Triggered - Donald Trump Jr - Russia Hoaxers Must Face Justice, Interview with The Federalist's Sean Davis | TRIGGERED Ep.265

00:06:24.000 Hey guys, welcome to another huge episode of Trigger.

00:06:27.000 Today we'll be back with Sean Davis over at the Federalist, who is the tip of the spear in exposing all of the corruption inside the deep state.

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00:09:05.000 Guys, joining me now, founder of the Federalist, Sean Davis.

00:09:10.000 Sean, great to have you back, man.

00:09:11.000 How you doing?

00:09:12.000 I'm doing great.

00:09:13.000 Great to be here.

00:09:14.000 Thank you for having me.

00:09:15.000 Well, obviously a lot's gone on since we last spoke, but Sean, you know, given the declassified documents from DNI Tulsi Gabbard, which show that the Obama administration officially, you know, basically, or even certainly officials within, manufactured intelligence.

00:09:31.000 What do you see as the most damning piece of all of that information revealed and why?

00:09:37.000 Yeah, I think the most damning piece of info came out in what Gabbard declassified, which was this House Intel oversight report on how the Intel Committee Community Assessment of 16 and 17 came out.

00:09:51.000 And if you'll recall, this was the document that claimed that Russia had interfered in the election because it wanted to steal the election from Hillary Clinton and wanted Trump to win.

00:10:00.000 We know that was false.

00:10:02.000 But there was a particular piece of information in there about some interactions that career intel experts had with John Brennan, who was the head of the CIA at the time. 0.94

00:10:11.000 And they were telling him, hey, this steel dossier thing that you're wanting to throw in the ICA, it's a bunch of garbage.

00:10:18.000 We don't know any of the sourcing.

00:10:19.000 The guy who put it together is sketchy.

00:10:21.000 None of it makes any sense.

00:10:23.000 We cannot put that in here.

00:10:25.000 And then Brennan looked at one of them who had objected to this and said, yes, but it rings true, doesn't it?

00:10:31.000 Put it in there.

00:10:33.000 That is such a damning piece of evidence that they were engaging in a conspiracy to defraud the country from the very beginning.

00:10:41.000 So, Sean, a presidential daily brief from December 2016 assessed that Russia was probably not trying to influence the election by using cyber means.

00:10:49.000 How significant is it that that information was seemingly suppressed or contradicted abruptly once Obama got involved?

00:10:59.000 I mean, we've all said, hey, it all starts with Obama.

00:11:02.000 Trump was the one saying, hey, Obama's spying on me.

00:11:04.000 People went outraged, but it seems like it's accurate. 0.98

00:11:08.000 I think that was a huge piece of information, and we didn't really know about that until the last week or so when Gabbard released it.

00:11:15.000 We learned that Obama and Trump, by the way, who had just been elected president, were going to be informed by this presidential daily brief that Russia's meddling activities, its cyber activities, hadn't done anything.

00:11:28.000 And had that been released, had that been shown to Obama and Trump, it would have blown up their entire Russia collusion hoax before they could even get it off the ground.

00:11:36.000 So that was a huge piece of information.

00:11:39.000 And I think it showed the guilt of mind that they had at the time to want to suppress that so that they could replace it with this completely bogus alternative intel explanation for what happened.

00:11:52.000 Yeah, I guess, and people really forget, but we should all remember, the House intelligence investigation, the Mueller investigation, the original FBI investigation, even the Senate Intel investigation all found no collusion.

00:12:07.000 Does this all really expose just how much of an overclassification problem our government has, that they can kind of get away with that, that all these things can say no, but one person can just override it and just put out a totally different narrative that's convenient to their politics?

00:12:22.000 Yeah, it's a huge problem.

00:12:24.000 And in fact, with this ICA, the one that we know at its core, said there wasn't any sort of Russian meddling for Trump or for Hillary, Brennan and Clapper, they actually hid a whole bunch of stuff in a super secret version of it.

00:12:41.000 They had the version that they gave to Congress and the public, which had been sanitized.

00:12:47.000 It did not include the steel dossier.

00:12:49.000 It didn't cite to it.

00:12:50.000 But then they had the secret version that they gave to top intel officials that they gave to Obama that they chose to leak from.

00:12:57.000 That thing had all the steel dossier nonsense in it.

00:13:00.000 So they go to Congress and they lie about it, knowing that they've covered their own lies by classifying and making secret what they were actually doing.

00:13:08.000 And again, it shows that this wasn't just a mistake that people made because they had bad assumptions or bad intel.

00:13:15.000 They were cooking the books from the beginning, and then they were doing everything they could to cover their tracks, which is just perfect evidence of a guilty mind and a desire to defraud and lie to the American public.

00:13:27.000 Yeah, I mean, John Brennan and others pushed the fake dossier.

00:13:30.000 In terms of actual criminality, what statutes are we looking at here for them?

00:13:36.000 I don't have the exact U.S. code numbers off the top of my head, but I think we're looking at a conspiracy to defraud the U.S. And I think it's Obama has some interesting choices to make.

00:13:48.000 I know a lot of people are calling for Obama to be arrested and to be charged, and I totally understand that. 0.98

00:13:53.000 You know, being a president is different than not being a president.

00:13:56.000 You are allowed to do certain things as president.

00:13:59.000 You can't do all the things.

00:14:00.000 You don't have total immunity.

00:14:02.000 So Obama kind of has to make this decision.

00:14:04.000 Do I want to go out there and be Colonel Jessup from a few good men and say, Yeah, you're darn right.

00:14:10.000 I ordered the code red.

00:14:11.000 Does he want to take responsibility for all of it and say, Yes, I was directing it from the beginning.

00:14:16.000 I was the one who's calling the shots come at me.

00:14:19.000 Or because he was the one who was ordering it, he could say, Look, I was assuming they were going to do the right thing.

00:14:24.000 When I told him to do a report, I assumed they meant that they had to tell me the truth.

00:14:30.000 And I was defrauded by these people.

00:14:32.000 I was a victim of this.

00:14:34.000 I wonder if that's a road he'll want to go down to completely eliminate or reduce the chance that he ends up getting charged with crimes for his role in the Russia collusion hoax.

00:14:44.000 Yeah, I mean, it's sort of interesting.

00:14:47.000 If it's one of those where it's an either-or, right?

00:14:50.000 You may not be able to get them all.

00:14:51.000 I actually, I don't know which is worse.

00:14:53.000 Which do you think?

00:14:54.000 Who would you rather see prosecuted?

00:14:55.000 The Brennans and the Clappers of the world or the Obamas? 0.76

00:14:57.000 Because I actually may lean towards the former if I had to choose.

00:15:01.000 Oh, it's not a hard question for me.

00:15:03.000 It's the Brenners and the Clappers and the Comeys. 0.98

00:15:05.000 Like, they were the guys going through doing the day-to-day mechanics of this.

00:15:10.000 They were the ones leaking to the press.

00:15:11.000 It was Comey who hatched this idea to go do a completely bogus briefing of Trump on January 6th, 2017, just so he could go and leak it.

00:15:21.000 He was the one who wanted to put Steele dossier in so he could go leak it. 0.87

00:15:25.000 I think these guys were the real crooks.

00:15:27.000 Now, I don't think Obama is some like doe-eyed, innocent babe in the woods. 1.00

00:15:31.000 I think that guy's a crook too. 0.93

00:15:32.000 But the ones I really think deserve to be in prison for what they did for years are Comey and Clapper and Brennan.

00:15:38.000 So, how do these declassified documents reshape the public's understanding of the intelligence community's role and potential politicization during that period?

00:15:48.000 Yeah, that's a really good question.

00:15:50.000 And I think to fully reshape the public's understanding of it, you have to have some sort of media cooperation in it.

00:15:59.000 The reason so many people think Russia stole the election for Trump is because the corrupt corporate media lied about it for years and years and years.

00:16:08.000 They published stuff that wasn't true.

00:16:11.000 They took anything that Adam Schiff said and they were happy to trumpet it, even if it were lies.

00:16:16.000 And then they suppressed stuff from people like me, from my organization, the Federalists.

00:16:22.000 And so, what you're seeing right now with all these massive blockbuster revelations is kind of the same thing.

00:16:28.000 You have the media pretending it doesn't exist, and then you have organizations like mine out there screaming to the hilltops, hey, you've got to pay attention to this stuff.

00:16:36.000 And so, I think it's important as we go forward to remember that the corrupt corporate media was a key co-conspirator in this attempt to defraud the country.

00:16:46.000 Clapper and Comey and Brennan couldn't have done it without the willing, deliberate participation of the media.

00:16:52.000 And at some point, I think the people in the media who were part of this, they need to be held to account as well.

00:16:59.000 So, how do you do that?

00:17:01.000 You know, what would the mechanisms be?

00:17:03.000 Because I agree with you.

00:17:04.000 I mean, you know, when my father first said the media is the enemy of the people, this was back when I was a, I too was a, you know, a doe-eyed kid, a babe in the woods.

00:17:14.000 I was like, well, it's, you know, they're certainly, you know, lopsided.

00:17:17.000 They're certainly not on our side.

00:17:18.000 They're certainly biased, but are they really?

00:17:20.000 But honestly, 10 years later, you look back and be like, oh, it's not even closed.

00:17:23.000 Of course, I mean, they're as bad, but they have the protections of, oh, we were just reporting what we were told.

00:17:29.000 You know, it could have been all nonsense.

00:17:31.000 And again, if they were told something else that was towards my father's end, they would have just not reported it.

00:17:38.000 But how would you actually go about doing that to create some sort of accountability within the media other than just their dismal viewership and ratings?

00:17:46.000 Right.

00:17:46.000 Well, I think you have to go back to the conspiracy angle.

00:17:49.000 And it's worth remembering the First Amendment is really, really important.

00:17:52.000 It's vital to having a free functioning republic.

00:17:55.000 You can't just have the government go crack down on reporters because they say things the government doesn't like.

00:18:00.000 But at the same time, it's not a total immunity card.

00:18:03.000 It's not a get out of jail free card.

00:18:05.000 You cannot, as a reporter, go and just blithely lie about someone in ways that destroy their reputation and then claim, oh, no, I'm not responsible.

00:18:15.000 This person told me that was true.

00:18:17.000 And, you know, so it's that guy.

00:18:19.000 He's the problem.

00:18:20.000 At some point, you have a responsibility, and courts understand this.

00:18:23.000 You have a responsibility to do basic fact-checking.

00:18:27.000 So I think if they were part of an active and willing conspiracy to defraud the people, I'm not sure that they have all that much protection in the same way that if you were to go out and decide, oh, I'm going to destroy this person and I'm just going to have a bunch of people feed them lies and then I'll have my hands clean.

00:18:44.000 That's not really how it works.

00:18:46.000 So do you think that's criminal or do you think that's more penal financially?

00:18:51.000 Meaning, you saw what the news agencies, the various sort of three-letter big three news agencies did. 0.97

00:18:57.000 They changed the trans script of the Kamala Harris interviews to try to make it seem like she wasn't an imbecile. 0.95

00:19:03.000 They did those things. 0.89

00:19:04.000 My father's been winning those cases and settling for tens of millions of dollars because they essentially tried to steal an election.

00:19:10.000 Again, this is obviously significantly worse.

00:19:13.000 So do you think that's mostly financial or do you think there's actually statutory criminality involved?

00:19:18.000 I think there's probably some criminal exposure there.

00:19:21.000 Let's take the leak about the Flynn call with Kisley Act, this thing that they used to kickstart their Logan Act tribunal, which was totally absurd and bogus.

00:19:32.000 That transcript, that call, which we know they lied about, by the way, David Ignatius lied about it.

00:19:38.000 That was a classified, the call was classified.

00:19:40.000 So its mere existence was classified.

00:19:42.000 The contents of the call were classified.

00:19:44.000 The transcript was classified.

00:19:46.000 That was all leaked.

00:19:47.000 And if you're a reporter, it is one thing to passively receive information.

00:19:53.000 It's another thing if you are actively searching and trying to get classified information.

00:19:59.000 You're not allowed to do that.

00:20:00.000 Again, that's a conspiracy there.

00:20:01.000 If you're trying to get someone to break the law by giving you things you know you're not supposed to have, I think that is an angle that's worth exploring given the amount of classified info that was leaked and also lied about and deceptively reported.

00:20:16.000 Yeah, so from the federalist perspective, what role did that mainstream media play in amplifying the Russia collusion narrative?

00:20:22.000 I mean, they'll never learn their lesson, but at least their influence and credibility is shot to some extent, isn't it?

00:20:31.000 It is.

00:20:31.000 It's definitely worse than it was, but they're not powerless.

00:20:34.000 I mean, I think we probably delude ourselves on the right when we tell ourselves, oh, they're totally discredited.

00:20:40.000 What they do doesn't matter.

00:20:41.000 No, what they do really does matter.

00:20:42.000 They have a massive, massive soapbox.

00:20:46.000 If you look at just ABC and NBC and CBS, these guys have control of the public airwaves.

00:20:53.000 The broadcast power is massive.

00:20:56.000 And so I look at the media as they were really the doctor who injected the poison into patient zero.

00:21:04.000 They took what someone had gave them in this completely bad serum and they injected it into the bloodstream of the public.

00:21:11.000 I think CNN was probably guiltier than anyone.

00:21:14.000 But this entire conspiracy, this entire collusion hoax could not have been possible without the willing cooperation of a corrupt media.

00:21:23.000 So how do you think history will cover the Russia hoax in time?

00:21:28.000 Will they ever get it right?

00:21:29.000 Will they ever be even remotely intellectually honest about everything that went on?

00:21:33.000 Not if they can help it.

00:21:35.000 I look at a lot of the stuff with AI and I see that AI is being trained on Wikipedia and the New York Times and Reddit and CNN.

00:21:43.000 And I tend to think, you know, in 20 or 30 years, who's going to be writing our history books?

00:21:47.000 Is it people who lived through the history or is it going to be an algorithm that some blue-haired lefty freak wrote to make sure that only good left-wing sources are used to write the history books?

00:22:00.000 I mean, just yesterday, I was looking through the Wikipedia entry on the steel dossier, and it still claims that it was never used in the ICA.

00:22:08.000 I mean, we have black and white documentary, quote-for-quote, proof that it was in, and yet Wikipedia is lying about it.

00:22:15.000 And Wikipedia is a major source of all these AI engines.

00:22:18.000 So I'm kind of bearish on how history will cover this because I know how desperate the left is to control the narrative.

00:22:27.000 Because when you can control the narrative, you can control the history and You can control what people believe about something forever.

00:22:33.000 Yeah, no, I mean, that strikes me as a big one.

00:22:35.000 You sort of see the two big sort of tech races going on right now are crypto and AI.

00:22:42.000 I'd say crypto probably leans, frankly, probably leans mostly libertarian, but definitely probably leans a little bit right.

00:22:50.000 The left's fine with the conventional systems because it's never failed them.

00:22:54.000 But AI definitely leans very heavy left.

00:22:59.000 And I imagine given the advances we're seeing, given the deep fakes, given the way it is, if we don't sort of get involved in the AI race from the right or at least a center position, we're going to be propagandized without even knowing it.

00:23:13.000 We'll just assume some of this stuff is true because they're not going to attack it as ridiculously as CNN will publish everything that Adam Schiff says and therefore it must be the gospel.

00:23:21.000 I mean, they will very subtly manipulate people to believing whatever it is that they will with whatever trigger points over time.

00:23:30.000 They'll do it so subtly you won't even know it's happening.

00:23:33.000 And that will be how history is written.

00:23:35.000 How do we combat that?

00:23:37.000 Yeah, I think we actually have to change on the right how we view media.

00:23:43.000 So I think conservatives and a lot of the wealthy people who help fund races and campaigns, they tend to look at politics as an every other year kind of thing, an even year kind of thing.

00:23:54.000 I want to fund good candidates.

00:23:55.000 We'll get them into office.

00:23:57.000 That's what's important.

00:23:58.000 What the left has understood and one way they've been able to dominate culture is they understand it's a long game and you have to really invest in infrastructure.

00:24:07.000 And so they don't just have CNN or MSNBC or the New York Times.

00:24:11.000 They have scores and scores of left-wing outlets.

00:24:15.000 They have media matters.

00:24:16.000 They have fake local papers in every state.

00:24:19.000 They understand the stakes that if you can control the information, you can control the outcome.

00:24:24.000 And I wish our side would really understand the importance of investing in media.

00:24:28.000 It's the same thing, if you're a military, is investing in air superiority.

00:24:33.000 And we all know that you're not winning on the ground unless you can control the air.

00:24:37.000 Well, the left controls the air.

00:24:39.000 And so I think if we want to engage in this, if you want to win the AI war, it's not enough just to be engaged in the AI aspect itself.

00:24:47.000 You have to be engaged in determining and creating the things that you want AI to feed on.

00:24:53.000 And I just don't think the right has done a good job of that.

00:24:55.000 So obviously, yo, you're one of the guys doing that.

00:24:59.000 The Federalist is great.

00:25:00.000 You guys have been awesome on that.

00:25:02.000 I think Breitbart does a good job of that.

00:25:05.000 But after that, it falls off really quickly.

00:25:08.000 How do you encourage that?

00:25:09.000 A lot of people look at media today.

00:25:11.000 It's not the easiest business to make a buck in.

00:25:13.000 There's probably easier ways.

00:25:15.000 If you're on our side of the equation, there's sort of the natural censorship complex and the constant attacks.

00:25:20.000 How do we actually do that?

00:25:23.000 How do you create enough sort of counterculture zeitgeist to be able to combat some of this stuff to make sure that both sides are actually heard in the long run?

00:25:32.000 Especially, again, once you have the AI engine sort of amplifying one side far more than the other.

00:25:38.000 Yeah.

00:25:38.000 So DC buzzword for that would be like you need a belt and suspenders approach.

00:25:43.000 You need to just throw everything at it.

00:25:45.000 The right should be building up podcasts and print and broadcast and cable news and online and do all of it.

00:25:52.000 I think of more of a shotgun approach.

00:25:55.000 I joke when I shoot that I believe in accuracy through volume.

00:25:59.000 That's, I think, what we actually need on the right is we need people throwing everything at it and see what works.

00:26:05.000 It's almost like a venture capital approach to philanthropy because I do think it has to be viewed as a political philanthropic goal.

00:26:14.000 You need to throw everything you can at it and just see what works over time as opposed to thinking, oh, I've done this one thing with this one outlet.

00:26:22.000 I'm good.

00:26:23.000 We have to throw everything at the wall because the future of civilization is at stake here.

00:26:28.000 Yeah, no, it really is.

00:26:31.000 And it's scary.

00:26:33.000 You know, obviously, there are AI engines that aren't going to be as biased as others.

00:26:39.000 What do you see as the ones that are actually sort of being intellectually honest?

00:26:43.000 I mean, some of the big players that I've invested in XAI, we're supporting that.

00:26:48.000 I sort of like what Elon's done for free speech on all of these things.

00:26:50.000 And I think that's important.

00:26:52.000 There's others that are bigger that have a head start.

00:26:54.000 And there's a notion that once you sort of get that air superiority in AI, no different than America versus China, we have to build a power plant so that we can compete because once you lose that race, you get to a point where there's no coming back.

00:27:08.000 It sort of feels like that way within the AI engines in the United States.

00:27:12.000 What are some of the other ones that you see that viewers, you're going to be using AI?

00:27:17.000 You're going to have to use it.

00:27:17.000 But you may want to throw your money behind the ones that are at least intellectually honest, not the ones that are, they may even be fine today, but you know are going to be slowly shifting that narrative over.

00:27:29.000 Are you familiar enough with that to give people an idea?

00:27:31.000 Because again, I think if they're going to subscribe to some, they should probably subscribe to the ones that at least are going to be intellectually honest and not tell you that the founding fathers were trans women of color.

00:27:42.000 Yeah, it's a great point.

00:27:43.000 I'm definitely not an AI expert, certainly not a crypto expert.

00:27:48.000 I can only speak to my experience.

00:27:50.000 I tend to use Grok, which is the ex-Twitter AI.

00:27:53.000 And it's interesting.

00:27:55.000 For years and years and years, I used Google.

00:27:57.000 And I look back to like the early 2000s, mid-2000s as the golden era of Google.

00:28:02.000 You could find anything on the internet.

00:28:05.000 It didn't matter how obscure within like five minutes, you could find it.

00:28:08.000 Now I can't find stuff that I wrote on the site I publish with exact headlines and quotes on the first 10 pages of Google.

00:28:17.000 So I've actually started using Grok almost as my like Google substitute.

00:28:22.000 And it's a little clunky, but I've had pretty good luck with it.

00:28:26.000 But even then, it still makes mistakes because with AI, it's garbage in, garbage out.

00:28:30.000 With a large language model, it only knows what it's been fed.

00:28:34.000 And so I think it's as important to have the AI engine be good as it is to have the AI engine with a good diet of good, solid information.

00:28:43.000 Yeah, I just Grok and perplexity, you know, sort of as those, but you're right.

00:28:47.000 I mean, and the Google analogy is sort of a perfect one, right?

00:28:50.000 It started off fairly innocent and it was an effective tool, but no different than where I see some of these engines perhaps going.

00:28:58.000 Google was probably the worst offender in the spread of misinformation, disinformation, censorship, subversion, certainly over the last decade.

00:29:09.000 So it was around before it started off well, but then it was manipulated to be basically a left-wing narrative push.

00:29:16.000 AI seems to be the next generation of that, isn't it?

00:29:21.000 Oh, absolutely.

00:29:23.000 And you think about the things you used to have to do.

00:29:26.000 You wanted to learn something.

00:29:27.000 You maybe wanted to put together a plan for something.

00:29:29.000 And you'd go to Google and you would do your research and it would take a long time.

00:29:33.000 You'd hit 50 or 100 different sites.

00:29:36.000 You'd kind of have to like collate the information in your head.

00:29:39.000 AI, in a world where AI is neutral and really only synthesizes information as opposed to trying to tell you what to think.

00:29:47.000 I mean, that drastically reduces the amount of time and effort and resources it takes there.

00:29:52.000 It's a potentially earth-shattering, earth-changing tool, but only if it's used to actually give you good information as opposed to being used to indoctrinate you or hide the truth from you or prevent you from knowing things that AI or its engineers think are icky that you shouldn't know.

00:30:10.000 Yeah, exactly.

00:30:12.000 Because it's amazing.

00:30:14.000 I mean, like I said, until sort of AI became a big thing in the last couple of years, Google was sort of who I rallied against the hardest.

00:30:20.000 Cause again, you're right.

00:30:21.000 You could find anything you wanted when it came out.

00:30:24.000 And it wasn't always the cleanest, wasn't always this, but it then went so crazy, you know, you couldn't find anything.

00:30:32.000 If I looked up myself, it'd be like, you know, 97 pages of CNN, nothing of Fox.

00:30:36.000 And it was like, man, it was like, you know, maybe the information's out there, but unless you had unlimited time, unlimited capacity, you're never going to get far enough to where you're showing, you know, where you're seeing even the other perspective even remotely.

00:30:50.000 Yeah.

00:30:50.000 And it's crazy.

00:30:51.000 It's part of it.

00:30:52.000 I saw some story from Google during their antitrust suit where they were deliberately making the engine worse because you had to spend more time on it.

00:31:01.000 And if you spent more time on it, they could sell you more ads.

00:31:04.000 But I've gone on there recently and you get page after page of just current news results from its selected friends from like the last week.

00:31:15.000 Well, when I'm Googling stuff, I'm generally not looking for stuff that was in the news last week.

00:31:20.000 I'm trying to find something that's 10 or 15 years old.

00:31:22.000 I'm trying to find a particular document.

00:31:24.000 And so it's not even so much that it's biased, although it is.

00:31:28.000 It's that it's just bad.

00:31:30.000 It's just a bad tool.

00:31:31.000 It's like a screwdriver where somehow the shape on the head has been stripped out and all you're doing is frustrating yourself and wasting your time every time you use it.

00:31:39.000 It's maddening.

00:31:40.000 You know, it's pretty crazy.

00:31:41.000 Sean, I'd love to get your take on some of the stuff over the last weekend.

00:31:45.000 We saw the trade deal get done with the EU.

00:31:50.000 We saw the GDP numbers, 3% growth and 2% inflation.

00:31:54.000 I mean, what a reversal from the prior administration.

00:31:57.000 And yet, all the haters still out there saying, oh, it's failing.

00:32:02.000 I mean, they're still running the opposite of narrative of what the actual facts from the government.

00:32:06.000 Meaning, these are not, I wouldn't say these are MAGA bureaucrats.

00:32:10.000 These are the agencies that run numbers and crunch and are probably still very politically motivated towards the other side.

00:32:18.000 Do you see people feeling that and seeing through it?

00:32:21.000 Or are they going to still be biased by what's out there at this point?

00:32:24.000 I think people are seeing through it, but I'm reminded of what happened in Trump's first administration when he passed those first tax cuts.

00:32:32.000 There was a monster tax cut.

00:32:33.000 It was great for the economy.

00:32:34.000 It saved everyone a ton of money that they weren't shipping to a corrupt government.

00:32:38.000 And yet the media spent a year doing a campaign of calling them tax increases.

00:32:43.000 And I don't remember who it was.

00:32:45.000 It was some dummy left-wing journal who a year later found this poll and was saying, you know, isn't it crazy?

00:32:51.000 This poll says a majority of people think their taxes were raised by Trump.

00:32:55.000 Isn't that funny?

00:32:56.000 And he thought it was really cute.

00:32:57.000 And he thought he was.

00:32:59.000 It was like 90-something percent of Americans, right?

00:33:02.000 They always do that.

00:33:03.000 Only big corporations are getting it.

00:33:04.000 Only the billionaires are getting it.

00:33:06.000 But the reality is the most, the people who got the most, you know, let's call it marginal benefit were actually working class Americans.

00:33:12.000 And something like 93% or something like that, people benefited from these things.

00:33:16.000 And yet you wouldn't know it.

00:33:17.000 You'd think that only the billionaires got anything out of it.

00:33:20.000 And everyone else was settled with the savings that the billionaires got.

00:33:25.000 Right.

00:33:25.000 Yeah.

00:33:25.000 So the media definitely still has the power to lie and shape opinion.

00:33:29.000 But deep down, when it comes to the economy, people know when it's good and when it's bad.

00:33:34.000 They just do.

00:33:35.000 You can feel it.

00:33:36.000 You can see it.

00:33:37.000 You see it in the housing prices.

00:33:39.000 You see it in whether commercial real estate is moving or not.

00:33:42.000 And everyone I talk to right now, and this is reflected in the data, says, yeah, things are starting to move.

00:33:48.000 Things are starting to move.

00:33:49.000 And I think the last thing right now that is waiting, that's kind of holding us back are interest rates.

00:33:56.000 That's what's stopping any real movement in commercial and residential real estate now is, you know, on the commercial side, no one wants to pay 6.5% on a commercial real estate loan.

00:34:06.000 They're kind of one.

00:34:07.000 You can't.

00:34:07.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:34:08.000 You can't afford it.

00:34:10.000 And so properties are sitting in it.

00:34:12.000 The same thing is happening in residential real estate.

00:34:14.000 So although the economy is improving, people have more money.

00:34:18.000 The last thing that needs to change are interest rates.

00:34:21.000 And once those are brought down, I think this economy is going to fly.

00:34:25.000 Yeah.

00:34:25.000 So talk about that a little bit.

00:34:26.000 It was a week ago or so, Fed Chairman Powell basically left interest rates unchanged.

00:34:34.000 But right before the election, when it could possibly influence the election and sort of bolster the economy, he cut interest rates.

00:34:43.000 But inflation at the time was rampant.

00:34:45.000 So inflation is sort of the corollary to interest rates.

00:34:48.000 If inflation is going out of control, you raise rates, lower inflation.

00:34:51.000 Inflation's lower, but they haven't lowered rates commensurately.

00:34:55.000 Now you're leaving them the same, not doing anything.

00:34:58.000 I mean, at this point, there could be no mistaking, frankly, that it's political.

00:35:03.000 You even had two of the people on the Federal Reserve Board vote against Powell.

00:35:08.000 I mean, those guys almost always vote unanimously one way or the other, but always together.

00:35:13.000 How politicized has that gotten?

00:35:14.000 And what does that mean to the American people?

00:35:16.000 Because it seems like hundreds of billions of dollars and frankly, standard of living is going to be affected by trying to play this game, screw with Trump, don't let the economy get going.

00:35:27.000 I guess maybe they'll move after midterms when they can try to weaponize it and try to get control of the House or the Senate or whatever it may be.

00:35:34.000 How political is it at this point?

00:35:35.000 Oh, I think at least from Powell, just talking about him personally, I think it's absolutely political.

00:35:41.000 You had the guy cutting rates like crazy, even though inflation was a lot higher.

00:35:45.000 And you have to be careful about cutting rates when there's inflation because it can lead to more and more of it.

00:35:50.000 We don't really have much right now.

00:35:52.000 Import prices are actually down year over year, in spite of those awful tariffs that we were warned about.

00:35:59.000 Import Prices are down, inflation is way down, and yet you have Powell just saying, no, we can't cut rates.

00:36:05.000 I think what's happening right now is there's a concerted effort given how close the margins are in the House.

00:36:11.000 I think a lot of people in government who are left-wingers, I think the media, I think they're just trying to get to next November and hope that they can get maybe a one-seat margin.

00:36:22.000 Then they can grind everything to a halt again.

00:36:24.000 They can impeach Trump again, and then they'll ride that wave to a presidential victory in 28. 0.96

00:36:30.000 I think it is entirely political sabotage.

00:36:32.000 Now, we could get into the whole issue of whether like central banking and fiat currency is even the right thing to do.

00:36:40.000 I obviously don't think it is, but the genie's probably out of the bottle on that globally.

00:36:44.000 Like, this is what you end up with when you have a central banking system running your global monetary supply: is you have people who are political actors making political decisions, not making good financial economic decisions for the people they're supposed to be helping.

00:37:00.000 Yeah, I mean, does any of that change?

00:37:02.000 I mean, listen, I think probably anyone in the comment section right now is probably shouting and screaming, end the Fed.

00:37:08.000 You know, it may not be realistic, but do things like crypto and these things give you a little bit of that hedge against the inflationary powers that those create, et cetera, et cetera.

00:37:18.000 You know, what are your thoughts on that as it relates to the future?

00:37:20.000 And, you know, I'm not talking CBDCs, you know, central bank digital currencies, because I think those would be weaponized perhaps worse than anything we could imagine.

00:37:28.000 And my father was very clear about not having that, certainly not in the crypto bill, you know, et cetera.

00:37:33.000 But where do you think that goes that we could sort of create some of the independence that we need from these politicized actors?

00:37:42.000 Yeah, I do think it's possible.

00:37:44.000 And I think crypto is a valuable tool for kind of getting away from the model of central bank currency management.

00:37:51.000 But I will say, I'm not a smart guy on crypto. 0.95

00:37:54.000 I often feel way too dumb to fully understand it.

00:37:58.000 But the thing about the dollar is, and about hard currency, even if it's not backed by anything real, that's kind of been the basis of civilization for hundreds and thousands of years. 0.88

00:38:11.000 I think it's going to take a long time.

00:38:13.000 I think that's going to be a hard thing to get away from.

00:38:16.000 And so while I absolutely think crypto is an amazing tool for helping us to decouple from the tyranny of central banking, I don't see it as a deliverer or as something that's going to fix the problem in a year or 10 years or even 100 years.

00:38:31.000 But again, when it comes to this stuff, it's not my forte.

00:38:34.000 I'm not an expert on it.

00:38:35.000 So take everything I say with a gigantic grain of salt.

00:38:38.000 I am not an investment advisor.

00:38:39.000 Don't listen to anything that I said.

00:38:42.000 Sean, I'd love to get your take on some of the things.

00:38:45.000 My father's been sort of ending war after war after war.

00:38:50.000 I was with him last weekend in Scotland and he was taking calls, again, just in the background, not involved, but just there.

00:38:57.000 The prime minister of Thailand calls and the prime minister of Cambodia calls and he basically used America's economic might, threatening, hey, we're not just not going to do a trade deal with you guys and we'll put your economy in the crapper if you guys don't get together and figure it out.

00:39:09.000 And lo and behold, it happens.

00:39:11.000 You saw the same thing in Rwanda.

00:39:13.000 Does he ever get credit for those things?

00:39:15.000 Because it's like, I don't watch much conventional news anymore because, frankly, both sides, I think, are so screwed up that it doesn't really matter.

00:39:22.000 But you don't see anyone actually talking about it. 0.79

00:39:25.000 Before you just let them fight till they die, who cares?

00:39:27.000 Doesn't matter.

00:39:28.000 I mean, he's saving lives.

00:39:29.000 Does he ever get credit for that or not?

00:39:31.000 No, no, of course he doesn't because it would go against the narrative that's being fed to people.

00:39:35.000 I mean, he just had this massive South Korea trade deal as well.

00:39:39.000 I think something like $350 billion had got to buy from us.

00:39:43.000 It's a huge deal.

00:39:44.000 And it's interesting.

00:39:46.000 People, they see Donald Trump as a president and they remember him on The Apprentice.

00:39:52.000 It's kind of how he got to be this major global household name.

00:39:55.000 But the guy's medium, you know, Michelangelo used paint.

00:39:58.000 Donald Trump has been doing deals his whole career.

00:40:01.000 The guy clearly loves deals.

00:40:04.000 He loves making deals.

00:40:05.000 And it's one of those things that kind of gets forgotten in the day-to-day conversation because we get so lost in politics, this and talking points that the dude is a legendary deal maker.

00:40:16.000 It's kind of amazing.

00:40:17.000 And, you know, other people have hobbies.

00:40:20.000 I think his hobby is just like getting deals done.

00:40:22.000 I personally have 100%.

00:40:25.000 Well, and it was funny.

00:40:26.000 You're watching those things.

00:40:27.000 You see, I was there.

00:40:28.000 I was back when they were just sort of with the press and whatever it is in the background.

00:40:33.000 But I'm watching him do the trade deal with the EU, the largest trade deal ever accomplished.

00:40:36.000 And it's like, why was no one else doing these things before?

00:40:39.000 So, you know, they had tariffs on us.

00:40:41.000 We, you know, even, and honestly, mostly the conservatives, they've been bitching about free trade, free trade, free trade for years, but it was never free trade.

00:40:48.000 These people had tariffs on our goods.

00:40:49.000 You couldn't send American cars there.

00:40:50.000 It was cost perheaded.

00:40:52.000 And if just to level the playing field, why did no one ever do this before?

00:40:56.000 Why did no one even think to do it before or ever try?

00:40:59.000 I think it's a total lack of imagination that comes from spending your life in politics.

00:41:04.000 You just get so used to these dogmas and mantras you've heard, free trade this and free trade that.

00:41:10.000 In theory, I love free trade.

00:41:12.000 Sounds amazing.

00:41:13.000 We have no frictions.

00:41:14.000 There's no fees.

00:41:15.000 Everyone just kind of buys stuff at what it costs.

00:41:17.000 And, you know, in the long term, it works out great.

00:41:20.000 The idea that we have anything approximating free trade anywhere in the world right now is insane.

00:41:25.000 If you think we have free trade, that's nonsense.

00:41:27.000 I mean, an example I love to use is timber in Canada.

00:41:32.000 So we have hardly any milling capacity in this country anymore because Canada deliberately went about destroying our timber industry.

00:41:40.000 They dumped below-cost timber into the U.S., knowing that we couldn't harvest it and mill it at the same cost.

00:41:47.000 Over time, that leads to mills evaporating because they can't make it work.

00:41:51.000 And then ta-da, overnight, Canada has a monopoly on lumber and timber that they can then use to gouge us.

00:41:57.000 That's not free trade.

00:41:59.000 And you can replicate that.

00:42:01.000 You can find example after example in hundreds of countries doing the same thing to us. 0.99

00:42:05.000 And all it took was someone saying, you know what, this is a load of crap. 0.98

00:42:08.000 We probably shouldn't do this anymore. 0.99

00:42:10.000 We should just go in and renegotiate stuff so our people aren't getting screwed.

00:42:14.000 And that was seen as revolutionary.

00:42:16.000 So what does that tell you about the state of politics before Trump came along?

00:42:20.000 No, it's wild, right?

00:42:21.000 Because you see it, like, but you're talking about free trade, but it does not exist.

00:42:25.000 They're trying to tell you that it does.

00:42:26.000 It's like, well, how does it exist if we know the numbers?

00:42:31.000 Or they massage the numbers.

00:42:32.000 Meaning, what was the great one, I guess, for Wisconsin was hit hard with this one because of the Canadian dairy stuff.

00:42:38.000 No, there's no tariff on American dairy going into Canada because it's like 7% for the, literally, I think it was like 7% or something, relatively low, but still a tariff, but on the first carton of milk or whatever it is.

00:42:49.000 So it's like, you know, you send one case of milk over, that's 7%.

00:42:53.000 But every case after that, it was like 30%.

00:42:56.000 So it looked optically like, no, no, no, no, it's only 7%.

00:42:58.000 It's like, yeah, but who sends one case of milk over there?

00:43:00.000 It doesn't work that way.

00:43:01.000 So the reality was a 30% tariff.

00:43:02.000 You destroy American dairy workers.

00:43:04.000 You do this for the benefit of Canada.

00:43:05.000 And again, it's just shocking to me.

00:43:09.000 And I don't have a lot of respect for too many of the politicians out there.

00:43:12.000 But again, that it went on for so long that no one thought to call it out.

00:43:16.000 You know, there's a couple of guys that are smart enough to probably know the difference.

00:43:19.000 Why maintain that status quo?

00:43:21.000 Why not do anything?

00:43:22.000 Why does it take Trump after 50 years of being taking advantage of, destroying our middle class, shipping our, you know, our only export was frankly the American dream that we sent to every other country other than ourselves?

00:43:33.000 Again, I still just don't understand how it got that way.

00:43:35.000 And how do we prevent that from coming back after Trump and just going back to the status quo?

00:43:41.000 Well, yeah, it never got changed because a bunch of people who were in charge of everything were getting rich off of it.

00:43:46.000 A bunch of people got filthy, stinking rich, hollowing out the American class, offshoring their jobs, getting rid of our manufacturing capacity.

00:43:55.000 A lot of bankers and a lot of lawyers and a lot of people who work in those areas got filthy rich.

00:44:00.000 That's why nothing was ever done about it.

00:44:02.000 It's actually a major reason why groups you had like the chamber seem to hate Trump because he's going after the golden goose that they were using to fleece the American people.

00:44:13.000 So I think the thing that has to change is number one, people had to know that it could be changed.

00:44:20.000 We were kind of like set in this soft despotism of just assuming this was how things had to be for 50 years because that's how they always were.

00:44:28.000 And sometimes it's just the fact that seeing it doesn't have to be that way that helps people to understand that they can demand more.

00:44:36.000 So I think that's the most important thing.

00:44:38.000 Trump has made people realize, hey, all it takes is someone who actually cares about you to go and change these things.

00:44:44.000 You don't actually have to sit and take it anymore.

00:44:46.000 Yeah, it's amazing.

00:44:47.000 No one ever used sort of the potential of America's economic might.

00:44:51.000 They're like, why would they do this?

00:44:52.000 It's like, well, because if we stop buying from you, like your economy is over.

00:44:55.000 I mean, we are consumers.

00:44:57.000 We have wealth.

00:44:57.000 We have this.

00:44:58.000 We have that.

00:44:59.000 If we stop buying from you, like you're actually forced to come to the table and no one bothered to ever exercise that might.

00:45:04.000 It's like being a pro football player playing a Pee Wee football team and like shackling your legs together, shackling your arms together, and wondering how is it possible that we're not winning.

00:45:14.000 It's like, it's crazy to me.

00:45:17.000 Well, yeah, and I'll use Canada as an example again because there was so much rhetoric going back and forth between the U.S. and Canada.

00:45:24.000 And you had people saying, well, oh, this is, you can't drop stuff on Canada.

00:45:27.000 They're a major trading partner and we're going to shoot ourselves in the foot.

00:45:31.000 But when you actually looked at the balance of the trade, they are so much more dependent upon us.

00:45:36.000 The things that we buy from them are so much of a higher percentage of their total economy than anything we buy from them.

00:45:43.000 And yet, for some reason, we had convinced ourselves over years, oh, we can't do anything.

00:45:48.000 We can't do anything to offset all the massive subsidies they're illegally using to preference their products because that might hurt us a little.

00:45:56.000 And it was all nonsense from the beginning.

00:45:58.000 Yeah.

00:45:59.000 Well, Sean, I really appreciate it.

00:46:01.000 Thanks for coming back.

00:46:02.000 I'm sure we'll be talking again soon as more insanity ensues.

00:46:06.000 But guys, check out Sean Davis over on X and Truth and check out the Federalist, one of the guys doing great work.

00:46:12.000 And again, to get all that information out there, you know, another one of those guys you should follow and share so we combat the insanity that's out there.

00:46:18.000 So, Sean, thanks all, as always, for being here, man.

00:46:21.000 Always a pleasure.

00:46:21.000 Thank you, sir.

00:46:22.000 Be well.

00:46:25.000 So, guys, thanks so much for tuning in.

00:46:27.000 Remember to like, to share, to subscribe.

00:46:30.000 Check out our incredible sponsors down below and in the video description.

00:46:34.000 It's because of them that we're able to do this.

00:46:36.000 Support those who share your values.

00:46:39.000 Share this, guys, with everyone you know because the truth needs to get out there.

00:46:44.000 Hit that like button, share it to a couple friends.

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00:46:48.000 Thanks a lot, guys.

Triggered - Donald Trump Jr - August 07, 2025

Russia Hoaxers Must Face Justice, Interview with The Federalist's Sean Davis | TRIGGERED Ep.265

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