Triggered - Donald Trump Jr - Inside Our Intel Agencies, a Lack of Intelligence: Former Deputy DNI Cliff Sims Knows Why | TRIGGERED Ep.135

00:00:00.000 you you

00:05:33.000 you guys welcome to another huge episode of trigger

00:06:01.000 Tonight I'm going to be talking with my good friend Cliff Sims.

00:06:04.000 Cliff worked in the Trump administration and he was a top intelligence official.

00:06:09.000 He's got some great stories about life inside of the swamp and so much more.

00:06:14.000 He also has a new book called The Darkness Has Not Overcome Lessons on Faith and Politics from Inside the Halls of Power.

00:06:22.000 It'll be a fun one.

00:06:23.000 Today I have to have a friend on because I literally I am About exactly 24 hours out of knee surgery.

00:06:31.000 So, uh, not Hunter Biden.

00:06:32.000 I've managed to avoid the drugs, uh, for the most part.

00:06:35.000 But, you know, a little rough.

00:06:38.000 Surgery in New York.

00:06:38.000 Flew back here this morning.

00:06:40.000 Uh, got cleared to fly.

00:06:41.000 Hobbling on crutches with a, you know, messed up knee and a meniscus. 0.99

00:06:45.000 All that crap.

00:06:46.000 So, uh, it's gonna be have- gonna be fun to have a friend on because... 0.93

00:06:51.000 Let him do most of the work.

00:06:53.000 But this will be a fascinating conversation one way or the other.

00:06:56.000 We'll lay out a vision to get this country back on track.

00:07:00.000 I need you guys, make sure that you're hitting the like button.

00:07:03.000 Share, subscribe, let's keep getting the message out.

00:07:07.000 I'm reminding it a little bit early because the show's just building up now so I gotta remember to...

00:07:11.000 Remind you guys to like this later, but do that so we can get it out.

00:07:15.000 The rest of big tech is obviously stacked against us.

00:07:17.000 We have to work harder to make sure we break through all the noise and we grow the movement, because the movement is America.

00:07:25.000 It is America first, and we have to grow that. 0.86

00:07:28.000 Not communists first, America first. 0.73

00:07:30.000 Remember, also guys, you can go to Spotify or Apple Podcasts if you missed the show here on Rumble.

00:07:35.000 If you have friends that get their podcasts perhaps that way, an awesome way to do it, you know.

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00:07:44.000 If you're at Roku, any one of those apps, download the Rumble app there and you can watch me On the big screen, in your home, with the kids, and I'd say 99.9% of the time, it's a very family-friendly show.

00:07:56.000 The other, you know, .1, maybe not as much, but it's also real, and we live in the real world, and we gotta not pretend that we don't, and therefore, it's probably good for the kids anyway.

00:08:06.000 So, for all the top headlines that we spotlight here on the show, make sure you go over to my news app, MXM News.

00:08:12.000 Like, minute by minute, MXM.

00:08:15.000 News.

00:08:15.000 For mainstream news, without the mainstream bias.

00:08:18.000 Remember, you know, the left? 0.98

00:08:19.000 They'll feed you all this garbage, whether it's Google or Apple or whatever. 0.99

00:08:23.000 It's all biased. 1.00

00:08:23.000 It's all crap. 1.00

00:08:25.000 You gotta see both sides. 1.00

00:08:27.000 They always said, you know, oh, you don't like it?

00:08:28.000 Build your own.

00:08:29.000 Guys like me and some of our friends, like, we actually go and do that.

00:08:33.000 We do that work to make it accessible for you.

00:08:36.000 So if you guys can support us, that would be awesome.

00:08:39.000 It allows us to get it out there better, more effectively.

00:08:42.000 That allows us to win in the end because I believe our message is 100% right.

00:08:47.000 But when you're up against a trillion dollars of big tech, up against a trillion dollars in the mainstream media, it's a problem.

00:08:53.000 So go check out MXM News.

00:08:55.000 And now, folks, let's get into some of those top headlines that I got from MXM News.

00:09:00.000 Starting on a lighter note, you know it's going poorly for Joe Biden when even a stand-up comedian, a very liberal group of people, are starting to make fun of him.

00:09:15.000 Look at what happened to this when one guy admitted that he worked for the Biden administration at a recent comedy show.

00:09:26.000 You work for the Biden administration.

00:09:29.000 It's your job to wake up her when she's down.

00:09:31.000 It's a law!

00:09:33.000 Okay, what do you think of the Biden administration?

00:09:37.000 What a cheap show of a job you have.

00:09:41.000 I can't believe you admitted that in front of all these people.

00:09:44.000 You have the freedom to lie. 1.00

00:09:45.000 You could have said you were a fucker and I wouldn't have been mad at you. 1.00

00:09:48.000 What do you do? 1.00

00:09:49.000 I travel to southern states.

00:09:51.000 Bzzzt! 1.00

00:09:52.000 You guys are scum! You're trying to scum on PYTE! 1.00

00:10:06.000 What are you talking about? 1.00

00:10:08.000 What the hell? 0.98

00:10:09.000 What are you talking about? 0.99

00:10:10.000 You're doing a f***ing job to get out. 0.87

00:10:13.000 Hey, listen, I know you guys want to talk, but PYTE, I mean... 0.87

00:10:17.000 Wow!

00:10:20.000 Um, are you ready to go out and poll me?

00:10:23.000 Guys, Joe Biden is literally a joke. 0.89

00:10:27.000 He's a butt of jokes.

00:10:29.000 Other countries' comedians are doing the same thing. 1.00

00:10:32.000 Our country is divided in many ways, but almost everyone can agree that Biden is a weak, bumbling idiot and a clown. 1.00

00:10:42.000 A clown. 1.00

00:10:43.000 He just read out the phrase, last name, from his teleprompter. 0.99

00:10:50.000 Again.

00:10:51.000 Remember, pause for applause.

00:10:54.000 Then he read out pause again last week.

00:10:58.000 How many times do we have to cover this before we understand that Biden clearly has dementia or something similar?

00:11:06.000 And it's obvious to everyone, people I know who are in the medical field, say he has to be jacked on something just the way he behaves it's the side effects of the drugs that they put him on to keep him I don't want to say lucid because I don't think anyone could believe that he's lucid for even one second but I guess keep him upright for at least 75% of the time and stumbling through whatever it is that he's doing my theology professor at the Catholic school I went to

00:11:39.000 Guys, a new poll just came out of Pennsylvania showing that my father is leading Joe Biden.

00:11:51.000 It found that a majority of voters say that the Trump presidency was a success, while the majority of voters think Biden's presidency is a failure.

00:11:59.000 That is objective fact.

00:12:01.000 There's no ambiguity there.

00:12:03.000 Look at the numbers.

00:12:03.000 And what's unique about this election, folks, you will have lived For an entire term under both people on the ballot.

00:12:12.000 When were you better off?

00:12:15.000 If that sounds familiar, that's because that's exactly what CNN found in a recent poll.

00:12:22.000 CNN!

00:12:23.000 When Joe Biden loses CNN, it's a problem, folks.

00:12:27.000 Now, I'm sure they'll make up for that with extra cheating and extra nonsense and extra help from big tech, but it's a problem.

00:12:34.000 This is the story of the 2024 election.

00:12:38.000 Voters get to compare two presidencies, as I discussed earlier, one that was a success and one that is an abject failure.

00:12:47.000 The failing far-left media is so out of touch that they think this headline from Rolling Stone makes us look bad.

00:12:55.000 And I quote, Trump is planning to send kill teams to Mexico to take out cartel leaders. 0.82

00:13:01.000 Sounds like a terrible idea. 0.99

00:13:03.000 We should just allow these people to take advantage of our open borders, to send fentanyl, to rape women and children crossing the borders that they're organizing and taking their life savings from. 1.00

00:13:16.000 We should allow them to continue to kill 100,000 Americans a year. 1.00

00:13:19.000 You know, just two Vietnams. 0.98

00:13:21.000 Two Vietnam Wars a year. 0.79

00:13:23.000 We should allow them to do that forever.

00:13:25.000 I don't know.

00:13:26.000 Doesn't seem like a terrible headline to me, but like everything else, this is the left.

00:13:30.000 They don't even get that.

00:13:32.000 It would be a dereliction of duty for us to not go after the cartels. 0.98

00:13:36.000 They are terrorists. 0.63

00:13:38.000 They are killing tens of thousands of Americans every single year.

00:13:41.000 Now, on Monday, I did a deep dive on RFK Jr.' 's record.

00:13:47.000 For years, For years, he supported the Democrat Party and its agenda.

00:13:52.000 He campaigned for Hillary and attacked the NRA as a terror group.

00:13:57.000 In case I wasn't clear enough on Monday, here's RFK Jr. 0.97

00:14:02.000 in yet another video, in 2018, mocking Republicans as dumb and saying that NPR, you know, National Public Radio, is the truth. 0.94

00:14:13.000 Watch for yourself. 0.99

00:14:14.000 80% of Republicans are just Democrats who don't know what's going on.

00:14:19.000 You know, I think a lot of people really aren't paying attention.

00:14:29.000 I was in Alabama two weeks ago and I was in a drive from Huntsville to Birmingham.

00:14:37.000 And you know, the AM dial is all right-wing talk, right?

00:14:42.000 It's completely, there's nothing progressive or liberal.

00:14:46.000 But in Alabama, the FM dial is also 100% right-wing talk.

00:14:54.000 There's five stations and all of them are extremely, really like poisonous racial stuff. 0.97

00:15:01.000 Stuff that you would not, you know, believe was happening in America.

00:15:05.000 And there's one NPR said, of course, public radio is not liberal, it's just, you know, neutral, it's just truth,

00:15:13.000 right?

00:15:14.000 And, uh...

00:15:16.000 Huh!

00:15:18.000 Wow, again?

00:15:20.000 Again!

00:15:20.000 I mean, you know, he wanted open borders.

00:15:25.000 He's a radical zealot of the environment.

00:15:29.000 He hates guns.

00:15:31.000 He thought, what, people who questioned climate change should be thrown in jail.

00:15:36.000 Now he's pretending to love conservatives.

00:15:39.000 What's the deal with this guy?

00:15:41.000 Can he not remember any of his past statements?

00:15:44.000 Well, it turns out that may actually be the case. 1.00

00:15:48.000 He literally has a brain worm! 0.98

00:15:51.000 Watch for yourself! 0.96

00:15:53.000 I just ask you guys one more thing.

00:15:54.000 The New York Times, and this has nothing to do with, well, it has to do with the presidential election, has just come out with this extraordinary, bizarre article on RFK.

00:16:06.000 And they're reporting that doctors, in a deposition, that RFK said doctors found a worm in his brain that had eaten part of his brain and then died there.

00:16:16.000 I mean, you laugh, but I mean, what might this mean?

00:16:20.000 I mean, what might this mean to an election hearing that he said this in a deposition?

00:16:25.000 It probably means, and one of the things that I tell my clients all the time is try not to go into depositions high.

00:16:30.000 That's usually what I would suggest.

00:16:32.000 And I would, that would be my words of wisdom.

00:16:36.000 I, you know, I have political issues with RFK, but this is just a little bit beyond my pale of expertise.

00:16:41.000 I don't even know what to say. 0.98

00:16:43.000 If a worm ate his brain. 0.96

00:16:44.000 Yeah.

00:16:47.000 Okay, maybe this explains it because no one I know in history has ever done an entire 180 in a six-month period on political beliefs that they have held for half a century.

00:17:01.000 That does not happen.

00:17:02.000 It certainly doesn't happen if you come from one of the biggest Democrat dynasties in the history of America, if not the biggest.

00:17:09.000 So, okay.

00:17:11.000 Maybe this makes sense.

00:17:13.000 RFK Jr.

00:17:14.000 just doesn't know where the hell he is, perhaps.

00:17:17.000 He should be resting or getting help, but not running for president.

00:17:22.000 And trying to help Joe Biden win.

00:17:24.000 Maybe the brain worm did enough damage to reverse those traits. 0.88

00:17:27.000 That doesn't mean you give him the nuclear football either.

00:17:30.000 Literally, no one does that.

00:17:32.000 But I guess they figured out a lane.

00:17:34.000 And they're trying to hurt conservatives by putting someone who's been a lifelong Democrat, remember?

00:17:40.000 Just on Monday when he couldn't remember, he doesn't know.

00:17:43.000 He doesn't know if, I don't know, doing the gender transition surgeries on minors, you know, he doesn't know enough about it.

00:17:50.000 You know, it took him a solid 48, 72 hours to come out with a statement.

00:17:54.000 Now, upon a little bit of reflection, once he got killed by the people he's trying to vo- woo, pretending to be a conservative, well, now he's not really for it.

00:18:03.000 But, you know, three days ago, I don't know.

00:18:05.000 I don't know enough about it. 0.97

00:18:06.000 I mean, I think probably totally normal to chop a child's genitals off and stick them on drugs for the rest of their lives. 0.99

00:18:12.000 If you don't know that answer, like this, off the top of your head, If you can't say no, that's ridiculous. 0.99

00:18:21.000 You are probably not a conservative. 1.00

00:18:23.000 You are a fucking lunatic. 1.00

00:18:26.000 RFK and Biden are competing for who is further left, and apparently also for whose brain is rotting more. 1.00

00:18:34.000 And by the way, if you see so-called right-wing accounts, and I've seen a lot of them, promoting RFK Jr., it's safe to assume that they are being paid.

00:18:45.000 I'm not shocked at all by this because months ago I started seeing him flooding my Instagram account from either accounts I didn't follow or people that I knew were sort of right-wing influencers.

00:18:55.000 But The Daily Caller just unveiled a plot by an RFK firm that includes buying, buying off right-wing influencers.

00:19:05.000 He's trying to trick MAGA into thinking he's a conservative.

00:19:09.000 Don't fall for it.

00:19:11.000 I said this to a group of friends.

00:19:12.000 Cliff Sims, who will be on the show later, was one of them.

00:19:15.000 I was like, hey man, I'm seeing all this RFK stuff.

00:19:17.000 This has to be a psyop, right?

00:19:20.000 Then you start looking into his policies.

00:19:22.000 I'm like, I don't know how they can pull this off.

00:19:23.000 There are probably people that aren't radical left-wing people

00:19:26.000 that you could get to take a right-wing position and say, hey, this makes a little bit of sense.

00:19:32.000 But now it's totally clear.

00:19:34.000 It was obvious to me because I know some of these people.

00:19:36.000 I created half of these people, not because I was paying them, but because I liked their content in 16 and I was boosting them or retweeting them or whatever.

00:19:43.000 You see them do that, you're saying, I don't know.

00:19:46.000 They're politically astute enough to know that this is a radical, but I guess you put him on the payroll and maybe Trump won't or didn't because we don't need to.

00:19:56.000 We kind of do it enough on our own.

00:19:59.000 I guess that's what's going on.

00:20:01.000 So it explains it.

00:20:02.000 Don't fall for the PSYOP.

00:20:04.000 There are two radical left-wing Democrats in this race and one conservative, Donald Trump.

00:20:11.000 Meanwhile...

00:20:13.000 Meanwhile, House Republicans are taking some action against the Democrats' lawfare.

00:20:19.000 The House Judiciary Committee and the House Oversight Committee just sent a criminal referral to the Justice Department for Michael Cohen.

00:20:27.000 Cohen lied to Congress apparently six separate times.

00:20:31.000 If he's not charged for this, then we truly have no rule of law left in this country.

00:20:38.000 But again, this is also Alvin Bragg's star witness in the New York bogus sham case against my father.

00:20:46.000 The star witness is a known liar and a disbarred attorney. 0.90

00:20:52.000 Think about that. 0.92

00:20:54.000 A known liar and a disbarred attorney, committed perjury all over the place, but hey, you can be a star witness as long as you're against Trump.

00:21:03.000 The other major witness in the Alvin Bright case is Stormy Daniels, who admitted yesterday on the stand that she owes over $500,000 in court-mandated legal fees to my father and refuses to pay them. 0.79

00:21:21.000 So she's lost.

00:21:22.000 Definitely not bitter.

00:21:23.000 I'm sure she's going to be objective.

00:21:25.000 She's going to be a great witness for the left after being in debt Half a million dollars.

00:21:31.000 This isn't a vendetta, folks.

00:21:33.000 This is a totally credible witness, obviously, right?

00:21:37.000 Obviously. 0.67

00:21:38.000 The left is having to say ridiculous things to pretend like she's a serious individual. 1.00

00:21:45.000 Look at this headline from Breitbart News. 0.99

00:21:48.000 Actress Mia Farrow praises Stormy Daniels as a strong woman, and I quote, there's nothing wrong with being a hooker. 1.00

00:21:58.000 You can't make it up! 0.94

00:22:00.000 You literally, you can't make it up.

00:22:01.000 I mean, this is Mia Farrow, a liberal activist. 0.98

00:22:05.000 She's absolutely batshit crazy. 1.00

00:22:08.000 And like, this is her defensive story. 0.99

00:22:09.000 I mean, you know, no, no, no.

00:22:10.000 She's a great witness. 0.97

00:22:11.000 There's nothing wrong with being a hooker. 0.99

00:22:13.000 Like. 0.99

00:22:14.000 Great job, Mia.

00:22:15.000 I appreciate you.

00:22:16.000 You're like MVP for our team.

00:22:19.000 That's just wonderful stuff.

00:22:20.000 Thank you.

00:22:21.000 The Manhattan case is a joke, and it looks like the only case that will go to trial before the November election.

00:22:28.000 The documents case in Florida has been delayed indefinitely after it was revealed that Jack Smith, the lead prosecutor there and in other cases, failed to preserve critical evidence.

00:22:39.000 I wonder why they would do that.

00:22:41.000 Because it would probably exonerate Trump.

00:22:44.000 You know, they can manipulate other things or whatever, but like, you know, this is not exactly an honorable guy.

00:22:49.000 This is not a guy that has a stellar track record. 1.00

00:22:51.000 This guy is a partisan piece of shit hack. 0.99

00:22:55.000 Jack Smith rushed to prosecute in order to try to take out Joe Biden's political opponent. 1.00

00:23:03.000 And naturally, there are a lot of issues with this case.

00:23:06.000 So, hopefully he gets what's coming to him.

00:23:09.000 Bad guy, terribly dishonest person, but that's of course why they chose him to be the guy to prosecute it.

00:23:15.000 Because you need someone with no morals, with no moral compass, who will do anything to win because all that is is a political hit.

00:23:25.000 Meanwhile, in Georgia, yet another winner, an appeals court will hear whether Fannie Willis should be disqualified from the case.

00:23:33.000 If you remember, Fannie hired her lover as the prosecutor, someone who'd never tried this kind of case, to lead the Trump case, and paid him hundreds of thousands of dollars, $675,000 approximately, or to be almost exact, and then she lied to the court about it. 0.53

00:23:51.000 She should clearly be disqualified. 0.78

00:23:53.000 That's taxpayer money that she was then vacationing with, amongst other things, but Hey, I digress.

00:24:01.000 This is the world that we live in today.

00:24:03.000 I'm glad that it's all coming out and getting exposed. 0.93

00:24:06.000 Now, that doesn't mean you're gonna get a fair trial in New York, no matter how ridiculous it is.

00:24:10.000 It doesn't mean you're gonna get a fair trial in Atlanta, even if they remove Fannie Willis.

00:24:14.000 That was the point of choosing those venues, those people, those prosecutors, and those judges.

00:24:19.000 But...

00:24:20.000 Anyway, at least the American public now get it.

00:24:24.000 So guys, make sure you're liking, sharing, subscribing.

00:24:28.000 Okay, I've given you a few minutes of an intro.

00:24:30.000 Enough people are watching now.

00:24:31.000 Do that.

00:24:32.000 That's how we get the message out.

00:24:33.000 That's how we break the algorithm.

00:24:35.000 That's how we make sure that other people see the truth.

00:24:37.000 And we're going to get to cliff sims in just a few moments.

00:24:40.000 But first, also an important word for our sponsors.

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00:25:36.000 To learn more, text Don Jr, just text D-O-N-J-R to the number 989898 and get your free info kit.

00:25:45.000 That's text D-O-N-J-R to the number 989898.

00:25:50.000 Learn more, educate yourself, inform yourself, make an informed decision to protect yourselves and your families from the insanity that we see going on every day.

00:26:00.000 But don't stop there, guys.

00:26:02.000 Make the parallel economy at the center of every Purchase you make with Public Square.

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00:27:00.000 Guys, I can't say this enough.

00:27:01.000 We have to vote with our wallets, okay?

00:27:04.000 We have to not take the easy way out and go on Amazon where your hard-earned dollars are weaponized against you.

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00:27:21.000 If you're traveling, you know, find the coffee shop that's on Public Square.

00:27:24.000 If you're at home, support the businesses that are there.

00:27:26.000 Put their kids through camp instead of some corporation that's gonna give their money back to the trans community, whatever insanity they're pushing these days. 1.00

00:27:35.000 Go to publicsquare.com, download the Public Square app, check it out.

00:27:39.000 And with that, we're gonna go to Cliff Sims.

00:27:42.000 Well, guys, joining me now, former Special Assistant to President Trump, your favorite president in the White House, and former Deputy Director of National Intelligence, the author of The Darkness Has Not Overcome, Lessons on Faith and Politics from Inside the Halls of Power, my buddy Cliff Simms.

00:28:01.000 So, Cliff, first of all, really good to have you here.

00:28:04.000 Thanks for having me, man.

00:28:05.000 Excited to be on.

00:28:07.000 So, Cliff, we have a little thread with a couple of our other buddies in politics, and they wanted to know is, have you ever seen Caitlin Collins and Dylan Mulvaney in the same room?

00:28:17.000 I mean, you worked in intelligence.

00:28:22.000 You were the deputy director of national intelligence.

00:28:24.000 This should not be a difficult question for you.

00:28:27.000 I have not in all of, you know, with all the intelligence resources we have, you know, CIA, NSA, spy satellites, everything that we have not yet gotten to the bottom of this one.

00:28:39.000 Maybe we'll have a chance to reprioritize some things.

00:28:42.000 We get back in there.

00:28:43.000 Maybe we bump this one up a little bit higher on the list.

00:28:45.000 But this is what happens when we're in a text thread. 0.97

00:28:49.000 Yeah, hey, you started it with, hey, what should I break Don's balls with?

00:28:52.000 So I was like, I want to, you know, I know, you know, there was a time you may have been buddies with a certain CNN anchor slash correspondent, whatever it may be, you know, in the White House. 0.54

00:29:02.000 And so we got, I have to ask these questions.

00:29:04.000 Inquiring minds want to know, Cliff.

00:29:06.000 Caitlin's from Alabama, she's a fellow Alabama grad, so we can we can unite over that even if we part ways on basically everything else.

00:29:14.000 So that's... But was she once a conservative? 0.82

00:29:16.000 Is she, was she a fake conservative?

00:29:18.000 Is she now a real liberal? 0.97

00:29:20.000 What are your thoughts? 1.00

00:29:21.000 Oh my god, you are the worst.

00:29:23.000 She worked at the Daily Caller, she worked for Tucker Carlson, and then at some point she went and worked for CNN, and you know, the incentives being what the incentives are, it's maybe a little bit different ballgame over at CNN, and so we are where we are now.

00:29:36.000 So let's talk about that a little bit, not specifically her, but in general.

00:29:40.000 I mean, are there people they get to DC and it's just easier to survive as a liberal?

00:29:46.000 I mean, do you see that in the agencies?

00:29:48.000 I mean, you worked as an intelligence individual, right?

00:29:52.000 I mean, is it just easy to be On the left, do people who don't necessarily do that, do they come in there and then it's like they just get eaten and enveloped by the swamp and it's just easier to give the swamp what it wants and that's the faster path for success and the careers?

00:30:09.000 Yeah, you know, as we often say, the swamp is undefeated.

00:30:12.000 There's no doubt about that.

00:30:13.000 And so I do think a lot of people go there and maybe even went with good intentions and once they get there, things change.

00:30:20.000 It erodes people's character in a hurry.

00:30:23.000 There's no doubt about that.

00:30:24.000 But I think one of the things that I saw in the intelligence community was with intelligence community reporters, there's a specific kind of I would almost compare it to like agency capture.

00:30:36.000 You know, it's the old thing where people who regulate a certain industry, once they leave that regulatory body, they want to get a job at one of these places that they used to regulate.

00:30:48.000 So maybe we're going to go a little bit softer on them.

00:30:51.000 And so I can get this, you know, high paying job when I get out in the intelligence community.

00:30:56.000 It was really interesting to see this own kind of agency capture that exists between the reporters and some of the entrenched bureaucrats in there.

00:31:06.000 And it's basically that these reporters are subservient to these entrenched bureaucrats because they're the ones who feed them this inside information. 0.99

00:31:16.000 And so the narrative that we always get from national security and intelligence reporters, there's a reason why it's always from the perspective perspective of those entrenched bureaucrats that don't want

00:31:26.000 any reform, that don't want anything to change. And it's its own kind

00:31:29.000 of agency capture.

00:31:30.000 We saw that I could give you a million examples of this.

00:31:33.000 The most famous one is the old 51 intelligence, former intelligence officials who lie and say that the

00:31:40.000 Hunter Biden laptop is probably Russian disinformation.

00:31:43.000 And it was Natasha Bertrand at Politico at the time, now at CNN,

00:31:47.000 who was the stenographer on that.

00:31:49.000 I dealt with Natasha and her colleagues all the time.

00:31:52.000 There are multiple examples, and I've actually got several really long threads on Twitter where I unpack How I tried to tell them the truth, even about the Hunter Biden laptop.

00:32:02.000 I told them before they weren't, but they weren't interested.

00:32:04.000 I mean, they were, they were a part of it.

00:32:06.000 You're right.

00:32:07.000 There's, I mean, I I've seen that, right?

00:32:09.000 The Washington post has their political reporters, but they have the one guy that seems to be like the, the spokesperson for the CIA.

00:32:16.000 You know, when the Pentagon wants it, they go to this one guy, and he almost signals it.

00:32:20.000 Like, you saw it... I forget the guy at WAPO, but you saw it when, like, you could see the swamp had sort of had enough with Joe Biden, and so they were signaling, well, Hunter may be in trouble.

00:32:29.000 And this guy's just, he's just their scribe.

00:32:31.000 Like, whatever the narrative they want out there, it has nothing to do with the truth, but they basically work for them as a mouthpiece to help sort of Through the vicious cycle, just get the end result that they want by printing stuff that's nonsense, just like they did with Russia, Russia, Russia, with their, you know.

00:32:47.000 We'll leak a story to the New York Times, they'll print it, we'll use that as the justification to start the investigation and the wheels of Washington and the swamp go.

00:32:56.000 No, that's exactly right.

00:32:57.000 That's exactly how it works.

00:32:58.000 It's an incestuous, not virtuous cycle that you see happen over and over and over again.

00:33:04.000 And at some point, it's just like, I just kind of threw my hands up.

00:33:07.000 It's like, well, I'm just not going to deal with these people anymore.

00:33:09.000 We're going to do our thing.

00:33:10.000 They're going to write what they're going to write.

00:33:11.000 There's nothing you can do about it.

00:33:13.000 I mean, we were there dealing with the New York Times national security reporters.

00:33:17.000 At some point, my boss, Director Ratcliffe, was like, just don't talk to him anymore.

00:33:21.000 I just don't even they're gonna they call you and they ask for it for a comment on a story

00:33:26.000 It's not like they're gonna change what they're writing if you say hey guys, that's not exactly right

00:33:30.000 It's gonna be what it's gonna be. So why waste time during your day dealing with it and frankly trump completely

00:33:37.000 changed You know as a communications professional

00:33:40.000 like the approach to some of this stuff, because like historically, you know,

00:33:43.000 you try to engage with the reporter.

00:33:45.000 We're going to try to get it to a place where it's not.

00:33:47.000 And Trump at some point was just like, forget these people.

00:33:50.000 By the way, that was the same with us, right?

00:33:52.000 I mean, when we were pretty out there for decades prior to ever getting into politics,

00:33:57.000 my father was like, I'd be like, I didn't call that guy back

00:33:59.000 because he was, what do you mean you didn't call him back?

00:34:01.000 You got to fix it.

00:34:02.000 You speak to him and you can make it a little bit better.

00:34:05.000 And, you know, it was interesting.

00:34:06.000 So he always had that mindset.

00:34:08.000 He got on the phone with it.

00:34:08.000 And he probably could when you were a New York real estate guy, like, hey, you know, you getting on the phone.

00:34:14.000 You know, hey, you fix this, you make it right, I'll take care of you later.

00:34:18.000 And another story, I'll give you access and exclusive, whatever it may be.

00:34:21.000 You know, I think he actually initially even tried doing it with politics.

00:34:24.000 Eventually, I was the guy to being like, stop.

00:34:28.000 There's no reason to engage. 0.97

00:34:29.000 These people hate your guts.

00:34:32.000 It doesn't matter what you do.

00:34:34.000 And I think, you know, I was the first person to kind of just try to break away from the mindset that we had previously had of like, no, you got to talk to all these people because you could probably fix it.

00:34:42.000 You get the truth out there.

00:34:43.000 It's like, I could give them the truth with evidence and corroborating witnesses, notarized, signed, stamped, sealed, delivered.

00:34:49.000 It's like, doesn't matter.

00:34:51.000 Russian disinformation.

00:34:52.000 It never ends.

00:34:54.000 No, that's right.

00:34:55.000 It's interesting.

00:34:55.000 I haven't really thought about this before, but I wonder if there was also a little bit of a shift in dynamic from time in New York real estate, where at the time, you know, I remember reading stories about certain developments that were happening that the entrenched bureaucracy in the New York City government was trying to do their, you know, swampy stuff.

00:35:16.000 And Trump was a threat to that.

00:35:18.000 But because The reporters didn't like them either, the administration in power.

00:35:24.000 They would allow him to get his word in there against them, but now he's a threat to their, to everything that they do.

00:35:33.000 The irony is incredible.

00:35:34.000 Completely changed.

00:35:35.000 I always use the example of the golf course we built at Ferry Point, right?

00:35:38.000 So it's right over the bridge there in New York.

00:35:40.000 It was literally, it was like a landfill site for 25 years, 30 years.

00:35:45.000 And it was basically a mob job, right?

00:35:47.000 The city was paying, I think they had like 150 million into this thing, and they were paying contractors to build a golf course, but you know, doesn't take that long, and you know, I think we built it in less than 18 months, like, but they were moving dirt from here, they'd move it to here, then they'd move it back to here, and then for 20 years, there was someone was moving dirt on a tractor, but nothing was ever done, and they just kept paying and paying and paying, so finally my father was like, Uh, why don't I fix this?

00:36:09.000 He gets a lease, everyone's mad because, you know, they spent 150 million dollars on nothing.

00:36:12.000 You know, we built it in under 18 months with a clubhouse, with this, it was spectacular, right?

00:36:16.000 They're like, oh wow, this is a great example of a public-private partnership after what was clearly, like, just, you know, a mob job milking the city, taxpayers, and everyone else for 25 years to get this thing done.

00:36:28.000 You know, and then it's operating great.

00:36:30.000 Then we get into politics, and then it's, we're gonna remove him from the lease, we don't, I mean, This thing would still be a landfill and you'd still be paying, you know, $15 million a year for literally nothing to get accomplished.

00:36:42.000 But because no one's checking and everyone's probably on the payroll, all of a sudden they were like, we're going to throw Trump out of here right away.

00:36:49.000 We're going to try to pull it away from him for nothing.

00:36:50.000 It's like, same with Wallman Rink.

00:36:53.000 You know, it was the same thing.

00:36:55.000 He built that in Central Park.

00:36:57.000 He watched it from his office for 10 years, not get built, not get done.

00:37:01.000 He took it over.

00:37:02.000 In six months, the thing's up and running great.

00:37:05.000 City thinks they're great all of a sudden.

00:37:06.000 They pull it back from him.

00:37:07.000 Within six months or a year, the thing fell apart again that he took it over and had it for 25 years.

00:37:12.000 But, you know, it's just, it's, you know, that's the government, I guess.

00:37:16.000 It's funny how his impulse as a builder and his life coming up in all of you guys, like the world pre-politics, it still can't help but come out sometimes.

00:37:26.000 I mean, I saw DJT was tweeting or truthing today about the FBI building, which I remember when I was there, he would be like, this is the ugliest building in the city. 0.97

00:37:37.000 Post-communist crap architecture. 1.00

00:37:39.000 Now, I don't think we should be building them a new building, unlike the morons in Congress. 1.00

00:37:43.000 Like, we're gonna take an agency that's been spying on Americans, that's been abusing the FISA court, that, you know, has villainized and bastardized Catholics, uh, anyone that's MAGA, you know, they, terrorists, that's fine, that's different. 0.99

00:37:55.000 They're, you know, they're probably trans and so it's fine. 0.94

00:37:58.000 Uh, but let's build them a new billion dollar building. 1.00

00:38:01.000 Uh, they deserve to have their building burnt down and like just the entire agency demolished.

00:38:07.000 Like that's what they actually deserve these days.

00:38:10.000 One of my favorite stories that I tell all the time, and I actually wrote about it in the new book, The Darkness Is Not Overcome, is about when Trump got there and he finds out, you know, everybody gets to remodel the Oval Office when they become president.

00:38:24.000 So he's, like, psyched about it.

00:38:25.000 Like, okay, we're about to, like, roll up my sleeves here.

00:38:28.000 We're about to remodel this place.

00:38:29.000 And he's like, it's a total, you know, some of this place is a dump.

00:38:32.000 What were the Obama people doing in here?

00:38:35.000 Which he wasn't wrong about.

00:38:36.000 And Clinton was stealing the furniture, so yeah.

00:38:39.000 There's some truth to it there in the West Wing.

00:38:41.000 And so he picks out this wallpaper.

00:38:44.000 that he loves from York wall coverings in Pennsylvania.

00:38:50.000 And so he's like, this is the wallpaper I want.

00:38:51.000 So they call up York wall coverings and they're like, hey, the president of the United States wants this wallpaper in the Oval Office and they think it's a prank.

00:39:00.000 So they like hang up.

00:39:00.000 They like think it's not really the White House calling them.

00:39:03.000 So they realize like, oh no, it's for real.

00:39:06.000 And then they freak out because the wallpaper that DJT had picked, they had stopped making it three years before.

00:39:13.000 So they had to drop everything that day, make 96 panels of double-sided wallpaper, and they delivered it to the Oval Office by dinner time that evening.

00:39:23.000 And it's like, even in the Oval Office, we're getting things done, you know, under budget and ahead of schedule.

00:39:28.000 We're getting it there before dinner time.

00:39:29.000 So it's like, a builder at heart, it never goes away.

00:39:32.000 Can't help it.

00:39:33.000 Yeah, you know, even the stories about all those things, it's sort of funny how he, you know, that builder mindset always comes back, you know, driving through DC that they, I mean, you know, what he did with the old post office there.

00:39:43.000 I mean, that took an act of Congress and then, you know, and then they don't want him to be able to do it.

00:39:47.000 He's the only guy that could have got something like that done.

00:39:49.000 It's spectacular place, but I guess.

00:39:51.000 You know, since we're talking about these agencies, I mean, you were Deputy Director of National Intelligence.

00:39:56.000 You worked directly for John Ratcliffe, who did a great job, you know, I guess, you know, going up against the swamp.

00:40:03.000 But, you know, what needs to be done, Cliff, to clean out these agencies, right?

00:40:07.000 You write in your book that the first time you were in CIA headquarters, you saw, you know, a pro-trans poster.

00:40:13.000 I mean, they probably didn't even have their president up.

00:40:16.000 They probably still had Obama, you know, or someone else.

00:40:19.000 But, you know, At the CIA, how does that happen?

00:40:24.000 And how do you fix it?

00:40:25.000 Yeah, you know, it was fascinating when Director Ratcliffe and I got there.

00:40:30.000 You know, one of the things that I realized early on is that there are a lot of good people in the intelligence community who actually do just want to protect America.

00:40:37.000 You just don't want to get killed.

00:40:38.000 You don't want to get Clintoned.

00:40:40.000 You're just saying that, are you?

00:40:42.000 I'm going to tell you what we need to do.

00:40:43.000 Just don't say anything bad about Boeing, Cliff, or they're going to come after you too.

00:40:47.000 Your tweet the other day about Elon risking his life tweeting about Boeing.

00:40:52.000 Boeing's only got two whistleblowers that magically died in the last two weeks.

00:40:56.000 That pales in comparison.

00:40:58.000 It's a tiny fraction to, what is it, the 58 friends and family of Bill Clinton that were involved, or Hillary, that magically died.

00:41:06.000 Literally no one in history has more people in their inner circle that have committed suicide than the Clintons, but minor details.

00:41:13.000 I digress.

00:41:14.000 Yes, you did.

00:41:16.000 So, you know, basically these people that we saw, they're frustrated by the stuff that you're talking about.

00:41:21.000 Like, they just want to wake up every morning and protect Americans' national security.

00:41:25.000 And what we realized very quickly is that these DEI offices in the intelligence community have become extremely powerful.

00:41:33.000 You know, at a time in our country where, you know, getting called a racist could ruin your life.

00:41:39.000 Yeah.

00:41:39.000 Or, you know, whatever, I mean, not using someone's appropriate pronouns that they have chosen could get you, you can ruin your life.

00:41:46.000 And so you have people inside these intelligence agencies, like they woke up one day, and one of the most powerful elements of the of the community are these diversity, equity and inclusion offices.

00:41:56.000 And they're doing things like, you know, I saw a couple of months ago, They had this internal publication inside the intelligence community, and they put out an op-ed by a current intelligence official who was explaining how being a cross-dresser makes him a better intelligence analyst.

00:42:16.000 I mean, it's like... Well, okay, so I, yeah, I remember the one, I made fun of it a while ago, when they had, it was the CIA recruitment video, and it had a guy, and they're like, you see him, and he's like, I suffer from extreme anxiety!

00:42:31.000 And the CIA was incredibly welcoming!

00:42:35.000 I'm like, holy... 0.99

00:42:36.000 Shit, like, this guy, like, he literally, I'm like, wait, wait, that guy's a spy, like, if you were to pick, like, if China got a hold of this guy, the over-under on how long it would take to break him was measured in less than a second. 0.99

00:42:50.000 It was like, I put it at .2 seconds. 0.99

00:42:51.000 Yeah.

00:42:54.000 And I'm like, but they're like, look at how inclusive we are.

00:42:57.000 I'm like, hey, dude, if you have an extreme anxiety guy, I think it's wonderful.

00:43:01.000 But like, this is not the guy you need on the front lines of defense.

00:43:04.000 Like, let's stop this.

00:43:05.000 It's just like, you're not putting, you know, you know, my daughter was a great basketball player before she got into golf.

00:43:11.000 It's like, she's not going to start for the Lakers.

00:43:13.000 Like, it's just not what you do.

00:43:15.000 And yet it doesn't matter.

00:43:16.000 So, but how does it get to that point?

00:43:18.000 Cause I get, you're right.

00:43:19.000 I joke about it all the time.

00:43:20.000 Cause it's, You almost have to, because people have to understand just how much the disease has taken over, right?

00:43:27.000 But it has taken over, so there may be great people in there, but imagine how much more productive they could be if they weren't doing DEI training at all.

00:43:36.000 If they were just focused on killing bad guys, or finding them, or, you know, it was like my buddies, I got crap, I think you remember this, because I woke up to like a shitstorm on one of our threads, One morning, because I guess I said on the podcast, or like, maybe I tweeted about it, but like, hey man, like, I know a bunch of SEALs that, like, literally have reached out to me and been like, we spend more time doing diversity training than we do shooting.

00:43:59.000 And like, CNN was like, Don Jr., how would he know? 0.95

00:44:02.000 I'm like, dude, I know...

00:44:03.000 Like, I know 150 people in that community, like, intimately.

00:44:07.000 Like, they tell me, and then of course, you know, Rob O'Neill jumps in who killed Bin Laden, he's like, Don's right, and it's a problem.

00:44:13.000 Carl Higby, like, all these guys that are out there already, but like, yeah, this thing's enveloped even the operator community.

00:44:18.000 It's not just the people who work the desk jobs.

00:44:21.000 I mean, the guys that are supposed to literally be on the ground killing the bad guys are doing...

00:44:26.000 You know, DEI training, and they have to have, you know, it's lunacy.

00:44:31.000 It's gonna get people killed. 0.89

00:44:33.000 And so, you know, so it's happening.

00:44:35.000 It's coming from the top.

00:44:37.000 How do we stop it?

00:44:38.000 Well, there are a few things that I think are really important when President Trump gets reelected and has an opportunity to put people in leadership positions at these agencies to make some of these changes.

00:44:47.000 There's a few things I think are worth thinking about right off the bat.

00:44:51.000 First of all, the talent recruitment for the intelligence community historically has come out of a lot of Ivy League institutions.

00:45:01.000 You know, I think we've got to do a better job of attracting some of the top students from state schools, from HBCUs.

00:45:07.000 I mean, these so-called elite institutions have become, you know, woke indoctrination factories, meaning that the IC's pipeline of talent is being disproportionately filled with individuals who are trained to prioritize ideological conformity over critical thinking.

00:45:22.000 And not to mention, in light of the alarming rise of anti-Semitism on these campuses, it's really hard to make the argument that these are the institutions where you could actually train a truly diverse workforce.

00:45:34.000 The other thing is, you know, diversity actually is important in intelligence, but let me tell you how.

00:45:41.000 When we were there in the middle of COVID, and we're getting all of this intelligence from, you know, the virus originated in China, we're getting all of these streams of intelligence coming in out of China, and we're trying to deal with a virologist with a pandemic here.

00:45:59.000 It would be really helpful to have virologists in the intelligence community who speak Mandarin.

00:46:05.000 Okay?

00:46:06.000 That's some diversity that would help us.

00:46:08.000 If we're trying to be on the streets of Tehran, it's probably good to have an ethnic Persian who speaks Farsi, as opposed to me and you walking down the street. 0.99

00:46:16.000 You're saying your albino ass would not blend? 1.00

00:46:21.000 Yeah. 1.00

00:46:21.000 Probably not going to work out. 1.00

00:46:22.000 I've got a little bit of a beard.

00:46:24.000 Borderline ginger? 0.60

00:46:25.000 Like, yeah, probably not going to be awesome.

00:46:27.000 I mean... Exactly.

00:46:28.000 And by the way, I'm totally fine with that.

00:46:31.000 You know, just like... Of course.

00:46:32.000 You know, guess what?

00:46:33.000 You know, if it's a ginger, if it's a black guy, if it's a Hispanic guy, like, if they're the best pilots, that's also who I want flying my plane.

00:46:40.000 Like, it does not need to be, you know, a white-haired, you know, white dude.

00:46:44.000 I don't care.

00:46:45.000 But when I see someone, you know, and I hear the stories, and now because I've talked about it so much on the show, you know, on the planes, like...

00:46:51.000 Well, we're on an airline.

00:46:52.000 I was on an airline today.

00:46:54.000 I'm 24 hours out of knee surgery, so if I'm hyper, maybe it's the drugs.

00:46:58.000 Although, I've managed to avoid taking them so far, so maybe it's just the leftover from yesterday's general anesthesia.

00:47:05.000 But, you know, they're talking, like, Don, you got to hear this, like, they just announced, like, you know, I'm a trans pilot, and this is what I make, like, and I'm like, oh my god, like, you're gonna die.

00:47:15.000 And it's scary.

00:47:18.000 But when it's going on in the age... I don't know that trans helps you, frankly, anywhere. 1.00

00:47:21.000 Like, you know, and by the way, it doesn't mean you're not great at something, but, like, I'm not sure.

00:47:26.000 Like, again, I have a feeling if you're not quite sure of your gender, you're probably not going to be the greatest person in the world of intelligence and gathering and covert ops.

00:47:34.000 But again, what do I know? 0.92

00:47:35.000 I'm just... Hey, I'm one of these guys that went to these Ivy League schools, so perhaps I thought they were elite and they were already ridiculous. 0.76

00:47:43.000 Uh, at the time.

00:47:44.000 And so maybe, maybe you're right.

00:47:45.000 I think maybe what could save America right now, Cliff, is like some of these frat boys from Alabama and otherwise in their pastel shorts seem to be saving America.

00:47:53.000 It's like truckers and like frat boys.

00:47:55.000 That's like the potential saviors of the Republic.

00:48:00.000 No doubt.

00:48:00.000 Well, you know, in the intelligence community or really any organization, the most important role of a leader is to set clear priorities.

00:48:08.000 And what has happened in the intelligence community is the priorities right now.

00:48:11.000 Look, don't take my word for it.

00:48:13.000 Go look at the Biden administration's National Intelligence Strategy.

00:48:18.000 It's an unclassified document.

00:48:19.000 Anybody can see it.

00:48:20.000 You know what number two is on their list?

00:48:23.000 It's various diversity, equity and inclusion benchmarks.

00:48:27.000 Listen, you know, whatever you think of all that, let me just tell you, China is national security threat number one. 0.96

00:48:35.000 DEI, global warming, go down the list of the things that they have outlined as the biggest national security threats that we have. 0.99

00:48:42.000 Yeah, and number two is the morons pushing this DEI crap at the expense of number one. 0.99

00:48:48.000 That's exactly right. 0.95

00:48:49.000 So, I mean, my view is, You need to abolish these DEI offices, and you need to take that money that's being funneled toward that stuff right now, that's being funneled toward lining the hallways with DEI posters about people's identity, and we divert that money toward the China Mission Center

00:49:08.000 Toward China, China, China. 0.65

00:49:10.000 National security threat number one.

00:49:11.000 If we get China right, other things will flow down from there.

00:49:15.000 But that's another thing that we've got to do is just get rid of these DEI offices in there that have become too strong and frankly just bullying a lot of people into submission.

00:49:24.000 A lot of people who just want to keep their head down and not get caught in the line of fire on this stuff.

00:49:30.000 So, I mean, talk, let's talk a little bit more about China.

00:49:32.000 I mean, you mentioned sort of the Wuhan lab leak.

00:49:34.000 Talk more about how overwhelming the evidence of the lab leak was at the time.

00:49:41.000 You know, what's that process like investigating something like that?

00:49:44.000 I mean, for me, it was like one of those, like, of course it, like, of course it came from the lab.

00:49:49.000 Now, if you said that you were me, I just got, you know, shadow banned on social media.

00:49:53.000 But if you were an academic that took the literally the most plausible outcome You were thrown out of academia.

00:50:00.000 If you were a doctor, you lost your, you know, your funding.

00:50:02.000 If you did research for the government, like, there's, you know, Fauci'd have you off.

00:50:05.000 Even though, like, of course it came from the Wuhan lab.

00:50:09.000 Like, no, no, no, no, no.

00:50:10.000 It didn't come from the Wuhan lab.

00:50:11.000 It came from seven and a half feet outside of the Wuhan lab by freaking magic.

00:50:16.000 But, but what was that like?

00:50:17.000 Because the intelligence people had to know, and yet...

00:50:21.000 It didn't get out and they weaponized it.

00:50:23.000 Like, how could Trump say that it came from the lab that studies the exact virus in question in the exact town that was ground zero? 0.97

00:50:29.000 I mean, that's just ridiculous. 0.86

00:50:31.000 Yeah, no, exactly.

00:50:32.000 Well, you know, your initial impulse in situations like this is to want to give people some grace in the midst of chaos where everybody's trying to figure it out.

00:50:41.000 But like you said, it doesn't take long where you're like, so the Wuhan bat coronavirus lab here And we've got a bet coronavirus, you know, whatever. 1.00

00:50:54.000 Like, this was not, by the way, you don't need to be an intelligence.

00:50:57.000 You don't need to be a virologist.

00:51:00.000 You don't need to be, like, you don't need to go to high school.

00:51:03.000 Like, it's like, I don't know.

00:51:04.000 It's like, I'm going to, I'm going to go out on a limb here and say, like, there's no bet, like, including my life that I would not have taken to be like, yeah, uh, you know, a billion dollars versus my life.

00:51:16.000 Uh, that happened like a hundred percent taking that bet every time.

00:51:19.000 Of course.

00:51:20.000 Just a little bit of common sense.

00:51:21.000 But you know, I think we have seen over the last couple of years a very, very slow march to the truth.

00:51:30.000 And eventually every U.S.

00:51:32.000 intelligence agency and everybody around the world will acknowledge that that virus started in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

00:51:39.000 But the delay.

00:51:40.000 But the delay is the problem, right?

00:51:42.000 Because we see this, right?

00:51:43.000 Like, oh yeah, the truth comes out.

00:51:45.000 We now know that the Hunter Biden laptop is real.

00:51:48.000 Oh, I'm so shocked.

00:51:50.000 We now know that he lied on his reports.

00:51:52.000 We now know that the 51 intelligence officers that signed on that had no information based on that, and the guy that led the charge, Anthony Blinken, became Secretary of the State.

00:52:01.000 That was his payoff for that.

00:52:02.000 So, yeah, we know all of that now, but the problem with all of these things...

00:52:06.000 They got what they wanted at the time.

00:52:09.000 There's no accountability.

00:52:11.000 No one's punished retroactively.

00:52:13.000 So they keep doing it.

00:52:15.000 So until there's that sort of retroactive punishment, what's to stop them from just lying to us again?

00:52:20.000 Like, it didn't take a genius, but like, people are like, I'm not gonna lose my job to tell you the truth.

00:52:24.000 Well, I guess we'll play along and we'll, you know, we'll do the job.

00:52:29.000 Yeah.

00:52:30.000 But it was always a lie.

00:52:31.000 But I guess, yeah, we know the truth now, but it doesn't matter.

00:52:35.000 And they're sitting there laughing their ass off, like, hey, we can't wait to do it again, because we will.

00:52:39.000 And we'll get a two-year grace period.

00:52:40.000 By the time we do that, we'll have Joe Biden in power, who will make sure that no one's held accountable.

00:52:47.000 That's the problem with all of it.

00:52:48.000 Yeah.

00:52:49.000 Well, you know, going back to that time period, and I think you're right, accountability has got to be number one.

00:52:54.000 The people who are involved in this, you know, whether it's China in spawning it and covering it up, or frankly, a lot of the members of the U.S.

00:53:03.000 scientific community and global scientific community that at the time One of the things that we did not have a full appreciation of as a country, as people in the government, as people who are trying to figure this thing out, was how compromised certain members of the scientific community were.

00:53:23.000 And I'll give you a specific example.

00:53:25.000 Anthony Fauci, obviously now the most famous slash infamous person attached to the entire thing, As Fauci is kind of pouring cold water on the lab leak theory and really kind of participating in a very insidious way in, you know, being complicit in the idea that that was a racist thing to say that, you know, all this kind of stuff.

00:53:51.000 One of the things that I feel like we didn't have a full appreciation of was that Anthony Fauci's entire career had been devoted to gain-of-function research.

00:54:01.000 Now, all of us know what it is now, or most of us do, but if you haven't followed it, gain-of-function research is basically take a virus, put it in a lab, genetically change it, I'm not going to use the right scientific terms, I'm no virologist, but you change it in a way, actually make it more viral, and your goal is I'm going to figure out how I would have an anecdote for this, like a vaccine or whatever.

00:54:26.000 If this were to happen in the wild, we would have some way to stay ahead of it and be able to head it off.

00:54:33.000 And he wrote a paper in his career in which somebody broached the subject.

00:54:38.000 Well, hold on just a second.

00:54:39.000 What's going to happen if one of these viruses that we're studying in one of these labs gets out and sparks a global pandemic?

00:54:46.000 And Fauci's argument in response to that was basically This is a possibility, but I think it's such a low and remote possibility that I believe the upside of everything that we're doing in gain-of-function research outweighs that possibility.

00:55:02.000 Now, it looks like we've had a pandemic that was spawned doing gain-of-function research in a lab somewhere, and now if you're Anthony Fauci and you've devoted your entire scientific career, your entire life, to defending and advancing this line of scientific research, You're probably not the most unbiased person to get out there and make the case that, whoops, maybe I was wrong.

00:55:26.000 Maybe the potential downside of this actually is so catastrophic that it does not justify doing it and certainly does not justify U.S. 0.91

00:55:33.000 taxpayer money.

00:55:34.000 But he knew that anyway, because there's a reason he's funding it in China and not in the United States.

00:55:39.000 There's a reason we have biolabs in the Ukraine and not the United States, because we know we're not legally allowed to do it here, but he was doing it anyway. 1.00

00:55:47.000 Then he lied to Congress about it, and that's the thing.

00:55:49.000 You can believe, you know, and again, I don't believe anything that he says, because if you look at his emails during the time, his emails to his colleagues, who actually were doctors and knew what they were doing, read very differently than the press conferences he was giving on a daily basis, because This clown, while he's never been right since the early 80s as it related to AIDS, certainly never met a camera he didn't love. 0.73

00:56:11.000 And that's what he was.

00:56:12.000 He was probably the worst doctor, but he was the best bureaucrat.

00:56:14.000 That's sort of the problem with all of these agencies.

00:56:16.000 The best spy isn't the guy that gets to the top.

00:56:19.000 It's the guy that can manipulate the media.

00:56:21.000 It's the guy that takes credit for other people's work effectively.

00:56:24.000 The guy that snakes all of that.

00:56:25.000 Actually, I had a Secret Service detail. 0.99

00:56:27.000 I saw all of the bullshit that went on in government bureaucracy. 0.99

00:56:30.000 The inefficiencies just... 1.00

00:56:32.000 Because this is the way it is.

00:56:33.000 Because that's the way it's always been.

00:56:34.000 And as a business guy, I'm like, why don't you do this?

00:56:37.000 They're like, you're 100% right.

00:56:38.000 But it's like, if I even bring this up to the chain of command, someone's buddy's on the payroll somewhere along the way, and they'll go work for them eventually one day and be taken care of.

00:56:46.000 That no one tries to fix anything.

00:56:50.000 Yep.

00:56:50.000 Well, this is one of the issues where I got to give director John Ratcliffe a lot of credit.

00:56:55.000 He said at the time, I don't care what criticism that we get for this.

00:57:00.000 We're going to tell the truth, which is that this started in China. 0.98

00:57:03.000 It started in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

00:57:06.000 He's been very consistent on that from day one.

00:57:08.000 Well, they tried calling him a liar about it though, also.

00:57:11.000 Oh, 100%!

00:57:11.000 And, you know, he said history's gonna prove us correct, and certainly that's no vindication, just like, oh, history proved us correct.

00:57:18.000 Like, there needs to be some accountability on this stuff, and my only hope is that we have an opportunity to get back in there and be able to hold some folks accountable, and frankly, get some of the intelligence that exists declassified so that the world can see how clear it is where this started.

00:57:37.000 So tell us a little bit more about the book.

00:57:40.000 What motivated you to write this book?

00:57:42.000 What are the major takeaways?

00:57:44.000 You did a book a couple years ago.

00:57:46.000 We'll get into that in a little bit.

00:57:50.000 Oh, you thought you were getting a hall pass?

00:57:53.000 So we're clear, guys.

00:57:55.000 Oh, here we go.

00:57:57.000 So we're clear.

00:57:57.000 Cliff Simms is one of the few people actually fired by Donald Trump who was able to... We got him back.

00:58:03.000 Hold on a second.

00:58:06.000 I was not fired by Donald Trump.

00:58:09.000 I did get sued by Donald Trump.

00:58:11.000 Okay, fine.

00:58:13.000 One way or the other, you got the Cobra.

00:58:15.000 Now, we can talk about some of the unsavory characters that did the snaking to make that happen.

00:58:21.000 It took me a little while to fix, but we fixed it.

00:58:23.000 I think we're all good now.

00:58:24.000 Everything was wonderful, but I had to expend quite a bit of political capital to make this thing happen.

00:58:31.000 So now you're at it again, so hopefully you won't get sued again.

00:58:35.000 Well, we're a few days into the book release, we haven't been sued yet.

00:58:37.000 Things seem to be going a little bit better this time.

00:58:40.000 I've said it many times behind closed doors, even though you're giving me a hard time here, I have to give you credit, tell people all the time, Don Jr.

00:58:48.000 a real friend. He's not a fake friend because at a time when it was not particularly in vogue

00:58:54.000 in the Trump world and even the Trump family, to be my friend, Don Jr. was always my friend.

00:59:00.000 And then we got it resolved. And of course, everybody realized that all is well with the

00:59:04.000 world. So no harm, no foul. Many things, but I am loyal, oftentimes to a fault.

00:59:08.000 No doubt about it. No doubt. Now, this book is different.

00:59:14.000 When I left the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, it caused me to think a lot about what that time period of my life meant for me, and maybe some of the lessons that I had learned from all of these experiences that we went through.

00:59:29.000 I started journaling about it and thinking about those things, and I realized that a lot of the lessons that I had learned for myself would apply to anybody's life.

00:59:37.000 No matter where they're coming from, you know, walking through the fire or dealing with anxiety or trying to figure out, you know, how to, you know, what dreams to pursue and, you know, all these different things we all struggle with in different ways in life.

00:59:50.000 And so I wanted to tell some of the stories that we have from the White House and CIA

00:59:54.000 and Office of the Director of National Intelligence, but then use each of them to jump into a lesson

01:00:00.000 learned from the halls of power, particularly lessons that I was able to take from my time

01:00:04.000 studying the Bible and thinking about the faith lessons that I learned.

01:00:08.000 And so that's what this book is all about.

01:00:09.000 I would call it like a political junkies dream devotional book, basically, because it's got

01:00:16.000 all those cool stories from, you know, inside the nuclear.

01:00:18.000 bunkers, what's inside the president's nuclear football, to inside the you know

01:00:23.000 Air Force One and all of that, but each of them used to jump into a faith lesson

01:00:26.000 and so it's out this week and so far it's doing great.

01:00:29.000 So talk about the title, how'd you choose that one?

01:00:33.000 Yeah so the darkness is not overcome It comes from the Gospel of John 1, 5.

01:00:38.000 The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.

01:00:41.000 And I thought it was particularly relevant to where we're at right now as believers and people of faith in this particular moment in American politics.

01:00:50.000 It feels so dark, feels so divisive.

01:00:52.000 In a lot of ways we're facing persecution in ways that we have never had before.

01:00:58.000 And so I wanted to give some positivity in that, you know, we can take God's promise to the bank that the light will not be overcome by this darkness, even while it does seem pretty dark in the moment.

01:01:09.000 So that's where the title comes from.

01:01:11.000 Well, yeah, I imagine, you know, while I guess the FBI DOJ has really specifically singled out Catholics as domestic terror threats, I imagine the evangelicals are right up there because if you bought a Bible with your credit card anytime around January 6th, you were also on a list. 0.86

01:01:29.000 So I guess it's only a matter of time till they come after you pesky evangelicals. 0.75

01:01:33.000 Yeah, no, that's right.

01:01:34.000 And look, there are things that President Trump did while he was in office that really didn't get the attention that they deserved, but certainly that people in the faith community recognize the importance of them.

01:01:45.000 One of those is, there's been an effort for decades from the left to keep Churches, pastors, non-profit organizations who have a faith lean to them from speaking into political issues.

01:01:59.000 Basically, there was an implied threat that we'll take away your non-profit status if you lean too far in on this issue, and the president told the DOJ we're not doing that anymore.

01:02:10.000 The other thing was, you know, A lot of these mandates that we were half joking about at the beginning of the conversation about people's pronouns and, you know, all kinds of stuff in these government mandates that exist now.

01:02:22.000 The president was very clear, President Trump was, that we're not going to compel people serving in my government to ever violate their sincerely held beliefs, religious beliefs, to be able to work here in government.

01:02:34.000 They have a First Amendment right to not have to violate their sincerely held beliefs.

01:02:39.000 And it was really a restoration of Something that I love, you know, in DC, the Jefferson Memorial is my favorite memorial there in the city.

01:02:47.000 It's the most beautiful one to me.

01:02:49.000 And inside the dome has a Jefferson quote, I have sworn eternal hostility against any tyranny over the minds of man.

01:02:59.000 And I think President Trump really restored some of that spirit that we're not going to oppress or tyrannize people of faith in this country who want to be able to live out their sincerely held beliefs.

01:03:11.000 There's many other examples that I could point to this, but that's some of the stuff that I think was really, really below the surface that the president didn't get enough credit for that he did for the faith community while he was in office.

01:03:22.000 So listen, obviously the faith community is good and there's so many great Americans that are incredibly devout and believe every aspect of it, but there also seems like there's a lot of those who have made a lot of money You know, within some of those things, who don't actually have any belief in it, but they have a lot of, you know, but they have a lot of vested interest in pushing some of these things, some of which are divisive, or, you know, let's call it, wouldn't be politically astute these days, but you see that happening.

01:03:55.000 A lot.

01:03:55.000 I mean, I know you and I have had a lot of conversations sort of in the background, because I'm like, hey man, like, I don't get it.

01:03:59.000 What's going on here?

01:04:01.000 But it seems like there are those who truly believe, and then there are those who will prey on those people because it gives them power and money in DC.

01:04:10.000 And I think it probably hurts Conservatives much more than Democrats.

01:04:15.000 I think the Democrats are sort of much more aligned.

01:04:19.000 There's plenty of grift there too.

01:04:20.000 But what are your thoughts about some of that?

01:04:22.000 Because I see it from some of the most powerful organizations on the right.

01:04:25.000 It's just like the grift is so palpable. 0.90

01:04:27.000 It's so disgusting.

01:04:29.000 You know, people buy into it.

01:04:30.000 And I think it, honestly, it hurts our chances every time because you turn off people from things that, or you turn them on to things you're never going to win anyway.

01:04:37.000 And it becomes their one issue.

01:04:39.000 And then they're like, well, I'm just going to sit out that if it's like, well, but it was never going to happen anyway.

01:04:42.000 What are you talking about?

01:04:43.000 Yeah.

01:04:44.000 Well, it reminds me of, uh, this is like from way back in my past, but like a totally different time period of my life where, um, I was, uh, I was in a band.

01:04:53.000 I was a singer in the band and we would meet some of these.

01:04:56.000 We got to get some visuals up for this one, by the way.

01:04:59.000 I shouldn't even brought this up.

01:05:01.000 I'm actually shocked you led me to this.

01:05:05.000 But one of the things that happened as part of that time period of my life, I started to meet a lot of the Christian bands that I had really grown up listening to.

01:05:14.000 And it was demoralizing sometimes because, you know, you meet them and you know, like it is when you meet many of your heroes, I guess, it's not quite what you expected.

01:05:23.000 Sex, drugs, and rock and roll in the Christian band community. 0.95

01:05:26.000 Yeah. 0.94

01:05:26.000 Yeah, maybe a little of that. 0.94

01:05:29.000 So it's kind of shocking.

01:05:31.000 And so I will say I was less surprised when I got to D.C.

01:05:35.000 and realized that some of the leaders of these organizations that you're talking about, it's really a money-making operation.

01:05:43.000 And a lot of what they do is just looking for their opportunity to drive donations.

01:05:48.000 Yeah, they're not looking to solve a problem or come up with something that everyone kind of Agrees with that they're looking to create more problems that magically only they can solve and you know they never quite get to solving it because once you solve the problem the money stops and so I've seen so much of it it always sort of disgust me and it prevents us from actually you know getting a lot of the unity that I think we need as a country.

01:06:10.000 Yeah, especially now at this time in the election season.

01:06:13.000 I mean, to me, look, I'm supporting President Trump to tell other people how to vote, but here's how I look at it.

01:06:21.000 It's very, very clear what you're going to get from the Biden administration.

01:06:25.000 And it ain't what you want.

01:06:27.000 None of these issues that we're talking about right now, that these advocacy organizations, conservative advocacy organizations in Washington, D.C.

01:06:35.000 are in favor of, at least they say they're in favor of, are going to get one inch down the road under the Biden administration.

01:06:42.000 In fact, they're going to be under an all-out assault.

01:06:45.000 And there's a little bit of a, there's a little bit of the rub.

01:06:49.000 The dirty little secret is a lot of these organizations make more money, bring in more money.

01:06:54.000 In opposition.

01:06:55.000 Being the opposition, as opposed to trying to actually make real progress.

01:06:59.000 And so I think, you know, as a believer, you know, I'll say this.

01:07:06.000 When I went on with the fine ladies of The View, And did an interview.

01:07:11.000 And got my teeth kicked in, but you know what?

01:07:14.000 It was fine.

01:07:15.000 After the interview is over with, Joy Behar comes up to me and she says, Hey, what's a nice man like you doing working for a guy like Donald Trump?

01:07:25.000 And I said, I kind of just laughed it off.

01:07:28.000 I was like, well, I'm probably not as nice as you think I am.

01:07:31.000 But I actually thought about that after I left.

01:07:33.000 Because the real question is, how can you, and I'm talking about like, especially now people of faith, how can you, as a person of faith, not agree with every single thing that a person does, but still support them?

01:07:47.000 Or even really dislike some of the actions to take, but still love them?

01:07:50.000 And the answer to that question actually punched me right in my own face.

01:07:55.000 The answer is, how can I do that?

01:07:57.000 Because I've been doing it with myself my entire life.

01:08:01.000 I've done a million things that I wish I had done differently.

01:08:04.000 I've made a million mistakes.

01:08:06.000 And yet, I still love myself.

01:08:08.000 I still support myself.

01:08:10.000 I still give myself grace to overcome those things.

01:08:14.000 And we are very slow to extend that grace to other people.

01:08:19.000 And especially when you're in the public eye.

01:08:22.000 And so, look, I'll shoot incredibly straight with you and everybody.

01:08:26.000 Is Donald J. Trump the perfect picture of the Christian faith?

01:08:32.000 Obviously.

01:08:33.000 Clearly.

01:08:38.000 But from a policy perspective, the issues that I care about as a Christian, he has been great on those issues, and in fact, probably better than any other president that has been around in my lifetime.

01:08:52.000 And he will have my support at the ballot box, and I will go to war for him on those issues.

01:08:58.000 Time and time again.

01:08:59.000 I will give some grace to people who have looked at the same set of facts and come in a different, fell in a different place than I have, but that's the way that I view it.

01:09:08.000 100%.

01:09:08.000 Yeah, I did the view and I think, yeah, it was a little bit, perhaps a little different outcome with me and them because I had Whoopi mother-effing the audience by the time I flipped them and turned them with some basic facts.

01:09:22.000 So yeah, the view, If you did not love me on there, but the irony is, you know, her saying that to you is, hey, I remember a couple of years before we were in politics, they used to kiss his ass to come on the show all the time. 0.98

01:09:34.000 Right. 0.98

01:09:35.000 You know, so it's kind of like these guys like, you know, Al Sharpton's like hanging, you know, medals for racial reconciliation around Donald Trump's neck.

01:09:43.000 I don't know.

01:09:46.000 I don't know, you know, but it's sort of amazing.

01:09:48.000 So, hey, you mentioned this earlier.

01:09:49.000 I gotta ask about this one because even I don't know and I'm kind of curious.

01:09:52.000 You talk about the nuclear football, the top secret briefcase that follows the president around so that basically he can nuke anyone, anywhere, at any time from, you know.

01:10:02.000 So, what's inside there and how does it work?

01:10:05.000 Yeah, so I write about this and the darkness is not overcome, and granted a lot of the things that are in there remain highly classified, and I had to go through pre-publication review to make sure I wasn't revealing a bunch of classified information, but what I can tell you is a few things.

01:10:20.000 Number one, the first and foremost purpose of this, the briefcase, is to verify the president's identity.

01:10:28.000 So the president, everywhere he goes, he carries with him a little laminated card with some codes on it called the gold codes.

01:10:34.000 We call that little laminated card the biscuit.

01:10:36.000 So everywhere the DJT would go, he had the biscuit with him.

01:10:40.000 And then in the event that, you know, something happens where there's got to be, you know, you got to crack open the nuclear football, I've heard it described as a Waffle House menu of options for different nuclear strikes that are kind of pre-planned.

01:10:55.000 Nuke Pyongyang. 0.73

01:10:57.000 Not going to use any specific... I don't want you to get in trouble.

01:11:02.000 I mean, I have a feeling if you even said that that was an option, they'd probably throw you in jail because let's just say you're not going to get the Hunter Biden treatment, nor would I. No question.

01:11:11.000 So, you know, the scariest thing that I saw is one researcher estimated That in the event that there was, God forbid, a nuclear attack on the United States, the window of time that the president had or would have to assess that and make a decision about how to respond could be as little as like six minutes.

01:11:31.000 Okay, like, hey, six minutes for you, me, my father, like, seems like a lot of time.

01:11:39.000 Six minutes for Joe Biden.

01:11:40.000 I mean, I don't know that he would actually grasp what's going on in 60 minutes.

01:11:46.000 How does that work?

01:11:47.000 No, seriously, like, you know, the guy, you know, again, today, I guess it was, you know, he read the prompter stuff that was like pause for applause stuff.

01:11:56.000 Like, you know, it's only the second time this week.

01:11:59.000 All is well.

01:12:00.000 He's totally, totally, totally with it.

01:12:03.000 But seems like a problem.

01:12:05.000 No, there's no question.

01:12:06.000 This is like one of those kind of real life scenarios that until you really, really think about it.

01:12:13.000 Uh, you don't realize how, uh, how kind of crazy it is that like literally in a six minute time span that the future of, you know, human existence could be decided.

01:12:22.000 And the idea that we're going to have Joe Biden make any decision about any life, much less that high pressure and that condensed of a timeframe with that high of stakes.

01:12:34.000 I mean, you just got to look yourself in the mirror and say.

01:12:37.000 You know, meme tweets and world peace sound pretty good right now.

01:12:41.000 Yeah, and if he wins again, it's like, just send a meteor.

01:12:45.000 Meteor 2025, like, because we deserve it.

01:12:48.000 At this point, we just deserve it.

01:12:50.000 We gotta start over.

01:12:51.000 It just went wrong.

01:12:53.000 Somewhere, somewhere far, far, a long time from now, another planet will develop with other life and like, you know, but like, we've ran out of, like, grace.

01:13:02.000 Yeah, no doubt.

01:13:03.000 This guy can't even read a teleprompter.

01:13:05.000 He can't walk across the stage.

01:13:06.000 He can't make it to Air Force or out to, you know, Marine One without having to take a pause on the walk on the way out there, but we want this guy making a decision like that.

01:13:14.000 It's just, it's crazy to think about. 0.98

01:13:17.000 Yeah, I always say, like, if Joe Biden pulled up, if you're shit-faced coming out of a party, something like that, and Joe Biden pulled up in an Uber, you're like, nope! 0.98

01:13:27.000 You're not getting in the Uber! 0.97

01:13:28.000 You're definitely not being like, that's the guy I want making a life or death decision.

01:13:33.000 Not just for him, or someone else, but for, like, civilization.

01:13:37.000 Like, that ain't the guy.

01:13:39.000 He ain't the guy.

01:13:40.000 Not the guy.

01:13:41.000 Definitely not the guy.

01:13:42.000 So you also wrote about, like, the doomsday bunkers, you know, back from the Cold War.

01:13:46.000 Are those still working out, you know, 60 years later?

01:13:49.000 Yeah, a lot of them still there, and you're right, a lot of them kind of originated during the Cold War period.

01:13:55.000 You know, one of the cool things when we went to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and I write about this in The Darkness Is Not Overcome, was that we got to, we do these exercises, like continuity of government exercises, where, you know, name a scenario, you know, if there's some kind of nuclear strike, or if there was like a giant weather incident that knocked out power on the eastern seaboard, I mean, Use your imagination.

01:14:17.000 If you've watched a Doomsday movie in, you know, Hollywood's Done, just use one of those as an example.

01:14:22.000 And I've always wondered to myself, like, does the government have plans for all of these things?

01:14:27.000 And it turns out they do.

01:14:29.000 And so one day we got to go to one of these locations and kind of go through some of those exercises and It felt a lot like the movies, like a giant metal blast door that's several feet thick, opened on the side of a mountain and kind of reveals this enormous tunnel leading to an underground city.

01:14:50.000 And there's like a thin layer of moisture coated on some of the tunnel walls, which was like, you know, rainwater trickling down through the rock from many stories above.

01:14:58.000 There's like this eerie stillness in the cool, damp air.

01:15:04.000 And really all you could hear was like the whir of the golf carts taking us down through there.

01:15:08.000 And we get there and there's like office space for us and you can see where our computers and everything are.

01:15:14.000 There's living quarters there where if the government had to be moved there in an emergency where you could sleep and do everything.

01:15:20.000 There's even like a made-to-order grill where you could go order burgers and hot dogs and all this kind of stuff.

01:15:27.000 And then they have like, you know, one of these kind of control rooms where you can

01:15:30.000 see all these video monitors where they're monitoring different things all over the country.

01:15:35.000 And it was really kind of eerie.

01:15:36.000 Honestly, you know, it's more eerie.

01:15:39.000 You're on that list like you actually get to go there in the event someone else launches

01:15:43.000 missiles. 0.99

01:15:44.000 My ass would have been left out on the streets and been like, you know, Mad Max stuff. 0.99

01:15:47.000 So I think it's more eerie for me. 0.99

01:15:49.000 But yes, I understand where you're going with.

01:15:51.000 So I haven't told this story before.

01:15:52.000 But now that you mentioned it, I've got a good one on that on that topic.

01:15:55.000 So when we get to the White House, I won't say how it is, but there was a certain thing that some staffers had and other staffers didn't have.

01:16:05.000 I want to elaborate on what that was, but the president noticed That some staffers had this particular thing and other staffers didn't, but he didn't know what it was.

01:16:14.000 And so he finally said, he was like, hey, what what is the difference in these things?

01:16:18.000 Why do you have and why he did?

01:16:20.000 And he finds out it's evacuation protocol and who gets to go on Marine One, who gets to go to the bunker, who gets to go to the whatever. 0.98

01:16:28.000 Well, at the time... Who's shit out of luck? 0.96

01:16:30.000 Yeah, exactly, exactly. 0.97

01:16:32.000 Well, at the time, you know, I'm a comm staffer in the West Wing, like I'm not, you know, before the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, all that, so I don't have one.

01:16:42.000 The rest of the day, every single meeting, DJT would point out who had one, and he would say, Cliff's not gonna make it, boys.

01:16:51.000 Cliff's not coming.

01:16:53.000 He's with us.

01:16:54.000 So I'm with you.

01:16:55.000 It would have been me and you.

01:16:56.000 We wouldn't have made it, but...

01:16:57.000 Well, yeah, I had one of those stories.

01:16:58.000 It was, it was during, uh, it was during like, you know, beginning COVID, all the insanity.

01:17:04.000 And it was like when the Tiger King was going on. 0.86

01:17:07.000 And I guess, I guess I'd put up some stupid tweet about Tiger King because it was sort of all the rage and everyone was locked at home. 0.96

01:17:14.000 So they're watching Netflix or whatever. 0.98

01:17:16.000 And it's, it's the White House press briefing.

01:17:18.000 And the first question to my father is, Uh, you know, Don Jr.

01:17:21.000 said something about pardoning the tiger.

01:17:23.000 No, he was like, one of your sons, he goes, said something about pardoning the tiger king.

01:17:28.000 And this is like, literally everyone's watching the COVID press briefing.

01:17:31.000 And he goes, let me guess.

01:17:33.000 It was Don.

01:17:34.000 I'm like, everyone's like, they're like, actually it was sir.

01:17:37.000 I'm like, yeah.

01:17:38.000 So I was like, yeah, you know.

01:17:39.000 There's no doubt.

01:17:40.000 But you know, the flip side of that is if I was going to be stuck with anybody outside of the bunker in a doomsday scenario, you know, having gone to shooting with you, I would say I'll be on Don Jr.' 's team.

01:17:52.000 I'm fine.

01:17:53.000 In the zombie apocalypse, I'm probably a vital player in this game.

01:17:58.000 I've been prepping for that one for my whole life.

01:18:00.000 You're a high first round draft pick.

01:18:01.000 A high first round draft pick in the zombie apocalypse draft, that's for sure.

01:18:05.000 So, in all of this, sort of a crazy journey through the White House and everything, comms to the DNI, how do you reflect working, though, inside the intel community?

01:18:16.000 That's going to be more exciting, obviously, than comms.

01:18:19.000 What were your expectations?

01:18:20.000 What absolutely sort of infuriated you?

01:18:22.000 And who were your friends and enemies?

01:18:25.000 How did you figure that out?

01:18:26.000 I imagine you probably had a lot more enemies than friends, because I think you were a loyal Trump guy, and that was probably not all that popular in the intel community.

01:18:35.000 Yeah, definitely.

01:18:36.000 Well, it was fascinating.

01:18:37.000 I mean, one thing I will say is for anybody who's interested in world events, there's not much more stimulating than being in the intelligence community because you're consuming all of this information, all of this data, all of these different things that are going on there.

01:18:52.000 So it's fascinating every single day.

01:18:54.000 You know, I will say one of the things about working in the intelligence community as a political appointee There ain't many of us.

01:19:02.000 I mean, in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, I'm pretty sure it was DNI Ratcliffe, me, and the Chief of Staff.

01:19:09.000 I think there were only three of us in the entire organization who were political appointees.

01:19:15.000 And so, you know, very quickly, you know, depending on who you're talking to, you can get a sense for Some people view you as a virus that they want to expel from the body of the intelligence community, and they're gonna lay down and try to stop everything that you're doing, undermine you, slow walk it, whatever it may be.

01:19:34.000 But there are also some people who, this is really interesting to me, who stepped up, who are career intelligence people, who were loyal, and I don't mean that in the way that the media derisively says, oh, they're Trump loyalists.

01:19:49.000 It's like, no.

01:19:50.000 The duly elected president of the United States has intelligence priorities that he has articulated to us.

01:19:55.000 We're going to be responsive to those things and give him the best possible information that we can to make informed decisions.

01:20:01.000 That's what it means to be loyal.

01:20:03.000 That's the job.

01:20:05.000 That's the job, that's right.

01:20:06.000 Yeah, the activism has become, the activism against it has become, you know, seemingly the job description these days and it's the exact opposite of what was always intended.

01:20:15.000 Yep.

01:20:16.000 No, that's right.

01:20:17.000 And we had some people who did step up and did a great job in that regard.

01:20:22.000 And those people were, again, career people.

01:20:26.000 When we left, they were moved out of their jobs.

01:20:30.000 The good portfolio, whatever that may be, was taken away from them and given to somebody else.

01:20:34.000 They were sent out into the wilderness to never be seen or heard from again.

01:20:40.000 They were punished Not for doing anything wrong, but for actually being willing to serve the duly elected President of the United States.

01:20:49.000 And so, coming back in, the good news is, next time around, we know those people.

01:20:54.000 Yeah.

01:20:55.000 I was like, hey, send me that list, because, you know, and I frankly, I want you to be involved in that, because, you know, that's exactly what you need.

01:21:03.000 And again, I don't care if they're devout leftists.

01:21:06.000 If they do their job, And not the activism.

01:21:10.000 I'm totally fine with that.

01:21:11.000 That's what we need more of.

01:21:12.000 But these people who are not elected, who are like, no, no, no, I just know better.

01:21:17.000 Well, you don't actually know better. 1.00

01:21:19.000 You don't know shit. 0.99

01:21:20.000 You know what I mean? 1.00

01:21:21.000 And you gotta get those guys.

01:21:23.000 So the people who are willing to do that job, that's a huge thing.

01:21:26.000 And we did not know that the first time.

01:21:28.000 That's right.

01:21:29.000 I will give you a very specific example.

01:21:34.000 China sought to influence the 2020 elections.

01:21:38.000 I'm just telling you, they did.

01:21:40.000 And when we got the intelligence community's assessment of the 2020 election, we noticed that they assessed that China did not seek to influence the 2020 election.

01:21:53.000 But there was one person.

01:21:55.000 His title, I won't say his name, his title was the National Intelligence Officer for Cyber.

01:22:02.000 And he was willing to stand up and put his name on a dissent that said, I assess that they did, here's the reasons why, here's what I saw.

01:22:12.000 Of course they did.

01:22:14.000 Trump's the only president that ever stood up to China.

01:22:17.000 Like, of course they did.

01:22:18.000 Obviously.

01:22:20.000 And when we saw this, we were kind of taken aback from it.

01:22:22.000 It's like, what do you mean they didn't?

01:22:24.000 Why are you acting like there's only one person here in the whole intelligence community who actually thinks that they did?

01:22:29.000 We happen to know that there are a ton of people who believe this.

01:22:32.000 Yeah.

01:22:33.000 So this kind of launched an internal investigation.

01:22:35.000 There's this guy whose title, and this is getting down in the weeds, but I think you'll understand why it's important.

01:22:41.000 His title is the analytic ombudsman.

01:22:43.000 His job is to referee disputes between intelligence analysts.

01:22:47.000 And so because there was this dispute, he launches an investigation.

01:22:51.000 This is a career guy, not a Trump guy.

01:22:54.000 It's a career guy.

01:22:55.000 What does he find?

01:22:57.000 He finds that leadership inside the intelligence community, including some which he labeled CIA management, had pressured people to change their analysis to assess that China did not seek to influence the 2020 election.

01:23:13.000 And in one of his interviews, one of the analysts said, The reason why I didn't want to say China sought to influence the election is because I don't support Trump's policies and I didn't want my intelligence used to support those policies.

01:23:30.000 Because that implicitly means the policies were actually right because of what was going on.

01:23:36.000 Those are the people that we've got to get out of there.

01:23:38.000 It's unacceptable.

01:23:41.000 We hear a lot about it.

01:23:42.000 What's a threat to democracy?

01:23:43.000 How is that not news?

01:23:47.000 Again, it shouldn't surprise us.

01:23:49.000 I had Julie Kelly on the other day. 0.99

01:23:51.000 She was the only person talking about, hey, they're manufacturing evidence by the FBI in the Trump case, the documents case.

01:23:58.000 You, like, at any other point in history, if it was against Obama as recently as a couple years ago, even if it was against, they would be going nuts.

01:24:06.000 This would be a major story.

01:24:08.000 I've heard, you know, if Donald Trump said, Merry Christmas, this is bigger than Watergate!

01:24:12.000 Everything's bigger.

01:24:13.000 I'm like, the FBI's manufacturing evidence against a former president and the leader of a political party?

01:24:17.000 Like, I don't know.

01:24:19.000 Seems like a big deal.

01:24:20.000 I get, I mean, even the concern, you know, conservative, you know, Fox News, like, You had Jerry Dunleavy on the podcast.

01:24:31.000 Jerry at the time was a reporter at the Washington Examiner.

01:24:35.000 He is one of the only reporters who covered this issue.

01:24:39.000 What I just talked about is not classified.

01:24:42.000 The ombudsman's report that he sent to the Senate is an unclassified report.

01:24:47.000 If you Google it right now, you can find that report.

01:24:51.000 And it got almost no coverage.

01:24:53.000 Seems like a really big deal.

01:24:56.000 Like so much that's not talked about, but you know, again, hopefully people are waking up to that as they are, you know, some of the other cases and everything like that.

01:25:02.000 So, you know, we just need more people like that.

01:25:04.000 So we just got to keep fighting, Cliff.

01:25:06.000 That's right.

01:25:07.000 A hundred percent.

01:25:08.000 Well, Cliff, you know, give it, tell us more about the book, where we can find it, how people can follow you, everything like that.

01:25:13.000 So they can, they can check that out.

01:25:14.000 Cause I think this is awesome.

01:25:15.000 Yeah, thank you.

01:25:16.000 No, thanks for having me on.

01:25:17.000 You can get the book, The Darkness Has Not Overcome.

01:25:19.000 It's available anywhere.

01:25:21.000 Books are sold now.

01:25:22.000 Grab it on Amazon, Books A Million, Barnes & Noble, anywhere that you get books from.

01:25:26.000 I'd really appreciate the support for it.

01:25:28.000 I think it's something that we've got an opportunity as people of faith to show in the marketplace that this is the kind of content that we want to consume.

01:25:36.000 And so I'd appreciate everybody's support.

01:25:38.000 Thank you so much for having me on.

01:25:39.000 You can find me on Twitter, Instagram, at Cliff underscore Sims.

01:25:43.000 Spell The Sims, because there's only one M. Only one M, that's right.

01:25:48.000 Only one M, because that took me a while.

01:25:50.000 I'm not going to say it, but I want the country to know that the level of discipline that I am showing right now to not say, unlike you, to not say what was discussed in our text thread right before this, you know the level of discipline.

01:26:04.000 I'm game to play whatever you want to play.

01:26:06.000 It doesn't bother me.

01:26:08.000 Yeah, I've been cursing all the show.

01:26:10.000 I forgot that you're an upstanding evangelical Christian.

01:26:13.000 I'm like, I probably shouldn't have done that.

01:26:14.000 It's the nice thing about having it be my show.

01:26:17.000 Fair, fair.

01:26:20.000 Well, Don, appreciate your friendship.

01:26:21.000 Thanks for having me on.

01:26:22.000 Likewise, buddy.

01:26:23.000 Guys, make sure to check out the book, Follow Cliff.

01:26:25.000 Great stuff.

01:26:25.000 And as more of this stuff comes out, we got to talk more because there's just so much craziness in the intelligence world that I think will be important.

01:26:32.000 So I think that was awesome.

01:26:34.000 Yep, have me anytime.

01:26:35.000 I'll be back anytime.

01:26:36.000 Good to see you, buddy.

01:26:37.000 So guys, that was awesome.

01:26:39.000 Remember, like, share, subscribe.

01:26:42.000 Like, share, subscribe.

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Triggered - Donald Trump Jr - May 10, 2024

Inside Our Intel Agencies, a Lack of Intelligence: Former Deputy DNI Cliff Sims Knows Why | TRIGGERED Ep.135

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