TRIGGERnometry - June 23, 2022


Project Veritas： ＂We Expose Corruption, Lies and Abuse＂

Topics
big tech bias at Twitter big tech companies censorship journalism social media censorship government harassment of journalists equality before the law
Hosted by
Francis Foster Konstantin Kisin
Mentioned
Elon Musk Pfizer Glenn Greenwald Mike Wallace Vanessa Gelman Charlie Chester Jordan Peterson Seymour Hersh Saru Murugusan Primetime Live Julian Assange George Orwell Chris Jackson Ashley Biden Noam Chomsky Diane Sawyer Donald Trump Your Honor Ed Snowden Konstantin and 5 more
＂Politicians Ignore Most Issues People Actually Care About＂ - Mike Graham How Elites Hurt the Poor With Terrible Ideas - Rob Henderson

Episode Stats


Length

39 minutes

Words per minute

164.88

Word count

6,438

Sentence count

419

Harmful content

Misogyny

2

sentences flagged

Toxicity

18

sentences flagged

Hate speech

5

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

James O'Keefe is the founder of Project Veritas, a nationwide, undercover investigative journalism organization that goes undercover to expose waste, fraud, abuse, and corruption around the world. In this episode, James talks about how he got started in his work, and why he founded the organization.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Most recently, our revelations inside Twitter, the Twitter executive stated that their culture 1.00
00:00:08.640 at Twitter is, quote, commie as fuck. 0.98
00:00:12.280 This is what he said, quote, Twitter does not believe in free speech. 0.99
00:00:16.920 Our jobs are at stake.
00:00:18.540 Elon Musk's a capitalist, and we weren't really operating as capitalists, more like 0.99
00:00:22.960 very socialist, like we're all like commie as fuck. 0.99
00:00:30.000 Hello and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster. 0.99
00:00:38.480 I'm Constantine Kissin.
00:00:39.660 And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people.
00:00:45.240 Our brilliant guest to date is the founder of Project Veritas, James O'Keefe. Welcome to Trigonometry.
00:00:50.360 Great to be with you.
00:00:51.780 Listen, man, you do very interesting work. And before we get into that, I would just love to know a little bit more about who you are,
00:00:57.680 What's your background? What's made you do the work that you do? Tell us who you are.
00:01:03.140 My name is James O'Keefe. I run an organization called Project Veritas with the model Be Brave,
00:01:09.420 Do Something. I'm in my office right now in Westchester, New York. We're a nationwide
00:01:14.280 undercover investigative journalism organization. We've been doing this for about, well, since I
00:01:20.080 was 19 years old. And we have dozens of undercover roaming journalists that wear hidden cameras to
00:01:27.120 expose waste, fraud, abuse, and corruption. Our most recent story was the Twitter one
00:01:32.300 featuring the two Twitter executives, engineers on tape disparaging Elon Musk,
00:01:39.000 calling him Asperger's and special needs and talking about how they're commie AF,
00:01:44.000 they're communists at Twitter. We've done stories on voter fraud, government corruption,
00:01:49.660 prosecutorial abuse. We've sued the New York Times for defamation and gotten past motion to
00:01:54.900 dismissed. That's interesting given the recent Johnny Depp revelations of the actual malice
00:01:59.860 standard. I've been incarcerated. I've been jailed. I've been raided. I'm the only journalist
00:02:04.920 in American history running a press organization to be raided by the FBI over Ashley Biden's diary,
00:02:12.300 reporting on that. So Veritas is kind of the tip of the spear. We represent an organization that
00:02:19.640 goes undercover, but also represents whistleblowers when the inside of these organizations that come
00:02:25.000 forward, because we believe that in order to expose what's happening, we need to equip people
00:02:30.420 to do that. So lots to talk about. We've done hundreds of investigations and the floor is yours.
00:02:36.460 Well, James, the one thing I was going to ask you to start off with is I came across your content
00:02:40.900 a couple of years ago, and I just saw that what you do is you get people to talk about themselves
00:02:47.500 on a on a hidden camera so you get to hear from the horse's mouth yet when i go on your wikipedia
00:02:53.340 page it says you're a far-right organization that uh deceptively edits videos and i'm like how does
00:02:59.620 how do we square those two different i mean that's assuming wikipedia has any credibility
00:03:04.300 i mean right it doesn't necessarily mean anything or you know wikipedia is is good for researching
00:03:12.060 you know rhinoceros in uh uh you know the country you know africa but not necessarily good for
00:03:18.760 politics um you know because oftentimes these are the these are the problems just like anything else
00:03:24.700 we've done it's it's the new york times washington post the powers that be google the bias that's
00:03:29.820 inherent um you know it's funny thing about anecdote about wikipedia um we've at veritas
00:03:35.240 we've never actually lost a lawsuit, which is an extraordinary victory for us. Contrast that to
00:03:43.580 an organization like CNN or The Washington Post that constantly settle lawsuits. And they accuse
00:03:50.240 me of being a liar. So our attorneys went to Wikipedia and tried to get cited. Well,
00:03:56.000 all these lawsuits that we've won, Wikipedia's moderators told us that legal documents are not
00:04:02.740 credible sources. Legal documents. So a federal judge giving us all these victories in court
00:04:10.760 saying we don't selectively edit videos or do anything improper, according to Wikipedia,
00:04:15.580 those are not credible sources. So what you have is the era of what we call at Project Veritas,
00:04:20.860 George Orwell's double think, because they will cite one lawsuit there on Wikipedia,
00:04:28.400 but ignore all the other victories.
00:04:30.660 And that's why Wikipedia is not credible.
00:04:34.000 And James, so you talk about bias
00:04:36.260 and you've done investigations, as you say,
00:04:38.420 into all sorts of things.
00:04:39.880 What is it that you're trying to show the world?
00:04:43.660 The reality.
00:04:45.540 I think we're trying to show the world
00:04:47.200 for what it actually is, you know, and unfiltered.
00:04:52.100 And what have you found that to be?
00:04:55.100 Well, I mean, it's circumstantial.
00:04:57.280 I mean, it depends upon what you're asking about. But generally speaking, things are, you know, as the late Mike Wallace said, and I wrote about this in my recent book, American Mockbreaker, things are rarely as they seem and seldom as they ought to be.
00:05:14.420 so people say what motivates me well when you're growing up and you're watching local media and
00:05:20.140 you're seeing things are rarely as they seem and seldom as they should be and and oftentimes people
00:05:26.900 debate facts in other words you know does two plus two equal four two plus two equals five and
00:05:33.140 that's the tragedy in america right now is that we don't agree on facts but there is only one
00:05:38.500 set of facts. You're not entitled to two different realities. So oftentimes we record these people
00:05:45.240 saying these things. For example, the Pfizer executive, and I'm not even sure I'm allowed
00:05:49.860 to say this on your show or Twitter or anywhere else, but it is a fact that a Pfizer engineer,
00:05:56.880 biochemist at Pfizer said that if you've had COVID, it's more effective
00:06:05.540 than their own vaccine. The antibodies are more effective. This is coming out of the mouth
00:06:11.260 of a Pfizer scientist. So for me to report that I get censored, why am I being censored? Don't
00:06:17.940 kill the messenger. I'm just reporting, which is my duty, what the people inside a pharmaceutical
00:06:23.980 company are saying. That's the tragedy that we're faced with at Project Veritas. And most people
00:06:29.580 don't do this because it's too hard. You get sued, you get attacked, you get censored,
00:06:35.540 It's expensive. Investigative journalism is hard because the problem we found is that media companies often give you the information that the people in the government want you to know.
00:06:46.960 They give you sanctioned information. And what you really ought to do is give people the unsanctioned information.
00:06:54.440 You have to go against the consent of the government and also go give the information that's not permissible for you to give.
00:07:03.140 And when you take that route, it's very difficult. It's very, very taxing. And oftentimes it leads to things that we had to deal with, like the FBI coming after us, which is truly an extraordinary development.
00:07:17.820 James, how do you pick your stories? Why do you go after certain stories and maybe just disregard others or think that others aren't as important? How do you do your editorial?
00:07:29.140 well oftentimes our stories pick us our stories choose us this is something that most people
00:07:35.960 don't understand um because people are very political right so most people are out there
00:07:41.560 opining and most content you consume on instagram it's all people's conjecture it's all people
00:07:47.660 talking what they think but what the project veritas and what investigative reporting does
00:07:53.100 is sources come to us with information. We try to corroborate it. People trust us.
00:07:59.440 They trust us because of what we've been through. We had a source come to us recently within the
00:08:05.480 FBI, a whistleblower. I did not seek that person out. That person sought us out. We get thousands
00:08:13.480 of tips a day, hundreds of DMs a day. And that source inside the FBI came to us with a document
00:08:19.140 showing that the Federal Bureau of Investigation labeled us as news media on their internal
00:08:25.740 computer systems. This was in direct contradiction to what the prosecutors said. We're not a
00:08:31.120 journalist, they said in New York. So this whistleblower, this person with a conscience
00:08:35.900 inside the Bureau felt the public should see this information. This is a restricted document. You
00:08:42.020 could say even perhaps classified document that very few people had access to and brought that
00:08:46.740 to us. I did not seek that out. In the beginning of my career, I indeed did seek out. I did
00:08:52.920 infiltrate, went undercover. I went in as a pimp into Acorn. I walked in the door pretending to
00:08:59.940 be a pimp with a young girl that I said was my prostitute. Obviously, in the beginning, 0.99
00:09:05.640 I kind of went out there. In the beginning, I chose subjects that were sacred cows. That means
00:09:12.400 to say organizations that the media refuse to investigate. Planned Parenthood is a great
00:09:17.800 example of an organization that, well, you shouldn't investigate them because they do
00:09:21.960 good work. I say, well, okay, well, they could do good work, but you should also investigate them
00:09:26.300 because they get whatever billion dollars of federal money. So everything deserves scrutiny,
00:09:32.860 particularly groups that are powerful and have a lot of money.
00:09:35.980 and james let's be honest everybody has bias we have bias every media organization organization
00:09:43.200 has bias do you think that project veritas has a bias and if it is would you say it's right
00:09:48.540 leaning at all well i think we have less bias than anybody else because we don't color what
00:09:54.640 we show you it's literally people's lips moving you can't you can't get less biased than that i
00:10:02.240 I mean, the only argument you can make is why don't you investigate all the things?
00:10:06.920 Well, that's kind of a non sequitur, though, isn't it?
00:10:09.440 Because, I mean, no journalist investigates all the things.
00:10:13.160 I mean, some of the most award-winning journalists in American history, like think of Seymour
00:10:16.560 Hirsch.
00:10:17.040 He won the Pulitzer Prize for his, rightfully so, for his exposure of the Vietnam massacre 1.00
00:10:22.800 with the United States Army killing innocent people.
00:10:27.120 But he focused on that one thing, didn't he?
00:10:29.980 Nobody criticized him for that.
00:10:32.240 So, no, I mean, yes, it's what you choose to focus on really is your point.
00:10:39.380 The question behind your question is, why do you focus in one direction?
00:10:43.140 But Veritas does a lot of different things.
00:10:45.920 And we investigated a Republican politician in Arizona most recently in December.
00:10:51.540 Stovall was his name.
00:10:53.120 And he was saying things in his automobile to his colleague that he was saying directly contradicted his public policy stances.
00:10:59.960 And as Veritas grows, you'll see us do a lot more stories. But the question behind your question is, you know, why do you want you seem more conservative? Listen, I mean, you'll generally have sources come to us with corruption in the government. And people say, well, left wing, right wing. Well, since when is the FBI left wing? CNN left wing? Is the New York Times left wing? Are pharmaceutical companies left wing? If so, when did that happen? And what's your definition of left?
00:11:28.400 So we really have to revisit these definitions of both ideology and public policy as Veritas grows.
00:11:39.340 And James, you talk about holding people with power to account and investigating them.
00:11:43.580 I think one of the things that we would definitely all agree on is the tremendous power that social media and big tech companies currently have.
00:11:50.160 And you've done a lot of work to expose some of the biases inherent in those companies.
00:11:56.840 Most recently, you mentioned Twitter.
00:11:58.940 What is your perception?
00:12:00.080 We talk about, you know, Big Pharma being or not being left wing.
00:12:02.920 Do you think that the big tech companies have a political bias or some other kind of bias?
00:12:10.520 What do you think is going on there?
00:12:13.660 Well, most recently, our revelations inside Twitter, the Twitter executive stated that 0.96
00:12:22.980 their culture at twitter is quote commie as fuck this is what he said we asked him what he meant 0.94
00:12:30.760 by that and he said quote twitter does not believe in free speech this is his word so you're asking 0.96
00:12:35.760 me what i think i'm only going to quote the people that work at twitter currently and by the way
00:12:40.740 that's what makes me less biased than anybody else you've ever spoken to here's what he said quote
00:12:45.500 twitter does not believe in free speech um our jobs are at stake elon musk's a capitalist and
00:12:51.780 we weren't really operating as capitalists, more like very socialist, like we're all like 0.99
00:12:57.880 commie as fuck. I don't know if two parties can truly coexist on one platform. 0.98
00:13:04.960 So this is what this man is saying at Twitter. His name is Saru Murugusan. He's a Twitter senior
00:13:12.900 engineer. And he says many of his colleagues have voiced that it would be their last day at Twitter
00:13:18.180 when Elon Musk takes over the company.
00:13:21.080 So clearly, based upon his own remarks,
00:13:23.700 he's describing the internal culture,
00:13:25.920 a very zealous ideological culture at Twitter.
00:13:30.140 And James, by the way, I grew up in the Soviet Union. 1.00
00:13:32.620 I'm not on board with any of this shit. 0.99
00:13:34.120 The reason I'm asking you what you think 0.99
00:13:36.140 is I mainly was asking what have you found
00:13:39.680 based on your investigations?
00:13:41.360 Because while I follow you and your content,
00:13:44.120 I haven't seen every bit of content that you've produced.
00:13:46.480 So I guess what I'm asking is what beyond that one interaction with this particular person, what have you found as a broader theme in terms of these big tech companies?
00:13:58.180 More like what he said. And there's a kind of the problem is, is that, you know, in going back to my Pfizer example, it's my duty to report what these people are saying.
00:14:10.420 And when you're censored for doing that, it creates a real catch-22 because in the case of Pfizer, people say, are you pro or anti-vaccine?
00:14:23.280 It doesn't really matter what my opinion is on that.
00:14:27.080 I don't really have one.
00:14:28.020 I'm not a scientist.
00:14:29.060 I don't have enough information really to even tell you what I think.
00:14:33.560 But when Pfizer's number three or number four position in Washington, D.C., Vanessa Gellman was her name, and she was a top executive in the company, and she's saying in emails, we've got to hide information from our customers.
00:14:51.700 We can't tell our customers that we use fetal cells in the development process of our vaccines.
00:14:57.360 I have a responsibility to republish that information and to report it, especially if it's a secret.
00:15:04.220 If they want to keep a secret from their customers, it's my duty to report that.
00:15:08.580 And Instagram removed people's ability to tag Project Veritas and myself.
00:15:13.920 That means you cannot tag us on Instagram.
00:15:16.820 And there's a little box that shows up that says we've spread misinformation about COVID.
00:15:22.800 And again, my question to these companies is – and by the way, I'm a very litigious individual. I like to sue. I like to defeat people who do sue me. We've never lost a case. So my question for these – and by the way, I can't sue Instagram and Twitter under this rule because of a federal law that shields these companies from immunity.
00:15:43.500 I'm certainly not shielded from immunity when I make statements about people.
00:15:48.000 But my question, and this is a rhetorical one because the answer we know, is what is misinformation about publishing an email from Pfizer's executive saying they want to hide information from people?
00:16:00.520 That's my responsibility, okay?
00:16:03.000 So what you have is a twisted vortex which disincentivizes people from doing the right thing.
00:16:09.500 It disincentivizes journalists from reporting truths unspoken, because when you do report the information that you're supposed to report, you get punished in the worst way in the 21st century to punish someone is to de-platform them.
00:16:25.320 And that's why and that's really why we have the problems that we have.
00:16:28.880 You know, when a Pfizer executive says, don't tell anybody this, what's the first thing going through my mind is I want to publish that information and I'm censored for it.
00:16:38.260 That answers your question about the problem in big tech companies and the problem overall.
00:16:44.040 Hey, Konstantin, do you want better mental health?
00:16:48.100 I'm from Russia. We don't have mental health.
00:16:50.560 So how do you deal with mental health?
00:16:52.480 You drink vodka, then go out and wrestle bear.
00:16:55.520 If you live, you feel better. If you die, you're not real man.
00:16:59.540 What about the bear's feelings?
00:17:01.420 It's Russian bear. It has no feelings.
00:17:03.720 People don't always realize that physical symptoms like headaches, teeth grinding, and even digestive issues can be indicators of stress.
00:17:12.400 And let's not forget about doom scrolling, not sleeping enough, sleeping too much, under-eating, and over-eating.
00:17:19.560 Sleeping too much, under-eating, this is Western disease. 1.00
00:17:23.620 Therapy has really helped me in my life to concentrate and focus.
00:17:27.380 it's really important to have someone impartial who you can talk to about the
00:17:32.420 tricky issues that you're struggling to deal with. Therapy has played a really
00:17:36.800 important role in helping me to deal with my ADHD and become better in all
00:17:41.880 areas of my life. Why is he telling them how weak he is? Drink vodka, feel better.
00:17:47.840 BetterHelp is customized online therapy that offers video, phone and even live
00:17:53.760 live chat sessions with your therapist so you don't have to see anyone on camera if you don't
00:17:59.460 want to. Trigonometry funds get 10% off their first month at betterhelp.com forward slash
00:18:05.000 trigger especially if they're not real men. That's b-e-t-t-e-r-h-e-l-p.com slash trigger.
00:18:15.880 And James, why is it that mainstream media don't cover these particular topics? Why is it left to
00:18:22.960 an organization like yours that started relatively recently why don't we get the big
00:18:29.360 the big publications the big channels reporting on this this is public interest surely i would i
00:18:35.400 would refer your audience to my book american muckraker which is probably the most comprehensive
00:18:40.460 modern essays on the question you just asked is the entire subject of my book but in short
00:18:48.400 In a nutshell, the press acts in a symbiotic relationship with these people in proximity to power through what Noam Chomsky referred to as a reciprocity of mutual interest.
00:19:03.880 So what does that all mean?
00:19:05.120 It means that they get the information from the people in these companies.
00:19:08.940 So to burn those relationships by publishing the truth, by publishing the unsanctioned info, would be to bite the hand that feeds them.
00:19:20.980 So they can't do that.
00:19:22.960 Second, what I said a moment ago is that if they publish the email from Vanessa Gelman, the ideological community and the tech companies would censor their information.
00:19:35.580 So the easiest thing to do is to go with the grain, to not be censored.
00:19:41.580 And there's sort of this sort of mutual reciprocity that exists in the government.
00:19:48.700 I mean, think about it.
00:19:50.220 Do you know any other, do you know any investigative reporters who are looking into these three-letter agencies in the federal government?
00:19:57.420 Is anybody doing anything?
00:19:59.580 And finally, another reason is nothing ever happens to these people.
00:20:03.380 That's another thing you hear from everyone, every comment you ever see, is always not – there's no one's ever held accountable.
00:20:12.200 So there's no fruit in it.
00:20:17.120 There's no reward in it.
00:20:18.760 In fact, the first chapter of my book is called Suffering.
00:20:22.180 You might say, well, why would you write a journalism book and first chapter be suffering?
00:20:27.360 Because you kind of have to like pain.
00:20:29.840 You have to be a masochist to do what we do.
00:20:32.880 There's no reward in it. So there's many other things to talk about there, but that's kind of
00:20:38.800 an overview. And James, we often hear people say that the media is at its lowest point.
00:20:46.000 Faith in the media is at its lowest point. Is it because the media is worse or is it just because
00:20:51.280 we're more aware of what the media does and how they manipulate information?
00:20:56.460 uh is the media worse than it used to be the answer is yes there's a there's a it's always
00:21:03.960 happened just like fbi jade grew hoover existed years ago and would use in dirt on people but i 1.00
00:21:10.340 think it's gotten worse because of the consolidation of of the big tech companies and most of the
00:21:18.480 profits that uh go to most of the information disseminated by the powers that be the new york
00:21:25.400 Times, CBS News are on Google and Twitter and Instagram. That's where people see the information.
00:21:32.420 There's also fewer newspapers than there used to be, fewer local journalism than there used to be.
00:21:37.040 There's very few reporters on quote unquote investigative journalism. And it's New York
00:21:42.180 Times or Washington Post, and that's about it in the United States. That just wasn't the case in
00:21:46.360 the 1960s, 70s and 80s. I mean, you had organizations like the Chicago Sun-Times,
00:21:50.860 which did intrepid undercover work at local bars, catching city inspectors, bribing people.
00:21:57.100 You just don't see that anymore. You just don't. And you had a lot of other undercover investigative
00:22:06.400 exposés in the 80s and 90s, like Mike Wallace and Primetime Live and Diane Sawyer catching
00:22:11.880 grocery store people and rotting meat. But that created lawsuits. Now, ABC News got sued by
00:22:19.980 uh food lion grocery and it cost you know seven figures million dollars plus to defend
00:22:26.400 and the for-profit corporations of america that run the newsroom said to hell with this
00:22:31.160 i'm not going to to to get sued and litigate all this uh so most people just go along to get along
00:22:38.260 and and do what's in the best interest then finally in in modern times you have good morning
00:22:42.700 america which it feels like i'm being sold comic book characters and disney movies i'm not really
00:22:49.040 I'm getting a bunch of gobbledygook in the morning.
00:22:51.300 I'm not really seeing any intrepid truth-to-power muckraking that you used to see.
00:22:58.440 And James, you use the word censorship a lot to describe what's happened to you by the social media companies.
00:23:04.200 So let's deal in specifics.
00:23:05.460 What do you mean by censorship?
00:23:07.500 Yeah, we've been banned from Twitter.
00:23:09.000 Project Veritas is banned on Twitter right after we quoted CNN's Charlie Chester saying that their propaganda, his words, not mine.
00:23:17.160 And I don't know why Twitter banned us.
00:23:19.300 Perhaps they should be banning the man saying what he said.
00:23:22.800 I'm banned on Twitter.
00:23:24.060 Project Veritas is banned on Twitter.
00:23:26.000 You can't tag us on Instagram, which has been an enormous wound to us.
00:23:33.480 We were gaining tens of thousands of followers a month.
00:23:36.180 We haven't gained any followers in six months.
00:23:39.760 So clearly, you know, that's the cause of that.
00:23:43.040 The social media is the main distribution mechanism for everyone. Twitter is the main modern town square. The alternative platforms to have a fraction of a percent of reach is those. And all the major news organizations get their news information out through Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. And that that is the problem in modern society. You have a complete consolidization of information. And that is the censorship we speak of.
00:24:10.560 Yeah, and that's really awful, because that's how I kind of initially came across your stuff. And to see that you're banned for quoting other people, I think it's insane. Whether people agree with what you do or not, it's just in a free society, that shouldn't happen. James, what has been the most shocking thing that you've discovered in the course of your investigations for you personally?
00:24:31.700 many things uh top of my mind the fbi executing a search warrant against a press organization
00:24:40.020 was was unbelievable oftentimes it's the reactions to our work that are more shocking than the actual
00:24:48.560 revelations i mean i could i could list it would take me 30 minutes to list all the different
00:24:52.520 things those things don't really shock me they sort of confirm suspicions we all anything you
00:24:58.900 suspect it's probably the case right people do corrupt acts they they they lie they cheat they
00:25:06.400 steal in fact one guy chris jackson colorado who is a progressive political activist quite
00:25:12.660 we have to lie cheat and steal to win this election remarkably nobody reported on it so
00:25:20.460 it's almost like the the reaction to what we do is 10 times more shocking to what we do
00:25:26.620 um uh i mean i i mean in no particular order twitter story i i asked the guy who said
00:25:33.220 mocking elon musk's uh asperger's he says he's special needs we can't take him seriously because
00:25:38.760 he's special needs i asked him what he meant by that and he started running away from me
00:25:42.240 hi alex i'm james o'keefe with project veritas oh my god and you are on hidden camera okay
00:25:51.280 I'm talking about Elon Musk.
00:25:53.280 Okay.
00:25:53.880 And you say that he is special needs, 0.98
00:25:56.400 and he's, quote, going to say some crazy f***ing s*** because he's special needs. 0.98
00:26:01.160 You also are, yep, you're also on tape. 0.98
00:26:05.980 Why is it funny?
00:26:06.980 Well, no, I'm just like, you're literally just trying to, like,
00:26:11.460 capture me in the middle of my own dinner.
00:26:13.680 Yes.
00:26:14.320 Well, this is what you said to one of our journalists.
00:26:18.080 You said, quote, you're special needs.
00:26:20.560 You're literally special needs.
00:26:22.460 I don't even take what you're saying seriously
00:26:25.160 because you're special needs.
00:26:26.580 That's not true.
00:26:27.380 Would you like to see you saying that?
00:26:30.380 Don't you also see his piece of...
00:26:31.960 Why can't we just all love each other?
00:26:33.940 Have you seen his other tweets where he's like,
00:26:35.420 I'm like, you're special needs.
00:26:37.240 You're literally special needs.
00:26:39.140 Literally, though, you really are.
00:26:41.000 So I can't even take what you're saying serious
00:26:44.260 because you're special.
00:26:46.920 No, I'm good, though, but this is...
00:26:48.960 Which part is inappropriate?
00:26:50.040 while I'm trying to finish having my dinner.
00:26:51.840 Well, I think, is it appropriate to mock special needs people? 1.00
00:26:56.000 No, absolutely not, man.
00:26:57.560 That's not even it.
00:26:58.740 Are you saying that you...
00:27:00.020 We're harassed by people that are coming on camera.
00:27:02.900 We're journalists.
00:27:04.060 This is what the First Amendment...
00:27:05.480 I know that you don't believe in the First Amendment.
00:27:08.280 I'm going to just finish my dinner.
00:27:10.620 They're hugging him.
00:27:11.420 Oh, there he is.
00:27:11.840 There he goes.
00:27:12.260 Oh, there he goes.
00:27:16.480 Hi, I was going to take a jog.
00:27:17.940 Why are you running?
00:27:18.680 Why are you running away from us?
00:27:21.680 Sir, why are you running?
00:27:23.680 We're jogging here with a Twitter executive on the streets of New York City
00:27:27.680 who's literally gone in an all-out sprint.
00:27:30.680 You shared an email with us.
00:27:33.680 Why are you covering your face?
00:27:36.680 Well, you already talked to us.
00:27:38.680 You shared an email with us here where you said,
00:27:41.680 it said, don't disclose confidential information.
00:27:44.680 Do you understand the irony?
00:27:46.680 You're literally disclosing an email.
00:27:49.780 It says, here's the email.
00:27:52.360 Team, groups like Project Veritas are active right now, right?
00:27:59.520 Excuse me, sir, what is Elon Musk going to do when he sees this?
00:28:04.040 I don't know.
00:28:05.300 He ran down the street.
00:28:06.740 I don't know if you saw this.
00:28:07.340 He ran down the street of New York City and into every business he ran to try to hide from me.
00:28:12.940 but each owner of each of those businesses on the Upper West Side of New York City came out
00:28:17.780 and expressed support for Project Veritas, which is itself insanely shocking because it's New York
00:28:23.620 City and one would think that nobody likes us there. Apparently everyone does. So the FBI raiding
00:28:30.140 my home, the prosecutors in New York have said that I'm, quote, not a journalist. And the judge
00:28:37.860 asked them why. And the prosecutor said, Your Honor, James O'Keefe is not a journalist because
00:28:43.600 he does not get permission and consent from the subjects he reports on. That was maybe the most
00:28:50.320 shocking thing I've ever heard said in my entire life. Obviously, the definition of a journalist
00:28:55.300 is to publish that which others don't want published. So for line prosecutors in the United
00:29:02.300 States of America to be telling judges that we're not journalists because we don't get
00:29:07.440 cooperation and permission from the fraudsters we report on, that was shocking. That was a wake-up
00:29:13.960 call for me to have FBI agents point guns at me in my apartment, put me in handcuffs and take my
00:29:20.160 phones and notebooks. That should be a shock to everyone. It was a shock to the American
00:29:25.140 Civil Liberties Union, which is considered a more liberal left-leaning organization,
00:29:29.340 but even they were like, whoa. So, I mean, I could go on for 30 minutes listening all the
00:29:35.120 shocking things that have happened. I think the problem in modern society, it's actually
00:29:38.460 very hard to shock anybody these days. 20 years ago, everyone would be shocked by everything that
00:29:44.700 happens to us. But these days, people sort of shrug their shoulders. And I think that the
00:29:49.500 tragedy right now we have is that it's all about hurting the other guy. Everyone is on the team,
00:29:54.920 And it's all about hurting the other team.
00:29:59.100 So people view that through that lens.
00:30:02.280 Information is less powerful and the images are less powerful than they used to be.
00:30:08.360 And I think the new currency, the new rarity is going to be courage.
00:30:14.480 And that's why our motto is be brave, because we want these whistleblowers to come forward
00:30:18.880 and show the world that they're going to have to give up their jobs and their livelihoods
00:30:24.560 bring these truths to the public. But you must be heartened, James, at the reaction that your work
00:30:30.340 gets, the number of people who engage with it, the people who enjoy your content and feel that
00:30:36.220 it has real value. Oh, I'm an optimist. I think we're going to win. I just think it's incredibly
00:30:42.480 painful. And that's why I call the first chapter of my book Suffering, because we need people to
00:30:50.320 actually do what I do. I mean, I need people to follow. I mean, I can do it, my undercover
00:30:56.060 journalists, but what the FBI whistleblower did was incredibly heartening. In fact, the most
00:31:00.860 heartening thing I've ever seen was the FBI whistleblower. I cannot obviously tell you who
00:31:06.420 this was, but we interviewed them in the shadows. This person actually brought me a secret document
00:31:13.260 from my case that said on news media, which contradicts what the prosecutor said,
00:31:19.760 And this person said to me the following statement, they said, I said, why are people doing all this stuff in the government and going along with it?
00:31:27.780 And he said, because they want the paycheck and they want the pension.
00:31:31.300 And he said, the paycheck and the pension, that mentality will eventually lead to the Holocaust.
00:31:40.120 And he said that when FBI training, they actually go to the Holocaust Museum.
00:31:44.020 They go to the Martin Luther King Memorial for a day to remind the agents, don't do this stuff, guys.
00:31:50.900 But it's just like Jordan Peterson says, inch by inch, they push the goalpost inch by inch.
00:31:55.480 Now they're pointing guns at journalists in the United States of America.
00:31:59.820 OK, and I'm confident that we must win.
00:32:04.420 In my case, I have to win.
00:32:06.680 If I don't win this case with the FBI in New York, don't raid a journalist's home and take their stuff because you don't like what they're doing.
00:32:14.660 If I lose that, it's game over.
00:32:16.320 It's over.
00:32:18.300 What other Rubicon do you want to cross?
00:32:22.020 You can't take away the First Amendment like that.
00:32:24.740 Government agents can't raid journalists' homes and take their notebooks to find out what sources they're talking to.
00:32:30.500 When you cross that Rubicon, it's the end.
00:32:34.120 It's the end of Western civilization.
00:32:35.980 So I do believe I'm optimistic.
00:32:38.240 I'm confident that I will win this case.
00:32:41.380 Right now, our motion to get our stuff back is on the judge's desk, and she has to rule on that.
00:32:47.820 And if she rules against us, I can appeal that to the Supreme Court of the United States.
00:32:51.600 But even then, look what's happening with our Supreme Court. 0.95
00:32:54.900 People are questioning the legitimacy of the Supreme Court based upon what political party appoints the judges.
00:33:02.240 So there's a lot at stake here.
00:33:05.580 And there's a lot on the line.
00:33:08.000 So I'm optimistic, but I understand it's trench warfare.
00:33:12.060 Yeah. And James, you talk about all these Rubicons being crossed, and I completely agree with you.
00:33:15.680 I don't think the law enforcement should be harassing journalists in the way that they have been.
00:33:20.680 Not just in your case, we have similar situations happening here in the UK as well.
00:33:25.480 Do you think that's happening for the reason that you mentioned earlier, which is everything is about Team Red, Team Blue?
00:33:31.220 And if you think it's the other team that's doing this, then no laws can be upheld.
00:33:38.160 You just do what you need to do as opposed to what the Constitution says or what the laws say.
00:33:43.480 Yes, precisely. You said it better than I could.
00:33:45.780 It's all about whose team you're on and whose ox you're perceived to be goring.
00:33:51.320 There's no semblance of justice or logic or principle.
00:33:57.020 Glenn Greenwald wrote a great article about this, The Death of Principle. You mentioned, I think it's one of your Guardian reporters in the UK, is getting secret warrants. It's all about good off with his head. This is the sentiment you hear, guillotine James O'Keefe, right? Put him in jail.
00:34:15.340 In fact, most people want to incarcerate the people that are politically opposed to them.
00:34:21.360 I hear this all the time.
00:34:22.760 Why aren't they in jail?
00:34:24.380 Well, they're saying that about me.
00:34:26.440 Why isn't O'Keefe in jail?
00:34:28.420 Let's jail everyone who disagrees with us.
00:34:30.760 And clearly that's a recipe for civil war and much worse than that.
00:34:38.420 There just is no logic anymore.
00:34:40.540 There's no principle.
00:34:41.360 It that's why I was so heartened to see the ACLU come to our defense. I was heartened to see the reporters committee come to our defense in these cases, because there are certain fundamental principles here at stake that we all have to unite behind.
00:34:58.480 And maybe that is the mission of Project Veritas after all, which is to find the areas of consensus in society.
00:35:05.500 And whatever that narrowing Venn diagram is where we all agree that this is wrong, this is unconscionable.
00:35:13.220 There's a great book called The Custodians of Conscience, which I cite in American Muckraker.
00:35:19.180 We test and affirm what is and what is not an outrage to 85% of people.
00:35:25.460 Is there anything that we're still united on?
00:35:27.740 Of course there is. Of course there is. That's narrowing. But if we lose that consensus in American society, we're in trouble. And that is the role of a journalist ultimately is to create that consensus. And sometimes they have to push too far like they did with the FBI raid for people like, whoa, people on the left like, I don't want that to happen to me under Donald Trump or DeSantis.
00:35:53.080 I don't want them to point guns at me and take my notebooks.
00:35:56.120 So I have to defend Project Veritas.
00:36:00.080 Yeah, James, it has been an absolutely wonderful interview.
00:36:06.200 We could have spoken for a double, triple the time.
00:36:09.200 Yeah, we know you're a busy guy, so we've got to let you go.
00:36:11.280 So we'll ask you our final question, which is always the same,
00:36:14.420 and then we'll do a couple of questions for our local supporters.
00:36:16.580 So go for it.
00:36:17.040 Yeah, so our final question is,
00:36:18.580 what's the one thing we're not talking about that we really should be?
00:36:21.200 that's a great question i think you stumped me this morning what's a what's one thing that you're
00:36:27.820 not talking about we as a we are not as a society more broadly are you talking and you're talking
00:36:33.320 globally or american well the west the west i think this issue of what we i i think i'm and
00:36:42.080 you know i'm i'm biased to what to what i've said here on this program i i think it's this notion of
00:36:47.840 equality before the law. That would be my main driving impetus that maybe even was the origin
00:36:56.660 story of this company that I founded was equality before the law, that we need to be treating people
00:37:02.900 equal before the law and not what team they're on. And there needs to be more, there have been
00:37:08.660 some conversations about that, but I'm very, I'm concerned about the lack of people's
00:37:17.840 even thinking about that concept. It's all about hurting the other team, which is a political
00:37:23.900 discourse. So I want to hear more discussion about certain principles. And I point again back
00:37:30.040 to the Glenn Greenwald column that he wrote about our very case and about Ed Snowden, about Julian
00:37:35.760 Assange. There needs to be many more conversations about equality before the law, in my opinion.
00:37:41.740 And James, thank you so much for coming on the show. Ironically enough, if people want to find
00:37:45.840 you online where is the best place to do that or band on twitter um but yeah you can you can find
00:37:53.040 us on instagram we're censored there you can't tag us on instagram i think your audience will
00:37:57.800 say did you know that you can't be tagged yes i know that we're well aware we get 100 messages
00:38:03.780 a time people telling us that you know that you can't be tagged it's hurt us immensely but you
00:38:08.840 can download something called telegram it's an app and you can follow us on on telegram and you
00:38:14.500 can download our clips which are only a minute long and you can upload them into your twitter
00:38:18.920 and instagram and that's what we have done in twitter the story we did on twitter uh 20 million
00:38:24.700 views on twitter which is most watched video in project veritas history two weeks ago and you also
00:38:30.180 have a youtube channel of course uh james don't go anywhere we're gonna ask you a couple of
00:38:33.680 questions for our audience but for the moment thank you so much for coming on and thank you
00:38:37.640 guys for watching and listening we'll see you very soon with another brilliant episode like this one
00:38:42.300 or Raw Show.
00:38:43.600 All of them go out
00:38:44.260 at 7pm UK time.
00:38:45.660 And for those of you
00:38:46.360 who like your
00:38:46.860 trigonometry on the go,
00:38:48.440 it's also available
00:38:49.360 as a podcast.
00:38:50.740 Take care
00:38:51.340 and see you soon, guys.
00:38:54.400 Would you consider
00:38:55.420 doing undercover work
00:38:56.660 targeting special interest groups,
00:38:58.740 lobbyists,
00:38:59.260 law enforcement
00:38:59.940 and politicians
00:39:01.340 around DC?