00:01:25.440And I hope they're going to fine the wrongdoers, fine the criminals, prosecute them, and put them in jail.
00:01:32.600Also, we're going to look into recent comments and actions by the former head of the FBI, that crack law enforcement official who managed not to investigate those crimes we just talked about, James Comey,
00:01:43.920who spent the entire Trump presidency or much of the Trump presidency undermining the president of the United States, attacking the president of the United States until finally he was rightly fired.
00:01:54.020He's made some comments that are nothing short of shocking, and he has effectively called for the assassination of the president of the United States.
00:02:05.600You might think that as hyperbole, but we're going to break down exactly what James Comey did.
00:02:10.580And finally, we're going to talk about a lawsuit that NPR has filed.
00:02:16.300NPR, National Public Radio, has filed a lawsuit saying that President Trump, trying to cut off taxpayer funding for their wildly partisan,
00:02:24.020unbiased, dishonest reporting, well, their allegation is that not paying for that wildly dishonest, partisan reporting violates the First Amendment to the Constitution,
00:02:35.240that the First Amendment mandates that you and I and all of us pay for NPR's lying.
00:02:39.780We're going to explain the absolute nonsense of that lawsuit, and we're going to get into the details right now.
00:02:48.220Yeah, it's really an incredible story.
00:02:50.680Let me tell you real quick about the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, and you're seeing something that's really shocking and disturbing.
00:02:57.980It's anti-Semitism, and it's on the rise, not just around the world, but sadly right here in the U.S.
00:03:11.180And it's something we hoped we'd never see again in our lifetime, and right now is the time that we make sure we're not silent as this is happening.
00:03:20.600This is the moment that we can all take a stand for the people in Israel.
00:03:25.100And that's why I want you to know about the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews.
00:03:30.040They're on the front lines providing real help where it's needed the most.
00:03:34.440They're giving food and shelter to Jewish families under threat.
00:03:37.500They're even building bomb shelters for children in Israel as we speak.
00:03:42.660And they help survivors of hate rebuild their lives.
00:03:45.920And they don't just respond to the crisis.
00:03:48.180They work every day to prevent it as well.
00:03:50.860That is where your simple gift of only $45 will help support their life-saving work by helping provide food, shelter, and so much more.
00:04:39.120So, Senator, let's talk about, and you had some humor there in the lead up to this topic,
00:04:44.200because it is insane that we had these three massive investigations that got us no information.
00:04:51.040Everybody just moved on in the last administration.
00:04:53.460And the opening up of these investigations, yet again, by the FBI, I don't think this should be looked at as an issue of, like, revenge.
00:05:03.160It's an issue of justice that clearly didn't happen and was covered up in the past.
00:05:07.540Well, understand that when you're dealing with the politicization and weaponization of the Department of Justice and the FBI and the law enforcement apparatus, there are two components of it.
00:05:18.520One component of it is using it as a weapon to attack your political opponents.
00:05:22.760We saw Joe Biden and the Democrats do that over and over and over again, most notably when they indicted Donald Trump not once, not twice, not three times, four separate times.
00:05:32.160That was a clear illustration of weaponization.
00:05:35.180It was designed ultimately to fight democracy.
00:05:37.800It was designed because they were terrified the voters would do what, in fact, they did in November, reelect Donald J. Trump as president of the United States.
00:05:45.380But there's another aspect of weaponization, and that is refusing to investigate crime, refusing to enforce the law against your friends and political allies.
00:05:55.140And we saw the Biden Department of Justice, the Biden FBI do that over and over and over again.
00:06:00.520And these three cases are among the most egregious.
00:06:04.440You know, you're in my friend, Dan Bongino.
00:06:06.260So Dan Bongino is now the deputy director of the FBI.
00:06:08.960Cash Patel is the director of the FBI.
00:06:11.900Dan tweeted out this week the following.
00:06:16.300The director and I have most of our incoming reform teams in place by next week.
00:06:20.720The hiring process can take a little bit of time, but we are approaching that finish line.
00:06:25.320This will help us both in doubling down on a reform agenda.
00:06:28.300Shortly after swearing in, the director and I evaluated a number of cases of potential public corruption that, understandably, have garnered public interest.
00:06:39.020We made the decision to either reopen or push additional resources and investigative attention to these cases.
00:06:45.960These cases are, number one, the D.C. pipe bombing investigation.
00:06:50.620Number two, the cocaine discovery at the prior administration's White House.
00:06:54.520And number three, the leak of the Supreme Court's case.
00:06:57.860I receive requested briefings on these cases weekly.
00:07:16.840And by the way, I'm going to add a fourth one that is not in this tweet, but it is something that both Cash Patel and Don Bongino and also Pam Bondi have committed to,
00:07:25.700which is transparency regarding Jeffrey Epstein.
00:07:28.180And I will say the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking case was grotesque.
00:07:33.140I think the American people need to know every name in that little black book.
00:07:37.100I think they need to know the clients.
00:07:38.440I think they need to know everyone who participated in the child sex trafficking.
00:07:44.340And I do believe I've had multiple conversations with Pam Bondi, with Cash Patel, with Dan Bongino about it.
00:07:51.160I do believe we will see transparency.
00:07:52.980I know a lot of people are frustrated that we haven't seen all that information yet.
00:07:57.760My understanding from those conversations is on Epstein, there is a vast trove of information, much of which implicates minors.
00:08:07.240And what I've been told is they are working to put it in a format where it can be released,
00:08:12.080where you don't release, say, video of a minor being sexually assaulted, which would obviously be inappropriate for protecting that child.
00:08:20.520A little boy or girl should not have that image released by the government for the world.
00:08:25.020But at the same time, the assaulter, the criminal, his image should be released.
00:08:30.680And I have every expectation we will see transparency on that front.
00:08:34.980And I will continue asking both of the Department of Justice and FBI to provide transparency and pressing them to do so as fast as possible.
00:08:43.980But on these three cases as well, look, let's take them one at a time.
00:08:47.960Cocaine in the West Wing of the White House.
00:08:50.940All right, Ben, you worked in the West Wing.
00:08:52.420Tell me, how big a deal would it be when you worked in the George W. Bush White House?
00:08:56.640Can you imagine the reaction if cocaine were found in that White House?
00:11:28.400President Bill Clinton approved legislation changing the name on November the 9th of 1999 from the old executive office building to was renamed to the Dwight D. Eisenhower Executive Office Building.
00:12:34.960And so the White House itself, you've got a lot of the White House that's like a museum and that has beautiful rooms and you have tours going through it.
00:12:42.820And it's it's it's a quasi public area.
00:12:46.860You've got the residence, which is upstairs.
00:12:49.160And that's where the president, the first family lives.
00:12:51.780And then you have the West Wing, which is where the senior offices working for the president are.
00:13:07.040Actually, the OEOB offices are much bigger than the West Wing offices.
00:13:11.220But but in the White House, power and prestige is measured by one thing, and that is proximity to the president, proximity to the Oval Office.
00:13:18.560And so a tiny little closet next to the Oval is much more prestigious than a huge grand office.
00:13:37.220And by the way, for those of y'all too young to remember, Bill Clinton, when he was accused of having oral sex with with an intern, Monica Lewinsky, he said to press conference, I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky.
00:13:50.620That was turned out to be a flat out lie because he did.
00:13:52.900And there's a little room off the West Wing where those interactions occurred.
00:13:58.500Do you know what Donald Trump has turned it into?
00:14:37.900So so a challenge coin, for those of y'all who are not familiar, a challenge coin is a tradition both in the military and in law enforcement.
00:14:45.020And so when when you meet with with typically senior officers of the military, they'll have a challenge coin that that is branded with their unit, with their battalion and they'll give it to you.
00:14:55.840And there's a whole culture of like having to present your challenge coin.
00:14:58.760And if you don't have it, having to buy drinks.
00:15:00.780And so in my office, I have a whole display behind my desk of probably 150 challenge coins that have been given to me by military leaders across the country and across the world.
00:15:21.780Police officers, sheriffs, police chiefs, firefighters, federal law enforcement will have challenge coins and they give them.
00:15:29.000And usually they're about the size of a silver dollar and they're elaborate.
00:15:32.760Well, Trump has made these presidential challenge coins that are about the size, somewhere between the size, the diameter of a baseball and a softball.
00:15:42.520I think they're a little bigger than a baseball, but not quite as big as a softball.
00:19:48.600I would like to find out who actually planted it, why, and I'd like them to go to jail.
00:19:53.180And I hope, listen, I'm encouraged by Dan Bongino's post on X that we are making progress.
00:20:01.400I hope that we can find out who did it.
00:20:03.420And I will say of the three, ironically, the one that is the most consequential, I think, is the third one, which is the leak of the Supreme Court's Dobbs case.
00:20:15.540And it is hard to overstate how much damage that leak did, not just to the Supreme Court of the United States, but also to the rule of law.
00:20:27.060The way the Supreme Court operates, justices deliberate on cases.
00:20:32.100They circulate opinion drafts back and forth.
00:22:22.200And in this podcast, we interview Canada's most inspiring women.
00:22:25.980Entrepreneurs, artists, athletes, politicians, and newsmakers, all at different stages of their journey.
00:22:31.700So, if you're looking to connect, then we hope you'll join us.
00:22:34.680Listen to the Honest Talk podcast on iHeartRadio or wherever you listen to your podcasts.
00:22:39.000This is, again, goes back to the basic issue of law and order, and this is something that this administration keeps saying over and over again.
00:30:13.400I want to move also to the NPR lawsuit and get your take on that, Senator, as well.
00:30:18.720So this week, NPR, National Public Radio, and three Colorado public radio stations filed a lawsuit in federal court against the Trump White House,
00:30:28.940against the president's executive order barring the use of funds for NPR and for PBS.
00:30:46.320The order targets NPR and PBS expressly because in the president's views, their news and other content is not fair, accurate or unbiased.
00:30:57.780Now, let me stop and say, listen, you could file a reasonable lawsuit arguing that on any of these particular executive orders that where you're dealing with congressional appropriations,
00:31:10.780that challenging the authority of an executive order to limit congressional appropriations, that that's an area that's being litigated, that's going to be litigated.
00:31:18.420And reasonable minds can can differ on what is permissible.
00:31:21.460And we've talked in previous podcasts that there is that there is a significant dispute over the president's authority to engage in what is called impoundment,
00:31:31.640which is essentially to decline to spend money that Congress has appropriated that.
00:31:42.980But but here what this lawsuit is claiming is that the First Amendment prohibits defunding NPR.
00:31:49.300And the reason they say it really is absurd is you can't defund the NPR simply because, quote,
00:31:56.860their news and other content is not fair, accurate or unbiased.
00:32:00.980Now, let me say, I think no objective person on planet Earth can contend that NPR or PBS are fair, accurate or unbiased.
00:32:10.100And so we really are in Alice in Wonderland through the looking glass where you now have litigants arguing because NPR and PBS are dishonest and political.
00:32:21.700You can't cut off funding because cutting off funding would be silencing our right to be dishonest and political.
00:32:27.320And not just look, you absolutely have a right to be dishonest and political.
00:32:32.160So MSNBC can publish any nonsense they want.
00:32:36.380CNN can publish any nonsense they want.
00:33:55.820That's their ideal situation is you guys complain about it and we keep giving billions to our propaganda machines.
00:34:02.260Yeah. Zero Democrats will vote to defund NPR or PBS, which means if it goes through regular order, it will not happen.
00:34:10.940The other way is that proof of just how biased they are.
00:34:13.540The fact that zero of them would would go to defund it because they know how valuable it is to their propaganda.
00:34:17.980And they don't care. In fact, I want you to listen to Catherine Marr, the CEO of NPR, who describes the First Amendment as the, quote, the greatest challenge that she faces to controlling narratives here.
00:34:32.680The number one challenge here that we we see is, of course, the First Amendment in the United States is a fairly robust protection of rights.
00:34:43.300And and that is a protection of rights, both for platforms, which I actually think is very important.
00:34:47.580The platforms have those rights to be able to regulate what kind of content they want on their sites.
00:34:51.900But it also means that it is a little bit tricky to really address some of the real challenges of where does bad information come from and sort of the influence peddlers who have made a real market economy around it.
00:35:04.700I mean, that's where your tax dollars are going. And that's the woman who's in charge.
00:35:08.400Damn it. That pesky First Amendment. We want to censor.
00:35:11.820We want to silence voices we disagree with. And that First Amendment stands in the way.
00:35:16.200And here, I want you to listen to this this this montage of Catherine Marr being being grilled at congressional hearing.
00:35:24.200Give a listen to just how extreme the NPR CEO is.
00:35:28.700And I welcome the opportunity to discuss the essential role of public media in delivering unbiased, nonpartisan, fact based reporting to Americans.
00:35:38.320Madam Chair, thank you so much for the opportunity to address this.
00:35:41.640Is it up to you and NPR to crack down on bad information or decide the truth? Answer the question. Yes or no, Ms. Marr?
00:35:48.980Absolutely not. I'm a very strong believer in free speech. And I believe that more speech...
00:36:46.180I've been at NPR for 25 years. Here's how we lost America's trust.
00:36:50.300Well, I do want to say that NPR acknowledges that we were mistaken and failing to cover the Hunter Biden laptop story more aggressively and sooner.
00:36:57.560Our current editorial leadership, Wuhan, we recognize that we were reporting at the time, but we acknowledge that the new CIA evidence is worthy of coverage and have covered it.
00:37:06.880You've even talked about the First Amendment kind of getting in the way of what you wanted to get done.
00:37:10.420NPR is now taking this non-biased approach.
00:37:12.960I so appreciate the opportunity to perhaps clarify some things.
00:37:16.420My talk about truth was really referencing the way that people use truth to refer to belief as opposed to facts.
00:37:22.940Your comments said that truth was getting the way of getting things done and that you were prioritizing what you wanted to get done over truth.
00:37:30.040Did they come up in your job interview?
00:37:40.720Like, do you not think it's a problem that your political leanings make it seem to the American people that you're not biased and you're not doing your job?
00:37:50.640Because you agree that your job is to have journalistic integrity, right?
00:37:59.080You have 87 registered Democrats, not a single Republican in your editor boards.
00:38:04.700So, I mean, how does that work to give us the perception that you're doing your job of actually delivering unbiased information?
00:38:11.640Well, I would agree with you that that number is a concern if it is accurate.
00:38:14.820I do believe that we need to have journalists who represent the full breadth of the American society so that we can report well for all Americans.
00:38:30.600And then she's like, yeah, if that number is true, then it is a concern.
00:38:36.540The argument of NPR is that the First Amendment requires for you and me to keep paying for them to propagandize and lie.
00:38:46.760And I got to say, one of my favorite facts, as I said, it's not just NPR.
00:38:50.920It's three Colorado radio stations, the statewide Colorado public radio station based in Denver, KSUT, which was originally founded by the Southern Ute Indian tribe.
00:39:04.840And this is the one that cracks me up, the Aspen Public Radio, which broadcasts in Aspen, one of the richest communities on planet Earth.
00:39:16.020If you're in Aspen and you look at the airport, you just see a line of private jets as far as the eye can see.
00:39:23.880And their argument is the First Amendment mandates that we tax American workers to pay for propaganda in Aspen because the poor, wretched masses of Aspen can't afford to pay for their own propaganda.
00:39:38.920They need to tax American workers instead.