3/21/23: NYPD Barricades For Trump Arrest, Trump Implies Desantis Is Pedophile, France Protest Explode, WH Press Corps Silences Reporter, Fauci Confronts DC Residents, Finance Youtubers Sued, Iraq War Hawks For Ukraine, Trita Parsi on Iraq Failures

Happy Tuesday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed we do. Will today be the day that Trump gets indicted? Some indicators pointing in both directions, So we'll break all of that down for you, as well as a little bit of the process of just how exactly this is all going to work. Is he gonna be handcuffed? Is he not gonna be handcuffed?

What will this all look like? Also, Ronda Santis finally breaking his side lence about the imminent Trump indictment, kind of making things worse for himself in a way, I think, really, I think. So yeah, we'll let you decide. We'll play the comments and you guys can see what you think. France really on the brink today after Matt Crone's government

barely surviving a vote of no confidence. The people, I mean seventy five percent of France completely outraged about his quote unquote pension reform changing the retirement age from sixty two to sixty four in a very undemocratic fashion as well, So we'll tell you all about that some press room chaos yesterday. That Saga was particularly interested in mainstream reporters rushing to the defense of cream Jean Pierre lest you know, one of their colleagues get out of line and be

in lack proper decorum within the press briefing setting. So we've got that video for you. Also, PBS did a little documentary following around doctor Fauci as he was trying to persuade people to go out and get facts, and there was quite an interesting interaction that got a lot of people' attend We will show you that as well. We also are happy to have a doctor true to Parsi in studio with us today to talk about the

event we're doing together. Remember twenty years of the Iraq War, how exactly the media failed us and what if anything did they learn from that? And He also wanted to talk a little bit about, you know, in connection with the rock and the media not really learning their lessons, the way the Ukraine War has been covered and the role that the US has just recently played that we covered yesterday in blocking any potential ceasefire if it is suggested by China. Before we get to any of that though,

Spotify Video. That's right. Thank you very much to our premium members who've been signing up for Spotify and have been using their premium feed to get the full show and audio. I know a lot of you guys have really been enjoying it. So just a reminder breaking Points dot com if you want to become a premium member and you get the full video and the audio. So I know that a lot of you have been using that.

It's been really fun to see the numbers. We are one of the biggest gated podcasts on Spotify, I'm told. So thank you all very much. Shout out to you guys. Yeah, there we go, absolutely Breakingpoints dot Com to become a premium subscriber so you can take advantage of Spotify Video. All right, let's get to the big story of the day. Will he or won't he be indicted. I'm course, of

course talking about Donald Trump. Manhattan, DA looks like imminently they are going to arrest and charge Trump with something related to the whole Stormy Daniel's hush money payment situation. As we broke down yesterday, it's really sort of a combination of two pieces here. There's an outright business fraud of recording the payment as something that it wasn't really on the books, and then the way that they get

it from being a misdemeanor to potentially a felony. And this is all, you know, speculative until we actually see what the charges are. But the way they get it to a felony is by arguing this was in service of another crime, which was a campaign finance violation. The argument here, the theory here is that Trump's campaign, as he was running for presidents way back in twenty sixteen,

got a huge benefit from these hush money payments. This was of course not recorded in terms of their books, and it would have been a contribution over the limit if it had been. Okay, So that is the legal theory of the case. We have some contradictory indications this morning about the timing of this potential indictment. Everybody seems to think it continues to be imminent in could be today, could be the next coming days, could potentially be next week.

But I think this is coming sooner rather than later. The first one is that all NYPD officers, including plainclothes detectives, have actually been ordered to wear their full uniform today starting at seven am, ahead of a possible indictment. This is from a CBS News reporter, So that's one piece, is okay, maybe this is coming today. On the other hand, Robert Costa with also with CBS News. I thought he was with the Washington Post. I guess it was a

while ago. Anyway, Trump's team did not hear from prosecutors this evening. That was last night, according to Susan Nickels, an indication that no indictment was made today. So is it going to happen a day Is it going to happen tomorrow? Is it going to happen a few day from now? Nobody really knows. We have some additional reporting to I'll get to in a moment, but let's go and put our first element up on the screen from the New York Times about what this would all look like.

The headline here is New York authorities prepare for unprecedented arrest of an ex president head of a likely indictment. Law enforcement officials are making security plans as some of Donald Trump's supporters signaled that they intend to protest. More on that in a moment they talk about in this article, you know, Trump would be fingerprinted, he would be photographed, photographed, He could even be handcuffed. If he is indicted by Manhattan Grand jury and the days ahead for his role

in hush money payment to a porn star. The former president of the United States will be read the standard miranda warning. He'll be told he has the right to remain silent and the right to an attorney. And the wake of mister Trump's public call for action, there were some scattered signs his followers were planning to protest on his behalf. So far that hasn't really amounted to a whole lot, But we'll see, you know, if it scales up.

And in terms of whether or not he'll be handcuffed, that's sort of like, you know, they can make that decision. They could handcuff them behind us back. Sometimes white collar defendants, they say are handcuffed in front of them, and they could also make the decision just not to do that whatsoever.

It is expected, this has been reported out that Trump will surrender himself, so you know, that makes some of the point of whether they would have to, like, you know, force the next tradition from Florida or something insane like that. But listen with this dude, you just never know what he's going to decide to do in the moment. Yeah, we have no idea how any of this is going to go down. And the preparations though, is that clearly New York authorities are preparing for the worst. We had

some video actually from the scene yesterday. Yeah, yes, you can see there. This is the NYPD unloading barricades to surround digit Attorney's office at courthouse and elsewhere. Couple that, I think, Cristle with the report that you read this morning about the NYPD officers being told to dress in full uniform. They're expecting quite a bit of protesters, but said protesters have not yet materialized, so we don't yet

know what's happening. Yes, that is correct. We also have go ahead and put this next piece up on the screen, just some additional reporting about potential timing here. This is from Politico. They say that Trump indictment could land soon, sending law enforcement scrambling. A grand jury is expected to charge Trump within days, according to three people involved in the deliberations. Now, according to Politico, they say an indictment

by grand jury is expected late Monday or Wednesday. Well, Monday past there was no indictment, so perhaps it will happen Wednesday. This is according to three people involved in the deliberation. Deliberations, there was one final person who apparently was scheduled to testify before the grand jury Monday afternoon. There was an expectation that Michael Cohen then might be brought back to rebut that witness, but that apparently didn't happen.

I think all of this Sogren. Why we wanted to cover it is just to underscore even though the details of this case have been hashed over again and again, it really feels like old news. The specter of a former president being indicted is I mean, it's historic, like this is a first in history. It's a remarkable, unbelievable moment, and you know, to see how this all unfolds him to think about Okay, they're considering whether or not to handcuff him and he's going to be read as Miranda

rights and he's going to be fingerprinted. To me, really brought home the kind of gravity and seriousness of the situation. I'm glad you said that because we have to be able to separate out and I think we both have said we're like, look on the merits, you know, it looks like a weaker case politically, think kind of a disaster to be this this is really the one that you want to go with. We're talking about bookkeeping fraud

with a very extraordinary interpretation of the law. Good luck, we'll see how that actually works out before a judge. Let's put that aside. Just the act of simply arresting the former president is something that we have gone out of our way to avoid here in the United States for literally hundreds of years, especially going back to what like Andrew Johnson and then of course a Nixon administration.

Whenever we think about Gerald Fords at the time unpopular decisions basically pardon Nixon for all crimes and to prevent the Justice Department forever trying to indict even a current president. A lot of these norms and all these things were set in place, even though, look, they don't pass the smell test in terms of yes, technically, he's a private citizen blood, he's an active candidate, and he's a foreign president, and he has a large constituency. So it's an extraordinary

act regardless of what it is. So we have no choice but to get into the nitty gritty of the bookkeeping fraud, of the exact nature of the payment, of whether Michael Cohen was charged or call before the grand jury or not. I found that a little bit interesting. I'm curious your interpretation. The fact was that he made

himself available to the grand jury for two hours. They did not end up calling him, which means I guess to me currently that they will not be pursuing in any way the campaign finance allegation, even with respect to the way that it would relate to the bookkeeping fraud that is there. At least that's a legal interpretation that I also saw that was out there, because if they had that would have been materially important to the cover up,

so to speak. But we also know that other members of the Trump organization have been cooperating with federal authorities, and you know, mary other legal cases on top of tax Rod and others, was possible that they also their testimony may be material to this as well. Yeah, I mean,

I genuinely don't know. My understanding was that the witness who had been called before, who was once advised Michael Cohen, who was also a lawyer, This guy, Robert Costello is his name, he was brought in to kind of call Michael Cohen's character in question, which I didn't think is a particularly difficult thing to do jail time for some

of the same, you know, similar charges. So anyway, I think the idea was Michael Cohen could then come back in and sort of re establish himself as a credible character. Was my understanding. But you know, it's very hard to know from the outside what exactly is going on here and why the decision was made to not bring Michael Cohen back in. Perhaps they just felt that they didn't need him in order to secure the intapement state that

they are looking for with regards to the protests. You'll recall in the infamous truth Social Truth post where Trump said, you know, he expected to be indicted on Tuesday, and the very last part of that called on his supporters to come out and protest and quote take America back, I think was the language that he used. There was a lot of concern that, you know, you could have a real sort of you know, violent protest, large scale protests could still happen. So far it has none. Let's

go and put this up on the screen. So this is Ben Collins. He says he's at the pro Trump protest put on by the New York Young Republicans Club. Not a joke. There are more reporters here than Trump supporters. This was supposed to be the big one. And Sager and I were both choking about how many of those so called protesters are actually Feds. I think he's also

a reasonable question to ask. I think you take out the so called the take out the Feds, and there's maybe like one guy the entire crowd, just the president of the New York Republican Club. Is that that's it? Okay? Well? According to Ben also he said it's just a bunch of cameras taking picture of a guy who's putting on a rat suit next to a guitar with the words hang Fauci on it. And this was supposed to start a half hour. Look, we have no idea how it's

going to go. It's also possible that many Trump supporters, even though they may be outraged having seen the events of January sixth, or like, well, maybe we won't be going at the same time. Look, he also hasn't actually been indicted yet, so this not technically something to protest. Now, you should hang on with those words, because that's kind of the excuse that a lot of people who are

defending Ron DeSantis are using. But I think that there's something materially different about a GOP leader and then somebody actually coming out to protest something based on the reaction. Look, we have no idea, right. I do not think though, that people should read it as some sort of acquiescence

by the Republican base. You know, you can be outraged about something and not technically necessarily take to the streets, especially after what happened on January sixth, So I don't think people should read it as him losing his power, although you know, it is certainly a noteworthy event, and ultimately we can't really make that call until well after whatever happens with this indictment, and then even you know how the judge will handle it if there is even

a trial or you know, prison or any of these other things that we have to speculate on. It's just I think it's too early to say it. I just do think it is humorous though that the media also, the number of cameras there shows you like they want this to be a thing. They're like, oh, we got to get everybody down there. There's gonna be such a

massive story. And they show up, and it's kind of like that other rally that we covered here where you know, it was supposedly some big right wing protests, and all that really came out of it is it seemed like there were a bunch of Feds that were there undercover, marching, marching around and clearly like the most the most like tailtale haircut that anybody had ever seen. Yeah, yeah, that's right.

I forgot about that. Some of the reporting suggests that actually some Republicans were concerned that the protest could be basically a trap. You know, there's a lot of concern about what exactly you know, might have unfolded if they did show up, So that may be part of why

so far there hasn't been much to emerge. There's also just like the logistical challenge of this all happened really quickly, whereas with January sixth, there was a long time to sort of like for the Oathkeepers and the Proud Boys to get their plans together and gather their weapons and plan you know, their hotel rooms and all that stuff. So anyway, I don't want to say nothing's going to happen, but so far the protests that have been planned have

not amounted too much, if anything. Yeah, I think that that's where we'll leave it. So we have no idea. We have indications in many size. The fact that he wasn't notified until last night means it may not come this morning, but it could come tonight. You know, it could be one of those that is a major breaking event. So we'll see what happens. We'll be watching, as I said, as Trump always used to like to say when he was president. So let's move on now and talk about

mister Ron DeSantis. And there has been an extraordinary civil war kind of breaking out online. But I don't we should think we should say that it's merely in the online category, because it has real world consequences. There have been calls by the Trump campaign people around President Trump for Ron DeSantis to come out and to defend President Trump against any possible indictment, to say that he will not extradite the president, or at the very least rhetorically

say something about it. DeSantis, while giving a press conference yesterday in Florida, was finally asked about this after silence over the weekend, and he's trying to have it both ways. We're going to play for you the full clip of his answer. On the one hand, he takes a dig at Trump about any payments to a porn star. On the other, on the substance, he tries to attack with the DA Here's what he had to say. So, I've seen rumors swirl, I have not seen any facts yet,

and so I don't know what's going to happen. But I do know this. The Manhattan District Attorney is a Soros funded prosecutor, and so he, like other Soros funded prosecutors, they weaponize their office to impose a political agenda on society at the expense of the rule of law. In public safety, he has downgraded over fifty percent of the felonies to misdemeanors. He says he doesn't want to even have jail time for the vast vast majority of crimes.

And what we've seen in Manhattan is we've seen the scott the crime rate go up, and we've seen citizens become less safe. And so you're talking about this situation with and like, I don't know what goes into paying hush money to a porn star to secure silence over some type of alleged affair. I just I can't speak to that, can't speak to that. Calling it a circus, We're not going to have any part of it. Tries to have it his way and attack the Manhattan DA.

This just shows him. Also, what's another word that you didn't hear, literally wants throughout the entire thing the name Trump. It seems like he's allergic to actually saying the man's name. He really wants to be in some situation where he can like maneuver around and sure like on the substance like maybe he's right about the Soros DA and all

of that. I've seen that line of attack, but specifically not willing to defend Trump on those merits or call it a political prosecution, not take any stand or in defense of the former president. Let's just say Trump certainly is going to take notice and that's exactly what he did in the most Trumpian manner possible. Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. So he

tweets out truths out. I'm sorry, I'm still getting used to that, he says, quote Ron dasanctimonious will probably find out about false accusations and fake stories sometime in the future as he gets older, wiser, and better known. When he's unfairly and illegally attacked by a woman, even classmates that are quote underage or possibly a man, I'm sure he will want to fight these misfits just like I do.

What he did is he effectively quote truthed a photo of Ron DeSantis allegedly partying with underage girls at a drinking party while he was teaching at a Georgia school. So, Crystal, he not only is intimating that DeSantis is a pedophile, but also possibly a gay pedophile. Yes, that was his response to the former governor, or, sorry, the current governor of Florida. I mean, look, this is middage Trump. You

can't help but laugh. It also just shows you with Trump, I mean whenever, So you know, just Santis is like, well, let me get to the substance of like the source DA and all this, try and you know, find this third way for me politically. And Trump is just like, actually, Ron, you're a gay pedophile. And you're like, what do you say to that? You do that? But what does he call it? The silly circus or the silly season? Silly season? It's silly. I'm sorry, that's weak. It's weak. It I mean,

I can't help but laugh. And I mean it's fun at the fact that Trump puts out the truth that's like already going hard basically, you know, it's like suggesting he's gay, and then he deletes it. Now, most normal people when they put on a social media post and then they pull it back, it's like, maybe I went too fast. I shouldn't have right, I shouldn't know that it was does too far, you know, I should I should reel it in a little bit. No, with Trump, it's like I messed up. I didn't put in the

groomer allocations. I forgot to call him also a pedophile. He's not just gay, he's also a pedophile. And listen, here's the thing with Trump, this is what he forces in terms of a Republican primary, in terms of American society whatever, there is no third way, right, I mean, people found this out was stop the Steal. You talked about this a lot sogger, this whole idea that all we could do like a high brow stop the steal type of thing, like do what Josh Holly was trying

to do, whatj Vake Ramaswami is still trying to do. No, you are either with him or you're not. That's what he creates. So this notion that Ron DeSantis is trying to, like, well, let me carefully craft this talking point that takes a little jab at Trump over here, but then has all the Soros da language over No, not gonna work. You are going to have to figure out how are you

going to play this. Are you going to just you know, not go after him and hope that these indictments and whatever else happens in silly season takes him down, or are you gonna actually directly go at him and yourself because no one's going to do this work for you. Muster a case against the former president that is going to be compelling to a Republican base. And he still seems to not really know how he's going to figure this out, and listen. This is when it's the easiest.

It's not getting any easier from here. You've got time to workshop your talking points. I mean forty eight hours. Man, how long did they spend with his you know, press team figuring out Wordsmith? Okay, here's how we're going to play, and here's what we're going to say. This was all very very rehearsed. What are you going to do with you when you're on a debate stage with this student he's calling you a groomer whatever else he throws at you. Yeah, I mean, and you know you okay, you see the

groomer attack. How you could prepare for that? You know, he's going to throw something at you that you have no nobody who's going to see coming, because that's just what he is. He is an agent of chaos. And I see zero sign that DeSantis is really ready to do. I do think that there is a way to handle it, and unfortunately it's not one that would be politically viable.

I mean, I've always thought that one of the worst things that Takes Crews ever did is whenever he was not he was like, hey, Donald, get my wife's name, you know, in almost like a Will Smith type thing like get my wife's name out of your mouth. Don't you dare talk about my wife, you know, and then just actually make a stand, maybe you look at the camera, just big, hey, Donald, screw you. Something like that actually

would have been a strong response. Instead he gave some like mealy mouth thing and at the end he's like, Donald, leave Heidi alone. And by that time everyone's like, oh my god. And then with the endorsement that ended up happening, the famous photo of him phone banking for Trump. I mean, you just look, you can never ever have a real stand against this person again. And I do think also with DeSantis at this point, like the gauntlet has been thrown.

The gauntlet is down, Like he's called you a pedophile already, now you're a gay pedophile. He's gone after you in so many different respects, and you're both trying to find this middle ground where look viable path for Ron DeSantis in any primary? What do we know? He is not winning an outright majority in any way, even of people who are skeptical of Trump, because all of those people

are split, as we showed you in those yesterday. His only path to victory is to shore up all of the people who are willing to move on from Trump, and even amongst those they actually still like Trump, they're just willing to move on from him. And then people who are absolutely one hundred percent behind him. How is that really possible. I mean, there's no way to do it without convincing them that they're strong, that he is an agent also of the chaos against the liberal establishment,

whom they hate so much. I think that they correctly read this as weakness, and I think that's why his poll numbers have gone down significantly in the last two months. I also want to note that the Groomer allegations obviously grab our attention get all the headlines, but Trump is also starting to muster a policy case against DeSantis as well. This was flagged for me by a friend from Florida Politics. Trump says Florida has the worst insurance scam in the US.

He said this was on true social he said, in addition to wanting to cut Social Security and raise the minimum age to at least seventy and Medicare, Rhino Ronda sanctimonious is delivering the big insurance company bailout to globalist insurance companies in history. He's also crushed Florida homeowners whose houses were destroyed in the hurricane. They are getting pennies on the dollar. His insurance commissioner does nothing while Florida's lives are ruined. This is the worst insurance scam in

the entire country. So this has to do with basically like homeowners insurance in the state of Florida, and you know, for catastrophic situations. So he's going after him on economic policy substance as well. So to your point, Zager, about the gauntlet being thrown, I mean, it's being thrown on the personal level, it's being thrown on the policy level. And you don't have time to wait around anymore to join this fight. Right, You're either in it or you're not,

and that's the only one that at this point. Then just bow out and then you know what, you can stop all of the speculation, and then you can also say whatever you want. You're like, look, I'm the governor. I'm going to handle this responsibly. There's nothing for me to comment on. Should a time come that I need to take action, rest assured that I will make a well considered, you know action. That's something that somebody who has no political ambition would say, but this was one

where it's both ways. And look, you know it's not just me and you, Crystal that took notice of this. There are a lot of folks out there who are taking a look and are not very happy with Ron DeSantis. First and foremost was Steve Bannon and Mike Lindell, both Trump loyalists, who blasted him for his response. Here's what he had to say, Governor DeSantis, You're better than this. That was a weasel approach, and don't give me the

don't throw anything about the porn star. Don't need to hear it from you, Okay, don't need to hear it, okay. Mike Lindell the Election Crime Bureau report sir, well, first of all, DeSantis is the trojan horse we thought he was. I just want to put that out there, how disgusting he is. How disgusting he is, the trojan horse that we thought he was. Weasel not the only ones. Let's put the next one up there, Candice Owens. Here's what she had to say. Anyone's surprised by this been saying

this forever. DeSantis is a good governor, but he is establishment. Will be a major dis pointment to those who think otherwise people disenchanted with Trump sometimes rightfully saw things in DeSantis that were never there. She follows up, he handled COVID correctly and bravely, but DeSantis is not America first, so he is really getting it from a lot of the magosphere. And actually, has Candace been on DeSantis. She hasn't. Really, this is the biggest shot that I've currently seen somebody's

kept her options open. You very much so, and I should also know from the Daily Wire it's really it's not. Also just Candace Shapiro actually replied to one of my tweets kind of defending Ron DeSantis is approach because I just said, look, it's terrible political judgment for him to stay silent either way, and then you know, miraculously, the moment he does break his silence, it's trying to again

have the two way approach. That's also even Matt Walsh, who I've noted as big DeSantis fan, very much a Trump critic in terms of policy, and he's like, I'm sorry, this was not the right approach at all. Another person who has actually been pro DeSantis and has not been advocating for Trump is Mike Cernovich, who, look, you can hand it to the guy. But he's been intellectually consistent on this. Here's what he said. Put it up there

on the screen. Quote DeSantis blew it. Today only people saying otherwise personally hate Trump or were never Trump in twenty sixteen. Where were you twenty fifteen? I was explaining why Trump would win when he had a ceiling of three percent, and Goober's I am not a Trump guy.

That's the lowest IQ thing that you could say. Again, Cernovich is somebody who was an original Trump supporter all the way from twenty fifteen onward, very much enjoyed the chaos, criticize him heavily over policy throughout the years, has been saying that the Republicans should abandon Trump in favor of a person like Rond de Santis. But he again is speaking I think as you and I are. We don't really have a dog in this fight. So I'm just

trying to look at it politically. Yeah, just being like, look, if you want to convince people, many of whom I know who are major MAGA, you know, to their core, and sure they are not the majority of the Republican Party or the American people, but enough of a stronghold to give you a very easy path to the primary. Then you would have had to make a defense of Trump. And one of the reason why I'm noting this is look at every other major Republican figure in the country.

Kevin McCarthy immediately the speaker, the senior most GOP elected official, tweet coming out full bear support of Trump. Jd. Vance, many of the other Republican senators, Steve Bannon, and others, the Trump campaign publicly praising vivike Ramaswami, calling on Nicki Haley and for Ron DeSantis to join vivike Ramaswami and

condemning what's happening there. The pressure that is coming to bear, all of the senior Republicans at the highest elected level, almost all the elected GOP senators and others have went out on the record. You have Jim Jordan, another MAGA figure you know, who's coming out there and calling on Alvin Bragg to come and testify before Congress saying that will withhold federal funding from your department and all that. Like it's out there now. Now it's a political issue.

The bar has been set by all of the top electeds. So your choice to go in a different direction that sends a direct bat signal, and it was it was read exactly that way as people in the magazine. Let's go to the next one here. Jack Pisobiac, another major figure in the MAGA community, is at two brew je from was it Shakespeare right? Mm hmm. That's all coming back to me right now. So the point is that

accusing DeSantis of stabbing him in the back. Cernovich also wrote a substack piece where it's just talking about DeSantis blew it today, which passed around heavily in the MAGA community. Raheem Cassam, who is also affiliated formerly with Breitbart with Steve Bannon as well, coming out and saying that, and you know, you can deny it or not. Sure, these guys are online, but they represent at least the thoughts

of Donald Trump the people around him. And it is a case that Trump has been racing against DeSantis, which we again know has been dropping Desanta's poll numbers like Iraq. To be fair, he hasn't even announced yet. Certainly things could change, but I do not think that people in around Trump, Trump himself and many of the people who DeSantis may have been able to win over, like the

entire conservative kind of media apparatus. They very much took notice of this again outside of Ben Shapiro and criticized his response. Yeah, and once again there is not going to be any third way middle ground, no not. I mean we talked yesterday about Mike Pence on January sixth, trying to have it both ways. To you see, Nikki Haley, this is also relevant to the conversation. She just put out an open in the Wall Street Journal that is

criticizing DeSantis over his stance on Ukraine. Now, of course, Dysantis and Trump's Ukraine stances at this point, I mean, it's not real really clear that they're the same, but effectively similar ish similar ish, But the criticism really isn't a Trump, it's a DeSantis. So you know, nobody is really stepping up to take this guy head on, and you have to think about the way this is all

going to play out. This is probably the first indictment of several so this is going to continue to be one of the most animating issues within the Republican base elector and frankly within American politics. So if you're wishy washer, you don't know where you stand on this. Yeah, Republican voters are going to have issue with that. This is

what Trump is so good at. He is so good at seizing on issues that he believes are to his benefit, making them the central dividing line in Republican politics, you know, policy stance. He's obviously doing this with Social Security and Medicare as well, and then forcing people to make a hard and fast choice. If you are not one hundred percent with him, then he then you know, you're seen as being one hundred percent against him. And I think that's we're seeing that in real time with how DeSantis

chose to respond to this moment. President's son also joining the four let's go and put this up there on the screen. So DeSantis thinks DEM's weaponizing the law to indict President Trump is quote a manufactured crisis. Isn't a real issue? Pure weakness. Now we know why he was silent all weekend. He's totally owned by Karl Rove, Paul Ryan, and his billionaire donors, one hundred percent controlled opposition. And listen, you can also say, what who cares? It's just the

president's son. As we also repeatedly showed you, Don Junior routinely places high in many of these polls simply because he's also a MAGA warrior. He's very prominent online. He's somebody who a lot of the people on the base loved. I remember seeing him once at the Trump Hotel. He was like a rock star like whenever he walked in there, because at that time, anybody who was visiting DC was like very pro Trump would hang out in the lobby and they all saw him and they were like stood

up and clapped. Frankly, I thought it was a little bit gross and kind of reminiscent of like the European kings, but it is what it is. You can't control what people like, so anyway, I'm just saying purely observationally, he has also a lot of credibility with a lot of

the MAGA base. You can dismiss it if you would like, and note that majority of Republicans don't align themselves with that, But the vast majority of Republicans will see any indictment of Trump, especially on Stormy Daniels related bookkeeping fraud, as one of a complete political prosecution. It will be a complete cross the rubicon moment politically. Also, Crystal and I you have discussed I mean the fact that they are going first with this, and I'm not saying they because

I'm not saying it's coordinated, although maybe it is. But you're going first with Stormy Daniels and not with the Fulton County grand jury, not with the January sixth, not with any of the other married investigations, where much of the American people definitely are with you, if not the Republican base on this one. I even think many independent voters would be like, listen, I think this is bullshit, you know to be It'll be interesting to see the

polling on it. My guess is you still have a majority of American people in favor of it, just because they're not paying so much attention to the details. But we've had consistent polling that says that they believe Trump deserves to be indicted. We'll see, But I agree with your fundamental point here that there's a lot more for Trump to work with on this particular prosecution versus Georgia,

versus January sixth, and fake elector schemes. So yeah, I mean, I think if it was coordinated, this is not the order that they would have chosen. So I think that argues against the idea that there was any sort of federal state, local coordinate nation in terms of ordering these indictments, because they do not think that this is the order that you would choose. There you go. So we will watch it closely, guys, and you know, the minute that something breaks, we'll try to you know, get up live

as soon as we can. And of course we've got counterpoints tomorrow to cover anything that unfolds overnight as well. All right, let's turn to what is going on in France, because this is quite astonishing we covered before. Macron has for years now actually been pushing to raise the retirement age in France and is facing vehement opposition from effectively all political corners. It's actually a real horseshoe moment. You have the nationalist right, as led by Marine le Pen,

which is opposed to Macron on this. You also have the left, led by figures like Jean Luke Mill and Sean. They are all united in their opposition to raising their

retirement age, and the people are behind them too. By the way, the polling I've seen has said that anywhere from two thirds to three quarters of the French public is like, hell no, we do not support this, and that has shown up in the legislative tactics that Macron has been forced into using if he wants to push this retirement age lift through, and it is also shown in the overwhelming street protests that have been rocking the country for months now, some of which we have covered.

But yesterday something absolutely extraordinary happened, which is that Macron put us up on the screen barely survived a no confidence vote by just nine votes. Now, the reason that this no confidence vote happened, and I'll get into a little bit of the details here, is Macrome could not actually muster enough legislative support, it appears, to pass this

retirement age lift through like normal order. So we had to invoke this unusual legislative procedure that I won't get into the details of, but that effectively circumvented having to go through and actually obtain a majority of the vote that can be used for certain particular votes within within France. It's very unusual to do, and frankly, it's very anti democratic. It seems like all of these neoliberals, when push comes

to shove, they really show their authoritarian cover colors. But after he pushes this through using this unusual mechanism, they had the opportunity to then have a no confidence vote, and if that no confidence vote had succeeded, not only would his government had to like effectively disband, but it also would have rolled back the retirement age lift. So

this came a lot closer than what people thought. And the reason is that they lost a good number of the like center right Republicans who were in theory in support of lifting the age even further to even higher, to sixty five. But they saw the freak out of the public, and a good like nineteen of them that they expected to vote in favor of Macron actually toffected and voted along with the no confidence vote, and that's why he barely barely survived. There have been protests going

on over this four months. There continued to be protests. We have a little bit of that. Let's go ahead and put it up on the screen so you can get a sense of this. You see the like, you know, cops with riot shields and you know, some smoke there. You've got similar interactions here between the police. You've got a fire one of the things. Go ahead, put up the next vo. Guys. There have been strikes, sort of rolling strikes throughout French society. One of the ones that

has been most visible is the garbage collectors. The rubbage collectors have not been working, so there are tons and tons of garbage piled up in the streets of Paris. And apparently last night, after that no confidence vote narrowly failed, a lot of that rubbish was set on fire. So

that's where we are. It really is quite extraordinary. I think you would put it in the context of you know, first of all, like the French are very protective of their way of life and they see this as an assault on their way of life and whatever you think about where the retirement age should be. Like, clearly they are overwhelmingly opposed to this change. That's number one. But it also comes from the context of, you know, you've also had in the UK huge protests also over sort

of neoliberal policies. So it starts to look like a real trend, that is, you know, that is burgeoning in

Europe and perhaps beyond well. I think that the point, the major point is if the majority the people in France don't want it, well, they're the ones who get to decide in their government, and yeah, I mean going nine votes away from a vote of no confidence is a disaster, but more so I think that the means through which that he was trying to do it by bypassing parliament, I don't think that that's going to sit well with a lot of people in France because it does,

as you say, look authoritarian in nature. Now, part of the problem is, you know, with their party system and their fracturing, that they've effectively guaranteed it so that Macrone consistently has been able to win power despite that fact that almost nobody likes him and he's got a thirty percent approval rating, which is outrageous. It almost reminds me of our presidential system. But they've always historically had that

strong parliament as well. And their inability here or the inability right now for the Macrone for the Parliament to come in and actually block this shows you though, that because they got so close, they may have a path there in the future. At the very least, it does send a signal to him being like, hey, you know, you're coming right on the razor's edge of actually losing here, and it could be it would be a huge blow,

I think to his presidency. It's also one of those strange things where why does he continue to push this whenever? Why is so so committed to us? Why are you so committed to this whenever? You're it's like, arguably the best thing you could do for the French economy right now is to try and negotiate peace in Ukraine. That actually would be the best possible beats great for energy prices. They're actually protests in France over NATO and over the

continued war in Ukraine right now. So we shouldn't pretend like everything is hunky dory over in Paris, something that he absolutely would have real control over and probably would be politically popular. But you know, this way he's decided to go with. I don't really get it. Yeah, I don't really get it either. And you know the parallels to the US system that you alluded to. You're not

the only one that took note of that. Remember, after mccron was able to win reelection, Ron Klayane, who was at that point chief of staff, tweeted basically like, oh, he got re elected with an approval rating in the thirties, How interesting, effectively intimating that the plan to get Joe Biden reelected is very similar, Like, well, you may not really like Joe, you may be wildly dissatisfied with his inadequacies and his ability to effectively govern, but are you

really going to vote for Donald Trump? I don't think so. And so it was a similar like lesser evil kind of dynamic that got Macron into office. It's also worth remembering that this form in the first protest, massive protest movement that he has faced since he has been the leader of that country. In his first term, that's when they had the Yellow US protests, which were over you know, a different basket of issues, but similarly driven by economics

and populistic nature. And these sort of like horseshoe coalition. So now you have in the second term as well. I mean these are massive, like his story. I know, like France protests all the time, but this is a different level and it's and they recognize it as such, yes, And it's across the country. It really is from sort of all corners of society. A quite you know, remarkable

show of force. Many many labor unions involved, like I said, you know, not collecting the rubbage and shutting down some of the transportation system, even dealing with some of the sort of core energy infrastructure scaling back production. So this has really rocked this society. And even if he is, you know, able to, he already has forced this thing

through effectively. Now he's facing I just saw this morning calls from even some lawmakers within his own party that are like, you know, this is really not worth it, like we support it principle and it's all about fiscal responsibility, et cetera. Of course you could always, you know, you could always build that whole another way. But so even within his own party, he is losing some support here,

which I think is pretty extraordinary as well. Put this last piece up on the screen from the Financial Times just so you can see their take on it. They say a Manuel and that Krone to force pension reform without vote as protests sweep France, and they say government risks a no confidence voting for their backlash on the streets. Obviously,

they narrowly survived that no confidence vote. But this article just goes into some of the details of the legislative maneuvering that was required here in order to force this through.

And it also notes that nearly three quarters of the public are opposed to raising the retirement age according to polls, and that millions have turned up to protests, not just in Paris and other large cities, but also in small town So it really is, you know, across the entire country that society is revolting against these neoliberal changes he's trying to force through. Yeah, we'll keep a close eye on it. It's not like anybody's trying to cut retirement

benefits here in the US. A lot of echoes, doesn't it. Listen, You know we are we are cousins, after all, I guess from across the right. All right, let's go ahead and move on to the next one. This is the subject near and dear to my heart. So the cast of Ted Lasso was in the White House yesterday. I don't really know what they were doing there, but I guess I don't even know what tedw It's a show on Apple. I hear that boomers like it. It's it's a joke boomers. But I do hear that you guys

like it. But but no, but for real, though, the biggest Ted Lasso fans I've ever met are all booms. So I'm just gonna say that, all right, So the Ted Lasso fan cast was there not dressed appropriately in my opinion, but I guess that's a subject for another day. They appeared at the White House podium next to Karine Jean Pierre, but some major fireworks erupted after Simon a Tabus. We've covered him actually before. He's a reporter for an African news outlet who has not been consistently called on

by the Biden administration. He often wants to ask questions to the administration, specifically about policy with regards to Africa. Now, I sympathize with Simon quite a bit because his plight of not being able to get called on is one that has been completely ignored by the White House Correspondence Association. Now, yesterday Simon decided to force the moment and to continue to shout at the White House Press Secretary until she

would acknowledge him. Two extraordinary things happen. One, Kareem John Japierre basically said that it was an act of disrespect, that this can never happen again. But two, and this is the most calling part. Yeah, he should always have admiralser relations between the press and the press corps. When they're yelling or in the Press secretary when she's yelling

at you, you're doing a good job. The best part, though, was that the White House Correspondence Association president and the other people in the room turned on Simon for trying to get his question answered and actually admonished him. Let's take a listen to that full exchange. You can't keeps some people in the free field room because you don't like them. You don't like that. So you have a choice. You have a choice. You have a choice. Okay. And

what I'm saying that that's right. This is China, this is the United States. The White House stings here to pal don't you. You should bring them to her later. I have press chorus tired of dealing with this. No no, no, no no, no, that's not We're not doing this. We're not doing this. We're not doing this. We're not doing this. You've been based disimulation against some people in this and I'm saying that you start Russia. Okay, he's been seven months.

That does not right. Funtis, welcome back, Welcome, welcome to the press briefing room. Okay, let me go. Are you ready? Are we going to behave? Are you ready? Are we going to behave? I mean, listen, I was there in

the Trump ears Crystal. I remember when a guy named Jim Acosta, who is now the host very low rated Saturday morning program, but who's watching that, happened to get his career and make millions of dollars on a book by literally grabbing a microphone out of a White House intern's hand, refusing to give it up, and consistently shouting

at the president. And guess what, Although I made fun of him at the time for the way that he acted, I would still be outraised if other people in the press corps were to shout him down, because the whole point is adversarial relations with the press, and look, it can take it in whichever direction that you want at the end of the day, are exactly how it should exist.

And instead, the White House Corresponds Association president Zeke Miller actually apologized to the Press Secretary after that and set our apologies on behalf of the press corps. And I think it's always important that we try and take you guys inside of the room. Is the entire system is rigged completely. The government has no say over the press room.

It's all controlled by the White House Corresponds Association, including the seating chart, including who they allow in and out whether people like Simon and others, people like me who had to stand in the aisles and try to get called on by the Press secretary also in with respect here, as you can clearly see, what they have done is the Biden administration returned to the rule where the first person to get called on in the briefing room is

the Associated Press. Worse, though, is that the traditional custom in the room is that the Associated Press correspondent, in this case also the White House Correspondents Association president. He

also gets to decide when the briefing is over. So people should remember, we'd played that audio of a fight that broke out last time that we exclusively obtained here at breaking points, which showed that the White the Associated Press president called the briefing over and reporters in the back were like, hey, you didn't have to call it over, Like,

we still have questions here. The point is is why are they the ones effectively apologizing here for the breach in decorum or whatever whenever you're supposed to have adversary relations. And two, why are you policing people for acting the way that you all acted During the Trump administration. They used to screaming like Banshees when Sarah Sanders came out, and it's outrageous that now that they are getting called on, it's decorm that's dcormfest. We have to police each other

when they weren't getting called on. Oh, it's an attack on the First Amendment. The press was in trouble. We all have to stand together. I can't tell you how many times it would come to all of us, you know, afterwards, and be like, we got to stand together, guys, like we've got to make a big stand for press freedom and all this. Well, what about this, it's the same thing. Yeah, I mean to be honest with you, that's the part

that is really galling to me. Like, I can't really blame Krein John Pierre for that's her job, right, that's her job. Her job is to be spokesperson as president and to call on the people she wants to call on and answer the question she was I can't really blame her because she is basically just doing the role

that she's supposed to do. What is unforgivable is all of those supposed journalists in the room teaming up against their fellow colleague who is trying to get heard and trying to get a question answered, and he says he hasn't been calling months and months and months. And you know, I don't doubt that he raises and asks questions about issues that most of the rest of the press corps

isn't really paying attention. Yes, yeah, so it's not without consequence, especially when you consider the fact that this administration is very close to Biden gives very few interviews. You know, they mostly only make themselves available to friendly outlets. So this is one of the only times when you have a little bit of give and take where you might be able to get a response on an issue that you know they're not going to get asked about otherwise.

So there are real stakes here, and it just demonstrates that, you know, the ones who sit in the front row and get most of the questions, they are more interested in preserving decorums in service of their access and their friendly relations with the White House than they are with actually fulfilling the adversary or role that the process is supposed to fill, right, and that was the major one, And of course you know this has been met with

complete silence. They have no answer for their hypocrisy. I again, you know, I literally was once shouted down by April Ryan, who basically threw one of the biggest fits I've ever seen whenever she didn't get called on by President Trump. I've seen Jim Acosta, Peter Alexander, and all of these other people clown themselves to a historic degree. I was standing right next to them while they were doing it.

And guess what, they were making millions of dollars. They were becoming heroes amongst their fellow press member for standing up to Sarah Sanders and Sean Spicer to President Trump. And now whenever somebody acts exact same way that they did, but it's somebody who's outside the club, oh, this is a breech of decorum. Also, here's the other favorite part. You can raise them with her later. Yeah, she's gonna take a meeting with her. It's not so easy to

meet with the press secretary. Okay, it actually is very hard if you don't want to. I used to have to get up at like six in the morning and go stand by Sarah Sanders's door just to literally get two seconds with her, just like hi, you know, just so you know, that's how it works. If the big time reporters though of course they get meetings with them all the time. It's a complete inside again, you know George Carlin quote big club, you ain't in it, and

Simon is finding out the hard way. He had the temerity to shout at the press secretary, which is literally supposed to what these people are supposed to do. But they don't have to shout anymore because they've got that inside relationship. This is. It's totally rich the way that this happened, and he just exposed it again once once again after his last big stand. So here you go, And if you really want to be disgusted, just look at the online reaction of this was all in favor

of dare he how dare he speak up? And the Queen great break de Korum, etcetera. So anyway, okay, so this there's a clip that has been getting passed around quite a lot online that is quite a storinary. So we want to play it here. Put actually the second element guys up on the screen. First. PBS is doing

a little documentary of doctor Fauji. I guess they followed him around for a while of part of their American Masters series and as part of this documentary, where again they were following Fauchi for a while with a camera crew, et cetera, and seeing what was happening. This was like

in the height of the vaccine push. As part of this, they went to a historic black neighborhood in Washington, d C. It's Fauci and current mayor maryel Bowser, and they are trying to get people who are not yet vaccinated to go and get the JAB. So mostly I watched the whole clip that they've posted. Most interactions very friendly. There were a lot of people are like, oh, I already got it done. People were excited to see him or whatever. But one of the interactions did not go exactly as

doctor Fausci expected. Let's take a look. People in America are not settled with the information that's been given to us right now. So I'm not going to be lining up taking a shot or an vaccination for something that wasn't clear in the first place. And then you all create a shot in miraculous time. It takes years to

create well, it used to take years. Okay, you know how you know how many years we're invested in this in this approach, about twenty years of science to get us to be what to do not enough, and nine months it's definitely not enough for nobody to be taking no vaccination. That you all came up with, what are we going to do about those other states? Oh my god, they're going to keep the outbreak smoldering in the country.

It's so crazy. I mean, they're not doing it because they say they don't want to do it with their Republicans, they don't like to be told what to do. And we've got to break that, you know, unpack that. Well. I heard that it doesn't hear it and it doesn't stop you from getting it. So on the very very very rare chance that you do get it, even if you vaccinated, it's a very you don't even feel sick.

It's like you don't even know you got infected. So the first interaction that we play that went on for some time. He had a lot of and they just had to eventually be like, all right, you're obviously not going to get the vaccine. But there's actually a lot to unpack here. I mean, first of all, in that last interaction, what Fauci says is really not accurate. It's

just not accurate, literally not true. It's just not true, right, I mean, we all found out that okay, the vaccine was very effective in preventing severe illness into that is that is absolutely especially amongst those who are menal compromises, elderly. Yes, but it really didn't do a whole lot in terms of just keeping you from COVID as we discovered in the rest of the country. And he's telling that to a mom with her kids. That's actually what really called me, Chris.

So that was that the first guy. Also, you know, zad Jlawni was talking about this. He was like, listen, you know, whatever you think about the vaccine, that's not how you convince somebody. Whenever you're like, well, actually it was twenty years of sign Now, look, maybe the man was unconvinceable, but he was so arrogant in his presentation about the data, about the way that he was talking

to that mother. Also in that comment that he was making to Muriel Bowser about oh, these Republicans and their choice and all this basically ridiculing them. You know, this was at the time, I believe this was in May

of twenty twenty one. At that time, whenever President Biden was like it's a pandemic or whatever of the unvaccinated and I did end up being true either, And the point was is that he was ridiculing and admonishing people rather than actually trying to meet that man with his legitimate concerns and just say listen, man, like tell me, what would you need to hear from me right now? Like what can I try and give you right now?

I mean, okay. So there's a lot of research about the best ways to actually persuade people, and the least effective thing you can do is sort of what Fauci did there, which is girl a bunch of statistics at them, beat them over the head with like well actually it was blah blah blah blah blah. The best thing you can do is engage in a conversation and ask them some questions that maybe allow them to themselves question some

of the assumptions that they had made. Now, look, I think it's entirely possible that this man was not persuadable. He clearly was like, you know, we're very invested, and that exchange, like I said, goes on for a long time. He is very invested in his view of the vaccine,

which wasn't accurate. But to me, what it reminded me of was the fact that, especially early in the vaccination campaigns, there was a median narrative that the only people who were vaccine hesitant were basically like crank, right wing Republican and that was not true. That it wasn't true at all. And so I actually, I mean, I'm glad that Fauci actually went out and talked of some p people that

didn't fit the narrative that was being sold. But you know, it makes a lot of sense that the people who have been screwed over the most in modern history, in past history, in further back history, by American society and by specifically the medical establishment in a lot of instances, Yeah, they're going to be skeptical. That is the natural reaction to their experience and the history of what they have

suffered in this country. So I think it was a real reminder of that time period and how much we were kind of gaslet about where vaccine hesitancy was coming from and what it was all about, when in reality it was a much more complex and multifaceted picture. And the other thing that it reminded me of, which is just like pretty service level, is there's oftentimes an attempt to paint the quote unquote black community as one single

monolith that holds one single set of views. And I think if you watch this clip in its entirety, it's very clear that you cannot reduce any demographic group of people to a single monolith. People are complex and they hold a wide variety of views within any demographic It turns out black people who are just like the rest of us individuals. Shocker. I know it's actually racist to think the otherwise, but what of course, I'm sure that

point has been made a million times. My major takeaway from that was Number One, Fauci is the least effective science communicator of all time, even though quote he is literally the science, as he dubbed himself. And two, which is a core tenant of the show, is I trust regular people. Man. You know these people are out there. I'm going to presume that they work very hard, that you know, necessarily that life has been tough in some cases,

especially in that neighborhood. And guess what, those people are often the best at sussing out information for themselves, and they can legitimately ask that question. And actually thought it was really outrageous the way that he lied to her about preventing transmission and all that, and trying to guilt trip this mother into trying to to protect her children when the information that she presented was fundamentally accurate as to what she wanted to do. Also, it's not like

she wasn't COVID unsafe. She was wearing a mask at the time. I don't know if everybody noticed that. So it's not like she didn't care about protecting her kids. She was. It turned out what we knew about mass and all that. But I guess, to the best of her knowledge, what she thought she was doing best for

protecting herself and protecting her family. And at the end of the day, like, this is America, and it also underscores I think I did a monologue about this with Don Lemon and with others where he was calling out like white unvaccinated whites and how they should be banned from society and all that, and I was like, here, you have like one of the top black people in news who's basically advocating for poor blacks in New York City and throughout the rest of America to not be

able to enter a public space. Yeah, that's crazy to be kicked out. And there was a conversation about kicking people out of school. Yes, yeah, I mean listen to to go back to that first exchange with the guy. It was very hard against the vaccine. I mean, some of what he said was not correct, no doubt about it. But it was also interesting to hear how he was

consuming the information that was available to him. And you know, one of the things that made him really skeptical was there were a bunch of these incentive programs like oh, we'll pay you, which I at the time thought, okay, well maybe that's a reasonable life thought. But clearly, at least for some percentage, this was taken of a sign of like, oh you're going to pay, then there must really be something else going on here if you're willing to pay me for it. And that's again because there's

this deep mistrust. And by the way, you know, to bring this background to Fauci, and I think that guy mentioned some of this or at least alluded to it as well. We know that at the beginning of this crisis, Fauci was not He admitted to lying to American people about masks and about herd immunity. So if that's your starting point of like out of the Gates on one of the most important questions of like should you mask

or should you not mask? You're gonna lie to us about what you actually think and what the science and research to that point actually says, Well, then yeah, that's going to degrade our trust than down the road when you're asking us to take these other steps. To me, it also just exposes that one of the I've met a lot of people who are unvaccinated. I've met a lot of people who refuse to get the vaccine, and the number one thing that they cite to me every

single time is the pharmaceutical profit incentive. Can you blame them? I absolutely cannot. And that is something which in retrospect and I mean we certainly said at the time, but also any injection of money into this process corrupted it

in the minds of the skeptical from day one. You cannot but look at the outrageous profits of a Pfizer and of Maderna, of their changing their tune from the original vacs to them the boosters to now continual boosters, and not say, hey, you're making a ton of money off this thing. You are also literally exempt by the US government over liability and so it's like you exempt the liability, but you get to keep the profits. So it's like, well, so it's literal, the literal meme of

socializer skin privatize the profit. I think that was the original sin. Yeah, from the beginning, I personally think there would have been much higher vaccine uptick A if they were way more honest about the data and B if they had taken money out from the process in the first place. Because that's one of the first things he sides too about the process, the opaqueness. That's something I learned. I have learned so much from John Abramson, who we had here on the show about the actual process to

which these drugs get Greenland through. With the way the flu shot so so much of this stuff that, you know, my own skepticism is skyrocketed about the entire medical system through this, and I don't think I'm alone. And a

lot of it does come back to money. I think I think you're right to pinpoint the profit motive, because even if we zoom out from this particular incident, etc. It's no accident that the US has a larger percentage of vaccine hesitant people than other developed nations that have universal healthcare where you don't have the profit motive at the core of every single interaction anyone ever has with our medical system, it is obtaining health insurance, whether it's

trying to get the you know, drugs that they've been prescribed or anything else. Yeah, guess what when your experience with the medical system is these people are just trying to price gouge me at every single point of interaction, that's going to fuel some skepticism and some hesitancy. So, you know, I think in this particular instance, going with a for profit approach to vaccine development, I do think

that that was a mistake. But it is not just a mistake, but a tragedy and a real crime against you know, the people of America that we are the only healthcare system in the world that operates in the way that we do where it is about profit and not ultimately about health outcomes. So this is what you end up with, and it is sad. Yeah, Fauci, the people who all supported this strategy of the privatized vaccine and all of that, You people are the ones who

are responsible for this. It's not on those individuals for asking questions, Crystal, what are you taking a look at a call FTX led by Sam Bankman. Freed collapsed spectacularly. While back in the wreckage, it became quite clear this was no ordinary business failure, but a classic Ponzi scheme in a modern crypto wrapping with billions and missing funds, a mountain of lies, and a founder who used a carefully cultivated public image to hide an alleged white collar

crime spree. SBF is now wearing an ankle bracelet at his parents' mansion awaiting trial. Well, there's an interesting new sub drama playing out which could have huge ramifications for the entire YouTube creator space, but especially for the world of financial influencers. Investors who claim they lost money in FTX because of YouTube creator hype have filed a class action lawsuit against a number of popular finance YouTubers. The list of ten defendants here includes Graham Stephen of The

Graham Stephen Show. They have four point twenty six million subscribers, Ben Anderson of the bit Boy crypto channel it has one point five to four million subscribers, and Kevin Papras of Meet Kevin one point eight seven million subscribers. Now, I actually wasn't familiar really with any of these dudes before, but looking at their channels kind of looks like a standard combination of get rich, Quick stuff, crypto promotion, elon standing, etc. Now,

the lawsuit makes a couple of key claims here. First, claims that the promoters were involved in the illegal sale of unregistered securities. Effectively, the argument here is that the FTX high Yield accounts were really technically unregistered securities, which then have to be handled legally in a very specific way.

The suit claims that these influencers are sophisticated and should have been able to see that FTX was a scam, and it also claims that these promoters were selling FTX without sufficiently disclosing that they were getting paid for that endorsement.

For the complaint, though FTX paid defendants handsomely to push its brand and encourage their followers to invest, defendants did not disclose the nature and scope of their sponsorships and or endorsement deals, payments and compensation, nor conduct adequate, if any, due diligence. For example, Meet Kevin was apparently paid twenty five hundred dollars every time he even mentioned FTX, an arrangement that he told coffee Zilla netted him more than

two hundred thousand dollars. How clearly was this disclosed? Well, that'll be a key question for Meet Kevin and other influencers who took money from FTX and then subsequently hyped their products. You'll recall that Kim Kardashian actually settled a case against her for a million dollars because she was alleged to have insufficiently disclosed that she was getting paid to show for some schlocky ethereum knockoff coin. She put hashtag ad in her Instagram post, but regulators claimed this

was not enough. Now, in terms of this legal case here, to be perfectly honest with you, after reading the complaint, far from persuaded that this suit is going to actually succeed. I was expecting to see a lot of specific details about who was getting paid what, and specific comments they made which were fraudulent or lacking in appropriate disclosure. Those details could come out still in discovery, but there was

not a whole lot here. At least one of the named influencers, bit Boy actually warned that FTX was a scam a month before its collapse, and claims he had no financial deal with them whatsoever. Coffee Zilla interviewed a lawyer who raised a lot of red flags about the case as well, finding in in particular, the notion that these YouTubers should have had special, non public knowledge of

FTX to be a pretty unreasonable notion. But taking a step back from the rather murky legal analysis, there are some very clear lessons inadvertently revealed by used uber Meet Kevin in his response to the filing. Now that's the guy again, and who's getting twenty five hundred bucks a pop every time the word FTX came out of his mouth. Take a listen to a portion of the response video

that he posted to his channel. At what point does sort of the promotion of an idea or a suggestion, paid or unpaid rise to the level of actually being personalized advice? And in my opinion, it does it. In my opinion, at no point does me saying I think oil is going down and it's a good short rise to the level of personal financial advice. At no point does me saying hey, I'm investing in something rise to

the level of personalized financial advice. Personalized financial advice is when somebody signs a contract with a financial advisor and says, hey, I'm paying you specifically to advise on my portfolio. And by signing that contract, now the other person is taking the fit duciary obligation of providing the best responsibility in

service to that person for their case. And see that, I think is the big difference here is when people who are content creators are sharing ideas and perspectives, they're doing just that. They're not giving you personalized insights. They're giving you ideas and perspectives. And the reality is people have to put on their big boy pants and realize that if you make a decision because of something you

heard online, that's your responsibility. So when people who are content creators are sharing ideas and perspectives, they're doing just that. They're not giving you personalized insights. They're giving you ideas and perspectives. So here, this guy's whole thing is being a financial YouTube or the whole reason that people watch him is to get advice, But he says he's not

actually giving advice. He loves the followers listen, of course to what he has to say when he's building his channel and cashing those checks from FTX and whoever else, But he wants another responsibility that comes with having an audience that you have explicitly cultivated to trust your guidance. In his words, quote, people need to put on their big boy pants and realize if you make a decision based on something you heard online, that is your responsibility.

So basically its position here is that if you were dumb enough to take my advice, it's your own damn fault. Now, I hope anyone who listens to this type of contact really takes this in. If you trust a word of the advice that they're giving you, they think you're a fool who needs to put on your big boy pants and accept personal responsibility for the catastrophic investments that they were paid in many instances to promote to you. Now,

what many of these influencers did. It might not be illegal, but it is wildly unethical to pump a bunch of risky bets that you are being paid to promote. Knowing how we approach our business here and our responsibility to all of you, I genuinely cannot wrap my head around it. We have decided not to talk to or take direct money from corporate sponsors at all, because I would feel terrible if I even just promoted some product that was

kind of crappy and didn't work as advertised. When you're talking about people's money, or I should add also their health, that is a whole other level of response and a whole other level of callousness. I could not live with myself if I thought there were people who lost everything because I was on the FTX dole shilling for their crappy, fraudulent Ponzi ski. The bottom line is this, They're happy to profit off your trust, but they take zero responsibility

for any wreckage that that trust creates. Meet Kevin says you should not consider his or any other financial influencers comments as personal advice, and ironically that is actually good advice. It's so scummy this world, I don't I mean, listen and if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at Breakingpoints dot Com. All right, sorry were looking at yesterday. March twentieth was an important day.

It's one that will likely pass with little fanfare and acknowledgment by the mainstream media. But as we covered and those who know, it's the twentieth anniversary of the day that we invaded a rock March twentieth, the day that American ground force has crossed to Iraq for the race

to Bagdad. Little did those men know that we were doomed to waste five trillion dollars, thousands of American lives, who knows how many hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, and pouring gasoline on a global jihadist movement that took almost twenty years to actually bring to Bay. It is difficult to describe how bad the Iraq War was what it did to this country. It actually ruined us to our

core at home and abroad. It set us back in ways we still have yet to recover from, and to me, it's where the root of almost all our modern problems stem from. Yet those who led us into the war in Iraq, those who supported it and beat the war drump for it, are still amongst us. George W. Bush is a celebrated painter, now pro democracy because he stood

up to Trump. The Cheney family is a paragon of virtue. Apparently, Press Secretary is George Bush, who lied to the American people, who doomed young men to their deaths in a far away land, are now MSNBC stars and never Trump heroes. Lawmakers and thinkers who justified the war in Iraq. They voted for it, they defended it, propagated it remain amongst

us to this day. Iraq is important not just because of how bad it was, but because those who pushed and justified this war today have been reborn as icons of the liberal establishment. They have moved from the center of power from right to left in this country throughout the ideological takeover, never taking their hands off the wheel

of foreign policy. I was especially struck by this in the freak out over Ron DeSantis' comments on Ukraine and the people who crawled out of the woodwork to criticize him. Exactly four GOP lawmakers went on the record in the story. The first was Liz Cheney. Do I even need to tell you that not only did the Cheney support the war at the time, but that she continues to support

the invasion and the acts of her father. The next one was Lindsay Graham, another noted GOP clown, who supported the war in Iraq at the time, never stopped supporting it, and recently advocated for World War three with Russia because our drone was forced down. The next was Marco Rubio, who of course, famously defended Bush for invading Iraq in his twenty sixteen campaign and subsequently was trounced by Trump

in the primary. Finally, the last was John Cornyn. Cornyn, conveniently for US, represented Texas in the US Senate at the time, he voted for the war in Iraq and actually said in it was not a war of our choosing,

Let's keep going. Among so called prominent conservatives who criticized DeSantis, David French, now a New York Times columnists who lambasted DeSantis for his carefully worded answer to imply that it's not a core US interest for Ukraine to defeat Russia and calling it at least in part a quote territorial dispute. French laid out his take on DeSantis, which is of course fine and a legitimate opinion, saying he's no Ronald Reagan. But I also happened for no, he's still a viamin

defender of the Iraq war. He wrote in twenty nineteen quote, I believed the Iraq War was just and proper in two thousand and three. I still believe that today. So by that metric in the Frenchian worldview, if this is something that Reagan would have done. Well. I think we should all be out on that one. Let's keep going, shall we. Let's move on. David from of the Atlantic, from never Trump figure. Also the guy literally wrote the access of Evil speech the President Bush delivered dumius to

the quote forever war on Terror? A week ago, he writes, is DeSantis flaming out, already advancing the idea that embracing a skeptical view of the US view towards Ukraine is trying to win quote the Fox News primary, and not even a few days later, comes out with a piece that to this day defends the Iraq War, admitting that while it might have been a mistake, we got at least something out of it. Right. Yeah, I'm just gonna

go with wrong. I'll keep going. Let's go. Bill Krystal, served as a mouthpiece of the Bush administration, ran a magazine whose entire job it was to push for the Iraq war. Also hit DeSantis for not supporting Ukraine's freedom. Reminded me of a tweet that I'll never forget of his November twenty sixteen. The Iraq War was right, necessary, and we want it. Let's go. I can continue even more.

I'm sure you get the point. Nicole Wallace, the former push a Kom's official who shielled for the war, aired multiple segments on her show denouncing DeSantis. All of this is just compiled to show you the loudest voices out there today beating the drum from more aid to Ukraine and attacking DeSantis for half harded endorsement of a trump Ist style worldview. Shows you how these people have suffered

no real consequence. Worse, it shows that a group of people who hold tremendous power over our foreign policy and remain influential, are also completely out of step with most Americans today. The vast majority of Americans say the Iraq War was a terrible mistake. Sixty one percent say they do not believe that the US made the right decision. If you remove boomers from that equation, it is overwhelming almost all young voters saying it was a catastrophic mistake.

With respect to Ukraine, this also shows out of step even these lawmakers are from their own voters. Only forty two percent of GOP voters even support aid to Ukraine, with most turning against it. This is the same trend

amongst independents. One of the most enduring lessons of Iraq is that monoculture views on foreign policy lead to inevitable disasters, that intervention has fortieth order consequences, often which are far worse than people ever could predict, and that you can deal with the fallout for years to come if you get it wrong. We escaped Iraq merely penniless, torn apart as a country, and with a million or so people dead. Let's hope that the Butcher's bill is not as high,

if not higher, for our current posture abroad. And isn't it amazing when you look at those side by side pieces on what people say and if you want to hear my reaction to Sager's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at Breakingpoints dot com. So, guys, as we have been discussing in the show, this week marks twenty years since the Iraq War invasion and joining us now to talk about some of the media failures then and whether they have learned anything in the present is doctor Tree

to Parsi. He is executive vice president of the Quincy Institute. It's great to see you, sir, good sez back before we get into the content here, I do want to flag for everybody. I'm moderating a panel in conjunction with Quincy Institute that is going to be tomorrow and it's going to tackle It's a great group of people that are going to be on this panel, and we're sort of tackling how the media led us into war and some of these questions about what if anything has changed

in terms of their coverage. So you can RSVP online, you can join us online, you can join us in person. It should be a great event. So with that being said, doctor Parcy just remind people of what a monolith the media was leading up to a Rock War. It wasn't just conservative media, it was almost uniformly across the board. How did they make such a grave era error of just trusting hook line and sinker whatever the Bush administration wanted to feed them the Mata error by not doing

their jobs. The job of journalism is to question power, to scrutinize it, and there was no scrutinizing. There was no tough questions being asked instead of the media really helped create a groupthink situation in Washington and beyond. I was on the Hill at the time and it was very clear. It's like a switch went off when once the White House set the signal that they want to

do this, you could not disagree with it publicly. People had to whisper in the corners if they had any qualms about it, and the media helped create that atmosphere in which if you questioned it meant you were on the other side, you were a Saddam hugger, just as much as Putin hugger today if you have question marks about the wisdom of this, about the tactics, about the strategy, but the very inception of the idea that yes, it is the job of the United States to go all

the way to the other side of the world to create a democracy in a country that we know literally nothing about. Yeah, and that's something we wanted to dig into. Is the dynamic that you said, let's ahead and put this up there on the screen. From Bronco. Marstig made a great point twenty years ago, the Iraq War changed everything and taught it leads nothing. Can you, since you were at there at the time, compare that time to where we are right now in not just the Ukraine debate,

but really the foreign policy debate in general. Well, I think, I have to say, having gone through Iraq, I never thought was going to happen again, you know, and it wasn't because I thought humanity had this amazing ability. I thought there were specific circumstances that made it particularly bad, and so I was quite wrong. And then seeing it being repeated in Ukraine, and I think what happened with Ukraine.

Part of the reason why, both from the media and other ends, there was this desire to just think that this is the right thing to do is because of that desire of us wanting to be on the right side of history, which then means that logic and nuance, all of that stuff has to be said to decide.

And it wasn't a way way of correcting in the minds of some people what had happened for the last twenty years when the United States used to be the aggressive of one country that invaded others, preemptive words, etc. And now it was someone else doing it. Great, Now

we can be on the right side of history. We can be the good guys thinking that we are in a Marvel movie rather than being in a reality in which nuance is unfortunately the key thing that makes us better understand the world and chart it better is direct than for direction for our foreign policy. So I think that desire really kicked in and it made it at times even worse. And one thing I have to say that is really really scary. I follow stuff in Europe

a lot. I grew up in Sweden. They didn't have the group think back in two thousand and three, as you know want critically. Now they're in a worse situation than the United States. I have to say, the conversation here not saying that it's great, but the conversation here is better, and it is in many capitals in Europe right now. And that really came as a surprise. That was your experience when you were there. I was going to say, I was just in the UK a month ago and I was I was like, man, they put

us to shame their media. Yeah, there was a caller, you know, I think it was like LBC radio is exactly what you're referencing. All he said was maybe we shouldn't send fighter jets to you, and this guy, the host just lost it on him. My anti democracy all that. I was like, man, if that's how it is here, you know, And to be fair, I guess London is the most hawkish. But maybe talk about that as well in the context of the need at the time with

Iraq to have the countervailing point of view. I said yesterday, you know, one of the great failures. Sure the media was there, but it was also the Hill, you know, like there at the end of the day, could have had access to the secret intelligence. They could have asked questions, had hearings. Instead, he had Joe Biden and the Senate

Foreign Relations Committee. But not just but he is a president now, but all senior leaders are completely lining up the President Bush at the time and basically validating their case for Iraq. I mean, has that changed in any way at least or what do you have not to an extent that it should. And I think again it comes down to, instead of looking at to his issues as hard foreign policy issues that need to be analyzed, we quickly moralize it. There's a good and a bad side.

And once we do it that way, you're not allowed to any longer have question marks about strategy, tactics, etc. Because if you have those questions marks, you are then citing with the evil guy in the equation. That's not to say that what Russia did in Ukraine is completely wrong,

it's a violation of international law. All of those things are true, but when we look at foreign policy through that moralizing lens, we eliminate the possibility to be able to actually have a nuanced, logical, critical conversation about what the right way out of this situation is. It's all about taking side, and the end result of that is that far more people die. So even if you want to take a look at it from a moral position, the outcome is likely going to be worse from that

moral position as well. You know, I was thinking the other day about remember when progress is put together that letter that was like so mild, was like, look, we totally support what the president is doing. We think he's great, and Russia's you know, obviously illegal invasion, all of that, but maybe we should potentially consider diplomacy. That's not exactly what it said, but that was basically the gist of the letter, and the backlash to that was so over

the top. They end up apollo, they pull it, they apologize for it. We really haven't heard a word of dissent from progressives since then. And that was you know, both sort of like political backlash but also a lot of that was fomented by the media. It seems to me like the the attempt to crush descent coming from the progressive left elected left has been very successful. I have to say the idea that this only comes from one side is simply not true. It comes from all sides.

It's an unfortunate human condition, and we have to recognize that rather than again throwing ourselves and thinking, oh, it's only the political opponents that are doing it this way, this is happening on both sides. I think it was a huge mistake the reaction to that letter. That letter simply just said, look for supporting the defense of Ukraine, but there's got to be a diplomatic element to it as well, and rest a sure at one point there

will be. And at that point the closing of political space that has happened is going to make it all the more difficult for the White House to go in that direction. This was a letter aimed at creating political space for the administration so that when it felt that the opportunity was there to shift towards diplomacy, it would be able to do so without having a lot of resistance in Washington. And that was squashed that was a

huge mistake. And incidentally, just a couple of days later, it turns out that Jake Salloon was going to Moscow, Oh sorry, what was going and talked to a Russian counterpart. So clearly the White House was already engaged in some of this activity of diplomacy. So those who thought they were defending the president by squashing it had no clue what the White House actually was doing, because they were engaged.

Not at the level, not at the extent that I would like to see, but nevertheless there were some diplomacy taking place. Whereas the defenders of the White House thought that they had to squash this clearly showed they had no clue what was going on. They had no clue where the White House wanted to go. But they were acting as this moral police of being able to decide who's allowed to have an opinion on this and who was not. Well, my last question is on at least

the space has been opened. You're with the Quincy Institute, with figures like you in the foreign policy debate, do you think what are the best ways that you think that people ordinary people, but also here in Washington, we could move it so that there is at least a fair one and stood a Iraq style event happen again. Well, I think the key thing again is to have the moral courage of asking questions and doesn't mean you're taking

the other side. It means that you have to question these things in order to improve the various directions that we might consider to go. And I think the emergence of breaking points and alternative media is essential to this.

The problem I see though, is if you have half the population only watching mainstream media and the other half only watching alternative media and never talking to each other, all that's going to lead to is further polarization, further looking at it from a moral lens of you know, there's us and then there's the others, and that's not

going to help. But at the end of the day, it's still a step in the right direction, because if we didn't have breaking points and alternative shows that brought on other guests that asked these questions, it would be exactly where we were with Iraq, in which no questions were acting and incidentally was very fascinating. I personally benefited

from this. I was leading the Iranian and nationally Irani American Council and then the way the media two years, three years after the Rock War wanted to compensate for a mistake that they had committed, that they knew that they had committed, but very few of them were willing to admit, was to actively go and seek alternative voices and bring those in. That's good, it was not bad. Again, it's not good if you're not learning from it in

order to prevent the mistake in the first place. Right. Yeah, Well, one of the things, you know, I'm excited to talk to Jonathan Landay is on the panel tomorrow and he for people who don't know, he was a journalist with Knight Ridder at the time and one of the few who actually dared to question and they were on an island. I mean, they're putting out you know, they're putting out reporting that was accurate. That said basically the vice president

is lying. This case about WMD is completely made up and fictitious. Meanwhile, you know, the paper of record, New York Times is publishing Judy Miller columns practically every day that are directly opposed to that. And part of what he has said in the past, and I want to hear more from him tomorrow, is that the reason he and some of his colleagues there were able to get the story right is because number one, they actually didn't have access to these top level officials who would lie

to them. And when they did talk to them, they were skeptical, right, they were talking more to like the mid tier career bureaucrats. But also they really took to heart the fact that their papers were were going out to, you know, towns that had military bases where they saw themselves not as writing for the DC elite. They were doing journalism that they wanted to serve, you know, the sons and daughters who are going to be sent over to Iraq to fight and die. And that's what they

really took to heart. So, you know, I think part of why things may have gotten worse is there's been so much media consolidation, like everything is basically national press now at least at this sort of like corporate legacy media level, and so you don't have that same local connectivity or sense of loyalty to people who are out in the nation who are the ones who bear the

cost of horrible foreign policy decisions. Yeah, I mean everywhere else we hear that the diversity of views and viewpoints are important in order to get the best possible decisions right, but when it comes to the media, we see the direction going in exactly the opposite direction. As well as

within government as well. I mean, it cannot be easy to be inside government having a different view, knowing very well that your career path is going to be severely set back if you are expressing questions and skepticism about certain decisions. Yeah, I think that's all well said. Well, I'm excited for the panel tomorrow. Thank you for inviting me to do it. It's going to be really interesting to dig into and it's always great to have you. Thank you so much, Thank you so much. Good to

see you appreciate it. All right, we'll see you guys later. Abou