The Great America Show - February 19, 2022


JOHN SOLOMON： REPUBLICANS WANT REAL, SIGNIFICANT CHANGE IN LEADERSHIP


Episode Stats

Length

38 minutes

Words per Minute

172.09189

Word Count

6,575

Sentence Count

422

Hate Speech Sentences

10


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Great America podcast with Lou Dobbs,
00:00:04.200 always in the fight for truth, justice, and yes, our American way of life.
00:00:09.220 And now here he is, the Peabody award-winning voice of truth, the great Lou Dobbs.
00:00:14.560 Hello, everybody, and welcome to the Great America show, truth, justice, and the American way,
00:00:20.940 always. And in Washington, D.C., the Biden administration is now contending
00:00:26.080 with what, President Biden says, is the decision of Vladimir Putin to invade Ukraine,
00:00:32.000 and that the capital of Ukraine, Kiev, is the objective of Russian troops,
00:00:37.300 troops that now almost completely surround Ukraine.
00:00:41.040 President Biden's press conference at the end of the week was remarkable for a number of reasons.
00:00:47.020 President Biden was obviously resigned to the prospect of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
00:00:52.100 And while trying to project strength, President Biden at the same time seemed unsettled as he
00:00:59.100 announced that Putin had made up his mind and had decided to invade. But his remarks were also
00:01:06.020 hesitant and left out any reference to any administration statement or action that would
00:01:13.280 in any way serve as a persuasive deterrent to Putin's threatened invasion.
00:01:19.240 And we are joined now by the inimitable John Solomon, the founder, the chief executive officer of
00:01:29.760 justthenews.com, extraordinary investigative reporter, journalist, and editor, and entrepreneur,
00:01:38.880 I might add. John, great to have you with us, and we appreciate you being here on the Great
00:01:43.960 America show.
00:01:44.800 It's an honor to join you. It really is.
00:01:46.620 I want to, if we may, start straight away with this being Wednesday.
00:01:54.880 We know that President Zelensky of Ukraine said he was being, I believe, sardonic or ironic
00:02:01.140 when he said the invasion is coming Wednesday. But here we are, it's Wednesday, and the White
00:02:06.960 House has been telling us for more than a week that the invasion is imminent, the Russians
00:02:13.240 masked on the border with Ukraine, and nothing yet. What do you make of both Biden and Putin?
00:02:23.620 Well, listen, I think it's true to say that Vladimir Putin has never changed. He's been the
00:02:30.200 same KGB agent, the same wily guy, head fakes and aggression. And what's changed is that America's
00:02:36.680 posture has moved from the peace through strength approach that Donald Trump had that was really
00:02:41.540 born in the Reagan era, the Cold War era, to we're now back to the Obama era, peace through
00:02:46.540 appeasement. If you take a look, the two times that Vladimir Putin decided to threaten Ukraine,
00:02:51.520 our ally in the region, was when Barack Obama and Joe Biden were in charge back in 2014. And by the
00:02:57.120 way, Biden had the Ukraine portfolio. And now Joe Biden, he didn't do it the whole time. Donald Trump
00:03:02.180 was in office. And that's because there, there was a clear policy of how the Trump administration
00:03:07.240 reacted. What we have in the Biden administration is every piece of intelligence we might get on
00:03:14.360 Vladimir Putin, we're putting out there saying, well, if we tell him everything we know he might
00:03:17.460 be doing, he might not do it. That is weakness. It's foolishness. It allows Putin to figure out what
00:03:22.980 communication channels are and human intelligence channels we're using. And he figures out all of the
00:03:29.180 posture of the United States. And then he doesn't have to invade. He got everything he wanted out
00:03:33.440 of this because he now learned there's a fissure between Germany and the United States. He now
00:03:38.020 learned what places we're listening to. He played the game. He got the win. We got nothing.
00:03:42.760 And I think we have to say that the Biden administration was doing, as John said,
00:03:48.280 shoveling out everything that we knew, throwing it at the media as a disinformation,
00:03:54.760 misinformation, misinformation campaign, if you will. In other words, the Biden national security
00:04:02.560 structure using Infowar and PSYOPs tactics, but not strategy, had really simply made themselves look
00:04:15.260 like fools because the Russians could assess whatever they wanted, what was true, what was not true,
00:04:21.940 and how reliable was what the Biden administration was doing. And meanwhile, it had absolutely no
00:04:28.800 effect on either Putin's thinking, as you point out, or his actions. It is ludicrous what this
00:04:36.740 administration is doing. Yeah, listen, all the national security experts I have said are scratching
00:04:41.480 their head of just how we handle this. And I have two thoughts in this. One is that it's not surprising
00:04:46.340 to me that the American public would get a bad Russia story when your national security advisor
00:04:50.520 is Jake Sullivan, the guy who was peddling the fake Russia story from 2016, right? So there's a
00:04:56.300 credibility gap on Russia when that's your point, man, for national security. I think the second part
00:05:01.120 is the most important thing that Putin has done in the last seven days, our government has not talked
00:05:06.660 about at all. And that is the Duma in Russia decided to recognize two breakaway regions of Ukraine as
00:05:13.400 separate republics, basically two spaces inside the territorial integrity of Ukraine. Russia now says
00:05:19.420 they're recognizing as independent republics. They've basically created an annexation through
00:05:24.480 fiat, through action. We're not talking about that, even though that may be the longer term threat to
00:05:31.380 Ukraine. Their sovereign territory now has been declared by Russia to include two breakaway publics.
00:05:37.860 Those are the sort of things that Putin wins at, and they have consequences down the road,
00:05:42.180 and our people aren't even talking about it.
00:05:43.580 They're not talking about it. I am convinced, at least in part, the reason they're not talking
00:05:50.280 about it is because they have no idea in the world of what they're doing. Jake Sullivan,
00:05:54.900 let us be clear, because John said that very quickly, and I'm going to just kind of stress what
00:05:59.120 you said here, John. When you refer to Jake Sullivan, he is one of the authors of the fake dossier.
00:06:07.720 He is one of the authors of the Russia hoax. He is one of the authors of the effort to overthrow the
00:06:16.880 president of the United States, also to have stopped him as a candidate. This is the left-wing
00:06:22.360 Marxist radical dem sitting in the White House as the national security advisor who is right now
00:06:31.100 advising, if you will, of all people, the president of the United States on Ukraine.
00:06:35.840 It's utter madness.
00:06:38.780 He gives testimony in December of 2017 to the House Intelligence Committee when Devin Nunes was
00:06:44.020 running that important investigation. He says, it's ludicrous to suggest that we provided any
00:06:49.420 or procured any fake Russian information about Donald Trump. It was all true. Three years later,
00:06:54.160 there's nothing that Hillary Clinton's campaign produced that's true. Steele's dossier is out the
00:06:58.360 window. The whole Alfa Bank secret communication thing, not even remotely true, made up. The man gave
00:07:05.320 sworn testimony that everything the Clinton campaign was putting out there was true,
00:07:08.420 and none of it is. That's a credibility gap. And believe me, our allies see these things. They
00:07:14.680 know that this is the guy that was peddling it in 16. They know it's the guy that was the architect of
00:07:18.800 the failed Afghan withdrawal last summer. Joe Biden has a real credibility problem as long as Jake
00:07:25.220 Sullivan stays in charge of national security.
00:07:27.120 Well, and the fact that he would put him there creates, as you put it, a credibility problem for
00:07:32.960 the president of the United States. But it also has to go into the calculus of not only Vladimir Putin
00:07:39.240 and his ambitions to extend his Western borders into Europe rather than allowing Europe to extend theirs
00:07:48.620 and NATO's influence into his region of influence. He's winning this hands down. And let me say to you,
00:07:58.760 John, what I've been telling the audience of this podcast for over a week now. This is about Belarus.
00:08:05.720 This is about Moldova, in which Putin has placed brigades in Moldova. He's put 30,000 troops into
00:08:15.860 Belarus. And as you say, he's the breakaway provinces, but which has been at, they've been at war
00:08:23.800 with Ukraine since 2014 and the annexation of Crimea. This man is winning. And as you say,
00:08:33.440 there's not even a discussion from the White House about Belarus, Moldova, or the breakaway republics,
00:08:41.660 as you highlight there. This is a man who has just won big time. And NATO, the European Union,
00:08:49.700 the United Nations, and the United States are standing there moot and flat-footed. It's embarrassing
00:08:58.160 to watch. Yeah, you couldn't have said it any better. That really isn't. And so many people I'm
00:09:02.500 talking to are having a Democrat and Republican security strategist are just mortified at the
00:09:07.940 weakness that America is exuding right now at this moment. I had Chris Miller, former Defense
00:09:12.440 Secretary, and he said something really interesting in the interview. He said, if Reagan was around
00:09:16.300 today, you know what Reagan would have done the second Vladimir Putin did? He said, hey, dear Vlad,
00:09:20.760 here's a letter for you. I just activated three regimens of U.S. Army. They're going back into
00:09:25.160 Europe. They're going to be in these five countries. Once we get settled, give me a call,
00:09:29.540 and we could talk things out. And he said, Vladimir Putin would have panicked because
00:09:32.760 he can't sustain a long war with the United States. That would have been a show of strength.
00:09:37.040 Instead, we stand there saying, we don't know what we're going to do. We're not going to use a
00:09:40.340 military option. So President Biden took the military option off. Once that military option's
00:09:45.500 off, Vladimir Putin has all of the luxury to go do what he just did. Peace through weakness doesn't
00:09:51.700 ever work. Peace through strength does. And I think a lot of the security experts are beginning
00:09:54.900 to more harshly criticize Joe Biden. Yeah. Joe Biden is, in my opinion now, without even a remote
00:10:03.120 doubt, the worst president in the history of the United States. He has set this country back in one
00:10:11.700 year in office. We are no longer, I mean, I can go through the list. We're no longer energy
00:10:17.840 independent. We no longer have even the facade of being adventurous and ingenious and innovative
00:10:26.660 in weaponry development. And DARPA is a thing of the past in terms of what it's bringing forward
00:10:34.660 in the way of hypersonic missile technology. We are way behind not only China, but Russia.
00:10:41.660 And let me just remind everybody in the audience, the United States was the inventor of hypersonic
00:10:50.360 missile technology. In 1990, we had hypersonic missile technology on the drafting board ready to be
00:11:00.820 manufactured. And we walked away from it. And you know why? Because suddenly there was no longer a
00:11:06.720 cold war. We didn't decide it. We just were just too, too above that sort of thing to have a missile
00:11:12.680 that went Mach 20 and could be delivered against our enemies, whom we no longer respected sufficiently
00:11:19.860 to continue to be innovative and to be advanced in our weaponry and in our missile technology.
00:11:28.540 Yeah. You said it great. I mean, that history lesson is so important. We got fat, lazy,
00:11:33.160 and complacent. And our enemies kept digging away. And again, we're still have the potential to be
00:11:38.240 superior. And I think our greatest asset of all time is that we still have the greatest fighting
00:11:42.940 men and women in uniform that any country has ever assembled. But the leadership, the technologies,
00:11:48.720 the military weapon systems, we're not ready to fight the sort of wars that our enemies are going to
00:11:54.660 fight in the future. And at some point, someone has to step into that board and say, we're going to
00:11:58.820 remake this. We're going to reclaim peace through strength. Joe Biden doesn't feel like that guy.
00:12:03.260 Maybe he'll have an epiphany in the next year, but he doesn't feel like that guy. And that's why the
00:12:07.160 next two elections become so important to the future of America. Yeah, they are important. And I have to
00:12:12.920 tell you, I'm conflicted. Because one part of me wants to say, I'm a patriot. I'd never and ever want to
00:12:21.760 have to disparage our uniform military. I never want to be pessimistic about what we can or cannot achieve in
00:12:32.580 this country. But right now, I don't know which is the greater patriotic service to hold back on my
00:12:40.420 criticisms of what is happening with the US military, what is happening with the Defense Department and our
00:12:47.340 general, our command staff, or to say point blank, that I think they have failed the United States
00:12:55.500 for the past 20 plus years, that they haven't won a war in the past 20 plus years, excluding Iraq,
00:13:05.340 which then they turned into effectively defeat, or Afghanistan, which they won that conflict in a
00:13:13.640 year, primarily through paramilitary, special forces, special operations. They had control of
00:13:20.300 Afghanistan, and yet squandered it all in the ensuing two decades, which is how does one resolve
00:13:28.560 that conflict, John? Listen, I think you have to rewire the system, you have to have someone with
00:13:34.060 such bold leadership to say, staying on the same course is failure. And failure isn't an option for us.
00:13:40.080 I think Donald Trump was getting there. I think Donald Trump's problem was he wasn't surrounded
00:13:44.260 with the right people who could execute for the first two or three years of his presidency. And
00:13:48.400 when he finally got people who were aligned with him, not trying to undercut him or work with the
00:13:52.760 bureaucracy, the intelligence bureaucracy to undercut him, the clock was running out. And I think,
00:13:57.560 but there are people on the horizon that get this future world. I think people like Mike Pompeo,
00:14:02.680 and you listen to Tom Cotton, there are very smart conservatives, that if they have the chance to move into a
00:14:08.520 step of power, they can make real change, they can realign the world, because America still has all
00:14:14.000 the advantages it's had for the last 30 years, we just haven't executed them and embraced them
00:14:18.760 in a way that Ronald Reagan would have done it, you know, 40 years ago. But I have great hope. I think
00:14:25.080 the American public bought into this big government socialism program that Joe Biden had, and one year's
00:14:31.060 in, they have the worst buyer's remorse I've seen in polling in a very long time. And that can set in
00:14:36.340 motion a series of events that put the right people into power. And again, like I said, the people in
00:14:41.420 the mainstream, you know, in the down in the heart of our great military, they're ready, they know how
00:14:47.300 to fight, they're good, they need better leaders, we need less Secretary Austins and more creative
00:14:52.280 thinkers at that level. But the people down on the front lines, they're ready to defend us day and
00:14:56.520 night. And that gives me a lot, a lot of encouragement.
00:14:59.520 Well, I make a clear distinction, I hope I make a clear distinction between our war fighters.
00:15:05.500 And our command structure, and the general staff, that is, those people wearing a star or more,
00:15:15.060 flying around in a G5, and spend more time at altitude than they do on the ground with the
00:15:22.700 troops they command. By the way, they command fewer and fewer troops. And the ratio of generals to troops
00:15:29.540 is obscene. We have 300 times, 300% more generals than we had in World War Two. Does that sound right
00:15:41.240 to you, John? It doesn't to me. And we have a, an indolent, I think, absolutely indolent command
00:15:49.820 structure, that has no idea what they're doing. We have to watch the, the, the farce of Lloyd Austin,
00:15:58.480 the Secretary of Defense, and of course, good old Mark Milley, advisor to the President,
00:16:03.780 calling in the defense contractors to tell them we really need to catch up with the Chinese and the
00:16:10.160 Russians on hypersonic missile technology. That is pathetic to me, that they are doing it both in
00:16:17.780 public, that it was necessary to do it all, and that they would convene a meeting as the way in which
00:16:22.940 to do it. These are silly, silly little people. And they are really in the wrong jobs for the wrong
00:16:29.500 country. And no one is talking about it, not the Republicans, not the Democrats. And by the way,
00:16:35.440 where are all the people in the military who wanted to rat Donald Trump out at every instance?
00:16:41.240 They wanted to criticize him about this or that, some sort of picayune, petty, silly nonsense.
00:16:46.100 And we've got major issues right now. And I haven't heard of one person in the United States
00:16:51.180 military step forward to criticize Joe Biden. They're too busy getting thrown out for vaccine
00:16:57.340 mandates or not attending their political correctness class. And they should be focused
00:17:01.040 on the security of this country. And our reckoning is coming. And I think the American voters are ready
00:17:06.240 to make a large correction. And if they do, I think we'll start to see some common sense come back.
00:17:11.780 But right now, there's no common sense in Washington. It is elitist silliness. And
00:17:16.740 the American public have figured it out pretty quickly. It doesn't usually it takes longer than
00:17:21.300 a year to get frustrated with the president. They figured this out in the first 12 months.
00:17:25.360 Yeah. And I think I think that started last August, to be honest.
00:17:28.860 You're right.
00:17:29.240 And when we watch this, this gaggle of fools in the White House screw up a surrender to the Taliban
00:17:40.660 and Kabul, that just about was every signal anyone needed. Let's turn to that issue, though.
00:17:48.060 The Democrats themselves are now turning against Biden. And I'm talking about the rank and file,
00:17:55.640 not necessarily the so-called leaders in Washington. We'll call them the big the big puffs in Washington.
00:18:04.200 Democrat internal polling revealing Republicans winning big and the culture wars. The culture
00:18:10.020 wars defined as is what you were just saying, the politically correct wars, the wars over critical
00:18:16.360 race theory, the wars over EID, all sorts of nonsense. And yes, it is nonsense, ladies and
00:18:25.500 gentlemen. The the prattle push by BLM and Antifa is Marxist nonsense. And that's right. I'm the one
00:18:34.560 who said it. Put it put me down as a target for that for the left on that. Because it the truth is
00:18:42.280 what really hurts. And it's killing America. And we've got to get to it. Your thoughts?
00:18:48.280 I couldn't agree more. And, you know, I just I every time I travel the country, I just people come up
00:18:53.280 and they say these things like, where's common sense in Washington? When did the elitists take
00:18:57.600 over everything? Where's all the brains that we used to have in America? And I think the answer is
00:19:01.980 it's going to it's about to reemerge. I think that there is just an utter rejection of socialism,
00:19:07.680 an utter rejection of open borders, an utter rejection of defunding police. And those polling
00:19:12.140 that you show, there's some really remarkable data. And you have several signs of just how desperate
00:19:17.380 the rank and file the Democratic Party is. First, a record 30 Democrats have decided to give up
00:19:22.340 their seats and not run in 2022. They don't want to be part of the slaughter. That is a real sign
00:19:27.160 that the Biden presidency has created downstream problems for the Democratic Party. You look at
00:19:31.720 some of the polls, half of Democrats don't want Joe Biden to run again. He's only been in office a
00:19:37.100 year. They're already done with him. Three quarters of Americans don't want him to run in general. But
00:19:41.380 when half of your own party doesn't want you, you're in really significant thing. And all of the main
00:19:45.980 policies that are at the prescription of the big Biden government plan are all incredibly
00:19:51.720 an increasing impact. People don't want an open border. They don't want to defund police.
00:19:55.800 They don't want inflation driven by insane amounts of spending. And the second half of this
00:20:03.320 presidency is going to be just consumed by the impact of what he did in the first 12 months.
00:20:08.940 We're going to have a long stagflation period and crime and borders because the first year of the
00:20:15.720 Biden presidency is going to overrun the next three years of it.
00:20:18.720 Yeah, no question about it. And you're reporting in just the news, your story on senators calling for
00:20:28.500 the release of crossfire hurricane records, the investigation, of course, of Donald Trump
00:20:34.520 by the FBI and intelligence agencies as well. We subsequently learned Senator Grassley and Senator
00:20:43.000 Johnson are the two senators who sent a letter to Merrick Garland, the attorney general.
00:20:47.600 Yes. And, you know, I'm cheering. But on the other hand, I'm asking why in the world isn't this coming
00:20:54.200 from the Senate minority leader? Why is it not coming from the Senate leadership instead of Johnson,
00:21:01.200 who's been courageous not only on this, but also on mandates? He has been a stand up, I think,
00:21:09.500 impressive, exemplary senator for what he engages in. But where is the leadership and why is there such a
00:21:18.040 nagging suspicion that the most of the Senate are senators, Republican senators are rhinos? Your thoughts?
00:21:26.900 Listen, Mitch McConnell had an opportunity at the start of the Trump presidency to run the table, right?
00:21:32.700 To push back in the fake Hillary Clinton story and to take the Trump agenda, which is popular,
00:21:38.180 whether Donald Trump's popular or not in any given moment, his policies were enormously popular,
00:21:42.620 and run the table. And they could barely pass anything. It took a miracle just to get the tax
00:21:47.220 cuts through because Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell couldn't get their own troops there. And as a result,
00:21:54.180 they lost the House in 2018, the Senate in 2020. There is a need, when you talk to the rank and file,
00:22:00.460 and I just had a couple of senators on my show saying this, we're defined as the party of no,
00:22:06.720 and no one can tell what the Mitch McConnell Senate stands for. That is a brand problem. And I think
00:22:11.940 this next election, if Republicans are lucky to ride this wave and get back in power,
00:22:16.420 they have to decide, do they have the right leaders, the right brand and the right message
00:22:20.920 to hold power for more than a couple of years? Are we just going to keep seesawing back and forth
00:22:25.220 because both parties have weak, weak leaders? McConnell's time has passed. A lot of people
00:22:30.740 tell me privately, some say publicly now, will there be a changing of the guard? If they don't
00:22:35.340 make a changing of the guard, Republicans will get two or three, four years, and then it's going to
00:22:38.880 flip right back again. And we're going to keep doing the seesaw. There's a generational moment for
00:22:43.260 conservatives to have a long run, 10, 12, 14 years of power, and make fundamental change. But it starts
00:22:49.940 with leadership. And that's something I think the rank and file are beginning to talk about
00:22:53.820 privately, which is we may not have the right leaders.
00:22:58.140 I happen to think that there is, you know, I've said for some time that no Republican candidate
00:23:05.740 should be taken seriously or win anyone's vote if they do not say straight up and straightforwardly
00:23:12.640 they are a Trump supporter and a Trump America first candidate, that they are all
00:23:23.800 about making America great. I think there is also another qualification I would add in
00:23:30.100 there. Unless Mitch McConnell resigns his leadership and new leadership is put in place, that is an
00:23:41.960 America first Trump candidate who wins election is put in that place. Not one of these hack empty
00:23:52.920 suits that they call their leadership team. I don't think the Republicans deserve a damn vote.
00:24:00.520 I really don't. And I don't want to hear anything more from McCarthy. I really don't. They're both
00:24:06.520 rhinos. They are both empty suits. And they have stood in the way of everything that Donald Trump
00:24:12.120 represented when he showed this party how to move forward. What do you think?
00:24:16.120 There are a lot of people thinking exactly like you, Lou. And I think that the party has to do two
00:24:22.780 things at once, right? They've got to keep on message to win the election, keep the Democrats
00:24:26.780 pinned down and show them what the alternative is, what we just had two years ago before these guys
00:24:31.620 took over. And at the same time, affect leadership change inside the plane you're flying every day.
00:24:37.300 I think there are more and more members of the House. And you look at the growth of the Freedom
00:24:41.920 Caucus, which is the most conservative part of the House. It's growing in size and in volume and
00:24:47.320 impact every day. People that used to be fringe marginalize are now the face of the party. And I
00:24:52.700 think that that is a sign that there is a energy in the party to make significant change, not
00:24:58.960 incremental change, not electoral change, but significant change. And that energy that we saw
00:25:04.140 at the school board level when CRT just scared the living dickens out of parents and you saw
00:25:08.400 every day. People start running for office, throwing out people. There were just some school
00:25:12.820 board members kicked out of San Francisco last night. That energy is so strong right now. And at
00:25:18.360 some point it's going to pivot from CRT and some of these other issues, and it's going to go at the
00:25:22.940 leadership of the Republican Party. And I think that's the moment you're going to see a lot of
00:25:27.860 changes in leadership. That is a hope that a lot of people have. And you can see the dynamics of it
00:25:32.540 setting up. The question is, will Republicans fall back to their, it's next up, it's still Mitch's turn.
00:25:37.700 If they do, they squander a great opportunity.
00:25:40.760 Yeah. And, and by the way, we, we may lose the nation. I think it's an existential issue
00:25:45.880 because the Democrats have proved themselves to be so cynical, so rancidly corrupt that they
00:25:51.260 would put a man like Joe Biden in the white house simply to hold power and to carry out a left wing
00:25:57.520 ideological, let me be straightforward, a Marxist agenda against this country and against Americans
00:26:05.300 that they don't deserve support by anyone for, as far as the eye can see, as far as I'm concerned.
00:26:13.640 But we have to have a guarantee that we're not going to have to put up with a Mitch McConnell
00:26:17.680 or a Paul Ryan or a Kevin McCarthy or a John Boehner ever again, because those are people who simply
00:26:24.880 exist in a world apart from what is America and apart from the Republican Party itself.
00:26:33.360 They are nothing more than the, the legions of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable
00:26:41.260 and Wall Street. And, you know, God have mercy on their souls because they have offended greatly.
00:26:49.200 Let's turn to a sign of great hope. And that is John Durham. I've talked often and you defended him.
00:26:57.700 I want to put this on the record. You defended him when I was lashing him for not being faster,
00:27:05.700 getting more done. And here he is delivering two years later, almost two years later on his charge,
00:27:13.760 which was to get to the bottom of the origins of Russiagate. And by golly, last Friday, he did just
00:27:20.700 that in his facts, his facts that he appended to his charges, his filings in federal court.
00:27:30.120 He said Hillary Clinton's campaign led a conspiracy to spy on the president of the United States
00:27:36.940 and on Donald Trump as a candidate for the presidency of the United States.
00:27:42.600 Hallelujah, John Durham and John Solomon. You were right. And I was wrong.
00:27:49.040 Well, there's a lot of reporting that went into it, right? More than defending, I've just been
00:27:52.360 watching the facts. I think what happened with John Durham is he's going up against some very
00:27:56.100 powerful forces. When you're taking on Perkins Coie and Mark Elias, these are some of the best
00:28:00.560 lawyers that the left have and tying people up. And there were these long battles that we couldn't
00:28:05.380 see, right, that were going on in the grand jury. When he pierced, and it's clear that he has,
00:28:09.900 he's pierced at least some of the privilege at Perkins Coie. That's how he made the case against
00:28:14.080 Sussman. He cracked open the evidence that would make his storyline, the one he was telling Bill
00:28:18.880 Barr two years ago, he made it believable. He made it tangible. Even now a jury can look at it and
00:28:25.460 say, and even in DC, like, ah, that's not good. We don't want that going on. And I think last week,
00:28:30.020 what the story he tells in this very perfunctory filing about potential conflicts of interest by law
00:28:35.880 firms is that Hillary Clinton spied on President Trump first as a campaign candidate, and it seems
00:28:43.060 to have continued to the beginning of his presidency. And their whole goal was to take a fake story and
00:28:48.420 weaponize it and get the FBI and the CIA and the intelligence community engaged in it. Because if they
00:28:53.600 got engaged in it, the media would take it seriously. That is a conspiracy of epic proportions. It's now more
00:28:59.620 than a really bad political dirty trick. They tried to give bad information to the United States
00:29:04.660 government to make government start to investigate Donald Trump and tie up his presidency. That's what he
00:29:10.440 laid out. And I have a funny feeling, that's not the biggest revelation to come. I think we're going to see
00:29:14.760 some more big revelations this spring and summer. I think the investigation's accelerating now that some of
00:29:20.680 these grand jury fights are over and evidence is now sprung to freedom where it can be quoted.
00:29:25.160 Yeah. And again, you were right about John Durham and his capacity to get to the bottom of it.
00:29:33.900 I do still wish... I'm sorry?
00:29:37.480 I said he's pretty stubborn. He stuck with it. But it does feel awful late, right? It's stubborn,
00:29:42.280 but it's a late process. And I think the Democrats did a good job tying him up.
00:29:46.200 Yep. And they continue it. And by the way, it's very clear right now, there's been some
00:29:51.760 public... that the law firms, some of them name, that serve the Democrats as their in-house counsel
00:29:59.980 and their outhouse operatives, you know, are really doing everything they can do to squelch
00:30:08.440 and quash this reporting, because they know it's about to break into a brush fire
00:30:17.180 that is incredible. Durham had an opportunity, though, to get some of this out before the
00:30:25.960 election. I wish, and I think history will wish with me, that indeed he had done so. Your thoughts
00:30:34.000 on that element? Yeah, listen, I think everyone did. And I think there was a movement to go in
00:30:38.660 that direction. And I think the courts probably got involved. And at the end of the day, Durham made a
00:30:43.200 decision. My long-term goal was to hold people accountable. If I blow it now for letting people
00:30:48.600 know what goes on in the election, I may lose the ability to indict someone like a Sussman. And I
00:30:52.900 think he decided to play by the law, unlike Democrats who leak and do things. He decided to play by the
00:30:58.300 law. And it did cost people the visibility of what went on. But I'll throw some blame somewhere else.
00:31:04.660 Donald Trump's White House and his lawyers had access to all of this evidence. And while there was
00:31:09.720 some great efforts by John Ratcliffe, heroic efforts by Ratcliffe, the lawyers around President
00:31:15.540 Trump let him down. They could have declassified and put all this information out. This has all been
00:31:20.620 known for over two years. President Trump ordered it over and over again, and his lawyers didn't release
00:31:26.680 it. And I remember two fellows in the media who were trying pretty hard to get that out there.
00:31:33.720 I think you and I did a lot of work on that.
00:31:35.820 Well, we did what we could, as they say. And, you know, doggone it. You know, I wish that history
00:31:45.080 would have been written otherwise. But there it is. Let me do as I always do here, give our guests,
00:31:53.400 well, I try to do it always. Sometimes we get a little tight on time. But I always like to give our
00:32:00.600 guests in the last word and their perspectives and including thoughts. And it can either be war
00:32:06.080 and peace or a succinct briefing. Your choice.
00:32:09.860 Oh, that's very kind. Listen, first, it's just an honor to be able to talk to you and have these
00:32:13.920 conversations because so many of the people in my profession today are trying to suppress this
00:32:18.720 information. They don't want the truth to be out there through embarrassment, ideology. I don't know
00:32:22.920 what it is. I can't assume the thing. But to have a platform like you have and to have the wisdom that
00:32:27.920 you have and be able to have a half hour conversation where we can tell American people what's really
00:32:32.180 going on. We're not trying to color sugarcoat it. We're not spinning you. This is really what's
00:32:36.240 going on is the greatest opportunity as a journalist I get. And so I've always been grateful for that
00:32:41.300 chance. And this new platform that you have now, Lou, is fantastic. The one thing I wish I could say,
00:32:47.080 I want to see my profession turn. I want to see people go back and realize, all right, we blew the
00:32:51.800 Russia story, but it's not too late to get in on this. And this week was the most frustrating thing of
00:32:56.380 all because I watched colleagues who know, because I'm talking to them behind the scenes,
00:33:00.580 that this was a big deal with Durham, unable to report it. They can't swallow their failure
00:33:05.400 and do it. And I think they're just serving the American public. And I just hope if any of them
00:33:10.220 are listening and if they're out there, get back on the horse and do journalism the way it used to
00:33:14.640 be done. Tell the truth, regardless of consequence, put it out there and stop playing favorites because
00:33:19.260 what John Durham is about to unfold, what the Afghan report just at the Pentagon unleashed,
00:33:25.100 is some amazing failures of American government, massive failures, generational failures. And we
00:33:31.820 have an obligation as journalists to chronicle it honestly, fairly, accurately. And a lot of the
00:33:36.800 reporters in my profession are too afraid to go there. We got to get them there. We got to shame
00:33:40.440 them, push them, tug them, pull them. The American people need to get these truths before the next
00:33:44.820 election.
00:33:46.180 You know, in that spirit, let me say something to those journalists who are
00:33:50.700 are disgracing themselves as well as the is the craft they practice in this country.
00:33:58.620 Sacred in this country is the public's right to know. Because without that knowledge that we work
00:34:05.260 so hard to provide, many people simply will not know what is happening with this great
00:34:10.380 constitutional republic and its politics and its governance. But let me just say to all of those
00:34:17.260 journalists who might happen to be listening to you and me, and then I want to get your thoughts on it.
00:34:23.660 I've never, I have never even hesitated to put my career on the line for what I believe.
00:34:30.620 And, and I, and I hope that we have more people who will be willing to do that. By the way, I haven't
00:34:38.700 always been right. And I have nearly every time I've been in that position, I was wishing like the
00:34:44.860 Dickens, that I was wrong. But, but I went forward anyway. We all care about this country. And that
00:34:54.380 requires more than a wish and a hope and an attitude. It requires sometimes sacrifice, whether
00:35:00.380 it's your, your career, your, you know, your financial future, whatever it might be. By the
00:35:07.180 way, that sacrifice will always be worth it. And I truly believe it. Your thoughts, John?
00:35:14.220 Listen, I can't say it any better than that. We just need courage. We need to go out and
00:35:19.020 remember that we're Americans first, and we're Republicans and journalists and others second and
00:35:23.820 Democrats. I think we've put our country second for a lot of petty reasons for the last 10 or 15 years,
00:35:29.500 and it's set us back. But it's not too late to have the sort of back to the basics of America.
00:35:35.180 We're all Americans first. We can disagree, but we don't have to lie and create illusions of,
00:35:40.380 of false illusions like we did with the Russia collusion case. I think we're getting to that
00:35:45.340 point. There was a poll that struck me. I'll just leave people with this thought the other day.
00:35:50.300 Despite the mainstream media's chronic refusal to reveal the unraveling of Russia, you know,
00:35:56.380 there's a little bit here and there, but almost none of the big stories get out in the
00:35:58.940 mainstream media. It's, it's the alternative media that are doing it. Two thirds of Democrats
00:36:04.220 now believe Hillary Clinton should be investigated for what she did to Donald Trump. Somehow they got
00:36:09.100 that inference and that message, despite the fact that there was a blockade. And maybe that's the
00:36:13.420 biggest warning sign to the media that kept quiet all this time. They've made themselves irrelevant
00:36:19.500 by refusing to cover the truth. And I hope they learn from that. If, if Democrats can pick this up,
00:36:24.060 despite the fact that their media outlets aren't covering it, that's a good sign for the future of the country.
00:36:29.580 And with that, we conclude. John, thanks so much for being with us.
00:36:34.220 We appreciate you and all of your insights and bringing us up to speed on where the politics of the thing
00:36:43.580 rest. They're not really resting. I guess at this point, they're jetting up. It looks like for full on,
00:36:50.380 full on conflict. We appreciate it, John. Good to have you with us. Thank you, John Solomon. Just the news. And there appears the likelihood we'll have a
00:37:00.860 lot more in the way of news for their developments in Eastern Europe or Washington, D.C. To further
00:37:07.260 assess what is happening over this weekend, we'll be bringing you the latest news and events and analysis
00:37:13.340 out of Ukraine, Europe and Washington, D.C. tomorrow on the Great America Show weekend edition. That's Sunday,
00:37:21.980 the Great America Show. We want to invite you to sign up for our Great America Show advisory and
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00:37:43.500 I don't want to overstate anything, but I'm pretty sure you will absolutely sense at least a small
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00:37:57.420 Lou Dobbs dot com. Thanks. God bless you and God bless America. Join us again tomorrow for the Great
00:38:04.060 America podcast. Stay in the fight. Truth, justice and the American way will prevail against all enemies,
00:38:10.380 against all odds.