2/16/23: Nikki Haley Humiliates Herself, US Says May Never Recover UFO Debris, Ohio Derailment Water Poisoning, Republicans On Ukraine Aid, MSNBC Girl Boss Haley, Feinstein Forgets Retirement, Ohio Corruption, Google Takedown with Matt Stoller

Breakingpoints dot Com. Good morning, everybody, Happy Thursday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed we do, guys. It has happened. Nicki Haley has officially entered the race for twenty twenty four. Get excited. We've got all the highlights. She's already embarrassing herself with Hannity last night, so we'll show you all of that. Also, President Biden's supposed to make some remarks about the UFO

situation in the Chinese by balloon situation. This comes as they are also warning, you know, guys, we just may not be able to get any of that debris. We may never really know what Overen Who's to say? Ultimately, We also have an update from Ohio, actually a number of updates from Ohio, as what appears to be a potential cover up unfolding. Residents are told to drink bottled water,

but assured that the air quality is perfectly fine. Meanwhile, Norfolk Southern, of course, that's the owner of that train that ultimately derailed because of lack's safety provisions. They bailed on a public town hall they were supposed to attend last night. People are absolutely outraged, as they should be, so we have all of the details. There also some updates on Ukraine, some indication maybe the Biden administration is thinking that they need to engage in some diplomacy at

least here down the road. We'll see about that. And also Republican support for continuing to support Ukraine with the level of aid that we have has been dropping. And we've got a great moment for you from Andrea Mitchell and John Bolton that you just go. You gotta check out. There's a lot of layers there. You can't miss this one,

all right. Well, let's start with the woman herself, Nikki Haley, officially launching her campaign yesterday, delivering her launch speech heavy on bio, heavy on some sort of like veiled references, maybe to Trump, definitely to Biden. Let's sigalism and take it from me, the first minority female governor in history. America is not a racist country. We're ready, ready to move past the stale ideas and faded names of the past, and we are more than ready for a new generation

to lead us into the future. In the America, I see, the permanent politician will finally retire. We'll have term limits for Congress and natory mental competency tests for politicians over seventy five years old. Later that evening, she went on with Sean Hannity over at Fox News and went ahead and proved the sort of central problem of her candidacy when she was totally unable to answer how she differed

on policy from former President Trump. Take a listen, what specific policy areas would you say part with Donald Trump? What I am saying is I don't kick sideways. I'm kicking forward. Joe Biden is the president, He's the one I'm running against. And what I'm saying is you don't have to be eighty years old to be president. We don't need to have these same people going back again. We need something new. We need a new generation of fighters.

We need people that understand whether American, your average American is coming from and we shouldn't be afraid to fight for that. And that's what I'm willing to do. I'm not going to kick sideways. I don't have time for that. That's not my focus. I'm kicking forward. It's all about Joe Biden always kicking. Why is everything kicking the heel the heels? Why it's like a feet thing? Like why are why are we always talking about Nicky Haley's feet?

I don't understand. It got worse from there because actually Hannity asked her again. He went back, He's like, Okay, that's fine kicking sideways or whatever, but President Trump is the one in the race. These things are all about contrast. What is a policy difference that you have? And she just went back to that same like, I'm not kicking sideway? Is I kicking forward? Which means I mean it was a very like it's like the Marco Rubio moment with

Chris Christy. Yeah, he says over it's like, oh, you memorize this one line and you literally have nothing else to say about it. And listen if you can't say Trump's name, if you can't lay out how you're different from him, don't waste your time. And that's to you, Nicky Haley, that's to all of these people. If you can't directly challenge this guy and lay out some reason other than your age, that you are different from him and that you have a different policy vision. I don't

know why you're bothering. Oh. Absolutely. You know. The funny thing is is they don't want to mention Trump. Trump is fine mentioning that. Yeah. Immediately he's taunting her being like she said she would never run against me. I guess she maybe she needs to answer why she broke her promise. We have this, you know, let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. Immediately after

she makes her announcement. Yeah, yeah, here you have that twenty twenty one, that moment where she actually outright comes out and says, yeah, this is why I'm not going to vote against Trump, or why I'm against Trump. We need to acknowledge he let us down. He went down a path that he shouldn't have and he shouldn't have followed him. We shouldn't have listened to him. We can't let that happen this waver again right after January exactly six.

Then she goes to mar A Lago and apologize like a month later, right, and then she says, I won't ever run against him as long as President Trump is in the race. So make up your mind, lady, which is it? Like you know, and just back to the point, like Trump is willing to go after her, immediately put this next one up there. Immediately after her candidacy is announ he comes out with a scathing actual policy disagreements

with Nikki Haley. Crystal, this is interesting. Let me read you some of the things that he lays out here because the line of attack, several of them are quite fascinating. First of all, he pulled this quote from her where she said the reason I ran for office is because of Hillary Clinton. And so his headline is Hillary Clinton is an inspiration Nikki Haley. But the very next thing he leads with is Haley supported Paul Ryan's plan for

entitlement reform, threatening Medicare and social Security. He also the next thing on his list is instead of finding a peaceful solution of the Ukraine Russia war, Haley has supported sending more American fighter planes to fuel the war. He goes on to talk about her differences on immigration, some transgender bathroom bill, and also, you know, takes credit for bringing out a warmber home. His mother was introducing Haley there.

And then the last one is Haley flip flops on the twenty twenty four race, and this is her saying I'm not going to run against Trump and then ultimately getting in the race. But Sagar, I thought this one.

Two of them I thought were really interesting. One is n't going after her for saying she'd cut Medicare and social Security, which is something that he signaled he's going to go after DeSantis on as well, and almost sort of makes the case that President Biden is making about Republicans too, that there are quite a lot of Republicans who have been interested in cutting social Security and Medicare and continue to be interested in cutting social Security and Medicare.

And then the other piece that we've highlighted before is Trump clearly sees a lane for himself in the Republican primary, pushing back on the direction of Ukraine aid and support, pushing more for a diplomatic solution. Now, listen, guys, you never know what this guy is actually going to do so. It's not like I take his words all that seriously, but he clearly sees the political opportunity here, and we're going to have some pulling later in the show on

Ukraine that I think backs him up in that room. Absolutely, it backs him up. And beyond that, actually, let's say fifty percent of Republicans say that they don't want to continue to support Ukraine, Well, then all those people are going to support Trump because every other Republican does want to continue support Ukraine's actually very smart and savvy move. I thought that the attack was perfect actually because he led with the she's disloyal because she used to support Hillary.

Then he hits her on probably the most salient policy difference around entitlement reform, Medicare, social Security, then Ukraine, then immigrate. It's like the greatest hits of all the things that matter most to the Republican base. I mean, look, she never had a chance in hell. The opportunity that she had to actually contrast herself with Trump just doesn't exist.

And increasingly I don't believe that any of this kind of Kennedy esque attempt new frontier, new generation, it just doesn't meet the moment as much as I would like for it too, I really do, But iolytically, I guy has something more to it than just like I'm younger than you. Absolutely, but I'm saying, Okay, you know, you take the New Frontier like it was not only a new generation, but it was like new generation policy ideas

didn't necessarily work out all that well. But what I'm saying is that that was at least aspirational of getting away from like the closet of the nineteen fifth and the stagnation of all of that. I'm doing some monologue on this and age and why to the extent that it matters and doesn't. But the point with this is that she's not offering anything new. It's like, Okay, you're fifty one years old, but you are a complete creature of the Washington establishment, which is what Trump is hitting

her on. And that's what the fundamental disconnect is the thing with Nikki Haley. Listen, guys, y'all know, I'm not a fan of Damad Trump, but the few things that he was right about, she's wrong on. Right from a policy perspective, there is just no doubt she is way worse than Trump and rather than being actually a new generation or some sort of evolution from Trump, she's actually a regression to the Paul Ryan politics that dominated DC

before Trump. And so that's what you're getting at is it'd be one thing if it was like, Okay, here's a new generation, these are fresh ideas, and here's a whole new approach and way of thinking about American the problems. No, but it's not that it's literally a throwback. The people who were upset in the Republican Party when Trump came into office and had at least some different ideas about

trade and China and some other things. They want control back, and they think she might be a vessel to be able to bring the party back to where it was during the like Mitt Romney Paul Ryan era ultimately. So that's why the critique on Social Security in Medicare is really fascinating one because this is becoming a very clear and salient dividing line within the Republican Party. And my god, I mean literally ever since Social Security was passed, Conservatives

have been trying to roll it back. And of course we've seen various efforts, I mean George W. Bush trying to privatize we saw Paul Ryd and Romney and Democrats have been complicit in this at many times as well. I mean during the Obama Biden administration, they actually accepted the deal that also would have cut Social Security. The Tea Party said it didn't go far enough, so it

didn't ultimately happen. But it's a very new dynamic where you have all of the Democrats effectively saying no, no, no, we don't want to cut Social Security, and quite a number of Republicans saying the same thing as well at this point. Oh yeah, absolutely, And just you know, overall, I think that it just highighlights the biggest problem for all these Republicans. Put this next one on the screen

from the New York Times. It just talks about all of these prospective candidates they're trying to topple Tump and Trump, and they could barely utter his name. She doesn't say his name one time at all. What's the point the pastor that is introducing her, he doesn't say anything about Trump. It's all just this vague nonsense like we gotta move on, we got to have a regeneration. And you know, also she didn't pick seventy five for no reason. You know why Trump is seventy six years old as of today.

So that was like, but they're all subtle digs. People don't know. If I hadn't just told you Trump is seventy six, I don't think people know what his actual age is. But the audience mostly thought she was talking

about Joe Biden. Yeah, exactly. A reporter Benji Sarlin made this point which I thought was intelligent, which is, you know, he was recalling back when Mark or Rubio was trying out a very similar line of new generation et cetera, et cetera, and taking these shots that you know, he was hoping people would interpret as being about Donald Trump,

but they didn't interpret them that way. Like, you have to come out and say it, right, And if you aren't willing to come out and say it and really take him head on and layance something, I just don't know what you think you're going to ultimately accomplish here. And it's not just NICKI Haley. I mean, listen, Ron

to Santa's isn't in the race yet. But he also in his rebuttals to the attacks on Trump, he also does a similar dance of just saying, well, look at the scoreboard, but not directly taking him on ultimately, and you're you're not. Maybe he's going to change once he actually gets in the race. Maybe he'll take a more direct approach. It's got to be. It's it's entirely necessary if you're ultimately going to succeed here. So the fact that none of these people can directly confront him, while

Trump is happy to take them on. He also his initial comments about Nikki getting into the race, he was like, the more the mary or but he doesn't see her as a threat. And immediately he was like, she's pulling it one percent. She's got a long way to go. Something well, And he's rights and not only that, but he's also correct in the analysis that for him, the more that get into the race, it definitely ends better

for him. So he is happy to see Nikki and Tim Scott and Christan Nunon, John Bolden and all these people lining up. Not to mention, you know, Ron de Santis and Mike Pence lining up to jump into the race speaking of being vague and potentially running for president, former Vice president Mike Pence laying out some also sort of like you know, vague buzzworthy consultants speak case for

himself recently, take a listen to us. What we need in this country is a return to common sense of common gudness, turn for common good the overwhelming majority of and look, this is a big country, so beautifully diverse population. I'm a conservative, but I'm not a bad Some of my best friends are just as liberal. When you push back from the table, there are issues that bring us together. This is so vague, the boiler plate, boring, common sense,

common common good. You know this actually for people who are in the know. The whole common good Conservatism was like a real Paul Ryan push back to two thousand eras Bush conservatism. And it's like, look guy, like how many times are we going to learn the same lesson? This stuff doesn't work. Like what the base and even the country wants has nothing to do with any of this think tank vague language. What are you going to

do for me? What are you actually running on? And with Trump, to the extent that he's ever done worst in politics, it's always whenever he departs away from that, so he is right back to his strong suit attacking Republicans on Medicare and social Security. You got a very old Republican base who are hardcore with Trump on this, and they are not with the donor class. Also, actually, I think this is the biggest problem for Haley DeSantis

and others. The Republican establishment wants them to win specifically because they're not Trump, and the people who back them, whether they like it or not, are exactly those who Trump vanquished in the two sixteen primary. Yes, Paul Singer was one of those people, vehemently, staunchly anti Trump all the way up until he won the nomination. Ken Griffin and many of the other billionaires that have come out that are backing that are backing Ron DeSantis are similar.

I saw yesterday Bill Ackman actually endorse Vivike Ramaswami. He was like, I think Vivike is going to win out people. Vivike is a guy. He wrote the Woke Ink book. We've had him here on the show. He's been on the Realignment as well, if you want to go listen to those interviews. He apparently is thinking about running for president. But Bill Ackman is also you know, he's one of those where you might remember him for trying to crash the market during COVID and making a killing whenever he

was shorting it. That's what I remember him for Private equity guy, you know, one of those Mitt Romney type Republicans. Any the more posturing that these people make, they're the ones who the voters hate. So like anytime you're backing up again, you're backing up behind them, You're actually having the opposite intended effect. It's just one of those where all their money is going to come and all of their support is going to come from fundamentally a more

establishment coalition. The only one with a chance possibly of doing that is Ron de Santas. He still has a very, very tough line to walk in all of that, and the only chance he really has is if he's the only one in the race. And what you're seeing from the Tim Scott's and the Nicky Haleys and now Mike Pence is and all those is the anti Trump vote is going to be totally split, and Trump is going

to use that completely to his advantage. It's the narcissism of these Republican politicians and of the establishment which will ultimately bring them down in this Yes, indeed, here's the latest to say you have a sense primary tracker for morning consult I always have to say the poles have

been all over the map. So I mean, always take polining with a grain AsSalt, take it with like a lot of skepticism, because there are continuing polls that show Ron DeSantis in a stronger position, and some that even show him beating Donald Trump right now. But here's Morning Consult has Trump at forty seven, Ron DeSantis at thirty one, Mike Pence at seven, Nicki Haley down at three percent,

along with Liz Cheney and Ted Cruz. So and you know, when you look at the Morning Consult, they always do these trackers that are like every week they check in, and it's been pretty stable in terms of their polling. It's been basically everybody's been clustered around these same percentages the entirety of the time that they have been polling. So that's where things stand. I just thought it was

remarkable in particular. I mean, number one, we're going to talk about this a little bit more later, but I also got to say, like the identity politics from Nikki Haley leaning into the bio and being a brown girl in Bamberg, South Carolina or whatever. And she even then right after she laid out one of those lines, she immediately was like, I don't believe in identity politics, Like, girl,

what are you doing right now? Yeah? Exactly, just be why would't you just be a good governor for South Carolina? And yeah, look, once again you can lean into your bio. I'm also proud of being a child of Indian immigrants. I think that's fine, you know, But the trying to like cast it as part of this and then also rejecting like some of the tenets of leftism which are clearly utilizing in your own camp pain and will show you some of her merch, that is what's cringe to me,

Like either do it or don't? Right, you are trying to have it both ways, and you know, broadly, part of the reason why, part of the reason why I hate it is there's nothing underneath that. It's like, okay, what else you know? I remember this all has happened during the Kamala thing in the Indian community, people were like, we got to support Kamala because Indiana. I'm like, yeah, what does she think though, Like what does she actually believe?

You know? In India, Trump is more popular than Kamala, you know why because they don't care about her background. The other thing with Nikki Haley doing this is like, I mean, I think she has an awareness that this only gets her so far with the Republican base, but her whole she has no policy plan that's different or that she wants to lean into. So even the new Generation stuff is really identity based. I mean, it's just literally about what, like what year you were born in.

So her whole pitch is bioh is like based in her bio rather than any sort of specifig policy plan. And listen, I just don't think that that it sells with the Republican base, with the Democratic base, with the American people. You can ask Kamala Harris how well it worked out for her in the Democratic partright. Ultimately, Yeah, and I think that's the way it should be, yes, O Greed. Let's move on to UFO's interesting developments there.

So President Biden actually broke this morning. Is scheduled at least at some point today to bring us an address on what's going on with the UFOs, specifically most likely around their version of the Chinese version of the story. But one thing that you should keep in mind is, just as we predicted here on our show on Tuesday, let's put this up there on the screen. Well, officials now say, in all three cases, these debris of these

down to objects, they're never going to be recovered. The White House is trying to quote tamp down on conspiracies. They say, if it can't be recovered, it's just going to be very difficult to say with great certainty what these things actually are. So tamp down the conspiracy. Yeah, that'll certainly tamp down the conspiracy. I mean, here's the thing. They've now had days in every single one of these instances I've checked in the weather conditions have been in

the Yukon and in Alaska Lake Huron. So as we told you previously, first it was choppy water. Okay, that lasts for a day, all right, So what about the next day, Well, now it's too deep. I went ahead and checked. The maximum depth of Lake Huron is seven hundred and fifty four feet. That is actually quite deep. However, we have had multiple instances in our history where we have gotten stuff from far deeper. The US Navy specifically, there's actually a military base on lake here or very

nearby with some capabilities. We know that the US Navy has all of these different assets that they can fly and bring from across the board, or at the very least, like, why don't you tell people we have the equipment, we have a concerted effort, it'll be up in two months something like that. They're not even coming out and saying that. They're just like, yeah, debris recovery operations are ongoing and continue. And remember, to date, we've had no images. We've had

no photos. Now, look, we can wait and see for what the President says. Some pilot audio actually came out from the F sixteen. One of the things that really comes out from the pilots is they're like, we have no idea what that is. Like, I don't know what it is. I think I see some string. No, I don't see any string. I don't know how it's staying aloft.

It's really small. They actually said it was, since it was moving and staying aloft at forty thousand feet and they were moving at such a high rate to speed they had difficulty even keeping a visual on it. We know that the missile actually missed over lake here on It required two missiles which actually get a target lock on them, indicating and possibly maybe have had some heat signature. And you know, look, I want to say again, it

probably is a balloon. It probably is, but it's one of those where they have got to at least assure and tell the public about what's going on. And we know, we know, but all the way from over twenty years. Now that you have internal video that can be released as have been released with the UFO videos. One of the things that struck me the most where some of the comments from senators after the classified briefing, where they

were honestly outraged with the Biden administration. This was bipartisan. Actually, they were like, this has been going on for years. They didn't tell us anything, We have no idea, and we have got to answer more questions about what's going on. Senator John Kennedy and others reacted immediately on Capitol Hill. Here's what they had to say. I just know that going into the last two hearings, I had the impression that this was something that had happened over the last

two weeks, and that's not accurate. This has been going on a long time. Now that this cow was out of the barn, the President and the Director of National Intelligence needs to address it. They need to explain to the American people if they know and I'm not sure they know. If they know, they're not telling us what these things are, who put them up there? And do they pose a threat to the American people? And the Director of National Intelligence coordinates all that, she is a

cabinet level officer. She needs to come brief the United States Congress, and then she and President Biden need to talk straight to the American people. Would answer just answered bation questions. A lot of frustration on Capitol Hill, Senator Tom Cotton saying the same thing, Senator Dick Durbin, many of these people saying the saying they're like, hey, look, we didn't learn anything. Tom Cotton was like, I learned more from reading the news than I did from the

classified briefing. And I just want to say again, if they thought it was really a balloon, they would have said so. If they had any confidence that it was something that they could identify positively, they would have told Congress, what do you also learn from that? Especially from Senator Kennedy's comments, this has been going on for a long time.

It's exactly what we've been saying here for years now in the discussion of this topic, and the revelations are really is that whenever you uncalibrate the radar from where it previously was, it turns out you're going to find all sorts of things that are flying up in your airsprace, Crystal, you had that idea that maybe they're just going to recalibrate back. I would not put it pass them. They're like, we don't want to deal with this, we don't want

to look at it. So maybe they already did that, like liveen ignorance was blissless, just go back to that regime. I think that's very likely, yeah, I mean, and also in terms of stuff coming out on the Chinese balloon, currently Intelligence says that we actually watched the balloon take

off from Hainan Island. The Chinese are saying, apparently with some earnestness, trying to tamp down the tensions, they're like, look, we only meant for it to fly over Hawaii, and like we didn't mean for it to drift well up here.

I mean, according to the reporting, the US is actually actually kind of buying Yeah, they're like that that's the case, because yeah, they watched it take I guess there were unusual weather patterns and there were actually some indication that after it was spotted in Wantana or whatever the Chinese were actually trying to bring back anyway, I don't know.

But the other piece that was interesting to me, I think it was in that same article that's in the New York Times about the Chinese by balloon they're getting from their administration sources that oh, we think that these other balloons were probably like weather balloons that were defunct and it was basically just like air debris or trash. What does that mean? Like, yeah, well, I mean, first

of all, we need proof. Yeah, I mean that's number one, washesn't fly around the static and forty thousand feet for hours on end. Well, and also, you use two hell fire missiles to take down a frickin' dead weather balloon. Really, really, And as we have pointed out already, the fact that they are unwilling to say like, oh, it was a balloon, that one dude was like, there's a reason I'm saying

it's an object not a balloon. Again, there's a lot of reason to be skeptical about any of these claims, but it's revealing the things that they leak to the Times. They can't say it outright because they have no proof, but they can suggest on background like, oh, this is what we really think it is. Judging by the reactions of members who came out of that briefing, I wouldn't put too much stock in that particular explanation. And Sener

Kennedy made this very eerie comment, very cryptic comment. He was like, all I'm going to say is lock your doors tonight. Yeah, exactly, And look what from what I've tried. I've talked my people on Capitol Hill. Senator Rubio, Senator Jillibrand both have been warriors on this issue, and they are the ones who are the most read in They genuinely seem afraid of the fact that we don't know what's going on. They've pushed for transparency now for two years.

At every single time, the Pentagon, the DNI, the Director of National Intelligence that he mentioned there have obfuscated and withheld evidence from them. We also from Director Ratcliffe, former director under Donald Trump, Mike Pompeo. Many of them do not report having seen any of the major intelligence. This is one of those where I really believe it is such highly special, compartmentalized information that they are willing in some ways to keep it away from leadership. And from

the elected officials told us before. John Podesta, who is the White House Chief of staff, he's actually a big UFO guy. He tried to get to the bottom of this whenever he was the White House Chief of staff to Bill Clinton, and they basically were like, go away, we're not telling you anything. President Clinton is on video. You can actually go watch the clip if you're interested. Where he's like, I'm embarrassed to admit I tried to find out and they wouldn't really tell me. And so, hey,

who's the commander in chief. In the nineties, things have changed somewhat in terms of some of the transparency pushes and all of that. And by the way, some indication that our show has made some difference, at least in the Pentagon. They're getting a little riled up over Jeremy Corbel's comments by specifically calling people out here on our show. So that's good. We're making a bit of a tent. I think that's great. And the point is that we

have to continue to push, push and push. At the end of the day, all we really do have control over is public pressure, not just on the executive but on Congress, and Congress is pissed I really think they should be final thing. Let's put this up there. As we alluded to, the President is weighing the possibility of a Biden address on UFOs. It looks like it'll come at some time today. I don't think it's going to be a primetime address, like a nine PM type thing.

Maybe he'll give a press conference, or maybe he'll just do a drop by in the White House Press briefing room. We still are awaiting whatever those details are. If they break at some point to the day, we'll try and get you some coverage on that. But that's for things stand right now. And an attempt to quote unquote tamp down conspiracy therees. You know what you could do on that regard, get the friggin debris removal going, show us

what it is, give us some proof. Even then, people are going to be skeptical because they just don't trust you because of all the lives that have been told. But that would at least be some move in the right direction. Absolutely, all right, we have some significant updates for you out of Ohio with regards to that horrific train derailment that, in the words of one has Matt Expert, basically nuked an entire town with chemicals. Let's go and

put this up on the screen. Ohio officials are saying, oh, the air quality is fine, but don't drink the water. Ohio Department of Health Director doctor Bruce Vanderhoff said air quality testing shows it is the same as it was before, but Tiffany Cadillac, who is Chief of Division of Surface Water for the Ohio EPA, said they are watching the cloud and how it could affect water systems. Quote, we know there is a plume moving down the Ohio River.

She said that water systems are being shut down as that plume goes over an area, and testing is taking place to make sure the water is safe. Residents of East Palestine are being advised to drink bottled water for now. Vanderhoff said water for the municipal system appears to be fine, but more extensive testing is ongoing. He said people with

private wells should get them tested. Remediation work continues, and as a reminder something we showed you some of the dead fish from a local person who record a video for TikTok. There have been reports of dead animals being found all around the East Palestine area. The Ohio Department of natural Resources. The official source says that thirty five hundred fish from twelve different species have been discovered dead. We showed you before. Our partners over at status qu

interviewed a foxkeeper. One of his foxes died, others of them were seriously ill. People are still reporting that they are nauseous, that they're getting headaches, that you can still smell the chemicals in the air. So a lot a lot of skepticism about exactly what is going on there and how safe it is and what the most critically,

what the long term health impacts could ultimately be. Status qu Jordan Sheridan interviewed Aaron Brockovich, of course noted, noted expert and crusader for safe water, safe and safe air. She talked about how this could be a cover up unfolding. Take a listen, This is definitely not your first rodeo, not my first rodeo. EPA testing is all often, if you want to give it the benefit of doubt, flawed

or not totally thorough. Do you trust? I mean, maybe they're not detecting it now, but what do you think of their claims that they're not detecting it? I don't trust in all fairness, it is going to take some time to do all of this testing. Now, some of the reports I read that the EPA initiated, yes initiated yesterday, they're almost talking out of two sides of their mouth because they state it's a known toxic substance, final chloride, and it's known and continues to be known that it's

leaking into the water, into the air, and into the soil. Okay, so we have that side of their story. But then over here they go, well, we tested the homes I've read where they didn't find any detection limit within the limits that they're supposed to be looking for. Well, that says to me, that doesn't mean you didn't find it. And but that's safe to go back, which is it? Do you really have enough information to call all clear? Is anyone from those agencies going and collecting the dead animals?

So there's just seems to be a big gap. Lack of transparency smells I could cover up what the hell's going on? And if you don't know what the hell is going on, I think you need to tell the community. I'm not sure what the hell is going on. She's right, Yeah, Yeah, big gaps, lack of transparency. Sure smells like a cover up.

And you know, this would be far from the first time that government officials and in cahoots with industry basically lie to people about what they know and their confidence that these people will be safe if they, you know, come back to their home, breathe the air, and ultimately try to drink the water. My personal favorite friends at the Lever, let's put this up there on the screen, Buddha j Edge now claiming, actually, I am completely powerless

to reduce derailmentt risks. Well, why exactly are you in this job? But the funny thing is they point out it's just literally completely not true. As they point to the Transportation Administration actually has a tremendous amount of regulatory regulatory authority over cost benefit analysis on the Brake rules. Before enacting it, they require executive branch overview and insight.

This is the case with the FAA, this is the case now with trains, and the Transportation Department told the Lever quote they would use all relevant authorities to ensure accountability and improve safety safety once the investigation into the cause of the derailment is done. I mean, this is just completely and totally just putting passing the buck to trying to obfuscate yourself from responsibility. Joe Rogan even brought

this up yesterday on his podcast. He's like, this guy's out there talking about diversity in the workplace expectation while you have a whole poison environmental disaster that's happening here, and you know, the EPA, as far as I understand it, they haven't even been taking regular readings of air and of water. I mean, look, I'm just going to be inclined to believe the residents here over whatever the bs that the company and the regulatory authorities have been putting out.

You you brought up that TikToker yesterday. I watched that full video and he's like, this is what always happens. A government just parrots the company line because they don't know anything. That's another problem too, like our capacity for dealing with these disasters is actually not high. We just rely on the company paid experts and like, all right, issue the press release, everybody, just move on. Well, I

don't think we should move on, not yet. Yes, that is exactly right, and we are definitely not going to move on. And I'm going to talk about this more in my monologue, massive, massive media failures on covering this story and talking about how we got to this place.

So to the extent that it's been covered at all, it's covered as this sort of like act of God in evitable, couldn't have been prevented tragedy, rather than hey, actually, industry corruption in the Obama administration, in the Trump administration, and now in the Biden administration. They're the ones that's

stripped down the safety regulations and the guidelines. They're the reason why this train, which was packed full of chemicals so toxic and explosive that they literally had to do this quote unquote controlled release to avoid the whole thing blowing up like a literal bomb. This train was not classified as being highly flammable. Think about that. Think about that. That is all because of industry corruption. So this wasn't

out of nowhere. This wasn't like, oh my god, we couldn't prevent it, or oh my god, you know, there was nothing we could do so to mitigate the impacts here. This is a specific story of corporate corruption over years and years and years. The media has completely failed to tell that story, and so it makes it easy for people like Pete Boodhaji to you know, do his like feigned helplessness dance, which is a Democrats tend to be really great at how we'd love to do as we

just can't. We're constrained the parliamentarian, the rules, the NTSB whatever. They always come up with a freaking excuse. And because the media hasn't explained the story to people and the specific actions that led us to this place, it lets characters like Pete Bootagete get off the hook for not doing the very basics of his job. There is another very specific outrage here Norfolk Southern, which has given their executives millions of bonuses. They've done massive amounts of stock buybacks.

Who are where their shareholders rather than investing in real safety or investing in their workforce. Those are the things that they have decided to do and those actions directly led and contributed to this derailment. Well, last night they were supposed to show up at a town hall to answer some questions that local citizens had for them, and guess what, they back down like the cowards that they are, put this up on the screen. This is so outrageous.

The tweet here says, just invite email Norfolk Southern says they will not attend tonight's town hall in East Palestine because they are quote increasingly concerned about the growing physical threat to their employees. What about the threat to the locals in that county? And many people also pointed out, Oh, really, you're so afraid for your safety, that's the real reason.

Zoom is a thing that exists. If you really wanted to give your side of the story and feel these questions in the interest of public transparency, there were methods to do this if you were really so fearful about your safety, but of course has nothing to do with that. And also to try to paint these local citizens who are rightfully enraged, in a negative light is absolutely enraging and outrageous. Two things that came out of that town

hall just last night. Number one, actually the railroad company put gravel over contaminated soil, actually being forced to remove it by the FDA. They're calling that the cover up. The second was a resident actually asked the mayor of East Palestine and said, where's Pete boudageed, and the mayor says, I don't know. Your guest is as good as mine. Yesterday was the first time I heard anything from the

White House. So as the February fifteenth, the Mayor of East Palestine was not contacted by the White House and by at least the President's office, presumably not even President Biden himself. That's almost what a full week after the trained de room and after the controlled release and all of this. I mean, that is a this is a total abdication of responsibility here. And you've even got what

the Governor of Pennsylvania issuing questions and letters like. You've got state officials here who are more invested in doing a better job than are higher authorities who are literally tasked with making sure this stuff doesn't happen. I mean, part of why this has been ignored by a lot of relevant national officials, you know, the Biden miministration. Obviously they've been asleep at the switch. Both of the senators from the state, SCHERA. Brown and JD. Vance, totally late

to the party. JD didn't issue a statement until nine days later, even though I mean, this is the region of the state that he's sort of most passionate about. This is technically Appalachia in Ohio. And it's because this

story implicates everybody. It's not an easy partisan narrative, and the Democrats in particular are really embarrassed right now, or they should be really embarrassed right now, because they're involved in crushing this potential rail strike, which is all about you know, the rail workers and their union representatives have been warning about safety, about rail safety, about if you keep putting profits over people, we are going to have

more accidents. And lo and behold, we've had multiple, multiple derailments, including this absolute catastrophe. So it's it's very uncomfortable for them, I guess because of their own nefarious actions and their own roles in creating this problem. Ultimately, Yeah, I think that's exactly right. All right, let's move on now to Ukraine.

A very interesting piece in the Washington Post, not necessarily the reporting itself, but more about what it signifies and what the people who are leaking to them have revealed at least about US policy. So let's put this up there on the screen. Here's what they say. Quote US warns Ukraine it faces a pivotal moment in the war. Now, the reason why this matters are a bunch of background quotes from the senior administration officials. They say, despite promises

to back Ukraine as long as it takes. Biden officials say recent aid packages from Congress represent Kiev's best chance to decisively change the course of the war, and they pointed specifically to Republican efforts to not support any new aid to Ukraine. So the second thing that I found fascinating was this senior administration said, the Biden administration will continue to request as much funding as it believes, but there's no guarantees that Congress will actually do it. Now.

They say that the war in recent months has become a slow grind, with neither side gaining the upper hand. Biden officials believe the critical juncture will come this spring, when Russia's expected to launch its defensive and more broadly, I think the real headline out of it is they

were basically like, it's now or never. We're probably not going to be able to provide you any more weapons or support after this year, and after this point you're gonna have to go to negotiating table what they point to. And actually there was a couple of things here which really made me raise my eyebrows. Number one, Crystal was this line, so everyone should remember that we have given

a hundred or appropriate one hundred billion to Ukraine. I believe we have sixty billion left now currently on the pace that Ukraine is using ammunition. They warn that Ukraine will exhaust the current congressional package as early as this summer. So they're going to roll through sixty billion in AMMO and in weapons and in support in literally a matter of months. Just showing you how much AMMO that they

are consuming over there in Ukraine. Number two was actually this Zelenski is making some moves which are really rubbing the White House the wrong way. So specifically in regards to the defending the town of bak Moot, which we've talked here, they just evacuated all those AID workers. Here's what they say. Ukraine has expended significant resources and troops defending Bakmok. American military analysts have argued it is unrealistic to simultaneously defend bak Moot and launch a spring counter

offensive to retake what the US views as more critical territory. Zelenski, however, attaches the symbolic importance to bak Moot and believes that it would be a blow to morale to lose the city. He said his country's forces would fight as long as we can. However, what they point to is that Zelenski, while he may know best to rally his country, have expressed concern that if they keep fighting everywhere that Russia sends troops, it will only work to Moscow's advantage. Why

because Moscow has tremendous amount more material. They also say, according to them, they have an initial force. Russia had one hundred fifty thousand troops. Right now they have three hundred thousand. Now you have hundreds of thousands more assembled in the draft they're about to come there. They are going to outnumber Ukrainian forces significantly. Now, Ukraine's gonna be on the defensive, and a defensive warrior is always going to have You're going to need less necessarily, However, it

will change if you're doing an offensive. But what they say is that Zelenski is expending a quote extraordinary amount of blood and treasure for the city of back Mood, which has no strategic value, and that instead what he should have been doing was basically holding back getting some of these weapons, conserving ammunition. One of the things that it kind of pointed to me is Zelenski is actually in much more of a desperate gamble than people may think.

He's trying to hold together the actual population of Ukraine. And also part of the reason why he's on this whole push for more is they can redo math and how much they're expending AMMO. Right today, Kamala Harris just landed in Munich. The NATO Secretary General. Over the last couple of days has been making pleas from all over Needo. He's like, look, Ukraine needs a hell of a lot

of AMMO. I mean, if you're rolling through sixty billion dollars of weapons in literally four months and there's still not even an actual Russian offensive that's happening right now, I don't really know what to say in terms of sustainability of this conflict because they ain't got no industrial base, they got no ammunition or whatever of their own, Like it is completely based on our support, and Russia still has the capability to ramp up and if they want to.

Rumors right if they want to. There have been rumors of another draft just in terms of just sheer manpower. These be inexperienced recruits basically sent you know, like like grist to the millstone or whatever that's saying is. But

they do have that capability. And the piece that really stood out to me in that Washington Post article is we talked to you before about how Rand Corporation, which is mostly funded by the Pentagon, put out this long assessment saying, look, we are not headed to an outright victory for Ukraine, we are not headed to an outright victory for Russia. We're headed to a stalemate. And the best thing we could do is try to avoid a

really law It's already a long war. Try to avoid a really long war, because the cost of this thing are a disaster. The costs in terms of the obvious risk of escalation, the obvious risks of potential Russian nuclear usage, but also in terms of Ukrainian civilian casualties, Ukrainian economic devastation, world hunger and poverty increasing because of increased food and fuel prices. These costs, they say, are are far too great for too little gain, given that what we're headed

to as the stalemate. So we told you about that. Well, in this report they talk about how US intelligence officials have concluded something similar quote. They have concluded that retaking the heavily fortified Crimean peninsula is beyond the capability of Ukraine's army right now, That sobering assessment has been reiterated tom multiple committees on Capitol Hill over the last several weeks.

So that again underscores this idea that Zelensky has put out, and plenty of administration and congressional leaders have fact that we're going to have complete victory, We're going to push Russians out of Crimea. That is a fantasy. They say that discrepancy between abes and capabilities has raised concerns in Europe that the Ukraine conflict will persist indefinitely, overburning the West as it grapples with other challenges including high inflation

and unstable energy prices. And against that background, here's the money quote. Biden's aids say they are pursuing the best course of action, empowering Ukraine to retake as much territory as possible in coming months before sitting down with Putin

at the negotiating table. Now, is this really what they think and is this really a strategy that they will stick to if we get down the road and Ukraine does well and consolidates their position or takes back a little bit more ground, are we going to be Are we then going to say, all right, now is the time to negotiate, or we go and feed ourselves. This lie that we fed ourselves before Ukraine can win. We got to keep pushing, we got to keep fueling it.

We got to keep sending them, shipping them arms, an increased the amount of military aid that we are getting them, because so far in this conflict, all roads have led to that same conclusion. If Ukraine's on the back foot and they're not doing well, we got to help them. We got to strengthen their negotiating hand. And if they're doing well, oh they can win. They can have complete

and outright victory. So I hope that this report is accurate, that this is actually what they're thinking, But I remain skeptical until I actually see any sort of push for diplomacy, keeping in mind that it was the US that nuked an early potential piece deal in the first weeks of this war. I don't actually believe it. I think this is meant more pacified domestic political forces that are against it.

I am completely of the same belief. If they have even a modest success, there's no way in hell even the Republicans will stop the arms. Look, I hope so, but we'll see. The second thing is that let's say that they're on the backfoot tremendously, then of course you know the same narrative, Oh, we can't let it happen. It's like a sunk cost fallacy at this point. So, I mean, we've got one hundred billion investors in there.

The only thing that may actually be the limiting factor is literally the sheer amount of ammunition that they require and our inability to provide it to them without also hurting our own defense stock. The US Navy secretary already said that's the case. By the way, if you think we might have ammo problems, the Euros have way less of stockpiles than we do. They are already also on the backfoot, and they might have to cannibalize their own forces. They're welcome to do that if they would like to.

I don't think that they will, so, if anything, it may be actual straight up industrial production of economies which are not in a total war environment like Ukraine. That might be the broader limiting factor on all this. But I think you should take Zelenski's recent push abroad as evidence that he is seeing the exact same thing, which

is like we're using a lot of AMMO. By the way, included in this Congress is going to appropriate another ten billion more likely to balance the budget of Ukraine, which I just can't ever particularly get over that one. We're going to look got to make sure that their economic house is short up, not the IMF or any of these others, on top of the one hundred billion that

we've already appropriated towards them. So it is possible that this could be the end, but I am very very doubtful of it politically what we alluded to earlier, Let's put this up there on the screen. Glenn Greenwald flagging this from a new poll of Republican primary voters. Fifty percent of voters say they are less likely to support a candidate who supports providing military aid to Crane. DeSantis has now really said anything about Ukraine. We don't really

know where he stands. Some of his votes in the House were pretty much just typical what a GOP politician would say. But Nikki Haley and Mike Pompeo have been actually criticizing Biden for not sending enough weapons to Ukraine or not supporting them enough, and clearly Trump views this as a major attack vector. There was a political piece from a couple of days ago where Trump believes that one of the ways that he could what he can divide the Republican primary is he can be the one

who is anti war. And I've always believed, you know that Trump is incredibly good at pointing and finding a cleavage and American policy where nobody is willing to say it. But at the now Look, we had an argument about this with Kyle and Marshall on the other side. They were saying, oh, well, actually it's very popular support Ukraine. I mean right now we're a fifty to fifty and in terms of where the conflict is likely to go, you know we're going to ship another ten billion. Well

that's going to make headlines. Maybe that'll change things if it had, depending on how the Ukrainians do, that could change things as well. Who know, who the hell knows what things are going to look like a year and a half from now. So if I was Trump by betting man on this position, absolutely clearly is Lena Nintuo. I mean, this is one of the first things he

hit Nikki Haley on. They're signaling they're going to hit Ron DeSantis over it, as you said, Tager, I don't think DeSantis has said a lot with regards to Russia. The things he has said have been a quite different tone than what Trump has said. I've got a New York Times peace on DeSantis's foreign policy approach where they've got a few quotes here they say where mister Trump responded to the war by calling Russian President of Vladimir

Putin a genius for invading. Mister DeSantis decried the invasion as a Russian strategic blunder. Trump long admired Putin as powerful and intelligent. DeSantis has dubbed him a quote authoritarian gas station attended. Trump notoriously accepted Putin's denial of Russian only meddling in the twenty sixteen elefe This from the

New York Times. Guys, mister Desanta's in twenty thirteen saw quote Putin as somebody who's trying to confront the US, and last year included Russia on a short list of countries with nefarious intentions to engage in espionage or influence operations in Florida. So he's taken a sort of in verbally, a more traditional Republican approach, like more like the way Mitt Romney talked about. But none of those like are like we yeah, no, I don't think I'm from you

know what I've seen. He hasn't said a whole lot on it, but clearly Trump thinks that, based on his sort of more neocon approach from when he was in the House, that this might be a place where he

can push him. See. This gets back to the discussion we had earlier, which is, I think the biggest limiting factor for DeSantis on foreign policy is going to be the fact that all the billionaires who are not going to back Trump are going to be the neocons themselves who are there if you think they if you think like MSNBC people are cringe on Ukraine, you should meet

some of these folks. Well, if you've given us a good segue here, because we've got a nice little MSNBC clip to share with all of you all this morning. All right, So, as we discussed earlier, Nikki Haley launched her presdential campaign much fanfare, girl Boss, energy, et cetera, et cetera, and it led to an amazing exchange between Andrew Mitchell of MSNBC and John Bolton and in which is just like every piece of it is in some way, So just take a listen. We'll react on the other side.

Quote Mike Compelle was saying that she is light as a feather. Would you be saying that about a man. Let's let's compare her with another woman. In the video trailer that she put out last week, foreshadowing the announcement this week, she opened up with quotations from Jeane Kirkpatrick. Now Jeane Kirkpatrick obviously another former u AN ambassador in the nineteen eighties. I would say Gene was America's Margaret

Thatcher and a phenomenal person. So the idea that Nicky is trying to associate herself with Jeane Kirkpatrick, I think is a little presumptuous. The reason I found this incredible is because, Okay, see if John Bolton criticizing Niki Hiley, fine, there are many things to criticize her for. We did it as well, but he chooses like the worst possible angle of being, like she's not enough of a neocon.

For those of you who don't know Jeane Kirkpatrick, she was like the she was in favor of a run contra. She was It's like the intellectual author of Reagan era foreign policy. Her view. Her view was that we should support any authoritarian regime, didn't matter human rights abuses at I mean, she laid this out in great intellectual depth as long as they were anti communists, so supported all sorts of brutal dictators, like I said around Contra, etcetera.

So he's like, she's not enough like that, which is a terrible critique. And then Andrew and Mitchell responds by critiquing John Bolton, which again good lots of things to critique John Bolton on, but it's from like you're not being fair to a woman. So it's worst. That's the

worst conversation, the worst analysis all the way around. I would even say that Jeane Kirkpatrick was at least a more talented speaker than Niki Hailey, So I'll say on a pure political talent level, I would also level that I don't doubt that one thing that we were talking previously about was about her leaning into identity politics by also to crying identity politics. Just look at some of the crap that she's selling on her website. Let's put

this up there on the screen. Sometimes it takes a woman Navy T shirt I mean, sometimes it takes a woman bumper sticker with the Nicky Haley logo down at the bottom. It's just so boilerplate cringe. I don't again really tweet I tweeted this. I'm curious what you think I said. You know, which political consultant gave Nicki Haley the mistaken impression any of us give a shit about

her high heels? And you know, somebody replied to me and they're like, hey, look, you know forty three percent of GOP voters are coming from women, even for Trump. So if you figure how to tap into that and bring them out in primaries, there's a premium no idea if heels does that, but presumably not meant for us. But I mean, am I the only person who thinks it's actually sexist to say that talking about high heels makes you a pro woman candidate or appeal to women.

Let's look at the data. Fifty three percent of white women in twenty sixteen voted for Trump. White women also increase their vote margin for Donald Trump in twenty twenty. You had more Latina and Black women also vote for Trump in twenty twenty, despite all of the whatever, you know, he's not a feminist all this other stuff. Is there any evidence that that's actually what appeals to women at all? I mean, like, why is this superficiality of high heels

and of sometimes it takes women. Think back to Hillary Clinton. I literally just laid out she lost white women and she is the person who leaned into glass ceiling. And also some where is the evidence that women care at all? I mean it's just like, Okay, it's nice you're a woman. I got yeah, that's it could be nice to have a historic first, but tell me what you're gonna do, lady, Like it's not enough. Okay, you have a vagina, congratulations,

Like what are you actually going to do? And the other piece of this is it is such consultant brain because you see it too. You see it on the Democratic side as well. They just assumed, like Kamala Harris is a black woman, so she's going to appealed to black women, which again is like both sort of racist and sexist essentralized like that that people are just so brain dead that they see someone who shares some idea unity characteristic and they're going to be like, that's my vote.

It's listen, there is something to people want to feel like you understand their experience, you get where they're coming from. That is real. But to just essentialize it like that, like the way to appeal to women is to talk about how you're a woman. Good luck. That's all I have to say. Well, also on the light as a feather comment, I mean, what Bolton was saying is that she is actually a policy lightweight, which is empirically true.

One of the stupid things that Trump did was appoint her un ambassador when she was formerly the freaking South Carolina governor in a non competitive race. Prior to that, winning some like state legislation, she had literally had no thoughts whatsoever on foreign policy and then gets arguably, you know, at least what was once upon a time was an important role to the extent that she comported herself. She raised her hand one time and took a photo of it.

It's like, okay, so now you're a Now you're supposed to be president of the United States, and listen. She could prove us wrong. She could have proved us wrong in that interview with Sean Hannity that we showed you, or she could have come out with some like, you know, deep policy thoughts and knowledge, demonstrated some sort of knowledge, expertise, vision, whatever, But instead she just regurgitated this weird cand line about I'm not kicking sideways, I'm kicking forward over and over

and over again. So you know, I'm not mad at her about our resume. There's plenty of line items there, but you have to demonstrate some sort of political competence, some actual vision for the country, and just falling back on your age, your gender, your race, that you grew up in a small town South Carolina. Good luck, good luck? All right, Sager, what are you looking at? Well? I know I can rub Boomers the wrong way sometimes when I talk about them derisively. I just want you to

know it's not personal. The ones who watch our show, I guess you guys are the good ones. But generationally, you need to understand how boomer and silent generation tyranny is soul crushing to people who are my age. We genuinely cannot believe we have been ruled for our higher adult lives by geriatric overlords who not only ruined the promise of the country but somehow still remain in power.

Perhaps no better example of this exists than Dianne Feinstein, the eighty nine year old California senator who officially finally announced her retirement yesterday. Too little, too late, you asked me, she's been verifiably senile for years. Disgracefully, she refused to accept her limitations and give up what is actually a serious job. Feinstein represents the people of California, a full

forty million people, the largest in the entire country. California, if it was own country, would be the world's fifth largest economy, ahead even of France, India, Italy, and Brazil. They deserve proper representation instead. Because reporters have been afraid to be too polite and are corrupt democratic hierarchy, the public has been shielded from just how much Finstein has completely lost it, and funnily enough, the full extent of how far gone she is was actually put on display

in her retirement announcement. Why because she literally did not know her staff had put out a statement that she was retiring. On Capitol Hill. Moments after the statement came out, a reporter asked her about the announcement. She said, quote, I haven't made that decision. I haven't released anything, to which Stafford cut in and said, quote, we put out a statement, she goes, oh, you put out a statement, and then she walked away. That's insane. That's weekend at

Bernie's stuff. People. The craziest thing is she's not even doing the right thing and resigning only she will not seek reelection in twenty twenty four. The people of California have to continue to have her represent them for a full two years when she will be ninety one years old. If I sound callous, I'm sorry. I know it's a tragedy when people age and families have to deal with it. She was a private citizen, I would have nothing but compassion for her. But she's not. She's a public servant.

It's just not right. The problem with the fine Seine situation is just how much the Democratic Party and her fellow geriatrics in power have gone to protect her. When the San Francisco Chronicle in April did a story on how senile she is, the only fellow senators admitting it on background said she was senile. No one would say so on the record. Worse, the only person on the record was Nancy Pelosi, who said, quote, Senator Findstein is a workhorse for the people of California, a respected leader

amongst her colleagues, adding that it is unconscionable. Weeks after losing her beloved husband of more than four decades and decades of outstanding leadership to our city and state, she is being subjected to these ridiculous attacks or beneath the dignity in which she has led and the esteem which she has held. Oh, it's unconscionable. So outside of the corrupt deal to shield this from the public, maybe it just struck a nerve with Pelosi, who is literally eighty

two years old. She's only seven years younger than Finstein. In fact, if you look at leadership in this country right now on a bipartisan basis, it will make you want to vomit. Sure, it's great Pelosi is no longer the Democratic leader. We all know she still pulls the strings. Schumer is a spring chicken of the Senate. He's only seventy two. McConnell is eighty. Our president is also eighty. If re elected, he would be eighty six the day that he left the Oval office. Call me agist if

you want, I don't care. That's too old for the hardest job in the world. Trump, of course, is in the same league. He's seventy six. All of this is madness. In fact, the one hundred and seventeenth Congress which just ended, was literally the oldest congress in American history ever, And it wasn't always this way. At a time when fifty percent of this country is below the age of thirty eight,

only five percent were the same in Congress. Now, look, I'm not saying it's got to be one to one, but a little bit more parody would be nice, wouldn't it. And sure, age itself is not a determination of anything. Bernie has the highest approval rating of all young voters, and he's older than Biden. Buddha j Edge is beloved by boomers. He's not even forty. The positions matter, of course, but a certain point we got to move on. Much of this, in my opinion, is a reflection of the

ability to run for Congress in the first place. The basic fact is that boomer's vote more and they participate in our politics because they actually have a stake in this country. People my age just don't. The average seventy five year old today is seventy seven percent wealthier than the average seventy five year old thirty years ago. Meanwhile, the average thirty five year old is nineteen percent poorer, same for those who are aged forty five to fifty four.

Those thirty four and younger are also poorer. Much of You can also ascribe home values, which of course only helps the elderly. They have a massive net worth and keep going up with prices, making it only harder for millennials gen Z and even gen X to buy a house. Who cares about property taxes if you have no property? Who cares about the states if you don't and probably will never have one. Why even care about high income tax If the odds are you probably will never get there.

That's why young people don't vote. It is also why those who do vote their own into power. I have no idea what the solution is, but I do know fragile systems like this they do break, and when they do, it doesn't go so well for the people at the top. What I do know is, at the very least, we cannot continue to be insulted by having literally senile people represent us in Congress while they're nursing home age colleagues

do everything they can to protect them. You can respect the elderly and the lessons they have to teach us while also advancing the interests of the rest of the public. Unfortunately, we have not yet learned to strike that balance, and I hope we do someday, because whatever this nonsense is, it cannot go on forever. Literally, I mean, look again, I don't want to sound mean. I know it can be callous. But she didn't even know she retired. That's insanity.

And if you want to hear my reaction to Sagres's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at breakingpoints dot com. What are you taking a look at? Crystal Well? Guys? Residents of East Palestine, Ohio are now being told they'd better stick to bottled water for the foreseeable future, as a toxic soup of chemicals makes its way through that community's

waterways and disperses throughout the broader Ohio River Valley. The derailment of a train packed full of hazard's chemicals has been a horrifying disaster for the local community, and it's been a lesson in the monstrosity of corporate greed combined with industry friendly politicians and regulators, or in any case, it should have been a lesson in this political toxic sludge.

But unfortunately, corporate media nearly across the board has failed to give Americans any context for how the hell this nightmare situation came to pass in the first place. Norfolk, Southern and their industry allies have perpetrated a grave crime that could impact this part of Ohio for generations, and the corporate news media have served as accomplices in the cover up. According to a comprehensive analysis for Media Matters, only three percent of broadcast coverage mentioned the year's long

successful industry campaign to weaken rail regulations. And if you don't understand the way that corruption fueled this disaster, you really don't understand this story at all. It is just a tragic, inevitable act of God, with no one to blame and no action to be taken. And that is precisely the way that industry wants you to view this derailment. As our friends at the Lever reported, three different administrations failed to regulate the rail industry in ways that very

specifically contributed to the devastation of this crash. The Obama administration exempted trains carrying exactly the sort of chemicals that were on this train from being classified as a high hazard flammable train designation that would have subjected them to

more stringent safety regulations. After seeing this train turned into a giant fireball and official warnings that if not for the controlled release, it could have literally detonated like a bomb, blowing up the entire town, imagine the levels of corruption that would lead to such materials failing to be designated as high hazard and as flammable. The Trump administration, though,

they went even further. They rolled back Obama era safety rugs, which would have required modern braking systems to be rolled

out industry wide. Now, this particular train relied on a braking system literally invented in the eighteen hundreds, and as a result, experts say the devastation of the crash was much more profound, with more cars derailed, more toxic chemicals spilt, and the Biden administration, with Pete as absentee figurehead at the top of the Department of Transportation, just let the new corporate status quo rain simple War era breakes, unregulating

toxic chemicals and all. But they did add their own special little touch by effectively backing industries approach to screwing and stressing and stripping their workforce down to the bare bones, all in the name of cost cutting so they could give their executives bonuses and their shareholders and multi billion dollar giveaway. Three administrations Obama, Trump, Biden, both parties, Democrats

and Republicans, they all birthed this whore. Anyone pretending that it's only one party or one person a blame for these years of failures in industry, boot looking is a liar and a hack running cover for their team. Anyone pretending like this was a fluke accident which couldn't have possibly been prevented, is also a liar and a hack running cover for industry. And a look at the news media's coverage is to see an entire universe of liars

and hacks, with hardly a single exception. Now, media failures to reveal the real story. They were profound, and they were really across the board. None of the Sunday shows covered the trained derailment at all, not one an American town. It was literally poisoned by corpor greed. They couldn't bother

to make mention of it. During a key three day stretch from February tenth to February twelve, there was not a single mention of this derailment in national news not one, but the specific strategies that were deployed by each of the three cable news networks really exposes the nature and the purpose of the cover up. According to that report quote on cable National Network CNN, Fox News Channel, and MSNBC, they aired just over two and a half hours of

coverage on the train derailment. The majority of reporting was done by CNN, which dedicated over an hour of coverage across forty two segments, was followed by Fox News, which aired fifty minutes across twenty two segments. MSNBC spent thirty six minutes across nineteen segments reporting on the derailment and toxic fire that followed. Let's break all of this down In every instance you can see how the network's biases

and political orientations drove their coverage. CNN did the most coverage of the three networks thanks to there If it bleeds, it Leads orientation. But while they cover the derailment because it's a sensational news event, not a six segment actually looked at the bipartisan political corruption that led to the catastrophe, not one sensationalism with zero accountability the CNN way over it.

On the s NBC, they decided the best way to run cover for the failed response of the Democratic administration was just to mostly not talk about the derailment at all. Over a ten day period, they devoted a mere thirty six minutes to the catastrophe. To put that in context, this is a twenty four hour news network. That means they had fourteen four hundred minutes of airtime to fill over that time period, and they chose to devote only

thirty six to the derailment. Now, Fox they did slightly more coverage, clocking in at fifty minutes throughut the ten day period. But now they're leaning in after Pete handed them an absolute gift by talking about white construction crews and ignoring the derailment. With this blessing from the culture were gods, Fox has now decided to cover the story laying to the Biden administration, while of course conveniently ignoring the fact that Trump failures were some of the most

critical in setting the stage for the current catastrophe. New Ohio Senator j die Vance went on Tucker Tuesday Night, take a listen, or We've had hundreds of trained derailments after we spent over a trillion dollars on infrastructure in this country. So the fact that this isn't getting obviously better is a major indictment of the people spending the

money and what they're spending the money on. Now we know if you listen to Secretary Bodagide today, that they are focused more on whether we have too many white men in construction jobs than he is on the fundamentals of his job, which is ensuring we have a viable

transportation infrastructure in this country. And unfortunately, my constituents in East Palestine have been some of the main victims of the fact that we have failing infrastructure in our country, again after spending tons of money in an effort to actually fix it. So the problem we have, Tucker, is that we are ruled by unserious people who are worried about fake problems instead of the real fact that our country is falling apart in some of the most important ways.

You mentioned the Environmental Protection Agency. Of course, it says it right there. It should be focused on clean air, clean water. It's the thing that I'm most focused on for the people these Palestine, but so often they're focused on environmental racism and other ridiculous things instead of fixing the problem that they are established to fix. So listen. Zero disagreement for me on the unseeriousness of Mayor Pete and Biden and all the rest. But listen, Jade Vance.

You are the senator for the state. You couldn't be bothered to put out a statement until nine days after the fact. You didn't care about this one lick until you could come up with a partisan culture war angle, So spare me your belated folk concern and outrage. Second of all, the problem here isn't from your list of right wing culture war buzzwords, environmental racism or wokeism, as another Fox host claimed, or war on white people as

Charlie Kirk claimed. It's corruption and it's corporate greed, plain and simple. It's a system that puts profit over people and doesn't give a shit about working people, whether they're black, white, purple or blue. And in this instance very specifically is documented by the Lever. It's a story about a bunch of politicians on both sides of the aisle who would rather lick industries boots then protect places like East Palestine. But you don't want to tell that story because it

implicates the guy you owe your whole political career. Two. That would be Donald Trump, And you don't want to talk about that corruption because it leads straight back to your own party. You want to know when the media is covering up for industry on the story. It is the same reason they do it all the time, because it doesn't fit their dumb, partisan, black and white narratives. MSNBC doesn't want to talk about it because it looks bad for their team. Fox doesn't want to be honest

about it because that would look bad for their team. Instead, they invent some culture war dribble that, in the absence of another accurate story, is going to wholly fill the void. I lived fifteen miles south of East Palestine for years, actually in the exact same county, Columbiana County. The toxic sludge that's now drained into the Ohio River that is flowing right through East Liverpool where I used to live when I gave birth to my first child, Core My

politics today were developed while I live there. There are few places in America which have been more betrayed by both parties than this region. Steel mills, shuttered, factory works, sent overseas. In East Liverpool, the town budget was so stretched that the men used to use his own money and sweat labor to paint the municipal pool every year so local kids could at least have a place to go in the summer. No surprise, this despair and abandonment

has also made it the epicenter of the opioid crisis. Now, the news media did not tell this story because it didn't fit into their little partisan bubbles. They didn't expose who was making money off of that destruction, the lives that had been decimated. They treated it just like they did this Traine realment, as an inevitable act of God. Who could help it. Thank God for truly independent media because we all know damn well the way that we have been lied to. And this story has made me

really mad on a variety of levels. The total dishonesty cross the board. They either and if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at breakingpoints dot com. There's a whole drama over at the Federal Trade Commission, led by Lena Khan. There is a commission rror by the name of what's her name, Christine Wilson, who has resigned in a bit of a blaze of glory here. She's got a Wall Street Journal op ed explaining her thinking, let's go and put this

up on the screen. She says, why I'm resigning as an FTC commissioner. Lena Khan's disregard for the rule of law and do process make it impossible for me to continue serving. So we needed to figure out what the heck was going on here, and we brought in the man himself, Matt Stoller, who is author of The Big sub Stack and is an expert on all things anti trusted. I knew would be following this very closely. So great to see you, Matt. Good see man, Thanks for having me. Yeah,

so what is the backstory here? Uh? Drama? You know there's a there's like a I'm going to call it Lena khn derangement syndrome. Right, You remember how like Trump just blew the minds of liberals and like broke their brains, and then you know, the same thing kind of happens to Republicans, Like this is what's happening in the anti

trust establishment. So you have Lena Khan and then also more broadly, a movement of people coming in many of the viewers of your show, who are saying, like, hey, we should stop monopolies, we should do something about these problems. And the old anti trust establishment, which has been kind of a group of the technocrats living in a clubhouse for forty years saying this is a very scientific area and ordinary people have nothing to say. They're deeply offended.

And Christine Wilson is kind of like she's the protege of some of the original people who constrained antitrust in the eighties, and so she's just like mortally offended that Lena Kamm would come in and say, no, we're going

to enforce the law. And so her kind of going out with a blaze of glory air quotes, sarcastic air quotes, is her saying sort of to that old establishment, the wallstret Journal editorial page, and the anti trust defense lawyers and CEOs who are used to emerging and Jim Kramer and you know, so on and so forth, it's saying, you know, how dare she write? And she she legit believes it. She's not like, I mean, there's a lot of dishonesty in what she's saying. But like she legit

believes that there's like a new era of lawlessness. But that's because she doesn't believe in stopping mergers or or the government being able to ban non compete agreements or various things like that. She just thinks that that's outlandish, even though that is what the laws say. The reason why I think his story is important is it's like

obviously a much bigger fight that's happening right now. And one of the reasons I think we're I want to do our best to try and elevate what Lena Khan is doing is you know, when you contrast her ability to actually like do her job with so many other quote unquote young promisers in the administration, like a guy like Pete Bouda judge, the contrast is just astounding, like

the level of competence. So what is the what are the actual fights that she's calling out that Lena Khan is engaging in that will have a major impact on our viewers and really all of us in America. Yeah, no, I like that, you said, like Pete Budha judge, It's like, no, but he's a post But there's many there are many there are many examples. Yeah, he's but there's also just one,

there's one Pete. Yeah, so so there's plenty of It's actually interesting because the Department they actually it's a great comparison because they're actually the Department of Transportation has authority that is was actually the statute was ripped out of the FTC statute and given to DOT and so it's the same authority. DOT is actually a little bit stronger and one you can see one person is using that authority and one person is not. So what is what

has Lena Kahn done? All right? So she's challenged a bunch of mergers. So if you look at I mean, you guys did a segment on Jim Kramer freaking out. Yeah, reason that that he's freaking out is because deal makers on Wall Street are very upset at the new tough challenges to mergers. So mergers have dropped by seventy six percent this year. It's not entirely an antitrust thing. That's also because of the funding environment is different, but some

of it is anti trust. So she's challenged you know, Microsoft and Activision Meta within we'll see what happens with the Kroger Albertsons. But you know, a lot of deals are just getting abandoned. And you know, the FTC lost the meta within challenge but made some important legal advances. But broadly speaking, the environment for deal makers is completely different. You can't consolidate your way into dominance anymore, or at

least it's much harder to do that. Another thing that she's done, and I think this is something that got a lot of attention, is that she said non compete agreements, the things that the parts of employment contracts that say you can't leave and work for a rival. She said

that is those are unfair and unenforceable. So she's putting out rules that are not in forced yet, saying the thirty million or forty million people who are subject to non compete agreements are no longer subject to those particular provisions. I mean they're called non competes, right, So that's like pretty obvious that they're anti competitive right in the name. Yeah, right there. But there are a lot I mean, there

are a lot of other things. So one of the things that she's started on is a new policy that says that like a gym can't make it, they have to make it as easy to cancel as signing up, yes, right, which and there's you know, there's there's some let me see,

there's what's it called fortnite? Right, Like, there were there were certain like user interface deceptions that were going on there, like dark patterns that make it easy for kids to spend money and and actually make uh allow like sexual in game purchases, but also like sexual predation of adults and kids. Right because they made it far. We actually covered this. I think I did a monologue it. They made it. They made it super easy for kids to

basically get permission. You had to opt out of the chat feature, which allows like people who are older to be in with like little kids who are on the platform they market as a kid. So there is a lot going on there. But the FC came in and said you have to pay five hunred million dollars and stop all of this. And that's that's actually changing the

whole industry. The gaming industry is going to look at that and they're going to say, oh, you know the engineer in the room who's like, maybe we shouldn't do this, versus the marketing guy saying, oh, but our rois says that we should. The engineer now can say you saw what happen to epic games, right, So it's these are changing industry structures in important ways. And Christine Wilson voted

against all of those. Yeah, just to be interesting. So I see there's a Larry Cutlow segment with her very you know, very upset. They're saying that Lena Khan's approach is quote modern socialism, okay, and the chirrod on the thing says Biden's push for big government socialism. They call her the radical chair of the FTC. I mean, what's

your what's your response to to all of that? Well, I mean the Republican Party is in an interesting spot because they have lived since the early eighties with a with a coalition of social conservatives and economic conservatives working together to try to get conservative judges and conservative policy. And that coalition is falling apart. And you saw that with Trump coming in, and you see it now Trump's saying protect social security and others saying let's let's cut it.

But it also hits in anti trust and market power questions. So there are there are a lot of young Republicans who are very upset with monopoly power, and they look at Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, and they say these feel like private governments and more skeptical of government power. And then you have people like Larry Kudlow and the Wall Street Journal editorial page, and you know, essentially conservative boomer donors. Yes that that are like no, no, we like the

you know, preserving our property. And that's like there's a serious and interesting tension. But the criticism of Lena Kahan is really coming from the old school corporatist wing of

the Republican aestoptions and the Democratic establishment too. I mean, you know, Cherr Khan really upset a lot of Democrats when she not like Democrats in Congress, but like the anti trust establishment democrats, the people in the Obama administration who really didn't challenge and mergers who allowed victim They were a bunch of them, were not all of them,

but a bunch of them were really offended. So this is this is kind of like a culture war among people who control all the money and power in America. A little bit more about the Republican side. I mean, I don't how was Trump on these issues, was already sign he really thought about or cared about them. How

are the people that he put in place? How do you think he would approach it if he was president Again, are there any other potential Republican presidential contenders who would, you know, side fall more on the Lina cons side of these issues? And also are there genuine allies in Congress who back, you know, banning on competes and actually enforcing the law with regard to mergers. Yeah, so those are a lot of questions, going to forget them first

time about Trump? Right, Okay, yeah, I already forgot that one.

So it's an interesting you bring that up because one of the things that happened with Christine Wilson and her colleague No Phillips, who left a couple of I guess a couple of months ago, is that they actually got crosswise with the Trump administration and so that they want to portray what's happening as a partisan fight between the three Democrats on the Commission and the two Republicans commission with five you know, but actually that isn't what's going on.

So under the Trump administration, there was Trump filed the first monopolization claim at the DOJ in twenty years, so there was Microsoft in the nineties, and then Trump brought the first Google case. But the FTCA brought a case against Facebook in twenty twenty under Trump, and that was a three to two vote. Now, the thing is is it wasn't a three to two. Three rs wanted to

bring it in the two Dems. It was two Democrats, the Republican chair named Joe Simons, and the two people who voted against it were Noah Phillips and Christine Wilson. So she actually brought voted against the Trump chair bringing a Facebook into trusted. Another example was, you know Trump is very like protectionist in like want to make things here. Well, one of the things the FTC can do is they can say if you label something as made in America

and it's not, that's fraud. Well, the FTC under you know, the Democrats of the FTC under Trump, were trying to get this mate put into a rule, and they were actually working with Trump White House officials to do that. The people who opposed it Noah Phillips and Christine Wilson. Right, Lena Khan's first thing that she did at the FTC is to vote for this rule saying true proposal and vote for this rule saying made in America fraud is illegal.

Who voted against it? Phillips, Christine Wilson, this is so, this is and this is on ideological grounds, like how dare the government? I think Larry Coudler would say, oh, that's socialism, right, but like it's obviously it's like that's that's silly. But the but the point here is they're offended at the idea that the FTC or that the public sector in general would work to structure markets in a way that doesn't funnel money and power to the top.

And so that's what's really going on, and I think what will happen, Well, so there are a number of questions there, but like, what's gonna happen next is Mitch McConnell will nominate you know, they're two open slots. They're eventually going to nominate some Republicans and they will probably be less libertarian than Christine Wilson and Noah Phillips, and that will it will sort of change how we do anti trust enforcement. But I wanted I forgot the other

questions you ask allies with regards to Republicans. Oh yeah, so so the non compete thing is really interesting. So you have Todd Young from Indiana and you have Kevin Kramer from North Dakota. These are two senators who came out and said, you know, with some Democratic senators like Chris Murphy, they said, this is good. We don't have non competes in North Dakota. We don't have non competes or I think there's trying to bear our serious problems

with non competes in healthcare in Indiana. And they so they came out and they said it is a good thing that the FTC is making non competes unlawful. And you know, you also saw Jim Jordan on the other side, he runs the House Judiciary Committee. It is likely he's actually said I'm going to investigate the FTC for banning non competes. This is an outrageous power grab and may

issue subpoenas and so on and so forth. So you're good at you're seeing like this weird split on the right and like there's an attempt to portray it as part of it, but it isn't. Well, I'm enjoying watching it. Very interesting. People pay attention because these people control literally the entire economy, as you said, culture war of people who control all the money and power. I love that, all right, Thank you guys. So much for watching. We

really appreciate it. We've got great content for you all over the weekend, and we will see you all next week.