4/1/23: Saagar Reacts To Trump Indictment, Covid Billionaires, Tech Leaders Open Letter Moratorium On A.I., Woke Millenials Hijacked Media, 40 Dead In Migrant Detention Fire, International Workers Strikes

breaking an extraordinary news right now. President Donald J. Trump, former President of the United States. Attorney Susan Nechls has now confirmed that President Trump was indicted today in New York by Manhattan DA. They have not yet told us exactly what the charge is, although we can likely surmise that it involves the hush pun money payment made to Stormy Daniels of one hundred and thirty thousand dollars. So we'll first put the breaking news up there on the screen.

It was first reported by the New York Times, quickly confirmed by all media outlets as well as President Trump's legal team. Now let's go to the second one here. What exactly is all of this and what's going on for those who are just joining us as to why

such an indictment might have even happened. All of it comes back to the one hundred and thirty thousand dollars hush money payment made from Donald Trump and his lawyer Michael Cohen to Stormy Daniels to cover up an alleged tryst between the two of them in two thousand and six that happened in Lake Tahoe. So you can go and read the details of that if you're interested elsewhere.

I'm not going to get into it. But effectively, all of this came to light in twenty and eighteen in a felony case against Michael Cohen in which federal prosecutors alleged that that one hundred and thirty thousand dollars payment was illegally recorded as a personal payment from the Trump organization to Michael Cohen for legal services, when it might

have had instead to do with the campaign finance violation. Basically, the allegation was that the only reason that they were paying this one hundred and thirty thousand dollars was not for the personal embarrassment that Trump would have suffered, but because it would have damaged it twenty sixteen campaign. Thus, they should have recorded it properly. Cohen pled guilty to that charge, but ultimately no charge was actually brought against Trump.

Now how does that relate to New York state law. Well, let's take a step back and realize that the actual charge here is not only do we know that Trump was indicted in the Manhattan by the Manhattan Grand jury, but also he was indicted with the felony. So what does that mean. Now, the only real charge here that makes sense. We don't have a confirmation of this, but peer speculation out is a falsifying business wreckers or felony bookkeeping fraud under Article one seventy five of the New

York Penal Law. Now, a conviction for felony bookkeeping fraud in the state of New York carries a sentence of up to four years. But to prove that it's actually going to be pretty difficult. So what do they have to prove to be a felony rather than a misdemeanor. Prosecutors have to show Trump falsified the business records with the intention of committing, aiding, or concealing a second crime.

So then we have to ask what was the second crime. Well, they are thinking of invoking that alleged campaign finance violation that I already described. The problem is is that federal election law is by definition going to be governed by federal law. So since that second crime was never actually convicted, and it's not even a state campaign law technically that Trump would have violated, then how is he going to prove felony? Now, again, it was enough to convince a

grand jury, so maybe it's possible. It's you know, maybe he has non publican evidence of some other intended offense that is around this, like if there was any intention to deduct the payments as a business expense on the state tax return. That also could be one that they were looking for bookkeeping fraud itself as a two year statue of limitations misdemeanor, and the statute of limitations also expires after five years, including taking into consideration the time

that Trump went out of state. So overall, that's basically from the people that we've spoken to the lawyer that we had on our show, Brad Moss, to discuss this novel theory of the case never been tried before in New York before a judge, so very quickly we know that Trump himself will easily be able to contest some of this far before it gets to trial. Even if it does so, it's very possible that a judge could

throw it out. Now, in terms of also the optics, now here's what we know they're going to by the time that they release the Act, by the time they released the indictment before the public, they will have not only notified the lawyer, they will have negotiated some sort of either surrender or release or you know, it also sets up politically here will there be a standoff, will he refuse to be extradited? What will Ron DeSantis say? What will all of President Trump's quote unquote opponents in

the race say about this indictment? And then politically, I mean, it's just extraordinary, which he's a former president of the United States, He's now been indicted in the state of New York. What is the major Democratic party going to say? What are the Fulton County Grand Jury? How will it impact all these federal investigations. So there's a myriad of

different things. Also, you know, do have to say that clearly there seems to have been some sort of scheduling fake out because the schedule originally was not known to the press. Not only that they had told everybody that they were disbanding for an entire month and going out of town, leaving a lot of them, including us you know this morning talking about how it seemed that they may be skipping town. But it seems that, you know,

this was all done in secret. Possibly the feint was to fake out everybody to think that they had gone home and they weren't going to be doing anything before they ultimately did so. Look an absolutely absolutely extraordinary act. Here done my best to synthesize both what happened, why it happened, the potential impact, the politics, and all of that. Let's all just take a step back and see what

extraordinary actions come in the coming days. But history is being made right before our eyes, and I guess things are just going to get interesting. Thank you all to our premium subscribers who are signing up at Breakingpoints dot com, watching the full video on Spotify and all that. We love you all. Thank you for making it so that me and the staff can get these things turned around very quickly. For breaking news videos and we'll continue to

keep you guys updated. Thanks. Lots of discussion around COVID and profiteering some of it on the drug companies, and they certainly did make billions and billions of dollars, but they're not the only ones who profited. New Forms magazine piece. Let's go and put this up there on the screen. Meet the forty billionaires who got rich fighting COVID nineteen.

Fighting is one way to put it. Certainly, a lot of these people are just Chinese, and many of them are consumer products manufacturers who quote made billions of masks and millions millions of protective overalls and gowns for healthcare workers. We should remember that one of the problems with personal protective equipment the PPE in the early days that we didn't know how to manufacture any of it. So it's great, actually, Crystal, we created multiple Chinese billionaires who made them for us

while we bought them instead of manufacturing themselves. Glad at least they got made somewhere. Yeah. Cool, that really worked out well for us. Not a surprise that the CEOs and several executives at Maderna, at Pfizer, and at Biotech

all became billionaires off of the COVID nineteen vaccine. But really what stuns me is it's like, look, we've talked a lot about the pharmaceutical companies that have made billions, but really what came away from this was every single person who became a billionaire fighting COVID from a from a supply perspective, and from a health technology perspective. Not one of them lived in the United States. Every single one was in China. COVID nineteen test manufacturer China, Medical

equipment China, Personal protective Equipment China. And first of all, there's no such thing as a real billionaire in China. Okay, they're one of those where the CCP is like, yeah, you're allowed to become a billionaire in this category, and you got to cough up and do whatever we tell you. But second, I'm like, why do we not do any of this ourselves? You know? It's every let me read you this one that health it the founder of the healthcare tech firm, which uses AI and big data to

help cities conduct contract tracing and coordinate China. It's like, in every case, even in the pharmaceutical many of these people came from China. From the inputs into the vaccines itself. Do we just make nothing anymore? Like? Not one person on this list from the US had anything to do with manufacturing. It was only with respect to biotech from the Pfizer vaccine. That's all we apparently are good at is using government backed resources to make a vaccine that

they didn't even use. Yeah, or sorry that they didn't even make. They didn't even do any of the research, right, I mean, I have to say things like this make me more and more radicalized of the number of industry that should just be like straight up nationalized or at least a very heavy government involvement. But yeah, I mean, especially if you look at the vaccines, how much was the government involved and did a good job spinning things

up quickly. But then it's you know, we do we fund all the research and not just in that moment, but over years, and then all the profit goes to these like new billionaires. And then yeah, because we have stripped our manufacturing base over decades, when we have a crisis such as this, and it's like, oh, we need masks for our frontline caregivers, and we need other ppe, and we need these ingredients to make these vaccines, and we need, you know, to have capability to spit it up.

We just don't have it. It just isn't there, so there's no other choice, and so you become completely dependent on a country that you know, like it or not. We increasingly have an adversarial relationship with not a great state of affairs. So it it was really really exposed just how incredibly vulnerable we have made ourselves on every front by not valuing the basic capacity to make things that are essential for daily survival at this point. Yeah, no,

it's just totally ridiculous. Like reading this, I did that monologue recently about how to become a billionaire in America, and the point that I made was in the third world countries that what they were not basically second world at this point, they become billionaires off of building things. We are billionaires off financialization and you know, biotech, which is basically using government backed research to manufacturer and then get legal monopoly with immunity and all of that from

the government. To become a billionaire, tell me which one you prefer, Like, how do you want your people to actually get rich, Because they all got rich by producing stuff in labs, building things in manufacture facilities and shipping and doing business and hard assets. We don't have any of that. It's all conceptual. It's all just like moving

money around in a new exotic way, right. Yeah. And the Indians too in same thing, manufacturing, manufacturing, manufacturing and all their generic drug makers and all of that which deliver an actually cheap product to their billion citizens. You know, that's how you really should be able to deliver value. None of what we are our people. Every person on our list is just some biotech manufacturer or sorry, some biotech executive involved in the vaccine process itself. You tell

me what you want. Absolutely fascinating development with Elon Musk, Steve Wozniak and a number of other tech leaders coming out and saying we need a moratorium right now on AI development. So let's go and put this up there on the screen, the open letter, which was distributed with about eleven hundred signatories. To be clear, you know, some people dispute that they didn't understand what they were signing, but Elon and Steve Wozniak's signatures are not in dispute

here at all. Say that technology companies need to cease AI training systems that would be more powerful than the latest large language processing system, not as GPT four. So AI power, they say, tends to correlate with the model size and the number of specialized computer chips that are needed to train it. They're outspoken in their concerns about

AI as a threat to humanity. And really what it comes back to is that we shouldn't forget that Elon was actually an original founder of open ai and decided to leave the organization because he didn't think that they were developing in the right direction. Since then, he has actually warned about censorship within the AI open ai chatch ept platform and what he's been pointing to. The reason I found this really interesting is this is a big

split in technology right now. A lot of people are i wouldn't say AI purists, or they're excited about the developments of AI. They're excited about the computational and you can't help but be. But then there are others, you know, more visionary founders, people like him and others who have been warning about what some of the dangers are and they say, hey, we need to develop rules around this, We need to develop some sort of protocol about how

we would approach these very tricky political questions. I'm not sure where I fall. I'm curious what you think, like if you think about the original development of social media because nobody knew how it was, what it was going to do. We didn't have preset rules around the First Amendment or other principles, but set us up for disasters in the future, right, So maybe it would make sense like, Hey,

we're in the burgeoning stages. Let's set the agreed upon thing and let's not deviate from it for when the inevitability comes. They're like, look, this is the standard. This

is what we've all agreed upon. I tend to be sympathetic to the idea of, hey, let's have a pause and figure out what the hell this means, because this is unfolding incredibly quickly, and the ramifications of it are far reaching in terms of the labor market, in terms of like information distribution, in terms of things that we aren't in terms of newscapt like everything. This is a small example, but there's just recently this picture of the pope that went y had like a puffy jacket on fun.

Everyone thought this thing was real. Oh really, Oh I didn't know that. It was initial to me fake Initially, like this thing was widespread and it looks super real and obviously it's minor and of no consequence, but it shows you were already at that level where there can be you know, pictures, images, videos, information that goes down that is wildly inaccurate, that gets taken up and consumed

really quickly. Again, this is a small example. I thought one piece of Elon's concern about the direction of open ai actually did a monologue on this and I thought was really well founded, which is like he says, when I signed up to be co founder of open ai, the idea was open like open to the public, transparent, open source, and now in nonprofit. Now they've sold this off to Microsoft to use it to you know, profit them, probably at the expense of everybody else, because that's the

way that these developments mostly work. We saw from the TikTok hearings. We may love to live in a world where our legislators are like really super on it and with it about what this is and what it means and how to regulate and wrap their arms around it. But we all know that that is not the case.

So the idea of not saying, all right, we got to shut this down, but let's have a pause, let's think about what this means, let's think about where this is going, and let's be intentional about it from the beginning. Given how fast this is all developing. To me, I'm very sympathetic to that poside, right, I am as well. I also just don't know if it's going to be private. At the look the name of technology that people were like, hey,

let's hit pause on this. It never happens, like unless the government comes in and is like, listen, this is the way it's going to be. Voluntarily, somebody will just depart from the consensus and then they'll get all of the benefits. So it's kind of a prisoner's dilemma. Yeah, Honestly, I just think it's going to happen regardless. I'm not sure that if there's anything that we can do about it. By the way, I don't even believe some of the hype around it. They're like, oh, it's going to replace

all white collar work. I'm like, maybe some you know, maybe something. But my point is we'll see, Like we should have also some hubris about how much technology or this type of technology actually can fully replace some things. It can automate a lot, and I think that's great. You know. I saw one example of somebody put in their blood work and open AI was a chat GPT

was better than their doctor. I'm like, okay, that's great, but like that's not the reason that people go to the doctor, you know what I mean, Like they're not going to be able to like sit there and so

open your eye. Maybe maybe we can get to that, but there's still a lot of finesse in things that still that you're going to require at least some human input, like the raw input output like a for example, like a diagnosis is very different from like emotional therapy or you know, many of the other things that people even go to the doctor use medicine in the first place.

So that's part of what Kevin Russe, yeah, talks about the type reporter for the New York Times who wrote a book about where some of this is going right, and he said, you know, it's easy to discount how much we sort of have a bias towards humanity. Where how are you going to feel about, for example, like a work of art that you know was crafted by human with all of their complex emotions and backstory and all of that, versus something that was spit out by AI.

You're not going to have perhaps the same emotional reaction to those things. That's one example. The other example is like, you know, we talked to Starbucks, Barisis who are organizing. Sometimes I could certainly imagine a coffee shop where everything was automated. You punch in your thing, it does your order whatever. But in reality, that's not the whole reason. People are not just going to their favorite coffee shop

because they like the coffee. That's part of it. Part of it is you like that little exchange with the person that you see every morning, and being in the line with the other people who are going through their routine as well, Like the humanity of it is part of what you were buying in that experience. And so I agree with you that perhaps some of the most maximus claims about what this means in the short term

I am also skeptical of. But I'm also open to the idea that even some of the small changes, like for example, in the news business, could in and of themselves be tranching. Yeah, we can still acknowledge titanic change. Well, also being like, hey, let's not take it too far. I mean, I always use example, but you know, self

driving is a good example. So like, for example, if you've ever in a Tesla and they're on full self driving and you're exiting off of the highway right, well, it will slow down to like thirty miles per hour on the ramp. Who actually goes thirty miles an hour? Nobody? And actually, whenever it fully slows down, you're now a danger to everybody in traffic because the flow of the flow of traffic is seventy not thirty. But technically it's like we got to go to the speed and then

you manually will have to change it back up. It's actually pretty weird. And or you know, when you turn left, who actually makes a right angle left turn? Everybody cuts the line right, but the AI doesn't want to cut the line because that's against the rules. Or if you're in a tunnel and there's like there's like green lights or whatever, they'll be like, oh, it's emergency light. They are all these little things and you're like, oh okay, Like there's a reason that humans, you know, humans drive

like we drive very differently. Technically the speed limit is this what idiot goes to speed limit when the flow of traffic is sixty five miles an hour and a forty mile zone. That's the perfect thing that you computing that or like changing that that's very, very difficult to solve. Yeah, I just don't see it yet. Yeah, I agree with that. So anyway, we'll keep looking at it because it is a fascinating debate. Low glimpse into our future. Sure, there

you go. Joining me now is my old friend Amber Athey. She's the Washington editor at The Spectator, and she's the author of a new book, Let's go and put it up there on the screen, The Snowflakes Revolt, How woke

Millennials hijacked American media. Amber's an old friend of mine, as I said, and then also a former member of the White House Correspondent, and she witnessed both of us some interesting shenanigans inside the press briefing room at the time that I thought the audience would be interested in. So welcome to the show. Amber, It's good to see you. Yeah, it's good to see you two Saga. Thanks for having me. Yes,

all right, So let's dig into a little bit. We were talking a little bit before about the WHCA and what we can get into how the entire system is rigged something our audience is really interested in. What do you talk about in the book and what did you witness there that you saw. Yeah. Absolutely, I'm actually still a member of the WHTA. Believe it or not. They haven't provoked my credentials yet. I know. It's truly amazing.

But what we uncovered, and you know what I write about in the book, is the fact that the entire system of the WHDA is set up to benefit establishment and corporate media outlets. And for those who don't know, most of the access that's given to reporters in that White House Briefing Room is given to them by the WHDA. It's not an administration decision. So this is something that cuts across all political parties in terms of who's actually

in office. The WHDA is responsible for deciding, for example,

who gets permanent seats in the briefing room. And it wouldn't surprise anyone, I think, to hear that the corporate big outlets get the first two rows, which are of course the rows that guarantee you a question, and everybody else is either relegated to the back of the room or in our case Saga, we actually had to stand in the aisle and just pray that the Press Secretary could see us around all the cameras and all the other clowns who were in the briefing room on any

given day. Yeah, so it was a real pain. We've both worked through it. But the system, you know, itself, it shouldn't be so difficult for somebody who's not traditionally in the corporate media to be able to get a question in there. I mean, how does the book and itself some of the stuff that you uncovered just align with some of the media coverage that we found so

frustrating at that time. Yeah. Well, I think the major problem in the media is that it's become an echo chamber filled with people who all basically have the same background. And this goes back to the credentialing system that was implemented in the mid nineteen hundreds. One of the major problems with the underlying journalistic ethos of objectivity is that they also decided at that time that you had to have some type of higher education in order to be objective.

You had to have basically a training ground, and that training ground was typically through journalism school or at the very least a bachelor's degree at a major prestigious university. And the big corporate outlets like The New York Times and the Washington Post still hire mostly from those universities.

So you have a group of people who tend to come from backgrounds where their parents were white collar, they tend to be wealthier, they're more likely to have lived in a city their entire life, and they're more likely to be liberal. So everyone who's in that briefing room, for the most part, there's a five to one conservative split in terms of who actually gets a seat in the briefing room. They're all kind of asking questions from the same perspective. So that's why you hear over and

over and over again. Everybody is asking basically the same thing, and any undercovered story really just doesn't get airtime in that room. Yeah, I think it's really interesting too, you know, if you take it out a little bit further, you know, something we witnessed a lot was just the complete absence in a lot, not even editorially, but from the way that they approach news stories is always from a framework that is both group think and also happens to align

mostly kind of with establishment thought. So since the time that you wrote the book, do you think that things have gotten better or worse? It's kind of split. I was actually in the briefing room yesterday with Karine Jean Pierre, and I heard basically the same thing that we would hear five years ago or three years ago when we were in the briefing room, which was question after question

on the exact same topic. And yesterday John Kirby was in there talking about this upcoming democracy summit, and they were asking, you know, about which countries are allowed to be included in which ones aren't, And none of them were really asking interesting questions except for Steven Nelson, who was asking about the IRS's targeting of Matt Tayibi, and that was met with irols from creating Sean Pierre because

how dare he actually go off script? But I will say in terms of the larger media, there's been a bit of pushback recently against the illiberal progressives who have been trying to turn journalism into purely activism, specifically at the New York Times, when reporters sided with Glad, the LGBTQ plus advocacy organization, to accuse The New York Times of transphobia, the New York Times newsroom leadership actually said that they were going they weren't going to tolerate reporters

citing with activist groups any longer, and that they were going to start disciplinary proceedings for the reporters who had done so. And that's a huge shift, of course, from how they reacted to staffers accusing the paper of putting black lives in jeopardy when they published an op ed from Tom Cotton calling for sending in the National Guard to called riots in the summer of twenty twenty. Yeah. Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah, I agree. You know, you

could see two sides of where things are headed. But I encourage people to go by the book or of a linked down in the description as a said Amber as an old friend of mine, and I appreciate you joining us. Thanks for the platform, Sager, of course. All right, we'll see you guys later. Fire at the Mexican border has killed at least thirty eight migrants, potentially more held at a detention center just south of the US border, exposing what is the what is the consequence of years

of failed immigration policies coupled with recent surges. Biden administration announcements to that they're going to get rid of Title forty two and then immediately saying, well, actually, we're not getting rid of Title forty two until later. And in the meantime, we're going to put in these other restrictions, and people are going to have to stay south of the border, and you're gonna have to use this app

to get across the border. And oh, of course the app doesn't work because government contract and there's some corruption who knows what corruption is involved that they can't make an app, and so you wind up with people crammed into these holding sales. This is apparently, and we could put up this second one pair of this rets reporting that there are some sixty eight people held without water

all day in a sellment for fifty people. They started protesting, fire ended up breaking out, and you end up with this tragedy. Are What have you made of the reaction so far to this. I think it's been shockingly quiet. I think there hasn't been much reaction to this news, despite the fact that we're talking about thirty eight people just south of the American border war as so very very close to the United States in an official Mexican

immigration facility, in an I in m facility. The level of death, I mean, that is just an tragic number, incredible, and I feel like there's been sort of crickets from American observers in this question, despite the fact that American immigration policy is almost certainly to blame. It's a huge poll factor. There are plenty of push factors that we

can talk about too. But the reason that so many people are packed into these migrant facilities in Mexico is because right now they feel they have a pretty good chance of getting humanitarian parole in the United States. There are a lot of Guatemalan migrants in this particular facility. According to this is at least twenty eight Guatemala nationals were among the dead. That's according to Guatemala, their Institute of Migration. One man was Colombian, one was Ecuadorian, twelve Versalvadorans,

thirteen were on DURAN, thirteen we Venezuelan. So people from all over south in Central America who you reference CBP one that's the app that has all kinds of problems and corruption. And that's the thing right now, there's just no clear pattern of who gets in when. So enough people believe if they come up to Siadad Warres or to Matamoros or Rainosa, they have a good enough chance to sort of wade it out, and that's why there's

just this incredible overcrowding. Obviously the push factors are involved too, but the overcrowding is not tenable. None of what's happening in these border towns is tenable. Whether it's Ciadad Warres or El Paso, whether it's Brownsville and Matamoros, it is not tenable. It is not a sustainable situation. And we're going to see more of this. Eight people done in a fire, not less of it. And I think we

should name names here too. And Susan Rice somehow has managed to skate by without much focus on her role in immigration policy within the Biden administration. Her presence in the Biden administration is completely inscrutable, beyond just pure kind of nepotism and inertia in the sense that she is

a foreign policy expert. Her entire career, she has focused on foreign relations by all accounts, utterly qualified and talented person when it comes to foreign relations, well educated, well lots of experience, an appropriate appointee for a Biden type administration to put into its kind of foreign relations apparatus. They made her domestic policy head. Why still an unanswered question we have absolutely no idea why Susan Rice's domestic

policy head and she still is. It's twenty twenty three, she still is domestic policy head, and so with zero experience in any domestic policy issue, particularly in zero experience and immigration, she is kind of driving the Biden administration's immigration policy, which has just been a disaster. And the on top of the unanswerable question of how and why she's even in that position is how has she escaped

scrutiny from the press for her role in this? That part, to me, I'm still trying to figure out, because normally, when something has gone as badly as it has for an administration, the press will figure out, okay, well, who is the person that we can write about, and who can we kind of, you know, who can we investigate and ask the question of what decisions made at what point?

And you basically never see Susan Rice's name in any of these immigration articles, which actually might be the answer to the first question, because that is the sign of somebody who is a very effective kind of internal political player if they can be kind of leading the charge on an issue that is going poorly and still managed to keep their name out of it. That's the sign of somebody who really knows how to operate within Washington. But you might want instead somebody who has an idea

of what they're doing when it comes to this. Well, and yes, domestic policy has just been a complete success for the Biden administration. So there are no questions to be asked of Susan Rice. But this comes as a hunter. Majorcas was grilled by congressional Republicans. I mean they let him up. The Senate Republicans let him up. Ted Cruz In particularly let him up. Ma Orcus didn't know why migrants were coming to our border with wristbands. It was one of the most basic things that if you spend

time in border facilities you know about. If you follow immigration, probably a lot of you watching this know exactly why people are wearing wristbands is because they're given to them by cartels, because they paid cartels, or they owe money to cartels. Majorcis didn't know that. In a congressional hearing in front of the Senate, he did not know how many migrants died in US custody. And that's an increased

number under his tenure. By the way, he's getting lit up by Senate Republicans for it just lacking basic knowledge of the crisis that's unfolded over his tenure. And then you see the other side of this, the humanitarian crisis of this, and I know it's unusual for people to see it Republicans, especially if you're Republican skeptical, conservative skeptical talking about human rights, talking about humanitarian crises in other countries.

I understand the skepticism, I do, but it is a direct result of United States immigration policy and the fact that Ahuro Majorcis can't even answer these questions with like basic knowledge. He doesn't even seem to know what's happening, let alone have an ability to explain why it's happening. It's just an embarrassment, not just for us on the world stage, but to us as the American people that

are affected by this too. It's unbelievable how the Biden administration has bungled thus, and it's remarkable that the bid administration has started to make things even less efficient than

they already were. So you used to have a policy where you would have attorneys who were steeped in immigration law, who would be on the Mexican side of the border, who would identify the most vulnerable people who had the best chance of making asylum claims and otherwise moving through the system, and they oftentimes would kind of physically walk those people and oftentimes people who had health issues and didn't have time to wait. Now they've replaced that with

this CBP one app that doesn't work. So now you have tens of thousands or more people who are all just trying to get an appointment through this app. Whether or not they are there're somebody who is in the most legitimate and immediate need or isn't. And that's the point. Times or somebody else wrote about a four month old child who in the past, there's a four month old child who's having a medical crisis, who in the past system would have just been walked by an attorney over

to the border patrol. Border patrol would have quickly kind of move them, moved them through the system and gotten them medical care. Instead, the app doesn't work, the four month old dies. It's like gambling. Yeah, the app, there's just no rhyme or reason into who gets in when no ostensible rhyme or reason. I'm sure immigration officials on the border have whatever reason they have. You can i mean,

you see it like nobody knows what's happening. You will talk to people who run the migration facilities and they're like, we literally do not know. We just get a list, and then we call people from the list, We put them on the bus, we take them across the border, and they're give it. They're they're put it a facility

on the American side and they're given humanitarian parole. And again, that's why you have so many people gambling, because there is a chance and it's worth it to make a better life for your four month old, for yourself, and people die. Again, this is Cruse talking to Mayorcus. How many people died in twenty twenty two. So CRUs says, how many migrants have died under President Joe Biden. Mayorkus says, I do not know. Cris says, of course you don't.

Eight hundred and fifty three. Eight hundred and fifty three is to increase. And you would think that the flippant answer that Mayorcus gave to that question would be and the fact that he didn't have the numbers in front of him, right, like your staff preps you and they put the important numbers and documents in front of you, you know that stuff. The fact that he came so unprepared should be a mass of embarrassment to the Biden administration.

They stand by my Orcus. They don't seem to have any concerns about Mayorcus not knowing these like extremely basic thought. I mean, it's just unthinkable. I cannot believe how he's he's gotten away with this and to show up in front of the Senate and not even have basic facts that your fingertip. It's just unreal. And one root of this, of course, is that the immigration process and system is completely broken and Congress has no ability to come together

and fix it. But the other root of it is that for people like Susan Rice who are running this policy, they're running it based on optics, Like what they care about is numbers, like what are the numbers of encounters, what are the numbers we saw at the border this month? Or are the numbers that have been released? And all

they care about is manipulating those numbers. And so then they come up with these policies that will say, well, what if we keep and Trump was doing the same thing, what if we keep these people or on this side of the border, then they don't count for the numbers. Obama manipulated the numbers in a ridiculous way when he was president. What he started doing is saying, we're going to count these encounters of people at the border in

the early part of my administration as deportations. Under Bush and presidents before that, if border patrol caught somebody right across the border and put them on a bus and send them back, that was recorded, but it wasn't counted as a deportation. So then Obama started counting that as a deportation, so it went on his record. Look how

tough I am on enforcement. He starts getting called the porter in chief, which he liked from the left because then he thought, oh, I'm going to go to the Republicans having proven how tough I am on the border, and then they're going to work with me because I'm tough guy. Yeah, And of course that didn't happen. Well, that's what CBP one is. It's a trick like what the Biden administration is doing is even worse than as

you mentioned, it's worse than that. It's less efficient than all of that, because what they're doing is to get the number of illegal crossings down granting humanitarian parole on this totally arbitrary basis or on inscrutable basis via CBP one, and so that takes down illegal crossings. And so they've actually even said you're not going to be eligible for asylum if you are caught crossing illegally, which doesn't mean

that people aren't coming into the United States. It means the government is giving them humanitarian parole and higher numbers to come into the United States. And humanitarian parole we can have a debate about that. I think the way that it's administered in this country is a damn shame

because there are people who deserve to be prioritized. There are people with legitimate asylum claims who shouldn't have to live in the shadows of American society on this like totally you know, tenuous humanitarian parole, legal designation, which is difficult, and just wait for a court date in two years. I mean, it's just absurd. And it's all getting funneled through CBP one and higher and higher numbers so that

Joe Biden can bring down his illegal crossings. And the poignant part of it all is that it appears that the people in Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, Venezuela, Haiti, elsewhere, watched the democratic rage at Stephen Miller's immigration policies, watched the compassion that they showed toward migrants and believed it was real right, and believed that when Democrats came into power that there would be a shift in immigration policy, not not understanding that it's the same United it's roughly

the same United States immigration policy, but with a kind of a smile, and they don't instead of kind of nativism, right, well, they don't even know. I mean, that's the thing with like, I think Democrats have gotten into this habit of dismissing concerns about the humanitarian crisis on the border as just republican cultural war posturing and don't even look at the situation. Like the fact that may Orcus doesn't know about the

wristbands is insane. But I bet a lot of people on the left don't know about the ristbands and don't know about cartel control over migrant flow. It's become this like massive industrialized system an economy. If some if we're not going to organize it, somebody's going to organize it and make money off to the tune of tons, and they make money off of it and then hold these countries hostage to their illegal rule. I mean, it's just

a complete disaster. And Democrats, if they, if they had the compassion as you say that they projected during the Trump era, would look at things like this migrant fire and be able to connect the dots between Joe Biden's policy and what happened there very easily. But I doubt that will be the case. Yeah, I think again they should just gets just open up the border. I know

that's what you think. Just open it up. There's not that many people on the North American continent like we can we can work collectively as various cultures together and find a solution to this. It's and I've said this a million times before, but like we're entering a period of we're going to enter a period of population decline, and countries that are able to attract immigrants are actually going to be the countries that outcompete the ones whose

populations are aging and declining. Nobody wants to hear that because they think that they're gonna they're gonna lower wages, are gonna take something from them. There's not enough room. That's that's not the case. The countries that are keeping people out are gonna be the ones that are that are gonna be the ones that are gonna suffer. I mean, I generally agree with that. I just don't agree that open borders is the best way to accomplish it. A little more open and you can you can still like

check passports and stuff, obviously. Yeah, but like this like thing where you just people can't move just feels wrong. We should do a full segment on this in a future episode, because I don't think we've ever had that. Like there we go all right before, so yeah, look forward to that and we go all right, So we'll stick around for that at some point. See you later,

all right. I'm Maximilian Alvarez. I'm editor in chief of the Real News Network and host of the podcast Working People, and this is the Art of class War on breaking points.

While coverage in the corporate media of the general strike rocking Grants has increased of late, the fact remains that for the past six months, one of the most massive stories not covered with corresponding urgency in North American media has been the massive, sustained and growing strikes by workers across sectors in the UK and in France, but also large strikes in Spain, Greece, Belgium and elsewhere. Between inflation and endless war spending and corporate price gouging affecting everything

from energy costs to rent and grocery bills. Working people across Europe and around the world are being pummeled by a cost of living crisis right now, and we are seeing organized labor, namely unions, resort to using industrial action, namely strikes, as a means of forcing the bosses, the business class and the elite serving ruling class, serving politicians and government to halt their multi fronted attack on the working class. And they're being joined by students, retirees, delegations

from other countries and organizations representing other social movements. The top down assault on working people is taking many forms from French President Emmanuel Macron's deeply unpopular plan to raise retirement ages and further weaken the country's beloved pension system, changes he has opted to force into reality by controversially and undemocratically invoking constitutional special powers to override Parliament, to the French police's brutal crackdown on strikers to the Tory

government in the UK drawing out and throwing a wrench into negotiations in the National rail dispute involving the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers or the RMT, and on top of that, responding to the massive wave of strikes in the UK by ramming through a draconian anti labor law that will force striking workers to cross their own picket lines. When I say these strikes are

a massive story, I mean it. If you've been watching our continued coverage over at the Real News or our reports here on Breaking Points, then you know that both France and the UK are in the midst of history

making nationwide strike waves. Whether they're fighting against Macron's Wall Street, serving attack on pensions, or fighting for real pay raises, lower energy and housing costs, or more job security and safer staffing levels, workers have been hitting the streets and holding picket lines, from freight and passenger rail workers, oil refinery and sanitation workers, civil servants and farmers, to school teachers, university lecturers, post workers, nurses, ambulance drivers, and Amazon workers.

To get an on the ground update on the class struggle playing out across France in the UK. I'm honored to be joined today once again by Matu Bodeadat, calling in from France. Matteu is a train operator and general secretary of the Versailles branch of the CGT Union or the General Confederation of Labor. We're also joined by Gaz Jackson calling in from England, another familiar face for real news viewers. Gaz worked on the rails for fifteen years as a train guard and now serves as the rmt's

regional organizer in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire. Gaz Matteu, thank you both so much for joining me today on Breaking Points. I really appreciate it. I know it's late on a Sunday and you guys have been fighting your asses off four months on end, so I promise I won't ask you guys like I have in past interviews, to give us the full backstories behind these strikes across France and the UK. If folks are looking for that background context,

we've got a treasure trove of reporting for you. You can go watch our past segments on Breaking Points, including my last interview with Matthu. Go watch the many documentary reports that we've published over at the real news on the strikes in Greece, Spain and across the UK and France. You can listen to podcast interviews with Gazz and other great British rail workers that we publish. But for right now, I just want to give people an update on where

things are right now. So, you know, why don't we just start by, you know, telling people from your vantage points as members of in fighters for the working class what has been happening in your countries over the past week. So Gas, why don't we start with you and then

Mattheu will go to you. Yeah, good, even everybody. So over the last week within the r MT, we've suspended our industrial action on the National Rail dispute because we've seen some movement from the government and the train operating companies. What this is going to allow us to do is get the information out to our members so they can make a judgment on whether or not they want to accept the proposals from the government and the train operating companies.

Being a democratic union, that's only right that we believe that our members should have the final say. But just generally across the UK, we're seeing people winning these disputes. You know, the doctors have got to pay rise. The nurses are in depth talks and the Communication Workers Union are also in depth talks with the government as well to try and get their disputes. So what we're seeing really in the UK, certainly in the last month or so,

is some victories, which is really good to see. So we just want that to carry on and our members will have the final say on whether the dale is acceptable that the government will give them. Matthew, you can happen whenever you're ready. Okay, Hi, everybody, thank you Max for this calling. Good evening to all brothers and sisters in Baltimore and all cameras from USA, so from across the ocean. I have my report to do for you

about the situation in France. Of course, you know, since the seventh of March there is an unlimited strike in France of strategic sector in the economy to blockade the economy, so right way, of course, but metro and a bus of course, and electric and gas power and the worker from our finery and the people from you know, the collecting garbage, the collecting trash in Paris and in seven

big cities in France. So we are a limited strike since the beginning of March and we u and one day by week there is general strike with other sectors come with us, uh to to go and strike. So as you know, maybe because it was on the on the every newspaper and all over the world the last last week. The government is a minority in the country, of course, because there is all the oppositional party, political party, all the trade unions. Trade unions are against the law.

But with discovery is he was in a minority even in the parliament, at the parliament, so he used tricks in our constitution to bypass the parliament and pass the law without vote. So of course it's this uh, this off and uh there is not just a limited strike of the strategic sector of the economy. There is the young people. For the first time since the beginning of

the movement, the youth. They came every night, every evening, every night in the to demonstrate in the center of Paris, but in plenty cities of friends and demonstrate, burn garbage, a fight with the police, and I think it was it's very brutal fight. A lot of people was enjured, was hurt during the fight against the police. So the movement continue, but it takes the new crossing line now because with the entrance of the US people in the movement.

So it's very important because we the working class, we still continue to be on strike, but we will not less. Our children will be beaten, badly beaten by the police during the night in the streets, you know. So it's a new development, a new motion of this movement and we will continue. You have to see Paris. You have to see Paris now. There is trash everywhere, there is rats everywhere. It's ugly, you know, you have to see that, very nasty. It's definitely not the show Emily in Paris,

you know, with good selfie in the monument. Every night. There is several places the BA still place, the Bastill Square, as you know, the Concord Square. They are occupied by children, by young people and the fight against the police. So that's the situation now. Of course, for the President Macron and the forty nine point three it's the article of

the tricks of the Constitution to bypass the parliament. For him it was the end of the process, but for us is the beginning of the new process of the mobilization. May I just sorry say a few more words about the international solidarity with our with our movement, if I may, okay, cool. So it's very important because we knew that every working class and people in all over Europe, including across the ocean, look at for you, for us, look at our situation,

look at our movement, and wait for our winning. We know that we know for them it could be a tool, a leverage, you know, to see and that's our way, the way of struggle of classes is the winning way. We know that. But now is not just an expectation.

Every week we have a delegation from different countries to demonstrate with us, and gas Jackson comes one months ago to demonstrate in Paris, people from Belgium, people from Portugal, people from Italy, people from Greece, people from Germany, from Denmark, et cetera. Story. And every day we receive statement of solidarity. And we know there is a lot of a lot of country in Europa, including in America. I saw it

two days ago in Los Angeles. There is trade unionist protests in the front of French ambassadory and that's very important. And in different countries, the collect money, the rise money for our solidarity fonts and we receive my union, receive ten thousand euro two days ago from Italy. The collect money from US, etcetera, etcetera. So that's very important for us. There is an international solidarity. There is a national solidarity because we collect a lot of money three weeks ago.

There is peasants, poor farmers. The collect two towns, two towns of food, meat, food, vegetable, honey, bread, cheese, et cetera, and all the good things of our big country. The collect two tons from my station for the striker of their side, and they bring to us. So that's incredible because we know, and you have to know, an unlimited strike. Our what's enemy is the feeling of loneliness. But now we don't feeling lonely. Okay, we know we are support.

We have loved, We are loved by people in France, in Europe, in all over the world. People expect our victory and vox for Pili Volks Day, we will give to them the biggest victory of the twenty one century. About the working class fight. Oh yeah, baby, and Gus, I just wanted to see if you had had anything

you wanted to add there about that. The scope of all of this, right, like you said, the RMT as We've talked about a number of times you me and your fellow rail workers Clayton Cat and others at the

Real News. You know, y'all really were kind of the tip of the spear beginning your strikes back in the summer, and it feels like things have only grown across the UK since then, and we've been seeing this sort of like brutal response from the Tories doing what the ruling class is trying to do here at the Supreme Court level.

Folks should watch my past Breaking Points segment about the Glacier Northwest case before the Supreme Court right now, which may give businesses the ability to sue unions basically out of existence for economic damages caused during a strike. And causing economic damages is the whole damn point of a strike.

So over in the United Kingdom, Rishi Sunak and the Tory government have been responding to this incredible historic wave of strikes and sectors across the UK, not by you know, addressing people's dire concerns about costs of living, you know, wage stagnation, corporate pillage, YadA, YadA, YadA, but instead you know, focusing on taking away workers' power to organize and take industrial action by ramming through this draconian anti strike loss.

So I was wondering if you could just sort of say a little bit building on what matth you were saying about the scope of these strikes, the response that you're getting from the community, from other unions, or even from folks around the world. So the sport that we've had has been absolutely fantastic. And I think you hit the nail on the head, Max when you say that the RMT was almost a spearhead of the fight back

of the UK. I think that the analogy that I use is we kind of we dropped a stone in the pond and we've sent out a ripple effects and all of the trade unions have started to join it because they've realized that they can't afford to not strike, because if we don't strike, we will not get the pay rise that we deserve, We'll not keep the terms and conditions that we fought for over the years. And I just wanted to touch on what Matthew said about the rats in the street in Paris, and is he

refering to the politicians. Certainly Macron after pulling his dat tricks. If you see one with an eighty thousand dollars. Watch then you'll know maybe maybe you could sell that for the solidarity fund for the CGT. But joking aside, you know, we we receive donations from Matthew's branch over over in Paris, and we also received many many other donations and our solidarity fund last year, and we'll be returning the favor

in the very near future. I'm hoping to get over to Paris again in the next few weeks to show some support for Matthew and the guys over there, because they've been over here and they've showed support to us. So that just goes to show that the international solidarity is very important. And what I would say to the people out in France is don't feel lonely because they

are empty right behind you. Hell yeah, love it. And I guess, like on that note, because I again, I know it's late on a Sunday, I gotta let you guys go, but I just wanted to sort of highlight something that it feels like both of you are saying.

And this is certainly something we hear in the reporting that we've been publishing at the Real News is these struggles, right, there's so much of it that is focused on you know, workplace issues, right, like, you know, working conditions, raises to keep up with the cost of living, more safer staffing ratios, and education and healthcare, so on and so forth. But it feels like in France, in the UK and increasingly

beyond that it's about much more than that too. It feels like this is really sort of the working class and the labor movement, you know, digging their heels into the ground, trying to stop a long backslide that has been going on for years and pushing back to advance

a different vision of society. And so I just wanted to ask, by way of closing out, if that feels like, if that track with what you're viewing and seeing over there on the ground, if this is about, you know, what workers are going through immediately, but also what society is going through, and you know what can folks here in North America and beyond do to stand in solidarity with their fellow workers in the UK and France and

across Europe. Of course, it's about our immediate claims, of course, wages. In France, it's the subject specifically of pension, but it's a it's a matter of choice of society and model. Strike continue. Well, we're the workers. We talk about that. You know, it's an interesting period, an interesting moment. The time is sustained and we can we can talk about

the society we want. I know, in the word books of r Empty there is a world about the The goal of tradingionism is socialism, a new socialist order of society. I think we have the same in France. And of course when we are on strike, we do a demonstration. We are the working class. If we don't work, the country, the entire country collapse. Okay, So we discovery and all the society discovery true things, but a true things hiding.

It's we produce. We create because we work. So we have to decide we have to take back our future. We have to take back the power in this society because we are the only used full class in the world. So, and it's difficult to say that because I'm from working class. I'm from a post suburb, Okay. And what we learn when we are child, then we are parasite, we are nothing, and we are losers and the winners. We can sew it on TV show. There are lawyers, they are traders.

They are Theogian et cetera, and we are nothing. But during this period we understand finally that we are everything, and if we are not at work, the countries collapse. So we have to decide to rule this country. That's very interesting during this period and that's giving to us confidence. Finally we are the cool class, we have the swag, we walking class are beautiful. Make working class great again.

And just for a confusion, you talk about a donational sorinarity, my dear brother Max, I will share to you the links about our solidarity funds and you can you can put in your podcast if you want, Thank you very much. In the UK, we've seen a massive increase in people joining trade unions, certainly with the teachers. I think they've they've gained over fifty five thousand members since they was

out on dispute. That's fantastic. We're engaging more with people and we're trying to organize within communities, not just with our trade unions. I think it's important that we go and speak to people that have not had any affiliations to trade unions or don't really know what a trade union are, because if people don't know, they won't understand and like Matthew said, without us, no wheels will turn. The one percent won't earn their money. They're billions of pounds.

The ninety nine percent, which is us, We have the power. They don't have the power. They think they have the power, but we do. If we don't work, they don't end. That's as simple as it is. And we will of course, Matthew, we will share all your solidarity funds out within the RMT as well, and I'm hoping to bring over a good donation to here in a few weeks time. Brother. So that is Mattheu Boulder that calling in from France.

Matthieu is a train operator and General secretary of the Versailles branch of the General Confederation of Labor or the CGT. And Gaz Jackson calling in from England. Gaz worked on the rails for fifteen years as a train guard and now serves as the RMTS regional organizer in Yorkshire in Lincolnshire. Gazz, Matthieu, thank you both so much for joining me today on Breaking Points Solidarity from across the Pond. Thank you a

veryrech You're nice see lights. Thank you for watching this segment on Breaking Points and be sure to subscribe to my news outlet, the Real News Network, with links in the show description. See you soon for the next edition of the Art of Class War. Take care of yourselves, take care of each other. Solidarity Forever.