← Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar
Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar
9/2/25: Modi Xi Putin Screw You To Trump, Demfluencers Rage After Dark Money Scandal
01:13:13
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- [00:00]
Krystal Ball
This is an iheart podcast.
- [00:05]
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- [01:35]
Saagar Enjeti
Good morning. Welcome to Today.
- [01:37]
Commercial Announcer
From back to school to tackling your to do list, the Today show is your best start to the day. It's a new season and every morning we're here to help you take it.
- [01:46]
Krystal Ball
All along as the forecast calls for.
- [01:48]
Commercial Announcer
Football all across the country, blockbuster stars, live concerts and so much more. Wake up to where it's all happening.
- [01:55]
Saagar Enjeti
We're getting back to all of it and the best way to start is together.
- [01:59]
Commercial Announcer
Watch the Today show weekday mornings at 7am on NBC.
- [02:05]
Krystal Ball
Hey guys, Sagar and Krystal here.
- [02:06]
Saagar Enjeti
Independent media just played a truly massive role in this election and we are so excited about what that means for the future of this show.
- [02:14]
Krystal Ball
This is the only place where you can find honest perspectives from the left and the right that simply does not exist anywhere else.
- [02:19]
Saagar Enjeti
So if that is something that's important to you, Please go to BreakingPoints.com, become a member today and you'll get access to our full shows unedited ad free and all put together for you every morning in your inbox.
- [02:30]
Krystal Ball
We need your help to build the future of independent news media and we hope to see you@breaking points.com. good morning, everybody. Happy Tuesday. Have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal?
- [02:43]
Saagar Enjeti
Indeed we do. Trump bringing the world together, perhaps not in the way that he intended. We'll take a look at that big summit with China and India and Russia all coming together, among others. Sagar and I are also going to do a little deep dive into that Dem influencers scandal. The dark money funding of 90 plus Democratic Party influencers. So a lot that's really interesting there, I think, to dig into about media and the future of the Democratic Party. What is even independent media. So excited to talk about all of that. I'm a little obsessed with the story, to be totally honest with you. We're also gonna take a look at some big questions about Donald Trump's health. He has been very scarce, hasn't spoken to the press on camera in quite a number of days. Very unusual for him. And Sagar, I don't know if you have the latest updates, but the pizza tracker was off the charts.
- [03:31]
Krystal Ball
Yeah, Pizza tracker's been off the charts for weeks, though. That's part of the issue. Look, we're gonna get into it and just in general, I'm enjoying it. I'm enjoying everyone having fun on the Internet, which we should all use together. Absolutely. I told you guys on my planning call, the most fun I ever had was speculating about Hillary's health in 2016. So to the left, you're welcome back to the Internet. We're all about having fun. No more taboos. Let's get down into the conspiracy land. Let's zoom in on Trump's browse. Let's make shit up. This is the fun stuff, right? So this is what we live for.
- [04:02]
Saagar Enjeti
Over of questions about the pictures that have been posted. Walter Reed entrances to it were closed. Like the roads were closed. The camera that's across from it was turned off. There are many details to dig into and we will bring you all of those.
- [04:16]
Krystal Ball
As a former White House correspondent who's actually been to Walter Reed with Trump and more, I can also give you some of my. So I'm not debunking per se, but I can give you some context. We will see Trump later on.
- [04:26]
Saagar Enjeti
Sounds like a buzz kill saga.
- [04:28]
Krystal Ball
Yeah. I will entertain and enjoy and I will also give some of the facts. Trump is scheduled though, by the way to speak sometime later today. So who knows? Who knows what he's gonna say?
- [04:38]
Saagar Enjeti
Who knows? Who knows? The plot thickens. All right, so. And then we'll turn to some very serious news with regard to Israel. Two United States senators were actually blocked by Israel from being able to fly over Gaza. We also have now revealed the potential Gaza Riviera plan, which is one of the sickest and most dystopian documents I have literally ever laid my eyes on. Also, a group of scholars just overwhelmingly voted. The top genocide scholars in the world. Just overwhelming. Voted yes, of course. In fact, this is a genocide. And then on a lighter note, we're going to take a look at a U.S. open controversy that did grip the Internet when a Polish CEO stole the hat from a young boy who had been given it by a star tennis player who had just won his match. So we'll take a look at that. We're also going to, INSHallah, do the AMA live today.
- [05:28]
Krystal Ball
Yes, yes, yes. No, it's happening. It will happen in some form, we promise. And we're very sorry about all the technical difficulties. I won't bore everybody with exactly what's been happening, but we have been agonizing and working to make sure that we get it all done. So thank you all very much to our premium subscribers for sticking with us. And if you want to be able to Support the show, breakingpoints.com actually, you know, maybe I'll even save the pitch for a little bit later on. But a lot of what we have done to design the show, the way that it's funded and more not only keeps us inculcated from scandals like this chorus thing going on with the influencers block, but I do recommend for people to stick around for that block in particular, just to tell everyone the exact mechanics of how this stuff all works and why we are set up the way that we are, which is pretty unique compared to most like, you know, independent shows or whatever. And there are reasons for that that keep us away and, you know, insulated from some of the major pressures that are out there. Business pressures, political pressures, and more.
- [06:26]
Saagar Enjeti
Yeah, we set up the show, as you guys know, very intentionally to try to avoid any sort of even appearance of impropriety. And, you know, Sakura and I both jointly and separately, have learned a lot about the sort of influence that can be exerted on you or attempted to be exerted on you. And so we wanted to make sure to insulate this show and guarantee that we would never be in that position. So talk about the scandal with The Democrats. We'll talk about why we set up the show the way that we did. And I think there's a lot to think about as we consider what is even independent media and how do we build an ecosystem that actually is genuinely better than the mainstream press. With all that being said, let's go ahead and get to this summit. Sagar.
- [07:09]
Krystal Ball
Yes. Some major news out of the sco. If you're wondering what the SCO is, if you hadn't heard about it, it's the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. It was set up back in 2001. It's kind of been China. It's difficult to describe. It's not really like a G7 alternative. It was originally kind of set up as a regional summit by the Chinese to exert power in East Asia, not just there but specifically to try and group together non US allies. It was Warsaw Pact might be semi apt example. But it's not NATO, it's not any of these types of things. It's just a meeting kind of of the minds. It has become kind of an alternative to the US and western led order. Now China this year in particular capitalizing on some of the alienation by the Trump administration of many of the global powers. And the number one story that has come out of the SCO this year is the just red carpet rolled out for Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India as well as President of Russia Vladimir Putin. The three of President Xi, President Putin and Prime Minister Modi put on a full display of friendship, very non subtly signaling to the United States that their pressure of sanctions and all of that is not going to work. And the most stunning images really was the trilateral meeting between those three leaders walking together, smiling together and sending a massive middle finger to Washington. So here is some of the footage from the scoff. Putin and India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi held hands as they met before the summit and appeared jovial together as they spoke with Xi surrounded by translators. At a bilateral meeting. Putin addressed Modi as his dear friend and said relations were developing dynamically. So you could see that Prime Minister Modi was there with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Xi Jinping joined the three of them. Prime Minister Modi actually called Putin his dear friend. They announced continuing plans to build or to buy Russian oil. Another major story that came out of the SCO this year is actually a pipeline that was announced between China and Russia deepening the energy ties. So basically all of US policy currently towards India, towards China and Russia has been trying to end the war in Ukraine and some of the things that we've been covering now here for years has been how the US led financial system has just simply not been able to deliver what was promised. They said that they would crush the Russian war machine. It hasn't happened. They've gone after India with 50% tariffs. They said that they would buckle instead. The opposite. Narendra Modi flying to, I think it's Tianjin where he met with these three leaders and again just holding up a giant middle finger to Washington and basically embracing China and saying, hey, look, we will cooperate with whoever we need to cooperate with. Part of the reason this matters is that since 2011 there has been a assessment here in Washington about the so called pivot to Asia, which I believe with all my heart, which is that Western Europe and the Middle east have diminishing returns for our relationship with those two places that were too which we spent too much of our money obsessing over these foreign conflicts. Israel and Ukraine are the perfect poster children for that. 50% of global GDP will be in East Asia in just a few years. You're already watching now the limited value of dollar sanctions. The BRICS phenomenon has been one that's been talked about for quite some time. But this is kind of the closest that BRICS in particular has come to becoming a real thing. And we're gonna be covering it now. But in the China sense in particular, it is just stunning to see how they have especially used the Trump years and the Trump administration to put themselves as the official like number two superpower in the world. And in my opinion, operating very smartly. So let's put this up here on the screen. This was Xi Jinping outlines China's ambition to reshape the world order in showpiece summit a quote unquote shock and awe victory day military parade. There's a real military parade, by the way. They actually do know how to march over there in China this week.
- [11:14]
Saagar Enjeti
Tanks and guys who don't know how to march.
- [11:16]
Krystal Ball
None of that not sponsored by Palantir or to Coinbase crypto, any of those guys, you know, they don't do that over there. Seeks to, quote, recast the Second World War narrative. He's called on Russia, India and other countries in the region to join China in leveraging their economic influence specifically to challenge the west at a time of rising geopolitical and trade ambitions. Hosting the Regional Security Forum on Monday with more than 20 leaders, he said that the world is undergoing turbulence and change, that they need to uphold a quote, orderly multipolar world. So you could not make it more clear what their goal was and put a three please on the screen. I thought the Washington Post did a pretty decent job of kind of summing it up here. They just say China tries to use Trump turmoil to unite leaders against the US Led order. And it's interesting because all three of these leaders, the flagship leaders that gathered at the scoff, have their own reasons for challenging the US Led status quo. Putin has Ukraine, China just has its, you know, they want to declare complete independence from the west and seek to build a second financial system, a second global order that they run, which obviously is to their benefit. It's the same thing the United States did with the so called US World order. India has always kind of played its cards close to its chest. They've been very suspicious of the United states since the 1970s. The US alliance with Pakistan is something that continues to grind their gears here in Washington. There has been a agreement under the so called pivot to Asia. It's like, well, if we want to quote, unquote, isolate China or keep US friends in the region, then we need to make sure that Japan, South Korea and India, the three most powerful nations in East Asia, are rock solid with the U.S. but the Trump tariffs have done more to offset the pivot to Asia than any single piece of foreign policy that I could think of in just the last 20 years. Like, yes, the Israel obsession, the Ukraine obsession indirectly takes away, but the levying and the targeting of India and then the failure of the sanctions on Russia are just two glaring opportunities for China. And you're really watching like a reverse Nixon happen where Nixon famously opens China, wants to separate China from Russia and the Soviet Union, to split the two powers, to establish and break apart global communism. And instead what we have seen happen is as if we had forced the two together through basically an entirely a fault of our own. So it is the most important story in the world.
- [13:44]
Saagar Enjeti
There's no question, no joke about it.
- [13:46]
Krystal Ball
We're stuck in here for a long time.
- [13:46]
Saagar Enjeti
And then you add Brazil to that mix.
- [13:48]
Krystal Ball
Yes.
- [13:48]
Saagar Enjeti
And you have, of course, we've been following the way that a series of tariffs have been levied on Brazil because Trump isn't happy about what their court system is doing with regard to Bolsonaro trying to do his own coup in Brazil in a very Trumpian fashion. And so you truly have a situation where he has united these nations in an alliance that previously would have been very difficult because they are very different nations, they have very different interests, they have their own concerns, Squabbles et cetera. And yet, in the face of this insane tariff regime, they truly have sort of come together in this way. It's also very interesting, the narrative, like the rhetoric coming from China recasting the end of World War II and their own role, really highlighting their own role in defeating fascism and building that post war international order. Effectively. What they're saying is, listen, the us, they're a bunch of hypocrites. They've dropped the ball on this. We're gonna actually build out the inclusive, multipolar world based on international law and be the true inheritors of the legacy of the post war international order and build out this new multipolarity in a way that respects the interest of all these countries around the world. So for a lot of nations that are being hit with tariffs and subjected to this very sort of, like, capricious foreign policy from the Trump administration, this is obviously extremely appealing. And it also is a recognition of the reality of where we are as a globe, as the world right now. The funny we were sharing with India. One of the reasons that Trump got upset with India and started throwing all these tariffs on them and throwing a fit about India is because. Because Modi wouldn't accept his narrative about brokering the ceasefire between India and Pakistan. He was like, that really didn't have anything to do with you. And then Trump wanted him to nominate him for the Nobel Peace Prize, and he was like, years ago, not doing that either.
- [15:45]
Krystal Ball
I'm good, actually.
- [15:45]
Saagar Enjeti
Yeah. And so. And that is what sparks Trump's rage at India. So you can't deal with someone like that. Like, you can't work with someone who is so unserious, so capricious, and so frankly, insane in the way that he operates.
- [15:58]
Krystal Ball
Something I just have come to deeply respect about many of these nations is the level of seriousness which they take their geopolitics. So in China, you know, I've talked here endlessly about industrial policy. They have orders of engineers in every bureau, managing the state, its capitalism, making sure that the factories are being built properly, put in the right places, spreading economic development, building roads, high speed and all that. The alternative to that is. I recently saw a video of a guy who was the equivalent of Google searching the word dictator. And they call him in. They call it, you need to come for tea to the Chinese police department. They literally go through your search results and be like, why'd you search for this? Why'd you search for this? Why'd you search for this? That's just part of the social contract in India, for example, Jay Shankar, who's their foreign minister, and many of these other. These are Serious Students of U.S. global foreign policy who sit around and are like, okay, what are all the big mistakes that we have made here? How can India further itself? We have all these problems, all of these, this poverty and corruption. And we also have our own political issues. How do we square this circle? Set India up for the future, have technological development, make sure that the country is insulated from the West. Their seriousness around tariffs and look, I'm not saying I support their tariff system because it is bad for us empirically, but one of the reasons why they have such massive capital controls on the country is they're like, we will not be messed with by other countries, period. Even if it means sacrificing interim economic growth. I recently just read a book by a guy named Dan Wang about China. It's such an incredible book. I highly recommend everybody go out and get it. One of the things that she determined some 10 years ago is he's like, financial markets and stock market shareholderism is good for the super elite. It's bad for companies, it's bad for development. So that's just not something that we're gonna do as a nation.
- [17:51]
Saagar Enjeti
Boom.
- [17:52]
Krystal Ball
I mean, and they have the ability to be able to do that. I'm not saying I favor their system, but I favor the seriousness and the level of thought that they put into how they're going to try and challenge the west.
- [18:04]
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- [19:04]
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- [19:34]
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- [20:05]
Krystal Ball
Let'S put a four, please, up on the screen and you can just see here. I mean, this is the biggest troll that you could ever have. Right after the Putin Trump summit, Modi posts this photo of him in the Russian presidential vehicle. And he says, after the proceedings of the sco, President Putin and I traveled together to the venue of our bilateral meeting. Conversations with him are always insightful. Apparently they spent nearly an hour in the car together just talking, I guess, really about the challenges of Trump, about how they're gonna navigate the relationship between their two countries. And meanwhile, we just have the absolute base level of idiocy here in our nation for our discourse. Peter Navarro, who is the trade counselor for Donald Trump, has, I mean, he's the attack dog, right? And by the way, I actually respected Peter in the first term. I, I read his book. I don't think he's wrong necessarily about tariffs. But the worst problem with Peter is that he turned himself into like this January 6th hero. He's Trump's most loyal warrior. So when Trump decides to declare war on India because he's butt hurt that they won't nominate him for the Nobel Peace Prize, he goes all in. He adopts the rhetoric. He's like a household name now in India. If you watch the news over there, I've been checking in just to see how they tolerate this. And this is the level of discourse that we're currently hearing from Peter Navarro and from the Treasury Secretary Scott Bessen on India. Let's take a listen. Modi's a great leader. I don't understand why he's getting to bed with Putin and Xi Jinping when he's the biggest democracy in the world. So I would just simply say to the Indian people, please understand what's going on here. You got Brahmins profiteering at the expense of the Indian people. We need that to stop. So this is gonna be a deep cut for those of you who are not familiar with Indian caste system. But what Peter Navarro basically is saying there, it's that these high caste Indians, the Brahmins in India, are profiteering. Now, if you knew anything about said caste system, you would know that the Brahmins are actually not the business class and not the major oligarchs who are in India to just saying this is empirical fact check. But it just shows the extent to which they're basically just grasping for whatever like low IQ cast criticism that you can have of India and then broadcasting it to the world. Their new line is that India is a democracy, so they need to align with democratic values. I have news for you, Peter. India is a democracy and they know who you are, and they know who Trump is. They know who America is. They've been pissed at America ever since Biden singled them out about Russian oil. You guys are making it 10 times worse, I can guarantee you. By the way, Modi, it's not like he won a stunning reelection. He's probably more popular than ever right now doing these types of moves. The Indian intelligentsia from, like the people who can not even read, who vote all the way up to the intelligentsia, are literally united against the United States right now in a way that I have never seen from a country which, you know, how many millions of people in India originally wanted to come here. There's still a lot of Indian immigrants, you know, apply H1B visa. We talked about that. That's more of a domestic political issue. But I see a lot of that changing over in the next period, which, you know, I know some of the white nationalists and other people will be happy about that, but at a very base level, like America, the global empire is basically crumbling all around us. For what? For Ukraine or for Trump's ego? For Israel? I mean, you know, all of these things are actually all interconnected.
- [23:39]
Saagar Enjeti
Israel.
- [23:40]
Krystal Ball
Israel is actually probably the most important part of the story. Which sounds crazy to say, but the reason why is that for years the United States goes abroad and wags its finger. It's like, oh, you can't be doing this. You're authoritarian and you're Bad. You're feeling bad things around the world. And the Chinese and the Russians and the Indian were like, oh yeah, how's Iraq doing? Is it a thriving democracy? But now, you know, you have Iraq, you have Libya, you have Syria, you have Israel, you have Ukraine. Right. All of those things together and they're like, we're not listening to you anymore. We don't care what you have to say. And you put that together and that's how you get the saying hike. The SCO meeting of 2025, which I do think will be a landmark moment in geopolitics.
- [24:19]
Saagar Enjeti
Yeah. And Ukraine is complex. Right. So it's less clear cut. Russia did invade. So there is a sort of. There is a liberal international value that is being upheld there. Truly, Israel is not complex. Like we are supporting a genocide, we are supporting colonization, we are supporting outright occupation. We're gonna talk later about this just like PowerPoint ethnic cleansing plan that's being floated where, by the way, the US is gonna be the protectorate. So I'm sure you guys are all gonna be really excited about that. It is so glaringly obvious, in fact. Truly. I know they put on a sort of like joint statement about Israel in the context of this summit.
- [24:58]
Krystal Ball
You want to.
- [24:58]
Saagar Enjeti
They should do more. I mean, the opening is. There's truly, it's truly wide open. You know, the vast majority of the world's population is in horror and shock at what is being done in Gaza right now and disgusted with Israel. I mean, Israel truly is a pariah nation everywhere except in like this particular area where we sit right now in D.C. among elites right here. And so, you know, there really is a wide open lane to show global leadership and to show. No, we really are the true arbiters. We really are the true representatives of this international world order.
- [25:33]
Krystal Ball
Yeah. And look, I think it's important in that context just to show you how a lot of the rhetoric is just crumbling. Let's put a 8 up on the screen, please. And you can see very clearly what they say from the SCO is that member states strongly condemn the military strikes by Israel and the United States of America against Iran in June of 2025. Quote, Such aggressive actions against civilian targets, including nuclear energy, which result in the diveth of civilians, are a gross violation of the principles in the norms of international law and the UN Charter, an infringement on the sovereignty of the Islamic Repub Republic of Iran. They undermine regional and international security and have serious implications for global peace and stability. Now no one should delude themselves into thinking that China and Russia in particular care all that much about civilian casualties. But that's where the rhetoric and all that stuff matters because the United States basically accused Russia of committing a, quote, genocide over Bucha. All right. I mean, if you look today in the US intelligentsia, they're like, Putin is a child murderer. Right. For the strikes. And that's true. It's true. Right. You know, yes, strikes have killed children, civilians all across of Ukraine. But how can you sit there and say that you need to use the full weight of the empire when you're also backing up what's going on in Israel? You can't. The thing doesn't square. So then it's actually not about any of that. What it's really about is power. And that's what those countries understand more than anything. The Chinese for long have held on this thing called mutual respect where they're like, look, well, you guys do what you want to do and we're gonna do what we wanna do. But we don't wanna be hearing about any U. We don't want you guys to be talking about Taiwan or any of this other stuff because that's our business. And we don't tell you how to run Alaska or Hawaii or any of that type of stuff. Well, I think that that hits even harder again in the year 2025 in the context of everything that is all happening. And again, just to highlight all this brick stuff, let's put this video here of between Lula and between Modi. I mean, this is not really something that you would see. It's not that long ago you could see the two leaders grasping hands, hugging basically trying to broadcast to the world that this alternative system is one which they are fully embracing. These are both two leaders who have been hit with some 50% tariffs, both capriciously under the Trump administration with no strategy or any of that behind it. And meanwhile, Trump is just spouting off. Here's his latest. We can put it up there on the screen. Quote, what few people understand is that we do very little business with India. That's not true, by the way. It's the 10th largest trading partner with the US but they do a tremendous amount of business with us. In other words, they sell us massive amounts of goods. Their biggest client, but we sell them very little. Until now. A totally one sided relationship. It has been that way for decades. The reason is that India has charged us until now such high tariffs. The most of any country that our businesses are unable to sell into India. It has been totally one sided disaster. India buys most of its oil and military products from Russia, very little from the US They've now offered to cut their tariffs to nothing. But it's getting too late. They should have done so years ago. Just some simple facts for people to ponder. But what Trump doesn't really get is that this is a vindication of the Indian strategy. Their high tariffs, high capital controls, and more on the country are exactly what insulate them from tariff threats. From the cuz. They know they planned for this for years. They saw what happened with their nuclear program, by the way, they banned bitcoin a long time ago. Anything that challenges the primacy of the state, of the rupee, and of the ability for India to remain sovereign, they nuke it. And they see it very early. TikTok over there, not even a question. They're like, it's done. They banned it years ago because, again, for them, they care about sovereignty. It would be nice to live in a country that actually cared about things like that. Same with the Chinese. And so they know, and they've studied this Russian sanctions now for years, and they see. They're like, oh, doesn't matter so much. Got oil, got guns, we got a lot of production capacity. Some of the world's. I think the world's largest population in India will be all right. And that's basically the package that they are choosing that can do enough business to sustain themselves. Not gonna say it's gonna hurt. It certainly will. But broadly, they're making enough of a bet that especially everyone, again, talks about democracy over there. It would not be popular to capitulate to Donald Trump. I can guarantee you that if people in China or Russia could vote too, like, for a real vote, all of them would probably back up standing up against the US So that's part of the democratic principle that a lot of people in the west are not ready for. Democracy doesn't ultimately mean we're all, all good friends here. It means will of the people. And I'm pretty sure that what's happening there over there is actually the will of the people 100%.
- [30:09]
Saagar Enjeti
Well, I mean, it's ironic, too, because Trump and Modi, in a lot of ways were natural allies because they actually share, like, similar ideology, national nationalist ideologies. And in the first administration, there was much more. You could see much more of that overlap and, you know, that sort of simpatico view of the world. Can we put ASICS back up on the screen there? Sagar, just take a look at this image and tell me, do you think that this is the cure for the toxic masculinity of the manosphere. Do you think this is it right here?
- [30:36]
Krystal Ball
What do you mean?
- [30:37]
Saagar Enjeti
This very tender, loving, affectionate between these two powerful alpha males.
- [30:43]
Krystal Ball
Sure. Yeah.
- [30:44]
Saagar Enjeti
I think this is a model for the world.
- [30:45]
Krystal Ball
Yeah, I guess I could go with that. I can see it. I mean, you know, Modi is an interesting character. I wouldn't call him like an alpha male. He is a lot of respect for things like yoga and fasting. I mean, it's like Indian male in their context. It doesn't really translate. Translate to the west. But I don't know. I don't really know enough about Lula to be able to say the same. But I do know watching all of this is. It's one of the most broadcasted screw yous against the United States. Genuinely. I mean, I can't think of another time that the leaders of the most powerful states outside of the Western hemisphere would gather together in an explicit it, go fuck yourself to the United States.
- [31:29]
Saagar Enjeti
Well, I keep thinking about what Professor Jeffrey Sachs told us, which is that our decision to levy these sanctions on these tariffs on India as a result of their decision to continue buying Russian oil, he called it one of the most foolish policy mistakes, foreign policy mistakes that the US has made in years. And that's saying a lot because we've made a lot of really horrific mistakes in recent years and decades. And this is why. I mean, this playing out in front of you is exactly why he has united these countries and it really is on him. Now, there are other things that lead to this point. I'm not saying it's the only factor. But his tariff policy has to already be deemed, like, in terms of American interests, one of the most disastrous economic policies ever pursued. Ever pursued certainly in modern American history. It has made our economy here. We can already see the effect of in certain goods prices going up. You can see the rate of growth in the economy slowing. You can see more and more consumer debt being taken on. Like all sorts of red flags flashing here in our economy because of his economic policy. So we aren't benefiting. Quite the contrary. And meanwhile, he has clarified for the rest of the world, okay, it's time that we get together and we move on from this mess because this is a disaster and we can't count on these people. This guy's a psychic. This country is hypocritical. They're insane. We've gotta figure out how to do our own thing over here and make sure that we are protecting our own nations. And it really does lay at the feet of Trump.
- [33:01]
Krystal Ball
Absolutely. It's about Trump's ego. It's about a misreading, I think, entirely of the way that geopolitics and all of this works. It also is completely counter to many of the things that were talked about by Donald Trump and all of the people who work for them. It's not an exaggeration to say that this is the exact opposite. This is the Lindsey Graham course. Leverage harvest on 500% tariff on India because of the war in Ukraine, while we continue to back up. You know, it's as if the Israel and Ukraine conflict are the sun, the moon and the stars and everything just revolves around them. And that this entire, you know, part of the world is just these secondary or tertiary characters. When in reality, Japan, number three trading partner in the world, you think that the Japanese people are happy about that trade deal and all the bullshit that they went through. They're not. Ok? You can go and read their press. Same with the South Koreans. I mean, the South Koreans, similarly, are in this weird limbo state where they're like, you know, they used to be understood as a massively important US Ally. They're basically just on the back burner. They pay them no attention. When they do pay them attention, it's to hit them with some tariffs or to get mad at them over Samsung or any of the other companies that they make. We're just playing. We are playing like Little League baseball. And that is why, you know, again, I have nothing but admiration. Maybe that's bad and it speaks to me, but, like, those are countries run by actual statesmen. And, yes, Putin, all of them, they do terrible things. I'm not absolving them of all of the bad. I wouldn't wanna live in Russia, I wouldn't wanna live in India, and I definitely wouldn't wanna live in China. But I have nothing but admiration for the seriousness which they run their countries. And we don't have any of that. We do not have any of that.
- [34:46]
Saagar Enjeti
No.
- [34:46]
Krystal Ball
And that's the starkest and the most depressing part, because you and I know for the next three and a half years, probably the years, let's be honest, it's just. We're locked in. And the Chinese century, it just seems more likely than ever before.
- [34:58]
Saagar Enjeti
Yeah, we're run by a bunch of clownish, evil buffoons who make some of the worst decisions of all time.
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- [37:06]
Saagar Enjeti
Very interesting story here. I am a little bit obsessed with it. So Taylor Lorenz over at Wired magazine really breaking some significant news here about an incubator program funded by a Dem aligned dark money super PAC called the 1630 Fund. So let's put her reporting up on the screen and I want to break down very specifically what she reports out in this piece. So her headline here is A dark money group is secretly funding high profile Democratic influencers. An initiative aimed at boosting Democrats online offers influencers up to $8,000 a month to push the party line. All they have to do is keep it secret and agree to restrictions on their. So the TLDR here is that this incubator named Chorus was set up by Brian Tyler Cohen, who you guys probably know is a big resistance creator on YouTube giant channel, 4 million subscribers, et cetera, and a guy who used to be an aide for John Yarmouth who was a congressman from Kentucky. So they set up this thing and the way they fund it is by taking money from this billionaire backed dark money super PAC called the 1630 Fund. That fund has spent hundreds of millions of dollars to back Democratic candidates and causes. It's very influential, it's very well known, you can read a bunch of reporting about it. But because it is a dark money group, their donors are kept a secret. Okay, so 90 plus Democratic Party aligned influencers were selected for this program. They're paid anywhere from $250 a month, which like we all are really selling out for the cheap if you're on that plan. But we'll get back all the way up to $8,000 a month. It has everybody from small creators I certainly had never heard of. Granted I'm not on TikTok that much, so I'm not trying to smirch the level of their influence, but all the way up to people like David Pakman who has a multimillion sub channel who has already been quite successful and has been around for longer actually than we have. David Pakman's been in this game for a long time. So it's like everybody from the small and the brand all the way up to the David Pakman of the world. So specifically Taylor was able to talk to people who were approached about participating in this program, some of whom were put off by the terms of the contract and said this is not something that I can be a part of. She was given access to some of the group chats that were flying around between some of the people who did end up in the cohort who were also expressing concerns about some of the terms of the contract. And she also apparently was able to get her hands on the contract themselves. And so here's specifically what the contracts that it says were viewed by Wired, what they indicated in terms of restrictions on the way these individuals can operate. So according to copies of the contract viewed by Wired, creators in the program must funnel all bookings with lawmakers and political leaders through Chorus. Creators also have to loop Chorus in on any independently organized engagement with government officials or political leaders leaders. So one of the creators who was approached about participating in Chorus said to Taylor, she said Quote, if I want to work with another politician, I have to fully collaborate with Korus. If I get Zoron and he wants to do an interview with me, I don't want to give that to them. So that was one of the concerns. Also, it says creators in the program are not allowed to use any funds or resources that they receive as part of the program to make content that supports or opposes any political candidate or campaign within they found express authorization from Chorus in advance and in writing per the contract. So if they want to support a candidate Graham Platner let's say in Maine, they have to get approval from Chorus before they can say anything supportive of any sort of candidate or campaign. In addition, the contracts reviewed by Wired prohibit standard partnership disclosures declaring that creators will not publicize their relationship with Chorus or tell others that they're members of the program, quote, without Chorus's prior express consent. A screenshot from a slideshow was shared with Wired Volumes article's publication by Graham Wilson, a lawyer working with Korus that offers several talking points if a member of the cohort wanted to discuss KORUS publicly. So they're expressly saying you can't talk about being in this program and certainly can't disclose the dark money funding of this program. They also forbid creators from disclosing the identity of any funder and give coarse the ability to force creators to remove or correct content based solely on the organization's discretion if that content was made at a Chorus organized event. One other piece that I thought was really noteworthy, Sagar is it also says you are not allowed to criticize any of the other influencers who are part of the Korus program. So for example, if you have a beef over David Pakman either not saying anything about Gaza or in the early days of the genocide, he was actively defending Israel. If you have a problem with that and you're an influencer in this cohort cohort and you want to talk about it, you are banned from doing that. So you have a combination of a lot of restrictions on the way that you operate having to run things through this course program. You have the the forced secrecy around it that you're not allowed to disclose course and you're certainly not allowed to disclose the funding source, of course. And then you also on top of that have these requirements that they check in that they go to these daily messaging meetings meetings to get the view, of course. And we're going to show you some of the responses from the creators themselves about the revelation that they're part of this program. And they actually affirm that, yes, much of this is in fact true. They show relevant parts of the contract and then give reasons why it's not such a big deal and it's not really a problem. But they actually confirmed Taylor's reporting here. So this seems pretty rock solid at this point.
- [42:59]
Krystal Ball
Okay, so let's put that aside. I think the question is about why. Why is this important? I think it's important not only for the context of what you laid out about specific issues, but it is an incentive and media ecosystem which is so much worse than allegedly what the Dem and Republican alternative medias were trying to go after. Like, look, we can say a lot of bad things about Jake Tapper, msnbc, cnn, Fox News. They do not get direct checks cut to them specifically say, you can't criticize X, Y and Z. They are actually less controlled in this particular way. And so that's what I think. And I wanted to cover the story early and I want people to grapple with that. Is that in this new ecosystem, just like in the original days of the printing press, it's gone wild. The norms don't exist. Everybody is a creator and a business person. They have not had well established norms to try and create a fire wall, a separation. Probably the most important is nobody is thinking about the downstream consequences of that. Because originally you're like, oh, you know, a couple thousand a month, great, I can pay my bills, I can do this. I don't have to have a second job and all that. But you don't ask what comes next. And you know, two people have been in this industry now for a long time and experienced much of the downside of what that type of stuff looked like. Now, to be clear, I've never taken a single dollar from a Republican group or any of that type of stuff in the same way. Which, you know, again, I don't really know how you ever thought it was cool. Cause even when I was absolutely broke, I never would have signed some sort of contract like that. But the point remains that I think most of them didn't think about it and now they're retreating to their corners because for them, they have to defend it at this point. But really you are either controlled, quasi controlled, or at the very least, you are not truly free to say what you want. Now, the mainstream is controlled in a separate way, right? As in Fox News guys can't criticize each other other. They also know that if they cover X, Y or Z, that's not gonna look so nice to Rupert Murdoch or to lachlan. Who are rabidly pro Israel and pro Ukraine. So there's all these separate issues and incentive structures that come with them. So don't get me wrong, that obviously exists the mainstream media and I still hate them for a variety of reasons. But this is really, really bad. And it is bad because I think that the Democrats in particular, I know that there are a lot of Dems, they're energized, they're ready. We're gonna talk about Trump health. Everybody wants to be online having fun and resisting, but you're being part of a machine. And that machine is being controlled for very specific purposes and ends which you and I may not be aware of. That's what I think is very important.
- [45:36]
Saagar Enjeti
Right. And it would be one thing if this was disclosed.
- [45:40]
Krystal Ball
Yeah, that's right.
- [45:41]
Saagar Enjeti
And what they say is, oh well, here are some videos where people did talk about being in chorus, and here's the chorus website. And, and it lists some of the creators who were participating in the program. So there was some disclosure. Was there disclosure around a dark money super PAC funding this? No, there was not. And there's, you know, so there's a reason why Taylor had to do an investigative journalism piece in order to reveal the details of this program. It expressly prohibits them in the contract from disclosing their funders, specifically from disclosing their participation in the program. And you know, in terms of, of like the ethics of all of this, that is almost the biggest red line here. Because, listen, it's very complicated. All of the different business structures within, quote, unquote, independent media. Right. Most places are different from us. Most of them will do ad reads, which means they're directly talking to advertisers. Actually much more direct relationship than like for example, when I was at msnbc, way more. There was a firewall between the hosts and the people who were selling ads. You had no idea what was on during the commercial break. That wasn't your, you were not paying attention to that. That had no bearing on your day to day. So there's that, but at least that's upfront. Everybody knows I'm paid to read this ad for Casper Mattresses or whatever the heck it is Zins or whatever thing that they're selling. So that's upfront and frankly, those corporate interests are going to only collide with your coverage in certain specific instances. Instances. Whereas if you are backed by this kind of group where you're going to daily messaging check ins, you're having to run by them. You're supposed to run by them, every government official that you interview and you have other restrictions on your content and they have a specific. They mention in one of these contracts that actually in the response video, one of the members of the cohort put up a part of the contract and it referred to Koris policy platform, platform. So like what is that? You know, and are you having to buy into a certain set of policies? I'm gonna guarantee you that based on the lack of coverage of Gaza by Brian Tyler Cohen and sometimes at times the incredibly terrible coverage of David Pakman, two of the biggest creators that are associated with this, I'm gonna bet that the fact that for example, Gaza has been officially deemed a genocide by all of the world's genocide scholars, I'm gonna bet that's not part of the policy platform. I'm gonna bet that's not part of the daily message guidance. And I wanna be clear because some of the way this has been portrayed, especially in the rebuttals, has been very caricature ish. We're not saying that they're being told you're gonna do a video on this and if you don't, you're kicked out of the program. And here's your talking points and you're gonna say these frickin talking points or you're out. It doesn't work like that. It works through several mechanisms. First of all, the choice of who participates. I guarantee you many of these people, they genuinely, their authentic view is that the Democratic Party is like, you know, vote blue, no matter who they are, vastly superior. The focus should all be on Trump. Like for many if not all of them, that is their genuine view. So number one is the choice of who you even include in the cohort. But then there's all these sort of like human pressures and inside incentives. You see who's in the in group with you, you see the sort of topics that are being pushed, you know, where the sensitivities are. And so if you're weighing, covering, let's say, you know, the Gaza genocide versus another topic that is also very important, that isn't going to create some sort of discomfort with the, you know, with the program that you're in, that you're receiving monthly cash from, maybe you're going to choose the one that's not going to sort of not going to be uncomfortable for the group, not going to be uncomfortable for your future potential prospect staying in this program. And as you get down the line, if these influencers become financially dependent on getting this monthly stipend, then you have A lot of control over them. So that's the way these things work. It's far more subtle than just like, you're getting your talking points and you're going to stick to them and you're not going to do videos on this and you are going to do videos on that. It happens in a much more subtle way. And I saw it. I've told this story before just to give an example from my own personal life and. And why, like, the lessons we've had to learn through our careers and how we came to the business model that we have. When I was at MSNBC, this was back in 2015, before Hillary. Actually, I think it was 2014, before Hillary officially got in the race for president. I did a monologue that was like, don't run, Please don't run, because you are not the person for the moment. I talked about her speeches to banks. I said, this is not the populist champion we need. It was very critical at a time when nobody on the Democratic side, nobody on msnbc, was being critical article of Hillary. They let me do it, but after the fact, I was informed that any future commentary I did on Hillary Clinton had to be run by the president of the network. Okay, that is not a normal thing. Message was sent to me that this was not appreciated, and in the future, I needed to make sure I run it up the flagpole. So can I say for certain that that didn't impact my coverage going forward, that that didn't make it so that if I was weighing two different monologue topics, I was like, well, well, I could do this one on Hillary again, or I could do this other topic that I didn't take the easy way out and say, well, they're both important. So let me do this one so I don't have to actually get all of my words approved by the president of the network and piss off everybody involved this day. That's the way these things work, through these subtle influences and pressures that every human is subject to. And so I think a lot of these individuals, they feel like, well, we're not corrupt. We genuinely believe in the Democratic Party and we gotta fight fire with fire. We gotta get in there and we gotta fight against Trump and we gotta build up this creator ecosystem. I think that's the way they're thinking about it without realizing the subtle way that your coverage can be shaped and influenced the minute that you start taking cash, and especially when you have these sorts of very specific restrictions on the way you're supposed to go about your content creation. And you're required to go to a daily messaging check in every single day. Of course that's gonna impact the way that you approach things. Not because you're, like, inherently corrupt, because you're a human being. And we are all subject to those sorts of incentives and pressures, whether we even realize it or not.
- [52:00]
Krystal Ball
I will just quote the great Noam Chomsky quote. The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum, even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there's free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are reinforced by the limits put upon the range of the debate. And then similarly, when he was asked in the. In that famous BBC interview about whether people self censor, he says, I don't say you're self censoring. I'm sure you believe everything that you're saying. But what I'm saying is if you believe something different, you wouldn't be sitting where you're sitting. That's the question around the corner. So like you said, it's not that these people are. And let's even think about the whole Gaza thing. You think they're doing it because they believe it? I don't. I don't know, David. I mean, I talked to David one time. I have no hate for the guy. Brian, we know, we interviewed him. Here is. He seems nice. I don't think that they are actively covering anything up. You know what it is? It's division for Democrats. Right?
- [52:56]
Saagar Enjeti
That's it.
- [52:56]
Krystal Ball
They're like, well, we can't divide the Democratic Party. And so.
- [53:00]
Saagar Enjeti
Well, Pakman, at the beginning of the genocide, actively backed up Israel.
- [53:03]
Krystal Ball
Fine. But btc, all right. I think for me is like, I don't wanna cause problems for Alyssa Slotkin. I don't wanna cause problems for Gavin Newsom. We need to train 100% of our fire on the right, by the way, the right does this all the time too. Right. Although it's more complicated. More recently, they are willing to go after people on the issues that they care about. Immigration in particular. Thomas Massie. Right. They'll go single him, or at least some people have. I'm trying to think more establishment, but Mitch McConnell and others, they'll get their fire whenever they, quote, go against the base. And Republican creators generally are more likely to be able to do that. The Democrats, though, they all seem to have internalized this thing about Kamala where protesters and people who spoke out against Kamala and Biden were nothing but trouble. And that. That's the reason that she lost, folks. It's just not true.
- [53:48]
Saagar Enjeti
Yeah.
- [53:49]
Krystal Ball
And it's like, that is. What they don't get is that iron sharpens iron. Going through a deeply competitive, brutal primary does not weaken the candidate. It actually makes them stronger. It means that you definitively won the debate. Kamala never won shit, literally. From the primary to her coronation at the Democratic Democratic Party. Those Gaza people, by the way, get mad at them all you want. They voted in good faith for Donald Trump or Jill Stein in the state of Michigan, and they were the exact margin of victory. Now, maybe it wouldn't have mattered in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Wisconsin, all these other. I know for a fact 100% it mattered in the state of Michigan. So that's on you. That's not on anybody else. That's not on some protester or anybody else. And that's where their theory of politics is just dead wrong. I mean, think about 2016 for Trump. It was sad, and he won. And not only that, he won the election. Obama, Hillary, that was true. I mean, the juggernauts went at each other. Obama got a blowout victory.
- [54:50]
Saagar Enjeti
And he was definitely, if you watch him, the beginning of those debates to the end, he was strengthened so much by. But even put aside, like the Gaza piece and all of that. Probably the worst mistake that Democrats made, political tactical mistake, was circling the wagons around Biden 100% and keeping out any sort of actual primary process and dissent where his weakness could have been exposed earlier. You could have ended up with a much stronger candidate who actually had won a Democratic process and had some sort of Democratic mandate behind them. By circling the wagons and keeping all the dissent out, they led themselves down this disastrous path where then you have the debate, and we all know the rest of how that history unfolds. So I think the lesson that Democrats should just shut their mouths and not ever criticize anything that any Democrat has ever, ever done, I think that that lesson has. I think that has been one of the single most devastating ideas for the Democratic Party. If you just care about Democrats winning, I think that has been an utter and complete disaster. On the piece around the future of the Democratic Party, too, for me, there's a battle right now. And this is why I think that even though it's whatever, it's one dark money group. Let's all be really clear, there's tons of dark money flowing through independent media. There's tons on the right. Okay? This. This is not something that's unique. By the way, a lot of these creators spoke out against the tenant media scandal when that happened, which we did too, by the way, because it was gross and it was corrupt. But they can't see the problem when it is on their side. But to me, there's a battle for the future of the Democratic Party right now. And I don't want to be overly simplistic about it, but it really is a battle between is this going to be a party that's run by billionaires or run by the grassroots? Is it going to be Zero Zoron or is it gonna be Kamala Harris? Is it gonna be Gavin Newsom or is it gonna be someone like a grand planner who has a true like grassroots behind him? That's the battle of the Democratic Party right now. And we saw through the Kamala Harris campaign when she started relying on the Mark Cubans of the world and this billionaire backed and approved strategy, that's when she truly sort of nixed. That's when she truly destroyed her campaign and made it impossible to win. So I also see this as a real struggle because if you're taking this dark money from a billionaire backed group, you are laying your chips down on the side of basically we're going to keep doing the same thing we did in the past. And let me tell you something, if you consider yourself left of center in any way, you are not going to win a contest of who has more billionaires and for whom, which party is more comfortable. For those billionaires you have to play a different game. And that's why I think that this is really important and very symbolic of the fights that are going on, the struggles that are going on within the Democratic Party. And of course Gaza ties in as well because that's an area where you have a lot of organized money on the side if we're going to be with Israel no matter what. And so it's not the case that none of these influencers in this cohort have said anything about Gaza. It's not been a complete proactive prohibition. But if you look at their body of work, there has been notably less, less focus on Gaza than among people who are, you know, much more independent, who really are out there, you know, saying what they think about what's going on in the world right now.
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- [60:17]
Saagar Enjeti
Let Me Go ahead and play for you guys. Brian, a couple of the responses here. Let me go ahead and start with a portion of Brian Tyler Cohen's response, which I also have to say I found these responses to honestly be kind of shocking in how disappointed dishonest they were, how frankly like Trumpian they were in their character. So let's go ahead and take a listen to Brian Tyler Cohen, who again is one of the co founders of Chorus. So he is actually like at the head of this thing.
- [60:46]
Brian Tyler Cohen
So here's what Chorus is. It is a scholarship program to teach creators how to grow their accounts, foster engagement, launch their own shows and become profitable on their own. It's an incubator program to build the pro democracy ecosystem. Influencers and creators have never been more important when it comes to how Americans are consuming their news. The right has been doing doing this for years and the left needs to catch up. That's why we're doing this with Chorus. So let's talk about what chorus is and what it's not. Chorus does not pay creators for content, does not tell them what to say. It does not control who they talk to or work with. And there is absolutely nothing in the contract that could even be reasonably interpreted to say that we do. Period. Full stop. I don't know a single creator who would willfully sign up for a program that would tell them what they can or can't say. That's not what this program we pay people to show up to workshops and technical trainings to optimize their content online. For example, we've got trainings on how to package content for YouTube, trainings on how to optimize audience retention for Instagram and TikTok, trainings on how to form an LLC. There is the implication in the article that this is some arm of the DNC or the Democratic Party. We have literally nothing to do with the dnc. I spend zero minutes of my day thinking about the DNA. The creators do not tow any party line. How could we? There isn't a party line. Creators are absolutely allowed to speak out against the Democrats and in fact plenty do. And frankly, Chorus creators should and do criticize Democrats when they suck. And quite often they do suck. 1630 Fund is our fiscal sponsor. One of the largest documented donors to 1630 Fund is the same person funding omitteer's reporters and residents Program program which Taylor Lorenz herself is a part of. And guess what? Her monthly stipend is $8,000 per month. So she's criticizing an entity that is funded by someone that she is currently taking money from. I guess it's okay when Taylor Lorenz gets paid, but no one else. There are people like Taylor Lorenz who are desperate to tear the left apart. And in fact it becomes clear who her efforts help when you hear stuff like this.
- [62:47]
Commercial Announcer
Genuinely, I kind of like Taylor Lorenzo.
- [62:49]
Krystal Ball
Lorenz because I know that she actually.
- [62:51]
Saagar Enjeti
Believes what she says.
- [62:52]
Commercial Announcer
You get what I'm saying?
- [62:53]
Brian Tyler Cohen
So yeah, I generally don't align myself with friends of Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens.
- [62:58]
Saagar Enjeti
Calling Taylor Lorenz a friend of Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens is wild, wild. And he opens up this thing we it's it was kind of long. So we like you know, clipped it up and didn't play the, the whole thing and wanted to give you the pieces where he's doing his best defense, whatever to be, to be fair to him. But he opens up the whole thing by being like. At the risk of giving more attention to an Internet troll, you can say a lot of things about Taylor Lorenz, but this is a fully reported piece in Wired magazine. He also spends a lot of time doing like, well, this person online said this thing about it which is totally untrue. And it's like, okay, but you don't actually deal with the very specific claims that she makes in her report about the requirement of non disclosure about the fact that they are required, contractually required to run all of the guests that they book, all of the government official guests that they booked through you guys in this approved channel that you have to go to daily messaging meetings. You don't deal with any of that. Instead you shift the focus to these Internet claims that were untrue rather than the actual reported out pieces. I want to deal with the piece that he says here about Pierre Amidyar, which I think is important. And listen, I think it would be fair to question whether Taylor should be taken, taking money from Pierre Omidyar. You know, he has this reporter in residence training. But here's what's different. She was public about that and we know who's funding her and it's, you know, it's on the website and she announced it. That is very different than a program that you're not allowed to say you're part of and you're not allowed to disclose the funders and you're supposed to keep it secret. And by the way, we still don't know who all is funding the 1630 fund. So I think it's fair. There could be a criticism of Taylor there too. But to posture like these are the exact same things, that is just fundamentally dishonest. And he's smart enough to know that.
- [64:49]
Krystal Ball
Well, look, people have, there's a four year track record here of criticizing Taylor. I read the story, I don't take her word for it. I read the story, I make sure that it's sourced and then I see the response. It seems to hold up. I think that's really what it's all about. So this isn't about Taylor Lorenz. I'm no great big fan or any of that over here. I do think it was really dishonest, but. Well, Candace says that. Candace and Tucker say that Taylor believes I actually agree with that is one thing. I mean I don't like most of what Taylor believes, but I do think she actually believes it.
- [65:19]
Saagar Enjeti
She genuinely believes it.
- [65:20]
Krystal Ball
Yeah, we can talk about that. It's kind of a different story. But the question here, and I think people are like, oh, is this ponderous? Why are we spending so much time. A lot of you guys are watching this stuff on the Internet and not enough people talk about the behind the scenes scenes to what you just talked about with msnbc. Talked a lot about here, our experience at the Hill, multiple phone calls, problems with coverage because it could affect advertising. And it's not again, it's not in the stuff that people would think. Like people would think it's Gaza sometimes. You know, if it's controversy, it's really about business. And like that's the stuff that people don't get. You know, criticizing or creating problems for potential events with bank of America or Pharma or TikTok Chinese advertising where the actual dollars hit the bank. We were speculating with our staff like what's the stuff that we cover that would be a problem. I'll give you a perfect example. Gambling. The gambling stuff would be a real issue if you and I were advertising 100% focus. A serious problem because back in 2021 wouldn't have thought much about it maybe oh, DraftKings, you know FanDuel, they're offering Googles of money. Right? Or polymarket like some people out there. By the way, polymarket is now getting into sports betting as you covered I think pretty previously Robin Hood, any of the so financial services credit cards. How much do I talk about user ish credit card rates and stuff like that on the show. That's not happening. If you're taking American Express. American Express, a blue chip, you know, brand, great brand. Who has anything bad to say about it? I do. Well, that would be an issue. I could go on forever, man. Like in terms of DTC that we talked about all of these DTC companies Better help. I gave that one. How could you be against therapy? James Lee, who does segments for us did a segment about BetterHelp that's not happening. If you have a $1.5 million a year contract with BetterHelp but you probably sign up for it and you think it's therapy. What's so bad about it? Well, maybe something. There's so many of the examples like yes, castware, mattresses and all that stuff probably wouldn't be an issue. But you never know. And that's why we don't do it and have left and I'm not exaggerating, millions of dollars on the table and have created instead an alternative funding structure which enables us to just, just do what we wanna do. But not enough people have thought about that. And I do, broadly, I do think that the reason why these people can't escape criticism is not disclosing who you're getting paid for is the ABS is scum of the earth behavior when you are doing public media consumption for other people. Cause they have to know one of the things again in the mainstream media in them is in ways they're more transparent who they take their money from. They're public, the companies, they publish their financials. I know exactly who CNN gets this money from. And also they'll tell you during the ad breaks, presented to you by Pfizer, presented to you by American Express or any of these other people. And that has all kinds of pernicious downstream effects in a Noam Chomsky sense. But it's very different than actually getting a direct check wired to you by your bank account. Mainstream media people are just W2 employees. They get cut a check which, you know, they don't really know how all the sauce gets made.
- [68:17]
Saagar Enjeti
Yeah.
- [68:17]
Krystal Ball
So that's why this is honestly kind of worse.
- [68:19]
Saagar Enjeti
It absolutely is. It absolutely is. And it is also so like you can think about, first of all, we need to come up with an agreed upon definition of who gets to call themselves independent media. Because if you're taking dark money from a party aligned super pac, sorry, you're not independent media. I mean you're just like, you could call yourself something else, but it ain't that the next level. So that's like kind of like the worst level is you're taking secret party alone money from billionaires and you're contractually obligated to not disclose that. That is the worst level of potential compromise and puts you the furthest from truly being able to call yourself independent media. The next tier is like, okay, it's funding from these various corporate entities, but it's disclosed you're doing the ad read right. It's up front. That's another level. You're getting sponsorships from this company or that company and you're disclosing, disclosing it. I don't take any of these decisions lightly because we were really fortunate. We were able to build a business. You guys signed up right away, we're able to fund it really quickly. We stepped into the breach and you guys were there for us. And I know that that's not going to be the case forever because Sagar and I were already established at the Hill and we had the benefit of establishing ourselves at the Hill when somebody else was paying the overhead before we went out on our own. So I don't really like, I don't judge people who are making somewhat different choices than what we are making. But I think transparency has to be at the core of what you're doing. At the very least, if you're not in a position to say, listen, we're not going to talk to any advertisers at all, which is the position that we have taken to keep from having to ask ourselves questions about, well, what about this sponsor versus that sponsor? Is this ethical? Whatever. Is somebody going to think that we're not covering the story because we're taking money from this place? We've just decided we're putting all of that off the table. If you aren't in the position to make that choice, I have some sympathy for that. It's just you have to be transparent. And if you're not, you cannot call yourself independent media. Like, I hope that we can all agree that that's the case and that's if you're on the left, if you're on the right. And maybe it's unfair, but I do think that the left should hold themselves to a higher standard because we are supposed to be the people who oppose billionaire influence, who want campaign finance reform, who want to represent public interest and not have all of this nefarious dark money that is controlling so much of our politics. So, yes, that is your obligation if you're going to call yourself someone who is on the left is to be more pure than the, you know, the Tim Pools or whoever taking the tenant media, whatever cash they can grab because frankly, that's more consistent with their idea. If you're Ben Shapiro, you know, and you're a standard issue conservative, you don't think there's anything wrong with billionaires and billionaire influencer and politics and whatever that is actually more consistent with your ideology. So I have scorn for those funding models as well. But I do think if you're gonna hold yourself out as being on the left, you do have to meet a higher bar and a higher standard. And as I said before, you're not gonna win playing the game of who can get more billionaire dollars. You're not gonna win that. And you are certainly not gonna win a movement that delivers for working class people if you are relying on billionaire funding to, to get there. Not gonna happen. So that's why I think this is so important. I wanna play a little bit of. There's at least one person in here who is. She's a tiktoker. She has been critical on Gaza. She's been critical of Andrew Cuomo, of Cory Booker. So she's gone after Democrats. And she put together her response. She's a member of chorus. She's in the chorus cohort or incubator as well. She put together part of her response and, and it was amusing to me because she put up parts of the contract that she claimed were debunking what Taylor was saying in the article, but actually just fully confirmed what Taylor had reported out. And then she does this thing that I found so incredibly gross. And there have been other instances of this in the defense of Corus where they're once again using identity politics to put protect, you know, to. To sort of rebut these claims of, you know, potential like corruption and being compromised by this dark money. So let me go ahead and play this. B5. Let me go ahead and play a little bit of this.
- [72:35]
Chorus Member
In the contract I signed, there is some language that says, hey, please, like, before you make a public statement about what course is, just check with us. The reason for that is that as the article states, there's over 90 influencers in the program, many of whom have very small accounts and joined the program to get like mentorship and happen to be immigrants or trans in a red state.
- [72:51]
Commercial Announcer
Right?
- [72:51]
Chorus Member
And like, already happen to be kind of in extra danger right now. And so the goal with the like please check with us clause was to make sure that small creators who already had targets on their back weren't accidentally like featured on a huge page and then suddenly had an onslaught of threats from the right. Boris has never been kept some nefarious secret. Right? People have been talking about it. It was more just, hey, this is already an unsafe job for some people. Check with us in advance so you don't accidentally like, add to someone's unsafety.
- [73:14]
Saagar Enjeti
That doesn't make any sense. Okay? She's literally saying that they are keeping their dark money funding secret in order to protect trans creators in red states. That is her argument. That makes zero sense. Okay, now maybe it would make sense to say, hey, don't talk about the other people who are in the cohort. But for you yourself, like, how is it protecting a trans creator or an immigrant in a red state for you to not talk about your Dar money funding? I. I'm having serious Hillary 2016 identity politics weaponized against the Left flashbacks with all of this. There were other allegations that Taylor was like anti black woman for publishing this. When they're all, I mean, I'm sure there are black women in the cohort. This lady appears to be white. There's all kinds of people. It reminded me of why I became such a vociferous critic of this type of identity politics. Because you see the way it is being weaponized here. When you genuinely have these communities that are under threat and they're cynically using this to protect their dark money funding source. That is disgusting. And one more thing I'll say about these responses is again, if you are on the left, look, I get that there are. I think the best case you can make for them is basically like, look, the right is doing this and we just got to, we got to throw out. We're dealing with fascism. We've got to throw out the playbook. And I get it's not ideal, but we got to fight against fascism in white whatever way we can, and so that's why we're taking the money. None of them even really acknowledge that there's an ethical question here. And that to me is a real rudder. How can you be call yourself on the left and you're not even contemplating the ethical dilemmas that are involved here and explaining, well, I get why it's a problem. Maybe in another time, but here's why I came down on the side. No, it just was like all, all out attacking Taylor Lorenz's credibility, throwing up, she's friends with Candace Owens. This very aggressive response of there is nothing wrong. We celebrate what we're doing. We did nothing wrong. There was no moral or ethical dilemma. Here we do it again ten times over. And I find that to be a real red flag that there wasn't even a willingness to grapple with the clear ethical issues that are involved in taking this type of secret dark money totally.
- [75:29]
Krystal Ball
And I know you're looking at it for a left thing, but I actually think this is much bigger than, than you may even realize because this is all industry for all, quote, unquote, independent. If you look in the world of sports, gambling runs sports. Now I listen to a really interesting critique of sports journalism, which is actually very similar to where we are right now. It's not only that gambling sponsors all of the podcasts, it's also that the people who succeed and the most famous sports journalists are basically people who tweet whether someone has signed a contract or not, and they just get the first, first scoop in terms of people who actually uncover information that makes people in power, like, very uncomfortable. They are very few and far between.
- [76:11]
Saagar Enjeti
Yeah.
- [76:11]
Krystal Ball
What is basically being consolidated is that industry and, like, money and influence is running the general ecosystem to make sure that things are positive in almost all cultural areas, from sports to. I mean, here's politics. That's number one. Finance is another one, by the way. Like, some of the. The biggest finance podcast all in is literally one of the biggest finance podcasts. I mean, think about that. What Chamath has, like, conflicts of interest coming out of his eyeballs. Every single one of these places is ridiculous. Or Bloomberg or any of these places. I mean, it was like, it says it in the name Bloomberg. You think you're getting, like, completely unfetched cnbc. I think this is actually a funding model question for, quote, unquote, independent media, where when they're rolled up basically into the ecosystem, I think they broadly become more corrupt than a lot of the mainstream media. And trying to make yourself a separate part out of that is just very, very few and far between. The money is hard to say no to. All right. I mean, I've laid it out for you. And that's just our show. Think about even the biggest shows, that's probably tens of millions of dollars. And so for people to say no to that, you gotta have some real stomach to actually be able to do it or bet on yourself in a different way and be true to some different, different values. So I think that's why it's important, because that's a view into how it works for everything. I really do think it's everything.
- [77:32]
Saagar Enjeti
Yeah. And I just gotta say, for the people who sold out for this shit for 250amonth, what are you doing with your life?
- [77:38]
Krystal Ball
That's actually.
- [77:39]
Saagar Enjeti
If you're not in the $8,000 a month cohort. I really don't. The $250 a month people, like, what is that?
- [77:46]
Krystal Ball
Well, it wasn't Pac. Correct me if I'm wrong. Pacman was taking 8,000amonth. Is that true?
- [77:49]
Saagar Enjeti
That's the assumption. Because that's the highest band that you can be. He's got like 2 million.
- [77:53]
Commercial Announcer
He makes millions.
- [77:55]
Saagar Enjeti
I mean, that's the thing, is do.
- [77:56]
Krystal Ball
Some back of the map math on the YouTube revenue, right?
- [77:58]
Saagar Enjeti
What do we do? That's what I want people to understand too, is like, we have left. There's no doubt. We've left millions on the table by not doing ad. There's no doubt about it. But guess what, guys? We're doing fine. Yeah, we are doing Fine. Like, we are able to, like, have a good life. We pay our employees.
- [78:13]
Krystal Ball
Yeah.
- [78:13]
Saagar Enjeti
You know, when they ask for a raise, we're like giving them more of that. We're doing, you know, we're doing just fine over here. We're able to build this new stuff, all of that, so it doesn't require selling out to some dark money super PAC to be able to make it. And again, look, I get it. Saga and I were both established before we had the Hill, all of that, so we did have some advantages. I don't want to deny that, but Kyle didn't. And he's doing good too. Right. You don't have to take this money. And if there is money, you have to disclose it. That's really, to me, the most key piece is Sager and I. As much as we've set our business up to insulate ourselves from any sort of corporate or political pressures, we still are human beings that are going to run into biases. Sager is friends with J.D. vance. Right. I'm friends with Kyle. So I'm not gonna be criticizing him. You know, he's my husband. I'm not gonna be criticizing him as another creator if he does something I disagree with. But when you are those instances, people know that about it. And that's the thing is, look, we're all human beings. None of us are going to be able to exist in the world fully and completely free of bias. But when you run into something that is a clear conflict of interest and clear bias, or there is money that is being paid to you that could potentially impact your views and your coverage, you have to disclose it. That to me is like the most central piece. And then, you know, other decisions that are made around that, I think there are better and worse decisions that can be made that. But if you aren't being upfront about where your funding is coming from, I think that is a real mistake. And I think it's a real ethical red line, 100%.
- [79:49]
Krystal Ball
You know, by the way, it's not just him. You know, anytime we cover somebody where I'll be like, look, full disclosure, met them for dinner, friends, you know what I'm saying? You think I enjoy doing that? It's embarrassing sometimes, but you gotta do it. I mean, because otherwise how much worse would it look to do the coverage to say something favorable and then some photo or whatever comes out of the two? It looks like horrible. So like, that's what these people are, in that position. So anyway, you gotta try and hold yourself up to an ethical standard that's why we spend a lot of time on it. Because again, I know a lot of people who watch this show consume a lot of stuff, you know, on the Internet. And I do think people should ask bigger questions. And this isn't just politics, it genuinely is all industries and I'm seeing it get a lot.
- [80:29]
Saagar Enjeti
So true.
- [80:30]
Krystal Ball
I really think it has never been worse than I don't think it's ever actually been worse, as bad as the mainstream media was, because they still have a lot of power and a lot of the grifters are the ones who are succeeding the most. Which means that both sides of the spectrum of like what you're consuming is more than likely like bought, paid for, shaped or whatever in some way. And that's the real we need you.
- [80:51]
Saagar Enjeti
Guys to be discerning consumers and know who you're, you know, if you want to support independent media, truly support places that are actually independent media. Because yeah, we're headed towards a worse cesspool than with mainstream media. And that was already a pretty low bar.
- [81:20]
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- [83:49]
Danielle Fishel
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