1/26/23: Trump Unbanned, Tanks To Ukraine, Zelensky Fires Top Ministers, George Santos Financial Trouble, Brett Farve Corruption, Pelosi Google Stock, Jim Cramer Cringe & MORE!

Breakingpoints dot com. Good morning everybody, Happy Thursday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have grissal Indeed, we do big breaking news for you this morning. Facebook slash Meta has decided to let the big guy himself, Donald Trump back on the platform. Not a huge surprise at this point. I mean, the guy is running again. Like there was a lot of pressure for them to

ultimately do this. But we'll dig into the decision because they've thrown into caveats there as well, trying to kind of have it both ways same time. Huge huge news with regard to Ukraine, we have decided to send them tanks. That is a line in the sand that we'd drawn previously and even as recently as five days ago. There are all kinds of news articles that were like, yeah, we're not going to do that. Well now we are,

so talk about what that means. We also have some new financial disclosures from George Santos that, if anything, just deepened the mystery of where his cash that he put into his campaign actually came from. We've got the Mississippi auditor some incredible video of him sounding off on that

Brett Favre welfare scandal. Nancy Pelosi caught in a gigantic trade just before major antitrust action against Google and in a related anti trust no. We also have Jim Kramer melting down on CNBC about government action against some of these big companies. We have Ryan Cooper on the show today to dig into an idea that has just been floated, which is using a sovereign wealth fund in order to fund social security. So be interesting get his take on

all of that. Yeah, but let's start with Facebook. This is obviously huge in the realm of tech and censorship, so let's go ahead and put this up there on

the screen. Meta, the parent company of Facebook, always have to say that is ending its suspension of Donald Trump's accounts with new guardrails to deter quote repeat offensive written by Nick Clegg, the former British politician the president of Global Affairs over at Meta, He says, quote, we will be ending the suspension of mister Trump's Facebook and Instagram accounts in the coming weeks. We have put in new

guardrails to place to deter repeat offenses. The public should be able to hear what politicians are saying so they can make informed choices. Imagine what a controversial decision, So here's what they say. The public should be able to hear what the politicians are saying, the good, the bad, and the ugly, so they can make informed choices to the ballot box. I agree, but that does not mean there are no limits to what people can say on our platform when there's a clear risk of real world harm.

A deliberately high bar for Meta to intervene in public disclosure we act now. Of course, that is an outrageous standard, one of which is deeply capricious, and of which is completely open to their own interpretation. Go through a whole bunch of fake legalies. And the reason I'm saying that is there's no law. All of this is contrived this blog post refers to its oversight board, to its internal processes. Listen,

it's all fake. They claimed that, oh, well, after a rigorous standard put into place, we decided on January eighth to suspend Donald Trump's account on Facebook as if it was part of some long standing decision, and then finally enter that's outrageous. All of it was done in a completely supposedly uncoordinated act by Twitter, Facebook and many other big tech platforms with regards to Trump, and of kind

of a post January sixth hysteria. But whenever they do restore the account, they say some things which we should hold them to account in the future. They say, quote, the normal state of affairs is that the public should be able to hear from a former president of the United States and a declared candidate for office again on

our platform. Now that time period of suspension has elapsed, the question is not whether we choose to reinstate mister Trump's account, but whether there remain such extraordinary circumstances that justify extending the suspension beyond the original two year period. Gristle. They say that they have now quote new guardrails in place, and that there will be a strike system, and that should he ever quote endanger the public again in the future,

that they will take his account down. But look, at the end of the day, this is all in Mark Zuckerberg's hand. He made the call to take it down, he made the call to put him back on. It's insane that this is even in the power of a single man. And I just hate all of the fake contrivance around who will now we have disci here's our protocols, as if they won't just completely dispatch with them or come up with some sort of tortured rationale for the

next time they take action against this account. Yeah, I mean all of the legalies and the quote unquote guardrails that they put out here. It's just an attempt to quiet critics who want Trump to remain off of Facebook. They're trying to have it both ways, to try to you know, the other piece that we shouldn't ignore here is it's not just their assess men of like free speech and potential you know, acts of violence. They've also got a bottom line that they have to worry about.

And Donald Trump spends a lot of money on Facebook ads. So I heard Roconomy at this point, and I think it's a good one. It's not an accident that all of these social media platforms and Facebook in particular, because they probably got the most money from the Trump campaign, Like the one year that they don't have them on is the year that it happens too. He's happens to be like irrelevant to the political process basically, and also irrelevant in terms of their bottom line because he's not

wasn't running for anything. It was like the only year since he popped up on the scene where he wouldn't have been spending really money with them anyway, So it was not any sort of loss to them. Well, now that he's ramping up his campaign, well now there's some money to lose, so that also has to weigh into some of these decisions as well. But yeah, ultimately this is all of oars. They will do with this account what they decide. It is in the hands of Mark Zuckerberg.

He has previously concocted these sort of elaborate schemes to try to distance himself and make it like there's this Facebook Supreme Court and it's this independent board of arbitration. No, it's up to him. He made the decision. He will make the decision again. And all of this is just an attempt to apply at critics, which of course won't work. I mean, the people who won him off forever, they're going to continue to want them off forever, and that's

not going to change, exactly. Correct. And Trump, to his credit, actually into some of this. Put this up there on the screen, he says, Facebook, which has lost billions of dollars in values since deplatforming your favorite president me, has just announced that they are reinstating my account. Such a thing should never again happen to a sitting president or anybody else which is not deserving of retribution. Thank you

to truth Social for doing such an incredible job. Your growth is outstanding in future limited And I'm not sure about that part, but I am sure definitely that they did lose some money. And at the very least, look, he's not wrong. I mean, in terms of the way that we thought about these platforms, a lot of it was destroyed in twenty seventeen with deplatforming and in general really ramping up throughout those years. But the final act really was Trump, And actually, when really think about it,

it was Trump in conjunction with Parlor. I still remain that Parlor was one of the most dangerous and censorious things that ever happened, because that was about the infrastructure of web itself, like with Amazon Web Services and the denial of servers that will literally allow a company to exist. That is where things really kicked into high gear. And I've done other monologues here since then about Andrew Tate. You can hate Andrew Tate, but simultaneous deep platform across

the Internet, that's pretty insane. Kiwi Farms was another big one. I mean, we're talking about d listing on Google like that's then we're talking about the very like ability to exist online. I'm not even saying I like any of these places, but it's not about like, it's like, how can this be in the hands of you know, of Sindhar Pachai over at Google, of Tim Cook the removal from the App Store that was another big one. I mean, I believe Apple has, if not a majority, near majority

of control over cell phones in the United States. These are all things where and this is the classic example the phone company. The phone company doesn't care what you say on the phone, right if you break the law when you're on the phone, it's the government's job to go and get in a subpoena and be like, Okay, he's breaking the law while he's on the phone. It's not AT and t's job to censor what you're saying

to somebody else in a private phone call. Now you can say, yeah, but the Internet is different because you're talking to everybody. But not really. I mean, when you think about infrastructure, that's the whole point is the infrastructure is supposed to be completely content neutral, and where we escaped that on January eight, twenty twenty one. I mean, I think it's a little more complex than that, because I've almost everybody agrees there should be some limits to

what people are able to say. I mean, threats of violence, docks like, you know, outright harassment, revenge, porn like. There are lines that I think society would want to draw, and that we draw with the First Amendment as well. But even a place like eight chan has some rules around what you can and can't post. So that's where things ultimately get complicated because then you have to ask. It's not like a phone company, because you have to ask,

where do we draw that line? The problem is having the power to decide where do we draw that line? On something that ends up being really critical to our democratic infrastructure in the hands of a very few people, and it being a complete black box. I mean, before the Twitter files came out, we really had no insight into the internal process within Twitter, as one example for how they came to this decision, and once we did have some insight into how they came to that decision,

it was exactly as we suspected. It was completely ad hoc. It was driven by a couple of ideological actors. It was driven by, you know, external pressure and the sense of employees at Twitter of like how the people around them in their lives would judge them if they didn't

take action against these things. And so even though they had these stated rules governing the platform, ultimately when push came to shove, it just ended up being their own personal decision making that led to the outcome of Trump being banned from the platform. So, you know, that's that, to me, is the core of the issue, and in

fact is quite relevant. We have a number of stories in the show today about antitrust actions being taken the attempt to curb and check some of the power of big tech, which obviously is relevant in terms of censorship but relevant in terms of all sorts of aspects of our lives on and off the Internet, and it really is the sort of crucial frontline battle of our time, and one that you know, fortunately there is some some

genuine bipartisan bipartisanship on. There are plenty of people who just posture, you know, plenty of Republicans who just want to posture about the censorship. But then, like Jim Jordan, ultimately all they're doing is like carrying water for the tech companies. They don't actually care about the power piece.

If you're not focused on the power of these companies when it comes not just to censorship, but all of the activities that they engage in all of their impact on public life, then ultimately you're not really serious about

this important point. We're going to table this discussion. We're going to talk a lot more about about both the Google lawsuit that the Department of Justice, the second Justice Department lawsuit against that company, and all so about the overall reaction to anti trust and how things are changing. So let's go ahead and talk about Ukraine. That's what we originally were going to start our show with before the Trump news broke last night. There's a major Titanic

development here in Washington. The decision to send some dozen two dozen or so M one Abrams tanks to Ukraine on the battlefield in conjunction with Poland, with Finland, and with Germany, and the departure of tanks from all of these Western nations to try and help Ukraine in its offensive in the coming months. President Biden making this announcement, let's take a listen. Putin expected Europe and the United States to weaken our resolve. He expected our support for

Ukraine to crumble with time. He was wrong. He was wrong. He was wrong from the beginning, and he continues to be wrong. We are united. America is united, and so is the world. We approach the one year mark as we do of the Russia full scale invasion of Ukraine. We remain united and determined as and our conviction and our cause. These tanks are further evidence of our enduring an unflagging commitment to Ukraine and our confidence and the

skill of the Ukrainian forces. This is an important decision marker. It was one that was never contemplated by the Pentagon, by the Biden administration, and by Western officials, which changed all within the last month. So let's go all the way back. So, first, President Zelenski visits here in Washington. One of the two main asks that he asked President Biden. Number one was not just patriot missile system but more

patriot missile systems. Number two is tanks and jets. Now, jets are off the table for now, but listen to this story. Because the tanks were completely off the table. Then what happens is that Poland has in possession some Leopard tanks that were given to it by Germany. Poland says, I want to give these tanks to Ukraine because of repeated requests by President Zelenski. Well, then what happens what they have to go to Germany because Germany is the

one who gave them the tanks. Germany says, no, We're not going to give you those tanks, because then the decision is on us to allow pole And to do it. Chancellor Oloff Schultz says, the only way I'm giving these tanks to Ukraine is if you give tanks to Ukraine, because then it's a complete NATO decision, especially led by the United States, and not one that lands in Germany. Because Germany doesn't want to be the one that is retaliated against by Russia if such an attack to happen.

They don't want to be out there on their own. Not to cut you short, but just to insert a little piece here. This is from politicos reporting about behind the scenes negotiations. This should make everybody very uncomfortable. Schultz was adamant in his discussions with Biden that's supplying Leopard tanks to Ukraine marks such a qualitatively new step that the US, as the world's biggest military power, but also

Germany's guarantee for nuclear deterrence, must be involved. They also want to demonstrate unity toward Putin important to the Chancellor from the very beginning that we take every step with as much unity as possible, as spokespersons said. So they're basically like, listen, we don't feel like our nuclear deterrence is enough. We want the world superpower on our I mean, that's how provocative they ultimately view this step, and they'd

really come to loggerheads because they're the military. In particular, Pentagon really did not want to send these tanks, and they put out there like, oh, it's because it's hard to train on whatever. You No, they saw this as a significant escalation. They also worry about our own readiness,

as we've been talking about as well. Biden was reluctant, and effectively, Germany was under pressure and there was starting to be this ugly split in the NATO alliance, and Biden just caved and was like, all right, fine, Rather than have any demonstration of disunity, we're just going to go along with sending these tanks, something that they had completely ruled out early in this conflict. Because remember, it's easy to lose track of how these things all started.

The original thought and the original what was sold to the American people, We will provide them whatever they need for their defense. Tanks are a strictly offensive capability. So this was previously like, you know, completely out of bounds, and now here we are. Well. The reason it also matters is the offensive itself. What is that offensive going to look like? Where you can combine that with some reporting that we brought to you all just a couple of weeks ago about the US is warming to the

idea of Ukraine taking back Crimea. Now look, I have no idea whether they even have that capability, And on the tank piece, it's important, so I asked some of my friends who work in the defense industry, and I was like, all right, what's actually the deal with these tanks? And they're like, look, we don't actually even know the detail of the tank itself. The tank itself is a platform. There's a lot of technology that goes into the US tank. There's in terms of the ones that we sell, we

sell them all over the world. Some of them are from the nineteen eighties. Some of them you wouldn't like a twenty twenty three Abrams tank versus nineteen eighty tank, and twenty twenty three one is going to win every day, even though they look kind of similar. So the point is that that's actually unclear. They need to be specially manufactured in the next couple of months by the US defense industry. So congratulations to the makers here in Northern

Virginia who are going to be supplying those tanks. So they're specially manufactured, they need to be trained on it. There's an entire logistical pattern that needs to develop in order to supply and keep up. These tanks are in general pretty advanced pieces of technology, so that's a piece of it. However, it was immediately noticed by Russia. Let's put this up there on the screen. The city of Kiev immediately under bombardment. That happened right after Kiev secured

the tanks. And the reason here is that the US and Germany are sending these tanks. Immediately after this decision was made, the strike happened on Kiev. So when we put those two things together, clearly the Russians see it as something. Now, how exactly are they going to respond? We genuinely have no idea. I actually saw a really troubling headline this morning in the New York Times. It says that the Ukraine War or it says here's how

President Biden reluctantly agreed to send tanks to Ukraine. But let me read you, guys the subhead It was just this morning the decision unlocked a flow of heavy arms from Europe and inched the United States and it's NATO allies closer to direct conflict with Russia. That is a that is literally, that's not me scaremongering or whatever. That's from the Times, probably one of the most hawkish outlets

in this entire conflict. It also comes on the heels of the Doomsday clock, the famous clock about how close we are supposedly to nuclear war. Let's go ahead and put this video up on the screen. I can speak over it. From the Bureau of Atomic Scientists, they now say we are set one hundred seconds or sorry, ninety seconds to midnight, which is the closest to catastrophe that we have ever been in the history of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists calling it, quote a global catastrophe. Look all,

we're trying. We're trying to approach this in a very level headed way and not be skeptical. I'm even trying not to let my bias come in here. When it's Germany and I'm like, yeah, why don't you send them the tanks. I'm like, you're the one who's only like a couple hundred miles from there. It's your country, You're a continent. Why do we have to be the ones

to do it. The reason why I think that this is significant and was regarded as such by President Biden, by General Mark Milly, by the Navy Secretary who said that we're going to have to start cannibalizing our own supplies if we continue to have to supply Ukraine, is that this could change the entire ballgame on the battlefield, because look at what happened with Russia. Russia's armored carriers and everything is breaking down, their global infrat or their infrastructure,

military supply chain disaster. That's why they're so reliant on railroads like it's World War Two. They don't have the upkeep Ukraine capturing many of these things, and it was one of the ways that they were able to cripple the Russian offensive in the first place. Well, now, if they have sophisticated Western technology that can out match Russia on the battlefield, we're not talking just about breakthroughs, but you don't know where that's going to stop. And let's

say that it stops in Crimea. Now what we're actually a completely different strategic situation. I'm not even saying I think Russia will should have Crimea. But what we're saying is they think they should have Crimea and they have nukes. So what does that mean? Now? According to The Times, President Biden his advisors believe that the risk of the tactical nuclear weapon being used in Ukraine has gone down.

What does that mean? I don't know. You know, the risk of everything seems to go down until it goes way up whenever the strategic situation changes, right, I Mean, they're logic here seems to be like, well, they haven't nuked us yet, so should be fine. Like I guess they're just not going to. And I do think it's a real myth the idea that Russia has not escalated in response to some of the actions that we have

taken with regard to Ukraine. They did escalate. Now they didn't escalate to nuclear war yet, but they did escalate in terms of going back to attacking, keep going to attacking the energy infrastructure to try to make this winter as brutal and painful as Ukrainians as they possibly can. So, you know, they ultimately went forward with the draft, and there's rumors that they may do another round of conscription domestically. So I think even this mythology that Russia didn't respond,

that there was no escalation is just factually inaccurate. And it also, as I said before, it reminds me of some of the conversations that came out in the WikiLeaks cables that were revealed by Bronco marcitic He talked about how there were a lot of people said all the Russians always say that about Ukraine and NATO and they never really do anything. So the fact that they didn't act instantly was taken as proof that like they're all blust or they're not ultimately going to move forward. That

turned out to not be correct in reality. It was a red line for them in a reality. In reality, and this again bonus and burden and culpability fully on Putin and the Kremlin, etc. But they had drawn a red line, we ignored it, and that is part of the context of how we ended up ultimately in this place. And I just see a lot of echoes of that here.

And the last thing that I'll put in here is, you know, a lot of what they're trying to sell to the process, like, oh, well, this was all about unity with NATO and unity with Germany, and you heard that in the president's comments. There was a line though, in that Politico piece that just came out of the like inside story or whatever that really stuck out to me too, because part of the debate before they decided whether or not to send these tanks was about the

capability of the tanks. If it really made sense in this context, some of the drawbacks of this particular type of tank and apparently, according to Politico, you'll love this. Those comments frustrated defense industry executives who felt the Pentagon was making disparaging remarks about US manufactured equipment. Weeks before, Laura Cooper, Pentagon official charge with overseeing Ukraine policy, had

called the Abrams tanks a gas guzzler. The US does not have to advocate for sending the Abrams, when industry insider said, but administration officials shouldn't criticize the tank. That's especially true since another country in the region, Poland, is buying em once from General Dynamics. Other countries like Morocco, Iraq, Australia, Sauta, Arabia, and Egypt have purchased export versions of the tank as well.

So they were also deeply concerned that this was impacting their bottom line and ability to sell weapons around the world. So they're putting pressure on the administration to make this decision from their own bottom line perspectives. One of the reasons why I think this again is so important is they don't know how to make these tanks. They don't know how to do anything, and they don't have the money to buy them. That means that we're on the

hook forever. Like a real nation, whenever it mounts a defense, it has an industrial base, it has an economy, it has a populace that is capable of mounting that singular defense, sometimes with allies, but not wholly reliant on them in order to mount it and defend its sovereignty. Ukraine has none of that. I mean they would not they wouldn't even deny it without NATO. In the Western countries, they failed to exist in a single moment. If we cut

them off on ammunition, they're dead. It's over. And so when does it end? Like what does the actual an period look? Because even if they push Russia out, what are they going to do? Then they'll say, if you don't continue to get us all these things, then they're just going to come back. Yeah, so are what are we on the hook for fifty one hundred billion a year for every single year going forward? And I really cannot let the Europeans off the hook. This is Libya

all over again. They're the ones who d I'm quoting Susan Rice, who herself was a complete hawk, who said, too, this is all in the transcript. You're not going to drag us into your shitty war in They didn't. Obama did not want to go into Libya. It's the Germans and the French who were like, no, we got to do it for human rights, all this stuff. Oh look at Benghazi, Gadafi, all this, and then now what's happening in Libya right now? They're literal slave markets that are

over there. And ask the people who live in a literal like anarchy whether they prefer then or now. I'm not saying Goadafi was a good guy, but the point is like, should we have been the ones who determined exactly what was going on there? Is all during the

promise of the Arab Spring? It was only ten what ten years ago that that happened, Like, how do we have collective amnesian I think it should scare everybody that they were not willing to do it without the burden on us, because listen, we're all in it now and

we don't have any says. And this is also why I was always advocating for the Congress to step up to its constitutional responsibility and to write strategic provisions in the arms that are given to Ukraine and define the exact platforms and to take it out of the executive hand. Biden is an eighty year old man. He could drop dead tomorrow. Or the policy of the United States then is all in the hands of Kamala Harris. Are we comfortable with that? Are you comfortable with that? Like take

away even the nuke button? Look at this. This is the extraordinary amount of responsibility that they have abdicated. I think it's really important. And again, let's s the next one up on the screen. It just shows you that this was just a couple days ago. Top US officials don't want to give Ukraine tanks despite German pressure five days ago. That's how quickly that we fold. And it shows you the power of the Ukraine lobby here in

the United States. All right, let's go to the next one here because this is also important in terms of Ukraine. What's happening. Basically, let's put it up on the screen. Zelenski fired nine of his top officials after reports that members of his government went on vacation to Spain and France and took bribes during the war. These are the senior most officials in the top Ukrainian government who have

been fired actually during the war. So let's look at who these people are four deputy men misters in the Ukrainian government, including five regional governors, were sacked by the Ukrainian cabinet. This was on Tuesday. The prosecutor Deputy prosecutor General also announced his resignation as a result of this, and it was because of internal investigations showing that some of them were going on lavish vacations using a Mercedes

owned by a prominent Ukrainian businessman. A spokesperson for the Ukrainian Border Guard was maligned for partying in Paris as the war continued in Eastern Ukraine. Zelenski painted this as an anti corruption move. This is also after they talk about how the apparently the former deputy Defense minister resigned after the papers reported that he had purchased food for the military at prices inflated two or three times higher than what was actually in the grocery store, spending some

three hundred and sixty million dollars on food. Now, let me ask you who's dollars do you think that is? Because there is no such thing as Ukrainian economy right now, we are backstopping everything. So congratulations, American taxpayer, you're the ones who paid. Yeah, you've funded these all expenses paid vacations to Paris, Spain and wherever else. So way to go. Yeah, yeah, I mean this is one of the key things that

the media has really gas led us on. Up until Russia's invasion of Ukraine, there was all kinds of reporting and you were allowed to say, this is a nation that struggles with corruption. Yeah, the most oft entry in Europe, very corrupt nation. Okay, the minute that this happened, you were not allowed to say that anymore. That's why they deserve to be invaded, right, yes, of course, of course.

But the reason that that became out of bounds in terms of you know, commenting on whatsoever, is because then that naturally raises questions in the minds of the American people. Okay, well, what are we sending them and where's it going? And maybe let's have like an inspector general to keep track of where the weapons are going and with the money is funding, et cetera, et cetera. But that was that

was out of bounds. You couldn't ask those questions, and so it was important to just pretend like Ukraine was this pristine beacon of democracy. And again, the fact that they had struggle with corruption, as you know, many nations around the world do, including our own. Doesn't mean they deserve to be invaded, doesn't mean that they were like you know, it's their fault, or that Russia has a

point or any of that. But it should have been always part of the context to inform the debate, debate here domestically about what we wanted to do and how we wanted to do it. Instead, you know, Rand Paul's very reasonable proposal, Hey, let's have an inspector general to watch over where these funds are going and where these

weapons are going, was completely voted down and dismissed as unreasonable. Yeah, exactly. Look, I mean, you know, is it too much to ask if you're going to give somebody a hundred billion, is it at least being spent on you know, Like, who do I feel for the most in this whole situation,

actual Ukrainian people and soldiers. I mean, listen, one of the crazy things about warfare in the twenty first century is and I remember this during Syria, and I remember now you can watch some of these videos of guys getting ambushed on the front line, both Russian and Ukraine. It is terrifying, and it just shows you too. Like look war, for all the talk of tech, a lot of it is just two guys in a hole, and some of it comes down to like horrific hand to

hand combat with bullets, and it is terrible. And you know the idea, I think a lot of us can take pride and it's like, all right, you know, these guys are fighting for the defense, they got weapons in their hands, and they're standing up to try and do something about it. But at least you want to make sure that that's actually happening, not that the rations that they're eating have been horrifically overpaid for by the American taxpayer so that some guy in Ukraine can take a

vacation in Paris. That starts to really piss me off. And I think a lot of people should be really pissed off about what's going on there. And the fact is it's like look, in terms of the Western media, nothing, I mean, yeah, absolutely, no reporting. No, it's hard to find all these like vacations and whatever that we're apparently going on that Ukrainian government knew about. There was no

reporting on that. I have to go to like Ukrainian sources or Russian sources and use the translate thing and be like all right, well I think that's what's actually going on here, and it's like all right, And this is also why, like do I know what's happening? The presumption that any of us know what's actually happening in Ukraine it's a farce, Like almost everything that you see

in front of you, unless it's literal ravity. Even then you know, yeah, even in terms of questionable what they're bringing out and whether the translation is correct, it is, it shows you the difficulty that we face here and trying to give people a fullsome picture of what's going on. But anyway, I think it's an important story. It's something that you got to track. I mean, Selenski's a guy, he's cracked on media, he's fired or does banned some

opposition parties that were actually in Ukraine. In terms of the people he's replacing, I mean, who knows, like whether those people are good or not? Are they corrupt in the right way? That's always a real question. The bribes, etc. I've done my best to try so. For example, they talk about the bribe Mike, well, who bribed him? You know, I'm looking into it. Some one of these deputy ministers takes a four hundred thousand dollars, but nobody's naming the bribe. Mike, well,

who is is it Russia? Is it Eastern Europe? Like, where's the money coming from? None of that is open in their board. We're going to stay on this because I actually do think it is really important. Yeah, and just one more piece on you know, the incomplete picture and the lack of questioning that we get from the Western press. Year. There's some real questions about exactly what happened with regards to this apartment block that was hit

with a missile, devastating attack on civilians there. Yeah, and you know, the Western press reported very definitively and conclusively that this was definitely a Russian missile strike. Well, go ahead and put this up on the screen. A Ukrainian advisor actually suggested that it was not a Russian missile which hit that building, but that it was a Ukrainian attempt to disrupt that missile that ended up incidentally hitting

this building. And Zelenski himself made some comments at the World Economic Form that seemed to suggest that was also a possibility. But this advisor resigned, apologized over the comments and Listen. I don't know what the reality is of what happened here with this apartment block, but I do know that there should be some curiosity in the press. Now listen. Ultimately, right, if Russia wasn't firing on this area, then this catastrophe wouldn't have happened. So, yes, still Russia

is to blame. But there's a qualitative difference between Russia was trying to hit and you know, energy block and ends up you know, the Ukrainians and trying to disrupt that missile ends up with these casualties on the apartment building. That's a very different portrait being painted of this war versus Russia intentionally targeting civilians in an apartment right, Well, we have no idea. Again, I have no clue. Guess

what I know. The Ukrainians lied and they said that it was Russia that fired on Pole, that accidentally hit those guys in Pole and kill two people, when it was actually adamant, right, they were adamant. They didn't admit it until we straight up had the forensic proof, and then even then they're like, oh, yeah, show is the proof, and they probably still deny it to this day. I guess we're all just not supposed to talk about that. Do I put it past Russia to hit civilians and

kill them? No? Absolutely not. Of course, of course, you know why would we especially maybe it wasn't intentional, Maybe they're just guided systems or shit, which is also sad at war. We know this actually in terms of them hit they like try to hit a bridge and they end up hitting a park. I mean, you know, they've hit several civilians. This is part of the problem, which is you know, you shouldn't put anybody in a pedestal. Nobody is you know, the hagiography of Ukraine is exactly

what makes it so difficult to ask questions. But I'm optimistic. Look, we're a year into this thing, and I'm not saying this tanks and all this stuff doesn't worry me. But people are asking more questions today than ever before, and one day we will get a real account, just like we did with Libya, just like we did with Iraq.

And just remember what it was like in two thousand and three if this show had been on the air and we've been saying what we were saying, what we believed about Iraq, and then a year later you're totally and completely vindicated. So well, let me just say to offer the administration's perspective, what they would say back to us about the tanks in particular, is this is an all in an attempt to really strengthen the Ukrainian hands so they're in a better position to sit down at

the table for Nego ultimately. But like you could make that argument indefinitely, right, But that's that's ultimately the case that they would put forward. All right, let's move on to American's America's Congressman George Santos aka Anthony Divalder aka Katara. This is a big deal. I mean, listen, all the lies and the like insanity of him claiming he's on the volleyball team, and the video of him as a drag queen and all of that stuff is you know, interesting, uh,

And obviously I've been really fascinated by it. But the key question here has always been where did that money come from that you put into your campaign, buddy, hundreds of thousands of dollars, when there is no real track record of this business that you claim you ran doing, any sort of you know, actual business. It appears that up until very recently you had very little funds to your name. You were getting kicked out of apartments. You reported I think a fifty five thousand dollars income the

last time you ran from Congress. So how did you suddenly have this big change of fortunes where now you're putting in seven hundred k to your own campaign. Well, the Santos campaign has now just filed an amended financial disclosure. This was with regard to their campaign expenditures. It's got to put this up on the screen. From Daily Beast.

Late Tuesday afternoon, Santos afternoon, Santos's political operation filed a flurry of amended campaign finance reports, telling the FEDS, among other things, that a five hundred thousand dollars loon he gave to his campaign did not in fact come from his personal funds as he previously claimed. However, while the newly amended filing told us where the funds did not come from, it also raised a new question where did

the money come from. While both the old new campaign filings claimed that the loans came quote from the candidate, the most recent amended filing had ticked the box for personal funds of the candidate, And on this new amended filing, that box is unchecked, so they are no longer claiming that this was personal funds of the candidate, So they're saying that it came from the candidate, but not from the personal funds of the candidate, which raises a whole

slew of questions. Then again, where did the money come from? And effectively the only legal answer to that would be is if he got like a bank loan, you know that then proceeds go into his account and he uses that bank loan to fund his campaign. That is from what I read from other you know, campaign finance experts, et cetera. That is effectively the only legal answer to

that question given these new revelations. And by the way, there was another one hundred and twenty five thousand dollars loan that they made the same change to unchecking that box saying that it came from the candidate's personal funds. Yeah. I really believe that this will be the downfall of Santos more than anything, just because it's you said, You're like, look, as long as you follow the rules, we have one of the most corrupt campaign finance laws in the entire world.

But if you don't follow the rules, you are going to jail. Like it's like denetch deesuza right, Like one straw donation, that's it, you know, welcome to the federal penitentiary. That's part of the reason why I think SBF is screen even if he was not guilty of wirefraud, which I really allegedly but do believe that he is. It's like, if he they can prove even one straw donation, they'd have you the Feds. You're done. FEC violation is actually

not hard to prove. It's part of the reasons why campaign spends so much time, energy and more investing and making sure they at least do follow the limited rules and at least go around the loopholes with five oh one c threes and fours right and all this. You got to know the way to work the loop right, But he didn't do right. You can do whatever you want, but you have to do it in the right way or else. Yeah, your face in prison time. And he doesn't appear to I mean, look like you said, unless

he straight up took a bank loan. And who the hell is going to give Anthony divald or George Santos, a proven Ponzi schemer fell in whatever criminal history. Who's gonna give him a five hour, thousand dollars bank loan like it's maybe, Or but if he took it from somebody and reported it as personal, that's it. I mean, look, you could try and revise the filing in but in the past, but you know, lying to the FBC is a very serious crime. Yeah, I very much think that

this is gonna this is going to go down. I agree with you. I don't see how he gets out of this one or how he comes up with any sort of explanation that really makes sense, which is why I mean, this new filing is just honestly bizarre. Just to remind you of what he had said previously. Previously it's said that this was quote money I paid myself

through the Devulter organization. He had confirmed to The Daily Beast last month that he withdrew money from his firm specifically to underwrite his campaign, reasoning he was the firm's sole owner. It was actually an LLC, not a sole proprietorship. But you know that you could you could maybe see if he was earning a bunch of cash into this company that is his company, and then he takes it in salary, which is kind of what he had claimed before, and then uses a big chunk of that to fund

the campaign. You may say, like, well, that wasn't really that wise, given that you don't seem to have that many other funds. But okay, it may technically be legal now though if you're saying this wasn't actually your your money that you were putting in. Again, the only legal answer to what's going on here is that he got some kind of a bank loan. It can't have it can't have been you know, just passed through from some other rich person like that is not that is not

going to pass muster. So he's under a lot of scrutiny there. At the same time, you know, we've been covering the fact that he has now been caught involved with what the SEC Securities Exchange commiss is accusing of being a Ponzi scheme and appeers based on the indictment that I read of very much being a Ponzi scheme. Washington Post has new reporting on how Santos operated within this Ponzi scheme, the way that he worked to try

to draw investors in, and it is really fascinating. I don't know if you guys watch that inventing Anna about Anna Deelvey, This like supposed this woman who portrayed herself as a German heiress and like really fooled a bunch of people in New York City, like almost got away with the whole scheme. There are a lot of Anna Delviy vibes contained in this Washington Post article. Is going and put this up on the screen. The headline here is, I felt like we were in Goodfellas. How George Santos

would investors for an alleged Ponzi scheme. They open this article with a sort of like dramatic, dramatic description of him bringing in investors to this restaurant, one of the restaurants that he spent like tens of thousands of dollars in, by the way, in his campaign finance reports, and would pitch them and over multi course elaborate meals. Really sort of portrayed himself like he was this very wealthy, high up individual that he was hobnobbing with elites in the city.

Which again, if you watch the Anadelvi thing, like that was her whole thing. It's just if you project that you are that and you have the right people around you, other elites will basically buy into this mythology that you're creating about yourself. So here's some of the details they say in internal Harbor City meetings. That's name of the Pazzi scheme. Santos refined his pitch braasily, offering stories he said he could tell investors to demonstrate his credentials or

lighten the mood. According to zoom recordings that the Post obtained, some of the tales were self deprecating, but they delivered the same message that he operated in the orbit of the rich and powerful. For example, he told this story about I think it was the Blackstone CEO that Santos was in a meeting with him and fell over a table or something like that. So again it was like

self deprecating, but it was like a humble brag. The bottom line of this story was, these are the sorts of people that I'm friends with, These are the sorts of people I know. Of course, is all completely completely made up. They also talk about the way that this the staff at this restaurant, which again he spent thirty

thousand dollars on in his campaign. According to his reports, they would welcome him and his clients he would order dish after dish, and one of the people that was involved said it really made her worry that he was trying to fleece this person that she had put him in touch with, and she said, I was so pissed. He did this nice show and dance. Everyone at the restaurant knew it. It felt like this was a routine

he did, like this was not the first time. So also raises some questions there about whether he was using the campaign funds in order to finance these elaborate dinners that he was using to try to pitch people on a Ponzi scheme. Yeah, exactly. And you know, I've also been fascinated by schemers. I've really just gone back to the case of made Off. Madeoff was also a genius exactly in this regard, in that even when he needed

money desperately. One time he was like two hundred million in a hole and some guy came up to him was like, Bernie, I want to give you one hundred million. He's like, that's not going to cut it. And at a gala and you know, they're talking and he's like, well, what do I He's like, I've got longtime clients I'm sorry, I can't do it. For for me to do it, I'd have to put somebody away. And he's like, okay, two hundred million. He's like, no, no way, I'm sorry.

That's just not going to do it. He goes to two fifty, which is exactly what Bernie needs. He needs it in order to make his next withdrawal for one of his clients. He said, nah. He works him all the way up to four hundred million, and he's like, all right, I guess I could make that work. And that it worked, I mean, that's there. It's like you read about it and you're like, that's just the craasiness

of the lack of shame. I just can't. If he doesn't get this money around it, it collapses, the whole scheme collapses unless he gets that money today. It ended up collapsing like a couple of months later. But I mean, you know, I don't have that in me, man I. Whatever that is, it's a rare, rare quality, and it auto select for the Bernie maid offs for the rare quality. He doesn't feel ever right now, I don't know. It's

a rare quality. It's an amazing story. There's actually a movie on it where they dramatize that scene on HBO called Wizard of Lies. I gotta watch that. That is incredible. I mean, you know, I really have been obsessed with this story, not even so much like the political implications whatever, Like politicians lie, We get it. You know, this guy part of why a lot of people feel like there's extra scrutiny on him or something because he's a Republican.

But I gotta tell you, I mean, I think anyone who lied this brazenly and just invented these personas, there's just a public fascination with the way that you can navigate through the world making up elaborate lie after elaborate lie. And you know, ultimately he did. He did trick a lot of supposedly sophisticated people. You know, even with this Ponzi scheme, tricked at least some number of supposedly sophisticated investors to get in on this thing, tricked a lot

of Republican elites. A least Dephonic apparently was a big sort of patron of his and sort of reviving his congressional campaign after some opposition. Some internal research that they had done revealed some of this stuff and a bunch of his campaign staff fled. Well she's the one that comes back in and her consultant gets on board, and that kind of enabled him to continue in this race in the way that he did and ultimately win it.

So that's the part that is really fascinating to me, is like the psychology, what it says about the holes in our political system, what it says about like what people are vulnerable to in terms of the stories that get told. So it is remarkable, that's what it is. Another fraudster, Brett Barv former you know, NFL Hall of Fame quarterback, etcetera, etcetera. So we dug deep into this

story because it truly, truly is shocking. And just to remind you of some of the details, I did a long monologue on this if you want to go back and review all of the nitty gritty details. Bottom line, Brett Farv was involved in a scheme to steal millions of dollars from Mississippi's welfare fund. This is money that is supposed to go to poor people in a state where you have a lot of poor people. Number one and number two, where they are so stingy with distributing

this money. It's almost like there is no welfare system in the state of Mississippi. Instead, multi multimillionaires like Brett farre were like pigs at the trough for this thing. He alleges no wrongdoing and I had no idea what was going on for the lawyers. Let me just put this out there. Well, the Mississippi Auditor is speaking out in a new interview on HBO talking about how this was the largest public fraud case in the history of

the state. And it wasn't just far. There were other players involved who ultimately robbed this welfare fund of like one hundred million dollars. Let's say, take a listen to

what that Mississippi State Auditor is saying. What I can tell you is that this is the largest public fraud case in the history of the state of mississ Here, in the poorest state in America, money from the state welfare fund, intended to help alleviate poverty was instead being re routed by those in charge to their cronies and friends,

nearly one hundred million dollars in all. They thought of this fund as not only their own fund to do what they wanted with, but they thought of it as a slush fund that no one was watching at all. They thought of it as a slush fund. Just a reminder on some of the details. Specifically with regard to FARV, he took five million dollars for a project to build a volleyball stadium at the university his daughter was attending, where he had also attended. That was like the big

part of his involvement. But there was also and this is something he says, there there's a weird transaction involving one point one million dollars going directly to far where he was supposed to speak at three total speaking engagements, but he didn't show up to those events. So I mean, already disgusting that you, who are a very wealthy man, are taking this money to do these speaking gigs that

are supposed to be about like motivation or whatever. That's the way that they justified taking this out of the welfare funds, which is disgraceful to start with. But then you don't even do the speaking gigs allegedly, Again he says there was no wrongdoing here, but this is having huge political reverberations. Also. Sober the former Mississippi governor was really implicated in all of this and had sort of

like direct involvement. There were text messages that were revealed between him and some of the key players in this where he seemed to know exactly what was going on. He also denies the wrongdoing the current governor Tate Reeves Ryan Krim look alike in case you want an image in your head, and the previous governor. You know, they're really tight. He was sort of like an acolyte of the previous governor. They have of the same network of donors and social circles and all of that sort of stuff.

So he is also implicated here and seemed to be involved in what looked to be a cover up of this whole scheme during his time in office. Well, I don't know if this is the whole story of why the people in the state are not too us with Tate Reeves, but he's actually in a little bit of trouble for re election. Obviously, Mississippi deep red state. The idea that a Democrat could have any shot in this state is incredibly far fetched. I'm not going to say

that the Democrat is going to win. The fact that even within striking range is quite remarkable. It's an article from the Hill, they say, Democrats, the Mississippi's governor race as ripe for an upset. He's got some of the lowest approval ratings Tate Reeves does in the entire country. Has been named checked, they say at times, in the state's long running welfare scandal. And if you look at the polling, you know the Democratic candidate is only a

few points behind right now. So there's a real chance that if this thing continues to unravel the way that it has been, you know that people are just done with this dude. Again, wouldn't bet on it, but I think the fact that this is even a question mark right now shows you how devastating the scandal has been

for him. In the entire Mississippi political class in that state, red blue, independent, everybody thinks it's pretty gross to use public funds that are allocated for single moths and poor people so that a one hundred millionaire can embezzle money and build a new volleyball stadium for his daughter. I mean, I think we can all just kind of come around that and say, yeah, this is pretty crazy. And look

with Brett, they have these people dead to rise. So you got text messages, what do they say nobody's gonna find out about this, right, Yeah, that's right. It will never be Yeah, it's like the press is never going to know about this, right, Like yeah, yes, First of all, what are you doing planning the ever heard a signal? I don't really understand uh boomers, you know when? Yeah, that's true. That's thinking that iCloud or whatever is safe.

The Mississippi auditor here. Also, it's not like these are liberals, it's not like these are democrats. They're like, this is a horrific, massive public fraud case talking about millions of dollars where you're literally using welfare funds as a slush fund to build and spend on infrat structure projects that personally benefit you. This is corruption that you used to see in the United States in like the eighteen hundreds. Yeah, and that's really what it. In a way, it's analogous.

You have a you know, a governor he thinks he's untouchable, Brett Fahr, he's like a king, right, He's I mean, look undeniable. He's like one of the most famous people in the United States from Mississippi's like it's one of the most famous people ever come out of the state. Ever, so he's probably like a god in Mississippi and that's how they treat him. And apparently he thinks he's above

the law. Yeah, absolutely, ridiculous, absolutely, And I mean, I do think the fact that you have effectively, you know, well one party state in Mississippi at this point where they don't feel like there would ever be any sort of political accountability. Just to give you the numbers on

Tate Reeves and what's going on here. Morning Consult poll released this month found him among the ten governors with the lowest approval rating in the country Mississippi Today Siena College poll found fifty seven percent of respondents, including thirty three percent of Republicans, want to see someone other than the governor as the state's top official. It wasn't that Mississippi was one of the last states to sort of transition from the era of like electing Democrats locally and

like the Dixie Crab model and that whole thing. So it actually wasn't that long ago that the governor was a Democrat. But you know, in recent years, these are blowout elections. They're winning by twenty thirty points, so to have an even close at all, again, utter indictment and shows you how disgusted the public there is with this

entire scandal. Yeah, and you know what, I really think that they should be So speaking of public corruption, scandals, fraud, and the history of the United States, it's all opportunity. Hear you know, I guess past speaker Speaker Pelosi, she no longer has as much of an impact, let's say, on public policy. But let's just say she's probably in

the know as the representative from San Francisco. So we're about to talk about in the ticketmaster block, but really about anti trust, the government suing Google over its monopoly in the ad market, something we could probably talk about a lot of your breaking points with respect to YouTube. Well, right before that lawsuit came about whether it was public knowledge or not, who knows. Let's put this up there

on the screen. Nancy Pelosi reportedly with her husband sold three million dollars actually worth of the stock just four weeks ago. So the next one we could put up there on the screen. It actually shows you the exact trades that were disclosed in the periodic transaction report. You could see it right there, several trades all that just hit in the last weeks of December, and what do we see. We see trades between five hundred to five hundred thousand to a million dollars, all of Class A

stock that were being made. And the real question is why. I mean, in many respects like we're talking here about people who literally run the government in the know representative here even from San Francisco. Let's even Crystal put aside the lawsuit. You represent a lot of people from Google. You should not be trading Google, period But then you add in the actual discussion, you add in or the lawsuit, you add in the potential of insider knowledge, and let's

all be real here. The only reason that we even know is because of the toothless periodic transaction report that comes out the it's not even real time data. That none of them may really feel particularly compelled to fawed by the law. Right who fought the exact fo or who fought the idea of a stock trading ban until they were ridiculed publicly and it became a major kind of meme online. And at the end of the day, did the stock band pass that Congress? Well, no, I

didn't listen. Both of these parties recognized that there was real public appetite for some anti corruption measures, in particular banning members from trading stocks. There was genuine bipartisan efforts working across the aisle at Agallanz Bamberger home in general, I'm a big fan of she was involved with a significant effort reaching across the aisle to come up with something that would actually have some real teeth on this. It was all there and lo and behold, not while

Democrats had the House. And remember when Kevin McCarthy pretended like this was something he cared about. Hey, why isn't this one of the demands that the Kevin McCarthy holdouts wanted in terms of their negotiations when they were extracting their pound of flesh? Hey, why isn't Kevin McCarthy talking about the stock trade ban now that he's actually in a position of power. Lo and behold, these people have no interest in changing the rules because they're making them

fabulously wealthy. And you know the bottom line with this Nancy Pelosi stock trade and many others. Besides, it almost doesn't matter whether it was based on inside information or not. The outcome is just as damaging to the American public because no one is going to look at this and think like, oh, this is all just like fair and

above board and based on public information. Bullshit, When three weeks later this lawsuit is real yield to the public and we know how close you are with the Biden administration, and we know how much insider knowledge you ultimately have, Like no one is going to buy and Google stock dropped, you know, immediately after the lawsuit. I mean, not like aren't they why, Like what exactly is going on here? And it's not just you know, it's not just Pelosi.

There's so many of them. There's like so many accounts these days. I just found one guy on Instagram. He does a bunch of these videos. The Nancy Pelosi stock trader account actually does Republicans as well, and they disclose and they show all kinds of trades. I mean, the fact that any of this is legal is insane. And you know, I was talking with some people on the Hill and you know, they've even brought it up to

their bosses. They're like, hey, like what are you doing And the bosses are like, oh what, you know, like I'm and they were like no, dude, They're like, unless unless you can prove you're innocent, you're guilty. And I actually think that's the exact right way to approach a public politician, somebody with so much power, so much influence on the decision, unless you can literally prove. And then again to point to the fact that we're not even

talking about ETFs. We're not talking about the Dow Jones or s and P five hundred. We're talking about direct stocks directly impacted by US government decisions of which you know, she was one of the most powerful members and she was actually the speaker at shell. Is you think she's not you know, King Jeffries is her hand righted successor. Yes, you don't think that there he's doing the things that

Nancy Pelosi strongly suggests that he should do. No, you're right, she's still in charge over in the Democratic side, no doubt. I should note that the trades were all made technically while she was still speaker and would have been privy to a lot of the discussion. So there you go. You can take that to the bank. This is corrupt as hell, and I really just can't believe that we

just continue to let it happen. It's outrageous. Yes, So on a more positive side of things, there are two areas where I really think the Biden administration deserves some credit, and both of them have less to do actually with Biden himself and more to do with people that he put in some key posts. So you know, I've been very improssed with the head of the NLRB, the National Labor Relates Board, in terms of, you know, really trying to rebalance the scales with regard to corporations and labor.

The other areas anti trust, where you had Tim Woo, Jonathan Cantor, and Lena Khan who have really sought to usher in a new era where we actually care about corporate power and we actually attempt to check corporate power. There has been This obviously, is something that Stolar attracts very closely and has done a phenomenal job educating a lot of people, myself included. On and this week in particular, there were a few things that were quite significant in

the anti trust news. Number one is there were Senate hearings with regard to Ticketmaster and the whole Taylor Swift debacle, which led to a lot of justified questions about this monopoly and the way that they gouge consumers and screw artists and have total control over so much of the live performance market. We'll get to that in a moment

with Ticketmaster. And the other piece was that the Department of Justice announced a big lawsuit again Google, and they're having some success there ultimately, so folks over at the NBC they're very unhappy about this whole development, and in particular Jim Kramer, bless his heart, having total meltdown on air and also, by the way, getting a bunch of key facts just straight up wrong in his Google lobbyist talking points that he's parroting. Here. Let's take a listen

to what he had to say. This is the most ideological anti trust department I have seen since and you'll get this standard oil and in Teddy Roosevelt that is their ideology. David, that's an ideology. I remember I took marks and angles. Remember when when Angles said to people's lot, people are like a sack of potatoes. After she was speaking of the peasantry understood and under Andy trusts law, it may be very difficult for them to prove a case that said, there is most shortage that she is

anti the man. It's a real throwback. We're not used to it. Because Obama wasn't like this, right, but they lost the House representatives, so they go real hard. They're hard. Ohbama wasn't like that. I've read Mark first of all, I highly doubt the actually effort Marx Andegra. I don't know if he's ever wrote a book ever that said I mean, look, that's the finance industry getting pedaled. Really

what they see is they're calling it ideological. Whenever you're talking about straight up literal I mean, one of the things that's important A he misses who's actually doing the suing. But like the investigation itself is pretty clear. Read the facts that are laid out in the lawsuit. They're like, by our estimation, you have a monopoly, which is against

US law. It's now on the government to actually prove those facts in a court and convince somebody that it's true, and then we can figure out what exactly it looks like on the other end. But you know, we talked about this, I think in one of our last shows. Does anybody think the promise of the internet actually came true?

I remember being online in two thousand and seven, and I remember just being like wow, man, like anything is possible, Like MySpace and Facebook and all this the idea of meeting all these people, Like, did we really imagine that we would have centralized choke hold points of Like, that's not really what was promised. Now we're in the middle of the AI Revolution, and I don't know. At first I was skeptical, but increasingly the way I see a lot of institutions behave I'm like, you know, I think

this is great. Like when I'm watching these professors lose it that they can no longer just assign busy work and then try and put They're like, oh, we made actually do something and you know, have oral examine it, which, by the way, I think is fantastic. I think oral examination and all that is really important in terms of what you're actually going to take away, and maybe even the idea of credentialism and life scales and what a lot of busy work even looks like in the workplaces,

being miserable can be taken away. That's all a result of monopolization, which is being enormously profitable for Google, for Facebook, a few select companies. And I think it's a very open question, like do we want that. We had a big fight in this country about that with railroads, which we recognize as infrastructure. We had the same fight with banks. We kind of forgot that lesson a little bit two thousand and eight. But why should we Why should we

forget that lesson? It's important, this is our country. Why not. There's so much say about the Pramer piece. I mean, first of all, as you point out, it just straight up got a number of the facts wrong. I thought it was Lena Khan that was involved in the suit. No, was Jonathan Cantor of the Department of Justice, number one, number two. This was also not just this Justice department. This was also a group of eight states, So it's

not just like one crazy idea log or whatever. And there are other lawsuits against Google that also involve a lot of states, including like Texas and Ken Paxton hardly some like hard left maniac that's number one, number two. And this was something a stolar flag for me as well. Is Lena Kahn actually was at odds with a lot of labor activists who also you would say, you know, broadly oftentimes on the left over Microsoft and Activision because

she was opposed to that going through. Of course, they liked the idea of some people on the left like the idea of large corporations, because then that gives you one node that you can organize and can make it easier for Labor United to gain support. So even the idea that everybody on the left has one view of how this should all go, even that basic fact is not true. But the bigger context for all of this is the fact that these mergers and acquisitions are big

business and big bonuses for Wall Street. So Kramer's friends who are still working on Wall Street and still very much in the industry, their paychecks depend on these you know,

big paydays from mergers going through ultimately. And so since there's been a slowdown in that kind of activity because the government is applying new and long overdue, frankly scrutiny to these companies getting larger and larger and larger and larger, and the impact that has on our society overall, that's upsetting Kramer and I'm sure upsetting a lot of his friends.

So that's sort of the context here is he feels that there's you know, a lot of money at stake that people are losing out on because they can't just continue the industry of growing every thing larger and concentrating more and more power in these industries, and not just tech either. If you look at agriculture, if you look at basically any industry, meat packing, any industry in this country, the amount of power and consolidation in the hands of

a very few people is really disturbing. It's bad for labor, it's bad for competition. It's the opposite of having an actual like free and fair market. Yeah, but it is great for stockholders, right, That's really what it's all abo about Wall Street. And when we think about it too, Ticketmas this is one other reason we should be hopeful. Look, the entire Congress basically was unified essentially against Ticketbaster in

their hearings. I know Ryan and Emily covered it, but I just think it is astounding to watch this mashup of senators from all sides, you know, using the tailor Swift doing the tail Swift tobacle, and sure it's cringe watching old people do it. That's like Taylor Swift. Should we care? I mean, they're trying to capture the public imagination in order to bring good to our industry. So that's a good thing in my opinion. Let's take a listen.

Ticketmaster Auto look in the mirror and say I'm the problem. It's me once again. She's cheer captain and among the bleachers. So as a ode to Taylor Swift, I will say, we know all too well, tarma's a relaxing thought. Aren't you envious that? For you? It's not. That's all I've got to say. So what do you see there? I mean, we literally have Mike Lee, we have Republicans, Democrats all quoting Taylor Swift, and through the quotes what's actually coming through.

They're all against the Live Nation Ticketmaster merger, which at the time only a couple of bands spoke out. Nobody in Congress thought about it. Obama gives it the rubber stamp, and now here we are, it's like a complete catastrophe. You know. One of the artists who testified before the Congress just did a really fantastic job like laying out

how much that it's hurt him. And this is somebody who's actually I mean, he's not like a household name per se, but gets a lot of views on Spotify and elsewhere, and he was just showing exactly the problems that it has faced his industry. Taylor Swift is just the bleeding Ageum, I was just in Mexico listened to a lot of Bad Bunny. Apparently they even screwed up a Bad Bunny concert in terms of their admittance there. And the important point actually Matthew Zeitlin pulled this, which

is over on TikTok. People are unironically like posting a clip of Josh Holly going after Ticketmaster. I don't even think they know anything about Ticketmaster or even or sorry, they don't know anything about who Josh Holly is. But the clips on Congress of Ticketmaster getting flamed is really

touching a cultural nerve. Here's an example of that. You're forcing everybody who just wants to get this ticket on the resale market, who hasn't bought from you suberctad to begin with, You're forcing them to become your customer in order to take possession of this ticket. I mean that's really something. I mean, hats off to you, I guess for being innovative and using your monopoly, But I have to tell you, from a competition standpoint, this really really

worries me. So what do you see there? It's like whoever put those and overlight that on it? It's clearly becoming like a meme. It's something that really was felt. So Taylor Swift situation, I think just happened really at the exact right time. Your entire job of Celtic is you literally can't even do that in a competent manner. But there's a lot more that's been going on behind

the scenes over a decade. And if this is the one heartening area where we can say like something is changing, good reward politicians for this instead of like, you know, his January sixth to fist point good point. Yeah. See, you can go the cynical place to ultimately take a stand up. Sometimes you can go viral whenever you do good things. So listen, it's a message of hope. I think Bush all right, Zager, what are you looking at it? Well.

One of the reasons that gas prices matter politically is the simple fact that most Americans just drive past it on a day to day basis. You drive one day, you see the price go up. You do it every single day for a month. You pull in, you see a bill higher. Then you just say, what the hell's going on in this country? It's a relative in a lastic product. Most of us needed on a regular basis. It's very difficult to adjust to when you see even massive increases in price. But gas it's not the only

product that's doing that, so is the grocery store. And while we focus a lot on the grocery store bills and the aggregate, let's zoom in on something that a lot of you have taken notice of. Eggs. Eggs are interesting. Most Americans buy them on a weekly basis. In fact, the average American consumes nearly three hundred eggs per year, and actually the amount of eggs that we eat has significantly gone up in the last few years to the

highest level in over fifty years. Eggs are and I've always been an important part of the American diet, from its inclusion in baked goods to the quintessential breakfast, which is why the price increase over the last few years or so has been so devastating to a lot of households and shocking. As you can see in the chart before you, before the pandemic, eggs were roughly the same

price as the nineteen eighties. There was minor price improvement in two minor price movement in twenty fifteen, but by and large it was like a reliable, staple, stable product. Relative productivity increases in the egg industy actually kept the price down over time. It's part of why Americans could be so reliant on eggs as a cheap way to feed their families. That is, of course, until twenty twenty two,

and now twenty twenty three. As the chart shows, the national retail price of eggs is over four dollars a dozen, when just a year ago it was a buck seventy nine. What accounts for a two hundred percent increase in the price of eggs, Well, if you ask the egg industry, they will tell you bird flu. Seems simple though, right. A historic bird flu outbreak that is killing hens means less supply while demand is high hans the price. But is that everything that's going on? If you read deeper,

it doesn't really appear to be the case. While bird flu is definitely bad, the total flock size of egg layers across the country has actually only gone down by four to five percent. A four to five percent reduction in the number of hens laying eggs does not even come close to explaining that price increase. In fact, the largest US producer of eggs, cow Maine, Foods is the

perfect illustration. Last month, it reported its overall sales dollar volume rose to a nearly one billion dollars over the last quarter, helping it generate one hundred and ninety eight million dollars in profit. So how much profit did they make the year before, Well, it was a million dollars. So are you starting to get the picture? You have a two hundred percent increase in the price and then you have a two hundred percent increase in profit. Interesting,

but it's bird flu that's the largest segg producer. Though to be fair, it hasn't been so easy for egg producers in the last year or so. The Russian invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent sanctions on the Russian economy have actually pushed grain prices to sky high levels, leading to an immense increase in the cost for egg producers

to feed their hens. When you add on top the immense amount of petroleum product needed for transportation, farm equipment, natural gas, and all of that redirected into a refrigeration, and you get the result of what we have right now. Really bad news is that while prices appear to be receding from their December high, that's peak egg demand during the holidays, the price effect is actually still being felt

heartily at the grocery store. Worse, we are beginning to see the same thing that we did with gas at five dollars a gallon. When gas got to the highest point in modern history, people just started driving a lot less, not because they wanted to, but because they had to. They stopped going out to eat, reduce their lifestyle. They were just more miserable reduce their savings. Same things happening

right now with eggs. Putting aside the nineteen nineties idiotic thinking about cholesterol, eggs are actually very good for you. They're relatively fresh, natural and a complete protein filling. There's a reason that a lot of people eat them for breakfast. But as egg prices increase and people adjust, they're naturally going to reduce their consumption of food in favor of what is cheap. What's cheap you already know process fast food,

anything instant. It's probably processed as hell, designed to be hyperpalatable, more likely to be less nutritious. What says cheap in bad times versus what gets expensive actually tells you a lot about society and what it's designed for. The simple truth appears to be. We are designed to make sure the lowest common denominator of price is the least nutritious. Thus the poorous and most vulnerable amongst us are pushed

to process food. At the outbreak of COVID, I actually have a lot of hope come together, as we did in previous national crises, wake up to our lack of resilience, the fact that we don't make anything here anymore. Our hyper concentrated economy designed for just in time and not for the flourishing of our people. But we didn't wake up to any of that. We didn't get good leadership under Trump or Biden. We're just left to fend for ourselves.

That's why people are so angry right now. They're not stupid. They know what's going on is not right. It's just that nobody is looking to actually do anything about it. It's really frustrating. That's the interesting thing about eggs. I love that statistic where they're liking and if you want to hear my reaction to Sagre's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at Breakingpoints dot com. Chrystal, what do you

take a look at? Well, guys, Joe Rogan recently floated a conspiracy for what is really behind the Biden document scandal. Take a listen. If I had to guess they're trying to get rid of him, Yeah, that my guess would be they're trying to get rid of him. If all of a sudden, his own aids are sending these instead of like taking these classified documents which you have located and go well, let's not do that again and fucking

locking them up somewhere, his own aids self reporting. Dude, Come on, that sounds suss Well, no one self reported that fucking laptop. I know that was that was Russian disinformation. That reeks ovation. They got a hold of the social media companies and lied to them. They did whatever the fuck they could to keep that from happening. And even this,

they discovered this before the midterms. Now, I'm not sure that any of the people around Biden are actually clever cunning enough to pull off this elaborate plot, but Rogan is picking up on something that is a real dynamic here. Biden is not in a great position politically in general, and the continued fallout from this document scandal has been

an absolute catastrophe for him. On a substantive level, there remain real questions about how the hell this all happened, the level of airlessness it implies, the real possibility of national security compromise, the arrogance of expecting a separate system of justice for yourself. On a political level, though, if anything,

the situation is even worse. Why because Biden's document scandal hits him right where it matters the most, electability, and there were already some real warning signs for Joe Biden in that buried department. Stretch your memory way back to the days of the twenty twenty Democratic primary. Pete and Kamala and Beto and John Delaney. They were all there. Bernie too, of course, but in the end one figure stood alone, Joseph Robinette Biden. It wasn't that voters were

particularly enthusiastic about Biden's policy positions. They did have some warmth for him personally, but they preferred Bernie on any number of issues. Ultimately, though, they came to believe Biden was best on the issue that they put above all others, electability, And they were right, sort of, because he completed the mission. He did beat Donald Trump, although it was ultimately really

too close for comfort. Now Biden is facing his reelect, and in some ways, up until recent that squishy pundit defined quality of electibility looked relatively intact strengthened even first and foremost, he is the incumbent president that typically does count for something. But he also defied history in the midterms, avoided the absolute democratic she lacking that looked imminent and which had become a sort of political custom for the

party in the White House. Sure voters consistently told pollsters they would love some options other than Joe Biden and Donald Trump. Sure Democratic voters consistently said they did not actually even want Biden to run for president again. But in the wake of the midterms, it felt like those lingering doubts would surely be assuaged. But the truth is, although the midterms might have shut up the press and the Democratic politicians who distanced themselves from Biden leading up

to November, they didn't actually quiet the public's doubts. For an incumbent president. Biden continues to be in a very weak position with regards to his own Democratic base. As a shocking example of how that weakness shows up in the numbers, there's a new poll that just came out testing a hypothetical twenty twenty four Democratic primary in the key state of New Hampshire. Overall, you're ready for this, sixty six percent of New Hampshire Democrats say they are

opposed to Biden running for a second term. Plus and this makes me throw up a little bit in my mouth to say, but it's got Pete Boodhagic beating Biden by five points. What's even more notable is that Biden's actually lost ground in this pole since the last time they tested the water so that was back in July. Back then, Biden only trailed Pete by one Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders they have also seen their support rise now.

Biden's erosion in this poll is counter to the media narrative that the midterms basically shored up his standing and erased any lingering Democratic doubts. The result is even more worrying for Biden given what a colossal mess Pete has made lately with his unwillingness to hold the criminal airlines to account. They're losing to that guy. Now. It's true that New Hampshire is not a great state for Biden.

He does better with black and Latino Democrats than with the overwhelmingly white population of New Hampshire, but he continues to show plenty of weakness at the national overall level. Two. In a new Emerson pole, a sizable minority forty two percent of Democrats say they want a different nominee. That same pole finds Biden losing a head to head matchup against DeSantis, but even more disturbing, it's got him trailing

Trump by forty four to forty one. Now this comes on the heels of a separate Harvard Harris pole, which found Biden trailing Trump by five. Since Democratic voters selected Biden for his electability, it then makes sense that their continued support of him would rise and fall with their sense of whether or not he can win again, whether or not he is the best candidate to take on a Trump or a DeSantis, And they have some good reason at this point to be a little doubtful. For one,

Biden ain't getting any younger or any more capable. His ability to do the job for another four year term has long been one of the top concerns of Democratic voters and general election voters alike, But now Biden is in a terrible position to make a strong case against Trump.

It's going to be Hillary Clinton all over again. Try and attack Trump on his character but being two flowed, but personally for any of it to really land and stick, there's no way that Biden can use Trump's own document malfeasans against him now, Not to mention, the fact that Biden now Pence had been caught in very similar misdeeds makes it so much less likely that Trump is going to be indicted. Listen, not long ago, I thought that was really little likelihood that Trump could make it back

into the White House again. Now I am not so sure whatsoever. Republicans did not stick the knife in and Biden's thrown him a massive lifeline. Biden's supposed delectability saved his political career in twenty twenty, but in twenty twenty four he's going to have to sell something else to Democratic voters because far from a strong contender, he looks very, very vulnerable and there's a bit of an intrad democratic and if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue,

become a premium subscriber today at Breakingpoints dot com. Ryan Cooper is The Prospect's managing editor and also author of how are you going to pay for that? Smart answers to the dumbest question in politics. Great to have you, Ryan, Welcome, Good to see you man, Glad to be here. Yeah. Absolutely, So you wrote an intelligent piece about this new idea that was proposed by Bill Cassidy and Angus King. Let's

go and throw this up on the screen. The headline here from the Prospect is the smart bipartisan plan to shore up social Security. Bill Cassidy and Angus King propose an American Social Wealth Fund. So I would love it if you could just start with the very basics of what is a social wealth fund and why is this even being contemplated at this point at all. Yeah. Well, a social wealth fund is quite simple. It's just a

government investment account. Basically, you know, the government finds a source of revenue from somewhere and they use it to buy buy up some kind of investment stocks, bonds, real estate. Alaska actually has one of these. They seeded it with their oil money, but it's not the They pay a dividend out of that to every Alaskan. The money doesn't

come directly from the oil. It's important to understand it comes from the investment returns of the fund they have about I think the current total is about seventy five billion dollars right now. So anyway, it's it's as simple as that. It's just like any wealthy individual they has stuff like this. This will be just doing it on a government scale. And the proposal is to just use that as a source of revenue to basically bolster the finances of Social Security, find another revenue stream for it,

as it were. And so they proposed to not take the existing Social Security Trust Fund, but to find some money from somewhere else, in this case by borrowing actually and invest it in stocks or I think that's mainly what they proposed. But you know, theoretically you could put it and whatever you wanted to, right So, Ryan, I mean,

what are the arguments against this? I guess one of them would be, at least with Social Security, it's a guarantee, you know, stop s and P five hundred returns like whatever, thirteen percent on average, but sometimes it drops by twenty two percent and sometimes it got up by forty sight. What would you do? How do you mitigate the downside risk I guessed to taxpayer money and to the overall

benefit well, there's a risk with everything, you know. One of the reasons we have this problem right now, which is that the Social Security Trust Fund is scheduled it'll they estimate it will be exhausted by about twenty thirty four or so, is because that the money has been invested in this hyper conservative account, which is all Treasury bonds.

And as you say, you know, there's an enormous difference over the last like thirty years, is about an eight percentage point difference between the return on the S and P five hundred and the return on the United States debt. So you know there is a risk, but you know there's also a risk to not doing it, which is

that you know you're leaving money on the table. And one of the nice things about a government is that you have a theoretically infinite time horizon, and so if there's a bad turn in the market, you can usually just wait it out. You know, this is this These are usually transitory things that only last a couple of years, and so you can you can basically sit on your hands. You could in the case of an you know, extreme event, just like bolster it up with some extra borrowed money

or something like that. And just wait for things to turn around. So you know, it's not like a person where they you know, you absolutely must get your money out when you need it. You know, the government can shore things, you know, paper over the cracks for a long time. Got it. How do you like this idea as opposed to what Senator Sanders has long proposed and others And apparently Joe Manchin just came out in support

of the idea of lifting the income cap. So right now there's a limit to the amount of wage income that is actually taxed to go into the Social Security Trust Fund. The idea is like, why are we giving this tax break to the wealthy? Basically that is undercutting the ability to make sure that social security benefits will be there for retirees into the future. What do you make of that proposal? Instead? I think that's great. You know.

The reason I would say I mainly like this social security you know, investment scheme is that it puts the idea of a social wealth fund on the table, and I think if you're actually going to do it, you know, the way to do it would be like Alaska. Basically, you know, you're taking some of the capital income of

the country, the income from investment returns. This is about thirty percent of national income goes overwhelmingly to the richest people in the country, and just like getting the government's fingers in that particular, you know high and you know, you could do it for social security, or you could do a universal basic dividend like my friend Matt Brunnick proposes.

But yeah, I don't think these necessarily trade off. I would also raise the get rid of that peril tax cap, and that would I think shore up the social securities finances indefinitely as well. So you know we could do we could do both and and in fact boost social security benefits higher than they are now, which is probably a good idea. Do we have any examples of other nations you know that are able to do I know Norway has a good one, but again that's kind of

oil related. Is there anybody on par with us that has a similar financing scheme? Yeah, I mean Norway's the big one. They own like one point three percent of all the stocks in the world, which is crazy when you think about small the country is. There are a lot of you know, petro states have them. Alaska. Alaska's probably the the single most relevant example I believe North

Dakota has one as well. And as you say, you know, these these tend to come from from oil rents because the it's it's much more easily politically to do it that way, you know, because it's like the oil is not, you know, being created by a capitalist or something like that sort of you know, the heritage of everyone. But you know, the guy who set up Alaska's dividend thing, he tried that multiple times with different sources. He wanted to do it with fish taxes, and then he wanted

to do it just with tax money. And there's no reason why you couldn't just use regular government money, you know, I mean that you know that buy is just as good as anything else. You know, it's just a question of getting the politics squared away. And you know, eight percentage points of investment return is is really that's a that's a huge you know, imagine being a Wall Street trad and you're looking at something like that. Just being able to borrow at these rock bottom prices and invest

in the market. I mean, you know, it's a total no brainer. Yeah, good point. Last question to you, Ryan. Part of why there's all this discussion now of social security and Medicare is because you have some in the Republican caucus who are once again back to floating cuts

to quote unquote entitlement programs. Joe Biden seems a newly reformed man, but he has in the past been open to these cuts as well, including during the Obama administration when they floated insanely this grind bargain, which the only reason we didn't end up with it is basically because the Tea Party at the time was like, no, this

doesn't even go far enough. So, you know, we have this debt sealing situation coming up where the Republicans are very committed to holding the country hostage in order to extract some sort of spending cuts, maybe with entitledment spending quote unquote, maybe in some other area. What is your level of confidence in the ability of this administration, led by Joe Biden, to sort of hold firm to their current position that we are not going to negotiate on

the debt ceiling whatsoever. I am semi confident. You know, Biden's a party guy at the end of the day, and you know the party has totally come away from the position of Obama in twenty eleven, when as you say, he was putting like eight hundred billion dollars in Social Security and Medicare cuts on the table, you know, to

give to the to the Tea Party. By twenty sixteen, Obama was proposing an increase in Social Security benefits, you know, pressed by Elizabeth Warren and other folks at Bernie Sanders as well. The other thing about Joe Biden, though, is he he tends to be a little bit of a flap jaw who just sort of say stuff without you know, really thinking it through. And I've heard from people inside the Congressional you know, staffers on the Hill are who are afraid that he'll just get to talking with the

Republicans just randomly proposed some like big bargain. But you know, at the end of the day, social Security and Medicare are so popular, you know, Pupil from a couple of years ago said seventy four percent of Americans do not want social Security benefits to be cut. I think Biden is a savvy enough politician that he knows that that would be horribly unpopular and it would be a terrible precedent to give the Republicans anything in return for like

holding the Global economy hostage, so you know, fingers crossed basically. Yeah, Well, especially when you have Trump actually already out there. I mean, this was one of the ways he broke rents with Republican orthodoxy in twenty sixteen, and he's already come out and said you should not put penty of cuts from Social Security Medicare on the table. So it'd be terrible position for Biden to be in going into reelective. He is up against Trump again to be to let Trump

get to the left of you on those issues. Thank you for breaking all of this Downforce. We really appreciate Ryan. Thank you Ryan by pleasure. Absolutely, thank you guys so much for watching. Really appreciate it was man, it was fun show today. It was a long show. That's a lot to talk about. It always happens, and whenever we got to break stuff down, we got breaking news all of that. I hope you guys do it. Enjoyed the counterpoints yesterday, We certainly did. They did a phenomenal job.

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