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Feb. 15, 2024 - Triggered - Donald Trump Jr

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Breaking News Investigations: The Fall of Russiagate and the Corruption of Endless War, Live with Matt Taibbi and John Solomon | TRIGGERED Ep.110

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	you you
	hello guys welcome to another huge episode of triggered This one's going to be a big one.
	Tonight we're joined by two incredible investigative reporters.
	People who are doing actual real journalism, not just sort of carrying out the narrative and the wishes of the deep state.
	First and foremost, I'll be talking to news founder John Solomon on the big news surrounding the border invasion and the big guy, Joe Biden.
	Then we're going to go to racket news, editor and award-winning journalist, author Matt Taibbi, who's broken other major stories like the Twitter files, big stuff on Russiagate, who has even more Big reporting on Russia collusion and spying scandal.
	You're not going to want to miss any of these because these are unique.
	We've been in a world where we've been lied to by our governments,
	where we're told things to distract us from what's really happening.
	All diversionary.
	That truth is now coming out.
	Guys like Matt and John are breaking those kinds of stories.
	We need your help getting it out there.
	Okay.
	Especially, I mean, when you talk about what Matt Taibbi is going to tell us
	exclusively here, so we're actually breaking news.
	Apparently now I am a journalist and unlike the people doing it,
	journalism or whatever the hell they're doing these days, all lying to you.
	We're actually breaking real stuff.
	So this is going to be a big deal because it's really relevant when we talk about what's going on right now in Ukraine and as we're being hoaxed and lied into telling you that we must fund Ukraine indefinitely because Russia's doing big things.
	Maybe in the grand scheme of things, maybe looking back at history, making sure that we look at the lies that our government has told us and sold us as though it was the gospel for years, maybe...
	We shouldn't be listening to everything that they say.
	Maybe we should be thinking what's actually happening.
	Maybe we gotta look a little bit further than that baseline before we risk getting into wars, before we send unlimited amounts of money mortgaging our children's future to the hilt and destroying our country so that if you guys in D.C. can get rich off the spoils of war, okay? So guys, make sure you're liking, sharing, and subscribing so you never miss any of these major episodes.
	You know, I'm not on every day like others.
	I want to be doing this.
	I want to make sure that you guys see that, but because it's not as consistent as other people, I want to make sure you're subscribed so that you see what's going on, that you can get notifications.
	I want you to share these things.
	And I also want you to remember that you can find these episodes on Spotify and on Apple Podcasts after they air here on Rumble.
	So... Ultimately, if you're traveling, if you're in your car, and maybe that's how you get your podcasts, you can do it there and share it that way with your friends, okay?
	That's a big one.
	Also important, for all of the top stories, we will show you on the show now,
	check out my news app, MXM News.
	We've talked about it before, right?
	You get the mainstream news without the mainstream bias.
	A big tenant of the other side, you know, oh, you don't like what we have,
	whether it's curated by Google or Apple or all these places you probably don't want to exactly
	trust.
	And that's based on now years of experience and the lives that you've been sold.
	see the rest of the show.
	So we did, we have, we've launched a new version of that so you can stay on top of it, even expanding into local news for what you're doing.
	So, you know, when they say build your own, guys like me and others, you know, we're actually out there doing that.
	So any support you can give us to make sure that we can keep that going is greatly appreciated.
	So check out MXM News.
	And before we get to the guests and their investigations, I want to give you a quick rundown of the top headlines.
	Because guess what, folks?
	It happened again.
	Again! Another so-called conspiracy turned out to be...
	Wait for it.
	Yep. You guessed it, folks.
	Completely true.
	Yes. Illegal spying.
	On the team, Trump did occur.
	Okay? Illegal spying on the campaign.
	Remember when my father accused them back in 16?
	They said, it's crazy. What can you do?
	How can that? It can't be. You're lying.
	There's no evidence. Well, turns out to be yet another Hoax that wasn't so much a hoax.
	A hoax that ended up being 100% right.
	Like about the 2 million other supposed conspiracy theories that you were told were conspiracy theories that you're not supposed to believe that also turned out to be 100% true.
	Check this out from Fox.
	A concerning new report accusing President Obama's CIA of curating the 2016 Russia collusion hoax by asking foreign intelligence agencies to illegally spy on the Trump campaign?
	Lucas Tomlinson in Washington with more.
	Lucas. Good early morning, Carly and Todd.
	This report from Substack citing multiple unnamed sources claims the U.S. intelligence community asked foreign spy agencies to help spy on more than two dozen associates of Donald Trump in the run up to the 2016 election.
	It reads in part, quote, President Barack Obama's CIA Director John Brennan had identified 26 Trump associates for the Five Eyes to target.
	A source confirmed that the IC had identified them as people to bump or make contact with or manipulate.
	They were targets of our own IC and law enforcement, targets for collection and misinformation.
	Now, the Five Eyes nations are the U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.
	Here's one of the reporters, Michael Schellenberger, who spoke to Jesse Waters last night.
	If this binder contains what we have been told that it contains, which may include raw
	intelligence information showing that the U.S. government, the CIA and the intelligence
	community of the U.S. government, initiated the Russia collusion hoax, that it did not
	occur in the way that the official story in the Durham investigation had portrayed it,
	then that's extremely serious information.
	Huh.
	Well, guys, it's nice this came out now, but sadly, so much damage was already done, and that's what they do.
	Even when the truth comes out, maybe you get a story on Fox, nowhere else will cover it.
	They got exactly what they wanted out of it.
	Now they get caught. There's no accountability, right?
	No one's getting in trouble.
	It doesn't really matter.
	Oh, well, now we can't do anything about it.
	No, I mean, it is. They held up We're good to go.
	And other agencies spying on the Trump campaign as well as new details on the lies of the entire Russian election interference narrative.
	So that's all coming up.
	And again, it's all relative when we're being told this week that we must For the sake of democracy and freedom and other things that these people in Washington, D.C. talk about like soundbites just to get a paycheck.
	They don't actually mean anything to them, but that's what they're doing.
	As we're being told, we must fund another $60 billion in the never-ending war in Ukraine that they can't articulate a real reason for...
	Maybe we want to think about just how badly we've been manipulated, and if we think that's not happening to us right now, we probably deserve whatever we have coming.
	And speaking of Russia, House Intelligence Chairman Committee Mike Turner must think we're all idiots.
	Yesterday, Turner released a statement about a serious national security threat.
	Turner's goal is obviously to stoke hysteria and fear about Russia.
	Watch this one for a second.
	Yeah, the timing of this statement makes it very obvious what he's trying to accomplish.
	The Senate just passed a bill sending billions of dollars to Ukraine, and Turner wants to pressure House Republicans to support the never-ending war.
	How dare you not just sign on the dotted line?
	Right? Democracy's at stake in everything.
	Let's make up, I don't know, a boogeyman.
	Let's blame Russia.
	You know, this is Russia, Russia, Russia.
	It used to be squared, cubed, you know, to the 10th power, to Google, whatever.
	Like, it never ends.
	Do you notice a trend here between Turner's statement and the Russia collusion hoax?
	Hmm. Hmm. Intelligence isn't used to protect Americans anymore, folks.
	It's used to achieve political goals.
	The CIA and these agencies function as arms of the Uniparty.
	They are all moving towards the same goal.
	More money for defense contractors.
	More death in Eastern Europe.
	And guess what? If they can make a few more bucks to send your kids to go die for unknown reasons, they'll do that too, gladly.
	And they'll tell you you're not a patriot if you question them.
	This is happening right now.
	This is why this stuff is so important.
	This is why I ask you guys to share these things.
	Because otherwise, it will not get out.
	It will be smothered.
	It will be suppressed. And it will go by the wayside as though it never happened.
	Meanwhile, folks, the Democrats' lawfare continues.
	Alvin Bragg's baseless case is scheduled to start the last week of March.
	Bragg is focused on targeting Joe Biden's political opponent...
	My father, instead of criminals destroying Manhattan.
	My team looked at the data, and the number of arrests that Bragg's office has declined to prosecute has increased by 125% since he took the DA job in New York City.
	Alvin Bragg lets illegal immigrants terrorize New York City.
	He doesn't care if New Yorkers get killed, raped, or robbed.
	His focus is on helping Joe Biden win the election, and it's disgraceful.
	He won't prosecute those crimes so that he can say, hey, crime went down.
	You know, it's not a real crime if we don't actually report it in the official stats.
	If you get robbed, raped, or bugged, then we just don't highlight it.
	It never really happened, folks.
	Alvin Bragg's political persecution is just one part of the Democrat's scheme to abuse the court system ahead of the 2024 election.
	Special Counsel Jack Smith right now is trying to rush along his bogus January 6th indictment.
	In a filing before the Supreme Court yesterday, Smith said that a delay would frustrate the public interest and cause serious harm to the government and the public.
	Okay. By public interest, Jack Smith means Joe Biden's interest in my father being convicted.
	Nothing more, nothing less.
	You don't just rush ahead of the line, get rid of the rules and norms to go after your political enemies unless you're doing exactly what I've been saying he's been doing for years.
	We know that. Smith never spells out why he needs to rush the case.
	That's because what he's doing is in violation of Justice Department rules.
	Minor details. Again, me and maybe four other people in America will actually call him out on this.
	The press certainly won't.
	DOJ rules don't allow prosecutors to time their case around an election, which is exactly what he's doing.
	Okay, that's what he's doing right now.
	And don't worry, I didn't forget about the drama down in Fulton County, Georgia.
	I saved the best for last.
	Okay, some of that's still going on as we speak, but like, I mean, from what I was able to see, Fannie Willis' bogus case against my father and several other defendants in Georgia is falling apart.
	Fannie Willis and her lover Nathan Wade lied to the court about when their affair started.
	Even MSNBC knows she is screwed.
	Listen for yourself.
	...centric and yet so important and fascinating.
	Right. Don't let the legalese fool you. This is epic. This is monumental.
	If things are going in the direction we think Fannie Willis lied to the court,
	it's game over for her. She will be disqualified.
	If they had a relationship prior to when they represented to the court,
	it's a huge deal. I can't overstate it.
	Do you feel the same way?
	Disqualified? What about disbarred?
	Because that's what would happen to anyone else if they had an R next to their name rather than doing the bidding of the Democrat Party.
	If you watch the rest of the testimony, you realize that it's actually a shame in America that people like this can actually pass the bar, let alone represent one of the largest counties in the country.
	It was going so poorly for Fannie Willis that she ended up taking the stand to defend herself.
	And we learned quickly that Fanny Willis loves Grey Goose Vodka and will give you a G. I assume that meant $1,000 if you need it.
	We're just going to give you a G. I mean, on the stand.
	Now, that's one of many.
	I'm sure maybe on Monday we'll do another clip of all the highlights because they're truly special.
	Unless you'd like America to have a future.
	And, you know, I do, so it's actually just sad.
	You just can't make this stuff up.
	Check this one out. I bought him.
	He likes wine. I don't really like wine, to be honest with you.
	I like Grey Goose. Um...
	And then he tells me how much it is, and I give him the money back.
	I don't, just like you're asking me about the money with Robin, I don't do my friends like that.
	So if you tell me it's a G, then you're gonna get $1,000.
	Whatever it is, I didn't ever make him produce receipts to me.
	Whatever he told me it was, I gave him the money back.
	Guys, this is the person who is in charge of the district attorney's office in one of the largest counties in America.
	God help this country.
	It's never been more clear now how serious our problems really are, okay?
	And we're going to get into a lot of that.
	But before we get to our guests, I want to share a quick word from our incredible sponsors, okay?
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	So with that, guys, joining me now...
	Just the News founder, investigative journalist, John Solomon.
	John, thank you so much for joining here today.
	Yeah, good to be with you.
	What a day. Yeah, I mean, it's spectacular.
	I mean, obviously, you have a lot going on.
	Matt Taibbi coming on next has a lot going on.
	Just in general, I feel like this is one of those days where...
	You could actually fill, like, the 24-hour news cycle as opposed to sort of recycling things after 15 minutes.
	But, you know, thanks for joining, first and foremost, because you're doing such great things out there.
	You've really put yourself out there taking on just beyond the narrative.
	And there's some breaking news.
	You've been talking about it.
	David Weiss, the special counsel appointed by Joe Biden, just indicted the informant who claimed that Burisma bribed the Bidens.
	What do you make of this indictment, and what can you tell us in the context of all of your other reporting?
	Because, I mean, this just seems like literally deep state retribution at this point.
	I remember a time where all informants, all people, all people who are willing to come out there and say something about the president, especially as it related to potential corruption, were treated as heroes, and this seems very different.
	Yeah, listen, this is a long line of informants who have blown up on the FBI. Now, whether or not people will believe what David Weiss charges depends on the evidence, right?
	We know that Mr. Smirnoff is assumed innocent, and he's going to get his chance in court.
	And the government's got to prove why they think he lied.
	And here's another thing. Why it took four years for the FBI to suddenly come to this conclusion when not that long ago the FBI was telling the Congress that this guy was one of their more credible and well-paid informants, somebody who had been useful before.
	So there are people tonight already out there, Marjorie Taylor Greene and others, wondering whether this is political.
	I think we've got to let the...
	Facts bear out.
	There's not enough information in this indictment yet to make a really informed decision about what went on here.
	But let's suppose the worst case scenario for Mr.
	Smirnoff, that there's really strong evidence against this.
	What we now know is the very FBI that went after you because of the Trump Tower allegations that turned out to be a big nothing burger, went after your dad and created the illusion of collusion then when it was not an iota of it there.
	We now know that from John Durham.
	The FBI is in a really terrible state.
	And three of the most famous informants in its history, Christopher Steele, Igor Danchenko, and now this man, Mr.
	Smirnoff. If the final narrative of the Justice Department turns out to be true, all three of them bamboozled our premier I've been raising a red flag about the FBI for a long time.
	The people in the FBI, many of them are so good, they're good agents, but this agency is really in distress.
	It can't tell a good from a bad informant, apparently, according to its own Justice Department.
	It wasted three years of your father's presidency going after something that never, ever existed.
	It took Hillary Clinton dirt and tried to pretend it was...
	But John, but that was a win for them because, I mean, they did that on purpose.
	I mean, we know that now.
	That was a win. I mean, it should be, if you're the American public looking objectively at the FBI, yes, you say that, but that was a win.
	They got what they wanted. Now that they got caught, it's, you know, oh yeah, my bad.
	There's no accountability. There's nothing.
	So there is a difference between when they get it wrong and And maybe they were trying.
	Literally, it seems like every shooter who's shot up somewhere in rage was, as they say, on their radar.
	But they were too busy prosecuting concerned parents at PTA meetings or the true terrorists in America, people who are conservatives or practicing Catholics.
	In the case of my father, though, that was not a loss for them because that was part of their M.O. Maybe they have to eat crow, but that was a plan.
	Yeah, you know, there's no doubt.
	Listen, Hillary Clinton hatched a plan, and she found her friends in the FBI to carry it out.
	You're absolutely right. We don't know yet why the government has taken this sudden turn against this informant.
	It's going to take us a couple days to get to the bottom.
	My job as a journalist is to stay neutral, get the facts, and try to tell people what did we learn, right?
	I don't know yet.
	It's a surprise to me. Now, I will say this.
	I'm the guy that broke a lot of the important Ukraine stuff in 2019.
	I was called a conspiracy theorist.
	Now, everything I reported back then is now confirmed to be true.
	All the time, until Senator Grassley mentioned this guy, my sources, who I've been very public, were inside the FBI. They never mentioned this guy.
	They had other evidence that was super strong against the Bidens, including the firing of the prosecutor, including the meeting that Joe Biden had with a guy that allegedly was a crooked company executive.
	He's meeting with Joe Biden at Cafe Milano.
	So this guy wasn't on my radar when I did my reporting.
	And quite frankly, I was surprised when this 1023 came out.
	I knew a lot about Ukraine.
	This guy was never on my radar.
	Maybe there's a reason for that.
	I don't know yet. As a reporter, I just got to dig in and find out.
	But he's someone that they used credibly.
	I wasn't aware of that.
	So it wasn't like this is just a guy randomly that came in and gave them supposedly false information.
	And again, if they're saying it's false, I have to almost at this point And again, I agree with you.
	There's some guys doing great work at the FBI, the door kickers.
	Although it's getting harder to honestly give them the pass when I see all the corruption and they're like, well, I'm just doing my job.
	I'm like, well, you know, if you're just doing your job and that job you think entails violating Americans' rights, arresting pastors at their home in front of their children for nonsense, going after the Amish because, you know, they sold some meat that, you know, that wasn't inoculated 9,000 times by the FDA. Yeah.
	You know, I don't know. It's getting harder for me to give them a pass.
	And again, the door kickers, they're on my team.
	They tell me this, but it's hard.
	Like, eventually someone has to step up.
	And I've seen what happens when they step up.
	They have the whistleblowers. I've had a few of them on this show.
	You know, and then they get fired, and they get sent to Guam, and they're on unpaid leave.
	You know, they're not like the whistleblowers.
	Like, you know, what was the fat pig in Ukraine that was going to be the defense minister over there?
	Vindeman, yeah. Oh, Alec.
	He's beyond reproach.
	No, it turns out he's just a fat pig who's a liar.
	I mean, minor details. Doesn't matter.
	But they're just treated very differently.
	And so we do have to get to a point where we start from scratch because under the current system, it's not working.
	And Don, you know what's amazing?
	What you said, some of the most senior executives of past generations of FBI are now saying, people like Kevin Brock and others have been warning about this, which is, this is a sick institution and it is losing the trust of the American people and is developing a losing record.
	They cheat on FISA still to this day.
	There are still problems with FISA's.
	We keep seeing them. They keep looking into Section 702 with impunity, and Congress does nothing about it.
	They're spying on Americans without a warrant.
	They violate the rules, and nobody really pays a price.
	So no matter what has come, the ills that the FBI had when it was improperly weaponized to go after you and your dad and your family and so many other people, They aren't cured yet.
	No matter how many times Chris Ray smiles and looks into the cameras, I got it fixed.
	He doesn't. And this is another sign.
	No matter which way this goes, maybe the guy will be proven innocent, incredible, maybe he won't.
	The fact that the FBI is in disagreement with itself tonight, this is an agency that needs major reform.
	It's going to take a president who has the chops to do it.
	This president is going to sweep his FBI under the rug and keep telling us it's okay.
	Somebody's got to come in and change this institution in the next election.
	Yeah, so you brought up the 702s and FISA and all that stuff.
	Like, that's going on right now.
	And there are Republicans in Congress actually saying, no, no, no, I mean, hey, I'm all for it.
	They want to spy on foreign nationals and stuff like that, but they're trying to amend it to make it easier to spy on Americans, to then go after them with nonsense that would otherwise be undiscoverable sort of evidence.
	And Republicans are doing this.
	Like, where are...
	Where are the people who believe in just the rule of law and the Constitution?
	Where are some of the civil liberties institutions that seem to have just gone full Democrat?
	It seems like they'd have a problem with this, but they're all just bending a knee to the deep state at this point.
	Well, because of people like Marcus Allen.
	You know where he is? He's still without a paycheck.
	Two years, three years later, when he did the right thing, he just simply blew the whistle about something he was concerned about.
	He's still without a paycheck.
	His family has been bankrupted by the FBI. They won't even fire him.
	They're just leaving him in limbo.
	The agents who did came forward have been treated so badly, and Congress has failed to fully protect them, that anyone else who's thinking about it is like, I'm not going to go do that.
	I've got kids I've got to worry about.
	They chilled the ability for people to come forward in the FBI. That is a legacy of Chris Wray that he will not be able to shed.
	What they've done by pulling all these security clearances, Marcus Allen, all the other ones, Steve Friend, they found a way to not fire them and get into the adjudication process, but strip them of their pay and starve them out of the FBI. That should be shameful.
	It doesn't matter whether you're Democrat, Republican, Independent, Martian.
	That is a wrong way to deal with whistleblowers.
	It's not the way they dealt with Eric Charmello in Ukraine.
	A lot of his information turned out not to be accurate.
	But it's the way that most of the people who come forward and spoke out against January 6th, Russia collusion, Joe Biden perhaps, now with this guy, that's how they're getting treated.
	There is a very sick institution.
	It's going to take a courageous president and a courageous Congress, which right now I don't see a lot of courage in Congress.
	Jim Jordan and Andy Biggs got a great idea together, and they can't get it through their own caucus.
	It was going to be passed last night, and then the stunt with Turner delayed that vote again.
	I'm fearful that maybe we won't get vice reform.
	It'll be kicked down the road again.
	Yeah. Well, so this week, Tony Bobulinski testified on the Hill about the selling of the Biden brand.
	Now, I don't know what the Biden brand is.
	I mean, I think Joe was known as the dumbest man in the United States Senate for like close to 50 years.
	I mean, that was what I understood of him before he became vice president.
	He had a sort of a lackluster vice presidency.
	So, you know, as someone who, you know, made a career around brand, I mean, you know, Trump Tower, doing that, I sort of understand brand.
	But, you know, maybe in politics, it's different.
	And I guess was confirmed in closed-door testimony that Joe Biden is what we all knew him to be, the big guy.
	How do you think this impeachment inquiry is moving along?
	Will this ever happen?
	Are we just being stonewalled and stalled to death?
	Because, you know... Man, when I look at the way the Democrats do this stuff, I look at where I was in this stage with no evidence of something that was later proven to be 100% a lie.
	And by this point in time, I feel like I had done over 50 hours of testimony before Congress.
	Hunter Biden hasn't even gone in yet.
	What's going on? Well, listen, it's slow walked by lawyers and Democrats and the media, which refuses to look at the evidence honestly.
	Not everyone, but a large number of the legacy media are refusing to look at it for what it was.
	In an earlier generation, when a president sold access, he got one of the biggest scandals in American history.
	Bill Clinton did a version of this, right?
	He didn't want the money going to himself in the 1990s.
	He wanted to go to the Democratic Party to politically enrich him.
	And we were absolutely shamed of him.
	And he was shamed by Democrats and Republicans because he took money from Buddhist monks and Chinese intelligence agents and anybody who would give him money.
	And he sold the White House. He put a for sale sign out in the White House.
	And the cost was $100,000 to get in, right?
	Joe Biden and his family did it at a much higher cost.
	But the same sort of characters, right?
	communist Chinese, Russian oligarchs, you corrupt Ukrainian companies,
	and the media today doesn't give it the oxygen and air it needs.
	So the Republicans have to build that knowledge around the roadblock of the media.
	They're doing it, right?
	Polling shows that Americans now think that Joe and Hunter Biden were involved in something
	crooked.
	That's a big change from three years ago.
	But they're not moving at a pace to get this wrapped up in the spring or summer.
	And I think if it goes past the summer, an impeachment in the fall during the election
	is gonna be treated about as credibly as any trial of your father in the middle of the election.
	Right, people can say, oh, we don't do that here in America.
	So I think that they're in danger of not hitting a target where they can actually get to a Senate trial
	and adjudicate this information.
	But it could accelerate.
	Big subpoenas went out today.
	Here's the key thing. It's no longer in dispute that Joe Biden was the deal closer.
	He was the rainmaker, the guy that showed up at the end and Hunter got his money.
	How do we know that? Joe Biden meets Jonathan Lee in China 2013 on the trip on Air Force Two.
	Oh, Hunter Biden gets a big hedge fund deal.
	A couple years later, Joe Biden meets with the Kazakh guys at the Cafe Milano.
	Oh, Hunter Biden gets a check the next day, $140,000 for his fancy car.
	Joe Biden meets with Chairman Yee of CFC China.
	A couple days later, what happens?
	Three million bucks come into Hunter Biden and his buddy's bank accounts.
	Joe Biden closed these deals.
	He facilitated these deals, and then he lied to the American people.
	He ruined my reputation, or tried to ruin my reputation.
	He ruined your father's reputation.
	He lied and said, my family didn't get a single dime from China, when we now know they got about $9 million into the various companies.
	Not all of it went to the Biden family, but that's a big number to forget if you're Joe Biden, no matter what Robert Hur says about his memory.
	Joe Biden lied, and he was the guy that made these deals possible.
	No one would have hired Hunter Biden were it not for his father's name.
	Even Hunter Biden admits to that today in some of the interviews he's done.
	This was an influence-peddling scheme, and the influence was Joe Biden.
	And all Joe Biden had to do was show up for a couple minutes, flash his grin, and then these crooked oligarchs and other people start writing checks to his family, and they get rich, and then the money gets dispersed to his family.
	In any other era of journalism, in any other era of politics, Democrats and Republicans alike would repudiate it, but not this Democratic Party and not this mainstream media.
	Yeah, I mean, it sort of feels, you know, we're three and a half years into this thing.
	And again, I take it a little bit more personal for all the reasons I discussed and everything like that.
	But unlike Hunter, you know, I'm a 46-year-old man.
	I'm not a 50-year-old baby who is, you know, clearly incapable of answering for the things.
	But, you know, he feels...
	So bad that he hasn't returned any of the money, and the Chinese don't exactly give a billion dollars to crackheads.
	That's not how they conduct business.
	That's not part of their diversity, equity, inclusion.
	They need crackhead money managers.
	They don't do that. They're not like us that way.
	They're not idiots.
	But, you know, it's taken three and a half years.
	I sort of feel like, you know, to your point, I think you've already proven beyond a reasonable doubt that this happened.
	There's no, it's like Wuhan lab leak theory.
	Like, of course that's what happened because there is literally no other plausible explanation.
	Like, not even a little bit.
	The Chinese don't invest with crackheads.
	Hunter had no international business experience.
	They didn't do anything.
	Joe Biden sending 85,000 emails.
	I mean, honestly, I don't know that I've ever sent 85,000 emails in my entire 30-year business career.
	It's crazy, isn't it?
	No, it's crazy.
	And yet he sent 85,000 in an alias while vice president.
	I mean, he was working full-time.
	you have to be because there's no time to do anything else enriching the Biden.
	So, you know, I guess it's sad that it's taken this long to get there and the Democrats are still saying, you know,
	well, other than the photos and the wires and the money for unknown reasons
	and the people that say, we don't know what Hunter actually did,
	but we paid him millions and millions of dollars and every corrupt regime and the tapes and the,
	other than that, there's no evidence.
	You know, I mean, how much more do we have to go through to make this case?
	Cause it doesn't make sense.
	I think most of the key people leading the investigation believe that they've proved their impeachment.
	Can this dysfunctional house caucus get it there?
	I don't know. They can't get a budget.
	They can't even get their impeachment vote headcount right.
	They had to do it twice, which I've never seen in my entire life.
	It's just one of the problems right now is that there is a dearth of true leadership in the Republican Party, and I think that's why your father...
	You know, he exudes so much enthusiasm when he's on the trail, because people look at the guy's like, that guy's gonna do what he says and says what he does.
	Even if you don't like it, you gotta admit, he's gonna do what he says and he says what he does.
	And I don't think that there's a lot of Republicans like that in the powers of Congress right now, and they're bumbling and fumbling along.
	Now, that said, Jim Jordan, Jason Smith, and James Comer have gotten all the goods, right?
	There's overwhelming evidence What the Speaker has to do to convince a caucus that the right thing to do is get this to an impeachment vote, it's hard for me to tell.
	It's hard for me to tell what they do every day.
	They're confused all day long.
	And that's a travesty, because Americans said, I thought Republicans are going to be more competent.
	Let's give them a chance to be in charge.
	And they are the bumbling, fumbling crew.
	Nancy Pelosi is laughing her butt off watching this crowd govern or lack of
	government in Congress. I do think the problem is there's just a lack of
	leadership in Congress. The evidence is there. You could make the case in 20
	minutes with your communication skills. 20 minutes you'd have the case made.
	If this was the Democrats, and just the roles were reversed, we'd be about...
	We'd be about two and a half years into Mike Pence's partial term.
	It would have been over so fast your head would spin.
	So it's just frustrating watching.
	And I like many of them. And I think some of them are well-intentioned.
	But we're playing two different games.
	You know... Is there any hope for that or is it just not?
	Because, I mean, I feel like we can be 99.9% on an issue and 15 guys will be like, no, no, no, but about this little thing that no one cares about, no one will ever heard of, doesn't mean anything.
	Like, the Democrats are just like, hey, we're 51% there.
	We'll worry about the details tomorrow.
	We take the win. We move on.
	And then we'll chip away at it with a death by a thousand cuts starting the next day.
	We're playing, like, it's the biggest amateur hour I've ever seen, actually.
	Yeah. I was up with a member of Congress two days ago, and he said something profound.
	It was funny, but it's profound.
	Republicans play tiddlywinks, and Democrats play nuclear battleship.
	And you remember that little game with the little fangs.
	You get the idea. You're right.
	The conservatives don't play, and they don't play with the modern tools that are available with them, whether it's early voting, which you can get a lot more votes in the Republican Party.
	The Republican Party can't get that right.
	Whether it's communicating in social media, they don't get that right.
	Whether it's just telling a simple story.
	Imagine how easy it is to sell this border crisis to Americans.
	The first thing a woman coming across the border should see when she tries to immigrate to the United States ought to be Ellis Island, not a rape tree.
	And their escort should be an INS agent, not a cartel member.
	But no Republican can actually say it that simply and get it through to the American people.
	It's a communication crisis right now.
	And I think that's why the 2024 election is so important.
	There's got to be an installation of people who can communicate and then get the job done.
	Your dad showed he could do it.
	There's other people out there.
	There's a lot of good leaders. Jim Jordan's out there, but the leadership slog above him prevents people like Comer and Jordan and Jason Smith from being fully successful.
	That's the truth of it. What do we have to learn about Biden's dealings, you think, that we don't know yet?
	What hasn't been uncovered just yet?
	I mean, it seems like it's so much, it's insurmountable at this point, but I imagine there's probably a lot more.
	Yeah, listen, I think there could be some other places where money went back and forth, and he's a beneficiary in some way.
	James Comer said something on the show last night, my show last night, I think it's really important.
	They found a new bank account that, after all their subpoenas and records, they didn't know about.
	It appears to be a Joe Biden bank account.
	And one of the witnesses, I think it's Eric Schwerin, we'll find out soon, told him, I think the grandkids were dumping money to a grandfather.
	Now, I don't know about you, but I've never had a grandfather or any other grandfather where the grandkids support the grandfather and put money into them when he's the president and vice president of the United States.
	So if Schwerin or this witness, whoever he is, is right, that's gonna be an interesting avenue that even the grandchildren are involved in moving money to the father, just like the brothers do in the loans.
	I also think we're gonna find out There's no paperwork for these loans.
	A loan was just a cash transfer.
	Well, it's like, you know, Hunter's, you know, sugar buddy, whatever the hell they called him, you know what I mean?
	Kevin Morris, Kevin Morris, yes. You know, hey, I was just letting my buddy, like, it's like $7 million over a period of years.
	That's no real... It's a payoff.
	Just call it what it actually is.
	Stop. No one lends even a friend $7 million if they have no intention of getting paid back without paperwork.
	It doesn't work that way.
	You're right. So you reported yesterday that an internal DHS email shows the agency admitted it's not even tracking illegal immigrants after they were released from federal custody and into the interior of the country.
	What's going on? Are they just giving up?
	They just don't care? I mean, how many illegals are just wandering a nation without any...
	If you thought Fannie Willis was evasive today in a thing, watch some of these Homeland Security officials when they're being asked, are you tracking these guys?
	They can't tell you.
	It's like a whole gibberish.
	Well, that's because they don't want to admit the truth.
	But here is the truth. They wrote it to their friends at the Washington Post.
	They had to put it off the record, of course, because they don't want to actually admit it.
	But off the record to the Washington Post, yeah, we're not tracking people.
	The second they go to the interior country, we lose track of them.
	We have no idea where they are.
	That's what Congress has been trying to get a two-year answer to.
	And every time they bring one of these guys up there, they get that Mayorkas treatment, which is, trust me, everything's secure.
	I don't know what you're talking about.
	I'll get back to you. They never get back to you.
	Listen, there is the largest human trafficking operation in American history.
	And the United States government and religious charities and taxpayer-funded NGOs are the leading front.
	It starts with the cartels, and after they rape their women and take their money and dump them at the border, then our government and its NGOs facilitate an illicit human trafficking ring in every Community in America is paying the price for it, and Republicans can't even tell that story very well.
	They fumbled it, even in the Mayorkas impeachment, but that's what's going on.
	Yeah, they could tell the Washington Post the truth off the record, and I guess the Washington Post kept it a secret, but in congressional testimony, they obfuscate.
	It's no doubt. There is a human trafficking operation, and the Holman Security Department is right in the middle of it.
	Yeah, and I mean, you even see the Red Cross.
	Hey, those of you who make donations to the Red Cross, I mean, they're not doing, like, Red Cross stuff.
	They're literally just transitioning these people nicely into America to change the makeup of our country.
	There's no, like obviously, they're creating a permanent class of Democrat voters.
	That's the intention.
	That's not a conspiracy theory.
	That's not the great replacement theory.
	It's just facts because again, there's no other way to look at
	the extreme set of coincidences.
	There's no other statistical possibility.
	So, you know, remember that if you're making your charitable donations, folks,
	because these people, they're not doing the work that you think they're doing anymore.
	They're just full-on Democrat operatives looking to change America.
	You're right. The NGOs are such a big part of this, and Congress could pull the string tomorrow.
	They could just say, listen, we're not funding them anymore, but what did the Senate Republicans do?
	They threw more money to these groups.
	That was their idea of border reform.
	What do you make of the Robert Herr report?
	I mean, that was, you know, I was watching it.
	I'm like, you know, like, oh, like, it's over.
	You know, he can't stand trial because he's incompetent.
	You know, but he can have nukes.
	Like, it seems.
	And if the Democrats the next day are all screaming, no, no, no, he's 100% competent.
	You know, he's running rings around, you know, these Ivy League guys in the White House.
	And he's... He keeps them on their feet.
	They can't even stand it. We've never seen that in public.
	In three and a half years, not once have we seen a standout genius moment, but minor details.
	But which way is it? Because they seem like they want to have it both ways.
	He's incompetent to stand trial.
	For a serious crime under very worse and different circumstances, clearly, than what they're trying to do with my father.
	They want to throw my father away for 700 years because of it.
	We can make of the report because, I mean, the mental gymnastics it takes to say, hey, this is the case and nothing's going to happen either way, meaning he can stay president and he will not be prosecuted because he's incompetent, seems like we're literally living an episode of South Park.
	Yeah, it was a South Park report.
	Now, that said, I do think that Robert Herr was trying to communicate a very important message, that I met the president, and I was shocked with what I saw.
	And I want you to know what I saw, even though I'm not going to charge him.
	I think this is a matter of public importance.
	And so he used the report to get that out there.
	And then Joe Biden gave the closing argument for Robert Herr, because he came out a couple minutes later and said, I'm totally fine.
	And then he got lost on the rosary beads and And he got lost on presidents.
	The whole week he was lost, he actually proved Robert Hurst's case.
	Listen, the American people are going to be the jury on this.
	They're going to decide who's going to be the next president.
	It's going to be between your dad and Joe Biden.
	I don't think Joe Biden is taking the ticket to Acapulco and quitting in July.
	I think he's sticking in. He's a stubborn son of a gun.
	He's going to stick in. But that said, there are two very important issues that flow from that report that aren't getting the attention they are.
	The first is We're good to go.
	But that's going to be the first thing.
	And I think at some point the lawyers, in your dad's case, are going to have to get to that issue and get that to the Supreme Court after immunity is resolved.
	The second thing is, of all the documents that Joe Biden kept from Ukraine, the classified documents, he just happens to keep his notes and his speeches and his conversations with the Prime Minister of Ukraine the month The month that he fires Viktor Shokin.
	That's the only thing he kept from Ukraine in, oh, one energy thing, which would have been beneficial to Burisma and Hunter Biden because they were looking in the energy in Ukraine.
	But he keeps his records for the month he's firing the prosecutor.
	And as you know from the records, I got under FOIA and sued and got recently.
	Joe Biden did not carry out U.S. policy when he withheld the billion dollars and fired Victor Shokin.
	He went against the recommendations of his career staff.
	They said, Victor Shokin's doing a good job.
	In fact, they sent him a letter saying, that a boy, Shokin, you're doing a good job.
	The task force said, give the billion dollars, and Joe Biden didn't.
	And when my records came out, the Washington Post, the greatest protection racket that Joe Biden had in 19 and 20, came out and said, oh, do over.
	Truthwatch, man. I got to admit, Joe Biden changed policy.
	He called an audible That still is there, and I think those records, why he kept those personal records of his conversations with Yatsenek, that's going to seep into the impeachment inquiry pretty quickly.
	Yeah, I mean, so I guess I'd ask you, as a last question, because I watched it, I'm like, wait a minute.
	Like, letting him get on a live stage.
	I mean, you don't make a great case for yourself that I'm totally coherent.
	I'm not, in fact, brain-dead when you forget when your son died.
	You know, I have the rosary, and I can't remember...
	Wait, what? That's not...
	And again, I don't mean to make light of it.
	I'll make fun of Joe and Hunter on a lot of things.
	I do that as a father of five myself.
	I can't imagine a worse experience to have to go through than losing a child.
	It's a tragedy. God forbid I ever have to go through it.
	I don't know how I would handle it.
	It would be a disaster.
	But I will say this.
	I would remember... I would know every detail about it, and forgetting those details to try to make the case that you haven't, in fact, lost it wasn't great.
	So I was wondering, like, what are your sources telling you on the Hill about how the Biden White House, his staff, whether they think he can even get through another campaign?
	I saw it for a second.
	I go, man, it's...
	It's malpractice to allow this guy on a stage unmedicated, at the last minute, at night, beyond his usual 3 o'clock in the afternoon lid.
	Unless... Unless that was the shot across the bow from the Democrat powers.
	You see some of the Washington Post reporters.
	The CIA leaks stuff, too.
	The Pentagon leaks stuff, too.
	Those guys, they're putting out...
	And everyone knows who they are once you're in the game long enough.
	They're putting out the hints.
	Do you think that this was some of that?
	Do you think this was the shot across the bow to try to get him out if he's not going to do so voluntarily?
	I'm not sure of that.
	I think the people around the president who made this decision believed he could handle it, and he clearly couldn't.
	And they should have read the whole week, because all week long, he was in a befuddled mess.
	He's mistaking countries, talking to dead leaders who have been dead for years.
	They should have known that this was not the time.
	Listen, they knew it in 2020.
	That's why they kept him in the basement, right?
	Now they put him out there because they feel like, well, he's got to defend himself.
	He's not capable of defending himself after 5 o'clock at night.
	It seems really clear that. And I can't wait to watch the first presidential debate of 2024.
	If your dad gets the nomination and Joe Biden's on the stage, I think people are going to see just how much Joe Biden has declined from 2020, where he wasn't that good then, but he's going to be a lot worse.
	Listen, I think most of the people around the president have resigned that, barring a major health episode, this guy is going to That's the only thing keeping him alive as far as I'm concerned.
	The best insurance policy he has.
	100%. At first, I thought it was a disastrous decision.
	You chose the person that's polling at 1% in their own party in a primary.
	Now it makes sense, doesn't it?
	Maybe Joe is capable of doing something smart or his team, although again, we have yet to see it.
	So John, thank you so much for joining us.
	Really appreciate it. Guys, check out all the work that John's doing.
	It's amazing stuff.
	And I appreciate you guys.
	Keep liking, sharing, subscribing.
	Keep your questions coming.
	I try to look at both.
	If I can integrate something that's beyond some of the trolls in there, I'll ask it in there.
	Guys, now we have Matt Taibbi. Matt's been doing some incredible reporting.
	He's the guy that brought us the Twitter files.
	And he's going to be joining us now with more big, breaking news on all things Russiagate.
	Racket News founder, investigative journalist Matt Taibbi joins us now.
	So Matt, thank you so much for joining us.
	This is not something I would have had on my bingo card probably not all that long ago.
	I imagine before we all sort of perhaps got confounded about just the state of our government
	and the lunacy that we're seeing, we probably wouldn't have agreed on much.
	But I love that you're out here doing it.
	And I love that you've been at the center of so much of this reporting.
	I wish there were other people actually willing to do that.
	So this story goes beyond just the collusion story, but it's really the entire election meddling narrative.
	And the reality is, it seems based on what I've read and you're releasing now, everything they told us is actually the opposite of what was real.
	Can you lay out what you found and the big takeaways?
	Because I think this is so important for people to figure out.
	Sure. First of all, thank you so much for having me on.
	And I think you're right, you know, politics make strange bedfellows.
	And this has been a very strange eight years, very upsetting and disturbing eight years.
	And we've learned that a lot of the things that we believe to be true, in some cases for our whole lives, are completely the opposite.
	So maybe it isn't so strange that you and I are talking to each other, in fact, and it's kind of cool and kind of interesting.
	So thanks so much for having me on.
	First of all, I'm very grateful.
	As to what these stories are, for people who follow this story, and of course you followed it closely, one of the last remaining mysteries of Russiagate was the contents of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligences.
	Investigation into the origins of this story.
	People know that there was a significant investigation conducted out of that office.
	Some of it got out, most famously in the form of the Nunes memo, which you remember was ridiculed by everybody at first.
	I mean, Nancy Pelosi went so far as to call for Devin Nunes to step down for writing a deliberately dishonest memo.
	He's the only one that was right about anything.
	Exactly, yeah. At the time, right?
	During this whole thing.
	I'm reading his stuff. I was like, that makes sense to me.
	And then he's totally discredited or at least attempted to be discredited.
	And, you know, it was amazing.
	It was. It was remarkable to watch.
	I mean, the ferocity of the press corps.
	I mean, the people that I grew up around in descending upon Nunes.
	I mean, he was instantly this infamous character.
	And everybody was in total agreement that the memo had to be absolutely incorrect.
	There was a counter memo issued by the Democrats, by Adam Schiff.
	And then a year later, or a year and change later, the Obama-appointed Inspector General of the Justice Department, Michael Horowitz, issued a report that totally vindicated what Devin Nunes was writing.
	Now, this is important because this tells reporters like me and like Michael Schellenberger and like many others, that this is a credible group of investigators, that they got a lot of things right in a very difficult environment.
	But there were a lot of things that did not come out.
	And some of us have been waiting for those other shoes to drop.
	And we got a few of them.
	We got a peek at some of the stuff.
	In the form of recollections from sources who basically agreed.
	The two main revelations are that there were at least 26 figures, Trump associates and aides of your fathers who were placed under surveillance in the election year of 2016.
	And the second really big thing is that the intelligence community assessment of January 6, 2017, that concluded that Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign specifically to denigrate Hillary Clinton and to help President-elect Trump's electoral chances was cooked intelligence, that they eliminated dissent, they downgraded reliable sources, upgraded unreliable ones, and eliminated Some information that was very valuable together.
	The Russians were not worried about Hillary Clinton at all.
	In fact, they were comfortable with the relationship.
	That's the quote. And they saw her as manageable and reflecting continuity, which is totally the opposite of what we were told.
	Oh yeah, no, she was going to be really hard on Russia despite having, you know, her and Bill taking money from every, you know, under the guise of the Clinton Foundation, etc., from every, you know, oligarch in the world, etc.
	No, that was going to be the case.
	Right, yeah. I mean, they had taken money from Renaissance Capital, $500,000 for a pretty short speech, which even by Clintonian standards was a pretty good day's work.
	You know, somehow that was completely forgotten in all the coverage of all this.
	But the idea that Russia, quote unquote, interfered, and by the way, the intelligence community never used the word interference.
	Interference has a very specific connotation in the intelligence world.
	It means meddling with the physical act of voting.
	So that's ballot boxes, voter registration.
	Even this crew of people never used that word interference.
	That was added by journalists.
	Yeah, they implied it enough to make the journalists take the leap for them and do their bidding.
	Exactly, exactly.
	But the notion that Russia did something specifically to help your father get elected, Is a myth that survives today to the present.
	It's probably the last thing that everybody still believes because almost everything else has been debunked.
	But this report that we have blows up even that and suggests that they did the same thing that would happen with the WMD episode.
	They just they overlooked the dissenting information.
	So what happens now?
	You know, again, for me, you know, I took this one personally because I was one of, you know, honestly, I was probably, you know, the number two target, you know, if you had sort of, you know, the game board for them, like if you could, you know, get me, you know, obviously a Nunez and, you know, a couple other people, but...
	I went through a lot with that.
	It's all based on a lie, so I do take it rather personally.
	But even for me, at the time, I'm like, well, I didn't do anything.
	This is what it is.
	But someone must have done something.
	I'm believing it because I want to believe.
	I want to believe that we have a country that operates under the rules and norms that I believe, the Constitution.
	I believed because, you know, man, it's just, that's what we, you know, no, it's the CIA. There's no way.
	They're all going to lie. The FBI, the entire institution, is going to get behind and do this?
	Like, I must not know something.
	And it turns out that is just total bullshit.
	It totally doesn't...
	No, no, no. And it's actually hard.
	Because, you know, I spent, you know, up until then, probably about 38 years of my life, you know, really believing in these things and these institutions and...
	They're corrupted beyond all possible belief.
	I mean, you went through some of that.
	I mean, with the Twitter files, you went through, you know, the coincidentally, just magically, just by total coincidence, there was clearly no collusion or they were not trying to send a message.
	But, you know, the day you testified before Congress, the IRS shows up knocking on your door, you know, clearly trying to intimidate you.
	I mean, you know, as someone who, you know, perhaps from very different political perspective, But someone who also believed many things that we all, I think, would have agreed upon as Americans.
	What did that do to you, this discovery?
	And then watching your other friends in journalism just either disavow or just knowingly spread sort of the narrative propaganda?
	Yeah, this particular story, this Trump-Russia story, you know, this Russiagate phenomenon was, I hate to admit this, it's kind of embarrassing, but it was a major event in my life, both personally and professionally.
	Me too! I mean, I would probably still be working at Rolling Stone if it were not.
	For this story, there were a handful of us in mainstream journalism, just a few, by the way, you know, people like Glenn Greenwald, Aaron Monte at The Nation.
	A few of us made a very simple point, which was, hey, you know, the last time we did a story that was based entirely on unnamed intelligence sources, We all got in a lot of trouble, and we ended up having to apologize to readers for a decade, and that was in the WMD episode.
	So where's the beef? If it's true, it's not like I'm not willing to believe it, but just show it to us.
	And they didn't.
	And we quickly became pariahs in the profession.
	And you're right, the issue with this story is you need to make a leap of perception to believe that entire institutions can be corrupted.
	Even in Watergate, think about it, like G. Gordon Liddy, they had to kind of hide and do a third-rate burglary to do their surveillance.
	In this case, you had whole institutions signing off on these things with the most senior members of those institutions doing it.
	And so you're right. That is the difference-making thing.
	It's corruption on a scale that we're not used to.
	And that's why I think so many people couldn't wrap their heads around it.
	Yeah, no, I saw it.
	And it's sort of amazing.
	I was there.
	I was a party to it.
	I was either a fly on the wall or one of the targets.
	And I'm sitting there being like, they're calling me all these things.
	I'm like, no, I'm not. But there must be...
	I'm even giving a little bit of credence.
	I'm trying to objectively look at it like, hey...
	I build buildings for a living prior to getting into this world.
	I don't know. Maybe they're doing something.
	But no. It was all a lie.
	I say one of the biggest sort of mistakes I made in the whole thing, and I think this is sort of by design, was when they went after General Flynn.
	I was like, well, I mean, again, the CIA is saying he did this.
	The FBI is saying he did this.
	And Obama said you can't trust him.
	And now you realize why years later.
	But I was like... Well, I don't know.
	I knew him pretty well. I spent a lot of time with him on the campaign.
	I was like, this is not a guy that I believe to be in any way, shape, or form any of the things that he's saying.
	But the accusation is so strong that you're also like, well, I'm not going to go to bat because these people must know something that I don't know.
	So maybe I won't come out against, but I'm going to sit on the sidelines.
	I'm going to take myself out of the game, and whether we like it or not, I have a decent sort of soapbox to be able to be loud, to be able to fight back.
	I did so for myself because I knew, but for someone else, I don't know, there's got to be something there.
	It's a truly sad wake-up call, but I think a lot of Americans have experienced that now, and I think that's being reflected in sort of their approval of Congress as well as sort of in their trust and faith in traditional mainstream media these days.
	Oh, well, yes.
	And then some. Understatement of the century, yes.
	Yeah, exactly. We're looking up at Congress, which is pretty pathetic.
	But, you know, I think you make a very interesting point, and it's something that I've only started to understand recently, which is that I think even within your father's administration, There was a hesitation.
	There was a sense of maybe somebody somewhere had a meeting with somebody and we don't know about it.
	And let's let all that play out.
	And meanwhile, you know, they were just going on offense and hitting, you know, from all angles and, you know, undermining the administration.
	Whereas, you know, perhaps...
	Somebody who had been through these kinds of wars many more times, right?
	Or, you know, J. Edgar Hoover in 1958 or whatever it was, they would have recognized this for what it was.
	But this, in modern times, this is unprecedented.
	No one had ever seen this kind of thing before.
	And so it's totally understandable that one would be overwhelmed by what happened.
	Yeah, no, by the way, I think, you know, whether by design or whether, you know, sort of a convenient, you know, after effect, I'm sure it had some sort of implications on my father and the way he, I mean, hey, are you not supposed to trust your generals?
	Well, it turns out you probably shouldn't.
	You know, they were, you know, knowingly lying to him or he'd give them a very explicit order and they would knowingly downplay it or drag it out or try to prevent it.
	And, you know, these are people that are really subverting sort of, you know, the notion of civilian leadership in our country.
	And I think, you know, that happened numerous times.
	I think it's, you know, as I've often said, it's probably one of the One of the only, perhaps, disadvantages of coming in from the outside is it does take time to figure out who those guys are, who they are real.
	Everyone will tell you everything you want to hear in Washington, D.C. The currency is not like business.
	You understand where everyone's goals are in business.
	You understand kind of what they want to do, and you also understand the downside of that.
	In D.C., they'll snake you because they're worried about getting into the next administration.
	They're leaking and lying.
	It's a very different game.
	Right, right.
	Yeah, no, DC's like Hollywood with less money, right?
	I mean, basically everybody- And much uglier people, in all fairness.
	We're not allowed to say that, because that doesn't matter, but it's true.
	So, you know, another one of the big findings you had was that, you know, the CIA and foreign intelligence agencies literally targeted 26 Trump associates.
	I mean- I mean, I can imagine who some of them are.
	I imagine every single one of those people had to know exactly what was happening and why.
	Or did they just kind of go along because everyone's just working together that way at this point and it's about that hegemony of power.
	Yeah, that's a great question.
	So we don't know the identities of everybody on that list.
	We have it separated into definites, and there's a list of about eight people who we can say absolutely for sure were targets because they're in, for instance, FBI reports about confidential human source contacts and that sort of thing.
	That's all the people who are in the FBI's crossfire hurricane probes, so Flynn, Manafort, you know, Waleed Faris, Carter Page, Papadopoulos.
	Those five are in the FBI probe.
	There's a few more. Sam Clovis was another one.
	Then there's a list of people who we think might have been on the list, but we haven't been able to fully confirm that.
	You might not have been on the list because There was a premium put on people who were overseas.
	I'm a little upset because I feel like I'm on every other watch list at this point.
	I get checked every time I go through Clear.
	I'm insurrectionist, terrorist, all these things.
	It would be a shame to not be on the one government list.
	I sort of want a clean slate, like 100% just total pirate.
	Fine, I'm good with that.
	Well, I mean, I wouldn't be surprised.
	Okay, good. So you're saying there's a chance?
	Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think there's actually probably a pretty decent chance that you're on the list.
	I'm a Trump. I want to be the best.
	I'll always be winning every list.
	That's it. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
	And as to the question of were there people who were objecting, there were.
	There were some people who we found out about, but it took years for us to find out these names.
	They didn't come forward at the time.
	We learned in the Horowitz report that there was an attorney in the National Security Division of the FBI named Stu Evans who did not want to go forward with the FISA. Surveillance on Carter Page because of who was paying for the key intelligence.
	He had to be overruled.
	There's an incredibly interesting 302 report involving an interview with a special agent named William Barnett, who was there from the very beginning.
	He was in Crossfire Hurricane And also was part of Mueller's probe.
	And he is talking about how there was, you know, poor predication.
	It was that the case was based on supposition after supposition.
	You know, that the...
	Story was opaque.
	There was a get Trump attitude.
	He talked about that. So he talked about the politicized nature of the investigation.
	He didn't see any evidence of collusion.
	All of this didn't become public until 2020, however.
	So that's kind of the problem with the story.
	All of the key revelations, there was a huge delay.
	Yeah, they get what they want.
	You know, right? It's like, oh, now it comes out.
	It's like, oh, yeah, that's great. They're like, oh, we got him now.
	You know, and I'm going, hey, we got a win fight.
	It's like, no, no, no. We got nothing.
	There will be no accountability.
	All of the people who lied, it's like the 51 intelligence officers who signed off saying the Hunter laptop was Russian disinformation.
	Like, no one's lost their security clearance.
	There will be exactly zero ramifications.
	They slowed down a government.
	They slowed down the will of the people for four years.
	They cost the American public hundreds of millions of dollars all in.
	I'm not just talking about Mueller, but just everything with the hysteria, And our ability to function on a world stage.
	And they got everything that they wanted.
	Like, make no mistake, we're catching it now, but because there's no accountability, they got literally 100%.
	Let's call it 99%, because maybe they got caught, but it won't matter because nothing's going to happen to them.
	Right. I mean, I would even characterize it as probably worse than that, because I think many of those figures were committing probably pretty serious crimes.
	You know, the leaking of signals intelligence to journalists.
	There are even a couple of cases where the journalists are liable.
	You know, the...
	There was that infamous meeting where, you know, Admiral Rogers, James Comey, John Brennan, and I'm sorry, who's the, and James Clapper, briefed your father on January 5th of 2017 about the contents of this intelligence community assessment.
	And then there was that separate meeting where Comey kind of Took him aside and allegedly told him all the stuff that was in the Steele dossier that was salacious.
	Now, he promised to keep that stuff close held or close hold, but it leaked out.
	Instantaneously. Magically.
	Because the FBI and the CIA, they couldn't keep something secret if they wanted to.
	And I saw that one.
	And that's when I first was like, wait a second.
	When I heard about the Steele dossier, for those of you watching who don't know, that's the pee tape.
	I'm like, hey dude, I've known my dad for a long time.
	Uh... Basically, until politics, where you just didn't have a choice.
	He's reluctant to shake someone's hand.
	He's a germaphobe.
	My father's a full-on germaphobe.
	He ain't going to Russia and letting prostitutes do that.
	Like, zero chance.
	Like, there would be days where if I look like maybe I maybe had a cold, like, he'd be like, just wave from a distance, like, not shake my hand.
	Like, no way it happened, but it didn't matter.
	Like, and Devin, actually, you brought up Devin Unions earlier.
	Like, he's one of the guys that actually, he came on this show when this sort of stuff, when I first started doing it, he was like, no, no, we actually think that the Steele dossier was actually Hunter Biden information.
	Yeah. For the Hillary camp that she didn't need when Joe didn't run, that they just basically repackaged and repurposed to go after Trump.
	Because that actually is totally fitting.
	That's really interesting.
	No, but think about it. It's actually perfect and like, I don't know, I see that as much more plausible than anything else that I can think of.
	Yeah, because they had to come up with some pretty weird explanations for where that came from, and none of them are terribly satisfactory, so I'm not sure that I believe, you know, I certainly don't believe their version of the story.
	It's just as good as any version right now, so it's got to be somewhere out there.
	Yeah, but that episode where they're scheming, basically, these are the heads of the intelligence agencies.
	You have a president-elect who's coming into office and they're already basically defying this president.
	And worse than that, there were leaks to other countries that were reported all over the world.
	It was in Haaretz in Israel that Israel should not share intelligence with the United States because Russia has leverages of pressure on the new president.
	I don't know how that's not a crime.
	I mean, it's one thing to maybe not go along with or to be unenthusiastic about the direction of a new president.
	It's another thing to tell another country that your president is a traitor and to leak that out based on classified material.
	I don't see how that's not a very, very serious crime.
	Because it was designed to do what they wanted it to do and therefore nothing will ever happen.
	I mean, that's the real problem.
	Talk about where the whole Russia hysteria really starts.
	I mean, why was there such hysteria around using Russia as the basis for all these false narratives?
	I remember, you know, the 1980s called and want their foreign policy back.
	And, you know, I'm a product of sort of the Cold War era.
	And, you know, I had my biases and my mom's Czech and I spent my summers in the Czech Republic, what was then communist Czechoslovakia.
	And like, you know, we were no fans of the Russians, but...
	Why were they chosen to be sort of the big bad boogeyman in all of these things instead of, you know, I don't know, a far more credible threat like a China or otherwise?
	That's a really good question.
	I mean, I spent nearly 10 years of my life, actually over 10 years of my life, living in the former Soviet Union.
	I speak Russian. And I was there when Putin took power.
	Putin actually shut down my old newspaper in Moscow.
	Yeah. And I'm not apologizing for him, but just saying...
	Yeah, no, but I think there's an archaic thing left over in sort of the organism of the intelligence agencies that still kind of reflexively views Russia as the same thing as the Soviet Union.
	They continually mix up the two countries as though they're the same.
	There was that famous quote from Donna Brazile Yeah.
	Yeah. Yeah.
	Yeah, exactly. So I think they were playing on archaic fears that are still in there in the American population about the big bad Russian bear and how they're out to get us.
	But I think it was incidental.
	I mean, frankly, they went into that year and that's one of the things that we learned.
	They didn't have an organizing principle.
	The initial Steele dossier reports If you pay attention, they were about Central Asia, they were about hotels.
	They didn't have this Russia focus.
	I think this started in the summer of 2016.
	If you remember, there was an intercept where the CIA heard that the Russians had heard that The Hillary Clinton campaign was planning on making Russia a centerpiece of their argument against Donald Trump.
	We don't know what the genesis of that was, but I think they just kind of invented it out of whole cloth, and journalists ran with it, which is, I guess, not surprising.
	I was surprised at the time, but now nothing that reporters do surprises me anymore.
	Yeah, I mean, I'd love to hear your opinion.
	You know, talking about sort of the parallels between, you know, Russia, Russia, Russia, Russiagate, as we know it, you know, Iraq and the WMDs, and just how often, like, the American people have become victimized by this really manipulated intelligence.
	Because, I mean, I see it happening.
	I mean, I'd love your opinion of what's going on this very week, you know, Wow!
	Oh! Russia! Oh my god!
	Russia! Russia! Again! Like, again!
	Like, magically! It just happens to be, Matt, you know, about seven minutes before...
	Sending another $60 billion in unaccounted-for funds for a war that I have yet to hear anyone articulate what victory looks like or what reasonable peace will be that will send more young men to their death for no reason other than maybe to make the deep state and big war some money.
	I mean, I feel like it's playing out again.
	Can you talk about that?
	Because, I mean, it feels like it's history repeating itself, right?
	We saw it with WMDs.
	We saw it with Russiagate. And now, magically...
	You know, simultaneously Russia's the boogeyman again the second we need 60 billion in something that's become very unpopular outside of the DC Beltway.
	In the DC Beltway, it's still the most popular with the exception of two or three people, you know, in there.
	What are your thoughts on that?
	Well, first of all, can I just ask you, man, what was your reaction when you saw that report of, there is a threat?
	Look at my Twitter feed.
	Within seconds, I was like, if you don't realize that this is 100% bullshit, you're either a single-digit IQ individual...
	Or you've been living on an island with no internet.
	Again, it's impossible, but that doesn't matter.
	Other things were impossible.
	If you were a doctor and you said the Wuhan lab leak theory was obviously true, you lost your funding, you lost your tenure, you were thrown out of medicine, you were discredited.
	Of course it came from the lab in the place where the virus origin that studied the exact virus in question, and not from...
	Three feet outside of that lab.
	Like, of course it did, but that doesn't matter.
	And I do feel that people are catching on, but, you know, there are those who still, you know, they're busy just trying to feed their families.
	They're not paying attention to the details.
	I've sort of, you know, this has become my thing.
	I scream about this stuff all day long, but, like, of course it is, but it doesn't matter.
	And they still think you're dumb enough to fall for it that even Republicans will go out there, no, this is obviously what's going on.
	Like, of course it's not. Right, right.
	And I think that's what they're counting on.
	They're counting on the fact that, you know, most people are working multiple jobs, they've got kids, every single second of their day is accounted for, you know, they're either You know, changing a diaper while doing something else.
	I mean, you know, they're struggling to put food in the table, all these things.
	They don't have time to obsess over details of intelligence controversies, so it's either a shrugging yes or perhaps a faint objection, but they don't have time to get worked up about it, and they count on that.
	With these intelligence controversies, the pattern is Is that they will come out with a strong statement, and then it will only later leak out that there was some other point of view about the whole thing.
	This is very, very similar to what happened here, very similar to what happened with the Iraq story.
	The only difference was they used a different tool.
	With Iraq, they used the National Intelligence Estimate, which is a formal, a big product that involves all the intelligence agencies.
	And there, they didn't Remove all of the dissenting information, but they just kept it classified.
	So when it first came out, we were told that the key line was Saddam is still intent on making nuclear weapons.
	That's what got out to the public.
	And oh my god, that's amazing, that's horrifying, let's go to war, right?
	It wasn't until 12 years later, it was 2015, that they declassified that document and we find out that there's there are lines in there like there is no operational tie between Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaeda.
	Now would we have gone to war if we had heard that first version?
	Of course not. But the delay is what matters, and it's the same with this.
	The only difference with this is they didn't have to put the dissent in this kind of report.
	An intelligence community assessment is a different kind of animal.
	They could just keep the analysts out of it entirely.
	They knew, for instance, that the State Department didn't agree with their point of view, so no State Department analysts.
	That's how they did it.
	But even so, Brennan, in his own book, Wrote that he had to overrule two of his Russia experts in order to come up with the conclusion that he came up with.
	But we never heard that at the time.
	At the time, it sounded like they were unanimous.
	And that's how this thing works.
	They're banking on your inattention and how busy you are.
	Yeah, but what's worse is now we all know.
	And people in the industry of journalism, they're still running with some of this stuff
	as though it's real.
	I mean, that should scare us all, that they're unwilling to acknowledge their errors even now,
	that they're continuing to push the propaganda and that they won't cover stories like yours.
	They're not willing to do the work.
	Most of them are lazy and they'll just sort of spoonfeed what they're given.
	But I mean, that says a lot about the state of journalism.
	And really the ultimate future of our country because of your point, which is that, yes, you're right.
	Contrary to popular belief from the same journalist, Bidenomics has not made it easier for people to feed their families and live.
	That's impossible given inflation and where interest rates are, etc., etc., etc.
	And yet they're unwilling to change.
	I mean, are they just... Content doing sort of the propaganda of the regime as long as that's for the Democrat Party?
	Because it does feel like, you know, for me, as a conservative, being out there and doing, like, I am not just combating, you know, the ideas of today's Democrat Party versus mine.
	I'm doing that being suppressed by big tech while they're artificially boosted.
	Being, you know, lied to by the mainstream media.
	These are multi-trillion dollar institutions, you know, that you're up against.
	And yet it's still close.
	It's sort of, I mean, I guess that should be scary to them and perhaps why they continue to do it.
	But why do you think? Well, I think it's a mixture, right?
	I mean, this idea that journalists, you know, are happy to be on the front lines of any movement to stop Donald Trump from being president.
	I covered your father's campaign in 2016.
	I was on the bus with all those journalists.
	I remember the discussions that people had once it became clear that he was going to become the nominee.
	There were a lot of journalists who felt guilty because they thought they had given him free coverage.
	And so there was this new discussion.
	Well, what are we going to do? Well, we can't cover him less because we're going to lose money on ratings because they got such great ratings out of Trump coverage.
	So let's just do the same stuff, but add a ton of negativity to it.
	And they justified this to themselves by saying, oh, we're doing a public service, blah, blah, blah.
	But this goes against everything real journalists are taught, which is we're not supposed to care about the outcome.
	The focus for us is supposed to be, let's get it right.
	In the case of a political movement, a presidential campaign, the job for me is Donald Trump is winning the primary.
	He's incredibly popular despite the predictions.
	Well, why is that? I mean, it's just a job.
	We're supposed to figure out what the answer is.
	Now, with this thing, there's an additional problem, though, however, which is that with WMDs, They could at least point to a couple of guilty journalists and say, well, it was their fault, and we can scale that back.
	With Russiagate, you'd have to run a retraction for five or ten years worth of coverage.
	People won Pulitzer Prizes, and they still have them for what is literally known as 100% false reporting.
	It's like, well, we like the writing style.
	I'm like, I don't think that's what the Pulitzer was, but what do I know?
	I'm new to this.
	Yeah, I mean, what are they going to do?
	Let's say they take away those Pulitzer Prizes.
	Okay, well, that's just a start.
	Then you've got to go through, you know, thousands of newspapers and, you know, fix all of those stories and add editor's notes to each and every one of them.
	And there are errors throughout all the coverage.
	Then that's not even including cable TV, which was...
	Worse even than the newspapers.
	So logistically, it's almost an impossible problem.
	You would have to go on TV and say, we got 10 years of stuff completely wrong.
	We're going to start over and we're going to have to fire a whole bunch of people and try again.
	That's the only way they can do it, and they're never going to do that.
	Yeah, it's brutal. How has that worked with you now that you're doing some of these things?
	I know, I mean, again, I'm sure many of them were your friends at some other point in time.
	Yeah. When you broke the Twitter files, people were going after you that I imagine were probably close friends of you for just pointing out that these things actually happened.
	I knew that it was happening.
	I knew that I was being suppressed because I went from one day magically getting 5,000 to 8,000 retweets opposed to We're good to go.
	Right, yeah. And people who would tell you that you're imagining things, I mean, what are you supposed to think about that?
	It's obvious. When the numbers go from X to X minus 10,000 or 20,000, you're not looking at an anomaly.
	But what was so weird about the Twitter files was the same reporters who were gung-ho for stories like, You know, the Snowden revelations, you know, stories about excesses of the intelligence community.
	What we were writing about was really very similar.
	We were saying the FBI, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Global Engagement Center, the State Department, they're violating their charters and getting involved in domestic Intelligence operations in ways that they're not allowed to.
	They're getting involved in speech regulation, which they're not allowed to do.
	And I could not for the life of me understand why reporters would not be interested in that story, except as it turns out, they believe that this is necessary.
	Just the press. You know, you can guess, right?
	Populous political movements of a certain type.
	So they've completely changed what their belief system is.
	And again, I just don't understand that because that's not how reporters used to think once upon a time.
	We were not supposed to care.
	This is a hot story.
	I thought, you know, I looked at this and I thought this is great.
	This is a story of a lifetime. Who wouldn't want to work on this?
	And all the older reporters I talked to agreed with me.
	It's this other, it's this new generation that's come in that has a different value system that, you know, is going to take some getting used to.
	Yeah, I mean, it certainly feels like it's become, you know, a lot more activism.
	You know, and again, I saw it just in the reaction to, you know, hey, when the IRS knocked on your door, the same day as your congressional testimony, like...
	I mean, that seems totally, totally normal.
	I know you've also said you've seen sort of your ex account take a hit following the Twitter files reporting, which is sort of interesting because I mean, I think, you know, whether it was Elon Musk or they sort of opened the kimono for you to go look into these things.
	You know, what more can you tell us about that?
	Because that's sort of interesting. And I've seen sort of the changes between Twitter 1.0 and even 2.0.
	It was actually the best time I thought for Twitter was like the in-between where everyone was just afraid.
	They weren't sure what was going to happen.
	So they just sort of took all the restrictions off.
	That's the only time I've actually seen real growth in the last few years.
	So I'm curious to see what your thoughts were on that one.
	Yeah, that was a really bizarre episode.
	Elon was having a dispute with Substack, which is the platform that I use for my business.
	And I woke up one morning and Twitter had Instituted some reforms that made it very difficult to open links for my site, and I made, I guess, a snarky comment about it somewhere, and next thing I knew, I had a comprehensive search ban on my site.
	Some of my own Twitter files reports were taken down, and Elon and I had an exchange on Signal that he published, which was really strange.
	And the really bizarre thing about this whole thing is I think he wanted me to go to Twitter subs, which is sort of something like Substack.
	And I said to him, We can't do that because then people will say we have a financial relationship and that will discredit the Twitter files reporting and that's really all I care about.
	And he didn't see it that way.
	Yeah, I see that.
	If I put up a link to this show on Twitter...
	I'll get 100 retweets where I'd normally get a couple thousand or whatever.
	They definitely want to control that space.
	I think it's certainly great compared to what it was.
	But like I said, the free time was when there was the algorithm and they weren't sure what was going to happen.
	The two months between when he said he was going to buy and when it actually closed.
	And when it actually closed, it actually reverted.
	For a while, it reverted to actually, for me, it was worse.
	than Twitter 1.0, because you could fire 80% of the people, but if the 20% are still 100% sort of ideologically
	on the other side, it probably doesn't change all that much.
	I think a lot of that's gotten better.
	I think we're in a much better place today because of X without question.
	But yes, if you're not sort of entirely in that ecosphere, I imagine they're gonna do what they can to suppress that.
	Isn't that sad though?
	I mean, isn't it sad that you have to figure in all of these people with their thumbs
	on the scale everywhere, right?
	In every institution.
	I mean, I don't remember America being like that growing up.
	This is a new thing to have to get used to, this idea that Somebody is cheating at almost every level of the system now, and you just have to find a way to navigate it.
	And that's just sad.
	I think the beauty of this country is that you could be pretty much anybody.
	If you were good at something, you could rise to the top.
	Well, it's not really quite like that anymore.
	No. Build your own.
	It doesn't really mean build your own.
	It means you can go ahead and try, and then Amazon will pull your hosting services.
	It's not really build your own.
	We're going to make it as hard as possible and force you back into the places that we ultimately control, and then also when we disagree with you, we'll shut you off.
	I'd say honestly, candidly, and I'm on the platform, but Rumble is one of the few places that does not seem to do that.
	If a country tells them, hey, we won't have you on here if you don't do it this way, okay, then don't have us on, but we're not going to sort of bastardize the notion of free speech to accommodate.
	But yes, there's not many that do it objectively or honestly if we're going to have a true conversation about that.
	Yeah, and all credit to them for continuing to do that.
	Substack has also kind of refused to give in to boycotts and pressure and throw authors overboard.
	But these are relatively small spaces.
	I mean, these gigantic...
	These platforms like Facebook, and especially Google.
	Google's by far the worst defender of all of them.
	I mean, the amount of money, the manipulation, it's scary.
	I mean, it makes Meta seem like a baby.
	And it's really bad there, too.
	But it ain't even close.
	Right. And they can make minor changes to the algorithm and fundamentally change how the world works.
	It consumes news, what information they will believe, not believe, that sort of thing.
	And they're making money at a clip.
	I mean, I had somebody who used to work there describe it as, like, there's no machine that you could make that would be able to generate cash fast enough to emulate the actual profit rate of the company.
	So they're making money hand over fist and having this inordinate impact on the world.
	Just to bring it back to something that's kind of real and significant, what we found on the Twitter files, this whole idea of anti-disinformation and turning the internet into a tool of social control, something that can be leveraged, it started with the Arab Spring, Occupy, the Tea Party, but the really big thing, frankly, was your father's presidential campaign when he proved that one person with a Twitter account Can ignore the entire press corps and still win an election.
	I think that was the thing that sent alarm bells through the system and started this big move towards censorship.
	We saw hints of that in the documents, but we were never able to prove it out.
	But I feel pretty confident that that's the thesis underlying all of this.
	100%. You said it. You know, Google can change the algorithm a little bit and sway public opinion.
	There's no question in my mind that that's exactly what they've been doing.
	And to your point about, you know, really the people in power want to change the status
	quo.
	I mean, there's, you see that, you see it, whether it's in big tech, you see it this
	week in Washington.
	I mean, there's still reluctance in Washington, because I'd love to get your take in this
	one on making any meaningful reforms to FISA, you know, to the 702 stuff.
	I mean, you have Republicans now, we should be able to spy on all Americans and use this
	stuff.
	Like, where's the ACLU?
	Where are any of the civil liberties, like, you know, institutions?
	Despite all of the spying abuses, despite all the lies before judges, before Congress, what has your reporting revealed about the FISA process and why there's still such a push to protect what seems to be as broken a system as perhaps the FBI itself?
	Oh yeah, no, it's unbelievable.
	Just in the story that we just did, the abuses with FISA are significant because there are just so many holes in the procedural checks and balances that you would hope would be there.
	So on the front end, In terms of requests, you know, you can have somebody who's at the CIA informally ask, you know, another foreign ally, hey, could you put person X, Y, or Z under signals intelligence or signal surveillance?
	And, you know, they will generate transcripts, they will generate, you know, some kind of a report, and that's done without sufficient predication.
	So that's like Getting a search warrant without probable cause.
	And then on the other end, when the transcripts arrive in the United States, the unmasking procedures have been basically debilitated to the point where they're non-existent.
	You have officials writing emails saying, yeah, I just need to know this for some report I'm writing.
	There's no national security reason whatsoever, and they're unmasking people willy-nilly.
	So FISA and 702 and the related programs of our allies have turned into basically a gigantic warrantless surveillance program, which is exactly what we've tried to avoid across at least the last century of jurisprudence about You know, surveillance, police powers, that sort of thing.
	And it's a mess now.
	And you're right, I'm very disappointed in Republicans because I remember when this scandal first came out about Russiagate talking to members of Congress in the Republican Congress who seemed to have this big come-to-Jesus moment about, oh my God, this is a mess. We've got to fix this.
	Well, you know, suddenly now they're canceling the debate about it.
	And what's that about?
	Yeah, well, by the way, many of them, and I like to call balls and strikes, like, you know, many of them are the same way with big tech.
	Oh, they're really, you know, they're really against big tech, but we're not going to actually do anything about it.
	You know, they cash their, you know, $4,000 check, whatever it is, from Google every time, and, you know, they talk big on Twitter, but don't actually do anything.
	So, you know, that seems to be...
	Something across the board with us down there.
	But I mean, that the American people can be spied on like this, that no one's up in arms about it.
	Again, the same people that are supposed to be doing this, journalists, they seem very happy just to allow this to go on when it's a flagrant violation of our basic rights.
	It's shocking, but I guess not surprising anymore.
	Well, it should be surprising.
	I remember early in the Bush years, there was a leak about how DARPA, which is that office in the Pentagon, which does exotic research for new products, projects, they had this thing called total information awareness, which was this plan that would It would grab information from everywhere.
	It would be health records, it would be financial records, it would be signals intelligence.
	They would put it all in one place and the Pentagon would be able to access instantaneously A kind of a singular picture of almost any individual.
	And there was a huge uproar in the kind of left liberal advocacy space.
	Oh my God, this is George Orwell.
	We can't have this. Well, where's that energy now?
	Because we have this now, right?
	Like the FBI uses national security letters to get basically any kind of information it wants.
	From almost any kind of business.
	They use the 702 program to spy on people abroad and even here.
	They're collecting emails.
	Where's the outrage? I mean, I'm outraged.
	I don't understand.
	Me too. I can only bitch about so much.
	It needs some backup.
	I'm glad you're doing it. Exactly.
	It's nice to meet somebody who actually agrees.
	I mean, but it's weird.
	American independence is weird because once upon a time, you couldn't tell an American, oh, yeah, I'm going to listen to all your stuff and get your health records and you're going to be cool with that.
	Are you kidding me?
	Most Americans would be, you know, reaching for their gun lockers if that happened once upon a time.
	But You know, now it's a different story.
	I just don't understand that. Well, I feel it's sort of a factor of, like, people have sort of been beaten into submission.
	They've been sort of, you know, I think that was the whole thing with the COVID and sort of the mandates across the board.
	For me, I was like, you know, I had a different take of so many in the country.
	I didn't realize, you know, we had as many sheep as we do.
	You know, people who, you know, I still see it.
	I mean, today, I live in Florida.
	I still see people driving in cars with masks on today.
	Like, you know, and I'm like, what is going on?
	And so, you know, I guess, you know, they're playing to that crowd or, you know, they're guilty of creating that crowd.
	Just, you know, an inane sense of fear that doesn't actually make sense.
	But I guess I'd get as a last question for you, Matt, what are some of the other big stories that are out there right now that legacy media is missing or perhaps just choosing to flagrantly ignore?
	Can you tease any other big investigations that we can see from you in Racket News?
	Sure. I mean, I think one story that I believe is going to turn into something really significant.
	There was a little hint of it when Jim Jordan and the weaponization of government subcommittee got a little hint of new forms of financial surveillance where essentially one bank was doing searches on terms like um bass pro shops yeah yeah right there were the religious texts that uh all kinds of things and they were uh basically what they were doing is they were scoring people like if you if they were using mcc code trans uh codes for transactions and saying like if over 50 of your transactions uh counted as things that we didn't like Then you were a candidate to be, you know, generate a suspicious activity report, which is something that happens in the money laundering world.
	This is also going to sound like gibberish, but basically this is...
	No, it's a social credit system.
	I mean, they're implementing it without our knowledge or perhaps with our knowledge.
	But yeah, there's no question that we just got to make enough people aware of it.
	Right. If you add this, if you graph that on to the mechanisms that they've already developed for speech control and add the algorithms that they're already using for things like Analyzing threats and put that into the private financial monitoring system, then you have something that we've never seen before.
	It's an end run around almost anything.
	For instance, if they're going to debank people for buying handguns, then what do you need gun control laws for?
	People are just not going to buy them anyway.
	They want to be extra sure that people can't protect themselves.
	With the open borders and the crime that's coming through there, those people will be fine.
	I say it a lot, and maybe it's a conservative soundbite, but I do feel like Americans now are second-class citizens in their own country.
	We are treated with fewer rights than those who are either here illegally or those who aren't actually citizens.
	I don't think that's hyperbole anymore.
	There maybe was a time where that would be the case, but it feels like that's the case in the actions.
	If I beat the hell out of cops in the streets of New York, I'd be in jail for a really long time, not released without bail a few moments later, only to become a repeat offender within 15 minutes.
	It's not the same for everyone in this country right now, and that's scary.
	No, and the degradation of rights is this huge, huge thing that's happened in American society.
	The importance of the Bill of Rights is exactly that we don't end up with second-class citizens.
	Everybody has the same right to speak.
	Everybody has the same right to due process.
	You can't just grab somebody off the street and throw them in a Navy brig and you need an arrest warrant.
	When George Bush did that in the early 2000s once, it was a huge news story.
	Well, you know, we're starting to violate all kinds of rights, you know, 5th Amendment, 4th Amendment, 14th Amendment, you know, 1st Amendment especially.
	And that does turn into a situation where bureaucracies have power and people increasingly don't, because the one thing we did have was the legal ability to protest.
	And if we don't have that anymore, then we are second-class citizens.
	And that is what's really scary.
	You know, you talk about what's the big story.
	I think that's the big story.
	And what can you do to fight it?
	I'd be curious to hear your, you know.
	Yeah, well, listen, I try to, you know, I try to do it with everything.
	I mean, you know, like I said, I talk about it on the show all the time.
	you know, helped, you know, take a company public, public square to allow sort of like-minded people
	to find and support businesses that aren't just sort of woke corporate interests that, you know,
	that would put you in the gulags in two seconds and are pushing stuff that you may not believe in.
	Like find the small business that aligns with your values.
	And, you know, a lot of this to me, it is about the money, right?
	If they can control the money and all of that aspect, and so you pull some of that away, it makes it harder.
	I've tried, you know, like I took this seriously.
	I was a business guy before I got thrown into politics.
	Our business is very different now, but I spend a lot of my time now trying to create these businesses that they said, build your own.
	I've done it with a publishing company because a lot of the traditional publishing houses basically weren't publishing other conservative writers.
	Or they'd say, hey, we'll give you your upfront, but you can't say this, you can't say this.
	And I don't mean radical things.
	I mean, these are congressmen and senators.
	You know, writing mainstream conservative thoughts, and that was too much, and they were going to censor it that way.
	You know, I've done this sort of across the board, a news app.
	You know, this one, we were debanked, actually.
	I started MXM News to just aggregate the stuff that's out there.
	You know, you can see the New York Times version, but you'll also see the Breitbart version, and you can see it in an interesting place, and compare and contrast will give you everything.
	Because I actually think that if you actually saw everything, my side probably prevails, so I'm not willing to hide it from you.
	This was like CPAC last year, I guess.
	The morning, my partner in the deal calls me.
	He's like, hey, our operating account is at zero.
	I go, what do you mean?
	There's like three quarters of a million dollars in there.
	We were using it to run the business.
	We thought we got hacked.
	Call the bank. Oh, it was PNC Bank, like a big bank out of Pittsburgh.
	This is not a small little bank that...
	Oh, yeah, wait, sorry, we forgot to call you.
	Like, we don't want to do business with you.
	I was like, well, we're not creating fake, we're literally just putting stuff that's out there in the ether and just making it easy for people to find, to your point about Google.
	It's, you know, you can get these 700 versions of CNN before you get to, you know, the Matt Taibbi take on page, you know, 476.
	You may be the right take, but no one's ever going to scroll far enough to get there.
	They didn't even call.
	They were like, oh yeah, there's a cashier's check in the mail.
	I'm like, dude, are you serious?
	It literally was the day of CPAC. So at the time, Kevin McCarthy was speaker.
	I ran into him. I was like, hey, by the way.
	So he put a tweet out about Carrie Lake.
	By 12 hours later, oh no, no, it was an error.
	It wasn't an error.
	We're on the phone talking with you guys.
	It's only an error because I have a big enough platform to actually fight back.
	So, you know, I spend a lot of my time doing this because I believe the money component, you know, I bitch a lot, but, like, you got to do more than bitch.
	You got to actually act. And so it's been creating sort of this parallel economy or doing my best I can with that.
	You know, again, Public Square, MXM News, you know, winning team publishing.
	Like, these are businesses I had no...
	No plan on doing when I was just a real estate developer, but I understand the threat.
	And so now it's become a huge focus for me because I think that's a huge component of it that perhaps I'm blessed to have the platform to help create and push that stuff into the ether.
	That's fascinating, but how terrifying is it that you can't even rely on Americans to chase a profit motive anymore?
	When do the class action—this is the thing we've got to start next, because God knows they've weaponized lawfare against me and my family for long enough.
	When do the shareholders of Disney say, hey man— It's pretty clear that the trans propaganda that you're putting out there on a daily basis is not good for shareholder value, and therefore you're violating your fiduciary responsibility, because that's clearly happening in corporate America.
	I have a friend who's a corporate recruiter for Fortune 500 companies, and she's like, Fortune 500 companies?
	Well, tell her, no straight white males.
	And preferably no white males, period.
	But what if it's an industry that's like 95%?
	It doesn't matter. CEO's got to be, you know, we need to check some boxes.
	I mean, they're violating just basic rules and laws, and they're doing it so flagrantly.
	You know, when do the people have enough of that?
	Hopefully enough of that's coming out.
	We see it with a lot of the DEI stuff.
	We see it with the airline stuff.
	And eventually people are going to die because of these decisions that are Are not based on fiduciary responsibility or anything.
	And hopefully people wake up to that.
	And once they step on the gas on that one, I think you change the narrative quickly.
	But... Man, again, we're not working, you know, hey, you know, the guy that's buying the ticket is not the same as the, you know, the trans CEO of United or whatever craziness I saw, you know, two weeks ago online.
	But those are the people that are getting in charge, and those are the people who have taken over the military.
	And, you know, they've done a good job that sort of that radical Marxist group of people that I think have taken over the vast majority of the institutions of this country, from academia to the military to the FBI, from going from the ground up.
	And, you know, the conservative, no, we're busy building a business and we're doing this.
	It's like, guess what, folks? None of that matters anymore.
	Like, run for your school board or you're going to have a serious problem.
	So we do have real issues.
	I'm just trying to combat it as best I can.
	It's probably why I do this instead of taking the easy way out of, hey, I could have just been a building guy in New York and been invited to the cool person party and shut the fuck up about politics.
	And, you know, maybe they'd have left me alone, probably not because of my dad, but we all could have done that.
	My dad knew that he could have done that, and he chose not to because he actually believes in this stuff.
	Yeah, well, I mean, it's fascinating.
	It's fascinating that it's necessary, but all power to you for trying.
	I mean, it's a sad state of affairs that we're in.
	It is. Well, I'm glad you're doing what you're doing as well, Matt.
	So I want to thank you for this.
	How can everyone who's watching, how do they find you?
	I know you're on Substack. You mentioned you got a good Twitter game.
	Just tell us where they can find you so you can check it out.
	Because again, for me, it's like, I'm happy to get all of this out there in the ether.
	I want everyone to see all the sides and I love what you're doing and I love that you're taking them on and coming from a very different perspective than I ever would, but I'm happy to be in the fight with you because I believe in this stuff.
	Excellent. Well, thank you so much.
	I'm at racket.news, so that's very easy to find.
	That's a Substack site. And on Twitter, it's just at mtaibi.
	It's T-A-I-B-B-I. And, you know, look forward to anybody who wants to check out the site.
	We've got the three-part series on the Russiagate stuff this week, which is almost a month in the making.
	So please at least check that one out.
	Well, Matt, thank you very much for being here, man.
	As more of this stuff breaks, I really enjoyed that.
	It was a really cool perspective.
	So, you know, as more of this stuff breaks, you know, let me know.
	Let's stay in touch, and we'll definitely have you back on.
	And, you know, however we can help, you know, fight this battle against some rather large and ominous forces, I'm happy to do that, man.
	So thank you so much for being here.
	Absolutely. And pleasure to meet you.
	Thank you so much. Likewise. Likewise.
	Be well. Take care.
	So guys, thank you for checking this out tonight.
	I really appreciate it. I thought that was really interesting.
	A really fascinating take.
	Someone who's really doing it and again, you know coming at it from a very different perspective
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	And for those of you who are on Locals, I'm going to head over now, even though we've been going for almost two hours, I'm going to go head over.
	I'm going to go do the Locals thing, so I'll do the AMA there right now.
	If you're a subscriber on Locals, check that out.
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	You know the drill. We can't do this without you guys, but you guys are all part of this movement, and I just appreciate you being in there with me.
	So, guys, have an awesome evening.
	I will see you live on Monday.
	If you're on Locals, I'll go do, you know, a half hour over there.
	Ask me anything. Enjoy it.
	I thought that was an awesome one.

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