Episode 17 - Tiger King Lessons. Hot Mic Scandal. Rosenstein Exposed.
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
169.5671
Summary
Rod Rodsenstein testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee, and he is exposed as a total joke as someone who was asleep at the wheel at best during the coup attempt of the Trump presidency, and at worst as someone complicit with and part of a corrupt coup to unseat the duly elected president of the United States.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
you ever watch this guy on television you all were not telling the truth and you should not
00:00:06.100
be trusted congressman matt gates thank you for what you did for your country today be offended
00:00:09.760
with the democratic whip not house republicans like a machine matt gates
00:00:13.940
welcome to hot takes this is congressman matt gates let's talk about the news mr rosenstein
00:00:21.200
thank you very much for coming to the committee rod rosenstein testifies before the senate
00:00:25.760
judiciary committee today and he is exposed as a total joke as someone who was asleep at the wheel
00:00:34.480
at best during the coup attempt of the trump presidency and at worst someone who was complicit
00:00:40.860
with and part of a corrupt coup to unseat the duly elected president of the united states and the
00:00:47.860
testimony today really showcases the role of these secret fisa courts and how willing members of our
00:00:55.440
own government were to use these courts for their political purposes not for any legitimate
00:01:01.720
investigative purpose so rosenstein is a key figure in all of this because he you know writes the scope
00:01:08.780
memo for muller he really unleashes muller despite the lack of a predicate but also because rod rosenstein
00:01:16.620
himself signed renewals of the fisa applications of the spying requests before the secret court he signed
00:01:26.100
those regarding carter page regarding someone that they believe to be potentially around elements of
00:01:33.040
the trump campaign and he did so without a legitimate basis and i think he knew there was no legitimate
00:01:39.400
basis and so i had what i thought was a very simple question for rod rosenstein in 2018 and you can just
00:01:46.860
listen to this clip and see what a weasel the guy is you know when when you're asked an honest question
00:01:52.560
you should just give an honest answer right and so i'm asking rosenstein with his signatures on these
00:01:58.360
documents where now we know that even the fbi knew that the document is based on this dossier the
00:02:05.360
sub sources of the dossier are targeted by russian intelligence to undermine and interfere with our
00:02:11.860
election of president trump and so rosenstein has all that and he signs it and i just want to know
00:02:17.860
did you read it did you read the document that bears your signature i mean hell the reason we require
00:02:24.880
these people to sign these documents is to attest as to their validity their legitimacy that it's not
00:02:31.660
just someone like clinesmith the lawyer that was doctoring emails and changing evidence that it's
00:02:37.600
actually someone with some substantial role in our government like rod rosenstein who would sign and
00:02:44.360
approve this type of a spying endeavor and like look this isn't just like going and spying on some
00:02:50.220
you know drug cartel or some you know street level gang i mean this is spying that is related to
00:02:57.500
the election and service of the president of the united states so if you're going to read any of
00:03:02.760
these like you would think that you would read this one and i just want to know rosenstein when people
00:03:07.940
were trying to spy on the president did you read the freaking document did you read the fisa application
00:03:13.480
before you signed it i'm not going to comment about any fisa application so you won't say to this
00:03:17.420
committee whether or not you even read the document you signed that authorized spying on people
00:03:22.900
associated with the trump campaign well i i dispute your characterization of what that fisa is about
00:03:28.660
sir did you read it or did you not i'll be happy you signed it well i'll explain the process to you
00:03:33.940
did you thoroughly review it yes or no explain the process to you and so now fast forward to 2020
00:03:38.580
today rod rosenstein testifying before senator lindsey graham's judiciary committee and this is what
00:03:45.060
rosenstein has to say if you knew then what you know now would you have signed the warrant application
00:03:49.040
no i would not and the reason you wouldn't have is because mr hoarts found that its sculptory
00:03:55.800
information was withheld from the court is that correct among other reasons and somebody actually
00:04:01.280
altered an email now i'm sure that in the legal circles of the beltway of washington dc rod rosenstein
00:04:08.440
would be heralded as some great guy but i gotta tell you one way to avoid regretting the things you do
00:04:17.340
is to try to ask the right questions do the homework be diligent be hard working and rod rosenstein
00:04:25.360
was derelict in his duty as the deputy attorney general of the united states when he did not read
00:04:32.240
these fisa applications and ask tough questions about them he was acting functionally against our
00:04:38.840
government when he was joking about you know wearing a wire on the president and potentially invoking the
00:04:45.300
25th amendment against the president rod rosenstein was a bad deputy attorney general he didn't do his
00:04:51.880
job and the things he did do undermined the department of justice they undermined the delivery
00:04:58.040
of justice in this country and good thing there were a few of us out there exposing this russia hoax
00:05:04.020
fighting against it folks like devin nunez and mark meadows and ron desantis and jim jordan and i
00:05:09.940
you know it was a small group at the very beginning but now we know the truth we know the truth is that
00:05:15.520
this was a corrupt investigation that it was based on politics not a real counterintelligence threat
00:05:21.240
that michael flynn never was out there engaging in any like disruptive or undermining behavior with
00:05:27.900
the russians he was just trying to keep everything copacetic at the end of the obama russia foreign
00:05:34.360
policy failures so that the trump administration would have an ability to to restore some world
00:05:40.280
order and de-conflict with russia where we could and perhaps in places like syria or on the turkish
00:05:46.900
border and oh by the way our relationship with russia is better under the trump administration and while
00:05:53.040
that doesn't mean that russia isn't a malign actor while it doesn't mean that we're ready to share values
00:05:59.060
with them and embrace them as a friend and ally it sure is helpful that you know the russians
00:06:04.800
de-conflicted with us and de-conflicted with the turks and the kurds and the syrians so as to not see
00:06:11.520
even more bloodshed so again i'm not here to wave the pom-poms for the russians but certainly
00:06:17.160
the thinking of you know neocon cold war obama administration officials was proven false and the
00:06:25.680
work of rod rosenstein was proven either ineffective or corrupt or lazy or derelict and in any of those
00:06:35.200
circumstances it is truly a shame that rod rosenstein ever served as the deputy attorney general
00:06:40.220
and i sure as hell hope that going forward in his legal career he'll at least read the documents he
00:06:45.840
signs we've got a hot mic alert on hot takes today a key member of the democratic leadership having a
00:06:54.960
hot mic moment that has him in hot water you know i've never had a hot mic moment myself which is
00:07:02.360
a bit surprising i usually i'm pretty free to say what i think in almost any circumstance but
00:07:07.520
but maybe it wouldn't be so bad for me you know maybe if you've got some of these like
00:07:10.980
stuffier congressmen and they have a hot hot mic moment and people think you realize what they're
00:07:16.420
actually thinking uh that uh that would be damning to their political career but i figure i say what i
00:07:22.400
think so often and this podcast is one great way to do so so maybe i'm a little more resilient to any
00:07:28.040
hot mic scandals but not so with elliot ingle elliot ingle the democratic chairman of the foreign affairs
00:07:35.300
committee one of nancy pelosi's top lieutenants 73 years old uh a real one of the neocons one i'll just
00:07:44.320
say it one of the democrat neocons i mean whenever i'm working with some of the more populist progressive
00:07:50.180
democrats on these issues of war and peace as i try to execute a trump doctrine where america is not
00:07:57.860
overextended but what where we make strategic choices where america is not passing you know the
00:08:04.260
same sand dunes back and forth in the middle east for 19 years i think there's a new bipartisan consensus
00:08:10.260
to try to invest in america first to have americans focused on protecting our country first
00:08:17.000
and uh elliot ingle has largely been on the other side of those fights uh uh with members of his own
00:08:24.120
party with members of the trump doctrine coalition of the republican party who want to see more foreign
00:08:30.300
policy restraint i recall when i was working on the issue of iran war powers as i was working
00:08:36.840
constructively with democrats like ro Khanna uh elliot ingle was uh ultimately on our side ultimately gave us
00:08:43.460
the thumbs up but he was one of the last democrats to approve a doctrine a mindset of foreign policy
00:08:50.740
restraint i think he would like to see us engaged in you know every corner of the world at just about
00:08:56.500
every opportunity so elliot ingle is this you know 73 year old democrat from new york and his big problem
00:09:03.620
is that our uh our colleague alexandria ocasio cortez aoc has recruited funded backed supported and
00:09:14.100
highlighted a primary challenge to elliot ingle so he's not having to just fend off republicans in new
00:09:20.580
york he's actually having to fend off democrats and the dynamic is obvious right i mean if you are an old
00:09:28.340
white dude in a democratic primary in the state of new york it is not a safe place to be you know
00:09:34.900
i mean just go ask former uh big wig in the democratic party joe crowley who got got beat by aoc and so
00:09:42.500
elliot ingle has got this this real tough primary challenge on his hand i i don't know that a lot of
00:09:47.620
people are favoring him to win it and he's at one of these protests one of these rallies uh that are
00:09:55.940
exploding across the country and he's caught on mike asking to speak getting told he can't speak
00:10:03.780
and then saying that if he weren't in an election if he didn't have a primary he wouldn't care
00:10:09.060
i mean talk about tone deaf i mean first of all just the indignity of being a guy who has like served
00:10:27.940
decades in the congress like you're one of nancy pelosi's key people you chair foreign affairs and
00:10:33.220
then here you are like back in your own state and you've got to beg like a dog just for the chance to
00:10:38.820
get the bullhorn or get the microphone and have your like woke moment of virtue signaling i mean it's
00:10:44.180
it's pathetic i mean in in my state in my community in my district uh if people were gathering in uh in
00:10:51.380
some political uh discourse like i would get the chance to speak they they would not they i would not
00:10:57.140
have to sit there like pretty please my way into uh the the microphone but engel then i mean when
00:11:03.700
he says like i wouldn't care otherwise it's a candid moment and it's why these hot mic moments actually
00:11:09.620
come to to play a very large part of our politics because a lot of the american people think that
00:11:15.380
their politicians say one thing when they're scripted and then they actually believe something
00:11:19.940
else i mean that's why what senator richard burr did with while he was selling off his stocks you
00:11:25.300
know in one case and then he and saying to his friends and his buddies and his donors hey this
00:11:30.100
is going to be really bad you want to get out of a lot of your positions uh before coronavirus and then
00:11:35.620
going and saying something entirely different to fox news in an editorial and so here you've got elliot
00:11:40.820
engel you know who wants to get up there and and rant and rave about how woke he is and how
00:11:45.860
you know he is in such solidarity with people in this political movement right now and then at the same
00:11:51.620
time he said look you know if i wanted some tough primary i wouldn't care and that is probably the
00:11:57.540
truth i mean if elliot engel was not in a primary do you think in the middle of covid some like
00:12:01.940
old comorbid 73 year old would be out there you know without his mask on trying to stuff his face
00:12:07.380
into a microphone that had been held by you know 25 people i doubt it but it is telling that elliot
00:12:14.820
engel is fighting for his political life because he is a moderate neocon democrat in a democratic party
00:12:24.340
that really has no more tolerance for moderates i mean elliot's not a socialist and the venezuela
00:12:31.060
wing of the democratic party led by aoc are coming for him and based on this hot mic moment they just
00:12:38.100
might get him tiger king essentially held this country together for three weeks during the front
00:12:46.980
end of covid i am not cutting my hair i'm not changing the way i dress i refuse to wear a suit
00:12:52.820
i am gay i've had two boyfriends most of my life i have tried drugs through the younger years of my life
00:13:00.660
i am broke as i have a judgment against me from some down there in florida i built one of the biggest
00:13:07.140
facilities and the nicest facilities for exotic animals in this country as far as a private
00:13:12.740
individual goes and carol baskin today is back in the news uh she she purports to be an animal rights
00:13:21.220
advocate and today i guess she has gotten a judge to hand over the 16 acre garvin county oklahoma
00:13:30.340
zoo i guess you could call it i probably wouldn't call it a preserve the zoo that was
00:13:34.420
owned and maintained by joe exotic that i guess he had transferred over to jeff lowe a court rules
00:13:41.620
that's a fraudulent transfer carol baskin gonna take over joe exotic's zoo and uh jeff lowe has i guess
00:13:50.180
uh 30 days to get those animals moved over where he's gonna have his new partner and his new endeavor so
00:13:57.460
i mean the tiger king documentary series really beyond entertaining us wildly raises some important
00:14:07.700
policy questions about these tigers about their natural environment about genetic diversification
00:14:14.660
and so i i want to zoom out from the great joy that was watching the tiger king documentary to maybe
00:14:20.500
what it tells us about our policies and how they inform on the health and safety of the tiger so i view
00:14:27.300
the like tiger mistreatment issue largely as a math problem to have to deal with so i mean you get
00:14:34.980
the fact that the money in the tiger game is in the cubs right i mean like a massive freaking you know 600
00:14:43.700
pound adult tiger is you know event i think there was a line in the documentary that like it eventually is
00:14:49.620
just a bill right it's this massive beast that you've got to continue to feed and that the experience that
00:14:55.700
you can really charge the most for and that is the most economically profitable is having these
00:15:00.500
cute little tiger cubs that people can play with pet take pictures with whatever and so you always
00:15:08.180
have to have a supply of these baby tiger cubs if you want this business because if like a family goes
00:15:14.260
to these one of these zoos and you know they had gone before and there were the cubs and this time they
00:15:18.420
weren't then you're changing the user experience and obviously in any of these attractions you want to
00:15:22.260
create consistency in the user experience so they've constantly got to be breeding these tigers
00:15:27.220
they've constantly got to have these tiger cubs but then as those tiger cubs come into adolescence
00:15:33.140
as they start to get a little bit larger and they're out of that cute cubby phase well then
00:15:38.820
you know you you have a bill you have a challenge to deal with and that's where you've heard these
00:15:44.660
stories where some of these just fascinating and colorful characters are actually doing horrific
00:15:50.100
and awful things whether it's freezing the tiger cubs as they enter adolescence or gassing them or
00:15:55.860
whatever they're simply disposing of them in you know in horrifyingly awful circumstances and so at the same
00:16:05.300
time this is going on these tiger species are facing major challenges around the world in terms of just
00:16:12.660
their population size and their genetic diversity i mean there there are more of these tigers in
00:16:18.260
captivity in the united states in some circumstances than there are in the wild in asia and so it sort
00:16:24.020
of got me thinking well if you need tigers for reintroduction into the wild and if you have tigers here
00:16:31.700
that are not all that beneficial is there is there any type of process is there any type of system
00:16:37.300
whereby you can rewild or reintroduce some of these cubs as they're entering adolescence into more of a
00:16:46.180
more of a dynamic situation uh in a training program or some other rewilding program and what's
00:16:53.620
fascinating is that national geographic has actually done coverage on this phenomenon with the south china
00:16:59.940
tiger and they have set up these preserves in africa of all places so they've taken chinese
00:17:07.220
tigers they bring them to africa and they attempt to rewild them to teach them how to hunt and
00:17:13.300
teach them how to live and and be successful and and ultimately reintroduced into some wild terrain
00:17:21.060
and they have had mixed success like it doesn't work every time some of these tigers that have been
00:17:25.860
uh born in captivity can never be rewilded but like let's assume that you know 15 can 20 can
00:17:33.940
that would lead to a huge volume of tigers that could potentially assist in the restoration of the
00:17:42.340
species and so discovery channel does an interesting piece on this and they follow the stories of ron and
00:17:49.220
julie two tigers that they take out to africa and i mean kind of like the way it works is you know first
00:17:54.500
you take the tiger out to africa and throw it a dead chicken and then you take it out there and throw it
00:17:59.300
like a wounded chicken and the next thing you know it's chasing down a live chicken and then it's
00:18:03.540
chasing down a live goat and then you know next thing you know you start to see if the tigers can
00:18:08.580
take to prey the size of the prey in the areas where they might be reintroduced for um for an
00:18:15.540
opportunity to grow the wild tiger species so here's a little clip from the story of ron and julie two of
00:18:21.860
the tigers that they are attempting to rewild in africa after two days with empty stomachs
00:18:28.340
ron and julie are getting the message to eat they have to learn to kill dave will hold the tigers back
00:18:34.420
to teach them patience it's a dangerous job but somebody's got to do it i'm about 190 pounds and
00:18:41.460
i'm trying to slow down about 700 pounds of starving tigers normally this is a job for a mother tiger in
00:18:47.140
the wild but ron and julie are beginning to understand that using cover is a better strategy
00:18:52.100
than just running wildly after prey the reason that american tigers today cannot participate in
00:18:58.500
any of these rewilding programs is ironically the endangered species act i think with all the best of
00:19:04.260
intentions the endangered species act doesn't contemplate uh the the trafficking of these adolescent
00:19:12.420
tiger cubs for their benefit i think largely there are these you know anti-trafficking provisions in
00:19:18.340
the endangered species act because you don't want to see the species exploited but but we largely have
00:19:24.820
learned from tiger king that the enforcement of those prohibitions on sale and trafficking are
00:19:31.540
very difficult to enforce they're sort of a joke and it's it's just a a secret that is known by
00:19:38.420
everyone that the trafficking occurs anyway so if it's occurring anyway maybe we could actually go
00:19:43.300
in and write into the endangered species act a waiver that would allow part of the american tiger
00:19:50.100
population to actually be transferred to africa and participate in some of these rewilding programs
00:19:56.980
who knows may not work for all of them may not work for many of them but if the option is seeing tiger
00:20:03.140
cubs gassed or killed in the united states or if you give them some chance to potentially assist the
00:20:09.540
species maybe that can be the great good that comes from this tiger king experience but in the meantime
00:20:16.420
carol baskin taking over joe exotic's zoo hopefully for the better but i think we can make some changes
00:20:22.740
changes to policy that would be the greatest legacy of the tiger king experience that america has had
00:20:31.780
the riots that continue in america continue to spread pain and anguish and division within our
00:20:38.740
communities though i am so grateful recently that president trump has taken such a strong posture for
00:20:45.700
law and order and for civilized society to ultimately prevail over those who would destroy our things who
00:20:53.620
would hurt our neighbors and would try to uh flow fear onto the streets of the neighborhoods where we live
00:21:02.180
i think these riots have largely shown who is strong and who is weak president trump has been strong
00:21:10.580
when he walked over to the church that had been burned when he embraced the bible i know that the
00:21:18.500
woke media and that the celebrities and some folks on the left didn't like that but it was an inspiring
00:21:24.100
strong moment for our country when store owners take their livelihoods and their futures into their own
00:21:31.460
hands and fend off protesters i saw you know so many cases of store owners showing courage and strength
00:21:38.500
i think the protesters who remain peaceful show a tremendous amount of strength it's it's easy in
00:21:43.940
these environments where people kind of get whooped up around each other to uh to escalate or spill over
00:21:50.260
into violent acts and for those who have a a true political point to make for those who are seeking
00:21:56.500
redress of their grievance and peaceful assembly i thank them for their strength and also to the police who are
00:22:03.460
enforcing order who are that thin blue line between those of us who want safe families and safe
00:22:10.740
communities and those who would disrupt that safety we thank you and we see the strength in
00:22:15.300
your eyes and in your hearts and in your family members who are unquestionably part of the sacrifice
00:22:21.220
that appends to your public service but we've also seen you know weakness the governors and mayors who
00:22:27.780
who've given up their streets who've simply surrendered to the mob they don't look that good those who
00:22:33.700
would burn and destroy you're not strong when you burn down or deface a monument or a national symbol
00:22:41.220
of pride you're showing how weak you are how you're you're unable to restrain and control yourself and
00:22:47.060
manage your emotions and actually direct your frustration which i think many would say is is
00:22:53.140
reasonable in this circumstance to a more productive path forward and i would also say
00:22:59.860
that corporate america has demonstrated a tremendous amount of weakness look if you're
00:23:06.340
like some fortune 100 fortune 500 company these riots aren't catastrophic for you right you've got
00:23:13.380
a team of lawyers and accountants who will calculate the losses who will get your business interruption
00:23:18.900
insurance who will get your property and casualty damage money back and at the end of the day these
00:23:24.020
large businesses have the ability to accrue long-term debt if they have to to bridge gaps and they're not
00:23:30.500
going you're not going to see a major fortune 100 or fortune 500 company that shuts down as a consequence
00:23:35.860
of these riots so they can afford to donate money to the organizers and entities that you know that are
00:23:43.780
out there animating this type of of chaos on our streets and it's the small businesses it's the
00:23:52.020
folks who operate that one bodega that family furniture store that electronics repair store you know they
00:23:59.060
don't have the team of of lawyers and accountants when they have to go fight with their insurance company
00:24:03.940
to get paid for damage they're going to be out cash they're going to potentially have to lay off employees
00:24:09.860
limit advertising limit the investment in their future that makes america great that makes small
00:24:15.780
business the driving force of success in the american economy more people work at small businesses in
00:24:21.780
america than work at big businesses and it's small businesses who bear the brunt of the weakness that we
00:24:28.980
have seen from the governors and mayors who have handed off their streets and their towns to those who would
00:24:36.020
not maintain order and who seek to just brandish the the disruption of that order as some sort of
00:24:43.700
success it's not a success at all it's un-american but thankfully we've got president trump we've got
00:24:50.580
folks like governor ron desantis and many others who've made it very clear that in this great country
00:24:56.820
we are going to be on the side of people who want to prosper who want to succeed we're going to be on the
00:25:02.660
side of the peaceful protester of the store owner and of the family who deserves to have this country
00:25:09.380
restored to its highest levels of greatness thanks so much for listening to hot takes with matt gates
00:25:14.980
really appreciate it if you'd leave us a review or rating let us know if you like the show we'll be back