In this episode, Alex Blumberg talks about the growing number of threats aimed at Republican senators, including Joni Ernst and Lisa Murkowski, as well as the potential for primary challenges against them. Plus, a look at the new VOA Director-General candidate, Carrie Lake, and why she thinks Trump won the 2020 election.
00:02:50.060They stole this election and every man, woman and child knows it.
00:02:53.640These bastards back there don't want us talking about stolen elections.
00:02:57.740Will you accept the results of your election in November?
00:03:01.640However, I'm going to win the election and I will accept that result.
00:03:06.540That's actually a pretty good, succinct articulation of the ethos, right, of Trump and Lake and all of them.
00:03:12.960If they win, they accept it. Otherwise, no.
00:03:16.080Now, it's not exactly clear if Trump can actually install Lake as head of the VOA because there's like a board of governors.
00:03:21.940But he doesn't care. He's certainly going to try.
00:03:23.820And Lake would no doubt use every facet of her power to push election lies and kind of create a domestic version of Russia's infamous state media apparatus.
00:03:33.260Lake believes, perhaps more than anyone else, in the core tenet of the Republican Party.
00:03:37.840Elections only count when we win them.
00:03:40.640Since World War Two, the congressionally funded news outlet has operated with the mission to provide free and comprehensive news coverage all across the globe.
00:03:49.200Today, VOA broadcasts to a weekly audience of more than 350 million people in nearly 50 languages.
00:03:57.080It broadcasts in places that distinctly do not have a free press, like China and Venezuela.
00:04:02.540And even though its broadcasts were banned in Russia after Putin invaded Ukraine,
00:04:07.100the network's Russian-language website is still up and running and providing factual information to people in Russia who access it through encrypted Internet connections.
00:04:15.400Since the network's founding, its purpose has been to provide a counterbalance to propaganda put out by nations like Russia and China
00:04:23.160and to promote democracy around the world just by giving people access to the truth.
00:04:28.980And now Donald Trump wants to put Carrie Lake in charge.
00:04:34.900I'm Carrie Lake. You might recognize me from TV.
00:04:38.720I worked as a journalist and a news anchor for 27 years right here in Arizona.
00:04:44.000So I know the ins and outs of the corporate media.
00:08:06.120The three massive things that have to be dealt with.
00:08:09.460Where they're trying to handcuff President Trump every second of every day.
00:08:14.720The, because they're not organized on the, the resistance that we had in 16 when we shocked them with the win is not the resistance they have today.
00:08:25.040Trump is such, so much in full spectrum dominance that they are, in trying to get a resistance, whether the governors, whether it's Mark Elias, whether it's Jamie Raskin up on the hill and the forces on the hill.
00:08:39.080It's not very effective yet, as they're in the plane.
00:09:04.100The reason that President Trump is back is resilience.
00:09:07.500The resilience of President Trump, of having gone to Mar-a-Lago with the 2020 election stolen and then having all the debanking, the suppression of his voice, the kicking off of Fox, you know, Fox, we're going to make him a non-person, all of it.
00:09:21.660Then the lawfare, the vast criminal conspiracy, all of that.
00:09:28.080The resistance is pretty well, is ill-defined but coming together, they can't really decide.
00:09:37.540And so this is the time when they're not organized and they're kind of defeated.
00:09:42.620They don't, they haven't shown us yet resilience.
00:09:46.300The, even their grassroots, which used to be quite strong on the Obama era, the community organizing aspect of it.
00:10:10.680One big piece of this is that many people on the left feel they were lied to.
00:10:17.280I can't emphasize enough that, you know, 10 o'clock, 11, and people are doing mashups.
00:10:22.640And I strongly recommend they get some great mashups online about the arc of the coverage on CNN, on MSNBC, on NBC News, on CBS.
00:10:30.840The arc of the coverage from polls closing in Virginia, and this is democracy at work, and we're all chipper, and it's going to be great, and we're going to have, we're going to break history.
00:10:40.220And all through the night, no, it's these urban areas, and the universities are going to, and people are calling me, you know, people close to the Harris campaign are calling me.
00:11:04.040One way to seize them, and you see on Voice of America, the revered, historic Voice of America, that's really atrophied into an anti-American platform.
00:11:14.920And the people of Voice of America ought to be on notice right now.
00:11:18.400Under no circumstances start destroying documents, and under no circumstances should you be doing, and locking in things that Carrie Lake and President Trump's team can't, don't get into things that can't be unwound quickly.
00:11:34.240I might note that over there that one of the worst aspects is the pro-CCP nature of the Mandarin language, the Chinese language, renowned throughout the anti-CCP movement as just being collaborators, essentially, in the management over there being collaborators.
00:11:52.580So that will definitely change, as well, many other things.
00:11:57.080And Carrie Lake couldn't be a better person.
00:11:58.800With $350 million, and my point to Carrie is that you ought to have a commitment to President Trump that it's at a billion – you're at a billion listeners in content, podcasts, doing videos, all of it.
00:12:14.200And the Voice of America is a – because it's – remember, in the wars that we're in, information warfare is – you know, information warfare is the most important of all.
00:12:26.400And they say, oh, we're just trying to tell the truth.
00:12:28.720In fact, if we can pull last night – there was a guy from NPR.
00:12:31.700I'm going to do some directing and producing here live to my crack team.
00:12:35.520Later on, Alex Wager, I think it was, or maybe Stephanie Ruhl, they actually had a guy from NPR, a media critic producer.
00:13:19.620The only thing that can stop us now is ourselves.
00:13:23.820If you notice up there 24-7, what are they talking about?
00:13:26.900They're talking about Republican senators that would be blocking President Trump's nominees.
00:13:32.080And we're spending an awful lot of time as a movement in this show and our content correcting that, where we should be spending our time right now and seizing the institutions and policy and things that happen.
00:13:43.640And January 20th is here because you have Christmas, New Year's, and then boom, it's upon you.
00:13:48.220You come back for the confirmation hearings and then you're in it.
00:13:51.760And on the 20th of January at noon, when President Trump takes the oath and turns around, gives it what his plan is, his address to the nation.
00:13:59.480We've got to be hitting it right then.
00:14:19.320We're spending an inordinate amount of time just kind of because the established or the Republican Party still rejects the populist nationalist movement.
00:14:27.240They are only, make no mistake about this, they're tolerating Trump because they feel they have to tolerate him.
00:14:37.580The populist nationalist movement, you know, Peter Stork said to his mistress, I can smell the Walmart on him, which is one of the most definitive phrases of this entire effort.
00:14:49.420Well, your bettors in the Republican Party can smell the Walmart as we're up on Capitol Hill.
00:17:12.420Their great fear is full transparency.
00:17:17.000Everything that we have to do on the declassifications, on J6, on the border, all we have to – Gasparino is one million percent correct.
00:17:27.240We have to comport ourselves, and we have to think of the long flow of history.
00:17:31.260When President Trump's administration takes charge on the afternoon of the 20th, we have to keep in mind the revolutionary generation, the framers of the Constitution.
00:17:42.720We will be within 90 days, the day President Trump, on that 20th, 90 days later, or 89 days later, is the 250th anniversary of Lexington and Concord, the shot heard around the world.
00:17:57.740In the providential story of the arc of the age of Trump, we won out of nowhere in 16, and it was a shock to the system.
00:18:13.280And the system was very quick to unite and come against us and to stop the – try to stop the populist nationalist movement, including two impeachments of President Trump, all the madness, right?
00:18:25.160We didn't have a deep bench at the time.
00:18:29.380This movement was just coming together, and everything we had to do was put into winning.
00:18:35.860We didn't have a lot of time to think about transition, and Chris Christie and these guys don't get it, obviously.
00:18:40.340One, they're kind of clowns and not particularly bright in the first place.
00:18:43.800And I don't mean to say that without the honored graduate of Seton Hall Law School.
00:18:53.020But we didn't have a deep bench, and you kind of got a lot of people in there that you might like the cut of their jib historically, but turned out they not only disliked our policies, they hated Trump and then hated our policies and fought us.
00:19:07.220Then you have the – that was providential, though, that winning was providential because you could stop the bleeding and defeat the Clinton mafia, which, quite frankly, was never able to raise its head again.
00:19:19.320You see this and how weak and feckless Bill Clinton is coming on the – they put him out to Wisconsin and go to some high schools and junior high schools, and then he goes on these shows.
00:20:17.840What's happening up here now is that we can only defeat ourselves.
00:20:21.800When I say ourselves, I mean the people on our side of the football.
00:20:24.620And there's a big hunk of people on our side of the football are just not down with President Trump and certainly not down with the populist nationalist movement.
00:20:32.960We're about to – let's give some inside baseball.
00:20:35.800In fact, can I play – I want to play Jonathan Lemire the tee-up to Vaughn here.
00:20:40.380Vaughn here's response was good, but we don't need to hear it again.
00:20:43.620But I want that – I want Lemire because Lemire speaks the truth of what's happening.
00:20:49.220On the surface, they're saying, yes, that what we've done and this audience have done and what Charlie Kirk has done and others are having people call.
00:20:58.660And the Mike Davises has had a big impact.
00:21:00.520But behind the scenes, they're telling you, hey, we've had a belly full of this.
00:21:04.680Because we don't need the – we can smell the Walmart on the War Room Posse.
00:21:10.420We can smell the Walmart on the Turning Point crowd.
00:21:14.260Real America's Voice got Walmart all over it.
00:21:52.240They're being aggressive and, like, really badgering and mobilizing their minions to go after the Republican senators they feel like are deemed insufficiently loyal.
00:22:24.600I will tell you right now with Hegseth and Cash in good shape, the one that they've identified, I think they're going to come together around Tulsi.
00:22:33.500Tulsi is the one they want to remove because they do not want – and this – hey, Ratcliffe, bro, when they – after Tulsi and not after you, from the war of Posse's perspective, that's not the best thing.
00:22:46.640The intelligence apparatus is like the FBI.
00:22:49.060The FBI, they've kind of – I think now they're not conceding.
00:22:51.600They're still going to try to chop, but Cash has got real momentum.
00:22:55.940Number one, besides all the lies you hear up there, Cash is one of the most, if not the most qualified guy they've got because of intel, counterintelligence, and counterterrorism.
00:23:07.400Those three things are 65 percent of the budget.
00:23:10.240When Cash talks about the big footprint or the massive footprint of the FBI, when they talk about the headquarters of the FBI being bigger than the Pentagon is because of those.
00:23:20.040And I happen to think that you can totally deconstruct the FBI out of existence by – and not saying their functions are going to go away.
00:23:27.320Just be different and smaller, but they can go to places in DHS or combine things for maybe some scale economies or scale of things doing things.
00:23:36.100That you can take the intel – and remember, it's not CA.
00:23:40.780Intel, counterintelligence, and counterterrorism, those can be – there's lots of interesting combinations that don't have to have FBI on it.
00:23:48.880Then you've got the 35 percent that's the law enforcement and the cops and working with the prosecutors.
00:23:54.900Well, hey, they have 250 lawyers right now.
00:25:54.400Obama couldn't pivot to Asia when he tried.
00:25:56.740He got one Marine brigade, four deployed in Darwin.
00:26:00.800President Trump in the first term, try as we might, and there's a reorientation to take China on with tariffs economically focused on East Asia.
00:26:08.100Let's be blunt, didn't get there, ran out of runway, and now this time the fight is on.
00:27:18.800Now, it turns out we have two abilities to do reconciliation, as fate would have it.
00:27:23.800And up until now, there's been all this focus that on day one, the 20th, shock and awe, we're going to do shock and awe at the border, on deportations, on security of the country, ISIS, all this.
00:27:39.000Because we've got a reconciliation coming in with a legislative package, a money package, executive orders, and we're going to solve it.
00:27:48.460And President Trump, as he said the other day, I want on immigration on the border and groceries, immigration on the border and groceries.
00:27:56.300So, boom, out of the box of one reconciliation that we're working on now, Miller, Holman, everybody, war room posse, boom, boom, boom, we're going to do it.
00:28:02.960But guess what? Now, and the second reconciliation would come in April, May or June with taxes and all this stuff kind of blended together, get the taxes, the taxes, the taxes.
00:28:15.680Now they're talking about one in a moment.
00:28:19.640Are you tired of progressive corporations that continue to further alienate conservative Americans, all the while eroding the future of the American dream?
00:28:28.780Companies like Starbucks, strong army customers to support abortion, or PayPal, canceling accounts over political views,
00:28:37.020Maybelline making a mockery of women by supporting transgender models, and Bud Light forcing gender ideology on you when all you want is to enjoy a cold beer?
00:28:47.400But thanks to Public Square, you don't have to fund companies like this any longer.
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00:28:58.680Whether you're looking to buy coffee, find a new athletic brand that knows what a woman is, shop for clean skin care, or just find a restaurant in your community that won't lecture you about your political views.
00:30:42.780And if you go back and look at how much time you spent, like on Fox and these other channels, I'm going to see, looking at this stuff over the years, and you realize, man, that was a waste of time, wasn't it?
00:32:37.080And right now, a third of it gets financed every year.
00:32:40.080And we're doing it like on a credit card short term.
00:32:43.980That gets embedded into the one third of the debt that you have to refinance.
00:32:50.180Zero Hedge laid it out for you in the first two months, October and November, the greatest deficits in the history of this nation.
00:32:55.680With everything else going on, six, six hundred twenty four billion dollars, folks, in sixty one days by the by by by by midnight on New Year's Eve is going to be a trillion dollars in another hundred days.
00:33:08.780May take a couple of days in the New Year's, but the first quarter plus ten hundred days, another trillion dollars.
00:33:37.180They got guys just like Steve Mann went to Harvard Business School, have an HP 12C, can do net present value, discounted cash flow.
00:33:43.300And they're sitting there going, hey, boss, at a central bank there, you know, those American elites are burying us in the twenty five to thirty percent depreciation of the dollar.
00:33:53.560Purchasing power of the dollar means we're selling our oil or a tin or a rubber or a tea or you pick it.
00:34:06.440You you've bound them together and they're talking and they'll figure out something.
00:34:11.380And once that happens, it is not the dollar.
00:34:13.880And I'm not saying we have to be the prime reserve currency because that debate, that debate that we must have, it gets back to the indestructible nature of the post-war international rules based order, which is predicated upon two things.
00:34:27.300The American dollar and the American military.
00:34:29.760And this gets back to the NDA, the nine hundred billion dollars.
00:34:34.400And this gets back to why Doge and Vivek and Elon, if I give you some free advice, take it for what it's worth.
00:34:41.860And Elon, you see today that coming after you, brother, now that you're down and dirty with MAGA.
00:34:46.780Hey, Gary Gensler and I used to work with Gary Gensler back in Goldman Sachs many decades ago.
00:34:53.000And Gary's kind of a, you know, kind of a nerdy guy, but he's a little bit of an assassin.
00:34:57.240He's giving you a love tap on the way at the door.
00:34:59.420Hey, maybe you got you some insider trading there, brother, on the Neuralink.
00:35:03.760And remember, we're not fans of Neuralink because, hey, guess what?
00:36:52.880The American people are not going to underwrite you guys up in your Swiss ski chalets or down there in the south of France or in the west end of London.
00:37:00.880There's more money in Europe than you can say.
00:37:09.940You want to see the difference between the American experience in the American Republic and the war room posse and the cadre here and populist nationalism.
00:37:17.640See it right there in Notre Dame Cathedral.
00:37:21.560When Trump walks in, he walks in like Charlemagne.
00:37:25.040And they're all running around and all the guys that hate him, they're trying to kiss the ring right there.
00:37:29.100They have a mentality to look for kings.
00:37:52.560They think of him like Andrew Jackson, a man of the people that on their shoulders drove him over the gold line as a leader who came back from oblivion because they were there.
00:38:31.400You turned out in the hundreds of thousands, not millions, to be ground game, to have a, wait for it, with all the early voting, it's great.
00:38:40.660On a day in November, on the 5th of November, I don't know, 50 million people had to show up.
00:38:45.940It was a mass mobilization unseen because the Democrats all vote early.
00:38:57.820A victory that could be like 1932 could be like when the great reign of the Republicans from the Civil War, from Abraham Lincoln and John Fremont and Seward and all that team of rivals and winning the Civil War all the way through, even with a couple of Democrats.
00:39:18.820But all the way through, Republican rule, all the way through, FDR in 1932 and the collapse, the stock market collapse of 29 led to the realignment of 32.