3/27/23: Trump's Wild Rally In Waco, Krystal and Saagar Debate TikTok Ban, Biden Bombs Syria, Putin Deploying Nukes In Belarus, Malcolm Nance Ukraine War Grifter, ESG Green Energy Scam, Tim Urban New Book

Happy Monday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. When do we have Crystal? Indeed, we do lots of big stories breaking this morning. We are still on Trump indictment watch. That could come potentially at any time, so we will keep an eye on that. Also, this comes as he just had his first official big rally. It was in an unusual notable place, Waco, Texas. We'll dig

into all of that. We're also going to dig into the debate over banning TikTok, some interesting reactions, some interesting videos to show you from the congressional hearings around that Putin is announcing that he is moving tactical nukes into Belarus. What will that mean? What are the dangers there? Also the US with new airstrikes in Syria. What the hell are we even doing in Syria at this point? Great question.

We can dive into that as well. And a new report about all of the grifters from the US who have flocked to Ukraine, including one Malcolm Nance. Also very excited to talk to Tim Urban on the show today. He's out with a book called What's Our Problem that has gotten a lot of attention that I know many of you have been really interested in as well. Yeah, that's right, and don't forget We've got the premium show on Spotify. I know a lot of you guys have

been taking advantage of that. So at Breakingpoints dot Com you can watch the full premium show there on Spotify. We are reducing the lag time and all of that as best as we possibly can. Shout out to the team at Supercast and at Spotify for supporting us. I know that they want us to build an awesome alternative so that you can have and watch the show anywhere that you want. So there you go, Breakingpoints dot Com

for premium. And one last thing before we dive into the show, Sagawater and to tell the people why you're not in the studio today. Yes, that's right, Today's kind of a promotion day for breaking Points Crystals on Russell Brand's show. I'm going on the Flagrant podcast. So I'm here in New York City. I can offer a little bit of eyewitness accounts about the security situation in midtown Manhattan whenever we talk about the possible Trump indictment block and all of that. So I'm on the ground for

you folks. But more importantly, Crystal and I are getting out there and making sure that people can hear the awesome news about what we're doing here and bringing people the news. There you go. I'm sure it's going to be a great podcast. I can't wait to watch it myself. All right, let's get to the news here. Big Trump rally over the weekend, as I said, happening in Waco, Texas, at the same time that we're right in the middle

of the thirtieth anniversary of the Siege of Waco. So a lot of people drawing the parallels with Trump trying to make a point about government overreach and persecution, just as of course it was outrageous government overreach and persecution thirty years ago. Some pretty wild sounds coming out of that rally. That's start with potentially the wildest moment, which was Ted Nugent calling Zelensky some names. Let's take a

listen to that. I want my money back. I did not authorize any money to Ukraine to some homosexual weight weirdo. I want my money back. What you think of that one, Sagar? Yeah, I mean, you know, I'm against a lot of additional a t Ukraine. I'm definitely skeptical of Celenski, but in terms of ad hominem attacks and all that, it doesn't seem like this one, is it. If anything, Ten, I think you're not doing the skeptical case for Ukraine aid

any favors by acting as well. Yes, fair, Yeah, And also it's such a throwback to like, you know, twenty years ago or thirty years ago, to just be like call people gay as some sort of a slur. Anyway, that was Ted Nugent. How things got kicked off. But you know a lot of people were watching the rally speech from Trump himself to see exactly what he would say about his own potential prosecution and indictment and also

about his potential opponent here, Ron DeSantis. Let's take a listen to Trump going in on DeSantis, and also the crowd reaction, which was interesting as well. Take a listen. When a man comes to me, tears in his eyes. He said, almost nothing in the palls, and he's fighting somebody that said forty two and he's got almost thirty million dollars in the bank. He said, almost nothing. He's got no cash. And I said, I can't give you an endorsement. There's no way you can win. You're dead.

But he fought a little bit, like one hundred and fifty who certainly know Jim Jordan that I can tell you. He fought a little bit, just a little bit on impeachment hoax number one, impeachment hoaks number two, meaning on television. Because I didn't know him very well, but I saw him. So he came and he really wanted I said, you can't win. Can you how he can win? Sir? If you endorse me, I'll win. Please, please, sir, endorse me. I said, let's give it a shot. Ron and I

endorsed him, and he became like a rocket ship. Within one day, the race was over. He got denomination. Now he's been telling this story about Rond de Santis for a while. Now it seems to get more and more over the top every time he tells that the tears were streaming from his eyes. The crowd is kind of quiet. They did chuckle like, kind of in spite of themselves at one point when he was talking about the whole

endorsement situation. Certainly not the same as the way he would get the crowd going with his attacks on Hillary. But you know, they stand there and they listen to it, and I think it shows once again, Sager, that while he is out there, you know, saying whatever he wants about Rond de Santis, DeSantis is kind of, you know, take a little jab here or there, but really not anywhere near in the fight the way the Trump is well, didn't you hear, Crystal is silly season. It's a ficial

and that's what this is. Look I mean, in terms of the crowd reaction, Ron DeSantis is still viewed fondly amongst many Republicans. Nobody hates Rond de Santis, even in the way that many people came to hate Ted Cruz. However,

that came after a prolonged battle. Wei should also remember Ted did come in second in the GOP primary, and there was a significant amount of overlap between Ted Cruz voters and Trump voters that ultimately sealed the deal for Trump with the primary, and of course all of them showed up to vote for him in twenty sixteen. So I would not take a lot of this crowd reaction. The fact that they didn't boo is probable and are really just willing to sit there and let kind of

Trump air his grievances. I think that is still a potent symbol. And look, we can just all we need to do is state take a step back, look at the polling. GOP. National polling across the board has been terrible for Ron DeSantis. DeSantis's allies are out, you know, with recent like head to head poles which show him either tied in some of the early states. I actually find that kind of nefarious for a couple of reasons, which is, since when did can we imagine this was

going to be a head to head race? Like you can't say, well, head to head, you know, I'm tied with this person, but okay, that's great, but you know, head to head, Ted Cruz would have beat Trump in Iowa and in New Hampshire, but it wasn't head to head because there are multiple other candidates in the race, and there are already multiple other candidates here in the race. So look, the strategy is working. He's locking his people down.

Overall GOP national polls are not very good for Ron DeSantis, the fact that people are willing to sit through them, and you know, you can't deny from Trump's position, the reason that he's doing this is to show what the power dynamic is. He's like, no, you serve me, not the other way around. You can't be my successor if I'm the one who's in the race and I'm the

one who anointed you. I've told you in the audience before I interviewed Trump right after the twenty eighteen elections, was one of the first people to actually interview him about his midterm performance, the very first, even though it was a disaster for him, of course, but guess what, even then in twenty eighteen, he said, look at this guy, Ron DeSantis, he was nothing. I endorsed him. He shot up. This has been deep in his mind now for years.

So I mean that was almost four or five years ago. Well, you're one hundred percent correct that it's all about the power dynamic. I mean to show him you know, the way that Trump paints it as DeSantis is practically they're groveling with tears streaming down his face, and he knows he's nothing without me. It's an absolute sort of like alpha power move. And DeSantis basically has decided and I'm not sure this is even the wrong choice to effectively

take it. And you know, I've been thinking a lot about this saga because like, okay, what would be a better strategy for him? And I'm not sure that there is one, because it's not like DeSantis can compete with Trump on this terrain. It's not like everybody who tried to get down in the mud with Trump in twenty

sixteen ended up just getting instantly obliterated. So probably his best option is what he's doing, which is to kind of stay quiet, to kind of, you know, take a little bit of a job to show he's just not completely getting rolled over by this dude, and that he is taking notice and that he has some ability to punch back, but to hope that some other circumstance takes Trump down, that he has nothing to do with and

that he's basically their second in line. If that does happen, that probably is his best play, And I think what you bring up with Ted Cruz is a really good point. Now, I do think Ron DeSantis is in a better position than Ted Cruz ever was. But it's easy to forget how much of a darling Ted Cruz was with the

Republican base during the Tea Party era. I mean, he also had his own national brand and identity and you know, a lot of warm feelings among a lot of Republican voters, and ultimately it really didn't matter once Trump decided to light into him. It was basically all over. While DeSantis and his allies may be citing a few new poles one out of Iowa, one out of New Hampshire, Trump but the rally had his own favorite poll that he

decided to tout. This was literally a Twitter poll by a Twitter user named I Kid You not Cat turned two that Trump cites favorably. At this rally tagalism. You'll see some numbers that are incredible. You'll see some numbers that we just had one today sixteen Trump and I think nineteen to shake themonius. Yeah, we were at sixty nine and one today. Classic there, classic move, citing a

literal Twitter poll as evidence of his dominance in the race. Amazing. Yeah, a little too much emphasis there from Trump on the sixty nine. I mean, look, with Trump, he'll take my favorite thing. When he was in office, he'd be like ninety eight percent of Republican support Trump, thank you. And it would come from a poll that showed him at like thirty two percent approval, but with ninety percent with Trump, listen, I mean, no matter what the numbers are. I've also

been thinking a lot about it too. I got a very thoughtful message from somebody who's been watching the show for a long time, Chrisonally. He said, you and Crystal were big advocates for Bernie Sanders to go after Joe Biden in two thousand and sixty or twenty twenty in the primary, So why are you not saying the same thing about DeSantis. Well, I think it's important to note that Joe Biden never had the level of approval amongst a Democratic base, and still doesn't that Donald Trump exactly.

That still doesn't that Donald Trump did in terms of his beloved nature, and so that's why I think it would backfire. In fact, one of the things that we really identified at that time was that there was an opening for a critique against Biden in the primary with a certain subset of voters that could have resonated in some of those early states that Bernie explicitly chose not to take, whereas in this case with DeSantis, there is not the similar opening lane of Republicans who want to

hear a criticism of Trump. And mainly the reason is that many Republicans conflate any criticism of Trump. And by the way, I'm not saying this is a correct thing. I don't think it should be this way, but they conflate that with going soft being a tool of the left, part of the reason why people hate Liz Cheney and really any tepic criticism of Trump whatsoever. So it's one of those where he is in just such a pickle that I agree with you, he's probably doing the best

thing he possibly can. But that just illustrates to me where as long as Trump is in the race, like, it's just not going to happen, and I can't imagine to try to subject myself to all of this. I mean, this answer is a young man. He's like forty forty three years old, his small children. It's like, why would you want to go through this? Yeah. Well, I mean that's a great segue into the next piece. But before we get to it, I did want to ask you, sar, what'd you think of the choice of Waco, Texas for

this rally? Oh? Very smart actually, because you know, obviously we cover we had David Thibodeau on the show, The Waco Survivor. The segment did incredibly well, and it's not a surprise. There's still quite a bit of organic, I would say, interest in what happened at Waco, and especially with the rise of the Internet and the ability for a newer generation people like us whose lives weren't defined by Waco as a seminal political event, to kind of re examine it in the cold light of day, and

everybody's like, this was a complete disaster. So I think it was a smart move, especially you know, politically, trying to conflate it with January six and look at government overreach, which is something that the base feels especially passionate about. Let me spend a second there too, which is a lot of people talked about. They're like, why is Trump talking about January six when clearly, you know, MAGA stopped the steal and all that was such a disaster for

him in the mid terms. I actually agree with that, but that's general election analysis, that's not primary analysis. That's right amongst the primary, amongst the base, people who watch Tucker Carlson every single night, amongst the Fox News dads, they are obsessed with January six, with the political persecution and all that. So it's an easy way for him to again conflate the entire Republican movement and persecution of them and himself as a bulwark against the left and

elevate him once again over Ron DeSantis. Well, this is the thing that Trump does so effectively and has always done so effectively. He defines and selects the landscape of issues that he wants to make central to a political campaign and forces people to pick a side, to be

on one side or the other. And with regards to the midterms, which yeah, we're you know, really ended up being kind of a disaster for Trump and the candidates that he endorsed, But in terms of the Republican primaries leading into those midterms, Stop the Deal was one of the key issues, if not the key issue. He managed to make it the central dividing line in the Republican Party and it's one that is very difficult for candidates like Ronda Santis who want to maintain elite donor support

to try to navigate. So it's another for him. I mean, yeah, I think it will be horrible for him in the general election. I think it's horrible for the country, But in terms of a Republican primary electorate, this is an issue that's very beneficial to him. So you can see the way that he's sort of already setting the table with his position on Ukraine, which again Rond Dea Santis

has struggled to navigate. He sounded very different depending on the day and depending on the interview, even though I think if you look at his comments in totality, I don't think they're directly contradictory of one another, but clearly the tone was different with Tucker Carlson versus when he was sitting with Piers Morgan, and it becomes clear that you know, he's leaving himself some wiggle room and looking kind of like a typical politician trying to navigate Ukraine.

So that's been a difficult one for him. The other one that I think is so intelligent, and that is in a lot of ways going back to classic Trump twenty sixteen, is him leaning into social Security and Medicare and very much like which side are you on on that one? That's another really challenging one for Ronda Santis, but also basically every other potential Republican contender in the field. And then when you throw stop the Steel into that

mix again, that's a difficult one. That's going to be a difficult one for Mike Pence, that's going to be a difficult one with for Nikki Haley. That's going to be a difficult one for Ronda Santis because this is an issue where they're going to try to have it both ways. They're going to try to do some version of the what you always call the high browse stop the steal, and that is not going to be acceptable to the base. And Trump is not going to let

that slide. So I think the landscape of issues that he is laid out is making it very difficult for Ronda Santis and all of these other contenders to try

to navigate. Yeah, I think you're right on that, Crystal, all right, So let's get to it's not just us that have some questions about whether Ronda Santis will be able to ultimately succeed in this Republican primary, and whether there's really any move on the chessboard that he could make that would enable his victory without some extra exogynous event occurring to effectively take Trump out of the running gun. Put this up on the screen. This is a report

from NBC News. The headline here is Ron DeSantis's donors and allies question if he's ready for twenty twenty four. They say, at a recent gathering of sixteen prominent Republicans, a number of DeSantis supporters discussed if he should run against Trump or wait until twenty twenty eight. Let me read a bit of this report because I think it is quite stunning. One of the individuals strategists they interviewed

for this had I thought a really great quote. He said, DeSantis is doing a book tour, he's barnstorming the country, and his polls are going down. Meanwhile, Trump's potentially under indictment and Trump's going up. It's just not a good look for DeSantis. The piece begins by saying, Ron DeSantis maybe missing his moment. A number of the Florida governor's donors and allies are worried his recent stumbles suggests he might not be ready for a brutal fight against Trump.

Some feel he needs to accelerate his timeline to run for the GUP presidential nomination and begin directly confronting Trump if sees to have any chance of thwarting the president's former president's momentum. Others believe DeSantis should just stude step Trump altogether and wait until twenty twenty eight to run. This was based on some reporting they did at this Sunday luncheon following a Red Cross ball in Palm Beach, Florida. So this was in Florida. This was again not a

bunch of Trump backers. These are DeSantis people, or at least Desanti's friendly. One attendee, you know, describe them as a mix of DeSantis backers and Trump's skeptics, and they were all discussing misgivings about the governor standing for the future. They liked him, many of them might even support him. The person who was at the event set of DeSantis, but they thought on ballots his long term future was better without him trying to take Trump head on. He

will get scarred up by Trump, the person added. They also mentioned this conservative billionaire shipping Goods Magnet Richard Julian and his wife Elizabeth. Elizabeth who's five hundred thousand dollars in combined contributions, ranked them among the most generous donors to DeSantis' previous campaign, and they said a purpose person with familiar with their strategy said on spending, they are pumping the brakes. The polling really made different people pause.

And you know, this all comes after DeSantis has sounded different notes on Ukraine, really in particular stumbling and delay, how he reacted to Trump's indictment, and just I think also the increasingly apparent landscape where because Trump is dominating the news so much, and because these various indictments are likely to come down and really make him the focal point of the party once again, it just makes the landscape damn near impossible for anyone to try to navigate

and get ahead of him in the polls. Yeah, it's very difficult. I thought that the Ukraine thing that he did was a massive mistake because he tried to have it both ways, you know, to Tucker Carlston territorial dispute. He takes the heat for it. The donors come out and actually get upset with him. And then immediately does an about face with Piers Morgan and now is like, oh, Putin is a war criminal. He must be held to account. Now, as you said, technically on paper, he didn't reverse anything

that he said. They're not intellectually inconsistent that said, this is about tonal and rhetoric comparison. Rhetorically, Clearly it was a backtrack, and he actually accused the mainstream media of distorting some of his comments. So it's like, well, which way is it, Governor. Did you say it was a territory or dispute. Are you skeptical of a to Ukraine or do you think that we should take a more

hawkish position towards Russia. Obviously this is a donor backed pressure, and this ultimately shows you why Trump has always been able to be successful in the first place. Like, yes, he might be do the bidding of the donors inadvertently whenever he allows the tax cuts and all of that to go through, but on issues, whenever he diverts from them,

he's just going to say whatever he thinks. And you know, I have no idea how much of that pressure or whatever actually does come to Mayor, but this seemed quite obvious of a pressure campaign, and it's also one where if he can't stand his ground on Ukraine, then you know, how are you going to stand your ground on many of the other fights that you're going to have to now navigate where the base feels very differently than mainstream

public opinion. Overall, I thought it was political disaster the way that he handled himself there and actually gave a great gift to the Trump campaign, who is smacking him over the head with Ukraine, for sure, no doubt about it. And do I think that Ukraine will be the number one issue for Republican primary voters, No, I do not.

Most voters don't vote on foreign policy. But do I think that this whole episode gives off an incredible stench of like politician with his finger in the wind, trying to figure out the right answer of where he should be rather than what he actually thinks. Yes, absolutely, and so in that way, I do think it is damaging to him, even though you know, again, I don't think that Republican primary voters, I don't want to pretend they're following all the ins and outs of how Ron DeSantis

like navigated Ukraine. In a couple of different interviews, but again, this is we're talking about an elite donor set that he's going to be very dependent on if and when

he runs for president. They're certainly paying close attention to this and clearly have a lot of nervousness around not just the Ukraine answers, but also and you picked up on this right away to Sager that there was such a delay in how he responded to potential Trump indictment that it took him days and days before even said a word about it, and then when he did say something about it, he once again tried to have it both ways, tried to take a shot at Trump over

you know, hush money to porn stars, which the base did not take kindly too, in which there's a big backlash online over, but also then going after you know the quote unquote George Soros back da. So so yeah, I think there's just an increasing realization this landscape is going to be very difficult, and like we've been saying the whole time, the indictments again might be bad for Trump in a general election, but in terms of the Republican base, it's just like when mar A Lago was raided.

It forces people to come out and defend him. It sort of strengthens his hand within the Republican Party. And this potential indictment that we may or may not get this week is likely to be just the first of a number of potential indictments here. Let's go ahead and talk a little bit about what might happen this week now as a refresher. The indictment we're talking about right now has to do with the hush money payments to

Stormy Daniels leading up to the twenty sixteen campaign. The allegation here potentially is that there was both a business fraud, which would be typically a misdemeanor where the payments were misclassified in terms of his record keeping, but also the way that they're potentially interpreting this as a felony is that this was in service of campaign finance fraud, and so that is the legal theory that they may be pursuing with this grand jury in Manhattan. Trump, of course,

at his rally, reacted to these potential indictments. Let's take a listen to what he had to say. The new weapon being used by out of control, unhinged Democrats to cheat on election is criminally investigating a candidate bad publicity and all you get bad publicity. It's the craziest thing. I got bad publicity, and my poll numbers have gone

through the roof. Would you explain this to me? Explain that to me, Dan, mister congressman, you got to explain it to me because nobody else has ever heard of it. But you know what, it gets so much publicity that the case actually gets adjudicated in the press and people see it's bullshit, and they go and they say it's unfair. Also worth noting he had preprinted signs that plaggards that those fans were holding up that said winch hunt on it. So he clearly is leaning into this fite zager. Yeah

he is. I mean, and again this is probably one of the most potent things that he has in further Republican base because they view him so tightly as a representative of them, and any persecution of him is one that is by definition and de facto persecution of them. So that's actually why the snowball nature of many of the law enforcement investigations and the fact that they appear again appear to be starting with this hush money bookkeeping

scheme about to a porn star. It just seems like a major mistake because narratively, what you would have wanted to start with is the Fulton County case about stop the steal, or a federal case about stop the steal, or the secret document. Now, obviously with the classified documents, that one went a little bit out the window after Joe Biden himself had classified documents themselves. So the best one they really had was Fulton County and January sixth.

Starting with the bookkeeping one, it's going to snowball now all into one thing where people aren't necessarily going to parse the details of every single prosecution investigation and all that. So, look, we don't know. Again, it's Monday. We don't yet have an indication whether the grand jury is going to meet and Trump will be indicted tomorrow. As I said, I'm here in Manhattan, and there is quite a bit of security in Midtown, including Secret Service. Nobody actually quite knows

what's going on. Specifically it's around the Peninsula Hotel, but the entire block is blocked off. Their garbage trucks everywhere, their Secret Service detail, their dogs ypds out in full foursome. You know, all things certainly smell of Trump. Why he would though he would be staying at a hotel and not at his own house. I don't certainly know, but it's one of those where there's quite a bit of speculation.

Here in Manhattan. There is security, I know, down at the courthouse and elsewhere in preparation for any type of indictment. So at the very least people in the city appear to be preparing or very authorities here in Manhattan are preparing for something. And apparently I look this up, the grand jury typically meets on Monday, so today would be one of the typical meeting days Wednesday and Thursday. Last week we're reported they canceled the Wednesday and Thursday meetings.

They didn't come in, and they didn't meet, So potentially there could be something happening today, but no one knows.

And the other thing that I just think it's really important to throw out there is we've been taking as kind of like a you know, a done deal that Trump is going to be indicted by this grand jury, and it's likely that he is, but I just want to say that there's no guarant You're still talking about human beings who have been presented with certain evidence in a case and will be making up their minds whether or not to indict him. So it's not like this process. Yes,

it's controlled. The process is controlled by Alvin Bragg, but it's still dependent on regular citizens of New York to ultimately make the decision here. And I just want to put out there that there are absolutely no guarantees that they will decide that they should indict him. President former President Trump, also reacting on true social as he does, put this up on the screen. This was apparently a late night post where he's warning of death and destruction

if he gets arrested. Let me read you the whole thing, and says what kind of person can charge another person, in this case, a former president in the US who got more votes than any's sitting president in history and leading candidate by far for the Republican Party nomination with a crime when it is known by all that no crime has been committed, and also known that potential death and destruction in such a false charge could be catastrophic for our country. And who would do such a thing?

Only a degenerate psychopath that truly hates the USA and saga. This reminded me of after the mar A Lago raid, Trump made some similar comments, basically threatening, you know, nice country you got there. If I'm indicted, it's all going to go to hell. Yeah, I mean this is vintage Trump. He's never been above using it. He quite literally already did it. So it's one of those people should probably take it seriously. In terms of how people will react, though,

that's the real open question. I have no idea. As we actually previously showed, not a lot of people showed up to the planned protest outside of the Manhattan DA's office, even though that was called or at least stoked a bit by Trump and some of his allies. So whether they will and will heed the call and whether they view it even as a fruitful exercise for protest is actually one where we really don't know the answer to that question yet. Yes, so will there actually be death

and destruction? I guess We're just going to have to wait and find out another great day. I'll see what happens. We'll see what happens as they as the Trump always said, all right, let's talk a little bit about TikTok. I know that there was a lot going on over the weekend. We covered previously how the TikTok CEO appeared before Congress.

At this point, we will show you some of his comments, but more interestingly what happened is that there was effectively unanimous a position on the committee itself around national security issues surrounding TikTok. Overall, the hearing is regarded as a massive disgrace for the TikTok CEO. It didn't handle himself particularly well. Also as a disgrace tough many members of Congress,

which we will absolutely get to. The major debate though, happening right now, has been sparked by Representative AOC who posted her first TikTok ever over the weekend in when she came out against banning TikTok. Wants to make sure that we showed all of you and broke down some

of what she said. Let's take a listen. The United States has never before banned a social media company from existence, from operating in our borders, and this is an app that has over one hundred and fifty million Americans on it.

Some of the arguments about banning TikTok have come with respect to discussions around Chinese surveillance and utilization of data that is tracked and the enormous amount of tracking on US citizens and data that is harvested by TikTok, and they say, because of this egregious amount of data harvesting,

we should ban this app. However, that doesn't really address the core of the issue, which is the fact that major social media companies are allowed to collect troves of deeply personal data about you that you don't know about without really any significant regulation whatsoever. So I think this is important. I want to spend some time on this. Christal. I know you and I have talked about this a lot, but people, obviously there's a lot of renewed interests in this.

So part of the reason why I want to take this seriously our own James Lee actually did a fantastic segment over the weekend about this as well. The reason why I think conflating data privacy with this issue is that, yes, it is certainly true that Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Apple are cynically using the TikTok national security issue to push their own business. That said, that does not mean that

we should disregard the core issue at hand. At the end of the day, Facebook, Google, Apple, all of these companies are subject to US law, to the US judicial system. If we have a problem with that, we can change it. We can actually change the way that they conduct business. I and you have both advocated for changing those laws.

One of the reasons actually why TikTok is so exceptional is that they are not subject to US control and are stead directly subject to the Chinese authoritarian system in which they directly have to do whatever the Chinese government tells them to do. We also know at this point that TikTok, owned by Bike Dance CEO Xiang Ziming, has directly made company decisions at the behest of the CCP

and so called government controlled actions. Now, the national security case on this is that you're going to have an app with one hundred and fifty million Americans being used that is not subject to any democratic, small d democratic control. And yes, let me just stop there and let me I want to hear what you have to say. Yeah,

I mean to be honest with you. I actually found some of the questions that James Lee raise, which I do want everybody to go and watch because he did a fantastic job on that video, I found them persuasive. And I also found Glenn Greenwall did a show on this last week that I thought also raised some really

important questions. A couple of things that they brought up is, as you were indicating Sager and as AOC also mentioned, Okay, if your concern is data privacy, then why are you focused on justice one app when Meta in particular collects way more data than TikTok does. So the data privacy concerns are hard to take seriously when you haven't seen a serious effort by Congress to deal with this in any real way in terms of, you know, all of

social media. So that's number one. One of the points that Glenn raised that I thought was also worth considering is the fact that you know, we know from the Twitter files the way that government control and government interface with Twitter in particular, but all American social media companies has not been a good thing. So it's not an accident that the one app that they don't actually have sort of direct control over and hold onto is the

one that they are going after to ban. So I think that's noteworthy, and I also think that, you know, it's also worth considering that this is just a truly extraordinary act. You are talking about one hundred and fifty million users on this platform, is the most popular platform among teenagers in the country. So the extraordinary nature of

this act, I think should also not be understated. And you also have a lot of people who are very self interested, not just the executives at Google and Facebook and other places, but also many of these members of Congress have stuck in these companies that they stand to personally benefit from banning TikTok. So I did actually think that a number of those concerns were, you know, significant

and worth consideration. I think that those are all incredibly valid points, And unlike a Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, I would not say that that's not true. I think they're all actually completely true. That doesn't yet absolve and part of what I would say is, Okay, we run our country. We have small d democratic input. We can vote for candidates,

and yes, this is incredibly hard. I'm not saying that government is incorrupt in our political system, isn't there That said, we can have some small de democratic control over the FBI. We quite literally have a Congress which is holding hearings about this. There are no such hearings in China. Secondly, and whenever it comes to this issue around data privacy and the self interested in nature, again, I want to

say that that is one hundred percent true. But I also want to inject a secondary issue to this, which I don't think that AOC James or Glenn has address,

which is about reciprocity. Look, at the end of the day, Facebook, Google, Apple, well, okay, not Apple, but Facebook, Google, and US social media companies are banned in China specifically because China does not want any US backed company to have any market share in their country whatsoever without total authoritarian control, because they believe that it would be used as a US cultural psyop

to turn their population right. So in that can we then allow their major platform in our This is a basic this is fairness, But I think cannot allow this company to operate in the United States when they ban OUR companies from operation. So I think that argument cuts both ways. Because when China or Iran or other authoritarian regimes block American social media companies, we interpret that as

their authoritarian despots. So when we do the same with their social media platforms, shouldn't we examine whether our behavior is similarly authoritarian and despotic. So I don't think that that argument. I don't buy that argument because I'm not looking to replicate the authoritarian tendencies of you know, a country like China. The other thing, in terms of the data privacy issues that I think is worth raising as well is if we're concerned, and I think we rightly should.

I don't think anyone should take the CEO as a word that like, oh, it's all stored in Houston and don't worry about it, like they don't have any acts. I don't think anyone should really buy into that. Okay, So I want to be clear about that. But the data that we're talking about that's being collected, A lot of this data, if not all of this data, is widely available for sale. So if China wants that data, like they've already got access to it in a lot

of ways, that ship has already sort of sailed. So I don't want to get caught up in a sort of anti China hysteria. I think it is worth you know, I have been in support of some of the efforts that we have taken in order to make ourselves more economically independent and less dependent on China. I think some of the things we've done, especially with chips manufacturing, makes a lot of sense. This one just to be Frank, I still have some major, major question marks about whether

or not this represents a dramatic overreach. And you know, maybe it's because my spider senses go up. When you have such overwhelming sentiment from both parties and so very few voices of dissent, and you got the Biden administration, you know, aligning with you know, almost every Republican in

support of banning this thing. I start to I start to wonder what the underlying agenda is, and I do think part of it has to do with national security, state wanting control over social media platforms, and also personal sort of financial investment in some of the companies that really stand to benefit from banning TikTok. As we've discussed before, all of these social media companies are basically desperate to

replicate TikTok success. We see very clearly with YouTube, which of course is owned by Google, where they're trying to do YouTube shorts and they're trying to compete, and they're leaning ward to their algorithm versus what people choose to select as their preferences on YouTube. This is all complete replication of what TikTok has done and the kind of

magic that has made TikTok so appealing to teenagers. So I guess that's what I'll say is I have the amount of questions I have about this direction have dramatically increased. I think those are all fair, and I actually I find myself uncomfortable being on the side of the establishment, I guess for once. And but here's the thing I will remind people, this was not a popular position three and a half years ago. It might have been one of the maybe like me and like three Matt Stoller

and like two others once we were talking about it. Actually, the entire Republican establishment was against banning TikTok for this reason because Wall Street had significant had a significant investors inside of the Bike Dance Corporation. The Biden administration also dragged its feet. If you can go back, you can actually go pull the receipts if people want. I've been doing monologues about this for over three years. I remember doing monologues when they had like thirty million users, and

I was like, guys, this is reaching escape velocity. You've got to nip this problem in the bud before it becomes a problem. And I also want to say this too, about what you were saying at the end of the day, I respect national sovereignty. If Iran and China want to ban Facebook and Google, I don't actually think that's authoritarian,

even though they are doing it for authoritarian purposes. As we also noticed whenever Twitter, for example, removed Donald Trump, many other democratic countries like Germany and France were like, hey, you can't be taken heads of state off platforms, and if you do, you're going to be subject to our regulation. All countries have the ability to conduct national sovereignty, which is why I think that our national sovereignty should be respected.

The talking point around why should we act like China has actually one that a lot of libertarian at libertarian activists and lobbyists for TikTok have been using here for quite some time. So look, yes, it is true that data privacy in the United States is a disaster. It is certainly true also that these companies are not acting in good faith in that there's a lot of shenanigans in corruption and all that going on. It is also true, certainly that the FBI and all of those want something

under their control. But at the same time, we don't have no we don't have no role to play here. We live in a democratic country, we actually can have input on this. I would view this actually as a victory for information and for democracy because the press, the press, the people, and many of the politicians actually the ones who caught up the least. It's really open source press reporting and pressure from the outside which brought this issue

really to bear. And look, let's also take a step and look as you alluded to to the actual TikTok CEO's testimony here where he did himself no favors with some of his disastrous answers. Let's take a listen to one. Bite Dens is not owned or controlled by the Chinese government, is a private company. Mister Chu, has Bite Dance spied on Americans at the direction of the Chinese Communist Party. No, has Fit Dance spied on American citizens. I don't think

they're spying, is the right way to describe it. This is committed to be very transparent without users about what we collect. I don't think what we collect. I don't believe what we collect is more than most. The problem here is you're trying to give the impression that you're going to move away from Beijing and the Communist Party you're trying to give the impression that you're a good actor, but the commitments that we would seek to achieve those

goals are not being made today. I have seen no evidence that the Chinese government has access to that data. They have never asked us. We have not provided well in a way I've asked that. I find that actually preposterous. TikTok access to the home Wi Fi network has Fit Dance spied on American citizens. I don't think they're spying, is the right way to describe it. The only phase data that you get that we collect is when you use the filters. You have sunglasses on your face. We

need to know where your eyes are. How do you need to know what the ads are if you're not seeing if they're dilated American data stort on American soil by an American company, overseen by American personnel. We call this initiative Project Texas. Please rename your project. Texas is not the appropriate name. We stand for freedom and transparency

and we don't want your project. You damn well know that you cannot protect the data and security of this committee or the one hundred and fifty million users of your app because it is an extension of the CCP from the data it collects to the contented controls. TikTok is a grave threat of foreign influence in American life. So what I like about that mashup is, first of all, does TikTok connect to the home Wi Fi? These people, I don't even know what to say about this, some

of these boomers in Congress. I know many of our boomera audis will get mad. I'm sorry, people, a lot of you gotta go. We can't be having this in some of the top representatives of Congress where you have an immense about responsibility. It's just like the Facebook hearing where they're like, mister Zuckerberg, how do you make money? I will never get over that one that said I don't think spying is the right word. Obviously ridiculous. I also think I should explain to people because it's not

ultimately clear. TikTok is a subsidiary company of Byte Dance, the Chinese holding company. Mister Chu is a Singaporean citizen who was hired specifically because he's not Chinese. Before that, they add an American who actually quit his job because of the national security concerns. He used to work over at Disney. Mister Chu was used and is a puppet of, basically of Xiang Xiuming, the CEO and the major success holder of Byte Dance. By Dance itself is subject once

again completely and totally to CCP authoritarian control. Xiang has already had to take many apps off of the Chinese App Store and apologize to the CCP for quote not upholding socialist core values, and of course those aren't actual socialist values, those are the CCP values. He also has held actual CCP ping thought trainings inside of bytenance. All I'm trying to say is that clearly it is directly

controlled by the Chinese government. Ask Jack Ma how it worked out for him when he got a little bit too big for his breches and he's basically thrown into prison. So I think it's important for people to look at this hearing as much of his disaster as it was really on all sides, especially with some of these some of these representatives not literally knowing how the Wi fi works. And that is where I do want to validate something that AOC did say. You do have to make the

case for people. It has to be cogent, and you can't be having clips of Congressman saying, does TikTok connect to the home Wi Fi and steal your data? I think a genuine case. I've tried to make it here many times, you know, laying out all the case here. I think Biden does owe that. Ultimately, I think he failed by allowing this amount of market penetration in the

first place. But if you're going to allow that, a very cogent important case needs to be made, because the one thing she is correct about is that a lot of people use the app. Half the country literally is using this app. So at that point, now you do owe it because there is an act. I mean, that's almost many people who voted, just so we are aware. Well, yeah,

I think those are great points. I mean I would say that really this app reached escape velocity during the Trump administration when these discussions first started and Trump started trying to you know, force a sale or whatever, and

it ended up coming to nothing. But there's a reason why Biden has pushed this, kicked this to Congress rather than claiming the authority to take action himself, and it's because he knows that this is likely to be devastatingly unpopular with young voters, and look, a lot of young people don't show up to vote, but some of them do, and a lot of them vote for the Democratic Party.

So he also wants to shift blame for this if they do end up banning TikTok in a bipartisan direction, so that he doesn't completely shoulder the blame, because I do think, you know, for a lot of young people, and I have some insight into this with how much my daughter, how much time my daughter spends on this app this is a really like kind of a central part of their life. This is really important to them. It's where they express themselves creatively, it's their entertainment, it's

all of that. And so if you and one fell swoop ban it, especially without really laying out a case that they believe in, buy into, accept and are willing to go along with, then you're going to face some huge political blowback. And as much as he's trying to shift the onus in a bipartisan direction, he's president of the United States, so I think and from a political perspective, he's still going to really get the blame here if they do decide to go forward with banning TikTok completely.

I've been very annoyed with the way that they've handled it. They've been dragging their feet. It's been several years now. He's been doing these fake reviews and try to negotiate. You know. Another thing I want to say is, I know that we covered in our previous show. I think about a week ago about how the Biden administration told them either for sale or ban. And what did I say? I said, a for sale is never going to happen. And behold, the Chinese regulators came out and they're like, yeah,

We're like, we're not going to approve that deal. There's no way we're to talk to me sold because that's valuable IP for bike Dance. That's one of the crown jewels of the Chinese technology empire. Why would they let it go. That'd be like imagine if China said, hey, Facebook, you've got to sell Oculus. America would be like, no, that's not going to happen. You know, we're not going to have No Justice Department, regulators or whatever would approve that deal again for the same reason. So I think

a ban is ultimately an inevitability. Personally, I think it's a good thing. I do think though, and I think, Look, we have a lot of young people who watch the show. Let's continue to raise this issues and to talk about it. I know, frankly a lot of them are skeptical. Maybe you should be, Maybe you should be. Hopefully we can either convince you or we can show you that a real debate can and should be had here, and that's

certainly not happening elsewhere. I think that's important. Yeah. Well, the last thing I'll say is, you know, I am in the skeptical camp for sure, just because I do think it is an extraordinary act, and I continue to be unpersuaded that the data privacy concerns here are significantly different than those with regards to other social media companies.

But to broaden out, we really have to have some sort of a wider ranging reform of social media companies so that you are dealing with the Metas of the world, you are dealing with the twitters of the world, you are dealing with YouTube and all the rest. Because this sort of piecemeal approach is not going to be any sort of panacea even if we do resolve whatever issues people have with TikTok. All right, let's go ahead and

talk about Siria some extraordinary things happening. Over the last couple of days, an American contractor, as we'll have other several US service members were wounded in an apparent drone attack on a US base in Eastern Seria. Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. So some of the details are a little bit scant, but the initial indications that are coming out of this incident are really trouble and the Pentagon has to answer a

lot of questions. So as I said, the Pentagon is blaming Iranian back to militias and said that it was a quote iranianne or a drone of Iranian origin, whatever that means. Obviously, Eastern Syria is a hotly contested territory. You've got Iranian backed militias, you've got Islamic militias, you've got US backed militias. It's basically a free fire zone. It has been now since the beginning of the civil War. Occasionally Israeli strikes will happen in the region against Hesbola.

It's absolute madness going on there. And of course the question arises, like why is American, Why are American troops even there? Who are these contractors? What are we doing. Much of it is currently being conducted under the US

Anti ISIS mission. So yes, there have been some limited number of air strikes and operations against ISIS in the last couple of months, but it's one that very much flies under the radar until as we all saw during the Niger attack, the US service members just end up dead in a part of the world that we barely

even knew that we were still operating in. What is especially insane about this attack, Crystal, is that the Basis anti air defense the air defense system was not working properly and apparently failed, which is what the Pentagon is saying. And not only that, not only did it fail, it appears that the Iranian militias knew that it was failing

and specifically choose that time to conduct an attack. So not only do we have our guys stationed in eastern Syria for a reason that nobody has ever voted for or made a case to the American public. By the way, we're not at war with Syria, and then also we're not even protecting them properly, and now a US contractor is dead and several service members are wounded. On top of that, more attacks were then conducted over the course

of the next several days. Let's put this up there on the screen where you can actually see a number of drone attacks and swarms happened all across of Syria in eastern Syria, specifically against other US bases, which actually raises the question how many American service members are inside of Syria. This was a major topic of discussion during the Trump administration when Trump ordered to pull out from Syria. That's ultimately why Secretary Mattis quit the administration in the

first place. And the case that he often was making there as many skeptics, people like myself were also saying, was Licksen, if you don't get out, then we're never gonna leave. And it's been five years since that happened, and now we just had a service member or a contractor was killed. There several services members who were wounded, and on top of that, now we are being drawn

further into this conflict. Let's throw this up there, the Biden administration conducting retaliatory air strikes in Syria in response to this attack, escalating tension with the Iranian regime as well over this. As if we don't have more problems going on elsewhere, in the world. This is just you know, like a vintage story I think outside of the Forever War. Yeah,

I think that is exactly correct. Where it reminds you number one, of all of these conflicts that we have service members engaged in that the American public has had no ability to debate that there was never any congressional authorization for number two that you know, this is all fine and good until you have some major conflict as we have basically right now with you know, an advers and a significant adversary and a significant power player in

terms of the region. You know, this leads us into sort of direct conflict with Iran, which can have all sorts of spiraling diplomatic consequences that can end in disaster. You know. The reporting suggests that there's more than nine hundred actual service members in Syria remaining and hundreds more contractors. We don't even know what number that is. So there continues to be potential for disaster here. As evidence by this, this is also not the first time that President Biden

has carried on strikes within Syria. There were strikes in February and June of twenty twenty one. There were strikes in August of twenty twenty two and now this latest round. So I think it has all the elements of total lack of transparency, total lack of accountability, and a very potentially dangerous and fraud situation that the American people have

really had no insight into or say over. Yes, And I also think it's important for people to understand American the US Congress never authorized any troops inside of Syria. All of this is being done under the auspices of Operation Inherent Resolve, which is the US backed mission to support Iraqi security forces against ISIS inside of Iraq. Obama and President Trump expanded an Inherent Resolve to secret mission of at one point thousands of American service members inside

of Syria. Syria, Look, we do not recognize any government outside of Syria. The Aside regime clearly is remains in power throughout the country. This is the sovereign nation which US forces are stationed on without the explicit permission and in fact the protests of the government who is in

control in that region. We are basically doing so in occupation of at least you know, the limited bases in other territory that we have with no legitimacy from Congress or from the nation whose territory that we are operating on.

This is again part of the problem with the congressional abdication of responsibility and the authorization of the use of military force that we saw in Afghanistan and in Iraq, where all of these missions, like in Niger and in Somalia and you know, God who knows where Mali many of these other places are all done without any actual government approval. In many cases, members of Congress, even those on the Armed Services Committee and others, have no idea

what these troops are doing there. And look, let's be honest, does the Biden administration even know what's going on? Like would do they know what they're doing there? It really is just run outside of the Pentagon on complete autopilot, and then the world just wakes up, as we did

in Niger when somebody dies. So look, unfortunately, just like in that situation, most likely what will happen is the Pentagon will cover it up, They'll try and act tough, the Biden administration will give any answers, and the troop presidence will just continue. You know, you covered that Niger attack there at the time. This seems very similar where what the hell is going on here. We have people in far flung places. Air defense doesn't even work properly.

A man is dead, like you can't just you can't whitewash something like this, and yet they do it all the time. Yeah, I think that's all well said. Okay, let's also talk about Vladimir Putin. This is important international news. So President Putin, let's go and put this up there on the screen, speaking in a long interview, saying that they will station tactical nuclear weapons inside Belarus. So this isn't an immediate action that President Putin says that the

Russians will undertake. But what they're doing is they're going to be building a new tactical nuclear missile base inside of Belarus. The reason why this is important is obviously Belarus is not inside of Russia and is its own independent country, of course, allied very strongly with the Putin regime. The tactical nuclear weapon issue also is not one that

has been raised in quite some time. Crystal Putin actually kind of dropped the tactical nuclear weapon threats a couple of months ago, trying to tone down the temperature, saying, no, we would never do that. That's not something that's under consideration after significant amounts of leaks and intimations by President former President Mediaevet that tactical nuclear weapons were under consider

eration inside of Ukraine. So clearly, this is once again trying to up the ante, trying and trying to raise the stakes ahead of a so called and possible spring offensive by both the Russians and by the Ukrainians, and of course ongoing Ukrainian fighting happening right now inside of Bagmut. But overall, with the strategic picture, it's something that is a bit of a nightmare for the Ukrainians and they

are recognizing as such. Let's put this next one up there on the screen please, as you can see, what they are calling for is an emergency UN Security Council session over the nuclear weapons deployment. First of all, it would be a violation of the Nuclear non Proliferation Treaty. It also would be one that has done explicitly kind of marching tactical nuclear weapons westward outside of the Russian border.

Of course, the US and NATO has its own nuclear weapons bases which they have long complained about the Russians and the Chinese, and this is something that they are basically trying to mimic that strategy of like, Okay, well

if you can do it, so can we. Encirclement is something that the Ukrainians probably fear the most, and there's been some speculation of these growing ties between Belarus and Russia militarily that Belarus would even authorize operations from the north in a future type of Spring offensive to draw pressure away from the Spring offense if that's happening in eastern Ukraine. So overall, obviously it's a troubling strategic situation

to be facing right now, no doubt about it. And to underscore some of what you were saying there, This was Putin's justification entirely was like, well the US does it, so why can't we? Said, we're doing what they have been doing for decades, stationing these tactical nukes in certain Allied countries, preparing the launch platforms and training their crews.

We are going to do the same thing. And I think it also exposes one of the sort of media tropes that has been put out there to convince Americans that there is no threat of further escalation potential nuclear conflict, which was this idea that Russia hasn't you know, they've drawn all these red lines and we've gone ahead and sent them tanks and done all these other things. They

haven't actually escalated. Well, I think this is definitely an escalation, and they point directly to the fact that Britain decided recently to provide Ukraine with armor piercing rounds that contain depleted uranium. This move. Depleted uranium is a byproduct of

the uranium enrichment process. It's needed to create nuclear weapons. Now, we're not at risk of any sort of like nuclear explosion from these from this ammunition, but the rounds can emit low levels of radiation and the UNS Nuclear Watchdog has warned of the possible dangers of exposure. So that is what they're pointing to as the reason for making this move right now. And also, as you indicated, saying, hey, you guys are doing it, so why can't we as well?

Of course, this reminds all of us what a dangerous game is being played right now, with potential ramifications that go far beyond Ukraine, and why it is so critical to get this war resolved by diplomatic means as soon as it is possibly feasible to do so. I also I don't think it is an accident that this happened

right after the meeting between President Putin and Shishingping. Let's go and put this up there on the screen from the Financial Times about the tightening embrace between China and Russia looking to try and build this bulwark against the West. China also obviously complains about this with respect to US bases in Japan and in South Korea, also pointing to

them as attempts to encircle them. So the point b that the alliance or seeming alliance growing between the two could, and this is only could in bolden either to take more aggressive action. Now, at the end of the day, a deployment is a deployment. It is not one with

means that they're actually being used. That said, it is not usually a good thing whenever you start moving the tactical nuclear weapons around and specifically closer to a hot war, the largest war inside of Europe ever since World War Two. I think that you put all of that together and you do see it's a serious problem here with respect to the strategic grand situation, because if China starts having lethal weapons flow towards Russia, specifically, if this call between

Zelensky and she doesn't happen. And if Zelensky ends up rejecting the Chinese peace plan outright, it will give them the easiest diplomatic cover that they've ever had to start helping the Russians even more so in a military capacity. This too could set the stage for either a Grand Spring offensive which goes well or goes badly, and both, unfortunately,

are disasters. A Russian Spring offensive that goes well, obviously, that's a bloodbath through the Ukrainians, and that's one in which guarantees the war even more and hundreds of thousands even more so will be killed on both sides, of course.

But then if it goes badly, that could also make them feel as if they are having their backs against the corner and they must then reach for the tactical nuclear weapon to save their territory, specifically in some sort of runaway Ukrainian scenario where you know they looks like they may be able to take crimea. Now, neither of those,

by the way, is all that likely. Most likely is a stalemate, but it just shows you that the risk in both cases is ones that we have to watch, and that risk in those cases in one which always results in a lot of death. Yeah, and thus could even broil the Brigger conflict. That's exactly right and thus far in terms of how the Biden administration has treated this conflict. Basically, whatever happens on the battlefield is a justification for US shipping even more aid and escalating even

further than we already have. If Ukraine is on the backfoot and they're not doing well, it's, oh, we've got to strength in Ukraine's hand to hopefully ultimately get them in a better position for the negotiating table. If Russia is on the back foot, then it's, oh, Ukraine can actually win. Let's go ahead and build them up as much as we can so that we can actually end this war with a Russian defeat. And if it's a stalemate, then it's still we got to strengthen the Ukrainian position

here to get them to the negotiating table. Of course, all of those roads lead to further escalation rather than actually getting anyone to the negotiating table, not that I'm

claiming that would be an easy feat whatsoever. But you know, General Millie, the Rand Corporation, lots of mainstream individuals acknowledging this has to end in a diplomatic resolution, and that the sooner we can get there, the better it will be for everyone, but in particular for the Ukrainian people themselves and avoid you know, further loss of unnecessary life and economic devastation. So with all of that as backdrop, let's get to this story from the New York Times.

This is quite extraordinary. Let's go and put it up on the screen here. You got to read this whole report because I'm only going to be able to touch on some of the high level details here. But their headline is stolen valor. The US volunteers in Ukraine, who lie, waste and bicker, people who would not be allowed anywhere near the battlefield in a US led war, are active on the Ukrainian front with ready access to American weapons.

So basically what happened here is Zelensky understandably was like, Hey, anyone around the world, please who is able to fight, please come and help us. And so there were thousands of Americans who responded to this call. The New York Times puts it this way. They say they rush to Ukraine by the thousands, many of them Americans, who promised to bring military experience, money or supplies to the battleground of a righteous war. Hometown newspapers hailed their commitment. Donors

backed them with millions of dollars. Now, after a year of combat, many of these homespun groups of volunteers are fighting with themselves and undermining the war efforts. Some have wasted money or stolen valor others have cloaked themselves in charity while also trying to profit off the war records show. One of the individuals that they highlight here is Malcolm Nance, who became an absolute resistant superstar over on MSNBC during Russiagate.

And he was one of these people who, you know, when the Ukraine War started, he said, all right, I'm signing up. I'm going to go over there and I'm going to fight this. You know, I'm going to fight in this war personally. So they say that when he arrived he made a plan to try to bring order and discipline to this legion of fighters that had been, you know, beset by infighting and chaos, and you know, had been lying about their military records and all these

other issues. Instead, they say he became enmeshed in the chaos. Today, he's involved in a messy, distracting power struggle, one that it will surprise no one to learn, plays down often on Twitter, where Malcolm Nance taunted one former ally as

fat and an associate of a verified con artist. One of the things that they point to here, Sager, which will also be a familiar pattern for those who followed his work on Russia Gate, is he will use his counterintelligence background to throw out all sorts of allegations about people that you know are totally at least unproven. He branded one person as a potential Russian spy, offering no evidence.

This individual, of course, denied the allegations. He defended himself saying that as a member of the Legion with an intelligence background, he developed concerns that he felt an obligation to report this to Ukrainian counterintelligence. He has now left Ukraine potentially was forced down, but we'll just say left Ukraine,

but continues fundraising with a new group of allies. And a number of these new allies are proven liars who have lied about their military experience, lied about their past work experience, etc. So a lot of shady dealings going on here that they're tracking the times. Oh yeah, this is so disgusting. I mean when you read this with Malcolm, I mean clearly got himself embroiled. Now he's raising money,

the denouncing other people. And you know what bothers me the most is, Look, there are a lot of well meeting people here in this country, around the world, who care a lot about Ukraine, who gave their hard earned money to these people with the belief that they were supporting people who are going to Ukraine to selflessly give

their lives and to support those military forces. And if that's the case, these people are the worst of society because and I guess allegedly I should say for the lawyers, they took their hard earned money, are embezzling it, in some cases wasting it, and in the worst cases, Crystal, they are drawing resources from the Ukrainian military, who has to deal with these morons who are like, who are you? Why are you showing up here? In some cases they had to kick them out for fighting with each other.

Now many of them are squabbling online. All of them we well healed by donors. There's also a secondary part of this where if you read this, our producer Griffin made a joke this morning that this should be made into a movie. It really should be made into a movie,

The Grifters of Ukraine. But one of the ones that bothered me the most was a guy who showed up there who said, I've been shooting rifles all my life, no formal training, never been in the military, shows up there, starts uh fighting other American militia members, basically saying that they were delivered brand new American service weapons basically out of a crate. When he was pressed, he was like, yeah, I don't know where they came from. I think we

all know where they came from. Okay, so we're talking here about unvetted, untrained yahoos from the US not saying they aren't brave like you certainly are. To be going into an active war zone with US provided and paid weapons and ammunition in their hands and throwing them at the Russians. Does that sound responsible to you? That's not responsible. And many of them, that's many of them aligning with these you know, far right, potentially Nazi Nazi ideology battalions.

The jude you're talking about, this guy James Vasquez had said he deployed to Kuwait, said he deployed and a rock all a lie. He left the army Reserve, not as a sergeant, as he claimed, but as a private first class, one of the army's lowest ranks. Still, they say he had easy access to weapons, including American rifles. Where did they come from? Quote, I'm not exactly sure, mister Vasquez said in a text message. The rifles, he added, were brand new out of the box, and we have plenty.

He also tweeted that he should not have to worry about international rules of war while he's in Ukraine. He admitted to misrepresenting his military record for decades. He acknowledged being kicked out of the army, but wouldn't talk about why. Quote. I had to tell a million lines to get ahead. I didn't realize it was going to come to this. And if you read through, that's like the beginning of

the article. If you read through all the way to the end, you'll find Malcolm Nance defending him and saying he's not a fake, he's the real deal. But these are individuals who would never make it on, you know, into the US mid This guy was actively kicked out of the army, and yet in the context of the Ukrainian conflict, he's got access to apparently whatever weapons he wants.

So it also speaks to a lot of questions that we have raised about, Okay, we're shipping all of this lethal aid quote unquote over there, where's it going, who's getting their hands on it? Well, we know one person who got their hands on it, mister James Vasquez, who's been lying about everything. And let's not forget this. The Biden administration has assured us we have no indications of misuse of American funds that have been sent to Ukraine.

You're looking at direct evidence right there. You got some crazy guy who barely served in the military. He's over there with his hands on brand new weapons, saying Crystal, he doesn't need to abide by the international What did you say, the international rule war? So wait, are you saying you're going to commit war crimes with US provided weapons? Because that doesn't sound great. Is that something that you want your hands on. Nobody here is defending the Russians.

Nobody is saying that you know, they don't deserve to be beaten or or any of that. But you got to be responsible with the aid and the weapons that you were providing to people. And over and over again they have assured us that any questions about a to Ukraine are treasonous. They say that they're unfounded that the Ukrainian military here can be trusted. I mean, I'm sorry, you can't be trusted. These are the type of people that you're willing to put weapons in the hands of.

This is crazy, I mean, and as they find out, because they're kicking many of them out for having crazy behavior or for big grifters. Yeah, no, that's exactly right. It's a pretty shocking report. Kudos to the Time for doing a good job on this one. For once, I knew the guy Thomas gibbonson f He's a straight shooter. He's actually was a US Marine himself. He did a lot of great work in Afghanistan. So I'll read anything that guy writes. He's a fantastic reporter. Okay, Christal, what

are you taking a look at? Last week I discussed how the environmental goals of the ESG investing criteria have amounted to nothing more than greenwashing. It's an attempt to put an environmentally friendly sheine on standard bottom line capitalism. But a shocking report that came out pretty recently puts a finer point on the extent of this scam. One of the methods that corporations use to signal their green ambitions and meet zero pledges is carbon offsets. Now, the

idea here is pretty simple. If a bit morally tortured corporations can figure out how large their carbon footprint is and then by credits that represent an equal amount of carbon taken out of the atmosphere. Now, this is usually

done through tree planting or forest preservation. If an airline, for example, is viewing jet fuel producing CO two in the atmosphere, they can clean their conscience, signal their virtue to customers, and make good on governmental emissions regulations, all by paying a company that will certify they have planted enough trees or saved enough trees to make up for that airline CO two emissions. Now, on its face, the concept already sounds kind of sketchy and misleading at best.

For example, Shell just delivered a shipment of seventy thousand tons of liquefied natural gas to Taiwan in a deal that they had the gall to celebrate as greenhouse gas neutral. How can they get away with this preposterous claim while they justify it based on the idea that they purchased enough carbon offsets to make up for the one hundred and ninety thousand tons of CO two emissions that this

amount of LNG will create. Here's some Shell big oil corporate propaganda that explains the concept nature can be used to compensate for emissions that cannot be avoided. Most cars still rely on traditional fossil fuels, for example gasoline or diesel, and it takes time to replace them. Adoption of electric cars is on the rise, but for many people they

are currently too expensive or impractic. Car Still, people and organizations may want to take responsibility for the emissions produced from driving the vehicles by efficient use and with the help of nature. By investing in forestry projects that store and capture CO two carbon credits can be created and used to compensate for the emissions from the use of fossil fuel vehicles. So Shell is arguing, basically, we don't

need to change what we're doing at all. We can just invest in a force in Kenya and poof net zero. The idea of a giant shipment of fossil fuels ever being labeled zero emissions as a course insulting on its face, but a recent Bombshell report from the Guardian and a consortion of other journalist shows just how much folly is truly involved here, because apparently the whole carbon offset business is just one gigantic scam at best. At best, these

offsets do nothing. At worst, they are actively making warming worse by pulling the wool over the eyes of gullible consumers and complicit governments. Here's the Guardian. The headline sort of says it all. Revealed more than ninety percent of rainforest carbon offsets by biggest certifier are worthless. Analysis shows investigation into VERA carbon standard finds most are phantom credits and may worsen global heating. Now, the article goes on to note that credits from this one company are used

by Disney, Shell, Gucci and dozens of other corporations. In fact, VERA is a giant in the space, making up three quarters of total voluntary offsets certified in what is now a two billion dollar market. So this is big business, and it's a terrible situation for those who actually care about dealing with the climate crisis and not just confusing

consumers with corporate virtue signaling. In order to analyze Vera's claims here, the Guardian, along with their partners, relied on two different groups of scientists and a team of journalists who further analyze the results those scientists found. They found that in quote thirty two projects where it was possible to compare Vera's claims with the study finding baseline scenarios of force loss appear to be overstated by about four

hundred percent. Three projects in Madagascar did achieve excellent results and have a significant impact on the figures. If those projects are not included, the average inflation is about nine hundred and fifty percent. Vera, of course disputes the results and offered a different methodology which they claim showed much

more significant carbon benefit. But what the multiple research teams here show is that the amount of force actually saved by Vera's projects is wildly less than what they estimated in planning their projects and selling credits. It makes sense, of course, VERA and other similar companies have an incentive to cut owners and do their projects as cheaply as possible.

Companies buying the offsets want the most greenwashing for the cheapest costs, so they certainly don't want to rock the boat here, and we all want to get a product with little label or promotion telling us that our purchases are actually good for the world, not just contributing to

a glut of planet killing crap. We feel better checking the little box when buying our airline ticket that claims, for a small price, we can offset the carbon generated by our weekend getaway, and governments which knowe that climate action is popular, are similarly disincentivized from digging too deeply to expose that the whole thing is actually a farce. It is one giant self licking ice cream cone. In fact, in our own country, California has the most significant state

administered carbon offset program. Now. The idea is that homeowners and large landowners alike can be issued carbon credits for preserving trees they would have otherwise cut down. Then those credits can be sold to private business as carbon offsets

to help meet their state mandated emission reduction goals. But like other carbon office systems, the whole thing is easy to gain by claiming you were going to cut down trees that you actually never really intended to cut down, And sure enough, new satellite data shows that the decade

old program has accomplished literally nothing. According to this data, Dimber companies, they're not logging any less, and the offset project forests don't look any different from a carbon perspective than areas that are not part of these offset projects. One way logging companies appear to gain the system is by claiming that forests they own which have effectively worthless trees, are part of the offset program. These trees are not valuable on the market, so the companies were not likely

to cut them down anyway. Meanwhile, they continue logging the areas that do have market valuable species. This has the perverse effect of actually subsidizing the operations of logging companies. That's obviously the polar opposite of what a green movement would actually want. As one expert told the New York Times quote, the most basic problem with carbon offsets is that you're trading a known amount of emissions with an

uncertain amount of emission reductions. But there's also the whole trading approach of companies being able to buy their way out of their responsibility to reduce their own emissions. This scheme is part of how corporate America seems to confuse and undermine our politics, tricking affluent consumers into thinking their choices are noble and tricking voters into thinking that the masters of the universe are actually good guys driven by

real concern for the planet. In such a landscape, forceful government action isn't necessary, of course, it's a clean conscience for sale with zero challenging choices. Who wouldn't want to put the blinders on and pretend that it's all exactly as advertised? And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at breakingpoints

dot com. Super excited to be joined by the creator of a really popular blog called weight but Why, and also the author of a new book that we both just read. Let's put this up on the screen. The book is called What's Our Problem? A self help book for societies. Tim Urban joins us. Now, great to have you, Tim,

Thanks for having me on. Yeah, that's right. So you lay out in this book in alternative way of seeing politics, where yes, you have a left right spectrum, but there's another dynamic playing out that you describe as the difference between sort of higher mind approach to politics versus a more primitive mindset. Just explain the general thesis of the book. Yeah, I think, you know, if you think about how how language works, like when we have a term for something

or even better like a framework, then we than our thoughts. Uh, you know, we have more thoughts about it. We can we have more conversations about it, we can refer to it, we can develop nuance around it. But if you don't have a term for something, and if you don't have the right framework, then that she limits our thinking. And I think that's a big part of what's been happening with our politics is we have this one dimensional horizontal spectrum left, center, right, you know, far right and far

left right, that's it. And and so that's very limiting, and I think it actually leads to people saying stuff they're not really They're trying to say something and they're saying something else. So they'll say something like, you know, we need more people in the center, and maybe they do mean that horizontally, but that's not really what they're talking about. I'm not saying we need more people that are halfway between the right and the left position on

tax cuts. That's not what they're saying. What they're trying to say is we need more people who are open to open minded and who are open to you know, who are down to really debate their ideas and who might change their mind about it, and who get into the nuance and who aren't dogmatic, and who don't you know, who don't form their opinions via kind of a checklist. And so that to me, center is not the word.

That's just another position on the horizontal axis. It sometimes correlates with what I'm talking about, but it's a different thing. So I said, okay, let's make a second axis. Let's just like make it a square instead of a line, and the vertical dimension I'll call it the latter. And so you have kind of high wrong thinking, high wrong politics and low wrong you know politics, low wrong thinking. And again there's nothing novel here. Everyone knows what I'm

talking about. It's just that we don't we we we don't. We don't really like have the frame so so high wrong politics to me, and this again is a this is a subset of kind of the broader concept of high wrong thinking. It's concerned with, uh, you know, moving towards a more perfect union, you know, as Abe lincos in right. It's like it's actually that's really what's going on.

They're really you know, and there's heated debates. It's like people, it's not saying that a lot of people mistake you know, what I'm saying hig wrong. It's for stability and for being nice and for being no, no no, no, people get angry. They they're heated. They can hate the other side. They can hate people who disagree with them, but uh, they attack ideas, they don't attack people. They're not tribal about it.

They don't think that we are the good, righteous people who agree with each other on everything and you are the bat They they they're all over the place. And any individual you know, if you have individual thinking, you're going to have true and you know a bunch of individuals truly independent thinking, you're gonna they're gonna be all over the place with the reviews, right, and that's what you're right and and they're you know, if they apply

you know, a moral judgment, they apply it consistently. So if they think that, you know, drones in Afghanistan are bad, they're not going to change that view. And it's a different president in office, they're not going to change their review on executive overreach or on you know, anything else. When there's a different president in office, right, because it's just that that's not how grown up thinkers do things. Right. It's so it's kind of consistent. It's it's open minded,

it's willing to change your mind. There's the core value is truth, you know, trying to actually figure out what's true, and then they try to achieve what they want via persuasion. Right, they will argue and they will try to attack ideas, and you know, you don't attack people if you're trying to persuade them. You attack the ideas and you try to show why it's wrong. And so that's what they call high roaring politics, and it's to me, it's just

kind of grown up politics. It's what like any reasonable it's how this it's how reasonable grown ups behave in every other arena. It's just if only they behaved that way in this arena too, Right, So that idea is like nuanced, open to different, open to having their mind change. If they have a principle, they try to apply it consistently,

not just be like weirdo partisan cheerleaders. So then what is the what are some of the qualities that are characterized by the lower rung thinking that you lay on in the book yeah. I think I call it political Disney World because like I think of Disney movies. You know, there is villains, there's you know, symbol goods, Scar bad right, Aladdin good to far bad right, and it's it's these you know, it's like this binary code of ones and zeros, right,

and there's and and and and and so again. That's great for kids. You don't expect grown ups to be thinking like why why would grown ups be thinking that way? That's not No one in the right mind thinks that's how the real world is where that's how people are. There's not good good people and the bad people with the good ideas and the bad idea. It's just not

how anything works, especially a complicated society's incredibly complicated political environment. Right, it's not going to be like that, but politics is one of those topics that drags our mind into this, you know, kind of primitive zone where we were not thinking straight and we we we're not acting like ourselves almost, And so you have all these people that are totally normal and great and in other areas really believe that they are on the good team of righteous heroes fighting

for they have all the answers. There's their team is right about everything, and the other team is wrong about everything, and every problem in the society is because the other bad not just wrong but bad evil team is it's their fault. And and they they abide, you know, it's

it's it's you. They abide by a checklist. So it's, uh, it's that if that someone who's really mired in political disney world or low wrung politics tells you their position on guns boom, you know their position on climate change, you know their position on on you know whatever, Russia

and Ukraine. You know their position on abortion and taxes and social justice and every single other thing right, And so it's, uh, that's not thinking, right, that's that's that's the no. If you have ten independent thinkers, there's no way they're going to happen to agree on ten separate issues. It's only if you have this checklist that is kind of the tribe's approved checklist of ideas, that you're going

to have that. And so to me, when I look at the problems, it's like there's two tiers of problems. One you could say there's the horizontal disagreements. Okay, you know what is the left and the right doing what are they doing. Someone you know, someone is more on

track with each policy probably than others. What's happening there, But to me, that is dwarfed by the much bigger dispute going on, which is between kind of like sanity and just acting like reasonable grown ups and politics who can actually move things forward and actually make positive change.

It's a positive some game and this other game that's going on, this crazy tribal game that that has huge hostility, by the way, not just to each other, but to the high run game that the low rung game hates the high rung game. You know, it gets called you know, they call them all kinds of you know, enlightened centrists, spineless centrists. They say that you're giving you know, the other that you know, dangerous ideas a platform you know,

you know, debate. Is this negative thing? Don so So Yeah, So anyway, this is the framework that I basically then built built this book around. Yeah, you are reciting all the criticisms of our show there, Tim, So we're every

one of those. Yes. One of the things I actually like about the book and some of the infographics, which are fantastic, by the way, I recommend everybody going to follow Tim on Twitter and read weight at y dot com because the infographics that you put together are really easily digestible and they kind of narrow home this point. One of them being the media. You have the famous dog and the raccoon headlines that you have side by side that I have even pulled up in front of

me just because I love it so much. Can you can you lay out them media role in this both not only how they handle it, but then how that is then digested and used, as you said by low wrong thinkers. Yeah, so there's been a seismic shift in our environment. If you take any animal and you you take their nature and you change the environment, you're gonna see different behavior. Right, that's same nature is going to

output different people. So humans are no different. Human nature is not different than it was ten twenty one hundred thousand years ago. What changes is the environment and then our behavior changes. And one of the major elements of a modern democracy's environment is their media landscape. And and there's been a seismic shift to that that has obviously

massive consequences of all kinds. And the shift is that there used to be three broadcast national news channels, and they weren't news channels, by the way, they were CBS, NBC, ABC, they you know, and they did a lot of stuff and they have Flower of News twice a day or something, right, and and so I mean, it's just it's not that those were better people running those stations. And I don't think they don't really think these there's any any of

this story is about better or worse people. It's that they had incentives, right if they if one of them, if NBC starts to get known for being really biased towards the left or right and really kind of like, you know, they'll rush to a story and tell it with no journalistic integrity, and like they'll just like, you know, they're wrong all the time and they don't apologize, and

the other two aren't like that that. You know, NBC would become the laughing stock, right, everyone saying, oh, you know the kind of person who watches NBC, you would become a joke. Right, So they don't want to do that. They all want to try to fight with each other. Who could be more professional, right, who can see who can be more accurate and and have and and you can never tell the the political leaning of the anchors.

That was a huge thing, right. It was like they were all famously secretive about it because that's not professional for a newsperson. Why would it okay? So that environment and they also had thirty minutes a day, right, so they would I need to that's not much time. You got to really what's really important today in the news. Now that changes. You have cable TV, so then you have at CNN, you have MSNBC, you have Fox News.

You have all these just spring up in the eighties and nineties really mid nineties for MSNBC and Fox News pretty recent. And then you have of course the Internet, right, and you have you know, a Drudge Report, and you have Huffington Post, and you have Brightbart and you have all these these things pop up in a million political blogs and it's a totally different game. So you realize is if you're not, if you're not, you don't have the burden of being broadcasting to the whole country, and

you can narrow cast. And really, you know, Fox News kind of was a pioneer here and a lot of others copied it. You know, if you can, if you can narrow cast and say, you don't screw the other half, if we can just we don't have to seem objective. Let's just really confirm theless cater to one tribe. There are these tribes, let's just be the news for that tribe. Totally does narrow casting and it's and it's tribal media kind of right, it's it's specifically is trying to say

the incentives totally ship. Now your audience becomes very quickly. You know, they're people who want professional neutrality, they're long gone. Your audience becomes these people who are addicted to this game, this tribal war, that that that that they're they're in political Disney world. And so now the incentives become accuracy, not as much like neutrality, definitely not right. The accurate incentives become tell these people why they're right and they're good,

and why those other people are so bad? How awful are those other people done? Yeah, so what's that going to do to? You know that? And that? How's that? Of course that's going to have a massive effect on behavior.

So what's happening is you go from news that was kind of informing I wrung politics to news that is like, uh like is just stoking low rung politics, that is just completely igniting low rung politics and tim you go through in the book your analysis of the version of low rung politics that happens on the right, but you spend the bulk of the book going over what you

describe as social justice fundamentalism. And I'm curious, since you started this book, you know, a number of years ago, if you think the landscape of what you call social justice fundamentalism you might call it woke, is cancel culture like it has a lot of different words to describe, which I think is part of why you spend such a long time teasing out your specific definition here. Do

you think that landscape has changed? And do you also see you mentioned this a little bit in the book, but in the reaction to that social justice fundamentalism, I see some of those same authoritarian tactics and low run thinking being deployed in terms of you know, book bands or constraining curriculums and constraining protests, those sorts of things. So I wonder if you feel like the landscape has

shifted since you first started writing the book. Yeah, I mean, so I created this term social justice fundamentalism because it's, like I said, you know, the same thing with needing of artical access, like you need more labels because right now it's either you like social justice or you don't. And it's like, well, you know, Martin Luther King was classic social justice activists, right, I don't know how many

many people who think he was bad or don't like him. Right. So, like women's suffrage and emancipation, and the gay rights movement and civil rights movement, these are all like what I would call liberal social justice and liberal meaning like lowercase L. Like they are trying to make the country more liberal. Right, they say that the liberal promises in the Constitution are great,

and we're not doing so great at them. Let's do better, Right, Let's break the laws that are illiberal to show how illiberal they are so we can make things more liberal. Let's use liberal tools like free speech and voting and protest and three assembly, you know, use the liberal tools to make this country better. Social justice fundamentalism to me is the polar opposite. It's not like it's all those are the really far left, you know, extra social justice people. No, no,

those are. It's the exact opposite philosophy, which is that it's not that liberalism is as good, but we need to do we need more of it. It's that liberalism is the problem. It's it's it stems from you know, stems from Marxism and you know neo Marxist ideologies. Uh. And the idea there is that that liberalism is inherently oppressive and that you need something much more revolutionary than using free speech to fix bad policies or fix bad laws.

You need to overthrow the order. And you know, as Audre Lord says, you can't use the master's tools to fix the master's house. So free speech is not going to be your friend. That's part of that's what they want you to do. Free speech has to be shut down, right. Liberalist's part of liberalism. So the whole, the Master's house and all the tools in it are need to be overthrown. And then, you know, and then and then so you see that authoritarianism, which is illiberal, right, coming through in

the tactics. Instead of persuasion, it's will get you said. You know, if someone says something you don't like, and you're a liberal social justice activist, you'll say, Okay, here's why that's wrong. I'm gonna show everyone. I'm gonna I'm gonna use use free speech to show why that's wrong.

But the social justice fundamentalists would say, is we need to cancel that person who to punish them so that no one else argues that again, which is again that's if you think liberalism is bad, this is this is how you behave So anyway, the landscape, I've noticed huge changes since I started, which is at the beginning, I think people didn't even see any difference here. They I think a lot of people on the left thought that, you know, what we today call awokeness, it wasn't called

that back then, is purely good? Is this is our today's version of the civil rights movement. And then I think a lot of people start to say, something's up here, something's wrong right, this is not these people are are not doing it right anymore or something, And they started to maybe have those conversations in private, and I think that we are just starting, and I'm not sure even there yet, getting to a place where and I think some people are starting to feel okay, maybe saying this

more publicly, maybe actually changing the policy at their company that is that has been created by social justice fundamentalism. But then you see you mentioned the right, and so yeah, I think what I see it as is I don't see the problem as social justice fundamentalism, and I don't see the problem as Trump. You know, I think Trump

is a demogogue, right. I think he is a classic kind of there's always demagogue people who want to be president and kind of use use lies and and basically play on people's worst instincts and and you know, kind of the dictator mentality. There's always those people. But why is Trump rising up now? Right? And why is social justice fund that? There's always ideologies that are illiberal that want to shut down liberalism, but they can't usually, So

what's going on? And so I see a bigger trend going on, kind of this downward spiral of the country has been in and I think the media is part of it. I think there's a lot of things that go into it, you know. It just we've become more we've lost kind of the foreign threat in a lot of ways, so there's not that uniting force up there kind of on the patriotic level. And also the parties have aligned so that there's not progresses and conservatives within

each part like there used to be. So there's a lot of so now you just have this one concentrated tribal divide, right, there's nothing that's diffusing it above or below. There's a lot of things you can point to, but I think that, yeah, when I'm not surprised when I see then the right maybe acting more authoritarian or maybe doing overreach of their own because to me, it's like, yeah,

this is a whirlpool. We're all caught it and the whole thing is caught in it right now, and so you're not socially you may maybe you'll get maybe wokeness goes on the decline, we say you have you passed peak woke Maybe we have. Maybe it goes something else. Another movement is going to crop up and it's going to be it's going to be bad. And then another demagogue, maybe it's on the left this time. Who knows, another demogogue is going to is going to rise to power.

So until we fix this bigger problem and understand what it is, this is not the last of it. Yeah really, well said well tam Oh, go ahead. I was just going to say the book is great. I think people should you know, read it. There were pieces of it I really agreed with. There are pieces of it I disagreed with, but all of it I think made me a sharper thinker on these issues. So I really appreciate your time, Tim, and I hope people will check out the book. Thank you Tim. Guys, Yeah, our pleasure man.

Fantastic interview. Thank you guys so much for watching. We really appreciate it. Reminder, we got the premium show for everybody on Spotify. You can sign up at Breakingpoints dot com. I will be back in the studio, our beautiful, beautiful studio which we are working on as well, tomorrow, so I'm excited to do that, and it's a fun promotion to hear at Breaking Points. But we'll see everybody tomorrow. See you all tomorrow.