The Tucker Carlson Show - Matt Taibbi： All the Top Secret Information Trump Is Releasing & What He Should Declassify Next

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00:00:30.000 So everyone's mad that, and even some Democrats, I think, are mad about these last-minute Biden pardons of Fauci and the J6 committee, etc., etc.

00:00:40.540 So let's just set that aside.

00:00:42.500 My concern is not that these people are punished.

00:00:45.000 Fauci's 81.

00:00:46.500 Yeah, who cares?

00:00:47.240 I think he'll be punished, you know, in some larger sense.

00:00:49.960 But I want to know what they did.

00:00:53.960 That's the—OK, so can we just go through a couple of these?

00:00:56.900 And, like, why would you pardon Fauci?

00:01:00.520 What are the potential crimes, the crimes you think he committed and could be punished for that you're trying to prevent him from being punished for by pardoning him?

00:01:06.440 Well, with Fauci specifically, the one thing that comes to mind immediately is perjury.

00:01:14.320 Yes.

00:01:14.680 Because he's been accused of that essentially already by, you know, the House committee.

00:01:20.800 Lying under oath to the Congress.

00:01:21.860 Lying under oath to the Congress.

00:01:23.280 In particular, saying, you know, that we have never funded gain of research, that we weren't doing it during this time period.

00:01:33.860 Even as there are other people in the government, like, you know, the deputy director of the NIH, saying, yes, we were.

00:01:41.700 Or Ralph Baric, who was one of the scientists at UNC, saying, yes, absolutely, that was gain of function.

00:01:49.100 Yes.

00:01:49.220 So there's a little bit of a problem there.

00:01:51.600 Now, he later amended the statement and said that he was speaking in a specific way, under a specific definition, but there's exposure there.

00:02:00.760 But that's not really the issue with Fauci.

00:02:04.040 The issue—

00:02:04.620 I believe that.

00:02:05.500 Welcome to the Tucker Carlson Show.

00:02:17.940 We bring you stories that have not been showcased anywhere else, and they're not censored, of course, because we're not gatekeepers.

00:02:25.280 We are honest brokers, here to tell you what we think you need to know and do it honestly.

00:02:30.540 Check out all of our content at tuckercarlson.com.

00:02:33.560 Here's the episode.

00:02:34.220 The issue is, really, it's about the whole rat's nest of gain of function.

00:02:40.300 How much did the authorities know about what was going on at the Wuhan Institute?

00:02:45.180 Did they have human sources at the Wuhan Institute?

00:02:50.120 Was there advance warning that this was coming?

00:02:53.620 Were they suppressing investigations into the possibility of a lab leak because of the connections to U.S. research?

00:03:02.440 All that stuff is in play.

00:03:03.760 I mean, there's a lot of stuff that's going on that, you know, that you want to know.

00:03:09.760 So, Fauci was part of the U.S. bioweapons program, obviously, right?

00:03:13.680 I mean, if you're funding gain of function, it's, you know, vaccines are one part of that, but probably not the only part of it, right?

00:03:20.960 So, the idea is you make the virus more dangerous in order to create a vaccine to fight the virus.

00:03:25.660 Right.

00:03:26.020 But in the process, you wind up with much more dangerous viruses.

00:03:29.340 Right.

00:03:29.620 And that's one of the things that raised a red flag for some of the people who were looking at the COVID phenomenon is just look at the surface characteristics of the disease.

00:03:40.000 It's highly transmissible.

00:03:42.880 Yes.

00:03:43.160 It doesn't, it's not terribly symptomatic.

00:03:45.480 Everybody's going to get it.

00:03:47.960 Not everybody's going to be harmed by it.

00:03:50.300 It's kind of, it's what they designed, what you would do if you were designing a disease to carry a vaccine, for instance.

00:03:57.760 Yes.

00:03:58.360 Yeah.

00:03:58.640 So, my interest is not in Fauci, I think any normal person can make up his mind about Fauci.

00:04:04.380 It's pretty obvious who Fauci is, the super bureaucrat.

00:04:07.820 It's in the bioweapon programs and the Frankenstein science that's being funded by our tax dollars around the world, to be specific, in Ukraine, in China, in Djibouti.

00:04:22.880 You know, we have biolabs in a lot of places around the world, and like, what are they doing?

00:04:28.640 What are they doing?

00:04:29.840 What was their relation to the Wuhan Institute also?

00:04:34.360 I mean, I think those are all important questions, like, both the bioweapons and, you know, their relation to the pandemic.

00:04:43.380 But the thing is, about these pardons, they're a mistake.

00:04:48.860 If you want to know what's happening, they just made it a lot easier for us to find out.

00:04:53.660 How?

00:04:54.800 Because now, once the pardons delivered, the person can't plead the fifth.

00:05:00.540 If they're brought before a grand jury, they can't take the fifth anymore.

00:05:04.240 If they're brought before a congressional committee, they can't evoke their right against self-incrimination.

00:05:09.920 So, they have to say something.

00:05:12.440 And this is what's so interesting, because I've been talking to criminal defense attorneys, people who are former Senate investigators, some current Senate investigators.

00:05:20.520 And they all kind of said the same thing.

00:05:23.800 It's so illogical to give somebody a pardon if you're trying to cover up things that the only reason you would really do it is if there's very serious crimes involved, right?

00:05:36.440 So, that's a red flag for us.

00:05:38.360 When we see somebody getting a pardon, we think, well, why would they do that unless there's something really bad there, right?

00:05:45.440 Yeah.

00:05:45.540 So, either it's a mistake where they just stupidly made it easier for everybody to investigate, or there's something we don't know about that is interesting.

00:05:55.040 Well, it's such a profound thing to do.

00:05:57.240 I mean, if somebody said to you, Matt, would you accept a pardon, you would say, well, why would I need a pardon?

00:06:04.060 No.

00:06:04.440 I mean, it's like –

00:06:05.420 No.

00:06:05.660 It's incriminating.

00:06:07.380 It's morally incriminating, or it has the appearance of moral incrimination just by its fact, right?

00:06:12.780 It's not only morally incriminating, it's legally incriminating, as the Department of Justice itself said in a memo, I think, on one of the J6 cases.

00:06:22.400 It said, this does not unring the bell of conviction if you get a pardon going forward.

00:06:29.440 So, you're making an admission if you accept a pardon.

00:06:33.340 So, yeah, I wouldn't accept one if I were totally innocent.

00:06:37.360 Of course.

00:06:37.980 Yeah.

00:06:38.220 And also, I wouldn't accept one if I had something to hide.

00:06:41.660 Because now, you know, if I'm dragged before a congressional committee or especially a grand jury investigation, now I can't tap out and say, yeah, I'm sorry, I'm going to take the fifth on that.

00:06:52.360 That's fascinating.

00:06:53.240 Right?

00:06:53.540 So, the whole thing is really illogical.

00:06:58.040 I think it was more meant to be a symbolic gesture.

00:07:02.200 And this is really, I think, speaks to the thinking of the Biden administration about so many things, right?

00:07:09.320 They were so driven by optics with Trump that they did a lot of things that were incredibly stupid.

00:07:15.520 So, they want to portray him as vengeful and out to get people.

00:07:21.020 And the pardons are a good way to do that.

00:07:23.640 I mean, if you're aiming for that audience.

00:07:26.520 But it had the negative effect of opening all these investigations up, it seems to me.

00:07:32.620 So, you really think this was aimed at MSNBC viewers, just to paint Trump as a vindictive person?

00:07:38.660 So, I asked a lot of people, why did they do this?

00:07:41.880 Like, what's the point?

00:07:43.920 And one of the theories was that, that this is messaging.

00:07:48.220 Yes.

00:07:48.500 That they were trying to create a headline.

00:07:51.180 And there were lots of headlines instantaneously.

00:07:53.600 If you saw them, they all basically said the same thing.

00:07:56.240 Like, you know, to ward off future vindictive retaliatory acts by the Trump administration.

00:08:02.860 You know, Biden issues pardons.

00:08:05.420 It's always after the comma, right?

00:08:08.760 That's one theory.

00:08:09.860 The other theory is that in the last days of a presidential administration, it gets pretty chaotic in the White House.

00:08:17.940 And people who want things and, you know, they will come in and there will be a hurried frenzy to put stuff on paper.

00:08:26.400 And that's why there are unprecedented things in these pardons.

00:08:30.040 For instance, the J6 pardons, this has never happened before, where you give a pardon to a category of unnamed people, right?

00:08:37.780 Like, it says to the members of the committee, to the Capitol Police officers who testified, to the staff.

00:08:45.400 But it doesn't delineate the names of the people who are pardoned.

00:08:49.320 So now, if you want to invoke your pardon, you actually have to go over a test to prove that you're actually part of that category.

00:09:01.320 That I testified before the committee.

00:09:03.360 Does that mean that the committee called you, that you talked to a staffer once?

00:09:07.620 Or does that mean you actually sat in front of the hall and testified?

00:09:10.760 It's very weird.

00:09:12.260 And the only explanation that I could come up with from people is that they were in a hurry.

00:09:16.820 They didn't have all the names.

00:09:17.720 It's amazing.

00:09:20.160 Right?

00:09:20.900 So, but why would you preemptively pardon the J6 committee?

00:09:25.840 I mean, that's like the single most legitimate, morally empowered, great group of people ever impaneled in this country.

00:09:34.340 Like, truly.

00:09:36.720 Well, I mean, there are obviously some theories about why they would do that, right?

00:09:41.300 What?

00:09:43.640 Mother Teresa, she was such a great person, we're going to preemptively pardon her.

00:09:47.720 Like, what?

00:09:48.600 This is like crazy.

00:09:50.080 No, it is absolutely crazy.

00:09:52.380 And if I were some of those people, I'd be offended.

00:09:55.680 Yes.

00:09:56.200 Especially the people who testified and who didn't lie under oath.

00:10:02.880 Yes.

00:10:03.160 For instance, right?

00:10:03.840 Because they're all named.

00:10:06.060 Yeah.

00:10:06.940 All the police officers who testified to the committee.

00:10:10.920 Now, what if they're only really trying to protect a couple of them?

00:10:14.720 And there are some very conspicuous names.

00:10:16.500 I think we know who they are.

00:10:18.200 Right.

00:10:18.500 Yeah, exactly.

00:10:19.560 The ones they're trying to protect.

00:10:20.780 Right.

00:10:21.020 But what if you're one of the other ones who just gave some testimony?

00:10:25.300 Well, they, I mean, they interviewed hundreds and probably thousands of people, right?

00:10:29.560 It's some number like that.

00:10:31.100 Massive, massive number.

00:10:32.080 And I assume most of them told the truth.

00:10:33.760 I mean.

00:10:33.940 Right.

00:10:34.580 Right.

00:10:34.860 Most people do tell the truth, actually, I think.

00:10:37.360 I think that's probably the case.

00:10:38.760 Yeah.

00:10:39.000 I mean, especially if you're under oath and you're a law enforcement officer.

00:10:42.740 I mean, it's a very serious thing to lie in those situations.

00:10:45.720 And, you know, there are a couple of places in the testimony where it doesn't look good

00:10:50.460 for some of the people who testified.

00:10:52.760 But for the vast majority of them, I would take it as a grievous insult to be given that

00:10:58.220 pardon and especially to not be named.

00:11:01.500 That's what's so weird about it.

00:11:02.940 But it suggests what I have thought from the first week, which is they're like serious

00:11:07.900 crimes here.

00:11:09.820 I mean, you talk to Steve Sund, you know, who ran Capitol Police, who's like a nonpolitical

00:11:14.600 person, just career law enforcement, former MP, you know, former Washington, D.C. cop.

00:11:20.200 I don't think he has any weird agenda.

00:11:21.980 I mean, his story is so unbelievable.

00:11:24.880 They just didn't give him any intel at all and didn't give him any resources.

00:11:28.140 And everybody else knew this was happening except him.

00:11:30.160 I mean, the whole thing is so nuts that you're like, wait, there's something going on here.

00:11:34.080 I don't really know the pipe bombs at the the pipe bombs, the gallows that was erected

00:11:39.400 by some weird unknown group the night before.

00:11:42.640 Will we ever get disclosure?

00:11:44.000 I guess that's what I want.

00:11:45.020 I just want to know.

00:11:45.860 I again, I'm not I am not vengeful.

00:11:47.760 I don't really want to punish people so much as I just want to know that feels like punishment

00:11:52.300 enough.

00:11:52.740 Will we?

00:11:53.080 I think we will.

00:11:54.420 I think we're we're heading into a golden age for investigative journalism.

00:11:59.360 I think this is after eight years of crazy, misleading news stories and dead ends and unanswered

00:12:08.560 questions and fake news, you know, ranging from Russiagate to Nord Stream to, you know,

00:12:16.320 the covid origins where we were actively kept away from one side of that story for years.

00:12:22.120 I think we're going to find out a lot of this stuff.

00:12:24.280 There are investigations already underway, document hunts going on all over the place.

00:12:31.480 There are reports that have been commissioned to look into a lot of these questions and they're

00:12:38.500 going to be staffed up with a lot of money and a lot of personnel.

00:12:41.760 And it's just an unprecedented situation where, for instance, the DHS or the FBI or the DOJ

00:12:50.340 would be in sync with congressional investigators to the point where they're not going to have

00:12:55.240 to issue subpoenas for a lot of this stuff.

00:12:57.560 They're just going to sit down and say, here's a list of the documents we want to find.

00:13:01.800 And I think that they're going to have that collaborative arrangement.

00:13:07.280 There's panic.

00:13:07.940 I sense panic and I sense it in some of these confirmation battles, particularly the sort

00:13:13.440 of offline stuff that you don't see in the media.

00:13:15.400 But just when you find out the lengths to which permanent Washington is going to, say,

00:13:20.180 sabotage Tulsi Gabbard, who's an army officer who's had a clearance for more than a decade,

00:13:25.920 carries an automatic weapon.

00:13:26.920 I mean, clearly we trust her with America's, you know, defense.

00:13:31.160 Why can't we trust her with America's secrets?

00:13:33.480 Well, of course we can.

00:13:34.240 So what is this?

00:13:36.060 And it really is people are panicked that what they've been doing is going to come to light,

00:13:40.620 I think.

00:13:41.640 Well, they should be panicked because if you read the executive order on the weaponization

00:13:46.200 of government, it specifically empowers the director of national intelligence to conduct

00:13:53.060 a wide ranging report into the possible misdeeds of the entire intelligence community and orders

00:14:00.380 her to come up with, you know, anything negative that they can find.

00:14:05.040 Holy shit.

00:14:05.600 So can you imagine?

00:14:06.840 No.

00:14:07.520 Right?

00:14:08.000 I mean, that's like trying to make a list of everything.

00:14:13.740 She'll be doing it from now to the end of time.

00:14:16.340 But no, I mean, in perfect seriousness, this is, it's setting the stage for, you know, kind

00:14:22.460 of a second church committee hearings era.

00:14:26.640 And that was a great moment in American history.

00:14:29.260 Once every 50 years.

00:14:30.520 Right.

00:14:30.980 We find out what they're doing with their black budgets.

00:14:33.180 Yeah.

00:14:33.480 And really, in the mid 70s, who would have known, right, that we were doing such an incredibly

00:14:41.240 wide ranging, you know, list of horrible, stupid things from, you know, trying to murder

00:14:49.180 Castro with exploding seashells to spying on Martin Luther King Jr. to trying to, you know,

00:14:55.960 leak news about mistresses of civil rights leaders.

00:14:58.940 I mean, it goes, the list went on and on and on, and we only found out about it because

00:15:03.420 they went too far.

00:15:04.980 Right.

00:15:05.580 And now suddenly people in the Senate had a hammer to start looking, you know, into this

00:15:13.580 direction.

00:15:14.380 And it all came out.

00:15:15.660 Well, not all of it, but a lot of it came out.

00:15:17.640 A lot of it.

00:15:18.020 Frank Church, sadly, got incredibly fast developing cancer, I noticed.

00:15:22.000 Did he?

00:15:22.560 Yes, he did.

00:15:23.460 He did kind of like Jack Ruby style cancer, Hugo Chavez style cancer.

00:15:27.480 It's interesting.

00:15:28.220 Huh?

00:15:29.100 I did not know that.

00:15:30.060 Yeah, couldn't treat it.

00:15:30.840 He died.

00:15:31.860 Sad.

00:15:34.020 Sorry.

00:15:34.780 No, it's all right.

00:15:35.840 I mean, look, it's hard not to think.

00:15:37.280 I never thought this way until like a year ago, maybe a year and a half ago.

00:15:42.840 I'm like, oh, not only did I not think this way, I attacked anyone who did.

00:15:46.900 Right.

00:15:47.440 Yeah.

00:15:47.820 But can I say one thing that I've noticed now that I'm in middle age is that all my

00:15:53.340 life, the older guys I've known, like you go on duck hunting trips or whatever in Washington

00:15:57.380 where I lived, like with my dad and his friends or whatever, and the guys who were in their

00:16:01.960 50s and 60s all thought this way.

00:16:04.720 They all thought this way.

00:16:05.980 You know, after like a lifetime of government service as an operations officer, whatever you're doing, right?

00:16:10.320 Right, right.

00:16:11.300 They all had this mindset.

00:16:13.120 And I remember sitting like in a duck blind thinking, these guys are fucking crazy.

00:16:16.920 They're all nuts.

00:16:17.460 Because what I didn't realize was there's a reason that people become more open to these

00:16:25.600 sorts of explanations the more they see.

00:16:29.240 Of course.

00:16:29.760 And maybe, right?

00:16:31.600 Yeah.

00:16:31.640 I don't know why I didn't get that.

00:16:33.200 Well, it's probably just our generation that thought the schoolhouse rock thing was true.

00:16:38.780 I mean, right?

00:16:41.040 It's so true.

00:16:42.120 Because, you know, we grew up with all the president's men and after the church committee,

00:16:46.980 so we thought it all had come out.

00:16:49.100 The good guys won.

00:16:50.420 There's transparency.

00:16:51.660 We have the Freedom of Information Act.

00:16:53.240 We can find everything out.

00:16:55.180 No, right?

00:16:56.100 It turns out, no, right?

00:16:58.280 No, I never thought of schoolhouse rock and all the president's men as sophisticated propaganda

00:17:03.920 put there by the intel agencies, but I think you're right.

00:17:08.500 Whether they were, whoever did it, it was effective.

00:17:11.280 You want to hear something creepy?

00:17:12.700 You are being bought and sold every day without your knowledge.

00:17:16.340 Data brokers are watching everything you do online.

00:17:19.040 They track every website that you visit, every link that you click, every video that you play.

00:17:24.080 They collect that information about you and your behavior and your thoughts,

00:17:28.620 and they sell it to anybody who wants to buy it, including governments.

00:17:32.400 No privacy whatsoever.

00:17:34.120 Obviously, it should be illegal.

00:17:35.220 It's not illegal.

00:17:36.180 People are getting paid off to keep it legal, politicians specifically.

00:17:39.560 Politicians, by the way, are some of the ones using your data.

00:17:45.440 They buy it and then employ it in campaigns to swing your vote.

00:17:50.700 It's creepy as hell.

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00:19:34.960 Tucker says it best.

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00:20:43.860 Nah, no more statistically speaking.

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00:21:08.680 So can we just go through, since I think you're, as I've said many times, and I mean it, I think

00:21:14.140 you're one of the great reporters still working.

00:21:15.920 Not that there are many.

00:21:16.560 Not that there's a ton of competition.

00:21:17.860 Yeah, there aren't many.

00:21:19.300 But, and you are, by your nature, a curious person, which is like requirement one for

00:21:27.380 journalism.

00:21:28.200 And like the one thing no one else seems curious about, I think, but you are.

00:21:30.680 So can you just go through, in no particular order, the stories whose endings you'd like

00:21:37.480 to know?

00:21:38.080 Like, what are you curious about as we enter an age of disclosure, and God willing we

00:21:42.800 do?

00:21:43.900 What do you want to know?

00:21:45.620 So first of all, just to back up, I tried to make a list.

00:21:48.240 A couple of days ago.

00:21:49.800 Oh, did you really?

00:21:50.380 Yeah.

00:21:50.740 Of all the things that I would want to investigate if I were, you know, in that kind of a position

00:21:56.920 to order these kinds of things.

00:21:58.260 I'm actually going to take notes as you talk, because I want to follow along at home as this

00:22:01.960 happens.

00:22:02.260 Okay.

00:22:02.840 But I couldn't finish.

00:22:06.540 There were so many different things that I never got to the end.

00:22:09.260 But I would say that the big ones, you know, there are huge glaring questions, which is

00:22:14.920 unusual.

00:22:16.220 For instance, who was president the last four years, especially the last year?

00:22:21.220 Or, I mean, I think that's an enormous question.

00:22:25.600 Tell me Blinken.

00:22:26.480 Do you think it was Blinken?

00:22:27.820 You know, I think Blinken's so evil, so demonstrably evil and also stupid that I just see his fingerprints

00:22:36.180 everywhere.

00:22:37.880 Right.

00:22:38.680 Right.

00:22:39.120 But that's just a pure guess.

00:22:41.900 That's the problem.

00:22:43.140 We don't really know.

00:22:43.660 I know that in the last two months, Blinken did everything he could to accelerate the war

00:22:48.320 between the United States and Russia, which is like, it should be illegal.

00:22:52.680 I don't know how he got away with that.

00:22:53.980 Nobody said anything about it, but that's a fact.

00:22:56.480 So anyway, sorry to interrupt you.

00:22:57.460 No, but he, you know, his State Department was also involved in the censorship stuff, too.

00:23:02.740 Yes.

00:23:04.200 Who was president?

00:23:05.280 Who or what?

00:23:05.960 Who was president?

00:23:06.780 Let's start with a big question.

00:23:07.760 Yeah, no, I mean, I think of all the crimes that are on the table and the potential corruption

00:23:13.820 issues, people signing documents or somehow getting documents signed by an incompetent

00:23:22.680 president or an unfit president has to rank up there with the most serious things that

00:23:28.180 have ever happened in American history, right?

00:23:31.640 So you have to look at what was the process of the White House operation, right?

00:23:40.160 Who was actually running things?

00:23:42.960 We know from a surface point who held the posts, right?

00:23:48.500 So Ron Klain was the chief of staff.

00:23:51.320 We know roughly who else was in Joe Biden's orbit.

00:23:54.520 What were the what was the schedule?

00:23:57.640 You know, did he did he sign things by auto pen?

00:24:00.860 Because they have this this machine that does and who and who was who basically had the power

00:24:06.620 of attorney to turn that on, right?

00:24:08.380 Like these are all questions that we have to get answers to.

00:24:11.620 What was the day to day operation of the Biden White House?

00:24:15.780 And again, especially in the last year, because I think, you know, that gets to bigger questions

00:24:21.200 of who was really making these big foreign policy decisions and who was making decisions about

00:24:27.580 things like, you know, cutting off the Democratic primaries, the challengers.

00:24:34.280 You know, I think these are big party decisions, not necessarily White House decisions who decided

00:24:40.960 to kick Biden off the ticket.

00:24:45.120 Biden on July 13th was giving a speech in Detroit and he's like, I'm running.

00:24:52.640 I mean, he couldn't have been more affirmative about the idea that he was not going to drop

00:24:58.360 out of the race within seven days.

00:25:00.140 He was out of the race within three days after that Detroit thing.

00:25:04.280 There were stories leaked out in Politico that were basically saying that Nancy Pelosi was

00:25:08.420 going to ask him to or going to try to pressure him to drop out.

00:25:12.380 But I don't believe that.

00:25:14.420 I think we need to find out exactly what those communications were.

00:25:18.200 I mean, who had the authority to push the president of the United States off his own ticket

00:25:22.600 unless he had a sudden change of heart?

00:25:27.420 Do you believe that?

00:25:29.440 I think it's really obvious that his statement dropping out on Twitter was issued before

00:25:34.200 he knew.

00:25:35.900 I mean, I've heard that again.

00:25:37.140 I don't know is the truth, but I've heard that.

00:25:40.540 It's very conspicuous that when he when he wanted to say things, he said it on camera.

00:25:45.100 But there were all kinds of things where the wording was much more careful and that was

00:25:50.180 done on Twitter or in a letter or in a press release.

00:25:53.760 I mean, even even the the note explaining the pardons who wrote that.

00:25:58.620 Right.

00:25:59.140 It was on the Biden's Twitter account.

00:26:01.680 I doubt he's sitting there tweeting.

00:26:04.220 So it's just a coup.

00:26:05.120 I mean, that's a coup.

00:26:05.840 If you take a sitting president United States and force him to drop out.

00:26:11.060 I mean, right.

00:26:12.540 It's on the table.

00:26:13.700 It has to be because, you know, Jill Biden has been very circumspect in talking about it.

00:26:20.340 She's said these really curious things about how she wants to reevaluate her relationships.

00:26:25.340 I think she was referring to Nancy Pelosi.

00:26:28.880 But what exactly happened in that one week period between, you know, the middle of July

00:26:37.380 and the 21st or so?

00:26:39.040 And then what happened in between the 21st and the 22nd or whenever it was when Biden suddenly

00:26:45.180 came out and and made Kamala the nominee?

00:26:48.360 Like, how did that happen?

00:26:51.020 Who made that decision?

00:26:52.760 So that was after the Republican convention.

00:26:56.220 Yes.

00:26:57.320 Yes.

00:26:57.820 So you had this incredible week or two where Trump gets shot, survives.

00:27:06.240 You have the convention and Biden drops out.

00:27:08.180 I mean, that's.

00:27:08.740 And as far as I know, I don't think anyone's ever done like a real tick tock on that.

00:27:15.400 There were there were stories, but they were incredibly incomplete.

00:27:19.820 And this is one of the things where, you know, I was looking at it even from just the professionalism

00:27:25.380 point of view in terms of The New York Times, The Washington Post, all of these these papers.

00:27:30.120 How does nobody ask who made the decision to nominate Kamala Harris?

00:27:37.360 How did that happen?

00:27:39.900 How was he kicked off or how did he come to that decision?

00:27:44.240 Normally, there would be a big show of that.

00:27:47.140 Right.

00:27:47.360 There would be somebody would come out and give an interview to, I don't know, 60 minutes

00:27:53.020 and say, well, here's how that happened.

00:27:54.900 Right.

00:27:55.180 And whether it was true or not, there would be a grand explanation.

00:27:58.700 Whenever there's something big that happens with the president here, they just they just

00:28:05.480 kind of did a little tweet or a press release.

00:28:07.940 And there were things that were leaked out in newspapers.

00:28:10.580 None of it made any sense.

00:28:12.060 So, you know, they have to get all those communications.

00:28:15.080 And I think that's what was important there.

00:28:17.320 You know, there were preservation letters that were sent out by some Senate committees.

00:28:20.460 I hope it captured a lot of this stuff, but we'll see.

00:28:24.620 You know, do you have any sense?

00:28:27.500 Of what the answer is to either one of these questions, who was functionally operating the

00:28:33.420 Biden administration and who kicked Biden out?

00:28:35.860 Who made these decisions?

00:28:36.840 I've only heard theories about this.

00:28:39.420 Right.

00:28:39.740 And that's the problem.

00:28:41.500 It's kind of irresponsible for reporters to speculate.

00:28:44.440 I agree.

00:28:45.160 We don't know.

00:28:45.900 All we know, we saw little bits and pieces of things.

00:28:48.940 Like there was there was a really weird moment.

00:28:52.320 You might remember when Biden said something to the effect of we can't allow Putin to stay

00:28:58.800 in office or whatever it was.

00:29:00.420 Right.

00:29:00.780 And and people immediately interpreted that as a regime change.

00:29:04.740 Of course.

00:29:05.260 Comment.

00:29:05.680 Right.

00:29:06.300 47 minutes later, the White House comes out with a walk back clarifying statement saying,

00:29:12.580 you know, our policy towards Russia is unchanged or something, something ambiguous like that.

00:29:17.240 But there were leaks in the press about what happened there.

00:29:21.080 And there was a remarkable line in one of the stories saying that Biden was allowed to

00:29:26.120 participate in the workshopping of that second statement.

00:29:30.600 How is he not in charge of it?

00:29:33.800 First of all.

00:29:34.560 Right.

00:29:34.880 Like, you know, they're talking about Jake Sullivan is involved in the process.

00:29:40.480 But that just gives you a little glimpse into this idea of a collective presidency where

00:29:46.560 at best Biden was a participant.

00:29:49.300 So I think we need to know a lot of things about who was actually making those decisions.

00:29:57.960 It might be different in terms of, you know, for each realm of the government.

00:30:02.640 Right.

00:30:03.080 Maybe the national security questions were dealt with by one person.

00:30:06.320 Then, you know, the foreign policy things by another.

00:30:10.300 I don't know.

00:30:11.080 I mean, we'll see.

00:30:11.800 Um, and then domestic policy, which doesn't even really exist in this country.

00:30:16.560 It's all national security, like runs everything.

00:30:19.620 Right.

00:30:20.100 Right.

00:30:20.520 Um, who's doing that?

00:30:22.120 Yeah.

00:30:23.120 Oh, that was only the first thing in the list, right?

00:30:26.480 No, you just got, you know, it's so funny as you say this and I won't interrupt you anymore,

00:30:30.300 but I just can't.

00:30:31.020 I mean, it's like crazy.

00:30:31.900 You're going through this stuff.

00:30:32.800 This just happened this summer.

00:30:34.720 Yeah.

00:30:35.100 And I was there.

00:30:36.760 I mean, I know a lot of the people.

00:30:38.700 I feel like I'm not that informed, but maybe more informed than average because it's my

00:30:43.000 job.

00:30:44.140 I kind of forgot about all this stuff.

00:30:46.020 Like so much stuff has happened.

00:30:47.740 It's like, it's amazing.

00:30:50.180 Yeah.

00:30:50.480 What we have allowed to sort of pass by us without demanding answers.

00:30:55.480 I mean, I remember being in Russia in the late nineties, there were multiple episodes

00:31:01.820 that you might classify as quasi coups.

00:31:05.620 Yes.

00:31:05.780 Right.

00:31:06.160 There were, there was an, uh, an episode where people tried to arrest Yeltsin's bodyguard,

00:31:12.920 Alexander Karzhakov, and it kind of turned out the other way in the end.

00:31:17.020 And, but there was intense reporting about this by the supposedly unfree Russian press at

00:31:24.420 the time.

00:31:25.020 And then there was also the whole question of, you know, why was Putin brought in?

00:31:29.640 Uh, what, you know, what did he do when he immediately, he was immediately kind of used

00:31:34.780 to, uh, clamp down on the, an investigation of Yeltsin that was done by the general prosecutor

00:31:41.540 at the time.

00:31:42.320 I mean, that's all in the weeds.

00:31:43.880 What I'm trying to say is even in a third world country, we got more information, uh,

00:31:49.660 about stuff that was going on than we got last year in the United States of America where

00:31:55.380 we had a gigantic press corps sitting in Washington, supposedly covering all this stuff.

00:32:02.020 I, I, it blows my mind.

00:32:03.960 So you do know, I mean, you've done this your whole life, so you know, and you grew up in

00:32:07.060 it.

00:32:07.240 So you, you must still know people in that gigantic press corps.

00:32:11.600 A few, but you know, the ones that I, that I, I'm still in touch with mostly have been kind

00:32:18.320 of squeezed out, uh, you know, there are people who, who did try to get to the bottom of what

00:32:25.300 happened.

00:32:25.660 I mean, Cy Hirsch did a, a story about the mechanics of how it got to be, went from Biden

00:32:32.980 to Kamala.

00:32:33.860 And, you know, that story came out on Substack, but it wasn't picked up anywhere.

00:32:37.520 Uh, and that's kind of the way the media works now.

00:32:41.020 Cy Hirsch also broke the story that the United States, NATO, the Biden administration was behind

00:32:46.180 the sabotage of Nord Stream, the natural gas pipeline to Western Europe, to Germany.

00:32:51.760 And that, I mean, that's on the list too, obviously.

00:32:54.500 But that's, I mean, I, I think we can say that's true.

00:32:59.520 And I mean, why isn't Cy Hirsch getting the Pulitzer for that?

00:33:04.160 Why, you know, he was immediately, this guy's been a hero on the left for my entire life.

00:33:07.500 But from, before I was born, he was a hero on the left.

00:33:11.600 And all of a sudden everyone's like, shut up, Putin apologist.

00:33:14.760 Oh, I know.

00:33:15.420 I know.

00:33:15.960 I mean, I'm sorry.

00:33:16.840 I'm, you know, all this is just, ah, it drives me insane.

00:33:19.600 It drives me insane.

00:33:20.740 Not only are there almost no good reporters left, the few good reporters left are like

00:33:24.760 attacked all the time.

00:33:26.080 Yeah.

00:33:26.400 No, they've all been kicked to the curb.

00:33:28.880 Uh, you know, it's, I think it's very notable that a lot of the high profile investigative

00:33:34.660 reporters just can't even publish in the United States.

00:33:37.100 You know, um, and, you know, look at somebody like Jeff Gerth who writes, who made a point

00:33:45.160 of kind of keeping ties to traditional media and not burning bridges and doing all that

00:33:51.440 stuff and worked his, his butt off to get this 24,000 word piece about Russiagate into

00:33:59.140 the Columbia Journalism Review and it should have landed hard.

00:34:03.900 It should have landed like a Mike Tyson uppercut, you know, and it, people just ignored it.

00:34:09.820 So even when they don't kick you out of the club, they just, they ignore the hard reporting.

00:34:14.420 Jeff Gerth for people who were, you know, under 40 was definitely one of the most famous

00:34:19.400 investigative reporters in the world and feared.

00:34:22.620 Yeah.

00:34:22.940 The New York Times front page.

00:34:24.900 Worst.

00:34:25.400 Jeff Gerth.

00:34:26.160 Yeah.

00:34:26.580 Big deal guy for many, many years.

00:34:28.840 He was the bulldog going after the Clinton administration on everything.

00:34:32.760 Right.

00:34:32.980 So, I mean, when he did a story, it mattered.

00:34:36.260 It was on the desk of every Senator in the country.

00:34:38.460 Of course.

00:34:38.840 You know, and that, that's what's so interesting about this period is that there, there is none

00:34:44.440 of that.

00:34:45.020 The stuff that lands on the desks of people in the relevant committees in Washington is PR.

00:34:53.040 There's no reporting there for the most part.

00:34:56.340 Maybe that will change now.

00:34:57.760 I don't know, but, um, you know, I doubt it.

00:35:00.820 Like, people read your stuff, I happen to know.

00:35:04.540 So, that's good.

00:35:05.680 That would be great to read.

00:35:06.840 They do.

00:35:07.540 Yeah.

00:35:08.000 Yeah.

00:35:08.220 So, um, okay.

00:35:10.240 But Nord Stream, don't forget.

00:35:11.620 Okay, so Nord Stream, let's go to Nord Stream.

00:35:13.360 And I'm going to stop interrupting.

00:35:14.560 Nord Stream, what do we know?

00:35:15.820 I mean.

00:35:16.780 I mean, we know that there's five or six shifting official explanations of what happened.

00:35:23.820 They eventually settled on this kind of labyrinthine story about a rogue Ukrainian operation that

00:35:35.020 apparently without our input went and did this.

00:35:39.580 Yeah, I don't believe it.

00:35:41.540 I mean, it's laughable to think that that's true.

00:35:45.080 And so, you know, but that's the kind of, Nord Stream is just one.

00:35:50.540 It's like looking up at the stars in the sky.

00:35:52.620 That's just one of them.

00:35:54.480 And that's a huge story.

00:35:56.460 I mean, think about it.

00:35:57.200 That could have started.

00:35:57.940 It destroyed the German economy.

00:35:58.800 It will destroy the EU.

00:36:00.400 Ultimately, when people wake up from their dream state, it will destroy NATO because it

00:36:05.100 was an attack by one NATO power on a NATO ally.

00:36:08.940 Another NATO member was attacked by the United States on Germany.

00:36:11.840 And it wrecked the German economy.

00:36:14.020 Absolutely.

00:36:14.720 It's strained the incoming relations.

00:36:17.000 And it's just, it could have resulted in, you know, an immediate nuclear escalation.

00:36:26.500 I mean, there's so many different things.

00:36:28.060 And it was a massive ecological disaster.

00:36:30.200 It was a Deepwater Horizon level environmental event.

00:36:34.300 It's the greatest man-made emission of carbon dioxide in history.

00:36:37.340 Right.

00:36:38.080 And it's a tiny footnote to the insane lunacies that happened during this period.

00:36:46.180 I'm sorry, but it is.

00:36:47.640 Like, Nord Stream is, if you're making a list of the 10 weirdest things that happened in

00:36:54.000 the last eight years, it's probably at the bottom, I would think.

00:36:57.980 I mean, don't you think?

00:37:00.480 I think that's right.

00:37:01.480 I just, you know, I like Western Europe.

00:37:03.680 I think it's important to have a thriving Western Europe.

00:37:06.560 I don't think they're a rival.

00:37:07.640 I think they're a complementary region to the United States.

00:37:11.160 And to see it destroyed intentionally by the Biden administration, let's just wreck

00:37:15.720 Western Europe.

00:37:16.440 Like, why would you do that?

00:37:17.960 And so I'm fixated on it.

00:37:20.300 But you're right.

00:37:22.460 So what are the others?

00:37:23.820 So COVID?

00:37:24.580 COVID, I mean, there are so many different areas where they're going to have to investigate,

00:37:33.060 reinvestigate that.

00:37:35.000 We just went through a period where, you know, there was sort of mass stonewalling of Congress

00:37:41.800 when it was trying to investigate what happened with COVID.

00:37:46.820 You know, people, there were key people like Peter Daszak from the EcoHealth Alliance who just

00:37:51.540 didn't answer subpoenas, right?

00:37:52.900 And so we're going to, there are documents that we know exist that we're going to get

00:37:59.020 now, you know, with FBI communications between the Bureau and a lot of these scientists, you

00:38:07.680 know, dating back 10 years.

00:38:10.400 And it's going to tell a very, a crazy story.

00:38:13.480 I mean, a really interesting story.

00:38:14.580 There's a reason why Fauci's pardon is backdated to 2014, because that's the time period that

00:38:23.960 they're going to be, have to start looking, which is, you know, when did we start defying

00:38:29.080 the ban on gain of function research?

00:38:31.700 We clearly did.

00:38:33.080 I think that's, I think that's pretty established at this point.

00:38:36.600 Why were we doing it?

00:38:39.460 What connection did that have to the Wuhan thing?

00:38:42.520 What kind of advance notice did we get?

00:38:45.720 What kind of lies were told about it?

00:38:48.880 Who were responsible for those lies?

00:38:51.060 What information did we get about the inefficacy of the vaccine?

00:38:55.180 And how did that connect to statements by the CDC and the White House?

00:39:00.820 This also connects to the censorship issue in a major way, because there was also a sort

00:39:08.460 of massive effort to control public, the public conversation about this that went through the

00:39:15.680 health agencies.

00:39:16.280 So we know they're looking at that.

00:39:18.240 And that's another executive order, by the way, the free speech order, you know, directs

00:39:24.900 them, the Department of Justice, to come up with a comprehensive review of all the censorship

00:39:29.780 stuff.

00:39:30.300 So we're going to find out about that.

00:39:32.560 But I just think COVID is a gigantic rat's nest of stuff.

00:39:37.240 And, you know, it's going to be like a turkey shoot where every direction they look, they're

00:39:41.460 going to find something, you know, revelatory.

00:39:44.920 The question is, will that information reach the public?

00:39:49.500 Because there is the intermediaries, the media.

00:39:51.520 So like congressional investigators, executive branch agencies like DOJ, you know, they're

00:39:57.640 constantly inspectors general.

00:39:59.460 They're always releasing reports.

00:40:00.860 And I'm like, no one reads them because nobody picks them up in the media.

00:40:03.720 Do we have enough interested reporters to like disseminate what they find?

00:40:09.400 See, I think we do, because I think that what we think of as the media is dead.

00:40:14.320 They no longer really matter.

00:40:17.800 The media that matters now are people like you and Joe Rogan and other, you know, there's

00:40:27.560 podcasters out there.

00:40:29.060 There's this gigantic, thriving independent media culture that turned last election, clearly.

00:40:36.160 It was also abundantly clear that the old media no longer had any ability to control the narrative

00:40:45.060 about anything.

00:40:46.200 They're totally discredited.

00:40:48.020 So I think this stuff is going to come out.

00:40:50.800 And because it's going to be so explosive, it's going to sort of solidify and heighten the

00:40:58.320 prestige of all this new media.

00:41:00.180 I think we're probably going to see whole institutions that are going to be built around these disclosures.

00:41:05.260 We're going to have new newspapers, new TV stations.

00:41:08.140 So I normally save this for the end, but I'm feeling so enthusiastic.

00:41:11.640 I'm going to do it now in case people don't get to the end.

00:41:13.180 Where do people find you?

00:41:14.280 How do they support you if you've made it this far in this conversation?

00:41:18.900 You're like, this guy's unbelievable.

00:41:21.440 I'm sorry, shamelessly promote for just one second.

00:41:23.220 Oh, thanks.

00:41:23.740 No, I'm at racket.news on Substack, where a lot of these news sites are.

00:41:31.320 For those who didn't grow up playing squash, how are you spelling racket?

00:41:33.500 R-A-C-K-E-T, .news.

00:41:38.380 Racket, so not squash racket.

00:41:40.380 Not squash racket, like racket, like that's a racket, which this is.

00:41:44.580 Yes.

00:41:45.020 It turned out to be aptly named.

00:41:47.360 Nice.

00:41:47.920 But yeah, no, I'm feeling very optimistic now.

00:41:51.540 I think there are still some holes in this new media landscape.

00:41:57.760 We don't have the huge institutions that have reporters who have beats, which I think is crucial.

00:42:04.340 I agree.

00:42:04.700 Because you need to have people who develop sources in one small area.

00:42:08.720 I agree.

00:42:09.060 Well, you saw that with Julie Kelly on January 6th.

00:42:14.680 Julie Kelly, I don't even know what she did before.

00:42:16.800 She's purely kind of a creation of the internet.

00:42:19.460 Well, she's a self-creation, but her medium was the internet and X specifically.

00:42:23.780 And she just got mad about January 6th and just relentlessly focused on that.

00:42:28.540 I'm sure she has other opinions, but she only did that.

00:42:31.780 And I mean, man, this one woman who thinks she's my age-ish, like unearthed all this information that was like, no, no one else got it except her.

00:42:42.020 Because she was just so focused on this thing.

00:42:44.520 You know, it's great.

00:42:46.080 It's incredible.

00:42:46.980 And that's exactly how the press is supposed to function.

00:42:50.680 They're not supposed to be credentialed.

00:42:52.200 Like, it's not supposed to be a thing where, you know, somebody confers a title.

00:42:56.860 You are the official media.

00:42:59.580 No, the citizen, like, that's part of our job is to be the press, right?

00:43:04.920 Like, that's why the First Amendment was designed for exactly for that to happen.

00:43:10.160 And there was lots of incredible reporting that was done by either individuals or small, you know, organizations.

00:43:21.100 Like, the U.S. right to know, they filed hundreds of FOIA requests on Fauci and gain-of-function and everything.

00:43:30.060 And they really started the ball rolling on that whole side of that investigation.

00:43:35.080 It's, you know, it was a relatively small site.

00:43:38.040 And they had good young reporters there who were hungry.

00:43:41.000 And that's how this thing works, you know.

00:43:43.200 Amazing.

00:43:44.000 Right?

00:43:44.640 Amazing.

00:43:45.320 It's exciting.

00:43:46.520 It's so exciting.

00:43:48.040 And it's also true that there are increasingly people making, like, a legit living.

00:43:54.080 I'm not getting rich, but, like, paying the bills, doing this job.

00:43:58.440 Right.

00:43:59.100 Which is important.

00:44:00.060 And that's also how it's supposed to work.

00:44:02.620 Yes.

00:44:02.680 I mean, I remember hearing a story about I.F. Stone when I was starting on Substack.

00:44:09.600 I was calling around to some of the old-timers and saying, like, is this a good idea for me to tap out of mainstream media?

00:44:16.420 And they told me a story.

00:44:17.600 And they said, you know, I.F. Stone cranked out a newsletter.

00:44:21.980 For those people who don't know, he was a—

00:44:23.620 Izzy Stone.

00:44:24.240 Izzy Stone.

00:44:25.000 He was, you know, one of the original independent investigative journalists.

00:44:30.340 He worked out of his house.

00:44:31.740 He put out this little newsletter, the I.F. Stone Weekly.

00:44:35.080 It was great reporting.

00:44:38.060 Independent.

00:44:38.680 Didn't have to answer to editors who told him to shape things one way or the other.

00:44:42.540 And he made a nice living.

00:44:44.620 Got himself a nice little house.

00:44:46.500 And that was enough.

00:44:48.000 Right?

00:44:48.600 And he had an impact.

00:44:50.300 And you can do that now.

00:44:51.500 The internet makes it easier, actually.

00:44:53.380 It's amazing.

00:44:54.720 Yeah.

00:44:55.340 In America, we do things a little differently, and we always have.

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00:47:27.220 You wonder, again, I'm delaying you in your narrative once more, so with apologies.

00:47:35.540 But you wonder, even just the four topics you've mentioned so far are so big that if we got the truth or some higher percentage of the truth about those things,

00:47:47.980 you wonder about the social effect.

00:47:49.580 So, one of the things the censors always say is they're doing this or preventing you from knowing certain things to preserve societal stability.

00:47:57.440 Yeah, and trust in institutions.

00:47:58.500 Trust in institutions, exactly.

00:48:00.500 Trust in institutions.

00:48:01.920 So, I mean, that's already gone away, but it will evaporate completely the more we know, don't you think?

00:48:08.520 Yes, yes, but it'll be like, I mean, hopefully it'll be like the church committee hearings where, look, we just have to accept people are going to have their minds blown by discoveries, revelations.

00:48:25.020 For instance, it's already starting in the news media.

00:48:28.300 We're starting to get stories from journalists who were told they had to suppress certain angles, right?

00:48:34.440 You know, there was a Politico story about some people who were told to stay away from the Hunter Biden laptop story.

00:48:42.740 Two Politico reporters having left Politico admitted that Politico, which is supposedly covering Washington, told them, no, we're not doing that.

00:48:51.100 Right, exactly.

00:48:52.200 And, you know, my first question is, why didn't you say that when it happened?

00:48:56.400 But I guess people have jobs, right?

00:48:58.060 So, that's a thing.

00:49:00.420 But there are going to be a lot more of those.

00:49:02.260 I mean, there are already kind of whispers going around, but people are going to learn that institutions they believed in their whole lives were fraudulent, that they lied to them about important things.

00:49:18.980 And it's going to be difficult at first, especially since there are not solid new institutions in place to replace them.

00:49:28.940 Yes.

00:49:29.060 You know, it's one thing if you're taking down the CIA in the 70s and there's a supposedly reformed CIA there, right?

00:49:39.420 This is different.

00:49:40.500 The media is going to have to rebuild itself from the ground up.

00:49:43.480 I think it's already doing great, but it doesn't have that look for a lot of people, right?

00:49:49.520 No, that's right.

00:49:50.100 It looks very different, for sure.

00:49:51.460 And so, you know, it's going to be, I think that's a good point.

00:49:55.100 It's a transitional period for people.

00:49:57.180 I guess, look, if you want trust in institutions, and I definitely do.

00:50:03.040 I do.

00:50:03.600 I grew up trusting institutions.

00:50:05.120 I don't now.

00:50:06.040 That's their fault, not mine.

00:50:07.980 I think your country doesn't work if nobody trusts any of the institutions, right?

00:50:11.460 It just doesn't.

00:50:12.060 So, we want that.

00:50:13.120 The only way to that is through transparency, honesty.

00:50:17.580 So, I get all that, and I'm for it vehemently.

00:50:21.080 I guess what I'm saying is the people who've been administering the system and benefiting from it are completely freaked out, right?

00:50:29.440 That's why they're trying to stop Tulsi.

00:50:31.360 But I wonder if they get threatened enough if they don't become, like, just flat-out dangerous to everybody else.

00:50:38.140 Like, the only way to stop disclosure at this point would be with, like, a catastrophe that's so all-encompassing, 9-11, COVID, that it just, everything shuts down.

00:50:48.460 All trends in progress stop.

00:50:50.600 Yeah.

00:50:50.720 And I just feel like there's a lot at stake for these people.

00:50:52.940 If you're, you know, John Brennan or Jim Clapper, and you're, like, a criminal, or Mike Pompeo, you're a criminal, that's my opinion, but I think they're obviously criminals.

00:51:02.880 Like, you know, you've got a lot to lose.

00:51:05.180 Absolutely.

00:51:05.580 Yeah.

00:51:06.580 Yeah.

00:51:07.140 And people in the intelligence agencies whose names are not known to the public, they're about to be.

00:51:14.500 Exactly.

00:51:15.440 And, you know, we don't know what that's going to result in, what impact that's going to have.

00:51:23.560 Well, so this was my thinking about, you know, the period between the election and the inauguration this week.

00:51:29.700 I think that's one of the reasons that Tony Blinken was pushing so hard for a real war, trying to kill Putin, for example, which the Biden administration did.

00:51:39.060 They tried to kill Putin.

00:51:40.080 Really?

00:51:40.520 Yes.

00:51:40.900 Yes, they did.

00:51:41.760 Wow.

00:51:42.520 Which is insane.

00:51:43.580 Like, okay, so who takes over Russia?

00:51:45.920 Right.

00:51:46.240 And what happens to the nuclear arsenal in a country that's, like, so complex, outsiders can't even understand.

00:51:52.200 I mean, you live there, you know.

00:51:53.380 Yeah.

00:51:53.520 Like, that's demented that you would even think of something like that.

00:51:56.740 Absolutely.

00:51:57.280 So why were they?

00:51:58.740 Because chaos is a screen that protects them.

00:52:01.400 I mean, I don't know this.

00:52:02.380 That's just, like, watching what they're doing.

00:52:03.940 I'm like, why would they be doing that?

00:52:05.540 Part of it is because, like, it's like when you're taking off the roof of the embassy in Saigon, you burn all the papers, right?

00:52:11.420 Absolutely.

00:52:11.780 But they can't because they're digital, so maybe you need, like, a war to hide your tracks.

00:52:16.680 Or to keep the public's attention elsewhere.

00:52:18.680 That's what I mean.

00:52:19.340 Right.

00:52:19.880 Yeah, exactly.

00:52:21.040 Yeah, I had the same fears, and that was part of my thinking when they started, you know, approving the firing of American missiles into Russian territory and British missiles and French missiles.

00:52:33.780 Exactly.

00:52:33.800 I'm like, why would you do, like, what possible reason would there be to do this?

00:52:40.160 You're not really going to make any military gains by doing this.

00:52:44.140 So you're doing it either to provoke the other side or to create a headline.

00:52:49.780 The headline, I don't think it gets you anything.

00:52:52.820 So what were they doing?

00:52:54.860 And, you know, as you're saying, they were fiddling with regime change in the interim.

00:53:02.260 Yes.

00:53:02.660 Yeah, I think that was a fear that a lot of people had.

00:53:06.460 I didn't think that, frankly, that Trump would become president.

00:53:11.100 I thought, you know, for a variety of different reasons, I don't know exactly what could have happened to stop that.

00:53:19.460 But it was hard for me to accept that it did happen.

00:53:24.060 I was sitting about six feet away, and I just thought, wow, I can't believe this has actually happened.

00:53:28.280 Right.

00:53:28.680 Up until the second he said the oath, I was like, man, you know, I mean, you just get superstitious or paranoid or whatever it is, having seen all this stuff.

00:53:37.420 And I was embarrassed to have those thoughts.

00:53:39.240 I agree.

00:53:39.620 I totally agree.

00:53:40.720 I was like, wow, I'm becoming crazy.

00:53:42.280 Yeah.

00:53:42.520 But it's not totally crazy when you see the pattern.

00:53:45.100 So, but I guess the point I would make is it's like we're not, the process has not unfolded fully yet.

00:53:50.680 So, like, there's still a lot that we don't know.

00:53:53.440 Disclosure is, as you've said, like, imminent.

00:53:57.140 And that sets up an incentive for the people being exposed to do something really crazy.

00:54:02.040 It does.

00:54:02.380 But I think the moment has passed for the real, like, there was a moment where they could have installed, you know, a European-style regime to stop misinformation.

00:54:20.620 This is the new trend, right?

00:54:22.100 Remember the hurricanes happened, and immediately FEMA's talking about setting up an anti-misinformation center, right?

00:54:29.160 It just happened in California.

00:54:30.920 So fucking crazy.

00:54:32.380 Right?

00:54:32.800 I mean, you know, the fact that Gavin Newsom had time to try to come up with a state bureau for protecting my reputation, but they could really have done that.

00:54:49.160 They could have basically put a net over everything with, I mean, that's the thing that's scary about the European situation is they already have that massive infrastructure in place.

00:55:03.360 To completely control the flow of information, what people see, what people don't see, they can punish people who step out of line.

00:55:10.920 And we were, you know, this far away from being part of something like that.

00:55:17.240 And if they were going to do that, if they had done that, and I think there was probably some thinking that that would have been accomplished by 2024.

00:55:26.160 If you go back and look at some of the European Union's papers on the subject, they were anticipating that we were going to be signatories to certain agreements, like the code of practice on disinformation, that we would have our own version by now.

00:55:40.960 If they had done that, then none of this would be possible.

00:55:45.180 You know, all these independent outlets, they could scream to high heavens, but no one would see it.

00:55:50.320 It would be like, you know.

00:55:51.600 No, it's totally right.

00:55:52.560 Right.

00:55:52.740 I mean, you know this because when you were doing shows about COVID, well, now we can look behind the scenes and see that the White House was demanding that Facebook dial it down.

00:56:04.340 They turned it down to 50%.

00:56:06.060 I mean, that's in print.

00:56:08.220 I mean, what did you think when you saw that, by the way?

00:56:10.960 I totally ignored it.

00:56:12.760 I ignore all coverage that in any way pertains to me.

00:56:15.880 I don't want to become self-conscious.

00:56:17.480 So I didn't spend, you know, one second thinking about it.

00:56:21.780 I've had a couple other things.

00:56:22.940 And one other thing, particularly in the last year, that was like so shocking, I never thought about it again.

00:56:28.260 Because you just don't.

00:56:30.560 I mean, I'm sure you've been through this.

00:56:32.260 I mean, you were speaking of mistreated.

00:56:34.200 I'm not going to bring it up, but you were identified as disobedient and, I mean, they tried to end you.

00:56:40.400 I watched it.

00:56:41.500 Yeah.

00:56:41.760 So you shrug it off or whatever, but you shrug it off.

00:56:44.000 But from my perspective, it's always, you see things clearly when you're looking at someone else's life.

00:56:47.640 Sure.

00:56:48.420 Absolutely.

00:56:48.940 I didn't even know you at the time.

00:56:50.200 I was like, why are they trying to kill this guy?

00:56:53.060 Yeah.

00:56:53.540 Right.

00:56:53.860 Well, they were.

00:56:54.800 And, well, that's my interpretation of it anyway.

00:56:58.180 But you can't brood on it.

00:57:00.320 No, but the fact that the mechanics, they were trying to install the mechanisms by which all this stuff would have been locked down.

00:57:12.740 And we saw during the COVID period how effective it was.

00:57:17.060 Yes.

00:57:17.320 I mean, look, the new head of the NIH, you know, Jay Bhattacharya, mostly didn't hear about his research, right?

00:57:27.640 I mean, this is the guy who.

00:57:29.620 Can you believe Jay Bhattacharya, who I love.

00:57:32.460 He's a thoroughly decent man, by the way, in addition to being right on the science, but he's a decent guy.

00:57:37.440 He's like the sweetest guy in the world.

00:57:38.820 Yes.

00:57:39.180 Yeah, I know.

00:57:39.680 Absolutely.

00:57:39.940 He's the head of NIH?

00:57:41.100 Yeah, I know.

00:57:42.460 Isn't that amazing?

00:57:43.520 I'm kidding.

00:57:43.760 Yeah, he goes from being censored to being the head of NIH.

00:57:48.760 It's an amazing transition.

00:57:50.600 But the thing that's so extraordinary about it is America would have had a completely different idea about lockdowns if they had understood how infectious the disease was,

00:58:03.560 how fruitless it was to try to physically prevent people from, you know, getting infected.

00:58:10.700 And how unlikely that was to succeed and how, you know, compared to all the other negatives that could have happened from keeping people at home and everything like that.

00:58:23.800 Like, they wouldn't have made that decision going forward, but they were able to effectively suppress that point of view, which is really scary, right?

00:58:33.100 I mean, there was real research out there and most people didn't see it.

00:58:36.500 I didn't see it until a year and a half later.

00:58:38.600 No, I know.

00:58:39.040 Right?

00:58:39.680 I know.

00:58:40.320 So, and that's what could happen.

00:58:43.260 That's what could have happened with all this stuff.

00:58:45.860 So, I know that you, without getting too specific, but you're, you know, you're in touch with doctors, like on a personal level, like you know doctors.

00:58:54.620 Just practicing, you know, clinical physicians, right?

00:58:57.720 My wife's a doctor.

00:58:58.640 Okay, I didn't know if you wanted to say that.

00:58:59.960 You're married to a doctor.

00:59:01.100 Mm-hmm.

00:59:01.300 So, did they know, like they, it was kept from them too.

00:59:04.940 Like, they didn't.

00:59:06.400 Yeah, I mean.

00:59:06.980 Your average, like, emergency room physician was like aware that a lot of the COVID propaganda was fake.

00:59:12.080 Well, yeah, I mean, I know some ER doctors as well.

00:59:16.200 And they had to go looking for information.

00:59:21.320 That's what I'm saying.

00:59:21.820 And it was very hard to find.

00:59:23.280 And, you know, to this day, if you go on Google and you go looking for things, you're not likely to find the sort of counter-narrative thing easily.

00:59:36.040 And I think for a lot of doctors during that period, it was frustrating because even peer-reviewed research was not always easy to find for them.

00:59:46.380 So, yeah, during that period, it affected the whole question of, like, experts who talked to the press.

00:59:55.840 Like, they weren't always informed about what was going on or about different studies that had been done.

01:00:02.200 And, yeah, we had a completely different idea about the pandemic than maybe we should have.

01:00:07.840 But the point being is not so much that that was destructive in itself, though I think it was, but that it was a proof of concept of something that was to come, you know.

01:00:19.700 Do you think that as we unearth more about COVID that the biggest question of all, which was what was the point of that?

01:00:26.120 Clearly it was the point.

01:00:26.660 I mean, if every part of the society was coordinated and aimed toward the same goal, which was increasing the fear, preserving the lies about its origin, hiding a lot of stuff, and, like, telling you—and pushing you toward the vaccine.

01:00:43.240 So, like, and it was utterly coordinated.

01:00:45.500 If anything was coordinated, that was from the churches to the schools to the media, everything.

01:00:50.920 Everyone's in the same picture.

01:00:51.640 Like, why?

01:00:53.640 I don't know.

01:00:54.320 I mean, that's what we have to—that's why these documents will be so fascinating to get.

01:00:58.940 Do you think that we'll ever get to that?

01:01:00.000 We'll ever be able to say with some certainty or confidence, like, this is why they did that?

01:01:07.260 We may not know some of the higher-level thinking about things.

01:01:12.940 I mean, you're probably not going to get a document that says, look, it's really important that we do this because if we really stress masking,

01:01:22.800 then we'll have established the precedent of that visible symbols of conformity are, you know, a positive goal for an authoritarian regime, I mean, they're not going to have that on paper anywhere, right?

01:01:34.520 Yes.

01:02:04.520 Because we've already seen that in FOIA disclosures with some of these anti-disinformation groups and that sort of thing.

01:02:14.360 So, I imagine there's going to be some stuff with the White House, the CDC, the NIH.

01:02:19.660 There might be some things like that in there.

01:02:22.420 But the higher-level, sort of broader conspiratorial questions, I don't know what we're going to get.

01:02:30.340 But I'm fascinated to find out.

01:02:31.980 Me too.

01:02:32.900 I want to tell you about an amazing documentary series from our friend Sean Stone called

01:02:37.820 All the President's Men, the Conspiracy Against Trump.

01:02:40.820 It is a series of interviews with people at the very heart of the first Trump term,

01:02:46.620 many of whom are close to the heart of the second Trump term.

01:02:50.080 This is their stories about what permanent Washington tried to do to them,

01:02:54.700 in many cases send them to prison, for the crime of supporting Donald Trump.

01:02:58.240 Their words have never been more relevant than they are now.

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01:03:09.800 Highly recommended.

01:03:20.080 So, okay, so, COVID.

01:03:30.900 Next.

01:03:32.440 Okay, Russiagate.

01:03:34.460 Russiagate.

01:03:35.060 And, you know, the sort of related phenomenon of fake news, intelligence leaks designed to destroy careers,

01:03:44.880 which bleeds into kind of lawfare, right?

01:03:48.180 But Russiagate specifically, that's a big story.

01:03:54.280 That's a place where I think that's going to be the easiest hit for investigators,

01:03:57.940 because we know where the documents are.

01:04:01.460 In some cases, we even have them already.

01:04:04.240 We just, they're redacted.

01:04:07.700 So, we get to look under the redactions now.

01:04:10.820 Why did they start the original investigation?

01:04:13.000 What was the impetus for the July 31st opening in 2016 of Crossfire Hurricane?

01:04:21.660 You know, there's some conflicting stories in the past.

01:04:25.140 Did it really come from Britain?

01:04:27.820 Did John Brennan really advise the CIA to look into it?

01:04:32.260 Or was it something else?

01:04:34.420 Why did the FBI open an investigation into Trump specifically after he had taken office in May of 2017?

01:04:45.360 It's just an extraordinary thing.

01:04:47.400 Thinking, you know, back to that time, we don't remember it.

01:04:50.980 But the FBI opened a probe into the sitting president of the United States

01:04:55.820 to ask the question of whether he was working for a foreign power at that time.

01:05:02.280 And what evidence could they have possibly had for that,

01:05:06.140 apart from the fact that he fired Jim Comey?

01:05:09.180 If there's...

01:05:09.620 I mean, they had no evidence.

01:05:11.360 If there's nothing under those redactions more than that,

01:05:15.640 then that itself is an extraordinary scandal just by itself, right?

01:05:20.180 So the predicate for all of this, I think, and maybe even earlier,

01:05:23.520 but to my knowledge, late in the summer of 16 with the hacking of the DNC and the emails from the DNC.

01:05:33.300 And the FBI never investigated it, never investigated the actual, you know,

01:05:38.100 the physical removal of this data from their servers.

01:05:41.120 Instead, a company called CrowdStrike, which worked for the Democratic Party, did.

01:05:45.320 And then exactly at that moment, or right around that moment,

01:05:49.560 a DNC staffer was killed in Washington, D.C.

01:05:53.320 in an apparent robbery in which nothing was taken from him

01:05:56.340 that I happen to know for a fact the MPD, the Metropolitan Police Department,

01:06:00.100 thought was, like, bizarre.

01:06:01.440 And they kind of didn't believe it.

01:06:02.740 And a Fox News host went on air and asked questions about this killing.

01:06:09.280 Why wouldn't you?

01:06:10.600 And the parents of the man who was killed either sued or...

01:06:14.860 I think they sued.

01:06:15.500 They certainly threatened to sue and basically scared the crap out of everyone.

01:06:18.660 So no one's ever asked a question about it since.

01:06:20.300 They hired a private investigator who looked around in that case, I remember.

01:06:26.840 And there were some odd details there.

01:06:30.600 The FBI ended up in possession of his laptop.

01:06:36.700 Why would the FBI wind up in...

01:06:38.760 I mean, this is a local crime, right?

01:06:41.100 Yeah.

01:06:42.280 This was one of the first reasons I started to look at that case,

01:06:45.520 because I got a call from somebody about that.

01:06:47.360 But, and, you know, I don't know why that was the case, but it is the case.

01:06:55.300 But, and there were people at the DNC, one of whom I know,

01:06:59.160 who thought that he was murdered for political reasons at the DNC.

01:07:03.340 A very high-ranking person at the DNC told me that.

01:07:06.800 And I probably should just say, but I, everyone can guess who it is who's informed on this,

01:07:10.780 but I don't want to betray confidence, but I'm not making this up.

01:07:13.660 And, you know, I don't know what happened, but like, as far as I know,

01:07:18.120 not one person has looked into that in the media.

01:07:21.320 No.

01:07:21.920 And, you know, even if it is just an unsolved murder of a type that they normally solve,

01:07:30.360 the whole situation, that whole timeline was very strange.

01:07:35.900 It doesn't really make sense, the, you know, the hacking of the DNC,

01:07:43.900 the bringing in of CrowdStrike, when the information was released online.

01:07:50.040 They never really proved that case, but they immediately made inferences about it.

01:07:54.780 And there was an incredibly sophisticated kind of public campaign to create this narrative

01:08:02.060 that, you know, upon closer examination, it turns out not to be true.

01:08:07.400 So we got to go back and find out what did exactly happen there.

01:08:12.180 Why did they order this crossfire hurricane probe?

01:08:16.560 Why were they sending informants in after Trump or people in his orbit?

01:08:21.940 And we know they did.

01:08:24.280 And who were all those informants?

01:08:25.760 It'd be interesting.

01:08:26.700 I have some suspicions.

01:08:28.480 Yeah.

01:08:28.880 Well, we know who some of them were, right?

01:08:31.800 But we don't know who all of them were.

01:08:33.940 I mean, I did a story to the effect that the people in the House Intelligence Committee

01:08:39.680 who were looking at this, you know, Kash Patel's initial probe,

01:08:44.080 that they came up with a number that it was 26 different people who were being investigated

01:08:51.340 in Trump's orbit.

01:08:54.380 No matter what happened, it's a huge story because it's a political espionage story.

01:09:00.020 It's not unlike Watergate, really.

01:09:02.420 Exactly.

01:09:02.840 And we've laughed it off or the mainstream press has shrugged and snorted at the idea

01:09:11.780 that this is a scandal that needs to be taken seriously.

01:09:15.760 But it does.

01:09:16.700 It absolutely does.

01:09:18.080 Just because it's Donald Trump doesn't mean you can ignore the FBI conducting political

01:09:24.680 investigations willy-nilly and inventing predicates to look into people's campaigns

01:09:31.720 and using FISA and all kinds of other crazy, can I say crazy shit?

01:09:37.620 I mean, that stuff was all nuts.

01:09:40.240 And we need to find out exactly what happened with that.

01:09:43.780 And that is one of the reasons I think that people are nervous about this weaponization

01:09:49.640 of government probe because it's absolutely going to look in that direction.

01:09:53.440 Yes.

01:09:53.540 And, you know, that's one of the first things they're going to look at is who was behind

01:09:59.640 that, you know, who cooked up the Steele dossier, how was that released, you know.

01:10:08.780 And then there's the whole question of, you know, leading up to impeachment and the leaks

01:10:16.200 that were done.

01:10:17.780 A lot of them were kind of illegal on their face, right?

01:10:21.020 Like, you can't leak signals intelligence to newspapers, and it was done repeatedly during

01:10:25.920 that time period.

01:10:26.440 It happened to me.

01:10:26.560 They did it to me.

01:10:27.320 Right.

01:10:27.740 Yeah, exactly.

01:10:28.520 The NSA read my texts and leaked them to the New York Times twice.

01:10:32.240 Right.

01:10:33.040 Right.

01:10:33.540 Yeah.

01:10:33.860 And they, you know, admitted it one time.

01:10:36.480 But it was under FISA, so it was like, yeah.

01:10:39.560 Which is, by the way, hilarious because initially they were denying that it even happened, right?

01:10:48.380 And then, of course, later it turns out it was more advantageous to leak the contents.

01:10:55.740 So, but people had developed, they developed very short memories during this time period.

01:10:59.820 They were not able to retain information.

01:11:02.260 Among other things, it's because journalists got out of the habit of repeating the story.

01:11:07.180 That was one of the things that we were taught.

01:11:09.160 But, you know, when I was taught growing up, when you're doing a story about anything, you

01:11:15.360 have to recount all of the facts as if the reader has never encountered this story before.

01:11:22.840 Each story should stand alone.

01:11:24.020 Yes, exactly.

01:11:24.900 You have to retell the whole thing so that they don't have to go looking for another story

01:11:29.180 to find out what this means.

01:11:32.200 And one of the subtle little changes that happened to the media business in the last eight years

01:11:38.760 is they stopped doing that.

01:11:40.920 They would tell you the thing.

01:11:42.400 That's fascinating.

01:11:43.140 Right?

01:11:43.420 They would tell you the thing that happened that day, and they wouldn't tell you all this

01:11:47.340 backstory that you needed to know to really understand what you were reading.

01:11:52.760 And so, yeah, I think we're going to have the opportunity now to see these things laid out

01:12:00.960 in full and, you know, in hindsight.

01:12:04.800 And that's hopefully going to be able to persuade people who didn't see it the first time.

01:12:11.020 That's such a fascinating observation, which I've never heard before or thought of.

01:12:14.420 But isn't it true?

01:12:15.500 It's so true.

01:12:16.100 It's so true.

01:12:17.180 And so everything's out of context.

01:12:19.200 Right.

01:12:19.800 Yeah.

01:12:20.500 There's a certain element of dot connecting required in journalism.

01:12:24.040 Like, why am I telling you this?

01:12:25.260 Why does it matter?

01:12:26.060 How does it connect to things that happen, other things that happened or may happen?

01:12:29.800 Even simple things like when, you know, if Anthony Fauci comes out and says, well, masks

01:12:39.340 are important because of X, well, you have to put in the timeline of what he originally

01:12:45.380 said about that.

01:12:46.360 Yes.

01:12:46.620 Or, you know, Joe Biden saying, you know, we have to correct misinformation because they're

01:12:55.660 killing people.

01:12:56.560 And you've got to point out that they were wrong about things themselves or that the Biden

01:13:01.140 administration itself was deamplified by some of these platforms accidentally.

01:13:09.440 But they were right.

01:13:11.960 But yeah, they just left out a lot of backstory and we have to get back into the business of

01:13:17.640 telling people the whole story from the beginning.

01:13:19.380 Fascinating.

01:13:20.620 Fascinating.

01:13:21.400 Yeah.

01:13:22.820 Okay.

01:13:23.700 So, Russiagate.

01:13:25.080 Russiagate.

01:13:26.040 I mean, and that's one of the reasons why the pardon of Adam Schiff is kind of interesting

01:13:31.440 because he's a central figure of both the J6 committee, but also the Russiagate story.

01:13:40.900 Um, and, you know, he was somebody who was giving interviews saying that preemptive pardons

01:13:45.600 should never be given, but whatever.

01:13:47.880 Um, yeah, Russiagate is a thing.

01:13:51.340 Then there's the whole question of, uh, lawfare, right.

01:13:56.440 And the effort to make sure that Biden faced no opposition at all, uh, in his reelection

01:14:04.320 campaign.

01:14:04.940 And this is here.

01:14:05.900 I'm not just talking about, um, you know, Donald Trump and the lawsuits.

01:14:10.900 To prevent him from being on the ballot because of the 14th amendment and all that.

01:14:14.960 This extends to, even to groups like no labels or the green party or Dean Phillips or Marianne

01:14:23.460 Williamson or Cornell West.

01:14:25.720 There was an extraordinary calculated effort to prevent competition.

01:14:32.980 Now, yes, that's not necessarily illegal.

01:14:35.600 Parties can do whatever they want, uh, internally, but.

01:14:40.900 It's still fascinating that there, there had to have been some kind of coordinated campaign.

01:14:46.080 If, if there's any communication between the white house say, and the groups that were

01:14:51.960 suing, um, uh, you know, no labels or RFK or, you know, issuing challenges, no labels went

01:15:01.080 through this extraordinary incident where somebody created a dummy, no labels site, uh, and it

01:15:10.460 had a big picture of Donald Trump on it.

01:15:12.460 So that would try to, uh, associate no labels with Trump.

01:15:16.180 And there's a lawsuit, uh, going on about it right now.

01:15:20.820 What was the real origin of that?

01:15:22.640 Like, you know, who, who, who financed that whole thing?

01:15:25.120 I mean, I, I think there are a lot of stories about little tiny dirty tricks that are, that

01:15:31.400 are going to be coming out.

01:15:32.500 Well, and also like the, the main question was who makes these decisions.

01:15:35.840 So if the democratic party's running the United States, which they have for four years, I

01:15:39.420 think we can say that.

01:15:40.740 What does that mean?

01:15:41.620 Who's running the democratic party?

01:15:43.380 Right.

01:15:43.520 I mean, I would imagine it's a coalition of, you know, elected officials, you know, Chuck

01:15:49.540 Schumer, the big fundraisers, right?

01:15:54.460 Mm-hmm.

01:15:55.120 You know, um, Jeffrey Kassenberg and I don't know, Obama, I guess, but, but who, who really

01:16:01.760 is running this?

01:16:02.720 Who's on the central committee?

01:16:04.300 Right.

01:16:04.580 And, and how is that done?

01:16:06.500 How, how, how was the coordination managed with these sort of legal action committees that

01:16:12.540 were mass filing suits about everything from, you know, the, the ballot access issue to

01:16:18.940 there were Klan Act suits that were filed against people?

01:16:22.420 I mean, um, did that have any connection to people who are actually in office?

01:16:27.460 If it, if it did, you know, then we have another corruption situation involved, but yeah, the

01:16:33.820 larger question of who, who was managing all this stuff?

01:16:38.080 Uh, cause it clearly wasn't Joe Biden.

01:16:40.820 That's the country.

01:16:42.300 Who, who, who runs the country?

01:16:43.880 That's don't, in a democracy, we have a right to know.

01:16:46.780 Right.

01:16:47.200 That, uh, you know, our, our mutual friend, Walter Kern, um, talked about this saying that

01:16:53.320 this was the first time that we had a president where that had a sign on his desk, basically

01:16:59.220 that said, the buck does not stop here.

01:17:00.940 No.

01:17:01.120 Right.

01:17:01.500 Uh, we, we don't know where the buck stopped during this period.

01:17:04.320 And so that, that's a fascinating question, but the whole, you know, war gaming of, of

01:17:11.120 the last election season, there are a lot of stories.

01:17:14.660 People don't even remember this.

01:17:15.940 Like New Hampshire held a primary, right?

01:17:19.660 People went and they voted in the New Hampshire primary, uh, and then the results were canceled

01:17:25.560 and they held a second nominating event on a Saturday night months later where a bunch

01:17:32.220 of officials got together and they just decided to allocate the, the, the delegates, uh, themselves.

01:17:39.600 Like I'd never heard of that before.

01:17:41.120 Just canceling an election and just sort of redoing it in a, in a closed meeting.

01:17:45.660 Like, how does that happen?

01:17:47.080 And just turning the spoils over to somebody else?

01:17:50.160 I mean, I think it ended up mostly having the same result, but for some reason they, they,

01:17:56.220 they, they held the second contest.

01:17:58.400 Uh, it's just very strange, you know, um, why that happened.

01:18:02.080 So that we got to get into, um, you know, the, then there's the whole question of the

01:18:11.040 investigation of the Trump assassination incidents.

01:18:13.760 We heard nothing about that.

01:18:15.580 It was the most extraordinary news story that I've ever, I mean, apart from the disappearing

01:18:22.420 president and the mysterious nomination and COVID, uh,

01:18:27.080 you know, presidential candidate and ex-president gets shot and the story's dead within like

01:18:34.600 48 hours.

01:18:36.360 Uh, and all you read in the news from the FBI, uh, there were these comments saying that they

01:18:42.920 don't have any motive evidence.

01:18:44.240 We've done a hundred interviews.

01:18:46.240 Um, but we don't know anything about why this happened or, you know, what was going on there.

01:18:52.940 Do you believe that?

01:18:53.860 I, I, I have a very hard time believing that there was nothing interesting.

01:18:57.060 He was kind of your classic 20 year old American kid with no social media presence whatsoever,

01:19:02.660 ever.

01:19:03.740 You know?

01:19:04.640 Right.

01:19:05.240 Yes, exactly.

01:19:06.080 And it is a very typical American story where one day you just wake up and decide to die

01:19:10.580 assassinating a presidential candidate for no reason.

01:19:13.660 Right.

01:19:14.240 It's like, who hasn't done that?

01:19:15.100 It's like your first joint.

01:19:16.380 Yeah.

01:19:16.800 Your first joint.

01:19:18.260 Um, and then this, this, the second one, I mean, you know, the, the Ryan Ralph thing

01:19:26.540 that that's not weird at all.

01:19:28.600 Like I just flew into Florida last night.

01:19:32.320 I don't think I could have gotten, gotten my hands on, you know, a Chinese made SKS semi-automatic

01:19:40.220 rifle without help.

01:19:41.380 I mean, I, I don't know, um, that's being a little conspiratorial, but look, there are

01:19:46.240 a lot of.

01:19:46.660 He met with the members of Congress.

01:19:48.000 He was lived in Ukraine.

01:19:51.000 What?

01:19:51.700 And we know that our intel agencies working through the Ukrainian intel agencies have

01:19:56.740 murdered all these people and tried to murder all these people, including some I know personally.

01:20:00.800 And so that's a, like, that's just a fact.

01:20:03.960 And he, he was there with them, but this had nothing to do.

01:20:08.680 And by the way, are those the only two attempts on Donald Trump's life?

01:20:11.140 Do you think during this campaign season?

01:20:12.560 I don't think so.

01:20:13.660 So why don't we know more about that?

01:20:15.740 I don't know why we don't know more about that.

01:20:17.540 Yeah.

01:20:17.560 Right.

01:20:18.060 So, and I, I mean, I've, you know, talked to the Trump people and Trump himself and I,

01:20:24.560 I, I'm being sincere.

01:20:26.280 I really don't have a sense of what they think of all of that.

01:20:29.060 I know that in public, they haven't been anxious to talk about it at all.

01:20:33.340 So I've talked to some of them and, you know, I've heard a lot of anger about this, that,

01:20:43.340 you know, and I think this is, this is the impetus for these investigations.

01:20:47.260 I think the, probably the second attempt was the last straw for some of the people on his

01:20:54.040 staff and, and, you know, it's part of the reason why I think they're going to be very

01:21:00.980 public about this.

01:21:02.820 It can't come, it can't come too soon.

01:21:04.760 I really think.

01:21:05.820 And, and I will say, you know, whatever people watching think of Trump, I know for a dead

01:21:09.880 certain fact that a lot of people who work for him really like him personally.

01:21:13.940 So I think they are mad about it.

01:21:15.320 They're, they're very mad about it.

01:21:16.760 And, and, and then, sorry, just to finish off the, the, the censorship thing, um, that

01:21:25.460 is going to be a major investigation.

01:21:27.260 There's, there's at least two that I know of, uh, that are already underway.

01:21:33.480 Uh, you know, the government affair, the, you know, Rand Paul's committee, uh, government

01:21:37.860 oversight committee in, uh, in the Senate, they were, they really want to do a big thing,

01:21:42.860 like a government files type of thing where it would be like the Twitter files, but for

01:21:48.440 the whole federal government, basically.

01:21:50.020 Uh, and I, I think there are so many different wings of the government that were involved,

01:21:57.880 uh, in what we got to see in the Twitter files, which, you know, to follow the, uh, the example

01:22:04.900 of what I just said, I have to repeat what this is.

01:22:07.320 You know, when Elon Musk bought Twitter, he opened up Twitter, uh, Twitter's internal

01:22:12.200 correspondence, and we got to see that there was this big, uh, bureaucracy with government

01:22:17.820 pressuring platforms like Twitter and Facebook to censor content, but we only got to see a

01:22:23.200 little bit of it.

01:22:24.420 And I think what's going to come out is, you know, how extensive it really was, what agencies

01:22:31.160 were really involved in it.

01:22:32.680 Um, you know, how many people, uh, were, were committed to that effort?

01:22:39.700 What also were we negotiating with, uh, the European union to be part of the digital services

01:22:48.540 act?

01:22:49.680 Um, what's the state department doing that?

01:22:52.680 Uh, you know, I think, so there's going to be a big.

01:22:55.240 For people who haven't followed it, can you just describe the digital services act?

01:22:58.320 The digital services act is like the, it's like the wet dream of every censor in the

01:23:02.880 world, right?

01:23:03.540 Basically it mandates that every, uh, internet platform abide by the recommendations of these

01:23:12.180 people called trusted flaggers who are basically licensed content reviewers who look on at things

01:23:21.060 on social media.

01:23:22.080 And if they see a narrative that they don't like, um, they will elevate it to the platform.

01:23:27.940 If the platform does not abide by the recommendations, they get crippling, enormous fines.

01:23:34.080 And this is one of the reasons why there was a dispute between, uh, Elon Musk and Europe,

01:23:40.800 uh, about whether or not he was following these rules closely, closely enough.

01:23:44.820 This just came into effect last year.

01:23:48.000 Uh, but it's, it's an extremely effective way to, to, uh, regulate speech because it doesn't

01:23:56.460 require the government to actually do it.

01:23:58.560 It's the private platform that actually commits, of course, the censorship and this third party

01:24:04.720 methodology, which is specifically by the way, what, uh, what Donald Trump referenced in his

01:24:11.120 free speech executive order.

01:24:12.740 Uh, we, we, we don't want that to happen.

01:24:14.520 We're going to not allow that.

01:24:16.800 Uh, they already have the full blown death star version in Europe of that.

01:24:22.260 Right.

01:24:22.840 And so the investigation here in the United States is going to basically uncover how far

01:24:29.080 along were we into developing the same kind of thing.

01:24:32.920 The Twitter file suggested that we were, we were already doing it informally, uh, and illegally

01:24:40.140 probably, uh, but we want to find out exactly.

01:24:44.300 With Snopes and all the other fact checkers.

01:24:46.880 Yes.

01:24:47.320 All the fact checking organizations, right.

01:24:50.200 Uh, you know, sometimes that was done informally, uh, by inference or it was done through NGOs that

01:24:58.240 made recommendations.

01:24:59.180 But I think the really dangerous stuff is when you had state department agencies like in the

01:25:04.540 global engagement center or the FBI's foreign influence task force, making direct recommendations

01:25:11.320 to these platforms or the white house in your case.

01:25:14.420 Um, we're going to find out all of these communications, not just little pieces of them.

01:25:19.260 What about, um, the U S government, the Intel agencies control of Wikipedia, which basically

01:25:25.620 is our collective memory at this point.

01:25:27.780 It's elevated by Google, it's the top of every search.

01:25:30.540 It is the only history most people will ever read and it's controlled by the U S government

01:25:36.940 to disappear inconvenient facts.

01:25:40.080 Yeah.

01:25:40.300 I mean, Wikipedia has a very, um, advanced system for regulating what gets into Wikipedia pages.

01:25:49.920 Uh, if you, if it's not a certain kind of source, it doesn't get on there.

01:25:54.420 There was a bizarre incident last year where the real clear politics, uh, you know, polling

01:26:02.160 average, which is a tool that reporters have been using for almost two decades.

01:26:06.580 They kind of left it off their, their page, um, of polling average sites, uh, because they

01:26:13.760 didn't like the page, I guess, I don't know.

01:26:15.700 But yeah, I think, I think we have to get some clarity about what happened there.

01:26:21.460 Obviously the former head of Wikipedia, uh, is now in a, or a senior position in NPR.

01:26:27.900 Um, the deputy or the COO government media job to another.

01:26:34.240 Yeah, exactly.

01:26:35.060 And the, the COO of NPR is the former head of this thing called the Aspen commission on

01:26:41.020 information disorder, which is one of the groups that we investigated in the Twitter

01:26:44.420 files was sort of heavily into this whole content moderation question.

01:26:49.680 So the merging of state media with platforms and regulation of sourcing and all that stuff,

01:26:57.700 that's probably going to come out too.

01:26:59.520 Kind of weird that the head of the Aspen Institute wrote the biography of Elon Musk, isn't it?

01:27:03.840 Right.

01:27:04.200 Yeah, exactly.

01:27:05.360 Yeah.

01:27:06.000 The Walter, Walter Pincus, right?

01:27:08.080 Isaacson.

01:27:08.600 Isaacson.

01:27:08.920 Sorry.

01:27:09.320 Walter Pincus was the CIA reporter at the Washington Post.

01:27:11.920 Can you cut that?

01:27:12.640 I'm sorry.

01:27:13.120 No, no, no, no.

01:27:13.860 It's just funny.

01:27:14.660 Yeah.

01:27:14.840 You remember Walter Pincus.

01:27:16.100 Yeah.

01:27:16.800 Walter Isaacson.

01:27:17.720 Yeah.

01:27:17.880 Yeah, no, it is weird.

01:27:20.020 The Aspen Institute, I mean, they played a very strange role in the whole censorship story,

01:27:25.440 but, but yeah.

01:27:39.560 So what happens to the, you said the media as constituted is dead, but I mean, like the Episcopal

01:27:47.880 church, like they have enormous like shells left, you know what I mean?

01:27:52.420 Like the church has died, but the, they've got great churches, great buildings.

01:27:56.720 What do you, what happens to like the Washington Post and NBC News?

01:28:00.080 It still has bureaus and CNN and like what, what happens to these things?

01:28:05.680 They're going to struggle, I think, to get audience back.

01:28:11.440 You already see that the strategy of some of them is to try to pander to the audiences

01:28:17.820 that they betrayed previously.

01:28:20.040 Uh, yeah, there was a funny episode over last weekend where NBC and Saturday Night Live, you

01:28:28.860 know, they finally did a joke picking on Rachel Maddow.

01:28:32.920 It wasn't particularly funny, but it was a signal that, okay, we're, we're going to suck

01:28:38.560 up to this group now.

01:28:39.580 Right.

01:28:39.860 As opposed to the other one, which is so loathsome.

01:28:42.360 Right.

01:28:42.760 And that, but Rachel Maddow is not the core, whatever you think of Rachel Maddow, she just

01:28:48.580 like advertises herself as Rachel Maddow, you know, one person's opinions.

01:28:52.640 It's funny.

01:28:53.280 You sounded like her for a second there.

01:28:54.780 Yeah.

01:28:55.000 Well, I know her and I've never been mad at her.

01:28:57.580 I couldn't disagree more.

01:28:58.780 I know I'm sure she's attacked me a lot.

01:29:00.240 I wouldn't know, but I'm not mad at Rachel Maddow.

01:29:02.980 I'm, I'm mad at Ken Delaney and like, you know what I mean?

01:29:06.340 People who pose as reporters who are actually just mouthpieces for the Intel world.

01:29:10.720 Of course.

01:29:11.100 And my only point is that just by, you know, changing their, the direction of their BS,

01:29:20.420 they're not going to win back audience.

01:29:22.880 Right.

01:29:24.420 People, you know, and this is something that I, that I've noticed since I've been in the

01:29:29.240 business, people in media continually underestimate audiences.

01:29:34.600 They think that they're much stupider than they really are.

01:29:38.340 I remember when I covered Wall Street, I was constantly told that you, you can't do these

01:29:45.420 big stories on credit default swaps and all these other things because audiences don't

01:29:49.600 want to hear about it.

01:29:50.420 They'll, they'll turn the page, but it's not true.

01:29:53.080 People have a great hunger to find out things and they have a much stronger ability to understand

01:29:59.920 things than most media people imagine.

01:30:02.320 And so when they do these sort of transparent, uh, exercises in lying and PR and political

01:30:11.580 propaganda, and they think that people won't notice, it makes it worse.

01:30:16.220 The, the, the, the, the numbers are going to go down rather than up when they start.

01:30:19.980 Totally.

01:30:20.260 Don't you think?

01:30:21.020 I mean, well, it's just interesting.

01:30:22.200 I actually think it's more sinister even than you described.

01:30:24.480 So the two topics after, you know, 30 years in the, in television, the two topics that

01:30:29.340 they like never wanted to do, they always want to do stuff about trannies or race or,

01:30:34.500 you know, whatever, all that stuff.

01:30:35.680 But they never want to do economics or foreign policy ever.

01:30:38.540 Right.

01:30:38.980 And their view was, or their, their stated view was the audience doesn't care.

01:30:44.700 And then I get fired and start doing foreign policy stuff and it gets crazy numbers.

01:30:48.660 And I only do it purely because I'm interested.

01:30:50.580 That's it.

01:30:50.860 I was always interested and I'm also interested in economics, not an expert, but I think it

01:30:54.380 matters.

01:30:54.780 That's, that's why I'm interested.

01:30:55.780 Right.

01:30:56.580 You do a story like that, you, you blow out of the water, all the pap that they do.

01:31:02.920 So it turns out there's a deep reservoir of interest among viewers and readers for these

01:31:07.360 stories.

01:31:08.360 And I'm starting to think that maybe the people who run the networks where I worked, they

01:31:13.200 just didn't want to address that stuff because there was a consensus on it that they agreed

01:31:17.920 with and that they didn't want to challenge.

01:31:20.260 You think so?

01:31:20.860 Oh, I, a hundred percent.

01:31:22.460 I think that, I think that the, especially when you're talking about, you know, interventionist

01:31:29.700 military policies, whether or not they've been effective, try, try pitching stories to,

01:31:36.580 you know, one of the big newspapers about, you know, maybe some kind of downside to an invasion

01:31:43.840 or an occupation or the expansion of, you know, a thousand military bases in the Middle East

01:31:50.100 or whatever it is, drone warfare.

01:31:52.680 Like, you know, you're going to have a hard time selling that one, right?

01:31:56.960 But they did it in the slyest way.

01:31:59.360 I mean, it went right over my head for decades.

01:32:01.760 They did it not by saying, you know, we just don't agree.

01:32:04.480 You know, we have one perspective on that and we're going to stick with it.

01:32:07.280 That's a straightforward way to explain it, which I can digest.

01:32:10.320 They instead said, no, the audience just doesn't care.

01:32:12.820 And you're basically putting the business at risk by covering things that people have

01:32:16.600 no interest in.

01:32:17.220 So get back to Natalie Holloway or whatever the drama of the moment was.

01:32:21.300 Yep.

01:32:21.420 And I believed that.

01:32:23.660 I believed it.

01:32:24.720 I mean, I just assumed people just aren't interested.

01:32:26.860 I guess I internalized our audience's dumb position, which they had for the whole time

01:32:31.700 I worked there.

01:32:32.420 Yeah.

01:32:32.640 And it's worse in TV than it is in print, but it shouldn't be, right?

01:32:39.180 And I got the same thing.

01:32:40.780 I mean, not so much at Rolling Stone, but I remember we did one story where our plan was

01:32:47.260 to do one story on what caused the financial crisis.

01:32:50.400 And we got such an overwhelming response because it wasn't anywhere.

01:32:55.420 People could not read anywhere what happened to the economy in 2008.

01:33:01.120 There was not a rational explanation that people could read.

01:33:04.200 And so...

01:33:04.720 Well, you did big, I guess, numbers is not applicable to a magazine, but that got, I mean,

01:33:10.440 your stories on that were widely read because you're one of the only people doing it.

01:33:15.320 Right.

01:33:15.620 But it wasn't so much what I was doing.

01:33:17.380 It was just the fact of, you know, how does this work?

01:33:22.080 Who was really profiting by it?

01:33:24.220 What happened to the people who bought these homes, et cetera, et cetera.

01:33:27.380 Just basic questions.

01:33:29.240 And people wanted to know.

01:33:31.280 And as you discover, they want to know other things.

01:33:34.460 Where are they spending the money that I send every year that goes to the Pentagon?

01:33:38.760 That's right.

01:33:39.320 Right.

01:33:39.560 How does it disappear into a black hole and it's not auditable and that's okay?

01:33:46.020 And...

01:33:46.300 You know, it's funny.

01:33:47.620 I remember getting back in the summer, late August of 2001 from Maine.

01:33:54.120 I'd been in Maine.

01:33:55.160 And, you know, I'm just on vacation going back to work.

01:33:58.000 And our, I was at CNN then and we were wall to wall, literally wall to wall on a story

01:34:04.840 about a congressman from Bakersfield, California, Kern County called Gary Condit.

01:34:10.500 And the question was, did he murder his intern, Chandra Levy?

01:34:12.960 And then later, whatever, in case anyone cares, turns out she was killed by an illegal alien

01:34:18.000 from El Salvador called Ingemar Guendecke.

01:34:20.180 He killed a couple other people, I think.

01:34:22.180 Anyway, whatever.

01:34:22.760 That was the story.

01:34:23.220 But at the time, we were fully immersed in this question of, is this moderate Democrat

01:34:28.980 from Bakersfield a murderer?

01:34:31.320 And I mean, we did specials on it.

01:34:33.340 It's all we did.

01:34:34.720 And then that September, that was interrupted by 9-11.

01:34:38.780 And I remember thinking at the time, like 9-11 came out of nowhere.

01:34:42.780 There was no kind of backstory.

01:34:44.420 It just happened.

01:34:45.080 It was like truly like the least expected thing that ever happened.

01:34:49.080 Right.

01:34:49.600 Right.

01:34:49.840 But in retrospect, I think, were there things going on in the world, longer, bigger trends

01:34:55.240 that maybe we should, you know, as a news company, we should have been paying attention

01:34:58.240 to?

01:34:59.000 Sure.

01:34:59.540 To kind of prepare people for the, at least the idea that like, wow, something bad could

01:35:03.020 happen because there's a lot going on abroad.

01:35:05.580 Yeah.

01:35:06.200 I think if you had visited parts of the Middle East back then, you would have-

01:35:10.160 Well, we had the coal bombing and then like the Saudis where we had bases in places that

01:35:14.540 were clearly very provocative for no real reason.

01:35:16.920 The Fatwa, the Kenyan bombing.

01:35:19.980 Yes.

01:35:20.320 Right.

01:35:20.620 Yeah.

01:35:21.000 Exactly.

01:35:21.560 There was a lot going on and we just kind of ignored all of it, but we didn't just ignore

01:35:25.960 it.

01:35:26.220 We ignored it in like this manic way, like must cover Gary Condit.

01:35:30.400 And I'm not a conspiracy nut, Matt, but you do sort of wonder like, what was that?

01:35:36.360 Yeah.

01:35:36.720 Those were the good old days when the manias were things like the summer of the shark.

01:35:42.500 Right.

01:35:43.180 Remember that?

01:35:44.240 Do I remember?

01:35:44.740 I think I participated in it.

01:35:46.920 Should you swim?

01:35:50.020 But then you get 9-11, like this one, you know, sort of beautiful fall morning and everything

01:35:56.120 changes.

01:35:56.760 And it's like, I do think it's fair to ask, even if there's no intent involved, like how

01:36:01.720 did we, like, what should we have done differently to at least give people the sense that there

01:36:06.400 were highly organized, well-funded elements abroad that hated us?

01:36:10.660 Like, I just did not know that.

01:36:11.820 And most people didn't.

01:36:12.740 Yeah.

01:36:13.900 Why didn't we do that?

01:36:15.540 Honestly.

01:36:16.280 And it came as a shock to a lot of people.

01:36:18.360 Like, a complete shock.

01:36:19.680 Yeah.

01:36:19.780 I don't know.

01:36:19.940 Were you in the country when that happened?

01:36:21.260 No, I was, I was in Russia.

01:36:23.700 And.

01:36:24.460 Well, so at least you have that excuse, you know, you're living in another country.

01:36:27.280 I lived in Washington, D.C. covering the news for CNN.

01:36:29.940 I mean, I hosted a show on CNN and I had no idea that, like.

01:36:33.220 Oh, that's a terrifying feeling, right?

01:36:34.860 To, to be, you got to cover something that you have no back, background in.

01:36:39.700 Well, there was no covering it.

01:36:40.720 There was just watching it.

01:36:41.860 Right.

01:36:42.200 Yeah.

01:36:42.520 Right.

01:36:42.760 And there's never actually been any covering of it.

01:36:45.160 Right.

01:36:45.320 No one's ever really covered 9-11.

01:36:46.820 Like, what was that?

01:36:47.780 Yeah.

01:36:48.300 Exactly.

01:36:49.460 And what followed it.

01:36:50.940 Yeah, exactly.

01:36:51.860 Yeah.

01:36:52.020 Well, I did cover that.

01:36:53.580 But like the 9-11, like how do, how exactly did that happen?

01:36:56.540 We have all these law enforcement and intelligence agencies protecting us.

01:37:00.460 And they had no idea that there are, you know, dozens and dozens and dozens of, you know, the 19 hijackers.

01:37:06.200 But then all the support people living in our country, training, getting money from.

01:37:11.860 So we didn't, we never really, what?

01:37:14.760 But anyway, I don't know why I'm going off on that, but it's like no one ever asked the basic questions.

01:37:20.780 Right.

01:37:21.360 Right.

01:37:22.120 And, you know, there are a lot of people who didn't ask basic questions in the last eight years.

01:37:29.140 I've noticed.

01:37:30.800 Including me, I guess, because a lot of the things you just said are like, yeah, whatever happened to that?

01:37:36.800 Well, there's, it becomes overwhelming after a while.

01:37:39.700 It's overwhelming.

01:37:39.860 That's right.

01:37:40.220 I mean, you know, the 50th time they tell you that democracy is going to end in 10 minutes or, you know, you're going to die if you don't, you know, take this medicine or whatever it is, or, you know, your kids are going to die.

01:37:54.120 It emotionally, it wears on people and it becomes very difficult.

01:37:58.660 I mean, I think this was a factor in, it was a factor in a lot of the corruption stories because audiences were not, they were not going to be receptive to alternative versions of what they had just heard because it was such an emotionally wrenching experience for them.

01:38:15.500 So, it's going to take a while for people to digest a lot of these things.

01:38:22.360 You know, I think it's happening slowly, but what's going to be interesting about this period is that there's going to be this avalanche of primary material that's going to come out.

01:38:34.200 And I'm fast, I can't wait.

01:38:37.280 You're going to need to hire more staff to keep up with it all.

01:38:39.820 Yeah, absolutely. Probably, probably that's the case. And it's going to be a fun time for journalists like me, but just, just as a citizen, I can't wait to read it, you know?

01:38:49.600 So, can I ask one last question of your, your reporting is marked by its command of detail, I would say. I mean, it is, I read it.

01:38:57.600 Hopefully.

01:38:58.180 Yeah, no, but of like a lot of detail, like a lot of detail. And so, you look at things, I kind of like, you know, I'm not a detail guy. You are.

01:39:07.740 What, name one, like tiny detail that you are personally obsessed with and maybe mildly embarrassing, embarrassed to admit you're obsessed with, but like, what's the one thing that you just, you want to know, like you've, that you've been wondering about?

01:39:21.980 I mean, I think the thing that happened last year with that frenzied week in July with, with Biden and, you know, and the, and the, the lying about the poll numbers and the, the phony, the clearly planted stories about Nancy Pelosi.

01:39:45.700 Lying about the poll numbers?

01:39:46.900 Well, look, there were stories that Biden was ahead in the polls that, that came out as they were telling us that he had to drop out because the poll numbers were so dire.

01:39:57.840 NPR did a story, like virtually, I believe it was this, a couple of days after the debate.

01:40:05.620 I'll have to go back and look at this, but there, but yeah, there were stories that, that he was doing fine in the polls.

01:40:10.280 And, and of course, we later found out from Biden staffers that they said they never had, I'm sorry, that that was about Kamala.

01:40:20.080 They never had internal polling showing Kamala ahead, even though there were scads of stories telling us the opposite, which is, but for me, the, the, the, the story that I just can't get past is what happened in that one week.

01:40:35.500 Uh, and, and, and how did they, how did they manufacture that whole thing without anybody showing any kind of curiosity about it?

01:40:45.460 Um, you know, had the media been so completely paper trained by that moment that they, I, I, I guess so.

01:40:52.840 Right.

01:40:53.500 Uh, but.

01:40:54.800 Well, it's the same, but it's the same impulse that maintains discipline in Washington and in the media, which is commitment to party first.

01:41:02.900 And what is, so that is the one thing, like all the things I disagree with the democratic party and some of the Republican party on policy, like I have all kinds of disagreements.

01:41:12.680 Like I think that they think that's okay.

01:41:13.820 Got it.

01:41:14.160 But the one thing I really can't relate to is the loyalty to party.

01:41:18.680 What is that?

01:41:20.720 I never understood that.

01:41:22.400 You know, like what you're going to agree with a, a bunch of people on everything that they do.

01:41:28.040 And you're going to support that.

01:41:29.400 It's one thing for politicians to act that way, but I cannot understand it in a media person.

01:41:36.200 Do you think that's a defining fact of like our life is this commitment to, to party?

01:41:40.980 Well, right now we have the situation where the only versions of things that you get are essentially party explanations.

01:41:47.760 And that's why it's so, it's so interesting that there's this sort of intermediate podcast space where people are exploring things from all different directions.

01:41:59.500 And that's where all the people are going.

01:42:01.400 I don't think it's a coincidence.

01:42:03.580 Can that last?

01:42:04.560 I think it can.

01:42:05.500 I think what's going to happen is you're going, you're going to have new institutions that are built up around that, that are, that are just going to find new ways to.

01:42:14.540 Then you can't have, as long as that lasts, you can't have authoritarian rule.

01:42:18.180 Right.

01:42:18.780 Oh yeah.

01:42:19.580 And, uh, and that was proven.

01:42:22.320 I mean, look, the handful of podcasts that a lot of people chuckled about had a huge impact in the last, in the last election.

01:42:32.120 And you know what?

01:42:33.600 Shame on those media people who laughed at those podcasts because among other things, they had lower numbers than a lot of those podcasts, like significantly lower.

01:42:41.100 Most of them.

01:42:41.520 Yeah.

01:42:41.840 Right.

01:42:42.120 And, you know, they're snobs about it.

01:42:45.180 They say, oh, well, that's, you know, we have, we have a better quality of audience.

01:42:48.720 No, you, you, you just are not convincing.

01:42:51.560 That's actually have a much lower quality of audience.

01:42:54.540 You know, your average Rogan listener is way smarter than your average cable news viewer.

01:43:02.100 Like, sorry.

01:43:02.960 Right.

01:43:03.180 Yeah.

01:43:03.920 And, and they're more willing and partly because they watch shows like Joe Rogan, which, which ask them to entertain multiple points of view on things.

01:43:13.300 Right.

01:43:13.760 That's kind of the whole idea.

01:43:15.220 You're like, you'll see somebody.

01:43:16.860 There are lots of people who go on the Rogan show that I disagree with.

01:43:19.800 Me too.

01:43:20.100 But I hear it, you know, and that's the whole point, right?

01:43:24.120 Is you get to hear different points of view.

01:43:26.160 And that's been excluded from this other form of media, this kind of bifurcated red, blue landscape, which doesn't work anymore and is in collapse.

01:43:36.920 But, um, I, I just think that this, this period now, uh, it's going to be great for launching the, this new media that's necessary because they're going to have all this material to work with.

01:43:51.820 And because it's going to be all documents, people are going to trust it.

01:43:56.080 Right.

01:43:56.620 In the same way that they trusted the Twitter files, I didn't have anything to say about it.

01:44:00.400 I just sort of put it out there.

01:44:01.620 But, uh, all of these new, these independent organs are going to look at this, these reams of material and they're going to discuss it and pass it around.

01:44:14.080 And that's going to be how the public is educated, which is great.

01:44:17.580 I love it.

01:44:18.260 It's the best.

01:44:18.980 Right.

01:44:19.660 Man, you put me in such a better mood.

01:44:21.400 Matt Taibbi, thank you.

01:44:22.500 No, thank you.

01:44:23.160 Seriously.

01:44:23.880 I mean, I, I, I think you would do this for free.

01:44:27.100 I get that feeling.

01:44:28.840 Absolutely would.

01:44:29.800 I love it.

01:44:30.580 Thanks, Tucker.

01:44:31.200 Thank you.

01:44:31.520 Appreciate it.

01:44:33.860 Thanks for listening to Tucker Carlson show.

01:44:35.720 If you enjoyed it, you can go to Tucker Carlson.com to see everything that we have made the complete library.

01:44:41.720 Tucker Carlson.com.

The Tucker Carlson Show - January 27, 2025

Matt Taibbi： All the Top Secret Information Trump Is Releasing & What He Should Declassify Next

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