5/9/23: Was TX Shooter A White Supremacist, Buttigieg Fails On Airline Meltdowns, Gain of Function Research Gets More Funding, Kamala In Charge Of AI Regulation, CA Reparations, LGBTQ Book Bans, Gun Control, Ken Klippenstein on Disinformation Agency

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And now let's get to the show. Good morning, everybody, Happy Tuesday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. Emily Dashinski is in the house for Ryan Grim and Crystal. It turns out and out of the leftists who work with us want to work.

It's a joke.

He planned it.

Also, you scared the hell out of me with your good morning. It was so absurdly l.

You don't understand.

We got to turn it on whenever we're starting here at this or This is what I try and tell people. Whenever you do this gig, you got to bring the energy. And I know that that's what is for everybody at home. So since my conservative critics all think I'm a leftist anyway, I will be trying to bring.

The leftist perspective. I'm going to do my best.

Emily just maintain the hard right position, and we'll give everybody as balance of a view as possible.

I did.

Hell, everyone, We're gonna have the most ambitious crossovers of all time here on the Breaking Points Channel.

So we've never done it before, but we've never done it before.

I feel like we have.

We've done a couple of podcasts and stuff together. We're old friends, so I think it'll work. So we got a bunch of topics that we're going to be discussing today. Obviously the horrific shooting in Alan, Texas. We're going to break down everything we know about the shooter. There's been a little bit of a controversy around whether the information that we have is.

True or not.

We're going to give you all the details possible, just so you can know where things stand and you know what possible takeaways we can have. We'll talk abut a little bit about the media about whether Hispanics can be white supremacist. What a twenty twenty three topic, not something that we'd ever thought to be discussed. A secretary Buddha Edge woke up from a three year coma. He's decided to try and do something about airlines. We'll tell you

AI.

We've been trying to stay on top of this story, Emily, I know you guys have been looking at it to We know it's going to change everything. This is one where AI and education in particular, we're seeing massive disruption and somehow we've decided Kamala Harris should be in charge, so yeah, what could go wrong?

And then the artificial intelligence in charge.

Of the artificct that's right, Yeah, that's a good I like that, all right, So reparations Also, since it's just the two of us, we're like, hey, why don't we pick one of the hottest topics in social science California deciding possibly trying to pass reparations.

We're going to tell you what we know about that.

Emily's taking a look at the New York magazine Education I will not say gay and new cover, and I'm gonna be looking at gun control and talking about facts of fiction. We also have Ken Clippenstein who is in the show today. He's got a great news story about new disinformation initiatives are.

Popping up all across the US government.

Ken has done some of the absolute, like the best groundwork I think in terms of exposing the disinformation industrial complex, if you will. And so we are going to get into all of that, but let's start with Alan Texas. So we didn't touch it yesterday because we're still a developing situation.

We didn't really know and much about it.

Now, of course, it has become a major national story, not just because of the horrific tragedy that's happened and the victims, but now it's a sparking a meta conversation around not only guns, which I'll be talking about in my monologue, but also about you know, wide identity politics, far right, the motives of said shooting, the way that this media treatment is happening. First, just some on the ground fact the initial reaction from a breaking news reporter an NBC affiliate.

Here's what he had to say now.

Authorities report the first gunfire came in around three thirty Saturday afternoon. That's when witnesses say a man dressed in black, wearing body armour looking similar to a police officer, began walking through the mall property here, firing indiscriminately, sending thousands of people running for cover. Authorities tell us a police officer that was responding to an unrelated call heard that gunfire and ran towards the sound, immediately engaging the gunman,

So we ran to the back, barricaded it with some concrete bricks, and then right then on the security camera and thank god we went in the back of that time we saw him walk right by, masked up, fake police outfit on there you go.

All in Texas.

The initial reaction, you know, kudos to the police officer not taking a tage the Uvaldi playbook running towards the sound of gunfire.

Actually doing his job.

So questions, now, Emily, after a couple of days, who is this guy? And there were some initial reports about how we knew the name of the shooter. His name is Mauricio Garcia. But then there were media reports about how he had been inspired by possible white identity politics. Now, before we get to said tattoos and alleged social media profiles and all of that, let's start with what we actually know. Let's put this up there on the screen

They say, not only were they.

Investigating the Texas gunman's quote alleged white supremacist ties, but they have now confirmed that mister Garcia. Mauricio Garcia joined the army, the US Army in June of two thousand and eight, but was quote terminated three months later for some sort of mental health condition. Three months obviously not that long of a time to be separated, didn't even qualify for his initial training before he went ahead and got separated. So, in terms of the verified facts, we

Now I'm going to withhold.

My judgment for now, and I'm just going to show you what people are reacting to.

Just a warning.

These are you know, these are really terrible images. But let's go ahead and put these up there on the screen. Initial images that were taken off of a Russian social media website. I'm not even going to try and tell

It that stands for right wing death squad.

That's something that's been appropriated by far right groups here in the United States. In the middle, obviously, you can see two fresh SS tattoos and a swastika hearkening to the Nazierra, as well as a Texas tattoo that was on the shoulder, a very odd meme that he actually posted, which is certainly a discourse igniter, saying Latino children have two different pats. One of them is to quote act black and the other one is to become a white supremacist,

Is that this all seems a bit too convenient.

A number one these images were unearthed by Belling Cat, which is certainly an organization with I would. I think it's fair to say, like a more neoliberal bent in Micraine. Yeah, so you know it's a group that has been connected to the State Department in the US government. We're not

Well, I think the.

Likely answer is probably the I mean, the less suspect answer. It's probably just most likely that this is one of the very many mentally ill, mentally struggling people in this country who chose to act out this expression of their personal anguish in an incredibly tragic and awful way. And that's really not that hard for me to believe. And I mean, of course it happens every week. And in terms of the identity question, well, I mean this is again also not that hard to believe, because people's.

Minds are swimming in garbage.

So like this idea that you can come up with a Hispanic formulation for white supremacy in the media, I think we have this as an element.

It's the last element in this block.

You can see side by side here Washington Post Wall Street Journal headline.

Shown and put a eight there up on the screen. Yes, thank thanks Sagar.

Yeah, so you can see white supremacist views after eight killed. And this is on both of these I think it was on both of the front pages of the print editions yesterday too.

Yes, And that is again it's misleading.

It's out of context because if you don't know that the shooter is Hispanic, you have a completely different takeaway. At the same time, you have a guy with USS.

Tattoos and a swastika and the swastika.

And a lot of strange tattoos, a lot of strange beliefs. But given the sort of worldview that we're all swimming in right now, I don't think it's particularly strange to imagine that a confused and mentally ill person would get involved in an ideology like that.

Right, So elon, apparently jumping on the train here, let's go and put this up there on the screen. Redheaded Libertarian tweeting out that quote it's a sy op, and it's not even good about questions around how exactly this guy's social media was profile was posted, He says, quote, this gets weirder by the moment. So again, I think I just want to spend some time and look at this.

I guess it's technically possible.

We should wait all of the facts that arise as to what we're going to see that the investigators release, whether they verify that these are social media profiles. I should say, there are some social there are some company or news organizations which claimed that they have verified that this social media profile does belong to this gunman. Now

So anyway, I think.

This is all just a long way for me of saying of if you are out there and you are skeptical around this, I can tell you, like I spent hours of my life digging in seeing like where this social media profile came from, the verifiability, given the hand tattoos and all of that. The alternative explanations just don't pass the smell test to me. One of them was that this is some cartel related gun incident. The thing is is that the victims of this shooting one in

Match the name of the gunman.

Now, those were never released by law enforcement, and so people were like, hey, the tattoos or whatever that were on this alleged gunman's social media profile don't match the mug shots that had been released or not released, that were initially distributed online. Now, this is also, i think is also a very long winded way of pointing out,

Okay, that's what we know.

Now what was released from social media by a Belling Cat, which you know is definitely a suspect organization.

Okay, Now just because released.

By them doesn't mean I'm going to dismiss it just means I'm going to scrutinize. It's like, okay, so I got this, and then I'm trying to match this up, and then where's the confusion coming from. I get where the confusion is coming from. Put that all together. To me, it appears to be the social media, the legitimate social media profile of the shooter. All of that said, all the questions as to whether he was some plant, people were like, oh, it's tattoos are fresh and all that.

Listen.

I mean, I think sometimes we try to apply a rational mindset to a psychotic killer.

These people are freaks, like you.

Know, mentally sane person murders eight innocent people in cold blood for no reason and then blogs and posts about it.

And it's not going to make sense to you if they do.

Ok, yeah, it will never make any sense.

And actually the most disturbing part when you watch it, if anybody who's ever like watched videos of like truly mentally ill people or schizophrenics that they create, it's just like you. The reason why it's so foreign to us is because it's another planet. It's another world. That's kind of how I felt consuming this man's content.

Well, and I mean, it strikes me as we're talking about it that this is not this is a story, because it's also a story about how we get the news now and that you have all of these people. Like listen, one of the best documentaries in the last ten years is Don't f with Cats.

It's so good.

Okay, but you have a situation like that playing out on a micro level every single day, and every time there's a horrible tragedy like this. I mean, imagine, in all honesty if nine to eleven.

Had happened with Twitter. Yeah, I just like imagine.

And so the alternative where you have total monopolized corporate media not great. But what we have right now is not great either, and it makes it really hard for us to litigate the truth in these circumstances without also getting bogged down in divisive, painful, and untrue politics at certain times.

Yes, okay, so let's go to the next part here, which is a more of a meta conversation.

Can can Hispanics be white nationalists?

Let's go to put this up there on the screen, The Rise of White Nationalists Hispanic Systems, written by Axios. This was kind of being passed around in a what's it like in a way where people were joking about the headline. I will admit that it does like sound ridiculous when you say it, and.

Yet at the same time, we have to try and break it up.

And this is actually why I think so many of our labels around all of this doesn't make any sense at all, Like can you be a white nationalist Hispanic? It's like, well, one of the interesting things is because I am from Texas and I actually know third, fourth, and fifth generation Hispanics, is that the term white Hispanic

And so what do you do with that?

I mean, you know, I think in terms of our like box checks and all that. And this is also why I think all of our racial obsessiveness is ridiculous. I am effectively just coming around to instead of can Hispanics be white nationalists? Can Hispanics or anyone else be far right? And I just think that that's a much easier and cleaner way of discussing it, Like like, what's to me the idea? You know, here's the other thing when you put it that way. Can Hispanics be fascist?

Many of them.

Even borrowed some of their ideology. Even many people don't know this. Even the Nazis themselves, like the SAS for example, had divisions and people who are within it who were not German and who were not even Aryan. You had like Serbia like Slavs who were members of the why because they bought into some you know, whatever the crazy ideology was, and it was actually kind of a controversy

Yes, I think that's actually a very easy answer.

Well, and I mean it depends on their definition of white nationalism, which is used all of the time in the super inflated sense. And now, of course in this case it looks like it hasn't been applied in an inflated sense. It looks like there's a legitimate case that this is somebody who believed he had an ideological formulation that allowed for Hispanics, as he says, in his own means,

Of the population.

It doesn't mean that that can't be a dangerous, mobilized, animated percentage of the population. But we know right now that the establishment is inflating these definitions in order, very specifically to justify surveillance of people who have descending viewpoints.

Yes, this is also why it is difficult. This is also why I hate racial terminology in the United States. For example, with Hispanic the typical definition, I think, according to the US Census is somebody who is a person of Cuban, Mexican, Puerto Rican, South or Central American or

Are you Hispanic?

I guess you know, under our definition, are you a Spanish American? Like, once again, this is where it starts to break apart, and then through our race kind of obsessed media, they'll say, like that person is somehow something in common with someone who is from Puerto Rico. It's like, well, yeah, maybe five hundred years ago, not today, or same thing with Puerto Rico versus somebody from Columbia who barely has just as much in common with somebody who is from Honduras.

Have you ever been to Central America?

I mean, even within Central America you have a tremendous amount of ethnic diversity and the cultural practices.

They're not all the same.

And I think that's why whenever I think and and consider, you know, all of this, it just is easier to actually take that element out of it and say, can anyone who is on the internet be inspired by far right ideology far left ideology?

Yes? Actually it seems it's quite clear.

And so anyway, I think this is more of a meta conversation around how we can all discuss this without seeming like we want to blow our brains out. And it is a nuance and interesting question around ethnicity, around race, around identification, and around what multi racial, heterogeneous societies look like. I mean, one hundred and fifty years ago, if we were here in Washington, DC and we said that Irish people were white, you know, white Presbyterians would be like, what do you talk?

Are you're crazy? No they're not, you know, they're different.

Or and if you know, not even that long ago, if you said that, for example, Italians were white again, the Irish people be like.

No, we're not.

We had nothing in common with them one hundred years ago. This all sounds ridiculous. So that's my point is that these things can evolve, and in reality, like it's more on us to try and make sense of this. And the last thing I guess I want to say is sometimes the semantics of the conversation themselves are so ridiculous because we haven't even spent enough time media and even here now just honestly honoring some of the victims. You know, some of these people were I mean, Korean American famili

Were murdered and cold blood their lives taken and ruined.

And you know, one of the alleged things that was said by the shooter was media always celebrates the people who is a shooter. They can't help themselves. The people who get killed never get as much attention. He literally said that in one of his alleged to social media musing. So you know, and sometimes, you know, it comes to the question of like should we even be talking about this person, But because it has become such like a meticultural talking point, I almost feel like we have no choice.

Let's take a listen.

The FAA and Department of Transportation are doing our part, but airlines need to accept their fundamental responsibility to better serve passengers. When they don't, we are here to enforce passenger rights and hold airlines accountable. In just over two years, this administration has delivered some of the most significant gains in airline passenger protections in decades. We have stepped up enforcements,

There's more. Last fall, the Department of Transportation proposed to rule that will be finalized this year. If finalized as proposed, it would require airlines to show you the full ticket price up front before you purchase it, including fees for baggage, for internet, for changing your seat. And I'm proud to announce two critical steps that my administration is taking to protect American air passengers. First, we just launched a new website,

He has the name behind him just so people don't know who don't. We're just listening.

It's actually flight Rights dot gov, not flights right dot gov.

You'll be shocked to dot gov.

Dot Actually it doesn't make any sense anyway. So what are these.

Proposed rules again? They're not even the new regulations going into effect. They're just proposals. Let's go and put them up there on the screen. That will require airlines to compensate air travelers and cover their meals in hotel rooms if they are stranded for reasons within the airline control and would be in addition to the ticket refunds when the airline is hit fault for the flight that's being canceled or delayed. Basically, these are the exact same protections

Are working to quickly publish.

A notice that is required to get the process started. So not only did they wait two and a half years into their administration, Emily they didn't even finish the job of the proposal whenever they did the press conference, and they have no update.

As to when they will be done.

Listen, you know I have with buddhaj Edge, his level of incompetence, his lack of seriousness. It is so angering to me just because he was the chosen one.

Yeah, it's like starting.

It's like were you are supposed to be, mister McKenzie.

Mister I get things done.

Yeah, it was only a small town mayor, but I have much more potential. He thought that the Office of Management and Budget was beneath him. He said, I want to be a secretary. I want to be a member of the cabinety. Give me transportation. And the reason why it's clear is he didn't actually want to do anything. He just wanted to fly around and cut ribbons and

But that's what I think is even doubly infuriating about it, is that you have Pete Boodha Judge play acting mister secretary on the camera. When I went back and looked at what was what he said around the Southwest Tobackle ro Conna was out there tweeting at the time, Bernie and I had a six months ago, told you guys to ratchet up fines and penalties on these airlines.

And so why is that important?

Because right now when he's saying that they don't have a finalized plan or date for the rest of this, well, that six month gap, how many people got crunched in it? Now whatever, how many months this is going to be, how many people are going to get crunched in it again. They don't want to actually do anything. They want to play act and have tough press conferences so that they can come out and say this administration has been very tough on the airline.

Yes, no, you haven't.

Yeah, and that's like listen, I have flown several times since the Southwest meltdown. I actually was in Austin days after the Southwest meltdown.

I was caught in Southwest Mountain. Really is because of Milwaukee DC.

I remember seeing all the bags and all these people lined up to get their bag. And again we're in the middle of vacation. These poor people are lined up for hours trying to skate just to get their own luggage. Imagine how any stand alone with the privilege of proclaiming your own luggage after you already missed your flight. I was in the airport Christmas at that time. It was it was a complete nightmare personally, no people who had to drive hours and hours and heard so many stories.

And this is the first substance that thing you're doing.

And oh and by the way, the FAA melted down to in between. Oh and by the way, we also had two near miss crashes on the tarmac. Actually, yeah, I don't know what's going on. I was also in Austin the morning that that near miss happened. So maybe I'm maybe I'm the Jonah I guess, as they say in Master and Commander, my favorite movie.

But put that all.

Together, and you see that the spirit that he brought to this interview from about a year ago, it's still exactly the same.

He still just to completely do nothing. Figure, here's what he had to say.

Then, what about those lawmakers like Bernie Sanders Democrats in addition to him, who make the case that that fifty billion dollars that came with strings attached, and that the airlines when they do cancel on folks, when they do have folks waiting on the tarmac for X amount and out of hours, they should be fined heavily.

Well, that's part of what we do as a department. Look, our preferred outcome is that the passenger doesn't have this problem in the first place. But when we find that an airline is, for example, failing to issue prompt refunds or in some other way not treating passengers fairly, we will act.

As a matter of fact, a few.

Months ago, we issued the stiffest fine in the history of our consumer protection program, and we have ongoing investigations about other practices again, we want things to go well, but when they don't, we will act.

When they don't, we will act. That's a complete lie. You guys want to know when we did their segment about that July twenty five, fifth, twenty twenty two, it took him ten months just to get to the point where he's doing what they were asking him to do. At that point, how many literally hundreds of billions of lost productivity hours costs of nightmare has been now, you know, inflicted upon the American and global consumer Like this is once again, I want to say, their rules are not

Yeah, the rest is out the window.

That was what Bran Biden was building back. It was building back better. But you know, I mean when people are why do people fly well? Because they have funerals to go? Do they have birthdays to go? Do they have special occasions? They have things that they've saved up, they're hard earned money for. And this is what our system looks like. And I think the really sad thing at the end of the day is that we.

Are both overregulated and underregulated. And what does that amount to. We are just very poorly regulated.

We're poorly regulated, but the airlines are richer than ever so don't worry.

You know, they're doing great.

They're buying they're buying back those stuff.

Yes, they are by stock back, and we are paying them for their privilege. What a country.

It's an amazing country. Let's go to the next part here. Actually some decent news though we very rarely get to talk about here on the show.

Let's go and put this up there on the screen.

We had a big endorsement last night from former President Donald Trump on Truth Social He says, quote crickod Joe Biden has still not visited the incredible patriots of East Palaestine. Mayor Pete couldn't get out there fast enough. But that's okay. Our movement will be their voice. We will never forget them.

JD.

Vance has been working hard in the Senate to make sure nothing like this ever happens again. That's why it's so important for Congress to pass his Railway Safety Act. JD's terrific bill has my complete and total endorsement. Now, the reason why this is such a big deal is that this might be one of the few bipartisan areas in modern history where we.

Might actually be able to get something done.

Because don't forget only two months ago, President Biden endorsed the same bill. Put this up there on the screen, statement from President Biden on the Bipartisan Railway Safety Act of twenty three that was almost immediately released not only by JD. Vance, but we also had Sheriff Brown who was on there. We had John Fetterman, we had the Senators from Pennsylvania. We had a literal almost equal parts Democrat and Republican bill, Emily, something.

You almost never seen.

On stuff like this, especially on stuff like this, But now we're set up for a major titanic fight. Hopefully we'll be able to talk to Senator Vans on our Thursday show a little bit about this. But what we have to get to the bottom of here is the question of will the corporate Republicans and corporate Democrats acquiesce to this bill after heavy lobbying by the railway industry, because this is where it is a crazy bipartisan you know,

And the reason why is oh shocker.

A libertarian at least whenever it comes to corporate issues, has long been a beneficiary of donations from the industry.

They're Democrats to who have taken a lot of this money.

And the major block right now is getting the institutional support of right and left behind this bill.

When we have the.

Crazy situation where the leading candidates in the twenty twenty four race, the literal president of the United States and the ex president of the United States, are endorsing said bill. Why is this thing not passing tomorrow? There's no reason that it shouldn't be on the floor right now. The only reason it's not is because people like Mitch McConnell and John Thune, corporate Republicans probably some corporate Democrats too that are in there, are not letting this thing actually

Wouldn't pass it. You know, why are they standing against Trump? That should be the the question.

Actually, yeah, but we'll see media doesn't want to talk about it in that context, obviously, but get you have the heads of both parties, the heads of both parties as you just mentioned, the former president, the sitting president. But more than that, they're the heads of their respective parties who are in favor.

Of this bill.

And I mean they're what National Review editorialized against the bill. John Thune has come out, who's a real industry guy, and said, oh gosh, no, we don't want to overregulate this industry.

We were talking about this just earlier.

It's true that there are burdens, some overly burdens, some regulations in rail.

There's true. It's also true, though, that.

There's incredibly lenient and lax regulations in rail. And this bill is a perfectly reasonable, like stop gap measure until we can completely go back to the drawing board, which is essentially what has to happen at this point. Because both of those excess regulations and lax regulations are carve outs from the industry.

That's all you need to know at the end of the day.

Where it's overregulated, why is that, Well, it's in many cases because really the big guys know they can hurt any other competitor by screwing around with regulations and where it's underregulated, well obvious, I don't even need to explain why they would want something to be underregulated, although you might have to explain it to National Review because they say, well, it's not in their market interest to be underregulated, to which you obviously would reply, they have a freakingness.

Totally exactly, thank you for saying that, which is that it's in their interest because they have a monopoly. And we also remember that these have not been responsible corporate entities. Their profits have gone up by billions of dollars in the last decade, at the same time that they've been fighting for fighting against paid sick leave, sick time and

You know the amount of money that they.

Pour into their railway infrastructure. I'm not saying we only need passenger high speed rail. I'm just saying, like, if we're going to have rail through which we move at dangerous chemicals, maybe we should make sure that they don't spill all the time. It turns out we have a one thousand trained derailments or something like that per on an annual basis here in the US. Compare that on a per capita per mile versus other countries, and they are laughing at the rest of us. And it's because

We're talking about John D.

Rockefeller and the power of the railroads and the gouging rates and all that. Like, we literally had the fight before, and we won. Actually the people won against the monopolists whenever it came to that. Now though we seem to have forgotten that lesson, and in the context also of what's happening with the airlines, you know, basically the new transportation monopolized infrastructure.

It's like we haven't learned anything. The consumer always loses.

Infrastructure is yes, the infrastructure is the most basic function of a government safety infrastructure the combination of both of them, and we to like bridge both of these segments between airlines and rail we cannot even do the most basic things despite being one of the wealthiest countries who ever exist on the face of the earth, one of the most technologically advanced societies who ever exist on the face

And it's completely tragic.

Right, it really is sad.

Anyway, Look good news by Trump endorse it. So let's get this goddamn.

It's huge news.

And that's we'll keep people saying yeah it genuinely will keep.

People saying yes it.

Actually it literally a could save lives.

Maybe we'll all be a little bit better off knowing the chemicals and I bought be accidentally spilling, and that big, big billionaire railroad executives won't be getting fat paychecks. Well, cats are literally dropping dead in East pala steam. We haven't forgotten about that story, and we're going to continue to keep up on it. Like I said, hopefully we'll be able to get Senator Vance. We're working on it

And for me, you and Ryan are just like the lab leak because here's the thing.

For me, Originally it was where tod COVID come from.

Yeah, that's layer one, but layer two is, well, whoa, what is this multi billion dollar infrastructure that exists for funding labs?

That's actually a second layer.

Third layer is Wait, this multi billion dollar infrastructure funded by the US government is completely unregulated, unsafe, and has been propagated by maniacs like doctor Fauci and ideologues who believe that genetically engineering dangerous viruses is going to make us more safe. Then you peel the layer back even more and you find out that it all traces back to the two thousand and one anthrax attack in October.

Was literally part of the Patriot Act.

No, I know, but I'm saying it got no attention.

Yeah, Like everybody knows about the overreaches of the Patriot Act, of the dangers of the billions of dollars spent on fake tsa screening, nobody ever asked any questions, including me until twenty twenty one, basically when we were talking about lab leak in twenty twenty to say like where did all of this come from? So like, whenever you start to peel back the layers, you just see this like vast infrastructure of basically Jurassic Park playing out on a mass human scale.

And the craziest part.

Is, you know, using the Jurassic Park analogy, it's like we just had the dinosaurs escape from the cage, and all of us know the dinosaurs escape from the cage, and the answer from the scientific establishment is let's give amgen. I think that's the company even more money so they can genetically engineer even more vicious dinosaurs.

And we're gonna do that.

Don't you dare say we shouldn't be agin don't say that we shouldn't do to these dinosaurs, because if you do, you are an enemy of science.

You're an enemy of science itself. So let's go and put this up there on the screen. Scientists currently linked to the Wuhan Lab are back in business because the US is renewing a grant for natural origins research to Eco Health Alliance. Now I've talked about this previously, but this is actually a new grant. Quote from EcoHealth Alliance, we have a lot of human serum samples in freezers around Southeast Asia.

They will provide clues.

We are resuming as of this month, the funding of the EcoHealth Alliance with Gain of Function Research in South East Stasia, the very same group that was funding the Wuhan Lab. Under the current terms of the grant, they will receive approximately six hundred thousand dollars for the next four years to continue work unquote bat origin coronaviruses. It is committed, however, to not subcontract its work to China.

He's a British guy, and he said, well, what else can we do?

And like, you know, I don't know, like circumstancel evidence, actually subpoenaing records.

Within the who in your own organization. No, no, we can't do any of that. Okay.

I like how you did him sort of a misdoubt fire.

Yeah, well that's what was necessary. He actually is a clownish figure. I don't just mean that, I guess I do mean in a very mean way. Yeah, anyway, you should go watch the interview if you're interested.

Well, the audacity though Peter Dazak is like unrelenting and somehow remarkable. It is. That's why he shouldn't be able to show his face in public after what he did, and yet he's being quoted with this like very arrogant take, like well, we're very glad to resume this type of blah blah blah.

It also reminds me too of how badly the media has done a job here. So for example, if everybody remembers Valerie Plain, this was the household name in the mid two thousands, and the reason why is that she was a CIA agent. She was married to this ambassador, and the ambassador was linked to the yellow Cake uranium story. The point that I'm making is that's got the Bob

Like Valerie Plane.

All of these were characters who Americans could tell you about because they knew the chain of events which led to the false story about WMD in Iraq, which led ultimately to the invasion. If you are not you know, online and consume our content or the Joe Rogan podcast, you don't know who Peter Dazak is. Sure you know who fount You is, but you don't know some of the secondary and frankly most important characters in this story.

I've cited him before.

I found a quote of him as Scientific American back in two thousand and seven, pushing back against biodefense research in the posts anthrax world, so probably we owe like if there was ever a Cassandra around this, like it's Richard, and he has also been on the forefront of this

Well, yeah, there's that, And there's also this question of like the media knows that the stuff exists and Ken and Ken segment will talk a little bit about this, like they note exists, they don't ask any questions about it because partially, if you do ask questions about any of this, you're a crazy conspiracy theorist.

And Peter Dazac, who's being quoted in the article that was just up on the screen, was.

Colluding with Fauci and with Francis Collins to cast anybody who was suspicious of the Eco Health Alliance grant being used in Wuhan partially with American tax payer money that we could talk about as a conspiracy theorist. And so that's how they've been able to shield themselves impenetrably from criticism.

Well, if it's so important, then maybe you should have a little bit of transparency.

Well said.

We talked a lot here about AI regulation, what AI regulation might and should look like. I've done monologues, so it is crystal about what you know, how we balance free speech concerns and political correctness with the genuine fear that technological development will overpass us and could possibly supplant us. So of course what you want whenever we're talking about AI regulation, Emily is the best and the brightest who are involved.

And because of that, it seems of the White House taking heed.

They're taking heed about how seriously they want to take this issue.

And so they put Kamala Harris in charge, which is fantastic.

Let's go and put this up there on the screen, they say, Biden and Harris are meeting with CEOs about AI risks. They met with the heads of Google, Microsoft, and two other companies involving in developing artificial intelligence as they are rolling out their initiatives meant to ensure the rapidly evolving technology improved lives without putting people's lives at risks.

During that, they had this weird and bizarre drop.

In by President Biden into the meeting, which was totally just a non plan drop in. Right, we always have cameraman pointing at the door with subtitles that are ready whenever somebody does drop into a meeting.

President Biden came in.

Here's what he had to say about Aire.

No one has an enormous potential. I know you understand that, and I hope you can educate us.

What you see is mostly tech society as well as to advage really really important.

So a lot of platitudes. Still not really sure what's happening.

Well, I was gonna say we should just pause there, and he was asking industry leaders. That's like going, you know, to a bunch of railway barons and saying, I'm really curious.

I want you to tell us what we need to do to protect the people from this.

And so that in and of itself is amusing, but it actually reminded me as we were talking. I did an interview with Nita Farahani recently, who's super interesting, has that new book Battle for Your Brain Out. She actually said she was on a commission on bioethics and the

Well, why did he leave Google Because.

He didn't think he could be an effective advocate for the protections that people need inside Google and I think that's when you see the President turning to Microsoft and Google appointing. Actually, it's a pretty fitting appointment for Kamala Harris because in some ways she really is the champion of artificial intelligence in a very literal sense.

The funny problem to have talked about this with regulation is, of course Microsoft and Google will want regulation and licenses for people who are new entrants, because what they want to do is they want to come and they want to roll up the existing AI market incorporated into their search and battle it out against each other. And then basically what they would want is regulate.

All of their up and coming competitors. I'm not saying the regulation is an answer.

I'm saying that their type of regulation that they appeared to like the most is one which definitely would be a helping hand to the monopolists, whereas, let's say we had proper antitrust legislation on the books. Here's an interesting history for everybody involved Microsoft. Microsoft was actually sued under the Clint administration for antitrust.

Now that suit.

Itself, even though it was dropped by the Bush administration. Microsoft felt compelled not to enter certain markets at that time, specifically because they were concerned that by doing so, they might add to the monopolistic argument and to the case that was being brought against them by the DOJ.

So, once again, not even a successful case.

Just the pressure of political pressure itself was enough to make sure that they didn't get involved. Now, let's say that we had proper AI legislation, or even monopoly legislation on the books.

Google not even as allowed to get into AI, not even.

Allowed to try and pursue AGI whenever it comes to their search products.

Same with Microsoft.

You know, these companies would be so big that they wouldn't even be considering it. Well, imagine that world, a world where Chat, Shept and open Ai remain open instead of ten billion dollar multi billion dollar companies who are

What went wrong with the web?

I mean, one of the things that went wrong is if we think about nineteen ninety eight being on the Internet, We're all having an awesome time.

It's super cool. People are checking out different websites. They're like, have we chocked out this website?

That website It hadn't been rolled up yet, and you know, Yahoo and all these other directories. They weren't even really search It was more like a list of cool websites that were around.

There.

There were genuine communities, There was a serious free speech, and there was the idea this will lead to you know, all these great ideas and creativity and freedom.

And then what happened. It got corporatized.

It got rolled up effectively both by Google, by Facebook, by Twitter, and the vast majority of web traffic and our experience on the web happens through portals of let's say, like five to ten different websites. That actually is what was the opposite of what people predicted in kind of the early days of the kind of crypto libertarianism that sprung up from the early nineteen nineties Internet. Why would we choose emily to go down and do the exact same thing whenever it comes to AI.

You would never choose to do.

That, No, we wouldn't, but this headline might give you some some answers. This is from June twenty second, twenty twenty one, so it is a couple of years ago in Washington post Biden administration, full of officials who worked for prominent tech companies. The ties are most prominent at the White House, where thirteen aids, some of them with the ear of the President, have previously worked for Google, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Lift, Microsoft, Twitter,

I would be surprised.

I mean I barely do.

The whole point is that we need real experts who don't have any who don't have any stake in the companies, to be making the legislation, not the other way around, which actually brings me to the next point and some really interesting news. Actually, sal Kan of con Academy, let's go and put this up there on the screen, is actually piloting a version of chat GPT called con Mingo, and it's a new tool trained to act as a tutor and.

A teacher's assistant.

It's a really interesting managed version of the open AI platform. That quote can help guide students in their studies, not enable them to cheat. A pilot currently running with a handful of schools and districts to try and test the software. The thing is about con Solcon and con Academy is obviously the revolutionary revolutionized like initial tutoring with YouTube videos.

It's all fake and we all know it.

We're talking about you know, online homework assignments like you remember did you take intro to econ those e coon courses.

I don't know anything about the economy.

Okay, Well, actually, anybody who's ever taken like intro to macroeconomics or whatever, this is all sanitized homework that you're doing on a computer program that your university has licensed, and that you're not learning anything. They're like, there are very basic questions where you know they code in some ways that you can't cheat, and it's all just checkbox.

Same with statistics.

If I remember my statistics statistics courses where the quizzes and all that, it was just nonsense, like it wasn't conceptually getting into anything. What I hope is that AI will destroy all busy work because it would be ridiculous to even sign it when you know it is so easily cheated on, and instead in my statistics statistics classes or macrorec nomics classes, instead of doing box checks from textbooks, we'd.

Be like, what is GDP? Why does it matter?

You can ask Hillary Clinton.

Yeah, no, I'm saying we want in the course.

I'm sitting there, laptop clothes, I'm sitting with a professor, like, explain this to me in terms that I can understand. In a real dialogue instead of six seven hundred people in a classroom all looking at some stupid PowerPoint, everyone fake taking notes and then fake doing homework and we're all just you know, gaming our GPA so we can go work at Mackenzie afterwards.

Like this is this is why it's like I want that dead and gone.

And from what I've heard with the destruction of CHEG bringing back in person essays written by hand, I love that. Love that, like courses and stuff written by hand Emily and removing busy working and bringing back socratic discussion in classroom we might actually learn something.

It's amazing. Actually, yeah, that's the thing.

Like there's doom and gloom about generative as this is what I'm happy.

This is good stuff. Walter Russell Mead had a great piece of tablet yesterday. Don't if you read it.

It's called you are Not Destined to Live in Quiet Times, And the way he frames it is like, listen, the reality here in the same way that this is the reality in the Oppenheimer era, is that this is a massive rate of change. It's happening over the course of your lifetime, whether you like it or not. And so that means some of it's going to be really, really dangerous, and some of it can be harnessed and channeled for

I mean, And the questions that they include in these history exams are just so stupid and they really do not help anyone in any way. It's just wrote memorization. So I've pulled up, for example, from the a Push exam, the ap US History exam. Here are some samples from

Around the New Deal.

This leads to just rote memorization and wrote memorization is just the worst possible thing that you could try. And you know, you could try and give people like other examples that I've seen is they'll they'll be like, what here are four read like like, which of these reasons is why America abolished slavery?

You can't multiple choice that.

It's like there are It's a multifaceted question that which requires us all sitting down and reading a range of different books from the original perspective to the postmodern perspective, and you know, reconciling which has validity and not historically and all of us would come up with a different answer why was America founded in the first Why did America ditch the Articles of Confederation? Like we all have these stupid history textbook answers. That's it's much more complicated than that.

But well, yeah, and this is the lesson of the Articles of Confederation is not that there was another constitution named the Articles of Confederation, And that's what history teaches you to memorize, as opposed to like you actually truly internalizing what happens, like, well.

We had this idea we have fought a revolution to have less power in the hands of the federal government. Maybe we took it too far, and then there was a rebellion, and then in the context of that, we said, okay, we're going to have a constitution convention and we're going to try and figure this thing out, which was very

Well we had this thing and then we ditched it. Thirteen years later, we all still sing that. What's the song? Like the School of Rocks?

Oh the Yeah, both of us are public school kids. Mostly. I used to just like mercilessly mock homeschool kids. Obviously because I still do. I'm a bully. Yeah, No, they deserve it. In many cases.

We're speaking as people.

Who know a lot of home steal kids.

But that said, when I talk to them now and realize how much better their educations were than what I got. Not everyone, but when I talked to them, it just like blows my mind and I feel like I lost out on something. And so if we can, because if the robot forces us to educate ourselves in a way that makes us better regulators of robots in the future generations have more civic mindedness, more socratic learning. I'm not optimistic, but to your point, Sager, if anything pushes us.

To that, it's this.

Yeah, I hope that it does.

This actually is what college education in America used to look like pre basically bureaucratization post nineteen forty five. There are a lot of interesting reasons as to why that happened, money probably being number one and if there is one hope as to how we can escape it, this is what it is. Let's go to the last part here. Had to throw this in because Emily is here a resident culture war expert.

I think let's go and put this up there on the screen.

A California reparations panel has okayed a state apology and payments.

They caut apology first.

Yes, that's right.

Yeah, that's kind of funny. They say, let's go ahead and get into it here a little bit. California's Reparation's Task Force has voted Saturday to approve recommendations on how the state may compensate and apologies to black residents for generations of harm caused by discriminatory policies. The nine member committee, convened two years ago, has given final approval at this meeting in Oakland to a list of proposals that now

How do all Americans generally feel about this issue? The polling on it is actually quite complicated.

One of the better approximations that I try to come to is affirmative action. So affirmative action effectively is like an in kind, like an in kind acknowledgment of discrimination and of It's almost like in kind reparations. Can we agree on that definition? I think that's fair. Let's go ahead put this out there.

That's the explicit ambition of its writers.

I agree.

And so Yet in California, remember this in twenty twenty, the same time as this so called Reparations Council was formed.

Well, guys, on a voter.

Levels, fifty seven percent of Californians, some ten million people voted against affirmative action. They voted against bringing affirmative action back in college admissions. So I think that this is a great approximator of how Californians, some of the most liberal, democratic minded people in the country, even they don't agree with affirmative action. And there we're talking about in kind effective racial benefits within the state system. Now we're talking

Here.

Let's go and put E three up there please on the screen. To the best of our ability. Whenever it comes to the view of reparations and all of that, some seventy seven percent of Black Americans, compared with eighteen percent of white Americans do support reparations specifically for the descendants of enslaved people all of US adults, though, the answer comes to no sixty eight percent and yes at thirty percent. For White Americans it's eighty and then eighteen

Eighty one and eighteen.

Now, in terms of the general polling here, there's some changes whenever it comes to income, which I find kind of interesting. So if you ask lower income Americans, the slight majority are still against fifty four versus forty two. Middle income Americans it's seventy four and twenty four, and upper income Americans seventy two and twenty seven. So lower American, lower income Americans more kind of on board with reparations.

Now, what is the best way to do that.

If you were to look at this policy, you would posit then that solving racial discrimination through economic inequities that have manifested is to have direct cash payments of some x sum to specifically black Americans, with an acknowledgement that what has happened there is obviously a moral crime. It must be rectified. However, and I would posit this, and this is my kind of view of this. I wish Crystal was here. I would like to hear it.

Also what she had to say, we need, we need more white people in this country.

You're right, that's right.

And actually though, that's what it gets to you is at the end of the day, we are talking about taxpayer money. We are talking about a democratic problem, a small d democratic problem. So we all do kind of get to say as to how we want to address rights and wrongs that are all been done in our name.

And the way that I've always looked at is this.

If you look at the lower income Americans that I reference, they disproportionately include Hispanic Black and lower middle class and lower class White Americans. The wage gap between lower income white,

But that's kind of the framework where I'm coming at it from.

And I would say also that the framework that I'm coming at it from is dramatically more politically popular.

And why does political popularity.

Matter, Because we're living in a democracy, we don't live in a unilateral dictatorship.

I'm curious what you think.

You know.

I think two things are absolutely true, and they can be true at the same time. One that generational wealth disparities are very real and are very directly and obviously the results of explicit white supremacist discrimination policies that were

Than slavery itself.

But you're then going to take from Hispanic taxpayers money and give them you may be forced to give them to people who look exactly like me and whose family has been in this country long enough to have been, for instance, likely on many sides of this conflict.

This is exactly why I think that trying to parse all this is so ludicrous. And once again I would say, I am not against helping poor black people or all poor people in this country. In fact, though, and this is why you know, trying to parse this and I've never necessarily wanted to, but I think, you know, possibly are forced to. Is you know what, there's better evidence to say that the worst economic hit that ever happened

My perfect personal favorite statistic.

Is you'll often hear in the media like the white and the Black wealth gap. Well, the truth is, sadly, is that the wealth gap between white and Black Americans on an overall basis, the vast majority of that gap is between the top ten percent of white people and the top ten percent of black people. As in the top ten percent earners of whites out earned dramatically the top ten percent of black But if you take the

To well, And we can't even have honest conversations about what's happened with entitlements and welfare state, and I know

Correct. Well, we do have one update though for you.

Whenever it comes to these reparations, they probably are not going to app and let's gohead and put this up there on the screen, despite the fact that they have been proposed and all of that. Even the San Francisco Gate here is saying quote why they are likely doomed. One of the reasons why is that they say, whenever you've seen his way to make amends. The task force

But who knows.

We never know where we will get in terms of that, and even if they don't get implemented, the fact that they're on the table, I think for the discussion that we try to handle sensitively here at breaking points.

So emily, what are you taking a look at?

Well, just yesterday there was a flurry of headlines about Republican efforts to quote pan books. New York Magazine rolled out a new cover story on the topic with an unintentionally hilarious image showing the words quote I will not say gay, written over and over and over again on a chalkboard.

This is a great place to start.

Notice the wording from the magazine in this tweet about the story, quote convinced schools are brainwashing kids to be left wingers conservatives are seizing control of the American classroom.

This is somewhat amusing because.

The story is authored Jonathan Chate is forced to concede some three quarters of the way through his piece that yes, schools now instruct students to abide by the values of political liberalism on a wide scale.

So why as is the scale? As Chait himself.

Mentions, the country's largest teachers union is explicitly working to include critical race theory, for instance, in curricula from.

Pre K through twelfth grade pre K. That's literally in his article.

So right there, he's dispelled the myth of his own premise that Republicans are fantasizing about some left wing takeover of education. It's not a fantasy. They are correct that it's happening. But whether it's good or bad is actually the question. This is the case with the corporate media narrative on this topic time and time again. Hilariously, the New York Times reported last month that a billionaire desantist doner was cooling on the governor in part because of

So what prompted all of this will As in.

Many states around the country, the book Gender Queer freaked parents out Why the book is full of nude cartoon teenagers having intercourse, giving each other oral sex, and more. Really, it is Indiana's ACLU trumpeted Gender Queer is the state's most challenged book of twenty twenty two in a Sunday.

Tweet, they're not making the argument that they think they are.

In fact, pen America's data shows quote Gender Queer is the most challenged book nationwide. Last Ball was the most challenged book, followed by a book called Flamer. In other words, the so called bands are targeting legitimately inappropriate material. You can see it on the screen if you're not watching and you're listening. Essentially, it's what I described earlier, cartoon teenagers nude having sex with each other, talking about extremely

The GOP is pulling really well for Democrats.

So expect to hear way more about these book bands in the next year and a half.

And here's where it's important to just cut out the nonsense.

The media will blame Republicans for stoking this culture war battle while ignoring, for instance, Muslim parents and dearborn fighting against genderqueer, and then the teachers' unions fighting against those parents to implement debunked history or gender career, or bring the sixteen nineteen project to their community and put it

And move on. That's so easy to do.

They put those books there, they can get them out. But because these institutions are captured by mediocre ideologues, they'll cling to the porn, rile up parents with good and bad consequences, and do a really, really bad job actually teaching students.

And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at Breakingpoints dot com. Okay, Inevitably, after almost every single mass shooting, we hear the same response from our media and the Democratic establishment, need more gun control, gun controls the only answer.

President Biden is nearly on repeat with it.

After a spate of mass shootings in recent months, and you get basically the same treatment from the media. I want to also acknowledge that a lot of people who watch the show probably agree with that.

But something I've always.

Tried so hard to emphasize here is it's just not that easy. If it was, then we would have done it already. It's not a matter of the NRA or the gun lobby. It has to do with our Constitution, the Second Amendment, a right to self defense, and ultimately a level of authority that we are willing to provide our government over our lives. In my estimation, the gun

What are they and what are they not?

If you don't follow this much, you probably would forgiven for thinking that mass shooting statistics cited by the media entail school shootings or the shootings that.

Just occurred like at the mall in Allen, Texas.

The actual definition, though, is actually up to the government and when the government is involved, and you already know that politics is involved. President Obama actually forced the FBI twenty thirteen to adopt this definition. A single attack in which three or more victims are killed. On its face, I guess it sounds reasonable, but is it? Consider us firearm homicides and the type that they are involved in.

The facts aside.

I think what the gun debate does more than anything is show how much we are talking past each other and how little that we really understand our own countrymen. Gun ownership is probably one of the best single signifiers in America today for party identification. Consider this map side by side from twenty sixteen. On the left is what the electoral college would look like if only people who didn't own a gun were voters. As you can see, every single state save for one would.

Go for Hillary.

On the right is what the map would look like if only people who voted who had guns had in twenty sixteen, Trump would win all but one state. That about says it all, doesn't it. Gun owners and non gun owners are completely at odds politically, But what I would argue is downstream from culture. For the non gun owners, guns are nextibly linked to violence, both by the state and by criminals, including mass shootings. Connotations around them are

Any discussion of the Second Amendment sounds ludicrous to this person. For gun owners, it's the opposite.

Guns certainly are linked to violence, but they are also to other things that have nothing to do with violence, like hunting or bonding with family members, recreation as a tool, sometimes self defense.

Much of this, too, comes from a rural and an urban divide. When you're out in the middle of the country.

You're forty five minutes from authorities, possibly without cell service, the ability to defend yourself, either from another person or from a wild animal, actually becomes very much more acute compared to a city, where the response time is less than ten minutes from authorities and people are literally everywhere. In these cases, you can see why the other would react viscerally around the gun debate to each other, and how the lived reality of both on a.

Day to day basis clashes so hard with others.

Personally, I think it's important to look at things this way, and especially to the Metropolitan group who overwhelming a hold the view of more gun control. When you say things like the Second Amendment shouldn't apply today because there's no way that the founders could have predicted ar style rifles or high capacity magazines, it actually kind of opens up

In both cases, it would be ridiculous.

Because we understand the Constitution as a set of principles laid out to apply to a dynamic and changing nation which we can rely on to give us even in the face of unprecedented societal and technological change. Now, to the extent that there is a policy solution, it must come from a deeper and multifaceted understanding of the problem from loneliness, identity, politics, and the litany of social ills that seem to manifest in this sick freak in Texas.

And if you want to hear my reaction to Cyber's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at breakingpoints dot Com.

Joining us now is Ken Klippenstein's a great partner of us. He's also a reporter over at the Intercept. Great seaman.

Hey, good to be with you, guys.

Ken, you've been at the forefront of reporting on this disinformation industrial complex. Who came out with a brand new bombshell story. Let's go and put it up there on the screen. Quote the government created his new disinformation office to oversee all well the other ones. And you reveal here some new offices inside of the Pentagon. They're tasked with quote unquote overseeing disinformation. So tell us about these Dystopian Orwellian agencies being funded in our name.

Okay, So we want to start with Dystope and let's talk about the one in the Pentagon because I dearly love the name of that. Okay, it's called the Influence and Perception Management Office. There's a term that harkens back to the Reagan administration.

Oh.

I think under his CIA he had a perception management office. I think the goal was to kind of try to influence the coverage of the Iran contract.

Or the concerts in Nicaragua. That's right, right, And so now they've stood that up in the Pentagon.

What's interesting about these agencies that they're working on now is that they're not just disinformation agencies.

I found out in the course of the supporting that, for.

Example, in the Department of Homeland Security, there are nearly half a dozen counter disinformation offices. So now they're creating ones to oversee the ones that they already have within the agencies and departments. And so what I found in this stow with the Foreign Malign Influence Office that's overseeing the ones that are overseeing all the various agency and

And can we talk about what these offices are authorized to do, because that's part of what you get into and the piece and can make a big difference as to, you know, whether something is nefarious or whether it's just the Pentagon being the Pentagon and doing what it does. There's actually indications that they have pretty serious authority capabilities in these offices.

What are they authorized to do?

Yeah, So what was unprecedented about the fm C is that instead of just having access to that specific agency or that specific department, they have full sweeping access to all relevant intelligence that they deem you know, pertinent to disinformation. And so particularly after her story on which you had us on to discuss and I appreciate that very much, without the DHS efforts there, it feels like there was a big rebrik and on the part of the federal

So let's get into that though.

And that's intentionally what they do, that they blur the line intentionally so that they can sweep Americans into the Hamilton sixty nine dashboard.

So if we're like, oh, well, we're talking about Russian disformation, it's like, well, well, all of a sudden, now we're talking about Facebook and then we're actually talking about election as.

And we're talking about Jill Stein or Chill Stein.

And one of the things you pointed out that I still want noise a crap out of me was that they were going after criticism of the Afghan withdrawal as disinformation. For example, do you have any more concrete examples you could share with the audience, just to put this all into perspective, So why should people be afraid? Like, why should we care if the government is regulating disinformation?

Yeah, So to give you guys a brief timeline of these kind of disinformation efforts, it began with twenty sixteen of the Russian active measures campaign. I mentioned in the story Rand Corporation report, which is the most detailed one to date that actually looked at the hard data and said, okay, what practical effect did the Russian propaganda campaign have? And

And there's also an interesting media aspect to this, which is that you know, as you you put, we were actually talking about Crystal and Coyle's wedding.

This is in the budget right like this, this is in the federal budget.

Yeah, this was not a classified I mean I have story based I've had stories based on classified documents and stuff that's not supposed to be public.

This was sitting right there.

Nobody. Yes, that's the other thing.

This was the for Online Influence Center had been debated for years now publicly, and nobody covered.

It, Nobody covered it, nobody's even considering what the potential dangers here are. Can I mean as we watch this behemoth expand we've had Jacob Siegal on the show to talk about the disinformation industrial complex, We've had you on the show, you and Lefong's reporting about the government, it never seems to actually stop anything.

Or am I wrong?

Our lawmakers actually waking up to this fact. Are they looking into what's changing or are they just changing their tactics and rebranding them in different ways.

So the previous story that we had on the that focused on the DHS efforts, particularly the Countering Foreign Influence Office, not to be confused with the Foreign Influenced Task Force of the FBI.

Much overlap.

Do these different entities.

The main effect that it's appeared to have so far, to be completely candid with you, is to cause them to drive it underground and become more secretive and disclose less about it. Because you'll recall the quadirennial Department of Home Security review came out just a week ago, a bear in mind, like six years past the date that they were supposed to release in and I had originally been leaked in my first story a draft copy of

Right, I mean, yeah, go ahead, Emily, Well I was gonna say, I mean, it's just insane that they appoint themselves with these massive powers and then they also they just strip away any semblance of transparency whatsoever.

So it exists, but you have absolutely no idea.

These are multi million dollars. Do we know some of the individuals who are in charge? I mean, we got that. Remember the czar or whatever her name was.

Nina Janko Woods, who, by the way, just sweetheart.

She still has an open invitation. I've invited her many times. Come on the show.

Well away, I've invited her.

I will give her as much time as she wants to speak, Ken. Do we know any of the figures who are involved here.

There's a former senior CIA official who was I think one of the top officials for the analytics section of

Ken fantastic job on the reporting.

We're happy to support some of the work that you're doing with the intercept and all of that, and have you had here on our show. You've always been at the forefront of this and we will continue. So thank you very much, sir, appreciate it. Emily, thank you for being a great coach with me. It was a very ambitious crossover.

Concludes today's edition of Fascists Live.

With y.

Fascist points. I'm sure, I'm sure the haters will call crawl out of the woodwork. It's okay. You know, we we love our haters as much as we love our lovers. I guess is that is that the.

Way you was say it to be clear that I am Regis and you are Kelly.

There, I am give me a. I fully embrace the uh, I fully embrace that role. We love you guys. Thank you very much.

Counterpoints are going to be on tomorrow for a normal show, and I'll be back here with Ryan on Thursday. Much loved to Crystal on her honeymoon. We missed her very much dearly. Thank you all to the Premius describers for our work. We will see you all later