The Great America Show - March 13, 2023


EVERY SINGLE INTELLIGENCE AGENCY HAS KNOWN THE ORIGINS OF COVID FOR ALMOST 3 YEARS AND COVERED IT UP TO MANIPULATE AN ELECTION

Hosted by
Lou Dobbs John Fawcett
Mentioned
Rick Grinnell Hunter Biden Yellen Avril Haines Adam Schiff Jeff Zucker Trump Jennifer Granholm Michael Turner Kevin McCarthy Nancy Pelosi Mark Warner Marco Rubio James Comer Elon Musk Jim Himes Joe Biden Russ Tice Fauci Gang
SEN. BLACKBURN： CHINA HASN’T BEEN HELD TO ACCOUNT FOR COVID & JW’S FITTON： BIG CORPORATE MEDIA ENTITIES HAVE CEDED JOURNALISM TO MARXISTS AMERICA IS A FULL FLEDGED SURVEILLANCE STATE SAYS FORMER NSA INTELLIGENCE ANALYST AND WHISTLEBLOWER RUSS TICE

Episode Stats


Length

26 minutes

Words per minute

137.11

Word count

3,688

Sentence count

233

Harmful content

Misogyny

2

sentences flagged

Hate speech

2

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this week's show, we discuss the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, the Biden administration's handling of the Ukraine crisis, and the revelation that the Department of Homeland Security has its own domestic spying agency. Our guest today is Rick Grinnell, who served as Director of National Intelligence in the Trump administration and as U.S. Ambassador to Germany.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Hello, everybody, and welcome to The Great America Show.
00:00:03.140 I'm Lou Dobbs, and thanks for being with us.
00:00:05.960 We begin this week with uncertainty aplenty.
00:00:09.380 In Ukraine, Russian missile strikes have hit power stations and other infrastructure as well as civilian targets.
00:00:17.140 Russian troops have all but encircled the eastern Ukraine city of Bakhmut.
00:00:22.240 The Ukrainians claim they've held much of the city amid reports they've also blunted the Russian attacks on the city to take control.
00:00:30.360 The Russians are taking heavy casualties in this war, and it's clear the Russian forces mean to retake Bakhmut and the Donetsk region.
00:00:39.920 And investors in U.S. markets are understandably unsettled today.
00:00:45.160 Investors anxious in face of the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, the second biggest bank collapse in 14 years.
00:00:52.500 Treasury Secretary Yellen says there will be no federal bailout of the bank, the bank's big money owners.
00:00:59.340 Squealing now for that bailout that Yellen says won't be forthcoming.
00:01:03.940 And Yellen maintains there will be no such federal giveaway to owners, but they will back up uninsured depositors of the bank.
00:01:13.440 The big money owners are squealing for that bailout, but Secretary Yellen maintains there will be no such federal giveaway to the owners.
00:01:21.540 The Fed and the FDIC can also backstop uninsured depositors, which they may well do in order to prevent runs on smaller banks and prevent a contagion across the country.
00:01:42.220 There are reports an auction is underway to buy the failed bank, Elon Musk reportedly offering to buy SVB.
00:01:50.400 But there's no reason not to expect considerable downward pressure and volatility in the markets today.
00:01:56.840 In the Mideast, Saudi Arabia has clearly and dramatically pivoted away from the Biden regime, and it is now aligning with China and Russia in favor of Iran.
00:02:08.960 China has brokered a deal for Saudi Arabia to restore diplomatic relations with Iran.
00:02:16.300 The Biden foreign policy is, in other words, in flames in Europe with the Russian war on Ukraine and being shredded in the Mideast and in suspense in the Asia-Pacific region,
00:02:28.320 where China is on the march threatening to invade Taiwan.
00:02:31.720 All this is the Biden regime has admitted the China virus originated in Wuhan in a virology lab there supported in part by Dr. Fauci and the NIH,
00:02:45.580 the origin of the virus confirmed by the intelligence agency of the Department of Energy.
00:02:51.560 As I said, uncertainty abounds.
00:02:54.360 Destabilization is underway, it seems, in nearly every quarter of the globe.
00:02:58.520 Our guest today is a highly regarded diplomat and national security expert.
00:03:03.780 Rick Grinnell served as director of national intelligence in the Trump administration and as U.S. ambassador to Germany.
00:03:11.520 Great to have you back with us, Ambassador Grinnell, and welcome.
00:03:15.420 Let's start with the latest revelation that the Department of Homeland Security also turns out to have its own domestic spying agency.
00:03:24.740 Your thoughts, Ambassador?
00:03:25.820 Look, when you look at the details of this program, and I've got to be very careful not to reveal any classified information,
00:03:34.400 but let me just say two things about it.
00:03:37.340 One, I believe in transparency.
00:03:39.900 I think that it's woefully lacking in Washington, D.C.
00:03:44.500 Transparency is not political, not partisan.
00:03:48.040 You're not helping one side or the other.
00:03:50.660 You're helping the American people when you're transparent.
00:03:52.840 And so I've long said that the intelligence community has a credibility problem.
00:03:58.840 And I think Avril Haines, our current DNI, really needs to tackle this, be honest, and come forward.
00:04:05.040 We've seen Republicans and Democrats going after Avril Haines because she's not transparent. 1.00
00:04:11.980 This program in particular really needs the DHS secretary, needs the DNI to come forward and explain it.
00:04:20.280 Parts of it, let me just say, I've got to be super careful here, but let me say it this way.
00:04:29.100 Having perfect information is the goal.
00:04:33.460 So the more information we can get, the better.
00:04:35.640 Obviously, as I was talking about transparency is important, but when you're collecting information, intelligence, whatever you want to call it, from people who have a history of being involved in nefarious activities, it can be very important.
00:04:53.560 But obviously, in America, this needs to be a transparent process.
00:04:59.800 It does not need to be secretive.
00:05:01.600 There needs to be oversight from Capitol Hill, aggressive oversight.
00:05:07.360 And, of course, each individual should have their own attorney presence.
00:05:11.020 Well, I think that makes all the sense in the world, Rick, and I would endorse your view.
00:05:19.560 What I'm having trouble with right now is understanding the level of oversight from our Congress and from our Senate, because it seems woefully inadequate to the desires of the public, the American public, and their right to know.
00:05:35.880 So the congressional committees, and I'm talking about everything from intelligence to the oversight committee itself, judiciary, subcommittees, are being told to go to hell by the Biden administration and absolute resistance against any meaningful oversight.
00:05:55.560 Your thoughts about the state of current oversight and where we need to go?
00:06:02.900 Well, I think you just hit it on the head.
00:06:04.740 As I said, there's a trick that the administrations do, and I really tried to get around it, but it happens to be the rule, basically, for Congress.
00:06:17.080 There's this thing, as you know, called the Gang of Eight, and it's the leaders.
00:06:21.180 It's the eight leaders from the House and the Senate for leadership and for the Intelligence Committee.
00:06:27.400 Just the leadership, eight people out of 535 members of the House and Senate.
00:06:32.980 Eight people get briefed, and so the trick that the intelligence community does is that people like Averill Haynes will say, well, this is a huge concern.
00:06:44.600 The media are focused on it sometimes.
00:06:47.140 The right or the left are concerned about something.
00:06:49.780 So she'll call a meeting with just the Gang of Eight to brief the Gang of Eight. 0.98
00:06:55.880 Now, the problem is, is that when you give information to just them, it doesn't trickle down to the oversight committees.
00:07:03.420 They can use it how they will.
00:07:05.880 They can say things like, Adam shifted for years.
00:07:09.200 I've seen something that you haven't, so you need to shut up because I know more.
00:07:13.280 So they manipulate the process.
00:07:16.420 And lastly, I'll say this.
00:07:17.640 In practice, the Gang of Eight is a real problem because most of the time, the actual elected official doesn't show up.
00:07:26.880 They send their chief counsel or their intelligence legislative assistant or their committee director.
00:07:34.580 That's a big problem, and I can tell you from the congressional side of things, from the executive branch, that many times our congressional liaisons at the department, at DNI or CIA or any of the intelligence agencies would get extremely frustrated because they couldn't get to the member.
00:07:58.060 And that's got to change there.
00:08:00.100 If you're going to sit on the intelligence committee, you can't pull an Adam Schiff and pretend like you have full information when you are really articulating partial information, partisan information, and not being transparent with the American public.
00:08:15.240 Yeah, and just to give the audience some sense of what we're talking about, on the current Gang of Eight, we're talking about Michael Turner, Republican in the House, Jim Himes, Mark Warner, Marco Rubio, Kevin McCarthy, Hakeem Jeffries.
00:08:33.380 That's a small band of elites with which the intelligence community works.
00:08:39.480 It is, to me, a terrible, terrible bargain that the Congress and the Senate have made.
00:08:46.820 The leadership, I understand, and the concerns on the part of the intelligence community about maintaining classified information.
00:08:55.340 But to your point about transparency, it's anything but, and it certainly doesn't seem to me, to comport to the ideals of oversight.
00:09:05.500 That's exactly the point, Lou.
00:09:07.120 I think you hit it on the head.
00:09:08.220 It is not what the oversight committees are charged to do.
00:09:12.900 They have a responsibility to dig deep on the agencies that they cover, and they're doing that to make sure that money is well spent, that programs are working, that successfully, you know, identifying a program gets, then that program gets more money.
00:09:33.700 If a program is not successful, you cut the money, and this is the type of oversight that has to be done.
00:09:39.640 Remember, in the last Congress, one-fourth of the Gang of Eight was Schiff and Pelosi.
00:09:47.800 These are not the people that you would typically pick to be overseeing the intelligence community, which is a vast, as you know better than anyone, a vast enterprise, including, by the way, just mentioning the Department of Homeland Security.
00:10:07.220 We find out there is a domestic intelligence program underway.
00:10:10.220 We find out that because of the announcements from the administration on the issue of the origin of the China virus being in, of all places, China, in point of fact, Wuhan, China.
00:10:26.720 The intelligence department resides in the energy department.
00:10:33.820 This intelligence agency that files this report, I did not know that energy had an intel operation, and I think most Americans didn't.
00:10:45.800 What do you think?
00:10:47.400 Well, you would be surprised at how many intelligence agencies are embedded.
00:10:53.780 Let me just say that.
00:10:54.900 Look, I feel very passionate about this subject because I hope that our listeners here will go to the D&I website, pull up the April 30, 2020 statement that I negotiated.
00:11:13.340 And remember now, I was acting D&I at the beginning of COVID and through the first four months of it.
00:11:21.060 And it's incredibly important to look at this statement because this is what we call an IC-wide statement, meaning every single intelligence agency signed off on this statement.
00:11:35.340 And I negotiated it.
00:11:36.460 It's incredibly difficult to get done, to have every single intelligence agency sign off on it.
00:11:43.100 And in this statement, in April of 2020, we made clear that China was responsible and that it was in Wuhan, at the Wuhan lab. 0.65
00:11:58.440 And it was either, and this is what the intelligence community believed, either an accident in the lab or an animal-to-human transmission from the lab.
00:12:08.800 And either way, whether it was an injected animal or a sloppy process that Wuhan had underway or an accident in the lab, either way, it was Wuhan and it was the lab. 0.62
00:12:25.960 And then there was a cover-up.
00:12:28.480 And we knew this in April 30, 2020.
00:12:30.820 I hope people will read this.
00:12:32.340 The most frustrating part of the last week for me is the lack of media scrutiny on Jennifer Granholm, who is the Secretary of Energy.
00:12:44.520 No one has asked her, why are you just claiming this today when your entire team or the team at the Department of Energy signed off on the Wuhan responsibility for COVID in April of 2020?
00:13:03.280 We've known this.
00:13:04.840 They didn't want it out in April of 2020 because they had an election to manipulate.
00:13:09.580 That is the fact.
00:13:11.360 I think you're exactly right.
00:13:12.960 And this is not a singular incident.
00:13:17.400 We also, for example, a parallel, I believe, to this is the statement by the FBI in August of 2021 that they had fully investigated January 6th and the protesters, demonstrators on that day and did not find any cohesion,
00:13:37.800 cooperation, cooperation, or any conspiracy to do anything akin to what the January 6th committee declared the protesters to have done.
00:13:50.440 It was settled, actually, by the FBI in August of 2021.
00:13:54.140 But then we have to, for the purpose of the election in 2022, again, the Democrats exploited it mercilessly.
00:14:04.120 And by mercilessly, I'm using the term advisedly.
00:14:07.160 When you look at 900 people who are in the grip of a prisoner of war status because they have crossed Nancy Pelosi and the Marxist left of the Democratic Party.
00:14:19.080 What do you think?
00:14:19.840 It's 100 percent clear that we were not told the full story.
00:14:25.740 Selective footage was done in a primetime special.
00:14:29.300 And we knew this was going to happen because when you have an investigative arm of Congress in a special select investigative committee, you should have a dissenting voice on that committee.
00:14:45.180 It is basic.
00:14:46.840 It's a basic principle of the United States of America to have a dissenting voice.
00:14:51.220 But, Lou, we saw for years this sham committee with no dissenting voice.
00:14:57.720 They hand-selected two Republicans who believed like they did.
00:15:03.700 And so I'm troubled because, you know, look, I travel the world and I meet with world leaders regularly.
00:15:10.040 And the fact of the matter is we have a lot of people who look at what's happening in Washington, D.C., and they say, how can you tell us not to have sham committees if you're doing it?
00:15:23.380 How can you tell us to be more transparent and open with the media when your media literally regurgitates what the regime says?
00:15:33.680 We are ruining our credibility.
00:15:36.820 And I should be more specific.
00:15:38.220 Washington, D.C. types, the political types, the media types, the political class are ruining our reputation and our credibility by having this scam system where reporters pretend to be unbiased but they're totally partisan, where we have investigative committees that have no dissenting voice, completely un-American.
00:16:04.080 And then we find out two years later that this huge committee never looked at all of the footage and didn't release it to the American people.
00:16:14.380 Shame on reporters in Washington, D.C. for fighting against transparency.
00:16:20.140 It's just puzzling.
00:16:21.900 And I don't understand how they can live with themselves.
00:16:25.240 It's totally un-American not to have a dissenting voice, not to have full transparency.
00:16:31.540 I couldn't agree with you more.
00:16:33.820 And even worse, I believe, is that most of those reporters are pretending to be reporters.
00:16:39.640 They are not fair and balanced.
00:16:41.900 They're not objective.
00:16:43.220 They are bought and paid for by corporate America and Wall Street.
00:16:48.200 And this is not conspiracy talk.
00:16:51.640 This is fact.
00:16:53.760 The corporate owners of national media control what we see and what we hear emanating from our nation's capital.
00:17:02.100 It's that straightforward.
00:17:04.300 Do you dissent?
00:17:06.940 No, I think it's true.
00:17:08.980 We've, you know, really just turned into this system where it's all about clicks.
00:17:17.000 It's all about corporate money.
00:17:19.040 They're very comfortable.
00:17:20.600 The oversight of these corporations, the board, the CEOs, the news directors, they're all very comfortable with presenting one-sided information as long as they can make money.
00:17:35.480 And what needs to happen is that we need to have pushback from real journalists who will stand up and say, look, I'm going to present, you know, facts and fight against both sides.
00:17:52.840 I'm going to be skeptical of both sides.
00:17:55.100 That's journalism.
00:17:56.260 But I got to tell you, Lou, you know, you're an old school journalist, but we have a whole crop of phony reporters in Washington, D.C.
00:18:06.860 who have been trained to not call the sources, to take another outlet's story, rewrite it, and when they get in trouble, because they built their story on a faulty story from another reporter,
00:18:24.400 when they get in trouble and you, you know, call them up and you say, why are you writing that?
00:18:28.880 They say, oh, that wasn't me.
00:18:29.860 Maybe that was ABC News.
00:18:30.820 I just picked up on ABC News.
00:18:33.040 We have a whole class of reporters who think that their sources are other journalists.
00:18:38.280 And rather than picking up the phone and calling the actual person that you're talking about to get the full story, they're lazy.
00:18:47.280 They rewrite stories.
00:18:48.320 They call them rewrites.
00:18:50.140 And I think it's a crisis in journalism.
00:18:52.320 I think that the news editors should be held responsible, and we're going to have to make a change somehow so that there is a responsibility for media companies to give both sides or have the truth or be held liable if they're going to print something that is built on a fallacy.
00:19:16.000 Well, the fallacies are actually being constructed by the editors whom you're describing.
00:19:22.980 Jeff Zucker, in the last day or two, saying that we learned that he had told his news organization at CNN when he was running CNN to dismiss the origins of the Wuhan virus,
00:19:39.020 that it was just basically not a story that was worthy of further discussion.
00:19:44.840 That was Jeff Zucker, as the head of CNN, doing exactly what he was told by his corporate masters, most likely, at AT&T.
00:19:56.000 These are outrages against even the idea of journalism in this country.
00:20:01.280 We no longer have independent objective journalists.
00:20:04.920 We have a group of pretend journalists doing pretend journalism when they particularly look at the White House press corps, Rick.
00:20:12.700 These journalists are acting as if Joe Biden isn't an impaired puppet of the Marxist Dems who lead the Democrat Party.
00:20:23.520 And then they pretend that what he's saying makes perfect sense and that they do not follow up to see what are the consequences of the policies,
00:20:31.380 whether it's an open border to the South, whether it is an impending war involving U.S. troops as well as materiel and weapons in Ukraine.
00:20:43.580 And the list goes on.
00:20:45.220 It is bizarre, and apparently enough of the public are feeding on it to make it sustainable.
00:20:53.940 And as is until the 118th Congress, led by the Republicans, until the point that that Congress convened,
00:21:02.380 everything was just fine in Washington as far as the leadership of both parties seem to think.
00:21:08.540 Yeah, it's really an outrage, and the only word that I can come up with is it's totally un-American.
00:21:15.380 I think that's a great word for it.
00:21:18.240 And now we have the Treasury Department refusing to cooperate with the Republican Oversight investigation of President Biden
00:21:26.500 and his family's business dealings.
00:21:29.220 And we have a Treasury Department that has always turned over suspicious activity reports to the majority,
00:21:37.920 whomever was in charge at the time in Congress.
00:21:42.480 Now the Biden administration has brought the hammer down on that,
00:21:46.100 and they're refusing to give Chairman James Comer and his Oversight Committee
00:21:50.100 those suspicious activity reports as they pertain to Hunter Biden and perhaps the president himself.
00:21:57.180 Well, they get away with it because there used to be a pushback from the media.
00:22:03.020 There used to be a system in place where when one party overstepped, there would be consequences from the media.
00:22:11.060 They would be mocked.
00:22:12.040 They would be highlighted for their lack of transparency.
00:22:14.300 But that doesn't happen.
00:22:15.940 So what we see is the left continues to ratchet up their weaponization of government.
00:22:21.880 And it's really one of those things that is shameful, but it's going to continue to happen until we fix the media.
00:22:31.160 Fix the media and fix the intelligence community.
00:22:34.740 And this is where I'd like to turn to you for some judgment because, as you know,
00:22:38.480 we have coming up deep discussions preparing for under the Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Act.
00:22:50.340 This is going to be a big deal.
00:22:52.420 And what we have seen is that both parties rubber stamp the surveillance powers of the intelligence community,
00:23:00.920 which is permitting domestic spying in point of fact, your thoughts about the 702, the Section 702 being extended once again,
00:23:13.540 and the abuses that we have all lived through over the course of the past seven years.
00:23:18.960 Well, there's a great debate on this subject.
00:23:20.860 What I think that we have to do is use transparency as the only criteria.
00:23:26.200 When we can't be transparent with the American public, then we get laws that are off balance.
00:23:34.960 We get politicians that manipulate the process, and we get big corporations that take advantage.
00:23:40.960 I think that the best sunlight is transparency.
00:23:45.240 And if corporations, if individuals are not going to be transparent,
00:23:48.680 then there needs to be some sort of consequences, and there needs to be a pushback from our elected officials.
00:23:56.200 Well, you know, I think that's terrific, and I think it's spot on.
00:24:02.540 And I'm praying that the leadership of both parties will not simply insist on a rubber stamp of 702,
00:24:10.100 because it is broken, and we've paid a high price.
00:24:13.020 No one, as you well know, a greater price than President Trump,
00:24:17.480 who's been the subject of political persecution for.
00:24:20.440 We're now in the seventh year of it, and there has been no finding of wrongdoing whatsoever.
00:24:25.060 Meanwhile, we learned that four FBI directors have lied.
00:24:29.780 One of the leaders of the original Russian hoax frame-up is himself now charged with collusion with the Russians.
00:24:41.400 It is mind-boggling.
00:24:43.820 Rick, as always, we give our guests here the last word, and we thank you for being with us.
00:24:48.880 And, as always, terrific, terrific insight and perspective.
00:24:54.340 We appreciate it.
00:24:55.340 If you will, your concluding thoughts.
00:24:58.600 Well, thank you very much for this opportunity.
00:25:02.320 I would just take a moment to talk about my work in California.
00:25:06.880 I run an organization called Fix California.
00:25:09.200 We're trying to take advantage of the frustration that many conservatives have in California.
00:25:17.060 We're doing great work by going county by county to clean up the voter rolls,
00:25:22.720 and we have an aggressive campaign to register conservatives.
00:25:27.420 We're currently registering 10,000 conservatives every month in California,
00:25:31.720 and we'd love to have your help.
00:25:33.940 You can go to FixCalifornia.com and learn more.
00:25:38.420 FixCalifornia.com, and we will be reminding the audience of your efforts.
00:25:44.440 And Rick is, of course, the founder and the chairman of the organization.
00:25:49.060 Great work.
00:25:50.460 We expect nothing less in any capacity on the part of Rick Grinnell.
00:25:55.980 Rick, thank you very much for being with us.
00:25:58.020 We appreciate it, and come back soon.
00:26:02.000 All the best, Lou.
00:26:02.700 Thank you.
00:26:03.100 Ambassador Rick Grinnell, and he is the founder and chairman of FixCalifornia.com.
00:26:08.940 That's FixCalifornia.com.
00:26:11.620 Please check it out, and please follow me at Lou Dobbs on Truth Social,
00:26:16.440 at Lou Dobbs on Twitter, and our website at LouDobbs.com.
00:26:21.980 Thanks, everybody, for being with us here tomorrow with all that's going on
00:26:25.880 in our intelligence agencies and around the world.
00:26:28.700 We've asked a former National Security Agency intelligence analyst and whistleblower to join
00:26:35.100 us with his perspective.
00:26:37.060 We'll be doing a number of interviews with former National Security Agency intelligence
00:26:42.400 analyst Russ Tice.
00:26:44.100 We begin this series tomorrow here on The Great America Show.
00:26:47.260 Please join us tomorrow.
00:26:48.940 Until then, thank you, God bless you, and God bless America.