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Speaker 1: Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here and we here at breaking points, are already thinking of ways we can up our game for this critical election.
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Speaker 2: We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade the studio ad staff give you, guys, the best independent coverage that is possible. If you like what we're all about, it just means the absolute world to have your support. But enough with that, let's get to the show. Good morning, everybody, Happy Tuesday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal.
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Speaker 1: Indeed, we do lots of big news breaking here and internationally. It looks like that Ukrainian counter offensive has in fact the gun, so we'll bring you all of those details. Also some pretty stunning details about the way the media has been covering this conflict that we must get into. As well some big developments in terms of twenty twenty four. We've actually got a new content Cornell West, doctor West, is joining the race as a People's Party candidate. We also have some new tea leaves. Looks like Trump may be invited again quite imminently, so we'll tell you about that big story in the UFO world. A whistleblower has come forward alleging that they have actually recovered craft. We've got a guest on to talk about this. Sager is chomping at the bit to dig into this one as well, So, yeah, give you all the details there. We've gotten new charges filed against Finance, largest crypto exchange platform in the world, and some pretty stunning revelations from within there the discovery process, some texts that are pretty damning in terms of their case, and a quite interesting exchange between Senator Tim Scott, who is running for president and the ladies of the View that we want to talk about as well. Before we get to any of that, though, there is a reason why we are doing the show remotely instead of in any studio. Sager, what is that reason?
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Speaker 2: Yeah, The reason is is that, as we've said last time, you guys have to hear about it. We are building that brand new, beautiful set that it's all coming together. It is absolutely stunning for a big debut next week. As a reminder, premium subscribers will get a very first look at the set we be announcing very soon via email. So if you want to become a premium subscriber, it's breakingpoints dot com not only to get a first look, but also to help us with the expense is the largest expense in the history of Breaking Points. It's basically like we bought several cars and houses over there, Crystal. But the reason why, the reason why is because we believe very much in investing in the show, giving everybody the premium and the best experience possible, and making sure that we are absolutely one, ready and set. We've got some great guests already lined up for the first week that I think everybody's going to be really really excited about and honestly kind of shocked once they debut. So I'm pumped, I really am. And yeah, we still got a great show though for everybody here Counterpoints tomorrow and they'll have another show on Thursday, remotely.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, And actually, Sager and I got our first look at the CEO yesterday and it is quite I mean, it is quite stunning.
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Speaker 2: I was blown away.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, totally blown away. It is amazing. I can't believe it's our new home. So can't wait to share it with all of you guys before we jump into the show. Just apologies for my voice struggling with a cold. Actually feel a lot better but sound a bit worse. You know that fad the cold, So bear with me today, my apologies in advance.
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Speaker 2: The brutal summer cold comes for us. All okay, let's go ahead.
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Speaker 1: These kids are killing me. Let me tell you, it's been brutal this whole year.
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Speaker 2: I'm sure all parents can probably sympathize. All right, let's go ahead and get to the Ukraine counter offensive. We'll put this up there on the screen. Indications from the intelligence community leaking to the US media and also from the Russians saying that the Ukrainian counter offensive has begun. Kiev is denying that the counter offensive has begun, but a lot of stuff is being picked up on open source satellite showing some movement across several key areas of the front. The biggest development, however, happened overnight in US time with the Collie aaps of a major dam in southern Ukraine, which has triggered a major emergency. Both Moscow and Kiev are actually blaming each other for the collapse of the dam. So I'm going to go ahead and give everybody here the details. The dam is in the part of southern Ukraine which is actually controlled by Moscow. So the collapse has now triggered floods and is actually now endangering the largest nuclear power plant inside of Ukraine, which is currently under Russian control. Not only that, is actually currently threatening drinking water supplies for both sides of the war as they're currently trying to evacuate residents and are blaming each other. So, as I said, Ukraine is currently accusing the Russian forces of blowing up the Kakova Dam and the hydro electric power station. Russian officials are saying that Ukrainian military strikes in the contested area are the ones that are responsible. Of course, nobody can verify what exactly is going on here, But of really immediate concern is ay all of the people in this area. It's obviously a disaster whenever you are triggering a major flood like this to the downstream, and emergency crews who are having evacuations are rushing to get people out of there. But then finally, is really that nuclear power plant, which you know has been at the center of so much consternation just because of scares of an accident, and especially because you know, everyone here knows I'm pro nuclear, but of course you know it's like whenever a foreign government is going to invade, take it over and then effectively try to weaponize said nuclear power plant, that's when things get a little bit tricky, right, And same would be safe for any other type of energy station. And clearly this is now being contested. It's probably crystal one of those where we will never know who is responsible. But I mean it's a blow obviously to Russia because this is something now that they have to deal with because it's in their territory and also it was in Yeah, it's in territory that they controlled, and now they have to divert resources. But also you know Ukraine, if they do want to recapture their own territory, it's not something that you want it to necessary be devastated. So I'm not even even entirely sure yet about who benefits from this. It's just a humanitarian catastrophe.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, same, And I mean anytime you're talking about targeting civilian infrastructure, this is a disaster, it's honestly a war crime. And this was a hugely important dam in terms of electricity and energy generation within Ukraine. So not only the flooding, not only the concerns about the nuclear plan, but also some you know, real concerns about power generation, which obviously is critical for people's lives as well.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, it's really sad, and you know, actually missiles continue to rain down on Kiev and just absolutely brutal attacks all over civilian infrastructure. Let's go ahead and put this on the screen, Zelenski saying, quote, we are ready for the counter offensive. This comes a month after he gave another interview where he said that the counter offensive was beginning, so you know, don't necessarily take it all to the bank. But anyway, what I.
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Speaker 1: Thought was interesting in this interview too, is he really sort of downplayed expectation for what they would be able to achieve in the counter offensive. He also, you know, sounded some of the notes that he sounded before about On the one hand, he would express a lot of gratitude for the amount of support he's received. On the other hand, he would express a lot of frustration that there wasn't even more flowing to him and more rapidly, which you know, I guess understandable, but he says, I would not want such a country with regards to China to stand by and watch people die. So also still not totally you know, sort of severing the Chinese relationship, being hopeful in some way, or guess holding out some sort of possibility that China could be a good actor here in terms of brokering an eventual peace. But those, to me were the most noteworthy parts of that interview.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, let me read here what he said, quote, we strongly believe we will succeed. However, I don't know how long it will take, and quote to be honest, it can go a variety of ways, completely different. But we are going to do it, and we are ready not sounding the same triumphant note that they did ahead of the offensive last year, although look, I mean the smart thing to do is always to downplay expectation and then to overperform so that you look good. So we have no idea. The General Millie, actually the US top general, yesterday gave an interview where he said that the Ukrainians were quote well prepared, but said he didn't know how he thought it was going to go, also basically sounding the exact same thing. Also the Russians, even though literally the offensive has just started, now say actually we've thwarted it. Don't worry. Let's go ahead and put the stuff there the Defense Ministry put out a statement yesterday saying it has thwarted a major Ukrainian attack in Dnetsk region. And they say that they show military vehicles under heavy fire and claim that they have killed three hundred troops and destroyed sixteen tanks. Something tells me that, you know, just repelling a single attack, if that even happened, isn't exactly repelling the entire offensive. So I have no idea how this one is going to go. This is one of those weight and see moments. And actually another important thing too, which is a story we're going to get to later on. Given media coverage, this story that we're going to talk about later in the show, just can out give the teas away. It's basically, the Ukrainian government is heavy handed, let's just say, in terms of how it treats American journalists who depart from the narrative and report what's going on. Everyone needs to be very, very skeptical of every single thing that you see come out of Ukraine. From the Russian side, from the Ukrainian side, we are being lied to left, right, and center. And it's basically like you have to try and average the three and see maybe that one is directionally, especially in the middle of this conflict. So do not believe a word that the Russians say, and do not believe a word that the Ukrainians say about what's actually going on in the ground. This is truly like a complete wait and see moment about how exactly the actual battle turns out. So we don't know yet. We don't even really have confirmations in terms of maps. I looked for several from some open source intelligence analysts. The best that I have been able to find is just a general consensus that yes, it has begun. We'll see how it works out. Crystal.
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Speaker 1: Yeah. I think that's about all you can and say it at this point.
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Speaker 2: Okay, let's go to the next part here. This one is also a very significant story and also gets to some of the dangers who are involved. Let's go and put this up there on the screen from CNN, leaked to their intelligence community's favorite journalist Natasha Bertrand, Ukraine has cultivated sabotage agents inside of Russia and is giving them drones to stage attacks. Sources say, what you can really read here is they say that Ukraine has cultivated a network of sympathizers and agents inside of Russia working to carry out acts of sabotage against Russian targets, providing them with drones to stage attacks. US officials believe these quote unquote pro Ukrainian agents inside Russia aka intel operatives, carried out the drone attack that targeted the Kremlin earlier in May, and they say that they are not yet quite ready to ascribe the same level of attribution on these residential neighborhood bombing, our drone attack in Moscow and then also on the oil refineries in southern Russia. However, they believe that the development of sabotage shells is made up of quote a mix of pro Ukrainian sympathizers but also operatives well trained in this kind of warfare by the intelligence officials. Also, it's kind of interesting that they get to the exact way that they are doing this. A lot of it is not just ideology, A lot of it is just straight up bribery, it says cash Works Wonders, one of the European intelligence officials who actually has worked in the area, says that it is quote ripe for smuggling, something that Ukrainians have quote been doing for the better part of a decade, and that the Ukrainian intelligence community and others are very adept at I guess, let's just say, using the illicit networks that they are well familiar with. Now, obviously this is these stories only come to light when the CIA and the intelligence community is trying to pull the Ukrainians back, And I think that's why we should always try to remember, all of this is controlled. All of this is controlled opposition. You know, everything about Ukraine, anything even remotely critical about Ukraine is always couched in the nicest possible terms, of which we will show you my personal favorite example in a little bit. This particular one though, is every time that they start bombing the Crimean Bridge, that they start you know, attacking Moscow with drones a couple of times, you know, blowing up the Nord Stream pipeline. That's when the CIA and all of them, the Biden administration too, are put in a very very difficult spot. I also think it is funny because some of the most pro Ukraine people I see are always defending Ukraine's right to attack Moscow, as if that's the argument. It's never it's never somehow able to have the nuance in their heads where someone can say it was a fool. It is completely fine for or countries at war to attack each other and if they, of course, quote unquote have the right to, but the externality effects on so said country's allies are something that those allies should calibrate to whether they're good for their interests or not. I really have no idea how people are incapable of separating those two. Nobody's attacking Ukraine's rights to defend itself, only the level of US support, and then, you know, a level of US responsibilities should should such an attack trigger an actual counterattack, which would be devastating and would escalate the war. And I don't think anyone, including of course the Biden administration and now the CIA clearly who are leaking these stories Crystal, can even dispute that if they supported it, then they would keep their mouth shut. They're only leaking it because they want the Ukrainians to stop and they want to keep making it known to all of them. They're like, hey, yeah, we may not slap you on the wrist, you know, in person, we're also going to make it known in the public, like we didn't have anything to do with this. Because this is also probably a signal to Russia just to be like, hey, guys, like this one's not on us, so you know, just make sure this one is not with our support.
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Speaker 1: Yes, I mean defending yourself targeting your enemy, that's all fair bounds. Targeting residential apartment buildings is another matter. It's not acceptable when Russia does it. It's not acceptable when Ukraine does it. There was, also, of course, in this article tager the typical language about like, well it was probably Ukrainians in Russia, but Vilenski didn't know anything about it. They say, who exactly is controlling these assets is murky. US officials believe elements within Ukraine's intelligence community are involved. Ukrainian President Sala set general parameters for what is intelligent security services are allowed to do. Two of the sources said, but not every operation requires sign off, so again trying to give him a little bit of distance from this operation, which is just every single report, without fail includes a very similar language to this. But they also have some intel here about the way that the US feels about this, at least the way the US wants to tell CNA they feel about it. They say publicly, senior US officials have condemned the strikes inside Russia, warning of the potential for an escalation of the war. Those are the concerns, you know, that we have been sharing and continue to have on speaking privately to CNN, US and Western officials said they believe the cross border attacks are a smart military strategy that could divert Russian resources to protecting its own territory as Ukraine gears up for a major counter offensive. Now, it might be true that this is a smart strategy if you are just looking at it from the Ukrainian perspective of, you know, distracting Russia, forcing them to have to defend their own population and not concentrate all of their resources on the battlefield to thwart this coming counter offensive that appears to now have begun. But what about our interestingness, what about trying to maintain, you know, trying to mitigate any possibility of escalation. The fact that you have US officials signaling this, I mean, that shows you and it kind of proves Russia's point too, that we are tacitly backing and accepting these type of very dangerous and potentially escalatory operations within Russia's borders certainly gives them fodder to feel like, oh, yeah, the US is cool with this. They've given the Ukrainians tasks that approval, and you know, wouldn't be shocked if there's US resources involved here.
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Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, I always just point back to remember the fake story about Russian bounties back in the Trump era, completely fake story, by the way, But when that happened, you had US senators and other US officials saying, Okay, now we need to kill Russians. I mean, look, Russia is the same, They're not all that different from us. Why wouldn't they feel the exact same way. And that was with just TACIT support. So you know, listen, what goes around can come around. And none of this is an endorsement, it's just a reality other people. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. So every action that you take should always be calibrated and done in such a way that we understand exactly what might become in our way. Let's go to the next part here. This is I mean, these next two are something you're not going to hear anywhere else. Friend Ben Smith over at Semaphore doing a deeply reported column revealing some serious problems for free press access inside of Ukraine. Let's put this up there on the screen, inside the high stakes clash for control over Ukraine's story. The top line thing that jumps out to me, Crystal is New York Times reporter Thomas gibbons Neff, who I've actually followed gibbonstph for a long time. I knew him before he even joined the New York Times in the days when we used to cover the Pentagon. He is a former United States Marine who is one of the best reads on combat, the actual reality of combat, that I have ever encountered in almost a decade of reading. You know about these issues in a contemporary manner. Well. He has been banned from Ukraine because he was embedded with the Ukrainian military and drew anger from the government when he correctly reported that the Ukrainians were using banned cluster munitions. The headline that he published at the time was quote to pushback Russians, Ukrainians hit a village with cluster munitions. The New York Times verified Ukraine forces apperitimate buyer at least two of these internationally banned weapons in a neighborhood, putting Ukrainian civilians at extreme risk. This was over a year ago April twentieth of twenty twenty two. Well, guess what, everyone, he had his crevenials revoked as a result of that, and his renewal to go back to Ukraine to tell us all the truth has been denied in multiple separate instances, ultimately only being reissued after they protested significantly. The other was a NBC News broadcast Crystal which is totally nuts, where during this broadcast, a pro Russiani resident of Sevastopol inside of Crimea said, and an anchor inside of it said that her words echoed those of most people that NBC News spoke to in Crimea, AKA, indicating that people who NBC spoke to inside of Crimea while they were embedded there supported Russia. We have a little bit of a taste of this just to show you how they handled it fairly, and then we'll tell you what the reaction from the Ukrainians was. Let's take a listen.
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Speaker 3: Ukraine's president Zelenski told the West, give us more weapons and we'll get back what's ours. But Crimea, where we saw new signs for air raid shelters, has many pro Russian residents who say it's theirs. Is Crimea Russian or Ukrainian is Russian, of course Russian. Seventy three year old pratt Soviet tells me.
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Speaker 2: Well, that did not sit well with the Ukrainian governments. Listen to this. The Ukrainians revoked NBC's cnterentials and then basically confined them to their local Kiev hotel and would not allow them to leave. Not only that, they still defended. They say that NBC's traveled to Crimea was quote a violation of Ukrainian legislation, and we don't want other Western media companies doing the same. If they want to go to Crimea to report, they can go to Crimea through Ukraine, saying currently it is impossible. So they're trying to tell our journalists how to do their jobs. I didn't even point this out. Whenever you go to Ukraine as a journalist, you have to sign a document saying that you will comply at all times with Ukrainian government policies, which was the grounds in which they can find these people to their hotels. I mean, look, everyone I've seen this, so like, oh, well, Britain did this during World War Two against the Nazis. I'm like, well, okay, I mean also, that doesn't make it right. It's like, it's not a justification to say that an authoritarian approach to free press access is bad. It obviously is terrible. In fact, in the middle of conflict is when we need correct information at any time, at more so even than in neural normal times. And then second, there we are are the ones who are bankrolling this entire conflict. We are the ones who underwrite this, their entire ability to exist as a nation. They would collapse literally without us. So maybe our people have the right to know exactly what the hell is going on inside of Ukraine. And this is exactly why I said it earlier. I was like, hey, guys, don't trust anything that's coming out of there. Every you know, I recently on Max Boot from the Washington Post. He's like, I returned from Kiev. Here's what I saw. This is all propaganda. It's like going to North Korea or something like that and saying, oh, everybody in North Korea I spoke to is happy. It's like, okay, so is that reality?
00:21:36
Speaker 1: Yep, that's right. And I think we have Americans tend to have a good understanding of the way that press freedom is severely curtailed with regards to Russia, and so there's a lot of very justified skepticism of what's put out from Russian journalists, Russian media outlets, et cetera. That's all filtered through a lens of skepticism. As it should be really important people understand very similar limits on press freedom and tightly controlled access, tightly controlled narrative shaping, and also a lot of retribution if you dare step out of bounds of what the Ukrainians want to present in this coore. So this is just a reminder you really need to take everything that is being reported out of this, whether it's from a Russian outlet, a Ukrainian outlet, or a Western outlet with a million grains of salt, and the incredibly skeptical of the narratives that are being pushed out there. You know, as I was reading this, Zagur, remember that early report that came out talking about where the weapons that we were shipping and where the resource aware sent where that was actually going, raising a lot of concerns about the end of viligage track exactly what's happening here. Good report, interesting report, something that is a vital interest to American people. Who are funding, you know, these shipments of weapons over and over again, and that thing got pulled down and they put on this statement saying, oh, you know, things have changed on the ground and we'll do a different report in future maybe. And you know, that was the last we heard of it. I wonder what the reaction was from those Lenski government. I wonder what was going on specifically behind the scenes now that we know some of these details. But this is the reason why all of the narratives that come out about this or follow the same very simplistic, very sort of disneyfied good versus Evil script. It's because if you even dare step out of bounds enough to go to Crimea and talk to a few citizens on the ground and just relay what they say, you get hit, You get smacked, and you will never get that access again.
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Speaker 2: Yeah. And you know, speaking of Thomas Gibbons snaff, he actually wrote a decent story, but I can clearly see the heavy hand of the editors. Let's go and put it up there on the screen headline Nazi symbols on Ukraine's front lines highlight authority issues of history. This, guys, we're not joking, is literally both siding Nazism. They say the decision by some Ukrainian soldiers who wear patches with Nazi icons threatens to reinforce Russian propaganda used to justify the invasion. It could also give symbols mainstream life after the West decades long efforts to eliminate them, and effectively, what they try and do here Crystal is say, yeah, there are battalions inside of Ukraine which are basically far right Nazis and that, you know, venerate Nazi ideology. Now, let's be very clear so that this doesn't get clipped in some ridiculous context. Nobody is saying that Zelenski is a Nazi, or that the Ukrainian government are Nazis, or that the vast majority of the Ukrainian military are Nazis. However, it is factually correct that there are some people who are neo Nazis who are in the Ukrainian military, which is used as a pretext by Russia to invade Ukraine. That does not make it okay to invade Ukraine, but it is just simply a fact that these battalions and exist inside of the Ukrainian government. And what they try to do in this story is basically say, yeah, it's true, there are a couple of uh, you know, militias and all these, but it's complicated. You know, they're not technically real Nazis or you know the actually it's justified Russian propaganda. I mean, it's it truly is stunning that it's stunning that they are trying to both side it and not. You know, it's like, if you're going to report on it, it just tell the truth. There are yeah, battalians and militia members inside. You can attach the Ukrainian military funded by the US government who are Nazis. You can be okay with that or not. Many people are okay with that. But the problem is is that many people don't even know about it.
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Speaker 1: That's that's okay. So there's a lot of layers of issues with this article. Number one. The issue they point to with this isn't that US taxpayers are funding some amount of Nazis in Ukraine. That's not their takeaway, which seems like a pretty obvious takeaway and something we should all be thinking about and concerned about. The leads weighing into these decisions. Their takeaway is that the presence of these symbols might give Russia a talking point. That's their concern. Okay, so that's number one, number two in terms of the both sides in Nazism. I loved this line here. Questions over how to interpret such symbols are as devices, as they are persistent, not just in Ukraine and the American South. Some of them insisted that today the Confederate flag symbolizes pride, not a history of racism and successions. Let me just pause you there. Can you imagine New York Times saying that about the Confederate Flag in any other circumstance. Never then they go on to say, I love this. The swastika was an important Hindu symbol before it was co opted by the Nazis.
00:26:32
Speaker 2: That's true.
00:26:32
Speaker 1: Now do you think the Ukrainians that are wearing this in the Azon battalion are doing it out of respect for Hindu peace traditions? Like this is absurd. And by the way, the symbology that I'm no expert in like Nazi symbology. But what they're using here is like, you know, some insignia that was associated was like the worst of the Nazis that were guarding concentration camps and stuff, and they're trying to wave this away as like, well, maybe it's about the Hindu part of Nasi of the swastika, not the Nazi parts, like okay, y'all. They also go through a long, you know, diatribe about the history of the Nazi invasion of Ukraine and and this is factual that initially people viewed them as potential liberators because because they suffered under you know, some of the totalitarianism in the Soviet Union. But then they had to go ahead and throw a line which is also true that they then helped the Nazis some Ukrainians and you know, were also complicit in atrocities that were created there. It's like, what part of this justifies and makes it okay for you to be wearing Nazi imagery at this point? What part of it separates you from that you know, horrific tradition history, And so it's really quite an astonishing article to reach a mostertality, like they have to acknowledge the reality that this is happening in some significant level, but the layers of justification cope that they go through to make it like, yeah, it's Nazism, but it's really not that bad. It's okay, is pretty incredible.
00:28:06
Speaker 2: You know, some Americans just have the most naive view of history. This is my immigrant speaking, because it's just like they really believe that history began in like nineteen ninety one or whatever, whenever Ukraine became a country, as you just pointed to, Yeah, guess what. And look, I mean you can somewhat understand it. You know why they supported the Nazis when they invaded because they hated Stalin and they literally had a famine. It was terrible. So I'm like, yeah, intellectually I can get that. Also, it's not like they it's not like they love them the entire time. Basically, after the Nazis started hanging them, then they started fighting back against everybody and they wanted independence, which is you know, okay, a noble I guess idea. But also, yeah, look, there's a deep history of anti Semitism and of anti Jewish sentiment in the region well predating Nazism. Many American Jews whose families came here came in the late nineteen hundred or in the early nineteen hundreds after horrific pogroms, specifically in Ukraine and in that region. I know many actually families who are descendants of that time. None of it is to denigrate the Ukrainian regime or say that they currently you know, hold those ideas, only to say history is complicated. These areas of the world are not, you know, it's not not. The whole world is America, and most people in this country are frankly so terribly traveled, badly read, or just have like naive ideas that they have no idea how the rest of how the old world really does conduct itself and thinks in terms of generations and not just in terms of you know, like whatever what happened last week. It's a very American idea, to be honest.
00:29:40
Speaker 1: Well it's also like, okay, so in the beginning, when you're starving because of Stalin, you know, you can understand reading the Nazis as liberators. Sure, but you are no longer starving under the thumb of Stalin. Now you have the benefit of history to know what a horror and an atrocity this was. So I don't know that that original view of what was going on there really justifies the continued embrace of Nazi symbols and ideology. So yeah, again, I cannot imagine New York Times writing many of these phrases in any other context and trying to both sides Nazism or trying to say, you know, Confederate flag like it's complicated, We get it. So it was pretty wild to see. And then that the takeaway is it, Hey, guys, maybe you know, we should consider the fact that we are not arming some number of Nazis. Again, not everybody, not even the majority, not the overwhelming, that's nothing like that. But some number of Nazis we are arming. That's not the takeaway from the article.
00:30:43
Speaker 2: Pretty incredible, absolutely well said.
00:30:48
Speaker 1: So let's get to what is going on with twenty twenty four. We'll start with Donald Trump here. So we've got some new revelations from a CNN reportedly about what is causing a lot of a skepticism of them, making it more likely that he is going to be indicted with regard to the classified document situation. Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen. This is pretty wild. So apparently, as part of the investigation process, the Department of Justice had originally subpoened some surveillance footage and you know that was turned over and then in October they asked for additional surveillance footage. Oh right, at that similar time in October, just so happened, the mar A Lago pool was drained, it caused a flood into the room where the surveillance footage happened to be kept, and they were then unable to turn over that amount of surveillance footage again, according to the CNN report. Furthermore, the maintenance worker who was charged with draining the pool that ultimately causes the flood is the same person who is seen in other videos moving some of the boxes around at the time per where they're also being asked to turnover documents, and they see on the surveillance cameras that boxes are sort of suspiciously being moved around. Furthermore, they also have apparently thought or received heard some testibony that the relevant IT equipment was not even actually damaged in the flood. So they don't come out and say this, but basically the allegation is they use this flood to pretend like they damage the surveillance footage so they wouldn't have to turn it over to the Justice Department. And you know, it's part of an alleged cover up in this case. So the details here are pretty wild. I mean, it's like something out of a movie. Again, this is allegations, it's not confirmed, but it gives you some context and some background of why they might be moving swiftly here towards an indictment.
00:32:48
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I also know that the special Counsel, Jack Smith, actually met yesterday with Trump's attorneys about nearing the decision to possibly go ahead and charge him. So so, I mean, I think it's one of those where we genuinely have no idea how this is going to play out, just because you have the political aspect of play. You of course have President Biden, who literally got caught also with the classified documents at his residence. Then you also have the added you know, wrinkle I guess of Trump, the charges they're zeroing in or not possession, but of obstruction. Then they have to prove the obstruction in terms of his legal team violating the confidentiality with his lawyers, and now with the surveillance they say that they have. Now I also heard reporting about a tape, you know, in which Trump acknowledged that he had classified documents in his possession while he's doing a book interview sometime in twenty twenty one with Mark meadows, this is about Iran. So anyway, I am one of those where this smells so much like Mueller to me. But also look on the merits. You know, in terms of the leaks that are coming out like oh, they met with this and they oh the Special Counsel is zeroing in on this. But you know, every lawyer and legal expert that we have spoken to Crystal just said, look on the merits the obstruction charge. You know, this is a disaster for him, just because it's one of those where it's really as long as they have like a decent amount of evidence to bring a charging document against it or charging case against him on this, then you know, all they have to prove that, all they have to prove to the jury is he took an effort to try and obstruct the government from obtaining these documents, of which you know, if they have a tape, and if they can prevent circumstantial evidence on this, then you know, on its merits, this may not be that difficult to prove to the jury. The only thing that really would save him is the political consideration about charging a former president. But also you can see this and say that well a former president, you know, he was charged in New York, and it's not like it all it changed really things all that much politically. In fact, it only helped Trump. This one might be different because of the Biden administration. Of course, I'm not downplaying it. It's still extraordinary whenever it does happen, but just that maybe that influenced our calculus. Really don't know.
00:34:57
Speaker 1: Yeah, So if the emerging reports are accurate, you have the tape you're referring to, which would undercut his defense that basically like, well, I declassified all these documents when I was president, so I could do whatever I want with them. Allegedly, in this tape he seems to indicate like, hey, I got these classified documents and I didn't declassify them, So it undercuts that defense of these were all declassified. You also have a complicating factor there too, which is that the document that he's referring to in that tape apparently they have been unable to find and it was very sensitive with regard to a potential attack on Iran. So there's that piece. Then, in terms of potential obstruction and a cover up, you've cut this wild story about the pool draining situation flooding the room you know, maybe it really was an accident, maybe it wasn't an accident. But the when when you add that to the footage they have of guys moving boxes around, and potentially even Trump himself moving boxes that contain this sensitive material around, then you start to have a pretty damning set of back. So that's the way that that is all shaping up at this point in terms of the time and good and put this up on the screen. As you mentioned, Sager, some of Trump's attorneys did meet with the Special Counsel at the Justice Department on Monday. This was seen as very significant because also the grand jury that had been impaneled, they had been not been meeting for a month. Now they are starting to meet again this week. There is some speculation I have no idea whether this is founded or not, that potentially that means they're wrapping things up, and the fact that the Trump's lawyers are meeting with the Department of Justice is another indication that they are coming close to an indictment. You also have Trump, remember before he was indicted in the other case in New York, he started raging on truth social and talking about like I'm going to be indicted imminently, etc. He sort of started to do that again with regard to this case and saying how unfair it is that he would be indicted and not Biden or not other presidents, et cetera. So I also take that as another potential sign that you could be getting close to an indictment here. Now in terms of the politics of all of this, with regard to the Republican primary, I hate to say it, I think is only good for Trump. You've had a little bit of a media moment now with Ron de Santis launching, You've got a bunch of other presidential contenders launching this week, where there's been some focus that's not just on Donald Trump in terms of the Republican primary. The minute that you get back into another indictment and all the details and whatever comes down, whatever that process is going to be, then all eyes and all media focus is right back on Donald Trump, and in terms of a Republican primary electorate, that is only to his benefit.
00:37:38
Speaker 2: Yeah, I absolutely agree with you, chrystol.
00:37:42
Speaker 1: So. At the same time, we have a new contender in the twenty twenty four race, not a Democrat or Republican, doctor Cornell West, Progressive activist, someone who was a surrogate for Bernie Sanders, someone who I personally deeply respected. Meyer, who we've interviewed before, I think multiple times. He is announced he is running for president as a People's Party candidate. Let's take a listen to a little bit of his announcement video.
00:38:11
Speaker 4: In these bleak times, I have decided to run for truth and justice, which takes the form of running for President of the United States as a candidate for the People's Party. I enter in the quest for truth, I enter in the quest for justice, and the presidency is just one vehicle to pursue that truth and justice what I've been trying to do all of my life. I come from a tradition where I care about you. I care about the quality of your life. I care about whether you have assets to a job with a living wage, decent housing, women having control over their bodies, health care for all the escalating, the destruction of the planet, the destruction of American democracy. Democracy creates disruption, It creates an eruption, It creates an interruption. Why from below the energies of everyday people as manifests And I know there are precious people in your life who you care for. That's why it's important for you to be involved, important for you to participate. Not talking about hating anybody. We're talking about loving, We're talking about affirming, We're talking about empowering those who have.
00:39:44
Speaker 5: Been pushed to the margins.
00:39:47
Speaker 4: Because neither political party wants to tell the truth about Wall Street, about Ukraine, about the Pentagon, about big tech, neo fascist like brother Trump or Milto's ne liberals like Brother Biden. Wow, well, I'm so happy to make a world shaking decision.
00:40:06
Speaker 6: You know what I mean?
00:40:08
Speaker 4: I know gangsters when I see it, and Gangster's not a subjective expression, It's an objective condition. Do we have what it takes? We shall see. But some of us are going to go down fighting, go down swinging with style and a smile, accenting the best in you and trying to tease out the best in me.
00:40:38
Speaker 5: Let's do it together. Wow.
00:40:41
Speaker 1: I think it's a great video. Yeah. And doctor West, I mean, he's an incredible force in American public life, someone I deeply admire and respect, A brave to truth teller. I don't think anyone could take that away from him. And I just love his energy. He's always brought of reaching out to people who may disagree with him, but never never compromising his values in any way. However, the choice of running in this way with the People's Party is it's just confusing to me, you know, if you're going to run third party. The Green Party has ballot access in almost every state. They obviously were able to have an impact in getting more traction in twenty sixteen when doctor Jill Stein ran the People's Party from what is public of publicly available only has ballot access in three states. They've been around since roughly twenty sixteen. Is they've never been able to elect a president, so effectively, you're signing up for what is really like a write in campaign. You know, I also have questions about how much your success you're able to garner as a third party candidate, just given the structure of American politics, the fact we have first past the post voting, the fact we don't have ranked choice voting. So I'm sort of confused about what the thinking is tactically here, because if you were going to go to the third party route, there seem to be other vehicles. And also, frankly, you know just sort of tried the let's have an impact or a third party run thing in twenty sixteen, so you kind of know with a third party like you're not gonna win just because of the overall structure of American politics. But if your theory of changes, all right, this is going to put pressure on Biden the Democrats to move more left and represent more of our values. Well that was tried in twenty sixteen, and rather than putting pressure on them to move left, what it actually caused them to do was to further smear and dismiss leftists and anyone whoever said even a single kind word about doctor Jill Side, to redouble their efforts to crush any sort of leftist insurgencies, to smear everyone as like you know, Putin's puppets, then fascist sympathizers, et cetera. And just as a tactic it wasn't successful. So that's sort of my take. I love doctor West, doesn't take anything away from my respect for him, but as a tactic, I'm quite confused by it.
00:42:57
Speaker 2: It could be he just wants media attention, he wants to try and move the race, you know, in that way, in that way, I mean, listen, maybe it's It could also be a way in order to garner funding for the People's Party in order to get them on more ballid access, to try and get the initiatives in order to you know, set them up for future success. That's I think that's, you know, one way to look at it. I mean I think that really, you know, in fact, that's probably the most likely scenario, which is giving you such a well respected figure and is well known media wise, gaining enough attention both in the media forced to cover his run, but also to gain enough money and in volunteers, then they could go out and to try and get more ballid access so they could become maybe the next Green Party in the future, you know, overall. I mean, look, I think people often confuse you know, political reality for for like a judgment like I have no issues with third parties. It's always more I just come down to, like, is this a real effort that's actually going to work? And that is why, right, I mean, honestly, that's why I respect what RFK do you and Marianne are doing because they're running is democrats, and especially with RFK, I mean RFK Junior is basically running you know, on the same policy platform as people who were Green for decades but he I think correctly intuited that if I run as a Democrat, that this forces a genuine contrast with Biden Mary Anne doing the exact same thing as well, even though though both easily could be third party candidates. It almost gives them, I don't want to say legitimacy, but it gives them a more contestable ground also, you know, the same with many other even Look, I don't think Liz Cheney could ever win, but there's a reason she's not running third party. She's like, no, I'm a Republican because she wants to try and quote take back the Republican Party. Again. I don't agree with her. I don't think she will be successful, but working within the same construct gives like a gives a ground to contest on which the opponent has to fight, whereas unfortunately, in our current system, they're able to just write you off, which is what most people are going to do, you know with this, which I don't think is right. You know, if he had run as a Democrat. But you know, here's the other thing. Maybe he just doesn't believe in the Democratic Party. Nothing wrong with that, you know, It's okay, that's that's yeah.
00:45:12
Speaker 1: Absolutely that's fine, and I do think there are potential twenty sixteen levels of third party support, level of interest within the American electric. You have a huge number of Americans who are disgusted with the idea that they're going to have to pick again between Biden and Trump, sentiment that I deeply relate to. Right, So there, it's not like there's not an opening for people for a third party candidate to get some chunk of the vote. Is that going to be a winning percentage? No, it's not going to be just simply because of the structure of American politics. And we've seen the way that this is played up. I mean Bernie Sanders, there were problems with this campaign. He was you know, was ricked against him. He wasn't able to get across the finish line. He came out of a lot closer than Jill Stein did, for example. So you know, in terms of if you actually want to win the state of American politics, the structure of the system is such that you have to compete in one of the two main parties if you want to push Biden to the left. If that's your goal, I think we have sort of run the playbook and run the experiment before, and there's been more success, not that this worked on amazingly, but there's been more success pressuring him within the context of a Democratic primary, where, for example, Joe Biden did not want to cancel any student loan dead right, very clear. He would not have taken a position in that he wouldn't have felt pressure to do any of it in his administration had he not been on a stage with Canada's like Bernie Sanders that were pushing the issue and forced him to have to take that stance. And then you know, once he's in office, he's sort of shamed into sticking with the very clear commitments that he made. So if your goal is not to win but to push him left, I think we've also seen more effective tactics. And then I also have to say, like I'm not trying to be mean here, but the People's Party has been in shambles. It's been in disarray, it's been ripe with controversy. Their board members have been resigned left and right. There's allegations of sexual harassment and self feeling and all the rest of it. So it's just again it's hard for me to understand what the goal is or what the tactics are. And that's disappointing to me because I do have so much respect for doctor West. I would love for him to have a huge impact on American political discourse and you know, the direction of the country, because I do think he's such a powerful voice, and it's hard for me to see how this maximizes his chances to have the greatest impact on American political life.
00:47:30
Speaker 2: Maybe I'll turn it around. Who knows, you know, it'd be never know, you never know.
00:47:35
Speaker 1: Yeah, Ok, let's go Karen for him always.
00:47:38
Speaker 2: Of course, all right, let's go to the next part here, UFO's I've been dying to get into this one ever since the story came out yesterday. I want to really spend some time and go through this thing to help people understand. So, guys, let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. I'm going to break down I think the most relevant and the most important parts. The headline here is the intelligence officials say that the US has retrieved craft of non human origin. Now, first of all, that is a massive headline, but I also want to draw everyone's attention to the byline here, Leslie Keene and Ralph Blumenthal. Now for those who are not as initiated as I am. One of the reasons why these two journalists are absolutely unimpeachable on this topic is that they were the ones who brought the world the twenty seventeen New York Times article that actually revealed the existence of the UFO program inside of the Pentagon, and of course gave us those videos which are now so many Americans have seen the go Fast video, the tic TAC video, and others, and they really opened up the space for respectability and acknowledgment by Pentagon officials and others that this is a real phenomenon, and really they ignited the congressional interests enough to try and get some information about the program. Okay, so that's kind of the starting point the headline, and also who these reporters are, and let's get into the content. So here is what they are saying is that a former US intelligence official who is now turned whistleblower under the official whistleblower process, is giving Congress and the Intelligence Community Inspector General extensive classified information about deeply covert programs that he says possesses retrieve intact and partially intact craft of non human origin. This information he says, has been illegally withheld from Congress, and he has now filed a complaint through the program alleging that he suffered illegal retaliation for the confidential disclosures reported here in the debrief. This whistleblower, David Grusch, thirty six years old, a decorated former combat officer in Afghanistan. He's a veteran of the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency the National Reconnaissance Office. He apparently was one of the people who would help compile the Presidential Daily Brief. As I understand, he was given over seven hours of interviews to Newsmax which are airing recently about the documentary that has been working with some great UFO researchers who have been long in this topic. And I want to sorry NewsNation. I apologize NewsNation is too many startup cable things out there. Here is what is very important. David grush says that the recoveries of partial fragments of craft through and up to fully intact vehicles have been made for decades through the present day by the government, its allies, and defense contractors. Furthermore, he has told Congress in sworn testimony of the existence of decades long, quote publicly unknown Cold War for recovered and exploited physical material, competition with near peer adversary over years to identify UFO crashes and landings and retrieve the material for exploitation and reverse engine nearing to garner asymmetric national defense advantages. Here's the other thing I think everyone needs to understand. David Grush not only is a patriot, not only is somebody who was tasked actually with assignment to the UFO program to go in to discover all of these secret programs, which he then says were illegally withheld from Congress, which is why he's coming out. That's how he got his hands really on some of these files and became known to the existence of these seek apartmentalized black highly secret black programs as they are known but crystal. He is testifying to all of this under oath he has signed under penalty of perjury, that he is telling the truth not only to Congress but to all of us through this official whistleblower process. And he has felt so strongly about bringing this information to the light that he has actually left the government, says simply so he can bring all of the US public. This information. Not only that. Not only that, but what I think people really need to understand is that not only is this being done through the official whistleblower process, but that the actual Inspector General, the Intelligence Inspector General to whom he submitted his complaint in July of twenty twenty two, found his complaint quote credible and urgent in an official US government document. So this is not a crank. This is somebody who was attached to the program, had knowledge of the program. He was actually tasked with going and discovering all these secret compartmentalized ones, delivering the reports to his authorities, who would then go and give him to Congress. He's coming forward because he says that they have been illegally withheld the existence of these programs. Actually from Congress. He submitted these documents through the internal process. The Inspector General of the US intelligence community itself finds David Grush both credible and urgent. And I mean the allegation here is the most stunning allegation of all the existence of craft and the posision of the United States government of other foreign governments of craft and parts of craft of non human origin. I listened to a breakdown of seven hours of the interviews that he gave. Apparently it's also referred to quote in the plurality non human intelligences, non human intelligences in terms of the types of craft that are are within the possession of the government. And finally, you know, the last thing I'll say before I shut up and get your reaction is this implicates massive crimes across the US government. First and foremost, the current head of the UFO Task Force just told Congress there is no existence of craft or program that we know of. This says that he's a liar. He actually purjured himself before Congress. Second, and then the second which is so important also to understand, is Crush is saying that there has been a decades long crime and also even collusion between the US government and aerospace defense companies outside of normal processes to cover this up from the US public, for presidents, from Congress, and now basically you know, for years and years, and from what I understand, he's alleging crimes of such tremendous like weight that many of the people, if they're even still alive or you know, if this ever does fully come to light, they would go to jail if the actual accountability happens in this process. So, I mean, look, in some ways is the most important story in the world. Like, this guy's one of the most credible people probably in the UFO world to come forward is David Fraber in the twenty seventeen article and is literally saying that the government has the possession of alien or you know, non human spacecraft.
00:54:45
Speaker 1: It's incredible, It's absolutely stunning, And just to underscore what you're saying, keep in mind, this man is risking his freedom and potentially his life in order to come forward and make these claims through a fish whistle blower processes. So it is a stunning revelation. Let me play the skeptic here for a moment's soccer.
00:55:06
Speaker 2: Sure, So, what he's.
00:55:08
Speaker 1: Alleging is that there was not only a whole of government within the United States cover up, but there was a global cover up, that there were multiple countries that were competing to obtain these crafts because of obviously like the scientific discoveries and military defense advances that you can make from reverse engineering this type of alien technology. Is it far faest to believe that everybody over all of these many decades kept their mouths shut and that this information never became public previously.
00:55:43
Speaker 2: Listen. I mean that's what everybody always says, and I think it's a fair point. But then JFK clearly was killed by somebody. We still don't know who it was, or at least officially. It's been decades, right, you would think it's one of the biggest stories in the world, and yet the official narrative is not out there, only questions. Or let's think about some other big ones. I mean the JFK assassination that we had even with the UFOs, I mean Roswell. The government has already admitted that they lied on Roswell and that was you know, nineteen forty seven, and yet we still don't know the truth about what happened there. So I think what is Oh, Charlie Manson is another one that we can think of the Manson murders. If you read the book Chaos by Tom O'Neil, it is very obvious that this is a CIA US government operation gone terribly wrong in which they effectively created Manson may have even been connected to Jack Ruby. Well, you know, Tom O'Neil, decades after the crime, is still unable to get these guys to talk, and he comes as close as he possibly can to proving that the official story was complete. But yes, so, on the one hand, you know, common sense would say, yeah, you're probably right, but we have enough proven examples to show that if you keep the circle small enough and if you really work the system, that you could keep enough questions out of the public consciousness to make the propaganda flourish. And here's another such an important part of the story, Crystal. They brought Leslie Keane and Rob Blumenthal. Block brought this story to the New York Times, to Politico, to The Hill, to the Washington Post. Every single one of them passed on it. And wow, look read the story. It's rock solid as a story as it's it is unimpeachable. The only reason that the mainstream media and others wouldn't do this is because somebody in the Pentagon threatened to retaliate. Is they threatened to say, we're gonna go like, if you run this, we're gonna you're gonna burn some of your sources. I mean, they are trying to relegate this to the fringes of the internet, you know, you know, crackpots like me and others, to the ones who we're talking about it because they don't want it to enter the public consciousness. There is no question that this is a credible allegation, and yet I have not seen a single single in stream of journalists take this up. And by the way, I've talked to here previously, I was a former Pentagon correspondent. I've sent this to multiple form Pentagon course current Pentagon correspondents, and please please ask them about this. I'm already looking into ways like maybe I can, you know, try and you know, try and get some answers as well. I'm trying my best, you know, but I'm not within the system as much as I was at some point. Until people start pushing not only their representatives but also the press for answers, They're going to try and squash this as much as they can, because on its face, we have a credible allegation here that the current head of the UFO program lied to Congress no ifans or butts, and then not only that, but the sworn testimony and all of the documenting evidence about how credible this man is about you have former Army colonels and others from the intel community coming out openly saying that he is unimpeachable. That you can absolutely take into bank. You know, everything he's been saying. He was vetted for over fifteen months by these journalists and others who were involved with this. So just wow, I mean wow, it really, like I said, if it's true, it's the biggest story of the world.
00:59:09
Speaker 1: I mean it just see it seems so wild that it's hard to wrap your head around. I mean, just to be candid, what do you think happens next saga? Like, what's the next part in the process, And did he decide to come forward now because it seemed like he may have some actual allies in Congress.
00:59:25
Speaker 2: It's certainly possible. That's something Actually we can speak with our next guest, Ryan Graves, about one of the pilots who actually has come forward about these not only this specific allegation, but just about his own encounters up in the air for years while he was in the United States Navy. I believe he is coming forward because of people like Christin gillibrand, of Marco Rubio, of Timbert, you know, several other members of Congress who are they've had enough, they've had enough of the lies from the intelligence community, and they want to hear the truth and you know this, this could give them the ability to get to it now. Personally, I do not underestimate the CIA, the US government, or these black programs. They didn't keep stuff secret for seventy five years by no accident, and so this is only the beginning. I think it could be a tipping point. It really could into disclosures and exposure of the future. But I don't think that. I don't think that things are going to necessarily change overnight. There's still a lot of work that has to be done.
01:00:24
Speaker 1: Not going to be an easy road.
01:00:26
Speaker 5: Nope.
01:00:26
Speaker 2: All right, we got a great guest standing by Ryan Graves. As I mentioned, let's get to it. Joining us now is Ryan Graves. He's the executive director and founder of Americans for Safe Aerospace, friend of the show, and he's got a great podcast. He's also a former pilot as well, who's given us some interesting revelations around the UFO phenomenon. Ryan, it's great to have you back on the show. Thanks for joining us.
01:00:46
Speaker 7: I'm happy to be here.
01:00:47
Speaker 5: Thank you.
01:00:48
Speaker 2: Ryan. First and foremost, we just did a whole segment here on the show about the latest revelations about the whistleblower who has come forward and says the US government is in possession of intact of non human origin. I just want to get your reaction to that as somebody who's personally had experiences with the phenomenon.
01:01:07
Speaker 7: Yeah, I know how hard it is firsthand coming forward and talking about this publicly, both the professional and personal risk that I can entail. So I applaud David for coming forward and the courage that he's demonstrated. These are the exact type of people that Congress was hoping would be able to step forward once they passed their legislation that would enable the whistleblower protections.
01:01:30
Speaker 2: Yeah, and Ryan, you're one of those people who was courageous in coming forward. Could you just describe why it is so difficult for people like you the pushback that you receive internally to coming out and telling Americans the truth.
01:01:43
Speaker 7: Well, I think we're all familiar with it to some degree, that stigma that comes with this topic, and once you really commit yourself to looking into this and investigating it, of course there are potential professional or personal ramifications from them. I haven't personally seen those been a positive experience for me, but traditionally that has been the experience. Now that we have protections in Congress, and now that this has been matured as a conversation within media, I expect to see more and more people step forward in the near future.
01:02:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, and so Ryan, this kind of fits with what you're here to talk about today, which is very serendipitous. We'd booked you long before about the Americans for Safe Aerospace. What are you trying to do through your experience and through this new organization.
01:02:28
Speaker 7: Exactly so, Americans for Safe Aerospace was found to help support people just like David and other aerospace workers that are impacted by this. Primarily, we're focusing on building a safe place for pilots and other aerospace workers to be able to share their experiences to talk about this. We're going to leverage those experiences to be able to provide general education to the public, but also to Congress as well. We want to destigmatize this conversation. We want to lead with the credible voices that have come forward, and we've put together a great advice board that we're going to be able to use to recommend policy legislation and advance the growing caucus of UAP support within Congress.
01:03:09
Speaker 2: See. This is why I think it's very important is you're spocusing specifically. Also, what David has been trying to do is get Congress to do its job. Can you explain this is something I've been trying to do as well, the role that Congress and why it really is one of the only organizations here that can, you know, destigmatize, declassify, and make transparent what has been happening within the government. Why can't just a normal person or you know, why can't the press necessarily get its hands on what it needs to do here?
01:03:37
Speaker 7: Well, certainly Congress, you know, has the ability, has the oversight ability on certain branches, and within the Department of Defense that's no different. They have a mandate not only to represent us as our representatives, but also to perform those oversight roles. And what we're seeing now through the National Defense Authorization Act of twenty twenty three and potentially with a future legislation in twenty four, we're going to see continued oversight of these programs. And that's really at the core of what is potentially the wrongdoing here is that these programs have been withheld although they were utilizing public funds in order to execute they were not being properly reported to Congress and thus our representatives, and so we're essentially cut out of that conversation.
01:04:20
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so Ran, I mean, here's what I really want you to be able to speak to is through the organization and the general public. What power do we have the listeners of the show, the general public, what do we what role can we play in helping you and helping David and helping so many others trying to get information out to back to all of us, because really, you know, the government's supposed to belong to us.
01:04:43
Speaker 7: One of the best things you can do right now is to join us at safferospace dot org. The more members we have, we're going to be able to take that message and we're going to be able to speak to that on Capitol Hill and show that your constituents care about this. This is a winner, This is an issue that people care about, and they're going to take that message and they're going to be able to continue to apply that pressure, continue to apply that oversight with the support of their voters. And that's what we want to make clear. We want to bridge that gap to show that support exists.
01:05:12
Speaker 5: So by just the.
01:05:13
Speaker 7: General public joining, raising your hand and saying you care about this topic. That's where you can start.
01:05:20
Speaker 2: Excellent. Well, we'll have a link to that in description. We appreciate so much of the work that you are doing here. It's very you know, it's always an honor to talk to you here. Welcome back on the show anytime to talk about this issue. And if you ever need help, you know in Washington, d C. I'm here, I'm ready, willing and able to appear with you. Let's do it, all right, man, thank you so much for joining us. We appreciate it, all right, pleasure.
01:05:42
Speaker 1: So, the SEC has filed thirteen new charges against Finance, the largest crypto trading exchange platform in the entire world. This comes on top of charges that had been filed against them with the CFTC. So let's go ahead and break down what we've got here. This is from the SEC announcement. They say they filed thirteen charges against Finance entities and the founder here, Shengpeng Chau, who is known as the z. Charges include operating unregistered exchanges, broker dealers and clearing agencies, misrepresenting trading controls and oversight on the binance dot us platform, and the unregistered offer and sale of securities. I'm going to read a little bit more of this, but just as background, recall that Finance has been presenting themselves as they don't have any US customers, they don't appeal to US customers, they did not want to have to deal with the US regulatory regime. They have gone through and CZ specifically has gone through great lengths to make it so that the company is really like headquartered nowhere, so that they can be subject to the laws of effectively no jurisdiction. And so what the US is saying here in part is we see through your game. Clearly you are offering securities. You're violating a whole host of our laws. And it's very clear cut that you know you are doing this and you have knowledge of the way that you are violating our own laws. So let me read you a little bit about some of the charges here saga. They say, through thirteen charges, we allege that CZ and Finance entities engage in an extensive web of deception, conflicts of interest, lack of disclosure, and calculated evasion of the law. This is per sec Chair Gary Gensler as alleged CZ and Finance misled investors about their risk controls, and corrupted trading volumes, while actively concealing who was actually operating the platform, the manipulative trading of its affiliated market maker and even ware, and with whom investor funds and crypto assets were custody. They attempted to evade US securities laws by announcing sham controls that they disregarded behind the scenes so they could keep high value US customers on their platforms. The public should beware of investing any of their hard earned assets with or on these unlawful platforms. They go on to say, we allege that and the Binance entities not only knew the roles rules of the road, they also consciously chose to evade them and put their customers and investors at risk, all in an effort to maximize their own profits. And just to give you a sense of how raisin this was, some of the messages that were exchanged among finance executives make it pretty clear that they knew they were violating the law and they brazenly did it anyway. Go ahead and put this next piece up on the screen. From Matt Stoler, so Binance's chief compliance officer in twenty eighteen said and I quote, we are operating as an effing unlicensed security exchange in the USA. Bro so pretty hard to deny that they knew what they were doing, that they knew it was illegal, and that they you know, this has been coming for a while, but some of the extent of the charges here soagar are still stunning because it's not just them operating as an effing unlicensed security exchange in the USA, but also lying to investors also pretending that they had these controls in place that they didn't really have. And this fits with some of what was revealed in the previous set of charges, where they were going so far as to while they're pretending that they don't have US customers on their exchange, they were coaching US citizens on how they could evade detection as being US citizens so that they could continue doing business on the platform. So, I mean, it all appears to be incredibly brazen.
01:09:31
Speaker 2: That's the real disaster for them because they specifically say this is the US tie in that they were working to subvert their own internal controls to allow high net worth of Americans and customers to continue to trade on their unregulated international exchange. Their compliance officer has that famous quote where they're saying they're working the unlicensed securities exchange in the US and that they saw their finance as a shield to reveal, retard, and resolve law enforcement targets and to insulate Binance itself. So some of the internal representations of the company are really coming back to bite them, and it really is a real issue because they show that between June of twenty eighteen and July twenty twenty one, they earned eleven billion dollars in revenue, almost all of which came from transaction fees. They say that since its inception, the exchange at first overtly and later furtively worked to entice US customers at the explicit direction of the CEO, and they also say that Jao himself is the one who ordered the creation of these actual the program to try and help some of these high networth investors come onto the platform. Now, the real issue why all of this matters is because it is in conjunction with the CFTC also filing similar charges against Binance, saying that they had failed to prevent US customers from accessing it, and this can cause a whole host of issues for the company. Through the banking system. Because the thing is is that you know, of course, uh, you know, Bitcoin and all of that operates outside of control. But if you want to ever try and convert any of this to cash, you're gonna have to touch the banking system. And at least in our current world, the United States has an immense amount of reach through the Treasury Department and through its sanctions regime, and through its ability to go after any banking institution in the world that does business with any US institution can try and ban Binance and its financial assets. So at the very least, they are facing a very serious issue here with the with the lawsuit and really, you know, any of their investors and others is could you know, create a world where many of them could never like touch US jurisdiction again, which is which is insane right to think about?
01:11:54
Speaker 1: Yeah? Oh absolutely, And Binance is vastly larger than FTX Sambangma Breathe outfit ever was. It's not even close. There are a lot of similarities here in terms of allegations of self dealing. I mean, most clear cut the similarity is the fact that you have this one dude who is controlling everything, even as he's pretending pieces of it are independent, he has nothing to do with it. In reality, he's making all of the key decisions behind the scenes, operating in this extraordinarily lawless manner, like overtly and intentionally lawless, trying to make sure that the company is not even headquartered anywhere, and that this legal structure is so opaque that they think that we'll protect them from having to face any sort of accountability or being held you know, liable, or having any sort of legal regime apply to them. So you have this, you know, lawless, chaotic, one man band kind of a situation. Now there are some differences with finance. You don't have the affiliated you know fund the way that you did with FTX and Alameda, but there are some sort of you know, commonalities here. And it's also interesting the two SBF and CZ were also really rivals. CZ is the one who sort of pushed SBF over the ledge at the very end here, and now his time in the barrel, I guess has arrived. So in terms of the impact on the crypto world, I mean, I think it's hard to underestimate how massive this is, just given how large this platform was and how integral it was to any sort of crypto transactions here or around the world.
01:13:36
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a huge problem. It also has put coinbase at risk. From what I have read that they got a something called a wells notice from the SEC. They're trying to make sure that they are able to stay away from it. But overall, almost all of the almost all of the reporting that I've been able to look into, and financial analysts as well, is that the remedy that they could ever come to this would be a huge hit to finance because it would forbid binance from any offering of trading services, as I said, in the United States, and it would make difficult to do business in the US with really anyone unless it was then registered with the SEC and followed securities rules, which of course would be a huge problem for them. And this is the reason why they were chasing investors and traders here in the United States because of the size of our market. So overall, it's a major, major problem, and it also reveals, you know, the wild West nature of what was going on behind the scenes in some of these places, and also why post crash, you know, many of them are not in the same capitalized position to be operating or throwing around the kind of money that they were not just that long ago. And then you're really, you know, paying that you're really you know, revealing what's going on behind the curtains in the middle of the downturn right now.
01:14:50
Speaker 1: The last thing I'll say about this is that there was a lot of debate after the downfall of SBF about whether we needed new laws and place to deal with the with and you know, it's sort of like unique challenges. I think that's still an open question, but cases like this seem to indicate you actually have sufficient laws on the books. You just have to actually do the investigation, you have to enforce them. That's been you know, more or less the position of SEC Chair Gary Gensler. You'll also recall dam Pankmin Freed was doing a lot of lobbying to make sure that Crypto didn't fall under the jurisdiction of the SEC because they felt like there would be stricter scrutiny, that they had more resources to actually go after them for the law breaking that they were engaged in. So there was an explicit effort by him and others to make sure it wasn't under the jurisdiction of the SEC, and Gary Gensler has been pretty forceful in you know, the last year or so in trying to bring the hammer down and trying to take control over this space and make the SEC the preeminent agency in terms of regulating crypto.
01:15:52
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think that's a really good point, all right.
01:15:55
Speaker 1: So we also wanted to bring in there an interesting, i would say exchange between Senator Tim Scott, who of course is a you know, senate black senator forum South Carolina who is now running for president of the United States on the Republican side, and Sunny Houston and the other latest of the view. But it was mostly Sunny Tim Scott verse on the issue of structural racism. We're going to play you the whole thing so you can get, you know, the flavor of the entire exchange. Take a left.
01:16:24
Speaker 5: You have indicated that you don't believe in systemic racism. What is your definition of systemic racism? Let me ask answer the question that you've answered asked or does it even exist in your mind? Let me answer the question this way.
01:16:35
Speaker 6: One of the things that I think about and one of the reason why I'm on the show is because of the comments that were made frankly on the show that the only way for a young African American kid to be successful in this country is to be the exception and not the role. That is a dangerous, offensive, disgusting message to send to our.
01:16:47
Speaker 5: Young people today, that the only way to succeed is by being the exception.
01:16:52
Speaker 6: I will tell you that if my life is the exception, I can't imagine.
01:16:55
Speaker 5: I can't. But it's not. Actually, here's a fourteen years yes.
01:16:58
Speaker 6: So the fact of the matter is We've had an Africa American president, African American vice president, We've had two African Americans to be secretaries in the state. In my home city, the police chief is an African American who's now running from mayor.
01:17:09
Speaker 5: The head of the highway patrol for South Client is African American.
01:17:12
Speaker 6: In nineteen seventy five, there is about fifteen percent employment in the African American community.
01:17:16
Speaker 5: For the first time in the history of the country.
01:17:17
Speaker 6: It's under five percent homelessness folks in our community. Chess asked the question, I know I've watched you on the show that you like people to be deferential and respectful, So I'm going to do the same thing.
01:17:27
Speaker 5: So here's what I'm going to suggest.
01:17:28
Speaker 6: I'm going to suggest the fact of the matter is that progress in America is palpable.
01:17:31
Speaker 5: It could be measured in generations.
01:17:33
Speaker 6: I look back at the fact that my grandfather born in nineteen twenty one in Sally, South Carolina, when he was on a sidewalk a white person was coming, he had to step off and not make eye contact. That man believed then with some doubt now in the goodness of America because he believed that have faith in God, faith in himself, and faith in what the future could hold.
01:17:50
Speaker 5: First, kids would unleash.
01:17:51
Speaker 6: Opportunities in ways that you cannot imagine. Every kid today can look just change the stations and see how much progress has been made in this country. ABC, NBC, c BSESBN, CNN, Fox News all have African, American and Hispanic hosts. So what I'm suggesting is that the yesterday's exception is today's rule, and for us to.
01:18:10
Speaker 5: Semessa has met its promise.
01:18:12
Speaker 6: No, of course, the concept of America is that we are going to become a more perfect union. But in fact the challenges that we faced fifty years ago and sixty years ago should not be the same challenges that we face today.
01:18:22
Speaker 5: And here's the way that you measured that.
01:18:23
Speaker 6: But my mother was born about ten percent of African Americans got a high school degree diploma today is over ninety percent.
01:18:30
Speaker 5: When you look at the income.
01:18:31
Speaker 6: When you look at the income success that we had, HBCU stat was an HBCUs. That is a good one because one of the reasons why I took the funding for HBCUs to the highest level in the history of the country, and then I helped make it permanent is because I believe that education is the closest thing to magic in America. So I'm about making sure that our kids have as many opportunities to succeed as possible. Is one of the reasons why the opportunity to because I have to go to bad the more the big real I'm just gonna started.
01:18:58
Speaker 5: You can see the success.
01:19:04
Speaker 2: Wow, certainly fun exchange.
01:19:08
Speaker 1: Yeah, So there's a lot to say about this. I mean, first of all, I think tender Scott's point about you know, to the extent there are people out there that deny that there's been any progress made, like that's obviously a ridiculous position. But the thing that frustrates me about this conversation between you know, a black conservative and a sort of classic neoliberal is that they're metric of that. The metric they're using here is like how many diverse spaces make it into the elite class? And definitionally, I mean he's correct, like he's actually completely wrong about Obviously he is an exception, right, Obviously Sunny is an exception. Obviously everybody on the view as an exception. But the problem is that to make it into the elite class, to have a chance at you know, real success in America, where you don't feel precarious, you don't feel like you're going to fall over the edge at every second, not only for Black Americans, but it's proportionally for Black Americans, for everyone, you have to be an exception at this point. And that's the real problem that they should be grappling with versus having this debate about like how many black people are on CENA, so there was a black president of the United States, Like how many diverse spaces have ascended the elite? Well, what about lifting everybody up? What about making sure that we have law underneath everybody? What about making sure that we have actual pathways to success that are not limited to this tiny slice of America and everybody else left behind. So that was the part that I found really frustrating.
01:20:37
Speaker 2: It's funny, y, Yeah, I'm the same view. I was like, man, this is just such a stupid metric of progress. It's like you know, and if anything, it's actually identity politics really on votes. And by the way, look, I find the story inspirational. I think it's great. That's the story I believe in as well. However, and what I see if these ladies were smart and they actually had brains, what they would do is be like, well, why do you vote against policies? Well, here's the thing with Tim Scott. Especially Scott is especially of the Reaganite school of economics, which believes in the power of individualism and also goes very much against social safety net programs and others. Now, listen, I have complicated views on many of those subjects, but I'm not ideologically opposed to trying to help vast swats of Americans come and come out of come out of poverty. Whereas Scott explicitly takes an economic libertarian view of this, which you could then say, well, how are you then trying to realize and help not only Black Americans, but all Americans achieve the American dreams. So actually the metric he's using is one of which is identity politics, identitarians themselves embrace. They're just arguing over whether it's quote unquote representative enough. The metric of progress cannot be that, you know, there are more black people in the higher elite. The metric of progress has to be what is the distance between the higher elite, the middle class and the poor, and is the floor high enough for everyone? And also, as I've said so many times here on the show, if you lift the poor, you will do more to help black and Hispanic and white Americans without igniting some horrific you know, like racial tension and fights against each other. This you know, by the way, Black identitarians hate what I'm really saying here the most because everybody's always trying to play like victimhood, you know, olympics about who apparently or whatever has been more oppressed. And that's part of why the whole discussion drives me insane, is that it misses the boat almost completely about the best ways to help poor Americans in America. And look, the thing is too with Scott, he does like he believes what he believes in. I do genuinely think he seems like a nice guy. But unfortunately I almost think that they are handing him a layup if they're trying to argue about the ability to achieve you know, individual opportunity instead of ignoring like this much broader discussion. It's that that was with a big yeah failure. The huge failure of it to me was the whoop be in Sunny basically saying, no, the the view is not black enough, and he's like, you know, it's like.
01:23:11
Speaker 5: What is it?
01:23:12
Speaker 2: What are we talking about here? You know, when you reduce things to that just stupid. It misses the point.
01:23:19
Speaker 1: Yeah, I get so. In the same way that I think it's silly and frustrating to deny that there's been any progress. It also is irritating to me the view that Scott puts forward of like, you can't be honest about the reality of America because you'll discourage kids and make them think that they have no chance to succeed. Now, these things are intentions, right, You of course want to encourage people. You of course want to motivate them to be the best that they can in their lives. But you can't use that to cover for, you know, a system that is wildly unjust and that is stacked against them. And that's what I you know, object to in a lot of the sort of like conservative leaning like self help narrative, it's fine to have that aspirational uh, those aspirational goals to you know, speak to people about how they can better themselves in their own lives. But what Scott does and a lot of others in his ideological lane do is they use that as a way of completely erasing the entire rest of the conversation. And especially when you're a United States Senator and you're in a position of power to change some of those structures and make it so that it's more possible if you do work on yourself, you might actually have a chance to succeed. Then you're really, you know, failing at the task that should be in front of you. And I've also talked to you know, in America we have this kind of uniquely and there's studies that back this that this isn't just my opinion, but we have this unique ethos because of the mythology of the American dream, of this idea. Anybody can make it. You play hard, you work, but you know you play by the rules. You work hard, and anybody can succeed that. Then, when people are doing all the right things and they're still not making it. Rather than having an understanding of, well, here are the structures in place that you know were not my fault that kept me from succeeding, they turn it inwards. They feel shame, they feel depression, and you know, they they sort of beat themselves up rather than recognizing those other influences. So it really is a double edged sword here. Yes, you want to inspire people, Yes you want them to have that motivational story, but you don't want to completely erase the reality of corporate power, of the union busting, of the fact that you know, wages have been stagnant for decades and decades because of intentional government policy that is not your fault. You don't want to just pretend like that doesn't exist, because you know, you're worried about how it might sound, and you just want to focus on the individual responsibility part of it.
01:25:49
Speaker 2: Well, when I think whenever, this is why it's complicated. What I think that they are trying to get at is where an alone I object to, you know, people can go read the record. I've been against CRT since before it was cool. I just want to say I was one of the first people against the sixteen to nineteen project and trying to come out against it, and it was because I actually think that it leads to a nihilistic message in which you lead yourself to believe it is impossible to enact government programs that can get you out of this because racism, sexism, and all this other stuff is so oppressive that it's not possible. And it's like, no, wait, hold on a second, that's actually not true. That is a historical So there is actually a way to use I think the Tim Scott idea that it is possible to work yourself out of this. And also kind of what you and I are talking about, which is the ability of government policy to come together to actually give people the floor, the equality opportunity in order to move forward and to achieve a better life. I actually think there is a better way. And so look, obviously it's multifaceted, and you know, you literally debate and sit here forever. But I was very frustrated by the conversation because I just felt like it was all just trading places about. You know, it's like, oh, well, it's like when the Nasdaq says you have to have a black person on their board or whatever to go public. I'm like, who gives a shit? Are they doing business better or not? Are they paying their employees better or not? I care less who the executives on the boarder directors are. You know, It's like that, And there is also no evidence by the way that diversity of boards has led to better corporate practice. If anything, the diversity movement has been the greatest boon in history to Fortune five hundred companies because they use it to cover for stock buybacks or cutting their employees, or cutting benefits, outsourcing jobs, destroying the American dream. Like it's all the smoke screen. People just need to wake up to that.
01:27:35
Speaker 1: I think representation has value. I genuinely do. Like I think it mattered from a representation standpoint that we had Barack Obama as president as one example. But it's like so far from the entire picture, and so much of our politics is exactly like that exchange between Tim Scott and Sunny houstin where like you're not even equipped to rebut what Tim Scott is saying because you're not even looking at these other you know, real challenges and the whole rest of the picture, and so you end up with this very surface level debate about whether there you know, are enough press or class and it doesn't end up really surfing our politics very effectively. I would say, I agree with you, all right, Tager, what are looking at?
01:28:22
Speaker 2: One of my favorite things to do is to revisit some of the main characters from the Russia Gate era. We all know who they are, seth Abramson, others who got filthy rich during and spreading you know, copium to liberals. One of the best is Muller, She wrote in account on Twitter that probably many of us are sadly familiar with from over the years, who's constantly tweeting about how Trump is just one second away from it finally all closing in on him. Well, a new investigation, actually by an anonymous Twitter account Freudian Slip, has revealed the depth of some of the most psychotic behavior on the Internet that I have seen in quite a long time. So let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. This is the first tweet of the expos of nearly one hundred that he put out there Froudian slip the mother she wrote, expose a wild, chaotic ride through Alison Gill's narrative world where little is what it seems to be. Stay to the end if you want your jaw to go and hit the floor. Now he focuses in on or maybe or she focuses in on. A couple of claims that Alison Gill, the molo she wrote account actually made who runs a popular podcast and really monetized her entire brand online as you know, sticking it to Donald Trump. First and foremost was that she was a quote disabled American fing veteran who had served in the United States Navy who was suffering from PTSD from the First Gulf War. Well, let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. While Allison Gill had constantly claimed to be a nuclear engineer from the United States Navy, it turns out she actually studied to be a machinist Nate, completed three month basic training but didn't even finish the full study program. Furthermore, it was revealed that she was a veteran of the Gulf War era, not necessarily of the Gulf War, and actually by her own definition of stolen valor that she's leveled against others. Well, she certainly flirted right up to the line of claiming effectively that she had served in combat when in reality she was somebody who had served in the military at that time, and then didn't actually finish the job that she had claimed repeatedly online that she had engaged in. But second, what I think is also crazy is the level to which she spun a persecution narrative, not according to this reporting. Let's put this up there, the next one up there on the screen. She had claimed repeatedly that she had actually been fired from the United States government for her tweets for her podcast. And it turns out, though that an internal US government investigation found that she wasn't actually fired. She was off offered relocation which he had voluntarily rejected, which the form right in front of you actually shows. She spun this, you know afterwards as a case of some you know, employee discrimination, fired allegedly for having PTSD, and even filed an equal opportunity complaint. None of these actually came to any fruit or revealed that you know, was revealed any wrongdoing on the part of the government. And then the most bizarre one to me, let's put this up there on the screen, was putting and tweeting out photos in which she had alleged she had been attacked by her husband, who was she accused of, an abuser, a manipulator, or drunk. Well, she tweeted out, you know, photos of injuries that happened to her. But what actually was revealed from the Freudian slip account is that at least some of these photos appear to have come when she was almost killed in a car accident. And really, what this entire thread revealed to me, of which you know I looked, you know, she hasn't disputed at least the very concrete claims within this she's claiming persecution is the level to which you can just put things out online that both become reality but can ensnare you in a bunch of different narratives all while you are cultivating this persona which you are saying is being persecuted for putting out the truth of which was all fundamentally not true, not only from her personal narrative, but about Russiagate itself. And this person was held up again as a russiagay hero. This is somebody who has gained tens of hundreds of thousands of followers on Twitter, who the thread goes into financially profited from the persona from the brand online engaged repeatedly with fans and led them to believe all of this and conjured up this story of prior service and of a history of persecution, which also ended up end up being true in terms of their family background. And the bizarre behavior that is exhibited here should be a cautionary tale to people who fall easily prey to personas that you can see on Twitter and others, and to the idea that everything that's happening online either stays there doesn't have a connection itself to the real world that can't be revealed. And it's one of those where I just found it to be so revealing about who some of the central characters who found identity in this anti Trump crusade online were and how so much of it really does reveal like a pathological sickness at the heart of so much of what happened at that time and still continues to reverberate in our current politics. So that's that's kind of the expose. Crystal. I'm not so sure if you were able to.
01:33:52
Speaker 1: And if you want to hear my reaction to Cyber's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at Breakingpoints dot com.
01:34:02
Speaker 2: Okay, Christal, we're you taking a look up.
01:34:03
Speaker 1: Well, guys, the media has finally started to admit that maybe Biden's age, and not even just his age, but his clearly declining abilities are an actual issue for him. And the reason they're doing this, which now, which is going to become quite clear in a moment, is because you have a massive donor and elite freak ap about this state of affairs. So The New York Times wrote quite an extraordinary piece here. Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen. They talk about the complicated reality of being America's oldest president, President Bidens asking voters in the White House until age eighty six, renewing attention to an issue that poles show trouble most Americans. And they've got a bunch of heavy hitters on this article. By the way, keep this up on the screen, because I'm going to read a little bit from this. You know. They mix into this piece a bunch of hero arc narratives about our strong and viral leader alongside these anecdotes about some real struggles in terms of just understanding like the basics of what's going on and recalling certain basic facts. So they say, there was the time last winter when President Biden was awakened at three am while on a trip to Asia and told that a missile instruct Poland, touching off a panic that Russia might have expanded the war in Ukraine to a NATO ally within hours in the middle of the night, mister Biden consulted his top advisors, called the President of Poland and the NATO Secretary General, and gathered fellow world leaders to deal with the crisis. And then or there was the time a few weeks ago when the President was hosting children for take your Child to Work Day and became mixed up as he tried to list his grandchildren. Quote, so let me see, I got one in New York, two in Philadelphia or is it three? No? Three? Because I got one granddaughter? Who is I don't know, you're confusing me. He also drew a blank when asked the last country he had visited and the name of a favorite movie. Put the next screen up here, guys, that has some of the details about the way that his staff has limited his appearances, has limited his schedule to accommodate the realities of the president today. They say his staff schedules most of his public appearances between noon and four noon and four and leaves him alone on weekends as much as possible. Aids limit exposing the president to news media interviews when he could make a politically damaging mistake. For comparison, he's given just a fourth of the interviews that Trump did in the same period, and a fifth of the interviews that mister Obama did in the same period, none at all to reporters from a major newspaper. And they say White House officials have not made mister Biden's doctor available for questioning as previous presidents have. Now keep in mind, these are the limitations that exist today, and he is asking to be re elected and would be eighty six years old, so quite a number of years down the road from today, and you know, you can project into the future. Nobody knows for sure what type of limitations may be placed on him at that point in time. So this shows you how far they already are down the road to purtailing any of his activities and even his ability and accessibility to the press, which is, you know, a vital part of democracy and being able to assess and question the president on key issues of the day. There's an interesting piece of this article where they acknowledge that this has become a major concern among donors and among Wall Street elites, which is the whole reason that the media is really paying it any attention, now whatsoever. One of the reporters was actually on MSNBC where he got asked about this report. Listen to the framing and listen to how he talks about the concerns among those elites are stake.
01:37:35
Speaker 8: Listen take us behind closed doors party leaders, whether it's a Democratic donors, prominent Wall Street Democrats, what are they saying privately, How big of a concern is the president's age and what the alternative could be.
01:37:49
Speaker 9: Well, it's the concern I hear all the time. I don't think I ever speak with any Democrat who doesn't raise that issue. Not that we raise it, they raise it, you know. And I know that there are people in the White House and around it who like and this is just a creation of the media or the Republicans, it's really not. I hear from almost every Democrat. I talked to me. You know, there was a dinner recently I was I was told about between you know, former governors and senators, all of whom are roughly in by the generation, all of whom thought, no, he shouldn't be running as too, you know, he's too old at this point there, you know, is the Wall Street you know, a major figure we talk who said, every single donor for the Democratic Party they speak with, in fact, brings this issue up. The White House gets calls from local officials asking about the president's health. I mean, he is a constant concern among Democrats.
01:38:39
Speaker 1: So here's a part in the article where they discuss exactly this. Put the quotes up on the screen. Here they say uneasy about mister brines Ah suffuses Democratic circles. When prominent Wall Street Democrat, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity, noted that among party donors it was all anyone was talking about at a small dinner earlier this year, former Democratic senators and governors, all of them in mister Biden's generation. Everyone at the table agreed he was too old to run again. Local leaders often call the White House to inquire about his health. So these are the discussions that are going on in elite circles, in democratic donor circles behind the scenes, and that's the reason why they are now leaking out into the press. And Sager is also the reason why you see this panic. The last attempt to, you know, get Jamie Diamond or somebody into the race that they feel like could take the reins from Joe Biden, but certainly not enough for them to allow an actual democratic process to unfold in which.
01:39:36
Speaker 2: We are and if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at breakingpoints dot com. Thank you everybody for bearing with us. We really appreciate you. We've got aus we're so excited about the new studio. Counterpoints will be here tomorrow. If you can help us out with the new studio, and if you want to very first look at it breakingpoints dot com, you'll get it substantially earlier than everybodybody else. We're really excited to show it to all of you. Otherwise, we'll see you all on Thursday.
Speaker 1: Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here and we here at breaking points, are already thinking of ways we can up our game for this critical election.
00:00:08
Speaker 2: We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade the studio ad staff give you, guys, the best independent coverage that is possible. If you like what we're all about, it just means the absolute world to have your support. But enough with that, let's get to the show. Good morning, everybody, Happy Tuesday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal.
00:00:42
Speaker 1: Indeed, we do lots of big news breaking here and internationally. It looks like that Ukrainian counter offensive has in fact the gun, so we'll bring you all of those details. Also some pretty stunning details about the way the media has been covering this conflict that we must get into. As well some big developments in terms of twenty twenty four. We've actually got a new content Cornell West, doctor West, is joining the race as a People's Party candidate. We also have some new tea leaves. Looks like Trump may be invited again quite imminently, so we'll tell you about that big story in the UFO world. A whistleblower has come forward alleging that they have actually recovered craft. We've got a guest on to talk about this. Sager is chomping at the bit to dig into this one as well, So, yeah, give you all the details there. We've gotten new charges filed against Finance, largest crypto exchange platform in the world, and some pretty stunning revelations from within there the discovery process, some texts that are pretty damning in terms of their case, and a quite interesting exchange between Senator Tim Scott, who is running for president and the ladies of the View that we want to talk about as well. Before we get to any of that, though, there is a reason why we are doing the show remotely instead of in any studio. Sager, what is that reason?
00:01:53
Speaker 2: Yeah, The reason is is that, as we've said last time, you guys have to hear about it. We are building that brand new, beautiful set that it's all coming together. It is absolutely stunning for a big debut next week. As a reminder, premium subscribers will get a very first look at the set we be announcing very soon via email. So if you want to become a premium subscriber, it's breakingpoints dot com not only to get a first look, but also to help us with the expense is the largest expense in the history of Breaking Points. It's basically like we bought several cars and houses over there, Crystal. But the reason why, the reason why is because we believe very much in investing in the show, giving everybody the premium and the best experience possible, and making sure that we are absolutely one, ready and set. We've got some great guests already lined up for the first week that I think everybody's going to be really really excited about and honestly kind of shocked once they debut. So I'm pumped, I really am. And yeah, we still got a great show though for everybody here Counterpoints tomorrow and they'll have another show on Thursday, remotely.
00:02:57
Speaker 1: Yeah, And actually, Sager and I got our first look at the CEO yesterday and it is quite I mean, it is quite stunning.
00:03:04
Speaker 2: I was blown away.
00:03:06
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally blown away. It is amazing. I can't believe it's our new home. So can't wait to share it with all of you guys before we jump into the show. Just apologies for my voice struggling with a cold. Actually feel a lot better but sound a bit worse. You know that fad the cold, So bear with me today, my apologies in advance.
00:03:21
Speaker 2: The brutal summer cold comes for us. All okay, let's go ahead.
00:03:25
Speaker 1: These kids are killing me. Let me tell you, it's been brutal this whole year.
00:03:28
Speaker 2: I'm sure all parents can probably sympathize. All right, let's go ahead and get to the Ukraine counter offensive. We'll put this up there on the screen. Indications from the intelligence community leaking to the US media and also from the Russians saying that the Ukrainian counter offensive has begun. Kiev is denying that the counter offensive has begun, but a lot of stuff is being picked up on open source satellite showing some movement across several key areas of the front. The biggest development, however, happened overnight in US time with the Collie aaps of a major dam in southern Ukraine, which has triggered a major emergency. Both Moscow and Kiev are actually blaming each other for the collapse of the dam. So I'm going to go ahead and give everybody here the details. The dam is in the part of southern Ukraine which is actually controlled by Moscow. So the collapse has now triggered floods and is actually now endangering the largest nuclear power plant inside of Ukraine, which is currently under Russian control. Not only that, is actually currently threatening drinking water supplies for both sides of the war as they're currently trying to evacuate residents and are blaming each other. So, as I said, Ukraine is currently accusing the Russian forces of blowing up the Kakova Dam and the hydro electric power station. Russian officials are saying that Ukrainian military strikes in the contested area are the ones that are responsible. Of course, nobody can verify what exactly is going on here, But of really immediate concern is ay all of the people in this area. It's obviously a disaster whenever you are triggering a major flood like this to the downstream, and emergency crews who are having evacuations are rushing to get people out of there. But then finally, is really that nuclear power plant, which you know has been at the center of so much consternation just because of scares of an accident, and especially because you know, everyone here knows I'm pro nuclear, but of course you know it's like whenever a foreign government is going to invade, take it over and then effectively try to weaponize said nuclear power plant, that's when things get a little bit tricky, right, And same would be safe for any other type of energy station. And clearly this is now being contested. It's probably crystal one of those where we will never know who is responsible. But I mean it's a blow obviously to Russia because this is something now that they have to deal with because it's in their territory and also it was in Yeah, it's in territory that they controlled, and now they have to divert resources. But also you know Ukraine, if they do want to recapture their own territory, it's not something that you want it to necessary be devastated. So I'm not even even entirely sure yet about who benefits from this. It's just a humanitarian catastrophe.
00:06:06
Speaker 1: Yeah, same, And I mean anytime you're talking about targeting civilian infrastructure, this is a disaster, it's honestly a war crime. And this was a hugely important dam in terms of electricity and energy generation within Ukraine. So not only the flooding, not only the concerns about the nuclear plan, but also some you know, real concerns about power generation, which obviously is critical for people's lives as well.
00:06:31
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's really sad, and you know, actually missiles continue to rain down on Kiev and just absolutely brutal attacks all over civilian infrastructure. Let's go ahead and put this on the screen, Zelenski saying, quote, we are ready for the counter offensive. This comes a month after he gave another interview where he said that the counter offensive was beginning, so you know, don't necessarily take it all to the bank. But anyway, what I.
00:06:54
Speaker 1: Thought was interesting in this interview too, is he really sort of downplayed expectation for what they would be able to achieve in the counter offensive. He also, you know, sounded some of the notes that he sounded before about On the one hand, he would express a lot of gratitude for the amount of support he's received. On the other hand, he would express a lot of frustration that there wasn't even more flowing to him and more rapidly, which you know, I guess understandable, but he says, I would not want such a country with regards to China to stand by and watch people die. So also still not totally you know, sort of severing the Chinese relationship, being hopeful in some way, or guess holding out some sort of possibility that China could be a good actor here in terms of brokering an eventual peace. But those, to me were the most noteworthy parts of that interview.
00:07:39
Speaker 2: Yeah, let me read here what he said, quote, we strongly believe we will succeed. However, I don't know how long it will take, and quote to be honest, it can go a variety of ways, completely different. But we are going to do it, and we are ready not sounding the same triumphant note that they did ahead of the offensive last year, although look, I mean the smart thing to do is always to downplay expectation and then to overperform so that you look good. So we have no idea. The General Millie, actually the US top general, yesterday gave an interview where he said that the Ukrainians were quote well prepared, but said he didn't know how he thought it was going to go, also basically sounding the exact same thing. Also the Russians, even though literally the offensive has just started, now say actually we've thwarted it. Don't worry. Let's go ahead and put the stuff there the Defense Ministry put out a statement yesterday saying it has thwarted a major Ukrainian attack in Dnetsk region. And they say that they show military vehicles under heavy fire and claim that they have killed three hundred troops and destroyed sixteen tanks. Something tells me that, you know, just repelling a single attack, if that even happened, isn't exactly repelling the entire offensive. So I have no idea how this one is going to go. This is one of those weight and see moments. And actually another important thing too, which is a story we're going to get to later on. Given media coverage, this story that we're going to talk about later in the show, just can out give the teas away. It's basically, the Ukrainian government is heavy handed, let's just say, in terms of how it treats American journalists who depart from the narrative and report what's going on. Everyone needs to be very, very skeptical of every single thing that you see come out of Ukraine. From the Russian side, from the Ukrainian side, we are being lied to left, right, and center. And it's basically like you have to try and average the three and see maybe that one is directionally, especially in the middle of this conflict. So do not believe a word that the Russians say, and do not believe a word that the Ukrainians say about what's actually going on in the ground. This is truly like a complete wait and see moment about how exactly the actual battle turns out. So we don't know yet. We don't even really have confirmations in terms of maps. I looked for several from some open source intelligence analysts. The best that I have been able to find is just a general consensus that yes, it has begun. We'll see how it works out. Crystal.
00:09:58
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think that's about all you can and say it at this point.
00:10:01
Speaker 2: Okay, let's go to the next part here. This one is also a very significant story and also gets to some of the dangers who are involved. Let's go and put this up there on the screen from CNN, leaked to their intelligence community's favorite journalist Natasha Bertrand, Ukraine has cultivated sabotage agents inside of Russia and is giving them drones to stage attacks. Sources say, what you can really read here is they say that Ukraine has cultivated a network of sympathizers and agents inside of Russia working to carry out acts of sabotage against Russian targets, providing them with drones to stage attacks. US officials believe these quote unquote pro Ukrainian agents inside Russia aka intel operatives, carried out the drone attack that targeted the Kremlin earlier in May, and they say that they are not yet quite ready to ascribe the same level of attribution on these residential neighborhood bombing, our drone attack in Moscow and then also on the oil refineries in southern Russia. However, they believe that the development of sabotage shells is made up of quote a mix of pro Ukrainian sympathizers but also operatives well trained in this kind of warfare by the intelligence officials. Also, it's kind of interesting that they get to the exact way that they are doing this. A lot of it is not just ideology, A lot of it is just straight up bribery, it says cash Works Wonders, one of the European intelligence officials who actually has worked in the area, says that it is quote ripe for smuggling, something that Ukrainians have quote been doing for the better part of a decade, and that the Ukrainian intelligence community and others are very adept at I guess, let's just say, using the illicit networks that they are well familiar with. Now, obviously this is these stories only come to light when the CIA and the intelligence community is trying to pull the Ukrainians back, And I think that's why we should always try to remember, all of this is controlled. All of this is controlled opposition. You know, everything about Ukraine, anything even remotely critical about Ukraine is always couched in the nicest possible terms, of which we will show you my personal favorite example in a little bit. This particular one though, is every time that they start bombing the Crimean Bridge, that they start you know, attacking Moscow with drones a couple of times, you know, blowing up the Nord Stream pipeline. That's when the CIA and all of them, the Biden administration too, are put in a very very difficult spot. I also think it is funny because some of the most pro Ukraine people I see are always defending Ukraine's right to attack Moscow, as if that's the argument. It's never it's never somehow able to have the nuance in their heads where someone can say it was a fool. It is completely fine for or countries at war to attack each other and if they, of course, quote unquote have the right to, but the externality effects on so said country's allies are something that those allies should calibrate to whether they're good for their interests or not. I really have no idea how people are incapable of separating those two. Nobody's attacking Ukraine's rights to defend itself, only the level of US support, and then, you know, a level of US responsibilities should should such an attack trigger an actual counterattack, which would be devastating and would escalate the war. And I don't think anyone, including of course the Biden administration and now the CIA clearly who are leaking these stories Crystal, can even dispute that if they supported it, then they would keep their mouth shut. They're only leaking it because they want the Ukrainians to stop and they want to keep making it known to all of them. They're like, hey, yeah, we may not slap you on the wrist, you know, in person, we're also going to make it known in the public, like we didn't have anything to do with this. Because this is also probably a signal to Russia just to be like, hey, guys, like this one's not on us, so you know, just make sure this one is not with our support.
00:14:06
Speaker 1: Yes, I mean defending yourself targeting your enemy, that's all fair bounds. Targeting residential apartment buildings is another matter. It's not acceptable when Russia does it. It's not acceptable when Ukraine does it. There was, also, of course, in this article tager the typical language about like, well it was probably Ukrainians in Russia, but Vilenski didn't know anything about it. They say, who exactly is controlling these assets is murky. US officials believe elements within Ukraine's intelligence community are involved. Ukrainian President Sala set general parameters for what is intelligent security services are allowed to do. Two of the sources said, but not every operation requires sign off, so again trying to give him a little bit of distance from this operation, which is just every single report, without fail includes a very similar language to this. But they also have some intel here about the way that the US feels about this, at least the way the US wants to tell CNA they feel about it. They say publicly, senior US officials have condemned the strikes inside Russia, warning of the potential for an escalation of the war. Those are the concerns, you know, that we have been sharing and continue to have on speaking privately to CNN, US and Western officials said they believe the cross border attacks are a smart military strategy that could divert Russian resources to protecting its own territory as Ukraine gears up for a major counter offensive. Now, it might be true that this is a smart strategy if you are just looking at it from the Ukrainian perspective of, you know, distracting Russia, forcing them to have to defend their own population and not concentrate all of their resources on the battlefield to thwart this coming counter offensive that appears to now have begun. But what about our interestingness, what about trying to maintain, you know, trying to mitigate any possibility of escalation. The fact that you have US officials signaling this, I mean, that shows you and it kind of proves Russia's point too, that we are tacitly backing and accepting these type of very dangerous and potentially escalatory operations within Russia's borders certainly gives them fodder to feel like, oh, yeah, the US is cool with this. They've given the Ukrainians tasks that approval, and you know, wouldn't be shocked if there's US resources involved here.
00:16:14
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, I always just point back to remember the fake story about Russian bounties back in the Trump era, completely fake story, by the way, But when that happened, you had US senators and other US officials saying, Okay, now we need to kill Russians. I mean, look, Russia is the same, They're not all that different from us. Why wouldn't they feel the exact same way. And that was with just TACIT support. So you know, listen, what goes around can come around. And none of this is an endorsement, it's just a reality other people. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. So every action that you take should always be calibrated and done in such a way that we understand exactly what might become in our way. Let's go to the next part here. This is I mean, these next two are something you're not going to hear anywhere else. Friend Ben Smith over at Semaphore doing a deeply reported column revealing some serious problems for free press access inside of Ukraine. Let's put this up there on the screen, inside the high stakes clash for control over Ukraine's story. The top line thing that jumps out to me, Crystal is New York Times reporter Thomas gibbons Neff, who I've actually followed gibbonstph for a long time. I knew him before he even joined the New York Times in the days when we used to cover the Pentagon. He is a former United States Marine who is one of the best reads on combat, the actual reality of combat, that I have ever encountered in almost a decade of reading. You know about these issues in a contemporary manner. Well. He has been banned from Ukraine because he was embedded with the Ukrainian military and drew anger from the government when he correctly reported that the Ukrainians were using banned cluster munitions. The headline that he published at the time was quote to pushback Russians, Ukrainians hit a village with cluster munitions. The New York Times verified Ukraine forces apperitimate buyer at least two of these internationally banned weapons in a neighborhood, putting Ukrainian civilians at extreme risk. This was over a year ago April twentieth of twenty twenty two. Well, guess what, everyone, he had his crevenials revoked as a result of that, and his renewal to go back to Ukraine to tell us all the truth has been denied in multiple separate instances, ultimately only being reissued after they protested significantly. The other was a NBC News broadcast Crystal which is totally nuts, where during this broadcast, a pro Russiani resident of Sevastopol inside of Crimea said, and an anchor inside of it said that her words echoed those of most people that NBC News spoke to in Crimea, AKA, indicating that people who NBC spoke to inside of Crimea while they were embedded there supported Russia. We have a little bit of a taste of this just to show you how they handled it fairly, and then we'll tell you what the reaction from the Ukrainians was. Let's take a listen.
00:19:17
Speaker 3: Ukraine's president Zelenski told the West, give us more weapons and we'll get back what's ours. But Crimea, where we saw new signs for air raid shelters, has many pro Russian residents who say it's theirs. Is Crimea Russian or Ukrainian is Russian, of course Russian. Seventy three year old pratt Soviet tells me.
00:19:40
Speaker 2: Well, that did not sit well with the Ukrainian governments. Listen to this. The Ukrainians revoked NBC's cnterentials and then basically confined them to their local Kiev hotel and would not allow them to leave. Not only that, they still defended. They say that NBC's traveled to Crimea was quote a violation of Ukrainian legislation, and we don't want other Western media companies doing the same. If they want to go to Crimea to report, they can go to Crimea through Ukraine, saying currently it is impossible. So they're trying to tell our journalists how to do their jobs. I didn't even point this out. Whenever you go to Ukraine as a journalist, you have to sign a document saying that you will comply at all times with Ukrainian government policies, which was the grounds in which they can find these people to their hotels. I mean, look, everyone I've seen this, so like, oh, well, Britain did this during World War Two against the Nazis. I'm like, well, okay, I mean also, that doesn't make it right. It's like, it's not a justification to say that an authoritarian approach to free press access is bad. It obviously is terrible. In fact, in the middle of conflict is when we need correct information at any time, at more so even than in neural normal times. And then second, there we are are the ones who are bankrolling this entire conflict. We are the ones who underwrite this, their entire ability to exist as a nation. They would collapse literally without us. So maybe our people have the right to know exactly what the hell is going on inside of Ukraine. And this is exactly why I said it earlier. I was like, hey, guys, don't trust anything that's coming out of there. Every you know, I recently on Max Boot from the Washington Post. He's like, I returned from Kiev. Here's what I saw. This is all propaganda. It's like going to North Korea or something like that and saying, oh, everybody in North Korea I spoke to is happy. It's like, okay, so is that reality?
00:21:36
Speaker 1: Yep, that's right. And I think we have Americans tend to have a good understanding of the way that press freedom is severely curtailed with regards to Russia, and so there's a lot of very justified skepticism of what's put out from Russian journalists, Russian media outlets, et cetera. That's all filtered through a lens of skepticism. As it should be really important people understand very similar limits on press freedom and tightly controlled access, tightly controlled narrative shaping, and also a lot of retribution if you dare step out of bounds of what the Ukrainians want to present in this coore. So this is just a reminder you really need to take everything that is being reported out of this, whether it's from a Russian outlet, a Ukrainian outlet, or a Western outlet with a million grains of salt, and the incredibly skeptical of the narratives that are being pushed out there. You know, as I was reading this, Zagur, remember that early report that came out talking about where the weapons that we were shipping and where the resource aware sent where that was actually going, raising a lot of concerns about the end of viligage track exactly what's happening here. Good report, interesting report, something that is a vital interest to American people. Who are funding, you know, these shipments of weapons over and over again, and that thing got pulled down and they put on this statement saying, oh, you know, things have changed on the ground and we'll do a different report in future maybe. And you know, that was the last we heard of it. I wonder what the reaction was from those Lenski government. I wonder what was going on specifically behind the scenes now that we know some of these details. But this is the reason why all of the narratives that come out about this or follow the same very simplistic, very sort of disneyfied good versus Evil script. It's because if you even dare step out of bounds enough to go to Crimea and talk to a few citizens on the ground and just relay what they say, you get hit, You get smacked, and you will never get that access again.
00:23:34
Speaker 2: Yeah. And you know, speaking of Thomas Gibbons snaff, he actually wrote a decent story, but I can clearly see the heavy hand of the editors. Let's go and put it up there on the screen headline Nazi symbols on Ukraine's front lines highlight authority issues of history. This, guys, we're not joking, is literally both siding Nazism. They say the decision by some Ukrainian soldiers who wear patches with Nazi icons threatens to reinforce Russian propaganda used to justify the invasion. It could also give symbols mainstream life after the West decades long efforts to eliminate them, and effectively, what they try and do here Crystal is say, yeah, there are battalions inside of Ukraine which are basically far right Nazis and that, you know, venerate Nazi ideology. Now, let's be very clear so that this doesn't get clipped in some ridiculous context. Nobody is saying that Zelenski is a Nazi, or that the Ukrainian government are Nazis, or that the vast majority of the Ukrainian military are Nazis. However, it is factually correct that there are some people who are neo Nazis who are in the Ukrainian military, which is used as a pretext by Russia to invade Ukraine. That does not make it okay to invade Ukraine, but it is just simply a fact that these battalions and exist inside of the Ukrainian government. And what they try to do in this story is basically say, yeah, it's true, there are a couple of uh, you know, militias and all these, but it's complicated. You know, they're not technically real Nazis or you know the actually it's justified Russian propaganda. I mean, it's it truly is stunning that it's stunning that they are trying to both side it and not. You know, it's like, if you're going to report on it, it just tell the truth. There are yeah, battalians and militia members inside. You can attach the Ukrainian military funded by the US government who are Nazis. You can be okay with that or not. Many people are okay with that. But the problem is is that many people don't even know about it.
00:25:34
Speaker 1: That's that's okay. So there's a lot of layers of issues with this article. Number one. The issue they point to with this isn't that US taxpayers are funding some amount of Nazis in Ukraine. That's not their takeaway, which seems like a pretty obvious takeaway and something we should all be thinking about and concerned about. The leads weighing into these decisions. Their takeaway is that the presence of these symbols might give Russia a talking point. That's their concern. Okay, so that's number one, number two in terms of the both sides in Nazism. I loved this line here. Questions over how to interpret such symbols are as devices, as they are persistent, not just in Ukraine and the American South. Some of them insisted that today the Confederate flag symbolizes pride, not a history of racism and successions. Let me just pause you there. Can you imagine New York Times saying that about the Confederate Flag in any other circumstance. Never then they go on to say, I love this. The swastika was an important Hindu symbol before it was co opted by the Nazis.
00:26:32
Speaker 2: That's true.
00:26:32
Speaker 1: Now do you think the Ukrainians that are wearing this in the Azon battalion are doing it out of respect for Hindu peace traditions? Like this is absurd. And by the way, the symbology that I'm no expert in like Nazi symbology. But what they're using here is like, you know, some insignia that was associated was like the worst of the Nazis that were guarding concentration camps and stuff, and they're trying to wave this away as like, well, maybe it's about the Hindu part of Nasi of the swastika, not the Nazi parts, like okay, y'all. They also go through a long, you know, diatribe about the history of the Nazi invasion of Ukraine and and this is factual that initially people viewed them as potential liberators because because they suffered under you know, some of the totalitarianism in the Soviet Union. But then they had to go ahead and throw a line which is also true that they then helped the Nazis some Ukrainians and you know, were also complicit in atrocities that were created there. It's like, what part of this justifies and makes it okay for you to be wearing Nazi imagery at this point? What part of it separates you from that you know, horrific tradition history, And so it's really quite an astonishing article to reach a mostertality, like they have to acknowledge the reality that this is happening in some significant level, but the layers of justification cope that they go through to make it like, yeah, it's Nazism, but it's really not that bad. It's okay, is pretty incredible.
00:28:06
Speaker 2: You know, some Americans just have the most naive view of history. This is my immigrant speaking, because it's just like they really believe that history began in like nineteen ninety one or whatever, whenever Ukraine became a country, as you just pointed to, Yeah, guess what. And look, I mean you can somewhat understand it. You know why they supported the Nazis when they invaded because they hated Stalin and they literally had a famine. It was terrible. So I'm like, yeah, intellectually I can get that. Also, it's not like they it's not like they love them the entire time. Basically, after the Nazis started hanging them, then they started fighting back against everybody and they wanted independence, which is you know, okay, a noble I guess idea. But also, yeah, look, there's a deep history of anti Semitism and of anti Jewish sentiment in the region well predating Nazism. Many American Jews whose families came here came in the late nineteen hundred or in the early nineteen hundreds after horrific pogroms, specifically in Ukraine and in that region. I know many actually families who are descendants of that time. None of it is to denigrate the Ukrainian regime or say that they currently you know, hold those ideas, only to say history is complicated. These areas of the world are not, you know, it's not not. The whole world is America, and most people in this country are frankly so terribly traveled, badly read, or just have like naive ideas that they have no idea how the rest of how the old world really does conduct itself and thinks in terms of generations and not just in terms of you know, like whatever what happened last week. It's a very American idea, to be honest.
00:29:40
Speaker 1: Well it's also like, okay, so in the beginning, when you're starving because of Stalin, you know, you can understand reading the Nazis as liberators. Sure, but you are no longer starving under the thumb of Stalin. Now you have the benefit of history to know what a horror and an atrocity this was. So I don't know that that original view of what was going on there really justifies the continued embrace of Nazi symbols and ideology. So yeah, again, I cannot imagine New York Times writing many of these phrases in any other context and trying to both sides Nazism or trying to say, you know, Confederate flag like it's complicated, We get it. So it was pretty wild to see. And then that the takeaway is it, Hey, guys, maybe you know, we should consider the fact that we are not arming some number of Nazis. Again, not everybody, not even the majority, not the overwhelming, that's nothing like that. But some number of Nazis we are arming. That's not the takeaway from the article.
00:30:43
Speaker 2: Pretty incredible, absolutely well said.
00:30:48
Speaker 1: So let's get to what is going on with twenty twenty four. We'll start with Donald Trump here. So we've got some new revelations from a CNN reportedly about what is causing a lot of a skepticism of them, making it more likely that he is going to be indicted with regard to the classified document situation. Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen. This is pretty wild. So apparently, as part of the investigation process, the Department of Justice had originally subpoened some surveillance footage and you know that was turned over and then in October they asked for additional surveillance footage. Oh right, at that similar time in October, just so happened, the mar A Lago pool was drained, it caused a flood into the room where the surveillance footage happened to be kept, and they were then unable to turn over that amount of surveillance footage again, according to the CNN report. Furthermore, the maintenance worker who was charged with draining the pool that ultimately causes the flood is the same person who is seen in other videos moving some of the boxes around at the time per where they're also being asked to turnover documents, and they see on the surveillance cameras that boxes are sort of suspiciously being moved around. Furthermore, they also have apparently thought or received heard some testibony that the relevant IT equipment was not even actually damaged in the flood. So they don't come out and say this, but basically the allegation is they use this flood to pretend like they damage the surveillance footage so they wouldn't have to turn it over to the Justice Department. And you know, it's part of an alleged cover up in this case. So the details here are pretty wild. I mean, it's like something out of a movie. Again, this is allegations, it's not confirmed, but it gives you some context and some background of why they might be moving swiftly here towards an indictment.
00:32:48
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I also know that the special Counsel, Jack Smith, actually met yesterday with Trump's attorneys about nearing the decision to possibly go ahead and charge him. So so, I mean, I think it's one of those where we genuinely have no idea how this is going to play out, just because you have the political aspect of play. You of course have President Biden, who literally got caught also with the classified documents at his residence. Then you also have the added you know, wrinkle I guess of Trump, the charges they're zeroing in or not possession, but of obstruction. Then they have to prove the obstruction in terms of his legal team violating the confidentiality with his lawyers, and now with the surveillance they say that they have. Now I also heard reporting about a tape, you know, in which Trump acknowledged that he had classified documents in his possession while he's doing a book interview sometime in twenty twenty one with Mark meadows, this is about Iran. So anyway, I am one of those where this smells so much like Mueller to me. But also look on the merits. You know, in terms of the leaks that are coming out like oh, they met with this and they oh the Special Counsel is zeroing in on this. But you know, every lawyer and legal expert that we have spoken to Crystal just said, look on the merits the obstruction charge. You know, this is a disaster for him, just because it's one of those where it's really as long as they have like a decent amount of evidence to bring a charging document against it or charging case against him on this, then you know, all they have to prove that, all they have to prove to the jury is he took an effort to try and obstruct the government from obtaining these documents, of which you know, if they have a tape, and if they can prevent circumstantial evidence on this, then you know, on its merits, this may not be that difficult to prove to the jury. The only thing that really would save him is the political consideration about charging a former president. But also you can see this and say that well a former president, you know, he was charged in New York, and it's not like it all it changed really things all that much politically. In fact, it only helped Trump. This one might be different because of the Biden administration. Of course, I'm not downplaying it. It's still extraordinary whenever it does happen, but just that maybe that influenced our calculus. Really don't know.
00:34:57
Speaker 1: Yeah, So if the emerging reports are accurate, you have the tape you're referring to, which would undercut his defense that basically like, well, I declassified all these documents when I was president, so I could do whatever I want with them. Allegedly, in this tape he seems to indicate like, hey, I got these classified documents and I didn't declassify them, So it undercuts that defense of these were all declassified. You also have a complicating factor there too, which is that the document that he's referring to in that tape apparently they have been unable to find and it was very sensitive with regard to a potential attack on Iran. So there's that piece. Then, in terms of potential obstruction and a cover up, you've cut this wild story about the pool draining situation flooding the room you know, maybe it really was an accident, maybe it wasn't an accident. But the when when you add that to the footage they have of guys moving boxes around, and potentially even Trump himself moving boxes that contain this sensitive material around, then you start to have a pretty damning set of back. So that's the way that that is all shaping up at this point in terms of the time and good and put this up on the screen. As you mentioned, Sager, some of Trump's attorneys did meet with the Special Counsel at the Justice Department on Monday. This was seen as very significant because also the grand jury that had been impaneled, they had been not been meeting for a month. Now they are starting to meet again this week. There is some speculation I have no idea whether this is founded or not, that potentially that means they're wrapping things up, and the fact that the Trump's lawyers are meeting with the Department of Justice is another indication that they are coming close to an indictment. You also have Trump, remember before he was indicted in the other case in New York, he started raging on truth social and talking about like I'm going to be indicted imminently, etc. He sort of started to do that again with regard to this case and saying how unfair it is that he would be indicted and not Biden or not other presidents, et cetera. So I also take that as another potential sign that you could be getting close to an indictment here. Now in terms of the politics of all of this, with regard to the Republican primary, I hate to say it, I think is only good for Trump. You've had a little bit of a media moment now with Ron de Santis launching, You've got a bunch of other presidential contenders launching this week, where there's been some focus that's not just on Donald Trump in terms of the Republican primary. The minute that you get back into another indictment and all the details and whatever comes down, whatever that process is going to be, then all eyes and all media focus is right back on Donald Trump, and in terms of a Republican primary electorate, that is only to his benefit.
00:37:38
Speaker 2: Yeah, I absolutely agree with you, chrystol.
00:37:42
Speaker 1: So. At the same time, we have a new contender in the twenty twenty four race, not a Democrat or Republican, doctor Cornell West, Progressive activist, someone who was a surrogate for Bernie Sanders, someone who I personally deeply respected. Meyer, who we've interviewed before, I think multiple times. He is announced he is running for president as a People's Party candidate. Let's take a listen to a little bit of his announcement video.
00:38:11
Speaker 4: In these bleak times, I have decided to run for truth and justice, which takes the form of running for President of the United States as a candidate for the People's Party. I enter in the quest for truth, I enter in the quest for justice, and the presidency is just one vehicle to pursue that truth and justice what I've been trying to do all of my life. I come from a tradition where I care about you. I care about the quality of your life. I care about whether you have assets to a job with a living wage, decent housing, women having control over their bodies, health care for all the escalating, the destruction of the planet, the destruction of American democracy. Democracy creates disruption, It creates an eruption, It creates an interruption. Why from below the energies of everyday people as manifests And I know there are precious people in your life who you care for. That's why it's important for you to be involved, important for you to participate. Not talking about hating anybody. We're talking about loving, We're talking about affirming, We're talking about empowering those who have.
00:39:44
Speaker 5: Been pushed to the margins.
00:39:47
Speaker 4: Because neither political party wants to tell the truth about Wall Street, about Ukraine, about the Pentagon, about big tech, neo fascist like brother Trump or Milto's ne liberals like Brother Biden. Wow, well, I'm so happy to make a world shaking decision.
00:40:06
Speaker 6: You know what I mean?
00:40:08
Speaker 4: I know gangsters when I see it, and Gangster's not a subjective expression, It's an objective condition. Do we have what it takes? We shall see. But some of us are going to go down fighting, go down swinging with style and a smile, accenting the best in you and trying to tease out the best in me.
00:40:38
Speaker 5: Let's do it together. Wow.
00:40:41
Speaker 1: I think it's a great video. Yeah. And doctor West, I mean, he's an incredible force in American public life, someone I deeply admire and respect, A brave to truth teller. I don't think anyone could take that away from him. And I just love his energy. He's always brought of reaching out to people who may disagree with him, but never never compromising his values in any way. However, the choice of running in this way with the People's Party is it's just confusing to me, you know, if you're going to run third party. The Green Party has ballot access in almost every state. They obviously were able to have an impact in getting more traction in twenty sixteen when doctor Jill Stein ran the People's Party from what is public of publicly available only has ballot access in three states. They've been around since roughly twenty sixteen. Is they've never been able to elect a president, so effectively, you're signing up for what is really like a write in campaign. You know, I also have questions about how much your success you're able to garner as a third party candidate, just given the structure of American politics, the fact we have first past the post voting, the fact we don't have ranked choice voting. So I'm sort of confused about what the thinking is tactically here, because if you were going to go to the third party route, there seem to be other vehicles. And also, frankly, you know just sort of tried the let's have an impact or a third party run thing in twenty sixteen, so you kind of know with a third party like you're not gonna win just because of the overall structure of American politics. But if your theory of changes, all right, this is going to put pressure on Biden the Democrats to move more left and represent more of our values. Well that was tried in twenty sixteen, and rather than putting pressure on them to move left, what it actually caused them to do was to further smear and dismiss leftists and anyone whoever said even a single kind word about doctor Jill Side, to redouble their efforts to crush any sort of leftist insurgencies, to smear everyone as like you know, Putin's puppets, then fascist sympathizers, et cetera. And just as a tactic it wasn't successful. So that's sort of my take. I love doctor West, doesn't take anything away from my respect for him, but as a tactic, I'm quite confused by it.
00:42:57
Speaker 2: It could be he just wants media attention, he wants to try and move the race, you know, in that way, in that way, I mean, listen, maybe it's It could also be a way in order to garner funding for the People's Party in order to get them on more ballid access, to try and get the initiatives in order to you know, set them up for future success. That's I think that's, you know, one way to look at it. I mean I think that really, you know, in fact, that's probably the most likely scenario, which is giving you such a well respected figure and is well known media wise, gaining enough attention both in the media forced to cover his run, but also to gain enough money and in volunteers, then they could go out and to try and get more ballid access so they could become maybe the next Green Party in the future, you know, overall. I mean, look, I think people often confuse you know, political reality for for like a judgment like I have no issues with third parties. It's always more I just come down to, like, is this a real effort that's actually going to work? And that is why, right, I mean, honestly, that's why I respect what RFK do you and Marianne are doing because they're running is democrats, and especially with RFK, I mean RFK Junior is basically running you know, on the same policy platform as people who were Green for decades but he I think correctly intuited that if I run as a Democrat, that this forces a genuine contrast with Biden Mary Anne doing the exact same thing as well, even though though both easily could be third party candidates. It almost gives them, I don't want to say legitimacy, but it gives them a more contestable ground also, you know, the same with many other even Look, I don't think Liz Cheney could ever win, but there's a reason she's not running third party. She's like, no, I'm a Republican because she wants to try and quote take back the Republican Party. Again. I don't agree with her. I don't think she will be successful, but working within the same construct gives like a gives a ground to contest on which the opponent has to fight, whereas unfortunately, in our current system, they're able to just write you off, which is what most people are going to do, you know with this, which I don't think is right. You know, if he had run as a Democrat. But you know, here's the other thing. Maybe he just doesn't believe in the Democratic Party. Nothing wrong with that, you know, It's okay, that's that's yeah.
00:45:12
Speaker 1: Absolutely that's fine, and I do think there are potential twenty sixteen levels of third party support, level of interest within the American electric. You have a huge number of Americans who are disgusted with the idea that they're going to have to pick again between Biden and Trump, sentiment that I deeply relate to. Right, So there, it's not like there's not an opening for people for a third party candidate to get some chunk of the vote. Is that going to be a winning percentage? No, it's not going to be just simply because of the structure of American politics. And we've seen the way that this is played up. I mean Bernie Sanders, there were problems with this campaign. He was you know, was ricked against him. He wasn't able to get across the finish line. He came out of a lot closer than Jill Stein did, for example. So you know, in terms of if you actually want to win the state of American politics, the structure of the system is such that you have to compete in one of the two main parties if you want to push Biden to the left. If that's your goal, I think we have sort of run the playbook and run the experiment before, and there's been more success, not that this worked on amazingly, but there's been more success pressuring him within the context of a Democratic primary, where, for example, Joe Biden did not want to cancel any student loan dead right, very clear. He would not have taken a position in that he wouldn't have felt pressure to do any of it in his administration had he not been on a stage with Canada's like Bernie Sanders that were pushing the issue and forced him to have to take that stance. And then you know, once he's in office, he's sort of shamed into sticking with the very clear commitments that he made. So if your goal is not to win but to push him left, I think we've also seen more effective tactics. And then I also have to say, like I'm not trying to be mean here, but the People's Party has been in shambles. It's been in disarray, it's been ripe with controversy. Their board members have been resigned left and right. There's allegations of sexual harassment and self feeling and all the rest of it. So it's just again it's hard for me to understand what the goal is or what the tactics are. And that's disappointing to me because I do have so much respect for doctor West. I would love for him to have a huge impact on American political discourse and you know, the direction of the country, because I do think he's such a powerful voice, and it's hard for me to see how this maximizes his chances to have the greatest impact on American political life.
00:47:30
Speaker 2: Maybe I'll turn it around. Who knows, you know, it'd be never know, you never know.
00:47:35
Speaker 1: Yeah, Ok, let's go Karen for him always.
00:47:38
Speaker 2: Of course, all right, let's go to the next part here, UFO's I've been dying to get into this one ever since the story came out yesterday. I want to really spend some time and go through this thing to help people understand. So, guys, let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. I'm going to break down I think the most relevant and the most important parts. The headline here is the intelligence officials say that the US has retrieved craft of non human origin. Now, first of all, that is a massive headline, but I also want to draw everyone's attention to the byline here, Leslie Keene and Ralph Blumenthal. Now for those who are not as initiated as I am. One of the reasons why these two journalists are absolutely unimpeachable on this topic is that they were the ones who brought the world the twenty seventeen New York Times article that actually revealed the existence of the UFO program inside of the Pentagon, and of course gave us those videos which are now so many Americans have seen the go Fast video, the tic TAC video, and others, and they really opened up the space for respectability and acknowledgment by Pentagon officials and others that this is a real phenomenon, and really they ignited the congressional interests enough to try and get some information about the program. Okay, so that's kind of the starting point the headline, and also who these reporters are, and let's get into the content. So here is what they are saying is that a former US intelligence official who is now turned whistleblower under the official whistleblower process, is giving Congress and the Intelligence Community Inspector General extensive classified information about deeply covert programs that he says possesses retrieve intact and partially intact craft of non human origin. This information he says, has been illegally withheld from Congress, and he has now filed a complaint through the program alleging that he suffered illegal retaliation for the confidential disclosures reported here in the debrief. This whistleblower, David Grusch, thirty six years old, a decorated former combat officer in Afghanistan. He's a veteran of the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency the National Reconnaissance Office. He apparently was one of the people who would help compile the Presidential Daily Brief. As I understand, he was given over seven hours of interviews to Newsmax which are airing recently about the documentary that has been working with some great UFO researchers who have been long in this topic. And I want to sorry NewsNation. I apologize NewsNation is too many startup cable things out there. Here is what is very important. David grush says that the recoveries of partial fragments of craft through and up to fully intact vehicles have been made for decades through the present day by the government, its allies, and defense contractors. Furthermore, he has told Congress in sworn testimony of the existence of decades long, quote publicly unknown Cold War for recovered and exploited physical material, competition with near peer adversary over years to identify UFO crashes and landings and retrieve the material for exploitation and reverse engine nearing to garner asymmetric national defense advantages. Here's the other thing I think everyone needs to understand. David Grush not only is a patriot, not only is somebody who was tasked actually with assignment to the UFO program to go in to discover all of these secret programs, which he then says were illegally withheld from Congress, which is why he's coming out. That's how he got his hands really on some of these files and became known to the existence of these seek apartmentalized black highly secret black programs as they are known but crystal. He is testifying to all of this under oath he has signed under penalty of perjury, that he is telling the truth not only to Congress but to all of us through this official whistleblower process. And he has felt so strongly about bringing this information to the light that he has actually left the government, says simply so he can bring all of the US public. This information. Not only that. Not only that, but what I think people really need to understand is that not only is this being done through the official whistleblower process, but that the actual Inspector General, the Intelligence Inspector General to whom he submitted his complaint in July of twenty twenty two, found his complaint quote credible and urgent in an official US government document. So this is not a crank. This is somebody who was attached to the program, had knowledge of the program. He was actually tasked with going and discovering all these secret compartmentalized ones, delivering the reports to his authorities, who would then go and give him to Congress. He's coming forward because he says that they have been illegally withheld the existence of these programs. Actually from Congress. He submitted these documents through the internal process. The Inspector General of the US intelligence community itself finds David Grush both credible and urgent. And I mean the allegation here is the most stunning allegation of all the existence of craft and the posision of the United States government of other foreign governments of craft and parts of craft of non human origin. I listened to a breakdown of seven hours of the interviews that he gave. Apparently it's also referred to quote in the plurality non human intelligences, non human intelligences in terms of the types of craft that are are within the possession of the government. And finally, you know, the last thing I'll say before I shut up and get your reaction is this implicates massive crimes across the US government. First and foremost, the current head of the UFO Task Force just told Congress there is no existence of craft or program that we know of. This says that he's a liar. He actually purjured himself before Congress. Second, and then the second which is so important also to understand, is Crush is saying that there has been a decades long crime and also even collusion between the US government and aerospace defense companies outside of normal processes to cover this up from the US public, for presidents, from Congress, and now basically you know, for years and years, and from what I understand, he's alleging crimes of such tremendous like weight that many of the people, if they're even still alive or you know, if this ever does fully come to light, they would go to jail if the actual accountability happens in this process. So, I mean, look, in some ways is the most important story in the world. Like, this guy's one of the most credible people probably in the UFO world to come forward is David Fraber in the twenty seventeen article and is literally saying that the government has the possession of alien or you know, non human spacecraft.
00:54:45
Speaker 1: It's incredible, It's absolutely stunning, And just to underscore what you're saying, keep in mind, this man is risking his freedom and potentially his life in order to come forward and make these claims through a fish whistle blower processes. So it is a stunning revelation. Let me play the skeptic here for a moment's soccer.
00:55:06
Speaker 2: Sure, So, what he's.
00:55:08
Speaker 1: Alleging is that there was not only a whole of government within the United States cover up, but there was a global cover up, that there were multiple countries that were competing to obtain these crafts because of obviously like the scientific discoveries and military defense advances that you can make from reverse engineering this type of alien technology. Is it far faest to believe that everybody over all of these many decades kept their mouths shut and that this information never became public previously.
00:55:43
Speaker 2: Listen. I mean that's what everybody always says, and I think it's a fair point. But then JFK clearly was killed by somebody. We still don't know who it was, or at least officially. It's been decades, right, you would think it's one of the biggest stories in the world, and yet the official narrative is not out there, only questions. Or let's think about some other big ones. I mean the JFK assassination that we had even with the UFOs, I mean Roswell. The government has already admitted that they lied on Roswell and that was you know, nineteen forty seven, and yet we still don't know the truth about what happened there. So I think what is Oh, Charlie Manson is another one that we can think of the Manson murders. If you read the book Chaos by Tom O'Neil, it is very obvious that this is a CIA US government operation gone terribly wrong in which they effectively created Manson may have even been connected to Jack Ruby. Well, you know, Tom O'Neil, decades after the crime, is still unable to get these guys to talk, and he comes as close as he possibly can to proving that the official story was complete. But yes, so, on the one hand, you know, common sense would say, yeah, you're probably right, but we have enough proven examples to show that if you keep the circle small enough and if you really work the system, that you could keep enough questions out of the public consciousness to make the propaganda flourish. And here's another such an important part of the story, Crystal. They brought Leslie Keane and Rob Blumenthal. Block brought this story to the New York Times, to Politico, to The Hill, to the Washington Post. Every single one of them passed on it. And wow, look read the story. It's rock solid as a story as it's it is unimpeachable. The only reason that the mainstream media and others wouldn't do this is because somebody in the Pentagon threatened to retaliate. Is they threatened to say, we're gonna go like, if you run this, we're gonna you're gonna burn some of your sources. I mean, they are trying to relegate this to the fringes of the internet, you know, you know, crackpots like me and others, to the ones who we're talking about it because they don't want it to enter the public consciousness. There is no question that this is a credible allegation, and yet I have not seen a single single in stream of journalists take this up. And by the way, I've talked to here previously, I was a former Pentagon correspondent. I've sent this to multiple form Pentagon course current Pentagon correspondents, and please please ask them about this. I'm already looking into ways like maybe I can, you know, try and you know, try and get some answers as well. I'm trying my best, you know, but I'm not within the system as much as I was at some point. Until people start pushing not only their representatives but also the press for answers, They're going to try and squash this as much as they can, because on its face, we have a credible allegation here that the current head of the UFO program lied to Congress no ifans or butts, and then not only that, but the sworn testimony and all of the documenting evidence about how credible this man is about you have former Army colonels and others from the intel community coming out openly saying that he is unimpeachable. That you can absolutely take into bank. You know, everything he's been saying. He was vetted for over fifteen months by these journalists and others who were involved with this. So just wow, I mean wow, it really, like I said, if it's true, it's the biggest story of the world.
00:59:09
Speaker 1: I mean it just see it seems so wild that it's hard to wrap your head around. I mean, just to be candid, what do you think happens next saga? Like, what's the next part in the process, And did he decide to come forward now because it seemed like he may have some actual allies in Congress.
00:59:25
Speaker 2: It's certainly possible. That's something Actually we can speak with our next guest, Ryan Graves, about one of the pilots who actually has come forward about these not only this specific allegation, but just about his own encounters up in the air for years while he was in the United States Navy. I believe he is coming forward because of people like Christin gillibrand, of Marco Rubio, of Timbert, you know, several other members of Congress who are they've had enough, they've had enough of the lies from the intelligence community, and they want to hear the truth and you know this, this could give them the ability to get to it now. Personally, I do not underestimate the CIA, the US government, or these black programs. They didn't keep stuff secret for seventy five years by no accident, and so this is only the beginning. I think it could be a tipping point. It really could into disclosures and exposure of the future. But I don't think that. I don't think that things are going to necessarily change overnight. There's still a lot of work that has to be done.
01:00:24
Speaker 1: Not going to be an easy road.
01:00:26
Speaker 5: Nope.
01:00:26
Speaker 2: All right, we got a great guest standing by Ryan Graves. As I mentioned, let's get to it. Joining us now is Ryan Graves. He's the executive director and founder of Americans for Safe Aerospace, friend of the show, and he's got a great podcast. He's also a former pilot as well, who's given us some interesting revelations around the UFO phenomenon. Ryan, it's great to have you back on the show. Thanks for joining us.
01:00:46
Speaker 7: I'm happy to be here.
01:00:47
Speaker 5: Thank you.
01:00:48
Speaker 2: Ryan. First and foremost, we just did a whole segment here on the show about the latest revelations about the whistleblower who has come forward and says the US government is in possession of intact of non human origin. I just want to get your reaction to that as somebody who's personally had experiences with the phenomenon.
01:01:07
Speaker 7: Yeah, I know how hard it is firsthand coming forward and talking about this publicly, both the professional and personal risk that I can entail. So I applaud David for coming forward and the courage that he's demonstrated. These are the exact type of people that Congress was hoping would be able to step forward once they passed their legislation that would enable the whistleblower protections.
01:01:30
Speaker 2: Yeah, and Ryan, you're one of those people who was courageous in coming forward. Could you just describe why it is so difficult for people like you the pushback that you receive internally to coming out and telling Americans the truth.
01:01:43
Speaker 7: Well, I think we're all familiar with it to some degree, that stigma that comes with this topic, and once you really commit yourself to looking into this and investigating it, of course there are potential professional or personal ramifications from them. I haven't personally seen those been a positive experience for me, but traditionally that has been the experience. Now that we have protections in Congress, and now that this has been matured as a conversation within media, I expect to see more and more people step forward in the near future.
01:02:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, and so Ryan, this kind of fits with what you're here to talk about today, which is very serendipitous. We'd booked you long before about the Americans for Safe Aerospace. What are you trying to do through your experience and through this new organization.
01:02:28
Speaker 7: Exactly so, Americans for Safe Aerospace was found to help support people just like David and other aerospace workers that are impacted by this. Primarily, we're focusing on building a safe place for pilots and other aerospace workers to be able to share their experiences to talk about this. We're going to leverage those experiences to be able to provide general education to the public, but also to Congress as well. We want to destigmatize this conversation. We want to lead with the credible voices that have come forward, and we've put together a great advice board that we're going to be able to use to recommend policy legislation and advance the growing caucus of UAP support within Congress.
01:03:09
Speaker 2: See. This is why I think it's very important is you're spocusing specifically. Also, what David has been trying to do is get Congress to do its job. Can you explain this is something I've been trying to do as well, the role that Congress and why it really is one of the only organizations here that can, you know, destigmatize, declassify, and make transparent what has been happening within the government. Why can't just a normal person or you know, why can't the press necessarily get its hands on what it needs to do here?
01:03:37
Speaker 7: Well, certainly Congress, you know, has the ability, has the oversight ability on certain branches, and within the Department of Defense that's no different. They have a mandate not only to represent us as our representatives, but also to perform those oversight roles. And what we're seeing now through the National Defense Authorization Act of twenty twenty three and potentially with a future legislation in twenty four, we're going to see continued oversight of these programs. And that's really at the core of what is potentially the wrongdoing here is that these programs have been withheld although they were utilizing public funds in order to execute they were not being properly reported to Congress and thus our representatives, and so we're essentially cut out of that conversation.
01:04:20
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so Ran, I mean, here's what I really want you to be able to speak to is through the organization and the general public. What power do we have the listeners of the show, the general public, what do we what role can we play in helping you and helping David and helping so many others trying to get information out to back to all of us, because really, you know, the government's supposed to belong to us.
01:04:43
Speaker 7: One of the best things you can do right now is to join us at safferospace dot org. The more members we have, we're going to be able to take that message and we're going to be able to speak to that on Capitol Hill and show that your constituents care about this. This is a winner, This is an issue that people care about, and they're going to take that message and they're going to be able to continue to apply that pressure, continue to apply that oversight with the support of their voters. And that's what we want to make clear. We want to bridge that gap to show that support exists.
01:05:12
Speaker 5: So by just the.
01:05:13
Speaker 7: General public joining, raising your hand and saying you care about this topic. That's where you can start.
01:05:20
Speaker 2: Excellent. Well, we'll have a link to that in description. We appreciate so much of the work that you are doing here. It's very you know, it's always an honor to talk to you here. Welcome back on the show anytime to talk about this issue. And if you ever need help, you know in Washington, d C. I'm here, I'm ready, willing and able to appear with you. Let's do it, all right, man, thank you so much for joining us. We appreciate it, all right, pleasure.
01:05:42
Speaker 1: So, the SEC has filed thirteen new charges against Finance, the largest crypto trading exchange platform in the entire world. This comes on top of charges that had been filed against them with the CFTC. So let's go ahead and break down what we've got here. This is from the SEC announcement. They say they filed thirteen charges against Finance entities and the founder here, Shengpeng Chau, who is known as the z. Charges include operating unregistered exchanges, broker dealers and clearing agencies, misrepresenting trading controls and oversight on the binance dot us platform, and the unregistered offer and sale of securities. I'm going to read a little bit more of this, but just as background, recall that Finance has been presenting themselves as they don't have any US customers, they don't appeal to US customers, they did not want to have to deal with the US regulatory regime. They have gone through and CZ specifically has gone through great lengths to make it so that the company is really like headquartered nowhere, so that they can be subject to the laws of effectively no jurisdiction. And so what the US is saying here in part is we see through your game. Clearly you are offering securities. You're violating a whole host of our laws. And it's very clear cut that you know you are doing this and you have knowledge of the way that you are violating our own laws. So let me read you a little bit about some of the charges here saga. They say, through thirteen charges, we allege that CZ and Finance entities engage in an extensive web of deception, conflicts of interest, lack of disclosure, and calculated evasion of the law. This is per sec Chair Gary Gensler as alleged CZ and Finance misled investors about their risk controls, and corrupted trading volumes, while actively concealing who was actually operating the platform, the manipulative trading of its affiliated market maker and even ware, and with whom investor funds and crypto assets were custody. They attempted to evade US securities laws by announcing sham controls that they disregarded behind the scenes so they could keep high value US customers on their platforms. The public should beware of investing any of their hard earned assets with or on these unlawful platforms. They go on to say, we allege that and the Binance entities not only knew the roles rules of the road, they also consciously chose to evade them and put their customers and investors at risk, all in an effort to maximize their own profits. And just to give you a sense of how raisin this was, some of the messages that were exchanged among finance executives make it pretty clear that they knew they were violating the law and they brazenly did it anyway. Go ahead and put this next piece up on the screen. From Matt Stoler, so Binance's chief compliance officer in twenty eighteen said and I quote, we are operating as an effing unlicensed security exchange in the USA. Bro so pretty hard to deny that they knew what they were doing, that they knew it was illegal, and that they you know, this has been coming for a while, but some of the extent of the charges here soagar are still stunning because it's not just them operating as an effing unlicensed security exchange in the USA, but also lying to investors also pretending that they had these controls in place that they didn't really have. And this fits with some of what was revealed in the previous set of charges, where they were going so far as to while they're pretending that they don't have US customers on their exchange, they were coaching US citizens on how they could evade detection as being US citizens so that they could continue doing business on the platform. So, I mean, it all appears to be incredibly brazen.
01:09:31
Speaker 2: That's the real disaster for them because they specifically say this is the US tie in that they were working to subvert their own internal controls to allow high net worth of Americans and customers to continue to trade on their unregulated international exchange. Their compliance officer has that famous quote where they're saying they're working the unlicensed securities exchange in the US and that they saw their finance as a shield to reveal, retard, and resolve law enforcement targets and to insulate Binance itself. So some of the internal representations of the company are really coming back to bite them, and it really is a real issue because they show that between June of twenty eighteen and July twenty twenty one, they earned eleven billion dollars in revenue, almost all of which came from transaction fees. They say that since its inception, the exchange at first overtly and later furtively worked to entice US customers at the explicit direction of the CEO, and they also say that Jao himself is the one who ordered the creation of these actual the program to try and help some of these high networth investors come onto the platform. Now, the real issue why all of this matters is because it is in conjunction with the CFTC also filing similar charges against Binance, saying that they had failed to prevent US customers from accessing it, and this can cause a whole host of issues for the company. Through the banking system. Because the thing is is that you know, of course, uh, you know, Bitcoin and all of that operates outside of control. But if you want to ever try and convert any of this to cash, you're gonna have to touch the banking system. And at least in our current world, the United States has an immense amount of reach through the Treasury Department and through its sanctions regime, and through its ability to go after any banking institution in the world that does business with any US institution can try and ban Binance and its financial assets. So at the very least, they are facing a very serious issue here with the with the lawsuit and really, you know, any of their investors and others is could you know, create a world where many of them could never like touch US jurisdiction again, which is which is insane right to think about?
01:11:54
Speaker 1: Yeah? Oh absolutely, And Binance is vastly larger than FTX Sambangma Breathe outfit ever was. It's not even close. There are a lot of similarities here in terms of allegations of self dealing. I mean, most clear cut the similarity is the fact that you have this one dude who is controlling everything, even as he's pretending pieces of it are independent, he has nothing to do with it. In reality, he's making all of the key decisions behind the scenes, operating in this extraordinarily lawless manner, like overtly and intentionally lawless, trying to make sure that the company is not even headquartered anywhere, and that this legal structure is so opaque that they think that we'll protect them from having to face any sort of accountability or being held you know, liable, or having any sort of legal regime apply to them. So you have this, you know, lawless, chaotic, one man band kind of a situation. Now there are some differences with finance. You don't have the affiliated you know fund the way that you did with FTX and Alameda, but there are some sort of you know, commonalities here. And it's also interesting the two SBF and CZ were also really rivals. CZ is the one who sort of pushed SBF over the ledge at the very end here, and now his time in the barrel, I guess has arrived. So in terms of the impact on the crypto world, I mean, I think it's hard to underestimate how massive this is, just given how large this platform was and how integral it was to any sort of crypto transactions here or around the world.
01:13:36
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a huge problem. It also has put coinbase at risk. From what I have read that they got a something called a wells notice from the SEC. They're trying to make sure that they are able to stay away from it. But overall, almost all of the almost all of the reporting that I've been able to look into, and financial analysts as well, is that the remedy that they could ever come to this would be a huge hit to finance because it would forbid binance from any offering of trading services, as I said, in the United States, and it would make difficult to do business in the US with really anyone unless it was then registered with the SEC and followed securities rules, which of course would be a huge problem for them. And this is the reason why they were chasing investors and traders here in the United States because of the size of our market. So overall, it's a major, major problem, and it also reveals, you know, the wild West nature of what was going on behind the scenes in some of these places, and also why post crash, you know, many of them are not in the same capitalized position to be operating or throwing around the kind of money that they were not just that long ago. And then you're really, you know, paying that you're really you know, revealing what's going on behind the curtains in the middle of the downturn right now.
01:14:50
Speaker 1: The last thing I'll say about this is that there was a lot of debate after the downfall of SBF about whether we needed new laws and place to deal with the with and you know, it's sort of like unique challenges. I think that's still an open question, but cases like this seem to indicate you actually have sufficient laws on the books. You just have to actually do the investigation, you have to enforce them. That's been you know, more or less the position of SEC Chair Gary Gensler. You'll also recall dam Pankmin Freed was doing a lot of lobbying to make sure that Crypto didn't fall under the jurisdiction of the SEC because they felt like there would be stricter scrutiny, that they had more resources to actually go after them for the law breaking that they were engaged in. So there was an explicit effort by him and others to make sure it wasn't under the jurisdiction of the SEC, and Gary Gensler has been pretty forceful in you know, the last year or so in trying to bring the hammer down and trying to take control over this space and make the SEC the preeminent agency in terms of regulating crypto.
01:15:52
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think that's a really good point, all right.
01:15:55
Speaker 1: So we also wanted to bring in there an interesting, i would say exchange between Senator Tim Scott, who of course is a you know, senate black senator forum South Carolina who is now running for president of the United States on the Republican side, and Sunny Houston and the other latest of the view. But it was mostly Sunny Tim Scott verse on the issue of structural racism. We're going to play you the whole thing so you can get, you know, the flavor of the entire exchange. Take a left.
01:16:24
Speaker 5: You have indicated that you don't believe in systemic racism. What is your definition of systemic racism? Let me ask answer the question that you've answered asked or does it even exist in your mind? Let me answer the question this way.
01:16:35
Speaker 6: One of the things that I think about and one of the reason why I'm on the show is because of the comments that were made frankly on the show that the only way for a young African American kid to be successful in this country is to be the exception and not the role. That is a dangerous, offensive, disgusting message to send to our.
01:16:47
Speaker 5: Young people today, that the only way to succeed is by being the exception.
01:16:52
Speaker 6: I will tell you that if my life is the exception, I can't imagine.
01:16:55
Speaker 5: I can't. But it's not. Actually, here's a fourteen years yes.
01:16:58
Speaker 6: So the fact of the matter is We've had an Africa American president, African American vice president, We've had two African Americans to be secretaries in the state. In my home city, the police chief is an African American who's now running from mayor.
01:17:09
Speaker 5: The head of the highway patrol for South Client is African American.
01:17:12
Speaker 6: In nineteen seventy five, there is about fifteen percent employment in the African American community.
01:17:16
Speaker 5: For the first time in the history of the country.
01:17:17
Speaker 6: It's under five percent homelessness folks in our community. Chess asked the question, I know I've watched you on the show that you like people to be deferential and respectful, So I'm going to do the same thing.
01:17:27
Speaker 5: So here's what I'm going to suggest.
01:17:28
Speaker 6: I'm going to suggest the fact of the matter is that progress in America is palpable.
01:17:31
Speaker 5: It could be measured in generations.
01:17:33
Speaker 6: I look back at the fact that my grandfather born in nineteen twenty one in Sally, South Carolina, when he was on a sidewalk a white person was coming, he had to step off and not make eye contact. That man believed then with some doubt now in the goodness of America because he believed that have faith in God, faith in himself, and faith in what the future could hold.
01:17:50
Speaker 5: First, kids would unleash.
01:17:51
Speaker 6: Opportunities in ways that you cannot imagine. Every kid today can look just change the stations and see how much progress has been made in this country. ABC, NBC, c BSESBN, CNN, Fox News all have African, American and Hispanic hosts. So what I'm suggesting is that the yesterday's exception is today's rule, and for us to.
01:18:10
Speaker 5: Semessa has met its promise.
01:18:12
Speaker 6: No, of course, the concept of America is that we are going to become a more perfect union. But in fact the challenges that we faced fifty years ago and sixty years ago should not be the same challenges that we face today.
01:18:22
Speaker 5: And here's the way that you measured that.
01:18:23
Speaker 6: But my mother was born about ten percent of African Americans got a high school degree diploma today is over ninety percent.
01:18:30
Speaker 5: When you look at the income.
01:18:31
Speaker 6: When you look at the income success that we had, HBCU stat was an HBCUs. That is a good one because one of the reasons why I took the funding for HBCUs to the highest level in the history of the country, and then I helped make it permanent is because I believe that education is the closest thing to magic in America. So I'm about making sure that our kids have as many opportunities to succeed as possible. Is one of the reasons why the opportunity to because I have to go to bad the more the big real I'm just gonna started.
01:18:58
Speaker 5: You can see the success.
01:19:04
Speaker 2: Wow, certainly fun exchange.
01:19:08
Speaker 1: Yeah, So there's a lot to say about this. I mean, first of all, I think tender Scott's point about you know, to the extent there are people out there that deny that there's been any progress made, like that's obviously a ridiculous position. But the thing that frustrates me about this conversation between you know, a black conservative and a sort of classic neoliberal is that they're metric of that. The metric they're using here is like how many diverse spaces make it into the elite class? And definitionally, I mean he's correct, like he's actually completely wrong about Obviously he is an exception, right, Obviously Sunny is an exception. Obviously everybody on the view as an exception. But the problem is that to make it into the elite class, to have a chance at you know, real success in America, where you don't feel precarious, you don't feel like you're going to fall over the edge at every second, not only for Black Americans, but it's proportionally for Black Americans, for everyone, you have to be an exception at this point. And that's the real problem that they should be grappling with versus having this debate about like how many black people are on CENA, so there was a black president of the United States, Like how many diverse spaces have ascended the elite? Well, what about lifting everybody up? What about making sure that we have law underneath everybody? What about making sure that we have actual pathways to success that are not limited to this tiny slice of America and everybody else left behind. So that was the part that I found really frustrating.
01:20:37
Speaker 2: It's funny, y, Yeah, I'm the same view. I was like, man, this is just such a stupid metric of progress. It's like you know, and if anything, it's actually identity politics really on votes. And by the way, look, I find the story inspirational. I think it's great. That's the story I believe in as well. However, and what I see if these ladies were smart and they actually had brains, what they would do is be like, well, why do you vote against policies? Well, here's the thing with Tim Scott. Especially Scott is especially of the Reaganite school of economics, which believes in the power of individualism and also goes very much against social safety net programs and others. Now, listen, I have complicated views on many of those subjects, but I'm not ideologically opposed to trying to help vast swats of Americans come and come out of come out of poverty. Whereas Scott explicitly takes an economic libertarian view of this, which you could then say, well, how are you then trying to realize and help not only Black Americans, but all Americans achieve the American dreams. So actually the metric he's using is one of which is identity politics, identitarians themselves embrace. They're just arguing over whether it's quote unquote representative enough. The metric of progress cannot be that, you know, there are more black people in the higher elite. The metric of progress has to be what is the distance between the higher elite, the middle class and the poor, and is the floor high enough for everyone? And also, as I've said so many times here on the show, if you lift the poor, you will do more to help black and Hispanic and white Americans without igniting some horrific you know, like racial tension and fights against each other. This you know, by the way, Black identitarians hate what I'm really saying here the most because everybody's always trying to play like victimhood, you know, olympics about who apparently or whatever has been more oppressed. And that's part of why the whole discussion drives me insane, is that it misses the boat almost completely about the best ways to help poor Americans in America. And look, the thing is too with Scott, he does like he believes what he believes in. I do genuinely think he seems like a nice guy. But unfortunately I almost think that they are handing him a layup if they're trying to argue about the ability to achieve you know, individual opportunity instead of ignoring like this much broader discussion. It's that that was with a big yeah failure. The huge failure of it to me was the whoop be in Sunny basically saying, no, the the view is not black enough, and he's like, you know, it's like.
01:23:11
Speaker 5: What is it?
01:23:12
Speaker 2: What are we talking about here? You know, when you reduce things to that just stupid. It misses the point.
01:23:19
Speaker 1: Yeah, I get so. In the same way that I think it's silly and frustrating to deny that there's been any progress. It also is irritating to me the view that Scott puts forward of like, you can't be honest about the reality of America because you'll discourage kids and make them think that they have no chance to succeed. Now, these things are intentions, right, You of course want to encourage people. You of course want to motivate them to be the best that they can in their lives. But you can't use that to cover for, you know, a system that is wildly unjust and that is stacked against them. And that's what I you know, object to in a lot of the sort of like conservative leaning like self help narrative, it's fine to have that aspirational uh, those aspirational goals to you know, speak to people about how they can better themselves in their own lives. But what Scott does and a lot of others in his ideological lane do is they use that as a way of completely erasing the entire rest of the conversation. And especially when you're a United States Senator and you're in a position of power to change some of those structures and make it so that it's more possible if you do work on yourself, you might actually have a chance to succeed. Then you're really, you know, failing at the task that should be in front of you. And I've also talked to you know, in America we have this kind of uniquely and there's studies that back this that this isn't just my opinion, but we have this unique ethos because of the mythology of the American dream, of this idea. Anybody can make it. You play hard, you work, but you know you play by the rules. You work hard, and anybody can succeed that. Then, when people are doing all the right things and they're still not making it. Rather than having an understanding of, well, here are the structures in place that you know were not my fault that kept me from succeeding, they turn it inwards. They feel shame, they feel depression, and you know, they they sort of beat themselves up rather than recognizing those other influences. So it really is a double edged sword here. Yes, you want to inspire people, Yes you want them to have that motivational story, but you don't want to completely erase the reality of corporate power, of the union busting, of the fact that you know, wages have been stagnant for decades and decades because of intentional government policy that is not your fault. You don't want to just pretend like that doesn't exist, because you know, you're worried about how it might sound, and you just want to focus on the individual responsibility part of it.
01:25:49
Speaker 2: Well, when I think whenever, this is why it's complicated. What I think that they are trying to get at is where an alone I object to, you know, people can go read the record. I've been against CRT since before it was cool. I just want to say I was one of the first people against the sixteen to nineteen project and trying to come out against it, and it was because I actually think that it leads to a nihilistic message in which you lead yourself to believe it is impossible to enact government programs that can get you out of this because racism, sexism, and all this other stuff is so oppressive that it's not possible. And it's like, no, wait, hold on a second, that's actually not true. That is a historical So there is actually a way to use I think the Tim Scott idea that it is possible to work yourself out of this. And also kind of what you and I are talking about, which is the ability of government policy to come together to actually give people the floor, the equality opportunity in order to move forward and to achieve a better life. I actually think there is a better way. And so look, obviously it's multifaceted, and you know, you literally debate and sit here forever. But I was very frustrated by the conversation because I just felt like it was all just trading places about. You know, it's like, oh, well, it's like when the Nasdaq says you have to have a black person on their board or whatever to go public. I'm like, who gives a shit? Are they doing business better or not? Are they paying their employees better or not? I care less who the executives on the boarder directors are. You know, It's like that, And there is also no evidence by the way that diversity of boards has led to better corporate practice. If anything, the diversity movement has been the greatest boon in history to Fortune five hundred companies because they use it to cover for stock buybacks or cutting their employees, or cutting benefits, outsourcing jobs, destroying the American dream. Like it's all the smoke screen. People just need to wake up to that.
01:27:35
Speaker 1: I think representation has value. I genuinely do. Like I think it mattered from a representation standpoint that we had Barack Obama as president as one example. But it's like so far from the entire picture, and so much of our politics is exactly like that exchange between Tim Scott and Sunny houstin where like you're not even equipped to rebut what Tim Scott is saying because you're not even looking at these other you know, real challenges and the whole rest of the picture, and so you end up with this very surface level debate about whether there you know, are enough press or class and it doesn't end up really surfing our politics very effectively. I would say, I agree with you, all right, Tager, what are looking at?
01:28:22
Speaker 2: One of my favorite things to do is to revisit some of the main characters from the Russia Gate era. We all know who they are, seth Abramson, others who got filthy rich during and spreading you know, copium to liberals. One of the best is Muller, She wrote in account on Twitter that probably many of us are sadly familiar with from over the years, who's constantly tweeting about how Trump is just one second away from it finally all closing in on him. Well, a new investigation, actually by an anonymous Twitter account Freudian Slip, has revealed the depth of some of the most psychotic behavior on the Internet that I have seen in quite a long time. So let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. This is the first tweet of the expos of nearly one hundred that he put out there Froudian slip the mother she wrote, expose a wild, chaotic ride through Alison Gill's narrative world where little is what it seems to be. Stay to the end if you want your jaw to go and hit the floor. Now he focuses in on or maybe or she focuses in on. A couple of claims that Alison Gill, the molo she wrote account actually made who runs a popular podcast and really monetized her entire brand online as you know, sticking it to Donald Trump. First and foremost was that she was a quote disabled American fing veteran who had served in the United States Navy who was suffering from PTSD from the First Gulf War. Well, let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. While Allison Gill had constantly claimed to be a nuclear engineer from the United States Navy, it turns out she actually studied to be a machinist Nate, completed three month basic training but didn't even finish the full study program. Furthermore, it was revealed that she was a veteran of the Gulf War era, not necessarily of the Gulf War, and actually by her own definition of stolen valor that she's leveled against others. Well, she certainly flirted right up to the line of claiming effectively that she had served in combat when in reality she was somebody who had served in the military at that time, and then didn't actually finish the job that she had claimed repeatedly online that she had engaged in. But second, what I think is also crazy is the level to which she spun a persecution narrative, not according to this reporting. Let's put this up there, the next one up there on the screen. She had claimed repeatedly that she had actually been fired from the United States government for her tweets for her podcast. And it turns out, though that an internal US government investigation found that she wasn't actually fired. She was off offered relocation which he had voluntarily rejected, which the form right in front of you actually shows. She spun this, you know afterwards as a case of some you know, employee discrimination, fired allegedly for having PTSD, and even filed an equal opportunity complaint. None of these actually came to any fruit or revealed that you know, was revealed any wrongdoing on the part of the government. And then the most bizarre one to me, let's put this up there on the screen, was putting and tweeting out photos in which she had alleged she had been attacked by her husband, who was she accused of, an abuser, a manipulator, or drunk. Well, she tweeted out, you know, photos of injuries that happened to her. But what actually was revealed from the Freudian slip account is that at least some of these photos appear to have come when she was almost killed in a car accident. And really, what this entire thread revealed to me, of which you know I looked, you know, she hasn't disputed at least the very concrete claims within this she's claiming persecution is the level to which you can just put things out online that both become reality but can ensnare you in a bunch of different narratives all while you are cultivating this persona which you are saying is being persecuted for putting out the truth of which was all fundamentally not true, not only from her personal narrative, but about Russiagate itself. And this person was held up again as a russiagay hero. This is somebody who has gained tens of hundreds of thousands of followers on Twitter, who the thread goes into financially profited from the persona from the brand online engaged repeatedly with fans and led them to believe all of this and conjured up this story of prior service and of a history of persecution, which also ended up end up being true in terms of their family background. And the bizarre behavior that is exhibited here should be a cautionary tale to people who fall easily prey to personas that you can see on Twitter and others, and to the idea that everything that's happening online either stays there doesn't have a connection itself to the real world that can't be revealed. And it's one of those where I just found it to be so revealing about who some of the central characters who found identity in this anti Trump crusade online were and how so much of it really does reveal like a pathological sickness at the heart of so much of what happened at that time and still continues to reverberate in our current politics. So that's that's kind of the expose. Crystal. I'm not so sure if you were able to.
01:33:52
Speaker 1: And if you want to hear my reaction to Cyber's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at Breakingpoints dot com.
01:34:02
Speaker 2: Okay, Christal, we're you taking a look up.
01:34:03
Speaker 1: Well, guys, the media has finally started to admit that maybe Biden's age, and not even just his age, but his clearly declining abilities are an actual issue for him. And the reason they're doing this, which now, which is going to become quite clear in a moment, is because you have a massive donor and elite freak ap about this state of affairs. So The New York Times wrote quite an extraordinary piece here. Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen. They talk about the complicated reality of being America's oldest president, President Bidens asking voters in the White House until age eighty six, renewing attention to an issue that poles show trouble most Americans. And they've got a bunch of heavy hitters on this article. By the way, keep this up on the screen, because I'm going to read a little bit from this. You know. They mix into this piece a bunch of hero arc narratives about our strong and viral leader alongside these anecdotes about some real struggles in terms of just understanding like the basics of what's going on and recalling certain basic facts. So they say, there was the time last winter when President Biden was awakened at three am while on a trip to Asia and told that a missile instruct Poland, touching off a panic that Russia might have expanded the war in Ukraine to a NATO ally within hours in the middle of the night, mister Biden consulted his top advisors, called the President of Poland and the NATO Secretary General, and gathered fellow world leaders to deal with the crisis. And then or there was the time a few weeks ago when the President was hosting children for take your Child to Work Day and became mixed up as he tried to list his grandchildren. Quote, so let me see, I got one in New York, two in Philadelphia or is it three? No? Three? Because I got one granddaughter? Who is I don't know, you're confusing me. He also drew a blank when asked the last country he had visited and the name of a favorite movie. Put the next screen up here, guys, that has some of the details about the way that his staff has limited his appearances, has limited his schedule to accommodate the realities of the president today. They say his staff schedules most of his public appearances between noon and four noon and four and leaves him alone on weekends as much as possible. Aids limit exposing the president to news media interviews when he could make a politically damaging mistake. For comparison, he's given just a fourth of the interviews that Trump did in the same period, and a fifth of the interviews that mister Obama did in the same period, none at all to reporters from a major newspaper. And they say White House officials have not made mister Biden's doctor available for questioning as previous presidents have. Now keep in mind, these are the limitations that exist today, and he is asking to be re elected and would be eighty six years old, so quite a number of years down the road from today, and you know, you can project into the future. Nobody knows for sure what type of limitations may be placed on him at that point in time. So this shows you how far they already are down the road to purtailing any of his activities and even his ability and accessibility to the press, which is, you know, a vital part of democracy and being able to assess and question the president on key issues of the day. There's an interesting piece of this article where they acknowledge that this has become a major concern among donors and among Wall Street elites, which is the whole reason that the media is really paying it any attention, now whatsoever. One of the reporters was actually on MSNBC where he got asked about this report. Listen to the framing and listen to how he talks about the concerns among those elites are stake.
01:37:35
Speaker 8: Listen take us behind closed doors party leaders, whether it's a Democratic donors, prominent Wall Street Democrats, what are they saying privately, How big of a concern is the president's age and what the alternative could be.
01:37:49
Speaker 9: Well, it's the concern I hear all the time. I don't think I ever speak with any Democrat who doesn't raise that issue. Not that we raise it, they raise it, you know. And I know that there are people in the White House and around it who like and this is just a creation of the media or the Republicans, it's really not. I hear from almost every Democrat. I talked to me. You know, there was a dinner recently I was I was told about between you know, former governors and senators, all of whom are roughly in by the generation, all of whom thought, no, he shouldn't be running as too, you know, he's too old at this point there, you know, is the Wall Street you know, a major figure we talk who said, every single donor for the Democratic Party they speak with, in fact, brings this issue up. The White House gets calls from local officials asking about the president's health. I mean, he is a constant concern among Democrats.
01:38:39
Speaker 1: So here's a part in the article where they discuss exactly this. Put the quotes up on the screen. Here they say uneasy about mister brines Ah suffuses Democratic circles. When prominent Wall Street Democrat, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity, noted that among party donors it was all anyone was talking about at a small dinner earlier this year, former Democratic senators and governors, all of them in mister Biden's generation. Everyone at the table agreed he was too old to run again. Local leaders often call the White House to inquire about his health. So these are the discussions that are going on in elite circles, in democratic donor circles behind the scenes, and that's the reason why they are now leaking out into the press. And Sager is also the reason why you see this panic. The last attempt to, you know, get Jamie Diamond or somebody into the race that they feel like could take the reins from Joe Biden, but certainly not enough for them to allow an actual democratic process to unfold in which.
01:39:36
Speaker 2: We are and if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at breakingpoints dot com. Thank you everybody for bearing with us. We really appreciate you. We've got aus we're so excited about the new studio. Counterpoints will be here tomorrow. If you can help us out with the new studio, and if you want to very first look at it breakingpoints dot com, you'll get it substantially earlier than everybodybody else. We're really excited to show it to all of you. Otherwise, we'll see you all on Thursday.
