Episode 9 - DeSantis Unloads on Media, Future Florida Man Elon Musk, Ratcliffe Confirmed as Intel Director
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Summary
There is no news hotter than my good buddy, the Governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, breathing some fire down on the media. I talk about why you should be offended with the Democratic whip, not the democratic whip, and why the media should not be trusted.
Transcript
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you ever watch this guy on television you all were not telling the truth and you should not
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be trusted congressman matt gates thank you for what you did for your country today be offended
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with the democratic whip not house republicans like a machine matt gates
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welcome to hot takes this is congressman matt gates let's talk about the news
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some good news my good friend tiffany trump graduating from georgetown law school
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tiffany is just a fantastic person and really up to date on a lot of the legal issues surrounding
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the interface of digital platforms and the consumer experience and she's had really a lot of
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advice that's been very helpful to me regarding how we can create better equity on digital platforms so
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that conservative voices are able to be vibrant and bold in a marketplace of ideas that our great
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country deserves so congrats tiff we're all proud of you and i know great things are ahead there is no
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news hotter today and no take hotter than my good buddy ron desantis the governor of florida breathing
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some fire down on the media he was fantastic in his articulation of the florida approach and how it's
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worked here is the governor of florida our data is available our data is transparent in fact actor
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burks has talked multiple times about how florida has the absolute best data so any insinuation
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otherwise is just typical partisan narrative trying to be spun and part of the reason is that because
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you got a lot of people in your profession who waxed poetically for weeks and weeks about how
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florida was going to be just like new york wait two weeks florida's going to be next just like italy
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wait two weeks well hell we're eight weeks away from that and it hasn't happened not only do we
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have a lower death rate well we have way lower deaths generally we have a lower death rate than
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the acela corridor dc everyone up there we have a lower rate death rate than the midwest illinois michigan
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indiana ohio but even in our region louisiana mississippi alabama georgia florida has the lower death
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rate and i was the number one landing spot from tens of thousands of people leaving the number one hot
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zone in the world to come to my state so we've succeeded and i think that people just don't want
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to recognize it because it challenges their narrative it challenges their assumption so they
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got to try to find a boogeyman maybe it's that they're a black helicopter circling the department of
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health if you believe that i got a bridge in brooklyn i'd like to sell you you know there is a certain
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successful quality to folks like de santis and trump who just take it to the media who don't sit back
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and allow themselves to be defined but who get out there and really defend themselves it was great to
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see there's another great article in the national review by richard lowry where does ron de santis go
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to get his apology the national media was so obsessed with florida beaches that it it really
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i think unfairly characterized the great work the governor was doing in the last podcast i talked
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about some of the specific choices that the governor made that were effective in limiting the
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transmission rate and the mortality rate now governor de santis and his team are on to sentinel testing
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surveillance testing and i am confident that florida will restore consumer competence and visitor
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competence faster because we've got a governor who really is into the data and the details i talked
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to governor de santis yesterday i can tell you he was he was reviewing reports about specific ways in
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which coronavirus uh interacted with a moisture and humidity and was like you know down into the
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specific facts and how that might inform on some of the policy choices that he's got to make
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upcoming so he's been right all along uh i'm glad to call him a friend i'm glad to be a supporter of
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his and i'm sure glad he brought out the fire in his interactions with the media when they tried to
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cast him in an unfair light that's how you fight in the era of trump who knew that elon musk would become
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like a new cult figure of the political right during the time of coronavirus elon musk tweeting out
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cancel cancel cancel culture and amen to that i am so against the cancel culture and i don't think
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you're going to be canceling elon musk he got into it with officials in california as he was doing
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everything he could in a safe and responsible way to open up give people a chance to access their
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economic prosperity and continue the great drive of american innovation that elon musk has had such a role
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in really throughout his life but it raises the question what in the hell is elon musk still doing
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in the state of california come to florida baby elon musk needs to be a florida man he needs to
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join president trump and so many others that have brought their dreams and resources and registrations
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to the great state of florida because we don't have that california view of the world that we feel
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more powerful in the government when we can restrict your choices and your progress and your commerce we've
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also got a big space mission in florida elon musk has certainly been an innovator in space and
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developing ways for humans to become a multi-planetary species and so with florida leading in that endeavor
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it just makes sense that he should come to the sunshine state i noted an article all the way back
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from 2018 in cnbc where musk gets criticized because he gave 40 000 bucks to a republican political
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action committee to ensure that republicans were elected to the house of representatives and oh did
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the radical left go crazy they were you know indicating that he was a partisan that he should
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you know be outed as a republican and as a conservative and in response musk rather nonchalantly
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said look you know i donate to republicans i donate to democrats i think that it's important to have a
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vibrant national discussion around the critical issues facing the day and bravo for that i mean look i i don't
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begrudge someone because at a particular moment in time there might be a democrat cause or a democrat
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candidate that they feel compelled to support i think it's okay for people to contribute to a vibrant
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dialogue on issues that they care about and if elon musk tended to lean republican i know he says he's an
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independent but he would certainly be my kind of republican on a few issues in this 2018 cnbc article where
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he was being criticized for donating to republicans musk pointed out that on issues like humanitarian
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care for the vulnerable that that he had a very progressive approach uh you know my mother is in
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a wheelchair she has been for uh all of my life since i was three years old and i understand the need for
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any working society to care for the vulnerable so i i certainly hold that view and elon musk is also
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someone who acknowledges the obvious science of climate change and that humans by releasing carbon
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absolutely contribute to climate change yeah i don't think elon musk has signed up for the green
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new deal approach to having every aspect of our lives controlled by power hungry people in washington
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i think that elon musk is the embodiment of the type of american innovation that we will need
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to meet our challenge with climate change and other environmental contaminations that have occurred
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during during the boomer era and so i i'm hopeful that uh with elon musk realizing the cancel culture
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vibe out there in california that he'll pack up and uh head on over to the great state of florida and
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heck we can build some great teslas for him here and we can certainly create the kind of launch
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environment that would achieve elon musk's great space ambitions for our human species
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stacy abrams is not a candidate for anything right now which is why i can talk about her on
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a non-political podcast but i think she's wanting to be a candidate for vice president which is why her
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very effective pr team has spun up this washington post profile of stacy abrams that that really
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reads more like a hero's comic book than a review of how someone stands on the issues that are
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qualifications for a position it compares stacy abrams to a runway supermodel and has a pose of
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her in a cape if you could think i guess of all things but you know this mythologizing of losers
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is something that the media seems to do with some frequency i mean you'll remember like after beto
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o'rourke lost a senate race like he was the next big thing in the presidential campaign until he
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actually got out there and was not all that interesting to voters as he hopped from table
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to table and then you had andrew gillum right he was the next obama this national force despite the
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fact that all he had actually done was be a failing mayor of a small town until making the news recently
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in a hotel room with a male prostitute drugs and what appeared to be a disco ball and various forms of
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pharmaceuticals you know so now stacy abrams loses the governor's race in georgia doesn't concede
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and uh now is like deemed by not just the washington post but other mainstream media the next great thing
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in democrat politics here is an interview the last time stacy abrams was on meet the press with
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chuck todd and what's just fascinating about this is that he's asking a question about her qualifications
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which is perfectly reasonable thing to do but the premise of the question is whether or not people
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will overlook her obvious on paper qualifications so just just listen to the question from chuck todd
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try to understand how absurd it is that he builds that into the premise and then even just as
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interesting listen to her answer i'm going to ask you the vp question do you worry that no matter how
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qualified you are on paper that the perception you've not run a large organization as an executive
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office holder um or have not won statewide is a knock against you for the last year and a half i have run
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three national organizations including fair fight 2020 which is in 18 states protecting the right to vote
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i've been traveling the country promoting a census that is accurate and that helps us prepare for the
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next pandemic and for redistricting and i've been working to make certain that poor families especially
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those in the south but around the country have the services they need i believe in doing the work
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i've been doing it since the day i did not become governor and i will continue to do so
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and i do so at a national level because i understand that while i may be grounded in georgia
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and a daughter of the south my responsibility is to do the work to make sure all of our communities
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are healthy and safe and able to participate in our democracy so now here stacy abrams is saying that
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her her qualification to be the vice president of the united states to someone who who is obviously
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sort of in the early stages of uh of of something uh so her qualification is she has run a multi-state
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organization to register voters now like this is not some massive employee base this is not some
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strategic company that's got to find develop a brand or find their their echelon in the market like
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by by this standard stacy abrams would barely be qualified to like own and manage a modest chain
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of ruby tuesdays and yet baked into the premise of chuck todd's question is just how darn qualified she
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is and yet you know people who go out there you know like ted cruz and ron de santis and president
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trump who win elections uh they don't seem to get the same treatment as the losers so maybe that's uh
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maybe that's the price of winning you got to go out there and fight so at this point everyone in
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america knows that there was a trump dossier that it was false that it was an attack on our democracy
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that it was funded by democrats that it was polluted by russians and then it was used illegally in a
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secret court with no adversarial process to smear and spy on americans with the hope of gaining
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leverage against the president now we know that there wasn't just a trump dossier there was also
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a flynn dossier the fbi doing everything they could not just to pay for dirt on the president but
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even to pay for dirt on the people around the president when they went to speak to flynn it wasn't
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to conduct a legitimate counterintelligence investigation they had already listened to all
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the conversations that that they were aware of between flynn and kislyak instead it was an effort
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to set him up uh to get him out of the trump administration and then to use that as leverage
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somehow against the president and and really to try to recast the obama administration's foreign policy
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failures as the fault of russia this you know this declining power and i mean think about how russia has
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been viewed in my lifetime you know you you got uh george w bush who said he could you know look into
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putin and see his soul you had a senator john mccain say that that he saw only the kgb you had mit romney
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say that russia was this greatest geopolitical threat that we could possibly face as a country and i sort of
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want to just reply you know okay boomers to all of that because it it doesn't strike me as a real modern
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approach to russia and flynn in his communications with susan rice and others seem to embody the more
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modern perspective that russia while not our friend while mischievous was really a regional power and to
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every extent that we could de-conflict with russia that was probably a good thing for the world and
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and again that doesn't mean that we share values or interests it simply means that um you know in the
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fight against radical islam and the desire to have diminished violence on the syria-turkey border there
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are some places where russia can be less of a malign actor and more cooperative and so flynn really opens
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the door to those policy questions but what we have also learned about flynn is that the setup the detail
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the unmasking really shows how high this scandal went think about it flynn was the incoming national
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security advisor i mean this guy wasn't going to get taken out by you know some low-level bureaucrat in
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a windowless cubicle with green shades on i mean we saw circumstances where the fbi lawyer kevin
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cline smith altered documents before the fisa court but like it it it really with flynn goes so much
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deeper than that and i think that what we've learned in these recent disclosures uh is very very damaging
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to obama and to biden here's my commentary on sean hannity last night regarding the way in which
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the flynn setup informs on the depth of the scandal and the people involved if lies were
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music susan rice would be mozart if i were writing myself a email where three times i had to say i did
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everything by the book that is certainly more incriminating than it is exculpatory and when
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you look at jim comey just look at the last three tweets from jim comey you have a flower an attack on
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the department of justice that's probably investigating him and praise for the removed
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disgraced now former chairman of the intelligence committee richard burr now if rick rannell had been
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the director of national intelligence back in 2017 jim comey would probably already be under the jail
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because the grinnell disclosures lay bare the coup before the american people obama was involved
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biden was involved susan rice was involved and jim comey was set up to be the inside man
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going from the obama administration to the trump administration and remember all that weird
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journaling he was doing to try to set the president up on obstruction of justice
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well now it is exposed and it's my expectation that finally we could get justice from the
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investigation that ag bar is overseeing chuck ross with the daily caller has written a brilliant piece
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that highlights some elements of the inspector general's report regarding the setup of michael flynn
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in a way that the traditional media has not done uh you know flynn in fact faced these
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unproven allegations that he was having an affair with some lady with tied tied to russians uh that
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allegation was bought and paid for by our own fbi from christopher steel matter of fact
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chuck ross's reporting goes through these elements of the inspector general michael horowitz's report
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where he says that the fbi had paid significant sums of money to christopher steel this foreign agent
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essentially to go dig up dirt on flynn and in horowitz's review of the dirt it doesn't even
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appear that it's all to be true they allege that flynn is having some extramarital affair with some
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russian lady and that he left some dinner with her but when the horowitz team went and talked to
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the husband of this lady he indicated that he came and picked her up so it seems to be that our
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government may have been paying for dirt from a foreign operative to disrupt our democracy and the
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democratic choices that our voters made uh and they did so all the while crowing about the negative
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consequences of foreign interference you know i mean the democrats spent the better part of three years
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just you know crying and moaning about foreign interference in our elections and i'm sitting here
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saying well what about the domestic interference i mean what about the interference from our own
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government from these elites in washington who believe that they had all the answers and that
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they weren't going to let the voters have the president that they selected so i would say
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maybe domestic interference is something that we need to talk a lot more about and focus on
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chuck ross's piece also talks about the way that the fbi really wanted to get access to
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the sub sources of steel the people he talked to to build out the dossier now why is that important
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well because we now know as a consequence of these revelations and investigations that have occurred
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subsequently that the sub sources of steel were specifically targeted by russian intelligence that
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one of the ways that russia wanted to be mischievous was not just to demean hillary clinton which they
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probably did but also to demean donald trump the fbi field office in washington dc actually
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recommended closing the counterintelligence investigation into michael flynn that seems
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consistent with the notes that that show that they didn't even know why they were talking to him if it
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wasn't a setup and guess who kept the flynn case open guess who ensured that there was still
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an insurance policy against president trump and his team that's right peter struck the very same peter
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struck who reflected bias who was utilizing uh the fbi's system to try to create uh some smear against
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the incoming president uh the same peter struck who you know was i i guess you know maybe in his
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efforts to impress his uh girlfriend lisa page was trying to show what a what a big bad baller he was
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and what his capabilities were to uh impeach and destabilize the presidency so when you see these
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characters like struck as the basis to maintain the investigation and when you see other presumably
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honest fbi people saying well is this a setup do we even have a basis to be here why are we even
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investigating flynn why don't we close this counterintelligence investigation it just makes
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you wonder how are they able to keep up the con so long how are they able to do it and and really
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nothing better encapsulates this than the commentary of my good friend and mentor congressman jim jordan
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jim jordan was on the hannity show and and really compared the three months of rick grinnell and all the
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disclosures we've gotten to the three years that we've had under fbi director christopher ray
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here's congressman jordan's commentary on that subject compare three years of chris ray
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with three months of rick grinnell i i don't see where the fbi director is taking this seriously
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you know we talk about all these terrible things that happened in january of 2017 and they were bad
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comey tell him to keep pursuing mike flynn even though the agents wanted to drop it comey meeting
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with obama talking about the flynn kislyak conversation comey going up to trump tower briefing
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the president on the dossier that he already knows is false and of course comey sneaking guys into the
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white house to set up michael flynn on january 24th but we forget what happened in those critical
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eight days in may of 2017 comey's fired on the ninth moeller gets appointed on the 17th as a special
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counsel but in between they were talking rod rosenstein about wearing a wire they were talking
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about the 25th amendment they were talking about an obstruction of justice investigation into the
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president of the united states and chris ray doesn't seem to care so we're going to try to go
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around him and see if we can get these guys to come testify and answer some questions
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my good friend a great texan someone i've served with on the house judiciary committee john ratcliffe
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has been confirmed as the new director of national intelligence john will do a fantastic job he was
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one of the leading legal minds in the defense of the president both in the russia hoax and in the
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goofy knockoff ukraine sequel you know the president had originally nominated john ratcliffe
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as a consequence of his qualifications and diligence and his patriotism for the country
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and it was weird when when he was first nominated i did not see a whole lot of love from the united
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states senate you know the the now uh disgraced removed former intelligence committee chairman richard
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burr gave a pretty lukewarm statement in response to ratcliffe's original nomination and then lo and
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behold when president trump put uh acting director rick runnell in place boy the senate sure seemed to
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hop to it to confirm ratcliffe uh here's what you can expect from john very high integrity high honesty
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and i'll make this bold prediction john always seemed to be most worked up in the judiciary committee
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about the information that should have been included in the discussion and in the analysis of all this
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russia stuff that wasn't included uh whether those in those pieces of evidence took the form of
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transcripts or recordings or notes you know john was always a guy that felt like the more actual proof
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that we got before the american people of this corrupt setup the better and that sometimes rubbed some
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of the traditional intel people on the right and on the left the wrong way you know that that is a
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community built on secrecy and keeping stuff contained and i know that there is a time when that's
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appropriate but when you're trying to steal an election from the voters we need to get out as
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much information as possible and so i think it would be hard to top the incredible tenure of rick
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runnell as the acting dni but i have every confidence that john ratcliffe will continue that progress
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i think you're going to see more disclosures under ratcliffe i'll leave you this nugget
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specifically as it relates to george papadopoulos and the effort to set him up and make him into some
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like big criminal figure when he clearly wasn't there's evidence around that that i think will be
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the focus of john ratcliffe and some of the people that were engaged by our government to try to set up
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papadopoulos the way they set up flynn i think you may be learning a lot more about that for all that
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we've learned about flynn there's a lot more to learn about the way that our own government
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tried to you know convert the otherwise pretty legitimate activities of george papadopoulos into
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like the centerpiece of some international criminal ring so we'll learn more and john's going to get the
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truth out thanks so much for listening to hot takes with matt gates we appreciate all of the five star
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