Trump considers replacing Attorney General Pam Bondi with current EPA administrator Lee Zeldin, a news outlet reports. The Guardian reports that Trump wants to replace National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard with Joe Kent, the former National Counterterrorism Center director who resigned over his opposition to the Iran sanctions.
00:00:00.520Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at New East.
00:00:12.220Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.
00:00:15.340We've got a former CIA officer coming on in just a bit who has some wild stories about being a spy
00:00:21.380and unique thoughts about everything from the war in Iran to Jeffrey Epstein,
00:00:26.040and I'm really looking forward to this talk.
00:00:28.020But we begin today with Trump's talking about regime change in Iran and the numerous reports that he's planning big changes to his own administration.
00:00:39.180That regime change does seem underway in some way, shape or form.
00:00:43.320Last night, The New York Times breaking the story that the president is considering firing Attorney General Pam Bondi.
00:00:49.500Mr. Trump reportedly upset at her handling of the Epstein files and her lack of aggression in going after his political enemies like New York Attorney General Letitia James and former FBI Director James Comey et al.
00:01:07.360The report was quickly confirmed by multiple news outlets. According to The Times, Mr. Trump is considering replacing Bondi with current EPA administrator Lee Zeldin and Semaphore this morning, a news outlet reporting that the president has informed Ms. Bondi that, quote, her time as attorney general is nearing an end, end quote.
00:01:29.700And a formal announcement is expected soon.
00:01:32.540As always, with Donald Trump, Semaphore is reporting he could change his mind before going through with the plan.
00:01:54.860The president apparently upset that Tulsi did not condemn Joe Kent, the former National Counterterrorism Center director who resigned over Joe's opposition to the war in Iran.
00:02:07.000Before he left the government, Kent reported to Tulsi before he resigned.
00:02:11.680He worked for her as their chief of staff and then went over to counterterrorism and did speak to Tulsi before he resigned.
00:02:17.240They spoke to the vice president and then he went and directly spoke to the president about leaving.
00:02:21.720The Guardian also reporting that Trump is not happy that Tulsi, a longtime opponent of foreign interventions, has appeared somewhat reluctant to defend his actions in Iran.
00:02:33.940There's a lot going on here. Joining me now to react to all of this is Saurabh Amari.
00:02:39.080He's U.S. editor of UnHerd and Sean Davis, who is CEO of The Federalist.
00:02:45.060Ever been in a bad relationship? You know, the kind that just wears you down.
00:02:49.240you settle in, even though deep down you know
00:05:33.260the way she handled that initial White House meeting, the handout of the binders.
00:05:37.520And I think it did extreme damage to Trump, the way she handled it. So I don't blame him. And I
00:05:43.720don't find it particularly surprising that he's probably had enough, especially when you look at
00:05:48.280what happened with Tish James, with James Comey, with so many things falling apart. I think he
00:05:52.260understands now, yeah, loyalty is important, but you need to have somebody who can actually do the
00:05:55.740job competently every day. I mean, I'm wondering, Saurabh, if he's seeing his dwindling poll numbers
00:06:02.040now and looking for somebody to blame. And there is no question that when it comes to Trump's base,
00:06:10.100the two things that arguably have hurt him with that base, well, we're seeing some erosion thanks
00:06:17.620to Iran, but the Epstein files is definitely on the list. And I don't, is there a chance he's
00:06:24.060blaming Pam Bondi for that as opposed to himself? Because we watched, yeah, she was way out ahead
00:06:30.880of her skis with her PR campaign around the Epstein client list is on my desk and all the
00:06:35.620Fox News appearances and all that. But like in terms of we're done giving you any more disclosures
00:06:41.540goodbye that we saw Trump on camera saying all that himself. Yeah, I think that's the price you
00:06:48.460pay when you campaign on full disclosure of the Epstein files and then sort of renege on that,
00:06:56.480whether it's for understandable reasons or not. I think some of it is understandable.
00:07:00.880There are people who are on the so-called list who I know, you know, just happened to
00:07:05.980be there because they had some interaction with Virginia Jeffrey, but they were not at
00:07:10.560all accused of being on the island or done any wrongdoing.
00:07:14.260Yet if there was a kind of full, unredacted disclosure, their lives would be destroyed.
00:07:20.120So whatever the reason, the fact is that I think Pam Bondi is basically executing what
00:07:25.440the president wanted to do some disclosure, but not the full that would be super destructive.
00:07:29.820So I think the blame lies there. I will say one thing. There is one specific area which is kind of wonky, but it's important. And that has to do with antitrust, meaning breaking up monopolistic businesses.
00:07:43.040That was an area where kind of left wing and right wing populists had begun to see eye to eye going back to the first Trump administration.
00:07:50.940And part of it falls under the Department of Justice.
00:07:53.620There is a specific antitrust unit within the Department of Justice.
00:07:58.180And over the past year, you know, the person who was put in charge of that, her name is Gail Slater. She came from J.D. Vance's office and was seen as a as a mega populist, someone who would translate the mega populist agenda into going after big tech and other companies.
00:08:14.280That is not the free market, right? Businesses colluding to buy each other and ultimately so that consumers only have one choice to go to, whether that's in technology or ticket prices with Ticketmaster and the like.
00:08:27.400That's not free market capitalism. And antitrust is a way to correct for that.
00:08:32.160Unfortunately, the Bondi DOJ was pretty actually bad in that regard.
00:08:36.920Gail Slater, the person who was, again, put in charge of the antitrust unit, was basically had all her power taken away.
00:08:44.680Firms that had reached basically settlements with the Department of Justice were able to sidestep her so that the normal scrutiny that goes into how a settlement was reached.
00:08:54.880This happened, for example, with the merger between two companies, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Juniper Networks that provide like Wi-Fi and networking services to big stadiums, hospitals and things like that.
00:09:06.920They basically they reached a settlement with a DOJ, but one that where it was done behind in a kind of behind closed doors, literally over cocktails, which raises serious legal questions.
00:09:19.800And when Gail Slater's team objected to this, one of her deputies was fired and then eventually she herself was fired as well.
00:09:27.480So it's one of those instances where, you know, what looks like populism on the campaign trail and then under Bondi, it cashed out as kind of crony capitalism.
00:09:39.880So that was an area of disappointment.
00:09:41.580I have no idea whoever comes next will do anything different.
00:09:45.180Gail Slater is now gone and she was seen as like one of the one of the real populist anchors of this administration.
00:11:43.000How ironic is that? You know why? Because Donald Trump, the Dow, the Dow right now, is over, the Dow is over $50,000. I don't know why you're laughing. You're a great stock trader, as I hear, Raskin. The Dow is over $50,000 right now.
00:12:02.640The S&P at almost 7,000 and the NASDAQ smashing records.
00:12:09.600Americans, 401ks and retirement savings are booming.
00:12:14.400That's what we should be talking about.
00:14:14.260When you want to be the face, you're going to be the one who takes the fall.
00:14:16.660And it looks like she's finally taken the fall.
00:14:19.600That is so right with the influencers who could forget this moment where she had them all come to the White House.
00:14:26.200These are some of the president's most loyal social media, you know, warriors, and she humiliated them by having them to the White House.
00:14:34.500We were told that she actually didn't even front to them when she got them to come, that it was going to be about Epstein.
00:14:40.660But then she handed out these binders and sent them out, understanding that they would all be photographed by the press sitting on the White House lawn with the binders.
00:14:48.420and there was nothing in them, nothing new.
00:16:07.460I mean, I can't believe you're asking a question on Epstein at a time like this.
00:16:11.040Okay. That's not great. All right. Now my team is just sending me this. All right. This is trying to see the source of this article. Daily Mail. Pam Bondi begged Trump not to fire her during dramatic White House showdown as insider reveals his final straw.
00:16:29.080It reports AG Pambani begged Trump not to fire her in an explosive showdown at the White House after he accused her of an unforgivable offense.
00:16:37.040He informed the AG last night, shortly before his Iran speech, that she would soon be leaving the Justice Department, according to a senior administration source.
00:16:44.400She responded by pleading to give her more time in the role, but Trump remained firm that her time leading the agency was over.
00:16:50.840She was unhappy and tried to change his mind, said the source.
00:16:53.520However, the president told her she was fired and that an announcement would be made shortly.
00:16:57.400The announcement is set to be made on Friday, but is now imminent because of all the media attention.
00:17:02.360His reasoning for the sudden dismissal comes in part because the president believes Bondi tipped off Eric Swalwell.
00:17:08.960OK, this is not on our bingo card, guys.
00:17:12.100Tipped off Eric Swalwell about the FBI's efforts to release investigative documents related to his relationship with an alleged Chinese spy, our old pal Fang Fang.
00:17:23.460The FBI was preparing a cache of documents on Swalwell's relationship with Christine Fang.
00:18:45.580And look, I mean, if the if the previous administration, if the first Trump administration is any guide, if there was indeed a scene that involved her begging him not to fire her, you can almost bet that there is going to be three years of Bondi serving as a source to the press, getting a book deal.
00:19:03.980what i saw up close and of course like the you know the irresponsibility of this president and
00:19:09.500so on and so forth having you know been you know perfectly eager to do those sessions where they
00:19:14.460sit around in the cabinet and each of the cabinet members goes by one one by one and says sir your
00:19:19.700presidency really is better than abraham lincoln's it's amazing she was doing that just as much
00:19:24.560but she'll be leaking against him it's very uncomfortable it's very uncomfortable i mean
00:19:29.540i'm a trump supporter and i like most of the people in the administration but the the cabinet
00:19:33.560meetings and like the constant fluffing of Trump is very Pravda-esque. It makes me uncomfortable.
00:19:37.900Like, just stop, just like stop with the obligatory compliment. It reminds me of what I saw in Russia
00:19:42.740with Vladimir Putin. If you watch a press conference over there, I mean, all the entire
00:19:46.340Russian press corps is like, isn't he fabulous? He's even more fabulous than we thought he was,
00:19:50.580isn't he? He's amazing. Now our press isn't like that, but certainly the cabinet is. It's just
00:19:54.400too much. It's like, okay, whatever. It's like, it's fine. I forgive Trump the need to be, to have
00:19:59.700his ego stroked because he gets just ripped by everybody so often. So I get it. Okay, Sean,
00:20:05.060here's what I think. I think it's probably more of what we said in the intro, which is she's not
00:20:12.260bringing indictments against the people who tried to put him in prison and bring down his first
00:20:19.400presidency. You know, we have not seen an indictment of John Brennan. We have not seen a renewal of the
00:20:24.500charges against Tish James. The Comey matter, too, is on the ropes because of a judge ruling
00:20:30.080that the indictment was improper. And I I bet Trump actually is very angry about that stuff
00:20:36.400and maybe is blaming Pam Bondi. Like if I had to put my own money on it, that's where I'd put it.
00:20:41.800Yeah, I think it's a whole collection of things. You know, if you look at his presidency so far,
00:20:46.280which we forget how bad Biden was. Thank goodness he is president now and we don't have to deal with
00:20:52.760all that nonsense. But I think he's had kind of two major missteps. The big political one was
00:20:58.540the Epstein thing, which we've covered. But I also think his administration had a fairly
00:21:03.080significant strategic misstep in how it was handling what I call the judicial insurrection,
00:21:08.740these collection of completely corrupt, inferior, unelected district judges, to a certain extent,
00:21:13.820circuit court judges. This was something that started very early in the administration,
00:21:18.580where you just had a bunch of judges with no authority to do this, nonetheless saying,
00:21:23.380hey, Mr. President, we get that you're the head of the executive branch, but you don't get to do
00:21:27.060anything unless you get unanimous consent from a bunch of chuckleheads with law degrees who
00:21:31.660managed to somehow get appointments to district courts. And I think there was a strategic
00:21:35.680calculation made early on that rather than taking them head on immediately and saying,
00:21:41.380we're not going along with your stupid lawless nonsense here, you can issue all the opinions
00:21:45.660you want. We're not going along with them. We're not going to pretend they're valid. And we're
00:21:50.300going to do what we're going to do. And if the Supreme Court wants to step in and somehow back
00:21:53.820you up, they can have at it. And I think now, whether it was at the advice of the White House
00:21:58.460counsel's office or the AG, I think Trump now understands that he's been in a bit of a hole
00:22:03.040by how his administration has decided to handle these courts. And when you add that up to all the
00:22:08.580other missteps with Bondi, the appearances, the embarrassing hearings, the Epstein thing,
00:22:13.520I don't see how Trump had any other decision to make other than it's time for you to go and we're going to put someone else in there.
00:22:21.420You made some of these comments in a taped interview we did for our AM Update podcast, which we release every day.
00:22:26.520And my husband and I were listening to it this morning, as we always do, over our coffee.
00:22:30.040And he you really gave him a lot to think about.
00:22:32.460He was saying my husband was saying, like, how good your points were and was saying, you know,
00:22:37.100how is it that we have all these district court judges who have lifetime appointments who want
00:22:40.920to, you know, ding Trump and pretend that they're little mini presidents and get plaudits at the
00:22:46.020Georgetown cocktail parties with no skin in the game? Like they don't care anymore if they get
00:22:50.460chastised by the circuit courts above them who, you know, depending on the jurisdiction, never
00:22:54.960will chastise them anyway. The only chance is when it goes up to the Supreme Court. They don't care.
00:22:59.800They all hate Trump so much. They have such TDS. We never impeach them. We do abide by their
00:23:05.100rulings, you know, anyway, you persuaded him. And if people missed AM update this morning,
00:23:09.120you missed something good. You can still go back and listen to it on YouTube or on podcast.
00:23:13.260Here's the other thing. The Tulsi news, I really hope not. It's the Guardian, Saurabh. I don't know
00:23:18.560how great the Guardian sources are inside the administration and what the motive here might be.
00:23:24.600I believe Tulsi Gabbard wants to stay and that she doesn't think her neck is on the chopping block,
00:23:30.960But the report is that it is. I'm going to read what the Guardian has reported.
00:23:37.360Trump has privately asked cabinet officials in recent weeks whether he should replace his DNI, venting frustration that she shielded a former deputy meeting Joe Kent.
00:23:45.880It's not clear that Trump will actually fire her over the episode. There's no standout candidate to take the job.
00:23:51.380It's an ominous development for Gabbard that he's doing this polling, given that he does tend to poll his advisers when he starts to seriously consider whether he should change.
00:24:00.960a post. The nature of Joe Kent's departure and his criticism of the war had already angered Trump,
00:24:06.940but he expressed particular frustration about Gabbard seemingly defending Joe Kent and appearing
00:24:12.180reluctant to defend the administration's position to attack Iran. He was asked on March 29th,
00:24:18.980just days ago, whether he still had confidence in Tulsi on Air Force One. Here's what he said
00:24:23.620in SOT1. She's a little bit different in her thought process than me, but that doesn't make
00:24:33.100somebody not available to serve. Okay. That was pretty tepid. Yeah. It doesn't make somebody
00:24:42.060unavailable to serve. Like this is not a ringing endorsement. Yeah. I think here's what's happened
00:24:49.120is what my sources in the administration,
00:24:52.240including lots of people who've in the security apparatus
00:24:54.940or the Pentagon, this is what they tell me,
00:25:06.980and especially in the Middle East behind,
00:25:08.780the people who want to pivot away from that
00:25:10.700and focus either on domestic development
00:25:13.120or because they see China as the greater threat.
00:25:15.740those people of whom Tulsi was very much one, as everyone pointed out, like her 2020 campaign
00:25:22.240sold T-shirts that said no war with Iran. Those people won many of the staffing battle inside
00:25:28.420the administration, meaning they got these jobs up and down the Pentagon, the intelligence community
00:25:34.720and so on. And but what's happened is that that's not who the people who ultimately made the really,
00:25:41.440really big policy call, which is to invade Iran. Mark Levin did. It's these outside,
00:25:46.620they call them outside voices like Mark Levin, like Senator Lindsey Graham, like Senator Tom
00:25:51.600Cotton, these kind of uber hawks. Miriam Adelson, who has the president's ear very close.
00:25:57.000She's our real president. Well, I wouldn't go so far, but I'll let you say so you say.
00:26:02.480I'm being facetious, but she's her two hundred million dollars really did get her a bang for
00:26:07.380her buck. And so so, you know, at some point that that's going to come to a head is there
00:26:11.540are these people in the administration who were brought on on the premise that this was going to
00:26:15.820be the the administration that was not going to do this one thing, which is to launch a war against
00:26:21.280Iran, a big war, especially rather than like a quick intervention. So here they are. What do
00:26:27.480they do? And all of them are facing this pressure. Do they just like grind it out and grit their
00:26:32.500teeth and do you know execute policies that ultimately leave them unhappy and feel like
00:26:37.700this against their conscience i think she's prepared to do that it may well be or do they
00:26:42.700resign or even if they don't want to resign do they get um you know thrown out for lack of
00:26:48.520sufficient enthusiasm and i think maybe she's in that third right right or lack of sufficient
00:26:54.120enthusiasm or in her case there is a tie to joe kent and if the president is somehow
00:26:58.560hanging Joe Kent around her. Yeah, he could potentially make her suffer for it. But Sean,
00:27:03.980I mean, we can't, to lose Joe Kent and then to lose Tulsi Gabbard too, it's like the restrainer
00:27:10.560wing of the Republican Party, which is already unhappy with Trump. If he fires Tulsi, that's
00:27:17.960not going to help the poll numbers. He doesn't need to give the neocons another gift. He needs
00:27:23.340to worry about the other part of the Republican Party that feels as Tulsi does, or at least as
00:27:29.420she did prior to joining the administration. I'm assuming she secretly feels the same way,
00:27:33.000just keeping a quiet out of loyalty to him, which is we don't want this war.
00:27:37.180Right. So I have something of a different perspective. Having been a staffer, I worked
00:27:41.260on the Hill for a long time. I worked for a presidential campaign. And when you're a staffer,
00:27:45.700you have, I think there's a certain code you need to adopt, which is that you don't matter.
00:27:50.440You are there entirely to serve the person that you're working for. And Joe Kent was a staffer.
00:27:56.320Tulsi's a staffer. You might even say J.D. is a staffer. The only important one there is Donald
00:28:02.140Trump. And I think as a staffer, when you have made the decision internally that I can't work
00:28:07.520for this person because I can't in good conscience implement these policies, I personally find it
00:28:13.520distasteful to see people do the big public spectacle. Here's why I'm quitting. I think
00:28:18.740you have a responsibility to quietly quit and go your separate ways. Now, in defense of Joe Kent,
00:28:24.980he could have done what so many people in Washington have done for decades, which is
00:28:29.280stew privately and then do everything he possibly could to backstab and delegitimize the person he's
00:28:36.140working for. Okay, that's what everyone in Washington does. So bless him for actually
00:28:41.500having a- Old-fashioned way. Yeah, taking a stand and saying, I can't do this. But I have a hard
00:28:46.640time faulting Trump for being disappointed with that. Because if there's one thing Trump cannot
00:28:50.680stand, it's number one, being disloyal, and number two, making yourself the story over him.
00:28:55.420And I love Tulsi. I think she's great. I think she's a very important voice to have in there.
00:29:00.000But I don't think you can be surprised when Trump says, hey, this was your guy,
00:29:03.840and he went and did that. Are you really on my team? I think that's probably a fair question.
00:29:09.920Right. And I think he accurately senses her skepticism about the war. And maybe he just
00:29:14.220doesn't want that right now because he wants all loyalists around him to promote his agenda.
00:29:18.380But then that's how you make really big mistakes is the only people who, I mean,
00:29:23.140there's a video going around kind of a downfall, like it's a Hitler movie,
00:29:27.620making fun of the decision to go to war. And the Trump in it says, like, I'm in this because I
00:29:33.880just brought so many askers around me and no one to say, hey, like Mr. President, Iran is not like
00:29:40.580Venezuela or Iran is not like Iraq, it's going to be a while and it's going to be a big war.
00:29:45.640I think, you know, like loyalty is very important. But sometimes loyalty means actually putting your
00:29:52.040neck out there and saying, Mr. President, this is a really bad decision. Yeah, because there's
00:29:56.440no way Trump isn't seeing the collapse of the coalition that put him in office. You know,
00:30:01.500the latest polling out we've talked on the show this week about the loss of the Hispanic voters,
00:30:06.480the loss of the young voters, the loss of the men. He's lost men, young men in particular,
00:30:12.300but men across the board now no longer favor Donald Trump. And of course, the women have
00:30:16.220hated him for a long time. Now today, the latest is he's lost the working class,
00:30:20.820the working class vote for Trump, which has always been his bedrock, is now he's underwater
00:30:26.440with them. So he sees this and he looks around for like a clean way to get out of Iran. It's not
00:30:32.400there. And it's because of this escalation trap that Professor Pape has been talking about that
00:30:37.080we're falling into. And then last night, there were reports that he was going to go out and
00:30:42.160announce that we were pulling out, we were de-escalating. It wasn't true. I heard nothing
00:30:48.640new last night. I heard a restatement of his truth social posts, which basically say we're staying.
00:30:56.560He said maybe two to three weeks, but he said he wants the Iranians to do what we want them to do.
00:31:02.320to cut a deal, or we're going to do all the stuff he said in the True Social post, which is bomb
00:31:06.600their electric plants and their energy plants. He didn't mention the desalination plants, which he
00:31:11.960said in the True Social. But did you hear anything new? And what did you make of last night's
00:31:16.020White House address? Well, I did hear one thing that was new, which is in a very disturbing way,
00:31:21.000is the president has said, you know, it's not possible. It's not possible for the U.S. to pay
00:31:27.880for Medicaid, Medicare, daycare, quote, we're fighting wars. And now wait, wait, hold that
00:31:34.840thought that because that wasn't at the White House address. Correct. But he did. But this is
00:31:40.040a separate story. And it's we can get into it. Yeah, you're right. That's where the working
00:31:43.280at the White House. They put a post up on YouTube, apparently erroneously of his remarks to this
00:31:51.380private group. And there was a devastating soundbite by Trump. It's now been pulled down.
00:31:57.580but everybody has it. We all have the feed that was up there for some time. And here's the sound
00:32:02.600bite to which you refer in SOT 9. Because the United States can't take care of daycare.
00:32:09.120That has to be up to a state. We can't take care of daycare. We're a big country. We have 50 states.
00:32:15.140We have all these other people. We're fighting wars. We can't take care of daycare. You got to
00:32:20.240let a state take care of daycare and they should pay for it too. They should pay. They have to
00:32:25.180raise their taxes, but they should pay for it. And we could lower our taxes a little bit to them
00:32:30.040to make up. But it's not possible for us to take care of daycare, Medicaid, Medicare, all these
00:32:36.440individual things. They can do it on a state basis. You can't do it on a federal. We have to take care
00:32:42.240of one thing, military protection. So that is a big departure from the Trump of 2016, from the
00:32:52.100Trump of 2020 and the Trump of 2024. The whole thing with Trump was he repeatedly said, I am
00:32:59.040not going to touch your entitlements. I am not going to touch your entitlements, including in
00:33:03.720the 2024 GOP, the Republican platform. One of the planks is, you know, protect and preserve
00:33:10.040entitlements. And that means Social Security, Medicare, and there are even White House
00:33:15.620statements you can find in which that says we are not going to touch Medicaid either.
00:33:19.360Now, for the voters who are the marginal voters whom Trump brought into his coalition in 2016, then again in 2020 and even bigger in 2024, these are I'm not talking about the MAGA hardcore, the MAGA hardcore.
00:33:33.100If he converted to Shia Islam tomorrow, they would continue.
00:33:36.400But I'm talking about those marginal voters, half of Hispanic men, a fifth of African-American men, young men who are antiwar.
00:33:44.120For those people, what stood out about Trump was that unlike Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, the kind of old Republican Party of 2015, he would say, I'm going to protect your entitlements and the foreign wars have been a disaster.
00:33:57.820This is the complete reversal from that, because he's saying Medicaid, Medicare, all of these things are under the under the chopping under chopping block, potentially, and it should be a state problem.
00:34:09.500Maybe we give them some discount, which is not how they're set up, certainly not for Medicare.
00:34:14.120And then but what is not on the chopping block is the war I just launched in Iran, which is going to add at a minimum is going to cost 200 billion, which is what is being asked for from Congress.
00:34:25.660So that's like literally a switcheroo. And I'm sorry, I know that was not from the from the the the original address he gave us.
00:34:33.640I didn't hear anything new in the address last night. No clear timetable, you know, no sense of even like again, the shifting of the mission.
00:34:41.360Is it to open the strait? Is it to denuclearize? Is it regime change? All of these things, depending on which Trump you ask or which member of the cabinet, it shifts literally every 12 hours.
00:34:51.820So whatever. It was another address. It sounds like we're in for the big war.
00:34:55.540It shifts along with a message, no matter who it's from, of we've been perfectly clear from the start.
00:35:02.240And then what follows is some new like another explanation that isn't clear. But OK, whatever.
00:35:08.880I mean, I really don't care. Like I don't, I don't, I don't care anymore about like the retroactive justifications. I just want us to get out and I don't care what excuse we have to use. I'm perfectly happy to go along with the excuse. I really am. I just, just get out. Like his, I hope his advisors tell him they'll buy it. Yes. Just get out. The straight, it's not fair to the Europeans to say it's your fault. I mean, it's your problem now. The straight of Hormone is being closed. You deal with it. It's not fair, but I don't care about that either.
00:35:34.640I just want us out. I don't want any more troops over there. And I think he can do it if enough
00:35:39.740people get in his ears and if enough people show him these polls, Sean. But your thoughts on
00:35:43.600both the soundbite we ran just there and on the address last night.
00:35:47.520Yeah. So I was actually pretty encouraged by the address last night. And I am where you are. Like,
00:35:52.560I don't think this was a wise action to take. I think it's a distraction. I think it's making
00:35:56.560it harder to do things that need to be done here domestically. And it was the domestic agenda that
00:36:01.380got him reelected. But what I saw, I saw a couple of things. So he talked about a few different
00:36:07.480things. He said the objectives were largely completed. He said Iran was no longer really
00:36:12.020a threat. It's a direct quote, that regime change wasn't a goal, that there were maybe two to three
00:36:16.440weeks left, and that the Strait of Hormuz is just going to have to open up on its own.
00:36:20.600So what I saw in that was an admission that, hey, we're not going to do this big ground invasion to
00:36:25.520open up the strait. It's not our problem. Look, we may have been the reason it got screwed up.
00:36:29.380You're going to have to deal with it. I was encouraged by all that because it suggests to me that he understands that this is not popular, that people didn't want it, that it's a distraction, that it's hurting him.
00:36:40.620And it reminded me of a New York Post article that ran right after the war was launched.
00:36:46.080And there was a quote in it that was very uncharacteristically Trump, where he said something along the lines of, well, I don't care what the polls say.
00:36:54.280It's the right thing. I need to do it. I don't care what the polls say.
00:36:56.660And it's very, very rare for Trump to ever say something like that because it's an implicit
00:37:02.620admission that what he's doing isn't popular. I think he's known all along that this was going
00:37:08.120to be a drag, but for whatever reason, he felt compelled to do it. He felt he had to do it.
00:37:12.560The overall vibe and impression I got from that speech last night was a president who
00:37:17.440understood that it's a drag on him, it needs to be wrapped up, and it's time to move on.
00:37:22.260And say what you will about Trump. Unlike, I think, every other president I have experienced and seen as an American, the man does listen. He has a pretty incredible political radar and political instinct. It's how he got elected twice, three times, depending on where you sit. The guy's not an idiot. He's not a political neophyte. He survived attempts to imprison and bankrupt and even murder him. And he's in president again.
00:37:46.260So I was encouraged because I think I saw a president who understands this thing's got to get wrapped up and we got to move on.
00:38:25.400I think I just would not count on this being I want I want Sean to be right.
00:38:31.960I want this to be basically an indication of we're going to like do a bit more.
00:38:37.540And so it'll look like we've really hurt the Iranians now.
00:38:40.340And then that gives him domestic justification to to leave. I hope that that's correct. But, oh, you know, the pattern has been one of has been on a kind of escalatory ladder.
00:38:52.480And so what I worry is two kinds of ground deployments that either or or both, I think would be terrible. One is to try to take this Karg Island or some portion of Iran's southern shore. The problem with that is that that area, the Iranians have so fortified. And I watch Iranian state TV and you can say, yeah, it's all their propaganda and stuff.
00:39:13.640But at some point, there's some nexus between propaganda and reality. And I think the Iranians really, really want that to happen because it'll get them a chance to get up close and get far more U.S. deaths than they've been able to achieve, even if it means they also rack up lots of deaths.
00:39:32.080But to them, it's like it's martyrdom, right? They like glory in it. So they don't mind that. But if they can rack up like more kills and it provides a static target to if you're landing on an island, it's pretty easy for them to like drone it, you know, and other forms of targeting that they can do.
00:39:50.180That's one. The other, which is, I think, even crazier, is this idea of landing special forces to try to retrieve several hundred pounds of enriched uranium, which are in tunnels. And obviously the Iranians aren't like cartoon villains to keep all their enriched uranium in one underground site. It's multiple tunnel cities across the country where they've placed these.
00:40:13.700So the idea of sending in special forces on this, to me, it seems like a wild goose chase.
00:40:19.600So I laugh because it's but it's grim because it's also obviously very, very it's a very dangerous thing to do for those for the special forces operators.
00:40:28.740So, I mean, like the only way to do the really big thing of, quote unquote, defeating Iran is to do an invasion that takes 500000 troops at a minimum.
00:40:38.540And that's what Mark Levin really wants.
00:40:40.980It's obvious from all of live-in type messaging.
00:40:44.700It'll become a U.S. problem for two decades.
00:44:33.520Did it compromise American principles or did it save American lives or both?
00:44:37.220I think both. It may have compromised our principles, at least in the short term.
00:44:42.700That interview put him at the center of a national firestorm over interrogation techniques and U.S. policy in the war on terror.
00:44:50.720Years later, Kiriakou was charged under the Espionage Act and ultimately pleaded guilty, with the feds breathing down his neck, to revealing the identity of two covert CIA officers to journalists.
00:45:02.940He believes he was targeted for speaking out about the enhanced interrogation program.
00:45:06.500He ultimately spent just under two years behind bars.
00:45:10.260John says he has no regrets about speaking out.
00:45:12.440And in recent years, he's become a major player on the podcast scene, revealing some of the
00:45:16.440agency's tactics and strategies and speaking out about Jeffrey Epstein and what really
00:45:21.120motivates U.S. foreign policy decisions.
00:45:25.660Former CIA officer and whistleblower John Kiriakou joins me now.
00:45:59.560Not really. What I had been hoping for, having watched Donald Trump for the last six plus years, longer than six plus years, 10 plus years, I was hoping that he would declare victory and announce that the boys are coming home.
00:46:20.300What we saw was that we're winning or we won, which I don't believe we are.
00:46:25.560And and we're going to keep fighting for weeks.
00:46:28.720That's probably going to stretch into into months.
00:46:31.480But one of the things that really disturbed me the most was the president threatened again to attack Iran's infrastructure, specifically its electrical grid.
00:46:39.540And that is quite literally a war crime.
00:46:42.680It's very unusual for a president to go on TV and announce, I'm going to commit a war crime.
00:49:44.480The CIA in the last 20 years has written two national intelligence estimates.
00:49:49.340Now, this is a sense of the entire intelligence community concluding both times that the Iranians did not have a nuclear weapons program, besides the fact that Ayatollah Khamenei, the late Ayatollah Khamenei, issued a fatwa, a religious decree in 2003 saying that it was a sin to have a nuclear weapons program and that the government was forbidden from doing so.
00:50:12.480There's no evidence that they had a nuclear weapons program except for what the Israelis have been saying, and I think the Israelis made it up.
00:50:20.040And our own intelligence assessment, as we heard from Telsey Gabbard when she testified publicly, is that they did not have a nuclear weapon and that they were not close to getting a nuclear weapon.
00:50:29.340And even our president told us that their nuclear weapons program was obliterated last June.
00:50:34.020So this is why many of us are having trouble believing anything other than Israel had an agenda, and we decided to help them, as you point out, the same agenda they've had for many years.
00:50:42.480there's much, much more to do. John, stick with us. We've got to take a quick break and we will
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01:01:19.520I caught a connection to Washington. She caught a connection to Cleveland.
01:01:23.660And that was the end of it. Was that the end of it for Stelios too?
01:01:29.300Yeah. Yeah. I, uh, they didn't wind up together. Oh no.
01:01:34.380The guy could barely read. That was, uh, no,
01:01:38.060she was feeling lonely and it was because I was so focused on the job.
01:01:42.240It was very hard to maintain a marriage in the CIA. Very much so. Very,
01:01:45.360very much so. And you know, I'll tell you another thing. Um,
01:01:48.060Two years later, I was in Pakistan and I'm dating a CIA officer. And in Pakistan, we had this trunk line. So it was just a normal phone, but it was a 202 area code. So it's like you're making a local call. So I think we were like 11 hours ahead of Washington or 10 and a half hours ahead of Washington.
01:02:07.400And so I would call her every morning when I got to the office because it was already evening the previous day for her.
01:02:15.680And one of the guys in my branch, they were all retirees in my branch.
01:02:20.660They were all either former chief or deputy chief of Near Eastern operations.
01:02:27.180And and so one of them heard me say, OK, I love you.
01:02:31.980And I hung up the phone and he said, so are there wedding bells in the future?
01:16:10.900And I said, thanks, Senator, but I got to tell you, I expected more from you.
01:16:16.140I thought you would have been more helpful to me.
01:16:18.080And he got angry and he said, look, it took everything I had just to not lose my security clearance. And I said, oh, you're afraid of them. You're not overseeing them. You're afraid of them. And he walked away from me. But I was right. He was afraid of them. They're all afraid. And so they just tow the line.
01:16:39.960Well, remember who was it that said about Trump, like you mess with the three letter agency, you mess with CIA and they will make you pay for the rest of your life.
01:16:50.000That was Chuck Schumer. He said they have nine ways from Sunday to make your life miserable.
01:16:55.180To make you pay. But here's my question, because I heard you on Diary of a CEO saying the CIA can they can they can rest control of your car.
01:17:07.060You know, our cars have these big brains now that, I mean, you know, if the car company can't, like whatever the service is, if you get into an accident, you can just sort of say, help me.
01:17:15.740If they can get in there, sure, I bet it's hackable by somebody else to the point where they could potentially drive your car right off the road.
01:17:22.100If they could do that, then why would they ever have to do anything more explicit?
01:17:28.480Why would they ever have to do mind control over anybody at a rally in Pennsylvania if that's what they want?
01:17:34.020You know, like there are, there would be ways of getting rid of you that would be so undetectable
01:17:38.500and, and not suspicious that they could be doing that all the time. They wouldn't have to go about
01:17:43.400mind control, MK ultra LSD. You know what I'm saying? So that to me, that's, that undermines
01:17:48.060the theory that they're doing any of these public executions explicitly or behind the scenes.
01:17:54.040I think that's right. But think of it this way too. I'm going to tell you a little funny,
01:17:58.880little anecdote about one of my promotion panels. I had been working with a psychologist in the CIA's
01:18:05.700Counterterrorism Center to come up with outside the box ideas on how to recruit spies to steal
01:18:12.140secrets. And she happened to also sit on my promotion panel. And she said in my promotion
01:18:17.860panel, in great support of my promotion, she said, John Kiriakou will come up with 40 different ideas
01:18:24.900for an operation. 36 of them are insane, but four of them are going to be really good.
01:18:30.740So imagine sitting around the table and somebody comes up with an idea to put an explosive
01:18:36.040in Fidel Castro's cigar. Well, that's a stupid idea. If you're going to get close enough to put
01:18:42.720an explosive in the cigar, just shoot them in the head, for example, if that's what you really want
01:18:48.500to do. So there are a lot of people sitting around a lot of conference room tables at the CIA coming
01:18:53.360up with really stupid ideas. And then there are nodding heads all around the table saying,
01:18:59.280yeah, that's a great idea. We should do that. So, you know, the bottom line is this. We know
01:19:04.380thanks to WikiLeaks and the Vault 7 revelations that the CIA can remotely take over your car.
01:19:10.020They can make you drive off a bridge or into a tree or into an abutment and kill you if they
01:19:17.460want to. They can turn your smart TV into a microphone. They can reverse engineer your
01:19:23.000speaker to turn into a microphone so they can listen to everything you're saying, even when
01:19:27.740the TV is off. The technology is 20 years ahead of what anybody else thinks the technology is.
01:19:36.080I don't want to be a Pollyanna about it, but they're not supposed to do that without a warrant.
01:19:40.860Are they doing that shit without a warrant? Without a warrant. You know, at the CIA.
01:19:46.100In training, they used to tell us all the time, our job is to break the law.
01:19:52.260And I remember saying, yeah, but not here.
01:19:56.280The job is to break the law over there.
01:19:59.320I was perfectly happy and on multiple occasions actively participated in breaking into people's houses or offices and planting bugs and cameras.
01:20:29.140Do you think the FBI is doing similar behaviors or is this all CIA?
01:20:33.680You know, it was my experience when I was working with the FBI and I worked with the
01:20:37.900FBI for years and years that they really were sticklers for the law where the CIA wasn't.
01:20:44.240I remember even saying one time, I'm going to I'm going to fudge the details here for obvious reasons, but they we were talking a couple of us CIA people were talking to a group from the FBI and they were saying what difficulty they were having infiltrating a domestic terrorist group.
01:21:02.580And I said, oh, no, I got you covered. I said there was this group that that we took care of. We just didn't have access to them. So what we did is we found one of them.
01:21:13.100It was only like six members of this terrorist group.
01:21:15.800We found one and we said, hey, listen, Muhammad, your friend Abdullah, I'm from the CIA.
01:21:21.520And Abdullah told me that that you'd be a good guy for me to talk to because Abdullah works for me.
01:21:27.060And he said, you'd like to work for me, too.
01:21:29.220Well, the guy runs screaming from the room, but he goes back and he kills Abdullah.
01:21:33.240And then we and then we tell Rashid, hey, listen, we were talking about about Abdullah with Muhammad.
01:21:39.360You know, Muhammad's one of our guys, and he told us that Abdullah was a bad guy.
01:25:17.180I also heard that she never really wanted to be attorney general.
01:25:21.460The president insisted that she be attorney general.
01:25:23.920And, you know, when when a president calls you and says your country needs you, you say, of course, Mr. President, I'll do whatever the country needs.
01:26:03.400But like a lot of lawfare, you know, by the Trump administration, against the Trump administration, these judges who think they're mini president.
01:26:09.880Like, it's just zero free time, zero thanks, zero love, you know, coming back from the public.
01:26:17.400Whatever Pam Bani is going to do next, especially if it's private sector, I guarantee she's going to be happier.
01:26:21.840so we'll see what happens with Todd Blanche. Okay, but back to you. So the CIA doesn't have
01:26:28.960any real rules overseas. The FBI domestically does. I've heard you say before, another group
01:26:34.500that has no rules is the Israelis. And that seems really clear right now. I mean, one of the
01:26:42.400dynamics of this war has been the president going out there saying, we are talking to somebody. I
01:26:47.760can't tell you who it is because I'm worried he'll get killed. And then, of course, left unsaid is
01:26:52.020killed by exactly. Obviously, it's the Israelis. So what was your experience with them?
01:26:57.600It was universally negative on in my very first briefing. I had only been on the job as an Iraq
01:27:06.120analyst for six weeks. My boss said to me, I want you to participate in a group briefing. You're
01:27:11.880going to brief the Israelis. They have a Shin Bet representative and a Mossad representative.
01:27:17.760And he said, we don't we don't speak to the Israelis in the building.
01:27:21.060They're not permitted in the building because every time they would come to CIA headquarters, they would bring gifts.
01:27:26.020And the gifts were always laden with listening devices and batteries.
01:27:30.760And, you know, we we would x-ray everything and and we would tell them, stop trying to bug our conference rooms.
01:27:37.080And they would say, oh, OK, OK, you know, you caught us.
01:27:41.340OK. So finally, we said they just can't come in anymore.
01:27:44.860So we have a safe house where we meet with the Israelis.
01:27:48.460So it was like eight of us, the senior Iraq analysts, the military analysts, the political
01:27:53.760analysts, the econ analysts, the oil analysts, everybody's doing their thing.
01:27:57.540And because I was the most junior, I went last.
01:28:01.440And I said, because I was an overt employee, my name is John Kiriakou, and I'm going to
01:28:07.480brief you today on Saddam Hussein's state of mind.
01:28:10.080And the Mossad representative looked over his glasses at me and he said, spell your name.
01:28:50.620On my very first day at the CIA, where, you know, you put your hand up in the air and
01:28:54.860you swear to uphold and protect the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.
01:28:59.240We had a briefing by the CIA's director of security.
01:29:02.100And he told us that there are two intelligence representatives at the Israeli embassy, one from Mossad, one from Shin Bet.
01:29:10.260He said, but the FBI has been able to identify 187 other undeclared Israeli intelligence officers spread out all across America, working to steal secrets from American defense contractors.
01:29:25.760but politically the relationship is so close that you don't want to rock the boat and uh you know
01:29:34.280start arresting people spying for israel look at jonathan pollard he does every day of a 30-year
01:29:39.880sentence and then is welcomed like some kind of a conquering hero at the american embassy in
01:29:45.020jerusalem jerusalem it made me sick to my stomach well when you said the comment about how everybody
01:29:51.840in Congress is afraid of the CIA. The same is true when it comes to Israel. I don't know if
01:29:57.180afraid is the word, but controlled by. I mean, one of the dynamics of this, the wake of the Iran
01:30:02.780war, John, has been not just like the loudest, but kind of the only front-facing critics have
01:30:11.140been from the more isolationist right. Where are the Democrats? Where are they? They don't say
01:30:17.380That's the question right there. Where in the world are the Democrats? They are utterly silent.
01:30:22.960In fact, I'll tell you, I was especially furious with Cory Booker, the Democratic senator from New Jersey.
01:30:29.420Not the last time Netanyahu came to Washington, but the time before.
01:30:34.260Cory Booker literally ran through the halls of Congress to get to a photo op so he could stand behind Benjamin Netanyahu with his big, stupid grin on his face.
01:30:44.660like even now after gaza after the start of iran now you're running like oj simpson through an
01:30:52.680airport in in the old i'm dating myself but in the old uh whatever it was commercial yeah hurts
01:30:58.060commercial you want to be in a picture with benjamin netanyahu some of them are afraid of
01:31:03.840being primaried and and god knows that that apac if you are not 100 pro-israel in your voting
01:31:10.900record, they will primary you and they will spend millions of dollars to defeat you. That scares
01:31:16.540most members of Congress. And so they're just not willing to challenge anybody. I'll tell you
01:31:22.380another thing. I used to be the chief investigator in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. I did
01:31:26.020that from 09 to 11. And a couple of days after I started the job, these two guys came in clearly,
01:31:36.180obviously from APAC, and they said, hey, welcome to Capitol Hill. I said, thanks. I've worked on
01:31:43.280Capitol Hill before. We want to invite you for an all expenses paid trip to the Holy Land. They
01:31:51.360didn't say Israel. Totally. And I said, thanks, guys. I can pay for my own vacations. I'm not
01:31:56.340interested. It's all expenses paid, and we're going to take you to all the Christian holy sites.
01:32:01.620I go, guys, I'm not taking APAC's money. I'm not interested. But I don't think a single day went
01:32:10.440by where I didn't see those two. They were they practically had offices up there. And then
01:32:16.840individual House members say that there are APAC reps that will go to their office every day and
01:32:23.660just sit on the couch. And if constituents come in to meet with staff or to meet with the member
01:32:29.860of Congress, these guys will get up like it's their office and say, remember, Israel, Israel,
01:32:34.840Israel, Israel, remember. What is that? That's not the American way.
01:32:41.200I think that the manipulation is so ubiquitous, you almost just don't even know it's happening
01:32:46.520because everyone's singing from the same hymnal. And so it's like, yeah, this is what we all think.
01:32:52.620I remember at Fox News, it was like a knee jerk thing. You had to say like in Israel,
01:35:07.880They blow right through the polygraph because they don't react to anything.
01:35:11.820People who have sociopathic tendencies do have a conscience.
01:35:15.360They do feel guilt or remorse, but they're willing to break the law or to work in legal,
01:35:22.020moral, and ethical gray areas if they believe it's the right thing to do.
01:35:26.100So I mentioned earlier that on multiple occasions, I broke into people's houses or businesses
01:35:31.840and planted microphones or listening devices.
01:35:36.080I was very happy to do that because I believed we were the good guys.
01:35:40.360And this was to protect America, right? We've got to disrupt that next attack. We need to take apart this terrorist group. And if that means, you know, identifying a terrorist apartment and renting the apartment underneath and drilling a hole through the floor so I can stick a pinhole camera and listen or a microphone and listen to everything that's being said and then report it back to CIA headquarters, I'm going to do it. That's what a sociopathic tendency is.
01:36:06.100to you. Are you able to go anywhere now or rent an apartment? Like, I mean, are you constantly
01:36:12.800wondering where this is, this is being done to you? Oh yeah. Oh, I, I just assume that it is
01:36:18.780sure. And you know, that's why one of the reasons why I'm so vocal and so public is I figured it's
01:36:25.960safer for me because more people would miss me if something were to happen. I will add,
01:36:31.220And I will add that an investment in a good bulletproof vest is always wise as well.
01:36:59.620I mean, let me ask you like without getting too graphic, but like, let's say you're, you know, you're being intimate in your home. You're in an intimate position. Like, do you, do you remove all phones? Do you make sure there's no TVs in the room? Like, is it at that level where it's like everything's exposed?