Off The Cuff Declassified - John Cardillo - May 7⧸2018
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Summary
Former Secretary of State John Kerry has been engaging in shadow diplomacy to try to preserve the Iran nuclear deal, according to a new report from the Boston Globe. Is it possible that John Kerry knew that Iran was enriching nuclear material to weapons?
Transcript
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Today on Off the Cuff Declassified, former Secretary of State John Kerry, is he engaging
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in NATO diplomacy or is he just undermining anything Donald Trump tries to do?
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Former hostage of al-Qaeda's al-Nusra Front, Matt Schreier joins me.
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We're going to discuss the growing instability in the Middle East and the psyche behind it.
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Also, there were some really big crowds this weekend at a gun show in Broward County, Florida,
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And an Israeli private intelligence firm is debunking fake news that aides of Donald Trump
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The weakest, most failed Secretary of State in history is now engaging in shadow diplomacy.
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John Kerry, Obama's failed Secretary of State, one of the weakest, most inept people to ever
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hold any office or position in Washington, D.C., is trying to undermine the Trump administration.
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Remember, this is a guy who fell off a bike and broke his leg.
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This is a guy who rides around on a little girl's bike.
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He and Obama both rode around on little girl's bicycles.
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Maybe that should be the new rule of U.S. foreign policy.
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If you ride a little girl's bike, you're not allowed to negotiate on our behalf.
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I'm going to read you some excerpts from them, but first from CNN.
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Former Secretary of State John Kerry has been engaging in shadow diplomacy to try to preserve
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the Iran nuclear deal, a major diplomatic achievement of his, according to a new report.
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Over the recent months, Kerry has been holding meetings and speaking with big players in
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the Iran nuclear agreement who, like Kerry, do not want President Trump to withdraw from
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the U.S. deal, to withdraw the U.S. from the deal, the Boston Globe reported.
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So Kerry has been meeting with, oh, God, a whole host of bad guys, right?
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I always tell you on the show, in an investigation, timeline is everything.
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So let's discuss a nuance of this timeline not being picked up on by most in the media.
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Kerry sat down at the United Nations with Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, Iranian Foreign Minister
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Javad Zarif, to discuss ways of preserving the pact, limiting Iran's nuclear weapons program.
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It's the second time in two months, very important, second time in two months that the two had
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met to strategize over salvaging the deal they spent years negotiating during the Obama
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administration, according to a source briefed on the meetings.
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Because we only found out, we only found out what Israel had grabbed in that massive
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But why was John Kerry frantically meeting with, why was he frantically meeting with the
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Iranian Foreign Minister over the course of two months?
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He and Macron were sort of middle of the road on it.
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They weren't really committed to anything until that Israeli intelligence dropped.
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Well, that begs, that begs a really, really troubling question, a really important question,
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Did John Kerry know that the Iranians were cheating on the deal?
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Did John Kerry know the Iranians were enriching nuclear material to weaponize it?
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My personal opinion, I don't have any source information to back that up.
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I believe that John Kerry architected this deal to protect Iran's nuclear weapons program
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because we found out in those documents from the Israelis that Iran themselves said they were
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looking to enrich and manufacture five warheads, each with a 10 kiloton TNT yield.
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That's about equivalent to four to five times the power of bombs we dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
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They would essentially eradicate Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Riyadh, Amman, Jordan, and pick another city in the region.
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Is it possible that John Kerry and the Iranians cut a deal where Iran said,
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We'll keep them on short to medium range missiles that could only hit the region.
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Is it possible that John Kerry is frantically running around D.C. in the world meeting with
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the Iranians, meeting with the French, meeting with the German president, meeting with members
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Is it possible that he's doing that to cover his own ass?
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Is it possible he's doing that because he doesn't want it to come to light that he knew
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full well that Iran was enriching uranium for its and plutonium for its nuclear weapons
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program and not for medical or scientific research?
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Like Netanyahu said, you don't bury centrifuges underground if they're for experimenting with
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Previous administrations, especially secretaries of state who are out there making a lot of money
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on the speaking circuit, Kerry's wife is worth six hundred and some odd million dollars.
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Why is he walking around worried, running around really frantically like a chicken with his head
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cut off, worried about this deal unless he's going to be personally implicated in something
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and other members of the Obama administration, maybe Obama himself, Valerie Jarrett, Susan Rice,
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Why are they running around like chickens with their head cut off trying to preserve this deal
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unless they're going to be implicated in something disgusting, something filthy, something nefarious
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like them knowing Iran was enriching nuclear materials for weaponization but not telling anyone
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and the U.S. government was helping them hide it.
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Did the Obama administration cut a deal to fund Iran's nuclear weapons program?
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But as an investigator, that's where it's taking me.
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That's where what's going on, the evidence, the deal itself, the fact that the whole world
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knows Iran can't be trusted, the Obama administration's just obstinance on defending Iran as being
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It's pulling me to investigate John Kerry, what he knew before he sold the world on this deal
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The only collusion we keep getting irrefutable proof of is collusions.
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It's collusion by Democrats, by members of Team Hillary and Team Obama with bad actors.
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We have ironclad proof of Hillary, Clinton, colluding with Fusion GPS, Glenn Simpson over
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there, Christopher Steele, who created the dossier, her colluding with people like John
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Brennan, disgraced, horrible, far left Obama CIA director, James Comby, Andrew McCabe, now
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both under criminal referral by Congress and or the OIG, who, the Department of Justice,
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we know Hillary was colluding with Christopher Steele, the foreign spy, who was colluding
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with Russian actors to create a fake news dossier on Trump.
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We know Hillary Clinton colluded with her law firm, Perkins Coie, to hide campaign money
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to pay Fusion GPS through that law firm, probably in violation of many, many campaign finance
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They could kill people in Times Square on New Year's Eve, and they'd get away with it
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And now we know, we have irrefutable proof that John Kerry, former Secretary of State,
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Secretary of State, weak, failed, is colluding with Iran.
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It's irrefutable proof he's colluding with Iran.
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Now, the CNN story, the Boston Globe story, I'm sorry, goes on to say, the rare moves by
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a former Secretary of State highlight the stakes for Kerry personally, as well as for other
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Obama-era diplomats who are dismayed by what they see as Trump's disruptive approach to
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Now, this is from Michael O'Hanlon, a foreign policy expert at the Brookings Institution.
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He says, quote, it is unusual for a former Secretary of State to engage in foreign policy
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like this as an actual diplomat and quasi-negotiator.
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Well, it's inappropriate, unprecedented, and probably, probably highly illegal.
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Part of the equation is if Ernie, former U.S. Energy Secretary, who has hair like he's in
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some kind of, I don't know, he looks like one of Willy Wonka's employees at the chocolate
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factory or some kind of Hans Christian Anderson character.
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So, Ernest Moniz, the former Secretary, or John, I mean, John Kerry, made a bold statement.
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Trump is crazy, and he might do the opposite just to spite.
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Trump is crazy, and he might do the opposite just to spite them.
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You don't want him to go in just to be spiteful, said one source who has worked with Kerry.
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And the crime would be 18 U.S. Code 953, more commonly known as the Logan Act, private
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Any citizen of the United States, John Kerry, wherever he may be, who, without authority of
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the United States, John Kerry, directly or indirectly commences or carries on any correspondence
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or intercourse, intercourse and being used in a different context in terms of communication
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here, with any foreign government or any officer or agent thereof, with the intent to influence
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the measures of conduct of any foreign government or of any officer or agent thereof.
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Now, morons say, well, General Flynn did that with Sergey Kislyak, and that's why he was
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General Flynn was the national security advisor elect.
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So, with any foreign government or of any officer or agent thereof in relation to any
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disputes or controversies with the United States or to defeat the measures of the United States
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shall be fined under this title or in prison not more than three years or both.
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This section shall not abridge the right of a citizen to apply himself or his agent to
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any foreign government or agent thereof for redress of any injury which he may have sustained
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from such government or any of its agents or subject.
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Meaning, you can sue a foreign government, so you can meet with a foreign lawyer to sue
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You can't collude, and you can't engage in foreign policy that undermines the U.S.
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Oh, you violated the Logan Act, or you violated the Hatch Act, you used your office to campaign.
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Those terms, those laws are thrown around, they're bantered around, and most people
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Any citizen of the United States, John Kerry, wherever he may be, whether it's at the United
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Nations, in New York, or in Europe, without authority of the United States, which John
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Kerry does not have, who directly or indirectly commences or carries on any correspondence or
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intercourse with any foreign government or any officer or agent thereof.
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John Kerry, by his own admission, met with Kavid Zarath, the Iranian foreign minister,
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But right now, he has satisfied every element of the statute with the intent to influence
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the measures or conduct of any foreign government or of any officer or agent thereof.
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Meeting with them so that they put pressure on the United States.
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He's meeting with Iran to influence their conduct towards the United States in relation to any
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disputes or controversies with the United States, we're in a dispute over the Iran deal, or to
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They'll be fine under this title or in prison, not more than three years or both.
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As a guy who was in law enforcement, I'm telling you, this would be one of the easiest charges
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for federal law enforcement to level with John Kerry's own words, actions, and paper trail.
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If only we had an attorney general who was willing to act like one.
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If only Jeff Sessions would charge John Kerry with the Logan Act violation tomorrow.
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And I fear that morons like John Kerry are going to keep getting away with this.
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What he is doing is subverting the United States of America, and he needs to be charged
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John Kerry needs to be criminally charged today.
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With all the volatility going on in the Middle East, John Kerry out there trying to engage
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And now Israel saying they have intelligence that Iran wants to launch missiles into their
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nation in retaliation for the strikes in Syria.
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We see many, many experts, but experts in quotes out there on cable news, broadcast news, digital
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But I wanted to talk to somebody who's been around the bad guys, been around the bad guys
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Matthew Schreier, author of The Dawn Prayer, first American to ever escape al-Qaeda custody
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You've seen Matt on the show before when he told us his story.
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Now I want to bring Matt in as a subject matter expert on the region.
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He did a lot of work in Syria as a photojournalist prior to being captured.
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What's your opinion of those in regards to, well, let's go back a step.
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A lot of people say they don't believe it was Assad using the gas.
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I've seen no evidence in this case that it was him.
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In previous cases, like the last one, which was way out in Idlib province, that was most
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likely him because you figure why would the jihadi smuggle gas all the way to the east
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But in this case, the gas attack came in an area after he already won.
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In eastern Ghouta, he basically took that area after like five years of it being besieged.
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So there was really no point, militarily speaking, for him to do a gas attack.
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What would his endgame have been there if he already gained ground?
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Would it have been maybe there was an insurgency rising up there?
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What would have been—you've been on the ground all over that country.
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You know Syria better than many intelligence and special operations people I talk to because
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of the way you were able to navigate without restrictions.
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What would the endgame for him be were it Assad who launched the gas?
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I mean, the only thing that I can think of is just basically thumbing his nose at the
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international community saying that he's basically going to do what he wants.
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And if he wants to launch gas, he'll launch gas, even if he doesn't need to.
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I mean, that's the only logical explanation there is for it.
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Does it get Assad to look to the U.S. and think twice about what he's doing?
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You dealt with the pre-Syrian army who were fighting his people.
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You also dealt with Syrian army regulars when you were incarcerated while you were held
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And you told me on the show last time that they treated you pretty well.
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What what does this do for Assad with regard to does he say, hey, I've got to cooperate
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with the rest of the world or I need to get closer with Iran and Russia?
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I mean, in one regard, you know, there are multiple factions of that question.
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No, I mean, we're always going to give Russia a heads up and Russia is always going to give
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So in terms of casualties and whatnot, it's always going to be limited, if not none.
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And, you know, my friends who live over there, who I was locked up with, you know, they said
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But on the flip side, at least it shows that we have a president who's going to act.
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He's going to he's going to live up to his word.
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You know, you look at Barack Obama drawing a red line in disappearing ink and everything
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that happened after he made that statement, you know, after he said there's a red line
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if you use chemical weapons and he did nothing, Putin moved in and took over the skies.
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You had ISIS form the Islamic State, their own country.
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So when you don't back up your words with action, there are consequences.
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So in this case, at least there were consequences, doesn't whether they were serious or not is
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Send a message, say, I'm going to act, but not kill anybody in the process.
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Don't kill anyone and then see if he doesn't get the message.
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It was a polite, expensive way to bomb that message to give some bodies.
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But but but at the end of the day, you know, it accomplished the goal.
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Like he knows that there's there are going to be consequences for his actions.
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So when you were you were held hostage by Al Qaeda, the Al-Nusra Front.
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But in many respects, it was unusual captor captive relationship because they would actually
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You got to see literally inside the inner workings of their organization.
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The other groups in the area at the time that were the predominant insurgent factions were
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And Ahad Arsham was it was another major power in the area.
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What what influence of any that Iran have on them?
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Was Iran giving them any material support, financial support, military advisory support?
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Or were they exclusively working with the Assad regime?
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The guys that I was with, you know, Iran is is exclusively with the the regime and Hezbollah,
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So the guys funding, you know, Al Qaeda and ISIS, most likely are, you know, Saudi Arabia,
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Qatar, you know, the nations that are against the regime.
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So so the speculation that Saudi Arabia has always played both sides of the fence with
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Well, I mean, I didn't see it, but I presume in Qatar, I pretty much know because they negotiated
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And if you could pick up the phone and call the bad guys and do something like that, obviously,
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And just to clarify for the audience, your cellmate was in the last name.
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He eventually Qatar brokered a deal where he his release was secured with money, right?
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Well, I mean, he's never admitted that they say a humanitarian act, but I know a little
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better, you know, people, what people at home need to realize is when you keep somebody
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alive for 22 months, right, you have to feed them, you have to shelter them, you want to
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get, you want to get a return, you want to get a return on your investment.
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And they're not going to hand him over as a humanitarian act for Barack Obama, who's
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the one who needed the political victory five days after James Foley died.
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They cut the deal for for Theo Curtis right after Foley was beheaded.
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So, I mean, you look at the timing, it was, and then, you know, John Kerry is proclaiming
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him a victory for America, even though he knew the guy was basically a traitor.
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And you look at the Obama administration, you know, that's like a common theme where they
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bring home traitors and portray them as victories.
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I'm two thirds of the way through that with my schedule.
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I got two thirds through and then my schedule got insane.
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But it's, it really is a fascinating read because you knock out the first, oh, you can
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If you've got the time to do it, you really can.
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It's a very, very quick read, but a lot of this is detailed in the book.
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And we're going to be, you and I are going to be doing another segment where we talk about
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all of the discrepancy that Theo Curtis had given the mainstream media, as opposed to what
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I'm going to invite Theo on the show to refute or to confirm these things that he said.
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So it's going to be an interesting segment for the audience coming up.
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But I want to go back because you brought up John Kerry.
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So now John Kerry is out there engaging in this, what he calls shadow, or other people
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are calling shadow diplomacy with Iran to try to get Iran to, uh, to preserve this Iran
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deal, to get Iran to put pressure on the U S give me a little bit about the psyche, the
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Muslim psyche, the psyche of a state sponsor of terror in many respects, or a state sponsor
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You and I have had these conversations offline.
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I mean, they've got to be looking at Kerry as some kind of patsy that they can roll over.
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I mean, that's, that's the goal of Iran here is, is, is to get as much as they can from
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And, you know, they're never going to keep their word ever.
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I mean, they, I mean, look, they're the biggest sponsor of terror in the world.
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And we're cutting deals, billion dollar deals with these people and they're not showing us
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And, you know, that's the psyche of, you know, any third world country who's, who's
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They're going to, they're always going to try to cut deals, but they're never going to
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I mean, you know, you just look, look, look at history.
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So, so what was the, explain really quickly for the audience, Matt, what the goals of
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the four factions, it was the free Syrian army, free Syrian army, ISIS on loose in front
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And the other group you mentioned was called the.
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Were they all trying to occupy as much of Syria as possible?
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Well, I mean, at first they were united, then they started splitting up and fighting with
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But yeah, they all wanted like Al Nasser wants their own emirate.
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They want to basically turn Idlib province into their own country.
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ISIS just wanted to, you know, take as much as possible.
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But the Kurds, you know, you have them too, they, they, who have risen up since then,
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You have the Turks who want to get rid of the Kurds and clear the border out.
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And then you have the government fighting pretty much all of them with Iran and Hezbollah.
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And there are, and there are all these other factions too.
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I mean, there's the army of Islam, but I mean, this is where I was in the, in the north,
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Those were like the main, main factions at the time.
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But I mean, yeah, they all want their own country.
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But we've seen, we, we watch, you know, we, the audience, I'm sure you do as well.
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We watch cable news, we read stories on the web, we listen to talk radio, and we hear all
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these experts saying, well, we've got these plans on how to stabilize Syria post this wake
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And it involves bringing Turkey into the fold and getting Iran to abandon the Shia Crescent.
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But you were there, you were listening to these guys talk from the inside, the insurgents.
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You, you were able to hear what intelligence they were gathering about the Assad regime,
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because they really didn't think you were a threat, right?
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They didn't know you were a Jewish guy from Long Island.
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They thought you were the German Christian American photographer who was being a good
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hostage and not trying to make too many waves, but for one escape attempt.
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So it got to a point, you told me, where they started to be relatively free in front of
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No, I mean, you know, they didn't share their plans with me, but they shared their opinions
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But, you know, in regards, so what was the exact question?
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What I was going to say was, so with regards to these theories or these plans, these strategic
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concepts floated by these experts, what is the likelihood of getting Iran to abandon the
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What is the likelihood of bringing Turkey into the fold to stabilize the region?
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To me, some of these proposals, they look great on paper, but they seem undoable practically.
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Well, I mean, getting Iran to do anything is pretty much impossible.
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The only way you're ever really going to get their cooperation is if you side against the
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I mean, they didn't care what was going on in Syria until the Kurds started building up
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And they were like, hey, you know, we're not going to let this happen.
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And, you know, when I was in Turkey, you know, I would you would turn on the TV and see Kurds
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protesting peacefully and they would just move in with like the riot squash and start tear
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Literally, literally, literally like these peaceful, peaceful protesters.
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So they they have been suppressed for a long time, the Kurds.
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So the Turks do have a lot to worry about in that regard if they set up their own country.
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So they are never going to settle for anything that, you know, builds up a Turkish.
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Legitimizes the Kurds and brings them to the table in a meaningful sense.
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They're never, ever going to going to go along with that.
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So as long as you know, as long as we're packing the Kurds, which creates the problem.
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It occurs in Turkey's pissed off at us because we're NATO, they're NATO.
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We're backing the Kurds and the whole thing's a mess.
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So we, so what you're saying is we'd have to completely abandon the Kurds to get Turkey
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But then it's, you know, questionable whether they would come to the table anyway.
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Now, it's always questionable, but it's not like we haven't abandoned the Kurds
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before, you know, but look what we did with in desert store.
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And we just pretty much didn't do anything, but I'm not saying that's what we should do
00:29:09.380
now, but it's just, yeah, no, the whole country's a mess.
00:29:12.760
And then, you know, you have all these other different factions.
00:29:14.600
You have the government and, you know, people like Hillary Clinton who are like, yeah, we
00:29:18.980
should, you know, we need to get rid of Assad and this and that.
00:29:21.140
And it's just like, look, his military is fiercely loyal to him.
00:29:26.860
By the way, you know, you know, tomorrow, if anybody watches this in the mainstream media,
00:29:29.880
tomorrow, the New York Times headline is going to be Shire recommends, Shire recommends abandoning
00:29:37.360
They'll be, they'll be cherry picking, cherry picking my lines.
00:29:40.960
But, uh, so anyway, so, uh, yeah, no, as far as, you know, when people are like, you
00:29:46.240
got to get rid of the Assad guy, get rid of Assad.
00:29:51.660
That's what people leave out of all these conversations.
00:29:53.900
And the only way to get rid of a dictator whose military is fiercely loyal is to go
00:30:00.100
And we already tried that in Iraq and it didn't really work out for us.
00:30:03.660
So in this case, you know, as terrible as he is.
00:30:16.980
He just maintains stability in the country for them.
00:30:22.640
These guys, you were in a cell, but you let them know these guys very, very well.
00:30:31.000
This is high quality intelligence, 18 soldiers.
00:30:37.080
One is that they were all Alawi, which is a Shia sect of, of Islam.
00:30:49.820
So if, so, you know, if they, if they lost their dictator, they'd be facing genocide and
00:30:55.760
basically, you know, you know, deportation and stuff like that.
00:31:00.280
Tribal, tribalism and personal survival in those respects.
00:31:03.220
Partially, but a lot of his military is also Sunni.
00:31:06.820
Like I, they threw a general in with us at one point who was a Sunni and he was fiercely
00:31:12.500
And that, and that is where, what you just said comes into play where it's like stability.
00:31:17.280
Like they know that he brings a certain level of stability to the country without being too
00:31:24.240
So, I mean, under Assad, before all this happened, you know, women could walk around wearing makeup.
00:31:29.040
Uh, they sold alcohol, they could smoke cigarettes.
00:31:31.860
They had, you know, basic freedoms that they know are gone.
00:31:35.180
The second, you know, the FSA or, you know, the extremists take over because let's face
00:31:40.020
it, if the FSA takes over, the extremists are going to bump them out and take over anyway.
00:31:45.420
So they know that it's, it's either Assad or basically Baghdadi.
00:31:52.720
And, and Baghdadi takes over somebody like him, right?
00:31:56.100
Somebody like him, Golani, who's the head of, uh, Al-Nosra.
00:32:00.320
So it's, it's either, you know, you're with extremists or you have this guy Assad who, let's
00:32:08.260
But as far as we go and Israel goes, the guy knows this place.
00:32:11.800
You know, Israel flies in there every couple of weeks, months, drops a bunch of, drops
00:32:16.940
a bunch of bombs and goes home and he never does anything.
00:32:19.580
He doesn't want, he doesn't want, he talks stuff, but he doesn't want to dust it up.
00:32:22.680
But Israel, but you know, what's interesting is that, you know, you know, he's a bad guy.
00:32:30.160
But I've got a friend, a guy who, uh, American guy, but he's Syrian and a very successful
00:32:37.060
Both of his parents are doctors, very, very well off.
00:32:40.180
He was born, he and his sister were born here and his brother, but his parents are from Damascus
00:32:44.480
and his mother was an Olympic swimmer and basketball player, secular Muslim.
00:32:51.440
Not only, you know, when they dated, there was no problem, right?
00:32:54.920
And he, the country had been relatively stable.
00:32:57.380
His relatives only left when ISIS started to grow.
00:33:02.360
They were physicians, they were attorneys, they were CPAs.
00:33:07.040
All Christian, the Christian side of his family, protected by Assad.
00:33:11.780
When ISIS started to proliferate, they then moved to Dubai.
00:33:15.940
They had money stashed to other places because the new Syria wasn't the most, I mean, it's
00:33:22.220
So they fled to Dubai, but they said, well, they lived in Damascus.
00:33:26.840
They only started to feel fear once ISIS started to gain a foothold in the country.
00:33:31.140
And so it's a conundrum for the U.S. in many respects.
00:33:36.480
And, but, but I mean, these are facts that a lot of people don't know.
00:33:38.980
Like Christians were protected and they weren't only protected, they were welcomed.
00:33:45.260
Like in the, in the coastal cities, Latakia and Tartus, where most of the guys I was with
00:33:49.840
were from, you know, they celebrate Christmas with their Christian neighbors.
00:33:55.800
It's like, uh, like I got a text from my friend Ali who I was locked up with on wishing me
00:34:05.920
And he called, he sent me a text like wishing me a Merry Christmas saying that, yeah, we're
00:34:10.460
Cause you know, Jesus was one of their prophets.
00:34:14.280
So they, so they, so they're very, very open to that.
00:34:16.640
And, you know, they have, they say, you know, some of us have Christmas trees.
00:34:20.920
So yeah, I mean, they were very open-minded about stuff like that.
00:34:24.540
And, uh, you know, it's a shame that more people don't know about it because, you know,
00:34:28.640
maybe they'd be like, all right, you know what?
00:34:30.440
You still a bastard, this, this Assad, but you know, what's the alternative?
00:34:39.620
You know, I look, I'm a hardliner in many respects, but I talked to this friend of mine
00:34:42.940
who's a pretty conservative guy, but he, his family lived it firsthand.
00:34:48.320
And, you know, I hate to sound elitist, Matt, but it's, but it's carries weight when you've
00:34:55.780
got a family that's wealthy, that was very prosperous, who left because of ISIS.
00:35:01.360
And then they had the means to go anywhere they wanted in the world.
00:35:04.180
It does make you think that, Hey, maybe we have to examine.
00:35:09.620
Letting bad actors be bad in their own countries if they can create stability in the world.
00:35:14.560
But my, my problem with Assad where I keep coming back and saying, you know, reason I
00:35:19.320
can't fully get there is his coziness with Russia and Iran.
00:35:22.640
So tell me this, what do you think we could do now, just from what you've heard?
00:35:26.300
I know you're not, you don't ever profess to be a foreign policy expert.
00:35:30.520
What do you think we could do to get him to back away from them and start listening to
00:35:34.540
I mean, I think the time for that might be, might be passed.
00:35:41.880
You know, he's, he's been giving them so much support for so many years to get them
00:35:44.720
to abandon him for us is, is kind of, it's kind of, you know, I don't think it's really
00:35:49.580
possible, but I mean, in terms of, I mean, he just screwed himself with the gas.
00:35:57.340
Like before he, he dropped the gas, I would have, I would have had a whole bunch of answers
00:36:00.560
for you on this, but once, once you drop gas and, you know, like I said, I haven't seen
00:36:05.360
evidence to this, but you know, I haven't seen evidence that he didn't do it either.
00:36:13.500
It makes it, it makes it really impossible for us to negotiate with him openly under the
00:36:17.720
table is the only way I would say that, that we should do it because, you know, like
00:36:23.560
I said, once you drop gas, you can't really negotiate with somebody in today's day and
00:36:28.380
But in terms of that, you know, we can talk to Russia, we can talk to Iran.
00:36:32.300
I mean, we're talking to North Korea for Christ's sake.
00:36:34.840
So, I mean, so, I mean, honestly, and whether we like it or not, Iran is a regional power
00:36:40.580
They, their intelligence is off the charts and their reach is extremely long.
00:36:46.200
So it, it suits us to maybe have conversations with them and Russia all at the same table to
00:36:52.040
figure out how to rein this in because, you know, the war, if you pay attention, is coming,
00:36:57.220
I'm not going to say coming to an end, but I mean, Assad is definitely wrapping things
00:37:03.440
And he's doing it in a way where like he, you know, every time he takes an area, they
00:37:07.720
are, they put it, everyone surrenders, they put them on buses and they ship them over to
00:37:11.760
And basically he's corralling all his bad, all the bad guys into one area.
00:37:16.340
And eventually he's going to be in a position where he can just bomb the hell out of it and
00:37:20.980
I thought he's going to wind up doing it either gas or just, just a straight up bombing
00:37:26.020
That doesn't end until pretty much they surrender.
00:37:31.540
And you know, that's, that's where we're heading.
00:37:33.880
So he's going to remain in power no matter what.
00:37:38.760
So, uh, you know, it's going to take everybody coming to the table and, you know, like I said,
00:37:44.460
with the Turks and the Kurds, you know, it's game of Thrones over there.
00:37:49.080
Yeah, Matt, I think this is going to be, uh, going to be something to walk.
00:37:55.800
I really want to talk about the discrepancies and Theo Curtis's claim to the New York Times
00:38:02.060
And what he said on the speaking circuit since he reminds me, he reminds me a lot of James
00:38:13.200
I want to, you want to want to get him on and see if we can't, uh, a figure out the truth.
00:38:17.980
And if the New York Times didn't vet any of this, I would love to be able to call them
00:38:23.100
So let's plan on doing that in the next few days.
00:38:32.060
As I mentioned before on the show, my home and the studio here are both about, well,
00:38:45.160
25, 35 minutes from Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.
00:38:49.220
So that shooting, that massacre really hit home for me.
00:38:52.300
In fact, I know many people from the conservative political movement down here who were personally
00:38:57.920
I know some people whose kids went to the school.
00:39:01.400
I've had him on the show in the past, former Navy SEAL, who's been a national security expert
00:39:14.800
When the shooting took place, his girlfriend, a senior, was inside the school.
00:39:19.140
Luckily, they were okay and they carried out one of the wounded.
00:39:21.760
He ran into the school, as you'd expect the son of a former Navy SEAL to do, and they carried
00:39:26.720
out one of their wounded friends, another student.
00:39:28.620
And so I know many, many people affected by it.
00:39:35.680
And the Broward County Commission held hearings to eliminate the Fort Lauderdale gun show held
00:39:41.400
in Fort Lauderdale at the War Memorial Auditorium.
00:39:44.800
And that's literally just a couple of neighborhoods over from where I live.
00:39:49.000
It's maybe two, two and a half miles down the road, if that, from my home, five-minute
00:39:56.440
So the gun show went down just this past weekend, the last two days.
00:40:00.080
I went on Saturday and I picked up a nifty little new toy, a little AR-15 pistol.
00:40:08.320
But I wanted to go because I wanted to see, A, if there were going to be protesters, B, how
00:40:14.460
And C, just wanted to see what new gear was out there.
00:40:17.600
And so I decided to go very early, well, relatively early on Saturday morning.
00:40:26.180
And typically when I go that time in the morning, it's not yet that crowded.
00:40:29.740
It typically gets crowded the show after one o'clock, noon to one.
00:40:35.340
Their concealed weapons class starts about two.
00:40:37.100
And you see people start filtering in lunchtime right after lunch.
00:40:43.000
I got there, like I said, a little before 11 a.m.
00:40:48.600
I had to park rows, five, six, seven rows back from where I normally do.
00:41:00.080
There were only a few protesters on the sidewalk outside.
00:41:06.540
And the Florida Sun Sentinel, the paper of record for Fort Lauderdale, Broward County, said they did a story on it.
00:41:14.840
And I think the story with its slant, Parkland slant, was pretty accurate in terms of crowd size.
00:41:20.120
They said gun lovers flocked to Fort Lauderdale's gun show on Saturday, knowing its days may be numbered because the county commission wants to do away with it.
00:41:28.040
But it's ridiculous because you know what I saw in that gun show?
00:41:43.480
There were people of all religions, all creeds, all races.
00:41:47.900
I saw a gay couple holding hands, looking at handguns.
00:42:07.020
I saw two people who were paraplegics in wheelchairs.
00:42:13.620
I would say a quarter of the crowd, if not a third of the crowd, were women.
00:42:17.920
And like I said, many families walking around with their kids.
00:42:20.760
You know, young sons and daughters, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, looking at that first .22 rifle.
00:42:29.800
The show is held, like I said, every other month or so.
00:42:34.780
It's held about seven, eight times a year, the Fort Lauderdale show at the War Memorial.
00:42:38.640
And really, from the studio where I said it's only about two miles down the road, it draws a nice crowd.
00:42:45.380
The police are there, but they don't bother you.
00:42:47.360
They're just chatting outside, kind of hanging around.
00:42:49.620
They're there really more to deal with traffic control and just in case anything happens.
00:42:56.920
And if you bring a firearm in, you can't bring a loaded gun in.
00:43:00.240
And if you bring in a firearm to have it repaired or looked at or sold or traded, the police inspect it, make sure it's unloaded, and they put a zip tie around the trigger.
00:43:09.840
So this notion that a bunch of, you know, weirdo right-wingers carrying loaded guns around the room with a million other guns, it's simply not true.
00:43:22.360
Was I able to take that gun, you know, look both ways and shove it in a paper bag and leave?
00:43:27.880
When I bought that gun, I had to sit down with the dealer.
00:43:30.640
I had to show him my concealed weapons license and my driver's license.
00:43:36.180
Some of the dealers still make you write out the form.
00:43:38.860
The dealer I purchased from actually had a new software that links right to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives.
00:43:46.840
So I entered all my information on the form digitally.
00:43:49.660
He submits my information electronically and there's a queue.
00:43:53.600
And in about five minutes, my background check had been run.
00:44:05.180
In fact, my driver's license has my previous address on it.
00:44:09.320
So this dealer was so thorough that he actually had me digitally find a utility bill.
00:44:15.920
And I found a utility bill from my water bill from the city in which I live.
00:44:20.960
And he had me PDF that on my phone and send it to him so he could attach that as a backup.
00:44:26.180
So he could say, okay, well, his driver's license has one address, which is fine.
00:44:32.280
His license is up for renewal in a couple of months.
00:44:37.440
And after doing all that, I was able to take my gun home with me.
00:44:41.600
But only because I have a concealed weapons license.
00:44:43.700
Had I not had a concealed weapons license, I would have had to wait five days to go pick
00:44:49.400
And so I wouldn't even be able to pick it up until later this week.
00:44:52.040
So the gun show loophole is a silly, silly thing.
00:44:55.460
That refers to, that doesn't really exist, face-to-face sales that are very, very rare.
00:45:00.320
In fact, many of the gun shows now don't allow you to engage in those kinds of transactions
00:45:08.980
They basically say, look, if you want to do that, you have to be off our grounds to do
00:45:17.200
And those dealer federal firearms license rules are filling out the paperwork.
00:45:23.380
Now, county commissioners informally agreed in April, about a month ago, April 3rd, from
00:45:30.560
the Sun Sentinel, that gun shows will not continue past November.
00:45:34.860
That's when the gun show promoters, the host's license expires with the city of Fort Lauderdale.
00:45:41.740
And this guy, Dean Trantalis, the new mayor of Fort Lauderdale, I live in Fort Lauderdale,
00:45:46.660
He says, quote, I fully respect the right of people to own guns.
00:45:49.940
I just don't feel we should have a gun show in the middle of Holiday Park, a playground where
00:45:54.000
children play soccer, volleyball, and baseball, end quote.
00:46:00.080
The park is a good 200 yards behind where the auditorium is, 100 yards to the fence,
00:46:12.680
It's literally around a major intersection and a good drive or a very long walk behind
00:46:19.320
The parking for the gun show, the ingress and egress, is the other direction from the
00:46:25.020
And so his assertion that this gun show is in the middle of a park is simply not true.
00:46:37.020
Now, families are bringing children to the gun show and the mayor of Fort Lauderdale, my
00:46:42.100
mayor, unfortunately, says, wow, what can I say?
00:46:45.900
How about responding by saying it's none of my business what families do with their children
00:46:52.940
Now, while all this is happening, of course, the liberal left will never tell you that
00:46:58.820
gun shows are family activities where nobody goes to buy guns illegally and shoot places
00:47:05.940
Hollywood is still lying because the NRA convention went down this week.
00:47:10.600
The NRA convention went down this week in Dallas and actress Alyssa Milano showed up in downtown
00:47:17.840
Dallas to protest to downtown Dallas to protest the NRA.
00:47:21.960
And I remember Will Haraway asked Milano security if he was armed and the man wasn't amused.
00:47:27.480
The man, Milano's armed security guard that I'm going to ask you to leave, he was a big
00:47:33.980
guy and he's this close into this guy, Will Haraway's face, pushing him, armed and pushing
00:47:44.260
Why is Alyssa Milano allowed to have people, law-abiding gun owners who are lawfully asking
00:47:50.000
questions in a park, physically strong-armed out of that park by armed guards?
00:47:55.060
The guard said, I'm going to need you on the sidewalk.
00:47:58.600
The guy started saying, and the crowd started saying, hypocrite, Alyssa, you're a hypocrite,
00:48:04.080
Now, Alyssa Milano and her friends were sitting there denouncing guns, denouncing guns, while
00:48:09.800
Alyssa Milano's security strong-armed people and pushed them out of the park for armed security
00:48:16.980
If that's at the height of liberal hypocrisy, what in the world is?
00:48:26.700
They want you to have rules that they don't impose on themselves.
00:48:31.240
I'm going to work very, very hard, very, very hard to preserve the gun show in Fort Lauderdale.
00:48:37.360
I think our county commission is engaging in knee-jerk reactionary policy.
00:48:53.240
I don't want the far left, the far left to dictate the policy.
00:48:58.740
Hundreds on the far left dictating policy that affects thousands of us.
00:49:03.020
And so we need to fight very hard to preserve American institutions like gun shows around
00:49:09.440
The crowd was calm, going about their business, all races, all religions, all sexual orientations.
00:49:16.040
A group of Americans who got together for one purpose, to enjoy their Second Amendment, their constitutional rights.
00:49:39.840
Now, last week, The Guardian wrote a story revealed Trump team hired spy firm for dirty
00:49:47.320
And the story said that AIDS to Donald Trump, the U.S. president hired an Israeli private
00:49:51.940
intelligence agency to orchestrate a dirty ops campaign against key individuals from the
00:49:56.940
Obama administration who helped negotiate the Iran nuclear deal.
00:50:02.560
President Trump's camp contacted private investigators to get dirt on Ben Rhodes.
00:50:16.480
Oh, my God, the Trump campaign is worse than Hillary Clinton, even though it wouldn't have
00:50:20.280
been because he's a sitting president and he can use whatever he wants to dig up dirt
00:50:25.140
on people that are undermining as foreign policy as John Kerry has been.
00:50:28.900
Well, the story said, the story went on to say, and this is where it gets really good, sources
00:50:36.040
said that officials linked to Trump's team contacted investigators days after Trump visited
00:50:48.600
A source with details of the dirty tricks campaign said the idea was that people acting
00:50:52.060
for Trump would discredit those who are pivotal in selling the deal, making it easier to pull
00:50:57.540
We don't need, we don't need to discredit team Obama.
00:51:03.460
Investigators were told to contact prominent Iranian Americans as well as pro deal journalists
00:51:07.360
from the New York Times, MSNBC television, the Atlantic's, the Vox website, and Haaretz,
00:51:11.940
the Israeli left-leaning Israeli newspaper, among others, who had frequent contact with Rhodes
00:51:17.040
and Khal in an attempt to establish whether they had violated any protocols by sharing sensitive
00:51:23.760
They are believed to have looked at comments made by Rhodes in a 2016 New York Times
00:51:27.320
profile in which he admitted relying on inexperienced reporters to create an echo chamber that
00:51:35.540
Well, it seems like a pretty elaborate black ops, dirty ops operation by Trump team, right?
00:51:40.780
To discredit Ben Rhodes and Hillary Clinton and John Kerry and Barack Obama and Susan Rice
00:51:46.920
and Samantha Power and all the other people around Team Obama who worked on this disastrous Iran deal.
00:51:54.440
Well, the only problem is none of it ever happened.
00:52:00.280
None of it ever happened because Haaretz, one of the newspapers, one of the outlets that
00:52:07.720
was cooperating with Ben Rhodes in selling the Iran deal, had to report, had to walk us back
00:52:16.720
and report, quote, Israeli spy firm Black Cube denies Trump aides hired it to discredit ex-Obama
00:52:26.940
The private intelligence company, however, does not deny or confirm that it was hired
00:52:33.280
It goes on to say, Israeli private intelligence company Black Cube strongly denied on Sunday
00:52:38.840
that it was hired by, this is just yesterday, that it was hired by aides to U.S. President
00:52:43.140
Donald Trump to spy on former Obama administration officials.
00:52:47.120
And also Newsmax ran the story and ran with it a little bit in more detail, quote, Black Cube,
00:52:54.340
this is from Black Cube, the intelligence firm, quote, Black Cube has no relation whatsoever
00:52:58.140
to the Trump administration or Trump aides to anyone close to the administration or to
00:53:04.200
Anyone who claims otherwise is misleading their readers and viewers.
00:53:12.560
Now, you would have thought that The Guardian, The Observer, The New York Times, The Washington
00:53:18.000
Post, CNN, Haaretz, and all these other outlets would have contacted Black Cube for this statement
00:53:28.960
They were far more interested, far more interested in spreading fake news than they will, fake
00:53:34.380
news that would malign the Donald Trump team, Donald Trump's team, the Donald Trump administration,
00:53:39.100
that would preserve the Iran deal, that would paint John Kerry and Barack Obama in a good
00:53:44.960
They would much rather run that than fact check because walking back a story gets far
00:53:55.160
And I'm going to expose things like this every single time they happen.
00:54:00.020
And I'm going to stay on them because this wasn't just fake news.
00:54:09.600
They lied to you based on anonymous sources to push an agenda when all they had to do
00:54:16.520
They chose not to do that until the company itself, all the reports, got out there and
00:54:28.440
And this is why people despise and disrespect an mainstream news.