Oct. 28, 2024 - Bannon's War Room
46:17
Participants
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| This is the primal scream of a dying regime. | ||
|
unidentified
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Pray for our enemies, because we're going medieval on these people. | |
| I've got a free shot of all these networks lying about the people. | ||
|
unidentified
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The people have had a belly full of it. | |
| I know you don't like hearing that. | ||
| I know you try to do everything in the world to stop that, but you're not going to stop it. | ||
| It's going to happen. | ||
| And where do people like that go to share the big lie? | ||
|
unidentified
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MAGA Media. | |
| I wish in my soul, I wish that any of these people had a conscience. | ||
|
unidentified
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Ask yourself, what is my task and what is my purpose? | |
| If that answer is to save my country, this country will be saved. | ||
|
unidentified
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War Room. | |
| Here's your host, Stephen K. Banff. | ||
| But that jamboree happening right now, you see it there on your screen, in that place, is particularly chilling. | ||
| Because in 1939, more than 20,000 supporters of a different fascist leader, Adolf Hitler, packed the garden for a so-called pro-America rally. | ||
| A rally where speakers voiced anti-Semitic rhetoric from a stage draped with Nazi banners. | ||
| When a Jewish protester rushed the stage, the Associated Press reported, quote, Now, | ||
| against that backdrop of history, Donald Trump, the man who has threatened to use the military against opponents he calls enemies from within, who has threatened to use the troops to quell what he says are lawless cities, and to use those troops to carry out mass deportations of immigrants, is once again turning Madison Square Garden into a staging ground for extremism. | ||
| They should virtually be nothing else. | ||
| We could be nine days away from losing our democracy as we know it, and yet there are still people complaining about a lack of policy details coming from Kamala Harris. | ||
| Now, don't get me wrong. | ||
| I like policy discussions. | ||
| I live for the detail and the minutia of public policy. | ||
| But if we lose our democracy to a fascist, we will never have those kinds of nuanced and important discussions again. | ||
| Under Trump, we will not be debating climate or universal health care or collective bargaining or Gaza. | ||
| This is not a normal election. | ||
| Donald Trump is not a normal candidate, yet the perception and treatment of this election as a normal contest between competing candidates persists. | ||
| Because some of us are not treating this with the urgency and the gravity that it deserves. | ||
| What we're seeing, it isn't only so much what Donald Trump does, it's what his followers do. | ||
| I think it's pretty clear that Donald Trump believes that his followers want to hear That he will be dictator for a day, or that he will rule in an authoritarian fashion, because the more he talks about it, the more enthusiasm he seems to have on his side. | ||
| So we have to face the reality that a significant chunk of the American public is, in a way, weary or disgruntled with democracy, not just with the Democratic Party, and are willing to see a strongman take power. | ||
| No matter what happens with the presidential election, we have a very big problem with Christian nationalism in the United States today. | ||
| And we can see that not just on the national level, but also on the state level. | ||
| I live in Texas where we have had a concerted push towards authoritarian theocracy over the last several years. | ||
| So Christian nationalism remains a problem no matter what happens on November 5th. | ||
| Monday 28th of October, Anno Domini 2024. | ||
| Hanrake at the helm, filling in for the last time to Stephen K. Bannon. | ||
| Look, we're going to have so much to break down on the show today, but I've just got to respond to some of this stuff that they were saying when MSNBC in the cold open just now. | ||
| Why are they pushing this line so hard, so aggressively, and accelerating the tone in the last full week before the elections? | ||
| It's absolutely clear. | ||
| We know the reason. | ||
| It's because the Democrats have no record to stand on. | ||
| Kamala Harris is doing everything she can to distance herself from Joe Biden, not being invited out to campaign with her. | ||
| This is all they have left. | ||
| This shtick is all they have left. | ||
| It's so outrageous. | ||
| Even Mayor Eric Adams said a couple of days ago to the Democrats they need to tone this rhetoric down about fascism in the Republican Party. | ||
| A quick rewind in history. | ||
| In 2008, there were 3,144 counties in the United States. | ||
| In 2008, when Barack Obama defeated John McCain, two-thirds of the... | ||
| And in 2012, when, again, Obama defeated... | ||
| Mitt Romney. | ||
| Two thirds of all those counties, you remember the map how it was in 2016 when Trump won? | ||
| Two thirds of those counties voted for Barack Obama once out of those two cycles when Obama won. | ||
| One third of all your counties in the United States voted for Obama twice in both of those cycles. | ||
| And then as I say, 2016, it was a sea of red, right? | ||
| This country, therefore, America, did not become white nationalist, fascist from one moment to the next. | ||
| This is an absolute deception that the Democrats in their desperation are attempting, and the mainstream media is absolutely complicit in this. | ||
| Back in the beginning of October, I think October the 6th, CBS interviewed its interview with Bill Whittaker, 60 Minutes, A lot of suggestions that this interview have been heavily edited. | ||
| That would compromise news distortion. | ||
| So, who better to discuss this with now than Nathan Symington, a Trump-appointed commissioner on the Federal Communications Commission. | ||
| Commissioner Symington, good morning. | ||
| Thank you for joining us on the show. | ||
| Now, I think you're the only commissioner To flag this outrage up with the chairwoman, Rebecca Wurzel-Rosen. | ||
| Tell us a bit, if you wouldn't mind, about what has driven you to do this and are we going to see the full unedited interview? | ||
| Well, that very much remains to be seen. | ||
| Delighted to be here and glad to have the chance to discuss this issue. | ||
| So with the Federal Communications Commission, what we do, we don't regulate media. | ||
| The United States has a much more robust free speech regime, even today, than most other democracies. | ||
| So we don't regulate media, but we do say that since the airwaves are public property, no one's entitled to a broadcast license. | ||
| And in order to have a broadcast license, There are certain standards that you have to meet. | ||
| Broadcast news distortion is a very interesting situation because there hasn't been a good claim brought on it for years and years. | ||
| Usually we get broadcast news distortion complaints when someone just doesn't like coverage or they feel that the coverage is slanted. | ||
| The problem is that's protected editorial discretion under the First Amendment. | ||
| What makes this claim interesting is that transcript you were talking about. | ||
| You see, if you film coverage on an event, and in this case the event being an interview, and then you alter the meaning of that footage in some way that deceives the public, you may find yourself within actionable broadcast news distortion. | ||
| And so, you're asking, are we going to see the transcript? | ||
| I guess my answer is, it would be very easy For CBS to immunize itself against any possible claims for broadcast news distortion by releasing the transcript and showing that the editorial decisions that they made, you always make them when you're preparing a show. | ||
| You know, you cut a little bit here, you film 40 minutes of footage, but you can only use 20, whatever it is. | ||
| If they show that their decisions were typical editorial decisions, then there's no case and the entire thing falls apart and there's no grounds for any investigation. | ||
| On the other hand, if they don't release the transcript, you have to ask yourself, why is it exactly that they are so reluctant to take this simple step that would remove any possible FCC claim? | ||
| So in some ways, I'm as much in the dark as you. | ||
| Commissioner Symington, one of the aspects here of this interview that has led to a lot of suspicion and complaints is the fact that when they previewed this the time before, they had Bill Whittaker ask a certain question, right, about E.B. Netanyahu, and she answered it one way. | ||
| And then when the show went out the following day, the answer was the exact same question. | ||
| The answer was totally different. | ||
| So there's It's not just a suspicion, is it? | ||
| It's absolutely in your face. | ||
| It's uncontrovertible that they have edited this somehow to give Kamala Harris the opportunity to To be more coherent, let's put it like that, changing substantially the response that she gave. | ||
| Now, the FCC chairwoman, Jessica Rosen-Walsall, is she obligated to do anything? | ||
| I know that individual commissioners don't have the power to hit These broadcasting institutions. | ||
| But if one of the commissioners, such as yourselves, flags up something like this, what is she obligated to do? | ||
| How is she obligated to respond? | ||
| Well, there, again, we don't really have an established process for dealing with broadcast news distortion because there have been so few successful claims under it. | ||
| That's, again, what makes the instant case rather interesting because, you know, the last time I can find a major case that was litigated under this, it was in the last century. | ||
| It was in the late 90s. | ||
| And so the FCC just doesn't really have standard policies and procedures for dealing with something like this, and it's really hard to figure out exactly what, if anything, the chair can be made to do. | ||
| Now, just because a lot of what we do at the commission is discretionary, it therefore turns to how is that discretion going to be exercised. | ||
| And regardless of who wins the election, it's traditional for the chair to step down on the inauguration day. | ||
| So no doubt we're going to have a new chair pretty soon. | ||
| And at that point, the question sort of comes back up. | ||
| In terms of what can the chair be forced to do? | ||
| That's, again, an especially interesting question because we're just coming out of 40 years of chevron deference to the behavior of administrative agencies in interpreting their own statutes. | ||
| And so there's, I guess, a longer-term question the degree to which FCC precedents of the last 40 years are still good. | ||
| Because it may be that we have been somewhat outside the bounds of our statute, that we've allowed, for example, too much discretion to go down to the office and bureau level, or too much power to concentrate in the chair. | ||
| Those are questions that really are not going to ripen prior to the next administration taking office. | ||
| So I think it really falls to the next administration to grapple with Supreme Court developments and to figure out what the future of the FCC looks like. | ||
| And of course, When we talk about this, we can't avoid talking about Congress. | ||
| At the end of the day, Congress writes our statute. | ||
| We're accountable to Congress. | ||
| And if Congress tells us, you're chronically outside of your statute, and we're going to perhaps make a little amendment saying so, well, then that's, again, that's some new direction for us. | ||
| But in terms of immediate prospects, nothing's going to happen before Inauguration Day. | ||
| There's no process in place to force anything like that. | ||
| On the other hand, if the public becomes sufficiently outraged with an issue, well, that's where democratic accountability comes from. | ||
| Commissioner Symington, my final question to you is, and you've mentioned that there's not a huge area of jurisprudence here to lean back on. | ||
| But I gather that there's a specific threat here to broadcasters is to do with the license, license renewal, the potential to resell that license if it's formally censured. | ||
| Could you just tell the warring posse a little bit about how that works and how it might come into play moving forward into the next administration? | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| Well, as I said at the beginning of our conversation, the airwaves are a public trust, they belong to the American public, and no one has an inherent right to use the airwaves. | ||
| That's why the FCC exists, in order to handle claims or handle privileges to use the airwaves. | ||
| And in the case of broadcasters, they're subject to a public interest obligation. | ||
| And so we say if the broadcasters are not acting in the public interest, then FCC sanctions can include not just, for example, a fine. | ||
| In fact, I'm not sure that we can fine people right now. | ||
| That's another Supreme Court development. | ||
| We'll leave that for another time. | ||
| But they definitely do include possible sanctions against a license. | ||
| And the termination of a license is an extreme sanction. | ||
| That amounts to killing a TV or radio station. | ||
| Conditions on a license renewal, on the other hand, have become a commonplace mechanism for exerting a degree of control over the behavior of a broadcaster. | ||
| And I guess I would just make one additional note in respect to that. | ||
| That case wound up—well, the plaintiffs wound up losing in court, and then they took it to appeals. | ||
| And there the D.C. Circuit said something very interesting. | ||
| The D.C. Circuit said that actually the FCC was a little bit insufficiently aggressive in considering evidentiary standards. | ||
| So they said that the FCC should be, or at least have the ability to, look to a wider range of evidence to infer the intent to distort. | ||
| That the FCC actually did have some rights to second-guess broadcasters' editorial choices, for example, quality of sources or depth of research. | ||
| That there are actually affirmative obligations on broadcasters to investigate the truth whenever a story involves inflammatory claims. | ||
| So right now, at least on the basis of the last major case to be litigated, it seems to me that the FCC should maybe revive this question of whether broadcast news distortion is taking place or is taking place systematically. | ||
| We need to trust the news. | ||
| We'll be back in two minutes after this short break with Commissioner Nathan Symington. | ||
| Don't go away. | ||
|
unidentified
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Here's your host, Stephen K. Mann. | |
| Welcome back. | ||
| Commissioner Symington, could you just perhaps give us a quick word? | ||
| How is it you're the only person to flag this up? | ||
| This whole thing has been occupying sort of column inches and broadcast minutes since October the 6th itself, and you're the only person who's stepped up on the entire commission to say, hang on, we need to look into this. | ||
| How is that possible? | ||
| Well, I'm happy to say that my colleague Brendan Carr has also started discussing this issue. | ||
| He mentioned it on Glenn Beck and on Maria Bartiromo's show and perhaps other venues, but those are the two where I've seen it come up. | ||
| And I think he's across the issue as well. | ||
| So at this point, we have two of the five commissioners flagging this as a potential problem. | ||
| I think the commission got used to not pursuing news distortion. | ||
| I mean, Section 326 of our statute says that the commission doesn't get to have any powers of censorship over any kind of broadcast. | ||
| And I think we've, you know, we've... | ||
| I've grown accustomed to trusting the news and to assuming that the news that comes out over broadcast is going to be honest and faithful and good journalism. | ||
| The difficulty is that right now in today's broadcast environment, maybe that assumption needs a little testing. | ||
| If you saw the beginning of the show and the cold open we had with some of the output from MSNBC, there was a commentator there who literally basically said that what Donald Trump was doing at Madison Square Gardens was a rerun of fascism. | ||
| And it was there. | ||
| That wasn't editorial. | ||
| That was absolutely put out there as if that was an objective statement of fact. | ||
| That will appall Many, many people in the country and all of the audience of this show. | ||
| What can they do? | ||
| What can the warming posse do in the future, assuming Trump wins on November 5th? | ||
| What can people do? | ||
| How can they use the fact that there were two good commissioners on this show? | ||
| On this commission to force back against the arrogance of the left-wing cable news channels and say, well, hang on, you know, you can't say this kind of thing with impunity without there being consequences. | ||
| Every day, Commissioner, we have on this show, we normally open with something from either CNN or MSNBC, and it's just based on an outright lie. | ||
| And people are quite justifiably angry and fed up with it. | ||
| I think they want to feel empowered to be able to fight back. | ||
| And as you say, the airways belong to them, right? | ||
| The airwaves do. | ||
| The airwaves absolutely do belong to the American people. | ||
| It's worth noting that when we auction spectrum license rights to, for example, wireless telecommunications providers, those rights routinely go for the tens of billions of dollars. | ||
| So just the right to use the airwaves and thus reach the American people, those are very valuable rights, and no one should feel entitled to them. | ||
| I guess what I would say is broadcast news distortion, in a way, it's a very narrow category because if you want to go on TV and say, you know, this is communism or this is fascism or, you know, this so-and-so is the worst person ever to live, that is unfortunately protected editorial discretion. | ||
| I mean, you know, no matter how incredibly disagreeable it might be, no matter how wrong you might think it might be, broadcast news distortion Can't reach those points of view because we take a very strong view of First Amendment protections here, and we say that the commission is not going to set itself up as a truth commission to decide what's right and wrong. | ||
| But with broadcast news distortion, on the other hand, in terms of what we can do, I think what we could do is talk about where there's deliberate misrepresentation or alteration of coverage. | ||
| And it's maybe that alteration of coverage point that's the most interesting, because when you have presentation, Of an interview, for example, or some other newsworthy event in which the editorial choices that are made go beyond mere editorial choices to actual changes of meaning, then that's an area where we're not accustomed to being watchdogs because we've got a feeling of learned helplessness about the broadcasting industry. | ||
| And I think it would do everyone good to let go of that feeling of learned helplessness and to say, we are going to demand that broadcasters present interviews and present newsworthy events in the way that they occurred. | ||
| Because that's how you get within broadcast news distortion, you see. | ||
| If you present it as something different from what occurred, that's where you have the problem. | ||
| Commissioner Symington, we're going to definitely invite you to come back on this show and expand on some of these themes. | ||
| Warren Posse, if I may make a direct statement to you, you're probably feeling very angry right now hearing that broadcast networks have first protection rights to call you and Donald Trump fascists, but someone like Rudy Giuliani, who's an American hero, has been bankrupted because he expressed his Right, to free speech. | ||
| Take that anger with you. | ||
| Nurture that anger, right? | ||
| Nurture that anger. | ||
| Take it with you all the way up until November the 5th. | ||
| That is the arrogance of the system, right, that you need to confront. | ||
| Now, if I could jump in just for one second. | ||
| Now, I just want to emphasize, just because you have a First Amendment right to say something, that doesn't mean that there aren't potential other avenues by which you might have liability. | ||
| So we don't exercise prior restraint on speech, but there is such a thing as illegal speech. | ||
| There is such a thing as defamation. | ||
| I think everyone should be very aware of when they're potentially coming within a tort claim that now That's outside of the direct FCC world because we're just looking at broadcast regulation, regulation of broadcasting over the airwaves. | ||
| But you absolutely can get yourself in legal trouble by defaming people or by engaging in illegal speech. | ||
| And again, we shouldn't have a sense of learned helplessness about that. | ||
| If there's a specific person who could bring a claim, then they absolutely should. | ||
| Commissioner Nathan Symington, thanks very much. | ||
| Yeah, I guess, look, we could chew on this all day. | ||
| Where do people go? | ||
| I noticed that you put something out on X earlier. | ||
| Where do people go on social media to keep up with you and to support what you're doing here, holding CBS to account? | ||
| Well, my senior Republican colleague on the commission, Brandon Carr, has a very well-known ex-account. | ||
| That's always worth following. | ||
| I haven't been very active on social media because my personality and disposition is to be a little bit of a behind-the-scenes technical legal expert. | ||
| And I like working on the engineering issues more than on any sort of public-facing issues. | ||
| But that said, I think with this live controversy that we have right now, I will be continuing to post clips and analysis on X, formerly known as Twitter. | ||
| And then, of course, people are always welcome to engage directly with my office. | ||
| My email and my staff emails are all on the Commission website. | ||
| And if there are people out there who feel that they need help navigating these waters, we really do answer our email. | ||
| We're public servants. | ||
| We're accountable for that. | ||
| So I encourage people to reach out. | ||
| Commissioner Nathan Simington, thanks very much for coming on the warm. | ||
| We'll definitely be catching up with you again soon. | ||
| God bless for now. | ||
| Okay, E.J. and Tony, we've got a couple of minutes left before we go to the break. | ||
| I know that the Wall Street Journal seems to have its knickers in a twist regarding the potential of an incoming Trump administration doing scare tactics about inflation. | ||
| Why don't you just break this down for us? | ||
| What's going on now? | ||
| What's this debate all about? | ||
| Well, the first thing to remember is all the people who are saying that the sky is gonna fall, essentially, if Trump gets a second term, are the same people who said that the sky was gonna fall during Trump's first term. | ||
| They said that he was gonna cause runaway inflation, that he was gonna set off trade and tariff wars, etc. | ||
| And none of those things happened. | ||
| Ironically, all of the inflation came During the Biden administration, when the runaway spending, which those same experts said would not cause inflation, set off that inflationary fire, which then also gave us not only 40-year high inflation, but also the fastest interest rate hikes in 40 years. | ||
| All of this has combined, of course, to create essentially a cost-of-living crisis for most Americans. | ||
| And again, all of the experts, a At the center of this Wall Street Journal piece, who are saying that the economy will essentially fall apart under another Trump administration, they said the same thing under the first Trump term, and they were completely wrong. | ||
| They said it was going to be a new age of prosperity under Biden. | ||
| They were completely wrong. | ||
| There is no reason to believe that they are right this time around. | ||
| Furthermore, the evidence and the record of history says that they're not going to be right this time around either. | ||
| EJ, we've got half a minute up until the break. | ||
| Can you just say, I think they've got some important US jobs data coming out this week, right? | ||
| Yes, Friday we'll get the last jobs report before the election. | ||
| And, you know, unfortunately, something that we've talked about quite a bit before has been the inaccuracy of these reports, where we get what initially looks like a very good number, but then it's always revised lower in later months. | ||
| months. | ||
| And we've also seen not only those monthly revisions, but also the annual revision process as well knock off a lot of those jobs. | ||
| And just to show you how bad things are in manufacturing, for example, you're off over 140,000 jobs since the start of January 2023. | ||
| AJ, stand by it. | ||
| We're back in two minutes after this short break. | ||
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| There's just an article in the New York Times with the headline that came out a couple of days ago. | ||
| They used to be ahead in the American economy. | ||
| Now they've fallen behind. | ||
| One economic question that really matters in an election year. | ||
| Are others doing better than you? | ||
| The answer is, obviously, for so many people in America, especially those in the lower two quintiles, know they're not doing better over the last four years. | ||
| And what the regime is trying to do is to gaslight you and to think, yeah, it's great. | ||
| Inflation is coming down. | ||
| You know, so these statistics are great. | ||
| But, of course, life... | ||
| It has never been more expensive. | ||
| E.J. Antonio, what you were saying before the break is extremely important there. | ||
| On Friday, the US jobs data will come out and the recent practice is these Data are quite positive, and then they're revised back down subsequently. | ||
| That's important, I think, for the Warren policy to bear in mind, because the regime and its apparatus in the mainstream media is going to go hard on now, isn't it? | ||
| The last full week before the election, Friday before the election, they're going to fall on and try and convince you not to trust your own lying eyes. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And there's a reason why we see such an incredible disconnect today between the official government-produced data and polling on the economy. | ||
| And to be clear, this is not even politically driven. | ||
| So in other words, when we ask people not just how do you approve of, let's say, Biden or Harris's handling of the economy, forget those questions. | ||
| Let's look just for a moment at how are your personal finances or do you think the We're good to go. | ||
| But the fact of the matter is, again, the numbers we are getting do not reflect reality. | ||
| And so ironically, the best objective measure we have right now of the economy is the subjective measure of how people feel about it. | ||
| Because what that is reflecting is the fact that most Americans have have maxed out at least one of their credit cards, for example. | ||
| It's reflecting the reality that there's well over a trillion dollars of credit card debt right now, that the total interest paid on those credit cards is over three hundred billion dollars a year. | ||
| That's just the interest. | ||
| You know, we have a completely frozen over housing market for the first time since the Great Depression. | ||
| An entire generation of young people likely will never be able to afford a home in their lifetimes. | ||
| In other words, a majority of that generation will probably not become homeowners, at least not until one of their parents dies and leaves a home to that younger generation. | ||
| I mean, things are really, really terrible right now in the American economy. | ||
| But going back to the data question, when you continue to have numbers that are initially wildly overestimated, it looks like a beat to Wall Street estimates. | ||
| And then you get the downward revisions and you realize that all of those beats were actually misses. | ||
| But for some reason, no one wants to pay attention to those things. | ||
| E.J. Antony, you're doing excellent work at the Heritage Foundation, and you're telling the warring posse the truth. | ||
| Where do they go if they want to digest some of your analysis more profoundly? | ||
| Best place to find me is going to be on X, and the handle there is atrealejantony. | ||
| E.J., thanks very much for coming on the show. | ||
| We'll catch up again with you soon. | ||
| God bless for now. | ||
| You too. | ||
| Talk now. | ||
| We're going over to Virginia. | ||
| I think most people will have seen these comments from Governor Youngkin about criticising the judge who had ruled. | ||
| I think over a thousand or so votes of non-citizens must be included, must be considered in the election. | ||
| They must be able to vote. | ||
| Erin Joyce from the Electoral Process Education Corp. | ||
| Thanks for coming back on the show. | ||
| Could you just give a quick refresher on what is going on in the Commonwealth of Virginia and say what the recent developments are with regards to Governor Youngkin's appeal to the Supreme Court? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure, Ben. | |
| Thanks. | ||
| Thanks for having us on. | ||
| Very fast-moving case. | ||
| Just last night, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Virginia's appeal to stay a federal judge who ruled on Friday that the Commonwealth of Virginia must return to the voter rolls Just under 1,600 registrations that had been removed because the registrants had self-declared as non-citizens. | ||
| So under Virginia's own existing statute, a statute that then Democrat Governor Tim Kaine had signed about 18 years ago, as well as federal law, the National Voter Registration Act, Virginia did its routine maintenance of voter rolls and did not register non-citizens who do not have eligibility to be registered in the first place. | ||
| So it's kicked off quite an uproar since the judge ruled on Friday that you have to stop what you're doing, Virginia, and let these non-citizens back on your voter rolls. | ||
| So that's where we are. | ||
| So on Sunday, just last night, after Attorney General Meyers filed an appeal to the Fourth Circuit, which is the path that you have to go down to get onto the Supreme Court, very It swung very liberal in the past few years. | ||
| A Biden appointee and an Obama appointee rejected Virginia's appeal. | ||
| And so Attorney General Myers is now seeking an appeal to the United States Supreme Court. | ||
| And this is the, I think, if I understand, I've done my homework properly, this is The portion of the circuit that Chief Justice John Roberts oversees. | ||
| So we'll be waiting to hear if they decide to take the case. | ||
| Erin, can you help break this down for me? | ||
| Because I would have thought this was an open and shut case. | ||
| Non-citizens aren't allowed to vote in elections, right? | ||
| What is the legal argument that the Democrats are using here? | ||
| How does this thing still have legs? | ||
|
unidentified
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It all comes down to a read of the National Voter Registration Act, so-called Motor Voter, which allows people to register to vote at the Department of Motor Vehicles when they're transacting to get a driver's license. | |
| Non-citizens are awarded driver's licenses through the DMV, but they have to submit legal presence codes to attest whether or not they're a citizen, because if you're not a citizen, you get a different kind of license. | ||
| You get a limited duration license. | ||
| You might be a student here on a student visa, but you're not a citizen. | ||
| So the DMV sends those codes to the Department of Elections. | ||
| They do a match to find out whether declared non-citizens through the DMV are on their rolls. | ||
| They send a notice to the declared non-citizens saying, you declared non-citizen, could you please attest under penalty of perjury and possible deportation? | ||
| Whether you're a citizen or not, they said no. | ||
| This is what Governor Youngkin was talking about over the weekend on his social media feed, saying they've already attested, they've submitted paperwork, they're not citizens. | ||
| But it's a read of the NVRA, the motor voter, that uses this term, quiet period. | ||
| The 90 day quiet period, 90 days prior to an election that says you can't do anything to your voter rolls. | ||
| And what this what the read is all about, though, what that portion of the law addresses are people who were registered already registered voters who have eligibility to be registered in the first place. | ||
| So non-citizens do not have the eligibility to be on the rolls in the first place, and that's where the fight is coming down to because it's just a straight read of the NVRA that if you're a non-citizen, you really have no eligibility to be on the roll in the first place. | ||
| If you're somebody who's lived here in Virginia, for example, for five years, and you moved about three weeks ago, and you haven't re-established your residency somewhere else, That kind of grey area is what this quiet period is all about. | ||
| So that's kind of a rundown of where we are in this legal battle. | ||
| Erin, just to give the Democrats here the benefit of the doubt, only on this issue, only on the 90-day grace period, there is a certain reasonableness about that. | ||
| This is like the 28th of October. | ||
| The election is next week. | ||
| People have been screaming, you know, the war has been on election integrity every day since 2020. | ||
| It is a bit, you know, there ought to be, there are questions, right? | ||
| Is this simply performative on behalf of the Republicans going through the motions now with last minute appeals on Sunday, right? | ||
| They've had four years to sort this out. | ||
|
unidentified
|
They have and we've documented, as we've been able to tell your audience and the Posse before, Ben, EPIC, Electoral Process Education Corporation, we've qualified to look at the voter rolls. | |
| We have documented evidence of non-citizens who leave a voting history before they're taken off the rolls, before they attest, yes, I'm a non-citizen, or where they certify they are not a citizen. | ||
| They're declared non-citizens taken off the rolls and have a voting history and have cast, even in the past 18 months, we have found Over a thousand ballots that have been cast by non-citizens before they were removed. | ||
| So this is a political fight. | ||
| It's about, you know, a status quo and soft spots in the system of voting that exist. | ||
| And there's agreement that non-citizens are going on to the voter rolls through the automatic registration process at DMV. And the Department of Elections in Virginia has been following a state law for 18 years to send a notice to the non-citizens who told the DMV, yep, I'm a non-citizen. | ||
| And then asking them to sign paperwork and attest. | ||
| So those are the citizens that we know about because they said they were non-citizens. | ||
| The Fourth Circuit is saying, well, we don't believe you, basically. | ||
| I mean, it's kind of, I'm reading the ruling, and Fourth Circuit says, well, you haven't put out any evidence that they're non-citizens, and they just might be citizens. | ||
| And that's not true. | ||
| They've all attested that they're not citizens. | ||
| So this is probably a little forum shopping from the political aspect of using the Fourth Circuit, going to a judge who's a Biden appointee, and then going to a Fourth Circuit that leans very left in their ruling. | ||
| So that's the path to the Supreme Court. | ||
| And we'll see if the High Court accepts the emergency appeal. | ||
| Erin, One minute before the break, and then we need to close this. | ||
| But I can't express, because I know, I read every comment posted on Getter, I know the seething anger that exists out there in MAGA, in the movement generally, in the war room posse. | ||
| Can they expect lawsuits after this election to officials that allowed non-citizens to vote? | ||
| Will these people be held to account, or will we just get more performance? | ||
|
unidentified
|
There is a lot of anger, Ben, I can tell you. | |
| I mean, this has really sent shockwaves through the early voting period. | ||
| We're about 30 days into the early voting period. | ||
| There's also a concept in federal law known as the Purcell Principle, where federal courts are asked to not make rulings that can have an impact. | ||
| And already we're seeing about a 400 percent increase in just one week. | ||
| In so-called same-day registrations. | ||
| So that's people who walk in, they're not registered, and they essentially can cast what's known as a provisional ballot that's reviewed after the November 5th general election. | ||
| So there's a lot of frustration, a lot of anger, because when more than a thousand non-citizens are casting ballots before they fess up essentially and say, oh yeah, I'm not a citizen, take me off the rolls. | ||
| Those are civil rights issues for American citizens whose own ballots are being effectively cancelled out by people who had no eligibility to be on the roll in the first place. | ||
| And so Virginia's Attorney General has been given a lot of criminal referrals about this, and we have Virginia counties that are now referring for criminal investigation for this. | ||
| Standby, we'll be back in two minutes. | ||
| America is standing on the brink of an election meltdown, and Jim Rickards, editor of Strategic Intelligence, the man who predicted the 2008 financial crisis, Trump's victory in 2016, and the COVID disaster is sounding the alarm. | ||
| Rickards has just dropped a bombshell that could change everything you think you know about the 2024 election. | ||
| He's uncovered what he calls the Democrats' secret plan to keep Trump out of the White House, even if he wins. | ||
| This isn't some far-off theory. | ||
| He's warning that this meltdown could lead to a 50% market crash. | ||
| The total collapse of the U.S. dollar and violent riots in our streets. | ||
| The stakes are higher than ever, folks, and if you're not prepared, you could lose everything. | ||
| But Jim Rickards isn't just predicting disaster. | ||
| He's laying out five critical steps you need to take now to protect yourself, your family, and your financial future. | ||
| This isn't fear-mongering. | ||
| It's coming straight from a man who's been at the highest levels of intelligence, finance, and national security. | ||
| Go to Meltdown24.com right now to watch his urgent presentation. | ||
| Don't wait until it's too late. | ||
| Meltdown24.com. | ||
| That's Stephen K. Van. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Welcome back. | |
| Aaron, would you quickly give your media, your social media contact? | ||
| Where can people go to get hold of you to support the great work that you're doing? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you for having us on. | |
| It's always a pleasure. | ||
| Exciting times these days to follow. | ||
| You can find out about Epic's work at epic.substack.com. | ||
| We have a free newsletter. | ||
| We're publishing a lot more during this early voting period to really do an analysis and help people understand the voting process. | ||
| And whatever anomalies we see, but also, you know, the good stuff, too, because there's a lot of counties that are doing really good work, and they deserve to be called out for the good work they're doing to improve their process. | ||
| Epic.substack.com. | ||
| You can find out about what we do, Epic, the nonprofit, at epicepec.info, and also read our executive director, John LaRose, very deeply analytical blog about all things election integrity at digitalpollewatchers.org. | ||
| And thanks again. | ||
| I just want to flag up for the war in posse. | ||
| You said just before the break that a thousand non-citizens had voted and you have this evidence. | ||
| I repeat, the war in posse is so angry on this. | ||
| They want to see litigation. | ||
| They want to see lawsuits. | ||
| They want to see the people responsible for ensuring non-citizens aren't voting. | ||
| They want to see some action here. | ||
| They're very angry. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's a class 6 felony. | |
| To vote illegally in Virginia, in most states, it's a class 6 felony. | ||
| We have a lot of liberal Commonwealth attorneys, otherwise known as DAs, in Virginia who just do not investigate these crimes. | ||
| But the Attorney General, Jason Mayares, is aware of a lot of criminal referrals. | ||
| We're aware that investigations are underway. | ||
| But I think, Ben, what you're suggesting is a class action type of a lawsuit where non-citizens are being allowed to cast a ballot. | ||
| Now we have said citizens need to be engaged in this process, and the left is berserk about that. | ||
| They call us a threat to democracy. | ||
| It's a federal statute that poll observers must be protected. | ||
| It's state law. | ||
| I mean, there's a reason why. | ||
| It's because we should have transparency in the election process. | ||
| The only thing that should be a secret in the election process is who somebody votes for. | ||
| Everything else should be open for public inspection and review. | ||
| And the left really hates that. | ||
| The New York Times hates that. | ||
| You know, they talk about our subversive materials and how they've gotten their hands on them. | ||
| They're on our website. | ||
| The Citizen's Guide to Building an Election Integrity Infrastructure. | ||
| It's free. | ||
| Go to www.whoscounting.us. | ||
| Download it. | ||
| It's free. | ||
| Our video training on how to have oversight of the election process. | ||
| We have 20 videotapes. | ||
| They're free. | ||
| Download them. | ||
| Take them. | ||
| Use them. | ||
| Share them. | ||
| So it's pretty remarkable. | ||
| But we're on to them, and they don't like that. | ||
| I guess the reason they're pushing this article now out is that they know how effective you are, they've seen how effective you are, and they're scared. | ||
| And this is sort of, this is them pushing out this stuff to... | ||
| To scare their own leadership. | ||
| We will get this article out on our own social media in the New York Times. | ||
| Headline, inside the movement behind Trump's election lies. | ||
| And there you are, front and centre. | ||
| Just once again, Clito, to warmly congratulate you on your nefarious, subversive work. | ||
| Where do people go to support this, to follow you on social media? | ||
| Well, I think the best place is on my Twitter account, my X account, at Cleta Mitchell. | ||
| You can also go to, we have two websites. | ||
| One, I really want people to go to www.votefair2024.com. | ||
| That's votefair2024.com. | ||
| Look at the ballot issues. | ||
| We have a map. | ||
| Look at your state. | ||
| Do you have ballot issues that affect elections that you're going to be voting on? | ||
| Please go look at that. | ||
| These ballot issues on elections are really, really important. | ||
| And the left has been manipulating this process for a good while. | ||
| That's how Alaska and Maine have ranked choice voting. | ||
| And they want to put ranked choice voting to Idaho and Arizona and other states. | ||
| So go look at those ballot issues and go to www.whoscounting.us. | ||
| That has all of our election training materials. | ||
| And look, one thing I have, I want to say two perfect, two really relevant things. | ||
| If you live in Maricopa County, Arizona, You need to go vote in person this week because the election plan that has been devised by the county is woefully inadequate. | ||
| So go vote early if you live in Maricopa County. | ||
| Katie Mitchell, thanks very much. | ||
| You had two points, right? | ||
| My beg pardon? | ||
| I thought you had two points. | ||
| That's fine. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Thanks for coming on the show. | ||
| We'll catch up again with you soon. | ||
| Cleetha Mitchell. | ||
| Stay tuned. | ||
| We'll be back in two minutes after this short break. | ||
| Don't go away now. | ||
| Hack, hack, hack. |
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