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March 25, 2019 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin
18:47
Don Lemon vs The Russian Menace
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So Don Lemon, how's it going?
So let's bear in mind, what we got today is a summary of Robert Mueller's findings.
And that summary found it is not the entire report.
No, it's a summary of a report that found no collusion.
So how do you feel about this, Don?
And what we have learned, quite frankly, it raises a lot of new questions as we move forward.
Really, does it?
Because it seems to have answered a lot of old questions.
One of the biggest questions tonight, why did Robert Mueller not come to a conclusion on obstruction himself?
Why did he leave that to Rosenstein and Barr?
Why don't you go and ask him?
Because we should remember it was William Barr in an unsolicited memo that brought him to the attention of the White House.
It was him who called Mueller's theory about obstruction, quote, fatally misconceived.
And who said, quote, the obstruction claim is entirely dependent on first finding collusion.
Well, then I guess you're shit out of luck, aren't you, Don?
If the obstruction claim is contingent on a collusion claim and there was no collusion claim, where does that put you?
So what Barr was saying there seems to be if there was no collusion, there was no obstruction.
So Trump did absolutely nothing wrong here.
You can say it.
You can just say it, Don.
Just be like, okay, fair enough.
Fair enough.
It was a witch hunt.
We were wrong.
We just couldn't accept that we were the insufferable pricks people were voting against.
We'll dig deeper into all of this with our legal experts in just a moment.
I am on the edge of my seat, Don.
So I want to turn now to questions about collusion.
Okay, well, the answer to all of those questions would seem to be, there was no collusion.
So make no mistake, this is a good thing that Mueller found no collusion with Russia by Trump or his campaign.
That is a very good thing for the country.
But it's a very bad thing for you vultures whose ratings were dependent on Trump being a bad guy and being caught doing something wrong.
I mean, you have played your part in all of this too, haven't you, Mr. Lemon?
But the fact remains, Russians did interfere in our election.
Oh, God, not the Russians and not interfering in our elections.
You know, and certainly the way that Silicon Valley is not interfering in our elections by silencing political voices.
But Gohan, what exactly are the list of Russian crimes?
They spread disinformation on social media.
Woo, lad!
Oh, did they?
Oh, did they, Don?
You might want to be careful about complaining about people spreading disinformation on social media, especially about, oh, I don't know, conspiracy theories regarding the president.
Because you know what, Don?
You might find that comes back to bite you in the ass.
And they waged a hacking campaign that included stealing emails from Hillary Clinton's campaign and from Democratic Party organizations.
My memory's a little rusty, but isn't that because they couldn't get into the Republican ones?
They did try to hack the Republican email servers, but I don't know, they weren't stored in their bathrooms or something.
The special counsel determined that.
And the Attorney General acknowledged that in his letter.
Okay, I don't think that's anything particularly unusual.
I think that state actors are trying to hack one another's emails all the time.
But what exactly are we going to do about that, Don?
I mean, what's the punishment for Russia here?
They interfered with the elections, of course, by having Facebook adverts.
And they hacked into someone's email server, which is definitely some kind of crime.
So what will the punishment be?
So why has the president repeatedly deferred to Vladimir Putin, who's an enemy?
Don Lemon, Vladimir Putin is an enemy because Russia tried to hack US email servers.
Don't you recall when the United States did something very similar to Germany?
Is Germany now the enemy of the United States or is the United States now the enemy of Germany because of some espionage?
Who waged an attack on our democracy?
Oh, it's an attack on democracy now, is it?
So what do we do about this?
What do we do about countries that attack our democracies?
Because it really sounds like because Trump didn't collude with the Russians, as in you can't bring Trump down over this, you now have to defer your anger to the Russians themselves.
Russia had some kind of influence using social media or email hacking.
Therefore, that's an attack on our democracy.
What are we going to do about it, Don?
What exactly are we going to do about Russia's attack on democracy?
And I just want to say, it's mildly hypocritical that you, an American, are suddenly concerned with election meddling, especially after one academic found that the United States has been responsible for about 117 different examples of partisan election meddling around the world.
I mean, I'm not saying it's right when you do it and wrong when they do it.
All I'm saying is it seems to be par for the fucking course.
Why did he publicly take Putin's word over that of his own intelligence chiefs?
Because the intelligence agencies are essentially colluding with the Democrats to try and overthrow him and have been investigating him for two solid years.
And he's perhaps trying to build up a diplomatic relationship with the Russians?
I mean, I don't know, Don.
You're the analyst here.
You tell me.
My people came to me.
Dan Coates came to me and some others.
They said they think it's Russia.
I have President Putin.
He just said it's not Russia.
I will say this.
I don't see any reason why it would be.
Our intelligence community warns Putin is still attacking our democracy.
Sorry, are we just unironically believing everything the US intelligence community says now?
Have they not got a long enough and dirty enough track record against what I would suggest is the interests of an entrenched elite that run the United States, that Donald Trump seems to have trampled all over in his bid and successful achieving of the presidency?
Are we just, I mean, this is like the Democrats are waving, yeah, we love the CIA, woo!
Do we?
Do we love the CIA, do we?
Do we love what the CIA does?
Do we?
Okay.
This is weird.
I mean, it always used to be that the left hated the CIA because they'd go around fixing elections and worse, all around the world in order to meddle in other countries' affairs.
But suddenly, when it's against the Russians, who apparently Don Lemon hates, we're all in favor of everything these people have ever done.
Why has the president kept his own aides in the dark about his communications with Putin, even taking away his interpreter's notes?
I don't know.
Why don't you ask him?
Oh, I know why you don't ask him.
Because he's not interested in talking to you because you have given him nothing but negative coverage since day one when he announced that he was going to run for president.
You have been an implacable opponent of his, an elected leader, since the beginning.
Desperate to unseat him, desperate to uncover any kind of dirt, desperate to hurt him in any way possible, because you are a Democratic partisan.
And when will we learn about more details about what the Attorney General in his letter today describes as, quote, multiple offers from Russian-affiliated individuals to assist the Trump campaign?
Presumably when the report is fully released, Don?
But even then, I mean, isn't that great?
Isn't that great?
Even though the Russians tried to buy him off, tried to infiltrate and subvert his campaign, they couldn't.
Trump didn't do it.
You shouldn't be angry.
You should be thrilled.
This should turn you into a Trump supporter because presumably your biggest fear that your democracy had been subverted and that Trump had interfered and negotiated and colluded with the Russians has been revealed to be wrong.
Aren't you happy about this?
Why do you seem so upset?
We might be able to get a lot closer to answering some of these questions if we could see Mueller's entire report.
Honestly, Don, these questions don't really seem to be as interesting as you think.
You seem to be really scraping the bottom of the barrel because it looks like your, frankly, conspiracy theory has blown up in your face.
The DOJ official tells CNN the process of determining what else can be released and scrubbing it of grand jury material.
That process has begun, but there's no firm timeline for releasing more of the report.
Oh, no, you'll just have to wait like the rest of us.
Do try not to declare war on Russia or something in the meantime.
Democrats say that they'll settle for nothing less than the full report.
Yeah, but who cares what those losers think?
The House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler says his committee will call the Attorney General to testify.
And he says this.
It is imperative that the Attorney General release the full report and the underlying evidence.
The entire unfiltered report, as well as the evidence underlying that report, must be made available to Congress and to the American people.
Yeah, because he's a Democrat and they just can't get over this.
This is the end.
This is the terminus of their wild hysterical conspiracy theory.
And if this isn't true, then something else must be true.
And that's a scary proposition for a Democrat at this point.
So my God, they're going to go through this with a fine-toothed comb and presumably find that Mueller is, in fact, a Russian agent himself.
The biggest unanswered question tonight may be, will we ever get to see the full report?
Yes, when private information or legal information has been redacted.
Who cares?
The public are not going to read it anyway.
The summary is probably accurate.
I don't see why Mueller would lie about his own summary.
What difference does it make?
There is no evidence of collusion.
You are wrong.
That's it.
End of story.
Why are you still talking about this?
You should do like the young Turks and start talking about literally anything else.
Abby Phillips is at the White House for us this evening.
Abby, good evening to you.
We appreciate you coming in late on a Sunday.
So listen, Mueller found no collusion, or which is coordination and conspiracy is really what his letter says.
We all know how many times the president said that according to this letter, the report says he is right.
So you got nothing.
You got nothing.
Go on.
But did not exonerate the president of obstruction.
Yes, it did.
He literally said that there was no obstruction.
Why are you saying it didn't exonerate him of that?
If there's no evidence of the thing happening, that means that we assume it didn't happen.
Despite the second point, the president and his allies are taking a victory lap, and they're feeling good.
And so should the American people.
It turns out that Donald Trump was a legitimately elected president.
He wasn't conspiring with Russia.
He is, in fact, an American patriot.
You should all feel pretty great about that.
This is a grand day for Trump, and he's earned this.
That's right, Don.
The president is having a really great day today, according to our sources, that he's thrilled by these results because they believe that they can take what's in this letter from Attorney General Bill Barr and make these blanket statements about both collusion and obstruction.
Because that was the result of the investigation.
The blanket statement is the conclusion of the two-year $25 million 500 interview, 2,800 subpoena investigation.
Yes, they can make those conclusions.
They can make those blanket statements if they are true, which they appear to be.
On the collusion point, you're right that the president is correct, that the report was pretty clear.
There was no collusion that was found between the Russians and the president's campaign.
But on the obstruction point, it was basically a lack of evidence.
It was written in the Mueller report that this was not an exoneration.
But when faced with that question, Hogan Gidley, the principal deputy press secretary here at the White House, he said this.
He said, essentially, prosecutors are not in the business of proving that someone didn't do something.
They can't be expected, according to Gidley, to exonerate the president.
And so they are taking the lack of evidence as essentially an exoneration for President Trump, that he's not going to be charged with this, that they don't believe there's sufficient evidence to be charged with this.
And we heard the president's lawyers say, saying that this idea that there was no collusion, no underlying crime, is really critically important.
And I think that's what we're going to hear from President Trump and his allies.
Because that's how evidence works, you fucking idiots.
Of course, of course, he's not going to say, we have evidence of something that didn't happen.
How could something that didn't happen produce any evidence?
Of course, he can't say, here is physical proof of a non-event, because a non-event would leave no physical proof.
We take the absence of the evidence to be absence of the event itself.
That's what we do.
That's why we give them the assumption of innocence.
That's why we extend that to people because that's the only fair way to do things.
If we can't prove you did it, we're going to have to assume you didn't do it because otherwise we end up down some suspicious rabbit holes where we're constantly second-guessing absolutely everything and nothing can be trusted.
You can't prove a negative.
End of story.
I can't believe that CNN are speaking about this as if they do not understand that concept.
And beyond that, I think they feel like this is just an easy thing.
No collusion, no obstruction.
Yes, the president's been saying it for two years, but this time they can say that they can make a case that that's actually true.
So Donald Trump was telling the truth about this for two years, and now this comes smack bang into your face.
We've been like, okay, right.
So Donald Trump can say this, and he has evidence to back it up.
Where do we go from here?
Russia.
We need to invade Russia.
They meddled in our elections.
And they can take that case to the American people going into 2020.
It's good messaging for them.
One must admit that.
Being innocent of accusations and having the truth on your side is indeed excellent messaging, Don.
Well done.
It's really good messaging.
One must admit that indeed.
God, that is the cry of partisan hackery, isn't it?
You're not after what is right and wrong.
You're after your side versus theirs.
Abby Nilsen, the special counsel, had, let's look at all the people who were involved in this.
19 lawyers had helped 40 FBI agents, intelligence analysts, forensic accountants, other professional staff, obtained more than 230 orders for communication records, nearly 500 search warrants, interviewed approximately 500 witnesses, more than 2,800 subpoenas.
Despite an exhaustive investigation, the president continues to attack it.
It seems very thorough to me.
Presumably, this is the most intensive investigation into anything in the history of the United States.
So yeah, you would think actually that Trump would embrace this at this point and be like, yeah, no, Mueller did a great job.
I mean, the public thought the Democrat public thought that Mueller was doing a great job, and he's come out that I've done nothing wrong.
So yeah, great job, Mr. Mueller.
It does.
And you have to think about just a couple days ago, the president was talking about 13 angry Democrats who were part of Mueller's investigatory team.
He was saying Robert Mueller is so conflicted.
He was basically saying, it is not possible for this investigation to be fair to me.
And yet, today, that same investigation, in his words, totally exonerated him.
But you didn't even hear anything about that from President Trump today.
It was interesting that President Trump didn't talk about Russian interference in the election, which we know happened, which is part of the Mueller report as well.
And he also didn't thank Robert Mueller for his work, for essentially exonerating him on these accusations that have been hovering over him for two years.
Why would he?
This was obviously a partisan attack that the Democrats and the really sort of awful, boomerish Democrats like Maxime Waterstyle had been using as a weapon against him for two years.
This has hardly been a pleasant experience for Trump, I am sure.
And you came up with no collusion.
But you know what?
We've been beating you with this stick for two years and now we're going to stop.
Aren't you thankful?
What this has been is proof that there is a process in place at the Justice Department, that it was working and that it worked fairly.
And I think President Trump would even say now that he knows the result, that it was fair.
But leading up to this moment, the president was saying that everybody involved in this investigation was conflicted.
And even now, Don, President Trump is hinting that the next step could be turning the tables on the other side, what he calls the other side, which may be a reference to Hillary Clinton.
It may be a reference to people within the Justice Department who were there at the onset of this investigation during the Obama presidency, who he believe improperly surveilled or investigated his campaign.
So in fact, the president could be trying to turn the tables on this whole situation.
We'll see where that goes, but he certainly hinted at that in his comments to reporters when he was leaving Florida this afternoon.
You investigate Robert Mueller.
Listen, it's hard to praise someone that you have criticized so heavily over the last couple of years and thank them as well, even though it seems like he helped you out.
You can't do it.
It'd be tough to do, even for this president.
Trump is your bottom line, Don.
If anyone owes anyone a thank you, you owe Donald Trump a thank you for running for president and giving you all of this material that is making you a wealthy man.
Honestly, this is such nonsense.
Get over it.
Go and have a little sob in the corner.
Go and curse and gnash your teeth and say, oh, I really hate that Robert Mueller.
And I really hate Russia as well.
And good grief.
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