4/13/23: Media Hunts Down Pentagon Leaker, US Boots In Ukraine, Tim Scott Speechless On Trump, Fox News Rebuked in Trial, Elon Fights w/ BBC, NPR Leaves Twitter, Electric Car Rules, Cancer Drug Shortage, Disinformation Industry

Happy Thursday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Christol? Indeed, we do truly a jam packed show. This morning. We have news with regards to the oldest serving senator, Senator Dianne Feinstein, about what exactly is going to go on with her and what

exactly is going on with her. We also have some revelations about potentially who the leaker of those classified documents are, as the media is like out for blood, calling for them to be found and hunted down and dealt with and whatever. So we've got to catch the trader, as one Msnbccia Gooul said, So we've got all of that for you. Also some additional revelations from those documents. This morning about the US presence inside of Ukraine. What the

official line from the Pentagon is on that. Also the very latest with regards to twenty twenty four. Yet another contender, Tim Scott, entering the race. Yet another individual who cannot bring himself to say one negative word about Donald Trump, who is the front runner kicking sideways in that race. Yes, indeed, Jim Scott is kicking sideways forwards or whatever. Anyway, we also have some updates where some developments in that dominion

lawsuit against Fox News. More bad news for Fox News there, and we're going to react to this viral Elon Musk interview with the BBC. You got a couple parts that we want to show you there as NPR says that they are no longer going to post on Twitter because of the what do you say, state ye, state affiliated affiliated me? That's the word I was looking for. Yeah, So a lot to get to this morning before any

of that though. Spotify video, Yeah, that's right. You know, we've been taking a couple of days off from talking about this because we've been dealing with highly classified information. Still are, but don't forget that. You can watch the full video on Spotify for our premium subscribers, you could sign up at Breakingpoints dot com. It's you guys are taking great and big advantage of it. I could see the numbers from Spotify, and I know that it's really an easy way and better way in some ways to

consume the show. Not necessarily the earliest, but still fantastic for everyone. So it's a easy way to support us and for to enhance your viewing experience. You could sign up at Breakingpoints dot com as a premium member and support all of our work here and everything we've been doing in the last week. But let's talk about Diane Finstein. Yeah, so we wanted to give you a quick update on

this situation. So last we heard from Diane Feinstein, she announced that she was not going to run for reelection in twenty twenty four. Well that was about two months ago. She has not cast a single vote or been in the Senate since then. Now this cause is of course umber of problems, but most crucially, she is on the Senate Judiciary Committee. Her vote is required to confirm any

federal judges anywhere in the country. So, in terms of Joe Biden's push to get his people on the bench in an aggressive way, the same way that Trump did when he was in office. Feinstein has basically her being unavailable in home in California receiving treatment has kept them from being able to do any of that. So yesterday this really sort of came to a head when congress and Rocanna, who of course is also from the California delegation, put on a statement calling on her to retire. I mean,

this is really pretty extraordinary. Go ahead and put this up on the screen. From Congressman Conna, he says, it's time for Senator Feinstein to resign. We need to put the country ahead of personal loyalty. While she has had a lifetime of public service, it is obvious she could no longer fulfill her duties. Not speaking out undermines our

credibility as elected representatives of the people. Now, as we have talked about here before, for the last number of years, the Democratic establishment, including Nancy Pelosi, starting with Barack Obama, really covered for Dianne Feinstein and defended her, wouldn't speak a word of criticism, certainly did the opposite of pressuring her to resign. They actually propped her up in the last election. So shortly after Congressman Conna puts out this statement.

Feinstein puts out a statement of her own, saying she is not going to resign, but she is going to step down from the Senate Judiciary Committee. In that statement, she provided no timeline for her return to the capitoal I'm reading from the Washington Post reporting right now, which she said, quote has been delayed due to continued complications

related to my diagnosis. She said she planned soccer to work from home until her medical team said it was safe for her to travel, but she conceded that she understood her absence could delay the work of the Judiciary Committee, which she once was poised to chair. So quote, I've asked Leader Schumer to ask the Senate to allow another Democratic Senator to temporarily serve until I'm able to resume

my committee work. So not resigning, as she showed how I've done long ago, frankly, but she is going to step down from the Judiciary Committee so they can move forward with confirming judges. This is outrageous. You are not doing your job. You are ill and infirm, honest like outside of public service. We feel bad for you. It's sad when anybody's in their twilight years. And is no longer at the top of their game. She lost her

mind a long time ago. I mean, we brought everybody this story here, how she forgot that she had put out a statement saying that she wasn't going to run her own staff had to remind her of that. So many stories have now come out about how she has completely lost it in terms of her memory. Her staff has to tell her how to vote on separate elections. And you know what again bugs me the most about this is now that she's stepping down from the Judiciary Committee.

That is the only ostensible, actual responsibility that she has in a Senate being on the Judiciary com Yeah, now, what are you doing. You're just at home, negligent for constituent services. For there are thirty nine point five million people who live in California. Senators are supposed to be helping their local businesses, their constituents, veterans get benefits, all this stuff. There is no way in hell that she is actively engaged in this when she's quote working for

most she probably has no want her to be. Quite frankly, yeah, that's the other thing. If you're a business and you need like a tax credit or something like you want to call Finestein to get that done for you. So basically, California has only one working senator. They have so forty million people only have one guy in the Senate who can actually do anything from them. People in vermont have better service than that, give them the action up. I mean,

even what's a tinier state, Montana. People in Montana have more representation than the people of California right now in terms of getting stuff done. This is craziness, Like she has to go. And the reason why people don't want to say anything is because all these other senators are just as elderly infirmed. I mean Mitch McConnell, the guy hasn't been seen in like a month after he had a fall. Look, this is all sad. It's sad when eighty year old people fall, we can feel bad for them.

But when they we publicly pay their salaries and they're supposed to be doing jobs on behalf of us, then yeah, we get to sound a little bit agist like I and I'm so sick of tap dancing around like sensitivities on this. Yeah, there's a difference in private and public life. That's right. It's not ageist when the person just literally

can't do their job, right. I mean, this is just about like, are you there, are you literally like doing the very basics of what this job requires, which the very basics is being present and taking votes on this critical committee, which she's been unable to do for two

months now. So just as a reminder, you know, back in twenty eighteen, the California Democratic Party, who no doubt saw the way that she was declining, and also because her politics had become really out of step with the California public overall, which has moved more to the left, and she's this very sort of like centrist, corporatist old school type, they endorsed her primary challenge to California Democratic parties and you know, we're ready to go in a

different direction. And the National Democrats, again led by Obama I think she was the first Senate candidate that he endorsed in that twenty two election cycle, came in over the top and said, no, we went Diane Feinstein. This is on them. I mean, Pelosi continues to cover for her. She has never admitted what is really going on here.

And so now you have this situation where, you know, a lot of Californian is very concerned about what's going on in Judiciary and the types of votes that are being taken on reproductive rights and all sorts of other issues, and they have no representation from one of their two senators. So I mean, it's good that she's stepping down from the Judiciary Committee, but it's insane that it has gotten to this point. And you know, I have so much

contempt for her staffers. I'm sorry too, what are you doing? You're letting this persist come on? Like absolutely, this is the most populous state in the country already, you know, in terms of proportionally they are underrepresented, and then you effectively have just one senator to represent this entire gigantic state. So anyway, it's a very telling, sad, absurd, ridiculous situation.

But the very latest we could tell you this morning is she is stepping down for the Judiciary Committee, but I guess continues to plan to serve out the rest of her term doing absolutely nothing. If she had any scrap of decency left, she would resign. And you know, she's worth like one hundred million dollar. I cannot understand, Oda NAPA. Invite your grandchildren and hang out for the remaining time you have on this earth. Why are you subjecting the rest of us to your bs? But they're

such egomaniacs, it doesn't even enter their head. Right, Let's get to the main stuff that we have in the show. Some breaking news this morning on the way that the media is handling this leaker. They seem intent on making sure that this person both gets prosecuted and trying to basically uncover who it is as possible. Now, I'm not going to say that isn't technically a good act of journalism. It certainly is newsworthy. It's newsworthy and it's in the

public eye. But there is a vehemence to which they want to unmask this person as soon as possible, to try and get them prosecuted. Not usually how we handle leakers here in the press, but whenever you're against the regime narrative, I guess that's what they've decided to do. The Washington Post hunted down and found a member of a private discord community around a gun YouTuber where this

original leaker seems to have originated from. The leaker itself is said to have been posting hundreds of classified documents on this discord. Basically that found community during the pandemic in which they were He was basically trying to prove to all of them that he was a big deal.

Yeah he was cool. But he started out hand transcribing intel, then just eventually just started taking pictures of classified documents on the discord before they had migrated to other channels and eventually surface to the level where people like us were able to report on it. So The Washington Post sat down for a video interview with one of the members of the discord. The man's face is well, I guess teenager's face is blurred because apparently he's under the

age of eighteen. He's going to give us a little bit of insight into who this person was and possible some of his motivations. Let's take a listen. I was first midware of these documents. I want to say about six to eight months ago. I was in a discord server by the name of Dougshaker Central, and in this channel there was classified documents being posted by a user who I refer to as og. From this point, the documents were often listed as Ukraine versus Russia. At first, however,

it slowly spiraled into just intelligence about everything. I would not call it giobisl blower in the slightest. I don't think that there was a goal nor some sort of accomplishment that he was looking for and sharing these documents. Of course, there's some anti government sentiment, but that's not Unlike most right wingers in the modern day and age,

og was not hostile to the US government. However, he had disagreed with several occasions such as Waco and Ruby Ridge, and thought that the government is overreaching in several aspects. There was no heavy snowd in like conspiracy here. Like some people may believe, he is not a Russian operative. He is not a Ukrainian operative. I'll go as far to say he's not even on the east side of the world. Any claims that he is a Russian operative

or pro Russian is categorically false. He is not interested in helping any foreign agencies with their attack on the US or other countries. All right, So what can we take away from that? By the way, Waco Ruby Ridge sounds like my kind of guy. Whoever this person is now in terms of his motivation, it just seems clear like there was no like higher motive. It was just like proven to my friend basically cool. Yeah, he's like

shit posting and being like, hey, I'm actually cool. I mean, I guess who amongst us hasn't been anonymous online and wanted to be like, no, actually, I really am a big deal, guys. I totally promise. Here's some classified intel to prove my bona fides. I mean, taking away from it,

I guess what can we say? First of all, it confirms a couple of things in the background we've seen in the background before that there was a hunting magazine taking the background of some of the photos, and I had said here before, I'm like, whoever this guy is, I'm like, he did not do a good job, because you can you can see all kinds of paraphct gorilla

gorilla glue, it choose a metal ruler, hunting magnet. It's like, you know, step one, Like, it's obviously the Department of Justice is just gonna subpoena the IP address of every single person who is in this. If they didn't use a VPN or tour or something like that, you're screwed already from that. Then all they got to do is go to your house and be like, oh, well, so do you subscribe to this hunting vagazine. Yes, your your closet, right closet, what are your shoes like? Like Like, oh, do

you have a metal ruler? Like literally hanging out on your desk? So yeah, whoever this gentleman is, he didn't necessarily take the best steps. Let's go and put the tear sheet up here on the screen. Uh. Their takeaway is quote leaker of US secret documents worked on a

military base. His friend says, So, I mean, what can we I don't know whatever even to take this for granted, because it seems that this person has been posting all of these photos and videos and text messages and all this stuff on this discord for a number of years now. He bragged to the group his name is OG or is known as OG, that he had worked on a

military base. But the current speculation around that level of intelligence crystal is it does appear to have come from somebody on the Joint Staff, because and the Joint Staff's office is here in Washington. Look, it's possible he was part of a targeting unit or something like that which is supporting Ukraine operations or some sort of intelligence base which is outside here at DC. But some of the

immediacy through which people have been talking about. This level of documents and the like full scale readouts that this person was getting seems to have been working on the staffs for somebody at the very very very high up on the food chain in the military bureaucracy. Listen. I mean, we don't know all the details yet, but if you take this all at face value, it's pretty wild to me that this was done like very casually, as you know, with the young man they interviewed there says, you know,

obviously he would have known that it was illegal. But if you were doing this in this kind of a casual manner and continuing to escalate and posting these pictures with things obviously in the background, really might have known that it was illegal. But I do not think that you understood the gravity of what you were doing and that it would trigger you know, an entire like whole of media and whole of government which hunt to find you. So that's the part that's just really wild and extraordinary

to me. I mean, when we think of past whistleblowers, they were very intentional in their actions. They you know, had sort of clear political goals, whether it was just you know, transparency and exposing secrets or you know, holding the government to account. But this seems really have to have been a leak in search of clout. I mean, that's this is the first in the modern era, and so it's it's just kind of a wild phenomenon that

you could have this undertaken so incredibly casually. So we'll see, you know what else the media is able to dig up about this guy. I have to believe the government basically already knows who it is, though, right, Well, here's the other issue is that this teenager apparently has a video that you can want of Og the original poster, at a shooting range with a rifle. Now, according to the post quote, he yelled racial and anti Semitic slurs. I want to see the video first before we start

branding this guy a racist. But I mean, basically, from what they could say is Og had a dark view of the government. The young members said he spoke of the United States and law enforcement as a sinister force that sought to suppress its citizens and keep them in the dark, and he ranted about government overreach. So I guess it's not even necessarily fair to say it was only clout chasing. I think he was upset by some

of the stuff that he said. It's very possible that he was against much of what was going on with the Ukraine War and he wanted to make known what exactly was really going on on the ground. And again, I think we owe this person a great service, and unfortunately he seems to have not taken any care at all. He was doing video calls. Apparently apparently the people recognized the background of his house in some of the photos

that were distributed. So I think you're right, whoever this guy is, like he's either in a jail cell or you know, like what happened with Edward Snowden where there are twelve cargo vans outside his house and who are all happen to be doing electrical work in this neighborhood at the same time. Yeah, I mean, in a sense like it's interesting to know what his motivations could have been, you know, which could be a mix of Yeah, basically like trying to prove he's badass to this small discord server,

which seems at least what the teenager said. Yes, that seems to have been the primary like impetus for him posting information and then continuing to escalate to really prove to them like, no, no, I really am that badass, mixed with obviously this like anti government you know, ideology

under the surface. But you know, in a sense also it really doesn't matter what his motivations were, because he has, in my view, done a great service in exposing the lies that the US government has been telling and exposing you know, the reality on the ground of this war, and providing us with some useful information that can help us make what are absolutely critical decisions moving forward about

US involvement in this war. So, you know, on one hand, it's it's fascinating to know who this is and like what was going on and how did these things end up on some like random tiny discord server. On the other hand, it really doesn't matter his reasons for, you know, being a whistleblower here exposing these secrets, you know. To Glenn Greenwald reacting to this, immediately, he says, quote, the

democracy dies in darkness. Washington Post now does the job of the US security state, hunting down its leakers, doing everything to expose their identity. Says everything about the real function and the ideology of these media corporations. Glenn actually points out that the Washington Post did the same thing with Edward Snowden. While they gleefully used part of the archives that he obtained, published those documents and got a

Paulitz surprise. They demanded he'd be imprisoned and never pardoned, and unfortunately that already seems to be the case with the initial media reaction. You know, we have here a snap reaction from MSNBC where they go to one of their retired CIA officers who immediately is like, we have to catch and hunt down this trader. This is how the media. Our job is to expose classified information and secrets, regardless of what the consequences are. The consequences are the

job of the US government that is not. Our job is to produce information. This is how a news network immediately reacted to this. Let's take a listen. Officials believe the documents are most likely authentic, though some may have been. Doctor Aswing right now retired to CIO. So Mark Paul Moreopolos, he's an NBC News security and intelligence analyst. Also the Washington Post, David Ignati is still with us as well. Mark. Okay, let's pretendure to CIA briefing. You have thirty seconds to

explain to your superiors. What the hell's going on here? What the hell's going on here? So I think it's a potentially serious compromise. We don't know yet. Key points are, we have to catch the trader. Number two kind of re establish or reassure our allies, our bilateral relationships. So number one, we have to catch the trader. He doesn't even get into the substance. He doesn't even work for the CIA anymore, at least allegedly. I don't know. You

never really leave the agency. I'm not sure there is a such thing as a former CIA. But look, I mean, this is there. This is what they want. They're doing the job of the FBI, like hunting down this person and trying their best. You know, if I was a

Washington Post, you know what I would do. I'd be like, hey man, you want to give me some of them, more of those documents you're taking these green shots in that discord server while you were over there, And then I would publish every goddamn story I could, and then maybe we can talk about who that's such is. That's such a great point because we know that there were way more documents. There were three hundred originally posted in

this discord server. The most that any news outlet has at this point is like fifty So like, yeah, if you're the Washington Post and you basically track down, okay, who this is and what the server, why isn't that your focus? And I think you know what has been clear in the media's very selective coverage of these documents is number one, they're concerned first and foremost seems to be for the sanctity of the security state and making sure that they're all okay, and like that our intelligence

and the CIA won't be compromised and whatever. And number two, the stories and the framing of what they do report on is really cherry picked. I mean, they intentionally focus on the pieces that can be used to justify a more hawkish response. You know, they reiterate over and over again, Oh, it's doctored on the Russian casualty numbers, not ever really making it clear that, okay, that happened after the fact. And that's the only doctored element that has been pointed

out by anyone at this point. So there's that piece. And then the other thing they like to emphasize is like how deep our intel was into the Russian like military apparatus and how cool our spies are. So it's you can see by the fact that we've covered pieces just here, our little Breaking Points team that the gigantic New York Times, Washington Posts, like NBC Fox seeing to any of these people that none of them picked up on, because we're actually interested in what these documents reveal, not

just quote unquote catch the trader, I mean unbelievable. Look, I've tried to get in touch with some of the guys on the discord. It's actually pretty hard to find if we had the journalistic resources, and clearly they you know, charted a plane and flew immediately. If we had the resource, I'd be like, all right, let's sit down, man, Like what do you got, Like, let's go through it all.

Then our team and all that we would go. We would report every single story and then maybe we would get to who the leaker is, although you know, I'm not sure I wouldn't necessarily want that on my conscience, but if you look at how it fits with the Washington Post editorial board itself, let's go and put this up there on the screen. Guys, they say the most damaging part of the leak Ukraine documents. Is the leak itself? Oh,

do tell the trove of the leak documents? Some mark top secret is a sensational intelligence brief, a highly damaging one, more than the juicy tidbits, most of which entail detailed information of the Ukraine War. The most sensational and damaging aspect of the story may be the fact of the leak itself. And on that score, how and why these documents came to see the light of day. Little is known if most of these documents are genuine. They say

it is with pair alterations intended. Of course, they try and point to that, but really, you know, what does the editorial board come out to. They say that the leak itself was very damaging for the Ukraine War, and thus they basically come to the conclusion, you know that this person has done immense damage to US and Ukrainian national security. I mean, yeah, the only reason that this person has done any damage is because he told us the truth when they were lying to us. That's that's

the He did damage to their lies. So they basically prefer the lies over the trip. Have you ever seen a meta organization that wants less info? What's wrong with you? You want to sit there as a Pentagon scribe and just print the bs that they tell you what comes through this the rest of the world. Many of our allies don't agree with us. Number two, Zelensky actually does want long range missiles to strike directly inside of Ukraine.

What Number three, that the situation in Ukraine is way more dire than they tell us, and that they the US tells us. And also here's the other part. I don't know why people aren't going with this. The Russians

are doing terribly. That's another thing that out of this thing, they're embarrassing for everyone it is, and I mean, yeah, another part that was included in these documents is Russia is actually open to Brazil's offer of helping to negotiate a piece with a host of you know, unaligned countries. So there is a lot of really important information here, but that seems not to be the primary focus of

the media. They say in that editorial piece that the US authorities will urgently need to track trace the leak's providence. The Justice Department has launched an investigation intended to do just that. You know, going back to that MSNBC clip, the Morning Joe clip with like the Cia Gooual, who's

immediately like catch the Trader. The other guest that they have on there is David Ignatia, who has a column in also the Washington Post that uses what came out to again like sort of cherry pick this and and call for a more hawkish approach in Ukraine, which is something we've seen in a number of places. I've his piece pulled up here. He says that our defense production capability should be the quote trump card for the US.

In World War Two, the US converted manufacturing plans across the country to make tanks, planes, and aircraft carriers that simply overwhelmed Japan and Germany. No similar mobilization has taken place this time. Why not? Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has met several times with defense contractors. But why hasn't President

Biden appointed the equivalent of FDR's War Production Board. Do you get literally calling for a World War II style mobilization to supply Ukraine in this proxy war we're fighting with Russia, Like that's what they're using these documents to call for catching the Trader and to call for a dramatic World War II level mobilization. Why hasn't Biden done what it takes like FDR did in World War Two.

I mean, to me, this is just insanity. Yeah, and you know, you read even more of the column Crystal that you're referencing the David Ignatius column, and he's like, Lloyd Austin needs to explain to the American people why he's not doing more to in Ukraine. He even references you know, one of the maps that we actually saw. We didn't even I didn't even see it was all that noteworthy. If anything is responsible, it's basically says US spy drones or should not fly over Crimea to avoid

any sort of incident over Russia. He's like, why are we doing that? That's too cautious, And I'm like, too cautious. They have people in the military who are trying to not get us into a full scale war. They should be applauded for that. And actually, you know, if anything that's good on the Biden administration, one of the two things that we learn that validates some of the Biden

admins is that caution is worthy. And also don't ever give Zelensky long range missiles or jets, because we know exactly what the hell he's going to do with them correct, and it also listened if there were a handful of David ignacious style takes in the media, balanced on the other side by people who were saying some of the things that were saying, like, hey, the only thing that held Zelenski back from long range attacks deep inside of Russia was the fact we didn't give him the long

range missiles that he's been begging us for for a year now. Maybe we should like consider the way that this could ask lea out of control. And look, here's China's red lines. Maybe we should consider what that means as well. If you also had those voices there too, you could say, okay, this is like a healthy ecosystem. There's a debate going on. You're looking at these documents trying to parts the media only ever pushes in the

hawkish direction. I have seen no one making any of the points that we're making within the corporate mainstream media. They only ever apply pressure in a hawkish direction. Liberal media, conservative media. Largely. It is really consistent across the board. You've got MSNBC with their CIA dude, catch the Trader.

You've got side by side with David inging Asius on the same very same program than warning Joe like e Lait table setter for Washington program saying, oh my god, we're being way too cautious about not getting into World War three. So that's how you end up with the foreign afairs landscape that we have. It's only ever goes in one direction, and that has never been more clear than it is right now. Yeah, it really is. And look, you know they want blood. The fact that this guy

is anti government and likes guns. Brother, it's going to be a rough goya. Unfortunately, let's go to the next part here, which extends to what the fallout from this is going to look like. Let's go and put this up there on the screen. Quote. US intelligence agencies may change how they monitor social media chat rooms after missing leaked US documents for weeks. Quote. President Biden and other officials were dismayed when they learned the docs have been

online for at least a month. Nobody is happy about this, said one official. The Biden administration is now looking at expanding how it monitors social media sites and chat rooms after US Intel agencies fail to spot Pentagon documents circulating online. So their response to this is, now we need to crawl every discord server, every private chat just watch. They are going to come after They're going to come after encryption.

They're going to be looking for even more back doors into things like WhatsApp, into any private reddit, private chat rooms. You should now assume everything is infiltrated outside of like poor proton mail and I guess the signal protocol, although I guess they can, you know, even try and go after that one. This is terrifying. I mean, they're really what they're talking about here is creating a dragnet for

the entire Internet just to look for classified information. But what have we learned in the history of the post nine eleven security state that's may never just stop there. Once they get everything, then they'll be able to read metadata and pull to the extent that you know, they don't even have this stuff. They're going to possibly you know, hire more people to trawl through gaming chat rooms and fort fortnite groups and all this stuff Minecraft because that's

where some of this originated. They're literally talking about a massive expansion of the US surveillance state, and we all know it's going to happen, and you don't even get to vote for it. That's the most insane part all, we'll just do it. We'll never even hear about it until another brave whistleblower exposes helped our civili have been casually violated, like over and over again, and then the media will demand the hashtag catch the trader in order

to reveal that person's identity as well, they say. According to one congressional official, the intelligence community is now grappling with how it can scrub platforms like Discord in search of relevant material to avoid a similar leak in the future.

Now they do have at the very bottom of the article, they do have some like, you know, people who actually, like mildly care about civil liberties, one of whom, a former intelligence official, said, if the administration tries to check online chatrooms more closely, will have to navigate legal safeguards design to protect Americans privacy and freedom of expression. Watching a public chat room is fair game, but law enforcement agencies don't have the legal authority to monitor a private

online chat room without probable cause. Another person who was former General Counsel of the NSA said, we do not have, nor do we want, a system where the US government monitors private internet chats. Now, the former officials may feel that this is over the line. But we have seen many times how the US government will find loopholes. I mean, one thing that they'll do classically is like, well, the government can't do it, but what if we hire a

private contractor and they do it for us instead? Like, does that is that okay? Then? I mean we've literally seen them go to that those sorts of lengths and tactics. Make no mistake about it, whether or not you know, they're overblowing how devastating this is to the intelligence gathering and our allies and all this stuff. They are absolutely the pentagon, the CIA. They are absolutely humiliated by this leep and they will take extraordinary measures to try to

make sure that it never happens again. Number one, and that number two. You can't have material like this just sitting out there on some discord server without them knowing about it immediately. So God only knows what they're going to do behind the scenes. But you should be very very very uncomfortable with all. I mean, the moment I saw this, I said, this is it. You know, private chats are gone, you know, to the extent that they're even safe now even with you know, there's a I

recommend this they're on your iPhone. You can use something called lockdown mode, which is meant to try and stop like the Pegasus Israeli systems they've used in the past. It can be a pain in the ass. But honestly, I'm I think anybody who is involved in anything even remotely sensitive now at this point you're doing a disservice. Not too they are coming after you. They will read all and everything private communications that you have, and even just your run of the mill VPN is not even

enough now at this point. It's terrifying really, whenever you think about it. I thought about it a lot too, whenever we were handling the classes. Oh yeah, I was like, man, you know, it's one of those where you just don't know and they could throw it right back at you. And you know, we look at what with Julian Assange like in terms of going after people and saying that, you know, even asking for people to leak you information is supposedly now a federal crime. So anyway, I'll still

say it. Listen, if you have access to anymore, we only have fifty some of these docs. If you have access to any two fifty we'll produce. We will never try it out and we will do our best to publish every scrap of news that is inside of it. So if you have it, OG, if you're listening, OG, if you're listening, we would love to see all of it and we will protect you. All right, Let's go

to Ukraine and go to the second part here. Another important story that has come out, one of the initial ones that we were able to discuss, is that US special forces were actually present inside of Ukraine along with French and British special forces. It's leaked several days ago. Counterpoints actually covered on the very first day of the League. Well, that wasn't just a part of the League. It has now been officially confirmed by the Pentagon. Let's go and

put this up there on the screen. The Embassy confirms that the Pentagon has US special forces on the ground in Ukraine. They say, quote, I will not talk about specific of numbers and that kind of thing. To get to your question. There is a small US military presence at the embassy in conjunction with the Defense Attache's office to help us work quote on accountability of the material that is going in and out of Ukraine. So they

are attached to that embassy and to that defense attache. Now, if you believe that they're just staying inside the embassy, I think that you're an idiot. Also, if you think that we really care at all about transparency in terms of making sure weapons get to where they are, I also think you're an idiot, because, well, here's the thing. We have no Inspector General's office that requires any transparency on this whatsoever. The Treasury Department doesn't even have a

unit that is looking at this. They're monitoring social media to make sure to try and see where weapons are. What do we also know from that crazy article that we talked about here about the grifters in Ukraine who just show up and are like US citizens who want to fight, and some of these things they're getting access to full, brand new automatic weapons. Who do you think that's coming from. You think you just get crates of weapons that magically appear inside of Ukraine and we have

no idea who gets their hands on. So the idea that this is what they're ostensibly doing is bs. We already know that the former Ukrainian Defense secretary official you know, is currently getting under indictment or whatever inside of Ukraine for over purchasing weapons and overpaying for military supplies, which again, you know, he's not the one foot in the bill. It's US who are floating the bill for all this,

So I just think it's ludicrous. The fact that they even confirmed that they're on the ground though, is again one of the extraordinary services that this leaker gave us. Yeah, that's right, because we would not know it for sure. We all suspected, but we don't know it for sure. Yes, it comes out. Their theory here is that we sent like army rangers over to be like glorified auditors. Like, okay, get out of Sure, that's an insult to that, it's

an insult to everyone's intelligence. And you know, it's amazing there's like very little pushback on any of that, but any of this with the Pross but whatever. The other thing to keep in mind here is that, yeah, from the leak, it wasn't just the US, it was also notably France. Now France just came out and outright lined and said, no, we don't have any money on the ground there whatsoever. Yeah, they didn't come up with They're like, well,

they're just auditing. They're like hanging out of the Embassy of prom they're not actually engaged in the war. They're just like they're making tea and like checking the doing the bookkeeping or whatever. So yeah, it's really important that Americans understand what we're doing. How many people where are they that there is a presence on the ground. This

has never been acknowledged before. So yeah, the fact that this forced the government's hand to at least, you know, admit the partial, bare bones truth ten percent of the truth here is a significant service that's been done. Yeah. Absolutely, And you know, in terms of also where even if they are just in the ambassy, let's believe that. One of the things that came out of the documents is that the Pentagon is running all of Ukraine's military operations.

They are doing battle damage assessment on strikes they are going through and the logistically, you know, supplying their weapons depots. If those guys are on the ground in defense attach a role that doesn't even necessarily minimize what exactly that they're doing, which is they're basically running the war like the Ukrainians are. The Ukrainians are doing the fighting and

the dying, and that is very brave. But the high level strategy and all that, it's not happening in Kiev, it's happening in the Pentagon, and then these guys are basically carrying all that stuff out. I really wish, you know, some of this stuff we could show, Like we're talking about slides and slides and slides of the US military

doing after action reports on all these Ukrainian ops. This is not even our fight, and we're doing this All this stuff like that is what those guys are actively engaging. So just because you're not there pulling a trigger, if you're there and you're doing spotting and you're helping with ISR and all this other support stuff, you're probably even more vital to the war effort than some boot who's

on the ground. And even if they're just doing the auditing from THEBC, what do you think is going to happen if a few of these service members on the ground special Operations forces? What do you think is going to happen if they get killed and like dragged through the streets or god forbid, horrible? What do you think that the David ignatious is and the CIA Gooule that we've showed you earlier from thement, what do you think they're going to say we should do in response to that.

So this is a tremendous risk in terms of potential escalation. It's very revelatory in terms of our real role in guiding this war. We've had little scraps of reporting previously about the way that our intelligence is absolutely I mean, all these weapons systems that we're shipping, many of these things like they have to then rely on us to do the back office work in terms of, you know, making these things work and understanding where to target and

who to target and all of that. So we are so much deeper in this than the American people have been told or realized, and you get just little glimpses here of what's really going on. Yeah, absolutely, So keep you guys updated on that story. I doubt we'll literally ever hear about it again. Yeah, let's go to the next part here, this one thanks to our friend Diegor in Moscow flagging what is a story that the Western press is almost entirely miss. Let's go ahead and put

this up there on the screen. Russian lawmakers are currently in the end stage processes of allowing electronic draft notices. Now, why does that matter? The bill which is going on at second and third readings needs to pass the Upper House of Parliament and be signed into law by President Vladimir Putin effectively does away with the in person delivery of notices to conscripts and reservists who are called up

for duty. A lot of the ways that passed Russian men were able to avoid the draft is they just stayed away from their addresses, can't find you. It's kind of like a subpoena if you're not technically served, you know, or whatever in person here in the US, and you haven't technically been served by a court of law, and that's why people, you know, dodge process servers and all

that stuff. Well, what this would do is it would do away with the in person requirement and say that any notice issued by local military conscription office will doesn't just have to be sent by mail, but will be considered valid the moment that they are put onto a state portal for electronic services. Recipients who do not show up will then be prohibited from leaving Russia, will have their driver's license suspended, and will be barred from selling

their apartments in other assets, and otherwise. They are basically fully ramping up the digital surveillance state and they will put a digital drag net on you the moment that they want your ass to be drafted. So this puts you, it puts things on the line for a future draft. A lot of guys were able to dodge the past draft by getting out of the country, avoiding their places, selling their apartments. They were just like, it's not going to work, and I'm out of here now. Nope, if

your name is in the registry, you're done. You're driving. You can't drive, can't go anywhere, can't leave the country, can't sell anything. They'll probably cut you off. You for a bank account. They're sending you to the front line in Ukraine. I mean, it's a tragedy actually, you know when you consider it, and it's one of those where apparently we haven't been noticing. But it also just shows you, like the will of the Russian government here does not

appear to be breaking. They are very much setting the stage for a second draft if they need one, and that you know, look, that's thousands, tens thousands of young men. Yeah, who Look, I mean, they probably don't care about Ukraine either way, and they're just getting you know, thrown into a meat grinder like this and they're fighting and dying. You know, for Vladimir Putin's ego, it's just a tragedy. It really is. So Jegor, who is one of those military age men, who is now you know, part of

this whole disaster, he says. So basically, legally a totality of adult men in Russia are now a draft fodder for Putin. The mobilization law is still acting with this. He can order to draft anyone in any numbers, and people can't run. It will be made very difficult to hide if you do fail to report to the draft office. So it's not only the minute they post they no longer have to find you. The minute they post this like electronic draft. Notice, that's it. You've legally been officially

served and you can't leave the country. And if you don't come to the draft board within twenty days, then they're going to forbid you to drive a car, receive loans, sell and buy real estate and so on a whole list of prohibitions. The other thing about this that's worth noting, I mean, this doesn't it doesn't guarantee that there's going to be another draft, But I think you can kind of read the writing on the wall of where he's going with this and why they're setting all of this up.

But the other thing that was shocking is that this just this really came out of nowhere. You know, it's basically like in one day as fast through the Duma and like said to be made into law. So really caught people off guard and was quite shocking within Russia again according to Yegor and his impression of what's going on there. So this is a massive, you know, escalation

in terms of the population. It's also a reminder Russia has a lot more people and a lot more men that Putin is willing to just like throw into the human meat grinder and horror of this war apparently with you know, little regard for their lives or their injuries or you know, the pain of their families. So as horrific as as that situation is, it is a reminder that, you know, time is not on Ukraine's side in terms of thinking of how this war is going to be

brought to a conclusion. Russia continues to have an advantage in terms of ability, you know, defense production. They certainly have an advantage in terms of manpower. Yes, their war efforts have been less than impressive thus far. But you can also see in these documents the way that Ukraine is really sort of struggling to hold this thing together. And the analysis is that neither side is going to be able to get beyond in the spring offensive a stalemate.

So at what point do you say, Okay, this is actually the strongest position that Ukraine may be in for a while in order to try to negotiate an end to this war, some sort of diplomatic resolution that could you know, bring hopefully a lasting peace. And you know, these things are never easy. It would be ugly, there would be trade offs that shouldn't be made, but that basically have to be made. But when you see the just rob resources advantage that Russia has, I think there's

some hard decisions that have to be made here. Yeah, I mean on Russia too. You know, that could rip the country in half. Even more so you know in terms of domestic turmoil, if they do a full scale draft like that again maybe nic it wouldn't be something good I think for an anybody who's involved here. All let's talk about politicz All right, let's get to some domestic politics here. As Counterpoints brought you yesterday, we now sort of officially have another candidate in the race for

the Republican nomination, Senor Tim Scott of South Carolina. So fresh off the announcement that he'd formed his presidential exploratory Committee, he went on with Fox and Friends and got asked in most obvious question of all time, one that everyone has basically stumbled on, how are you going to actually, you know, how are you going to defeat Trump? Since he is the clear frontrunner here. Let's take a listen

to what he has to say. Are you answering my question about how you beat Donald Trump by saying that your personal story is what's going to sell you to the American people. What I'm saying in response to your question is that the field of play is focusing on President Biden's failures. What Americans want to see is a contrast between the radical left and the blueprint to ruin America and why our policies actually work. I believe that Psalms one thirty nine tells us that we are all

uniquely and fearfully made. If we focus on our uniqueness, we focus on our path to where we are. I believe we give the voters a choice on so they can decide how we move forward as opposed to trying to have a conversation about how to beat a Republican. I think we're better off having a conversation about beating Joe Biden. So focus on our uniqueness. That's his answer. That is as lame as I'm not kicking sideways, I'm kicking forward. You're running against Trump, dude, So what do

you have against Trump? Also? Trump literally endorsed you. That's the most hilarious part. Trump has endorsed him, I think twice and throughout the entire time, Like Tim Scott kissed Trump's ass all throughout his presidency to get the first step back passed, and now, like, what credible? This is the funny thing too, about Tim Scott. What case do you have, man? Trump actually did what you wanted to do. You know, anything that you wanted done got done because

you kissed Trump's ass and then he endorsed you. What credible case do you have to actually succeed him? I don't know. I just think this is a tremendous exercise in ego because he has only one constituency. It's basically the liberal media who likes Tim Scott and likes to prop him up, and also his own colleagues. His colleagues think that he's like God's gift to politics. I mean,

I'm sorry, I think he's fine. He seems like a genuinely nice guy, probably a good neighbor, but as a politician, like, I don't see the skill at all. And I listened to the people South Carolina. I think they agree with you. I feel like Nicky Haley had kind of a liberal media glow at one point. I feel like anybody who associated themselves with Trump whatsoever, like any sort of liberal media curiosity has long been gone. And I think that's true for Tim Scott. I think it's true for Nicky

Haley as well. I am reminded of before he officially announced his presdential exploratory, he went on with Sean Hannity, and Hannity was the one he was on there a streak for a while. That's the one where he got the Nicky Haley like I'm not kicking sideways, I'm kicking forland. That's oh so bad. And he asked him Scott at the time, like, Okay, so you know what differences do you have on a policy level with former President Trump. Here's this quote, probably not very many at all. I'm

so thankful that we had President Trump and office. Frankly, the policies that we were able to pass from twenty seventeen to twenty twenty more monumental. Thank god we went into COVID with a strong economy, so that is you know, his official take on his policy disagreements with the former president is like, you know, the other irony is that oftentimes these people, to the extent they do have policy

difference from Trump, they're actually worse. As we've talked about, less electable, like more to the right, with less popular positioning on things like Medicare and social security, and Tim Scott has a died in the role both social and fiscal conservative you know, Reagan, Republican or whatever, very similar

to positioning as sort of like Mike Pence. But the other thing we were debating is do you think that people like this really think they can win or do you think see I do too, I actually do think

they have that level of delusion. And then the other piece that you can't take for granted is they have a whole circle of aids and especially consultants who Tim Scott will raise a good amount of money, millions of dollars that he's going to spend on TV ads that TV consultants, media consultants are going to get a hefty slice of. So they have no interest in telling him the truth. They want to prop him up, tell them, oh, you have a laying and look, people are looking for

something different or whatever. They're telling him. So they have a vested financial interest in basically lying to this man about what his chances are, and he has a vested ego interest in believing what they're selling him. I do not think people can underestimate what it is like to be one of these types of politicans, like a Tim Scott,

especially beloved by the donor class. His entire life is lived inside of a bubble, interacting with geriatric boomer senators who think they're like, oh, well, he's such a wels you know, well spoken black Republican, like he can win the black vote. That's literally how they think. On top of billionaire donors who probably tell him the same thing. That is his level of socialization, that is his entire life, like,

that's the bubble that he lives in. I mean, anybody who lived in that type of reality, of course, they're going to think that they could win, and then he know, going back to South Carolina where it's like somewhat of a popular politician, although we're about to get to not all that popular. Yeah, where you know again you people kiss your ass and constituent services meetings and yeah, you

can easily see how your ego becomes out of control. Yeah, there is a hefty dose of conservative identity poolitics or anything. They've already no doubt about it. Yeah. So there was a poll out of South Carolina of the Republican primary. All right, how are voters in his own home state feeling about this potential run. Let's go put this up on the screen. You will not be shocked to learn Donald Trump number one at forty one percent. Ron DeSantis

number two at twenty percent. Nikki Haley, the former governor of the state of South Carolina, is in third there at eighteen percent. Tim Scott in fourth in his own home state at seven percent. He's not even the top ranked South Carolinian, even close to it in this pole of his home state. I think this was the poll

that I was looking at. It had favorability ratings for a variety of politicians, including some of the prominent South Carolina politicians like Tim Scott, like Lindsay Graham, like Nikki Haley. He does have a high approval rating in the state. People are sort of like, yeah, he's fine. Yeah, but that doesn't mean, like what I said, he's a nice guy. Yeah, that doesn't mean they're like, oh, we want you to

be president. They may feel like, okay, yeah, he's fine, he's like, you know, a good enough center whatever, you know, but that does not mean that they want you in Escana, she don't. Yeah, South Carolina's a number three state here. Trump is forty one percent in the number three primary. Like, am I the only person who feels like I'm taking crazy nails looking at this, Like forty that's a lot, and look at Santa's The's still twenty points behind. It

ain't like Nicki Haley's even all that popular. She's losing to somebody who's not even in the race, and then Tim Scott's losing to her, right right. I don't know, man, I don't know what to tell you. Yeah, it is like it's an amazing situation because you do get a little window into the bubbles that these people are in and the you know, self interested financial incentives of the

consultant class that's around them. How disconnected the republic looking to owner classes from the base of the party, and that even now, I mean even now at this point. Listen, right after the midterms, when things went really poorly for Trump, there was very clear referend in there and they went great for Ron De Santis down in Florida, and it seemed like Trump was at this sort of like weakest moment.

You know, then maybe I could buy here's your lane, and here now you have had time to see the way this is all going to play out, with the indictments and the rallying around Trump and the way he sucks up all of the oxygen. He makes everything about him, and the whole Republican primary is a litmus test about how you feel about this man, who, by the way, is going to be very likely the nominee. You've had a chance now to take all of that in, and

still you're moving forward. I don't know. It's amazing levels of delusion and lack of connection to reality within the rebubble, especially whenever we're talking about Trump, who is not backing down, No, not backing down. So let's get to that. This was an interesting piece that we wanted to talk about from Benji Sarlin over some of four. Put this up on

the screen. So he is warning, like, listen, even if Trump loses, let's say he loses the primary or wins the loses the general election, why are you assuming that that's going to be it for him? That he's just gonna Oh, that's that's so sad that I lost. I'm just gonna go home to mar A Lago and enjoy my grandchildren or whatever. His headline here is, don't assume this is Donald Trump's last run. And I think he

makes some good points here. He says. It might seem a little early, even absurd to bring this up now, but a refusal to acknowledge Trump's comeback ambitions after twenty twenty may have caused his Republican critics their last best chance to cut off his past denomination in twenty twenty four. Everyone in the party should proceed with eyes wide open now, however they decide to handle him this cycle. Let's start with one simple fact. President Biden will turn eighty two

just two weeks after election day twenty twenty four. Donald Trump will be the same age on election day twenty twenty eight. God is the ultimate decider when it comes to their political futures, but age alone is no guarantee against another run. Another fact, Trump is extremely predictable, does not acknowledge defeat. He lashes down at the people he blames for sabotaging him, and he responds to setbacks by

trying to immediately prove his dominance. Again, there is little reason to think a loss would prompt a different reaction this time. What did you think of this star? Yeah, I mean, I do think it is correct, and I do think that I've just always said I think the Trump era ends the day that Donald Trump dies, because even if he's not the nominee, he will still be the driving force behind the party. The counterfactual I've been talking a lot about recently is Reagan. Reagan got out

of office and basically pieced out. He retired from politics. He didn't actively engage. This is what a world would look like if Reagan had decided to stay engaged basically up until the end. Reagan actually did not particularly like George H. W. Bush, didn't agree with a lot of what he was doing, but said, I'm going to do my duty. I'm not going to talk against the president. I'm not going to actively get involved in Republican races, and he kept his mouth shut and kind of let

his legacy stand as he was also mentally declining. Well yeah, but it's not including when he was exclusive right part of the issue right, which is one of those things where he was willing to acknowledge that with grace and this kind of go away, whereas Trump is not willing to do that at all. Trump is like, I'm going to be engaged basically up until the end, up until I decide. I don't think a scrap of evidence exists that says that even if he was on mental decline

that he would stop. I mean, I think he would probably just become even more engaged. Is that what they say when you're older, like you just revert to like your most base tendencies. So probably, yeah, mostly that makes sense. So the thing is with Trump is there's no reason to think that he would just back out in twenty twenty four, like and even if he did, he would endorse somebody, and he would keep the game going up until the last moment and make everybody kiss his ass

up until the end. And it all just depends on whether the base is still going to care about that from what we know right now, Yeah, they do. They aren't going to care what he has to say. Maybe they don't, Maybe they don't in twenty twenty twenty eight. It's certainly possible. It's a long way away, but you know where things currently stand. Why wouldn't you if you're Donald Trump. He loves attention more than anything else on the planet. That's what he would do well. And we

talked about it right after January sixth. You know, there was a real sort of like shock within a lot of Republicans. It comes out in the Fox News text. So we're going to talk about Fox News in a minute about how like horrified some of the hosts were, politicians like Kevin McCarthy even messaging him on that day, Mitch McConnell coming out and you know, decrying what happened and being pretty, you know, pretty decently strong language against

Trump on all of that. And the public public opinion was overwhelmingly disgusted with January sixth and what happened and Trump's role in it and all of that, and maybe maybe there was an opening there if a Republican party really wanted to move on from Trump. I'm talking about Republican elites here, because there's no sun in the base really wants to move on from. But Republican elites at that point they at least had a hand to play.

They could have if they acted in concert, tried to you know, barrow him from running from office again or you know, directly impeaching or at least settling on an narrative about January sixth and consistently like messaging it that was unfavorable to Donald Trump. But instead, after like a week or two of making some noises about being unhappy about it, they either stopped talking about it or they

basically adopted whatever his framing of the day was. And so to the extent that there was an opening there, and I think that's probably the biggest opening that there has been for the Republican Party to rid itself of Trump. They you know, they folded and they hoped you would just go away. And that's kind of what Benji is getting at here, is like you see it playing out again. I mean, we just played you Tim Scott being like, eh,

I'm not even willing to say the word Trump. Ron DeSantis over and over again, not even willing to say the word Trump, Nikki Haley, I'm not kicking sideways. Like to this day, they're still unable to reckon with the fact that you either got to do something to get rid of this dude or else you just should accept that he is going to be the Republican Party until the day that he dies. And there seems to be no awareness of that, no recognition of that, no ability

or willingness to do anything about it. And so yeah, this is going to be the play that just continues to repeat itself over and over again. I think that's right. Fox News, as you know, they are in some serious legal trouble here with regard to the election lives that they platformed in the wake of twenty twenty, and especially with regards to what they said about the dominion voting systems, or at least what they allowed on their air about

dominion voting systems. Now, we have already covered here some of the very embarrassing text messages that have come out about how Tucker Carlson really feels about Donald Trump, about how they knew that basically some of these things that were being said were total bullshit. They thought Sidney Powell was a crazy person because she is a crazy person, but then they would put her on air and like

take her seriously like she wasn't well. Now, the latest shooter drop, let's put this up on the screen, is that the Delaware Superior Court judge who was overseeing this defamation lawsuit multi billion dollar by the way, defamation lawsuit against Fox, they just sanctioned Fox and their parent company, Fox Corporation for withholding evidence in the dominion defamation suit. And the judge said that he's considering further investigation and censure.

So basically what happened here is lawyers for Dominion Voting Systems came into court and played recordings of a Fox News producer in twenty twenty that was not handed over to them during discovery until like a week ago. So this process has been going on now for like over a year and they just were given this latest recording which has in her deposition, she says she's a former

producer for Fox host Maria Barbaroma and Tucker Carlson. She sued Fox News and said her deposition was coerced and amended. Filing Tuesday. She said she had recorded conversations with Rudy Giuliani Sidney Palell and others. And again those are the

recordings that Dominion was just given access to. The Other piece here, which is kind of weird is they lied about whether Rupert Murdoch was actually like what level of title he held at Fox News because they wanted to sort of insulate him, like, oh, Ruper didn't really have anything to do with what was going on at Fox News, even though some of the messages from him would indicate otherwise.

But they out and out hid what his actual role was at Fox News, which is like sort of crazy because how did you think that that wasn't going to

come out? Yeah? I agree, I mean I think one of the weird things that really comes out throughout this entire thing is Rupert Murdoch unable to reconcile kind of the empire that he built and also putting the company in significant like legal jeopardy and also financial damage because at this point Dominion has gotten and gained so much ground Crystal they feel no need to reach any sort of settlement outside of the one billion or so dollar Ranger suing for one point six billion, and now the

reputational damage to Fox not only from the text, but what is coming from the trial after being censored. Now is they very male may have to call Tucker Hannity and some of the top talent to the stand in open court, which would be a disaster growth. Yeah, under oath same and it would be a disaster too for Rupert Murdoch. I mean again the damage that this would occur to the overall brand too. It's already like having schism with Trump. I think is already you know, well

passed what settlement is. And apparently people inside the company are furious with him for not just settling the case for exactly the reasons that I'm talking about. Yeah, maybe he just maybe he just doesn't care. Like he's worth like fifty sixty billion dollars, so I don't know what a billion six. Also, he's very elderly. He's old to an infirm and has had major health issue. Let me read this part also from the profile. Yeah, nuts face

up on the screen. This is from a Gabe Sherman over at Vanity Fair who has this in depth profile of Rupert Murdoch and the real crux of what he's talking about here is the sort of succession drama that's playing out within the Murdoch empire because he has these two sons, Lachlan and James, who are kind of at war with one another. Ruper really pitted them at war with one another over control of the organization. Lachlan is

more ideologically aligned with Fox News. James is more like resistance friendly and wants to do a bit of a U turn one in terms of the way that you know, the type of content that Fox puts down, the type of positions that they take. So there's this behind the scenes war as Murdoch is very aged and everybody's looking towards Okay, what happens when this guy is kind of how old he is not well known. Here's what they say.

Quote Murdoch has suffered a broken back, seizures, two bounds of pneumonia, atrial fibrillation, and a torn achilles tendon, as well as a terrible bout with COVID nineteen. So he's ninety one or ninety two years old. That is brutal. So that also gets to you know, a decision making and whether he's even in the right state of mind to be doing this. Yeah, yeah, if I were one of obviously it's tough, you know, when you're dealing with

your dad and all that. But the bottom line is that for Fox itself, like this is a this is bad, especially with what's going on right now. Well then with the judge the money quote from that Gabe Sherman piece is the dominion lawsuit is the worst crisis of the network I've seen. And Gabriel Sherman, by the way, he's done in depth, you know, Yeah, he wrote the Roger Ails biography I talk about all the time right exactly in their own words. Fox hosts have been exposed as propagandist.

Here's a quote from a senior Fox staffer. He said, if we lose this suit, it's effing bad. As far as Murdoch himself goes, you know, the picture that comes out is someone who's kind of lost control over the empire, at least the Fox News portion of the empire in a way because he initially, you know, really didn't like some of the election fraud stuff. He wanted them to sort of tamp down on it. It is basically overruled

by the hosts who saw the ratings going down. They were worried about One America News and they worried about Newsmax, and so after this brief flirtation after the election of actually being like, well, no, Joe Biden really did win. Then they did, you know, an about face and started leaning into ur let's have Sidney pal on, let's have Rudy Guliani on, Let's make sure we give credence to some of the nonsense that was, you know, the most

insane of the stop to steal stuff they say. According to Dominion's court filings, Murdoch protected Fox News ratings by allowing the network's host and guests to propote a batshit crazy theory that algorithms inside Dominion machines secretly switch votes to Biden to steal the election somehow at the behest

of the Venezuelan government. There's a couple other pieces here that are very interesting, which relate to the twenty twenty four discussion we were just having, which is, according to this Murdoch actually wanted a post Trump future, as many Republican aligned elites do. Shortly before the twenty twenty election, according to a source, Murdoch invited Flora Governor Ron De Santis and his wife Casey for lunch at Murdoch's vineyard. As they dined outside on steak. This is again before

the twenty twenty election. Murdoch told DeSantis then that Fox News would support him for president in twenty twenty four. Right, So, a couple things that are obvious from that statement. Number one, the idea that Fox News is just like, oh, fair and balanced and we're fine. No, this is a this has always been an explicitly political organization, you know, above

and beyond anything else. As number one, like to actively tell him like, no, I'm going to from the top down, We're going to back you in twenty twenty four is pretty wild. That's how Roger Ayles used to run the company too, with George W. Books. Oh yeah, aad cruise absolutely, And you know, I think the real story is that

they just have less influence. Now, well, that's the other piece of this is he can say all he wants like, oh, you know, Fox News is behind Ron DeSantis, and we've shown you the evidence of they have been behind Rond DeSantis. But it does it doesn't matter, does not, movingly doesn't matter at Yeah, and I don't think that would have been true in another era. They had so much influence with the base and they really set the narrative. And yeah, I think it's a commentary on just the media landscape

that exists now. You just can't have that tight control anymore, and people are gonna they are gonna make up their minds to themselves if they are hearing from you. Ronda Stances is the great They Okay, he's fine, but you know what, I'm also watching Newsmax or watching One American News, or I'm looking at Facebook or Daily Wire or whatever, and I'm I still like the guy that was here before, and the fact that you've got your hosts selling me

Ronda Santis doesn't really matter to me. Yeah, that was my takeaway too. I'm not going to do any succession spoilers, but there is a part in season three where like the idea is is that Logan Roy is like this Rupert Murdoch character, and they're like, we're gonna go pick

the next president. And the idea was that like behind the scenes, like the Fox News whatever, it's representative, it's called ATN and so the show they're like, we're gonna go and pick that, and I remember watching it and being like this is old, Like this is not how it works anymore. This is maybe two thousand and eight. Yeah, you can make a case for that. But today I'm like, this is this actually is wrong, Like that's just not how it works in terms of how the base is

able to get its information. Yeah, they're on True Social or on YouTube like you know, some Tim Poole show, like a million other places. Yeah, that they can get it. They don't need Fox to tilt the thing for them. Yeah, so they'll never get over that. I think the last piece that we just added in because it is also revealing, is MSBC got their hands on some audio of an actual Trump campaign official, oh right, telling a Fox News

producer that there were no problems with the dominion voting machines. Okay, again, a Trump campaign person telling Fox News no issueses that dominion voting machines. Take a listen to this. Are any of the machines? I know it was on War Room the other day with Steve ben And have any of the machines been looked at? He had said that one was looked at in Georgia. I'd have to check on that in terms of Georgia. I know during the audit

they did check on those machines. They're really good. If you just go off the record for one secure, Yeah, should come. I would. I don't want us to say it if it's not. That's why we're talking. I would, I would. I think they have looked at the machines when the when the Secretary of State did its audit, Uh, there was a lot of I think a fair bit

of looking at the machines. You know, the audit came in pretty ear and close to what the machine count was with the receipts, so you know, I don't know the outcome of those, but are understanding again the sort of Secretary of State's office is that there weren't any physical issues with machines of those inspections, and that was from December fifth of twenty twenty, just to give you a sense of the timeline here. But yeah, no physical

issues with the dominion footing machines. And this is highly relevant for the legal case because dominion has to prove that they knew this was wrong. It's like the actual malice. So that would they call like they knew that it was wrong and incorrect and a bunch of lies and they pushed it forward anyways, So that's why audio like

this is relevant to the legal case. I mean, it's just humiliating funny too that he has to go off the record to be like, yeah, we looked at the machiet I know, right to admit that the yeah you that guy was on TV talking about how they need to do an audit. Well they did and there's nothing there. Well yeah, anyway, embarrassing nonetheless for all of the parties

who are involved. Yes, speaking of embarrassing, Elon Musk sat down for this was like on Twitter spaces first, right, but also but there was also video for the BBCs, So you guys might have seen this initial initially in just audio format and then you might have seen the full video. But there's a particular moment from this BBC interview that did not go particularly well for the interviewer. With regards to hate speech. Let's take a listen to that content you don't like or or hateful. What do

you to subscribe a hateful thing? Yeah, I mean, you know, just content that will solicit a reaction to something that may include something that is slightly racist or slightly sexist, those kinds of those kinds of things. So you think something is slightly sexist, it should be banned. No, what you're saying, I'm not saying anything I'm just curious what I'm trying to say, what you mean by hateful content content.

I'm asking for specific examples and if and you just said that if something is slightly sexist, that's hateful content, and does that mean that it should be bad? When you've asked me, you've asked me whether my feed, whether it's got less or more, I'd say it's got slightly more. That's what I'm asking for examples. Can you name one example? I honestly don't you. Honestly, I don't name a single example.

I'll tell you why, because I don't actually use that for you feed anymore, because I just don't sickly like it. You actually a lot of people, a lot of people are quite similar. I only well, you said you've seen more hateful content. You can't name a single example, not even one. I'm not sure I've used that feed for the last three or four weeks. And although, how did

you see the hapel content content? Because I've been I've been using I've been using Twister since you've taken it over for the last six months, because then you must have at some point seeing that you for you hateful content. I'm asking for one example right, and you can't give us some more And I'm saying, then, I say so that you don't know what you're talking about. Honestly, that wide messed up so bad when he lied and claimed that, oh yeah, I've been seeing more hateful content in my feed,

Like you didn't have to do that. You could have just like, if you're going to make a big claim like that number one, you need to have some example. Here's the video, here's the data from a reputable source. And but the and Elon clearly smells blood. The minute that he said, oh yeah, in my feed, I've seen more hateful content, is like, oh, really, tell me about it.

But it does. I mean, first of all, so there's a couple other pieces of this interview that we want to show you, but one of the things that portion underscored for me is that they go after some of the mistakes and flaws of Elon's ownership of Twitter in all the wrong ways. Like the real critique of Elon's Twitter handling is first of all, I mean, it's just been like it's a chaos, It's total chaos. Things are breaking, it doesn't work as well, it's full of ads, like

the user experience is way worse. But then the other thing is he claimed he was going to run it in this free speech manner, and he just hasn't. I mean, he just banned substack links and went to war with Matt tayev over like, so the idea that he was going to buy this and have this like consistent free speech principled approach, he just has failed at that. And so their inability to prosecute that case leaves them on very weak ground with regard to what they're actually trying

to say here. Oh yeah, so, I mean, there's just no question. And also Glenn Greenwall flagged this. Really what he was doing is he was parroting the report by a place called the Institution for Strategic Dialogue. It's going to put this up there on the screen. After he was caught lying, he finally pretends he has no view. He's just repeating the claims of ISD global, which has said that Twitter is more hateful and you know, lo

and behold this. Isd global is funded by a bunch of European defense ministries and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the O mid Yard Group, the Open Society Foundation, the Soros, people like government and other technology companies Google, Facebook, Microsoft, YouTube.

I mean, this is part of the problem with the disinformation industrial complex, which we will actually have a whole guest on to talk about today, is just that it's this architecture of like NGOs, non governmental organizations, which just create these fake statistics which their mouthpieces in the tech press can use as evidence. Like if you have examples cited in your feed that you can show him, that's

one thing. But to just say it with no like, with no evidence and then immediately back down, you just look like a fool, and you are a fool. You are a fool. Also, any I mean even if you did have like a personal anecdote, that's not really evidence, Like Sarah, I could have a personal anecdote of careful stuff that was in my feed before Elon probably over. Yeah.

I think it also exposes that a lot of the people who have these, you know, concerns about misinformation and want are on the side of more censorship from social media companies, they don't have a deeply formed, coherent view of about it. So when Elon's like, so you want anything that's like mildly sexist to be banned, I mean, who's going to decide that I think even at one point in the interview is like what is the BBC

going to decide? Like Who's going to decide it? And that does kind of get to the know the core issues here. Jack Dorsey had I thought a thoughtful post about what he viewed to some of his failings of Twitter in the way he would do things differently, and the core of his argument was vesting these sorts of powers of who gets to say what and what stays up and how you're going to handle all of these

genuinely complex free speech issues. It's too much of a responsibility and too much of a burden put on any one individual. And so the whole setup in construction of these social media companies where they claim all the power for themselves to be the judge, jury, and executioner, that whole setup is really bankrupt and you're never going to solve these problems as long as that is the core

model of the social media companies. Now, there are some that have, like you know, experimented with Master John's the only one that I know of that has less of like hierarchical approach. I've never been on mass down, so I don't really fully understand it. But there are some sort of like experiments out there for how to do this differently. But obviously the main platforms right now of Twitter and Facebook, et cetera, they all rely on this

centralized control and it ends up being a disaster. And so let me show you another piece here that, in my opinion, is a lot less of a good look for Elon Musk, where he's asked about Twitter banning a BBC documentary that is critical of Narendra Modi. Let's take a listen to that. We then believe that some of those some of that content was taken off Twitter, was that the behest of the Indian government. I'm not aware of that. Sure, I don't know. I don't know about that.

You know what's exactly happened in some content sitution. The rules of the idea for what can appear on social media quite strict, and we can't go beyond the worst of But do you get that if you do not intentialized countries around the world to some people passing more draconian laws. No, but what if we have a choice of either our people go to prison or we apply with the laws. We'll comply with the laws. The same goes with the BBC, so he tries to just play them, Oh,

I have no idea what you're trying. Come on, I ready know this has been an obviously know what you're talking about. Yeah, Actually that that stance is not one that the US government has looked kindly to or the US public, and often that has been part of the problem, which is that we look at it and we'll be like we're, oh, well, we're just complying with local regulation, where it's like, well, okay, we'll hold on a second.

Like your whole thing is about values and prison It's like, so are you saying that you just value like business more. If you do, then say that that's actually fine, but just be honest about what you're doing well. And that is what he seems to be hinting at, is like, oh, I just got to follow the loss. So if they need governments, then that's got to be taken down. Then

it's got to be taken down. But then you think about, okay, so if there's like Twitter in Afghanistan, are you going to follow like what the Taliban I mean allows on Twitter. If you're in Saudi, are you going to like follow what you know? Ksa says is allowed on Twitter, and you know, maybe they answer the answer seems to be yes. But that is far from the free speech promotion that he sold when he purchased Twitter. That allows, you know, authoritarian regimes to censor in any way that they want.

Allows really the US government if they come in and say, hey, you got to take this down, then hey, it's the local you know, local law. They've got the right to do it. Who's to say against them? So I thought that was a much more interesting and revelatory line of questioning there from this journalist. And just to show you like he knows what he's talking about here, this is

not some new issue just put on his radar. He had actually responded to a question about this Indian Modi documentary before put this up on the screen, so he had gotten a question about it, and he said, oh, it's the first I've heard of it. It's not possible for me to fix every aspect of Twitter worldwide overnight while still running Tesla and SpaceX, among other things. So very defensive here and sort of uses the same dodge of like, oh, I had no idea this was going on, okay,

but now you do know what's going on. So what are you going to do about it, because it is a pretty significant, high profile example of you taking an action that is at odds with the at least the stated principles that you bought the platform with. Yes, absolutely totally agree. At the same time, this is just a little funny coda here. Put this up on the screen so you know MPR had been designated what do they

say state affiliated media on Twitter. NPR has now quit Twitter after what they say being falsely labeled as state affiliated media. They sent a message to their journalist explaining the decision. They said would be a disservice to the serious work you all do here to continue to share it on a platform that is associating the Federal Charter for Public Media with an abandoning of aial independence or standards.

They're giving a two week grace period so staff who run the Twitter accounts can revise their social media strategies, and they say that individual NPR journalists and staffers can decide for themselves whether they are going to stay on the platform or not. What's also hilarious is that PBS is now joining NPR their brethren over being upset that they are labeled as government funded media. Guys, it's called the Public Broadcasting Network. It's like, how can you deny that?

It's not, like, how is that some sort of besmirching of your editorially independence. You can claim you're editorially independent, most people don't believe you, saying with NPR, it's like, well, look, you do get the vast majority of your funding from the government, So I mean it's sorry vast majority. You get a portion of your funding from the government. In

the case of PBS, you get a significant portion. NPR has literally said that federal funding for NPR is vital to their operations despite outside you therefore are state funded media. There's simply no guest around it. And they really what it is is that they can't stand being labeled this way because it just exposes who they are, Like they

want to have their cake and eat it too. They don't want to be cast as state funded, and they want to claim that they're editorially completely independent, funding wise from anything that keeps them from reporting on power, Like that's just truly not the case. And so I don't

know why they answers the problem with the truth. Well, what I would really like to see personally is corporate affiliated right media labeled because that is, I mean, those companies get the bulk of their revenue from advertising and are like deeply conflicted, and so I would love to see some labeling to that regard. Not that people don't you know, people don't really need these labels, like they

know what's going on here. There was an exchange in that BBC interview because BBC was also labeled state affiliated Media, and Elon was floating like maybe I'll change the label to publicly funded media or something like that. He was like, you would that make you feel better? So anyway, that's where things stand right now. As I guess Elon is mulling weight whether he might shift the title somewhat or which wants to hold your guns? We don't need NPR

on two. We'll be consistent, be consistent about it though, because that's the thing is, it's like very selectively applied as a troll to the companies that he felt like targeting and going after. But like I said, if you want to do something genuinely useful, I would label all the corporate mainstream media corporate affiliated press. Label them all right? Sorry,

really looking at well. Biden's EPA announced an ambitious new target yesterday requiring two thirds of new car sales in the United States to be fully electric by twenty thirty two. The nine year effective moonshot actually starts even earlier than it sounds, because the order requires that a minimum of fifty four percent of all new cars be fully electric

by twenty thirty. This represents a titanic shift in the US automative policy that sounds nice on paper and today, though, I really want to dive into and see if this is realistic and even advantageous. Let's start with the present day. How many electric cars are on the road present? Presently, electric cars make up five point six percent of all cars and trucks sold in twenty twenty two, up from

one point eight percent just two years earlier. While that certainly is parabolic, we are still talking about what is effectively a niche market and turning it into the dominant mode of new transportation in less than a decade. Is this feasible in any way? Now? The answer is kind of yes. But the unfortunate part is that Biden has not done really anything else to prepare the world or America for this. First thing, what is the most important

part of an electric vehicle? The battery. Who makes those batteries, what goes in them? Not only is it not us, but we are losing by several orders of magnitude. Today, China produces seventy six percent of globally lithium ion battery cells worldwide, including those going to most US electric vehicles. The US is number two in rare earths. But we have a major problem. Chinese reserves of rare earth minerals required for evs actually outstripped the entire production of what

America made just last year. We have no reserves. Worse, if you look at the countries that do have them, we are not exactly on the best terms, including Brazil, Russia, and India. Why would they sell it to US and not China. We have less economies of scale for production. We have less EV sales than China, which dominates sixty percent of the global market. It's not like America is an easy place to actually build anything whenever it comes

to mining. And critics of my position will say, well, Soger, this presumes lithium ion batteries remains the standard for evs. But here's the issue. We're so far behind on EV technology. We don't even really have a chance with the second generation. China already makes up sixty percent of the world EV market, and it is investing heavily in a battery supply chain that both ditches lithium and includes sodium because they are first. Quote, in two years, China will have ninety six percent of

the world's capacity to make sodium batteries. Now, it may sound like we may make up the ground, but it is not easy. They have been investing this for over a decade, graduates of top universities or studying this tech.

They state subsidize the companies that make these batteries to undercut any private Western competition, and they have a stranglehold even on the largest EV makers here in the United States, like Elon Musk, who is currently building a new facility in Shanghai and appears to have no qualms of doing business with the CCP. Building an alternative EV supply chain that we would control requires an investment of minimum of hundreds of billions of dollars, if not trillions of dollars.

Right now, the Biden EV future looks like one where the dominant mode of transportation in this country is completely reliant on a country that is our main geopolitical rival that sounds really dumb to me. Again, it can be avoided, but only with a serious Apollo style program requiring national buy in and absolute gobs of state funded infrastructure, which last time I looked at the US Senate, probably not going to happen. Next, let's look at the other problem.

Where will we charge these evs? Right now, there are approximately one hundred and forty five thousand gas stations in the United States, which is actually historic low. With evs, we have about five three hundred chargers That sound like a lot, but it is actually not because the average fill time on a car at a gas station is only two minutes, meaning that you can service thousands of customers per day. Even on a level two charger. On average, it takes about four to ten hours to charge a

car from empty to full. You can get around this with things like Tesla superchargers, which will get you a decent range in twenty minutes, but the numbers on them for publicly available dismal. There are approximately twenty eight thousand

fast chargers distributed across the US. The Biden administration only has current plans to fund approximately five thousand more factory in the twenty minutes or so that it will take for the average EV battery to fill up here, and you are looking at a catastrophic mismatch in infrastructure that exists today to make this a part of day to day life. Now. Of course, this is not the only way to charge your car. You can do so at home,

but this also cost money. Right now, the average cost of an L two charger at home is around one thousand dollars between hardware and installation, sometimes much more. Cost that the consumer has to absorb and requires a significant upfront investment from that consumer. And that brings us to

our final problem. While it certainly would be better for the climate if we switch from gas powered vehicles to electric vehicles, even if that power comes from natural gas, any so called transition to electric future cannot be sustained

on the current power grid. A shift of two thirds of all cars to the grid would dramatically increase the price of power across the United States for average home basic appliances, let alone the car that you now have to charge, which means we need cheap and abundant energy available nationwide. I have spent hours on the show laying out why the only real way to accomplish this is wide scale available in nuclear power, but here again, the government is the worst obstacle. The newest reactor in the

US just came online in June twenty sixteen. The one before that came online in May nineteen ninety six. There is one plant in Georgia that is coming online soon, which means the grand total of nuclear reactors to come online in the last twenty or thirty years is three. That Georgia place that I mentioned is a cautionary tale. It started construction at nine and has taken more than a decade to build, with huge cost overruns and very

little support from the federal government. Any electric future that we live in will again require a separate Apollo program just to provide clean, reliable power. On top of the infrastructure, need to build EV batteries and then keep the supply chain here in the US. I don't want to sound like a doomer. Our country certainly has had the capacity to do some of these things in the past, but

the past is the past. Our political system right now has no consensus, and the genuine seriousness that it would require to pull something off like this is way outside the capacity of an aged man. Like Joe Biden and Secretary Pete. Maybe we can fix it, but honestly, I doubt it within the next ten years. More likely, this could be a colossal boondoggle which would inadvertently spike the price for the poorest consumers on electricity and increase demand

on the existing grid for all Americans. Again, I hope to be wrong, but laying it all this way, see another way. What do you think, Crystal? I mean, it's again and if you want to hear my reaction to Sager's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at Breakingpoints dot com. Crystal, what are you taking a look at? Well? Guys, Perhaps no effort is more personal to President Joe Biden, or more consistently touted by the President himself, than his efforts

to cure cancer. Inspired by the untimely death of his son bo Biden initially launched the so called cancer moonshot in twenty sixteen when he was Vice President. Now in the White House, they have established another admirable set of goals quote to reduce the death rate from cancer by at least fifty percent over the next twenty five years and improve the experience of people and their families living with and surviving cancer, and by doing this and more,

end cancer as we know it today. But as Professor Anthony Zincas has been pointing out right now as we speak, our for profit healthcare and pharmaceutical industries, they are not even capable of supplying existing cancer drugs for patients who are suffering with that disease right now today, NBC News has some of the details. They say cancer drug shortages are creating dire circumstances for some patients. In some cases, other drugs are available, but they may not work as well.

In other cases, patients may die waiting for the medications that they need. According to that report, four different cancer drugs are in shortage right now, causing rationing, the use of inferior treatments and leading, as they say, there in some instances, to avoidable death. NBC interviewed a man named Roger who is suffering with an aggressive form of prostate

cancer stage four. After chemotherapy was unsuccessful, his doctor recommended a new advanced drug specifically for prostate cancer, which is made by Novartis, But that is one of the drugs that's in short supply, so rather than receiving the potentially life saving care that he needs right now. He has been put on a wait list, which is expected to delay his treatment by several critical months. He told NBC quote, I definitely need that drug. It's the only way I

see my life. But it's not just cancer drugs. A Senate subcommittee recently released a report on the growing scourge of critical drug shortages, and they held hearings on this matter. Corns to that report, at the end of twenty twenty two, a full two hundred and ninety five individual drugs were

in shortage. In a single year. From twenty twenty one to twenty twenty two, drug shortage is spiked by thirty percent, and because drug makers have few requirements to inform the government of upcoming shortages or explain the causes, regulators, doctors, and patients are often completely in the dark about when a drug might be available or whether it's going to be available at all. Listen to how one of the witnesses at that hearing described the whore that this creates

for doctors and for patients. We are lucky enough to live in a country where cutting at research has massively reduced cancer related deaths, but cancer drug shortages represent a tragedy that's happening in slow motion. For example, etopicide is a cancer drug that's been on the market for over forty years and typically cost it less than fifty dollars

a vile. It is given to patients for nearly a dozen different kinds of cancer, But in twenty eighteen, due to a manufacturing delay, this drug was on shortage across the country. Which of our patients with can or should

get it? How can we prioritize between American lives? Should our limited vials go to an older woman who is just diagnosed with lung cancer, a young man who's already been successfully taking it for testicular cancer, or a baby with neuroblastoma, an aggressive cancer for which this drug is recommended,

but others might substitute. Our hospital, like others across the country, struggled to make decisions based on projective availability, which patients were already under our care, and our best guess at how many new patients would be diagnosed in the coming weeks. As a doctor who's devoted my life to fighting cancer,

it's hard to express how horrible that is. In this particular case, we had enough drug for our long and testicular cancer patients, and our heroic pharmacist was able to scrape together enough atopicide from the bottom of the leftover vials to also treat the infant patient. But our pharmacist should not be desperately trying to squeeze out a few last drops when a life may be on the line. Now, the causes of these shortages will not be remotely surprising

to you. It's the same story we see in a whole lot of industries, only of course, with lives on the line. Industry consolidation is meant that when a single drug maker stops making a drug or has some sort of supply or factory issue, the result can be absolutely devastating. In the name of market fundamentalism, we have also allowed damn near our entire pharmaceutical supply chain to become dependent on ingredients or processes from foreign countries, most notably China

and India. Eighty percent of the factories that make active ingredients for pharmaceuticals are located outside of the US. That's the reason why this hearing was actually held by a Senate committee focused on homeland security. Our drug shortage issue is so dire it is actually a national security issue. According to CNN, a single factory in Shanghai that made a necessary material for radiological scans shut down. It literally

nuked half the US supply of that critical substance. A VA hospital doc told them that the shortage hit them immediately and they were faced with making some horrific choices, but whether they had enough to do a needed cancer screen or heart disease scan. Many of the drugs in short supply are generics, which provide a lower profit margin

than the patent protected drugs. Since Big Pharma is unable to have a monopoly over these drugs and unconscoantly priced gouge us in some cases, they just decide to stop producing them altogether. Now, the neoliberal or libertarian or Pharmachhill answer to all of this would be to basically bribe the drug makers to make the drugs that we need, give out price gouging monopolies for the generics, or use Medicare or tax credits to artificially prop up the prices.

Use an endless stream of corporate subsidies to inflate an already wildly profitable industry just to induce them to keep from killing babies with cancer. Bribe them with even more subsidies to manufacture drugs here rather than overseas. Meanwhile, you're just allowing pharma to blackmail the American people and the US government. Nice cancer drug, you got there, shame if something happened to it. Let me just state the absolute obvious. This is an insane way to run a healthcare system.

You simply cannot let profit incentives determine who gets care, what drugs get made, who lives, who dies, who spends the rest of their lives under a crushing burden of medical debt. And a cursory glance at this current system tells you that it is already anything but a free market. Already, public money has been used to fund every single new drug molecule over the past two decades. Why because drug

companies aren't interested in saving lives. They're interested in extracting profit, so they would rather spend their research and development money crafting a new formulation of viagara that they can use to extend the patent, or not performing research at all but engaging in all out law fair to protect their monopoly price gouging powers for another few years. But listen, I understand if you aren't ready to just fully nationalize

the industry. Our government has certainly got a long way to prove they're really up to the task of effectively managing production and distribution. So how about we start with a pharma public option. Join the ranks of other nations which have recognized that some essential medicines are too critical to be left to the whims of the greedy psychopaths who run the pharmaceutical industry, Countries that have also decided that the public should benefit from the medicines our tax

dollars are used to invent in the first place. As stat News Rights quote, publicly owned manufacturers at the state, local, and regional levels could make new medicines developed by a national R and D institute and also produce low cost generics. These manufacturers would then work with publicly owned wholesale distributors to assure the medications are available at hospitals and retail

pharmacies nationwide, all at the same low price. It could even leverage existing public institutions like the US Postal Service and the Veterans Health Administration, both of which have important experience in pharmaceutical distribution, to ensure that cost effective medications are delivered directly to patients and clinics in every community. Listen, Big Pharma wants to compete in these markets. Great if they prefer to make the fortieth version of Viagar instead,

so be it. Remember back a while ago when there was a whole fear mongering campaign about Obamacare and supposedly socialized medicine creating death panels. Will now hospitals struggling with these shortages are forced into actual literal death panels, trying away the ethics as we heard of how to ration a limited supply of life saving drugs plot twist, capitalism

actually brought to the death planels. Never again, should we allow people who are already going through the worst moments of their lives to have to work worry about whether the drug that would save their life is profitable enough to make. And I am shocked that this isn't a bigger story. And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at breakingpoints

dot com. Joining us now is Jacob Siegel. He is a senior editor at Tablet Magazine and is the author of a fascinating a new piece Let's go and put it up there on the screen. It's a guide to understanding the hoax of the century, thirteen ways of looking at disinformation. It's an important rundown both on the history of the disinformation wars but also kind of the architecture of the disinformation industrial complex that exists today. Jacob, thank

you so much for joining the show. We really appreciate it. Thanks for having me so just it's a very long piece, but I do recommend that people go and read it. Give us first the genesis of why you decided to write this and some of the most shocking things that you were able to uncover and kind of string together for people. Well, I started working on it a few years ago, so it's been a long time in the making.

And the origins really were in what appeared to be the mass manufactured of narratives in the United States, and just being an American and being a spectator and observing the way in which there was both this production of these pseudo events to borrow a phrase coined by Daniel Borston, things like, for instance, the Russian bounty story from Afghanistan, which you may recall, which was just an entirely false story, obviously political narrative that was planted in the press, so

observing that on the one hand, and observing on the other hand, this new regime of censorship that was capable of purging from the public record, you know, things that were not simply controversial, but also things that were vital, for instance, about health issues around COVID and the pandemic, or for that matter, around the twenty twenty election and Hunter Biden's laptops. So it was this machinery that had

become more and more overt in American life. And seeing these two things, the production of these pseudo events and mass narratives on the one hand, and then on the other hand, the mass censorship that was taking place, and recognizing that they were two sides of the same coin,

that was the genesis of the piece. So take us back to the roots of the current misinformation moment, because I feel like it sort of gets glossed over now, but I remember quite vividly the whole red scare Kremlin stooge discourse was used obviously against Trump and Trump supporters, but it was also used to try to call the populist uprising of the Bernie Sanderson anybody you know. Bernie

was seen as like doing Russia's bidding. Anybody supported Bernie was called like a Krumlin stooge and all of these sorts of things. So what happens that enables that discourse to be turned into this entire sort of like industrial ecosystem. Yeah, that's right. It was virtually identical language used with the two sort of populist insurgencies on left and right, Bernie on the left, obviously Trump on the right. And the proximate origins of this are in military and defense establishment

theories around what's called hybrid warfare. And this really starts in twenty fourteen with the invasion of Crimea and also the Euromaidan movement in Ukraine, which the US backs and Russia opposes, and the popularization of this idea of hybrid warfare, which essentially posits that there is a new form of warfare also sometimes you know, lumped in with fourth generation warfare, in which conventional and unconventional tactics are mixed together in

a kind of larger information space, globalized information space enabled obviously by the Internet. And so Russia is seen as utilizing this method of warfare not only to pursue immediate tactical aims, but also to demoralize target populations, to seduce fellow travelers in the West, and even in some Eastern

European countries, as it were. And so this idea of hybrid warfare, which has some legitimacy as some basis in terms of new tactics, new operational techniques being employed in warfare, as some legitimacy in terms of the kind of ways in which the Internet opens up this new space for proper baganda and for information operations very quickly, and from the beginning, as early as twenty fourteen, twenty fifteen, there are people who are pointing to the kind of capaciousness

of this concept, the amorphousness of it, the ways in which it can be used to mean anything, And in particular there are Eastern European security officials pointing to it and saying, hey, this excessive focus on hybrid warfare is actually taking away from the real sort of you know, beans and bullets, aspects of war that matter, and turning

it into this sort of abstract, vague political concept. So that's there from the beginning, and some of those same critical us in particular, though it's also NATO people involved, intelligence, defense counter terrorism officials who are talking about hybrid warfare, then begin to talk about in the context of two thousand and fifteen sort of emergence of the Trump presidential campaign,

and then really in twenty sixteen it picks up. They begin to talk about the Trump campaign and the Bernie Sanders campaign as extensions of hybrid warfare essentially, and they're pointing to memes that are being spread online and saying, in particular, there's a former FBI officer named Clint Watts who becomes a prominent counter terrorism official later re emerges in relation to Hamilton sixty eight the Russian influence detecting

dashboard online, But before that, before Hamilton sixty eight, Watts is one of the key people who's pushing this idea that you know, as he says explicitly in a piece for The Daily Beast where I used to work, he says that basically that trumpkins as he calls them, and Russian trolls have become more or less indistinguishable. Yeah. I think all of this is so important in terms of the history because it sets the stage also for state action.

So can you describe where governments begin to get involved, They begin to start funding this stuff, and it gets laundered both through government to non governmental agencies, and then gets perpetrated as fact and repeated by journalists. It's like two sides of the same coin, that's right. The key event there occurs in December of twenty sixteen with the it's actually the authorization for the twenty seventeen NDAA, which

is the Defense Authorization Bill. There is a bill that's a part of that, called the Countering Foreign Disinformation and Property and Act that gets signed into law by President Obama December of twenty sixteen and really is the first major piece of law and policy authorization that creates the architecture for this what is effectively an information operation that you know, is nominally aimed at defending against foreign threats, but is always from its inception because of what I

just pointed out, because of this blurring that you get from the proponents of hybrid warfare theory and people like Clint Watts who are blurring the lines between you know, Russian trolls, Russian influence operations, and American political actors. Even though this is nominally directed against foreign disinformation threats, it's always in fact really sort of omnidirectional and in practice

it's really directed against domestic political actors. In the United States, you get the creation of the Global Engagement Center and the State Department, which becomes the central governmental hub for

coordinating and leading these counter disinformation experts. And then the GEC, in its own mandate and its own mission statements, is talking from the beginning about leading a whole of society effort that will involve bringing together actors from the tech industry, actors from the ango sphere, basically all of the most influential and powerful, powerful sectors of American society in terms of controlling the kind of messaging apparatus on the one

hand and the communication structure on the other hand. So that's all baked in from the very beginning. Well, I think what's really important about the piece is, you know, the media piece is the most apparent. It's sort of at the surface, it's what we see. We've certainly talked about the media role here, but you kind of dive a level deeper at all of the architecture that has been constructed that is, you know, deeply troubling. I think, no matter where you are in the political spectrum to

our civil liberties. So Jacob, thank you so much for spending some time with us. Thanks man, appreciate it. Thanks for having me. That's a pleasure. Thank you guys so much for watching. We really appreciate it. Thank you for continue to support us, signing up for a premium and watching the full show on Spotify for our premium members taking advantage. We've got fun things cooking over here that we're working towards every day. We can reveal some of it very very soon, and we will see you all

next week. Love you guys, See you next week.