3/23/23: Trump Plans Perp Walk, DeSantis Polls Sink, Fed Risks Bank Failure, Market Chaos Over Yellen, Putin and Xi Pledge New World Order, Rolling Stone Alleged Pedo, Biden Prosecutes Meme Poster, Vivek's Fake Anti-Elitism, WACO Survivor David Thibodeau

Happy Thursday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal and Dee, we do less interesting stories we are following this morning. Trump has not been indicted yet and doesn't look like he's going to be indicted today. But we'll give you an update about everything we know there to the extent that we know anything there. We also have some new indicators about how

Ronda Santis is bearing in all of this. More Trump response, more mag response, more poll numbers, all of that stuff. Also huge decision made by the Fed yesterday about what they're going to do with interest rates, and crazy day in the stock market too, as Drome Pal and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen seemed to be at odds in what they were laying out in terms of the economy. So we'll dig into some of those details. It's really quite interesting.

We also have some details of that meeting between Putin and she, what came out of that, what does it mean for us? And a crazy story. So we followed this when it initially broke. Rolling Stone had this gigantic piece about this journalist whose home was rated by the FB, and they really tried to make it seem like this had to do directly with his work. You especially were immediately skeptical and actually, I don't know that you said it on air because you don't want to just like

casually accuse someone of having kiddy porn. But that is in fact ended up happening. I've seen enough of these because the way that they rolled up on him was over the So anyway it turns out Rolling Stone, it seems like new at the time time that was likely the real reason. They had a source who said that was likely the real reason that he was rated. But the editor of Rolling Stone was like, buddies with this dude and strip that out of the piece. Huge blow

up over there. Incredible reporting about exactly went down quite an astonishing story. So we'll get into all of that, and really excited to talk to our guest today, David Thibodeau, a survivor of Waco. This comes as there's a new Netflix documentary about everything that went down there. I mean, an crazy, atrocious seminal moment in terms of American history and American politics. So really looking forward to that as well. Me too. I read his book. We're going to recommend

it as well. Yeah, it's a fantastic I also read his book. I'm Taber's recommendation. Yeah, great book. Also, as a reminder to everybody, you can go ahead and watch the show on Spotify if you are a premium member so Breakingpoints dot Com, I know a lot of you guys have been taking advantage of that. Thank you so so much to everybody. We are still working out in terms of processing time, et cetera, but we're every single

day it's getting faster and faster and faster. So for premium subs, you can watch the full shit on Spotify. Toggle between audio and video if that's what you want. You can also continue to watch it on YouTube as we will email you guys the link every day. So there you go with Crystal, what is going on with Trump? All Right? Well, I don't really know what's going on with Trump. But here's what we can tell you based on the reporting that is out there. This is from

the New York Times. They say Trump is at mar al Lago with magical thinking and a purp walk fixation. Those who've spent time with Trump in recent days says often appeared significantly disconnected from the severity of his potential

legal woes. I don't know if any of this is accurate, and I don't think anybody except Donald Trump himself could know whether any of this is accurate, because this is all based on the musings people are around him, taking in what he's saying, taking in whatever his mood is, etc. But let me just tell you what they say here. They say behind closed doors. Former president has told friends and associates he welcomes the idea of being paraded by the authorities doing that purp walk before a throng of

reporters and news cameras. He's used openly about whether he should smile for the assembled media's Pon wondered how the public would react. Said to have described the potential spectacle as a fun experience. No one, they say, is really sure, whether it's remarks of bravado or genuine resignation about what lies ahead. If he is truly looking forward to it, though he might be disappointed, there's no expectation that we will actually do a purp walk. They're likely to coordinate this.

The indication is if he is indicted, which continues to be an if not a certainty, he is expected to surrender himself, they will likely coordinate with secret Service kind of bring him in secretly, so there probably will not be the purp walk. To the apparent and disappointment of Trump himself. They have a quote here from one person who spoke to Trump over the weekend. They said he wants to be defiant and to show the world that if they can try to do this to him, they

can do it to anyone. What do you make of those saga. I think it's actually the smartest move that he could make, because what they're pointing out is that mister Trump is not focused on the particulars. It's like, yeah, well, now this is all being tried in the court of public opinion. He is literally one of the most recognizable figures on the planet. I did find funny the idea

that they might mug shot him. The entire purpose of mug shot is to have an official photograph of somebody in the event that they like go missing or something. You're like, he probably is one of the most photo Yeah, I think I wouldn't be eventure to say he's probably the most photograph person literally on the entire planet. Obama was before him, so you know, there's no expectation as to why that would have changed. No, I actually think

it would be the correct strategy. It would be one defiance making it into a show, and let's be honest, like, this is what he is the best at. He's the master of PR like showing you that he's being persecuted, whether he says something or not, like an image of him smiling. It's almost like, you know, you think back to like the John Gotties and all those other people, the way that they were able to weaponize PR and then have real impacts on the legal system. I'm looking

at it basically in the exact same way. So this look many of his advisors like he needs to be more focused on the law. I'm like, I wouldn't be because of a you're gonna have good lawyers. Well, I don't know about Trump, but we'll see you will have lawyers that can make a competent case at the very least on that. What you need to do is try and put an exert as much public pressure as possible. And this is exactly the way that anybody would do it. And he is, look, perhaps one of the greatest showmen

of all time, So give people a show. My instinct is that the purp walk and all the visible the mugshot, if he gets handcuffed, like all of that stuff, I think that benefits him definitely with the Republican base, no question,

general electorate. I don't know. I think I have no idea. Yeah, I in my instinct is it probably cuts in the other direction with the general electorate, because you know, there's a real normy instinct of just like you know, you get arrested, you get indicted, you're handcuffed, your purp walked like you did something wrong. So terms of, you know, down the road, I think it is maybe not the best call. But in terms of this moment right now,

I see his thinking. I'll also say that remember this, all of this speculation really ramped up when he put out that true social saying that he thought he would be arrested on Tuesday. Now he was not arrested on Tuesday, and there was reporting at the time. This is just like he doesn't really have any inside information. He's just putting this out there. I think that was also a very smart and savvy move because number one, it cuts out the element of surprise in terms of you know,

the DA and whatever they want to accomplish here. And number two, it gives his people the time to come up with what their talking points are, you know, marshal their own public defense before the DA and others can really say anything because they haven't indicted him yet, so

they can't make their case yet. It makes it an asymmetric situation because he and his side of this can fully come out and make their case against the indictment and say this is a witch hunt, this is political Alvin Bragg is, you know, connected with George Soros and all of this stuff before the other side really has an ability to respond. So, you know, in hindsight, I think that was actually a very clever strategic political move.

Not only that, now the media is one hundred percent fully focused and with Trump, I mean one of the things with Trump is he at the end of the day, what he loves most is attention, and you can't deny, Like, look, we have to talk about Trump. Everybody has talked about Trump, and it's one of those where like he he is a former president. If he gets arrested, it literally would be one of the most insane moments in American history,

you know, So I did some reading historical knowledge. One only one former president has ever been arrested, although he was not indicet. It was former Ulysses S. Grant and it was like a municipal thing having to do with like horses or something like that here in DC. Yeah, it was like a DC cop who like didn't know who he was. So that is that is literally the only time that a former president has ever technically I've been arrested, and even then it wasn't thrown in jail

or anything. I'll get the details for everybody, but the point is that it's never happened, not even Nixon. So it would be a landmark event no matter what. And that's why we're forced to cover what's going on here and with the grand jury. As you said, it's literally like kremlinology. We're like, what's happening. Yeah, okay, Well they're not meeting yesterday. That means it wouldn't have happen yesterday. That doesn't mean it can happen today if they do convene.

Even if they do convene, they may not necessarily issue an indictment. We have no idea. Well, I do think that that's an important note, is there's an active assumption now that of course the grand jury will indict, which they probably will, but it's not a guarantee. So I do think that's important to put out there, is like, you know, they are human beings who get to make

a decision, have minds of their own, et cetera. So it's not one hundred percent guaranteed that things are going to go the way that we expect them to go. Put this next piece up on the screen, and I have an update on this as well. So this was reporting originally from Insider, This Politico tear sheet we have here Trump grand jury called off for Wednesday. They were told to stay home yesterday on standby for today. Insider had an updated report that it has also been called

off for today. Now, this grand jury typically meets on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday, so today would be the last day that they would be expected to meet this week, so they have also been called off for today. That likely means we're not going to see an indictment anytime this week, right, and it gets pushed into next week. So that's as far as we know about, you know, potential timing here, That is what we can tell you. Yeah, I truly

have no idea. I was telling you I will be in New York City tomorrow and over the weekend up until Monday, so if anything does pop off, I'll try to go down there to the courthouse. Yeah, what's going on? That timing works out for me too. I'm going to be doing the Flagrant podcast shout out to Andrew Schultz on Monday, so yet any time before that, we'll see you know. Yeah, we're gonna be all over the place.

I'm gonna you'll be doing that. You'll be doing that with Andrew Schultz, and I'm gonna be on with Russell Brand. There you go. Yeah, little shameless plug here. Okay, we're getting a little bit of a sense of how the American people feel about this potential indictment, and quite frankly, this is not surprising to me at all. Put this

up on the screen from Reuters. Basically, they feel like there's probably something to this charge, like they believe the hush money story, but they also fail think that the potential prosecution is politically motivated, which you know, kind of makes sense to me, is a common sense position. Let me give you some of the specific numbers here. They say about half of Americans believe in New York investigation into whether Trump paid hush money to a porn star

is politically motivated. A large majority find the allegations believable, though, according to a Reuter's IPSOS opinion poll, That two day poll, which ended on Tuesday, found fifty four percent of respondents, including eighty percent of the President's fellow Republicans and thirty two percent of Democrats, thought that politics was driving the criminal case. So even a third of Democrats ay as

kind of politically motivated. Seventy percent of respondents, including half of Republicans, say it was believable that Trump, during his twenty sixteen presidential campaign, paid the adult film actress Stormy Daniels for her silence about an alleged sexual encounter, and sixty two percent of respondents, so a healthy majority, including a third of Republicans, that it was also believable that Trump falsified business record and committed fraud. So make of

that which you will. People tend to think, yeah, there's probably some politics involved. They also tend to think, yeah, he probably did the stuff that he's accused of. So what does that mean. I have no idea. I don't know. I again, think about it on importance. It's one of those where like, no Republican voter was ever like, you know, Trump, that's a real stand up family guy. That's somebody who percent That's who we're voting for. That's never ever been

the case. Even the evangelicals who backed him were like, yeah, we think he's personally a scumbag. They're like, which, we just think he's gonna do what we wanted to do justice, which he did. Yeah, we want those square. They made a deal with the devil and they won. So one of those where I would look at this in terms of political import and again you look, trying to judge

general electorate to this point is nearly impossible. We do have very good evidence from the last midterm election cycle that stopped this deal was probably the most potent general

election weapon against Trump. So I do think indicting him on some be like bookkeeping fraud on a long time payment to a porn star which was his own money, and then not recording it properly is not even close to the level of political import for most people, as opposed to I don't know, you know, calling the Georgia Secretary of State and potentially trying to get him to be signing me x number of votes that one people do care a lot about. And we've already had a

run of this twenty sixteen access Hollywood. He's dead. There's no way can survive. Everybody denounced him. He wins, so most people didn't care, or at the very least a lot of Republicans didn't care. Don't forget, he did win some fifty four percent of white women in the twenty sixteen election and actually increased is margined with white women in the twenty twenty election, So there is no evidence in any of this stuff actually matters ye to female

voters and others. To the extent that suburban voters were turned off was because they're pissed off about stop Steel and probably on Roe versus Wade. So as usual things of actually important to people usually are what they vote on and influence their political decisions. Trump as a lecturius shady dude is just baked into the dah. It's one

of those notions across the board. I mean, what I will say is I think that for people who are you know, Trump has his loyalists, that none of these prosecutions are going to matter for if anything, it'll just strengthen their commitment to him. We're already seeing that in the polls, and we'll talk in a minute about Ron de Santis. For people who are you know, more on the opposed to Trump's side, which is a majority of Americans based on the polling, I don't know that they.

I think there may be a sense of just like, you know, this guy deserves to be popped for something, and so even if the particular details of these allegations are kind of like baked into the cake, et cetera, I have a feeling that a majority of those folks do support the prosecution just in that sense of like, listen, this guy has gotten away with so much crap. He deserves to be popped with something. Now you should be

thinking about the individual, specific specifics of the case. So I'm not saying put that all to the side, but I think that may be the sense among a lot of Americans. It's certainly possible. It could be like the OJ thing, you know where OJ technically what it is? What was he like pulling memorabili or whatever out of our lights house? Al Capone popped on cash fraud? Right, Yeah, who knows, We'll see. Maybe bookkeeping fraud is what does it. Although I think there's a little bit of a difference

between well j al caponents. I have a feeling you asked, I have a feeling this is not the end of the indictments. I think old Donnie will wriggle his way out of this bit one one and probably all of them. I'm just being honest again, let me, I just want to put it out there. This none of this is guaranteed.

They still have they have to persuade the grand jury to indict and to accept the legal theory that they are offering here and again, you know, they always famously feel like you can indict a ham sandwich in front of a grand jury. That is very likely the case. And this is Manhattan grand jury, which is very you know, probably Drump skeptical or anti actively anti Trump. But I just want to put out there that there are no guarantees.

So we we genuinely do have to just wait and see what unfolds because all of the speculation up to this point could end up being incorrect. You just don't know. Yeah, we know. Maybe we're playing right into Trump's hands. Giving me the attention on the next month. Speaking of Trump, DeSantis and so much more, the primary between the two is heating up, if you will. But let's put the war of words aside, which we will talk a little bit about, in which Ryan Amiley did a fantastic job

of discussing yesterday. How is DeSantis doing in the polls. Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. Yet another poll showing mamath that Trump is not only leading DeSantis continuing to gain in a potential presidential primary. Trump is up forty one to twenty seven over Ron DeSantis. As Nate Cone writes, quote, this is the longest long term trend from a high quality poll in this race. Since December, Trump has gained fifteen points while DeSantis has

lost twelve points. So basically directly drawing from Desanta's support, and I think it's important to remember what was December exactly, Well, that was immediately after the Stop the Steal losses in November, and it shows you that a lot of GOP primary voters, it seems, have shorter memories whenever it comes to stop the steal and the political impact and are beginning to be reminded why they liked Trump in the first place.

The longer and more that Trump makes it a direct contrast with Ron DeSantis and blasting him, and DeSantis is very wishy washy in his critiques of Trump. You know, even then, you know, the whole like I can't even spell to sanctimonious, which I'm going to say is sanctimonious whenever you're a Harvard and Yale educated lawyer. Is one of those very weak attacks. The quote it's silly season

was a ludicrous response. And then I do think though his only good comeback was you can call me whatever you want as long as you call me a winner. I think it'd be stuck to that. That would be the best one. But many of his other kind of perries of Trump attacks really just did not seem all that politically effective. Let's go and put the next one here up on the screen. Morning consult another high quality

poll showing the exact same thing. March nineteenth poll shows Trump at fifty four percent DeSantis is twenty six percent, a similar but at the same time it shows the similar decline because January second, twenty two, twenty three, it had Trump at forty five and DeSantis at thirty four, a similar drop in the amount of support for Ron

DeSantis by eight points. So everywhere you look, every primary poll, and again you can say that the poles are wrong, but within each pole, the consistency of the movement is generally what people are looking at, and you see that Ron DeSantis is suffering. So in general, Crystal, I don't think we can but take away from this that the longer DeSantis holes his fire and he's out of the race, the longer then that he is going to suffer in

these polls. Similarly, the more that he's doing his pushback and trying to draw the contrast, I am just not buying it. So I continue to see in this Piers Morgan interview that I went through, I tried to read it. By the way, Piers, please just release the whole goddamn thing. Instead of all these mishmash articles sensationalism. I just want to read the transcript anyway, So I read what's the fundamental critique, and it comes back to one that they've

telegraphed for a long time. I handled COVID better than Trump. I simply do not believe that this will have any actual resonance with the base for a couple of reasons. Number One, the reason that Trump has actually said this because I think he's correct. The reason Desantas was able to do what he did is because we live in a federalist system. The president has enormous delegation and authority

to all the governors. Hence why California did something different than Florida, which did something, than Georgia, which did something from Indiana. State governors were the ones who were able to set their COVID policy. Number one. Number two, they're like, he didn't fire Fauci. Now, listen, I care a lot about that. I definitely think Trump made a mistake, etc. Are we really going to be voting for twenty twenty four based on a personnel decision from four years ago? Okay,

I just don't believe that. By the way, again, I wish that would be the case. I just there's no evidence that people actually vote on that. Third. This was implicit in Theatus critique. He said, well, I think I will have people who are fully aligned with me whenever they're in office. Here's the deal. I would love for voters to pay attention to the fact that Trump hired Gary Cohene, to the fact that Trump hired deminution John Bolden.

There's no evidence of that. I made that case all throughout twenty twenty and I genuinely believe Trump would suffer for not delivering on many of the policy priorities that he said he would do in twenty sixteen. Guess what, guys, who won ten million more votes. He only lost by thirty thousand votes. There's no evidence of voters care about the personnel decisions. There is no evidence that they're going to vote on COVID policy from three and a half

years ago. When Trump can say correctly that he was anti lockdown during the whole thing, and then you know, in terms of the personnel charge, I just don't see it. So anyway, his best case was I don't have as much drama. Okay, I think that's a good one. Again, though, he looked at the base, not necessarily general election. At the base likes a drama. So I just am ticking off every single critique that he's making, and I'm like,

this seems very online. It's like an online critique of Trump, which, by the way, I do think is correct, but is not one that's necessarily going to resonate with a lot of voters who guess what they just like whenever he pisses off Mika Prasinski. That's what they've always loved about it. It's also it's kind of a wine track type of critique. I mean, it does remind me a little bit of the Elizabeth Warren campaign that was very like wonky in

the weeds and all these policy papers and whatever. I mean, I'm not saying that it's exactly analogous, but specifically the personnel critique. People care about how the personnel translates into like what it means for their life, But are they actually thinking about who's like, you know, Secretary of the Treasury or whatever. You No, they want to like, Okay, do I have a job? You gotta put foot on, food on my table, et cetera. This is another example too,

of asymmetric warfare. We were talking about this with regard to him getting in front of the indictment and spinning it in his direction at a time before the indictment drops, so the other side can't really marshal their forces fully and defend whatever may be in the indictment. And meanwhile he's going all in saying this is ridiculous, this is political,

et cetera. It's the same deal here. DeSantis is lobbing some like tepid, sort of passive aggressive critiques at Trump, will barely even say his name, and meanwhile Trump is going all in. I mean, the things that are the most headline grabbing are like what we covered earlier in the week where he insinuates he's like a gay groomer. Okay, but he also unloaded on his policy record in Florida in a way that was frankly much more effective than any democratic critique I have seen of DeSantis so far.

Just to give you a little taste of that, this was a long truth social He talked about how Florida ranks among the worst in the country on education. He hit him on crime, and Florida does actually have a like crime has spiked there, So that's a vulnerability for DeSantis, hit him on affordability and went after him on his handling of COVID. It was funny because it almost did

look like a democratic attack. He was like, they were worth you know x, they were near the bottom and terms of COVID deaths and COVID infection rates, and yeah, eventually he opened the state after he had shut it down, but that was because of what I was able to do. And he said that he was an average governor, but the best by far in the country in one category public relations, where he easily ranks number one. But it is all a miarage. Just look at the facts and figures.

They don't lie, and we don't want Ron as our president. So going in on the policy case too, we actually have that B six guys, let's go and put that up on the screen, please, just so people can see exactly as Crystal lays it out. It is a very lengthy paragraph here that you can see where Ron, the sanctimonious disciple of Paul Ryan, big lockdown governor, says quote that his profile is all a mirage and we don't

want Ron as our president. As you said, this basically almost reads like a Charlie christad in terms of the worst for the total number of cases. How other Republicans actually did much better than Ron because I allowed them freedom. They never closed their states. He talks about how the country's number thirty nine in help and safety, number fifty in affordability, number thirty in education and childcare. Hardly greatness there of course, and easy Perry is okay, Then why

do you live there? Dude? Like, why do you like? He actually has the answer there, he says, And I thought this was kind of a clever too. He's like, look, it's amazing what ocean and sunshine will do. Surprise, Like, yeah, people want to move to the state because it has beautiful weather. But that was going on long before you were there, dude. And he also called him Rob in a press release. Actually I love that Meatball, Rob Trump

nieces Drop. Well, okay, we can keep to sanctimonies because I do actually think it's a decent line of attack. But Meatball is so okay, can we talk about sanctimonious because I think this is an unpopular opinion, but I actually think it's a I actually think it's a clever nickname.

I was talking to a friend of the show. I don't know if he wants this out there or not, so I won't say who his name is, but we were he was making the case, and I think this is true that like DeSantis's whole pitch is I'm Trump without the drama, and by labeling him to sanctimonious, whenever he tries to lean into that like I'm above the fray thing instead of reading as above the fray, now it's implanted in people's head is like, oh, you're sanctimonius,

your snobby. You think you're better than us, That's why you're acting this way, and so it really undercuts it goes after his strength. Yes, and that's why I actually think it's an underrated nickname in my personal opinion. Yeah, I absolutely one agree with the sanctimonious. I think it's correct. As I said, you can't pretend that you don't know how to spell to sanctimonious because the quote has too many vowels. Whenever you literally are an Ivy League educated lawyer,

like stop. It reminds me of that that viral clip of his biography where he's like, I was raised in Florida, but culturally I was raised in Ohio and Pennsylvania It's like, dude, just shut up, Like this is the most transparent, ridiculous, like attempt to be like I'm a normal dude. Yeah, anything else. That tough piece from Selena Zuto is really in that regard. We can talk about that. Save all of that for another day. Let's get to the second bar.

Maga Maga absolutely escalating its war against Ron DeSantis. It's just full scale now at this point, with all of their allies. Go and put Donald Trump Junior there up on the screen. So here's what he said. Quote. Just as radical Dems are indicting Trump and destroying the fabric of our nation with their police state tactics, DeSantis pathetically runs to the liberal media on orders from his rhino establishment owners to attack my father. He is exposing himself

as one hundred percent controlled opposition. Let's go next to Jason Miller, who currently works for the Trump campaign. He says, Ron DeSantis has finally shown his true colors, an establishment, never Trumper who despises the magabase and was faking it the entire time. Similarly, also Mike Cernovici, we cited here a couple times on the show, and again to note he is somebody who is pro Ron DeSantis does not necessarily want to see Trump, but thinks that the way

Desantas is handling himself is not wise. Let's put his up there, he says, I'm quote looking forward to the big brains explaining to me that this is actually brilliant timing for a full attack on Trump. So I think if you put all of these together, what you really have is kind of a horseshoe effect of people who were maga and don't want Trump to be the nominee, and we're pro DeSantis but think he's not doing well.

On top of what I have seen is a major escalation of MAGA like forces online who are really willing to take the gloves off against DeSantis. I've seen like Gavin Wax, who is the I believe he works for the New York Republican Club, Raheem cassam As. I've mentioned war room people like Steve Bannon and others who are one hundred percent with Trump to some extent, Like you wouldn't necessarily say that that wouldn't be the case, but the fact that they're willing to do it so early

is I think a problem for DeSantis. Also in terms of DeSantis's calendar. So from what I've asked and read around, here's what I hear. I hear he's waiting for the Florida legislature session to end so he can be like, look at all of these things that I've done. I think that's stupid for a number of reasons. As we've already seen now in the polling that we just covered, he's sinking like a rock whenever he's getting attacked too, You're not actually gonna do anything in the Florida legislature.

That's all that like big of a deal. For example, whenever he was asked by the reporters about his Trump with Trump's attacks on him, he was at an event banning central bank digital currency. Now listen, I actually think

that's important on a policy level. I also do not think that a single voter is like, you know what, we need to ban CBDC, Like I just don't go to the diner where all those people said, right, it's one of those where if you go to the diner where all those Florida boomers said they were going to vote for Trump and not DeSantis, when Fox News was trying to get them to say that they would vote for Ron DeSantis, like, ask them what a CBDC is.

They have no idea. And now again I'm not saying it isn't important, but you can't say, look, I'm the only governor who ran on CBBC. It was kind of the same thing with the soros Da attack, the saurus it. Yeah, again, he's correct on the policy. He did remove sorous Da, but like, that's not what this was about. It was about Trump. It's not about violent crime spiking in New York. Like, sure we can talk about that if you do become the nominee. That would be a great line of attack

about why you're a good governor. That's not what the base wants to hear about right now. Yeah. So it's one of those where I continue to see him almost coming a bit too much to online vibes. And then the biggest one, which actually broke last night Crystal, is about him distancing himself from his previous comments on Ukraine. So that came out and he said, actually Putin is a war criminal. He said my territorial dispute line was

mischaracterized by Tucker Carlson. Tucker actually attacked him later that night, making fun of anybody who gives into the war criminal line. And then what he did say was he's like, well, it was mischaracterized as a war criminal, and he cited that John McCain gas station line. Now to be fair, actually the gas station line is good. I thinkally a gas station with a bunch of nuclears. I have used that line before because I do think it is accurate.

That said if you were I'm not a Republican politician, and if I want, I would never do that if I was somebody who was running on some sort of restraint position, simply because I know that where it would come from. He did himself no favors by borrowing the line and started very much kind of Look what I've always seen with him is he wants to have it both ways. He wants to be maga in some cases, and then he wants to be the guy who can hobnob with Ken Griffin and all these other billionaire donors.

Apparently Reid Hoffman now wants to back his campaign, which is nuts. One of the largest Democratic donors is opening some financing spaces. Puck News Teddy over there. So look, that's interesting. He's in a tough position, especially with Ukraine, because that's what the donor class really probably hated him the most for. And I don't think he's politically playing

this right, I really don't. The Ukraine thing is really fascinating to me because it shows you that all of the elite freakout over his original comments that got to him. It definitely got to him. And because I think his campaign number one, if you just look at the polling, the one thing that's really consistent is Trump wins a large majority of non college educated DeSantis is more popular

among college educated voters. Those would be the type that even within the Republican coalition, would be more likely to be pro Ukraine, pro Ukraine aid. And then also, you know, he's got to look at okay, well where's my financing, where's my funding coming from? And I do not doubt that there were a number of donors who were upset with the original tenor of the comments to Tucker Carlson. So I think that's really very interesting and very telling.

I also think that the extreme pushback from a number of figures both like you know, Mega Adjacent and actually Maga over the incredibly tepid criticism that he lovies at Trump is also really telling because again, Trump is going in on this guy like dropping I mean all the data he can about floors it's actually a terrible place. And he's an average governor and he's it's all a mirage. And by the way, he might be a gay grumer.

I mean, no holds barred from Trump. DeSantis says, these like little tiny, passive aggressive won't even is named jabs, and they're like, how dare you attack Donald Trump during his hour of need? Right? And I mean they're able to do that because I think the Republican base is ultrasensitive to any criticism of Trump because they feel like all of it is unfair and all of it is coming from the liberal media. So it makes it very difficult to lay a glove on Trump whatsoever, even if

in the most mild, tepid way. And meanwhile, it's just again baked into the cake that you expect Trump to go, like to another level that you can and even imagine when it comes to his attacks on Ron DeSantis. So it is not an even playing field in terms of the critiques you're allowed to levy one against another. And you know, I've been trying to think about we've been covering this as like DeSantis is making a bunch of mistakes, and I do think that he's not playing his hand

in the best way possible. I also don't know that there really is a winning hand here, because the bottom line is that Trump still is the leader of this party, and the majority of Republicans still really like Donald Trump. And you know what, guys, he is maddening and I got all kinds of issues with him. He is an extraordinary politician when he's on his game, and you can see it. I mean, he is on his game lately.

So I don't know that there is a way that you play this hand that you end up beating Trump in this cycle. Now, listen, let me put the caveats out there. It's early. There are all kinds of things that could happen. The man is likely to be indeted next week. He's likely to face other indictments down the road. We don't know what's going to be revealed. We think we know everything about these cases, we may not, and so things can definitely change. It is a long road

to the nomination. I do want to put all of that out there. But the way things stand today, I think no matter what Ronda Santist did, I think it is very, very difficult to unset Donald Trump from winning the nomination. Definitely agree co sign everything he said. All right, guys, Federal Reserve had an absolutely momentous decision to make yesterday about whether or not to raise rates and by how much.

This of course comes on the heels of the Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank and really industry wide bank bailout that occurred. So on the one hand, you know, you had this series of bank failures and market fallout because in part because of the actions that the Federal Reserve had been taking in hiking interest rates. You also, in the response to that situation, had the FED basically going in the polar opposite direction of hiking rates in

order to save you know, wealthy depositors. They're like, okay, well we got we got actually ease money to make sure these people are okay. So there was a big question mark about what the Fed would do, and they made their decision yesterday. Let's put this up on the screen. They decided to continue hiking interest rates, but rather than going for you know, halfpoint or more like they have in recent times. Gun put this tear sheet up on

the screen. CNBC they decided to hike rates by a quarter percentage point, and there was this shift in language. You know, people read into everything that your own pal says very very closely, and I'll tell you more about that in just a minute. But there was a change in language too about how far they're going to go in terms of hiking rates, and they indicated that increases are coming to an end. So that is what we found out yesterday. I mean, I'll just say it. I

think it's a mistake. I think given the fact that number one, you know, you had this banking issue. Number two, you went out of your way to ease monetary conditions when it came to these specific depositors and the specific group of banks. But you're continuing on the other side to hike rates, which could cause more fallout not only for banks but for ordinary people as well, at a time when what you've been doing hasn't really worked all

that way to curb inflation. I think it would have made a lot of sense to say, you know what, we're going to wait and see what happens and what conditions ultimately settle in Well, I think I also agree with you that it was a mistake, but more so I think that it shows how ideological things are. Absolutely that I think is actually the greatest danger where look,

this is almost like discount vulgarism. They're like, no matter how much we have to do, we will raise, raise, raised, until we see that unemployment rate go down and we go up, sorry, go up, and as long as that is the soul metric, like oh, bank collapses okay, uh, you know, sheer chaos and mortgage markets and home prices and all that, okay, making it unable for businesses to borrow or for people to obtain credit, not even cheap, but like at a normal rate at like something that

would be considered fair market value, and the ability to expand your capital. It's just they are making sure that the damage that they're willing to reak is just one of those where ideologically, until they see that rate go up, they are just not going to hit pause on the brakes. Yeah. I think it's a huge mistake. Yeah. No, I mean that they have this like tough guy mentality of like we got to show them that we're to stick to our guns and we're going to keep going even though

things are already breaking. So there's another piece here, just to highlight this what they call a quandary. Put this next piece up on the screen. This was before the FED announced their decision, but it highlights the conundrum that they were facing. They say, banks are running scared. Is the Federal Reserve about to make things worse? The quandary, they say, highlights the multiple and conflicting issues facing the FED.

With key sectors of the economy growing strong, inflation still more than double the fed's target rate of two percent, central Bank is keenly aware that any sign it is relenting in the battle against inflation could give rise to another wave of price increases. At the same time, lifting the federal funds rate could now magnify other lenders, the same kind of problems that led panic depositors to yanked their money out of Silicon Valley banks. So that was

the basic decision. Again, I think it was a mistake, and just to reiterate what we've talked about here a lot, because I think it's a really key point. Wage inflation, which is basically the only thing that the FED can really deal with here, is a minuscule part of overall what has contributed to overall inflation. A large percentage has been corporate price gouging, and another large percentage has been continued supply chain issues, none of which the FED has

any control over whatsoever. So as they continue this like death march of interest rate hikes, you know, consequences be damned. Just keep in mind that the tool that they're using here is actually very poorly suited to deal with the real problem that does, of course, have huge negative impacts

on every working person in the entire country. Yeah. No, I think that's the big takeaway is that, Look, we just have a far less control than I think any of us would want on how any of this is actually run and on the major impact it can have on our lives. Housing is the one that you know, you just can't underestimate. Yeah, how big of a deal it is. And I see it everywhere in terms of you know, houses with thirty forty days of signs up there,

and I guess I think that's fine. But it's not like the price is dropped to make it most affordable either, that's it. And with the mortgage rates you know, six seven percent, like good luck, you know to a lot of people who are out there. Yeah. Absolutely, there is some movement on the legislative front that we wanted to bring you, which is kind of encouraging. Put this up

on the screen. It's a bipartisan bill between two very unlikely bedfellows here, US Centator Rick Scott, who is a real fiscal hawk and a Democrat of course, Elizabeth Warren. They have unveiled a bipartisan Fed oversight bill. Now, I'm gonna be honest with you, I genuinely don't know how

impactful this would actually be if it was passed. But the fact that you have the two sides at least finding some common ground and trying to work together, I take as a good sign, and potentially this would have it. I'm not saying it wouldn't. I'm just saying I don't know. So the details here are that the legislation would establish a presidentially appointed, Senate confirmed Inspector General at the FED like every other major government agency. That's according to a

joint release with Scott and with Warren. Warren said this month's banking upheavals have underscored the urgent need for a truly independent inspector General to hold FED officials accountable for

any lapses or wrongdoing. Now this comes as there are a million questions about how the FED was so asleep at the switch that they let this all unfold at Silicon Valley Bank, where, by the way, the CEO of Silicon Valley Bank was sitting on the San Francisco FED board, which is not a great look in terms of the optics of this situation. But there's reporting now that the FED knew there were problems with SVB and that they

had huge interest rate exposure. Actually for years they've been warning about this, but they didn't They would just like send in a notice, but they didn't actually do anything until this was a total crisis that required what is effectively a revolutionary remake of the banking system that even they are still trying to figure out what exactly means.

So we'll get to that in a moment. So the idea here is, let's bring in an independent inspector General who can watch over what the FED is doing here so that we can hope to have more teeth in terms of our regulatory bodies if we face a similar situation in the future. Yeah, I think look with the actual legislation, as you said, in terms of an inspector General and all that. Still, though the checks that actual Congress would ever be able to exert on an independent

FED and make it we're democratic. It just doesn't really exist, given the fact that you renominate them on a very limited basis for ten year terms. Then even the way that the entire federal Reserve governors are run from the system itself, it designed basically to not have any democratic input. So there's not a lot you can do. I'm not saying it's not necessarily a bad thing, but it's only

like an inch in the right direction. Yeah, we'll leave this discussion for another day, but I do want to throw out there we take as this bedrock assumption that the FED has to be totally independent of politics. That has not been the case throughout all of history, and there's a real debate to be had there. So we'll save that one for another day. But this was also really quite extraordinary and to the point about how even the people who crafted this bailout don't exactly know what

it means. You had FED shared Jerome pal and Churgery Secretary Janet Yellen giving what appeared to be sort of conflicting statements about what exactly is going to happen with depositors because You'll remember a key part of this bailout was that the Signature and Silicon Valley Bank depositors were going to be ensured. The entirety of their deposits were going to be backstopped, regardless of how much it's over

that two hundred and fifty thousand dollars limit. So Jeff Stine at the washing Post right away picked up on, Okay, well, does this mean that basically you are backstopping all depositors in all institutions across the country. And Yellen really hedged, But that was kind of the working assumption. Will continues to be a real question of what exactly they mean and if they intend to change the deposit insurance system or if they really are just you know, backstopping the

depositors at the institutions of their choosing. So let's put this up on the screen. This next piece you had Jerome pal on Wednesday. This is a different part. Sorry. There's also a legislative push to ensure big deposits that they're contemplating on Capitol Hill that has to do with this two hundred fifty thousand dollars limit. So there is some effort at changing this from a legislative perspective. I'm not sure how much ground it is gained. So this

is from Bloomberg. You can see that they their headline here says differing Pal and Yellen messages were a lot for the stock market to digest. One analyst said it was astounding how they were giving contradictory comments seemingly at the same time, and all of this is sort of like, you know, they keep it vague, so to say it was directly contradictory is not exactly accurate. But clearly the market read these comments as being contradictory. Let me tell

you what they said. Here. You had Jerome Pal telling reporters about these deposits. You've seen that we have the tools to protect depositors when there's a threat of serious harm to the economy or the financial system, and we're prepared to use those tools. And I think depositors should assume that their deposits are safe. So that's Jerome Pal. Depositors should assume their deposits are safe. So that sounds like all right, I guess they are just basically backstopping

the entire deposit system. At the same time, you had Janet Yellen on Capitol Hill talking to senators and saying that blanket deposit insurance is quote, not something we have looked at or are considering in any way. So seems to be that they're not exactly on the same page here, or at least not you know, totally putting out a similar message and put this chart that we have on the which shows you that the markets were reacting in real time to these comments. So you've got at the

peak there. That's when Pale is saying basically like, yeah, well probably you know, we've got the tools, we know how to use them. You read into that what you will, but I think your deposits are safe. And then you see the dip when Yellen says, now we're not actually even considering doing anything with regard to deposit insurance. Now. The reality is, in terms of an actual policy change, you would require legislative action of the type that you

know they're starting to consider. But they really got to figure out what they're messaging is on all of this. Because the fact that you have these two incredibly powerful officials, even they don't seem to really know what this bailout

means and what they're prepared to do. It's pretty extraordinary. Yeah, No, I mean the disconcerting nature of it is just the fact that they're both in public giving completely contradictory answers when they're actually both supposed to coordinate, and again the entire point of their powers that they're like, these are the big boys in the room, the adults. They're supposed to be the hands on the global economy making sure

that things are all working. Instead, they literally prompted market sell off, right, And then well it's like, well which one what are we supposed to do? Is the bank safe or not? And it's like such a basic question. It also kicks back to our previous discussion about why

it's important for Congress to get involved here. Yeah, Congress is the one they're supposed to send the messages correct around how the banking system will be ensured, what the actual dollar figure is, if it's stabilizing, into what extent regulators will have an input. It should be set from the democratic process, not from the holy heads of Janet Yellen and your own power. Again illustrating the problems with

the system. Yeah, I mean, you really get a sense these people are just like up there freelancing and haven't really even they haven't really wrapped their heads around what this means, what they're willing to do, and where it's all going. So yeah, there is no There is no substitute for having a legislative body that actually passes bills and regulates the banking system. There is just no other answer than that one. Yeah, there you go. All right,

let's move on to the next one. Here important meeting pressions Shishing Ping and Vladimir Putin in Moscow, where they made not necessarily policy inroads, but have pledged to themselves a new world order. There was one clip in particular.

Let's go ahead and put it up there on the screen and I'll read some of the subtitles where Putin is speaking and says, already two thirds of the trade turnover between our countries is carried out in rubles and Chinese yuan, so we are for the use of Chinese yuan in settlements between Russia and the countries of Asia,

Africa and Latin America. One of the reasons why that's so important is he says that already with the two thirds of tradeover between the two it's talking about replacing the dollar as the de facto the de facto currency for a trade actions, which is one of the things that undergirds really the entire global financial system. Russian sanctions, of course, have made that nearly impossible. They've been trying

to price some of these deals in different currencies. His acceptance of Chinese wand in that matter is both one where he's kind of adopting a more Chinese global financial system, but also his acquiescence. So again further of the two things coming together. Let's put the next one up there on the screen. Associated press writing from Moscow, Putin welcomes China.

She to the Kremlin amid Ukraine fighting. There was some outrageous ceremonies in these great halls with they're honestly fun to watch, like whatever you watch dictators going to greet each other, with the giant hauls and the music and the pomp and the circumstances. It is all a little bit ridiculous, but it's not like the consequences are not immense. Putin really just laid the red carpet out for she.

China has made colossal leaps a development, he says. It is causing genuine interest all around the world, and we feel a little bit envious. He said, as smiled, he said, we will discuss all these issues, including your initiatives that we highly respect. Our cooperation of the international arena undoubtedly helps strengthen the basic principles of the global order and multipolarity.

So the major takeaway from the two meetings is that they are pushing and in some ways is correct the idea of a shift to a multipolar global system, to trying to remove any US power in the region, especially in terms of finance. And then Ukraine is like almost a secondary part of that because multipolarity then means that you know, kind of a US, NATO, Western led order. For the way that we think about border states and

transactions to see etc. Is put aside. Then that opens the door for why it would be okay for someone like Russia to invade Ukraine, and why it would be

okay for China to invade Taiwan. I think though, when you put those things together, our insistence on and this is borrowing from doctor Tree to Parsi, of not playing the peacemaker, not even playing the peacemaker, but not showing any inroads to peace, not seeing as a fair broker or arbiter in the global financial system, representing the interests of the Indians, of the Global South, of the Vietnamese, of Brazil and all those other countries re see the

conflict very differently and instead being completely wedded to the NATO centric euroview of the world declining and cultural relevance declining, especially in GDP, and also declining in terms of its share of global public opinion. That is where has left the Chinese opening for it to come in and have

this role. So I think it's a disaster, as I've said before, largely because it was the greatest fear of the Nixon administration, of the teaming up between the great power of the Soviet Union and then the secondary power of China. Now that has flipped as evidence of why Putin is literally willing to accept payments in Chinese want that said, I mean, it still doesn't make the fear of what that type of system looks like in terms of any ability to play peace maker or even to

exert influence go down. So Trita Parsy made this point in New York Times op ed, let's go and put this up there on the screen after he was here on the show. I thought he did an excellent job here, And there's a good quote which was pulled out. The greatest threat to our own security and reputation is if we stand in the way of a world where others have a stake in peace. I think he is exactly

right here. I would also note that Chinahawks like Albert Kolby and others have also come out and talked about the danger of this, largely using the same rhetoric. So I think this is one of those places where people who are on the right and left and who are skeptical of this, like us total wedded view to NATO, to Europe and to the being basically a co combatant in the Ukraine conflict, are both seeing this as a

disaster for whichever respective foreign policy you want. If you want a progressive like less intervention as FORIGN policy is a disaster. And if you want to try and if you believe that Asia is the global rising, where the GDP will be, where the center of power will be, this is also a disaster because it gives them even more power in the Rea and also lets the two team up for the quote new world order which they're so desperate for. Christ Yeah, well, in which in some

ways has already arrived. I mean, you know that's there to the extent that you can stop it. I'm saying, like, that's what people are Look, let's all be real here, like it is the global power, or it is the power in the Asia Pacific, and all US policy is geared towards making sure that you try and quote contain that for US interests, specifically US allies like South Korea, Japan,

and Vietnam. I think that one indicator that we are already shifting to that multipolar world is the fact that, yes, we did a great job of like getting Europe on our side with regards to Ukraine. Rest of the world.

Global South was like, hey, we're just gonna we're gonna stay out of this, and we don't see this the way that y'all see this, and have really gone out of their way to maintain a sort of non alignment with regards to this conflict and see the conflict in totally different terms than the way that it is framed here.

We got a taste of that when the new Brazilian president, new and former Brazilian president Lula was in town and laid out the way that he viewed this and he actively said I want to stay neutral so that I could potentially play a role as a peacemaker and be part of the diplomatic process here. I think the real shot across the boll with regard to China in this was obviously the deal that they were able to strike

between Saudi in Iran. That was extraordinary. So yeah, there was not a lot to read going back to the specifics of this meeting in terms of the tea leaves of how they're thinking about the Ukrainian crisis and what role they may play there. There still continues to be reporting that she is expected to speak with Selenski. They put out that previous peace plan, but there was not a lot that was said about Ukraine publicly in terms

of this meeting. There were a couple things I wanted to highlight from the report that we put up earlier. One thing, the Foreign Ministry spokesperson for China told reporters that China will quote uphold its objective and fair position on the Ukrainian crisis and play a constructive role in promoting peace talks, whatever that means, just to give you

their line. But the other thing that I thought was really interesting is there have been all these reports in the US press that our intelligence officials believe China is contemplating sending lethal aid to Russia in support of their war in Ukraine. There was this line in this season. I've noted this in a couple places now that I

think is really important to highlight for you. They say, quote, US officials have picked up indications China is considering supplying Russia with weapons for its fight in Ukraine, but have seen no evidence they've actually done so. So I just want to put a little pin in that that I wouldn't necessarily take their word for it that they're totally

convinced that China is going to send these weapons. I think, you know, they're very interested in saying, Okay, China is on side of the bad guys here and so and there are opponent but the evidence that they're actually planning to send the weapons seems to be a little bit loosey goosey, in my opinion. I agree with you. I also, though, would dispute though that we've quote got in Europe on

our side. That may be rhetorically, but actually the NATO Secretary General just revealed yesterday only nine of the countries or nine of the some thirty or whatever countries they're inside of NATO even meet the two percent GDP alliance or two percent GDP spending. Germany has pledged it, however, they have still not gotten there. France is also pledging it. They have not gotten there. Britain is the only one that's there. In terms of their match of our at Ukraine,

it is currently still at the one fifteenth level. If you look at the total EU, it is still less than the United States. The only countries which do meet the percent GDP target are countries like Estonia, which is the size of like Rhode Island. So you know, I love that too. When everyone's like, what are you talking about? Estonia and the Latvian countries are standing up, I'm like, they are literally smaller than neighborhoods in the United States.

Like I'm sorry. In absolute terms, that means nothing. And whenever you look at the way the Europeans continue, in my opinion, to take us for a ride in NATO, it's like we are basically riding not only Ukraine, but all of them a blank check. Remember when the Germans wouldn't send those Leopard tanks unless we sent our weapons systems specifically, because they're like, no, we need to be protected by the US nuclear umbrella. There you go, That's

what it's all about. And guess what even the Ukrainians are like. They're not sending us all the aid that they promised while we are expediting our patriot missile systems to them. So it continues to be totally one hundred percent US led and the State Department coming out and trashing the Chinese plan is not representative of global public opinion and that is going to be a blow to the US should it try and make inroads, specifically diplomatic

ones all throughout the Asia Pacific. We've talked about this before. I talked about it with Treata Parsi. I can guarantee you in New Delhi they are pissed at the way that they have been treated on Ukraine. This is the world's largest democracy outside of China, one of the most populous nations in the world. GDP exploding, and if you have any hopes of maintaining power in the Asia Pacific, you of course the India to be one of your

closest allies. I'm not just saying this because I'm Indian, saying like I can read how these people are, how these people are behaving. Not only that the Japanese and the South Koreans. South Korea actually, especially Japan's Prime Minister kind of been wishy washing on Ukraine, but the US has been forcing him. He was just in Ukraine also as kind of a show that while Putin has hosting X, the Japanese PM is in Ukraine, but South Korea has

been You can go and read this. They have been backfilling all the defense capabilities that the US has stopped paying, largely because of Russian sanctions. They've also long been buying Iranian oil. In other words, they're in it for themselves. And you know, why shouldn't any nation be that. Vietnam as well Taiwan if you care about Taiwan. Taiwan behind the scenes is pissed about many of the weapons that

are going to Ukraine. A lot of their weapons buys have been cannibalized in terms of what can be sent to Ukraine. So there's a lot of reason for people in Asia to be skeptical of the US ability to quote walk and chew gum at the same time, mostly because we've literally haven't done that since World War Two. So there's anyway I think you can look at this in two different lenses. I would say it's a disaster, really,

and either one that you want. Even if you are one of these neoliberals who wants to support Ukraine and all this like, you have to admit that the nightmare of the uniting of two nuclear powers being in total lockstep and forging larger diplomatic relations in the interest of conquest is not good for global peace. So at a very basic level you would want to try and prevent this. Unfortunately, Washington has decided that Kiev is more important than any

of this, and who knows, you know. I hope that we don't pay the price, but unfortunately we probably will. I thought Doctor Parsi summed up the dynamic well. In sort of like the conclusion of his piece, he says, in tomorrow's world, we should not worry if some roads to peace go through Beijing, New Delhi or Brasilia, so long as all roads to war do not go through Washington,

which gets at this point. When we make ourselves effectively co combatants in a conflict, then of course it's going to make it very difficult to serve as an honest broker in terms of fostering any sort of diplomacy and trying to achieve any kind of peace. And that's why in a lot of ways, China is better positioned here to actually do something with regards to this conflict. Yeah,

of course they are. I've always thought that the Indians were too, and the resilience because they're looking at this like they have interest with both countries and both sides and could play some sort of broker if anything. Really, what the US should do is be calling New Delhi and being like, listen, we need you to do it. We need We don't want you to do it because if you don't step up, if Lula doesn't step up.

But instead, whenever it're on the phone to New Delhi, they're like, maybe, can you please stop buying Russian oil? And they're like, no, we're not going to start. Why don't we just move on past that? Why don't we get to the next place. But we're not interested in peace, And as long as that is the starting conversation with our Asian Pacific allies, they're going to continue to laugh at us, laugh all the way to the bank with their Russian oil and then also consider us unworthy and

untrustworthy allies and honestly, can you blame them? Yeah, you really can. All right, let's go into the next block, because I think this story is absolutely extraordinary and reveals how much personal relationships corrupt important journalism. Put this tear sheet up on the screen from NPR. This is quite a report. So their headline is the FBI rated a

notable journalist home. Rolling Stone did not tell readers why, and as I set up at the beginning of the show, we should actually covered this when it happened, because it was a crazy story. Rolling Stone got the scoop that this very well known national security reporter had the FBI raid his apartment building, and in the piece they really led you to believe that the reason probably had to do with his work so catered out he may have

had some classified documents on some of his devices. Obviously that's a huge deal because you're talking about, Okay, the Biden administration is rolling up on this important journalist, like what is going on here, Sager behind the scenes. His spidy senses immediately went up just because of the way this all went down, and also because some of the details, like for example, his employer ABC News didn't defend him. Okay, that was the real red flag. His publisher immediately drops

his book deal. And because of the show of force here, we didn't say it publicly because you don't want to just casually accuse someone having kiddy porn. But you were like, mmm, this kind of sounds like we may have. Yeah, it was that it was ABC not defending him. But also whenever they're like they seized a lot of his servers. I unfortunately, as I've said before, used to cover a lot of DOJ prosecutions, so I've read a lot of indictments. I know what the raids look like whenever they go in,

like against a terrorist. And unfortunately, I've also had to cover some cases where the FBI will storm in and take somebody's servers because they suspect them of being involved in the distribution of child pornography. And this looked like an open and shut child porn case like them all. As I was reading the deal again, I cannot save that up on the air. Yeah, because we're not like child We're not going to flow some groom around me anything about it. I was like, yeah, it really does

look like child porn, but you know, you never know. Yeah, lo and behold, it was child porn. So there you go. So the reporter on the story, a woman named Tatiana Siegel, who now has left Rolling Stone. It looks like because of this whole situation, she actually had the story. She had a source that said it looks like there was

a child sexual material that they were going after. She had lines in the piece to indicate that, and there was immediately a tension between her and Rolling Stone editor and chief Noah Shackman, by the way, she says, and I think colleagues around her said that normally he wouldn't get involved in editing her pieces to this level, but he right away is involved. Then she had a family emergency that pulled her off right before the piece is set to publish. That sort of pulled her off of it,

and he's like, don't worry, I got it. He stripped down any of the language indicating that this was anything other than having to do with his work. James Gordon Meek, by the way, is the name of the reporter, his work as a national security reporter, and again really splants the piece towards making you think like, oh, it's because

he's got classified documents or something like that. Well, lo and behold Shackman has multiple connections to this guy, a sort of personal professional relationship, you know, very like clubby kind of a situation. There. Also, Shackman's lawyer had called him directly, and this was another personal friend of Sorry James Gordon Meek's lawyer called Shackman. This was another personal

friend and personal connection here. And so it sure looks like they sandbagged this piece and pulled out the most critical part of the reporting in order to cover for this dude. And another outlet ultimately started really reporting this out and ended up getting the scope, so they lost really the story and they did some subsequent reporting, But just quite extraordinary to see the way that they apparently covered for this guy, especially given what he is accused

of because of personal and professional relationships. Yeah, I mean you're telling me Rolling Stone magazine would publish it a factual era I would never have look. As I said at the time, I was like, it's certainly extraordinary. The guy's done some important work. It would be in violation of a twenty twenty one Justice Department rule that says that you're not supposed to raid and seize the materials of journalists. I was like, it has to be clearly.

I mean, look, on the one hand, it was like it could have been something that genuinely was a violation national security related. On the other again, looking at the case, I was like, it does look a lot like how the FBI acts whenever they do a childborn raid. But the fact that they didn't put that in there, even though they had a direct source, and and if you look at all the details, Crystal, he didn't put a photo of the guy, right, he was like, no, let's put a photo of the FBI and not of the

photo of the reporter. He's basically covering him for him from day one, and then it comes out later on that it was child porn related the entire time. Yeah, it's like, you can't do that. You're basically stoking conspiracy like conspiracy connections, maybe even rightfully, right if you don't know the details. And they never intimated that they had

any idea what the connection was. When they actually did so, it was a huge disservice not only to their readers but to everybody, and rightfully, I think exploited people's fears about press freedom who were on alert, people like us, when if you know, if we had known or if others had known, it would have been a totally different story. Absolutely, And just to give you some of the horrifying details of the type of individual that he was covering for.

On February first, the Justice Department unveiled criminal charges against Mek related to images of child sexual abuse, among other accusations. Authorities say Meek shared a video showing the rape of an infant. That's who you're covering for. He and I is wrongdoing, not guilty, et cetera. He's sitting in federal potastudy right now, a waiting trial. That's who you covered for. Disgusting.

I don't even have words for that one. Yeah. Look And also another thing I know from covering a lot of those cases, they only raide your house if not only do you have a lot of that material, but you're one of those people, one of those sick freaks who like sells it on the dark web, like they only really their strategy, I think correct, is they go after people who have some of the most heinous material,

people also who are distributors. A lot of these freaks they like traded amongst each other and they like sell it, you know, and they get connected with brokers and stuff in Eastern Europe and also it's repulsive sick system and anyway, those are the top targets for the FBI, So that was another reason why looking at it, I was like, man, they really only raid your house and they make you a top priority if they identify you as like high up in the distribution ring of material like this, So

whatever app look allegedly all of that, although if convicted, he'll rotten jail for the rest of his life, rightfully, so in data All right, sorry, what are you looking at it? Well? One of the most important First Amendment cases in the country is one that you may not have ever heard of. It's the case of Douglas Mackie. He's a former right wing Twitter user charged by the Biden DOJ just merely days after assuming office in twenty twenty one. That is going to trial as we speak.

The details of the case are staggering in their importance to setting a precedent on limits of online speech, how to interpret satire, and if convicted, will make speaking online a much more dangerous endeavor. Let's review. Mackie was charged

exactly one week into the Biden presidency. The Biden DOJ alleges to Macki, through his Twitter account of fifty eight thousand followers, conspired with to disseminate fraudulent messages designed to encourage supporters of Hillary Clinton to vote via text or social media. The one tweet that the government seems fixated on is a November one, twenty sixteen, tweet, in which Mackie tweeted an image directed at black voters with instructions

on how to allegedly vote for Hillary by text. The government alleges that some forty nine hundred people eventually call the phone number, and thus are charging Mackie with depriving individuals of their right to vote. But what is Mackie's side of the story. Basically, it amounts to being a young male on the internet. Mackie was a Middlebury College

trained economist who was bored at his job. He had an anonymous Twitter account which he spent way too much time on, and the trial reveals he was basically obsessed with going viral. Key to the case, though, is his messages. He consistently described the images that he was spreading his means, and that he and other friends laughed at tricking quote

dopey liberals. Mackie's defense has maintained from the beginning, it is quote highly unlikely that memes actually fooled any voters, and that even if they did, any harm is quote far outweighed by the chilling of the marketplace of ideas, where consumers can assess the value of political expression as provocation, satire, commentary, or otherwise. Obviously, to me, Mackie's defense is correct. Shit

postings should not be illegal. By this definition. The TikTok trolls who signed up hundreds of thousands of people to attend a Trump rally in Oklahoma in the middle of twenty twenty should also be guilty of election interference. Obviously, that would be insane. As long as we have pseudonymity on the Internet, we will have pranks that, yes, sometimes

have real world consequences. But having the full force of the federal government go after you for it, especially in this case years later in defense of Hillary, is chilling to free speech. Unfortunately, the judge did not agree. He allowed the case to proceed, and the judge wrote that Mackie's indictment does not violate the First Amendment because although the case does involve false utterances, it also is at

its core about conspiracy and injury, not about speech. Thus, the judge effectively disregarded the first amendment of jehos into prosecution, allowing it to go forward in a jury trial. The trial itself actually began yesterday, and given that it's being held in Manhattan, good luck to any Trump supporting guy with a jury there. But that is part of the problem. Who he supports and who he was tweeting about really

should not matter at all. At the end of the day, people, we are talking about a freaking Twitter account with fifty eight thousand followers that may and again may, because there is no way to prove how many people took this seriously,

may have confused five thousand people. Furthermore, beyond speech protection, if you are so stupid to believe that US law miraculously changed and you think you can vote by texts, would you really have dragged yourself to a voting booth on the day in first place, Or maybe they knew it was a joke and texted obscenities to that number. Literally, there is no way to know the actual harm here

at most is five thousand people. Frankly, is nothing amongst the one hundred and thirty nine billion people who voted in twenty sixteen, and the consequences of conviction are immense, but actually even greater in their impact than one hundred and thirty nine people, because thirty nine million people, because it would affect almost anyone who uses the internet. People say stuff on the Internet they don't mean all the time.

If the government wins this case, it will pay the way for direct government standards of quote election disinformation, which not only they can take down, but they can throw you in federal prison for this means everything, including jokes which may may again discourage voting, can get you indicted. People joke and say, seriously all the time, it's not even worth voting because the same thing happens all the

time with that qualify. And if you think I'm being hyperbolic, think of the Twitter files and what Matt Tyee discovered. FBI agents whose salaries we are paying, we're spending their time flagging moronic and tiny Twitter accounts joking, including one who said I am a ballot counter in my state. If you're not wearing a mask, I'm not counting your vote, saying that every negative comment on the post you would

add another vote for the Democratic Party. Another example is a low follower user who tweeted out quote I want to remind Republicans to vote tomorrow, then included the wrong date. Again. This was flagged by FBI agents who wanted Twitter to take it down. It had three retweets. Under the standard though of potential market conviction, they could claim anyone who saw that tweet and misinterpreted it could have had their

civil rights violated. That too, is what angers me. This whole proceeding is making a mockery of civil rights law. The law was written into place to stop literal KKK terrorists from standing in the door of the courthouse and to dismantle Jim Crow not to go after shit posting economists board at work who are posting memes. The long arm of the federal government is disregarding humor to directly target those who dared to go after the anointed Hillary Clinton. Worse,

it perpetuates something that Democrats cannot accept. Hillary loss, fair and square, guys, she just sucked. Get over it. It wasn't Doug Douglas Mackie's fault, and it wasn't Russia's. It was a cold blood that ran through her veins and the reek of corruption which people all over this country can smell that's what did her in. Nothing else, especially not means I mean, can you even believe this case? No?

And if you want to hear my reaction to Sager's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at Breakingpoints dot com, Bristol, what are you taking a look at? Well, guys. President Biden issue the first veto of his presidency this week, blocking legislation that would have blocked the ability of retirement funds to consider so called ESG in their investment decision. So ESG, if you don't know, stands for environmental, social

and governance. It has become a real focus of the right as more investment funds and companies pledged to consider these factors in their decision making. It's part of a new push for what's called stakeholder capitalism over the post nineteen seventies focus on shareholder capitalism. So shareholder capitalism was actually a radical notion when it was introduced. It's the philosophy that public corporations should be run solely for the

benefit of shareholder return. In theory, stakeholder capitalism is meant to return to older traditions of public corporations which considered a wide range of interest from different stakeholders, not only investor return. So if done well, I think that could be an improvement from the short term profit driven status quo. But it completely fails an execution. These efforts have amounted to little more than corporate virtue signaling, identity posturing, and greenwashing.

They're an attempt to convince legislators and the public they don't need more regulation, they don't need higher taxes, they don't really need for the government to govern at all. Corporate American partnership with Wall Street, we got this, guys. We believe in good things too, So just let us handle the details of how to make the world a better place here. But for a lot of conservatives, ESG isn't just another capitalist virtue signal. It's an actual attempt

to remake the world through diversity initiatives and green investments. Now, in order to stealman this worldview, I want to play a bit a presdential contender Vivek Ramaswami's recent interview with Jordan Peterson. Now, vivec really became a fixture in conservative media through his critique of ESG. He's been a true thought leader in this space, and he's done more than

just critique. He also started Strive Fund. It's made large investments in large public companies with the intent of pushing them off of any ESG goals and back to the profit maximizing shareholder value. Here's how Vivek describes the birth of ESG. Take a listen. What this whole game is about is using private power, using capital markets to accomplish through the back door what government could not get done

through the front door under the constitution. So the essence of the ESG movement is what it does is it uses the money of everyday citizens Americans, but Canadians too,

Australians and Western Europeans. It uses the money of everyday citizens to invest in companies and to vote their shares in ways that advance one sided progressive agendas, environmental and social agendas that most of those people do not agree with, that most of those people did not know were actually being advanced with their own money, and which don't advance the financial best interests of most people whose money's actually used.

So what does that mean to think about yourself saving and a tirement account or a four toh one K account or a brokerage account. You think that the person who's managing that money is exclusively looking after your best financial interests, it turns out they're not. They're also looking

after advancing these other environmental and social goals. Who are these institutions their asset management firms like black Rock or State Street or Vanguard or Investco or countless others that have signed a pledge to say that they're going to align all of their underlying companies with the goals of the Paris Climate accordance, with net zero standards by twenty fifty,

with modern diversity, equity and inclusion standards. And those three or four firms alone manage about twenty trillion dollars, maybe even a little bit more. That's more than the US GDP right now in the hands of three to four financial institutions. So Vivek defines their ESG as quote using capital markets to accomplish through the back door what government could not get done through the front door under the constitution. Goes on to talk, as you heard about the power

money held by just a handful of institutions. And on this point I actually completely agree, because while corporations in Wall Street may pay lift service to a goal that I support, which is dealing with the climate right. I am under no illusion that these are actually my allies on this or any other issue. The answer to the problem of corporateocracy lies in checking corporate power through unions, through trustbusting, regulation, taxation, getting money out of politics. But

these are not actually Vivek's preferred solutions. Instead, he established an anti ESG fund, which seeks to use the very same tactics that he objects to when deployed by ESG types, to try to coerce corporations into behaving in the way he wants them to behave. So it's not so much that he opposes corporate power, just corporate power being used

for things that he doesn't like. In addition, Vivek asserts that the public does not support the goals of ESG, hence the notion repeated by others that this is forcing changes on the American public that they do not want. So let's examine that now. On social justice, I think it really depends on what you mean how you ask the question. Majorities of Americans of all races do say

systemic racism is real. Even among white Americans, only twenty nine percent disagreed with that statement, But if you ask about some of the goofy so oh it's racist stuff that's pushed by DEI consultants, I could easily imagine very different responses here. However, when it comes to environmental concerns, the polling is actually a lot more clear. Polls consistently show large majorities of Americans, including a majority of Republicans,

support transitioning away from fossil fuels. Even voters in famously pro coal West Virginia support making this transition and using federal dollars to do so so. In this particular survey, they found West Virginians are supporting green energy spending by the federal government by a fifteen point margin, so it's not even particularly close. So when Viveck and others claim that capital is sneaking in an agenda they can't win through democratic means, they actually have the failure of democracy

completely backwards. The public has seen their desires blocked by anti democratic means from achieving the clean energy policies they would like to see enact it now, the reason Congress hasn't done more has nothing to do with public will

and everything to do again with big money. There are a lot of people making a lot of money off of maintaining the current fossil fuel based ECONO, Big Oil Coke Network and others have flooded the campaign coffers of key legislators to try to prevent the action that the

public actually desires. But while Vivek uses the language of democracy to explain his opposition to ESG, there's no sign he's actually interested in making legislatives more responsive to the people, at least not on issues where he disagrees with that majority sentiment. In fact, he's quite derisive about the activists and citizens who are concerned about the climate crisis and

think it worthy of action. He dismisses them in a monoloth in this monolith, in this interview, in others, as quote climatists who have foolishly adopted concern for the environment as a sort of pseudo religion because their lives are otherwise devoid of meaning. Now, listen, I don't doubt that people find deep satisfaction in doing work or activism that they find meaningful. There's nothing nefarious about that. But there's

also a much simpler story here. A lot of people are just genuinely concerned by the mountain of evidence that the climate crisis is bringing more droughts, floods, hurricanes, and wildfires, and now the results will be quite bad if we don't deal with that. In fact, they are already quite bad, and that increasingly we actually have the tools to be able to tackle that crisis. So the truth is, while the VEC has a clever intellectual pitch that he makes here,

what he's doing is not really anything new. He opposes action on climate by business, and he opposes action on climate by the government. All the rhetorical nods to corporate powered democracy can get in the way of seeing that he has the same position as every other climate dey are out there. Opposing ESG is appealing because it has the esthetics of being against the system, sticking it to

corporate America. But in reality his efforts they're a giant gift to big oil, to the coke network, to quite a few by the way of those Davos elites that he rails against. Joe Biden just greenlit the Giant Willow project for Connaco Phillips. Is he an anti establishment renegade taking on the system. I hardly think so. There's another part of this interview though, that I think is important

on the social justice piece of ESG. Listen to the vex's telling of the birth of the ESG movement and its alliance with what he and Peterson describe as the radical left. Take a lesson. The left actually had a point in this country. Occupy Wall Street was born. And what they said is, look, if you're going to play that crony capitalist game, then you know what we're going

to play our game. We're just going to take money from your wealthy, corporate fat cat pockets and redistribute it to poor people to help poor people, because that's what we on the far left want to do on the Occupy Wall Street movement. But right around that time, there was a fissure in the left wing movement in this country where there was the birth of this new let's call it the woke left. Barack Obama had just been

elected the first black president the United States. There was a lot of cultural currents in the US that said, well, wait a minute, there, the real problem isn't quite economic injustice or poverty. It's really racial injustice and misogyny and bigotry. And by the way, climate change. And this is post al Gore's inconvenient truth This actually presented the opportunity of a generation for Wall Street to say that no, no no, no, okay, guys,

we'll make a deal with you. We will use our corporate power, use our money, really your money, to applaud diversity and inclusion, to put token minorities on corporate boards, to muse about this racially disparate impact of climate change from the mountaintops of Davos, after flying there in a private jet. We'll do all of these things, but we don't do it for free. We expect the new left to look the other way when it comes to leaving

our corporate power intact. And so they defanged Occupy Wall Street. Most people don't even remember what Occupy Wall Street is. It went by the wayside, and that's how the birth of this new what I've sometimes called woke industrial or est industrial complex was born, where Wall Street said that you know what, if you can't beat us, join us. This is a nice story, but it's not remotely what happened. Even Jordan Peterson expresses some skepticism of this fairy tale.

First of all, the Occupy movement, it didn't just go by the wayside. Key organizers from Occupy were involved in drafting and supporting Bernie Sanders for president. You might recall that Bernie carried a strong message about the ninety nine percent versus the millionaires and billionaires, and would have been president had he not had the nomination stolen by the Democratic establishment led by Hillary Clinton. It was not Bernie and the Occupy offshoots that abandoned the bank and class

focused critique of power. It was Hillary Clinton and the neoliberals who relentlessly club Bernie and his supporters as quote unquote class reductionists. Remember when she harangued the left because breaking up the big banks wouldn't end sexism and racism. So there is in fact an unholy alliance here, but it's the polar opposite of what Vivec postulates. Neoliberals led by Hillary Clinton, who had long been in bed with

Wall Street and corporate America. This was nothing new invented the ungodly counterproductive politics of personal identity and virtue signaling, and that is the context in which ESG emerges as a way for corporations to signal to gullible, confused, mostly affluent liberals that they are actually the good guys here, and as a way for Hillary Clinton to try to claim progressive cred even as her record was regressive and terrible.

The actual left was smeared relentlessly with this toxic mode of politics, I can promise you that, and many did ultimately submit to it. Even Bernie made sure to include a lot more language of the identity politics left in his twenty twenty four run, even though of course his

core policy commitments did remain the same. The irony ofs Vivek admits that funds like Blackrock are hypocritical in their stated environmentalism, so he, on the one hand, will acknowledge they aren't even really doing the thing that they claim

to be doing. But on the other hand, he posits that ESG represents some fundamental restructuring of the economy that must be stopped at all costs, again not by checking corporate power, but by backing the corporations which support his preferred ideology and forcing other ESG backing corporations to abandon their fake goals. Now, this confusion could stem from his misunderstanding of the history here. If this is truly a left align movement, maybe it would have had some teeth.

Since it's just warmed over neoliberalism. It definitely doesn't. It's just standard cutthroat capitalism with a new fake label on top of it. So if you want the fossil fuel status quota continue, don't worry. Fellis studies have consistently found ESG portfolios they actually have worse environmental records than non ESG companies. That's how fake this whole thing is. There are new numbers out though, that show that forty three thousand Somalians died due to a drought caused by famine

last year, a majority of them children under five. Now, look, the climate skeptics worry that the transition from fossil fuels to renewables could impose a terrible cost in the world in terms of food prices and energy prices, especially among the global South. Those are real fears, and they are, by the way, something that climate activists concern themselves with a great deal. But the cost of doing nothing, they're already here, and they're being borne overwhelmingly by the poorest

nations and the poorest people. So if you think just staying the course or doubling down on fossil fuels is the way to go, look, honestly, I think you're wrong, but it is a democracy, Go out and make your case, but don't try to hide behind tortured arguments about corporate power and the woke left. They're really just a smoke

screen for opposition to all climate action wherever it comes from. Honestly, I sort of miss the old days when people just be upfront in their climate denihilism, because at least that was honest, and that, to me is the irony. I also have an ESG critique, which is that it is all Sager fake And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at Breakingpoints dot com. Joining us now is David Thibodeau. He's

a survivor of the Way Go stand off. He's also the author of a survivor's story, Let's go and put this up there on the screen Waco, a survivor story, which was later made into that excellent TV mini series. It's a book that I have read Crystal as well. It's fantastic, thrown incredibly detailed. It is not biased really in any way, and just goes through who David Thibodeau is, the story of his interactions with David Koresh and then a step by step account of exactly what happened during

that siege. David, we found out you were a fan of the show, I said, we got to get this guy on. So thank you very much for joining us. We appreciate it. It's such a pleasure in the honor to be here. Really, I really am a big fan

of the show, Absolutely so, David. One of the things I thought was really important about your book is it was a dispassionate view and a step by step case not only of what happened at the compound the events that led up to it, but eventually many of the dismantling the mainstream media's coverage of the FBI, the ATF and the actions that they took on the initial raid. A lot of this is also coming under scrutiny now. Were in the thirty year anniversary. There's a new Netflix documentary.

You and I were talking a little bit before this, the three of us about some of the inaccuracies and others broadly, though thirty years later, people my age, you know, we didn't grow up with Waco. It's kind of a distant memory. Can you just describe for people what happened to you and to the branch Davidians on that day

while you were inside the compound. The events that lead led up to it, what eventually led to the standoff, Yeah, sure, Well, you know, the first day this actually started, I had been there for a year living on the property, and we took all the little houses down there, a bunch

of little houses. We built that big house. And the course of the year that I was there, Cresh had met someone named Henry McMahon who was a licensed firearm dealer, and Henry kind of showed him the ropes and a couple of the guys the ropes of the gun business. They started going to, you know, all kinds of gun shows and finding out that they could make quite a good profit, especially at the time Congress was passing a bill that was going to make certain munition very valuable.

So they started to get into the business of things. And before a couple of people that had firearms, but it wasn't a huge deal that it kind of became that last year, so it ramped up pretty quickly. But you know, living there, we would see helicopters fly around the building, and we'd see people taking pictures of us and stuff like that. So, you know, we knew that something something was afoot. Then these two guys claiming that they were college students. The two or three guys moved

in across the street. They started, you know, they didn't move in in a furniture or anything. They moved in equipment cases, right, things like that. So, yeah, they were in their mid thirties. They seemed to have you know, the hat Serengetti sunglasses, they had really nice SUVs. It didn't really fit the mold of a bunch of college guys living next door. So pretty suspicious. But to me, I just want to get right to The Waco Tribune

Herald did a series called the Sinful Messiah Series. It was an investigative journalism, that's what they called it, anyway, And they put that out the day before the BATF four two raid the building with the helicopters in the back and the two cattle trailers with the seventy five agents.

And you know, how irresponsible for them to put that article out, And just the fact they didn't work with the with the authorities at all and just did that out of their own arrogance really shows that some of the journals at that time definitely have blood on their hands, as well as the commanders at the ATF who planned this raid. They lost the element of surprise. They should have stopped right there. Frankly, if they thought David was such a criminal, they had so much evidence against them.

I don't understand why they didn't just get him jogging in front of their surveillance house, or David had taken them to a firing range and shot with them. So they kept saying how they were scared that Kresh was going to shoot them at any minute, but they hung out and they went off site with David. So that didn't really make a lot of sense to me. You know, the whole thing could have been avoided, should have been avoided,

and David should have had his time in court. Yeah, well, let's talk a little bit more about David, because I certainly don't want to whitewash. I mean, this is a man who was sleeping with very young girls. But what they came in on was actually firearms charges, so I think it's important to note here as well. But you know, you obviously found him to be incredibly compelling enough to completely upend your life and you know, swear off sex

and go live in this compound. What was it that you found so compelling, especially given and your mom, you know, seems to be a real force. She was like completely opposed to this, and you were close to her, like what led you to this place? And swear sex. I was trying to be a little more spiritual for that couple of years. So let's say that at least you're honest. But you know, my mother is very much a oh boy,

my mother is very much a goddess culture individual. So you know, I knew when it came to scripture, she wasn't going to be down at all with anything. And it could have been you know, it could have been any preacher whatsoever. She just wasn't going to be done with that. So I just tried to keep her out of the equation as much as possible. And I just wanted to know what the Bible really said because I

am stupidly curious like that. I would watch the TV preachers on Sunday and knew that they were just about the money. That that obviously wasn't anything to me. My father's a history teacher, I retired, so to me, the history of the Scripture, Okay, so much blood is so much violence, different ways of thought the battles, the that have happened over the centuries over this book. Some people faced the lions in the Roman Colosseum and died as Christians.

Early on, there were I mean just just so much passion over this book. Why what is it? You know, at the time we used to swear on the Bible in court or in school, we had to say there was a time when you said that the Pledge of allegiance every day and these things had reverence, and I just wondered about I wanted to know what it really said. And this guy made it come alive. David Koresh when he gave a study from Genesis to Revelation is if he lived it. That's That's the simplest, best way I

can describe it. And so it was fascinating to see. It was fascinating to watch, and you just wanted to learn more. The more I learned, the more I wanted to learn, and the more I became involved. Yeah, well I am again I encourage people to read the book. Is a very detailed acount that goes into it. And to me, you know, again, as Chrystl said, I'm not

going to co sign. You know, certainly think that a lot of what was going on, which you are honest also about in the book, was absolutely should be condemned. But if we take a step back and look at this just from a law enforcement respective, and that's kind of what I want to focus on, is the actions of the ATF in the initial raid. They lay out a case in which they were being fired on by

fifty caliber weapons. They were being fired on with automatic weapons that you guys had one point six million rounds of ammunition, that the branch Davidians unequivocally were the ones who fought, who fired first. You lay out and break

down many of these claims in your book. Can you just go through some of the initial claims on the first ones as to why violence occurred on the day of the initial raid in February, Sure, Rake before when we could hear the helicopters in the background, and there were a bunch of doors were slamming, and I could hear I could hear all these things going on, and

David give him to the top of the stairs. I was in the cafeteria and there heard a couple guys with him, and he says, they're coming, They're on their way. Don't anybody do anything stupid, I'm going to go try to talk to him. So he went to the front and everybody that was at the front door tells me the same story, Jamie Cassillo to Greg. A lot of these people told me the same story. And that was the day went to the door. He had it in his hand, he said, hold on, there's women and children here,

let's talk about this. And the door flew back in his hand from the velocity of bullets hitting it. Kerry Jones, who was his father in law, seventy year old man got hit in the stomach and went down screaming, and that's when some of the people started firing back. Now, we did a lot of research for the book, and I learned actually a lot of things I didn't know from just being a witness and being there, from the

research we had done. And you know, one of the things was that some of the trial testimony in San Antonio indicated that some of the first shots were fired. One guy said he was reaching for his firearm and it went off, and he believed he was the one that fired the first shot one atf agent. That testimony was recanted later when it came to for him his testimony in front of Congress. That happened a couple times

where their testimonies were recanted. The team that went to suppress quote unquote the dogs or shoot the dogs because we had five Alaskan Malamutes and penned up area. They shot the dogs first thing and just murdered them. Some of the trial testimony indicated that those were the first shots being shot at the dogs. Now, one of the issues that I have and in one of the books that I'm not gonna I'm not gonna name the name of the book because I don't want you to buy

it because it's complete property. Well, it's propaganda. He names the ATF agent that was supposed to go at the dogs with a fire extinguisher, as if to suppress the dogs with the fire extinguisher. That's something they put in their movie Ambush at Waco, which I found to be a propaganda film completely. It was one of the first movies to come out. Even the writer of that movie has disowned it and apologized to the survivors because he was just giving all of the information from the ATFN

wrote that film. Long story short, In that film, they show an agent going at the dogs with the fire extinguisher. They didn't have fire extinguishers. They shot the dogs first thing. So for them to continue to perpetrate this propaganda thirty years later personally very offensive. Yeah. Well, I mean putting David Krush aside. You're talking about seventy six branch Davidians, including twenty five children, two pregnant women, who were all killed here. And I think the point that you make

about how this was avoidable. I mean every accounting that I've watched of this, the ones that are you know, seem to be more accurate and fair. The ones that are less fair. I'm just watching the whole time going what the hell are you fitting? Like? Why are you doing this? You know there are scores of completely innocent people in this building. What are you doing? So? I guess that's my question to you. Why do you think

that they move forward with this plan? Why didn't they just arrest David when he was out jogging or try to go about that. I mean, they brought in tanks and hal it was insane. Why do they do this? Speaking as someone who is in that building instead with David for a couple of years, everyone who' survived that

will tell you it's a spiritual thing. They will tell you that David really did have some kind of message, that he did have some kind of understanding, and as crazy as they made him out to be, I understand all that. Man. If I were on the outside, I would have been the first person saying those people are nuts. I really would have. But I was there, so I saw this different side. You know, I look at it

as a spiritual thing. But it's also the incredible arrogance of the ATF and the FBI during the course of the fifty one day stiege that helped make the Bible come alive, because when you're reading the scripture, the people have God to contrite and humble and it's the forces of bad I hate to use these terms of the forces of Babylon, if you will, or the forces of power very arrogant, and that's how we view these people all the way through, Like they would get on the

tanks and moon us and flip us off. And you know, there are periods of time during the siege where people would exit the building and a flash bangrenade would be thrown at them. It seemed like they were always trying to get us to shoot at them. Somehow they were

always trying to make a you know, be aggressive. Yeah, it was crazy to me, you know, reading as you said as Chrys was laying out, I mean not only like the perimeter, the destruction of property, using the tanks, playing the music, the level of torture, and again, like let's be honest, David did renag on his deal in order to get everybody out of the compound and let

this thing go on. So like, I'm not saying that there wasn't blame on both sides, but at the same time, like you don't import use tanks, insert gas into a building. That was another one there, David, which we have to talk a little bit about as well, which is that the ATF, the FBI, and all others maintained that the Branch Davidians are the ones who committed a tragic mass suicide and set fire to the building. What evidence is there for and against that? Sure, you know, I want

to speak to what you said there about David. There were huge mistakes made on both sides. You know, David had his periods of time where he was arrogant, he was angry and obviously was not thinking clearly. While they had the speaker system going twenty four to seven. You got a bunch of people, you say, religious fanatics, and you're going to keep speaker system on them and play at twenty four to seven to make them crazier. That

makes no sense to me whatsoever. Like they're gonna make like people are gonna make rational decisions under those circumstances. It's just not going to happen. But I would like to talk about the CS gas that they use. CS gas is it's banned under the Amnesty International Geneva Convention. We can't use it against we can't use it against foreign forces. It's a riot control agent. In the in the actual manufacturer's booklet, it says only to be used outdoors,

never indoors. It's especially it could be harmful to children, older people with smaller respiratory tracks. This is the gas that they chose to use, a gas that is banned internationally. Not only that, but the delivery method when you're using the ferret rounds. Myth of the csgas is methylene chloride, which is one of the ingredients that's used in paint thinner, something that is actually mildly flammable. So they were using the csgas thing it's not flammable whatsoever. But the amount

that they used was absolutely incredible. I think it was four hundred or three hundred and eighty eight ferret rounds before they exhausted their supply. And this is supposed to be over two days. They exhausted their supply by ten am, and then they started to use the tanks to come in take out sections of the building and spray the gas in. Now, when they took out the sections of the building, they created these huge holes in the building. If you talk to anyone that is a firefighter or

a fire marshal, that's an oxygen flow system. If you look at an aerial of the building, you can see the tanks have made a fire break around it. There is nothing that will burn around that building. I can't say that's a coincidence, man. I mean, you know, when you put it all together, it looks pretty in a fair to me. Yeah, unbelievable. Well, David, thank you so

much for taking some time to talk to us. We really recommend people read the whole book, yes, because I do think it comes across as very unvarnished both you know, your own self reflection about your journey to that compound what happened on that day, the ways that the official narrative are just you know, it was just completely false in certain respects. So thank you so much for taking some time with us. Thank you David, thank you for having me. I really appreciate your time today. It's our

pleasure absolutely. Thank you guys so much for watching. We really appreciate it. Reminder you can watch the full show on Spotify for premium members Breakingpoints dot Com to go ahead and sign up. We've got we're on standby this weekend just in case, you know, I never know, in some sort of indictment and all that, we're always on top of it for everybody. Otherwise, we will see you all on Monday. As I said, I'm going to be in New York City, but I'll be coming in remote.

Crystal's going on Russell Brand, I'm going on the Andrew Sheltz Show. So we're all going to have a hell of a lot of fun. All right, We'll see you later. APO