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Indeed, we do.
Palestime protests have now hit graduation ceremonies, we have massive political reaction, we have total media freak out.
We've got all the highlights and low lights from that.
Also, big news while we were all sleeping, Israel has started the evacuation or forceful displacement of Rafa. They also are bombing that city. It appears that that ground invasion is imminent. As these fire talks breakdown, we will bring you all of those very grim details. Meanwhile, Democratic Congressman Henry Quaar that Nancy Pelosi and other moved heaven and earth to save He had a very close primary challenge only one by three hundred votes. Oh, he's been indicted.
He's been indicted for corruption him and his wife. Very similar honestly to the Bob Menendez thing, although they have not located any.
Gold bars as yet that we know about.
But incredibly impactful because you have very narrow house majority on the Republican side. If Democrats managed to pick up a few seats, this could be very consequential. So break that down for you've also got a big political debate over lab grown meat. Sager and I will both weigh in. I think we have different views on this one, so it should be a fun one. Christy Noham, who was at least a top potential Trump vpeepic, caught lying flagrantly in her book about a meeting with Kim Jong un
that apparently never happened. I don't know why you would lie about such a thing, but she did. So we'll show you that. We also are taking a look on taking a look in my monologue about Kent State, any lessons that were learned apparently not, and whether we are courting another version of that national catastrophe, and that Stiller is going to join us to break down what is truly a massive scandal that had a.
Direct impact on you and your wallet.
Some quarter of the inflation during the height of the worst period of inflation likely came from a price fixing scandal.
Still, Earn himself helped to.
Do some of the journalistic uncovering of this scandal, so he'll talk to us about what the hell happened and what it all means.
Yeah, that's right, real media they would actually cover it, but here it is.
I mean, domestically, it's one of the biggest stories in the country, no question, and you probably I mean, I don't think they covered it all on the Sunday shows. Like we're talking thousands of dollars that came out of your pockets because of this price fixing scandal.
So it is really.
As he has the receipt, it's not even a journalistic story. It's the ftc getting involved. So he'll break that down for us. I'm really excited to talk to him before we get started, though, thank you to everybody who watched Counterpoint's latest debate. They've got another one, awesome one that is set for this Friday, so as a reminder, you can watch it early and you can support that work here Breakingpoints dot Com.
Their show has been doing incredibly well.
They've made record downloads, a lot of views on their last one on Israel Palestine. The next one, I think, in particular, is gonna set. There's gonna be some feathers that are ruffled and some familiar personalities.
That's all we can say.
Now.
Yeah, at this moment, you guys its debate, Let's just put it there. Yeah, well, we'll leave it there and you can decide who it might be participating. So go ahead and support us at Breakingpoints dot Com so we can continue to have this brand new show for everybody. I know everybody's been really enjoying it, at least that's what the ratings tell us. So thank you all very much. We appreciate you. Let's get started, like Crystal said, with
the protests. So there's been the political reaction. President Biden taking the White House podium to react to the campus protest. These were his first words in reaction after Columbia University.
Let's take a listen.
So let me be clear, peaceful protest in America. Violent protest is not protected. Peaceful protest is it's against the law of violence occurs. Destroying property is not a peaceful protest, it's against the law. Vandalism, trespassing, breaking windows, shutting down campuses, forcing the cancelation of classes and graduations. None of this is a peaceful protest. Threatening people, intimidating people, instilling fairing
people is not peaceful protest. It's against the law. The scent is essential to democracy, but dissent must never lead to disorder or to denying the rights of others, so students can finish the semester and their college education. Look, it's basically a matter of fairness. It's a matter of what's right. There's the right to protest, but not the right to cause.
Chaos the protest force, Did you reconsider any of the policies with regard to the region.
No.
So the two questions that were asked there at the end were have the protest forced you to reconsider any of your policies in the region? President Biden Know? Do you think the National Guard should intervene? President Biden know before he was then exited the room. So President Biden then definitively speaking on the matter there, Crystal, what do you.
Think descent must never lead to disorder?
I think the founding fathers would like to have a word with you about that conception of protest. I think the civil rights leaders, I think the abolitionists, I think the suffragettes, I think the Vietnam War protesters would like to have a word with you about all of that.
I mean disorder.
The whole point of the media's mirroring of these protesters, the political class mirroring of these protesters, is they don't want to deal with the central claim. They don't want to deal with the central issue. And the reality is, and Zacer and I were talking about this before this started, and we have an element we'll get to in a little bit, but ninety nine percent of these protests have been peaceful in terms of a mass, nationwide, student driven
protest movement. I don't know that there has ever been a more peaceful protest movement.
So that's number one. Number two.
Many people contrasted these comments and this approach with the very different and much more nuanced commentary from Biden, specifically when it came to Black Lives Matter protests. He made short a center the actual core of the claims and the demands that were being made there, and said, listen, you know, the violence here doesn't speak for the majority of the protesters who are peaceful. Now, I supported many of the calls and demands and those protests in general,
and they were majority peaceful. But there was much more violence, including property damage, during the Black Lives Matter protests. So it is blatantly hypocritical his approach here versus his approach and his commentary with regards to Black Lives Matter, it's just.
And then the final.
Piece that I'll add here is than he sasked, you know, is this changing your mind? He says, no, it's actually a lie because no, he doesn't care about Palestinian lives. Yes, he's still committed. Zionis wants to do everything to support Israel. He's clearly sober feeling the pressure. And we're going to get to some of this in terms of the Israel segment. Reportedly, he was trying very aggressively to secure some sort of
a ceasefire deal that appears to have fallen through. No, he's not really willing to use leverage to compel Israel to actually fall in line. But there's no doubt they realize this is a massive political problem for them. And guess what. The only reason that it is a political problem for them is because of the size of the movement, because of the persistence of the movement, and because it's not just staying in the confines of something that is nice and decorous and can just be easily hand waved
away and dismissed. That's what him I'm going to talk about Mika Brazinski today, Peggy.
Noonan in my monologue.
What they want is a protest that is so meek, so timid, so decorous that it can just be vanished erased, that they don't have to actually grap with it, because to actually grapple with it is to deal with the fact that this country has been complicit in carpet bombing babies, starving them to death. Cindy McCain, head of the World Food program says, now there is a full blown famine
in northern gaz that is rapidly moving south. That sort of protest that is stays within the confines of oh, write a letter to your congressman if you feel upset and can easily be ignored is what they want. Because this type of protest that's in their face, that shows up at every Biden rally, that's President graduation ceremonies, that's President, not just to Ivy League colleges, but colleges across the entire country.
That's much harder to dismiss. It's much harder to ignore.
Yeah, I think the thing is with President Biden is trying to make a political calculation where he doesn't believe at the end of the day. I mean he believes basically in the silent majority bet of the Nixon administration, or in some sort of like Sista Soldia distancing hearkening back to the nineteen ninety two campaign. Well, honestly, we'll see. I have no idea. Tomorrow, we're actually going to be talking a lot about the polling. In terms of the
reaction to the campus protest, It's difficult to gauge. There's no real way to know. On the one hand, we've talked about the margins. On the other hand, we have talked about Biden basically trying to solidify the suburban white majority, especially amongst young.
You know, like women and adultsy go.
You say something about that though he already has the suburban white majority.
Well, yeah, so women who are voting on a borge, they're already in the Democratic Party camp. That's number one, number two before what has given the appearance nationwide of this like campus chaos and violence and all of you know, all of that, which I agree is not a great vibe for Biden because you know, his whole thing was like restore calm, and it's not going to be chaos, and Trump is chaos.
What created the chaos was the police cracked out.
These protests have been going on at many college campuses since very soon after October seventh, and it hasn't been oh my god chaos.
It's because of.
And he greenlit with his commentary this police response. So I think he is putting himself in the worst of all worlds where of course young people absolute hate his guts. There's no way that a young person for whom this issue is important and sees the president smearing them as violent anti semites, is going to want to vote for this dude.
So that's a disaster. He needs to win young people.
And then if you're the person who's like once the law and order candidate, do you think Joe Biden's going.
To be your guy?
No, You've got a more aggressive, more hardcore, authoritarian law and order dude on the ballot. So once again, I mean, it reminds me sort of his immigration positioning right where it's like, let me just accept the right wing framing of this. No, if people, if you're buying into the right wing framing, they're not going to just go with like the the lesser of the right wing of framing.
They'll go with the guy who's all in on that.
So I think it's a political disaster all the way across the board.
But it's a question of young people and their priority. So yes, we can go look at our poll. There were some young people who said they wouldn't necessarily vote for Biden, But there was a later poll that just came out a couple of days ago, Harvard Harris where they had Israel Gaza as number fifteen out of sixteen for priorities. I mean, I do think there is a danger that this is just an elite movement, and the truth is that most people, even if they do care
about Israel, palistine. I'll say this for myself, it's not my number one, not even my top five issue. I care much more about our country and policies that affect here. I don't think that that's necessarily a moral thing to say. And by the way, I'm not going to tell people what to do. If that wants to be your top priority, you BEU. I think that's fine. But the question does
come for is this an elite driven concern? And I don't even meet necessarily in terms of left, I would say right too, I mean, how much of our national discourse is captured by Israel and Palestine when the truth is the vast majority of people like don't particularly care
all that much. And in fact, if you look at the uninformed issue, a lot of people don't know very much about the conflict because they just don't leaders don't care, or they're not consuming a lot of media and they decided to turn out.
I think it is fair to raise the question of like, okay, is this a bubble?
Right?
I think just think I think that's entirely fair. Yeah, the idea I very much dissent from the idea. It's a quote unquote elite driven discourse. I know the focus is on like Colombian other Ivy League institutions. This is I mean City College, which is famously a working class institution.
New York City also saw protests.
You have protests at state schools, all sorts of institutions across the country.
So that's number one.
Number two is you know, okay, It's one thing when people are ordering their priorities and responding to a poll. It's another thing when you look at the poll numbers for Joe Biden with young voters.
That's true, but I mean, is how much of that is Israel Gaza? How much of it is is that shit is just way too expected?
Some of that is definitely the case, and we saw the fall off with young voters begin prior to Israel Gaza. It is accelerated. I mean, the fact that you now have Joe Biden losing to Donald Trump by eleven points is astonishing and certainly like smearing. If you look at young sentiment about Israel and pousing obviously very divergent from
older voters. And then if you see the present the United States basically smearing your entire generation as anti violent, anti Semites, I have to think that that's probably going to have a negative impact for people that this issue is a real priority. Listen, it only takes a few percentage points where like this is their thing and there's no recovering from it for it to be, you know,
a completely game changing type of political event. This is what you see frequently, you know, even with even with like abortion, Okay, abortion is not the number one issue for the like if you look for.
Some people, it is just like Lizerald Mouse, I buy it.
But it's not just how many people rank this as their number one, but how strong is the emotion and is this like a single issue for some percentage of young people? At this point, it's a single issue, and I don't think there's any recovery at this point for Joe Biden on this issue. So you know, we'll see. But I think that because the policy, it really ultimately comes down to, like the policy is really bad.
Now you have the specter of him.
Spearing effectively an entire generation is like, you know, racist, and I don't think that's going to help them.
But this is I don't think that's going to hire generation.
Like half the people in this most people who are young don't even go to college, so they're not even tangentially involved, like how do they feel about this issue? They may feel in some way, but they are not necessarily I as.
Seem as a protests are only on college campuses, which they're.
Sure, but I mean, okay, they'd be like saying, you know, all millennials feel this and like you're smearing my generation for going after I don't know, the avocado toast thing, Like, I don't feel particularly that way. I'm more just saying like it's important than we try and segment this out for like, who are these protesters, Who are the people who feel affinity for them. I don't think it's fair to say it's smearing an entire generation, because not all
young people do care about Israel and Gaza. I'm just trying to zoom out and really think about this politically, thinking about nineteen sixty eight and the eventual ramifications. I mean, there's a lot of truth to the fact that protest movement, I mean, we talked about this previously dramatically backfired and failed. The New Left as a project itself was a historic failure,
specifically because the idea of mass mobilization. And there's also a question I think again of the silent majority, which became very relevant in BLM when it was the same thing where people were like, oh, all young people believe that there's like some mass violence of police against black people.
It's like, well, not really, not actually true, especially if we look now and to what their overall reaction is But the question is also going to come to media and coverage of course, which we of course will focus on. There's been some more demonstrations that have been happening. Let's put this up there on the screen and I can go ahead and narrate some of this. This is the University of Michigan, obviously a major nexus. There were walkouts
during the graduation ceremony in support of Palestine. That you see a lot of flags, kefias and others who are walking out, who are disrupting the graduation ceremony. That Michigan one may be one of the most important because it's in that background. State here we have graduates at Northeastern calling out their university for complicity. They say, Northeastern has arrested me, Why don't you listen to your students, n
eu folence genocide divests. Now here is that we have Georgia State students who are being a scored away for wearing kefias and for having Palestinian flags. So this is all, you know, again feeding into a vibe of chaos. The only question is kind of like which way and how to navigate this? Now you are correct Crystal on the violence runts I will give it to you very very different whenever it comes to the Black Lives Matter protest,
Let's put this up there on the screen. This in particular was one that a lot of people focused on. I know, I think it was covered by Ryan and Emily and we covered a little bit on Thursday as well.
This is from the New York Times.
They say how the counter protesters at UCLA provoked violence and unchecked for hours. This in particular was a grievous case because you had the like rennecop camps, cops like lock themselves into a building and there was basically just like full on street violence that was just happening between these counter protesters who were like firing fireworks and others at the Palestinian encampment, and it happened for a period of almost three to four hours in the middle of
the night. That was you know, fostering all over social media, and it took them till six am actually for the LAPD to come in. And it's obviously very blatantly hypocritical whenever you do look at some of the other police reactions.
So I on this one, I'll absolutely give it to you.
It was ridiculous that it even took so long for them to come in, and because look, you know, we believe in student safety, right, I believe that for all the students who are involved. If you got people who are coming there looking to start a brawl and then get that's part of the most worst things about mob violence is that it begets itself and it's you know, just keeps a vicious circle.
And that's basically what happened at UCLA.
Well, what happened is you had a peaceful encampment that was violently attacked and police stood by and let it happen for five frickin' hours. Five hours they were violently assaulted. LA Times student reporters now the New York Times all look at this and say this was entirely one sided,
that this protest was entirely peaceful. And then these counter protesters, who were funded by the way by Bill Ackman and Jerry Seinfeld's wife, a bunch of other people came in and began assaulting and shooting fire were and sent significant numbers the numbers I saw originally to roughly two dozen students to the hospital and the police did nothing, nothing. And then when they did do something, did they arrest the violent people who were assaulting students. I thought we
cared about student safety. No, they didn't arrest them. No arrests were made of the thugs that were violently assaulting the peaceful protesters. They got off scott free. No, the peaceful protesters got assaulted. So after night number one where they're violently beaten by these thugs funded by a billionaire, on night number two, the cops came in and did the violence themselves, and we're shooting rubber bullets.
The image of.
That and the you know, the violence inflicted against these students. The injuries from those arrests also quite significant. So it is outrageous. And this is the most significant incident of violence that we have had.
It was as I said, entirely.
And going back to Joe Biden's comments and the comments of all these other frickin people, have you condemned that? Are you calling for? You know, where's your concern about disorder here? Where's your concern about lawlessness here? Absolute silence? Where's your concern about Jewish students safety? Because guess what,
there were many Jewish students in that encampment. Where is any of that concern when it's coming from the pro Israel Zionist agitator thugs coming into assault students in police standing by and letting it happen, and then doing it themselves the next day.
No, I agree, I didn't hear any of that.
I do think it is very hypocritical, and this is part of the issue when we all start taking size and we're all going to starting into street gangs, and it's like, no, that's not what we want here.
That's actually the opposite of what I mean.
If you do care about order and disorder and student safety, I actually do care about all those things, just not willing to say that words are violence, which is part of a segment that we'll get to, and that people being snowflakes and saying hearing dangerous chance is up setting. However, if you have people who are actually firing fireworks and are beating people up and then you allow that to happen, terrible, right,
absolutely terrible, and you are absolutely correct. You don't have a lot of people in media even condemning or even frankly commenting on some of the stuff, which is just a ten that it doesn't exist, very very common amongst a lot of the Israel First crowd. Let's go and put this next part up here on the screen. There was a let's just say, a troubling incident that broke out over at ole Miss University. You had kind of
frat brothers versus some of these Palestine protesters. Some people were saying that they were mocking this woman, this Palestinian protester, who is black, and they're calling him a racist. This man has already actually been expelled from his fraternity. So you've seen outbreak of kind of like fraternity versus Palestinian. I wouldn't call violence per se, but I guess what clashes on campus people screaming at each other kind of like that, So I guess this is a former frat boy.
Let me just say it all my brothers out there, don't ruin your life for the sake of you're literally getting expelled and trying to go viral on social media. I would just advise you not to do that and think about your future. As I had talked about previously.
For poms, can we put that back up on the screen. Put that back up on the screen.
Okay, because what you see here, you got these dudes, you know, mocking her, calling her lizzo.
Right, all of that.
Okay, that's one thing. Then you have this guy who's making monkey noises and pretending like he's an ape at a black woman. And what you have here is a Republican member of Congress tweeting this video positively and saying, ole miss taking care of business.
So it's not no.
People weren't saying that they're making no, no, no. You have a man making literal monkey noises and gestures at a black woman.
It is as textbook racist as you could possibly get.
And this Republican member of Congress is like, yes, I like this, this.
Is good for me.
So I agree that we should call out the Republican congressman. But in the same way, Chris, we shouldn't elevate a single person from this thing and say that this is who.
Well, here's why it's important, because when it's a single anyone associated with the you know, the ceasefire movement, with the anti war movement, then this is representative of the whole movement, right, And we have to get a presidential to create multiple presidential statements in a press conference about how they're vile anti semites. But when you have like the most racist shit imaginable, well that's just the one.
That's one God, that's just a one off. The rest of the guys are there and they're just shouting out and that's fine. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. So mart I would say, is I think unfortunately there's been a bit of left hypocrisy here where everybody's like, no, see, like all these kids are racist.
No. Here's what happened at UNC.
Those Palestin protesters took down an American flag stupid idea, by the way, and then a bunch of UNC frappros surrounded and defended the American flag while they were pelted with trash. Again, explicitly aligning yourself against the US flag wouldn't advise it in the United States. Those people went viral and basically from then on, all frat brothers around the country are like, okay, we got to get involved in this. So again I would say to my brothers
out there, please don't do this. Do not engage in racist mocking of protesters, because it's not going to work out well for you, as it worked out in this instance.
But I do think it's important to say that just because one guy did it doesn't mean that all of them are racists for coming up and for shouting against them, and I don't I have seen, unfortunately, a lot of people use the same tactics, which I don't think is fair because it'd be like saying that all of that, all of the campus protesters are anti Semites because one guy who like barely even goes there said something about Jews, and it's like, well, you know, that's not really what it's all about.
So I just wanted to put that out there. So I don't think it's fair.
But I think that's fine.
Yeah, I think there's a lot of hypocrisy on the other side, where As I said, one incident can be used to tar an entire movement as anti Semitic, whereas here this is not even acknowledged, and actually, to the extent it was acknowledged, it was celebrated, and the governor of the state also, you know, celebrating and lauding, saying warm is heart these individuals at ole miss. So fine, let's be fair minded and focus on what one side
stands for and what the other side stands for. One side stands for stopping a genocide, the other side stands for stopping the kid.
We're just pissed off because people have taken over what is the what's.
Their movement about?
What is their.
Movement is about? But they're not continue slaughtering children. That's what the conflict is about. And so yeah, I agree with you. To focus on who are they and are they racist, what are they saying whatever, is to miss the point of what these protests and counter protests are about. The protests are about, let's stop a genocide. The counter protests are about let's continuing. So yes, okay, we let's
have that conversation. I don't this is all a distraction from the real issue that these kids are out there protesting about.
Well, we will have our real discussion, absolutely, But I'm saying I don't think it's fair to say that people who are annoyed about protesters are coming on their campus and who are screaming and shouting and are basically like going out there to mock them, like hey, please get out of here because we don't necessarily agree with you. I don't think that means that they're pro genocide. In fact, I didn't even see a single as really flag amongst
a single one of those guys. I, like I said, it was a huge mistake for those unc idiots to take down the American flag.
I don't know why they had to do it, but they decided to do it.
And it's like, if you want to put yourself against America, you are going to get a lot of people who are.
Coming out there.
Why do such vitriol. There's a vitriol towards people.
Who you know, took down a flag, but so much less to this man making monkey noises of a black woman, and you want to excuse him, and you want to call that an.
Idiot using him. I think I said he was an idiot. I only because you're ruined your life for that. I absolutely don't condone what he did. What I'm saying, look, it's also about convincing people taking down the flag of your country in your own country is a dumb idea. I think it was huge, it was a backlash. There's a reason that it all went viral. I don't have vitriol for anybody. In fact, I'm just trying to analyze it in terms of like which one is going to
be more popular. But I'm not in the business just as I'm not in the business of smearing counter or protesters, as tysmitic as a bunch of frat kids as racist, because I've seen this happen. You know, I was in a fraternity everybody know, a pro sexual assault and other so the bullshit, And I see a lot of the media basically participating and trying to cancel or use the same tactics that I think Phyzionists are using as the
counter protesters, and I don't think that's appropriate. More, what I'm saying is that I don't look, I mean, at the end of the day, I don't really believe in terms of that these guys are pro genocide. I think that they're participating in a social movement where for a lot of people in this country it is annoying to have this happen, and so they're coming out and they're like yelling, and I don't think there's anything particularly wrong
with that. You can think that one side is more moral if you'd like, but for a lot of people, they either don't care or they're you know, they think this is something, this is worth to come out and just like make fun of people, which again is a fundamental American right.
Look, I support their right to be assholes. That's part of what the First Amendment is but I think we should stay focused on what the actual issue is that is being protested. And sorry, I don't think one side is more moral than the other, one side is more moral than the other.
I don't think that it could be.
There could be an issue that is more clear cut at this point, when you have so many children slaughtered, you have We're going to cover this in the Israel segment. Every single child in Rafa right now is either malnourished, sick.
Or injured.
Okay, so yeah, there is a morality gap between the two sides, and I agree with you. It's not fair to take one individual and say this is reflective of an entire movement. But that is what's been done to the pro Palestinian students. And suddenly when it's these kids, or when it's the UCLA counter protesters, who were the ones who are one hundred percent violent, that's just it's either completely erased or they're actively celebrated.
That's what I'm upsetting.
I totally agree with you.
And look, I mean we can't we can't control with the rest of the media does. We can only try and you know, cover it the way that we can here and I don't think, you know, we're trying to erase any horrors or any of the others. We have plenty of stuff about that in our shown. I do think if you were on the Palestinian side, you should be upset about the way that the media has treated you, specifically MSNBC and so called like fellow travelers, I'm with you. I mean, if I was on this side'd be furious
about the way that they covered BLM or others. I'm only saying, well, it's not to send, you know, fight fire with fire or any of that, because I don't think it will get us to a particularly good place and if anything, history shows you will probably backfire. So I think that's a decent enough lesson. Let's go to the next part here, when we're going to talk about the campus protesters themselves. It's time to save some of
our fire for the snowflakes on campus. And the snowflakes, it seems, have taken to Fox News, once the place where they would make fun of snowflakes and people who were against violent words, and there was no such thing as hate speech and safe spaces and all of that. Now they have convened a panel of a bunch of people who are saying that they feel unsafe, that actually hate speech is not free speech.
So let's take a listen to that. I think that one of the.
Main issues is just the way that speech is being promoted, because although I do believe that free speech should be allowed of course in America, I think that a lot of this speech is not being is not actual free speech and should not be classified as such. And I think that there's also something to be said about the lack of speech. That Jewish students are being silenced. We
aren't allowed to talk, we aren't allowed to speak. I walk past these protests and I'm scared I can't say anything to them.
I just want to say something that's been incredibly frustrating in my eyes, and I'm sure a lot of them will agree. There are these token Jews, that's what I like to call him, who basically renounced their Judaism, don't associate with Judaism in the slightest bit, even to me.
They've renounced their Judaism.
I was at a tabling event earlier this year for mis Rockley Heritage Month, and this kid who's like the prominent face of JVP told me I renounced my Juju JAVP Jewish Voices for Peace got it anyway, So he told me himself that he renounces his Judaism.
But then you know, the second CNN comes.
He puts on a tallest he puts on his kipa and he sits in the middle of the kill and leaves a satyr. And was really frustrating there is that there are guys like Mark Ruffalo from the outside, who are you know, hopping in from their high horse saying there's no anti semitism, Mark Rofflo. I understand that you're famous,
but you're not on campus. Also there's Professor Howley, the Jewish professor who I've never seen associate with Jewish community once come in and say they're teaching about anti Semitism here, so clearly there's no antisemitism. While Professor Holly, the same kids who are teaching about anti Semitism are also the modern day Nazis. They're the ones saying, what's globalizing, it's a fault it, let's target Jews. They're the ones who
are encouraging harassment against Jews. So is really frustrating when these token Jews step in act like they understand what's happening and then kind of make it as if were weaponizing anti Semitism, So.
What's anti semitic?
Saying token Jews because Jews aren't acting like Jews that you should like, you're basically defining Judaism for everybody else. I would never dream of doing that for somebody who is Indian American or trying to define that for others. And then my personal favorite is that she feels unsafe because she quote can't she doesn't even try to speak to the count to the protesters.
Right whenever he DA's on our campus.
And apparently that means that hate speech is actually not free speech.
I mean, we're right back to where we started. This is war on.
Terror crap, you know this is this might as well be Fox News in two thousand and two.
It's like we're basically right back to where we were.
It's actually more unhinged War onto it is because think about Okay, so Fox News, this is not a one off, like they're just constantly bringing on these college kids to.
Well, I need my safe space and I'm.
Words are violence and all the stuff that they mocked right just justly in my opinion that they mocked like you know, overly woke college students for in the past. Now suddenly, oh they're all in on the freaking safe spaces and words are violence.
That's number one.
Number two, that dude so anti semitic to think you get to define who's a real Jew and who's.
A quote unquote token Jew.
And you know what, I'm glad he said it, because this is exactly the line of thinking that's used to dismiss Jewish voices for peace and the other Jewish pro testers. Usually it's done more quietly. This kid comes out and says it, Basically, if you don't support Israel in the way I think you should, you're not a real Jew. And that's the way that Benjamin Netanyahu thinks about it, that's the way that many of the sort of like
hardcore zion Is, that's the way they view it. And to conflate Jewish identity with one particular nation state that's actually in the definition of anti semitism.
That just cut combine.
So to my point about how this is more insane than the war on Terror, you not only have this media totally manufactured outrage, panic free count etc. Complete with presidential statements and members of Congress calling for the FBI to get involved. I mean, they're not even doing covertly anymore. They're just like blatantly calling for the FBI to infiltrate
these protests. And then you have multiple pieces of legislation that are passing that are codifying anti semitism as basically you can't criticisize Israel and you have a TikTok ban, which Soccer and I disagree about whether or not there should be a TikTok ban, but we do not agree on the fact that it was one hundred percent sparked at this time by this panic freak out manufactured crisis over anti semitism. In fact, Romney was just talking to Tony Blincoln and so the same crap. I mean a minute,
it's straight out we have to think about that. We have to ban an entire your social media platform because we don't like the information that these kids have access to there, and we don't like the things that are being said there.
We didn't even in the height of the War.
On Terror, we didn't get to that level of censorship insanity. Now we're banning entire social media platforms. And Romney even seemed to indicate like that might not be the only one, because we saw in our poll the numbers are wildly different in terms of how people view this conflict depending on whether they're social media news consumers, podcast news consumers, or cable news. Cable news viewers, they're the ones that
maybe need to be shut down. They're the ones being brain with all this fake anti semitism stories.
Now are you starting to speak my language, Perystal? Now, now we're starting to actually get somewhere. Let's ban cable news for the good of the country, speaking of war on terror idiocy.
Here we have the the NYPD has really found its roots, Crystal.
We're right back to the two thousand and two panics as well. Here you have an officer who holds up a book on terrorism and is like.
This is what was found amongst the protests. Let's take a lesson. Somebody's behind this, somebody's funding this. There's probably bigger in New York City. Bigger in New York City. Police devombit. We got to figure out what's going on.
Wow.
So it sounds like what you're saying is this raises your level of alert even higher here in New York City. But this could mean that as you said, it's a national issue that then could involve potentially the FBI and CIA really trying to track down, as you said, who's funding this.
Let's talk about Columbia, Let's talk about Hamilton Whole right, a book on terrorism. Wow, And I've said it before that there's somebody, whether it's paid not paid, but they are radicalizing our students.
Christal as a recipient of a National security master's degree from Georgetown, I hope the FBI never raids my house because I have a lot more in s indiar shit than that. Do you know why, Because that's what we studied in school. The school is called terrorism. A very
short introduction by Charles Townsend. The book is quote a very short series introduction from the Oxford University Press that contains hundreds of titles in every subject area and as they put it here, discusses the emergence of ISIS and an upsurgeon individual suicide action explores the issues involved in a proportionate response to the threat they present, particularly by
liberal democratic societies. This is basically, you know what, you know why the book was probably there because somebody who was studying first school for.
Going on right now, it's like we.
Can you know, have a what is happening here?
This is that is quite for those who are too young, and there's a decent chunk of our audience who was actually too young to remember what a lot of this like this is. I was coming of the age, like beginning to watch the news. This is what I most remember about the War on Terror era. It was like they found one book in there, or one guy tweeted one bad thing, and that's why he's doing twenty five to life, you know, in a federal prison today because
the FBI entrapped and ensnared him. Like we're on that level of type of craziness, and they basically we've been talking a lot about the sixties.
I've in talking about some of the backlash.
Well, one of the things that we don't study enough is the full on police state infiltration of a lot of these leftists, which is probably one of the most insane anti First Amendment things that has happened in the history of this country. It seems like they want to recreate it. This is like McCarthyism two point zero, except there's zero here as opposed to like ten percent here.
It's it's just insane.
It's like a freaking textbook intellectual history of an understanding. Like you said, someone was probably using it to study for their class, just like the remember the chain they brought.
All these are the tools of professional agitators. It's a bike lock. Okay, guess what.
There are textbooks and bikelocks on a college campus. You don't have to get the counter terror unit involved. And I just I can lose in my mind over this because it actually reminded me of at the beginning of this whole post October seventh conversation, remember when the bin laden letter oh yes was going viral on TikTok, and there was a whole thing about that too, like god forbid that people read some like relevant historical document and have a different idea.
But like it was that level panic.
But this is even more insane because it's literally one book found in one place. It also reminded me of remember there were a number of instances where the IDF would go in and claim like we found a copy of Mind Come for Whatever in some house somewhere in Gaza, or some other material that they claimed was really malicious, etc. It's you know, people still read mindkomfy the way for historical perspectives as part of being a literate intellectual who
understands history. Just like you know, we watch Russian propaganda sometimes you understand that they like anyway, that's that's what we're talking about about here and New York City too. We can go back to a five because this just shows you the level of the like, you know, monsters,
rhetoric and total freak out here. This is a councilwoman in New York City who says the NYPD confirms that ninety nine percent of arrests at NYU were in dude students, not outside agitators, which was very inconvenient for their narrative by the way. They were going hard on the outside agitators thing. So she goes, continues, the sad reality is that our schools are producing monsters and it's now our job to slay them. Simple as that producing monsters and
that's now our job to slay them. So you know, words aren't literal violence. But I would ask you which whose words are more important? Those of you know, some random student at Columbia University or you know, a politician and a position of power who's saying that we need to slay our college kids because they're monsters like it's just and based again on like some terrorism textbook or a bikelock or whatever that was about.
And finally, in terms of our war on Terrort series, here we have Alan Dershowitz back.
He's fully back this time, guys.
He has now started a new organization to launch quote massive offensive lawfair against anybody who they deem being anti Semitic.
Here's what he had to say.
We are going to be engaging in massive defensive and offensive lawfair against biggots, anti Semites and potential violent terrorists.
We're going to take many, many kinds of legal actions.
We're starting a group called her did Jew We Sue you, in which if you send us the name of a Jewish kid, it could be a Christian Zionist too, who was hurt by one of these big We will sue them, and we will get their dorm rooms taken away, and we will take their cars in their boomboxes, and we'll bankrupt them. We will do whatever is necessary under the law in order to bring these lawsuits, bring them successfully and deter October seventh.
Remember there are people out there who have promised they will bring ten thousand October seventh, that's genocide. Ten thousand October sevens is the end of the Jewish people.
That's genocide.
That's Hitler in a sign that it is definitely two thousand and two, Alan still thinks that young people have boomboxes, Crystal.
Apparently, I'm glad.
That Jeffrey Epstein's close associate has weighed into the conversation here, very telling moment when he says, like, if you've been if you're a Jew has been.
Hurt by one of these bigots.
Oh, by the way, Christian Zionists would be fine too, because guess what. I could refer you to some Jews who were hurt by aggressive agitators at UCLA, but they're not Zionists, so you don't care. You don't care about those particular Jewish people. You probably think like that, you know, do that they interviewed on Fox News their quote unquote token Jews because they aren't Zionists and so in your
mind they don't count. And it's listen, I don't even know what to say about this, but the idea of aggressively weaponizing the law against college students for you know, your own political purposes, and just that you feel open to admit that outly allowed is pretty disgusting, not to mention his own questionable past.
Yeah, good point. Last thing that we had to put in here. Actually, I'm curious what you think about this. I'll put this up there on the screen. This is from the Washington Post. They say university endowments show a few signs of direct Israel and defense holdings.
But he has an idea.
This gentleman who wrote this column, Todd Frankly says student protesters could try a different tactic, one that does not seem to have found any traction amid these volig demands. They could instead become investors in defense contractors or other companies that they want to influence. That would then allow them to become activist investors and push for the changes that they want to see from the inside.
Uh.
Marciano said, So, I know he was being dunked on. I don't think it's a.
Terrible idea, Sager. No, I'll tell you why.
Because that's basically what divestment is, is that they're asking their school endowments to act quote unquote as active investors and to divest from these defense contracting companies by becoming an investor you would get an active say in company, I mean.
How much money you had to invest in stocks when you were a college student. But it doesn't I doubt that it's going to match the like multiple billion dollar investments the stock set.
Glad to mention the idea.
Of like we're gonna instead of divestment, we're actually going to invest. We're going to like bolster the stock of Lockheed Martin or Boeing or whatever.
What's the most not a bad investment.
It's the most neoliberal idea I have ever heard of, not to mention being one of the stupidest ideas I've ever heard of, because again, we're not talking about Bill Ackman here.
We're talking about like, you know, Susie.
Who can barely afford her meal plan, or like is struggling.
To be looking up the market cap. Yeah, so market cap of Lockied Martin is one hundred and ten billions.
I'm sure they'll be really.
Difficulty, They'll be able to really make a dent. They'll be able with their activists investing to you know, make sure that Lockied Martin does their bidding just the most rate.
Theeon market cap is one hundred and thirty four billions.
It's one thing for it's one thing for someone to have.
A stupid idea, okay, but then for the Washington Post to publish this is like, hey, here's something to think about. Why don't you just like throw your weight around in the in the stock market and see how that years are Instead of having all this disruption, which is so uncomfortable, why don't you just play with money like all the people on Wall Street.
I'll defend the students there in that in that because their universities have become hedge funds, you know, pressuring their hedge funds with actual power to make an investment, it's not a bad idea. Part of the thing is that, for example, in Texas and a couple of other states, they've actually passed laws that either force or will go after.
Companies that invest in ESG.
And one of the reasons that they're able to throw their weight around is not through the states banks. It's through the endowments, like for the University of Texas or the University of Texas, A and M and love.
I think it's Texas Tech as well.
Now, by the way, I don't think any of these dowment should evening exists period. But if they are going to exist, you might as well pressure them in order to do something.
It does.
I mean, that is part of what these students have exposed is the way that these universities are like hedge funds first.
It's true, before educational institution and trying to say.
You have to ask us out.
Because there are a few places that have said okay, not even some of them. It wasn't even will divest, it was we'll have a vote on it. And guess what the students were like, Okay, that's that's sufficient. We'll accept that and we'll you know, we'll disband, we'll like dismantle our protests whatever. You don't have to call in the cops. You just have to actually negotiate in good
faith with them. And there are a few places that took steps towards divestment because you have to ask yourself, like, you know, it's Columbia University. I'm sure this president of Columbia is not enjoying this. Why are these investment in Lockey Martin.
Or what like?
Why are they so dear to.
You that that's completely off the table to even consider, especially when you consider the fact there was a vote at Columbia Barnard and the students are overwhelmingly in favor of divestment. So student body is overwhelming favorite, the faculty is overwhelmingly in favor of it. So it's not like you're capitulating to this very small liver minority demand. It's
like very broadly supported. So when you look at this, you're like, why is this so important to you that you're willing to die on this hill.
That's because of all the donors who donate to university, the students.
Students, Robert Kraft.
Robert Kraft is the actual guy who runs that university. I also looked it up. It makes sense, Brown's Universities and dowmin It's only six.
Point six billion. It's like nothing. You know, Colombia is like almost fifteen.
Billis and Brown is the one that said they'd have a vote on divestment. And the other schools that I saw that were willing to negotiate were by and large like smaller schools.
For example, University of Texas Austin ten point eight billion. I mean, you know, Harvard University. Harvard University's endowment is larger than the GDP of many small African nations. That is the level of insanity that we currently live in, and that's why we need an endowment tax.
So other things you could invest in, you know, there's lots of others.
One thing you could invest in your students so they don't have to pay eighty thousand dollars.
How about that?
But that's not possible.
How about that Columbia. Actually I did a whole monologue on this back in the day. Princeton University just on the like four percent withdrawal rule could pay tuition for every single student that they have, just on the interest of the capital that they already have in their endowment, except they continue to increase tuition. So they're criminals in a different regard to And I wish that this would spark a conversation about that.
Yes, indeed, all right, let's move on to the very latest out of Israel because we have some big breaking news this morning. So we have some very grim news to report out of Israeli Gaza strip this morning.
Let's put this up on the screen.
Evacuation orders have been issued for over one hundred thousand Palestinians in Rafa. Bombing of Rafa, which had already begun in a sort of sporadic manner seemed to escalate as well. Let me read you a little bit of this from Reuter's headline, is Israel begins evacuating part of Rafa Hamas to CRY's dangerous escalation. Israel's military carried out airstrikes on Monday, residents said, hours after they told Palestinians to evacuate parts of the southern Gaza city, where more than a million
people uprooted by the war have been sheltering. Fears are growing of a full blown assault in Rafa, long threatened by Israel against holdowns of the Palestinian militant group Hamas. As ceasefire talks in Cairo stall, instructed by Arabic text messages, phone calls and flyers to move to what the Israeli military called an expanded humanitarian zone about seven miles away. Some Palestinian families began trundling away under Chili spring rain.
Some piled children in possessions onto donkey carts, others left by pickup or on foot through muddy streets. One refugee Abu Raid told Reuters via a chat app quote, it has been raining heavily.
We don't know where to go. I've been worried that this day may come.
And as a reference before, there was an overnight aerial assault on Rafa. Israeli planes hit around ten houses, killing somewhere around twenty people and wounding several more according to medical officials.
So there's a lot to say about this.
I mean, first of all, keep in mind Rafa, why is it so significant? You have over a million people who have been already forcibly displaced, who are sheltering there right up along the border with Egypt. The US has been warning against a Rafa invasion because the results are
inevitably going to be catastrophic on a humanitarian level. So the fact that you now have more than one hundred thousand people who are being once again forcibly displaced, some people, some of these individuals will this will be their third fourth displacement at this point, it indicates that that long feared Rafa invasion is set to begin. And as I
mentioned before, you also already have air strikes occurring. So Sager, it's a very it's a very dire situation that we're watching unfold this morning.
It's going to be major geopolitical developments. Everybody, brace yourselves.
What we're seeing here is that the evacuation notice delivered by text messages, phone calls, flyers broadcasts in Arabic. That's almost usual. That's actually what the IDF IS bragged about in the past. We're the most more alarming because we warned people before we're coming in there, so previously we knew. There are one million Palestinians currently sheltering in Rafa, the only city which hasn't been subject to the ground invasion.
The unfortunate thing, Crystal is that the area which they're being told to move to has apparently already been overcrowded with tents. There's also a major question as to whether a military age men are going to be allowed to leave. Previously we've brought in everybody the report that they were not. But this puts the Israel on a major standoff with the United States, which has been telling them that they do not desire this. And it also is a major
dip somatic failure for Joe Biden. I mean, because at a certain point, you know, you if you were going to say, what for the last three months, we don't want to see a rapha invasion, and then it happens anyway, and you have exerted the full might of your superpower to prevent that, then you just look like an idiot. And that's really a lot of what we're seeing right here, although there may be some policy developments, and I'm curious to hear what you think about this AML thing.
Yeah, let's put this up on the screen, because I mean, I think it is really clear. I think it's really important to make clear we didn't use the full might of our superpower status. We use some you know, rhetorical public warnings, allegedly, some tough conversations.
We now have.
This report that I don't know if I believe that claims the US put a hold on an ammunition shipment to Israel. The Israelis were concerned because it's the first time since October seventy the US had stopped a weapon shipment intended for the Israeli military. The Biden administration, according to two Israeli officials, put a whole on a shipment of US made ammo. So it's not saying it's not
going there, claiming that there's a hold on it. Again, I don't know if that's true or not, but according to this report, every serious concerns inside the Israeli government set official scrambling to understand why the shipment was held, and they put it in the context of this concern over Rafa invasion from the Biden administration. You had US Secretary of State Anthony Blincoln visiting Israel last week and having a tough conversation with net Nyaho regarding a possible
Israeli operation in Rafa. Blincn told Net Yahoo that a major military operation would lead to the US publicly opposing
it and would negatively impact US Israel relations. A day later, John Kirby, White House spokesman, told reporters that Israeli leaders understand President Biden is sincere when he talks about the possibility of changes to US policy regarding the God's War should they move ahead with a ground operation in Rafa that doesn't take into account the Refugee's National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan also said a Financial Times conference on Saturday,
the Biden administration made clear to Israel the way it will conduct an operation in Rafa will influence US policy towards the Gaza War. So what you hear in all of that is no firm threats. There's if we don't like the It's not even like you can't do a
ground invasion of Rafa. It's if you conduct it in a way that we don't like, that doesn't at least give us some kind of ass covering because we're under a lot of political pressure here at home, then maybe we might possibly in some unspecified way, change our policy visa VI Israel. And I think, you know, BB is basically calling the bluff because many other times there have been concerns raised about this or that in tough conversations that were happening, and Israel did whatever the hell they
wanted and there was absolutely no price to pay. So I think there once again betting that is what's going to happen again.
The alternative explanation I want to put forward is there's a lot of ammunition exp's out there who don't even think this had anything to do with Israel. They just think that they probably had to send the AMMO to Ukraine because Ukraine is so hard up for ammunition.
Right now.
Just shows us also that it's a choice to supply both.
Of these nations not particularly important to us, and all of these wars for what purpose exactly. Let's go and put the next one up there on the screen. This is important to highlight. They say that Israeli officials confirmed that the US had told Israel that any uncoordinated operation would lead to delays in weaponshipments and possible restrictions on
US US weapons significant This is from an Israeli media report. Again, it's a hypothetical and the one of the reasons I don't necessarily believe it given the fact that these AMMO might have been held.
For Ukraine purposes.
Is Biden is on tape saying that there are no conditions whenever it comes to Israel. So then why would he now all of a sudden just decide to put it in practice, Like there's no real military Let's be honest, no actual difference between the military's conduct in Rafa or will be so far from the previous execute of the war.
So what makes this particular one so much worse? Like if you've stuck with them throughout all of this, Like if we're going to draw lines, we should have drawn it a long time ago, or we should have set very clear diplomatic standoff, or like if this goes on, you will lose aid. There will be a major political reaction here in the United States. We will allow X Y and Z to go through, you know, at the
United Nations. But very clearly Beebe does not believe. He either believes that's not going to happen, or he believes if it does happen, he'll be totally fine. And I think he's right, you know, in both respects.
I think he's right too.
Yeah, because there's no track record of them actually paying a price, with Joe Biden for any of their actions, including you know, murdering an American aid worker, there were no consequences to that.
There haven't been any real consequences for.
Anything that Israel has done, whether it's dropping two thousand pound bombs on refugee camps, you know, destroying the entire medical system, completely annihilating most of Gaza, there have been no consequences. So of course he's pretty justified in thinking there's not going to be a consequence for this either. It's just more empty words. I think that is likely
a very safe bet. Just to back up a little bit and give a little bit more of the context here, this new apparent development with regard to RAFFA and the evacuation or an apparent imminent ground invasion, and you know,
increased already airstrikes on Rafa. This comes immediately after those ceasefire talks that were ongoing and that supposedly the US was really pressing for which I think I actually think that they were because I think Biden realizes what political trouble he's in right now, those.
Talks have collapsed.
So we could put this up on the screen because I don't want you guys to get hoodwinked by the way the media is definitely going to frame this. So this is from Haretz. This was a couple of days ago. They said report Hamas accepts Gaza ceasefire deal, but Israeli officials reject the prospect of the war ending. So without getting into all the details here about phase one, phase two, phase three, what they were negotiating, what the framework looked like, etc.
Because it looks like this is.
All now Nolan void Hamas agreed to return all of the hostages and all of the you know, human remains of the hostages who had died or been killed in order to end the war. Okay, We've been hearing this line from israel defenders for however long, like, if Hamas just returns to the hostages, then the war will end. Well, Hamas says, okay, we'll return all the hostages, but the war has to end, and Israel said no. They rejected that Phoebe does not want the war to end, and
we all know why. And this is over, by the way, the objections of Israeli society, who you know, they're not worried about the humanity of Palestinians, but.
They're very worried about the hostages.
And it's very clear that Biebe would rather keep the war going than actually rescue the hostages. There have been huge protests in Israel, tens of thousands of people coming out. We covered the polling that even right wing voters want the hostages back if even if it means, you know, an end to the war and a calling of elections.
Bibi doesn't want that.
Put this next piece up on the screen, because once again Harets really put it quite clear. This is ken Roth, who's quoting from a piece that was in Haretz.
He says net.
Now, who hoped Hamas would reject the ceasefire offer. When it didn't, he turned to sabotage by saying he would invader Rafa whether or not there was a deal with Hamas, torpedoing Israel's last and best chance at bringing the hostages home. Bibi had hoped. They write in this piece that the Egyptian proposal, which was more far reaching than anything he'd been willing to accept in the past, would be rejected
by Hamas. But when the negotiations took a positive turn, he found himself in distress, as was expressed by his flurry of statements. Given our familiarity, they go on to take some shots at his quote unquote pampered son on the front in Miami. His fright is indeed understandable if Hamas says yes, and even if it adds a butt in one form or another. Net Now, who will have no choice but to carry through what he agreed with
Egypt in the US? Doing so could lead his kahanas those are the hard right flank to bring down the government. On the other hand, of his attempts at sabotage succeed, the National Union could pull out of the government, and its leaders, who still have the trust of a large section of the public, would join the growing calls for early elections.
Is it any wonder.
He is hysterical? So that's basically what happened. He wanted to have these sham negotiations. He wanted to put a deal out that he thought Hamas would reject. When Hamas was like, actually, we're open to that, we'll give you all the hostages back, but you have to end the war. He had to do something to sabotage this deal because it is overwhelmingly popular in Israeli society to have some sort of a deal to end the war. He can't do that for his own, you know, holding on to power purposes.
So very tragic.
So that's you know, and the other piece of context I want to add in here too, which is highly relevant to the imminent ground invasion of Rath and evacuation orders, et cetera, is they have now officially banned Al Jazeera in Israel, shutter the offices, et cetera. So a huge crackdown on any sort of dissenting media coming immediately before this escalation as well.
Yeah, no, you're absolutely right, Crystal.
It's actually very tragic because it seemed like it was on the horizon. We were prepared to do a segment to Conde's Clears. It just completely fell apart at the last minute. The key part is that the youth, and this is where I do believe the reporting about the US where they basically told Tomas, They're like, listen, if they agree to this, we're going to end the war. Like it's not going to happen. Well, eventually, yeah, there's forty days. We're going to give you our personal assurance.
But it appears that that personal assurance was enough for the Israeli is to just say, Okay, if you really want us to commit to any war, it's not going to happen, and we're just going to go into the RAFA and we're going to you know, quote unquote finish
the job. So good luck to them, because you know this is going to this is just going to be like the previous iterations of the war, but honestly on steroids now at this point, because at this point, there really is nowhere else to go for a lot of these people, and the conditions are so much worse that mass death is only even more likely at a worse scale.
That's exactly right. There is nowhere left to go.
There is nowhere left that hasn't been completely devastated. There has been multiple reports from entirely mainstream outlets like The New York Times and NPR and wherever about how the quote unquote safe zones. None of them have been safe, none of them have been you know, excluded from bombing campaigns. And by the way, as Sagera was mentioning before, the place they're telling people to flee to.
It's already jam packed.
It's already in crisis in terms of you know, lack of sanitation, lack of water, illness running, rampant malnourishment of children, et cetera, et cetera. So it's a horrific situation that appears set to get even worse in you know, with regard to that, some extraordinary comments made from Cindy McCain. She is the director of the UN's World Food Program. She was on NBC's Meet the Press, and she indicated to them that northern Gaza is no longer on the
brink of or on the verge of et cetera. It is in full blown famine, and that famine is rapidly expanding to the south. Let's take a listen to what she had to say.
Famine happens, and so what I can explain to you is is that there is famine, full blown famine in the north and it's moving its way south, and so with what we're asking for and what we continually asked for, is a ceasefire and the ability to have unfettered access to get in safe and unfettered access to get into the into gost At various ports and various various gay crossings.
I just want to be very clear because what you're saying is significant, and I believe it's the first time we've heard it. You're saying there is full blown famine. Yes, in northern gossips Am.
Yes, I am.
And there has not been an official declaration that there is femine but you are saying not based on what.
You've seen, Yes, it is based on what we've seen and what we've experienced from the ground. Yes, which is it's it's harror, it's you know, it's it's so hard to look at and it's so hard to hear.
Also so horrific, absolutely horrific.
And you know, for all of Israel's child or increasing humanitarian aid, it's wildly, wildly insufficient to deal with this increase in malnourishment, in hunger, absolute starvation. And you know, moving to the south, an invasion of Rafa is only going to make the situation worse, and we have some more indications of the humanitarian crisis, in particular facing children.
Put this up on the screen.
Catherine Russell is the executive director of the United Nations Children Fund UNISAF, said the war has already taken an unimaginable toll. In a major military operation against the Krowda southern Gaza city would bring catastrophe on top of catastrophe for children. She said, quote, nearly all of the six hundred thousand children now crammed into Rafa are either injured, sick, malnourished, traumatized,
or living with disabilities. All of the six hundred thousand kids in Raffa, I mean, you can only imagine what they're going to be dealing with. Injuries, loss of family members, just unbelievable levels of trauma.
For the entire rest of their lives.
That's already been done, and god knows how much worse it's going to get.
No, it's very tragic and clearly a major failure of US policy. It could be posturing, possibly to get a cease fire deal, but I don't think so.
I think we're probably just at the point where the.
Domestic popular I mean, BB's going to put up her shut up moment, and Biden is also really in a put up her shut up moment too. He's basically allowed this to happen. And it does seem like this is the most the most likely scenario given these really military actions, the one hundred thousand people evacuation order, you know, doesn't seem like anything else is possible at this point.
Yeah, I think that's right.
So, in a very Bob Menendez esque situation, Congressman Henry quay Are, Democrat, probably the most conservative Democrat in the House, has been indicted on foreign corruption charges him and his wife, again, very much like Bob Menendez. Let's put this up on the screen. This was the press release issued by the DOJ. Headline, here are US Congressman Henry Quayar and his wife charged with briber unlawful foreign influence and money laundering the schemes.
I'll read you a little bit of the details here they say. According to court documents, beginning and at least December twenty fourteen and continuing through at least November twenty twenty one, Kuair and his wife accepted allegedly approximately six hundred thousand dollars in bribes from two foreign entities, an oil and gas company wholly owned and controlled by the government of Azerbaijan and a bank headquartered in Mexico City.
The bribe payments were allegedly laundered pursued to sham consulting contracts through a series of front companies and middlemen into shell companies owned by the wife, Amelda Kwayar, who performed little to no legitimate work under the contracts. In exchange for the bribes paid by the Azerbaijani oil and gas company, Kyerson Quayar allegedly agreed to use his office to influence
US foreign policy in favor of Azerbaijan. In exchange for the bribes paid by the Mexican bank, Congerson Quayar allegedly agreed to influence legislative activity and to advise and pressure high ranking US Executive Branch officials regarding measures beneficial to
the bank. I won't go through all the charges here, but the potential prison time is quite significant because you know, you not only have these, you know conspiracy to commit briber of a federal official and to have a public official act as an agent of a federal of a foreign principle. You've got bribery, you've got wire fraud, you've got money laundering. I mean, just the money laundering is twenty years in prison on each count, and there are
five counts of money laundering. So this is no little upsie slap on the wrist. If he's found guilty, and if his wife is found guilty, you're talking about potentially significant prison sentences. And you know, listen, this is obviously, on its face, an important story. A member of Congress saying charged allegedly taking money from a foreign government, basically and saying, hey, I'm going to use my position of
power here to do your bidding. And Quayar as relatively senior, he was co chair, I think of the Azerbaijani which is apparently a thing in Congress. But also worth recalling that Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic Party leadership moved heaven and earth to keep this man in office, even though the FBI had already rated his home. So it's not like this came out of nowhere. We knew for years that Quaar was being looked at by the FBI, and
yet we can put this up on the screen. So Quaar was challenged by a progressive Duscus ssnaros very close and hard fought race. Pelosi came out and aggressively supported him, saying, I'm supporting Henry Quaar. He's a valued member of our caucus. The FBI has said he's not under investigation or really, I thought you were going to take it to choice or something, which is a reference to the fact that he's also not pro choice.
Yes, he is pro life.
He's like one of the only Democrats left in the House who is conservative on abortion. And he's also like, you know, that's okay. That's one thing. He's also a total corporate seller. I mean, he's pretty conservative across the board, and especially noteworthy given the post stops climate and how important choice has become. It's like the saving grace of the Democratic Party or their fig leaf or whatever they're
holding onto, grasping onto with their fingertips. So she overlooked his anti choice positioning and overlooked the FBI raid which we can put up on the screen C four, which happened back in twenty twenty two. So this was all this was all well known in order to keep this guy in power. So this is back from twenty twenty two FBI raid on House Democrats Home related to Azerbaijan probe,
so a lot of this was already known. She stuck by him anyway, and the end result was put C three up on the screen descus Asnaris, his progressive opponent, lost by only some three hundred votes. So there's no doubt that the you know, weighing in of Pelosi and the money that flowed into Quaar et cetera to keep
him in this position was definitely the reason. I mean, that was a determinative factor in jusice, the snare is failing, and now you've got this dude who's indicted, right, congratulations out picking him out.
They kicked out George Santos. So now what Honestly the should care. Yeah, they really should. But what we have here is, I mean, some of the again, the details, just to go back, are so Tunish wife was paid one hundred and twenty grand Congressman emails in Azerbaijani diplomat and says, I'm planning to give this speech on the floor of the House of Representatives. A year later, texts and him to say, is introduced legislation favoring of Azerbaijan. The diplomat replies, you are the best l He fe
like he's like a mafia boss or something. Around the same time, he is entering into a series of corrupt deals with a bank in Mexico, and then in March of twenty fifteen, the congressman expresses concerns that the arrangement would be discovered and asks a bank at the ask a bank official to quote create a middleman to disguise the payments. He literally said, quote, we need to find
another scheme. The cartoonish corruption some of the people who are in power here is just so on itspace you almost don't even want to believe that somebody so so stupid could be elected to Congress so many times from two thousand and four. But idiocracy is real life. So these people are just as corrupt, you know, as anybody would think. He's up there in terms of cartoon level
villain as Bob Menendez. And let's see if he pulls his Menendez defense and says that it was his wife's wamp the entire time.
Yeah, I always think of that too. Is he gonna because what Menandez was.
Able to do is his lawyers were able to get his trial separate from his wife.
Right because of health issues. I think for his wife's health issues.
Yeah, she has some sort of a surgery as something was going on with her. I don't really know exactly what, but anyway, they were able to use that to get those trials separated and those cases separated, and then we reported on the fact that he's apparently planning to just like throw her under the bus in hopes of getting himself off scott free. So we'll see what happens if
Quaar follows a similar path year. But I mean, you probably know more about this district soccer than I do since it's in Texas, But this is there's one that it's not a gimmy for Democrats if he's out to be able to hold onto because you guys know the way that Latinos have been, especially Latino men, have been increasingly identifying with the Republican Party moving to the right. I think this part of Texas is, you know, one
of the hotbeds of that type of party switching. So the fact that he is, you know, facing these these bribery charges could really be significant, especially given the type margin in the house and how you know closely fought all of this is so this could end up being really significant politically in terms of control of the House.
Right, So this is the Texas twenty eighth district. And the thing about the twenty eighth district of where he is is that he is very popular there. But it did have some of those large swings towards Republicans back in twenty twenty, so very likely that it could happen.
It doesn't. I mean, it makes a lot of sense.
This is the congressman who represents like Nuevo Laredo, which is across from Laredo and in Mexico. And it's not much of a surprise. It's like, oh, you're telling me the guy who's on the cartel district is involved with banks in Mexico. It's like shocking, and it's deeply corrupt. This has long been known about Henry Quay. Are people who have been whispering it for years in Texas. This
is just a confirmation. This happened again. This happened in twenty fourteen, twenty fifteen, So there's been whisperings about him for quite a long time. But that's part of the reason why the Democratic establishment has always tried to save
him is he backs them up basically on everything. The reason that Pelosi loves him is that, yeah, even though he's pro life like he is, you know, a reliable vote, reliable fundraiser, knows a lot of oil guys, been around there for a long time, and they think he's like a checkbox in terms of diversity too. So he's a long time enforcer for the Democratic establishment.
Yeah, and I think you know, it's it's one thing, listen, Sometimes voters are complex. Sometimes they're like, hey, he's a little corrupt, but you know he's delivering for our district.
We still like the guy.
Right, quite common down where he is.
It's quite common in all kinds of places to be honest with you where you're like, ah, but I know, and now what are you going to do?
Right?
Wasn't the case though, is Bob Menendez the minute those charges came out, plumited in the polls. But the fact that he narrowly won his Democratic primary I think indicates that wasn't really the case with him in this district. I mean, if you have a you know, challenger coming in coming within three hundred votes and it's taking the Democratic leadership, you know, moving heaven and earth in order
to keep your grip on that seat. I think that tells you that there wasn't like an overwhelming love for this individual in this district at this point in time. And I can't imagine that these revelation of these charges they are going to help his political standing or the political standing of the Democrats. So congratulation, guys, well done here, good point.
All right, guys.
So originally we had planned to have a little lab grown meat debate, but we've been talking too much, so we're going to put that in the show tomorrow. You can look forward to that, and we're going to go ahead and move on to the doings of one Christi Nome Sagar.
That's right.
Our eye are bigger than our stomachs whenever it came to the meat segment. Let's go ahead and start with Chirstynome. I don't even know how to transition to this. I've seen somebody implode. They're already a middling career, faster than Kirsty. No,
but she's definitely trying as hard as anybody can. Here she is on CBS News Face the Nation, getting exposed for claiming in her book that she then wrote and read in an audiobook that she had met with North Korean leader Kim Jong un, even though that literally never happened.
Let's take a.
Listen talk about meeting some world leaders and one specific one quote. I remember when I met with North Korean dictator Kim Jung un. I'm sure he underestimated me, having no clue about my experience staring down little tyrants. I've been a children's pastor, after all, did you meet Kim Jong un?
Well, you know, as soon as this was brought to my attention, I certainly made some changes and looked at this passage, and I've met with many, many world leaders.
I've traveled around the world.
As soon as it was to my attention, we went forward and have made some edits. So I'm glad that this book is being released in a couple of days and that those edits will be in place, and that people will will have the updated version.
So you did not meet with Kim Jong un, that's what you're saying.
No, I met with many, many world leaders, many world leaders.
I've traveled around the world.
I think I've talked extensively in this book about my time serving in Congress, my time as governor before governor, some of the travels that I've had I'm not going to talk about my specific meetings with world leaders.
I'm just not going to do that.
As soon it was brought to my attention when I read the audio book.
She read the audiobook, so, bitch, you didn't read it.
You obviously didn't read or write your own book. And to a certain excise, I sympathize you, know you were not well. No, you and I had to read off teleprompters before, right, and you kind of lose it. You don't even know really what you're saying. But it's like you clearly you didn't read your own book, like you did not write this book. I hope there's a ghost ride credit on there, because that person deserves all the
money there is. Now the book company has put out a statement being like, we've decided to remove this relevant passage at the request of Governor. No, but what an insane situation. She won't even stay straight up. I met with many world leaders, yeah, but not with Kim Jong now.
And then I like how she gets on our high horse and she's like, I'm just I'm not going to talk about my meetings with world leaders. I'm just I'm just like it was in your book. It was in your book. I mean, I just this is one of these. It was sort of like when we were talking about George Santo's. Yeah, like it just doesn't make sense to be what did you think you were really going to gain from lying about this? Because if it had been true, no one would have even noticed this passage on the book.
By the way, no one would have even noticed this book even existed if you hadn't bragged about murdering a puppy and a goat.
Okay to that. So, yeah, so that's step number one.
But like, that's what makes it feel pathological is when you lie about something where there's really no reason to lie about it. There's nothing to be gay from lying about it, and then on top of that, it's very easy to find out that you are lying about it.
So what are we doing here?
And okay, so there's I guess a few possibilities. She lied to the ghostwriter, the ghostwriter puts it in, the ghostwriter misunderstood something, it gets put in. But to your point, if okay, if you read the audio book and you knew this was in here, you can't just make up a meeting with Kim Jong wun that didn't happen. You have to put on the brakes, say this, we got guys, we got a crisis. We got to change this. I don't know why they thought this happened. It didn't happen, and you change it.
I don't know it.
Just like I said, it almost feels pathological. It makes me call into question whether the puppy story was actually true, or whether she's so psychotic that she thought bragging about murdering a puppy would like be good for her brand or something. It just you can't obviously, if you're going to make up something like this that is so weird and so inconsequential ultimately in terms of how people perceive you, nothing for you to.
Lie about it is really off the table.
As we well, when she's sticking with a dog story, not only saying that she killed her own dog, whether she would have killed President Biden's dog, let's take a listen to that.
You talk multiple times about it. In fact, at the end of the book you say the very first thing you would do if you got to the White House that was different from Joe Biden is you'd make sure Joe Biden's dog was nowhere on the grounds. Commander say hello to cricket. Are you doing this to try to look tough? Do you still think that you have a shot at being a VP?
Well?
Number one, Joe Biden's dog has attacked twenty four Secret Service people? So how many people is enough people to be attacked and dangerously hurt before you make a decision on a dog?
And what he's not living at the house.
That's the question that the president should be held accountable to. You're saying he should be sure that the president should be accountable to is what is?
What is the number?
I mean, yes, she is saying he should be shot.
That's wild, just defending murdering this goat murdering dog and how she wants to kill Bidens dog.
This is quite political blit. Like you remember how Emily tweeted like she's got a double down, Yeah you got him kill another puppy. This is like the political equivalent of this. She's like, what other dogs can I mark for murder? And listen, I'm flat the handling of commander at the White We covered it like it was the dog rageous completely. I didn't imagine this situation for this
dog was incredibly stressful. They should have removed him from the White House immediately, and this was clearly not a good situation for the dog. Okay, Biden has all the resources in the world to put the dog in a better situation that's going to be better for the dog, and make sure also, yes, that the people around the dog are now safe and not in danger.
That, like you said, that's on Biden.
But for you to now be like you know, making life or deaf decisions about other people's dogs and pets as well, I don't know.
But this lady away from my pets, man, I don't even know. This is wild stuff. Just like out there by the way I talked to him.
I've never seen someone flub like an Ana Dyne politician books as astonishingly as this lady.
Most of these books are just like you know, paper mill fodder. They end up in you know, those little free libraries. That's where I go and stick on my political books.
Give them an excuse to like, you know, get booked on a show and talk a adulo book tour. Gives them excuses and wait for them to like you know, make some speaking money or whatever. But there's never anything that's actually interesting or controversial, as the whole point of these books is for them to be a Santadeyna's possible.
That's a good point. We never we don't talk enough about that.
Politicians have a book exception where they're allowed to have speaking fees and to accept book royalties. One of the ways that politicians become millionaires and do a workaround while being elected is through books.
So we should close the book loophole.
It's like, I don't think you should be able to profit like millions and million take speaking fees for some bs book talk, you know, while you're out there shilling, but separate conversation. Clearly what she intended. Hopefully this thing doesn't sell all that well because she doesn't deserve it.
Do you think she's still a possible Trump VP pick or do I never thought she really? I thought she was. I did think she was. But to me, probably the biggest problem for her was the thing that was reported previously about how he's looking at any governor from a state that has like a heartbeat bill or like really extreme abortion laws is like, I don't want that person on my ticket. To me, that's probably the biggest problem
for her. I can't imagine Trump being like too upset about oh you made up some Kim Jaron thing.
Well, he also hates dogs, So apparently Trump famously hates dogs. He didn't even like being Remember that dog that like bit altback Daddy. He didn't even want to be around it, Like at the White House. They had to convince him to bring the Really, yeah, I know, they had to convince them to bring the dog that bit back Daddy to the White House. He like barely, he was like very far away from it. Famously does not does not
like dogs. There was some speculation that maybe she was trying to brag about killing a dog to endear herself to Trump. You know, I mean, think about how he always talks to me. He's like, like a dog, Get the sky out of here.
That's true.
That's true in the rhetoric, Crystal, what do you take a look at?
Wow? I wonder if you would give a your view of the state of the American society and where it's heading. Well, that would require rather extended answer. Briefly, this country is
not headed for revolution. The very fact that we do have the safety valves of the right to dissent, The very fact that the President of the United States asked the District Commissioners to waive their rule for thirty days notice for a demonstration, and also asked that that demonstration occurred not just around the Washington Monument, but on the Ellipse where I could hear it, and you can hear
it pretty well from there. I can assure you that fact is an indication that when you have that kind of safety valve, you're not going to have revolution, which comes from repression. Now, the second point, with regard to repression, that is nonsense. In my opinion, I do not see that the critics of my policies, our policies are repressed. I note from reading the press, from listening to television, that criticism is very vigorous, sometimes quite personal. It has
every right to be. I had no complaints about it.
That was President Richard Nixon responding to questions about the state of American society in the immediate aftermath of the Kent State massacre, in which National guardsmen opened fire on student protesters in Ohio, killing four and wounding another nine. That seminole American tragedy happened on May fourth, nineteen seventy. That's almost exactly fifty four years ago, and the events around in Kent State have frankly never felt more relevant.
In fact, we're learning how close Columbia came to being another Kent State. The NYPD has now confirmed that one of their officers fired a gun while clearing students who had occupied Hamilton Hall.
How the hell did we get here?
Clearly we never learned the lessons of Kent State, because while thank god, no students have yet been killed in the crackdown on their protests against America's Warren Gaza, they're nonetheless eerie echoes of the national political climate, the media, gas lighting, official lies and intolerance of dissent that characterized nineteen seventy. Now, with the luxury of time and distance from the events, and national consensus is formed around.
What happened at Kent State that day.
It stands as a national cautionary tale of what happens when the overwhelming violence of state power is used to crack down on young protesters, a horrifying, militarized response in which the guns of the government were turned on our own children, A chilling tragedy to never be repeated. But the first thing to know about Ken State is that at the time, it was not remotely seen that.
Way by the public.
Publishers of the Gallup Poll asked respondents at that time who they thought was most responsible for the student deaths at Kent State. In the immediate aftermath of those killings. Only eleven percent blamed the National Guard. A majority fifty eight percent blamed the students themselves, and the remainder expressed no opinion. It seems incredible, doesn't it. How did so few blame the ones with the guns that did the
kill it? But if you look back at the media coverage from the time, you can see exactly how it all happened. Here's an opinion column from the time explaining
why really the students brought this all on themselves? After first blaming drugs for campus unrest and echo of the outside agitator's narrative that is being used now to paint campus protests as super scary and dangerous, this columnist wrote, quote, Certainly, if there had been no disorders on the campus, there would have been no necessity to call on the National Guard. So the sequence of events made it possible for the
tragedy to happen. Maybe students themselves will discover they can better advance their cause if they publicize their protests by writing to their senators and representatives in the president of the United States, or by making their views known in the press. In the long run, this can accomplish more than demonstrations with reliance on disorders and tragic events to call attention to their.
Point of view.
Now, I can't read these words without thinking of mourning. Josmiker Brazinski recently saying something that was actually quite similar. Why can't these kids lodge their descent in a more decorous and less disrupt good fashionable Richard.
To your point, I think that's where we've all that's the place we've all been sitting in watching this, going what the hell is going on? What are these universities doing? Why aren't they doing something? And I'll echo the horror that this does look like January sixth, what a terrible example for our students. At the same time, these are young adults, and the question is why do you choose to learn about the complexities of other situations around the world.
But this one you want to set up an encampment. This one you want to scare people. This one you want to come to the edge of violence, or even go to violence. This one you live your future and your education for see.
I think these college.
Students obviously are missing the part where they need to see what's going on across the country with these protests, that it's now in the realm of violence, it's in the realm of hatred, whether some are peaceful or not.
They need to watch the news and look at all the different arguments and be adults, or start learning to be adults and set up discussions and debates across college campuses or their colleges or universities are going to have no choice but to expel them and ruin their future the impact they want to have on the community, society, and the world at some point now.
A variation of this argument can also be found in Wall Street Journal columnists Peggy Nunan's horror that student protesters didn't want to engage with her as she planned her next columns smearing them. She even compared them negatively with the Vietnam era protesters like those at Kent State nowonon rights quote, the Vietnam demonstrations came to a country at relative peace with itself.
And said wake up.
The Hummas demonstrations come to a country that hasn't been at peace with itself.
In a long time, it.
Watched and thought more jarring hell from kids with blood in their eyes making demands. The people of my liberal left town were relieved to see the NYPD come in, drag the protesters away, restore order, and let peace will clean things up.
Now.
It's sort of hilarious to hear this rewriting of history. Nineteen seventies America would have likely been very surprised to hear that they were at peace with themselves during this famously tumultuous time, And the fact that Peggy Noonan's wealthy white neighbors are cheering the crackdown is no surprise or
historical anomaly. When this demographic was pulled in the Civil Rights era, they were against lunch counter sitens, They sided with the National Guard that had just murdered unarmed college kids. They rejected the college protests against apartheid South Africa, and
they smeared as anti American the Iraq War protesters. These are the white moderates that doctor M. L. K. Junior famously wrote about as the biggest obstacles to progress during the Civil Rights era in his Letter from Birmingham Jail.
He wrote in April of nineteen sixty three quote. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block and his strive towards freedom is not the white Citizens Counselor or the KKK, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to order than to justice, who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension, to a positive peace, which is the presence of justice, who constantly says, I agree with you and the goal
you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action, who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom, who lives by a mythical concept of time, and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a more convenient season. Shallow understanding from people of goodwill is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of
ill will. This is King basically describing the nineteen sixties iterations of Noonan, Brazinski and their well healed moderate social circles. Noonan joins with other media and political elites and gas lighting on history. In another way, though, too, the anti genocide protests of today are vastly more peaceful than the
Vietnam era protests At Kent State. The days leading up to the May fourth massacre included significant property damage, including breaking of shop windows and the burning of the university's ROTC building to the ground. Here In twenty twenty four, a new report just found that ninety nine percent of
anti war protests have been entirely peaceful. The New York Times the La Times both reported that the one protest that did have significant actual violence was wholly one sided pro Israel counter protesters backed by billionaire Bill Ackman, assaulted peaceful anti war protesters as cops stood by and watched for hours. No word from Peggy noon In on this disorder. She's too busy recovering from the silent menace of students wearing masks and refusing to take the bait on her provocations.
The truth is that these student protesters have been far more disciplined and far more intentional in their non violence and strategic in their messaging than those in the Vietnam War era. It hasn't stopped them, though, from being demonized in similar ways to the college protesters of the sixties and seventies. In fact, Richard Nixon famously called college protesters quote bums two days before Ohio National guardsmen took matters into their own hands to murder these people, to president
of the United States had casually derided. On May second, Nixon said, quote, see these bumps, you know, blowing up the campuses. Listen, the boys that are on the college campuses today are the luckiest people in the world, going to the greatest universities, and here they are burning up the books, storming around about this issue.
You name it.
Get rid of the war, there will be another one. How much does that sound like the discourse today from Date Silver or Bill Maher about these privileged, narcissistic college kids today. They're so coddled, so self indulgent. They're out there protesting just to be cool and make friends. In
other words, just a bunch of bums. And in the same waynx in rhetorically greenlit attacks on college students, Biden rhetorically gave the go ahead for violent crackdowns of today's student protesters, only what he called them was frankly worse
than bumps. Biden smear protesters as violent anti semites, providing the intellectual rationale for a police response that has been seen nonviolent protesters seriously injured by rubber bullets, has seen live AMMO fired during the arrest of students whose most serious crime was breaking a window, and elderly professors assaulted as they at attempt in vain to protect their students in another eerie echo of history.
Part of why public.
Sentiment in nineteen seventy was so overwhelmingly on the side of the National Guard was because of official lies echoed and furthered by the media, which framed the protesters directly as the instigators. Now we remember the famous photos of kids in horror and shock at their classmates being gunned down. But here's the New York Times ride up of the slaughter the very next day. In it, they give credence to the National Guard lie that a mysterious sniper had
fired on them. First quote in Columbus. Sylvester del Corso, the Adjutant General of the Ohio National Guard, said in a statement that the guardsmen had been forced to shoot after a sniper open fire against the troops from a nearby rooftop and the crowd began to move to encircle the guardsmen. This was completely false on every level. There was no sniper, there was no encirclement. The worst that students had done that day was to throw rocks now here.
In twenty twenty four, how many lives and hoaxes have we seen spread by a credulous and complicit media. From the student provocateur who lied and said she was stabbed in the eye, to the insistence that rally chants are actually genocidal, to the claims that a run of the mill bikelock was a tool of professional agitators, to the presentation of a college textbook about terrorism as proof that students.
Are actually terrorists.
These lies have fomented the most insane media analysis I have ever seen, in which college students are being framed as literal Nazis by supposedly neutral CNN News anchored Dana bash In a near copy of the rhetoric of actual genicidal Nazi Benjamin net Yahoo. But history has largely forgotten these media lies. The public bloodluss, the controversial radical tactics deployed by anti Vietnam protests, all has largely collapsed down to one big takeaway about the actual conflict itself. The
kids were right and the government was wrong. So it is with Vietnam, South Africa, with the Iraq War, civil rights eras remembered not only for this basic moral story, but for the disruptive tactics themselves that had been upheld as a model of successful non violence, from blocking traffic by marching across the Edmund Pettis Bridge to John Lewis's famous exhortation to get in quote good trouble now. History doesn't provide answers on whether these student protesters will achieve
their goals. The Iraq War campus protesters of my college years failed. We invaded a rock on false pretenses. We still haven't completely left. The Occupy Wall Street protesters similarly failed. The banks were not broken up, bankers were not jailed. Our politicians are still bought and paid for. The protesters against South African apartheid, they succeeded as part of a
global movement and internal struggle against that racist regime. The Civil Rights era protesters, of course, succeeded in large part, although the murder of MLK Junior stifled the progress on further demands for economic justice. The Vietnam War protesters eventually succeeded took many years of horror, though before that, bloody insanity was ultimately brought to an end. So to these protesters. A few things do seem guaranteed. First of all, you'll
be smeared, You'll be vilified in real time. We see it now, you'll be judged correct by history. And in the meantime you are making Palestinians and Gaza feel seen and making American politicians squirm. The ultimate outcome, it's unfortunately not in your control and not in mind. One more thing, though,
is guaranteed. Twenty years from now, when we do know how this chapter of American history ends, you will know that even when it was difficult, when it was risky, when the personal stakes were real, you had sufficient backbone and morality to stand for what is right. And I would dare say that counts for more than what Peggy Noonan's neighbors might think about your descent.
The Kent State was thing was interesting and.
If you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at breakingpoints dot com.
So a massive scandal has been revealed, price fixing on an extraordinary level. We can put this up on the screen from Matt Stoler. He is helping to expose that there was an oil price fixing conspiracy that caused some twenty seven percent of all inflation increases in twenty twenty one. This is at his newsletter, which is called Big and Matt Stolar joins us now. He also works at the American Economic Liberties Project and as a partner here at Breaking Points.
Great to see you, sir, Good to see man.
Thanks for having me.
So actually, let's put that chart back up on the screen, and while we have that up, explain what we're looking at and explain what the hell happened here.
Yes, yeah, So that chart is what happened in twenty twenty one. When the rebound from COVID was an explosion of corporate profits, it was also an explosion of inflation and corporate profits. That increase in corporate profits about seven hundred billion dollars, and that was responsible for about sixty
percent of the inflationary increases above normal. So you know, there's always a little bit of inflation, but like the extreme amount of inflation that new stuff, sixty percent of it is corporate profits.
Wow.
And so that's what that chart suggests, that's or shows. That's that's a chart that I published in twenty twenty one. And then of that and what this is what was just revealed about two hundred billion dollars, yes guesstimate, we don't know exactly, is just one conspiracy of price fixing in the oil industry.
Wow.
So that's a little over a quarter of that increase was from one price fixing conspiracy in the oil industry. And this is like the reason it matters from like a macro standpoint, because remember all the debate over green inflation and you know economy thing. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, you know. And as it turns out, there's a lot of reasons to think that that consolidation and price fixing is really what's driving a lot of the price increases.
But to have just one alleged conspiracy, I should say alleged alleged conspiracy drives so much of it is kind of overwhelming and interesting.
Right.
And so what you write about is that this has been released from evidence by the ft see, which was banning the Pioneer CEO of being on the board of Exon in a merder. So can you explain the evidence that we was released in some of this case?
Sure? So the gist of what happened is, you know, in the oil industry you have Opek, right, which is the organization of petroleum exporting countries. It's a global cartel run by Saudi Arabia, and they control roughly fifty percent
of the global oil reserves and the price of oil. Well, what happened is in the US in the mid two thousands is the discovery of a new technique for getting oil, which is, you know, shale drilling, fracking, and the fracking is kind of you can spin up a well pretty quickly, so it's as close to oil on demand as we have. And what that means is that it kind of broke the leadership of OPEK, because Saudi Arabia controls OPEK by
flooding the market with oil. If anybody produces more than they should, well, all of a sudden, you have these shale producers in the US who can do the same thing. When there are oil spikes or oil oil declines, they can increase or reduced production. And that broke the cartel. And so from twenty fourteen to twenty sixteen you had this vicious price war, and oil was around forty to sixty dollars a barrel. The shale oil producers in the US and OPEK got tired of a low price now
here's what's important. OPEK is a cartel, which ordinarily would be illegal, but because it's foreign governments that the law doesn't apply to governments. It only applies to firms. However, US shale producers are corporations and so antitrust price fixing law does apply to them, so they're not allowed to collude with OPEK even if they wanted to, but that
didn't stop them. So the theory, and this is from a class action firm, and I wrote about this a couple of weeks ago, and then this is that the evidence is the FTC came out with confirmed. This theory is that in starting in twenty seventeen, the shale producers and OPEK started getting together at these dinners in Texas and then through multiple communications saying you know what, we're
not so different. You and I, let's collaborate on and share information on investment, on drilling, on plans, maybe pricing and investment which is really the key to oil production started going down, and you know, the price went up a little bit, and starting in twenty seventeen to twenty twenty nineteen, but it was it really didn't change that much. But in twenty twenty one, when oil just skyrocketed because
of the post COVID restraints were lifted. You would think that the oil producers would say, hey, this is a great opportunity to take market share, prices are really high. But they were all like no, and they were public They were like, we are absolutely not investing anyone who invests.
Were going to punish, and so the price skyrocketed. And you might remember there was a lot of fights, public spats between the Biden administration and the oil producers in twenty twenty one twenty twenty two about the price of oil and they were like, oh, you're not letting us drill enough on public land or whatever.
It was.
Well, as it turns out what the FTC just released in there were a bunch of these shell producers wanted to merge, and so the FTC did a lot of investigation, and that means you look through emails, you look through
text messages of executives and whatnot. And what they found is that the CEO of one of the big big shell producers, which is Pioneer, was sending hundreds of WhatsApp messages and emails and text messages to OPEC officials and colluding on on our coordinating on investment on drilling potentially pricing. A lot of the complaint is redacted unfortunately, so we
can't see the details. But he has public statements where he says that they're doing this and at a certain point he's like, you know, I think that about in about ninety days, opek is going to make a surprise cut. And then eighty seven days later they did.
Wow.
Right, And so it's this guy's name is Scott Sheffield. Yeah, the FTC allowed the Exon to buy Pioneer about sixty billion dollars, but they said Scott Sheffield can't serve on the board and can't be an advisor, and so they banned him from the industry. So big is controversial the fracking industry. They're all like what, I can't believe somebody got punished. And there's a lot of like, you know, a lot of people are very upset that there are
allegations of price fixing by the frackers. But that's the story.
So I have from your piece some of these text messages you write Pierneer Natural Resources CEO Scott Sheffield, leader in the fracking field, exchanged hundreds of text messages with OPEC representatives and officials discussing crude oil market dynamics, pricing, and output. He was explicit about his goal, saying, quote, if Texas leads the way, maybe we can get OPEC to cut production.
Maybe Saudi and Russia will follow.
That was our plan, he said, adding I was using the tactics of OPEC plus to get a bigger OPECH plus done. He talked to shareholders publicly throatened rivals ultimately achieved output cuts across the industry regardless of price.
And you know, Matt, I remember some of this discord. We talked about it some on the.
Show about all these theories of okay, prices are really high, why aren't they.
Investing, Why aren't they expanding production?
What were the excuses that they were using publicly for why it made the sense for them to keep production low at this point outside of, you know, excuses to avoid the obvious implication that they were colluding.
You know, it's kind of funny. So some of the excuses were, oh, those environmentalists, right, they're always cascade annoying. But in many cases they weren't making excuses. They were just saying, we're going to pay our shareholders back, we're going to pay dividends, We're not gonna we're not going to invest Like they weren't making excuses. It was like it was pretty open what they were doing. Some of the quotes from the from the complaints that I relied
on were public right where he was like threatened. He was saying, we're going to go to your shareholders and punish you. And so what was really going on is that a lot of economists were saying that it's crazy to assume that there is any sort of games or price fixing going on here, because there's just an increase in demand and that's what happens in commodity markets. Even as the oil CEOs were like, we're literally saying we're not investing, like we're going to be disciplined. I mean,
that's kind of the whole story with inflation. I don't you know, a significant percentage I think is just price fixing or various forms of price gouging, and CEOs are fairly explicit on investor calls, right they're like, oh, yeah, we're all going to be disciplined. We're going to raise prices. We think there's more margin that we can get. You know, they use all these like it's not that subtle, right, They don't say we're going to violate the Sherman Acts
Section one, but they're not subtle about it. And it's the economists who come in and say, you're crazy if you think that those CEOs are telling the truth to their investors. It's really weird. It's like a really weird thing.
I have it in front of it.
I forgot that this was Scott Sheffield who said on camera that they wouldn't even shale and drill more if there was two hundred dollars a barrel. And I remember that because I was like, what, yeah, talking about this?
Yeah, this was one of the topics that came up in that Bill maher appearance that I saw, that's right, and I was treated they acted like I was insane for suggesting that this was part of what was going on.
So I remember this discourse very clearly, but I mean, we shouldn't make light of me, because this was we're talking how what was the economic impact to like individuals, how much more money was coming out of their pockets, which is not just about what they're paying at the gas pump, but I mean this has massive cascading impacts throughout the economy.
Right, Oh, it's just oil.
I mean whatever, Right, it's not that important, right in an elastic product, right, you have to buy.
Yeah, that many.
Wars have been over and like completely determined geopology.
Yeah.
So Scott Sheffield said that it was about twenty to thirty dollars. The frackers took twenty to thirty dollars a barrel off the price of oil in the last ten years. I just used that number. I said, Okay, it's twenty thirty dollars barrel. I guess it's probably more during spikes, right, that's like, you know, the dynamics are spikes matter more.
But if it's twenty to thirty dollars, we consume about seven billion barrels of oily year, So you know that's between five hundred, four hundred to two one thousand dollars per person per year I direct and indirect costs. That's what you pay at the pump, plus all of the things, like you know, it goes into potato chips, it goes into you know, all everything gets moved on trucks and plastics and YadA, YadA, YadA. So that's a lot of money, right, that's for a family of four, that's between two to
four thousand dollars right in twenty twenty per year. Right, And that's just a direct transfer from consumers to and consumers being businesses too.
Right.
Yeah, it's not just it's not just you know, you and me, it's it's it's firms.
Yeah, trucking groceries, its input costs.
Everyone, right.
Yeah.
And then I think there's also probably this dynamic where the spike in oil kind of kind of revved up the engine and a lot of corporations were like, oh, if they're raising prices, we can raise we So it probably had like a little bit of a cascading effect.
Well, we can't forget about the Federal Reserve too, right, you know, the implication for high interest rates was also done in response to something that's a even borrowing cost now or sky high mortgages and everything all because of a lot.
Of this, right, And yeah, it's an interesting dynamic with the Federal Reserve because they raised they raised interest rates because they thought, well, prices are going up because our models tell us that people are asking for higher wages, and they don't have models that look at commodity price hikes. Or price fixing. They just don't have models, and so they're like, well, of course we're going to have to raise interest rates to throw lots of people out of work.
Can you remember Larry Summers, Yeah, who said that allegations of price fixing or antitrust being a fix for inflation, that was he called it science denial, right.
That's right, Yeah, you remember, called it science.
Style, and he said to deal with inflation, we're going to have to have a massive recession, five ten percent unemployment, because that's the way that they think about that's the way economists and macrocondoms to the people that run the FED think about the economy because it's too difficult to consider power, and so they're just like, let's just throw a bunch of people out of work and then people won't have money and that will sort of gradually bring
down prices instead of and so that's why borrowing costs our way up. That's why the price of oil and these these increases in profits and price fixing convinces the FED to raise borrowing costs. It's insane, it's totally insane. But like, yeah, I mean that we're not the crazy ones. Yeah, the emperor really has no clothes.
Well, here's the other thing that I can't wrap my head around. This is a massive scandal. These villains were robbing literally every American, every American, they were robbing all of us.
And yet I have yet to see this covered really at all.
And I don't hear the White House talking about it like I would think for them politically, this is like, look, guys, it.
Wasn't our fault.
These people were trying to take them and we were trying to tell you it wasn't our environmental regulations or whatever.
The deal it was these assholes. So where is that?
Yeah, so it's in the business press, right, And that's the things that Wall Street Journal wrote, you know FT right, So you know, you know, the trade journals are all over it, you know. So so if you're in the industry, you know about it. The FTC apparently has has issued a criminal referral to the DOJ. Right, because this is
this is crime. And but the but the Biden White House, you know, the Press Secretary was asked about this, this excell on Pioneer deal and she said no comment, right, And it's just kind of like, what, like, what's going on? You have a massive scandal here, and you know, the
I think the Senate Democrats and Republicans. The Republicans are very into oil, so they're you know, and and particularly they're into the oil companies, so they're going to be they want to attack the environmentalists and they they're not going to do anything about this, or they're gonna look, they're gonna lie about it. The Democrats, I think, are kind of like may. They may slowly notice it, and
they may slowly start to make a big deal. I don't know, but I don't know what motivates these people. I don't know why they don't talk about this kind
of thing. It makes no sense to me. Everyone is mad about the price of groceries, about the price of gas, about the price of rent, about the you know, the price of f and you have allegations of price fixing and you actually have litigation right the DOJ and FTC are going after price fixing in meat, in rent, in a whole series of areas, vegetables, and they don't talk about it. And it's really weird to me. I don't get it. It's like, this stuff is really compelling, and they just like, you know.
And I think the public I remember seeing some polling a while ago.
Even as they're being gassed by the larious in the world and whatever, they really felt like there was something nefarious here, like they were directly being price gouged and screwed. So it's not like for your average American, this is a crazy story to tell. Corporate greed is very easy to understand, something that everyone has some like personal experience with.
Yeah, well said, yeah, no, I mean they were saying it to investors, right. Everybody seems to know about it except the economists and the politicians who listen to them. And so it's really it's like, you know, so Urines, you get on, you get on Bill Maher, you say, hey, there's you know, Scott Sheffield is saying that he likes to steal money, like it's it's nice he likes to have that, and everyone's like, you're crazy, right, and but order everybody knows this is going on, Like this is
not everybody, as you noted, has experienced. We all noticed that people are getting richer. So like, clearly things get more expensive and other people get richer. It's like, where's the money going?
Yeah, right, I can't figure it out. It's weird.
Actual like people are much smarter than economists. We're running out of time in your map, but we just want to say thank you very much. We appreciate you, sir. Great job, and we'll have a link to the newsletter in the description massive Scandal.
Thank you for helping us understand it. Great to see Matt, Thanks for having me our pleasure.
See you guys later.