Juno News - September 18, 2020ObamaGate The Movie aims to ＂expose the deep state＂
Episode Stats
Words per minute
174.23293
Harmful content
Misogyny
2
sentences flagged
Hate speech
7
sentences flagged
Summary
In this episode, Andrew Lawton talks with Anne McElhenney and Phelan McAleer about their new film, Obamagate, a documentary that exposes the deep state conspiracy to take down President Trump.
Transcript
00:00:09.300
Conservatives all the time complain that Hollywood and the entertainment world have this big liberal bias.
00:00:15.080
And that's true. That is so very true. I'm not going to dispute that at all.
00:00:18.720
But it's all the more reason why conservatives need to support art and entertainment, films, music, whatever it is that is conservative friendly.
00:00:27.200
And I think this is such an important message, but it's one that also goes along with supporting good conservative content.
00:00:34.580
And when it comes to creating good content that is friendly to a conservative audience,
00:00:39.420
no better duo than Anne McElhenney and Phelan McAleer, filmmakers, documentarians, authors.
00:00:45.460
Their newest project, Obamagate the Movie, a film they're producing that they're actually crowdfunding for with a goal of exposing the deep state.
00:00:54.460
The deep state that tried to take down President Trump and continues to try to take down President Trump.
00:01:00.320
This is a movie that really follows a lot of the other work they've done, most notably with FBI Lovebirds,
00:01:06.100
a play featuring Dean Cain and Christy Swanson, who are actually going to be in the film as well,
00:01:11.220
playing the same characters, Peter Strzok and Lisa Page,
00:01:14.260
the former FBI agents that are household names now for their collusion during the 2016 election.
00:01:21.380
And joining me on the line is one of the fantastic duo, I was just talking about,
00:01:26.360
producer and co-writer of Obamagate the Movie, Phelan McAleer.
00:01:30.820
Phelan, good to talk to you again. Thanks for coming on the show.
00:01:33.380
Thanks for having me, Andrew. It's always a pleasure to be on your show and talk to your audience.
00:01:39.360
We are now almost four years after the election.
00:01:42.800
Barack Obama's been out of office for almost four years.
00:01:46.260
Why is this a story that, in your view, still needs to be told?
00:01:49.520
Because it started at the tail end of the Obama administration, it's hard to believe, right?
00:01:57.660
It is actually hard to believe, and I think it's missed in a lot of this.
00:02:00.860
This is an investigation by the most powerful parts of the intelligence apparatus
00:02:08.560
under one administration into the rival political candidates running in the next election
00:02:18.080
It's like Ronald Reagan having Walter Mondale investigated,
00:02:27.420
or I can't remember who ran against Harvard, Walker, George H.W. Bush,
00:02:34.700
using the power of the presidency and the power of the intelligence organization
00:02:43.940
And this is not, though, investigating their tax returns.
00:02:46.560
This is using secret warrants, recordings, tapping people's phones,
00:02:54.280
turning people, using spies, using a honey trap.
00:02:57.420
They sent a girl in a short skirt to a meeting in London to try and get a senior member
0.80
00:03:04.700
of the Trump campaign to incriminate himself and incriminate the campaign.
00:03:10.660
None of this worked, but they lied to the FISA court, the supposedly secret
00:03:16.000
but highly, you know, highly skeptical special warrant court, you know,
00:03:21.560
because you need a special warrant to spy on your own people.
00:03:26.220
And they just lied and they made stuff up and the judges just handed out warrants like confetti.
00:03:32.940
But these are all, this all happened under the Obama administration.
00:03:36.720
And then it continued, the cabal of FBI and DOJ, deep state,
00:03:42.560
they continued it after Obama was out of power, but it was started under his watch.
00:03:48.900
And that is the most fascinating part of this story is that when you say deep state,
00:03:54.820
there are a lot of people that immediately they put up their sort of conspiracy theory alert beacon
00:04:00.780
But you really have seen in the last few years how a lot of these intelligence community people,
00:04:07.040
these bureaucracy operatives, they really do have a mind of their own in a way
00:04:11.360
where once the old guy is out, they still are loyal to that regime that's no longer there.
00:04:16.860
Yeah, it's not just the regime, it's the consensus they're loyal to.
00:04:21.180
I mean, Peter Strzok is quite clear about it in his book and in interviews
00:04:25.560
that Donald Trump is a threat to the national security of the United States
00:04:45.960
They just think that anyone who disagrees with their consensus establishment view
00:04:55.600
So that's what, I mean, this is kind of, that's the deep political side to it.
00:05:01.920
At the other side of it is Strzok and Page were having this ridiculous affair
00:05:06.300
and texting on their FBI work phones because their wives allegedly couldn't get access to those,
00:05:14.240
wives and husband couldn't get access to those.
1.00
00:05:17.000
And they, you know, they thought they would get away with that and they almost did.
00:05:22.120
But in these texts, you know, and you see the mainstream media are calling them anti-Trump texts.
00:05:30.340
Of course, there was a lot of anti-Trump texts, but there's actually conspiratorial texts.
00:05:34.140
There was her saying, he's not going to win, is he?
00:05:36.780
And the chief counterespionage operative and the FBI saying, no, we're going to stop it.
00:05:44.560
I find that to be interesting because this is, I mean, some people would argue this is bordering
00:05:50.440
At the very least, it's undermining the democratic process.
00:05:53.760
But all of the players involved in this seem to have been able to kind of cement themselves
00:06:00.460
You know, James Comey, Peter Strzok, and we're going to see this with Bob Mueller and all these
00:06:05.700
And there is something very insidious about that.
00:06:08.340
Just the hero treatment that if the roles were reversed, if this were Trump doing this to Biden,
00:06:14.280
depending on what happens in 2020, this would be riots in the street.
00:06:20.340
I mean, I'm old enough to remember when the FBI were the evil deep state and the left hated
00:06:27.620
In fact, I have a friend whose baby was born last year.
00:06:30.740
That's probably old enough to remember when the FBI were the enemy.
00:06:36.340
You know, the FBI now are the heroes of the left and must be protected by the left.
00:06:42.920
But the things they did, they spied on a political campaign for no good reason.
00:06:51.060
They lied to get the warrants to spy on a political campaign long after the political,
00:06:59.000
I mean, to use Peter Strzok's exact words, I think there's no there there.
00:07:03.660
Long after there's no there there, they kept going.
00:07:06.440
So you have this Jean Le Carrier deep state cabal conspiracy mixed in with a bit of teen
00:07:15.760
romance texting between these embarrassingly middle aged lovers.
00:07:20.940
And then in the middle of it, you have their one of their wife, his wife, finding his work
00:07:27.000
phone and somehow getting access to the texts in his work for in his FBI work phone and then
00:07:33.960
phoning Lisa Page and threatening to set a private investigator on her.
00:07:38.160
And, you know, I mean, there's so many questions and so much madness there that it's a really
00:07:44.940
entertaining movie and that's, you know, this has to be entertaining, you know, we it's you
00:07:51.400
saw the play, you saw the we did the excerpt of the play original play on my on the Mark
00:08:01.380
But we've extended it now to bring in the whole Comey stuff, the Flynn stuff, all all the other
00:08:07.120
memos and conspiracies that have come out since then.
00:08:15.540
And that's the part I wanted to ask you about, because you've had a fantastic ability with
00:08:19.400
past work, whether it was your play on Ferguson or the Gosnell trial and FBI lovebirds of taking
00:08:26.120
things that have actually happened, not just events that have happened, but but actual
00:08:30.580
conversations verbatim and bringing them to life in a way.
00:08:34.060
And I guess there are two parts to the question.
00:08:36.820
You know, is there much work for you as a writer or co-writer of this film when you're
00:08:42.240
But but more seriously, why is that something that needs to be done?
00:08:47.680
Well, yes, I saw someone on YouTube called me a lazy writer and I or maybe it's on Twitter
00:08:59.780
You know, when the mainstream media has failed to do its job, when the media won't do its
00:09:05.480
job, then that's where verbatim plays and verbatim theater and verbatim movies, that's
00:09:13.620
I mean, in some ways, I'm lucky that the mainstream media is so crap because if there were any
00:09:23.420
I'd be, you know, shoveling cement in back in Ireland or whatever.
00:09:33.260
You know, they will not highlight the stories that should be highlighted.
00:09:37.420
They will not quote directly when the quote doesn't help them.
00:09:42.000
What they do is they paraphrase it in the most benign way.
00:09:45.080
You know, it's like, as Mark Stein once said, you know, I mean, this is, you know, when Salman
0.99
00:09:48.960
Rusty's book, you know, 20 people were killed and reviewers talk about it.
00:09:55.920
You know, I mean, they will paraphrase things and make things as benign as possible when they
00:10:02.080
But the great thing about verbatim is, you know, there's no filter.
00:10:09.280
You know, there's some, but this is what the people said and the audience loves it because
00:10:14.260
I always notice when you're in the theater, you know, people are sitting back like this
00:10:18.080
thinking, what's the playwright going to, oh, that's an interesting drama that, you
00:10:22.640
They get invested in the characters, but they're sitting back absorbing it when the, when it's
00:10:27.240
verbatim, they're leaning forward, trying to hear every word because they know these are
00:10:30.900
the words that were actually said by real people.
00:10:33.060
And, you know, it hasn't been easy getting actors for Obamacate.
00:10:37.360
We've, we've, we've lost a few, you know, for various reasons and we don't know why.
00:10:42.260
Same with Ferguson, nine of the actors walked out and, you know, they walked out.
00:10:48.220
These were African-Americans giving, getting their voices in the theater because it was eyewitness
0.70
00:10:53.260
accounts from the grand jury testimony and, you know, the, the, the, so, so they don't
00:11:01.680
They'd rather have some black lives matter activists tell you what the street is thinking
00:11:06.440
rather than people on the street speaking for themselves.
00:11:10.840
And it tells you a lot about the acting profession, about who they're really speaking for.
00:11:14.600
And when you talk about that whitewashing, that's particularly important because I know
1.00
00:11:18.360
when you and Anne announced this project, you had mentioned that Showtime is doing some
00:11:22.660
big special, but instead of basing it on the transcripts, which are publicly available,
00:11:29.000
They're basing it off of a very, you know, I don't even know what a self-aggrandizing version
00:11:35.680
of event through the, through the eyes of, of James Comey.
00:11:38.900
And they're getting, I think you said a $40 million budget that they're putting towards
00:11:43.480
this, whereas you and Anne are crowdfunding, I think you're, you're down to $103,000 or
00:11:50.320
You're doing this and it's going to be better at a fraction of the budget.
00:11:54.680
They're spending $40 million and I've seen, it's a mini series.
00:12:00.180
It's really turgid and boring and they don't do the, I mean, there's so much verbatim drama
00:12:09.680
You don't need to fictionalize when the real story is as exciting as this one is.
00:12:14.100
I mean, they're doing honey traps in a pub in London.
00:12:16.840
They're, they're, they're lying to the FISA courts.
00:12:19.400
You know, there's an agent who, who rewrites an email to, you know, Carter Page, you go,
00:12:24.680
why was Carter Page so, so involved with dodgy Russians?
1.00
00:12:28.120
Turns out Carter Page was working for the CIA and that was for free.
00:12:34.080
That he, as a patriot, he decided to work for the CIA and feed information, meet these dodgy
00:12:39.660
Russians, feed information back to the CIA.
1.00
00:12:42.380
The CIA wrote to the FBI and said, don't be suspicious of this guy meeting dodgy people.
00:12:48.500
They rewrote that email and said, oh, actually he's not working for the CIA.
00:12:53.820
Then they used his dodgy connections for Russians to get warrants to surveil the whole of the
0.92
00:13:03.540
Why would you, why would you have to fictionalize it?
00:13:06.100
Why would you have to rely on James Comey's version of events when, when the truth, I
00:13:15.860
I mean, you're, and you're right about this and you've got a great cast too.
00:13:21.680
They did a great job in Lovebirds and I know we'll do well in this.
00:13:25.260
I have to ask, you know, the, the fact that you're crowdfunding, is that just something
00:13:29.300
you want to do or is there genuinely no studio money behind anything like this from the perspective
00:13:36.520
Yeah, there's no, no studio, no studio money behind it at all.
00:13:41.260
You can go to ObamaGateMovie.com if you'd like to help.
00:13:46.580
I mean, it's funny when we first came to Hollywood, you know, eight or nine years ago, there was
00:13:51.940
a feeling that you could go to a studio and pitch your best.
00:13:54.800
And of course they're all liberal, but they would give you a hearing and maybe once in
00:14:01.980
Now it's very clear that that's not going to happen because even if there was some guy
00:14:06.500
up there who would want to make this, the employees would walk out like they have at
00:14:12.560
the New York times, like they have even at the wall street journal, they would say, we
00:14:20.360
Uh, you know, so there is no chance that Hollywood would make this even if they wanted to.
00:14:27.320
And you know, because their, their, their woke staff will not tolerate this.
00:14:38.180
It's a terrible disaster for fun and entertainment because you've got three hours of
00:14:42.260
turgid James Comey prose opposed to, uh, uh, one hour and 10 minutes of our sex romp
00:14:49.820
meets, uh, John le Carrier meets, uh, you know, Mrs. uh, the Vickers coming, get your
00:14:59.520
I I've had this conversation with you before, and I mentioned it briefly at the beginning
00:15:04.860
I think it's important for conservatives to support conservative friendly art and in this
00:15:10.500
context film, but I also think it's important for any movie or product that is really aiming
00:15:16.580
at a bit of a conservative audience to be good.
00:15:19.060
And I've always admired that your stuff is good quality first before it's ideological
00:15:27.260
A lot of people, I think, just think that, you know, they're going to put something out
00:15:30.040
and because they put an eagle and a flag on it, everyone's going to buy it.
00:15:37.440
What's your message to conservatives that a lot of the time just complain about Hollywood.
00:15:41.940
They complain about the bias, complain about all of that stuff, but don't really do anything
00:15:45.920
to support the work that is out there for them.
00:15:48.900
Well, I mean, you're just, you're terrible, right?
00:15:51.560
You know, if there's a conservative movie out there and you can't go to it, buy a ticket
00:15:56.040
online. If there's a conservative book out there, buy the book, give it to someone as
00:16:06.780
You see billionaires, conservative billionaires giving 40 million to the Lincoln Center for
00:16:12.260
the Arts to make product that's attacking them.
00:16:18.460
Stop giving money to your alma mater to attack America.
00:16:28.120
But people who don't fund and don't buy books and don't buy DVDs and don't buy, I mean, there's
00:16:39.960
Maybe you can't go, but you should buy a ticket, you know, and you could find it's the number
00:16:47.500
And suddenly, when it's number one, the great thing about, you know, people, when they hear
00:16:51.940
something's number one, they automatically want to go and see it, even liberals.
00:17:02.320
Well said, and I appreciate the plug to my show as well.
00:17:05.900
Certainly people can contribute to that, but I also very much encourage them to head on
00:17:09.680
over to ObamagateMovie.com, and we'll have a link up there on the screen right now, and
00:17:15.080
chip in a few bucks if you can to Anne McElhenney's and Phelan McAleer's latest project.
00:17:24.440
Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.
00:17:26.560
Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.