this, I think this is going to be a cycle that we see replay itself over and over again, not just with this administration, but with whatever comes next as well.

Let's see how they can blame Putin for it. Yeah, exactly. Putin's baby formula. Putin, the Putin price hike is responsible for the baby formula. Putin, Ukraine price hike on baby formula. Tell that to people who are parents of preemies. Speaking of screwing over workers and regular people, Starbucks, a little update for you. Of course, the Starbucks Union Workers United, they have been romping in union elections across the country. I mean, well over 100 stores have unionized now. It is extraordinary. And

Starbucks, we've been reporting, has been completely freaking out about this. They brought Howard Schultz back in. They fired a number of people, including some of the people leading their union-busting response. This has clearly not gone well for them. What did Howard Schultz say? It was like an invasion or an assault. That was the word he used, this union assault on Starbucks. Well, they now have escalated to a new tactic, effectively declaring all-out war on the union. Put this up on the screen. By closing one of the cafes that unionized, this according to a Bloomberg report, the union says that this is obvious retaliation. And they didn't just say this. They actually filed that allegation with the National Labor Relations Board. This is a store that unionized in April. It's located in Ithaca, New York. They're asking the NLRB to seek a federal court injunction to

quickly prevent or reverse the store closure. So we've had over around 100 Starbucks cafes have voted to unionize. Actually, more than that now. Only 14 have voted against unionizing. So Starbucks desperate to do something here to stop this trend and this landslide in favor of unionization within their stores. And part of why we know this is retaliation and not just, you know, normal, like obviously sometimes Starbucks stores close is because, put this up on the screen from More Perfect Union, they obtained the email that was sent to unionized Starbucks workers in Ithaca that announced the closure of their store. And guess who it was sent from? It was not actually

sent from Starbucks. It was sent from their union-busting lawyer who handles union negotiations. So they're using the union busters to close the store. That tells you everything you need to know about what this is actually all about. And we've seen this be successful in the past, Sagar, where at other companies, I think it was Dollar General who did this in Missouri. Yes, they did that. You know, they want to put the fear of God into these workers that, hey, if you vote to unionize, your store could be next. You could be out on the street and without a job like that because we still hold all the cards and have all the power. I think the fact, well, the fact that it was Ithaca and that it was at one of the original places

with unionization, I think is a major show of force against the workers by the company. And my great fear, as I was talking about earlier, is yes, the labor market is hot. Yes, it was a great time really in order to go and to try and form a union. But the more into recession that you go, the more excuse that they have to just crack down as much as possible. All you need is a single

down quarter and down in the stock for the company to just go full-fledged. And I'm not saying they haven't necessarily even already done that, but that just makes it so that it will get lost in the noise, I think. And that is a fear. Workers will be more vulnerable to these types of threats. Yes, way more. Because right now you have issues with inflation and wages not keeping up. So people are getting a pay cut every month. So there aren't enough good jobs.

But there are a lot of jobs. So when you are threatening – they also, they fired workers. Actually, Layla, who we had on this show, she faces, she's got her court hearing this week to see if she gets reinstated to her job because she alleges and the union alleges that she was illegally fired. There are a number of other, there's a Memphis Seven that also they allege were illegally fired. They have their court hearings, I think, coming up this week as well, maybe even today, actually, for those hearings as well. But they've already, they've fired workers to try to make an example of them and scare people and freak them out. Remember, he tried this ploy too, which I

assume they're still going through with, of we're going to give all the other workers a benefits increase and we've got new goodies for them. But if you're a union, sorry, you're left out of that. Also probably illegal, but yet another union busting tactic, because what they try to say is, oh, if you unionize, you may lose some of the good things that you already have. That is almost never the case. But they're trying to make that reality, even though they're probably doing that illegally. And so this is the next step in the escalatory chain. None of those things have worked. None of them have slowed the momentum whatsoever. I saw yesterday, I think, four, five, six, something like that, new Starbucks unions formed just yesterday, voted to unionize just yesterday. So this is the next step. All right. You didn't take it. You didn't do any, you know, it didn't stop when we fired workers, didn't stop we said, union workers, you're not getting these benefits that other Starbucks workers are.

What if we actually just close the store, just shutter the whole thing just to send a message and send a shockwave through the movement? So I still don't think it will work because of where the labor market is right now. But you're 100% correct. As the economy turns, these sort of threats, this sort of bullying, these sort of illegal union busting tactics, they grow more and more potent, the more desperate the workforce ultimately is. I mean, Starbucks really wants to make the case

that closing a Starbucks on Cornell University campus makes business sense. Right, mm-hmm. Come on. Right, mm-hmm. I've seen Starbucks in strip malls, which nobody goes to, and that place is somehow still in business. But not on a university?

That seems like the best possible place to have a Starbucks. Whatever. Good morning, everybody. Happy Thursday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed we do. Lots of big things happening today. The big start of the January 6th hearings. Democrats and their allies on the Republican side of the aisle have created a big multimedia presentation. So we will preview all of that, what it means, how it's all going to unfold

so you know what to watch for this evening. We also have some updates in that mass shooting down in Uvalde. We will tell you about that. And also Matthew McConaughey's big trip to Capitol Hill gave really what was an incredibly moving speech.

So we have a bit of that for you as well. Also, a threat on the life of Justice Brett Kavanaugh. A man was apprehended who had guns and directly said, I want to murder a Supreme Court justice. Some crazy stuff. Yes. So all of those, very, very troubling. Comes on the heels of actually a Wisconsin judge who was just shot and murdered in his home, too. So very, very troubling developments, needless to say.

We also have a perfect swamp story for you that sort of tells you everything about how influence really works in this town. The head of Brookings Institution, this General John Allen, who was very influential in the Obama administration, very important in terms of the Afghanistan strategy there. He is now under investigation by the FBI for his dealings with Qatar. There is a lot to this story, including this straw donor who's already been indicted and found guilty for funneling contributions. This is completely bipartisan story and a big, big deal here in town. But also again, just very revealing of how this town actually works.

We also have to give you the very latest in the complete meltdown happening over at the Washington Post. It is literally insane. I can't look away, Crystal. Nor should you, honestly. Yeah, the drama that I went into has only gotten ten times worse and has become even more hypocritical. And it tells us a lot about how modern media works today.

I think people are going to enjoy that. I think it says a lot, not just about modern media, about the modern left, about how these things are so destructive, about just how people are assholes to each other for no really good reason. There's a lot to say about this one. We also have Ross Barkin on to talk about the primary results. Some disturbing results for people who are in the camp of being progressive criminal justice reformers, in particular, Chesa Boudin, who was the prosecutor in San Francisco, was recalled by an overwhelming margin. 60-some percent. Ross has been following the race closely, the statistics in terms of San Francisco crime,

what Chase was doing. So we want to get into all of that with him and what it says sort of from a broader perspective. But we do want to start with those big January 6 hearings tonight, 8 p.m. Before I get to the first element, I was just reading this morning Politico Playbook has a little bit of in-depth detail about what exactly you can expect in this first hearing. This is, of course, the culmination of, I think it was a 10-month investigation. The co-chairs here are Benny Thompson, Democrat from Mississippi, and Vice Chair Liz Cheney are from Wyoming.

What they say in Politico Playbook this morning is, drawing on months of interviews and thousands of documents, committee has thus far kept most of its findings close to the vest. So we expect a lot of new information and some of the most terrifying video from that day that hasn't been shown to the public yet. They really want to sort of make the case that this was not just a sort of sporadic convulsion of violence, that this was premeditated, that it was coordinated, and Donald Trump was really at the center of it. They also say committee aides are staying coy on the actual structure of the hearings, but told reporters there would be a

multimedia component, much like the impeachment hearings in January. So we're going to get into some of the politics of this in just a moment. But, you know, Sagar, I feel like Democrats have this repeated instinct where when the things that they're very upset about, and I think there are good reasons to be upset as a nation about what happened on January 6th, but when they don't land the way they want them to with the public, when, for example, the public has other concerns, as right now, they're very concerned about the economy, very concerned about inflation, concerned about gun violence, concerned about a whole range of things. They are also concerned, I'm sure, about the future of our democracy and what happened on January 6th, but it's nowhere close to the top issue. So Democrats have this instinct of saying, well, we just haven't presented it in the right way. So go ahead and put this element up on the screen. This is from Vanity Fair. They actually brought in this veteran network executive named James Goldston, former president of ABC News, to pull together this multimedia presentation. You can see the headline here from Vanity Fair is, quote, people must pay attention. People must watch.

The January 6th committee is trying to make the most of its primetime TV slot. You know, they push networks to cover this live. I think almost all of them are doing that, save for Fox News, for obvious reasons. We are expecting, I guess, a Trump aide confirmed that the former President Trump will give some kind of a counter response here as well. Unclear whether it'll be a statement, a video, something on True Social, who knows. They also have been working to sort of, you know, preview this thing and kind of hype it up to get people to really expect that this is going to be very revelatory and contain new information. We have Jamie Raskin, who is on the committee, kind of teasing this this week, saying, go ahead and put this quote up from him.

Yes, the committee has found evidence of concerted planning and premeditated activity. The idea that all of this was just a rowdy demonstration that spontaneously got a little bit out of control is absurd. You don't almost knock over the U.S. government by accident. So we're going to lay on all the evidence we've found. House Resolution 503 charges us with defining what happened on January 6th, explaining the causes of what happened, and then ultimately laying out recommendations that would allow us to fortify ourselves against coups and insurrections moving forward. So again, I think that there's an attempt here to let's package it in a different way. Let's bring in this TV executive. Maybe this time it will land in a different way with the American people where it won't be just one of a list of issues, but it will be the primary issue.

There isn't a lot of indication that they have some new bombshell revelations. I think everybody who lived through that day knows the general contours of what happened and has already sort of taken that in and processed that in whatever way they are going to process it. But, you know, I think the other way you have to see this is through the lens of a media apparatus that also has never had better had ratings that were positive again since January 6th. So they also want to kind of recapture the magic of that day. Absolutely. I mean, I think there's a lot to say about this. Now, first and foremost is it's been 10 months since this committee was even founded.

It's been more than a year since January 6th. I think we have a lot of bigger problems than January 6th. But this reminds me exactly of impeachment 1.0 and 2.0. I remember specifically Nancy Pelosi talking in, I believe it was impeachment 2.0, whenever it was about Ukraine. They said, well, you know, the people of America don't understand how bad this was. So when we put him on trial, then they'll understand. And guess what? There has never been, and I really mean this, go back and look at Gallup party identification, higher identification with the Republican party in the United States than the exact time period, January of 2020, whenever impeachment was going down. So what do you, I'm sorry, that was impeachment 1.0 about Ukraine. So what does

that tell us? Which is that we've seen this movie before. How many times did I hear it about Russiagate and Comey? They said, well, when you guys hear James Comey testify before the committee, or when you hear Robert Mueller testify, you're going to see. People need to understand what the Mueller report really said. We all know what it said. Everybody does. They have much bigger problems. It's like, how many times are they going to continue to try and do this? I find the primetimization of this, honestly, just so facetious because what really got to me is that—here's the other thing, too. If you are one of these Russiagate, you know, Democrats, January 6th people who wants to see Trump out of office or impeached or whatever, criminally charged, you're being misled because they specifically have asked them. Jamie Raskin and others on the committee multiple times, are you going to find Trump criminally liable? They said, that's not what we were charged with doing. It's like, no, no, no. But that's the spirit of what you guys have been trying to do. They tried to impeach him and it

didn't work. It's like, what is the point of this entire thing? Well, and here's the thing I think too, right in the wake of January 6th, when the images and the emotion and everything that people felt of that day was really raw. That was the time for, and it's not, Democrats, I think, did everything that they could more or less do. I mean, they moved forward with impeachment. You know, people saw that day. They were horrified by all of it. Like this was not this was not a good day in American history. So Democrats move forward with impeachment. If you're Republicans who wanted to sort of excise this wing of the party, who wanted to move in a different direction than Donald Trump, that was your time. Yeah. And, you know, there was maybe an opening. And we might remember covering at the time Mitch McConnell kind of flirting with it, putting out trial balloons. Maybe we're going to maybe we're going to actually, you know, move in the direction of joining the Democrats for this impeachment, barring Trump from running for office again.

Maybe we're going to actually sanction the members who were complicit in, you know, trying to overturn the election results, whether that was a far fetched outcome or not, which I think is pretty debatable. But ultimately, they took the temperature, and McConnell is a creature of power and nothing else. This is not about morals or principles or anything else with him. Took the temperature of the base of the party and decided it was too hard to act in that moment. And so now, you know, that they didn't pursue that path, whether it would have been successful or not on the Republican side, they decided to just kind of, there were a few that voted with the Democrats, but otherwise they just sort of decided, let's keep our heads down and keep going in this direction and keep playing this game that we're ultimately playing. And so now the only recourse that is left is an electoral recourse. I mean,

the only recourse that is left is, you know, really prove that you have if you're on the Democratic side, that you have a better vision for the country, that you're going to deliver, you know, deliver calm, deliver material for people materially for people and push the country in a better direction. I mean, at this point, I think that's really the only answer to January 6th is offering the American people a vision that they can buy into that gets people moving in, you know, the same direction again, that doesn't just seek to tear and divide people apart. And I'm not saying that, you know, January 6th necessarily is about dividing people apart, because I think the overwhelming number of Americans were really horrified about what happened on that day. But, you know, if Democrats think that this time, with this multimedia presentation, with this new piece of information or this new interview with Sivanka or whoever it is that we're going to release tonight, that this is going to change the way that Americans are thinking about the midterms or thinking about the Republican Party

or thinking about us, you know, I just I think that that's probably pretty fanciful. Yeah. Look, gas is five dollars a gallon. Focus. Oh, sorry. It's four four dollars and ninety seven cents. It'll hit either sometime today or sometime tomorrow. That's the problem. Food is too expensive. Solve that. Hold a hearing on it. I honestly why can't we have primetime hearings with the CEOs of the oil companies and primetime hearings with the CEOs of the meatpacking industry? That actually might get people going. People might tune into that and be like, oh, you know, I'm kind of interested in what exactly is happening here. But this is what – look, politics and Washington especially is all about what you choose to focus your time on.

And this is what they have decided to try and make a key part of their case. And I don't think it's going to work. I think the holding it in prime time, obviously, look, fine. I mean, also, here's the other thing on the video side of this. What have we not seen at that point from the day? I mean, the New York Times did a whole mashup on this, like right afterwards. People have done, well, you can't watch it on youtube anymore and maybe we can talk about that a little bit later i think it's nuts but look they all the raw footage is out there there's also raw footage you know that people have been looking into to try and piece together like what exactly happened with some of the police informants and nobody talks about that one my point is is that there isn't hundreds of hours of raw footage at this point if you want to go watch it you can i'm

sure there's super cuts of it all over the internet. They're probably 10 times better than whatever some idiot TV producer has. We all lived it. Yeah, exactly. I watched it live on television. We all lived it in real time.

And I have no doubt they have something, you know, I think one of the things that they're going to show is, and we'll get to the Proud Boys in a moment,

but there was a documentarian who was actually following them on that day, so I think there's some footage from that that hasn't been released. I'm sure there is some new stuff that people have not seen. But I also think that people really understood it very clearly on the day what ultimately happened. And we have learned some new details about how there were people in Trump's orbits who had deluded themselves into making these plans and these,

you know, separate slates of electors. And again, I think it's an open question of how close any of this came to ultimately succeeding. But and I've read through the affidavits at this point and the indictments at this point of both of the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, who have now both been charged with seditious conspiracy. And we'll talk about that in just a moment. And, you know, it's clear they they deluded themselves into thinking that if they sort of showed up at the Capitol, that the American people would be behind them in this effort to overturn the election results. And that would be the spark of this revolution. And this is like the, you know, deluded, fanciful, like, LARPing that these dudes were doing. And I don't want to downplay that this is like a dangerous situation,

but ultimately in their mind, they'd completely deluded themselves. The American people clearly were not behind them. I mean, that's the bottom line of why this all became a complete failure. If your goal is to overturn the election results, is because people, even Republicans at the time, now Republicans have come up with all sort of post after the fact rationalizations, they were horrified by what happened. They did not have your back ultimately. Even Trump, after much persuasion and, you know, a million people calling him saying you have to tell these people leave, ultimately told them like to go home and to be peaceful. So the American people did not have their back. They

understood on that day what it meant, what happened. They have sort of made their political judgments around that. And I think that at this point, the parties that can focus most on delivering a better country and delivering for people and making their lives better tends to be the party that's doing best. I mean, this is the big Achilles heel for Trump as well, is he's so obsessed with the stop the steal nonsense. That's the one thing that could keep him and his wing of the party from coming back to power. And people like Doug Mastriano is now the Republican gubernatorial nominee in Pennsylvania who's obsessed with this stuff. Like that's a very winnable race and his obsession

makes it much less likely that people are going to ultimately vote for him and put him in that office because they are very concerned about their day-to-day life and that's what they want politicians ultimately focused on. So this story, very important for what it reveals about the swamp and how all of this works. Go ahead and put this first piece up on the screen. So the FBI has seized the electronic data of a retired four-star general who authorities say made false statements and withheld incriminating documents, so he was lying and covering up, about his role in an illegal foreign lobbying campaign on behalf of the wealthy Persian Gulf nation, Qatar. New federal court filings obtained Tuesday, they were sort of, I think, accidentally released,

actually outlined a potential criminal case against former Marine General John Allen, who led U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, did a bang-up job there, great job, before being tapped in 2017 to lead the influential Brookings Institution think tank. Side note, one of Brookings' longtime top donors, the nation of Qatar. Ah, interesting.

Okay, I did go deep on this. I will spare you all of the ins and outs, but let me just give you a brief sketch of what the government is saying went down here. There are three individuals who are really involved. One of them is General John Allen. The other is a former ambassador to the UAE in Pakistan named Richard Olson. And the third is someone they describe as a, quote, prolific political donor who's now serving a 12-year prison sentence on corruption charges related to those donations, some of which were fraudulent.

He would donate that it was really on behalf of some foreign individual who wasn't supposed to be donating in our political elections. Or sometimes he would invent names to funnel donations through. There was all kinds of shady dealings going on here. At the highest level, this man's name is Ahmaud Zubairi. And if you look into the details of what happened with Zubairi and Olson and John Allen here, basically, they were all colluding again. Allegedly, I'm sure their lawyers say this didn't happen, et cetera, et cetera. They were all colluding to come up with a way that they could represent Qatari's interests within the Trump administration.

I want to say that this, though, story is completely bipartisan. This shady Zubairi character who's now serving 12-year prison sentence, he's got pictures with Hillary Clinton. He got meetings with Joe Biden. You know, this is a complete political mercenary who is a hired gun for the shadiest characters around the world to try to peddle influence here in Washington. And also, by the way, sometimes with success. There's a quote here. Go ahead and put this next piece up on the screen. This is about the U.S. ambassador, Olson.

Part of what happened here, this is the guy who was ambassador to UAE in Pakistan. He was in trouble with the FBI, and he was basically like, how come you're focused on me? And what about John Allen, who I had, like, I was in cahoots with this guy and you're not looking at him at all. So that's part of how the FBI ends up at General John Allen's doorstep. Olson was being paid 20K a month by this sketchy political donor dude serving the 12-year prison sentences. And he also,

the sketchy donor dude, agreed to pay Allen an undisclosed fee for his efforts, according to prosecutors, in Olson's plea deal. But Allen's spokesman says the general was actually never paid. They say in mid-June, Allen met with Olson and Zuberi at a Washington hotel to explain, quote, how he would conduct the lobbying and PR campaign, according to prosecutors. A few days later, they flew to Qatar at Zubairi, the sketchy political donor's expense, to meet with Qatari's ruling emir, other government officials, where the pair explained they were not representing the U.S. government, but noted they had connections with U.S. government officials that placed them in a position to help Qatar.

Allen advised the Qataris on what steps to take, including signing a pending deal to purchase F-15 fighter jets and using a major military base in Qatar as leverage to exert influence over U.S. government officials. And what do you know? Just four days later, Qatar signed a deal to purchase those jets per Allen's advice. The last piece I want to lay out for you here, and the reporting from the AP has been really strong. Great job tracking all of this down. Go ahead and put this last piece up on the screen. So this one, the headline is mercenary donor sold access for

millions in foreign money. Prosecutors describe Zuberi as a, quote, mercenary political donor who gave to anyone often using illegal straw donor cutouts he thought could help him. Pay to play, he explained to clients, was just how America works. He also said, we get requests for meetings from all scumbag of the world, warlords, kings, queens, presidents for life, military dictators, clan chiefs, tribal chiefs, and etc. And he says everyone wants to come to Washington to meet people. So again, shady character, did not do a good job even hiding his illegal criminal behavior. No problem gaining access to the highest level officials on both parties. Yeah, absolutely. Go ahead and put this next one up there on the screen.

Ken Vogel makes a great point. DC think tanks always downplay suggestions that they're part of influence campaigns. But now the FBI says that the literal president of Brookings tried to hide his role in an illegal foreign lobbying campaign for Qatar. Look, they've got him dead to rights. He emailed the national security advisor of the United States who he knew and served in the military with while he was, I guess, maybe getting paid by these people to say you should have a more friendly tone to guitar. How much more pay to play does it get, people? And then, this is even better,

they have the three of them, or at least Allen and Olsen, conspiring of like, oh, what can we say that we were really doing? Let's say Allen was setting up a foreign military advisory panel for Qatar and that's what he was really there for. So, and they have them hiding documents and making up these stories that they go ahead and push to the feds. So yeah, it's damning. And

Brookings, by the way, has already suspended this dude. He got the Weigel treatment. Yes, he got the Weigel treatment. They already put him on leave. On leave. Presumably unpaid, although I'm not 100% sure about that. But here's the thing. People know this. I lived in Qatar. I went to high school. My last year's high school were there. Brookings has had a presence in Qatar for a long time. And there's always been sketchy stuff with the Brookings Doha Institution. I could see it while I was there. Their basic plan is, we know we're going to run out of oil, and we got nothing else going on over here. So let's just pay, or natural gas also, let's go ahead and just pay off all the major institutions in the West, have them come here and intellectualize our society, which if you know anything about them, that's an interesting thing to do over there. But that's what they've been trying to do with Brookings and others. Now, the problem was, is that when they got into all that snafu, people forget about this, they were like cut off by the UAE and the Saudis, it was like a whole thing. Then they used their

buy-offs and institutional connections to lobby heavily the Trump administration and others, not to just side with the UAE and to try and play a broker role. They called in all their favors with Rex Tillerson. He was the Secretary of State at the time. And this was all unfolding during that time. Exactly. This was all happening during that time. This is a big problem for Qatar because remember, Qatar is a tiny little peninsula. There's nothing going on there. And they're connected to the Saudis. They're one land border they just got cut off of. So they got to fly in all this stuff over here. So apparently, my mom had gone over there and she was saying the grocery store,

everything was from Turkey and Iran all of a sudden. Yeah. Because the food, the normal food, all that stuff got, but anyway, it was a huge problem for the economy in Qatar. Now, what happened then is that they started calling in all the favors of all these billions that they've been paying off all of these Westerners. And this is exactly the issue with having all of this intertwined connection with these foreign governments. I mean, when you have these foreign governments donating all this money and spreading it around town, nobody does it for free. There's always a cost, always. And that's something that so many people here have tried to deny. I'm not going to say it's always

pay for play, but it never hurts, right, to give $50,000 or $100,000 or pay some guy $20,000 a month or something. I mean, these stories, a lot of them are really quite connected because you see who actually is able to influence policy and actually get what they want oftentimes in Washington and the sort of, you know, the games they play to be able to do it. And you see issues that have huge public support and get no movement in Congress whatsoever. And then you wonder why you have the societal breakdowns, not to excuse like the criminals and the lunatics that would, you know, cause mass violence or political violence. But then you wonder why you have the societal breakdown of people who are like, you know, using these fringe and violent means to try to make their political, it's all a sign of a society in complete breakdown. When this is the real way to

get influence and power across both political parties, that is a devastating state of affairs. And, you know, these think tanks, like they have this very sort of like high and mighty type of image, especially in this town, Like, oh, we're just intellectuals here, like coming up with policy ideas and trying to, you know, help. They're incredibly enmeshed in the political world and provide the sort of backbone and thinking behind a lot of legislation that ultimately gets done. Congress basically outsources a lot of their work to these think tanks. And it's, I mean, this is, again, completely bipartisan and non-ideological. All of these think tanks are in bed

with disgusting people and countries and all the rest. Oh yeah, Neera Tanden in the UAE, you remember that? Yes, that's exactly right. So, you know, this is the real, this cast of characters is far from the only one that is engaged in this.

And, you know, I think it was the Wall Street Journal, I think it was, that wrote this up that said basically, like, you know, if this dude, this Zubari character is now in prison for 12 years, if he'd been a little bit savvier and just played a little bit more on the side of, like, what you can—is legally permissible, he could have done all that he was doing in basically a legal way, and it would have been perfectly fine, and it's totally standard operating procedure here in this town. Oh, 100%. And just so people know, John Allen was one of those people who lied to the American people about the progress of Americans under the Obama administration while he was commander of all U.S. forces in Afghanistan. He lied to all of our faces.

Then he endorsed Hillary. I'll never forget this. He endorsed Hillary on the 2016 DNC. He stays like, I'm a general, and Hillary's going to keep us safe. Then he became the Brookings head. This is as swamp as it possibly gets. Clearly still enmeshed in the military bureaucracy. He was rewarded for his lies and failures in Afghanistan with the Brookings Post. And now finally, you know, some several odd years later is actually being held to account.

Yeah, maybe we'll see. I'd love to see him go down. He is as swampy as it gets. Selling on his country. Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation. I'm also the girl behind voiceover, the movement that exploded in 2024. You might hear that term and think it's about celibacy, but to me, voiceover is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's flexible, it's customizable, and it's a personal process. Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it. Listen to VoiceOver on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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