3/28/23: Trans Suspect Behind Christian Mass Shooting, Netanyahu Caves to Protests, Peter Beinart on Israeli Hypocrisy, Top SVB Accounts 13 Billion, American Patriotism Plummets, IRS Targets Matt Taibbi, US Military Shortages, Binance Sued

Happy Tuesday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal, Indeed, we do a lot of big stories breaking this morning, a horrific mass shooting at a Christian school outside of Nashville. We will bring you all the details, at least as much as we

know at this point. Chaos continuing in the state of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu pausing the judicial reforms that sparked those protests at breaking on that as well, We've also gotten new hearings into what exactly the hell happened with SVB this as former President Trump weighs in with his own hot take on both the Federal Reserve and the SVB bailout. Really troubling story about front of the show, Matt Tayib, who apparently, while he was testifying before Congress had an

IRS agent show up at his doorstep. We don't really know why. And Elon Musk also is basically paywalling Twitter. We'll tell you those details. Too excited to talk as well to Peter Beinart, who is going to be part of covering that story on of Israel. He's been really pretty courageous in his views and his analysis and his journalism with regard to that nation. So a lot to get to you before we get to Nashville. Crystal, do

you want to address why you're at home today? Yes, So I've been a little bit under the weather, nothing too bad, but there is a horrific stomach bug that is rampaging through my household. So I did not want to risk inflicting this plague upon you, Saga, or anyone else in the studio, So out of an abundance of caution, decided to do the show remotely for today. But I'm already feeling better. I was feeling pretty rough yesterday, but I'm already feeling a lot better. I'm sure I'll be

back on Thursday. Well, we thank you for saving our stomachs, and we hope that you remain better and all the kids, of course get better as well. So it's sad to not have you in the studio, but hopefully everything is going to be okay. Thursday, all right, let's get to it. Terrible news that happened late yesterday Christian School, mass school shooting that occurred there. We had an update from Nashville Police after the shooting and after the suspect was actually

killed by police. Here's what the police chief had to say. Our investigations tell us that she was a former student at the school. I don't know what grade she's attended a grades, but we do from Delite she was a student there. She identified student she does identify as Trends. Yes. So it was five officers that immediately went in and address. We have video that we're going to release, but you can see in a video, you can hear un fire going on as they're in the school. They address the

threat and take that threat down. We know there were two AR style weapons, one a rifle, another was an AR style pistol, and the other was a handgoing We believe two of those may have been obtained legally locally. Here. No we have a manifesto. We have some writings that we're going over that pertain to this day, the actual incident. We have a map drawn out of how this was

all going to take place. There's right now a theory of that we may be able to talk about later, but it's not confirmed, and so we'll put that out as soon as we can. A couple of important things we could take away from their number one police chief saying the suspect is a female to male transgender. Appears to have left behind a manifesto. We don't yet know what the contents of that manifesto have been. There haven't

been any leaks or any of anything that was posted. However, it appears to be motivated at least in some way against this school. The person was previously had attended this Christian school. We know a little bit, unfortunately, most about the victims, going to put this up there on the screen, one of them including a nine year old daughter of

the pastor. So we have six victims of the Covenant School shooting, including the private Christian academy headmistress, a custodian, and the young daughter of the school's pastor, and officials identified three of the Slange students as Evelyn deek House, Hallie Scruggs, and William Kinney, all aged nine years old, in addition to three members of the faculty from both sixty one and the school head actually Katherine Kohon. So obviously it's just a heartbreaking case that's happening here in

Nashville at Chris Lane. You know, we were talking a little bit when the outbreak of the shooting. Unfortunately, it almost seems cooked up in a lab to try and you know, trigger a culture war here in the United States.

And you know, I just think it's very upsetting anytime, you know, children especially are killed in a school, and more so, you know, almost what we saw in Uvaldi and elsewhere, like the immediate kind of twisting for political purposes that I'm watching a lot of people on the right also partake in right now is exactly what they decry whenever it happens up on the left. And you know, clearly, anybody who shoots up a school and murders innocent children

is a drained individual. That is the case, regardless of whether they're transgender or not. I see a lot of these kind of people playing in the same political space as a lot of people do whenever it's a you know, let's say, a right wing motivated shooting like El Paso or something like that, which is obviously, of course not seized upon or defended against in similar veins saying why

are you politicizing it here? Most immediately, I'm curious what your takeaways were, you know, beyond just the obvious heartbreak for the parents and for the children who were killed here. Yeah, I mean, I don't know what the takeaways can be. It's horrific, and it speaks to some sort of deep sickness at the core of our society, because it's easy to forget that, you know, this doesn't happen regularly in other countries. And you know, there's a couple ways in

which we're outliers. One is certainly the level amount of guns that we are a wash in and that culture. And the other is, I think a lack of access to healthcare and a lack of access in particular to mental health care. So I'm just at a loss at this point. You know, of course there have been calls

for increased gun control. Those are things that I'm open to, but I also have always been sort of realistic and pragmatic about I don't know that just banning an ar fifteens or you know, banning particular weapons are really gonna completely solve the issue. A lot of folks are pointing to the fact that the congressman who represents this district, let's go and put this up on the screen to speak to the culture of being a wash in guns. This was the Christmas card that this congressman put out

last year. I believe he is a freshman member, And for those of you who are just listening, it's him with his kids and his wife all, you know, holding some sort of weapon here. So you know, obviously this is someone who has been very much in favor of why spread availability and access of firearms. But you know, it's just a disgusting occurrence that, again I think, just speaks to some sort of deep sickness at the core

of our society. Yeah, I mean, I just you know, I really just wish that it wasn't a grab bag of everything. So, you know, from what I look at, you know, on my Twitter, in terms of the reaction right wing lawmakers elsewhere, everything is about the discussion of the transidentity here of the shooter and listen I mean, if there were hormones involved, or lack of mental health resources,

or that was something that was referenced. Look, I mean, we can't surmise the actual motive, but it doesn't take a genius to figure out that they may have had some resentment at the school that they had attended as opposed to their current identity. I think that's absolutely worth a discussion as well. However, you know, also there's just as you said, you know, almost immediately that tweet that

you've showed, you know, went immediately viral talking about gun access. Well, we've had gun access in this country for a long time, like you've had ar style weapons, you know, it used to actually not be all that uncommon, especially where I'm from in Texas, for like kids to have literal guns in their trucks like in the nineteen eighties. But there were no school shootings. It's something that just like Columbine and afterwards, just ignited something I'm not exactly sure what

it was. On top of that, we of course are having a discussion here about mental health resources. It was actually a major takeaway from Uvaldi that I think the most unfortunate part actually of the entire Uvaldi discourse around the mental health resource accessibility and all that was a lot of the hypocrisy that I saw in particular that

really frustrates me. So for example, like Texas Governor Greg Abbott talking about the need for mental health resources when you literally denied funding for mental health Medicare and federal funds that would have funded such facilities, you know, at the same time, you know, look, taking away guns is not going to solve First of all, it's not going to happen. It's just not I'm already on the record it literally against gun control specifically for this reason because

I don't think it would actually solve anything. But beyond that, on a non practical level, it's not just guns, as I just as laid out. It's multifaceted. I think at our show our best, you know, difficult moment like this, we just try to show people like, well, there's no one size fits all solution. We can be open to it.

We should just approach each other with compassion that I don't think there's any other way to do it, especially in a horrific time like they actually know somebody who knew some of the people who were killed in the shooting and we're close family friends with them, and those people are really hurting right now. Yeah, I mean that is certainly the case. I think it's also just worth saying there's a lot we don't know. You know. One of the things that I will definitely be looking for is,

you know, how are the firearms acquired? Yeah? Was this person on the radar of law enforcement previously? In that press conference that we played a bit of, they said that she didn't have any prior record or convictions. Doesn't necessarily mean that there were no previous interactions with law enforcement though, as we know. So those will be some of the questions that we have. And not to mention

whatever is in this manifesto that this killer pend. I'm glad that you brought that up because that's also my number one you know, everyone also else, Everyone immediately reaches for the guns or the trance thing. I'm like, hey, you know Parkland Evaldi, we can go on for Charleston, all this, every single case known to law enforcement, No mass murderer just wakes up one day and commits and act like this, from a terrorist to a school shooter,

there are breadcrumbs that are everywhere. There are always it's a drop drop bag. And as you said, looking and going to be paying very close attention to, was the nine to one to one call ever made? You know why exactly? Even in the motivation? What about social media postings?

Did somebody ever report what was going on here? So let's also not take our eye off the ball of this could be a law enforcement failure that we don't yet know some of the details of and that we're going to be hoping that some local media and maybe even mainstream media will dig into. So look, guys, you know, that's basically everything that we have here. As Crystal talked about the spark for gun control, President Biden in his first initial comment and seized upon the shooting to talk

about this. Here's what he had to say. We're mondering this situation really closely, Ben, as you know, and we have to do more to stop gun violence. It's ripping our communities apart, ripping the soul of this nation, ripping it's the very sole of the nation. And we have to do more to protect our schools so they aren't turned into prisons. You know, a shooter in this situation reported we had two assault weapons in a pistol to ak forty seven, so I call on Congress again to

pass my assault weapons ban. So we had the call for the assault weapons ban here. However, you know, the police chief said that they were legally acquired. We still do know need to know some of the details. At least two of firearms and another three I believe we're involved in this case. So you know, it's not also uncommon for any of these guns to be illegally purchased, even in the event of increased background check, et cetera.

So we'll see if there's any you know, red flags from psychiatrists, from medical system, from the police chief, law enforcement, the details on all that, and we'll continue to stick on the story. I know. The Counterpoints also will bring you guys an update if needed tomorrow as well as on our show on Thursday. However, let's get to Israel, which is what we're going to start our show within

the first place. Before this tragedy occurred, there have been really wild and widespread protests in Israel among Israeli Jews over proposed plans by Benjamin Netnaho to quote unquote reform the judiciary. It's basically a major power grab as he himself faces corruption charges and would lead to undermining the independent judiciary. So there's been a huge response to this, and this really came to a peak over the weekend

and into Monday morning. Let's ahead and put this up on the screen so we can see a little bit of what this looked like. These protests, which were truly nationwide, followed Netnya who's decision to sack his defense minister. His defense minister had actually called for a pause on these judicial reforms. Netnaho fired him, and then there was a massive up in the protest nationwide, including their largest trade union which I think had some like seven hundred thousand members,

and Israeli embassies being shut down. So this was a massive escalation in the level of protest, and we do now have a reaction from Netanyahu. Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen. Because of the pushback, he announced a delay in that judicial overhaul plan. He's deferring the controversial proposals to next parliamentary session after mass protests. So he's not saying we're not doing it, but he

is saying we're going to press pause. He said he would delay those changes because he wants to give time to seek a compromise over the contentious package. Speaking in a televised address on Monday evening, ten hours after he was originally scheduled to give a statement net Yahoo, they say, looking tired and striking an unusually flat tone, said he was not willing to tear the nation in half, and

there's a possibility of avoiding fraternal war through dialogue. I as Prime Minister, will take a time out for that dialogue. There's another piece of this too, Sagur, which is as part of this deal to pause the judicial reform. Because remember Netanyahu's part of a coalition government with some really hard right figures who wanted to press forward with this

regardless of the public reaction. So in order to secure this delay as part of the deal, he announced that they would form a civil National Guard, which will be led by this Minister of National Security. It'samar Ben Gavier, who is i mean effectively an out and out fascist, is basically called for Palestin means to be wiped down, and a member of the far right Jewish Power Party. So this is coming not without a cost. And again it's not like the reforms are being completely quashed. They're

just being pushed off to the next parliamentary session. Yeah, this is a really interesting episode and we'll talk about it more with our guest Peter Beinart. But it really is a revenge or i guess, a revolt of the secular Jewish el inside of Israel, who have been much more kind of wedded to Western democratic ideals and are very upset at the both religious component of the government, the most religious government I think, yeah, in modern Israeli history.

And on top of that, you know, the judicial reform, of which has never been popular amongst them, is one which a lot of like mass cultural Israeli society was revolting against. This is one of those where kind of the secular Jewish elite inside of Israel, the business elite, the tech elite, so to speak, in conjunction with a lot of the younger people who would agree with them, who are also raised secular, were the ones who took

to the streets. We should, you know, say though there was also a protest to support the judicial reform, and it's one of those which just just underscores that, Look, you know, Netanyahu in the religious government, they do also maintain some support inside of Israel, especially amongst kind of the Orthodox, the ultra Orthodox Jews who maintain a significant

portion of Israeli population in society. That's one of the major cleavages that exists in israel Is fights over welfare, military service, you know what exactly qualifies as what the level of support that they would receive from the Israeli state, And it's caused quite a bit of tension in their society, which is kind of erupting all over this judicial reform. But it's much much deeper than that. It's really just

not about the court. It's both singularly about Netteenyah himself, who is obviously, you know, facing serious legal trouble if he doesn't get any of this through, but so many different coalitions and factions to kind of hitch their wagon to him or to the opposing side, that it's all kind of coming out in this major protest. Yeah, I think that's well said that this was the lightning rod, but the schism goes much much deeper. We have one other piece we can show you here, which is just

the extent of the protests among Israeli Jews. It went so far. God and put this up on the screen. As Israeli embassies and consulates around the world, closed THEIRS on Monday in protests over this judicial overhaul. As I mentioned before, the largest labor union instructed all government employees to go on strikes. So you truly had a general strike among Israeli Jews in the country and even at these embassies around the world. I mean, they shut down

the airport, everything was shut down. And so that level of action actually forced Netanyahu's hand to have to do something and at least press pause and hope that some of the furor over this dies down. We also have some breaking news this morning, which is that President Biden has now extended an invitation in the wake of this pause to netn Yahoo to come visit the White House. You know, this is notable because there had been a sort of you know, chill you might say, on their

relationships somewhat at least as this was all unfolding. Now there is no specific date set, but it's kind of you know, the White House extending in all of branch and saying, okay, we appreciate that you paused these judicial reforms and to give you a little bit more specifics about what was being proposed here effectively, the courts in Israel. It's not like they're like pro Palestinian or anything like that, but they will occasionally side with Palestinians in land disputes.

And so that's why the far right politicians that including net Nyahu and his allies, feel that the Court has too much power and they want to be able to overrule the court with the majority vote in the Kanesset. So that's effectively. There's some other pieces here, but that's effectively what it would do. It also give them more power to place judges on the court, so that they

would have more power that way as well. So this is both about nets Yahu trying to escape the corruption charges that he's facing, but it's also an ideological battle here too. Yep, exactly, and that's why it's so important to note. It's like he has a personal angle, but also it's one of those very convenient ones where politically he's The Biden administration also in a real bind because originally they had protested or at least issued a word

of condemnation about judicial overhaul that frosty relations. The State Department didn't have actually any reaction to the protest movement inside of Israel, which a lot of people took certain notice of, and then also immediately inviting him to the White House after he called it off. I will say, from what I've seen this morning, the US Ambassador to Israel says there's no date yet been set for the visit or for the meeting, so it's not like frosty

relations won't remain. We should remember too, Biden and Obama are no heroes amongst the ultra religious coalition inside of Israel. They don't forget the UN resolutions that the Obama administration allowed to go through in the last days of his presidency, condemning It's been a while since I've studied it, but essentially, I think around Israel's settlements, they kind of viewed that as a quote stab in the back. It caused a

big thing. Of course, Netanyahu is the one who came to America and spoke out against the Iran deal before Congress, against the explicit protest of President Obama, so there was a lot of bad blood there. And President Biden has always been a little bit more staunchly pro Israel than President and Obama was has always kind of called himself that and was certainly in Israeli ally within Congress, but many of the people who work for him, were a part of that Obama team, inviting a lot of deep

suspicion from what I understand inside the Israeli government. So he has probably never been more of a frosty relations between President Biden and Netaan Yahoo as well within this.

So we'll see whether that meeting actually does occur anytime in this near future, because it wouldn't necessarily be politically advantages Netanyahu and then certainly for Biden it would look weak, you know, for both criticizing somebody and then inviting them over here on top of the fact that there is a significant I know there was a poll I think, I know you were thinking about covering it can bring up here, which is that democratic support for Israel is

an all time low today that it has been in I think like modern American history if you look at the that many just rank and filed Democratic voters feel about the issue. So Biden himself is a little bit of a bind. Yeah, that's interesting that you bring that up. There was some new polling that showed positive sentiment and sort of like sympathy within the for the Palestinian cause.

It skyrocketed among Democrats is now majority held position, which is you know, quite remarkable, given that I have to always be careful about the way you phrased that, but given how much more organized and influential the Israel lobby is in Washington and in terms of the media. So this is another instance of you know, the public is being told one thing, but they're making up their mind themselves,

especially on the Democratic side. And there was a separate poll that also gave, you know, expose the lie that being critical of the Israeli government is somehow anti Semitic, because at the same time you had a lot of sympathy for the Palestinian cause among Democratic voters. You also have very warm and positive feelings towards Jewish people in general. So you can critique the Israeli government obviously without being

anti Semitic, and it's absurd to suggest otherwise. The other piece of this I want to get to, and we have a wonderful guest, Peter Binart, to talk to us about this, is, you know, there's a hypocrisy at the core of these protests, which is you have Israeli Jews who are fighting so hard and so passionately for their own democratic rights, while you have you know, majority Palestinian population which has no democracy, no democratic rights, and they're wondering,

where's your concern for democracy where we are concerned. So let's go ahead and bring in Peter and we can talk about that aspect of things as well. Really excited to be joined this morning by Peter Baynart. He is a professor of political science and journalism at the City University of New York, and he also is author of the bune Art notebook on Substack. Recommend that you all to subscribe to that. Great to see you, Peter, You sir, nice to be with you. I want to get into

some of what you've been writing about. But first off the top, we've got some breaking news this morning, which is that President Biden has extended an invitation to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanya, who, after Natya, who decided to at least pause these judicial reforms. You know, what do you make of the invitation and the timing? You know, maybe they saw it as a payoff Jetanya, who for

having for having delayed this judicial overhall effort. It's not surprising that an American president would invite any Israeli prime minister, given how close a relationship the US and Israel have now whether it's morally justified the fact an apartad state by the world's leading human rights organizations, and in fact, Israel's leading human rights organization, not to mention Palestinia human

rights organizations is a different question. But in the political reality that exists in Washington, it's not surprising that Menshayakhu would get an invitation. Okay, got it, And so Peter. If we're digging into the bigger situation here, we've got protests all over Israel. Does how should we make sense of this in terms of Israeli domestic politics and then the way that the US has approached the protest movement.

So what you have among Jewish Israelis is a kind of a culture war that has certain analogs to what you see in the United States. First of all, you have a corrupt prime minister who's trying to bend the judicial system to make sure he doesn't get prosecuted. That might sound somewhat familiar to us. Secondly, Israeli Jewish society

is deeply divided along religious versus secular lines. This is the most religious government in Israeli history, and one of the things that it wants to do is ensure that ultra orthodox Israelis Jews do not have to serve in the military, which is a very very divisive issue among Israeli Jewish society. You also have an ultranationalist I was the even fascist element in the government that wants to prevent the Supreme Court from allowing it to go even

further in seizing land from Palestinians. The street will already allows the Israeli government to seize land from Palestinians fairly easily. But there are elements in this government that I think whose ultimate agenda is the expulsion of Palestinians, and they want to ensure the Supreme Court can't get in the way of that. So those are the cluster of issues that have produced this fight, which is really among Jewish

Israelis with Palestinians largely as bystanders. Well, let's talk a little bit more about that, because that's a piece that you've been writing about and speaking about on your substack. Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen.

From Peter, you say that in a certain kind of bizarre way, it's almost worse more painful to see the links that Israeli Jews are willing to go to to fight for democracy for themselves, given that most of them and most diaspora Jews are so profoundly oblivious or dismissive or even hostile to the idea that Palestinian should also

have democracies themselves. Here in this tweet, you say Jewish Israelis truly invited Palestinians to join their democratic struggle and made it a struggle for freedom for everyone, not just for Jews. That movement wouldn't just defeat Phoebe, it would

defeat apartheid and change the world. So talk a little bit about the lens through which Palestinians must be viewing these protests right so fresh, and we have to understand the reality about eighty percent of the Palestinians who live under Israeli control are not citizens, cannot become citizens of the state in which they live, and cannot vote for

the government that controls their lives. These are the Palestinians who live under military occupation in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, those who live under block Hate, Israeli block Hate and Gaza. The twenty percent of Palestinians are Israeli citizens, but even they are citizens of a very profoundly second

class nature. So again to accuse a crude analogy, it's almost as if you were in the kind of white segregated American South and you had this huge protest movement because you saw a white politician who seemed like they were going to erode the democratic rights of white Southerners, and then you'd have black people looking and say, wait a second, here, this is really bizarre that you're kind of launching this democracy movement as if we don't even

exist when we are denied all basic democratic rights. There have been some Palestinian politicians inside Israel who have thought, well, we should support these protests because what Natanyahu is doing

would allow the government to abuse us even more. But I think the dominant reaction from Palestinian intellectuals and activists on the ground and in the diaspora has been that there's something really perverse and bizarre and insulting about Israelis launching a movement to protect democracy when Palestinians who constitate more constitute more than half of the people under is really control, don't live in a democracy. And I think

that was the point I was trying to highlight. Got it, Peter, how should you know, people who are looking at this, One of the takeaway I've seen is that this actually might bring down the Netuayau government. Just for context, because I don't know people understand the roiling nature of Israel. Israel's like constant shuffling of government. How realistic of a possibility is that does the you know, as you said, religious kind of ulternationalists coalition is will it remain together?

And how core is judicial overhaul actually to Nettaya, who's tenuous script on power. If I had to guess, I would guess the government will not fall because what's happened as a result of these protests is that the government has actually become pretty unpopular. And so in a parliamentary system, if you're unpopular, you don't want to bring down your government and go to elections because you're not going to do very well. So I think that for that reason,

I think this coalition is likely to hang together. Coalition. There were elements in this coalition that really wanted judicial overhaul, but not everyone in this in this coalition wanted judicial overhaul, And my guess, My guess would be that they will now focus on pursuing other strategies of things they want to do that are less not that will not produce

quite as ferocious a backlash. But I'm not sure they're pausing it till May, and I think it'll partly What will partly determine it is whether this protest movement continues or whether it peters out and they feel like they have a little bit more political of kind of runway to it to go on. Got it. Part of the deal that was struck here involves creating a new civil national Guard, which looks like it will be led by

a far right politician. It'samar Ben Gaviro is the current Minister of National Security and member of the Jewish Power Party. Can you talk about that development, what it means and how it's being received. Yeah, I mean again, I'm searching for analogies for America. In some ways, it's a little bit kind of like taking some very very far right person in the Trump orbit and kind of not turning

the Proud Boys into some kind of national guard. I mean, Ben Gavier is someone who's really been flirted with the

edges of terrorism. His entire career was actually considered so much of a you know, was involved in the group of people who assassinated Yitzak Rabin, the Prime Minister, in the mid nineteen nineties, even though he himself was not fingered for that had was a long time devotee and follower of rab America Hana, whose entire political identity was wrapped up with the idea of expelling Palestinians, and who for many years in his home had a poster of

a man named Beroke Goldstein, a terrorist who walked into the Ebra, the Cave, the tomb of the Patriarchs, the Ibrahimi Mosque and Pevron in nineteen eighty four and massacred I think twenty nine Palestinians while they were in prayer. So this is this man's basic agenda is to free the Israeli military and police from any restrictions on their ability to brutalize Palestinians, I think, with the ultimate aim of trying to expel Palestinians, so an utterly lawless of

human beings. So to put this guy in charge of some kind of private security for us, it's not clear, frankly, how many people will actually serve in this, but is you know, imagine what this means for Palestinians who don't have their own police force and army that can protect them, who are basically defenseless in the face of the Israeli military and police as it stands now. And then you're going to give this guy authority of some special unit.

I mean, it's a really terrifying situation. And finally, Peter, you know a question that I think is at the core of all of this. As you see Israeli Jews fighting so hard for their democracy, while as you put it, you know, the Palestinian majority is complete, we denied any voice or any Democratics say, can you have a democracy

an ethno state? I think fundamentally no, because I think at the core of liberal democracy is the idea of equality under the law, irrespective of your race, religion, ethnicity. And there is a global struggle we see all around the world between this idea of equality under the law and the idea that countries should be the property of one racial, religious, ethnic tribe. You see it in India where Narendramoti is trying to turn India into a Hindu state.

You see it, of course in the United States, where we have powerful forces that want to make this a white Christian state. In Europe as well, similar forces like that, And so the notion we have gotten so used to talking about Israel as a Jewish and democratic state that I think people don't think enough about the fundamental contradictions

of that idea. And the problem is that Israel has actually become a model for the kind of ethno state that people all around the world who threatened the idea of liberal democracy are trying to create, even including in our own country. So no, I think what I would hope is that one day is rebocomes a state for all its citizens, a state that treats everybody the same way legally, irrespective of what religion they are. And I think that's the fight that you know that we need

to have all across the world. Yeah, well, we appreciate you joining us, Peter. I really appreciate your insight and your analysis on this. I know there's a lot going on here and we're all trying to make sense of it, So thank you. Thank you. A bunch of breaking news to talk about with regard to Silicon Valley Bank. They are holding their first hearings today in Congress as to what the hell happens here. Before we get to that, though, there has been at least a partial sale of Silicon

Valley Bank. Let's put this up on the screen. This was brokered by the fd i C. The headline here for the New York Times is Silicon Valley Bank sold to First Citizens in government back deal. Banking regulators, which announced announced the deal late Sunday, had been looking for a buyer since seizing control of that failed bank. So this includes the purchase of about seventy two billion dollars in loans. There was a significant discount here of sixteen

point five billion dollars. They're also transferring all of the bank's deposits worth fifty six billion dollars. Roughly ninety billion dollars in Securities and other assets were not included in the sale. But the bottom line for depositors now you you know, are part of First Citizens Bank shares. They're the ones who hold your money. You go to their branches, and they own the Silicon Valley Bank branches as well.

Let's go ahead and put the FDIC announcement up on the screen just so we can get a sense of that. Their press release says First Citizens Bank and Trust Company in Raleigh, North Carolina, to assume all deposits and loans of Silicon Valley Bridge Bank that is the sort of like temporary holding company for the bank. And you know, one thing that was noteworthy here is this bank for Citizens Bank and Trust Company based out in North Carolina. This purchased it has apparently been making a habit of

purchasing distressed banks from the FDIC. Their size has grown dramatically as they purchased more than twenty different government sees lenders. Their assets have grown to more than one hundred billion from about twenty billion dollars a decade ago. So that sale has been brokeer, which, of course, you know Soccker is worth remembering this didn't take that long to unfold. You know, the normal process that could have played out from the FDIC would have involved a similar sale depositors

being made, if not completely holed close to whole. It just would have taken somewhat more time than what they were able to guarantee. But clearly there was a buyer for this bank and the assets here. Well, there certainly was a buyer. And there's some even more of those details which are pretty interesting just about how much the FED, the FDIC and regulators screwed this before the actual crisis

even began. You flag this is going to put it up there on the screen that in a February presentation before the Federal Reserve, they had specifically brought up before the Board of Governors rising interest rates on bank's financial conditions and discussed the issues broadly, but highlighted svb's interest

rate and liquidity risk. In particular, staff relayed. They were actively engaged with SVB, but as it turned out, the full extent of the bank's vulnerability was not apparent until the actual bank run on March ninth, So, in other words, they knew exactly what was going on. They had some time to try and pressure SVB to try and do something about it, to try and head off this crisis.

They didn't do anything about it, and then the government stepped in and guaranteed all of the deposits at SVB and effectively at all large banks in the country, while also screwing the smaller community banks. So the precedent, we really can't let go of what happened. I know, everybody's

moved on. You know, Oh, nobody lost any money. There was no real bank run for normal people, so okay, but I mean this still is an extraordinary, most extraordinary financial action by the United States government since two thousand and eight, and the president which has set is still not yet being grapple with. And unfortunately, you know, even in the two thousand and eight context, at least there

was some anger about what happened. I'm glad that we are having some congressional hearings, but there is no serious effort yet to actually grapple with what happened here. And I don't think people should underestimate the political vulnerability that the Biden administration and really anybody who supported these actions could face. Talk a little bit about you know, President Form. President Trump definitely seizing on it because he's not an idiot.

Anybody could see this is a real political vulnerability. When you know, big bankers get bailouts even whenever they do something where they screw up, and they get to literally continue to do business as usual and keep their regular amounts of profit. It seems like a little bit of special treatment for one people and not special treatment for everybody else. Well, and to that point, yes, nobody has

any sympathy for bankers, the shareholders, et cetera. But I got to say, these depositors put this up on the screen. We're getting some more details about exactly who was bailed out. Put this next piece up here. We now know per the FDIC chair, that the ten largest deposit accounts at SVB held thirteen point three billion dollars in the aggregate. Okay,

ten accounts had more than thirteen billion dollars combined. What is wrong with you that you're holding billions of dollars in an account that is only insured up to two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. And keep in mind the way this was sold to people, all the small businesses and the mom and pop food panch bull shit. This is the people that you bailed out. So even the

depositors who were the most sympathetic group here. You know, I got some real questions about any company, CEO or CFO that's holding over a billion dollars in a bank account. You are an idiot ultimately, and you do not deserve a bailan. You could wait a couple a week or two weeks for a sale to occur to have access to all of your billions of dollars here. Yeah, christl, that is an average of one point three billion in cash sitting in these accounts so let's think about that.

We all made fun of Roku for keeping half a bill in the bank. It turns out they were junior players and not even top ten inside the deposits. Inside of this, it's also funny to me. You know, these people are supposedly the most sophisticated financial minds, and tech is the future. And I spoke to some of my friends on Wall Street. They were laughing at them, and they were like, hey, you think you're the first rich person to ever exist. All our high network clients have

much more spread out assets. Specifically, in cases doesn't happen, they buy private insurance on their deposits because this type of stuff has happened before. And for somebody who has got a net worth of you know, five six billion, the interest payment that you'd be making on that is well worth it in the case of catastrophic risk, which

exactly what happened here. They were actually literally laughing at many of these tech billionaires and other people who might have had assets like this concentrated in their bank accounts, just saying that it was amateur hour. And so when Wall Street is laughing at you for being irresponsible, I don't really know what to say when even they are like,

you've got you people are a joke. You know, you talk about how you're the future, and you don't even know the very basics of what it's like to bank as a high networth individual or as a high well capitalized company. I think you could see that there were some serious problems, not just with the bank. And that's also why it was important in the first place. Why did all these people have so much money in the bank. Because this bank specifically catered to this one industry. They

became fantastically over a period of time. They had exclusive lockup deals, they offered very favoring financing, very favorable terms. I saw hilarious one from a depositor who talked about how they had to move their deposits from Silicon Valley Bank to somewhere else and that bank canceled their account because they asked for a physical address. And he goes that never happened to me and somebody at Silicon Valley Bank, and someone replied, You're like, hey, that's actually the law.

You're supposed to have a physical address. So what are you talking about. He's like, Oh, Silicon Valley Bank never asked me that. For seven years while I was a client in them. It's like, so they were illegal, basically illegally banking for seven years while at this one bank. Why because they catered to the tech industry, which is high moving startup and all that. And look, risky industries are going to attract risk. That's something which everybody likes

on the upside. Nobody seems to like it on the downside, except in this case, the downside, the US government is the one that steps in and says everybody's going to

be okay. So I just think it's totally ridiculous. And there is, of course still continue to be many questions about how the regulators were asleep at the switch here, with which I think reflects a deep ideological failing among all of our supposed regulators, who have seen their role basically postgreens Band and in the quote unquote neoliberal era, as rather than actually serving as the cops on the beat to make sure that any sort of obvious risk

is being mitigated and these banks are being dealt with, they've seen their role as just providing transparency to the market because the market will handle the regulation. I mean, it really is like the most classic possible situation because not only from Michael Barr's testimony here, but there was previous reporting that the FED did know there were issues here for not just like a month in advance, for years. They knew that there was an interest rate risk exposure.

They sent their little memos to the bank of like, hey, guys, you got to do something about this, but they didn't actually take any action. And so who ends up on the hook at the end of that, Well, it's all of us. The last piece about the that I just can't get over with the you know, depositors with billions

of dollars in the bank. We were really sold this narrative of we've got to act and take these extraordinary actions because this particular bank is special and this is going to have huge reverberating impacts on all of these small businesses, et cetera. I think we can see now that there was perhaps no bank and group of depositors better prepared to weather a financial storm than this bank

and this group of depositors. So, you know, if they had to get a bridge loan from their wealthy backers until you know, the next week when they'd have access to their deposits, most of these people would have been fine.

So again, this speaks to the core problem and the ramifications of these actions, which is, if you're going to intervene in this incredibly extraordinary system wide way when it's Silicon Valley Bank, a mid size bank with a bunch of billionaire depositors, that means that you basically have every significant bank in the country, you have deemed them all too big to fail. You have put the taxpayers on the hook for all of these banks and whatever idiotic

decisions they're making. And that's the piece of this that we really can't lose sight of. Soger. Yeah, that's right. And you know we're not the only ones we're talking about this. As I alluded to, somebody who's got pretty good political spidery senses is immediately going off form. Or President Trump weighing in last night after taking a shot at Ron DeSantis going after the Silicon Valley Bank bailout. Let's take a listen to what he said. And would

you have supported the bailout of Silicon Valley Bank? Okay, ready, I had a lot of questions you're asking me. I wouldn't have supported the bailout. The bank would have to get along by itself. And maybe they could have. What happened with the bank's interest rates went too high. And you know, I had my own situation with Powell, and I beat the hell out of them. Was not a big fan of pal He was recommended by some people. I didn't like him. He's too interest rate happy. What

you do is you get the up prices down. That's bigger than interest rates. The only thing. And what happened is we took an oil and now we take an interest rates. Those banks failed because the interest rates were do they stupidly bought long term treasure is ten year treasures, Well, they bought a long term longer than that even and they bought a long term and those treasuries got crushed because palal Key's raising interest rates. Shockingly good answer there

from for President Trump. He is right, he always was against raising interest rates, specifically for this reason. He is also correct that one of the best ways to bring down inflation costs is by the supply side, not necessarily on the demand side through the blood instrument of the Federal Reserve. And then criticized Silicon Valley Bank specifically for the way that they were managing their balance sheet. I have to say that is the most substantive policy response

yet in the twenty twenty four campaign. Crystal, I have not heard President Biden say a single word about this, simply that the banking system is totally safe and sound. Yeah, no, I mean on this one. Trump gets a lot of things right. It's funny to see the horseshoe of like basically like him and Elizabeth Warren having this deep hatred

for Jerome pal and deep critique of him. But the thing that he gets at, you know, it's sort of like confused what he says a little bit and not like tell you have to like read the tea leaves or read between the lines of what he actually means here. But to the extent that he raises the issue of hey, interest rates are not really getting at the problem that you have here with regard to inflation, which is of

course something we've been talking about the whole time. Okay, inflation, Okay, part of it might be dealt with with interest rates, which means you're dealing with inflation just by crushing labor and trying to spike unemployment. But the bulk of inflation is being caused by corporate price gouging, being caused by supply chain issues being caused by spiking food and energy prices in part because of the war in Ukraine. Those aren't the things that the FED can do anything about.

And lo and behold, even with what has been an extraordinary period of interest rate hikes, it hasn't solved the problem. There's a reason for that, because it's the wrong tool to use. So not only is this instinct correct, I think with regard to the FED, but obviously his political instinct with regard to Silicon Valley Bank, a critique which I you know, which I share in which I agree with,

is also spot on. It'll be interesting to see if he leans into this, though, and I hadn't heard him say anything about it before, so he didn't jump right on top of it the way, for example, like Vivek Ramaswami came out right away and was opposed to and

put out a Wall Street Journal ont bed. It'll be interesting to see if he adds this to the litany of issues that he really makes core to his campaign in the way that he has, like Medicare and social security, the Ukraine war, and then you know his like election denial nonsense, So it'll be it would be quite something if he had opted this as another core piece of

his you know, pseudo populist rhetoric at least. Right, Yeah, I'm also interested in that, whether it was a one off or whether it's something that he'll pick up on. Most likely, if he sees a good response to it, he will continue to pick up. So we'll see the trial balloon. This one's a trial balloon at the very least. It Yeah, at the very least. Let's let's get some interest. Yeah, maybe we can get Look, maybe this qualifies mister president.

Please talk more about this and not cat turn poles, although you should keep doing that because that is just objectively funny. There's just no way of being around entertaining. Indeed, absolutely all right, let's talk about this new poll from Wall Street Journal, basically pouring gasoline on the fire of the discourse. Absolutely fascinating. I spent a lot of time yesterday talking about with Andrew Schultz on the Flagrant podcast about this. Everybody kind of seems to have a take,

and I'm curious what yours is as well. So let's go ahead and put it up there on the screen. And it talks about how America pulls back from the value us that once defined it. So let's go ahead and actually put D two up there so people can see the visual. I'll read it for everybody who is just listening. Number one is patriotism. In nineteen ninety eight, seventy percent of Americans consider themselves patriotic. Sixty one percent

said so. In twenty nineteen, only thirty eight percent say in thirty thirty eight percent say so in twenty twenty three. For religion, it was sixty two percent in nineteen ninety eight, forty eight percent in twenty nineteen, thirty nine percent in twenty twenty three. For having children, it's fifty nine percent in nineteen ninety eight, down to thirty percent in twenty twenty three. Community involvement was at forty seven actually spiked in twenty nineteen to sixty two percent, but now down

to a record low of twenty seven percent. And then finally money and in terms of what values are quote very important to people, money has now gone from thirty one percent to forty three percent. So my takeaway, Crystal, was that it's easy to be patriotic. In nineteen ninety eight, it's unipolar moment, no dot com bubble. You could buy a house. You can basically sustain a family of four on a single income, So who cares about money because

money isn't actually all that relevant to your life. You actually are becoming basically rich or richer by participating in general society. Wage inflation had gone down, but it wasn't necessarily know even close to how bad it's gotten now. Also, my takeaway too was that I think that people are viewing this clearly through a left phenomenon, but in reality, if you look at where the major drop in patriotism comes from, a lot of it also comes from the right.

And part of the reason why I think that is is we have dual narratives of catastrophes that are happening. So clearly, you know, while Trump was president, we had a decline in patriotism because people said, I can't even believe that America would elect somebody like Donald Trump. But if you are a Republican, especially a Mago type believer, you literally believe that the election was stolen from Donald Trump.

So how can you then believe in your country you have a dual kind of catastrophizing that is happening, where you have lack of faith in the country's most basic institutions from both right and left in a lot of ways, really the only thing you really unites us at all anymore. On top of that, religion has been going down now for decades. But I think a money piece and the increase of money is not just about the rise of individualism.

It's about how much you actually do have to care about money today just to get by, Whereas in the past it's not something that would have been very important to you, when it would have been something where it was more of a foregone conclusion where you'd be able to participate and foster all of these other things. We already know that the main hindrance to people getting married today is money. Also to having children. People are having less children than they want to, and the main reason

that they cite is that it's too expensive. I believe the average childbirth is some thirty one thousand dollars or something here in the US, on top of the one million dollars or so that it costs if you want to send a child to college, and I think at two hundred fifty thousand dollars just for raising somebody up

through eighteen years old. I mean, this is not a not a small cost that a lot of these families are incurring here, and the reality of even trying to buy a house or any of the foundational types of things are now so out of reach that money has to become more important. What do you think, Yeah, I mean, look, I think on a basic level, our economy is supposed to serve the people, and our government is supposed to serve the people, and instead both our economy and our

government serve a handful of elites. So of course, when you feel like the societal institutions that are supposed to have your back don't, what's that going to lead to among a certain group of people, It's going to lead to a well, I just got to get mindset. And so I think that's where you see the rise in money being all important, which of course is a core sort of value of neoliberalism anyway, putting profits and cash

maximization over everything else. And then also it makes sense in terms of decline of patriotism if the government doesn't reflect you, doesn't serve you, if the institute of the economy don't reflect you and don't serve you, which you know makes sense. Coming on the heels of the Silicon Valley bail out discussion we just had. It's quite relevant. Yeah, why would you feel patriotic about a country that isn't doesn't seem to be there for you? And Matt Stoller

made this point that I thought was pretty profound. Let's put his his analysis up on the screen. Here his tweet that he put out. Go ahead and throw this up on the screen, guys, you can see a chart. He says, these two phenomenon are causal. America is in a mass die off. So Americans have become much less patriotic. When your country's systems end up killing your friends and family, you tend to lose your faith. And what he shows is, you know the grass we already showed you from this poll.

But he also has here the decline in life expectancy that we have seen in the United States over decades and as compared to other nations. So this is a US specific phenomenon. Now it was accelerated by COVID, But a lot of the underling things we've covered at nauseum Sager has to do with a lot of death to despair, the fact that you have these mass addiction crises. But I think Derek Thompson has also talked about how it's a whole range of issues where Americans are more likely

to die than their compatriots and other nations. So yeah, it doesn't surprise me to see that people don't feel too great about the country when that's the landscape. I'm reminded of a book I read a while ago, maybe in like twenty fifteen, twenty sixteen, about the American Dream and how it was being interpreted, especially by white working class voters in and around Youngstown. Is written by a researcher named Justin Guest. It's called I Think the New Minority.

I really recommend it, and he interviewed a bunch of white working class voters about how they felt about the American Dream, and they thought it was dead, you know. They thought, like this idea that you work hard and you get ahead, this is nonsense. This does not reflect

my life. And these were people, many of whom their father or their grandfathers had been able to get solid middle class union jobs, been able to have the family, been able to have the house, been able to have some vacation time every year, and then they had watched the standard of living in their area thanks to de industrialization, decline. Just over their lifetime, so they weren't able to achieve the basics of middle class stability that their father or

grandfather was able to obtain. So yeah, when I think you have that feeling of like, you know, this American dream is just a load of croc and this country doesn't have my interest at heart, of course you're going to see these kind of trends. Yeah, and I also think there's just a broader malaise. I mean, you know, you and I were like in the millennial generation. We really have not known in a time in our adult

lives of no war and no financial crisis. Like if you lived through like that nineteen ninety eight number, if I was my age then so it'd be thirty years old and nineteen ninety eight, then the Vietnam War was basically over by the time I was like eight years old.

Then you had the unipolar moment. Yeah, the seventies were pretty bad, but the eighties were pretty nice, and then the nineties were so awesome in terms of mass culture, in terms of money, the economic boom there was, yeah, I guess like the nineteen eighty two depression, but you know, the biggest problem in the nineteen ninety eight was that the president got a blowjob in the Oval office and lied about it and it was still out of sixty two percent approval rating when all of that was happening,

Just showing like how unserious so much of our politics were at that time, Like why wouldn't you have some high level of patriotism? Would we would wish for the problems of nineteen ninety eight Today we had like a budget surplus, right, you know, it's like all these things that were happening that you can't even imagine, and so compare then to compare now of course, same with the housing. You know, I think housing is just so foundational to it. You and I see it so much in our audience

as well. Nineteen ninety eight, a starter home was not outside of your reach. Starter home that was built in nineteen seventy You could buy a second hand on the market, not for that much money, with a decent interest rate,

with an income that you could easily pay for. You know, I think about somebody like my parents who moved here to this country in nineteen ninety eight or nineteen eighty eight, very easily, you know, moved from condo to you know, modest house, decent neighborhood be able to you know, relatively, you know, it was safe. You get to ride the school bus, you don't have to worry about anything. You go to school, and your schools are pretty good. And that was a very common reality of life for a

lot of people, and that's just gone. This just really doesn't exist for people who are my age, or even anybody who's coming to this country now today. So it's one of those where, yeah, the American dream is alive and well for people at the upper echelons of society,

they've actually gotten richer, literally than ever. But for everybody, if you lost your house, in my favorite stat on this, you know, for everybody who has any assets or whatever, is if you did not sell your house or any of your assets in two thousand and eight and you waited a decade, you not only made money, you know, on that trade by doing nothing, your house dramatically appreciated

in value. But the people who lost that, who never had the ability to hang onto anything, basically had nothing already in the system. They became dramatically poor. So the why the gap between rich and poor expanded more than we can ever really imagine in that decade after two thousand and eight. That's why President Trump became president, in my opinion, for a lot of these reasons. And that's why I think it comes to the heart of so much our political and some of our political and economic

problems that we have today. It's really sad. It's sad, and it causes a lot of nihilism too. So I hope that it can be reversed. But you know, we had that discussion with Tim Urban yesterday. I'm not so sure I think he was right. I think we are in the whirlpool. Like I think Trump is just the first part of our problems. It's going to be a long way. It's hard to say. I mean, you know, things can change, dynamics can shift. There's no doubt we're in a sort of like chaotic searching period. I think

that's really clear. You know, in a sense, I feel like the declining numbers in patriotism are actually kind of a sign of health in terms of the way the American people are viewing the betrayal of them by both the government and by the you know, economic institutions. Because just having blind patriotism, I don't consider that. I don't consider that a positive thing. I think it's good that there's a recognition that this system has failed in some really key and bedrock type of ways. That can be

a positive impetus for change. So in that way, I see a sort of silver lining here, because you're right. You know, we talk about inflation in the context of just the past year or two, but the reality is the basic bedrocks of a middle class life, housing, education, and healthcare have dramatically escalated in cost as to be wildly unaffordable for so many a majority of Americans, and those are kind of the key marks of the a stable,

non precarious middle class life. So the American people have been suffering under brutal escalating costs for decades now that have, you know, put stability out of reach for so many. And that's why when you dig into these numbers about patriotism and community involvement and all these other things, the places you see the largest declines are among young people because,

like you said, Zagar, they've never known another world. But basically, people my age and younger have never known a different world that wasn't you know, Bush invading a rock on a mountain of lies and media betrayals and societal institutional institutional failures and financial collapse and escalating crises. You know, that's been the world that we've existed in. So it's not a surprise that there's been a sort of radicalization. It's entirely to me, it's an entirely rational response to

the set of circumstances that we face. Yeah, I think that's very well said. All right, let's get to Matt Tayeb. Yeah, so this is a wild story. You all will recall that journalist Matt Tayeb who covered a bunch of the Twitter files, you know, with regard to the Elon Musk releases, and testified in front of Congress recently as part of that like weaponization of government hearings. On the day that he was testifying, put this up on the screen, This from the Wall Street Journal. Apparently an I R S

agent showed up at his house on that day. Now, this is a tweet from Michael Scheltenberger, who's another journalist who's been covering the Twitter files. He says, well, Matt Taybe and I were testifying before Congress on the weaponization of the federal government. An I R S agent showed up at his house, and he says what an amazing coincidence, you know from the Wall Street Journal report here, and I think we have that we can put up on

the screen. How Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan has now set a letter to the I R S on Monday demanding answers about why exactly this happened, because listen, I have been audited before. This is not the way that it works. Yes, IRS agents don't just like show up at your doorstep. You get a letter in the mail that says, hey, you need to contact us, and then you go through a process. But never has have I ever had a situation where an IRS agent actually knocks on your door

demanding answers. So and it was an unannounced visit. So it really is a troubling development here well, and some of the details relayed directly to his work over at Substacks, says the taxman left a note to mister Tayibi to call the IRS. Four days later, Taibi was told in a call with the agent. In twenty eighteen and twenty twenty one tax returns were rejected owing to concerns about

so called identity theft. Tayib has provided the committee with documentation showing that his twenty eighteen return had already been electronically accepted, and says that the IRS never notified him or his accountants of a problem after he filed that twenty eighteen return more than four and a half years ago. The IRS initially rejected his twenty twenty one return, which

he later then refiled. It was rejected again even though he was accountants refiled it with an IRS provided pin number, notes that in neither case was the issue monetary, and that the IRS actually owes him a considerable amount of money. So the bigger question is when did the IRS start dispassing agents for surprise house calls. By the way, Chrystal, you and I are currently could use a call back from the IRS. So that would be nice in terms of actually getting some service for trying to run a

small business and do it legally here. You know, it's actually much harder than you might imagine. And yet apparently whenever you go and you testify before Congress and you call out the actions of maybe the National Security State and exposed some pretty troubling and some interesting things, Oh then the tax man just comes to your house on that very same day. Look, as you said, these this is unprecedented people don't just show up at your house

completely unannounced. That's crazy. You know, we can barely get a freaking letter back from these people, so to have resources to dispatch somebody directly to your personal residence without a heads up. Also, you know, from what we can see here, you engage a professional accounting firm. They didn't even engage with the professional tax professional, so it would have been the people to contact in this regardless. So all of this just smells so fishy, and I think

this could be a real problem. I mean, there's to the idea that it was not political or so that it was not politically motivated, just seems incredibly hard to believe such a both incredible coincidence the exact nature of

what's already happening here in this case. And look, I hope that they actually do get to the bottom of it, because this is exactly the type of stuff that the Nixon administration used to do and threatened, specifically about the Washington Post Company and others whenever they were exposing the Pentagon papers. You can go back and read it if you want to. They also consider doing the same thing

to Daniel Ellsberg. This is literally all on tape so it is not outside the realm of possibility for how a White House or for how the executive branch lashes out at people that they view as political enemies, and specifically at journalists. Yeah, it's really just bizarre and deeply disturbing. What did you make of I didn't really understand the piece where they said it was related to identity theft

you what did you make of that? Yeah, I mean, I guess it could be what it could be one of those where somebody had stolen his identity before and you provide it to additional documentation. Sometimes people do that, I know, whenever they try to steal people's like tax returns, or whenever they try to steal people's what do they called the whatever, this surplus of whatever that you you paid that they'll give you the refund. I try to refund right the tax refund that I know that people

have tried in the past and have done that. That's part of the concern about identity that. The crazy part though, as he says, is that why are they contesting in twenty eighteen return from four and a half years ago. You know that's from especially at the federal level. And again he asked professional tax council that he is engaged here, who seemingly, you know, would have been on top of this. So anyway, I'm looking at all this fitchy as hell.

They don't just come to your house. It's complete. Especially this is also open sort. It's not just us. Small businesses are struggling dramatically and actually getting response time back from the IRS on their filings. It was one of the reasons that the Biden administration said we needed more agents was to process that backlog. Again, You and I are literally actually stuck in some of that backlog. But he's getting people getting set to his house. So how

does that work. It's totally crazy. It's such a great I didn't even think about it in terms of our context. But yeah, we've been waiting for like a response back to just the basic like structure of our business for over a year. But they've got the resources to send some and directly to Matt Diebe's doorstep, right, very very eyebrow raising, I will just say that, Yeah, by the way, if anybody's watching, we would level response back. It actually

would clear up a lot of headaches. Come to our doorsteps on the audio, Please come to my doorstep and resolve problems so that we can run our business anyways. Yeah, our own personal problems aside, So there you go. Anyway, we stand up here from Matt Tayibi. We'll put a link to his substack here in the description so you can make his tax problems even more complicated because he's making so much money. But look, the clear point here

is that obviously this seems deeply fishy. There need to be a lot of questions that are answered about this, and if it was politically motivated in any way, all of that needs to come out from a corruption of our tax system and if the executive branch was resolved, because it would be a genuine scandal. We also wanted to mention Elon Musk making some news here with regard

to the operations of Twitter. So you know, they launched the sleigh, the blue check mark thing that you have to pay for now the old legacy verified check marks like what we have SAGA are about to go away, and so he tweeted out starting April fifteenth, only verified accounts will be eligible to be in for you recommendations. This is the only realistic way to address advanced AI bot swarms taking over it is otherwise a hopeless losing battle.

Voting in polls will require verification for the same reason. Now, I think it's important to remember in terms of his claims of like verification, that the new blue check marks are do not require a verification. That doesn't actually, you know the right. The original idea with check marks was that it will you go through an identity verification process and so that way, you know, you could look at an account and know that this person is who they

say they are. And I didn't realize this actually came out of a lawsuit of someone who's identity and he was like stolen and they were slandered and whatever, and so this was the solution to that problem. Now I had issues with the blue check mark like legacy blue check mark system as well. I actually think it should have been much more widespread so that you had much more identity verification on the platform. But the direction Elon

is going in as the polar opposite. It makes it much more of a wild West where you have no idea who is saying what and whether this is real. And now those people who are willing to do the effectively pay to play are going to get a tremendous benefit in terms of their use of this platform. For

people who don't know, Twitter now has two settings. You can either look at just who you're following and what they've been tweeting out in order like just a true sort of timeline, or they haven't algorithmically generated for you. That the app usually defaults too. They were supposed to change it, so it defaults to whichever one you choose. But that's been sort of like, you know, sketchy, whether

that's actually been happening. So the four if you're not showing up in the for you algorithmically driven tweets like you basically have been disappeared on the platform effectively. Yeah, I think it's a huge mistake. I'll tell you why, which is that the major reason that people follow to Most people don't tweet. Most Twitter users don't actually engage on the platform beyond like a like or scrolling past something. They follow mostly large accounts to try and figure out

what's going on. So what if those people don't pay for their check marks? Are they not going to show up in the for you page? Airgo? Are you not going to then have the most timely access to information? And are you instead going to get a bunch of threads from guys talking about intermittent fasting, cold plunges, and how to become a multimillionaire, which gotta be the most annoying tweets on the entire planet. It honestly reminds me of what will happen to happen to Clubhouse. It's like

you went onto clubhouse. There's alo these scams about how to make it it whatever in venture capital, and the actual quality discussions weren't there anymore. And so this, as you said, is basically a pay to play system for all of these people who desire and want engagement. Now, I'm not saying that many follow accounts don't want that, but the reason that a lot of these accounts do fundamentally get a lot of followers is because people again want to hear what they have to say. So this

is more of a tiktokification of Twitter. The reason why I don't think it will work is that the tiktoication, if you will, is surfacing content which they know that you will engage with in a video format. This again is more timely access to information that you have curated, that you know that you want to look at if you're an NBA fan, you follow NBA accounts. You're an NFL guy, you follow NFL accounts. My account is mostly politics because I follow curated news people that I trust.

Over many years that I've said, these are information that I can look at surface and then hopefully either try to share it with you or into deeper with my own reporting. That is the actual value access of Twitter. It always has been for a lot of high like high I guess value, elite, perpetrator, whatever you know, cultural taste makers, whatever term that you want to use here. And I think that this will really destroy it. We'll see, though.

I mean, as long as I have access to my follower page, my following page, which is not the default but which you have to click into, I guess it's fine. But you know, like you said, legacy accounts like yours in mind, I will say, I do think it's a problem for anybody starting out in the journalism business. You basically now have to you basically have to buy a blue check mark. You know, if you want to get

any amplification. You and I have a combined almost a million followers, Like we don't really care, you know, take it away, Like what are you, what's it going to do to me? I don't care, but you know, if you're starting out, I don't think it's really that fair. I think I do think it is paid to play.

I think you make an important point though, about just the usefulness of the platform, because I frankly already find the platform less useful than I used to and find myself for you know, we use it extensively for generating stories and finding deciding what we're going to cover in

the news, and finding elements and whatever. Twitter is really central to the way that we operate, and I already find myself using it less just because of some of the algorithmic changes that have already been made, you know, in my day to day usage of it, I find it less useful. So I think you're correct in identifying that, you know, the really core problem here is that it's just going to be a less useful platform for everybody,

and so people are going to use it less. And you know, I also say, just as like a matter of principle, I will never pay for I will never play pay for the blue jet not having now you can like I would rather just be kicked off of Twitter, yeah, and then go through the shame of like paying for my Twitter access and get my little blue check mark, never going to do it. The only way that we would ever do it is if it were materially hurt the business in some way. But like you know, it

doesn't do anything. Like, Yeah, I guess it's good whenever we put out announcements about the show. But we have bigger following me here on Instagram and one or on YouTube especially or on our podcast feed, which nobody's charging me to pay. So it's like, all right, you want to take it away. I guess that's fine. Maybe people feel similarly. I don't know. I genuinely have no idea how this will all play out. Personally, I don't think it's gonna work. I don't think it'll work that well. Yeah,

I don't think so either. So well, we shall see. I'm not seeing a lot of business genius here right at this moment, to be honest with you, there you are, all right, sacher? Are you looking at From day one of the War of Ukraine and the debate about military aid to that country, we have been assured by policymakers of one thing at Ukraine is making America stronger. Ukraine is fighting our enemy for us, the anti Russian Neo konse, So the ammunition that we're setting them, it's just surplus.

We barely need it, or we have plenty of capacity to take care of Ukraine and take care of ourselves

in our allies. Obviously, the sheer dollar figure size of one hundred billion dollars has always exposed that as a farce, but they've cling to it nonetheless, And since conflict has now been going on for more than a year, some truth has begun to actually trickle out, not only about the aid to Ukraine and whether it's actually even being used in the way that we want to, but whether that aid is making us less safe and less prepared for a conflict that actually might have a real impact

on our lives. The very first indication of this publicly came from the US Navy Secretary, who accidentally admitted two months ago the day may come soon whether we have to choose between arming ourselves and arming Ukraine. Ironically, after he admitted the truth, the White House called him and immediately made him issue a correcting statement where he tried to shift the blame to weapons manufacturers instead, of course, actually had nothing to do with Ukraine, but they protested

just a little bit too much. Of course, this has always been obvious. The Western nations which supply Ukraine are not in a total war footing. Ukraine is blown through amals so fast they could expend the entirety of USA

by summer if they don't husband their resources. The only way they could really keep up with their weapons demand was if our economies went into overdrive to supply them, something not even the idiot most bloodthirsty neocons would ever advocate for, because obviously it would make America's population ask

a lot of questions. A new report from a series of inside whistleblowers over US defense readiness shows us not only has at Ukraine made us far less safe in our ability to prepare for conflict, but that, unsurprisingly, the money that we do spend, even on ourselves, is a gigantic boondoggle. Some choice examples from this new report quote the United States sent Ukraine so many Stinger missiles from its own stocks it would take thirteen years worth of

current production at recent capacity levels to replace them. More, America has sent so many Javelin missiles it would take five years at last year's rates to replace them. They continue. According to our military's own internal figures, should a conflict breakout with a major naval power like China, quote, within one week, the United States would run out of so

called long range anti ship missiles. These missiles, for reference, are what those war gamers rely on for any chance for the US in any naval conflict and in a most likely hostile scenario involving Taiwan. But the point of

this isn't just about to talk about Ukraine. It's to illustrate that military resources are a zero sum game that we have to prioritize based on strategic importance, and also that these weapons manufacturers that we rely on so heavily and who are making so much money off this, they are not even good at their jobs. As Eric Lipton points out, there are only two major rocket companies in America that supply all US missile systems. One of them had a fire at one of their suppliers. Now the

entire supply chain is backed up. Should a conflict break out, it would take months to split up an alternative. By that time, thousands or even millions of people could be dead. Throwing money at the problem cannot even fix it. It's about decades of lost industrial manufacturing capacity and technical know how.

In fact, in the so called moment of Need, when many NATO countries were increasing the amount of weapons they wanted to buy, they could not even buy them from US because our industrial capacity was so weak we could barely keep up with the modest demand of the Ukraine War. We had to choose between supplying Ukraine and supplying actual NATO allies. In the meantime. South Korea, though, of all places, stepped up. Why because unlike America, South Korea is not

a silly country. They have been in an effective state of war since their founding and of course have strict laws on the books keeping a robust internal supply chain in the event of potential conflict with North Korea. When the war in Ukraine broke out and the West was buying weapons, they were happy to oblige because they have the ability to spin up quickly, they had the technical know how, they basically are an allied nation already, and

they had the people to actually do it. More so, they don't have to choose between themselves and others because they had so much excess at their capacity and at their fingertips. The crazy part South Korea spends only a relative fifty billion dollars a year on defense, or two point seven percent of GDP. The America, meanwhile, spends eight hundred and forty two billion, or three point three percent

of GDP. So we spend orders of magnitude more in both absolute and percentage based terms, but we are weaker, less nimble, less safe. How does that work because of the corruption of the military industrial complex. That's something I've always maintained here that the size of the defense budget and the debate around it, it misses the picture. Yes, it's too big, but why it's too big? Because we spend too much and spend it on the wrong stuff.

US weapons systems come in ridiculously over budget. They are designed to keep factories open in different congressional districts than they are to actually make functioning weapons and protect our troops.

One of my favorite examples on this is during the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars, while the Pentagon brass resisted spending more on mine resistant vehicles to stop our soldiers from getting blown up by ID why because doing so would pull money from next generation fighter programs and other conceptual ideas that were costing billions of dollars they were quite literally, would rather have funded things like space lasers than actually protect the lives of American boots on the ground who

are getting killed in day to day combat. Even today, the overall dollar amount that we spend on naval assets is criminal. Another favorite example the new Zumwalt class destroyers, whose main guns fire rounds that cost a million dollars each. The rounds are so expensive that we don't buy them, meaning that we have guns with no ammunition. But I guess it's stealthy. So stealthy it costs a few cool four hundred million dollars each. There's so many examples like this,

the F thirty five program, which is hundreds of billions overdue. Also, every weapon system, though has been milked for dollars by the US taxpayers, with no evidence that they actually work and are mass producible in a time of crisis and would even keep America safe. We are at a major turning point here as a country. Last time is actually were things were this dire. It was nineteen forty. We had no financialization, we had a massive untapped industrial capacity.

I have no doubt that eventually we might be okay. Should things go south, but thousands and potentially millions should not have to die before we do so. The lessons that we have forgotten were forged in blood, and unfortunately, it looks as if we may have to spill that blood again before we ever wake up from whatever the hell is going on here. And Chris, I found this report just absolutely stunning. I'm curious what you did as well, and if you want to hear my reaction to Cyber's monologue,

become a premium subscriber today at Breakingpoints dot com. Well, guys, there is some absolutely bombshell news coming out of the Crypto World Finance, which is the world's largest crypto trading platform, which dwarfs FTX even at their peak, Finance is something like ten times the size of FTX. They have just been dude by the CFTC, that's the Commodity Futures Trading Commission,

and the complaint here is quite extraordinary. What they allege is a wide ranging scheme of illegally selling commodities to US customers, something they're not supposed to be doing, of covering it up, even of coaching these US customers how to cover their own tracks here and additionally, and fairly explosive allegations, some insider trading and self dealing. That does sort of smack of some of the failures of FTX

as well. Before I jump into the complaint and some of the admittedly juicy details here, because apparently a lot of these top execs just directly messaged each other all the time about their fraudulent schemes. Before I get to that, I want to give you some of the background on finance so you can understand what a big deal this is. A couple of months back, I did a monologue talking about this digital trading platform, how significant it was, and

how many red flags there were about its operations. Let's take a listen to a little bit of that. Here's a few things you should know about finance straight away. Much as FTX was operated at the seemingly sole discretion of SBF, with no corporate oversight and no board, Binance is seemingly run at the sole discretion of CZ. There

is no traditional shareholder structure or board of directors. In fact, it's a stretch to even Paul Binance a company it's not headquartered anywhere, and CZ himself Hopscotch is the globe in search of friend the regulators who will allow them to operate schemes which would be illegal in many countries. Here is how Bloomberg describes this state of affairs. Quote. Legally speaking, a Cayman Islands firm named Binance Holdings Limited

owns its trademarks. That entity's ownership has never been disclosed. JAO that CZ is the sole owner of Finance Capital Management, registered in the British Virgin Islands. Many Binance operations are also entirely owned by CZ, either directly or through an entity he controls. According to corporate filings, most of the trades on Finance go through the flagship exchange binance dot Com, which is based in who knows where and owned by God knows whom. So a whole lot of red flag there.

I mean, it seems like CZ was just running around the globe to try to escape any sort of regulatory scrutiny and avoid getting pinned down by the laws of any one country. But now let's take a look at what the CFTC is alleging was actually done here, and

there are some pretty remarkable details in this complaint. Let's go ahead and put this first one up on the screen, as I said, some of the top level executives seem to have a habit of messaging each other about exactly what they were doing and the level of contempt and disdain that they allegedly had for the laws of this

country and other countries as well. So here we have an exchange with the supposed person response responsible for money laundering reporting, and what she says here is that even though Binance doesn't have a board of directors, she complains about needing to write a quote fake annual money laundering report to finance board of directors WTF, to which another top executive responds, yet I can get management to sign. So this was this part of an external request for

documentation of how they are dealing with money laundering. Clearly they have complete contempt for any ability to deal with potential money laundering issues. So she is complaining about having to write a fake report to a Binance board of directors that does not even exist. Let's put the next one up on the screen here, because we've got another exchange between these two executives about the ways that some

of their customers use the platform. You've got Chief compliance Officer Samuel Limb saying, quote like, come on, they are here for crime. Finance's money laundering officer agrees that quote we see the bad, but we close two eyes. So these are the people who were supposed to be enforcing compliance for Finance, and they are openly admitting that they know many of their customers are quote here for crime.

Let's put another one up on the screen to give you a sense of the sort of flippant approach to alleged fraud which came directly from the top down. These are some interactions involving CZ himself. He explained that Binance needed to make sure it's PR messaging was on point.

Regarding their large US customer base. He told colleagues that quote, we need to finesse the message a little bit, and the message is never about Binance blocking US users, because our public stance is we never had any US users, so we never targeted the US. We never had US users. This, of course, was directly contradicted by reports. CZ was regularly receiving reports that their customer base was twenty to thirty percent US. And again, just to remind you, they were

not supposed to be selling commodities. They are not registered in the ussel commodities, so any exchange that they were doing with US customers was illegal. So what these findings here allegedly prove is that they were aware that their customer base was twenty to thirty percent US, and they were claiming publicly that of course they had no US users.

Let's put another one up on the screen that shows some of the extent that they would go to to help their customers hide that they were in fact US users. They apparently actually put an instruction guide up that explained how to use VPN, which masks allows you to mask your location that you are coming from. Here, we've got another quote from Lim. He explained to a subordinate, they can use VPN, but we are not supposed to tell

them that talking about their customers. It cannot come from us, but we can always inform our friends third parties to post not under the umbrella of binance. Ha ha ha. So basically saying like, yeah, we need to tell them to use VPN so that no one knows that they're actually US people. But you know, we can't directly say that. It's got to come from one of our allies. Can't come directly from byance lol. So if you take all of these alleged comments together, you see pretty clearly they

knew they were in violation of US law. They went to quite some lengths to cover it up, to pretend they had no US users when obviously they knew twenty to thirty percent of their customer base was US based. But maybe the most explosive allegations have to do with

self dealing and insider trading. So CZ himself is alleged to have controlled three hundred different accounts on the platform and was using their quant desk and insider information potentially about what exactly was going on in that platform to make money for himself. I've had a report on this. Let's put this up on the screen. This is from

an outlet called BlockWorks. They wrote the apparent setup reeks of a familiar funk control the markets, own the market makers, then offer enough special privileges to render profiteering from users a sure thing. Now, there was no disclosure around the fact that CZ himself controlled three hundred different house accounts on the platform. There was a scandal previously that I believe we touched on before where it looked like there was insider trading going on on the binance platform with

regard to potentially top executives. These three hundred house accounts were exempted from new insider trading rules put in place by Finance in response to that report, and according to the complaint here had no anti fraud or anti manipulation controls put on these accounts. So blatant alleged self dealing,

blatant alleged insider trading. And it just reminds me, you know, for all the like fancy new jargon and tech around crypto and the blockchain and all of these things, a lot of what this comes down to is good old fashioned, well worn white collar crime and with even fewer regulations and guardrails than the traditional finance system, which is really

saying something. And as usual, it will be a small handful of elites who gained the benefits of the crimes they are able to commit and regular people who are left holding the bag and soccer. It was kind of a matter of time before this complaint dropped, and before you know, and if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at breakingpoints dot com. Thanks everybody for watching. We really appreciate it. I know it was annoying. You know, I was in

New York. Now Crystal is unfortunately not feeling well. But we always bring sure that we bring the show to you everybody here and we will hopefully be back fully in the studio on Thursday. We've got a great Counterpoints show for everybody tomorrow, so make sure you go ahead and tune into that and we will see you all then