Debate Winners and Losers, BRICS Expands, Self-Driving Cars

The body language experts and everyone else weighs in on the first Republican debate.

International affairs and security analyst Mark Sleboda joins Misfits hosts Michelle Witte and John Kiriakou to discuss what we know and don’t know about the plane crash that might have claimed the life of Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin, the many entities who would have wanted Prigozhin dead, what the next steps might be for the Wagner Group, how the US will view the surprising expansion of BRICS, and why some Washington talking heads say Kiev’s counteroffensive still has a fighting chance.

UBS banking whistleblower Brad Birkenfeld discusses the trend of politicized debanking. He breaks down what banks have to gain by keeping an administration’s friends as clients and dumping their enemies, the larger implications for society when a government can threaten to debank individuals and leave him without recourse, what “criminality” really means in the context of big banking, and how the case of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein illustrates so many of these points.

Former Colorado County Commissioner and writer Arn Menconi discusses the fallout of the first Republican primary of the 2024 presidential race, the winners and losers of the debate, how the specter of former President Donald Trump hovered over the affair, how Vivek Ramaswamy’s performance left a mark on the night, and how Trump and his lawyer Rudy Giuliani’s indictments will affect their political futures.

Technologist and cohost of the CovertAction Bulletin podcast Chris Garaffa discusses the rise of driverless cars in US cities, how San Francisco is expanding its experiment with robotaxis, the risk these vehicles can present to public safety and the public purse, how residents of San Francisco have been attempting to push for safety measure amid a massive lobbying effort on the part of tech corporations, and what transit solutions could be a more sustainable alternative to single-occupant cars.

The Misfits also discuss serial sexual abuse at the Central Intelligence Agency.

The views and opinions expressed in this program are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the position of Sputnik.

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