Valuetainment - October 28, 2020


How Russia & China Use Disinformation to Affect Elections

Topics
financial challenges for Trump democracy in trouble
Hosted by
Patrick Bet-David
Mentioned
Donald Trump Vladimir Putin Biden Hillary Clinton James Comey Elizabeth Warren John Ratcliffe Michael Hayden Richard Nixon H.R. McMaster Felix Sater Eisenhower Folly Oscar De La Hoya George W. Bush Robert Mueller Letterman Leno Sam Dickstein Mike Hayden Joe Walcott and 35 more
How Quibi Burned $2 Billion in 6 Months Newt Gingrich Predicts 2020 Election

Episode Stats


Length

1 hour

Words per minute

162.47

Word count

9,749

Sentence count

968

Harmful content

Misogyny

4

sentences flagged

Toxicity

12

sentences flagged

Hate speech

22

sentences flagged


Summary

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

Tim Weiner won the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting as an investigative reporter at the Philadelphia Inquirer on black-budget spending at the Pentagon and the CIA. He s a graduate from the School of Journalism at Columbia University and has written many different books, including Legacy of Ashes, The History of the CIA, Enemies, the history of the FBI, One Man Against the World, The Tragedy of Richard Nixon, and his recent book, The Foley and the Glory: America, Russia and the Political Warfare, 1945-2020.

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.
00:00:00.880 There's been a unanimous conclusion by all the American intelligence services that Russia tried to monkey wrench the 2016 election to help elect Trump.
00:00:10.560 Are you saying that Russia is still a bigger enemy to the U.S. than China is today?
00:00:15.060 Why didn't Donald Trump pay taxes? I'm a New Yorker. I've known this guy since the 70s. He's a con man.
00:00:22.140 Whether you like the way he lives his personal life, I mean, if you think that never happened, you're a fool. 1.00
00:00:26.760 All right, we'll stipulate that Donald Trump is not a saint. Go on. 0.99
00:00:29.680 This guy's a billionaire. He parties. They love him. He's great. He's always on TV. Letterman, Leno.
00:00:34.380 Why the hell would you run for office and ruin your life? 0.99
00:00:37.320 He's a wrecking ball. He was trying to build a luxury hotel in partnership with the Soviet government. 0.89
00:00:44.080 We still have to have a bet. So how about we make the bet on the presidency? Are you confident enough to make it Biden-Trump?
00:00:49.200 I'm not happy about it, but I'm going to vote for Biden. Our democracy is in trouble, my friend. It's under attack.
00:00:54.380 It's under attack by the Russians and it's under attack by the president of the United States.
00:00:59.680 My guest today won the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting as an investigative reporter at the Philadelphia Inquirer on black budget spending at the Pentagon and the CIA.
00:01:11.740 He's a graduate from School of Journalism at Columbia University.
00:01:15.820 He's written many different books, Legacy of Ashes, The History of the CIA, Enemies, The History of the FBI, One Man Against the World, The Tragedy of Richard Nixon,
00:01:24.660 and his recent book, The Foley and the Glory, America, Russia and the Political Warfare, 1945 to 2020.
00:01:32.840 My guest today, Tim Weiner. Tim, thank you so much for being a guest on Valuetainment.
00:01:38.060 You bet. Thank you.
00:01:39.060 Okay. So, Tim, some of us wake up in the morning and we want to follow stats on the NBA to find out who had a good game yesterday in baseball.
00:01:48.120 Some want to read a comic book. Some want to Netflix and chill. Some want to read a romance novel.
00:01:53.600 Why are you so obsessed with studying the CIA and the FBI?
00:01:56.820 Well, I'll tell you, when I was a younger reporter, way back in the 20th century, I became very interested in what was going on in the Reagan administration.
00:02:09.560 They were selling weapons to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, skimming the profits and giving them to the anti-communist guerrillas in Central America.
00:02:21.060 And people got in a lot of trouble for that, including the President of the United States.
00:02:27.040 So, I wanted to know, how did the secret operations of the government work?
00:02:31.280 The biggest secret operation of the time, 1987, was the CIA was sending hundreds of millions of dollars of weapons to the Afghan Mujahideen,
00:02:42.960 and the Holy Warriors, in Afghanistan, who were fighting the Soviet Army, who had occupied Afghanistan at the end of 1979.
00:02:52.360 So, reporters didn't go to Afghanistan, not with the Mujahideen.
00:02:56.520 Maybe they'd fly in with the Red Army, in the Kabul, but they didn't go into the side of the Afghan rebels.
00:03:03.940 I said, well, I'm young, wasn't married then, didn't have any kids then.
00:03:08.240 I said, I'm going to do that.
00:03:09.400 So, before I went off to Afghanistan, I called up the CIA that was running this huge COVID operation, so huge that, you know, it was hard to conceal it.
00:03:21.820 It was like trying to hide an elephant with a handkerchief.
00:03:24.920 So, I called up the public information officer at the CIA.
00:03:29.220 That is a guy.
00:03:30.700 There is a public information officer at our most secret intelligence agency, the CIA.
00:03:36.440 And I said, hey, I'm going off to Afghanistan, and you guys often do country briefings for journalists who are going off to strange countries.
00:03:45.180 How about a briefing on Afghanistan?
00:03:46.800 And he told me to stick it where the sun don't shine.
00:03:49.640 So, off I went to Afghanistan.
00:03:52.800 Why would they want to talk about a secret operation, right?
00:03:56.660 So, off I went to Afghanistan for three months.
00:03:58.620 I saw a Stinger missile fired at a MiG, Soviet MiG.
00:04:04.680 I saw the brave Mujahideen fighting the Red Army.
00:04:08.300 I saw them fight and die.
00:04:10.060 And I came back to Washington.
00:04:11.620 And I hadn't been back at my desk for more than a day, and the phone ran.
00:04:15.880 Guess who?
00:04:17.440 Same person.
00:04:18.340 That's a guy from the CIA.
00:04:19.660 Now he's really friendly.
00:04:20.620 Hey, Tim, how you doing?
00:04:22.940 How do you like to come in for that briefing now?
00:04:24.560 So, I walk in to get invited to the CIA headquarters, seven miles up the Potomac River from Washington, out in the woods.
00:04:35.060 And I go through checkpoint one, checkpoint two, checkpoint three, into the headquarters of the CIA.
00:04:40.700 And I look up on the left-hand wall, and they're inscribing really big gold letters from the Gospel of John.
00:04:47.800 It says, and ye shall know the truth, and the truth will make you free.
00:04:52.320 Well, I'm hooked at that point.
00:04:53.560 I decided that I was going to cover the CIA like other reporters covered the cops or the courts.
00:05:01.060 And that's what I've done for most of the rest of my life since then.
00:05:03.840 Tim, let me ask you, did they ever try to recruit you?
00:05:06.560 Did CIA ever say, well, if a guy like this, you have the courage to go out there and do this, what if we come recruit you?
00:05:12.380 No, you know, that's a nice fantasy, but no, it never happened that way.
00:05:17.460 You know, people don't really understand what the CIA is, what the CIA does.
00:05:22.620 They think it's either, you know, James Bond flies into a foreign capital, makes love to a beautiful woman, has two martinis, overthrows the government, leaves on the midnight plane.
00:05:32.740 Yeah.
00:05:34.480 That's really not the way it works.
00:05:36.180 It's a dirty, difficult, dangerous business, and people get burned.
00:05:41.760 And sometimes lives are at stake.
00:05:46.360 Sometimes the fate of nations is at stake.
00:05:48.500 You know, you know, from your own personal history, your family history, that the CIA decided it would be a good idea to overthrow the freely elected leader of Iran in 1953.
00:06:01.260 Mossadegh.
00:06:02.320 Mossadegh.
00:06:03.960 And put the Shah on the peacock throne. 0.90
00:06:06.500 The Shah was a great friend of the United States.
00:06:09.320 Bought hundreds of millions of dollars, billions of dollars of our weapons.
00:06:13.040 But the consequence of that, 25 years later, was the rise of the Ayatollahs and the fall of the Shah.
00:06:23.120 And here we are today, 40 years later.
00:06:24.900 So, the folly and the glory, my new book, is about America, Russia, and political warfare from 1945 to 2020.
00:06:37.740 People think the Cold War was one thing.
00:06:41.140 And the Cold War has been over for 30 years.
00:06:43.900 And now it's now.
00:06:44.740 But no, there is a through line from the end of World War II to this present moment.
00:06:51.360 These two nations, America and Russia, have been at war with each other.
00:06:56.640 But it's political warfare.
00:06:59.100 It's the way you go to war without nuclear weapons, smart bombs, or sending in the Marines.
00:07:08.220 We couldn't go to war that way.
00:07:11.000 Because if we did, our nations would be reduced to smoking, radiating ruins in a matter of two hours.
00:07:19.140 So, we had to go to war.
00:07:21.360 With espionage, sabotage, subversion, secret operations.
00:07:27.340 And that struggle never ended.
00:07:29.280 It didn't end when the Cold War was over.
00:07:31.540 You can see it right now today.
00:07:33.660 Because Vladimir Putin is running a multitude of covert operations, trying to damage our democracy.
00:07:40.400 Pick up paper, turn on the news, see it happening every day.
00:07:44.040 He ran probably the most brilliant covert operation since the Trojan horse back in the last election, rubbing salt in our wounds, deepening our divisions.
00:07:54.140 Disinformation, propaganda, fake news.
00:07:57.980 And he's doing it again right now.
00:08:00.820 The difference is, he's got the President of the United States.
00:08:05.180 And I'm doing the same thing.
00:08:06.900 And our intelligence services are on red alert.
00:08:09.660 Because if Putin succeeds, it could be the death of American democracy.
00:08:15.460 That is what this book is ultimately about.
00:08:18.380 So, you're somebody that has done research for decades.
00:08:22.240 I think that's a fair assessment to make.
00:08:23.640 You've been in this world for a while.
00:08:26.100 35 years.
00:08:27.440 How many years?
00:08:28.480 35.
00:08:28.880 That is a long time.
00:08:30.640 Which means you've been reading up on this, pretty much every article and any article that has to do with this topic.
00:08:35.120 I'm doing my own reporting and my own travel and my own research.
00:08:38.220 That's right.
00:08:39.100 So, the question I would have for you, for somebody that is running a business, I'm running a couple businesses myself, and the audience is a lot in the world of business.
00:08:50.000 Sure.
00:08:50.720 We hear for the longest time the enemy was Russia, right? 0.91
00:08:53.880 Even in Rocky IV, it's Drago going against, you know, Rocky, and, you know, everybody's looking around the world.
00:09:01.780 My mother's side, they're from Baku, Azerbaijan.
00:09:04.260 You know, they're from Russia.
00:09:05.140 So, Armenians who escaped, the Armenian genocide come to Iran. 0.58
00:09:08.640 My dad's a Syrian.
00:09:09.520 I lived in Iran 10 years.
00:09:10.960 So, we all saw Russia as the big enemy.
00:09:14.320 But from my perspective and what I see, and I'm curious to know what you think about this,
00:09:17.840 it seems to me that that position of enemy of the state or enemy of the world today has been, you know, Russia's been dethroned today by China.
00:09:29.700 It seems to me that even on the left and the right, what they both agree on, they don't agree on a lot.
00:09:35.240 You saw the debate the other day.
00:09:36.380 They don't agree on a lot.
00:09:37.300 But if there's one thing they both agree on, the fact that neither side trusts China more than any other country before,
00:09:45.200 are you saying that Russia is still a bigger enemy to U.S. than China is today?
00:09:50.900 The Russian and the Chinese intelligence services are as different as night and day.
00:09:56.560 The Chinese intelligence service is, and has been for decades, primarily interested in economic espionage.
00:10:07.900 They want to steal trade secrets.
00:10:12.380 They want to steal technical secrets.
00:10:15.240 I mean, you go back, you know, when you and I were young, you couldn't get a ball bearing in China.
00:10:21.200 You couldn't get machine tools.
00:10:23.380 Since the 1960s, Chinese spies in America have been desperately trying to steal technological knowledge, technological expertise, trade secrets.
00:10:37.420 The Russians have a completely different outlook on how they run their espionage and intelligence operations.
00:10:45.760 I'm curious.
00:10:46.080 They have been interested since the 1950s, and it's a continuous line.
00:10:51.700 It didn't end when the Cold War ended, in attacking our national security agencies, attacking the FBI, attacking the CIA,
00:11:01.780 in undermining our faith in democratic institutions, and in rubbing salt in the wounds of American society, like race. 0.95
00:11:12.000 Disinformation has been one of their most powerful weapons.
00:11:18.700 For example, did you ever hear that the CIA killed President Kennedy?
00:11:24.200 Ever hear that one?
00:11:26.460 I've read all the conspiracy theories on Kennedy, and that's one of them, yes.
00:11:31.080 Ever hear that the FBI assassinated Martin Luther King?
00:11:35.480 Yes.
00:11:35.880 Ever hear that AIDS was invented in an Army germ warfare laboratory in Maryland? 0.65
00:11:43.140 I have not heard that one.
00:11:44.900 Now millions of Americans have can believe it.
00:11:48.080 Then you have been struck by a KGB disinformation operation.
00:11:53.220 The KGB set up a Department of Disinformation in 1959.
00:11:57.960 Disinformation is a Russian word.
00:12:01.780 Desinformatia.
00:12:02.840 Disinformation is not propaganda.
00:12:05.020 Disinformation is a deliberately disguised lie meant to afflict and affect public opinion and public trust.
00:12:14.800 Propaganda is one thing.
00:12:17.860 America's number one.
00:12:19.160 That's, you know, benign propaganda.
00:12:22.740 What's called Black propaganda or disinformation is a deliberately disguised and concealed lie that undermines your sense of reality. 0.98
00:12:32.840 They invented this.
00:12:33.780 They're the world's greatest expert at it.
00:12:37.920 And look around you today.
00:12:40.220 Disinformation is damaging our democracy.
00:12:43.680 And that is a triumph of Russian intelligence and a triumph of the KGB hood who runs Russia, Vladimir Putin. 0.55
00:12:52.680 Tim, what is the outcome of all three?
00:12:58.420 So if, and that's a very good way, the way you put it, you said Russia's economic espionage.
00:13:03.760 So they simply want to be the most powerful.
00:13:05.600 Other way around.
00:13:06.380 China's economic espionage.
00:13:07.960 China's economic espionage.
00:13:09.140 So their outcome is more, let's create wealth and become the most powerful economic nation in the world, et cetera, et cetera.
00:13:16.480 Russia's attacking national secret agencies, whether it's CIA, FBI, disinformation, that's what they're doing.
00:13:25.980 And in U.S., you kind of talked about the angle of propaganda as the greatest country in the world, you know, American drama, all this other stuff.
00:13:31.800 What is the outcome of China?
00:13:33.700 What is the outcome of Russia?
00:13:35.160 And what is the outcome of U.S., in your opinion?
00:13:37.480 I mean, what is the desired outcome?
00:13:40.180 What are they trying to do?
00:13:40.980 What is the vision?
00:13:41.840 Maybe a better word is a vision.
00:13:43.300 What is the vision?
00:13:44.020 What vision are they trying to turn into a reality?
00:13:47.060 You and I are old enough, certainly I am, to remember when China was desperately poor.
00:13:55.880 And in the 1970s, Nixon went to China, as you know.
00:13:59.480 And the desired effect, the desired outcome, as you say, of Nixon's rapprochement with Russia was to divide Russia and China.
00:14:12.680 There was still a belief then that Russia and China were a global monolith of communism trying to overthrow American democracy.
00:14:23.440 Well, come to find out, through good intelligence produced by the CIA, Russia and China have hated each other's guts since the end of World War II. 0.82
00:14:35.040 They were not a monolith.
00:14:37.340 So it was imperative for the Chinese to try and create wealth, to try and lift their country up from mass starvation and poverty, which existed well into the 1970s.
00:14:51.700 And one way they do this is to send tens of thousands of students and businessmen into the United States.
00:15:03.020 And a surprisingly large percentage of those people are told by the Chinese government and by Chinese intelligence.
00:15:15.860 You need to go.
00:15:19.500 Steal secrets.
00:15:20.520 Let's get an education.
00:15:21.820 We'll pay for it.
00:15:23.100 But steal what you can.
00:15:25.080 Learn what you can.
00:15:26.440 But take what you can.
00:15:28.280 And bring it back home and you will be rewarded.
00:15:30.820 The Russian intelligence services.
00:15:32.980 Now, remember, the U.S. only set up an intelligence service, the CIA, in 1947.
00:15:39.480 The Russians have been at this since Peter the Great. 0.68
00:15:43.960 Okay?
00:15:44.340 They are very, very good at what they do and they play a long game.
00:15:48.380 We're not that great.
00:15:49.220 We're Americans.
00:15:50.180 You know, secrecy and deception are not our strong suits.
00:15:54.540 They are very good at secrecy and deception.
00:15:57.860 They send three kinds of agents.
00:16:00.680 One is the sleeper agent who comes over, lives a normal life with a fake passport and a fake identity, pretending to be anything but a Russian spy.
00:16:13.820 Now, the FBI investigation called Ghost Stories turned into a very popular TV series, The Americans.
00:16:21.780 Everybody knows how that works, the sleeper agent, right?
00:16:25.820 Then there are people posing as diplomats who are spies, right?
00:16:30.580 They're not the second secretary of the Russian embassy in Washington.
00:16:35.340 They're not, you know, the second in command of the Russian delegation of the United Nations.
00:16:42.340 They're spies working for Vladimir Putin, and they are attempting to recruit Americans to work for them.
00:16:50.360 They have been very, very good at this.
00:16:53.820 One of the stories I tell in The Folly and the Glory is how the Russians and the Soviets before them cleaned America's clock going back to the 1930s, in the 30s, in the 40s, in the 50s. 0.91
00:17:07.560 They had spies at the Manhattan Project, and they stole the secret of the atomic bomb.
00:17:12.920 They had spies at the State Department.
00:17:14.600 They had spies at the Pentagon, at the FBI, at the OSS, the wartime intelligence service that became the CIA.
00:17:21.760 In the 70s and 80s and 90s, they had the chief of Soviet counterintelligence at the CIA, Alder James, was a spy for the Kremlin.
00:17:31.640 The head of the counterintelligence branch of the FBI, who was in charge of spying on the Soviets, Robert Hansen, he was working from the Kremlin from 1979 to 2001.
00:17:46.440 They have penetrated our society, and they continue to do it today.
00:17:51.660 The third kind of Russian agent is the agent of influence.
00:17:57.600 For example, in 1937, a United States congressman named Samuel Dickstein, who represented the Lower East Side here in New York, where I live, who was chairman of the House Immigration and Naturalization Committee.
00:18:11.480 He walked into the Soviet embassy, sat down with the Soviet ambassador, a United States congressman, and said, I can do things for you.
00:18:20.680 I can sell you fake passports for your spies.
00:18:23.500 I can hold hearings against Stalin's enemies here in the United States.
00:18:29.320 And he did that for three years.
00:18:31.000 He was paid handsomely.
00:18:33.180 The congressman was so greedy that the KGB gave him a codename, Crook.
00:18:37.740 He was an agent of influence.
00:18:39.800 And that is the third kind of Russian spy inside the United States.
00:18:43.940 And that's someone in a position of power and authority who can affect public opinion or public policy that aids Russia.
00:18:54.240 And I submit to you, I'm not alone in saying this now, so buckle up.
00:19:00.300 President Trump's National Security Advisor, H.R. McMaster, the former head of the CIA, Mike Hayden, the former head of the CIA who succeeded him, John Brennan, and the multitude of former CIA and FBI officers that I talked to for this book agree that the President of the United States, today, the man in the White House, is an agent of influence for Russia.
00:19:27.580 And that is a national security nightmare.
00:19:31.780 You're saying President Trump is an agent of influence for Russia right now?
00:19:37.220 This is the definition of an agent of influence.
00:19:41.420 Which is the last one.
00:19:43.380 Yes.
00:19:43.780 Can I unpack that for a second?
00:19:45.260 Let me unpack that for a second with you.
00:19:46.920 So sleeper agent is the first one.
00:19:51.020 Fake passport, fake identity.
00:19:52.940 You know, they just kind of go to this country and start learning what's going on.
00:19:56.160 Fake passport, fake identity.
00:19:57.200 Second one is the diplomats, which are spies.
00:20:00.780 They recruit Americans. 0.97
00:20:01.820 That's the second kind. 0.97
00:20:03.120 The third kind is the agent of influence, Sam Dickstein, KGB, gave him the code, crook.
00:20:08.700 So the third kind, Sam Dickstein, is he recruited by the KGB or they identify him or he just leans towards them?
00:20:19.260 What do you mean?
00:20:19.840 Can you unpack what the meaning of that is?
00:20:21.960 He volunteered.
00:20:23.160 He did it for the money.
00:20:24.620 You think Trump is doing that for money?
00:20:26.240 I don't know why Trump is doing it, okay?
00:20:29.720 Remember the definition of an agent of influence.
00:20:32.620 A person in position of authority or power who can influence public opinion or policy in Russia's favor.
00:20:42.800 Is there any question in your mind that Donald Trump has done that?
00:20:47.300 He has kissed Putin's ring.
00:20:49.460 He has kowtowed to him.
00:20:52.300 He has, when Russians put bounties on American soldiers in Afghanistan and those soldiers die, Trump does nothing about it.
00:21:02.100 He refuses to push back on Putin.
00:21:05.360 And as I said, the people I've talked to for this book on the record and the people I've talked to for a podcast I've done based on this book called Whirlwind, on the record, former heads of the CIA, former chiefs of Russian operations at the CIA, former FBI counterintelligence agents, Trump's own national security advisor, H.R. McMaster.
00:21:27.700 They say that Trump is aiding and abetting Putin.
00:21:32.180 Why?
00:21:33.100 Why?
00:21:33.880 Okay?
00:21:34.700 Is the great mystery of our time.
00:21:36.700 Yes.
00:21:37.400 Why does he do it?
00:21:39.080 Why does he bend his knee to Putin?
00:21:41.220 I raise the question of why, and I have several theories about it.
00:21:46.300 I'd love to hear it.
00:21:47.380 A few days ago, my old newspaper, the New York Times, published details from Trump's tax return.
00:21:54.280 Read that story?
00:21:55.320 I did, all of it.
00:21:57.700 Trump owes, he's personally on the hook, okay, hundreds of millions of dollars.
00:22:05.480 The grant total is $421 million.
00:22:08.320 He is on the hook for about three quarters of that, personally, not the Trump organization.
00:22:13.060 To whom does he owe that money, and who will help him pay it back?
00:22:18.040 Now, you know about security clearances, right?
00:22:21.700 You're ex-military.
00:22:23.300 I do.
00:22:24.020 You know something about how the world works.
00:22:26.000 There's levels to it.
00:22:27.700 What is the number one red flag for somebody who's getting a security clearance?
00:22:35.480 Financial challenges, financial difficulties.
00:22:38.960 Okay.
00:22:39.180 And the reason for it is motivation, meaning you will be desperate to make a deal that may be...
00:22:45.820 Worse than that, look, the Russian intelligence services are very good at penetrating financial institutions, okay?
00:22:56.200 They have a very close and very illicit set of relationships with Deutsche Bank, the German bank that loaned hundreds of millions of dollars to Donald Trump after his sixth bankruptcy when no one else would touch him.
00:23:10.520 They know who Donald Trump owes that money to, and they can hold this over his head, compromising information, compromise, as they would put it.
00:23:24.080 That's one theory of the case.
00:23:25.360 There's another theory of the case, a little less scary in the graphs.
00:23:30.280 An agent of influence, what does he do?
00:23:32.640 He's not stealing secrets.
00:23:35.820 He's using his influence to affect public opinion and public policy.
00:23:40.440 By the way, this is not my definition.
00:23:42.420 This is the definition in the American counterintelligence handbook.
00:23:45.720 Putin has flattered him.
00:23:49.060 Putin has given him political support, openly and covertly, given Trump's vanity, his ego.
00:23:58.640 Maybe all Putin has to do is influence him and win influence in return.
00:24:04.580 That is personally my theory of the case, because I don't have knowledge of who Trump owes that money to.
00:24:11.500 But he doesn't owe it to the federal credit, I'll tell you that.
00:24:14.480 So we got two of them so far.
00:24:16.580 So the first one is the theory is finance out of the $400 million, give or take 421, three quarters is his own debt.
00:24:23.120 Deutsche Bank, who's going to help him out here?
00:24:25.600 Is there a finance possibly linked to Russia?
00:24:28.420 No one knows.
00:24:29.240 Second one is Putin flattered him.
00:24:31.440 He's given him love back.
00:24:32.720 So maybe that's a way that that's taking place.
00:24:34.500 Is there any other ones that you have?
00:24:36.380 Donald Trump first went to Moscow in 1987.
00:24:40.260 He had a Czech wife to whom he was unfaithful.
00:24:44.480 And a pronounced case for Slavic women. 0.98
00:24:47.940 None of that matters.
00:24:49.480 He was trying to build a luxury hotel in partnership with the Soviet government across Red Square from the Kremlin.
00:24:57.740 If the KGB didn't put a target on his back at that moment, we got a bridge here in Brooklyn that connects with Manhattan.
00:25:06.420 Would you like to buy it?
00:25:07.180 It would have been criminally negligent of the KGB not to target Donald Trump at that point.
00:25:17.320 And we won't know the answer to the question of why Trump behaves this way until the CIA recruits.
00:25:25.340 The guy in the Russian intelligence service who has seen a thick file that says D-Trump on the cover.
00:25:34.900 But I guarantee you that file exists and that file has existed since 1987.
00:25:40.000 Okay, so that's a different angle.
00:25:43.900 He went there in 87, so wanted to build a hotel in partnership with the Soviet government.
00:25:48.760 It behooves the KGB model of a regime to hold them accountable without getting anything in return. 0.72
00:25:56.060 I can see that part.
00:25:57.080 Okay.
00:25:57.680 Is there any other ones that you have outside of those three?
00:26:00.520 Okay, so that hotel, that luxury hotel in Moscow, Trump was still trying to build it in 2015 and 2016 when he was running for president.
00:26:12.160 He was going to make a lot of money off that hotel.
00:26:14.820 He was looking at $300 million, which is about the sum of money that he's personally liable for on debts that are coming due two, three years from now.
00:26:25.820 His business associate in this, a convicted felon named Felix Sater, who happened to be in partnership, business partnership, with the Trump organization, dangled a $50 million penthouse at the top of this hotel in front of Putin.
00:26:44.920 Throw it in.
00:26:46.440 Deal sweeper.
00:26:47.420 Donald Trump said at the time he was running for president that he had no business interests in Russia, but he did.
00:26:55.820 A major business interest that if it had gone through and he didn't become president, which looked like a pretty good bet four years ago, right?
00:27:07.400 It would heal him financially, this deal.
00:27:11.000 And he was asked about it.
00:27:12.080 Do you have any business interests in Russia?
00:27:13.680 He was asked about it on the campaign trail.
00:27:15.940 And he said, no.
00:27:17.660 I have no business interests in Russia.
00:27:20.240 Why is he lying?
00:27:22.260 I don't have an answer to that.
00:27:23.680 Is it because he lies for sport?
00:27:26.820 Because he likes to engage in what he calls truthful hyperbole?
00:27:32.840 Or did he have something to hide?
00:27:34.940 These are questions that I explore in the last chapters of this book.
00:27:38.740 And they need to be answered.
00:27:40.640 Now, you'll recall that in the spring of 2017, Donald Trump fired the FBI director, Jim Cohn.
00:27:50.260 And he said on TV with Lester Holt on NBC News that he'd fired him because the FBI was investigating the connections between Team Trump and Team Putin in the 2016 campaign.
00:28:03.760 This set off a rather large red flag at the FBI headquarters.
00:28:08.260 The bureau, the FBI, had just been decapitated.
00:28:11.660 Why?
00:28:12.880 Trump told them why.
00:28:14.600 It was because of the Russia investigation.
00:28:17.560 So at that time, it took about 12 days, time between Comey's firing and the appointment of Robert Mueller as the special counsel.
00:28:25.420 With a very limited brief, to look into connections between Team Trump and Team Putin.
00:28:32.500 Mueller never looked at his financials.
00:28:34.220 At FBI headquarters, the senior counterintelligence agent who was going to run this case, said it was like those 12 days were like the Cuban Missile Crisis.
00:28:46.800 The difference was that the Cuban Missile Crisis lasted 13 days.
00:28:51.920 And it had a happy ending.
00:28:52.960 Because the FBI set out, can you imagine how hard this was, to mount a counterintelligence investigation of the President of the United States to determine the answer to the questions I just raised.
00:29:11.720 Why?
00:29:13.480 Why did he behave this way with Putin?
00:29:16.380 Why did he fire the FBI director to kill the Russia investigation?
00:29:20.940 That investigation never happened.
00:29:22.960 It was strangled in its crib at the highest levels of the Trump Justice Department.
00:29:28.860 And that is why we do not know the answer to these questions.
00:29:32.040 That investigation never happened.
00:29:33.860 It vanished into thin air.
00:29:36.780 We've covered a lot so far right now.
00:29:40.120 So you said the first one, which is $421 million in debt.
00:29:43.620 Three quarters of it is personal Deutsche Bank.
00:29:45.640 Great.
00:29:45.960 That's the first theory.
00:29:47.040 Second one is Putin flattered him.
00:29:48.740 Third one is his trip to 1987 to Moscow to build a hotel with Soviet Union.
00:29:54.960 Team up with them and they have to hold him accountable.
00:29:57.380 They're not going to let him go and just not hold him hostage because the model was you better, you know, do something.
00:30:02.060 There's got to be something in it for us.
00:30:03.460 The fourth one is Felix Sater.
00:30:05.200 $50 million penthouse that was offered.
00:30:07.180 And Felix was a former felon.
00:30:08.400 And then the last one you just discussed right now with Mueller, which there wasn't a happy ending after 12 days.
00:30:15.260 So I have this question for you.
00:30:17.100 I have this question for you.
00:30:18.100 So for me, I'm Middle Eastern.
00:30:20.960 I don't know if you've done a lot of business with Middle Easterners.
00:30:23.440 Middle Easterners don't trust anybody. 1.00
00:30:25.040 You know, they're skeptical.
00:30:26.060 They're skeptical with everybody and anybody.
00:30:28.180 They don't trust their kids, their family, their friends.
00:30:31.100 I would say that that's not unique to the Middle Eastern mind.
00:30:36.460 I have spent a lot of time in Afghanistan.
00:30:38.680 I'd like to take credit for our community.
00:30:41.340 I'd like us to own it, that we have that identity, okay?
00:30:45.340 It makes us good.
00:30:45.860 I grant you that.
00:30:48.480 So, you know, for us, you know, the painting behind me has got two books on the table that they're debating and all these folks that are debating there.
00:30:57.320 One is Atlas Shrugged.
00:30:58.700 The other one is Communist Manifesto.
00:31:00.220 And one is saying one is right.
00:31:01.400 The other one is saying the other one is right.
00:31:02.700 They're just debating back and forth.
00:31:04.100 That's the shot in the middle, by the way, with Milton Friedman, MLK, JFK, Lincoln, Einstein.
00:31:09.420 The two guys in the back you don't see is me, Tupac, and Senna.
00:31:11.760 Anyways, so for me, I like to hear.
00:31:14.060 That's a great painting.
00:31:15.300 Well, thank you.
00:31:16.000 I had a local painter commission there.
00:31:17.480 That's amazing.
00:31:18.540 Thank you.
00:31:19.400 So for me, I like to hear from both sides, and I like to bring people here from both sides to kind of hear.
00:31:24.880 If we want to do a debate on capitalism, I'll bring Richard Wolff, and we'll talk for 90 minutes.
00:31:29.220 I'll bring Slavoj Zizek to talk about communism, and I'll bring somebody on the capitalist side.
00:31:33.720 Let's just kind of talk about it and see what's out there.
00:31:35.700 What do you say to the recent report that came 24 hours ago?
00:31:39.280 Intelligence official urged Trump's spy chief not to disclose unverified Russian claims about Clintons.
00:31:45.120 Officials at CIA, NSA, and Office of Director of National Intelligence warned disclosure to Congress would give credibility to Kremlin-backed material.
00:31:53.440 And here's a statement that was made on September 7th by Graham asking a question to Comey.
00:31:59.540 You don't remember getting an investigatory lead from the intelligence community?
00:32:04.360 September 7th, 2016.
00:32:05.540 U.S. intelligence officials forwarded an investigative referrals to James Comey and his team regarding Clinton's approval of a plan about Trump as a means of distraction.
00:32:15.980 Graham asks Comey Wednesday.
00:32:18.760 Comey says, new information that Hillary Clinton drummed up Russia controversy to vilify Trump doesn't ring a bell.
00:32:25.500 Doesn't ring a bell.
00:32:27.140 And then it continues a little bit more saying, what do you mean it doesn't ring a bell?
00:32:30.380 I don't remember.
00:32:31.240 So the reason why I bring this up, the reason why I bring this up, and then I'll turn it over to you.
00:32:35.280 You can go, well, I'll listen to you.
00:32:36.240 I bring this up because I had an FBI agent on the other day, probably a month and a half ago, and he came across as somebody that wasn't too, he was a little bit embarrassed about talking about being an FBI agent.
00:32:50.600 He's the guy that took McDonald's down.
00:32:52.120 I don't know if you remember when McDonald's had that whole Monopoly scandal with $24 million where the guy was holding on to the Monopoly thing and FBI eventually got a, anyway.
00:33:00.220 So he was one of the FBI agents that did that.
00:33:02.620 America doesn't trust the FBI today.
00:33:04.760 America doesn't trust Comey today.
00:33:07.040 America doesn't trust CIA today.
00:33:08.860 How does somebody like Comey, who's good friends with Clinton family, saying it doesn't ring a bell?
00:33:14.240 So I totally hear what you're saying on this side, but what do you say to the people that are saying, I don't trust Comey?
00:33:20.000 Hang on here.
00:33:21.160 Because that's a lot to unpack.
00:33:22.840 Please.
00:33:23.940 All right.
00:33:24.520 Let's talk about the first part of what you said.
00:33:26.700 What you said today is that the guy who Trump appointed very recently to be the director of national intelligence, the congressman named John Ratcliffe, and John Ratcliffe knows about as much about intelligence as I know about theoretical astrophysics, which is to say not a lot.
00:33:47.300 Trump put him there to control the flow of intelligence about what Russia is doing to us right now, my friend.
00:33:56.700 Trump put him there to control the flow of intelligence from Congress and from the American people.
00:34:02.180 John Ratcliffe two days ago took a piece of Russian disinformation.
00:34:10.420 Specifically, the idea that Hillary Clinton monkey wrenched the 2016 election and said it uncorroborated.
00:34:20.980 person uncorroborated, identified as Russian disinformation, had a big, like, do not believe
00:34:30.660 sticker stamped on it by the CIA and the FBI, and he fed it into the public consciousness.
00:34:38.700 Why? To make us believe that there are no facts and there is no truth.
00:34:44.480 Let me take you back. Do you remember when Trump and Putin were in Helsinki?
00:34:50.980 At a press conference in July 2018.
00:34:53.520 I do.
00:34:54.220 Both stand there, Trump and Putin. And a reporter asked them both. So there's been a unanimous
00:35:02.920 conclusion by all the American intelligence services, there's 17 of them, by the way, that
00:35:08.660 Russia tried to monkey wrench the 2016 election to help elect Trump and defeat Hillary Clinton.
00:35:17.060 And Donald Trump says, well, you know, my director of national intelligence, same position I just told
00:35:23.780 you about, but this guy knew about intelligence. My director of national intelligence tells me
00:35:29.960 that everybody in the United States intelligence community thinks it's Russia.
00:35:36.060 Russia, on the one hand. On the other hand, I had Putin here, and he tells me it wasn't Russia.
00:35:42.900 And I say, I don't see any reason why it should be Russia. He's believing Putin's denial over the
00:35:49.520 mountain of evidence collected by his intelligence services. And then Putin says something equally
00:35:57.700 important. Nobody remembers this. Putin says, well, I'm translating here, but I'll do it in a Russian accent.
00:36:06.780 Well, as to who can be believed, and who cannot be believed, no one can be believed. There is no
00:36:15.620 truth. There are no facts. That is the pointed end of the spear of Russian political warfare. And our 0.77
00:36:25.700 president of the United States carries that spear, my friend. There are no facts, and there is no truth.
00:36:31.460 But that can be said about both sides. Don't both sides me, my friend. I'm talking about a very
00:36:39.800 specific question. Do you think America is trying to overthrow the Russian government right now?
00:36:47.060 No. No. Right. So that's one side. The other side is, do you think Russia is trying to screw with
00:36:53.960 American democracy? Yes. Ah, there are your both sides. Well, what does that have to do with? So
00:37:02.540 you're saying the fact that Trump said, ah, if he's saying that, I believe him like, like that,
00:37:06.260 that, okay, I get that. And, and look, I'm not going to say anything. The leader of Russia who is
00:37:11.600 running this intelligence operation and is running it right now over the entire
00:37:17.900 power of American intelligence. He's the one trashing the FBI. Yeah. He's the one trashing the CIA.
00:37:26.560 Well, they deserve it. He's the one trashing American diplomats abroad, calling them human scum. 1.00
00:37:33.280 He's a wrecking ball. He's doing the Russians work for them in the sphere, in the sphere of national 1.00
00:37:41.060 security. That's bad news, my friend. So I got a question then. I got, I got a, I got a question for
00:37:45.620 you. And, and I sincerely, listen, if, if you say, I absolutely degree, disagree with what you're
00:37:52.580 saying, trash my statement, do what I'm not going to take it personally. Cause I'm trying, I'm trying
00:37:56.700 to get, I'm trying to see both sides of the argument here. Just tell me, you're absolutely
00:38:00.660 wrong. So, so say for, for example, you know, for me, I sit there and, um, you know, how you said
00:38:07.820 there is a potential of motive. So who's he thinking the Deutsche Bank, the $300 million, say
00:38:12.900 three quarters of it is personal debt. Who's going to help them pay that off. And, you know, sometime
00:38:17.660 when you recruit somebody in the military, if you have too much debt, they're worried about you
00:38:20.700 because if somebody from the enemy offers, you got to secure, of course, all this stuff.
00:38:25.360 I remember all of this stuff. We had a guy that came in. The only way they let the guy
00:38:29.080 join the army was he had to pay off his $45,000 of debt before he went in, because to them,
00:38:33.500 it was concerned that that could be used as a, you know, way to persuade him to be willing
00:38:38.100 to share information, which I get that. I totally understand that part. I get that. But
00:38:42.160 to me, you know, like, let me give you from the innocent standpoint, this guy had a great
00:38:49.300 life before becoming a president. You know, you have to realize he's got an incredible
00:38:53.300 life. He, whether you like the way he lives his personal life, Stormy Daniels, Karen McDougal.
00:38:58.380 I mean, if you think that never happened, you're a fool. Whether you think, you know, the lavish 0.99
00:39:03.320 lifestyle he lived large, not driving women, all this stuff. Okay. You know, is he a, you
00:39:10.380 know, cocky, you know, I'm the greatest that kind of a mindset when he walks into the room,
00:39:15.860 I'm the person that walks into the room. He pushes the other prime ministers out because
00:39:19.340 I'm here. I don't think anybody disagrees that because we see that on tape, but you're worth,
00:39:25.000 say at the lowest $2.7 billion. And he said he was 10 billion to be higher on the Forbes list.
00:39:30.320 Let's just say he did that to be recognized higher, but let's just say he's worth a couple
00:39:32.780 billion dollars. And he's not, but, but you're saying he's not. Did you read that New York Times
00:39:38.100 story? Did you read? I did. If you're somebody, if you're somebody that wants credibility, you have
00:39:43.620 to also realize that that New York Times story is given to us by a person that leaked information
00:39:49.600 that's anonymous that we don't really know to see the papers because it's illegal, because it could
00:39:53.080 be a former IRS employee or existing IRS employee. So we cannot also naively just choose to believe it
00:39:58.400 because we want to believe it. We have to say, if it is not, it is, it's an, if it is not an,
00:40:03.300 it is, it's a big difference. You're a journalist. Hang on here. Yeah.
00:40:09.240 Let's posit. Sure. That the New York Times didn't make up the biggest story. Okay. I worked
00:40:16.060 for the New York Times for 16. They probably have his tax return. Okay. Give me that much.
00:40:23.580 I don't disagree that they don't have it. What I'm saying is the fact that we haven't seen
00:40:27.420 everything for you and I to jump to conclusion that everything's true. Of course not. Sure. So
00:40:32.100 why didn't Donald Trump pay taxes for 10 out of the last 15 years before he came in prison?
00:40:40.640 Because he lost tens of millions of dollars hand over fist. He's a terrible businessman.
00:40:47.160 In depreciation.
00:40:49.040 He's had six bankruptcies. He built an image of himself on The Apprentice, an image of an incredible,
00:40:59.340 brilliant billionaire businessman. And he sold that image to tens of millions of people across the United
00:41:06.680 States. You've got to understand this. I'm a New Yorker. I've known this guy since the 70s. He's a con
00:41:16.280 man. He's a grifter. He's a hustler. And he's conned the people in the United States for a long time now. 1.00
00:41:25.180 And the con, the long con is going to be over. What's going to happen to him when he loses the
00:41:33.660 invisibility cloak of presidential power? Manhattan DA right across the river is going after the
00:41:41.000 financials of the Trump organization. The Manhattan DA right across the river is going to see those tax
00:41:48.320 returns. I'll make you a bet. Dinner at your favorite restaurant.
00:41:58.320 Dinner at your favorite restaurant.
00:41:59.860 Okay. In New York.
00:42:01.580 No, I love, I love New York. On me, anywhere you want to go.
00:42:04.960 All right. Let's assume that the restaurants will be back open again in New York. We're not going to
00:42:08.900 know. We're not going to know how this bet comes out.
00:42:12.300 Sure. Sure.
00:42:13.160 I will bet you dinner at the best restaurant in New York that when Donald Trump loses the
00:42:22.940 invisibility cloak of presidential power on January 20th, he will be the target of multiple
00:42:32.320 criminal investigations here in New York. And he's going down.
00:42:37.800 So, so is the bet the fact that he'll be targeted or he's going to go down? Because I do agree he'll
00:42:44.260 be targeted, but the bet is on going down. All right. Let's refine the bet.
00:42:48.660 Let's refine the bet. It's him going down because I know.
00:42:52.600 I'm not saying he's going to do the, you know, being an orange jumpsuit in two years. I'm going to
00:42:58.080 say he's going to be under criminal indictment in New York. I think he will be. I wouldn't bet that
00:43:03.160 because I agree he would. You're not going to take my bet. No, because I know he's going to be
00:43:07.280 because there are a lot of people in the city of New York that hate this man. This is not a matter of
00:43:12.860 hate. But I do think it is because I don't know. I think it's bigger than that though. I think you
00:43:18.480 have to realize when, when, when, when, uh, when emotions gets involved in politics, people show
00:43:23.540 their true colors. And you know, when, when you see two competitors fighting and there is a deeper
00:43:29.400 emotion involved. I mean, people should like when one time, I remember one time Oscar De La Hoya was
00:43:35.100 fighting. I don't know who he was fighting. He was fighting this one guy. The guy started talking
00:43:38.540 about his wife and De La Hoya finally got up and he said, no, you crossed the line. You crossed the
00:43:44.160 line. You say something about my wife. It's over. What was the guy's name? Can you find out which
00:43:48.180 boxer told something about it? You know what I'm talking about? It was a showman. He started saying
00:43:53.220 stuff to his wife. He says, and he's Spanish. He told him, you come after my family. You come after my
00:43:56.820 heritage. You come after my wife. It's over game. Before you were born with a great boxer named
00:44:03.020 Jersey, Joe Walcott. His opponent question is Matt masculinity. Walcott hit him so hard that he died.
00:44:11.040 I wouldn't be surprised because this is not, this is not a battle. That's going to be fought under
00:44:17.840 the rules of the Martini to Queensbury. This is a battle. This is not warfare. This is not a cage
00:44:26.780 match on WWE. Okay. This is the law and the law is coming for this man.
00:44:33.620 But, but, but let me go a little deeper with you. Let me ask my question. Let me ask my question
00:44:37.860 and then attack the question. Okay. Let me ask the question. We're having a good time here.
00:44:41.860 So, so, so again, you're worth billions. Okay. Let's say he is, let's say he is worth billions.
00:44:50.800 Okay. You have the nice penthouse. You have all these buildings with your name on them. Yeah.
00:44:55.700 You've had six bankruptcies. You know, as a business person, if you're in the world of business,
00:44:59.100 I've been a lot of billionaires and one thing billionaires have in common, the average billionaire
00:45:03.020 has three bankruptcy. That's just the number out there. So it's very common amongst billionaires
00:45:07.140 because some things just don't work out. That's very normal. It's, it's, uh, it's, it's like in the
00:45:12.480 military. If you're in the military for 20 years and you've been married to the, to the same woman
00:45:15.800 for 20 years, you're saying, cause it doesn't happen often. The other day I interviewed, we had,
00:45:20.380 we'll stipulate that Donald Trump is not a saint. Go on. Okay. So there we go. But the point I'm
00:45:24.980 trying to make to you is this guy's a billionaire. He parties, he goes to all the shows. They love him.
00:45:29.620 He's great. He's always on TV. Letterman Leno, whether they like him or not, they know he brings
00:45:33.720 eyeballs, wrote a book, ordered a deal. He's got a show apprentice, 15 seasons, got money. His kids are
00:45:40.240 doing okay. He's all over the place on TV, gets invited to all the big parties, has the golf course,
00:45:45.080 has Mar-a-Lago. Why the hell would you run for office and ruin your life? I mean, what is the
00:45:51.100 motive? The answer is. I don't have, I'll give you all the theories if you want to go through the
00:45:58.540 theories, but if your theory is, okay, tell me. I don't think he thought he was going to win. Okay. I
00:46:09.000 thought he thought it would be good for the brand and he needed to protect the brand because
00:46:14.940 he was up to his keister in depth. That's why.
00:46:22.800 Why do you like him so much?
00:46:25.540 Because I love America. I'm an immigrant too.
00:46:30.640 My mother ran from the Nazis. My father ran from the Nazis. My father met my mother on a blind date
00:46:39.180 here in New York in 1953. They were married three weeks later at Fort Hood.
00:46:43.280 Wow. Fort Hood, biggest military base in America and Texas.
00:46:46.740 They were married for 50 years.
00:46:48.700 Wow.
00:46:49.140 I love American democracy.
00:46:57.000 I think it's the greatest system of government ever invented. Or as Winston Churchill said,
00:47:02.040 democracy is the worst system of government except for all the others.
00:47:07.820 Our democracy is in trouble, my friend.
00:47:09.680 It's under attack. It's under attack by the Russians and it's under attack by the president
00:47:17.180 of the United States. We're going to have an election in less than five weeks after we're
00:47:24.740 talking. 33 days. The president says he's not going to accept the outcome of the election
00:47:30.920 if he loses. He said that, right?
00:47:34.040 Well, Hillary said Biden shouldn't either for full intensive purposes.
00:47:38.660 I'm talking about the president of the United States.
00:47:40.740 I'm talking about Hillary, the face of the Democratic Party. 1.00
00:47:43.460 Hillary Clinton is not the issue here, my friend.
00:47:48.260 I'm trying to have some problem with you here because Tim is-
00:47:51.260 Donald Trump is the issue.
00:47:52.740 Okay.
00:47:53.520 The president of the United States said in the debate the other day,
00:47:56.780 I don't care. If I don't win, it's a fraud.
00:48:02.000 Yeah.
00:48:02.560 And I'm not leaving.
00:48:04.300 Okay.
00:48:06.820 You've lived and worked in countries that are not functioning democracies.
00:48:10.540 Absolutely.
00:48:11.480 So have I.
00:48:13.880 Democracy is a very fragile thing.
00:48:16.560 It's an experiment.
00:48:18.900 And if that happens,
00:48:20.700 the guy loses and he says, it's a fraud, I'm not leaving.
00:48:23.520 Biden, our 240 years, 243 years,
00:48:28.800 the democracy is in deep, deep trouble.
00:48:34.380 I don't want to see that happen.
00:48:35.720 So who do you think will be better for the job, Biden or Trump?
00:48:40.380 I'm going to vote for Biden.
00:48:41.780 I'm not happy about it,
00:48:43.500 but I'm going to vote for Biden because I think Trump,
00:48:47.960 all right, let me tell you something.
00:48:50.160 So for this book that I'm trying to get people interested in here,
00:48:56.180 the folly and the glory.
00:48:57.540 And for this podcast that I just dropped a whirlwind is based on the book.
00:49:03.880 Nice.
00:49:04.680 I interviewed general Michael Hayden.
00:49:09.620 You remember Mike Hayden?
00:49:11.340 Mm-hmm.
00:49:12.040 General Michael Hayden,
00:49:13.620 head of the national security agency under president George W.
00:49:16.560 Bush, head of the CIA under George W.
00:49:19.660 Bush, patriot, deeply conservative, four-star general.
00:49:26.660 So we talked and I asked him just what you're asking me.
00:49:30.980 I said, what do you think is going to happen?
00:49:33.140 Because, you know,
00:49:33.660 the CIA is supposed to be good at predicting things, right?
00:49:37.900 Here's what general Hayden said, four-star general, American patriot.
00:49:41.440 He said, if Donald Trump wins this election, American democracy is over.
00:49:48.980 We'll stop.
00:49:51.660 Were you more of a Sanders fan or a Biden fan?
00:49:55.240 Me?
00:49:55.860 Yeah.
00:49:57.160 Kind of like Elizabeth Warren.
00:49:59.240 Oh, you liked Elizabeth Warren.
00:50:00.320 Interesting.
00:50:00.760 Okay.
00:50:02.120 She reminded me of my mother.
00:50:03.720 My mother was a history professor.
00:50:05.780 Got it.
00:50:06.260 She, you know, came here without a dime in her pocket. 0.99
00:50:12.980 Lifted herself up by her bootstraps.
00:50:15.140 So, you know, I didn't agree by any means with everything Elizabeth Warren said.
00:50:21.200 But I like the fact that she was a self-made woman. 0.99
00:50:24.440 And she's smart.
00:50:27.200 Now, you don't see her around much these days.
00:50:30.140 No, you don't.
00:50:31.660 I'm surprised.
00:50:33.080 But you don't.
00:50:34.000 But I like Elizabeth Warren, yeah.
00:50:35.820 Who, in your opinion, is the greatest president, greatest statesman we've ever had?
00:50:40.340 Greatest president, greatest statesman.
00:50:42.520 Give me both.
00:50:43.200 They could be separate because statesman's could not necessarily be a president.
00:50:46.960 Statesman Roosevelt, President Eisenhower.
00:50:49.360 I think that's fair that you're saying that, because, you know, what that does to the audience is—
00:50:56.080 20th century.
00:50:56.660 20th century.
00:50:57.420 I think that's fair you're saying that.
00:50:59.160 Now, look, there's a lot of things that we're talking about that you and I may not agree on.
00:51:02.360 But I can respect your approach and why you believe in the things that you do.
00:51:07.560 Let me ask you this last question here.
00:51:09.160 I want to know why I think Eisenhower was the greatest president of the 20th century.
00:51:12.940 I'm very curious.
00:51:15.500 Five-star general.
00:51:16.700 Yep.
00:51:16.980 He knew a thing or two about, you know, how power works.
00:51:21.860 Ran the D-Day invasion.
00:51:23.900 Understood war and conflict.
00:51:26.920 After he settled the Korean War, which he did in the first weeks of his presidency, not a single American soldier died of shot and shell combat under President Eisenhower.
00:51:41.160 Because he knew how to wage peace.
00:51:45.160 That's why.
00:51:45.800 But you also got to—you got to tell a little bit more than that, because the enemy was scared shitless of the guy.
00:51:51.180 They—
00:51:51.680 He ran the D-Day invasion. 0.89
00:51:54.720 That's what I'm saying to you.
00:51:56.060 Meaning, like, the enemy—
00:51:56.960 No, they weren't—listen, the Russians weren't scared of him.
00:51:59.220 They respected him.
00:52:00.680 I can say—
00:52:01.680 They respected him.
00:52:03.100 I think he had both of them, though.
00:52:04.320 I think there's a part of it where you have respect, and there's a little bit of fear.
00:52:06.700 There's nothing wrong with having a little bit of fear for a leader.
00:52:09.160 But I would say, yes, they probably had a little bit of both.
00:52:11.720 But here's a question for you.
00:52:13.240 You've heard the same before.
00:52:16.500 Enemy of an enemy is a friend, right?
00:52:18.700 So a friend of an enemy could be an enemy.
00:52:20.840 So what do you say with the fact that both Iran and China would prefer a Biden presidency over Trump?
00:52:31.520 So would the Germans, the French, the English, all our allies.
00:52:37.540 Have you seen the polling on this?
00:52:39.300 You think Boris wants Biden over Trump?
00:52:42.240 I'm talking about the people.
00:52:45.280 Yeah.
00:52:45.780 The people.
00:52:46.240 I'm talking about the government.
00:52:48.300 I'm talking about the Chinese government, the Iranian government, not even the people.
00:52:52.020 The people—
00:52:53.740 Well, they don't have a say in the matter, do they?
00:52:57.080 They don't have a say in the matter.
00:52:58.660 Who?
00:52:59.580 The Chinese government and the Iranian government.
00:53:02.260 They kind of do, though, if you think about it.
00:53:04.340 What I'm asking you is, why do you think Iran, the leaders of Iran and the leaders of China, hate Trump and they love Biden?
00:53:11.640 Why would they prefer a Biden presidency?
00:53:13.840 All right.
00:53:14.340 It's a sincere question.
00:53:15.300 You are stating that the leaders of Iran and China love Biden.
00:53:22.880 I don't see the basis for that statement.
00:53:26.240 I see what I see around the world—and I've studied this, okay?
00:53:31.320 I've spent a lifetime studying this.
00:53:33.680 Our power as a country is not based on nuclear weapons.
00:53:39.640 It's not built on stealth aircraft.
00:53:45.740 Our strength as a nation is the image that we project in the world.
00:53:50.780 Everyone who has studied this question, and I mean everyone—right, left, center, liberal, conservative—
00:53:56.980 see what is happening to the image of the United States and the world.
00:54:01.680 The way in which we project our power by saying we are a shining city on a hill.
00:54:13.140 We're not today.
00:54:14.360 We have handled the coronavirus crisis worse than anybody in the world.
00:54:22.580 We have less than 5% of the world's population.
00:54:25.560 We have a quarter of the deaths.
00:54:27.980 Our image as a country has been damaged by this president.
00:54:33.300 And I fear for our republic.
00:54:35.700 I love this country.
00:54:38.820 This is why I wrote this book, The Falling and the Glory, to make people understand that we are at war with Russia. 0.88
00:54:48.160 That war is fought with political warfare.
00:54:50.300 We won the 20th century.
00:54:52.700 We helped bring down the Soviet Union, the evil empire. 1.00
00:54:56.340 They are winning the 21st century.
00:55:00.040 And that is a danger, mortal danger, for the United States of America.
00:55:07.620 People need to know this.
00:55:08.700 There's a lot to be said with what you're saying.
00:55:14.100 The audience can't make up their mind for themselves.
00:55:17.360 For me, I really worry about China way more than I worry about Russia.
00:55:22.700 And I know the difference between Russia and China, the way I break it down is the following.
00:55:26.780 Russia will come to you and tell you, we're powerful. 1.00
00:55:29.520 If you mess with us, we'll kill you. 1.00
00:55:31.040 That's Russia. 1.00
00:55:32.060 They're a weak country.
00:55:33.160 China will come to you and China will say, we respect you, you're so great, and take every information out of your house and leave. 0.86
00:55:39.900 There's a big difference.
00:55:41.060 And I'm talking not the people.
00:55:42.540 I'm talking about the government.
00:55:43.740 I'm not talking about the people.
00:55:44.900 So I don't disagree with you on the fact that you can never take Russia lightly because Russia's motivation is to be the most powerful regime in the world.
00:55:53.280 Power, power.
00:55:54.460 But I don't think China's right behind them.
00:55:56.500 I think those two are very close to each other.
00:55:58.900 I'm not an expert on China.
00:56:00.840 Yeah.
00:56:01.540 Full stop.
00:56:02.040 I am an expert on this war between America and Russia. 0.96
00:56:06.200 Fair enough.
00:56:06.960 The tools that they are using are not the weapons of war.
00:56:11.120 They are disinformation, sabotage, subversion.
00:56:15.140 And those are the weapons of the weak.
00:56:18.320 This is asymmetrical warfare.
00:56:22.080 And they are cleaning our clock, my friend.
00:56:24.520 They are hurting us.
00:56:26.760 And the President of the United States has done nothing to prevent it.
00:56:30.560 And he is actively aiding and abetting them right now.
00:56:35.580 Don't take my word for it.
00:56:37.120 Take the words of his national security advisor, General H.R. McMaster.
00:56:42.240 He uttered those words today.
00:56:44.780 Trump is aiding and abetting Putin.
00:56:46.960 This is an emergency.
00:56:49.740 I want people to read this book to understand how that emergency came to pass.
00:56:56.600 Here's what we're going to do.
00:56:58.320 We're going to put the link to your book below.
00:57:00.520 Are you more on Twitter or more on Instagram?
00:57:02.400 Which one are you more active on?
00:57:03.600 Oh, Twitter.
00:57:04.240 Yeah, Instagram.
00:57:05.060 I'm too old for Instagram.
00:57:06.160 Listen, I thought you were hip.
00:57:07.840 I give you the credit.
00:57:08.940 With the flowers you got in the back, I fully qualified you as a hip person from the 70s.
00:57:14.140 So we're going to put the link to your book below, The Folly and the Glory.
00:57:17.460 The Folly and the Glory.
00:57:18.640 And then also we're going to put the link to your Twitter.
00:57:20.480 So if anybody wants to send you a message directly as well, they can do that.
00:57:23.360 Even better.
00:57:24.960 The podcast called Whirlwind.
00:57:27.200 It's on Apple Podcasts.
00:57:28.480 It's on Radio.com.
00:57:29.580 It's really good, if I do say so myself.
00:57:35.100 It's the number one new and noteworthy podcast on Apple Podcasts today.
00:57:40.140 Check it out.
00:57:41.100 It's extremely entertaining.
00:57:43.300 Tim, if you send us that interview with the general that you did, we'll put that at the bottom for people to be able to go listen to it.
00:57:49.660 So if you just send us the link, the team will put it below.
00:57:51.700 They'll be able to listen to it as well.
00:57:53.360 I got to talk to my producer about that.
00:57:55.280 Okay, that sounds good.
00:57:56.320 If you're a producer, Pru, you sound like you're a producer, you're like an Italian family. 1.00
00:58:00.360 Let me talk to the people, see what I can do.
00:58:02.880 I got to talk to the couple.
00:58:05.560 By the way, you got a way of doing accents.
00:58:07.880 I saw a couple of your talks.
00:58:09.020 You did a couple of good accents.
00:58:10.280 So you got a gift there as well.
00:58:11.800 But in closing, Tim, thank you so much for being a guest on Value, Tim.
00:58:15.460 And I really enjoyed it.
00:58:16.320 I appreciate you sharing your perspective with us.
00:58:18.460 And hopefully, we still have to have a bet.
00:58:21.140 So how about we make the bet on the presidency?
00:58:22.920 Are you confident enough to make it Biden-Trump?
00:58:25.040 I'm willing to take any side just to have some kind of a bet with you, dinner, because
00:58:29.100 what's the over-under?
00:58:32.220 115, minus 115, meaning Biden's in favor right now of winning, Vegas.
00:58:38.760 What is it in Vegas?
00:58:40.200 Vegas has him.
00:58:41.340 You bet 100, you win 85.
00:58:43.640 You got to bet 115 to win 100.
00:58:46.520 I'll take that.
00:58:48.300 So do you want to do dinner?
00:58:50.540 You take Biden.
00:58:51.420 I take Trump.
00:58:52.920 If Biden wins, dinner's on me.
00:58:55.480 If Trump wins, dinner's on you.
00:58:57.200 You got to bet.
00:58:58.160 Bet?
00:58:58.700 New York, favorite restaurant?
00:59:00.000 We go to it.
00:59:00.680 I'm good with that.
00:59:01.720 I bet he won $150, though.
00:59:04.140 It's all good.
00:59:04.880 You tell me where you want to go.
00:59:06.060 I'll treat you.
00:59:06.460 I've enjoyed the conversation a lot.
00:59:07.680 Tim, once again, thank you so much for your time.
00:59:09.820 Take care.
00:59:10.260 Bye-bye.
00:59:10.740 All right.
00:59:11.420 So do you agree with him?
00:59:12.640 Do you agree with what he had to say?
00:59:14.340 Comment below.
00:59:15.060 Yes, no, maybe.
00:59:16.020 I don't know.
00:59:16.600 He made some points for himself, but you could tell there was emotions behind there as well.
00:59:20.500 I did definitely enjoy speaking with him again.
00:59:23.100 If you haven't gotten the book, we'll put the link below for you to go out there and get it.
00:59:25.740 But I got two other interviews I want you to watch if you enjoyed this one.
00:59:28.380 I have one interview I did with a former 28-year, I believe, CIA agent, Jonah Mendes, who she was a chief disguise officer.
00:59:34.980 What she did for the longest time.
00:59:36.320 If you've never watched this interview, I did it right outside the White House.
00:59:39.540 And you almost see the view of the White House.
00:59:41.340 If you've never seen this, click over here.
00:59:43.200 If you want to see the interview I did with John Perkins, who worked with different countries,
00:59:50.840 going, negotiating, and he was an economic hitman.
00:59:53.980 Very interesting story.
00:59:55.600 Click over here to watch it.
00:59:56.900 And if you've not subscribed to the channel, please do so.
00:59:58.820 Thanks for watching, everybody.
00:59:59.660 Take care.
01:00:00.080 Bye-bye.