The Anchormen Show Ep 47 - System Update w⧸ Glenn Greenwald
Episode Stats
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Summary
Glenn Greenwald joins me to talk about his new podcast, System Update on Rumble, and why he thinks we should be worried about what's going on around the world and in our own foreign policy circles. We talk about the Trump administration's foreign policy doctrine, the influence of the deep state, and the impact of deep state influence on our foreign policy.
Transcript
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Now, it's time for the Anchorman Podcast with Matt Gaetz and Dan Ball.
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Welcome back to another episode of our show, Anchorman, and I am joined today by a real
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Glenn Greenwald is one of the original founders of The Intercept and now is the host of System
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I want to cover what's going on in a lot of different places, but really I wanted to begin
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with how you view just the Trump doctrine as we encounter it in this second term, because
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it does feel like it has a different energy than we had in Trump 1 with people like Mattis
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and Tillerson having a real large role in the shaping of that policy.
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Now it seems very, you know, Howard Lutnick, Scott Besson, Donald Trump, economic, you know,
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But how would you describe, I guess, that difference and then the Trump foreign policy doctrine as
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Yeah, there's no question that the Trump administration and its current iteration 2.0 is very different
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I think there are a lot of ways in which that's a good thing.
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I heard from the Trump campaign, people close to the Trump circle all throughout 2024 and
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into the transition that they believe, and I totally agree, that one of the big problems
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with the first administration was that so many people had infiltrated it, had contaminated
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it, who pretended to be on board with the America First ideology, but in fact were sworn
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enemies to it and were really there to undermine and subvert everything he was doing.
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And I think they got away with that because he was very new to Washington.
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A lot of people surrounding him didn't really understand Washington maybe as well as they
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I mean, he was relying on Jared Kushner and his daughter.
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And I think they did, in a lot of ways, subvert what he was doing, and they were determined
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And they clearly came in prepared to ensure that Trump is the leader of the administration.
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They selected people who were willing to do that.
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So we actually have an elected president who's making decisions for the executive branch, which
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I think it's pretty dangerous when you have generals and other national security officials
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just going off on their own, doing what they want, and even violating orders of
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I think the problem, Matt, is that the reason I was so interested in the Trump campaign beginning
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in 2016, despite it causing a lot of rifts with a lot of former viewers and readers of
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mine, was because of the America First ideology, which I took seriously.
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The idea that, look, it's time to prioritize American citizens and their interests, which
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should be pretty basic, but it hasn't been, which means battling big corporate power, big
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banks, big multinational corporations, re-instilling the notion that we have an industry in the
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United States, that we have jobs in the United States, but also that we're not going to go
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to war for or continue to finance the wars of foreign countries.
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I mean, this was so central for me, at least, in terms of what the promise of the Trump ideology
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And in so many ways, we're seeing so many violations of that, particularly in foreign
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policy, but also it's spilling over in a lot of ways into domestic policy, free speech
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And there was the moment when he wins the South Carolina primary back in 2016, where the veil
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is pulled back on this theory that Republican operatives and Republican candidates have been
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told that you have to support this Liz Cheney version of foreign policy in order to have any
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And Trump stood up and called George W. Bush a war criminal and walked in and won South Carolina.
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But one of the reasons that condition you described of infiltration occurred is this highly
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intricate credentialing system that interventionists have developed in Washington, D.C.
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And I never understood it until I got there and really started to pay attention.
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But so much money is spent on these think tanks to get people, you know, vice president of
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public policy for Eurasia titles and to endow professorships where people could say, oh,
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there I was at, you know, Georgetown or some other, you know, the School of Foreign Service
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And when you weigh that against the life experiences of a lot of people who are foreign policy realists,
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And that weighed heavily on the first Trump term.
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I think people saw through that really effectively on a lot of fronts this last go around.
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There are all these, like, you know, Wilson Center type entities that do such a good job
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But if someone thinks thoughtfully about maybe wanting to reserve America's focus to America's
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Yeah, that's why it's so important and so interesting to speak to somebody who was in the kind of
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bowels of Washington as you were and got there with a certain set of ideas about how Washington
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works and then actually saw the real way that it works and are willing to speak openly about
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I think the whole world of think tanks, it's so opaque and mysterious to most Americans never
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think about think tanks, don't really care about think tanks when it's such a crucial
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I remember when Nikki Haley resigned from the Trump administration as the U.S. ambassador to
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the United Nations in the first Trump term, and she got extremely rich in the immediate
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So made something like $8 million, paid off a lot of debt she was in.
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And we investigated, like other journalists did, to find out how she was making that money.
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And one of the major ways was that she got hired by think tanks who are funded massively
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by huge pro-Israel interests, pro-war interests, the kind of people who get appointed into key
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positions, whether it's the Democratic Party or the Republican Party, they have kind of a
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On the one hand, they do a very good job because of how much money they have in being able to
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sort of attract the people who seem to Washington lawmakers or White House officials, like they're
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And they're only there because of their shared ideology, this sort of bipartisan consensus that
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And then there's also a second incentive, which is, you know, that if you leave government
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or you leave Congress, as long as you did your service and serve that agenda, there's
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all kinds of sinecures waiting for you where you can get very rich by doing that.
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And, you know, I think on the one hand, there's all this progress that has been made in breaking
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this, you know, decades-long bipartisan consensus that has been so detrimental to our country.
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The rise of independent media has obviously been crucial.
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The fact that there are all kinds of members of Congress now on both the left and the right
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who are deviating from it and making the case for it.
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There's obviously a left and right anti-establishment furor of the kind that I don't think we have
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The problem, though, and it's so true, is if you look at Washington, the two parties in
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Congress still basically work more or less the same way.
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They're really not responsive to these changes in public opinion.
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And that's because what official Washington has is this kind of locked-in system to force
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people to serve the agenda of moneyed interest in Washington and really not very much listen
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to or care about the actual constituents who elected them.
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And if you're willing to go along with the grift, then that presents in a variety of forms.
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You're willing to go say that bills do things that they don't actually do.
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You're able to kind of, like, falsely avoid blame on things like spending.
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You're able to, like, take these just bogus intel briefings they give you and then walk
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One member told me who had played the game and got a sweet gig that being a fellow with
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a think tank as a former member of Congress was just like being a congressman, but you
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make four times the money because you have a big staff that's paid for.
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You go around giving interesting speeches to people who want to hear you talk.
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And instead of making, you know, $1.72, you can make like $600,000.
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And then what that means is those folks own them in the short term.
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And if I'll put it this plainly, if you did not have defense contractors, the interests
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of foreign governments and a select group of Fortune 100 corporate interests, think tanks
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But now they are providing this faux credentialism and also a lot of grass tops imagery around
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support for U.S. intervention and a variety of these conflicts.
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So the first one I want to talk to you about, obviously, is in Gaza, where Israel is now saying
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they want to occupy Gaza, which is the most predictable thing after the way they have waged
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But is it wrong, Glenn, that there's a part of me that's like, you know what?
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Take the baton and freaking run with it, because we have endured that in the early aughts in
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You had Iran pulling back from some of their proxy forces.
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So if Israel wants to go be the neighborhood crime watch of Gaza City, like the block captain
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of Gaza, won't they kind of get their punishment just from the nature of that experience?
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Or is it going to have to come with all of this shame over the atrocities that people
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Yeah, well, first of all, I think there's a big question.
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I mean, I would look at it differently, perhaps if it weren't for the fact the United States
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government and therefore American workers and American taxpayers were going to pay for
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You know, we send four billion dollars a year minimum automatic to Israel and in the deal
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negotiated by President Obama on his way out in 2016 with Netanyahu.
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But then on top of that, we send billions and billions and billions more.
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We send 17 billion dollars extra every time Israel decides they want a new war.
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And on top of that, we deploy our own military assets and put our service members in harm's
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way in that region to protect Israel as well from the anger that they're provoking.
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And so the cost of the United States and American taxpayers is so massive.
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And if they go and occupy Gaza, they can't do that without us paying for it.
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And of course, we're going to end up paying for it.
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Now, having said that, I think it is interesting to note that the most vocal opponents of this
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new plan to go and occupy Gaza, and it's really not a new plan.
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If you listen to Israeli leaders from the start after October 7, the hostages and dismantling
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The real goal that they always had was they want, a lot of them believe in the idea that
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Gaza and the West Bank belong to Israel, even though the entire international community is
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The U.S. government's position for decades has been, we want a two-state solution.
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They want to move those people in Gaza out, the Palestinians and the Muslims and the Arab
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Christians, and replace them with Jews, with Israeli Jews that are going to rule that
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But the interesting thing is, it's the IDF, you know, like the generals and the IDF officials
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who are saying, if we go in and occupy Gaza, it's going to, first of all, it's going to
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You can occupy it, but there's still Hamas there.
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They're obviously going to fight a guerrilla war like we saw in Iraq, and they're going
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Like, what are you going to do with the people that there's still, well, there was 2.2 million
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If they do that, they're going to be probably harming themselves.
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But the thing that I worry about, Matt, is that, you know, they have demonstrated that
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they have no regard for life of the people in Gaza.
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They don't see Gazans or Palestinians more broadly as human.
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The number of deaths and the starvation has demonstrated that.
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And obviously, if they go in and occupy, it's going to entail massive amounts of more death.
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They're going to just be killing randomly because they are going to be in danger, IDF
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And they're already fighting multiple front wars for several years now.
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It's an army that has really been put through the wringer.
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And to ask them now to govern Gaza, the way the United States has to govern, you know,
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Fallujah and the Sunni Triangle and all the places in Iraq for all those years, you're
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But I worry more about the impact on the United States and Americans as well.
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The way those funding battles work in Congress is just debasing for so many of these folks
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who represent districts that are poor, that need their Congress member to care about them.
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And the way we do this with some of these touchstone international issues, Glenn, like
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Like there was a time period where every week we had to pass another resolution about the
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And I don't mean to like, you know, say that their plight is not a meaningful one, but it
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And then with Israel, there was a time period where almost every day we were passing a different
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And I don't know, I'm not a fan of the BDS movement.
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But did Mike Huckabee become the leader of it when they tried to shut down the Zionist
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Because I saw these statements from Mike Huckabee where they're shutting down the Zionist Christian
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And he says that the way he's going to react is that Christians should no longer plan to Israel.
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They should boycott their plan to Israel, that American donors should stop funding groups
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And then he was going to withhold sanction or he was going to sanction by withholding
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the visas of people in Israel who wanted to come to the United States.
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So like what chapter of the book are we in when Israel loses Mike Huckabee?
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Well, and also, you know, the Israeli military murdered an American citizen in the West Bank
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And Mike Huckabee actually denounced that vehemently and called it a terrorist act, which
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obviously is a word that typically only gets applied to Israel's enemies and not to Israel.
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It was really the settlers who did the murders.
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But the IDF is there to back them up and there's no accountability.
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But the thing is, Matt, like this is what I think is I'm kind of amazed at what I'm seeing,
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even though on the in one way, I also don't find it surprising because of everything we're
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This is a movement, the Trump movement, that decided to call itself America first.
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And the argument was that we have been financing and funding and arming wars all over the globe
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And as a result, we need to reprioritize how we work in Washington so that the American
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people and their communities that are falling apart and their and our industry that has been,
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you know, deindustrialized all throughout the country and fentanyl and immigrants and all
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the problems that is making are making the United States fall apart.
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And now you have the summer recess in Congress, which.
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Well, we can get into why if you want, there's the recess.
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I'm sure you've covered this, but I don't know if you saw you probably did.
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But like 30 members of the caucus, you know, usually usually the summer recess is the idea
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of it is you go back to your district since none of them barely have anything to do with
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So it's like one time they get to go back, touch the ground there.
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They hear from their constituents about what they're thinking, about what they want.
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It's sometimes even raucous because people are upset and that's an important thing for
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They got on a plane on an AIPAC organized and paid for journey to Israel.
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It's like, and there's statistics that show that members of Congress make pilgrimage to
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Israel more than every country in Europe and Africa combined.
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And, you know, I think we're also getting to the point now where a lot of people are starting
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Why is every politician that I'm listening to constantly in Israel?
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And there is an actual downward pressure from the leadership and even the committee chairs.
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Like if you're on the Foreign Affairs Committee, if you're on the Armed Services Committee, if
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you're on the Intelligence Committee, there's like an expectation that you go there and some
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And I remember being at the, I'll never go back.
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I was at the King David Hotel and I rolled back to my room unexpectedly when the rest of
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And he acted like he was associated with the hotel and taking an inventory, but had no clipboard.
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And so, yeah, there's a lot of reasons why they want members of Congress over there.
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And it is ideologically to steep them in this notion that the protection of Israel is of
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great import to people in America, but it's really not that important to voters.
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And that is becoming more clear on the right and left.
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I maintain that the true legacy of Netanyahu is that during his control of Israel, he has
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successfully made this a politically divisive issue on the American right and left.
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And like when I was growing up, it was a pretty bipartisan thing to have people generally supportive
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of a friendly relationship between the United States and the only democracy, democracy in
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And now on the left, it is a major issue in primaries.
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Are we in the cycle where in 2028, maybe on the Republican stage, maybe on the Democrat
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stage, maybe both, like you're going to see definitively anti-Israel candidates running
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for president saying, nominate me to lead this party and I won't make us subservient to Israel.
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I mean, I'd like to see what happens if anybody who says that actually gets close to the presidency
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There are going to be a lot of very powerful interests who are going to be very frightened
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But the reason why I say this has to happen is because the polling data that you referenced
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Every single demographic group in the United States has now, as a majority, views Israel
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unfavorably, except for conservatives over the age of 50 or Republicans over the age of
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50, which are, they're still clinging on to this sort of, you know, they've been indoctrinated
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But young conservatives in particular are, the steep downward is very, very steep.
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And you're obviously seeing major, major voices in the conservative movement, in the Trump
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movement, Marjorie Taylor Greene being one, you being another, Tucker Carlson, Candace
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You even have people at the Daily Wire now, like when the Israelis attacked a Catholic church,
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you know, on purpose, saying, wait a minute, like, I'm going to get off this train now.
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So there's only so long that you can sustain a gigantic breach in public opinion, on the
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one hand, and what the members of Congress do, and especially in a primary, if you have
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growing sentiment that I wouldn't even call it anti-Israel, I would call it more, like,
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opposed to the idea that we're supposed to be tied at the hip to this foreign country.
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And, you know, younger conservatives have not been steeped in this.
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Israel really hasn't been talked about for the last 10, 15 years.
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This is really the first time a lot of people are getting a look, not just at Israel, but
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People are watching babies blowing up every day, babies starving, and the Israelis doing
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what they're doing in Gaza, but also bombing Lebanon and Yemen and Syria, and then cajoling
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It seems like it's the only thing that the D.C. class talks about.
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And as a Jew, I actually do worry about how this is going to spark anti-Semitism in the
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sense that people are going to start to wondering, like, why is our government so controlled?
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And also, I just want to say, Matt, because in some ways, this is the most important thing
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As you know, I was very vocal in denouncing big tech censorship, Biden administration
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I absolutely supported that lawsuit to sue the Biden administration to bring it to the Supreme
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Court, that it was a full frontal assault on the First Amendment to coerce and threaten
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big tech companies to remove dissent on COVID, Ukraine, the 2020 election.
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It's why I'm at Rumble, because they're a free speech platform.
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But what we're seeing now is a full frontal assault on free speech in defense of Israel.
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I mean, the Trump administration is demanding a radical expansion of hate speech codes to wildly
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expand what anti-Semitism is under this new definition called the International Holocaust
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Remembrance Act, so that now on major college campuses—
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You cannot—you're barred from saying—this is a—you're barred—okay, this is a Trump
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presidency that was devoted to restoring free speech and opposing censorship.
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You are now barred from saying that you think that what the Israelis are doing in Gaza
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is similar to what the Germans did in World War II.
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You can compare the United States government to Nazism.
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You can compare any other state that you—any other country you want on the earth.
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You cannot say that you think Israel is an intrinsically racist endeavor because it's
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You can call the United States racist because it, you know, genocided Native Americans or whatever,
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You're free to say that about your own country.
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Or China, you can say it about Iran, Peru, Indonesia, whoever you want.
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And you can also not say that you believe that the Bible teaches that the Jews played
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a major role in the death of Christ, which is a teaching that many, many Christians for
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I'm not saying you have to agree with any of those views, but how can you be banned,
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You'll be expelled if you're a student for expressing any of those views.
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There's a stranglehold on free speech in the name of this foreign country, not even to
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protect our own people, but in the name of protecting this foreign country.
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When I was trying to get senators to vote to confirm me, they were giving me heat on
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this because I voted against some adherents in the House to this definition for those
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Not because I want to give any comfort to the anti-Semites, but because we've just gone
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through what we've gone through with the Biden administration, where they get an inch
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And you look at a definition like that, and it's almost meme-ish.
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You're like, oh, how many products made in Israel do I need to have in my house to prove
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What is a sufficient amount of lamb's blood to pay it on the door with my allegiance to
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And I'm sitting here getting grilled by the senator on this, who ultimately said they would
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But I'm thinking to myself, who is having you ask these questions?
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From some Midwestern state where this can't be central to what your constituents want
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in an attorney general, but it is so in the forefront of their mind.
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And I'll conclude our discussion on the Israel thing with this.
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You can't have this kind of a disconnect where the political representatives are so beholden
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to an ideology or any viewpoint that is becoming increasingly toxic to the body politic at an
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And you will start to see people emerge and say, vote for me because I will not betray you
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And when that happens, I think that, like Glenn said, some really powerful people are going
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00:25:52.600
One of my other favorite things to talk about is the Russia hoax.
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I really feel like I peaked during the Russia hoax.
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And I remember those days where Paul Ryan and Trey Gowdy were telling us to trust Robert
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We should just hope Donald Trump hadn't committed any crimes.
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And if people just started to ask kind of basic questions about the Russia hoax, like,
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And how are the mechanisms of intelligence collection being validated?
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If you ask those questions, it was like, you're Vladimir Putin's lawyer.
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And now, I mean, I think history is going to reflect on this and say, you had this batch
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of people in the Obama administration that were very dedicated to the Russia hoax, you
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know, before and after they ever found the first fact that could have been tied to it.
00:26:43.800
And then, you know, you had a reckoning thereafter where during the Trump administration, some
00:26:50.220
people who hadn't spoken up previously feel like they've got enough of a yellow brick road
00:26:54.640
to have their views platformed with their criticism of that effort.
00:27:01.200
But what's just crazy is the way those of us who ask questions were vilified.
00:27:10.180
How do you bring the new revelations into perspective?
00:27:13.800
I think the new revelations are helpful to make people who still have residual doubts
00:27:21.460
about whether Russiagate was a gigantic fraud and hoax perpetrated by the CIA and the FBI
00:27:27.060
It's now a little bit easier to convince more people that there's no doubt that that's exactly
00:27:31.160
what happened, that the CIA and the FBI manufactured a complete lie and then fed it to the Washington
00:27:40.320
And they gave themselves pollsters for it and celebrated themselves.
00:27:44.840
But, you know, Matt, the thing is, like, you could tell from the beginning the whole thing
00:27:51.660
Why would the Kremlin have to conspire with Donald Trump and his campaign officials to hack into
00:27:56.680
the DNC and Podesta's email in order to give them to WikiLeaks and have stuff that's incriminating
00:28:04.400
There was also never any proof that Putin ordered it, that he did it in order to help get Donald
00:28:09.860
Nobody thought Donald Trump was going to have a chance against Hillary Clinton.
00:28:14.280
And so there was all this huge evidentiary holes in it from the start, on top of which
00:28:19.740
the way the story was being presented to the American public is exactly how so many lies
00:28:26.880
So many other times, the CIA and the FBI whisper to their favorite servants of The
00:28:32.440
Washington Post and The New York Times, demanding anonymity, which they then get, the things
00:28:38.360
The Washington Post, The New York Times, NBC News, they all go around repeating it.
00:28:41.720
And especially because they were so unified in their hatred of Trump, they were absolutely
00:28:45.380
determined to have this be the thing that destroys him.
00:28:49.040
And no evidence is needed by any of these so-called journalists.
00:28:52.620
When journalistic skepticism of the CIA and the FBI is as foundational to being a journalist
00:28:59.780
And it wasn't just this time, so many other times as well.
00:29:02.400
But the other thing, Matt, is that the whole conspiracy theory from the start was basically
00:29:10.500
One, that Trump officials conspired, colluded, and collaborated with the Kremlin to break
00:29:20.640
And then the other one was even more important, I think, to this conspiracy theory was that
00:29:24.700
Vladimir Putin had blackmail power over Donald Trump, sexually, financially, personally, as
00:29:31.200
And as a result, if Donald Trump got elected, it would basically be Putin who was running
00:29:39.440
And the two policies that he implements toward Russia are, number one, to flood Ukraine with
00:29:45.120
lethal offensive arms, which Obama didn't want to do, but Trump was pressured to do
00:29:50.720
He flooded Ukraine with offensive arms, like the most threatening thing you could do to
00:29:55.500
And then number two, he set out to destroy Nord Stream 2, which was the basis of future
00:30:01.620
It enabled them to sell cheap natural gas to Germany and then to Europe.
00:30:04.120
And Trump told Europe, if you keep buying gas through Nord Stream 2 from Russia, we're not
00:30:11.860
So basically, Trump attacked the national security of Russia and the financial prosperity
00:30:17.040
And not one journalist ever stopped to think, huh, how do I reconcile with the claim that
00:30:22.320
he's captive to Russia, that he's controlled by Russia?
00:30:25.960
And finally, I will just say that on this core conspiracy of, you know, that Trump or his
00:30:32.580
son or his family or his key campaign officials conspire with the Russians, they
00:30:38.380
set out, they unleashed Robert Mueller, who they said was the greatest and most honorable
00:30:43.660
He had a so-called dream team of prosecutors, unlimited resources, unlimited subpoena power.
00:30:49.340
It drowned our politics in this conspiracy theory.
00:30:51.180
He comes back, closes the investigation without indicting even one American for collaborating
00:30:56.260
with Russia, and then writes a report saying, I looked, but I did not find any evidence
00:31:00.860
establishing this link between the Russians and Trump in order to interfere in the 26th
00:31:07.000
And to this day, if you go and ask the New York Times, the Washington Post, they'll say,
00:31:12.520
And they're running cover now to try and claim that Tulsi's documents that she released,
00:31:16.180
that she declassified, even though they obviously fortify the fact that it's a hoax.
00:31:22.900
They're so invested in this fraud that they perpetrated.
00:31:28.380
But Russiagate really is and was a religion to the corporate media and to a liberal America.
00:31:32.960
And I don't ever see that being really changed.
00:31:36.540
Well, and the media played their role in information laundering because they're not going to be
00:31:41.520
critical of what they're fed if they're just so hungry to be fed anything, right?
00:31:46.460
There's an ecosystem where they're all there frothing for information from these Intel officials,
00:31:52.220
who, by the way, a bunch of whom they want to go work for these media companies afterwards.
00:32:00.700
It is the exact same dynamic we just described on the think tanks and members of Congress
00:32:05.600
with the Intel officials and then the frothing media entities that are engaged in this information spin-up.
00:32:12.560
And what, like, regular folks that are upset about this one, I was like,
00:32:15.640
well, you know, when someone's getting thrown in jail,
00:32:17.860
which is a very challenging prosecutorial decision you've got to make based on the likelihood of a conviction.
00:32:21.960
And for you to get kind of the actualization where more people do, in fact, acknowledge what this was,
00:32:31.540
even if at the time they were bamboozled, you have to have a narrator.
00:32:36.600
And that narrator can't be Director Gabbard, as good a job as she's done.
00:32:41.020
Like, you have to have the person on the inside explaining how this occurred.
00:32:46.120
And based on the documents that CIA Director Ratcliffe and DNI Gabbard have released,
00:32:52.620
those people do exist because they keep referencing these career folks.
00:32:57.240
But if we have to hear that narrator, like, forget the bloodlust of whether you want to, like, see people behind bars.
00:33:04.780
Is that better done in a courtroom or in a congressional hearing?
00:33:08.040
If we think about how both have been used to create a historical reckoning,
00:33:13.960
where does Glenn Greenwald want to see the best narration we have of the worst features of this hoax?
00:33:21.580
In a perfect world, which is not the world we live in,
00:33:25.040
if you are inside the national security state and the intelligence community
00:33:28.920
and you purposely abuse the basically unlimited powers that they have
00:33:33.400
to interfere in an American election, to manipulate the electorate,
00:33:36.840
to try and get your colleague Hillary Clinton elected to the presidency
00:33:40.200
and destroy the Trump campaign and the Trump presidency,
00:33:43.640
I do think those ought to be crimes that are held,
00:33:47.840
The problem is we've created so many barriers and impunities and immunities
00:33:52.800
for people who work in the intelligence community who,
00:33:55.680
I mean, I thought, you know, Bush officials should have been prosecuted for
00:33:58.840
authorizing warrantless spying on American citizens in violation for the law.
00:34:02.460
But everyone agreed, no, no, we can't do anything like that or for torture.
00:34:05.640
There's so many different layers of protections that these people have
00:34:13.340
And the problem is if you didn't have an extremely strong case legally or factually,
00:34:17.820
you risk vindicating these people if you can't overcome the gigantic hurdle
00:34:22.080
of reasonable doubt in order to get a conviction.
00:34:24.740
And that would end up having the opposite effect.
00:34:29.920
the Republicans control the Congress, get people who are both the wrongdoers,
00:34:34.880
but then also people inside these agencies who will tell the story of what they understand
00:34:40.620
And that will bring a lot more public attention to it as well.
00:34:47.060
Someone credible needs to be sitting in those chairs with the cameras on explaining
00:34:51.700
to the American people why they were deceived and why this deception was accomplished
00:35:03.600
And I sometimes debate the role that the Russia hoax played in the conflict
00:35:09.320
that we currently find ourselves in Ukraine in this proxy war.
00:35:13.460
And I think NATO expansion without a real vision for NATO in the modern times
00:35:20.860
is a contributing factor to what we're observing.
00:35:24.980
And I also think that just when the Afghanistan war wound down,
00:35:29.080
there was a place that the money launderers and weapons launderers
00:35:35.560
And I do kind of think the winding down of Afghanistan
00:35:38.560
and the winding up of our involvement in Ukraine are linked.
00:35:41.220
But others have made the argument to me, and I don't know that I agree with this,
00:35:46.200
but that what the Russia hoax did to kind of position Vladimir Putin
00:35:52.120
as this villain trying to manipulate our elections
00:35:56.920
somehow led us to this moment where we're more involved than we otherwise would be.
00:36:03.680
I absolutely believe that from the very beginning,
00:36:06.420
my concern with Russiagate as a journalist was that it was an evidence-free,
00:36:12.200
So obviously, as a journalist, I'm looking at this and saying this is false.
00:36:15.540
My bigger concern, just as kind of an American, a citizen of the world, whatever,
00:36:19.460
is that there were a lot of people inside the Obama administration,
00:36:23.920
people like Victoria Nguyen and definitely Hillary Clinton,
00:36:27.040
who believed that Russia needed to be confronted far more aggressively
00:36:34.040
He didn't confront them with the 2014 annexation of Ukraine.
00:36:38.900
He got criticized by the Hillary Clintons and Victoria Nulands of the world
00:36:42.780
And they were determined to significantly raise the antagonism and hatred level
00:36:49.020
among American people toward Russia by telling them,
00:36:52.580
The reason you got Donald Trump is because of Vladimir Putin.
00:36:59.160
And basically, you know, when Mike Flynn got prosecuted for doing nothing other than
00:37:04.480
picking up the phone and calling his counterpart in Russia to basically say,
00:37:10.940
We're going to have we're going to try and have a better relationship.
00:37:13.520
People became petrified of even talking to the Russians.
00:37:17.740
And the United States and Russia are still the two largest nuclear powers on the planet.
00:37:22.080
We have, you know, thousands of intercontinental ballistic missiles
00:37:26.180
that are nuclear tipped aimed at each other's cities on hair trigger warnings
00:37:29.120
to go to war against Russia, which is basically what we're doing in Ukraine,
00:37:34.840
But I absolutely believe that one of the main reasons the public got on board to do it
00:37:39.260
was because this endless propaganda about Vladimir Putin and Russiagate
00:37:50.740
They were hardcore on funding the war in Ukraine.
00:37:54.560
And I think that was very much in the air, this idea that he got demonized.
00:37:59.660
We had 15, 20 years of president saying Putin is a shrewd, rational person.
00:38:06.440
And then overnight it became, no, actually, he's the gravest danger to the United States.
00:38:11.480
And a lot of older Americans still think of Russia as an enemy from the Cold War.
00:38:15.800
And I do believe that's a major factor while we got into this now four-year war
00:38:24.000
I remember when they initially did the sanctions package for Belarus and Russia,
00:38:29.880
there were only three members who voted against that on the Republican side.
00:38:34.180
You know, Thomas Massey, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and myself.
00:38:37.340
And we went from that moment, the kind of low watermark of opposition to U.S.
00:38:43.280
involvement in this conflict, to, like, by the time I left, Glenn, half the Republican
00:38:47.980
conference in every vote on this conflict was voting against continued U.S.
00:38:56.040
And I don't even know that these boomers in Congress came to that position out of anything
00:39:04.080
Because you had a lot of Republican primary voters out there who couldn't point to Ukraine
00:39:14.420
They saw, like you said, a country around them that was getting worse in terms of their own
00:39:19.680
And there was fatigue after Afghanistan and Iraq and Syria.
00:39:24.800
And so I think that the worm has really turned on that.
00:39:28.540
And what you don't hear anymore also is, like, this is what we have to do in the front lines
00:39:37.680
When, like, you know, Biden or whomever, Jake Sullivan would puff up, oh, for democracy.
00:39:45.260
They're lifting people off the streets and forcing them to fight.
00:39:49.260
They're making elements of faith and media and political opposition illegal.
00:39:56.400
And I'm thinking, what, this is the front lines of democracy?
00:39:59.500
And now I see that U.S. policy is to have the 50% tariff on India as a secondary sanction
00:40:11.520
So now, in defense of democracies that don't hold elections, that cancel the rights of media
00:40:18.460
and opposition groups, we are literally creating an economic sanction against the biggest democracy
00:40:28.260
That's incredibly of huge strategic importance.
00:40:34.760
But, you know, I think one thing that is important is you are right that a lot of Republicans turned
00:40:44.020
There were maybe 6,000 people on the first funding bill in the House Republican Caucus who
00:40:48.400
voted against it, you being one of them, obviously.
00:40:50.120
And I think 11 Republican senators and then that opposition grew.
00:40:53.940
One of the things that I think is worth noting, and I think one of the major reasons that it
00:40:57.080
happened was at the time, Tucker Carlson was in the 8 o'clock spot on Fox News.
00:41:01.500
He was by far the most popular and watched cable news host in the country.
00:41:05.260
And pretty much every night he was on TV ranting and raving about the stupidity and how nonsensical
00:41:10.500
it is that we're sending billions and billions of dollars to Ukraine, when obviously it's
00:41:14.760
a war about who governs various provinces in eastern Ukraine.
00:41:20.060
And I remember when Tucker got fired from Fox, and I think part of it was that.
00:41:23.380
A lot of Republicans, your colleagues, ran to Axios and Politico anonymously and said,
00:41:30.440
oh, we're so happy that Tucker got fired because now it's so much easier for us to fund the
00:41:36.600
He was the one of many people, but he, in particular, making it so difficult.
00:41:43.960
We're now seven months into the Trump presidency.
00:41:46.460
I do absolutely believe that Trump wanted to and continues to want to end the war.
00:41:50.160
And I do think that he's frustrated that Russia won't take his directions to stop because
00:41:57.040
Russia invested, you know, they've lost hundreds of thousands of young Russian men.
00:42:05.780
And they believe they have an existential national security interest in creating a buffer between
00:42:09.800
themselves and NATO and themselves in the West.
00:42:12.080
And they're not going to just stop because Trump tells them to.
00:42:16.100
But the current position is, and you never know if it's just Trump negotiating or not,
00:42:19.940
is like, we're going to continue to fund Ukraine because we have to help them in this war.
00:42:26.440
But I do think that's going to be a lot less than it was before.
00:42:29.600
And a big part of that is, and this is what we began by talking about, the America first
00:42:33.840
ideology was very much about this, like stop funding the wars of foreign countries.
00:42:37.960
And I do think Trump and a lot of people in the White House and Congress very much want
00:42:43.200
They just don't apply the same mentality to Israel.
00:42:46.120
But I think it was so important to get that message out there about Ukraine, like we need
00:42:51.160
to stop sending all our money to these foreign wars.
00:42:53.420
It's breaking our country because that has helped with every instance where we're doing
00:42:58.320
I think Trump was politically pressured not to bomb Iran for more than one night because
00:43:10.100
Like we shouldn't send any more money to Ukraine.
00:43:15.480
You know, the reality is Russia is much bigger and more powerful.
00:43:21.420
But but also just one quick point, which is that the time that elapsed between our leaving
00:43:26.060
Afghanistan and the war in Ukraine beginning was about eight months.
00:43:29.140
So the whole military industrial complex got to take a little break, got to breathe a little
00:43:33.880
And then right away, there was these huge contracts flowing in again for all their missiles and
00:43:37.760
weapons and tanks and everything to send to Ukraine.
00:43:45.640
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There is one other area of the world I want to discuss with you, Glenn, and it's one you cover closely.
00:44:46.660
And for those who don't know, Glenn was really one of the original reporters who showcased the corruption of the Lula administration
00:44:54.700
and probably one of the reasons why Lula had to face some consequences as a result of his conduct.
00:45:00.240
But now you have Bolsonaro as this reemergent, I guess never really went away, but certainly the popular support for Bolsonaro is palpable and noticeable.
00:45:17.280
Now the United States has issued sanctions against Justice Marais, the individual who's kind of acting like the dictator of Brazil.
00:45:26.280
But at the same time, Lula seems to be more popular than ever because the retaliatory economic consequences that were applied to the whole country
00:45:36.520
seem to have constituted some sort of base for Lula.
00:45:45.120
Yeah, just to quickly clarify, I did a reporting in 2019 and 2020 about corruption inside the prosecutorial office that put Lula in jail.
00:45:54.320
And then the Supreme Court used my reporting to let Lula out of jail.
00:45:59.400
We got this huge leak of documents from Marais' office, the Supreme Court judge that has been censoring,
00:46:05.020
imprisoning political opponents, putting them in exile, that showed massive abuses of power.
00:46:10.760
We had documents that came right from his chambers by a very, very whistleblower.
00:46:15.320
And we were able to show things like he would wake up one day and say, I want that magazine closed.
00:46:19.340
Go find some evidence that would justify closing it.
00:46:21.880
And they would come back and they would say, we looked everywhere.
00:46:25.700
It was like a right-wing Probable Snorow magazine or website.
00:46:27.980
And he would then send a message back saying, be creative.
00:46:31.940
This is a person, I can't overstate what a tyrant he is.
00:46:36.280
It's really like kind of a mental illness at this point.
00:46:38.560
Like he's so invested in his own righteousness and also in the determination to prove that his power is without limits,
00:46:54.380
They got some benefits because Lula raised the sovereignty flag.
00:47:00.620
And of course, that's going to create some positive feelings toward Lula.
00:47:03.680
It's like when any country gets attacked from an outside country, they unify behind their leader.
00:47:07.940
The problem is, is that these tariffs and these sanctions are going to harm Brazil's economy very severely.
00:47:17.280
And 14 and 15 months from now, when Lula runs for re-election, Bolsonaro is barred from running, but we'll see who he runs against.
00:47:24.200
When people are suffering economically, when they've lost huge numbers of jobs because of tariffs and sanctions,
00:47:29.220
and when the economy starts crashing, no one's going to remember, oh yeah, I remember that Trump put sanctions or tariffs.
00:47:39.400
And Lula really wants to find a way out of this conflict with the United States and negotiate a deal because he knows he's going to put him in trouble.
00:47:49.300
The problem is that Brazilians is a freak and a maniac, and he doesn't want a deal.
00:47:54.860
And so even every time they do something, the tariffs or sanctions, he goes further.
00:47:58.480
He is now at the point where he's ordering an American social media company, Rumble, to censor American citizens inside the United States for ordering them to turn over data about American citizens of the United States and threatening Rumble with massive fines if they don't comply, which of course they're not going to.
00:48:15.140
He's deliberately provoking the United States, the United States government to show that he doesn't care.
00:48:21.720
And, you know, I was at first a little bit doubtful, even though I do think Marais is a maniac.
00:48:27.720
Like, why should the United States be interfering in Brazilian politics, punishing a judge because he's internally repressive?
00:48:34.380
But I do think it becomes justified when that censorship, when those punishments start getting directed at American companies, American citizens, even legal residents in the United States, which he's been doing for months now.
00:48:46.760
And, you know, it's kind of like Ukraine and Russia.
00:48:49.720
In one sense, you can decide who you think is the just party.
00:48:53.460
But at the end of the day, Russia is so much more powerful than Ukraine that they're going to win.
00:48:57.340
The United States is infinitely more powerful than Brazil with the dollar as the reserve currency.
00:49:01.440
And Brazil can keep trying to pretend that they're willing to fight the United States.
00:49:06.320
We'll get a little popularity, raising the banner of sovereignty.
00:49:09.900
But at the end of the day, this is a major crisis, a major problem in Brazil.
00:49:13.660
We don't talk about it in the United States because it really doesn't affect the United States.
00:49:16.080
But in Brazil, it's by far and away the most talked about issue is the conflict with the United States.
00:49:22.020
So they're going to have to find ways out of that.
00:49:24.900
This persecution of Bolsonaro is going to have to end.
00:49:28.560
And because if not, I know for sure that the United States government, the executive branch,
00:49:33.360
tends to continue to to intends to continue to crush Brazil the more defiant they become.
00:49:39.720
How long until we can accurately call Brazil a dictatorship?
00:49:42.840
I am very careful about, you know, words like that.
00:49:49.740
But at the same time, I'll just tell you, you know, there are huge numbers of Bolsonaro supporters,
00:49:56.740
journalists, elected members of Congress, senators, bloggers, activists who are either in prison because of Marais,
00:50:06.260
They're all banned from the Internet and censored.
00:50:11.560
And when they go into exile, when they leave Brazil, he tries to put them on the Interpol list.
00:50:18.680
The United States, even under Joe Biden, refused his extradition request because the United States said,
00:50:29.720
The Spanish government also told Marais, we're not extraditing.
00:50:33.640
And then in retaliation, he actually released a drug dealer that Spain wants extradited, kind of as punishment.
00:50:41.120
He asked Interpol to put Bolsonaro supporters on the list.
00:50:45.960
These are not the kind of crimes that we're here to to govern.
00:50:49.320
And everybody I know in Brazil is afraid of him, is afraid of speaking out against him.
00:50:54.100
I mean, I do it because I feel like I have a lot of extra protection being American, having a big profile internationally.
00:51:01.860
But when you get to that point where people are genuinely petrified of criticizing government officials,
00:51:07.000
and for good reason, that you wind up in jail, you wind up having your life destroyed,
00:51:10.460
he freezes people's bank accounts, their assets, and there's so many people in exile.
00:51:15.180
You do get to the point where I think you can say Brazil is under judicial tyranny or judicial dictatorship,
00:51:20.700
even though I'm very hesitant to use words like that.
00:51:24.060
But we're getting to the point, if we're not already there, where it's appropriate.
00:51:28.860
Glenn Greenwald, he is the host of System Update on Rumble,
00:51:32.640
someone I follow closely when he speaks about matters of the world and access to information.
00:51:37.780
I always get a lot smarter every time we have a chance to chat, and greatly appreciate you coming on the show.
00:51:42.960
It's always great to see you, Matt. Thanks for having me.
00:51:48.120
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