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You cannot wait for this one.
That's right, all right, We've got a lot of stuff to cover today. Man, I don't know how Crystal does this. All right, Ukraine, let's start with that.
We're going to talk a little bit about a very strategic defeat for the Ukrainians in this war, as there's been major developments the Munich Security Conference. Then our friend Diegor Kotkin will join us live from Moscow to discuss the death of Russian dissonant Alexey Navalne, who was found dead in a prison above the Arctic Circle. And let's say mysterious circumstances, What does this mean for Uton's control of Russia?
Why did he decide to kill him?
Now?
If that is in fact the result of his death. Fannie Willis has some stunning testimony that will have major impacts on that case against Trump in the state of Georgia, basically confirming a relationship previously with the prosecutor who she hired to go after Trump, and including some possible corruption allegations that she might have gotten herself in some very hot water on the stand. Matt Tayibi out with a new report with Michael Schellenberger about the CIA spying on
the Trump campaign. We're going to break some of that down, as well as a bit of a fracas that he's found himself in with Elon musk Over at Twitter. Ryan, you're gonna be breaking down for us major developments out
of the state of Israel. We're gonna be talking about benjaminettya who's declaration saying there will be no two state solutions, some a doctor who you actually personally know who's gone missing, some humanitarian developments, and then we're going to discuss Rashida Talib, who is a squad member Representative Democrat from Michigan who is urging people not to vote for Joe Biden in that primary, committed own commit and coming under major attack by the MSNBC liberals.
So we've got a big, big show for everybody today.
Before we get to that, though, I just want to say thank you all to everybody who signed up for the focus group to be able to help us out. We have major more and developments and plans and all these other things that are coming very very soon, so we can help us out Breakingpoints dot Com.
We've got some big stuff that we're.
Ready to debut for all of you, which I'm very very excited to show. All right, let's go ahead and start with Ukraine. So there's been some major, major developments out of Ukraine. I did a monologue on Thursday discussing some of the major reasons why I personally oppose AID, and in that I previewed the Battle of Advica, very strategic town that has been at the basics of the front line since twenty fourteen in a target of Russian forces come on under even more attack in the last
couple of years of the war. Let's go and put this up there on the screen at Vika as of yesterday, officially confirmed by the Ukrainians, has fallen to Russian forces. They say, quote with Ukrainian forces at the risk of encirclement, the top military commanders nick named the butcher by his own troops, by the way, not by this enemy, says in startingly candid account, soldier described disarray and despair.
Effectively.
What they describe Ryan is that this city, as I said, which was previously home to some thirty thousand people, it's a very strategic strong point for the Ukrainian forces because they have some major bases of behind the lines, a couple thirty miles or so behind them. It's one of the reasons that they felt very strongly that they needed to defend the city. The fall of the city is kind of becoming a flashpoint for the argument for aid
to Ukraine. President Zelenski and the Ukrainian advocates of aid are saying that the city fell because of lack of ammunition, specifically artillery ammunition. Opponents of aid pointing out that this is a city where even with strong reinforcements, you know, even you know, supposedly, let's say, if artillery ammunition was the sole reason that it highlights and spotlights the massive manpower and morale problems that they had in this battle
where they were builded together. People were very fearful that troops were going to be running away, and some of the on the ground accounts of many of the soldiers there showing absolute despair, big morale problems in there as well as Russians with it appears have been able to
replenish their ranks with volunteers, not with conscripts. And while yes they certainly took losses taking the city, that this could be the beginning of a new advance, not just there but all along the six hundred mile front line.
What does it mean for the front line and what does it mean for the Russian advance that this particular strategic point.
Well, again not the general but military analysts that I've seen say that the territory and the terrain behind it is actually much easier for maneuver that the Ukrainians will find it difficult to be able to pull back and to be able to hold there. If they, as they claim, artillery is the main reason there, then obviously that's a static thing and that's not going to change.
This was the spot to hold, and that's why they've been holding it. It wasn't ten years.
Well, yeah, so it was a spot to hold for several reasons. Became a political point. It also was kind of a strategic crossroad, as I said, kind of that gateway to the place that we're talking about, the terrain and specifically some of the strategic assets that were placed behind there. Really the reason why I think the battle at this point is important is it just as this is the spotlight, and this is kind of why we
decided to leave the show with. This is now the nexus on which all of the arguments around A to Ukraine are being argued. So President Biden seizing upon the failures on the Ukrainian frontier to blame Republicans, saying it's their fault that this loss happened.
Here's what he had to say, The.
Idea that now if you run now of ammunition, we brook away. I find a serve, I find it on ethic, I find it just country and everything we are as a country.
So as you can see Ryan President Biden.
Kind of the ongoing line now from Biden from many of the Democrats. Fox News reporters supposedly supposed to be neutral or like this is unconscionable.
This demonstrates why the Ukrainians are losing.
I really wanted to focus in on this point because really is the crux of everything, which is this has now become evidence for why more military aid needs to keep funding, you know, keep flowing to Ukraine. And you also saw this at the Munich Security Conference where US former Secretary Hillary Clinton made her case raid.
Here's what she had to say.
He's absolutely right.
I mean, he knows the military situation, I know the political situation. If we actually voted to reflect the majority in Congress, the majority in the United States, we would be sending more help to Ukraine right now.
I think in order to fill.
The gap between now and when we can try to force a vote on the floor of the House, which I think is what's going to have to happen, other countries need to look at their weapon stocks. If they were thinking of sending or selling something to someone else, halt that sale.
Send it to Ukraine.
We've got to keep Ukraine going, and they are running out of ammunition. I was just speaking with some Ukrainian representatives, and you know, they're online soldiers who have been so brave are literally getting, you know, a couple of shells.
That's all they're getting, and they need more help. This was somewhere I really wanted to spend time. Yeah, go ahead, right.
It's just worth pointing out that earlier, after the counter offensive showed such success for the Ukrainians, that was used as the rationale for why you know, another hundred billions about the counter and a half year and a half ago, So that meant things are going really well, so we need to send more weapons. Now they're saying things are going really badly, so therefore we need to send more weapons.
It's interesting circular logic.
And you can imagine if it's stalemated, well, obviously you have to send more weapons because the stalemate will be broken.
So exactly right, because we just want to send more weabs. Yeah, if they just want to send more weapons. And one of the things that really bothers me about this is that they're not dealing with reality. The presumption there appears to be that there are secret artillery stocks which are just laying, you know, unused in the West that maybe you know, we may need for ourselves should we ever get into a conflict, but in production that secretly we can just turn things on.
They refuse to deal with reality.
I actually went through and read a new report by the Estonian intelligence services. Now keep in mind this is complete propaganda pro Ukraine, but they accidentally did admit a very basic truth which all of us need to grapple with.
Let's put this up there on the screen.
I've highlighted the relevant portion, which also includes a graphic. It says, therefore, it is almost certain Western ammunition deliveries to Ukraine in twenty twenty four will not be able to keep pace with supplies available for Russian armed forces. Now that is a very mild way of saying it. And as you guys can actually see, there was a graph that was right below it, which is a very important one and demonstrates the real futility of the US
and Western economies right now. So in twenty twenty one, Ryan Russia produced four hundred thousand shells. In twenty twenty two, in the midst of the war, they were able to increase that to one million twenty twenty three, in the span of just a year, they were able to produce three point five million shells. They are projected by the
Estonians to be able to produce four point five million. Now, Ryan, the European Union has had seven months to promise one million shells, so one out of do the math there, what is that twenty five percent or so of the shells that the Russians are going to be able to produce? How many do you think they are actually able to produce despite having six to seven months to be able to run production?
If I had a guess, yeah, does discount ones that they're like secretly buying from Pakagting No.
No, no, no, this is the ones they're actually able to produce in house. If they were able to give them a couple thousand, Yeah, half a million, half a million, so half of the promised amount having seven months to be able to ramp up production and so basically it is an industrial reality.
But they are the Mercedes Benz of shells.
Sure, but here's the other problem, as you just alluded to. Now, they're like, well, maybe we need to buy them from somebody else. How do you know they're going to sell them to you? You don't and with the government also, why should they?
Yeah?
Exactly, the South Koreans they have a policy in their government they're like, we don't really want to get involved in.
This, we'll put a new government in right as a new policy.
As we saw previously, we actually bamboozled the South Koreans previously, you know, in some sort of backdoor deal to send weapons to Ukraine. But this is just a basic facet of industrial production. We cannot come anywhere even close to the Russian industrial production. By the way, that was not supposed to happen. If you know, if we go back and read what some of the previous sanctions were saying,
it was going to collapse. It demonstrates to us very clearly that Russia and you know, I got this wrong too, because all of us underestimated the resilience of Fundamentally, what Russia and China have as an advantage over us. They have closed systems, they have vertically integrated production, and if they don't have vertically integrated production, they are still able to buy enough from the Great Powers to do not
agree with us on the Ukraine consensus. It demonstrates pretty clearly that you can have the entire West try and flatten your economy with sanctions, but if you have enough production, if you have the will, you can easily get it done.
Now, I don't want people to get me wrong, if we converted our economy to total war, yeah, maybe we.
Could, you know, sure we do.
It's like, do you want to do that?
You know, you want me to rush in the coffee in my cup, you know, to make sure that the Ukrainians can maybe hold the line in Advika. And I think that's really what it gets to is that we are at a point now where the reality is is that we have exhausted our coffers basically to zero. One of the reasons why President Biden sent cluster munitions to Ukraine was not just because they wanted them. It's because
we didn't have any more artillery to send them. And one of the alleged, you know, benefits of the new package is they're like, well, it's all going to flow to us, you know, factories and all that.
But here's what they don't tell you guys. It would take eighteen months.
For those shells to be able to roll off in significant enough numbers. So at the entire point, we're not dealing with reality and all of this, all of us. Even if we were to supply all of this ammunition, et cetera, it would only be able to get Ukraine to run not even parody in terms of the number of shells, And in that.
Situation, you actually need more than the enemy if you want to try and do shape.
This is again from military tacticians and analysts that I've followed. People were actually relatively nonpartisan her like, they would actually need an advantage to conduct shaping operations and all of that.
At best, what you would be arguing for maybe.
It's for them to quote hold the line, but this belies what morale problems, the fact that they're kidnapping old and disabled people off the street that are basically there to help hold the front line.
The situation is hopeless for them.
I mean, it's really one of the they would be lucky if they have the same amount of territory today, even if we were to ship them millions of shells, and then you know how many tens of thousands of people would be dead in the meantime of their own citizen rate.
And fundamentally, what we're talking about is kind of restructuring the entire West's economy to produce munitions so that this war.
Can just go on forever. Yes, Like, who does that make sense to you?
This is two countries that are fighting over territory between them works something out here. This is beyond the capacity of our international rules based order to sort out.
Are you kidding me?
Of course not.
You know, all it would take is literally a phone call from President Biden.
You can ask Victor Orbh of Hungary. He said that.
He goes, look, you guys are the ones who can figure it out. Yeah, he said, this will not be negotiated between Ukraine and Russia. This is going to be between Washington and Moscow. President Putin made that clear in his talker interview. If he let's find out if he's lying, We don't know, you know, we have no idea. Of course, it was out rejected, completely out of hand. The reason again I'm spending time here is you need to know the reality. It's not there's no secret artillery. There's no
secret weapons that are just hanging out there. And if there were, why would we send them to you? Frank, you want to drain us to the zero to send them so they.
When we attack the cartels, the cars will cartels invade us and they just conquer us.
I mean, it's not a joke. It's true. It's not even just cartels. I mean, who knows there's so many different flashpoints across the.
Clow would I would be remiss if I didn't say, if you're a pro Israel person, the Israelis, guess what artillery they are ammunition?
They want the same ones as the Ukrainians.
Because they will go to war with Lebanon.
Well, it was funny to see Hillary Clinton say if you were thinking about selling your weapons to somebody else?
Like, is she bds opponent? All of a sudden, She's.
Like, maybe you're right, She's like kidding, And is you're watching that be like hmm.
Look this reality. I mean it's sad.
It is sad because if you think about it, back in the day, in nineteen ninety one, after the Cold War, we actually produced eight hundred thousand shells I believe that year, and last year I think it was something like forty maybe sixty thousand, which is pathetic, and it demonstrates the hollowing out and.
All that of the economy.
All this is ever, all this has really done, is demonstrated to me like how weak and unprepared we are for the fact that we can't even supply to full strength like a third world backwater military as opposed to although it.
Is taking on a pretty big country.
Oh yeah, I mean, certainly, but which we.
Seem to forget. It's like the Ukraine is not fighting Poland here.
Yeah, No, you're right, I mean, and that's one of those two where it's clear that we've under they've significantly underrestd made it the strength. I mean, you have, as I said, they've got four point five million shells. Even again, you can ask the Estonians, they're the ones who read
the report. In their own report, they say that Russia has largely been able to fill it's all of its losses with volunteers by just paying the money in the poorest regions of Russia, and a lot of people, including the people who've been killed, the widows and all that, are like, hey, listen, you know, I missed my husband, but I'm getting paid more than I ever did before, which sounds bleak, but you've never been really already, No, I.
Swear, I actually highlighted the same report. Here.
They went and they did some interviews and it was in like dagastan Er, you know, some of like really backwater regions of Russia, and it was like, many widows find themselves much richer today as a result of the war because they're making far more in pensions than they ever did in their economy.
Yeah, they never liked that, one of them. Maybe it didn't like him any children, probably miss the wife.
Yeah, you're right exactly.
Let's put this up there on the screen as well, because you're going to hear this a lot, you know, continuing from the Lenski, from all of his advocates here in Washington, they say that we are running an artificial deficit of weapons after the Ukrainian withdrawal from Advika. They're trying again to make this purely a matter of ammunition. But the truth is is that even if they had parody, the best they could do is hold. We can't even
get them to parody with current Western industrial production. And that presumes that it would be worth draining our coffers to zero, spinning up all of our economies to total war, just to keep the war going and they could hold on the front line.
For what nobody ever answers that question.
You would think that after the second counter offensive, that where we poured as much money as we could find into it and fifty billion as many weapons as we could find into it, the Ukrainians threw thousands of men into it and it failed. Yes, you would think that after that, you're like, Okay, we tried that. That's not going to work. Now we sit down and we negotiation what the end of this looks like.
But that's not the answer. Rights more, which is do more, Yeah, more and more and more.
I fewer people you're running out of and older people yegor who we're going to have on next He said it, He said it really well, either they run out of money and ammunition now or they run out of men in like two years.
Yeah, it's actually it may even be sooner than that. Six hundred and fifty thousand conscript age Ukrainian men have fled the country, have bribed their way out. They're basically at this point, if you're like fifty or so, you're.
Up for grabs, you know, to be able to go.
The average age of the military is somewhere around forty five to fifty years old. That means that there's a seventy year old in there. If the average s fifty, that means there's a seventy year old in there. Like if we think about what a normal distribution looks like, so let's just consider you know where really things are going. And you know, even if you gave them like you said, then it's just going to be a country of boys and old men. And even then, you know, can they
really be able to hold on? And this presumes so much more of Western support, which still belies the question of now what very difficult?
In two years? What about four?
Yeah, what about six ten?
There's no reason that Russia's going to stop unless we come to a negotiated solution to this.
Right, Well, that's what reality is like. It's not pretty, but it is what it is. And it's one of those where a lot of people in the news are just not being honest. They're displaying it purely as some sort of magic artillery problem, when there are manifold issues as to the Ukrainians, and in the meantime they are likely to only lose more territory. The Russians appear to be preparing for a major offensive sometime in March, all along the front line, and it will just continue and
continue and continue. Will they have major breakthroughs like they did in the early days of the war. No, they don't care, though they are totally willing to sacrifice as many men as possible, and as we're just about to talk about with Yegor, Putin is actually stronger domestically than ever at the same time here domestically, as we've discussed a lot here, Fanny will let's actually believe it was with you, Ryan, last time we did a little bit
of an update on this story. Who is the prosecutor in the state of Georgia is in major hot water there after it was revealed that she was having an affair with the top prosecutor who she had hired in the Trump case. He was paid some seven hundred thousand
dollars nearly by the state. The major reason she's in hot water is not because of the affair that's come to light through his divorce proceedings, but because it appears that they took many lavish vacations together and airs no evidence Ryan that she reimbursed him as she is.
Required to do by state law.
So in the middle of the hearing there was a dramatic moment where Fanny Willis originally was defying or saying that she would not comply with a subpoena to come and testify, rushed to the courtroom to try and tell the truth and quickly fell apart on the stand with
her story. The story that the two of them have decided to concoct is that while yes, they did attend many lavish vacations and take a lot of cool trips together hotel rooms, etc. That she did pay him back, but she did it in untraceable amounts of cash.
Here's what she had to say.
Let's talk about both of those.
I know he initially paid for it.
Did you pay him back for the cruise and for a rub? But yeah, I gave him his money before we ever went on that trip.
You gave him cash before you ever went on the trip, m okay. And so when you got cash to pay him back on these trips, would you go to the ATM No.
Lady, you would not go to the ATM No.
And my worst days has probably only been five hundred or one thousand dollars.
At my best days, I probably had fifteen thousand.
Dollars in my house.
A kid cash at all times, there's going to be cash in my house or whenever I'm laying my head.
The money that you paid and it's her way the cash in October of twenty twenty two, you do not know where that money came from.
I do know where it came from.
It came from my sweat and tears.
It came from her sweat and tears.
Ryan.
However, when she was asked if she could produce withdrawal and deposit slips from the ATM and she could prove from her bank account the withdrawal of said cash, she said, well, it's just accumulated over the years. Who knows where it came from. It's a very interesting defense. Actually spawned a
discussion here in our studio. I was told I'm out of touch generationally because I don't have sympathy for people who just keep vast amounts of cash around and listen, you know, at a at a like a level of like the Great Depression and not trusting the banking system. Listen, I'm totally with you. There's just a little bit of a problem. It turns out that miss Willis pays her rent with the cash app and that whenever it's convenient for other expenses that she does use you know, credit cards,
the bank, the official banking system, traceable bank system. It's only in this instance where she's being asked to provide evidence that she did, in fact not flout Georgia corruption law and did payback her lover for the lavish vacations. That she does claim that she had these vast amounts of cash that was available to her, and that in every single instance, unlike previously when she was using legitimate banking tools or traceable ones, that she was no, she did not default.
To that in every instance.
Very reasonable and very obviously not a cover story.
Isn't it.
It certainly does stink like a cover story.
I always root for people to get away with cover stories.
Yes, And I hate the way that the state can trace every little die.
I hate your stomach.
So the way that this kind of cover story usually unravels is that somebody will get text messages between the two of them where they will say, let's let's tell the prosecutors that we paid each other in cash, and then somebody thumbs up the message and then that goes in front of the jury and you're like, oh, wow, yes, I'm so I'm so busted.
Here.
Her real problem ethically was once she was in a romantic relationship, well his problem. Pro tip if you're getting divorced, don't take it to court.
Because ask Bill Gates, mister.
Past Bill Gates, we would know about all his Epstein's stuff. If he had just paid whatever she was asking, whatever she was asking, you pay that, you're going to be fine. But her problem was once they were in a real romantic relationship, was hiring him to begin with? That's right, once they're dating, Why am I supposed to care who pays for dinner?
We don't care about cruise, right, But it.
Was because she hired him. Now she's responsible for him making that money, and now the state has an interest in who's paying for this cruise and who's paying for the dinner.
And we're not talking about five K, two K or something.
We're talking about six seven hundred thousand dollars which he needs to account for, and by all accounts was an inexperienced prosecutor. If you go back and you read before the affair came to light, there were a lot of questions in Georgia. They're like, hey, why did she hire this guy? Like, you know, he kind of came out of nowhere. There are a lot of other people that she could have turned to. It's a very odd choice, but it appears that she has trust in him. She
certainly did. I guess trusting with that amount of cash. Mister Wade, by the way, going with the story at court, here's what he had to say.
You said in the affidavit that you roughly shared.
Travel though, correct, Yes, ma'an okay.
So this roughly sharing travel, you're saying she reimbursed you. She did, And where did you deposit the money she reimbursed you?
It was cash? She didn't She didn't give me any chicks.
So she paid you cash for her share of.
All these bats.
Mister Shaffer, you'll step out if you do.
That again, yes, ma'am, okay.
And so all of the vacations that she took she paid.
You cash for, yes, ma'am.
And you purchased all of these vacations.
On your business credit card, correct, yes, ma'am.
And you included those in deductions on your taxes correct?
No, man, no, you did not.
So you purchased all this So how why is it mss Willis is only using cash, but he's getting these point maxing whenever he's lying stuff on his business He won those points credit card, right, but why doesn't she want any points? That's what I understand what's happening here.
That's true? Give that's those points?
Megan Kelly did a great summary really of this.
Let me put this stuff there on the screen, just because there's so much that came out of this hearing.
Number one, this actually preceded both of their testimony.
Fanning Willis's close friend testified to the court under oath that their romantic relationship began way before Fanning Willis hired him, meaning that they both lied to the court. Number two, Wade claimed that she reimbursed him for all of these very expensive trips, including wine tasting to Napa bitch. She made clear just so you know, Ryan, She's like, I don't even like wine. I prefer Ga Gray Goose. So thank you for that, Miss Willis. She says, of course
it was on cash. And then three, he definitely caught lying on his earlier court submissions in divorce court, attempting to say that the reason he swore that he had no receipts was because he only had credit card statements reflecting the charges.
I have secondhand embarrassment.
I mean, it really is one where there is also other instances, for example, Ryan, where she claimed that she had large amounts of cash on hand because she had just come off.
Of her campaign. And you're like, wait what, Hold on a second, It's like record scratch, what are you saying? Did you mean he'sh.
Where's Georgia Bureau of in exactly?
Can we get the Georgia Election Bureau who you are allegedly, you.
Know, prosecuting Trump on behalf.
Of Oh yeah, a whole bunch of cash from your campaign.
Well you said this last time, and maybe you can explain it again. The problem here is the corruption law. Her Tawdrey affair and all that other stuff is a secondary concern. The law is clear, like you have to reimburse people, you know, especially when you're in a personal relationship, and you have to be able to account for that. I mean, I was explaining to our crew previously, like if I spend ten dollars on our account or whatever,
and it's not immediately clear. My accountants are up my ass this same day they're like, hey, what is this charge for? You need to clearly explain and all this just so I can be compliant in the event that irs or whatever.
She's the Georgia prosecutor. I mean, you know, it's like she clearly has a.
Present interest, far more present than I do, of you know, dotting my eyes crossing my t's and all that stuff, just to prove in any event that someone would ever look at our books that all are our finances are one hundred percent legit.
What makes this difficult for her She can either get caught in the affair or she can follow the law, because if you're having an affair, you're not going to be then like, you know, five hundred dollars from Fanny willis in the bank account, So you can imagine why, let's say it was cash, or that she's not paying it back, why that would happen. But fundamentally for people
to understand, it's an anti kickback law. If you are a public figure who has your fingers on the purse strings of the public money, and you have the power to give let's say one hundred thousand dollars contract to somebody everywhere throughout world history, what happens is that somebody who wants that contract says, give me the one hundred k, and I'll kick you back ten K. Yes, And so as a public official, so many of them are like, great, what do I care who does who gets this project
or who we hire. I'm going to walk away with ten thousand dollars so it's an anti kickback law. You can't take more than x, you know, a very nominal amount of money from somebody who got a contract. And so he got six seven hundred thousand dollars contract to be the lawyer on this thing. She can't take money back. What makes it ethically and weirdly different is that it wasn't really a kickback, like we know what was going
on here, but it is a violation. But it is, But you've stumbled into a violation.
Yeah, I mean, listen, I have friends who work in because I hired him.
If I got enough dinner.
With them, as you know, it's a pain in the ass sometimes like well, I can't accept it, you know, because I'll be like I'll take the check because I want the points right, and I'm like, no, I can only accept up to twenty dollars or what. And these are these people are the low level staffers as compared to this lady.
Yeah, you're going up against the former president of the United States as a state level prosecutor.
You have to have your ducks in a row.
You would think, I forget what the recent case was where somebody got got caught up. They were well, I forget. I forget it was in the two It was just a month ago or whatever. They went down for something that they were completely guilty of, but it had nothing to do with like the initial things like but if but if you're if you're taking on a power center, like they're gonna come for you, right, and then they're gonna find whatever you did wrong.
Oh, I was thinking of Claudie and Gray and Glasure as that's what it was.
That's right.
It's like, look, if you're going to be president of Harvard, you got to have your daughter.
It's actually not complicent.
Even though they were not coming after you for that. It was about Israel.
Yeah, exactly what are you doing?
Right?
Why do you think I'm where do you think we're so neurotical? I know that we talk a lot of shit about a lot of people in power, and it's like you want to come go ahead, all right? You know, probably a little bit too cautious over here at breaking points. The final thing here is MSNBC had to come up with the best defense of miss willis that they could.
Here's what they had to say.
The testimony on the whole was calmer then I expected it to be.
When she first walked in, you were worried, but also incredibly detailed it.
I thought her portrayal of why it.
Is that she pays for things in cash and has lots of cash on hand was very compelling. Basically, it was a life lesson she learned from her father and then sort of joked about the way that she was raised by that old white man as she referred to Yeah and KETHERR Kristian.
And the defense oversold this.
There was no evidence other than the woman who is a former friend and.
A former employee.
That's their evidence, and anyone who has an elderly black parent or elderly black people in life.
No, it's about.
Keeping cash because you never know where you're going to need it.
So she's been very credible.
It's very credible because there is an antiquated racial explanation that is based.
In white people too.
My grandfather, who lived through the depression, keeps cash, and so I'm actually not doubting whether she keeps a lot of cash with her. What I am kind of doubting is whether she unrolled a whole bunch of it handed.
It's like, really, you reimburse him for every trip, every single trip, because if you didn't. You violated the law. And it's like, well, you can't prove it. And it's like the Epstein things saying, I'm not comparing the two.
I'm just saying whenever I would read through the financial services reports around Epstein from New York and all those others, he would take out, you know, nine and ninety nine dollars for tips, and every single time he would write it out like this is for tips, and it's like, really, it's like that's obviously supposed to trigger alerts inside of
the system. Hunter too, if anybody wants to know, if you go and you read his you know, extravaganza back and all expenses, he was spending six seven hundred thousand dollars, often in cash. In general, when people do shady things, they're spending large amounts of cash, specifically to try and stay out of the legitimate banking system, and specifically because she was able and often did use the legitimate banking
system for other expenses. It makes her explanation even more doubtable as to how this was not untoward and to why we shouldn't really.
Believe a lot of what she said.
So what's going to happen there?
I mean there's they're previously a judge had said that this possibly could be grounds for dismissal. I mean, it's one of those where at the very least, I mean, I think you could put a decent amount of reasonable doubt in jury's head.
Prosecution.
Do you find a new prosecutor? What do you do?
Maybe I'm look, I'm not there guy to ask. I don't know about Georgia double jeopardy or any of that. From what I know the people in the Trump people Georgia. I've said that before. He's touched by God. And I don't even believe in God but neither, but he's touched by it. He has been you know, he's had his hands laid. There's an angel who was looking out.
It was from that White House when they all laid their hands.
Maybe you're right, Maybe it worked, it worked. Maybe I should have listened to the evangelicals when I was growing up. Maybe they were right. All right, let's move on to the next part here.
Matt Tayibe out with a new report, taking a couple of time days to digest this one, and I wanted to Actually, you're a great person to talk about it with.
Ryan.
It traces back to some of the original days of Russia Gate with some pretty interesting reporting.
Let's put this up there on the screen.
This is coby lined Matt Tayibi, Michael Schellenberger over at Public and Alex gutten Tog, three excellent reporters.
They say, quote it was all a lie. The Trump Russia.
Scandal made its formal launch on January sixteenth, twenty seventeen, when the Office of the d and I published what was known then as the Intelligence Community Assessment. However, the report declared that Russia and Putin interfered in the twenty sixteen presidential election to denigrate Hillary Clinton to arm her electability thanks to her preference for President Donald Trump.
It was powerful stuff and it was dead wrong.
So according to them, there was an inside effort by the CIA within the DNI as well to try and to demonstrate that they cooked the intelligence to say that quote Russia had favored Hillary Clinton and not Trump in twenty sixteen, according to several sources that they had spoken to. Matt's been obviously working on reporting and news like this
now for quite some time. I think the effective allegation within it, and it's very detailed that you guys can go and read is that they selectively made intelligence important that claimed that Russia would like for Donald Trump to win in twenty sixteen, to then make it a declarative conclusion that they could put in the so called declassified intelligence assessment. And I mean, Ryan, you and I were reporting at that time that intelligence assessment right before Trump
takes office. Is tremendously influential for overall of Russiagate because front page of the New York Times, you know, intel Russia wanted Trump to win right as he's taking office. This is while you know the Muller investigation and all that, the very early days of that began to come forward. You have big discussions around James Comey and is firing.
This is years now, you know, in retrospect. But the reason why I think it is important is that once something Matt has really not ever let go, and what he is truly correct about is the seiasic implications of Russia Gate, because it's a lot like the Iraq War
and their fortieth order consequences. It was a media scandal, certainly, you know Iraq WMD level failure, but it also constrained a lot of legitimate options for the President of the United States, Trump in many cases tried to prove he was tougher on Russia then Obama shipping weapons to Ukraine. Anyone want to tell me how that worked out in terms of the war. It certainly realigned the entire Democratic
Party to become much more anti Russia. If you go back and you read President Obama's twenty fifteen interview with Jeffrey Goldberg, he sounds like me. You know, He'll be like, He'll be like, listen, you know, Ukraine is not a major strategic interest for America. If you really want to make the argument that Americans should die for Ukraine, go ahead.
I don't agree with you. What happened to that Democratic Party? It's gone.
That's a year after the kind of Dawnbus war break, right, Yeah. And twenty twelve, liberals including me, cheered during the presidential debate with Obama and Romney where Romney.
Bayonets moment, Yeah that's great, and he's.
Like, he's talking about Russia being the our biggest geostrategic adversary, and yeah, Obama's like, what are you talking about?
This is not nineteen twelve.
Yeah, banets and the battleships and like cavalry and like horses, like come on, get into the modern era.
This is not and actually and.
That is and he was right.
Obama was right.
He was right about that, and Putin actually wanted him
to be right about that. And this is something that Jegor has actually talked about that the main thing that we misunderstand both about the collapse of the Soviet Union and also Putin's psychology is that when the Soviet Union collapse, that the elites who took it over and turned themselves into oligarchs thought they were going to get a martial plan from the United States, thought that they if they basically surrendered the Cold War, that the West would then
welcome them in to this world of nations where you get to have this nice inequality at the very top. Because they misunderstood the conflict between the Soviet Union and the West as around communism and around kind of capitalism versus communism, when actually it was about you know, the West versus another power center like it, it was purely
about power. So Russia replacing the Silvi Union didn't actually change that from our calculus, but from Putin's perspective, and you can see this bleeding all through the Tucker interview. He just wants the West to like him and like accept him as Yeah.
He's like, we wanted to be a part of NATO. We want They.
Literally asked to be part of NATO, and we're like, no, NATO exists to go to war with you, so why would we let you in it? And from their perspective, they're like, well, so there's no war. We're like, yeah, that's the whole point. We need a conflict to constantly kind of keep our thing going. And they could never
and they could never understand that. And then this gave this Russia Gate situation gave the West the opportunity to kind of put Russia back in the place that it that it likes, which is.
I would say too all cerial empowered.
This one.
People don't understand.
Putin has always been the same, all right, as you said, Yes, he definitely does want the West like him and all that, but he sees the follows of a union as a tragedy. But the best question they talk or asked him in the interview is like, look, if all this bullshit is true, why didn't you just invade Ukraine on the day that you took office? And the truth is is that he didn't have enough control, and not enough of the oligarchic elite agreed with him.
They wanted to be friendly with West. They like it here. That's why it sucks for them that they can't.
Leave Manhattan, Mia.
That's why they hate that they can't access their cool properties in Brooklyn in New York. And you know that what is that stupid ass building in the middle of New York. It's probably empty right now, the result of well, I forget time, warnersenter or something like that, they should tear that thing down.
That's a whole other conversation.
The point just being that the Russian oligarchic elite, you know, it took them years to be able to put in a place where Putin could finagle all of society such that he could take an oppositional stance towards Russia. Russia Gate was a gift to him to be able to purge the elite of any Western friendly people. Combined then with the Ukraine invasion and the subsequent sanctions, part of why he is much stronger today in that society than he ever was ten years ago. And prior Russia Gate
was hugely influential to that. I also find it interesting that everybody seems to ignore the more recent Putin interview not with Tucker after Tucker, where he said I would prefer Biden. I actually would like Biden to win the election. Here's what he had to say. I'm going to go ahead and read this. You have a Kremlin interviewer. They say, who's better for US, Biden or Trump? Putin says Biden.
He's more experienced, he's more predictable. He is an old school politician, he says, But we will work with any US leader who the American people have confidence in. And I just find that astounding. He says it outright. Trump is he trolling a little bit, but he trolls all the time. How do you know when we take it seriously or not.
What he's saying is that predictability matters. Yes, And it's not crazy to look at Trump and be like, not exactly sure what he's going to do, Like Trump is not predictable.
Hillary Clinton. He despised Hillary Clinton.
He blamed Hillary Clinton for basically election interference in his you know, he blamed aimed her at when she was Secretary of State for sparking protests against him with Navolney et cetera. He believes, you know, he sees the hand of the CIA everywhere as frankly, you know, any foreign government ought to He's.
It's not all our fault, but it's not like we weren't involved either. Let's all be real.
So it's clear that he does not like Hillary Clinton, did not like want her to be president, but he doesn't want anybody to.
Be president of the United States.
If the president, if there's going to be a president of United States, you can imagine why he'd say, you know what, let's have one that's more predictable than less predictable. And if it's going to be Trump, let's try to like influence him one way or another. Like so you can you can see all of the things being true,
like the influence campaign. You could be seen as like, we don't know how Trump is going to be as president if he is president, but if he is, let's try to have him, you know, buddies with us.
An interesting question too, would be let's say Trump does come in office, he does fulfill his promise of ending the Ukraine War on day one, Let's say that we did freeze things. I'm not so convinced things would be all kumbai AA in Russia. I mean, the Russian economy is running on war right now. What would they do if they just stopped. I mean, they would have huge inflation, we find another war, yeah, they would. They would seriously
be in trouble. You know, Putin is using wartime powers and others to kill Nabalne maybe you know, or to eliminate political opponents, to purge.
The He could say, you could start sending the shells to Irun, which which then sends them too.
But I'm just saying, I mean, if you look at any economy in the world that's ever transitioned from a war economy out of it, it's not so simple from nineteen forty six in our case, post post Vietnam, and we had a lot of problems coming out of those that Russia would not certainly not be immune from any of that. And that just demonstrates to all of us that, you know, not everything is so you know, black and white, especially here with the CIA report. So I just want
to again commend Matt. I think it's a very interesting report. The crux of it just comes back to that they believe the si He. According to the sources that he spoke to years now later, they say multiple that they had cooked the intelligence such that they had upgraded sources from untrustworthy or not that trustworthy to trustworthy to justify underlying claims that had a massive impact.
On our overall politics.
I one hundred percent believe that it's consistent with everything that's come out from the Carter Page, Faiza and all the other Russia Gate scandals, and it was a very good reporting. So we'll have a link down in the description if you guys want to throw either of them a subscription and support their work.
They're independent journalists and they do awesome jobs.
Meanwhile, on our puddy Matt Tayabe he's beefing with Elon Musk Socker.
You've been following this.
I've been following it just because Elon really is one of the most unpredictable people who is out there. So Matt, as we'll all recall, you know, is this incredible journalist. He does the Twitter files. He's the person who Elon goes to. He was accused of being an Elon Tody, of doing pr, doing pr for the richest man in the world by reporting, you know, legitimate story working with sources. What Matt always told us. He's like, look, I didn't agree to any preconditions.
He brought it to me.
The only precondition was that it had to be published.
Published first on and is reasonable. That's yeah, you do this stuff all the time.
People. People will always come to you with preconditions and all the stuff.
Well, they would say, yeah, actually sometimes we like, I've got a scoop, but will you will you do it in your newsletter? Will you do it an intercept? Would it be counterpoints? And like some people for different purposes want different platforms first with that, and if they're like if they want a thing and I don't feel like doing that, I'm like, well, no, I'm not gonna I'm not gonna do that, And that's fine, and they go shopping.
Right, we have power, you know, there's a power in this relationship. It's give and take. But you're certainly not doing PR.
But then all of the people who accused him of doing PR conveniently are ignoring the fact that Tayibi has by all accounts, really been punished by Elon actually for speaking out on behalf of a platform that Tayebi is very loyal to. Substack let's put this up there on the screen. Matt has released a bunch of text messages that he had with Elon Muss from earlier last year, in April of twenty twenty three. I'll read them verbatim,
he says, Elon, am I being shadow band. Elon replies, we went on lockdown after discovering Substack has stole at a mass amount of our data to prepopulate their Twitter ripoff.
It looks like there's still a blanket search band. It should be fixed tomorrow.
Going forward, tweets with Substack will not appear in the for you page unless it is paid advertising, just like Facebook and Instagram, they will appear in following this reply included from Matt. He says, Elon, I have repeatedly declined to criticize you. I have nothing to do with your beef with Substack. Is there a reason why I'm being put in the middle of things? This seems really crazy. Elon, you are dead to me. Please get off Twitter and
stay on substack. Matt, this is about the substack thing. Seriously, that was it that appears to be you know, the texts that were released and Matt the reason that he replied this is because he had been tweeting previously. Quote, Elon is unc comfortable around people who are not afraid of him, and wants to prove he can hurt my business instead of just talking to me, even if it means suppressing access to news that he thinks is important.
Somebody replied, are you actually suggesting that Elon is deliberately burying your visibility? Do you have any proof of this, to which he then posts literal proof showing that he actually was banned. And you know, for anybody who also wants to accuse me or whatever of support, I mean, this is craziness because substack is the venue, the platform through which so much independent journalism is flourishing.
Number one.
Number two, we just read everybody a report, you know, from public. I find it horrible that people like Schallenberger and Taibi, who have thriving platforms over there very often Ryan when they want to distribute their work, cannot tweet out links to substack like they could to any other now in terms of substacks stealing Twitter and all that, I don't know personally, it sounds like bullshit to me.
If you if you ask me, you know.
Stuff is to available. It's the API and they just scraped it.
Right, And it's like, in reality, like what were they really afraid of that people were going to leave the platform?
It's like, are they really going to leave the platform in critical numbers? Like, let's be honest here.
You know, he's always he's always tweeting about how x's x's traffic, monthly users or whatever, and all that went up. It was just a capricious move, clearly done from a position of weakness. And anyway, I thought it was funny because it just highlights to me that all of the people who really trashed him for doing journalism that was allegedly you know, pro Elon and you know, writing pr for all of them, are completely ignoring that his business
has been very materially harmed. He arguably he was better off under the old Twitter regime because at least I think was going viral, right.
You know, now you don't see him as much. It's very clear that his his platform is being or his right. Yeah, yeah, it's so many followers he was able to pick up.
I had my inbox, but if I don't, but if I wasn't like getting his emails, I probably wouldn't see him.
Exactly. I think that's really bad.
I mean, it's just Look, it's not just Matt We'll forget who was a Barry Weis.
I remember she was also involved.
In the Twitter files and she criticized this is the early Elon Moore. Whenever Elon banned and then unbanned that account that followed as private Jet and a couple of other journalists Barry wise, I believe it's spoken out against it. And he replied to her being like, you're virtue signaling. She's like, I'm not virtue signaling. I just I believe a certain set of things. I don't really care who it is. Also that it is the person that's doing it.
Also, if like you think something is a virtue and you want to signal that to people, it's actually that's that's okay, that's actually okay, free country.
Yeah, it's like.
If you think that is wrong to ban this account and you say that publicly, that's called free speech, yes, virtue like yeah, And it shows that he must his defenders who say he's ideologically committed to an independent media are lying. He's what he's committed to as a media which he controls. Now, if you believe that he's a benign media dictator, then go ahead, you put your face
in him to control everything. If you think that it's better, if if voices are dispersed and people have access to different platforms, then you don't want a controlling billionaire dictator to run everything.
Yeah, I mean, look, somebody please tell me why substack is being throttled. But the New York Times can trend like that doesn't make any sense truly, especially if you're committed to free speech.
Er.
The problem for Tayibe there is and you know this, from premium subscribers here to breaking points, there's just a natural churn. Sure every month, either there's a billing problem, or we'll forget their credit card or lose their jobs or I say something that annoys them and.
They're out of here. And that's fine.
Churn is part of a subscription basis, but you need to then be able to get new people to replace them. And if Tayobi can't market his his work, then his churn is just going one direction.
And even though he's doing fantastic, far the one easier.
But I wanted to support I wanted to play some of this and to actually give you know, credit not only is a very important story. But just to again to highlight this, like he's being genuinely screwed over by Ela for reasons totally out of his control.
For sighting, he backed him like.
At the time.
At the time, Elon told him, why don't you just publish everything on Twitter because we're taking the the like limit away. Yeah, And Matt didn't really even take that seriously. He's like, that's an interesting thought, but of course I'm not going to do that. I have tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of subscribers over here on substect.
This is a platform that's treated me very well, and.
It's also better at like distributing long form content people's inboxes.
I'm not going to do it on Twitter.
But it was his refusal, it was his refusal to adopt a platform that doesn't work for his purposes that led to him banning him shadow banning him.
It's not right away speaking up from that here in all of this, it's certainly not. And for all of those who ask for proof that he was being shadow banned, unlike ninety five percent, no, unlike ninety nine point nine percent of people who are claiming that he actually has the receipts from the guy. Go whit support the guy if you can. We'll have a link in the description to his newsletter.
So Israeli Prime Minister of Benjamin Netyah, who responded to international pressure over the creation of a Palestinian state alongside in Israeli one.
We can put this up here here. He is speaking to the Kanesse.
Yesterday with an official declaration saying that Israel absolutely rejects any type of dictat from the international community that they agree to a Palestinian state. Now, this is you know, saga is sort of like that tweet format where somebody says nobody, absolutely nobody, Benjamin net and Yahoo. It's like, yeah, okay, there's been an international pressure. But also he didn't have to come out with his declaration like we get it. Like he's been against he's been against a Palestinian state
since like the nineteen nineties. It's only in the last may be several months that that has really been absorbed by the media because you know, people like you and I have been following this for a long time have always been able to understand that Netnyahu is against a Palestinian state. You know, he's he would occasionally say it openly that he opposed a Palestinian state.
We even remember when.
He said the reason that he helped to facilitate Hamas remaining in power was so that you could divide the Palestinian leadership between the West Bank and Gaza, because a united Palestinian leadership would bring pressure to bear for a Palestinian state, and so by splitting the Palestinians you prevent the formation of a Palestinian state. He has made his entire argument for why he his entire legacy has been prevention of a Palestinian state.
In his argument for continuing in.
Office is that he is the only one that can manipulate the United States effectively to make sure that there is no Palestinian state like that hit.
That is his entire rash now now here.
But this reflects increasing I think global pressure to say, all right, come on, it's been a long time.
Let's let's let's let's resolve this.
I saw on an analysis that this was Bbe in October sixth mode, as in, this is political BB. There's a reason saying this in Hebrew, except he's reflecting the conditions of the war. He's trying to get this coalition together. He's trying to get the right wingers to support him. As you said, a major part of something he often admits in Hebrew is I am the reason there.
Is a Palestinian state. Right he forgets, so we can hit translate.
But it's actually pretty easy to have that translate.
Just so something like that. But he says it very not even quietly, openly behind the scenes. My question to you is, in the context of US foreign policy and Western foreign policy, will this actually matter? Are the palest Indians correct that this is just lip for service from the US because we keep saying there has to be a resumption of a Palestinian state, a recognition of that at the end of this process period, end of story.
And if he is not going to be a legitimate negotiating partner, we continue to provide them aid and to tacitly support their actions. Is this not then the default position of the United States government at this point?
It is, as long as we keep shipping arms and money and giving that tacit and explicit support. Doesn't matter what we say. What matters is what we do. And it also in some ways doesn't matter what net Nyahu says there It matters what Netnah Who does, and that brings us to our next veo. Here, what Netnah Who is currently doing is building what's called Highway seven forty nine.
And so if you're listening to the podcast but We're rolling, here is a documentary from Israel's Channel fourteen that played on Saturday.
This is a highway that is cutting across.
The middle of the Gaza Strip basically from the neg of over almost all the way to the sea.
It looking like it's going to be come some type.
Of Berlin Wall situation that bifurcates the two you know, the Gaza Strip into two. In other words, if it was the largest open air prison on October sixth, that now it would be the two largest open air prisons just split in two. And according to this documentary that aired on Israeli TV, you wouldn't even be able to travel from one side to the other if you're if
you're a Gazen, you know. Since the Oslo Accords came into effect in the nineteen nineties, traff travel has been increasingly restricted for Palestinians, which is one reason travel, civil liberties, economic, the economy, et cetera. Has been increasingly curtailed. One of the reasons that Hamas has kind of gained in influence among Palestinians because a lot of Palestinians say, look, the parties that advocated for this Oslo accord have only led
to things getting materially worse for us. Not that it's status quo and things haven't gotten better for us, but things are actually better in the eighties and nineties than they are now. If you live, if you live in Godz on October sixth, you basically couldn't leave. I mean you could leave if you could get some type of permit that could take months or years. You'd have people with health complications who would die before they got the permits to leave. And so now you're saying that that's
going to be cut even even tighter. And so and we're going to talk a little bit later about the West West Bank in this in this block. But the problem in the West Bank is all of these different bantustans and all these different settlements.
That what do you mean people who are familiar, Oh so in South.
A, why you have these like little tiny areas that are cordoned off that you basically couldn't couldn't leave during apartheid during apartheid and so and you just make them smaller and smaller and smaller. And that's the main thing making it so hard for Palatinianes to have any sovereignty in the West Bank because there's something like one hundred thousand settlers dividing the West bankup.
Now if you divide Gaza up too, it goes.
It really fits into what Netanyahu is arguing here that he's going to be the guy that is going to change the reality on the ground to make it so there cannot be a Palestinian state just can't happen.
So with that establishment of the highway, do you see that as establishment is really control over that territory, set policy, Like what is it.
The goal there would be that, Yeah, you'd have you'd have watch towers, and you'd have a sophisticated security apparatus with walls.
You know, they they've they've got the wall up by just.
Like October six, though it basically seems like they're doubling down on the same strategy.
Yes, it's it's it's quote unquote managing the conflict, just managing it harder, right, Yeah.
And so this combines with some movement out of Egypt.
I actually really am curious what you think about this, because there's a variety of ways. Let's put this up there please on the screen, guys. We have video here of Egypt that is building a massive fence around the Rafa border. They're calling it a logistics zone. More likely Ryan, it seems to be in response to be an anticipated Rafa offensive by the IDF that would somehow pen in Palestinians I'm assuming who if they were able to breach the Rafa crossing would then be included in this zone.
But I mean seems strategically important because it would mean that these Palestinian civilians would be in some odd no man's land where they're technically inside of Egypt, but the Egyptians are keeping them out and not allowing them to resettle or whatever into the Sinai.
Yeah.
Since December, the fear has been that the Rafa crossing would be breached by a mob of people who just overwhelmed security there because there'd be so much pressure brought to bear on it by the suffering of the people on the other side of it. Egypt, for just as long, has been reinforcing it, putting tanks there, put sending out declarations saying that you know this, this absolutely cannot happen.
You know, from from Egypt's perspective, uh they they see a million refugees you know, pouring into the Seani desert as massively destabilizing was basically a dictatorship that they have
over there. So this is you know, unless uh CC wants to you know, head to Florida and retire this like, this is an existential question for the Egyptian government and they're being extremely clear that that they're that they're not going to allow what seems to be the only thing that makes any sense from Israel, like what like, what are what are.
They doing here?
And the only thing that makes sense is that they're driving into Rafa with such ferocity with the hope that they will then force them into the sign of others. So if you build these this met barriers, that relieves some pressure on the border because a lot of the people see, okay, let's say we could overwhelm the border and bust through there. The we all we've done is get into this desert area and are staring at these cement walls, right.
And that's where the big question is, are the Egyptians going to revoke the Camp David peace accords. Are yeah, they threatened to do that. This would appear to indicate that. And this is the other big question. Are they are they coordinating with the Israelis? Are they like, hey, you got to wait up for us to put up some barriers and all that, because we can't be having a mass expulsion. But at the same time, that appears to be what some of the goals of the Israeli government
are in this case. And if they do go into this so called no man's land, I mean, what are the odds that they ever actually.
Are able to leave?
Probably low, you know, in terms of in terms of what the actions currently anticipate for them.
That's exactly right.
You know, if there was some trust, like let's say that the population turned on Hamas and actually wanted Israel to like kind of round up and root out all of the Hamas fighters, and there was some faith from the Palestinian people that Israel would of course just allow them to return and help help with the reconstruction of their homes, then sure, you set up a refugee camp in the Sinai and the battle unfolds and then people come back.
That is none.
None of that is the case, though not like, not a single piece of that is true. The Palestinians do not trust Israel to allow them back into Gaza if they ever left, even though currently, like on an individual level, most Palestinians, it seems like if they could get out of this horrifying hell on Earth situation that they're in temporarily would.
Get out right.
But there's now if Israel was actually serious about this. They have and lots of people have actually suggested this, but they have not taken them up on it, which shows what their plan is. Open up the Israeli neck of desert to create a You wouldn't need a whole lot of territory to create a refugee camp, and you could say, you know, men over sixty I think they've said boys under.
Fifty children and women and.
Children, and that put a million people there, but that that is Israeli territory, and so that would kind of guarantee the right of return to Gaza, and that seems to be the problem with that plan.
That's an interesting point. I hadn't considered that really at all. Why don't we move to the next part there, right, And.
So on Thursday, the Algerians are going to bring to or we're talking about bringing to the United Nations another ceasefire resolution. We can put up this element from from Joe Biden. The administration came out and announced that they would veto They said it will not be adopted. They will veto a ceasefire resolution. So, on the one hand, and Biden is privately and semi publicly urging net Yahoo
not to launch an invasion of Rafa. Separately, he is a facilitating the transfer of more weapons which would assist with this invasion of Rafa, and on top of that is promising to veto any international accountability for this invasion.
So in order to try to find some gap between what the United States is doing and what and what you Israel is doing, you have to squint insanely hard, like we are one hundred percent complicit in what we have described as a disaster, Like the State Department and Kirby from the White House have both said used the word disaster to describe what would happen if there was an invasion of Rafa, right.
And yet which so here's to me, like, that's that's what's happening.
And we're gonna and we're gonna veto an effort to stop it, and we're going to arm it. It is I understand why it is making people so crazy watching it unfold, Like wait a minute, we think this is a disaster. We don't want this to happen, but we're going to use our capital internationally to block the UN and we're going to arm it.
This makes it.
This makes Biden actually more prisoner at pro Israel even than Obama. Absolutely, yeah, because he would you know, I don't know if you remember in twenty sixteen they allowed a couple of resolutions and all that to go through the UN. Yeah, specifically to try and depress Oh yeah, that was a blood feud for the Ages, which.
I helped Amir Tabone, this great Israeli reporter who he became kind of a journalistic celebrity October seventh and eighth because he wrote this incredible piece about being stuck in a safe room in one of the kibbutzim and being saved by his grandfather who came all the way from Tel Aviv to rescue his family. He's working on a book now about relationship about the last like fifty years or so, but I helped him with a profile of the relationship between net Yahu and an Obama back in
like twenty fiftween twenty sixteen. People should go back and read that these two teams did not like each other, as John Madden like to say, speaking people that don't like each other. So let's move to the international response to this coming Rafa invasion. We can put up Lula da Silva here, President of Brazil. He's saying, what is happening in the Gaza strip hasn't happened in history before.
It does not exist at any other historical context. And then Lula adds, in fact, it existed when Hitler decided to kill the Jews. So the president of Brazil analogizing what Israel is doing to the Palestinians what happened during the Holocaust. Moving back to Europe, the criticism is serious, but not quite on the level of Lula rhetoric. But let's put up here EU Foreign Minister Joseph Borol at the Munich conference, because this is a really fascinating point.
He made a couple of other points before this. This one, though, I think, is really worth considering. So let's roll and the global salad. The third one. They have its own dynamic. But no doubt, the war in Ukraine and.
In Gaza has increased tremendously the political space of the global South visa vi to us, and we have to avoid.
The Rest against the West.
For Russia, this new geopolitical liscenario has increased dramatically, it stands since the beginning of the war in Gaza, and they are really taking good advantage of our mistakes.
The blame about bubble.
Standards is something that we need to address, and not only with nice words. It's clear that the wind is blowing against the West, is blowing against us, and we have to win the battle of narrative.
And so right before this he had said, look, when it comes to Ukraine, with exception of maybe one country, I assume he means Hungary, we've been united on this situation, he said, But when it comes to Gaza and when it comes to Israel, all the member states want to.
Play games, play their own little game.
He said.
The result of that is that it is becoming the West against the Rest. And he's trying to let this the European elite there, the European leadership into the fact that this has been a godsend for everyone outside of the West, that the double standard is so apparent across the global global South that when you hear somebody like Lula make such make make a comparison as extreme is that what he's saying is that that's resonating with billions of people around the world, and you need to understand
where that's going. So, how are you surprised that the kind of the geopolitical chaos that's that the West seems to be willing to accept for this war.
Well, I was surprised on Ukraine.
I mean I watched us realign our relationships with Brazil and India, which are I'm gonna say one hundred times more important to us than freaking Ukraine.
Like, basically, think about this.
We think that the territory of the eastern Dunbass region, the territorial integrity of that is so important that we should sacrifice that Nika right Moblas that nobody in this country could name, including the people who want to ship them weapons. We think that is more important that that integrity than our relationship with the Indian government, or with the Brazilian government, or with the South African government.
And then you combine this situation with.
Israel, where all of the rhetoric that we were using to the Indian, to the Brazilians and to others as to why we just support them around civilians and about rules based order and all of that.
They're like, are you a joke. They're like, no, we don't believe you.
They already thought that we were empty, hollow people working great power politics and shrouding it in rhetoric. Now this just confirms it to them in an exact one to one situation. So yeah, I mean it doesn't shock me at all of what has happened with our geopolitical situation. I do think it's been a disaster for us because it both undermines any rhetoric that we have on human rights.
And look, I'm on record, I don't really believe foreign policy should be conducted that way, but if you're going to at least be consistent, and we're not doing anything that is in our direct strategic interest, So we're in this odd, you know, third bubble where we selectively apply both which makes us weak on all fronts.
And to the point about human rights.
And we can go back to that Channel fourteen documentary that we talked about at the very top we roll this one little clip from there, which is just an absolutely shocking thing that was that was published, that was aired on Israeli TV. This is an an Israeli interrogators said human animals, most of them, of course, at the beginning, deny any connection to the events of October seventh, and through certain tools and means, we managed to get the
first confessions out of them. So essentially, this is an Israeli interrogator on Israeli TV saying that they use certain tools and means to move Palestinian detainees from denying involvement in October seventh to confessing quote unquote confessing to involvement in October seventh. Saga, how long would it take you under certain tools and means until you told your captors whatever?
I don't know.
I don't even know if they would have to do it.
I think if they pulled the drill out, I'd be like, all right, just what do you want me to sign?
I've read enough. I'm not going through the Pow books.
By the way, highly I could go on a whole tangent because I went down a real rabbit hole on Vietnam.
POW's to know that number one, everybody breaks, and number two that there's virtually like nothing that you can tell yourself that will prepare you for being in a situation that is even remotely like this, and that you very likely, you know, like you said, will likely be able to tell your captors whatever you want, whatever they want to hear, or at least, you know, try and placate them and certain instant just to be able to stop that.
And that was obviously in a very extreme case.
I don't know necessarily what these gentlemen went through, but this was often you don't have to ask me. You can ask former PW John McCain. You won't ever hear me cite him, you know, favorably often. But he made this case a lot during the Bush administration when he was very against enhanced interrogation against al Qaida, certain tools and means, specifically because he was like, look, he's like, I don't have a moral care for these people. He's like,
it just doesn't work. And you know, propagandistically, when you put stuff out there, people know they're not dumb that are like, okay, well it seems like you were questioned under duress. Then they're not gonna do you know they're going to discount a lot of what you were saying.
So no, I'm not surprised.
And in this documentary they're picking up detainee after detaining every every male that seems to be anywhere between teenage and not elderly, They've they've got the cameras there and making a little documentary where were you on October seventh when I was in my factory, I was in a bakery, And they're like, we don't.
Believe you over here.
Yes, there are two there were at the start of this two point three million people in Gaza, or several thousand that participated in the attack on October seventh, and then several hundred civilians that also broke through the fence.
Like if you pick up every single male that you see in Gaza, you know nine hundred ninety nine out of a thousand of those are going to be innocent, and you're going to use this torture on them to extract a confession that doesn't it doesn't make what they tell you true.
Ran, you have a case of a doctor. Do you want a highlight that to people because you have a personal connection to this.
Well, yeah, so we can put up doctor Kalette Elsir here from Nasser Hospital on so on. On Friday, a colleague of his was was sending me what's that message?
What's up?
Video and audio messages and photos from not NASA hospital hoping that uh and here's a that's right, there is something that doctor Elser posted on Instagram himself. What's so poignant about this on Friday for me was this, there was this intense belief from doctor el Sir and and his friends and those who are reaching out to me and others in the press that if only we could get this to the White House, and I did. I said, I will, I will send this to the White House
and I sent it. I can I get comment on what's going on at Alnster Hospital. Want to let you know that doctor Collet Elser is saying saying this. He was one of the ones who worked in the ICU. He sent videos of the ICU going dark, literally pulling the plug on it, which ended up killing patients. Because if you need oxygen and you pull the plug, you are at risk of dying, and multiple people in that ICU did die. So I reached out the White House said people are dying in Alnoss I see you. This
is what the doctor is telling us. Do you have any response, because I don't want to get myself in a position where I'm advocating for the US to do anything in particular, but I'm going to let them know, Like right now as we're speaking, people's lives are at risk, and if you decide to do something to save their lives, then you decide to do that.
I'm making you aware.
But what was so interesting to me, and this has been happening throughout the entire conflict, so many Palestinians will reach out hoping that I can get word to the White House to stop x Y or ze atrocity that is underway but not even finished yet, Like there's still a chance to save people, whether it's hint like the Hindrad job situation is a great example. And like I said, I'll reach out for comment. But the whole time, I'm thinking, your faith in the United States is touching and poignant,
but misplaced. They know what Israel is doing, They are arming Israel to do that thing. They are using their international capital to block the world from intervening to stop this from happening. But I feel it deeply, this belief that there has to be somebody you can call to stop this. They just it looks and feels so wrong, and with with the right kind of phone call, it could be stopped there.
But they're not. They're not going to do it.
You can call nine one one, but that nine one one is arming the people who are burglarizing your house at the moment.
Well, the case that you're making is very poignant, and it's exactly one that Rashida to leave his thinking.
So but by the way, just to finish on doctor al Sir, they raided the hospital and as far as anybody can tell, he was picked up along with all the other doctors and is held in communicado in Israeli captivity. Right now, Israel just racking up more and more hostages. And so his colleagues and his friends put out a statement like begging basically Israel to release this doctor and the other doctors that.
They picked up so far, to no avail.
That was Friday night, Friday night, US times, Saturday morning their time.
Now here we are Monday morning.
Still no word on his fate, if he's even alive, or whether he's getting the certain tools and means to try to force him to confess that he wasn't actually a doctor despite all of the evidence that he is, and instead he's actually Pausedian Islamic Jahad operative or whatever.
But yes, so this brings us to Rashida Talib. There is a movement in the Michigan which is having its primary next week and actually early voting is happening now, So people, if you're in Michigan, you can go out and early vote right now, rather than getting behind Mary and Williamson or Dean Phillips or writing in jenk Yuger who wasn't able to get on the ballot because of the issues around around natural born citizens versus non natural born citizens. What a group in Michigan is urging people
to do is vote uncommitted. They got an extremely powerful supporter now in Representative Rashida Talib.
We can play her clip here.
It as important as you all know, to not only march against the genocide, not only make sure that we're calling our members of Congress and local elected and predit passe city resolutions all throughout our country. It is also important to create a voting block, something that is a horn to say enough is enough. We don't want a country that supports warmed wars and bombs and destruction. We want to support life. We want to stand up for every single life killed in RUSSA. Don't make us even
more invisible. Right now we feel completely neglis, neglected and just unseen by our government. If you want us to be louder, then come here and vote uncommitted.
So the dow Go, the democratic media ecosystem has decided in their infinite wisdom that they're going to strive and affect this okay that they're gonna have. They're going to have a temper tantrum of such epic proportions that her social media video will reach exponentially more people because they can't handle even the tiniest of challenges, not even voting against him. NBC it was like Rashila Telip says vote against Biden.
No, she didn't say that.
She said vote uncommitted, which is like, we'll still support you in the general election if you just do the things that we're asking you to do. So let's go to MSNBC real quickly for some sober analysis.
Let's talk about how the realities of politics works in Washington, DC. I got a lot of friends and family in Detroit.
I care a lot about that proud Black community. But up though, to all the folks in Detroit, when Jalen Rose Leadership Academy and Wayne State and Castech don't get the proper appropriations from the Democratic administration, the Democratic president, remember it's because you're a Democratic congresswoman told them to not for the Democratic president in the primary, and she won't have the excuse that well, I was saying primary,
not general. Uh, you don't slap the president in the face and then expect to be treated as a member of the caucus in good standing. And so Rashida Talib is not there to represent the squads. She's not there to represent Palestine while there's merit and all those things. You're there to represent your hometown constituency in the city of Detroit. And I will tell all my friends and family Detroit as your congresswoman has failed you and frankly embarrassed you.
And there could potentially be ramifications.
I don't like to be a surplus, but if you want to see Donald Trump beat Throw Biden, then you have voices of Charlemagne and Rashida tale questioning Joe Biden's leadership, suggesting he's not fit for reelection. That's how you do it, Democrats beating themselves. I mean, right now, Democrats have been given a historic opportunity with an alliance of independence and disaffected republicans that showed up with the Democratic Coalition in
eighteen and twenty and twenty two. And you're telling me going into twenty twenty four that a sitting Democratic congresswoman and a leading voice on the left are going to say, Nah, we don't know about our guy, maybe we shouldn't support him. It's a bunch of hot garbage, Alex. And if those voices don't.
Fall in line, fall in land.
Yeah, that's Don calloway we used to have in rising days.
For people who haven't forgotten, he's certainly still dropping suspicy takes.
I mean, just on, let's put up, Yeah, let's put up. Don's LinkedIn here, by the way, what he's up to nowadays? Do we have the next that next element here?
I don't want to insult. If you want to, you can't. All right, what does he got impact?
Investor, venture capital, private equity management, consultant, corporate affairs?
I always liked him for the right, I like.
Don sure sure, but he's threatening Basically, he's saying that Detroit is going to be is not going to get federal money because Rashiad Talib is standing up for this, not one second of debate on MSNBC about the issue itself that she what she is standing up for, right, and instead she needs to just get in line, Like wasn't that his Yeah.
You can't slap the president in the face. It's a primary night in general. I'm like, I don't know, I mean, it seems pretty relevant to me, it's not. Actually I was telling you so, I was at a Hassan Minaj show, which you know, pretty liberal and also predominantly.
A big Muslim audience.
This happened on Saturday, and I like to just pay attention and be like, okay, what's the you know, what's the tune.
Out there, and just previews. I'm not going to spoil the set.
But he did a good job, and actually it was even interested for the amount of jokes at Biden's expense.
And it was hitting. It was hitting with a liberal audience.
And there were a couple moments where, in particular, I saw some of the attendees, you know, if many of whom had his job or something like that on clearly were Muslim Americans who were definitely cheering at Biden's expense, and I was just like, huh, that's interesting.
You know.
It's one of those where you know, you very rarely know whether something you read on a poll or something that you know you see on social media isn't real can it manifest itself in real life. But there were a lot of people there, from what I can tell again, people who I would definitely code as uber libs, people who were definitely Biden voters or likely to be in that category in twenty twenty who were not happy I think with the present now, will they vote for him in the end in twenty twenty.
Four maybe, but you know a lot of them, a lot of them may sit it out too.
Yeah.
I mean, from the people that I talked to in the Illinois and Michigan and the Muslim American community. Unless all of the people there are lying or overstating it, it seems like the revulsion at Biden for what he's doing is almost universal, like beyond what anybody has seen before. And you hear it from so many people who will tell you I have always been somebody who argued against Third parties who said, yes, you're never because these are
Muslims in America. First of all, they're never getting everything that they think they ought to from the American two party system. So they are they more than anybody else understand, you know, compromising in order to get the lesser of two evils. So these are people who have been making the lesser. These are state representatives, you know, these are Michigan Party leaders majority leader.
Well, do you remember mayor of Dearborn?
I was going to say, do you remember the guy that we interviewed in New Hampshire, the guys for people wh don't you.
Should actually go watch it there because it's hilarious.
This is the most like ultra Biden bro voter that they're at the end of the interview.
I don't know if you remember.
He's like, by the way, I just want to say thank you to our capital police.
And I literally see what they laughing, like.
For whats for January sixth? It's like this.
I burst out laughing because it would not even occur to me that somebody who is like the most ultra noormy live MSNBC voter, like you said, who is abhorred to to third party Cornell West or any of that.
Even he is like, don't vote Biden.
And he was the one, Yeah, he was the one who organized right in ceasefire in New Hampshire which ended up getting they were expecting two or three hundred votes and ended up getting about sixteen hundred.
Wow, which I mean a lot.
But it's not many people in I'm sure either, but it's probably.
Going to be a lot more potent in Michigan.
They if uncommitted beats Joe Biden in Michigan, it's still necessarily.
Doesn't change anything, but at.
Least people will feel like they had a chance to say on a national stage how enraged they are. And people keep thinking, well, this is the Muslim Americans. Yes it is, but it's also young people. It's like, that's right, people under it's not just thirty thirty five, which which was. And Joaquin Castro, to his great credit, has been pretty
outspoken on this. CNN had him on to talk and they tried to do a horse horse race thing with him, and he brought it back to the actual policy, right saying like, what what Biden is doing is damaging to the US, damaging to Israel, and it is turning off young people and Muslim Americans.
The question is, though, why is it just Rashida to leave? I haven't seen AOC say. I think she said Biden was the best president of every like that. Why is it not you know, all these other squad members.
It's it's a good question. It's a good question.
Because if you had the entire squad, say, rallying in Michigan for uncommitted, then I think that has a that has a bigger impact. Sure, yes, you've seen you have seen a split there. You know, the rest of the squad has supported Rashida Tleib.
They voted, you know, against censuring her.
They've said supportive things about her, but they are letting her kind of take these.
Bullets for them. So they're not really operating as a squad in this.
All right, well we will, We'll see how it works out. I'm very curious.
Ceasefire, as you said, didn't exactly get a lot of votes, but I could see it actually become something. And especially here here's the thing in this particularly, you have an actual elected representative. Crystal's been telling me that Rashida's lead has been breaking in money, you know.
With millions stands millions of dollars, so clearly.
She's not people Magestry actually spends like four uncommitted right and also in New Hampshire was it was a two week organic campaign. This has financing behind it, and like you said, Rashida has actual money if she decides to pull the trigger.
And she didn't even go up on air all right.
Here in the United States, when it comes to foreign figures, we deal in cartoons, only in caricatures, and so that was the case when it comes to Alexia Volney. He, on the one hand, was the hero of the Russian resistance and the leading light of that nation. If you hear from other people, he was a racist in islamophobe, cia stooge who deserved what he got. So to try to actually move it from cartoon charriacture into kind of real life, we're going to be joined by socialist commentator
Yegor Kotkin joining us from Moscow. Yegor, you've talked a little bit about Navalney online recently. If we can put up this element from Jegor here, this is one of the things you said, the living Navalney was important not because of his politics, but as a political trailblazer. Dead Navalney is important as a symbol of resistance to the oligarchic regime, and the same people who killed him as a human now are trying to kill him as a symbol.
Don't be a part of it.
And Yegor, what I found interesting about your analysis, which people can find on your Twitter accountant is much deeper than that, is that if you were here in the United States, you'd probably be in the camp of people who were saying, actually, this guy's as cia st and uh, you know.
Deserve deserves what he deserves, what he got. But there's so much more to then Walney story.
So let me let me start with this question, what's been your kind of relationship to Navawnyism over your own political evolution?
Well, I have to say I knew as a figure political figure and the following all of his career for almost fifteen years, and most of this time I was a novely skeptic because of I mean, it's not a secret that she started basically as a fastist. I mean his video about from two thousand and seven when he referred to the immigrants as cockroaches being reserved again with his name back in the news, and there was a lot.
Then he moved to the left.
He constantly, in my view him constantly moved to the left over this fifteen year public career, reaching first liberal center, then moving even slightly to the left, almost borderline social democratic policies, but still staying firmly in the liberal center. And I think the history of Navali resonated with the audience specifically because this is a history of a populist who was follow his whole life path was finding a way to communicate with the most Russian people as possible,
and as many populists going for the most people. He started from the lowest possible nominators, So he started from the ride and started from from xenophobia.
But so can I can did he ever recant the xenophobia?
Did he recant that?
Or what he?
Yes?
What was his evolution like?
Uh, well, he entered very soon. He moved moved on to anti.
Corruption uh investigations, and he entered the liberal center, liberal media, who became his main base of support and the network of support. And he moved on from the Russian marches and Russian nationalism to being basically liberal centrist like closer to twenty thirteen, twenty fifteen, but he still was looking
for he still was staying in the populist lane. It's just his When he found that being populist right put you in such as in certain fringe area, very limited area of a fringe right, he moved.
On to the center.
But he started experiment with the leftist populist policies, and in some of them he actually went to the left of his main base of support and network of support liberal people. One for example, in twenty eighteen, becoming a presidential election.
In Russia, where he tried to.
Compete with Puttin, he suggested increase in a minimum wage two and a half times, five times from ten from ten thousand troubles to twenty five thousand troubles. It is a very substantial increase. It is very necessary increase for Russia. It's even harder situation than in American in terms of
a living wage. Here and he was heavily criticized by his own base and network of support by the liberal center, to the extent that even now six years later, when he already did this topic of debate about this minimumage increase, he's suggested again was reiterated in the day of his death by his supporters, So this debate never never died.
Just one of the things that I'm trying to get to. I think for our audience, they're hearing about him a lot in our news. What I hear from you is he was a complicated figure. You know, we understand him only as a Putent critic. You know, from what I can tell, he was a Russian nationalist, but he was
an anti corruption activist. But he wasn't necessarily you know, the dream of European politicians like how how did he How did people inside of Russia think of Navalny and why did Putin consider him a threat enough to throw him in prison?
I think, uh, I think you can you you can't tell how people that also think about Novality because it's heavily skewed by the propaganda from Putting media on the one hand, and the liberal propaganda from Individia independent media on the other hand. So his view in any Russian
group will be heavily skewed by ideological bias. And uh, I think Putting the recognized him as the biggest threat to his rule because Navali always starketed him his as his main enemy, and his populist search search for whatever give him the most base of support. He also experimented the support of unions at some point, being one of the first politicians who tried to restore restore unions as a political force in Russia. Since he us as our fault, so again it was kind of left to show of
him to try to do this. He always tried to maximize his base of support to to bit Puchin, So his target always was Puchin, and that made him uh. He obviously had some ideology, but his main goal in life was to defit Putchin, and he was able. He was ready to utilize any means necessary to do that.
In terms of political he never he never crossed the line of.
Political violence actually, but in terms of political engagement, he was looking everywhere for every way Pusson. That's that's why he was uh the dangerous for pushing. That's why Putting kindesing out him as his enemy. And that's why I when I said the road the street on his death. He was mainly a trail Brazer. My politics is not navality politics. I evolved myself from like liberal center to basically a socialist right now, so I always was to the left of him.
We never saw so I why but I saw.
In his what he's doing, UH the best possibility for opening for leftist electoral politics in Russia, which right now doesn't exist, so I thought, and his experiments with the left initiatives like rising medium wage UH, re animating unions UH and the helicopter money during the COVID lockdowns and UH social democratic initiatives led that.
Uh.
They were very very useful.
And is his electoral initiatives like smart voting actually helped to elect some leftist deputies in Moscow City Duma from the young leftist ILK, not all the Red Guard who basically go with put you in one hundred percent of times, but from the young oppositions, opposition leftists. They for the first time got in some high places of power in Russia, being elected.
Right now they all.
Already removed from there, but for the first time since ninety ninety one, new leftist ILK got in places in power of power in part the help of novality.
Of One of the things you'll hear here in the United States about him is that actually kind of American leads overblow how how much power he had, how much support he had among Russian people. What's your sense of what kind of base of social support he had there.
I think I think it's true.
I think they projected a lot of their own expectations on Navali and his real base of support. If I don't think it ever would in like perfect perfectly free elections with the strong leftist party is a strong social democratic presence, not only put in versus Novale.
I don't think the liberal center.
That Novality represent would ever broke fifteen percent threshold as it was in the nineties, because when there was a kind of freeish election in the nineties and Russia, the liberal center always was kind of marginal.
That's why the loss.
So if you say fifteen or fifty fifteen, now, I don't think it would be much much much more than that because so tiny.
Yeah, actually yes, well significant noticeable, but not like the Legion Party because either nationalists right propus and right or old school proslags left still has much bigger place of supporting Russia for natural reasons.
But yegor even within that, from you know, your realistic assessment, he still was thrown in prison, sent above the Arctic Circle, and we can put this up there on the screen. Apparently they're telling his family that he suffered from some like quote sudden death syndrome, which we have here. I mean, it's just laughable for many of us to look at. I know you've told him many times that people in Russia they probably don't even hear stuff like this, or
if they do, they believe it. But you know, it seems to us a position of weakness to kill somebody, you know, in this manner whenever as you describe, it's not even a realistic threat.
What can would that tell us about Putin himself? You know, at this moment in time.
The reason of this being this is actually find to find it? Yes, you know, well what can I say? It all comes back to his main goal being able to to defeit Putchin and his ability to utilize I mean, overall, in a normal electoral stration, calm and democratic, I don't think his brand of liberalism would have more than fifteen percent of support, But he was in terms of political repression that Putting created, he was able to mobilize this fifteen percent just proportionally.
It was young.
People, people living in big cities, people living in Moscow. His highest rating most Scow elections was almost thirty percent ten years ago. It was a very high result for liberal politician. So he was able to utilize this young, passionate part of the Russian people who would go on
streets on the protests. On the biggest street protests were either with the Navali presence ten years ago when Putting announced that he's going back as a president for the third term, or ten years later when Aval was returned to Russia three years ago and was imprisoned again. The biggest protest in the last ten years broke up on the streets again internection with Navali names.
So his ability to be.
Visible and you mabilized youth and mabilized street politics in the way that any other political force in Russia can or wouldn't do. I think that's what put him on the map, and that's why pushing was in some fashions, maybe if Putting was more democratic irrationally afraid, because I don't think that, Like, we can see how politics can change leaders' names, parties and still remain the same on
the example of America. So there is a lot of There is a lot of ways to continue the status school, especially if your status school is the power of like one hundred or one thousand riches people in the country without without political repression or in without.
Political killing.
So result like breaking the elections, you can do it through different things like America does.
Makes sense, Riego, We always appreciate your analysis live from Moscow. As a reminder, this man is literally, you know, risking a lot, you know, to be able to just come to us live. You can follow him on Twitter. We'll have a link to that in the description. And we always appreciate your time, sir. Thank you, thank you very much, see you later.
Thank you for hosting with me.
My friend, you are always a bare no no, you're not doing counterpoints.
Cristal will be filling in for you on counterpoints.
Going to Mexico.
Going to Mexico, nice, watch.
Some fish concerts. I'll be thinking of you down there. I'm going to get you down there. I'm gonna get you down there one year. You're gonna work it.
Yeah, but I won't be at a fish concert and tell you that I'll be somewhere somewhere, very very far away from civilization, eating tacos or something like that from a guy on the street. Anyway, Thank you guys so much for watching. We really appreciate you. Sign up at breakingpoints dot com. If you're able to support our work. Otherwise, Chris will be back and I will see you all tomorrow.
The speak spe