Danny Jones Podcast - #383 - Glenn Greenwald: War Updates, Trump-Clinton Cover Up & Joe Kent
Aired: 2026-03-30
Duration: 03:00:29


=== Joe Kent's Security Clearance (07:00) ===

[00:00:04]  All right, Glenn Greenwald, thank you so much for coming, man.
[00:00:09]  Great, great to be here.
[00:00:10]  Thank you for having me.
[00:00:10]  Huge fan of you, legendary Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, obviously known for breaking the Snowden files and all that stuff, which is incredible.
[00:00:20]  And, you know, the work you're doing now is also very, still very impressive.
[00:00:25]  But we were just talking off camera before we started about all this Epstein and Iran war stuff and the Joe Kent stuff.
[00:00:35]  The Joe Kent debacle that's happening right now is crazy.
[00:00:40]  I just watched your recent interview with Tucker and his Joe Kent's recent interview with Tucker and noticed like this guy is so measured and like taking such a neutral stance on this whole thing.
[00:00:53]  And it seems like, you know, everyone that's in defense of this administration right now is just going on an all out offensive on him.
[00:01:01]  Well, yeah.
[00:01:02]  Well, it's not surprising.
[00:01:03]  This is traditionally how the government treats people who reveal secrets.
[00:01:07]  About government corruption or government deceit that they want to keep hidden.
[00:01:11]  You go back, one of the formative experiences in my childhood, even though I was too young when it happened, but when I started learning about it was the Pentagon Papers and Daniel Ellsberg.
[00:01:20]  And it's such an incredible story because Daniel Ellsberg was in the heart of the American establishment, you know, PhD from Harvard in nuclear science, went to the RAND Corporation, which especially then was the key intelligence and defense contractor that planned policy for the Pentagon, including our nuclear policy in the middle of the Cold War.
[00:01:40]  Early architect of the Vietnam War.
[00:01:42]  And then he starts through the 1960s seeing inside the U.S. government that increasingly the Pentagon is concluding internally, for sure, there's no way to win the Vietnam War.
[00:01:51]  And to the public, they keep saying, We're on the verge of winning.
[00:01:54]  Just give us another six months because the public started getting, you know, very angry about the fact that thousands of American boys were returning in body bags and caskets.
[00:02:04]  And he finally couldn't take it anymore.
[00:02:05]  And even though it was top secret, he leaks the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times and the Washington Post showing that.
[00:02:10]  The government had been systematically lying to the public about this war.
[00:02:13]  And what's the first thing the next administration does to him?
[00:02:15]  They start attacking his character.
[00:02:16]  They say he's a Kremlin agent, he's a communist.
[00:02:19]  They broke into his psychoanalyst's office because they wanted to discover psychosexual secrets to dirty his name and reputation.
[00:02:26]  And he would have gone to prison for life had the government not done that.
[00:02:28]  The judge threw the case out based on this government misconduct.
[00:02:31]  But this is the playbook they use.
[00:02:32]  They've used it with Julian Assange, with Edward Snowden, with Chelsea.
[00:02:35]  Anyone who comes and reveals secrets like Joe Kent did.
[00:02:38]  And I remember the first time I met Snowden, I immediately realized that.
[00:02:42]  He was going to be very difficult to do that to because he's very clean cut.
[00:02:45]  Like, a lot of times, these people who do this, who risk their lives to reveal secrets, are kind of like alienated misfits, or they're otherwise just maladjusted.
[00:02:54]  And, you know, Snowden looked like the grandchild of an Iowa couple, you know, just super clean cut, had worked the CIA, went to enlist in the army to fight in Iraq.
[00:03:04]  And I remember thinking, like, try and demonize him.
[00:03:06]  But of course they did, but it was very difficult.
[00:03:08]  Joe Kent is probably the pinnacle of that.
[00:03:10]  I mean, you're talking here about a Green Beret.
[00:03:12]  Who's won every military award there is for bravery in combat?
[00:03:16]  Did 11 combat tours of duty, primarily in Iraq and Afghanistan.
[00:03:21]  His wife was an intelligence agent.
[00:03:23]  She died in Syria in a suicide bombing, deployed for the CIA.
[00:03:28]  So you have somebody who has given their entire adult life in the most courageous way for our country, then goes and works at the highest, most sensitive positions.
[00:03:36]  You know, chief of staff for Tulsi Gabbard, who's overseeing all the intelligence agencies, and then he gets his own position as director of the National Counterterrorism Center.
[00:03:44]  This is someone who knows everything, who's Almost impossible to demean or malign.
[00:03:50]  And in the middle of this war, early on, he quits and says the government was lying when they said that there was an imminent threat from Iran.
[00:03:58]  There never was.
[00:03:58]  We went and did this war for Israel.
[00:04:01]  And I was just on a podcast a couple days ago with the Free Press podcast, a podcast on the Free Press with Coleman Hughes.
[00:04:08]  Coleman Hughes, yeah, debating the Iraq war around war.
[00:04:10]  And in the middle of it, he starts saying about Joe Kent.
[00:04:12]  When I mentioned Joe Kent, oh, I think he's mentally ill.
[00:04:15]  He needs a psychiatrist.
[00:04:16]  It's like he got security clearance.
[00:04:18]  He was at the highest level of government.
[00:04:19]  Suddenly now he's mentally ill, but this is what they do.
[00:04:23]  And now there's an FBI investigation threatening to imprison him, which my understanding is a quite serious investigation.
[00:04:28]  Kash Patel wants to put him in jail.
[00:04:30]  So, this is always there.
[00:04:32]  The harder they go against somebody, the more damaging the revelations and truths are.
[00:04:37]  So, he wouldn't have been getting investigated prior to leaving, right?
[00:04:41]  Or else he would have, because I think he said that he still had access to all of them for all top secret stuff.
[00:04:45]  He had no, like, there was no issues with his clearance before that.
[00:04:51]  So, they must have started this after he went public.
[00:04:54]  Well, they're claiming through anonymous leaks, which, of course, you can lie as much as you want because, by definition, they're unaccountable.
[00:05:01]  They're anonymous that the FBI investigation started prior to his resignation.
[00:05:06]  Who knows?
[00:05:07]  They investigate everybody that they suspect of talking to reporters.
[00:05:11]  And they have been the kind of hardcore neocon faction, the warmonger faction in the Trump administration has been looking at Tulsi Gabbard and her group of people as someone whom they increasingly mistrust.
[00:05:26]  They excluded her from the planning of the military action in Venezuela that abducted the Venezuelan president.
[00:05:34]  Nicolas Maduro, they excluded her from the Iran planning because she has years of denouncing a war with Iran as incredibly self destructive and stupid and evil.
[00:05:43]  But as you and so Joe Kent, they're claiming was excluded, but as you correctly said, he never lost his security clearance.
[00:05:49]  He continued to maintain security clearance to the highest levels of our government.
[00:05:53]  So if they really thought that he had done anything untoward with classified information prior to his resignation, why didn't they suspend his security clearance?
[00:05:59]  It's very common pending an investigation.
[00:06:01]  They did none of that.
[00:06:02]  So clearly they still trusted him.
[00:06:04]  Yeah.
[00:06:04]  One of the things that John Keriakou explained to me on this podcast years ago, which really landed for me, and I think about it all the time now, was that when people get into the United States government, and especially into areas of the government where you could spend your whole entire life there, like the CIA, he said that there's about like a six to seven year ceiling.
[00:06:25]  There's a six to seven year marker where when you get there, it's usually at that point you're going to become a lifelong John Brennan type person, or you're going to leave and figure out that you've.
[00:06:36]  Maximized your potential in the CIA or whatever this division of government is, and you're going to go back out into the real world and use your skills to make real money because if you have that industrious capability to provide for yourself and to maximize your skills to the best way, you're going to do that.
[00:06:52]  The other type of people that stay in for the longest and become career politicians or intel people are the ones that are just inherently just ass kissing ladder climbers like John Brennan.

=== The Deep State Trap (06:49) ===

[00:07:04]  I think about that all the time, especially when Joe Kent.
[00:07:07]  No, I think it's very perceptive.
[00:07:09]  I think it's true in a lot of walks of life.
[00:07:11]  I mean, as you were describing that, I haven't heard John say that before, but it definitely aligns with my experience, both in that world and others.
[00:07:18]  You know, when I get out, before I was a journalist, I was a lawyer.
[00:07:22]  And after, you know, I went to law school that feeds big Wall Street law firms, lawyers.
[00:07:30]  And I got to one of these big law firms, and you know, you make a ton of money, you work in a huge building in Manhattan, all the perks that go with that.
[00:07:38]  But, you know, you're sitting there working 16 hours a day.
[00:07:41]  Working for Goldman Sachs or insurance companies or defending the richest but worst people on the planet.
[00:07:49]  And, you know, I ran out of there after 18 months, even though they wanted me to stay and I, you know, had a lot of, you know, financial advantages staying just because I didn't want to spend my life being this like institutionalist.
[00:08:02]  It just didn't combine with my character.
[00:08:04]  But a lot of people who I entered with, you know, 30 years later, they're there.
[00:08:08]  And I often wonder like, they're incredibly wealthy.
[00:08:11]  Like they can't be motivated by money anymore.
[00:08:13]  Or maybe they are.
[00:08:14]  Maybe they're trapped in that extremely wealthy lifestyle and they don't, but I don't know.
[00:08:17]  I like the idea that, They're there for 30 years, even though they've been making millions of dollars a year.
[00:08:22]  It makes me depressed.
[00:08:23]  Like, I feel sad for them.
[00:08:24]  And I got to the point where I used to read, like, people in my law school class, like, made partner at this firm or that firm, which meant they were lifers.
[00:08:30]  And I always reacted with pity.
[00:08:32]  And I think it's exactly the same thing inside these government institutions.
[00:08:34]  You probably arrive there, and I know a lot of people who went there and left, and they do.
[00:08:38]  They arrive there kind of believing the mythology about them doing, you know, good things for the world.
[00:08:44]  They're combating the bad guys and they're serving their country.
[00:08:49]  And anyone who stays there long enough is going to realize that's a A fairy tale at best.
[00:08:54]  And so I think the people who end up staying are just the people who have kind of dead souls or who, you know, understand the truth and want to serve that truth.
[00:09:05]  But Trump was kind of different because he didn't really come from the traditional background that most presidents do, right?
[00:09:12]  Because he kind of was in his own world.
[00:09:15]  And I feel like during the time leading up to his recent presidency, like right after he got the assassination attempt, I feel like.
[00:09:23]  At least from my perspective, there was a lot of optimism about him coming around back around for a second term.
[00:09:29]  Like this was going to change him.
[00:09:31]  It was going to be, we just got done with you know Biden for four years, whatever, in office and all the crazy DEI stuff.
[00:09:39]  And I feel like there was a lot of excitement for Trump on this time, you know.
[00:09:45]  Not only that, what I just explained, but then you had him, you know, it was like anti war, no more wars, we're going to release the Epstein files, the JFK files, all this stuff.
[00:09:55]  And apparently now we're getting the UFO files.
[00:09:58]  And then, you know, now it's like, should we be surprised that we're getting the opposite?
[00:10:02]  Because, I mean, isn't this what happens with every presidency?
[00:10:04]  Or, you know, is this worse in your opinion?
[00:10:08]  You know, it's interesting.
[00:10:09]  I think the first presidential candidate about whom I was actually excited, I'm embarrassed to say, was Barack Obama.
[00:10:16]  And the reason was I basically started, left law and started doing journalism because of my fear of the erosion of our civil liberties in the name of the war on terror.
[00:10:25]  And I knew it was endless, you know, detentions without due process and torture and underground prisons and.
[00:10:31]  The Patriot Act and every NSA spying and everything that came with it.
[00:10:35]  And Obama also had an unconventional background for someone credibly running for president.
[00:10:40]  He was in the Senate for like two seconds.
[00:10:42]  Before that, he was in the Illinois State House.
[00:10:45]  Not at all, you know, a creature of Washington.
[00:10:47]  He really had been, by the time he decided he would run in the Senate for two years.
[00:10:52]  So he kind of had this outsider status that he could, very similar to Trump, the way Trump, you know, ran this anti establishment campaign.
[00:10:58]  So did Obama.
[00:10:59]  And people forget this because he emerged as the ultimate establishment figure.
[00:11:02]  But Obama's.
[00:11:04]  Central promise was we're going to change the way Washington works and for whom it works.
[00:11:08]  And because he had this outsider status, people believed it.
[00:11:12]  He brought out millions of people who previously had given up hope about the political system.
[00:11:18]  And of course, in a very short amount of time, and I was one of those people, people felt betrayed because they saw that in the case of what I was most focused on and reporting on, the erosion of our civil liberties and war on terror, not only was Obama not reversing what he had promised to reverse, he was continuing and in many cases extending and strengthening and worsening exactly those things he had.
[00:11:38]  That he would uproot.
[00:11:40]  And I still feel like he was sincere in what he was saying, like the speeches he was giving about how imagine if you're a mother and your son is taken to a camp in the middle of the night and accused of something, but never given a trial, and you believe, shouldn't he have that opportunity to prove at least once his innocence in court?
[00:11:57]  That's so fundamental to how we can, you know, it was spoken in a way that was like, I know he, there's a part of him that is convinced.
[00:12:04]  And then in the second month in office, you know, he's sending his DOJ in to argue that we have the right to detain people indefinitely without any habeas corpus or due process.
[00:12:14]  And that was when I started really understanding politics in a lot better way.
[00:12:17]  That there really is this kind of deep state.
[00:12:18]  There's a permanent power faction in Washington.
[00:12:20]  That's for sure, whatever you want to call it.
[00:12:22]  You know, they're in these institutions, the agencies, they send guys in with big medals on their chest.
[00:12:27]  They take you into secret rooms that have all this high tech and they tell you if you stop this program, you're going to have blood on your hands.
[00:12:33]  And these are people who don't play around.
[00:12:34]  I mean, we've had presidents who have their head blown off with JFK, other assassination attempts, including President Trump.
[00:12:39]  So the pressures when you have that much power are obviously very real.
[00:12:43]  These are not, you know, science fiction.
[00:12:45]  And in the case of Trump, I, you know, When I was talking to people close to Trump in the 2024 campaign and then even after he won in the transition before he was inaugurated, the thing I heard the most was, and this is my own view as well, is the big problem that they had in the first term was they just got steamrolled by people who knew Washington way better than they knew it.
[00:13:08]  Like Trump got there, he didn't know how Washington worked, he didn't know all the vipers and the pits of snakes that were everywhere.
[00:13:17]  He got infiltrated.
[00:13:19]  There were a lot of people he appointed to his administration who he empowered who were there to work against his agenda and subvert it and not promote it.
[00:13:25]  And this time around, they were like, No, this we're never going to let this happen again.
[00:13:29]  This time we're going to consolidate power and we're going to do what we want, which I was glad about because I felt like the people were impeding in that first term his better impulses.
[00:13:37]  But I think one of the things that it's impossible to overvalue is the fact that the Democrats were not trying to just defeat Donald Trump in the 2024 election, they were trying to imprison him for life.
[00:13:51]  Had he not won that election, he would have gone to prison for life.

=== Biden Family Corruption (02:54) ===

[00:13:53]  They'd already had secured this preposterous conviction in that Manhattan case for the Stormy Daniels payments.
[00:13:59]  Jack Smith had two major felony cases against him for the documents and for January 6th, another one.
[00:14:04]  And they wanted to imprison him for life and almost certainly would have.
[00:14:08]  And he was not just fighting to regain the presidency or avoid losing twice, he was fighting for his life, basically.
[00:14:15]  And there were a lot of people who came and exploited that desperation.
[00:14:18]  People with a ton of money who were originally behind Ron DeSantis.
[00:14:22]  Billionaires who are Zionists, who care mostly about Israel, who want wars.
[00:14:26]  And they were the ones who, with their money, you know, endeared themselves and ingratiated themselves into Trump's, you know, circle.
[00:14:34]  And for Trump, money does speak and he respects money.
[00:14:37]  Yeah.
[00:14:38]  And I think a lot of that co option came from that.
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[00:16:07]  And, you know, it also does seem like there's been more shady backdoor.
[00:16:12]  Stock market bets that have been happening recently.
[00:16:14]  I think I just saw something this morning about like somebody made a billion and a half dollars in like 10 seconds betting against the oil or like betting on the oil prices dropping or something.
[00:16:24]  Yeah, because when it was when Trump announced, oh, we're going to do a deal with Iran, we're going to have a five day ceasefire, not a five day ceasefire, but a five day window.
[00:16:32]  Of course, the oil markets and the stock markets reacted very well because they want this war to end very desperately.
[00:16:37]  Yeah.
[00:16:38]  And if you know that's coming, as obviously people knew, as those incredibly aberrational bets demonstrate, Then you're going to make a ton of money once that speech is not.

=== Trump's Shady Choices (04:21) ===

[00:16:48]  And this is not the first time this has happened.
[00:16:50]  You know, I spent a lot of time on the Hunter Biden case.
[00:16:52]  I actually had a media outlet that I founded that I quit when they wouldn't let me do the reporting I wanted to do on it right before the election.
[00:16:58]  Yeah, The Intercept.
[00:16:59]  So I spent a lot of time on the Hunter Biden case.
[00:17:00]  I thought what the Biden family was doing, it wasn't just Hunter Biden, but it was Joe Biden's brother and Biden himself in places where they had a lot of influence, like China and Ukraine, trying to profiteer off their political influence, was genuine corruption.
[00:17:13]  This is on a completely different scale.
[00:17:15]  Like Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff.
[00:17:19]  They're just nothing but billionaires surrounding Trump.
[00:17:21]  He's doing, his kids' kids are doing all kinds of crypto deals.
[00:17:25]  You know, we talk about like Nancy Pelosi's stock portfolio and the way she was able to, you know, as everybody jokes, was like the greatest stock trader in history.
[00:17:32]  She's incredibly lucky.
[00:17:33]  Like every stock she sells goes down and everyone she buys goes up.
[00:17:37]  Obviously, using the information that she has as the Speaker of the House, the third ranking, highest ranking official in our government.
[00:17:44]  The Trump family and the kind of adjacent people around them are profiteering in a way that, Makes you know Hunter Biden look like a small time shoplifter.
[00:17:55]  It's shocking, it is crazy to see, it really is.
[00:18:00]  But it, you know, it does give me hope that some of the people that were some of the biggest advocates for Trump, um, this time around and some of his the biggest people campaigning for him in the public light are now like actively openly questioning some of the stuff.
[00:18:15]  You mean like podcasters, like podcasts, like Rogan, like Carlson, Rogan, and Tucker, right?
[00:18:20]  These types of folks, and um, I never saw any of that.
[00:18:24]  On the other side, you know, with Biden or Obama.
[00:18:27]  So the same people that were advocating the most for them never publicly came out and said, like, whoa, hold on a second.
[00:18:32]  You know, once they ask every liberal, you know, they'll tell you the American right, MAGA.
[00:18:37]  But even I heard this, you know, back in the day with George Bush, like conservatives, Republicans are cult members.
[00:18:41]  They don't question their leadership.
[00:18:42]  There's so much more attacks on Trump from within the American right, including people who had supported him and worked very hard to help elect him than there ever has been.
[00:18:54]  You know, you have a very hardcore left wing.
[00:18:57]  Component that's barely within the Democratic Party, like the real hardcore leftists, they will, you know, they attack Biden for supporting Israel and its destruction of Gaza, things like that.
[00:19:06]  But the sort of normie liberal, the big, you know, media influence, like the Rachel Maddow types, they're just in the pocket.
[00:19:14]  They're hardcore blind partisans.
[00:19:15]  They will never utter a single phrase.
[00:19:17]  And I think the American right deserve credit for that.
[00:19:20]  The problem is, Trump has made his choice very clearly.
[00:19:22]  I mean, he denounced and basically expelled from his little treehouse, the Maka treehouse.
[00:19:27]  Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly and Marjorie Taylor Greene and Thomas Pappas.
[00:19:30]  The crazy thing to me is that, like, it seems like to me, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I've never seen a president who's more poll aware than Donald Trump, who keeps track of the polls and knows exactly what the polls are doing at all times.
[00:19:44]  But the one poll that he's Helen Keller on is the Israel one and the Epstein one.
[00:19:49]  Like, that's the one he just ignores completely.
[00:19:53]  Yeah.
[00:19:53]  And I first noticed that when you're, I mean, he knows this too because he has talked about how the Israel lobby used to be this incredibly powerful, almost Omnipotent lobby, like nobody would ever question Israel or cross the Israelis.
[00:20:09]  And he's criticized Israel on PR grounds, like they don't quite have the same kind of PR campaign power that they used to have.
[00:20:15]  And as a result, the popularity of Israel is declining in the United States, which it is very rapidly, very precipitously, even very kind of shockingly, from at least from my perspective, as somebody who's wanted to see this for decades, never thought I would.
[00:20:26]  Yeah.
[00:20:27]  So Trump's very aware of that because he said he's very poll driven.
[00:20:30]  And it is so interesting, is it not?
[00:20:32]  That on the two issues, I'll just even like, even abortion, you know.
[00:20:36]  Trump understood that even in red states, after Roe versus Wade was overturned with Dobbs, even in red states, when they tried to put very hardline anti abortion bills on the ballot, it was getting defeated like 65, 35.
[00:20:49]  And he understood that he couldn't, if he wanted to win in 2024, be very hard on an abortion.
[00:20:55]  He started like moderating his language in a way that really alarmed pro life activists.
[00:20:58]  It was clearly just, you know, when he ran in 2016, it was standard, you know, pro life rhetoric.
[00:21:03]  So he's not just conscious of it, he's willing to adapt himself.
[00:21:05]  He's a good politician at the end of the day.
[00:21:07]  You don't get elected twice unless you are.

=== Epstein and Israel Layers (10:00) ===

[00:21:10]  And yet, with Israel and Epstein, and we talked about those like they're separate, but they're actually very inextricably linked.
[00:21:16]  Suddenly, he's just willing to take the most unpopular position or more so afraid not to.
[00:21:22]  And I think it's very telling.
[00:21:24]  And one of the things you couldn't definitively say 10 months ago is that, well, I mean, you could, but people could rightfully question you is that the Epstein and the Israel thing was like not in stone.
[00:21:37]  You couldn't say that for a fact.
[00:21:39]  Like there was no conclusive evidence.
[00:21:40]  But I think now, you, there's no way.
[00:21:43]  Anyone can question that.
[00:21:45]  And I don't think even like the, you can even say, I think you can rightfully say that Israel probably, I think he was above them.
[00:21:52]  I think it's probably likely that he was like on the layers of society that this, these whole, all these Epstein files have sort of made visible to us is that like there's our layer, there's this intelligence layer, then there's this, you have like the nation state layer of the people that run the nation states and all that, like the politicians and all that.
[00:22:11]  And then above them, then you have this Epstein Rothschild layer, these people that are really like, they're working behind the curtain.
[00:22:18]  Doing arms deals with the Trilateral Commission and doing all this other crazy stuff, living lawlessly and manipulating and profiting off of any and every conflict that they can find around the world.
[00:22:35]  Exactly.
[00:22:35]  I mean, to me, this is the most important part of the Epstein story, at least insofar as what we've seen thus far.
[00:22:40]  And there's still a lot of documents the government is hiding.
[00:22:43]  They thought that just by releasing a few million, you know, that people would be like, okay, and be satiated a common tactic when governments want to pretend they're showing the truth, but they withhold.
[00:22:52]  The most damaging truths.
[00:22:54]  Right.
[00:22:55]  So, insofar as what we've seen so far, you know, there has been stuff that maybe has been overstated or at least unproven, you know, in terms of like Epstein Island being this, you know, place where Bill Gates went and six year old girls and Bill Clinton had sex with like nine year olds and it was all videotaped and then they were blackmailed.
[00:23:13]  Like, there's some of that that could have been overstated.
[00:23:16]  But I just want to say two things about just like the purely sexual part, like the file part about who was accused, like.
[00:23:23]  Probably some people were swept up in accusations that, at least as of yet, haven't been proven.
[00:23:28]  To me, the two most important things are well, one is exactly what you just said.
[00:23:35]  We have the Epstein files, but then we also have, and this got so little attention for reasons we could talk about if you want, but the Iranians hacked into the emails of a bunch of high level Israeli officials, including former Prime Minister Ehud Barak, who was Jeffrey Epstein's basically best friend.
[00:23:51]  Yeah.
[00:23:52]  And they published it online.
[00:23:54]  There's these hacked emails that are online that you can.
[00:23:58]  Go and read.
[00:23:59]  And very few journalists were interested in reporting on them.
[00:24:02]  And, you know, in part, it's because journalists like scoops that only they have when something's dumped on the internet.
[00:24:08]  They don't like to report on it.
[00:24:10]  But there's this outlet called Drop Site News, which is founded by a couple of my colleagues like Ryan Grimm and Jeremy Scahill, who are great reporters.
[00:24:17]  And they've had journalists like Muhammad Tazer Hussain going through these emails.
[00:24:21]  And what you, that description that you just laid out about Epstein's relationship to Israel, to this kind of upper layer above nation states, including Israel, is very much proven in these.
[00:24:32]  Emails like it is actually true that Jeffrey Epstein was performing extremely sensitive and high level foreign policy transactions for Israel with the Mossad, but he was also doing it for a lot of other countries.
[00:24:44]  And, you know, we're talking about before he went on air, just this morning, I happened to see a couple photos with Jeffrey Epstein with the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman.
[00:24:53]  And it wasn't like one of those pictures where you just are at some event, you meet a leader and you take a picture, like a very formal picture.
[00:24:59]  They were like giggling and laughing.
[00:25:01]  It was like very festive and boisterous.
[00:25:03]  It was a social.
[00:25:04]  Event clearly, and the interaction was social in nature.
[00:25:07]  I think someone said, like, Oh, I know somebody who would be of great use right now in sensitive diplomacy in the Middle East, meaning Jeffrey Epstein, because of how intricately connected he was to everybody.
[00:25:19]  I think that is what we've learned the most about the that there is this Epstein world, and it's a group of yeah, there's that.
[00:25:26]  Oh my gosh, I know.
[00:25:27]  I mean, this is this is like a very serious guy, like Mohammed bin Salman.
[00:25:31]  Oh, yeah, I've never seen him without his thing on his head, yeah, and like with his.
[00:25:34]  Harm around him.
[00:25:35]  This is like supposed to be a devout Muslim, by the way.
[00:25:39]  I don't know if you've been to the Persian Gulf, but no, you know, you have like the elite level who lives exactly the opposite of this pious, you know, like just very religious life.
[00:25:50]  And it's really just imposed for the peasants who go to prison if they like look at a woman the wrong way.
[00:25:55]  Yeah.
[00:25:55]  The division is, I mean, here you see it.
[00:25:57]  It's, I can't think of a better, you know, manifestation than this.
[00:26:01]  And this is the, you know, it's a transnational global elite of billionaires and oligarchs.
[00:26:08]  And people who are sociopaths who just move massive amounts of money around, kill people, have.
[00:26:14]  And I mean, this is the most amazing thing to me about the Jeffrey Epson thing that's blown my mind from the beginning.
[00:26:18]  He was convicted of serious felonies, of soliciting a minor for prostitution.
[00:26:25]  He's a registered sex offender.
[00:26:27]  Everybody knows this.
[00:26:29]  And yet, it didn't impede his standing in this world even a little bit.
[00:26:34]  That's how just bereft and depraved this world is that absolutely resides above governments or nation states or anything like that.
[00:26:41]  And Jeffrey Epstein was an absolutely integral part of that.
[00:26:44]  And that is what the Epstein files for me revealed the most.
[00:26:47]  Yeah.
[00:26:48]  How much attention did you pay to some of these recent depositions that happened with like Leslie Wexner and Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton and all them?
[00:26:55]  Yeah.
[00:26:55]  I mean, the Hillary Clinton deposition in Congress was confidential.
[00:26:59]  It hasn't been released, although we've seen parts of it.
[00:27:02]  Oh, okay.
[00:27:02]  I saw.
[00:27:02]  And then, you know, there's been parts of it that have been released.
[00:27:06]  But the idea of the agreement was she would appear as long as it wasn't public.
[00:27:09]  She wanted it to be public, actually.
[00:27:11]  The members of the committee didn't.
[00:27:13]  But, uh, You know, like Leslie Wexner and Leon Black are, you know, people for a long time were like, wait, how did he live the life of a billionaire?
[00:27:22]  Right.
[00:27:22]  I mean, you buy a private island, you ride around the globe on a 747, you have mansions, sprawling huge estates in New Mexico and Palm Beach and this gigantic mansion in the Upper East Side of New York.
[00:27:37]  This is a billionaire's life or close to it.
[00:27:40]  And nobody could figure out how did this happen.
[00:27:43]  And now we have a better idea that it came primarily from two billionaires, Leon Black and Les Wexner.
[00:27:53]  Philanthropic causes that the two of them do, the only political causes that either of them have really ever cared about are pro Israel causes that give a huge amount of money to Israel, to every kind of arm of Israel.
[00:28:06]  And they were shoveling hundreds of millions of dollars to Jeffrey Epstein, like in a way that even if you hired the best, largest law firm to give you tax advice, you wouldn't even be in the same universe of compensation.
[00:28:18]  What do you have ever thought about whether or not Epstein could have gotten a large sum of his money?
[00:28:25]  From Robert Maxwell when he died?
[00:28:28]  I mean, it's a big coincidence, right?
[00:28:29]  Like, Robert Maxwell, for people who don't know, you know, was this incredible life, by the way, like, really fascinating life.
[00:28:36]  Born a Jew in Czechoslovakia and kind of rode around, remade himself a hundred times.
[00:28:41]  Robert Maxwell was not his birth name or anything like that.
[00:28:44]  But he turned himself into this, like, extremely influential billionaire, power figure, media baron.
[00:28:50]  And it just turns out, and Mossad agent.
[00:28:54]  In fact, when he died, even though he didn't live in Israel, he wasn't Israeli.
[00:28:58]  Mm hmm.
[00:28:58]  They basically got a state funeral for him on the Mount of Olives.
[00:29:02]  Yeah, exactly.
[00:29:03]  Where every former and current prime minister and defense minister and everyone went and paid.
[00:29:08]  And it's like, I guess it could be like one of the biggest coincidences in the world that it's his daughter who happens to be at Jeffrey Epstein's side.
[00:29:18]  There was a crazy podcast.
[00:29:19]  I forget what it was, what the name of the woman who did this podcast years ago.
[00:29:24]  I want to say it was like right after he died.
[00:29:28]  She did this audio podcast that was on Spotify, it was a series.
[00:29:31]  She went around and interviewed a bunch of people that worked for Epstein.
[00:29:33]  And she interviewed, I want to say it was one of the housekeepers for his Manhattan house.
[00:29:42]  And she was talking to him, she was interviewing him.
[00:29:44]  And you could hear him.
[00:29:44]  This guy sounded like, you know, it was like, yeah, Jeffrey, you know, he was rich.
[00:29:50]  He always had all this money.
[00:29:51]  But it wasn't until like 91, 92 until he had like a lot of fucking money.
[00:29:57]  Yeah.
[00:29:57]  Like he was rich.
[00:29:59]  But then in the early 90s, he was all of a sudden like, Limitless rich.
[00:30:05]  And that coincides with right around when he died, I think.
[00:30:08]  When Robert Maxwell died.
[00:30:09]  Robert Maxwell died, yeah.
[00:30:11]  He left behind the, what was it, like pension fraud with his company?
[00:30:15]  Yeah, Robert Maxwell died in all kinds of financial difficulty and debt.
[00:30:21]  But, you know, these guys like have money stocked away in all kinds of places hidden.
[00:30:28]  But, I mean, yeah, it's all part of this world.
[00:30:32]  And still, I find it very opaque.
[00:30:35]  I think we don't nearly know, we don't know.
[00:30:37]  Nearly enough about it.
[00:30:38]  It's just what I think maybe the most amazing part of the story is that Jeffrey Epstein actually got convicted because usually these people are completely immune from any kind of accountability.
[00:30:49]  I think that his crimes must have been so atrocious that even given who he was and who, I mean, remember, he was best friends with Donald Trump all throughout the 90s, not during, not up to the point where he got convicted.
[00:31:03]  They had a falling out over several things.
[00:31:06]  We don't know for sure.
[00:31:07]  There's different stories, but they weren't friends at the time.

=== Hidden Money Opaqueness (15:44) ===

[00:31:10]  But I'm just saying he was.
[00:31:11]  In every major power, political, and financial circle.
[00:31:17]  And it's extremely unusual for someone like that to even have to register as a sex offender.
[00:31:22]  So you can just imagine the extent of the depravity and the legal violations and just criminality on the most repulsive level that caused that to happen.
[00:31:33]  But that is ultimately the fact that he has all these connections with people like Robert Maxwell and his daughter and basically everybody.
[00:31:46]  And accumulates this massive wealth.
[00:31:48]  And he's very smart, very clever.
[00:31:51]  There's no doubt about that.
[00:31:52]  Like he was a real operator.
[00:31:54]  But it's just, it's how, you know, we have these illusions about how our world works.
[00:31:58]  Like we go to the ballot box once every four years and we elect our president.
[00:32:01]  And then every two years we elect our Congress.
[00:32:04]  And in reality, the people running the world are largely invisible from us, at least in terms of how they interact with one another and what they really do.
[00:32:12]  Man, I hit this point recently where I just felt off.
[00:32:16]  Same routine, same workout, same diet.
[00:32:18]  But after 2 p.m., I was just starting to drag.
[00:32:20]  And I realized I didn't used to feel this way.
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[00:33:12]  Yeah, I've been thinking so much about this term lately called hyper normalization.
[00:33:18]  So there's a great documentary by this guy named Adam Curtis who made a movie all about it, and it's basically.
[00:33:24]  About how, like during the so right before the Soviet Union collapsed how like everyone was aware how everything was failing the society, the politics, the economy was failing and everyone was trying to cope and just pretend that nothing was wrong.
[00:33:39]  And it was like this hyper normalization where they kind of just ignored all their problems for as long as they possibly could.
[00:33:45]  And that's kind of what I feel like is happening right now, and I think that's probably part of the reason why no one's really like you don't see anything happening to the level that was happening with George Floyd, now that the Epstein files have come out and exposed that.
[00:33:58]  You know, we're run by psychos, psychopaths that have no regard for human life.
[00:34:03]  And there's evidence that multiple people and children have been abused and murdered with the people, you know, and the people that are responsible are the people that run the fucking world.
[00:34:13]  So it's like, A, what do you, how do you, if you're a normal citizen in the United States, what can you actually do to change that?
[00:34:23]  Or is it the fact that this is just a problem that's too big to try to solve because it's so.
[00:34:30]  Deep in the core of what America is?
[00:34:35]  Yeah, I think it's both.
[00:34:37]  You know, I've lived in Brazil for years now.
[00:34:40]  I mean, American, I was born in America.
[00:34:41]  I lived here for 40 years, the first 40 years of my life, but I lived in Brazil for quite a long time now.
[00:34:46]  And it gives you insights into things when you kind of remove yourself from the country that you were born in, where you're kind of immersed in its mythology and all the things we're indoctrinated with from the time of birth.
[00:34:57]  You know, it's true for every society.
[00:34:59]  A couple things in Brazil that are very relevant to what you just said.
[00:35:02]  Like, there's a huge scandal right now involving this gigantic bank and the billionaire owner.
[00:35:07]  The whole thing was based on fraud, the whole thing collapsed.
[00:35:10]  This guy was stealing huge amounts of money.
[00:35:12]  It's called Banco Master.
[00:35:14]  He was stealing huge amounts of money from the depositors.
[00:35:16]  Standard story, but on a multi billion dollar level.
[00:35:19]  And he basically had bought every, not every, but most or tons of Brazilian politicians, judges, without regard to party or ideology, a lot on the left, a lot on the right, judges, police, federal police.
[00:35:32]  And so the media, and the media is quite, a lot of the big media is involved in this as well.
[00:35:37]  So it's kind of like Epstein, like it's too big of a story to completely suppress, but no one really has an interest in, Trying it all open completely, other than you know, people who are trying from the outside, because too many people from every political faction are implicated, and everyone's kind of secretly in collaboration to kind of just try and limit the damage.
[00:35:59]  I think of the Epstein situation, it is very similar.
[00:36:03]  I mean, I was actually watching the White House press briefing today with Trump on the Iran war, and you know, these are very carefully orchestrated events.
[00:36:11]  He had Marco Rubio to one side, Pete Hegseth, and then Pete Hegseth after Rubio, and then right after Hegseth was.
[00:36:18]  Uh, no, I'm sorry, Pete Marco Rubio is on one side, Pete Hexes on the other, and right next to Rubio, who just two slots down from Trump, was Howard Lutnick, who's Trump's commerce secretary.
[00:36:28]  And you know, he's known Howard Lutnick forever billionaire, real estate guy like Trump in Manhattan, who just shared a wall with Epstein, lived right next door to Jeffrey Epstein.
[00:36:37]  And so, of course, when the Epstein story started happening, a lot of people started asking Howard Lutnick, like, Hey, you lived right next door to him.
[00:36:44]  Well, you must have.
[00:36:46]  And he told this this is just a few months ago, not 20 years ago, he told this very elaborate story, very detailed story.
[00:36:51]  That in 2005, of course, before the conviction, he and his wife were invited to go meet Jeffrey Epstein, their neighbor.
[00:36:57]  And after 20 minutes, they were so disgusted and horrified that they ran out and they were like, We're never going to have anything to do with that man again.
[00:37:03]  You know, that was the story.
[00:37:04]  You should play that clip for people so they can see it.
[00:37:07]  It shocks me.
[00:37:09]  Yeah.
[00:37:09]  It was so definitive.
[00:37:10]  It was such an elaborate lie.
[00:37:12]  And then these files come out and he has these years of correspondence with Jeffrey Epstein.
[00:37:16]  He went to the island.
[00:37:17]  He was like, Hey, Jeffrey, are you in the island?
[00:37:18]  We're in the Caribbean.
[00:37:19]  We'd love to stop by with our yacht.
[00:37:21]  And he was asked about it in front of the Senate.
[00:37:25]  And he said, you know, he told the story about how it happened, didn't really reconcile the lie that he told with that fact, tried to minimize it.
[00:37:30]  And he's like, and then at the end, I left with my wife, all my daughters, and our nannies.
[00:37:35]  Like that was supposed to be exculpatory or something.
[00:37:38]  Like he didn't leave any of the nannies behind to sell into sex slavery.
[00:37:40]  No one thought you were, like, yeah, exactly.
[00:37:42]  Like, what are you saying?
[00:37:43]  Congratulations on like taking all your daughters before you left.
[00:37:46]  Anyway, like, and so there he is, like, no consequences at all.
[00:37:50]  And I think the reason is everybody.
[00:37:52]  Is kind of invested in power, is invested with not having this disclosed.
[00:37:57]  But then the other thing is what you said, I think is also very important, which is in 2013 in Brazil, there were these huge street protests about it began as an anger about an increase in a bus fare.
[00:38:08]  Like a lot of workers were extremely angry because there's massive wealth inequality and political protests on this scale had been kind of unheard of in Brazil.
[00:38:16]  And I remember reading this book afterwards about the protests by this political scientist who said, you know, actually it was a really good sign because.
[00:38:23]  There was this emerging middle class or middle class sensibility in Brazil for the first time.
[00:38:28]  And people only protest when they don't feel completely powerless.
[00:38:32]  You have to feel like you're actually angry and you're able to do something.
[00:38:36]  Like there's a reason to go into the street and risk arrest or whatever.
[00:38:38]  There's momentum.
[00:38:39]  Yeah.
[00:38:40]  Like you're not totally impotent.
[00:38:41]  You feel like you have to feel like it's worth it.
[00:38:43]  Like people who protest in the Vietnam War or the Iraq War or George Floyd stuff and Black Lives Matter.
[00:38:49]  And I do think with this Epstein stuff and even with the Iran War now, where I think Tucker asked me when I was on a show.
[00:38:55]  Well, last week, like, why don't you think there's protests about the Iran war?
[00:38:58]  And I think that's part of it.
[00:38:59]  There's no, there's no, with like Epstein stuff, people just feel like it's too big.
[00:39:04]  Like, what and who are they protesting and who's going to come and help them and who is going to come?
[00:39:08]  And even with the Iran war, it just seems like the war started without any consultation with the Congress.
[00:39:13]  At least, like Bush and Cheney, when they did the Iraq war, pretended to have this year long campaign to convince Americans to support it.
[00:39:19]  It was filled with lies.
[00:39:20]  At least their lies were at least consistent.
[00:39:22]  Yeah, but it was a coherent story.
[00:39:24]  Americans kind of understood why we were doing it, even though it all turned out to be lies and bullshit.
[00:39:28]  But Trump just started this war.
[00:39:29]  There was no even pretense of getting popular or congressional sign off.
[00:39:35]  And so I think people feel disempowered.
[00:39:37]  You know, like no one really cares what we think.
[00:39:42]  I think it's much healthier when you're seeing big protests in a society, which is what that political scientist said in Brazil that really kind of made me look at it that way the first time, than when people are just at home and feeling disengaged or detached or impotent.
[00:39:55]  And I think also we're too programmed to fight each other.
[00:39:57]  We're too programmed to fight left and right.
[00:40:00]  And this is probably the most bipartisan story of my lifetime, the Epstein stuff, because it's both sides, 100%.
[00:40:09]  It's not a left and right thing.
[00:40:10]  It's more of a class thing, right?
[00:40:12]  It's more of a.
[00:40:14]  Instead of a horizontal fight, it's a vertical fight, right?
[00:40:17]  Up and down.
[00:40:18]  And I think that's something that, you know, maybe we just need time to calibrate and to understand this and to let this sink in before, you know, things can be organized and before you can change it, you know, because it doesn't have, if it's going to change it, it does have to be ground up.
[00:40:33]  But, you know, again, I think one of the big problems is a lot of the older folks in society don't consume a lot of independent media and they consume sort of just like, The narrative driven stuff you see on TV that's, you know, hides behind the word news.
[00:40:49]  But I think it's, if I could just stop there for a second, because I think it's for me probably the most crucial point, it's probably been the focal point of my work like in the last 10 years.
[00:40:56]  You know, for the first like 10 years of my journalism, I was mostly associated with the left.
[00:41:01]  Like people would just call me left wing, even though I was always a little confused by that because I didn't feel like I was articulating particular left wing causes.
[00:41:09]  But, you know, I had kind of emerged in the Bush years and was very, a huge aggressive critic of Bush and Cheney and the war on terror.
[00:41:15]  So I think.
[00:41:16]  I developed a liberal audience, Democratic audience, left wing audience that way, continued kind of criticizing Obama for those same things as we discussed.
[00:41:23]  But then in 2016, with the emergence of Trump, I saw this amazing potential for these standard left white divisions to be broken down on anti war things or on a lot of economic populism too.
[00:41:38]  It's the lobbyists that control Washington.
[00:41:41]  Steve Bannon's plan was they were going to come in and raise taxes on the wealthy and on the corporations and use it to fund an infrastructure.
[00:41:47]  Program that would revitalize American infrastructure, put people back to work?
[00:41:50]  Like, is that left or right?
[00:41:51]  Even immigration, you know, used to be a very standard left wing cause, like restricting immigration because they viewed it as, you know, when I started writing politics, open borders immigration was associated with like George Bush and Dick Cheney and the Chamber of Commerce because it was a way of importing cheap labor at the expense of the American worker.
[00:42:08]  The left always hated unrestricted immigration.
[00:42:11]  I remember the Hillary Clinton speeches.
[00:42:13]  Yeah, she was an immigration hawk, you know, but she was an immigration hawk.
[00:42:16]  But like Bernie Sanders to this day, Like he did this famous interview when he was running with Edward Klein.
[00:42:20]  And Edward Klein said, What do you think about open borders?
[00:42:22]  And he's like, Open borders, that's a Koch Brothers proposal because that's how the left had always seen it.
[00:42:28]  Same on trade, you know, NAFTA and free trade.
[00:42:32]  And yet, what they do so effectively, and I don't mean to like use the they language like conspiratorially, but nonetheless, it's the effect is whenever Americans can unite on the basis of our common interests, our common grievances, our common class identity, they just feed those like culture war.
[00:42:50]  Issues.
[00:42:51]  You know, like, hey, you're what's causing the problems in your life isn't like the defense industry and the war machine and big banks like vulturing off of your jobs and importing huge amounts of immigrants to take your jobs.
[00:43:04]  And no, it's none of that.
[00:43:06]  It's, you know, the trans people in sports or, you know, abortion, whatever.
[00:43:10]  Like, and I'm not, or race.
[00:43:12]  And I'm not even, I'm not saying those are unimportant issues.
[00:43:15]  I'm just saying that in the scheme of how we love our lives and what affects our lives, left versus right is almost irrelevant.
[00:43:22]  Like, if you, and I think people have this experience so often.
[00:43:25]  If you go online, you think that left and right are people, we're mostly hating each other and divided against ourselves, what social media breeds.
[00:43:32]  But if you go and talk to people who aren't, Like in that framework, who aren't trapped in that prism, I think people understand that they have so much more in common with people than differences.
[00:43:43]  And these differences are so purposely inflamed and exaggerated to prevent, you know, it's a story as old as politics, like to prevent the population from uniting against the elite.
[00:43:52]  That's always the concern of the elite.
[00:43:54]  Yes, it is.
[00:43:55]  No, I have it.
[00:43:56]  You're right about that.
[00:43:57]  And it kind of only exists on social media.
[00:43:59]  My friend Julian Doyle has a great theory.
[00:44:01]  He lives in New Jersey and he's a big fan of Wawa.
[00:44:04]  And he goes, He's like, You go on YouTube and you go on Twitter and you see all these people.
[00:44:07]  Fighting left and right, the culture wars and all this stuff.
[00:44:10]  He's like, Then I get in my car and I drive to Wawa and I see the girl with purple hair holding the door with her, the guy in the Vietnam hat.
[00:44:17]  Exactly.
[00:44:18]  Yeah, I know.
[00:44:19]  I remember I once, you know, I went to my mother's office.
[00:44:23]  We grew up very working class.
[00:44:25]  My parents got divorced early.
[00:44:26]  And so my mother worked like until the day she died, she worked in this like office where they sold like airplane parts or whatever.
[00:44:31]  And it was like 2020, 2021.
[00:44:33]  So at the height of like wokeism or whatever.
[00:44:36]  And it was very like racially mixed office because in South Florida where I grew up, so you had like Haitian immigrants and Jamaican immigrants, but then like, You know, Jews from New York and, you know, just American black people, you know, like all the Latinos, a lot of Latinos.
[00:44:50]  And I remember I'd go in there and, like, the way they would kind of joke with each other, you know, they'd like make jokes about each other's ethnicity or gender or, you know, a couple of gay people there, like making, like, and I remember, like, as somebody who's so invested in the discourse, you know, it's like, oh my God, you can't say it.
[00:45:07]  But no one was offended.
[00:45:09]  Like, it wasn't taken as these, like, grave crimes.
[00:45:12]  You know, it was understood that it's just, What people have differences, and that's fine.
[00:45:18]  Like, you can talk about them, you don't have to tiptoe around them.
[00:45:21]  And so, often, when I've had those experiences, and I do, you know, I do think when you get to a point in life where you have success or you like are, you know, in some way segregated from what you used to know, you can start losing track and touch with that sort of thing.
[00:45:34]  Yes, and so I try and maintain that as much as possible.
[00:45:37]  And to the extent that I can, I'm always shocked by the heat.
[00:45:41]  Like, if you go into some TV studio or online political platform.
[00:45:48]  The way people talk, how they talk, what they think, it's like a different planet than if you just walk into, you know, like a diner where I just was before I came to your show.
[00:45:56]  Like, here we are.
[00:45:57]  And I was just like talking and observing.
[00:46:00]  It's just, you feel like you're in a different universe when it's that kind of, I don't know, just like normal life.
[00:46:05]  Yeah, it's so much more disarming when you can just have a conversation with somebody and make fun of them because they're fat or their skin color.
[00:46:12]  And you guys reciprocally can make fun of each other and crack jokes on each other.
[00:46:16]  It kind of, in a way, it almost makes you like the person a little bit more.
[00:46:20]  Nobody wants to tiptoe around and say the one wrong word, and you're going to be put into some sort of moral prison.
[00:46:27]  And we do see our differences.
[00:46:30]  The differences between us, it's fine.
[00:46:32]  And to declare jokes off limits, people understand that there's a big difference between a racial joke that is said in good faith with an office colleague versus somebody being very malicious and trying to hurt.
[00:46:45]  People are very capable of making these distinctions.
[00:46:48]  But in elite discourse, this is the sort of stuff that we're constantly fed.
[00:46:52]  And it distracts us from.

=== Stirring Israeli Controversy (12:26) ===

[00:46:54]  Who really wields power and how and to what ends?
[00:46:58]  Yeah, no, 100%.
[00:47:00]  And that's why I think that people like you and comedian podcasters are going to be able to pull us out of this crazy direction, get us on the right track here.
[00:47:11]  One of my favorites is Tim Dillon.
[00:47:14]  I don't know if you've listened to him.
[00:47:15]  Yeah, I've been on his show.
[00:47:16]  Yeah.
[00:47:16]  Oh, yeah.
[00:47:17]  He's incredible.
[00:47:18]  He's got some of the best takes on all of the things that are happening around the world, the Iran war and the Epstein stuff.
[00:47:23]  I love it.
[00:47:24]  It's just like, no, Tim is brilliant.
[00:47:25]  I get most of my news from Tim.
[00:47:26]  But that's such, then you're probably well informed.
[00:47:29]  I mean, but that is like, but this is what's so interesting is I don't think Tim.
[00:47:34]  Set out to be a political voice.
[00:47:36]  Right.
[00:47:37]  He's not a political junkie.
[00:47:39]  Like, if you go and listen to what he used to do, like when he was on Rogan all the time before he was getting better known, it wasn't that political.
[00:47:47]  It was like cultural.
[00:47:48]  Yeah.
[00:47:49]  But it was also, you know, a lot about his childhood, growing up in this fucked up, like dysfunctional family, like the drugs that he did.
[00:47:55]  Being a misfit.
[00:47:55]  Yeah.
[00:47:56]  Yeah.
[00:47:57]  And, and, and I do, I tell you, like, the thing that I think is most valuable for my work is that I have lived far away from like the, Kind of New York, Washington corridor where you end up like at parties with and making friends with all the people whom you're supposed to be held accountable.
[00:48:11]  And I, the distance that I maintain from them, I think is very healthy because I'm able to see it and not feel nervous that if I say something critical of them, if I go to a party, you know, that weekend, I'm going to run into them, which I think is a lot of what is corrupting in journalism.
[00:48:25]  Yeah.
[00:48:25]  And I think a lot of that is what makes Tim such a valuable voice as well.
[00:48:29]  Is like he just didn't go to the party.
[00:48:30]  He doesn't go to the party.
[00:48:31]  That world.
[00:48:32]  Yeah.
[00:48:33]  And he's been invited by Peter Thiel, according to him.
[00:48:35]  And JD Vance.
[00:48:36]  I know JD Vance, but he's, but look what he's saying now.
[00:48:38]  I mean, he's.
[00:48:39]  Clearly, not afraid of losing that social status.
[00:48:42]  And that's what I think makes him so kind of dangerous as an independent voice.
[00:48:47]  Yeah.
[00:48:47]  No, you're 100% right about that.
[00:48:49]  He just doesn't give a fuck.
[00:48:50]  And we definitely need more people like that.
[00:48:55]  But so, okay.
[00:48:56]  So, transitioning a little bit to the topic of Epstein and Trump and Israel, like we mentioned, like Israel, or not Israel, but the Epstein thing has been.
[00:49:11]  One of the most bipartisan stories of my lifetime because it affects both sides of the political spectrum.
[00:49:17]  But everything that's going on right now with the Israel lobby becoming more and more in the public light, and how our politicians are being paid off by Israel.
[00:49:31]  And now you have the people in the government saying that we attacked Iran because Israel did it first.
[00:49:38]  And it seems like if you are a foreign country, That is subverting another country, you want to at least be a little bit discreet about it, right?
[00:49:50]  You don't want to be so overt.
[00:49:52]  And it feels to me like they're intentionally being overt about this and intentionally trying to stir up more controversy over the Israeli influence in the US.
[00:50:05]  Yeah.
[00:50:07]  But I don't think they're doing it out of miscalculation, but rather panic and necessity.
[00:50:13]  It's hard to overstate for people who only started paying attention to Israel in a really intense and passionate way since, say, October 7th, how different of a world we live in when it comes to the ability to talk about this than basically every era before this.
[00:50:32]  You have generations, basically, since the creation of Israel.
[00:50:36]  You can go back and listen to Harry Truman when the United States was the first country to recognize Israel, when Zionism was still very controversial as a new ideology.
[00:50:43]  didn't even exist until the early 20th century, basically.
[00:50:46]  We talk about it now like Zionism is a religion.
[00:50:48]  Nobody can question it.
[00:50:49]  But Zionism is a very new religion.
[00:50:51]  There are a lot of religious Jews who think it's heresy, but they're outnumbered.
[00:50:55]  I've interviewed them on my show.
[00:50:57]  But if you, probably the worst accusation that you could stand accused of being guilty of in public life was anti Semitism.
[00:51:07]  People were petrified of it.
[00:51:09]  I mean, you could withstand being called a racist more easily or any other, but anti Semitism, anti being an anti Semite, that was career destruction.
[00:51:18]  And it's not hard to understand why there are a lot of very powerful Jewish people.
[00:51:21]  This is just reality.
[00:51:22]  I know people want you not to say it, but in banking, in Hollywood, in media, in politics, In education, in universities.
[00:51:31]  And so there was a lot of power that was packed into that accusation.
[00:51:35]  And I remember one of the first times I ever really confronted this as someone who was writing about politics and doing journalism.
[00:51:42]  It was like 2006, Hillary Clinton was running for the Senate in New York.
[00:51:48]  And this was before the Hillary Clinton that we now know, like the super mega establishment Hillary Clinton, who was Secretary of State and advocated wars.
[00:51:55]  This is like the Hillary Clinton who people still thought was kind of like the left wing Hillary Clinton as she was depicted in the 90s when her husband was president.
[00:52:01]  Going back to her Vietnam years when she was a protester, a feminist.
[00:52:05]  And when she was running for the Senate in New York, she started taking these very hardline positions, including about Iran.
[00:52:10]  This is like in the midst of the Iraq War.
[00:52:12]  She voted for the Iraq War.
[00:52:14]  She was very hawkish on Iran.
[00:52:16]  And she had this finance guy for her campaign named Hank Scheinkoff.
[00:52:22]  And someone in, they had this neoconservative Jewish newspaper called the New York Sun.
[00:52:28]  I think it's now defunct.
[00:52:29]  But at the time, it was a big neocon journal.
[00:52:31]  And they asked him, like, Hey, what gives?
[00:52:33]  Why is Hillary Clinton so hawkish now?
[00:52:34]  Like, she seems like she's almost like in the center, even on the right.
[00:52:37]  And he said, Look, the reality is in New York politics is that Jewish donors are the ATM of New York politics.
[00:52:44]  And you cannot succeed in New York politics unless you become fanatically pro Israel.
[00:52:48]  And I wrote about this.
[00:52:49]  This is a Jewish finance director of Hillary Clinton saying this.
[00:52:52]  I'm Jewish.
[00:52:53]  I was writing about it because he actually said it.
[00:52:55]  And I remember it was like the first time I really got attacked, like in a serious orchestra right away.
[00:52:59]  Yeah, 2006.
[00:53:00]  Wow.
[00:53:01]  It was like, You're an anti Semite.
[00:53:02]  This is a trope that Jews control everything, that they have all the money they use.
[00:53:06]  I was like, no, but I'm not the one saying it.
[00:53:08]  I'm just reporting.
[00:53:09]  This is the reality of what this guy is saying to a neocon Jewish newspaper, the New York Sun.
[00:53:14]  And then it was that year that John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, the professors at Harvard and the University of Chicago, wrote an essay that they couldn't get published in the United States.
[00:53:26]  They published it in the London Review of Books called The Israel Lobby.
[00:53:28]  And then they turned it into a book in 2007, which was the first real mainstream scholarly attempt to drag the Israel Lobby out into the light.
[00:53:37]  Because, as you said, they had been hiding in the kind of, you know, operating in the shadows the way most lobbies prefer to, not just them, but most lobbies.
[00:53:45]  And I was shocked by just how these, like, very well respected, you know, faculty members at our leading institutions, among the best, you know, most regarded international relations scholars in the world, just instantly overnight got turned into Jew hating bigots, you know, anti Semites.
[00:54:03]  And that was when I realized, wow, this is something you can't talk about.
[00:54:06]  And just my personality is okay.
[00:54:07]  Well, then I'm going to talk about it as much as possible.
[00:54:09]  So, all I can tell you is, This is how they operated for so long.
[00:54:13]  They were in the shadows and they were incredibly effective.
[00:54:15]  You know, I would be screaming about this like we would hear Republican Democrats can't agree on anything.
[00:54:20]  And then you would get some APAC resolution that they would put before Congress, you know, when Israel was bombing Gaza in 2014, for example.
[00:54:27]  Not as much as they did in 2023, but it was a serious bombing campaign.
[00:54:30]  And they had some resolution APAC wanted put before the Senate and the House.
[00:54:34]  And it passed like the Senate 90 to 2, saying, We are on Israel's side.
[00:54:38]  We side with Israel.
[00:54:39]  We stand with Israel.
[00:54:40]  And the House was like 431 to 6.
[00:54:43]  And it's like you don't see bipartisan consensus on any issue other than this very controversial country.
[00:54:48]  And there's very so the power is so obvious, but it operated in the shadows.
[00:54:52]  Yes.
[00:54:52]  What happened was the combination of what they did in Gaza and just the absolute moral atrocity of it, and the fact that we now have independent media.
[00:55:03]  So, if this had happened 10 years ago, no one would have seen it.
[00:55:07]  Now you have people in Gaza with their own phones uploading every day, and you have people who aren't afraid to show this, and you have all these people consuming it on TikTok and everywhere else.
[00:55:16]  And the polls just started immediately collapsing in the United States.
[00:55:23]  You had major figures like Tucker, who never talked about Israel before October 7th.
[00:55:26]  I was on a show a thousand times before October 7th on his Fox show.
[00:55:30]  Never once went there to talk about Israel, never asked me to talk about that.
[00:55:33]  But a lot of people were like, I can't avoid what I'm seeing.
[00:55:36]  This is, and it wasn't just what Israel was doing, it was the fact the United States was paying for it, financing it all, arming it, diplomatically and militarily protecting it.
[00:55:44]  We were completely a party to the war.
[00:55:46]  And young people first, and then lots of other people started finally seeing the truth.
[00:55:50]  And that's what finally dragged the Israel lobby out into the open was that they.
[00:55:56]  Couldn't afford any longer to kind of have this subtle operation.
[00:56:00]  They had to really like go after people.
[00:56:02]  I mean, you see what they're doing to trying to do to Tucker.
[00:56:05]  I think the most understated story of the last year is the fact that you have this app, TikTok, which was used voluntarily by a third of the American population, talking about tens of millions of people, and was easily the most popular for American young people.
[00:56:25]  And it was really one of the apps that only.
[00:56:27]  Social media platforms that the government couldn't completely control the way they did with Google and Facebook, Meta, and the rest, because they're so dependent on the American government.
[00:56:37]  They were allowing a lot more free speech on the things the American government cares about, like Israel, which is why there was.
[00:56:41]  And a lot of people have this misperception that they decided to ban TikTok because of China.
[00:56:47]  It was in 2020 when Trump said, let's ban TikTok because of China.
[00:56:50]  It went nowhere.
[00:56:51]  No one took it seriously.
[00:56:52]  It didn't get anywhere near the vote.
[00:56:53]  It lingered for years.
[00:56:55]  It was only after October 7th, and the ADL in January 2024 says, We have a big TikTok problem.
[00:57:00]  We need to ban TikTok.
[00:57:02]  And then suddenly the Democrats get on board with it.
[00:57:04]  The Biden administration gets behind it.
[00:57:07]  They banned a social media app in the United States, the thing we accuse China of doing, or Iran, or Russia, or whatever.
[00:57:12]  And then they force its sale to Larry Ellison, the single largest donor in history, private donor to the IDF, to the friends of the IDF.
[00:57:20]  He puts an IDF soldier in charge of content moderation.
[00:57:24]  It's all done right out in the open.
[00:57:26]  And then he buys CBS News and puts Barry Weiss in charge.
[00:57:31]  The panic is so.
[00:57:32]  Visible now.
[00:57:33]  And that's why, I mean, they never wanted that.
[00:57:36]  They never wanted it to be so obvious that you and I are able to talk about this and everyone just nods their head and understands what we're saying.
[00:57:41]  This was, if you said this five years ago, even if you had me on my show and we talked about this and you talked about the Epstein class and the Rothschilds and April, you would be destroyed.
[00:57:50]  Totally.
[00:57:50]  But now the cat is out of the bag and it's never going back in.
[00:57:54]  Not only would you be destroyed, but on social media apps like YouTube, your content would be completely invisible to people.
[00:58:00]  Yeah, or banned or suppressed or whatever.
[00:58:02]  Some level of suppression that they were doing like all the time when Biden was president.
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=== Too Big To Censor (02:48) ===

[00:59:21]  And then another thing is, you also, not only is it just out in the light because of all the public attention on it, but you have those moments like when Netanyahu was talking to those people, those reporters or whatever it was, or I forget who he was exactly like social media influencers.
[00:59:36]  Yeah.
[00:59:36]  And there was someone had a camera right in his face.
[00:59:38]  And he's like, well, now what do we have to control next, class?
[00:59:41]  Like talking like some mobster.
[00:59:43]  Like, what's the answer?
[00:59:44]  And he's like, TikTok.
[00:59:46]  Like, you know, there's a camera right.
[00:59:48]  There.
[00:59:48]  You know, this is going to go out on social media, and you know what the response is.
[00:59:52]  Like, he's not Netanyahu's a lot of things.
[00:59:53]  He's not dumb.
[00:59:55]  No, not at all.
[00:59:56]  So, what is the thought process behind this?
[01:00:01]  Well, they understand, like, okay, the United States, Israel, since its inception, since its creation in 1947, has basically been a dependent state of the United States.
[01:00:12]  They've been completely reliant on the United States, and it's gotten increasingly reliant.
[01:00:16]  We pay more and more for them.
[01:00:18]  We give more and more to them.
[01:00:19]  We go more and more to At war for them more and more readily, more and more easily.
[01:00:24]  And I don't mean things like, oh, we went to the Iraq war for them, leave that aside.
[01:00:28]  I mean things like anytime they're in any kind of conflict, we deploy our military to that region explicitly to defend and protect Israel, put our service members in harm's way to defend them.
[01:00:38]  It's a tiny little country.
[01:00:38]  Why are they so powerful?
[01:00:39]  Because they've been feeding off of the United States like some kind of leech.
[01:00:45]  They stole our nuclear secrets, they've had spies at the highest levels of our government.
[01:00:49]  And this is something that.
[01:00:51]  Has been so central, and it's not central to their survival, it's central to their ability to dominate the region, to steal land, to expand, you know, to have more Lebensraum, as the Germans used to say.
[01:01:04]  And so, the ability to maintain this stranglehold on a bipartisan level on the American consciousness, American public opinion, especially in Washington, has been absolutely central to the Israelis for as long as Israel has existed.
[01:01:17]  And to watch it now all kind of unravel, and I do.
[01:01:23]  I do think the main reason is independent media.
[01:01:26]  Like you can try and censor now all you want, but there's enough places you can go and that offer free speech.
[01:01:34]  There's people who are just too big to censor, like Rogan and Tucker and a lot of other people who have been just very willing to finally talk about this issue.
[01:01:46]  And, you know, David Ellison and his dad, his daddy Larry Ellison, they can buy up like CBS and now they're trying to buy, you know, Warner Brothers and CNN and everything else.
[01:01:54]  They can buy all All that they want.
[01:01:56]  This is never going to revert.
[01:01:57]  Yeah, exactly.
[01:01:58]  Exactly.
[01:01:59]  Or, you know, Paramount and CBS News, like it's not nothing, but in the, it's kind of like trying to build a little brick wall to stop a tsunami.
[01:02:08]  Yeah.

=== First Amendment Erosion (15:58) ===

[01:02:09]  Yeah.
[01:02:09]  I wonder about, I wonder, I get frightened about what's going to happen with things like Google and YouTube, you know, because like the previous to this and to the new Trump administration, which is giving credit, that like it seems like the clamps have been lifted off of social media.
[01:02:24]  And I think a lot of that has to do with Elon probably buying X and opening that up.
[01:02:28]  and fumigating X or Twitter.
[01:02:32]  But it does seem like the limiters have been taken off of YouTube and Google.
[01:02:38]  I know there's a lot of people who have pointed out a lot of the way the Google search algorithms have been curated.
[01:02:48]  And when Trump was running against Hillary, or against Kamala in the recent election, you couldn't search one good thing about Trump or one bad thing about Kamala.
[01:02:59]  And I don't know how much that's been curtailed with YouTube.
[01:03:02]  Google, but I know for a fact, I've seen it on YouTube.
[01:03:04]  Like, you can pretty much, the limiter is off on YouTube.
[01:03:09]  You can talk about whatever you want, and they will pump you in the algorithm, especially this Epstein stuff, and especially like any kind of criticisms against the current regime, which is, I'm optimistic about.
[01:03:20]  And I'm frightened about what's going to happen when the pendulum turns when whoever becomes the next president gets in power.
[01:03:28]  Yeah, I think what happened where the Biden administration got so.
[01:03:33]  Brazen and aggressive about doing things that, as Americans, we just know aren't supposed to be done by our government, especially when it came to COVID.
[01:03:42]  But there was, you know, sensitive around the 2020 election, there was sensitive around Ukraine.
[01:03:47]  It was most, it was primarily people really understood with COVID that if you questioned the Fauci consensus or the World Health Organization consensus on the origin of the COVID, whether it was really this zoonotic, you know, virus that leapt from animals to humans and this bat.
[01:04:07]  You know, these bat markets, these wet markets of the Chinese, and it was called racist to say that it came out of a lab, even though to me it was always way more racist to be like, hey, look at the Chinese.
[01:04:17]  They're so filthy and disgusting that they produce all these global pandemics from their disgusting wet markets because of their primitive eating habits.
[01:04:24]  Like, oh no, it leaked from a very sophisticated lab that the United States funds.
[01:04:28]  That seemed way less racist.
[01:04:29]  But ultimately, the only question was, which was true.
[01:04:32]  But we were banned from debating that.
[01:04:33]  We were banned from discussing.
[01:04:34]  There was an edict in the Lancet very early on saying, Anyone who's questioning this consensus is racist, is spreading disinformation, and then the big tech companies censored you or questioning the efficacy of masks or the dangers of the vaccine.
[01:04:49]  None of this is allowed to be debated.
[01:04:52]  The most important epidemic, pandemic, epidemic, whatever you want to call it, in a century.
[01:04:58]  And as Americans, we are banned by American companies from questioning government claims because the White House is calling and demanding that this be removed.
[01:05:05]  And on top of that, Donald Trump, as the sitting president of the United States, gets banned from every Right.
[01:05:11]  Social media outlet.
[01:05:12]  People have forgotten just how insane that was.
[01:05:15]  And I think there was enough of a realization, even though the Supreme Court kind of threw the case out, even though they lost in the lower courts, the government did.
[01:05:23]  The Supreme Court threw it out on kind of a technicality.
[01:05:26]  It didn't matter.
[01:05:27]  The American public understands we don't want that.
[01:05:29]  We don't want the government controlling big tech.
[01:05:32]  What case specifically are you talking about?
[01:05:33]  There was a litigation that was brought by Arkansas and Louisiana.
[01:05:39]  I'm sorry, Louisiana and Missouri, the attorneys general of those two states, sued the Biden administration.
[01:05:45]  Claiming it was a violation of the First Amendment to be badgering and cajoling and threatening big tech to ban certain opinions, to ban certain users on COVID and on other things.
[01:05:56]  They got a lot of discovery showing that it was the FBI and the White House doing it, the CDC.
[01:06:01]  And in the lower court, the lower court judge said this is the worst full frontal assault in the First Amendment he'd ever seen.
[01:06:07]  Went up to the appeals court, three judge appeals court, affirmed that lower court ruling and said this is an obvious violation of the First Amendment, needs to stop.
[01:06:14]  And then when it got to the Supreme Court, They basically threw it out on mostly on grounds that you couldn't prove, like technical grounds, like who has standing to sue this, who has really been censored, who has been silenced.
[01:06:26]  They didn't really address the heart of the matter.
[01:06:28]  And they kind of said it's okay for the White House to tell big tech, like, hey, we just want you to know we think this is misinformation, kind of casting it as free speech on the part of the White House.
[01:06:38]  But so ultimately the case lost on the mayor's, but it didn't matter.
[01:06:42]  By then the political controversy was so large over what is just very extreme government censorship of the medium we use to communicate.
[01:06:51]  But at the same time, also the emergence of independent media made it so that.
[01:06:56]  It almost was less important.
[01:06:58]  Like YouTube and Meta realized that Google and Meta, if they got a reputation for censoring, people were just going to go to places like Rumble or X or other places where they wouldn't be censored.
[01:07:08]  It was a market for that sort of thing.
[01:07:11]  So, are you optimistic about the future of censorship on social media platforms, like at all?
[01:07:16]  Like, as far as long term, do you think that, I mean, it's crazy to see, you know, despite all of the crazy stuff that we see as far as like control by like Israeli lobby and all that stuff, like they are not.
[01:07:31]  Being effective at all in silencing people on X or YouTube, right?
[01:07:36]  Right.
[01:07:37]  I mean, there, you know, Elon has done a couple of things after meeting with Netanyahu that are kind of contrary to his full free speech absolutist ethos, but never really got enforced, never really got implemented.
[01:07:48]  You can certainly see an endless amount of horror, like, you know, very unconstrained criticism of Israel on X.
[01:07:55]  And I think that's because Elon knows as well that, you know, he branded X as the free speech platform and he also can't be seen as being heavy handed or censoring.
[01:08:06]  You know, I obviously have a lot of criticism in the United States and what our government does, but the one thing we are so absolutely fortunate that we have that most other countries, almost no other countries have, is the First Amendment and the way that it's been interpreted by the Supreme Court to basically be absolute.
[01:08:20]  In Australia, just two weeks ago, the Australian Parliament passed a law banning criminal, making it a criminal offense to express certain political, use political slogans that are offensive to Israel, like from the river to the sea.
[01:08:35]  And A bunch of young women went out and, yeah, wore t shirts just saying from the river to the sea, just walking around, and they got arrested.
[01:08:43]  And there has been a lot of erosion of free speech in the name of Israel, including in the United States, on American college campuses, the Trump administration, as a force.
[01:08:53]  But I do think the fact that we have the First Amendment, and not just the First Amendment, but the fact that, you know, I remember learning when I was, you know, five years old that what made us the greatest country in the world is the fact that we're free.
[01:09:03]  We can say what we want.
[01:09:05]  Yeah, there's the.
[01:09:07]  Crazy state ban on pro Palestinian phrases.
[01:09:10]  I mean, it's shocking.
[01:09:11]  And then, you know, same thing.
[01:09:12]  And you see it in the UK, throughout Europe, but you don't, you couldn't have this exactly in the United States.
[01:09:19]  And it's not just because of the Constitution, it's because of the things we're taught about what it means to be American.
[01:09:23]  And that, it does make me optimistic.
[01:09:25]  Is this about the IHRA?
[01:09:28]  No.
[01:09:28]  This is just what happened was after October, like we, we talk about the pro Israel Abiy al Aad in the United States, and it is the strongest year.
[01:09:36]  They have it in Australia, they have it in the UK, they have it in Canada, in the EU.
[01:09:43]  And a lot of these countries that have a history and a tradition of tolerating hate speech laws where the government can just ban certain ideas when the grounds are dangerous started expanding them radically to protect Israel.
[01:09:54]  And then after this Bondi Beach shooting, which was a horrible massacre where two guys went and shot Jewish people in Australia who gun grated for Hanukkah, I think killed, I don't remember the number, but it was, I think, like seven or eight.
[01:10:07]  It was a terrible incident.
[01:10:09]  The Israelis immediately used that to exploit and said, Your hate speech codes aren't strict enough.
[01:10:14]  You need to ban things like from the river to the sea, a couple other pro Palestinian chants as well.
[01:10:21]  And they immediately jumped to it and obeyed and enacted the law.
[01:10:25]  And that's when people started getting arrested in Australia for just walking around with from the river to the sea.
[01:10:31]  That's fucking frightening, man.
[01:10:34]  It is.
[01:10:34]  I mean, this is pure government centers.
[01:10:36]  It's like the thing we read in Orwell.
[01:10:38]  Yes.
[01:10:39]  And, you know, the thing we learned about happens only in the bad countries.
[01:10:42]  And it's happening throughout the democratic world.
[01:10:44]  Not even to protect their own citizens, but to protect a foreign country that exerts a lot of power in their country.
[01:10:51]  Now, what is the IHRA?
[01:10:57]  So, the IHRA is this is very relevant to the United States.
[01:11:00]  Okay.
[01:11:01]  The IHRA, it stands for the International Holocaust Remembrance Act.
[01:11:05]  So, it's pretty exploitative emotionally right from the start.
[01:11:08]  Like, you better support this because it's about the Holocaust, remembering the Holocaust.
[01:11:12]  Yeah.
[01:11:13]  You know, kind of like the Patriot Act.
[01:11:14]  Like, you don't want to.
[01:11:15]  Yes, exactly.
[01:11:16]  Versus for patriotism.
[01:11:17]  Are you not a patriot?
[01:11:18]  Yeah, exactly.
[01:11:20]  And there, you know, in Europe in particular, there had been a lot of laws that banned racist speech, kind of the kinds of laws that we couldn't have in the United States.
[01:11:29]  And of course, because of the history of Europe, the Holocaust, World War II, and the like, there were pretty hefty protections against anti Semitism as well.
[01:11:37]  And Israel and its defenders in the West, its loyalists in the West, decided that this list needs to expand, that what it means to be anti Semitic is too narrow.
[01:11:49]  You know, it would just be the sort of things you would think of, like Jews are genetically inferior, you know, like just immediately recognizable bigoted statements like black people are prone to crime or whatever.
[01:12:01]  And so they.
[01:12:02]  Radically expanded what it means to be anti Semitic to include things like they have examples that are part of the law.
[01:12:08]  These aren't just designed to be illustrative, these are part of the laws they enact.
[01:12:12]  Israel is a racist endeavor as a country, meaning Zionism is a racist ideology.
[01:12:18]  Zionism is a racist ideology.
[01:12:19]  I mean, the idea is that you don't just have a country where Jews can live, you have a country where Jews are the majority, where Jews rule, where they govern, where they have special rights.
[01:12:29]  But you can debate that, but under this, you can't because if you say, Israel is a racist country, it means you're committing the crime of anti Semitism.
[01:12:37]  You can say it about any other country.
[01:12:38]  You can say the United States is racist.
[01:12:40]  You can say Germany is racist.
[01:12:42]  Iran is racist.
[01:12:43]  Whatever.
[01:12:43]  Just not this one country.
[01:12:45]  Another example, you can't compare Israel to Nazi Germany.
[01:12:49]  So you can say, I think when the United States massacred the Indians or when they invaded Iraq or Vietnam, that had a lot in common with the Nazi mindset.
[01:12:59]  You're free to say that.
[01:13:00]  You can say it about any other country.
[01:13:02]  You just can't say it about Israel.
[01:13:03]  You can't say the Jews participated in the killing of Jesus.
[01:13:06]  Even though Christians have been taught that for years because the Bible pretty clearly says it.
[01:13:09]  Right.
[01:13:10]  And it's a lot, you can't say that a certain Jewish person has greater loyalty to Israel than to their own country, even if they do, even if they basically say that they do.
[01:13:18]  These are banned ideas, these are prohibited ideas.
[01:13:21]  The EU incorporated them into law.
[01:13:24]  We can't have laws like that in the United States because they violate the First Amendment.
[01:13:27]  So, what the Trump administration did right almost immediately when it got into power, and remember, Trump was financed in this campaign that we talked about where he was trying to stay out of prison by people like Miriam Matelson, who's an Israeli her whole life until she married Sheldon Matelson.
[01:13:38]  If he went to war with Israel, would Would Miriam Adelson and Alan Dershowitz fight on the American side or the Israeli side?
[01:13:44]  That's the question.
[01:13:45]  Yeah.
[01:13:45]  Well, he said when he went to the Knesset, he made a typical Trump statement, which was a joke, but also revealing the truth.
[01:13:51]  He said, I once asked Miriam, who do you love more, the United States or Israel?
[01:13:55]  And she wouldn't answer.
[01:13:56]  I think that was a pretty clear answer.
[01:13:57]  So he himself is saying, by the way, it's so ironic because this IHRA definition that the Trump administration forced our leading universities to adopt, like Harvard and Columbia, by withdrawing their funding.
[01:14:09]  Funding, we've always fund colleges and universities so that they do research to keep us ahead.
[01:14:14]  That's where the internet was developed.
[01:14:15]  Like Mark Andreessen was able to invent the Netscape browser because he was at the University of Illinois, where they had immense government funding to do internet research.
[01:14:24]  Or we stay ahead in medicine, or that's what this government funding is for.
[01:14:28]  The Trump administration withdrew it and said, We're not going to give it back to you unless you agree to certain conditions, one of which is you would implement the IHRA definition as part of your hate speech code.
[01:14:38]  So that if professors, American professors on faculty say what I just said, any of the things I just said, including that particular Jewish individuals love Israel more than their own country, or a student says it, a faculty member can be expelled, a student can be fired, a student can be expelled.
[01:14:55]  It's just so ironic since what Trump said about Mary Mandelson.
[01:14:58]  Hey, I think she cares more about Israel than the United States.
[01:15:00]  Is one of the things that you're not allowed to say by the own anti Semitism guidelines and hate speech rules that Trump forces universities to adopt in order to get their billions of dollars in funding back.
[01:15:12]  So, this is now active in all American universities.
[01:15:14]  Not all, but like three or four dozen of our leading universities and colleges because they would have, like, what makes Harvard, Harvard is not that a bunch of smart kids go there.
[01:15:24]  It's that they have, like, the leading research facilities in the world in medicine and technology and AI.
[01:15:29]  Like, that's what, and they work with the government.
[01:15:31]  These aren't.
[01:15:32]  I think a lot of people got like conservatives said, Yeah, why do we give billions of dollars to Harvard just to fund gender studies programs?
[01:15:38]  It's not what it's for.
[01:15:39]  It's for, it's like what made the internet, the United States, a center of technology for decades.
[01:15:46]  And they withdrew it and canceled it in order to force them to adopt speech codes to protect Israel.
[01:15:52]  You know, like there was all this left liberal censorship, you know, in the woke period and before that on college campuses.
[01:15:59]  You can't say this if this is racist, you can't say this misogynist or anti gay or transphobic or whatever.
[01:16:05]  But at least, as much as I hate all of that and as opposed as I have always been to it, at least the one thing I could say about it is ostensibly it was designed to protect American citizens.
[01:16:15]  Like, oh, we're trying to protect American black people, American gay people, who are in these marginalized groups.
[01:16:20]  This is about protecting a foreign country, not American citizens, not people in our own country.
[01:16:26]  And this censorship is so pernicious.
[01:16:28]  But again, thankfully we have the First Amendment that it can't be written into our criminal law.
[01:16:32]  But forcing our leading universities to punish people who express these views, that is noxious.
[01:16:37]  It's insane.
[01:16:38]  And, you know, also, which I think was pointed out when you and Tucker were last speaking, was that the governor of Florida is like appointing affirmative action laws in the state of Florida and like signing them into law in Israel.
[01:16:50]  And also, I don't know if this is just in Florida, but I heard that if you want to get a government contract, you have to like sign some agreement that you will not protest against Israel.
[01:17:01]  Is that right?
[01:17:02]  Okay.
[01:17:02]  So I really just give me a second to defend it because I've been reporting on this for a decade and it's going to drive me crazy that it doesn't get more attention because it's so unbelievably insane and offensive.
[01:17:13]  36 countries of the 50 in the United States have laws.
[01:17:16]  They're called anti BDS laws.
[01:17:18]  BDS means the boycott, divestment, and sanction movement toward Israel.
[01:17:22]  It's kind of modeled after the 1980s divestment movement that was aimed at apartheid South Africa.
[01:17:29]  There were protests on college campuses saying, We don't want you to invest in South Africa.
[01:17:32]  We want to bring down the apartheid government.
[01:17:34]  And so a bunch of people who believe the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and blockade of Gaza is criminal or immoral or whatever have a boycott campaign saying, We boycott Israel.
[01:17:43]  Don't buy their goods.
[01:17:44]  Don't go there, et cetera.
[01:17:48]  36 states in the United States adopted a law saying if you want a contract with the state, which, you know, tons of people have, you have to sign as part of the contract that you sign with us an appendix, an oath basically, saying you don't support or participate in a boycott of Israel.

=== Watergate Style Tapes (09:20) ===

[01:18:07]  And two things are so amazing about this.
[01:18:10]  One is Americans organize boycotts of other American states.
[01:18:14]  Like when Andrew Cuomo was governor of New York, he boycotted North Carolina and Indiana because of these bathroom bills that they passed, saying you have to go use the bathroom corresponding to your gender, your sex at birth, your biological sex.
[01:18:28]  He boycotted Georgia because of this voting rights law that they enacted.
[01:18:33]  The Major League Baseball boycotted Georgia.
[01:18:36]  We have boycotts of our own states, and that's, of course, legal.
[01:18:40]  And yet, the same Andrew Cuomo wrote an op ed in the Washington Post saying, If you boycott Israel, we will boycott you.
[01:18:48]  And basically, he issued an executive order saying if you want a contract with New York State, you have to swear you will never boycott Israel.
[01:18:54]  Even though he boycotted American businesses and American states in Indiana, North Carolina.
[01:18:59]  Most of these states are red states, but not all.
[01:19:02]  And I profiled this woman in 2017.
[01:19:04]  She was a speech pathologist and she worked for the Austin School District.
[01:19:08]  And she had like glowing performance reviews.
[01:19:10]  And she specialized in like elementary school kids who have speech deficiencies.
[01:19:15]  And she has a very specific kind of specialty, which very few people have.
[01:19:19]  And she'd worked in the Austin School District as a contractor.
[01:19:21]  You know, she doesn't work every day.
[01:19:22]  She's not like a teacher.
[01:19:24]  She works with students on an as needed basis.
[01:19:27]  And when they passed this law, Texas did, they gave her a contract for every year she signed a new contract.
[01:19:33]  And it had this oath there saying, I swear that I don't participate in or support a boycott of Israel.
[01:19:39]  And she does support a boycott of Israel.
[01:19:40]  So she couldn't sign it in conscience.
[01:19:42]  I mean, she could have, but in good conscience, she wouldn't.
[01:19:44]  And she got fired.
[01:19:47]  So, like, Austin deprived itself of this specialist in.
[01:19:50]  Helping young elementary school kids with speech pathologies in the United States because of her refusal to.
[01:19:56]  I profiled her.
[01:19:57]  I read a big article about it in 2017.
[01:19:58]  It was the first time I really focused on these laws.
[01:20:01]  I did a video about her.
[01:20:02]  I couldn't believe it.
[01:20:03]  She's an American citizen.
[01:20:05]  And it's not even a loyalty to your own government, it's a loyalty to a foreign country.
[01:20:10]  It's embarrassing.
[01:20:12]  How long do you think that this has been happening?
[01:20:13]  How long do you think that Israel has had its hooks in American politics like that deep?
[01:20:19]  I just read an article last night which.
[01:20:23]  Was published in 2007, I believe.
[01:20:27]  That was basically all about Leslie Wexner had like his own airline, or he was hiring one of the CIA's airlines to bring clothing items for his company from China to the US.
[01:20:44]  And I forget the name of the airline.
[01:20:46]  It was one of the famous airlines that the CIA used to like traffic drugs or whatever.
[01:20:50]  And in Ohio, there was this.
[01:20:55]  Like a private air hangar where, like, you know, private airplanes will go and like refuel and maintain the airplanes.
[01:21:01]  There'll be like a nice, luxurious, like, bar there with like a conference room where they can all meet.
[01:21:08]  And allegedly, there was like diplomats and CIA people meeting there all the time.
[01:21:13]  And, you know, obviously that's where Leslie Wexner lives, right there in Ohio, and I think it was Columbus.
[01:21:20]  And it was also mentioning how Leslie Wexner was using.
[01:21:26]  This meeting place to like disseminate and to bring in people to help sell the Iraq war.
[01:21:33]  And he was like a very much a part of making the Iraq war happen, you know.
[01:21:39]  And this is like 2007.
[01:21:43]  So this was when did Jeffrey Epstein first get arrested?
[01:21:45]  Was that 2007 basically?
[01:21:47]  That was around the same time.
[01:21:48]  So like this was super early.
[01:21:51]  And you know, if Leslie Wexner, I mean, obviously he's a huge supporter of Israel.
[01:21:56]  And if he was doing that back then, how much earlier?
[01:22:00]  Does this go?
[01:22:01]  Like, when did this start and how did it happen?
[01:22:03]  So it's interesting because I think there are a lot of people who believe that this idea that Israel has its hooks in American politics or exerts unbelievably excessive influence in our government, that it's some sort of fringe idea that only started getting passed around on the internet when independent media grew, like Candace Owens, you know, it's like her conspiracy theory and it's a bunch of fringe people.
[01:22:27]  I guess part of the perception is that for a long time, people in the mainstream didn't want to talk about this.
[01:22:33]  There's a, let me just give you two examples.
[01:22:36]  Of how mainstream this idea is, how people at the highest levels of our government know this and speak openly about it in ways that are safe for them.
[01:22:44]  So, Barry Goldwater was a senator from Arizona for a long time, Republican senator from Arizona.
[01:22:50]  He was like very libertarian, very kind of, at the time, he was perceived as like far right figure.
[01:22:56]  But he kind of became a folk hero of the American right and he got nominated for president.
[01:22:59]  He was the presidential nominee for the Republican Party in 1964 and he ran against LBJ, Lyndon Baines Johnson, the incumbent, and got destroyed.
[01:23:07]  I think it was like.
[01:23:08]  One of the, I mean, I know it was one of the biggest landslides in American history because they painted him as this like right wing fanatic.
[01:23:14]  They did a commercial that's claiming that he was going to start a nuclear war with this little girl picking daisies in a field.
[01:23:20]  It was a famous commercial, and then the whole world blows up and it's, you know, wrote Lyndon Johnson.
[01:23:24]  So he really got, you know, destroyed.
[01:23:26]  The problem with Barry Goldwater as a politician was he was super candid.
[01:23:29]  Like he would just, he was very smart and he would just, he like, he hated politics in terms of like obfuscating what you think or like pretending that you're saying one thing if you really want to say another.
[01:23:39]  He was always very blunt.
[01:23:41]  So, He ended up serving in the Senate for another 25, 30 years.
[01:23:46]  And in 1988, as he was getting older, and you get older, you don't care much anymore about what other people think.
[01:23:52]  And it's one of the few benefits of getting older.
[01:23:55]  And he gave an interview, and he just went on and on and on about how anyone who's ever been at the highest level of American government knows that our Middle East foreign policy is shaped and dictated by Israel.
[01:24:05]  And his father was Jewish.
[01:24:06]  He was half Jewish.
[01:24:07]  That's where his name, Barry Goldwater, came from.
[01:24:09]  He wasn't raised Jewish, but he was ethnically Jewish.
[01:24:14]  And I don't think anyone knows.
[01:24:15]  In fact, I don't know this.
[01:24:17]  I didn't know this.
[01:24:17]  I saw this video like about three months ago when I went and watched the whole interview.
[01:24:21]  Wow.
[01:24:22]  And he just goes on and on about it, like in such a very unvarnished way.
[01:24:28]  And then there are all these tapes.
[01:24:30]  Like Richard Nixon, when he got impeached, like after a couple of years, he kind of started getting rehabilitated, became like an advisor.
[01:24:36]  He was super smart, knew everything about foreign affairs in the world.
[01:24:40]  And he would give interviews and go really in depth because he was like at the center of, you know, he was vice president in the 50s.
[01:24:48]  Ran president in the 60s, senator, president in 68, 72, Watergate, Vietnam, like at the center of everything, the Cold War.
[01:24:56]  And he gave an interview once where he said, basically, look, the reality is every president knows that American Jews are going to just like hammer you and pressure you to do everything for Israel.
[01:25:06]  These people have a lot of money.
[01:25:08]  They're very smart.
[01:25:08]  They're very well organized.
[01:25:10]  But because it was public, he sort of said, but you know, he said like they have every right to, and you know this.
[01:25:15]  And at the end of the day, you sometimes have to do what's best for the United States and not Israel.
[01:25:20]  But in those tapes, you know, he Those notorious tapes that made Watergate Watergate, where he was secretly taping everything that happened in the Oval Office.
[01:25:28]  There are all kinds of tapes where Nixon just goes on and on and on about the Jews and about Israel and how they control everything and how they like dictate foreign policy and how this was true in Germany before Hitler emerged.
[01:25:39]  And that's what gave rise to anti Semitism was that they were overplaying their hand and using their power and wealth.
[01:25:45]  So, this is not something that only people who are like just fringe conspiracy theories talk about.
[01:25:52]  This is people who.
[01:25:53]  You know, like I said, Mearsheimer and Walt are two of the most well respected scholars we have.
[01:25:58]  And they wrote a 700 page book, you know, filled with zillions of footnotes, like in a very academic, scholarly way, documenting the unique power of this lobby.
[01:26:06]  This is something that has been clear for so long.
[01:26:08]  But like I said, there were all the professional incentives to avoid this, and there were none to talk about it.
[01:26:15]  Yeah.
[01:26:15]  So, so I guess this must have happened right after, like, how soon after World War II did this start happening?
[01:26:21]  And was it mainly.
[01:26:24]  A blackmail operation?
[01:26:27]  Well, I mean, you have to understand like after World War II, when the reality of the Holocaust started to kind of be disseminated and this narrative emerged about what it was, and you know, that packed a very powerful moral punch.
[01:26:44]  And the idea that, oh, we need our own homeland had a certain kind of urgency to it because they were able to point to what had just been done like years, a few years earlier.
[01:26:55]  There's, you know, like for us, the Holocaust is.
[01:26:57]  You know, 80 years ago, but when it's two years or three years ago, and American troops liberated the camps, et cetera, you know, you're talking about an argument with such an emotional force, it's almost impossible to resist.
[01:27:09]  That's, I mean, basically, Europe, out of guilt for what they did to the Jews, stole land from the Arabs and the Palestinians.
[01:27:18]  And instead of giving them part of Europe and saying, hey, here's your country, and like Southern Germany, Munich is now your capital, which you would think would be the natural.

=== Tucker Cruz Politics (14:51) ===

[01:27:28]  They instead took all the European Jews and sent them to the Middle East in the middle of where Arabs and Palestinians were living.
[01:27:36]  And they massacred a bunch of Palestinians and drove them out of their homes.
[01:27:39]  But even Truman talked about the power of the organized Jewish lobby in the United States as a reason why he was the first one to recognize Israel.
[01:27:49]  And then it did become an important part of how we did foreign policy.
[01:27:53]  We don't have an interest in the Middle East anymore because we have our own oil, we're a net exporter of oil.
[01:27:57]  But back then, in the 56, 70, the oil was where we got our Middle East.
[01:28:01]  The Middle East is where we got our oil from.
[01:28:03]  And Israel was kind of a tool that we used to dominate the Middle East for our own purposes.
[01:28:08]  Hmm.
[01:28:09]  What, yeah, I wonder how this topic isn't going to be a huge talking point for the next presidential election.
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[01:28:51]  Like, how, like, the next presidential election, like, is this going to be, in your mind, something that people run on?
[01:28:57]  Like, not getting Israeli money?
[01:28:59]  No question.
[01:28:59]  First of all, the Democratic Party.
[01:29:02]  Yeah.
[01:29:03]  If you are like, even Gavin Newsom recently called Israel an apartheid state.
[01:29:06]  Yes, I saw that.
[01:29:07]  He's such a worm.
[01:29:09]  Like, he has no fixed beliefs.
[01:29:10]  I know.
[01:29:11]  The more he speaks, the more evident it becomes to everybody.
[01:29:13]  He was on a podcast right before that where they were asking about Israel.
[01:29:16]  And he was like, you know, that's really interesting.
[01:29:18]  You asked that.
[01:29:18]  You know, it's really, he was like very nervous.
[01:29:20]  And he goes, he must have said that's really interesting like 16 times.
[01:29:23]  Totally, totally.
[01:29:24]  With no answer.
[01:29:25]  Exactly.
[01:29:25]  And like, there was one three months ago where they asked him about APAC and he was pretending that he barely knew what APAC was.
[01:29:30]  Like, APAC, what was that?
[01:29:32]  You know, so he's very petrified.
[01:29:34]  Obviously, he's in California.
[01:29:36]  He was mayor of San Francisco and then governor of California.
[01:29:41]  Democratic, like I was saying before, that Hillary Clinton's finance manager said that the ATM of New York politics is Jewish money.
[01:29:48]  I didn't say that.
[01:29:48]  That's what Hillary Clinton's finance manager said.
[01:29:51]  Obviously, when you run for politics and when you're running for office in California, there's a lot of Democratic Party money in Hollywood, in Silicon Valley, where Israel sentiment is very high.
[01:30:01]  So he has this like embedded in his blood and bones.
[01:30:05]  I don't think a Democratic politician can win if they're too associated with Israel.
[01:30:12]  That's how much the politics have changed.
[01:30:13]  Joe Biden won in 2020, and he spent 30 years saying there's no bigger Zionist in. Washington than me.
[01:30:21]  No one's ever done more for Israel.
[01:30:23]  We love Israel.
[01:30:24]  We should give them even more.
[01:30:25]  All that's gone in the Democratic Party.
[01:30:27]  In the Republican Party, there's going to be a major candidate.
[01:30:30]  I am certain.
[01:30:31]  I hope it's Tucker.
[01:30:32]  Really?
[01:30:33]  I don't.
[01:30:34]  He.
[01:30:34]  I think it could happen.
[01:30:36]  This is my hope.
[01:30:37]  I mean, Tucker's a good friend of mine.
[01:30:39]  I don't exploit my friendship to pressure him to run for president.
[01:30:44]  And he's adamant that he won't publicly.
[01:30:47]  And even if you talk to him and try and exploit it, he'll kind of laugh.
[01:30:51]  But, you know, stranger things have happened.
[01:30:52]  But anyway, I hope it's him.
[01:30:53]  But even if it's not him, there'll be like a Thomas Massey figure, Marjorie Taylor Greene, I don't know who, who runs on a real America first, like returns to America first and says, Hey, remember this?
[01:31:03]  Like, we're not supposed to fight wars for our foreign countries.
[01:31:05]  We're not supposed to send billions of dollars out of our communities in the Midwest that have been deindustrialized and run overrun with addiction and suicide and depression and people having to work three jobs, not being able to buy homes until they're 40 or start families until they're 40 and maybe having one kid because that's all they can afford.
[01:31:21]  Both parents work outside the house.
[01:31:23]  Like, until that's fixed, we shouldn't be sending billions of dollars to Ukraine or Israel, paying for their army, paying for their society.
[01:31:30]  That is going to resonate among a huge number of Republican Party voters, especially the young voters that really provide the energy for campaigns, like they did with Bernie Sanders in 2016, where he almost took down the Clinton machine, would have had the DNC not cheated.
[01:31:45]  That is political gold, like that young energy.
[01:31:48]  And young conservatives are done with Israel, like, done.
[01:31:52]  Right.
[01:31:52]  And that is a lane just waiting to be filled.
[01:31:55]  Yeah.
[01:31:55]  Yeah, the idea of Tucker running for president has been like, it seems like more and more of a possibility.
[01:32:02]  I mean, obviously, A, he would have to decide to do it, right?
[01:32:06]  And B, like, fuck, man, if I was Tucker, I would be so worried about my safety.
[01:32:11]  And I'm sure he is.
[01:32:11]  And his family.
[01:32:12]  And his family, right?
[01:32:14]  I don't know.
[01:32:14]  I mean, I think Tucker is, I don't know him.
[01:32:16]  I've never met him, but I'm, I'm, I think he's probably really good at keeping stuff close to the vest with a lot of, I'm sure he knows a lot of people in politics and around the world.
[01:32:26]  And he's like one of the smartest people.
[01:32:28]  Like geopolitical minds, I've ever listened to.
[01:32:31]  So, like, he's very good at partitioning what he says publicly on his show and what he knows he needs to keep back.
[01:32:39]  And well, he's grown up on TV, he's been back on TV since his mid 20s, right?
[01:32:44]  Exactly.
[01:32:45]  But, like, goddamn, at this, like, he is going around kicking every hornet's nest around the world.
[01:32:51]  Like, I don't know how he is not paranoid.
[01:32:55]  Well, I don't know, he must be paranoid.
[01:32:56]  I mean, you'd be dumb not to be, right?
[01:32:58]  But, like, I'm you know.
[01:33:01]  You have to find ways to compartmentalize this.
[01:33:04]  Like, people go to war, right?
[01:33:06]  And people die in wars and they fight in revolutions and they, you know, are basically willing to sacrifice their lives for a cause.
[01:33:13]  I remember when I was doing the Snowden reporting, you know, like I had an archive on me filled with, you know, like hundreds of thousands or millions of the most sensitive secret documents that the United States government had that every government in the world would love to get their hands on every non state actor, terrorist group, hacker, whatever.
[01:33:31]  And you have to realize the risk, take precautions, and then.
[01:33:34]  Put it out of your mind.
[01:33:34]  Like, if you're going to do this, you've taken the precautions you believe are necessary and you can't be paranoid about it.
[01:33:40]  And you just have to go do it.
[01:33:41]  Otherwise, you won't leave your house if you don't function that way.
[01:33:45]  And I don't want to speak for Tucker.
[01:33:47]  I don't even know what he's thinking.
[01:33:49]  Like, as I said, every time I've heard him talk about it, both publicly and privately, it's been like, ha ha, it's a joke.
[01:33:54]  I'm not going to run.
[01:33:55]  There's no chance I'm running.
[01:33:57]  But I think one of the reasons why, and again, I don't want to speak for him at all.
[01:34:04]  So I'm just using my own assessment, but Tucker has had a lot of faith and hope in JD Vance, is close to JD Vance personally.
[01:34:14]  This is all well known.
[01:34:16]  Doesn't his son work for him or something?
[01:34:18]  Yeah, his son worked for JD Vance.
[01:34:19]  Exactly.
[01:34:23]  And already you see, like, the Israel fanatics are trying to demand that JD Vance fire Tucker's son.
[01:34:29]  Like, think how sick that is.
[01:34:30]  Like, he should have his career impeded American citizens because of the views of his father.
[01:34:34]  Like, we don't have that kind of generational justice.
[01:34:37]  Like, other cultures do, American culture does not.
[01:34:39]  Anyway, but the problem with JD Vance is he has to now be tied to these policies that the Trump presidency is pursuing.
[01:34:47]  He can't, you know, he can't speak out against them.
[01:34:51]  He can't even really run against them.
[01:34:53]  What would happen if he did speak out against them?
[01:34:56]  You know, it's always such an interesting question.
[01:34:58]  I remember I listened to this tape recording once when Hubert Humphrey was Lyndon Johnson's vice president, and Hubert Humphrey was the Democratic nominee in 1968 against Richard Nixon.
[01:35:10]  And there was like a tape phone call between the two where Hubert Humphrey wanted to criticize the Vietnam War, which Lyndon Johnson was the face of.
[01:35:19]  And he called Lyndon Johnson, and the way they spoke, it was like the boss was the president, and Hubert Humphrey was the president.
[01:35:26]  Even though he was now his own presidential candidate, he'd been a senator for 40 years, he was speaking to him like the most submissive underling.
[01:35:34]  And I was like, why does the vice president act like this junior level?
[01:35:40]  Like, he's elected in his own accord.
[01:35:42]  He has his own office.
[01:35:43]  Right.
[01:35:43]  Can't be fired.
[01:35:45]  I guess the worst that Trump could do is completely exclude JD Vance from all meaningful duties and functions.
[01:35:51]  Right.
[01:35:51]  And then also condemn him, which in the Republican Party is something you do not want.
[01:35:57]  Um, Because a lot of, you know, for a long time, Trump's condemnation means, you know, you're destroyed.
[01:36:02]  Thomas Massey is testing that.
[01:36:03]  We'll see if he's able to.
[01:36:05]  But Marjorie Taylor Greene, you know, he was calling her Marjorie Treater Greene, and she felt compelled to flee because of the dangers that produces.
[01:36:12]  So we'll see, you know, JD Vance grew up and came of age in the Republican Party.
[01:36:16]  He won in Ohio because Peter Thiel got Trump to endorse him in the Republican primary.
[01:36:21]  So his whole political career has been dependent on Trump.
[01:36:23]  I don't know why he doesn't.
[01:36:25]  Maybe when he runs, he'll feel more.
[01:36:27]  If Trump's super unpopular, especially in the Republican Party, he'll feel able to.
[01:36:31]  But I think he's going to be so tied.
[01:36:33]  It was kind of like Kamala Harris was so tied to Biden's unpopularity.
[01:36:37]  And she, too, wouldn't denounce.
[01:36:39]  That's one of the worst things she ever did she went on the view on Stephen Colbert one day after the next.
[01:36:43]  And they asked her, What would you do differently than Biden did?
[01:36:45]  And she's like, I can't think of anything, not one thing I would have done differently.
[01:36:49]  So she tied herself to this sinking unpopular president and she had no chance.
[01:36:53]  I think that's one of the main reasons she lost, aside from all the other huge flaws that she has as a person and a candidate.
[01:36:59]  But if JD Vance is tied too closely to Trump, I don't think he can jump suddenly to this lane, which is going to remain open.
[01:37:06]  And I think maybe Marjorie Taylor Greene is thinking about running.
[01:37:08]  Maybe Thomas Massey is if he wins re election.
[01:37:11]  But to me, Tucker is the most, like, the best communicator, the most dynamic, charismatic person who believes and has thought about these things deep in his soul for a long time.
[01:37:26]  Like I said, he never once mentioned Israel until October 7th.
[01:37:30]  Right.
[01:37:31]  Or if he did, it was very much in passing in the sort of standard pro DC line.
[01:37:36]  Mm hmm.
[01:37:37]  But now he's all in.
[01:37:38]  And the more he gets in, the more he learns.
[01:37:40]  And the more he learns, the more he understands, the more insight he has, the better he is at communicating.
[01:37:45]  And he'd be a very formidable character.
[01:37:46]  Man, he's done such a good job to just unmask the political game in the United States just the last couple years, especially with that.
[01:37:55]  What really blew my mind was the Ted Cruz interview that he did.
[01:37:59]  It was like the emperor has, like, this is really what it is.
[01:38:02]  It's insane.
[01:38:02]  The guy who's advocating for this war has no clue about any of the culture of the people who lived there, let alone how many people even lived there in the first place.
[01:38:10]  Plus, Ted Cruz, like, yes.
[01:38:12]  And that was one of the reasons why the Iraq war was such a debacle, is because we were going to this like ancient culture, very complex.
[01:38:19]  You know, so many fault lines, and we thought we were going to engineer it, you know, by like imposing American policy planners from the State Department.
[01:38:26]  But, and same with Iran.
[01:38:27]  I mean, Iran's, you know, as complex as not more.
[01:38:30]  But the thing that Ted Cruz said in that Tucker interview that I still to this day can't believe a politician said, and it shows you how just perverse, like you talk about Adam Curtis and like the hyper normalization.
[01:38:40]  Like Ted Cruz went into that interview, and when Tucker was pressing him, and it was at the beginning when before Ted Cruz realized how antagonistic it was going to be, he said, I ran for Congress with the stated intention of being the leading defender of Israel in the entire Congress.
[01:38:57]  And I have woken up every day for the last 13 years and done exactly that.
[01:39:01]  It's almost verbatim because I've listened to it and talked about it so many times.
[01:39:04]  It's so crazy that that's real.
[01:39:07]  It's like, yeah, I know that's true.
[01:39:09]  Like, it didn't surprise me that Ted Cruz thinks the fact that he's not only admitting it, but like proud of it.
[01:39:14]  Like, he represents Texas.
[01:39:16]  You know, any problems Texas has and the people of Texas have?
[01:39:20]  And like he just said it like it was normal.
[01:39:22]  Oh my God.
[01:39:24]  It is so crazy.
[01:39:25]  You're right.
[01:39:26]  It's like hyper normalization.
[01:39:27]  The fact that he thinks that he can actually say that and no one will, no one will, like everyone will pretend that that's normal.
[01:39:33]  Cause in his mind, it's normal.
[01:39:34]  Yeah.
[01:39:35]  I mean, no other country would.
[01:39:37]  I was trying to think, like, imagine if a Brazilian senator, like a Brazilian politician went on television and was like, I wake up every day and I devote myself to the interests of this foreign country on the other side of the world.
[01:39:48]  Everybody would like, I think you need to be.
[01:39:51]  Involuntarily, you know, put in a psychiatric institute because what are you talking about?
[01:39:55]  You're a brilliant politician.
[01:39:56]  In any country, that would be unthinkable.
[01:39:59]  Yes, yes, 100%.
[01:40:02]  You know, another whole aspect of this is, especially when it comes to this Iran war, is this like sort of resurgence of religion.
[01:40:15]  It seems like we've been, you know, you have Peter Thiel on the one hand, like doing these anti Christ lectures, and Silicon Valley has been becoming more and more Christian.
[01:40:25]  In the last few years, and I think Peter Thiel's a big part of that.
[01:40:28]  There's a big church now there, and for whatever reason, it seems like now a lot of the things that are happening in Silicon Valley are getting painted with Christianity, and people there are becoming more religious, which is interesting to me.
[01:40:43]  Because at the same time, now we have allegedly there were all these people in the military that just came out and complained that their commanders were telling them that Trump was anointed by Jesus or something like this.
[01:40:57]  Is that real?
[01:40:58]  Yeah, well, it's what we're told about Iran, right?
[01:41:01]  Is that it's a country led by religious fanatics.
[01:41:04]  And this is why they'll like go to war or whatever because they think they're ordained by God to do whatever they're doing.
[01:41:10]  They don't really care about life here, they care about the afterlife.
[01:41:13]  Pete Hegsef, this morning or yesterday, this video came out where he was basically saying that the Iran war is a war ordained by God.
[01:41:21]  This is where he was reading the Bible.
[01:41:23]  Yeah.
[01:41:23]  And he was talking about the war in like very, not even like spiritual terms or with reference to God, but like in.
[01:41:30]  Almost like denominational terms, like this was a war of Christianity against Islam.
[01:41:37]  You had that same thing in 2003.
[01:41:39]  There were a couple of generals who were saying things like, Our God is bigger than their God.
[01:41:44]  And that's what this war is about, proving that to them.
[01:41:47]  And it was considered kind of, you know, very off limits.
[01:41:51]  It like evoked the crusades and all these things that I think George Bush was one of the worst presidents.
[01:41:56]  But one of the things that, to his credit, he did was right after 9 11, he went that week and met with like Imams in mosques around the country, constantly said, We're not at war with Islam, just this like very radical, distorted minority perversion of this great religion.
[01:42:13]  And now it seemed, you know, I do think Christian nationalism has become a stronger force in the United States.

=== Religious Strain on Right (05:41) ===

[01:42:20]  And I think religion is healthy for a country, or at least like spirituality, like this, you know, human beings want to know and they've been craving to understand for years like, why are we here?
[01:42:28]  What purpose do we have?
[01:42:29]  What is there after death?
[01:42:30]  Like, what is the bigger, you know, the thing bigger than ourselves?
[01:42:34]  Yeah.
[01:42:34]  You want a society that's not asking those questions is like spiritually dead.
[01:42:38]  It's like nihilism.
[01:42:39]  And I think in the West, where you've seen this like extreme secularization of everything, you can start to see the decadent effects of that.
[01:42:48]  So, I think religion is good.
[01:42:49]  I think like spirituality is good, like having a vibrant spiritual life.
[01:42:54]  But when you start fusing that with government, and by the way, the same is true in Israel.
[01:42:58]  Like, Israel has become, Israel, you know, was all the things I've been saying, but much worse now because you've had this influx of like immigrants from Russia and from other places, these like fanatical religious people.
[01:43:10]  Israel was used to be very secular, you know, like Netanyahu is not a religious figure, he's a secular figure, but it's become very religious.
[01:43:16]  And that's why they think God gave them.
[01:43:19]  What they don't even call the West Bank anymore, but Judea and Samaria.
[01:43:21]  They use like biblical terms for everything.
[01:43:23]  It's become part of what we're told about Iran that it's like this apocalyptic doomsday cult.
[01:43:28]  It's very much true of Israel and certain factions of the American government, American military.
[01:43:32]  And occasionally we get glimpses of that.
[01:43:34]  Yeah, I've been learning more about Islam recently.
[01:43:37]  In fact, we just had a guest yesterday that was like, we were doing a whole deep dive on Islam.
[01:43:43]  We're like reading stuff about the Quran.
[01:43:45]  And, you know, it does, it seems like.
[01:43:49]  That Islam is probably more compatible with the West than like Judaism is.
[01:43:56]  Like they, religious Judaism, for sure.
[01:43:58]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:44:00]  And I agree with a lot.
[01:44:01]  Like, I very much agree with like a lot of the things that Charlie Kirk said.
[01:44:04]  But I think one of the things that he said was that Islam is not compatible with the West.
[01:44:09]  But, you know, just from reading some of the stuff that I've been reading recently, it seems like it would very much be compatible with the West.
[01:44:15]  And then it has been integrated.
[01:44:17]  You know, one of the things that I think it said in the Quran that we read yesterday is that like, When you live in another country that is run by a different sort of religion, it's like you respect that religion, you respect their laws, and you don't try to infringe or recruit more people to your religion or anything like that.
[01:44:33]  Right.
[01:44:33]  I mean, I think Muslims in the United States have integrated themselves incredibly well, like assimilated very well into American culture, much better than a lot of other groups have.
[01:44:45]  And there has been this strain on the American right.
[01:44:48]  And I do think it goes back to the war on terror and 9 11, but also.
[01:44:53]  I mean, that got exploited for this narrative, but it also has become a lot more common, especially among Israel loyalists who have, you know, kind of like we're talking about before, like people in power and economic and military power don't want you focused on them.
[01:45:06]  They want you focused on each other.
[01:45:09]  Yeah.
[01:45:10]  And so as this conversation about Israel becomes more prominent, they have really tried in a very coordinated way to say, no, the real threat is Islam.
[01:45:19]  And we, Israel, and you, the West, are united against the threat of Islam.
[01:45:24]  So, we're your ally in this fight against what actually is threatening you.
[01:45:27]  And if you look at who has caused problems in the United States and who is bringing difficulty and pathologies to the United States, it's really not American Muslim communities.
[01:45:41]  They are very much integrated, not just in the United States, but into the West more broadly.
[01:45:47]  And if you go and talk to Muslims, as you've been doing, and I don't mean just culturally identified Muslims, but I mean religious ones who have actually studied the Quran, who practice it, who.
[01:45:59]  Will tell you about their religion.
[01:46:02]  It is a very unthreatening set of beliefs and principles.
[01:46:06]  Now, you can find in any religion, right?
[01:46:08]  Like you can go into the Talmud and find some absolutely horrific things about what Jews are permitted to do to non Jews.
[01:46:15]  And you can go into the Old Testament and find things that we consider horrendous.
[01:46:22]  Not really in the teachings of Jesus, but in what became the New Testament with St. Paul, some stuff that we also have rejected.
[01:46:29]  In the Quran or any religious text, like things that were written thousands of years ago.
[01:46:33]  Right, right.
[01:46:34]  But the way in which it's practiced, the ways in which it's interpreted, I'm not saying there aren't radical and extremist Muslims.
[01:46:41]  There obviously are.
[01:46:42]  But by and large, in the West, it's a religion of peace and a religion of tolerance.
[01:46:46]  And that is how they understand their religion, not the propaganda that people use to try and make it look better.
[01:46:51]  Yeah, there's radical extremists in all parts of society.
[01:46:54]  Of course.
[01:46:56]  And people like to use those examples to broad brush that.
[01:46:59]  And make it seem like it's evil or make it seem like the whole thing is bad when in fact it's not.
[01:47:03]  You don't focus on the good things.
[01:47:04]  People like to focus on the bad things.
[01:47:05]  Like the same thing with the Catholic Church and all the different accusations or actual cases of child rape from bishops and stuff like that.
[01:47:14]  Like, yeah, there's bad apples in every aspect of society.
[01:47:18]  And just along those lines, there was a very vibrant Jewish community in Iran.
[01:47:23]  And there was Jewish representation in the Iranian parliament.
[01:47:26]  Before Israel came and drove out Arabs and Palestinians and massacred them.
[01:47:33]  There were, you know, in that region, Jews and Arabs were living side by side.
[01:47:38]  Like in peace, Jews were buying up land.
[01:47:41]  There were not to say there aren't tensions.
[01:47:42]  I mean, there have been ethnic tensions like in New York.
[01:47:44]  I lived in New York 15 years between like Koreans and Jews and black people and Chinese people and Koreans.
[01:47:48]  But they were living side by side in peace.
[01:47:51]  There have always been Jews throughout that entire region.
[01:47:53]  This idea that Muslims want to just exterminate Jews wherever they're fat, this is all fantasy and mythology that got manufactured after 9 11.

=== Soros and Ethnic Tensions (02:59) ===

[01:48:01]  And that 9 11 was exploited, of course, for a lot of pre standing agendas, including the invasion of Iraq.
[01:48:05]  And the invasion of Iran, which they wanted to do back then.
[01:48:08]  What is your take on Mondani?
[01:48:10]  We saw yesterday, we were looking up, we were doing some research on him, and we saw that he was funded by George Soros, like through a bunch of different cutouts.
[01:48:19]  I mean, George Soros money is basically everywhere.
[01:48:22]  Exactly.
[01:48:22]  If you go and work in an NGO that is at all, even like just mainstream, like you might go to work for the Humane Society, and there may be like George Soros money there.
[01:48:31]  So I don't put a lot of great value on the fact that there was something that was Soros funded.
[01:48:37]  Yeah.
[01:48:37]  You know, you're talking about like a Gigantic foundation.
[01:48:40]  Yeah.
[01:48:42]  So, you know, Zoran Mondani to me is like, you know, one of the things the left did so wrong, liberals did so wrong with Donald Trump, is they attacked him and tried to demonize him in a way that was just so anathema to how people saw him, right?
[01:48:56]  Like he was a major cultural tabloid figure for decades and he was like the star of the apprentice.
[01:49:02]  So Americans knew him.
[01:49:03]  And so to suddenly, you know, arrive and start calling, that's the new Hitler.
[01:49:07]  That's this fascist who's going to put you in camps.
[01:49:09]  These just didn't.
[01:49:11]  Because that's not how people saw him.
[01:49:13]  Same with the attempt to demonize Zoran as like some sort of jihadist or communist.
[01:49:19]  He's like a striver.
[01:49:20]  He's a careerist.
[01:49:22]  He's somebody who is very ambitious.
[01:49:25]  He's, you know, Islam.
[01:49:28]  He's Muslim by identity and practicing the religion.
[01:49:31]  But, like, to me, more than anything, he's just like a left liberal.
[01:49:35]  You know, like in 2020, he was posting, like, the NYPD is anti queer.
[01:49:38]  Does that sound somebody who's going to, like, impose Sharia law?
[01:49:42]  You know, he's like much more of this byproduct, like the AOC, maybe a little more extreme, but not much.
[01:49:48]  And you already see him, like, moderating.
[01:49:50]  Like, Trump loves him.
[01:49:51]  Yeah, I was funny seeing them together.
[01:49:53]  Yeah, I just, you know, I think it's just an effective politician who came at the right moment for and understood the.
[01:50:00]  I'll tell you what he did that I like.
[01:50:02]  I actually posted something in January of 2025 when no one knew him.
[01:50:06]  You know, I kind of knew who he was just from, but not much about him.
[01:50:09]  But when he was, he announced he was going to run for president in December of 2024, run for mayor, sorry, of 2024.
[01:50:15]  And the first thing I ever saw him do was after Trump won, there were all these neighborhoods in New York City that had always voted Democrat.
[01:50:23]  And They had these huge, huge shifts to Trump.
[01:50:28]  They voted for Trump.
[01:50:29]  And I'm talking about like, you know, racially diverse neighborhoods, black neighborhoods, Muslim neighborhoods, like working class neighborhoods.
[01:50:36]  And instead of panicking and, you know, saying that we're about to go into another Holocaust because now Hitler is in charge again, he went into these communities and he just asked, like, hey, who did you vote for?
[01:50:47]  And if they said Trump, which a lot of them did, I'm talking about like old, you know, Latino women and like black guys and, you know, just, A lot of different people who you've been told forever, you know, are Democrats, but they voted for Trump.
[01:51:00]  And he would ask why.

=== Nuclear Weapons Fears (14:12) ===

[01:51:01]  And they would hear things like, I'm sick of sending all our money to wars like in Ukraine and Israel.
[01:51:09]  The cost of living, we just can't afford rent.
[01:51:11]  We can't.
[01:51:12]  And he constructed his entire campaign based on what he heard, kind of almost adopting a lot of Trump's own like sensitivities and understandings of the suffering of people and how to speak to them.
[01:51:23]  He didn't run his campaign and like, you know, Burning down synagogues.
[01:51:27]  He rented on affordability and like speaking to the people of the city.
[01:51:32]  And that's why he won.
[01:51:32]  And he's still focused on that.
[01:51:34]  I think he's just a very adept politician, not anything threatening or radical, even.
[01:51:40]  Right.
[01:51:41]  Yeah.
[01:51:41]  No, that footage of them, him and Trump at the White House together, like they were best friends, was hilarious to see.
[01:51:47]  Trump likes winners.
[01:51:48]  Trump likes winners.
[01:51:49]  And good looking winners.
[01:51:50]  You know, like Zoran's kind of like.
[01:51:52]  He's handsome.
[01:51:52]  Yeah, exactly.
[01:51:53]  That's what Trump likes.
[01:51:54]  And if you are that, he doesn't care really what you are.
[01:51:57]  So, okay.
[01:51:58]  How do you think?
[01:51:59]  This Iran war plays out moving forward.
[01:52:03]  I saw this morning on something from Drop Site News that they had intel that we're going to send boots on the ground, we're going to send troops in, and they authorize special forces to go in or something like that.
[01:52:14]  The problem is that the United States is not winning this war.
[01:52:18]  If we were to end it now, Iran would be the clear winner of the war.
[01:52:23]  They control the Strait of Hormuz and are blocking the Strait of Hormuz and are charging for the Strait of Hormuz, which is something they weren't doing previously.
[01:52:30]  There's reporting now, and it's consistent with what I've heard, though not this extreme, but even in the New York Times and Washington Post, that Iran has been able to attack and hit and destroy basically, destroy, render uninhabitable every American military base throughout the Persian Gulf.
[01:52:46]  That's how effective and strong and precise their ballistic missile arsenals were, their drones.
[01:52:52]  They've really pummeled Israel hard.
[01:52:55]  There's nowhere near, they're not even in the universe of regime change where the people are going to rise up, which is always a fantasy.
[01:53:02]  And take down the Iranian government.
[01:53:04]  They've been in power for 47 years.
[01:53:06]  They are very fortified, a lot of popular support, especially now that the first thing Israel does is kill their spiritual leader, kill a bunch of their officials.
[01:53:15]  People band together.
[01:53:16]  They don't want to join a foreign power that's trying to destroy their society.
[01:53:21]  You could make the argument that they're stronger now than they were.
[01:53:23]  So Trump can't end the war now because he can't extract terms from the Iranians that he can credibly claim represent a victory.
[01:53:31]  And you can't lose a war to Iran either.
[01:53:34]  It's the reason why the Ukraine war has gone on for so long because the Russians.
[01:53:38]  Have won that war.
[01:53:39]  They're winning that war.
[01:53:39]  They occupied 25% of Ukraine that they didn't occupy before.
[01:53:43]  If you end it now, there's no credible way to say, oh, look, we, the West, won because the mission of the West was every Russian troop has to leave all of Ukraine, including Crimea.
[01:53:54]  And that's never going to happen.
[01:53:56]  So the only two choices are continue the war forever or admit you lost.
[01:54:01]  Stop the war.
[01:54:02]  That's why it can't end.
[01:54:03]  That's the problem with that war.
[01:54:04]  This war, the concern is that between the Israelis and Trump and people like Pete Hegstath, who we just talked about, I could see them resorting to very desperate measures because they can't lose the war, even though they are losing now.
[01:54:20]  And I wouldn't put anything past what they'd be willing to do.
[01:54:24]  I mean, Trump is clearly alluding to the use of nuclear weapons, which doesn't mean he's going to.
[01:54:28]  It's been something he's done before.
[01:54:30]  But the Israelis also saying things like, you're going to suffer and see the kind of destruction unlike has ever been seen in human history before.
[01:54:37]  I mean, it's a very clear signal about what they're talking about.
[01:54:40]  But even if they don't do that, even if this is how wars go on forever, okay, you send in like special forces.
[01:54:46]  And suddenly, you know, 14 of them are killed in an ambush or through, you know, booby traps that have been laid.
[01:54:54]  And now suddenly you have to avenge those troops.
[01:54:56]  You can't pull out after 14 special forces soldiers come back in body bags.
[01:55:01]  You've got to go avenge them.
[01:55:02]  Right.
[01:55:02]  And now you're doing more.
[01:55:04]  And then more is done.
[01:55:05]  That's how the Vietnam War became the Vietnam War.
[01:55:07]  This is such a disastrous, horrific shit show with the potential to be, to say nothing of the economic and financial costs to the world economy, which already are rippling.
[01:55:18]  Yeah.
[01:55:18]  And if this, like, That's the one saving grace is that the bond markets and the oil companies and like countries around the world can't sustain this for much longer.
[01:55:29]  The disruption in oil, the, the, the, I mean, do you know how much the Iranian, how much damage they've done to like Qatar and, and, and Bahrain and all of these like energy producing countries that have spent hundreds of billions of dollars in years and years building up this energy infrastructure and Iran can destroy all of it.
[01:55:47]  Yeah.
[01:55:47]  What do they think about all this?
[01:55:49]  I mean, you know, some of them supply.
[01:55:51]  Supposedly, they are encouraging Trump to go finish off the Iranians because there's always been this like Shia Sunni tension in the Persian Gulf, yeah, you know, and with especially the Saudis and the Iranians, although it's gotten a lot better.
[01:56:03]  But you know, these countries are getting attacked because they're the United States is using those military bases in these countries to attack Iran.
[01:56:10]  Obviously, it's a legitimate target that those countries are giving permission to the United States to attack Iran.
[01:56:16]  I'm sure you know, and what we're hearing is true, which is some of these countries are like, this has to stop, and probably the Emiratis and Saudis in particular are saying, you got to go destroy Iran.
[01:56:26]  Yeah, there was some reporting.
[01:56:28]  I think John Keriakou said a couple weeks or before the Iran war started that, or this might have been actually right before that strike in June when they took out those nuclear sites with the bunker busters.
[01:56:43]  I forget what the name of that operation was Operation Midnight Hammer.
[01:56:46]  Midnight Hammer.
[01:56:47]  Yeah, that's what it was.
[01:56:49]  So allegedly, John Keriakou said he had sources that were close to Trump that were telling him that the Israelis were telling Trump if he didn't do that strike, they were going to nuke Iran.
[01:57:01]  Right, which, yeah, I've heard that too.
[01:57:03]  Yeah.
[01:57:05]  And then a country that's, you know, is not supposed to have nukes, but they have nukes that they stole from us, so they're not declared in the nuke treaty.
[01:57:12]  Right.
[01:57:13]  But everyone knows they have them.
[01:57:13]  Everyone knows they have them.
[01:57:15]  Right.
[01:57:15]  That's the biggest irony, too, right?
[01:57:16]  Is that Iran is part of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which gives rights to enrich uranium, countries' rights to enrich uranium in exchange for IAA inspections.
[01:57:25]  And the Iranians not only have always complied with that, but gave free reign to the inspection process with the Iran deal.
[01:57:32]  That was the Iran deal.
[01:57:33]  We'll have sanctions on you.
[01:57:34]  Right.
[01:57:34]  Incorporate you back into the international community.
[01:57:36]  In exchange, you're going to allow full scale surveillance and all your facilities, cameras everywhere, IAEA inspectors who come and go as they want to make sure you're not enriching at levels that are leading you to produce a nuclear bomb.
[01:57:49]  It was working.
[01:57:50]  It was working.
[01:57:51]  The Israelis hated it, not because they thought Iran was going to get a nuclear bomb, but because they didn't want Iran reintegrated back into the international community and didn't want those sanctions lifted.
[01:58:00]  And there was no intelligence that they were anywhere near close to it.
[01:58:03]  Zero.
[01:58:03]  I mean, even Tulsi Gabbard said, Two months before Operation Midnight Hammer, that she went and testified before the Senate, and she said the consensus of the intelligence community has been and remains that Iran has not made a decision to get nuclear weapons.
[01:58:17]  They have never, I mean, this is, it's the same lies we were told with Iraq.
[01:58:21]  That's what I heard Marco Rubio today saying we can't allow even the possibility of Iran getting a nuclear weapon because the possibility is they would use it.
[01:58:29]  This is what George Bush and Condoleezza Rice said in 2003.
[01:58:32]  We know Iran is getting nuclear weapons, Iraq is getting nuclear weapons, but even if they're not, even if they're not.
[01:58:38]  Even though they're just moving in that direction, we can't wait for the proof to be a smoking, a mushroom cloud over American cities.
[01:58:45]  It's the same exact sales pitch, the same exact propaganda and deceit, often from the same people.
[01:58:52]  And it's amazing that that's the one thing that has actually surprised me I thought they would actually have to change the script.
[01:58:58]  They would have to like haul out new people.
[01:59:00]  No, they're using exactly the same people that sold the Iraq war with exactly the same lies, including this WMD.
[01:59:07]  They're calling it WMD because that's still like, but that is what basically what they're saying.
[01:59:12]  And it's amazing to watch how it, but it hasn't actually worked because the American people don't support this war.
[01:59:18]  It's important to always note that, that it doesn't work enough to do it.
[01:59:21]  There's a small group of people that do support it.
[01:59:25]  And again, I think it's more of like the boomer class that gets all their information from Fox News.
[01:59:30]  And, you know, I've had arguments with people that I know who get all their information from those conversations with people that get all their news from Fox and say, we'll say things like, well, do you know how many Americans have been killed by the Iranian regime in the last 47 years?
[01:59:42]  Do you know how many American lives that they've taken?
[01:59:45]  And they're so evil.
[01:59:45]  Like, is there any legitimate like steel manning you can do for this attack on Iran?
[01:59:56]  I mean, I know you'd have to do some sort of like mental jujitsu to try to do it, but like, is there anything?
[02:00:01]  I mean, Iran is the kind of if you look at it from the American and Israeli perspective, and I don't mean the citizens of those countries, I mean the people who are in charge of the security apparatus and the war making machine.
[02:00:18]  Iran is the most formidable opponent in that region.
[02:00:23]  Like, if you take out Iran, you have full reign of the entire Middle East and the Persian Gulf, which is what Israel wants and what the United States through Israel is hoping to exercise, even though we don't really need it.
[02:00:35]  But you can control all the oil, you control this entire region.
[02:00:39]  And Iran has funded resistance groups that resist Israeli aggression, like Hezbollah and Hamas, which we call terrorist groups because it's a terrorist group when it's against us, it's a freedom fighting group when it's on our side.
[02:00:52]  Kind of like the Mujahideen in Afghanistan, you know, with the freedom fighters.
[02:00:55]  And then they turned against us from the Russians.
[02:00:58]  And then suddenly they got transformed into terrorists, even though it was the same people and the same tactics.
[02:01:03]  And that is true.
[02:01:04]  That is true.
[02:01:05]  And they were, you know, with Assad, who was there, that's why Israel wanted to take out Assad.
[02:01:09]  He was part of that axis.
[02:01:10]  They were, you know, transmitting and transporting weapons and other types of, you know, armaments through Syria to Lebanon and then into the West Bank and Gaza.
[02:01:21]  So it is true that there was a counterbalance, but you don't just go around attacking other countries because.
[02:01:29]  They provide a counterbalance.
[02:01:30]  I mean, the biggest counterbalance by far to the United States in the world is China.
[02:01:34]  By this logic, we should go in and fight China.
[02:01:36]  But of course, we don't.
[02:01:37]  We don't fight countries that are formidable, that have a big military, especially ones that don't have nuclear weapons.
[02:01:43]  And I think that ultimately is the biggest danger.
[02:01:46]  I know you asked me to steal, man, and that's the best I can do.
[02:01:49]  But the biggest danger here is that we have said, when the nuclear bomb was invented and then when the Soviet Union proliferated, There was the biggest concern humanity had was how do we prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons because this doesn't just cause wars, this will cause extinction.
[02:02:06]  And there was almost, we came like seconds away, minutes away from a nuclear annihilation in the Cuban Missile Crisis and a couple other times it came close.
[02:02:16]  And so the question was how do we prevent the proliferation of these weapons?
[02:02:20]  And we created an incentive system for countries not to get them.
[02:02:24]  Right.
[02:02:24]  What we have done, the United States has done, is we have made it so that if you're a rational leader, Of a country that has a lot of resources or is geostrategically important in any way, you would be unbelievably stupid not to get nuclear weapons because we have shown the world the only way to protect yourself from our aggression, from Israeli aggression, is to have nuclear weapons.
[02:02:43]  Look at North Korea.
[02:02:44]  We'll never mess with North Korea.
[02:02:45]  Yeah, right, right, right.
[02:02:46]  And when he dies, he's going to die alone in a natural world.
[02:02:48]  Everybody was like stepping very closely with, cautiously with India and Pakistan.
[02:02:52]  That war ended in like three weeks, even though they have like intense, deep seated generational hatred between them.
[02:02:58]  It diffused because of the fear of that war escalating because both sides have nuclear weapons.
[02:03:02]  Yeah.
[02:03:03]  And I think it's ironic that we're told Iran is irrational.
[02:03:06]  I think the only rational thing that they've ever done is not get nuclear weapons.
[02:03:09]  And it seems like the only rational thing they could do now is actually try to get a nuke, which is a scary thing.
[02:03:13]  I think how stupid they would be not to.
[02:03:15]  Right.
[02:03:16]  Yeah.
[02:03:16]  And that's what Kim Jong il did, I think, during Clinton, right?
[02:03:19]  He agreed not to do any nukes, but behind his back, I guess he had his fingers crossed and they decided to get a nuke, which is why Kim Jong un would probably die of natural causes in his own bed.
[02:03:27]  Exactly.
[02:03:29]  And the counterexample is Gaddafi.
[02:03:31]  Yes.
[02:03:31]  They convinced Gaddafi to give up all his ballistic missiles and his nuclear aspirations and he did it.
[02:03:35]  And then, you know, a decade later, he was.
[02:03:37]  In the street to death by bayonet, yeah, because Americans were and and Europeans were bombing him.
[02:03:42]  So you look at that and you're like, I don't want to take the Gaddafi route.
[02:03:48]  What do you think the chances are?
[02:03:49]  Do you if you could like put a probability to it of an actual nuke being used in the near future, what do you think the probability of that is?
[02:03:58]  I mean, you want to think there's an extreme natural human inhibition to using them because you hope that people in power are not suicidal and.
[02:04:12]  You know, nuclear weapons were last used, you know, 80 years ago.
[02:04:17]  When, as Trump often points out, they were of much less potency, right?
[02:04:21]  Even though they vaporized hundreds of thousands of people in an instant and caused, you know, extreme amounts of disease for decades after.
[02:04:29]  They're, you know, they're like playthings compared to what exists now.
[02:04:36]  I, one of the things that really shocked me was in the war with Ukraine, when a lot of people, including myself, were saying, like, We're playing a very dangerous game.
[02:04:44]  Like Russia, despite not being the Soviet Union, still has the largest nuclear arsenal on the planet.
[02:04:48]  And you have like NATO in the West right on their border, right?
[02:04:52]  Like on the most sensitive part of their eastern border, you know, like playing games with this country that is a very proud civilization.
[02:05:00]  And I remember articles in the Atlantic were saying things like, we have to stop being paranoid or neurotic about the use of nuclear weapons.
[02:05:07]  We can use battlefield nukes.
[02:05:09]  We can use like limited nuclear weapons and still be fine.

=== CIA Mossad Leverage (04:18) ===

[02:05:13]  It's like, what?
[02:05:15]  Like the generation before me in the United States grew up, kids were like, Trained how to run to a bomb shelter because they were petrified of a nuclear exchange with the Soviet Union.
[02:05:24]  That's what dominated American life and Soviet life and the world for several decades.
[02:05:29]  And now we read articles saying, ah, nukes aren't that big of a deal.
[02:05:31]  And I do think we've lost our fear of nuclear weapons because it hasn't been used in 80 years.
[02:05:37]  And between the fanaticism of the Israelis and the kind of grandiose desire for historic legacy that Trump clearly is pursuing, I wouldn't say it's more than 50% or even close, but I also wouldn't put it at zero.
[02:05:53]  How much of this?
[02:05:54]  Decision to do this Iran war, do you think had to do with distracting from the Epstein files, if any?
[02:06:00]  It's so hard.
[02:06:01]  I try really hard, as a journalist, to work with evidence.
[02:06:04]  Right.
[02:06:05]  And if you ask people in media or in government, why did we go to war in Iraq?
[02:06:13]  You'll get 10 different answers because different factions have different motives for wanting this war and they have to kind of align in order for it to happen.
[02:06:21]  And so there's no one reason why.
[02:06:24]  Sure.
[02:06:25]  I believe that we haven't gotten the most incriminating documents when it comes to the Epstein files.
[02:06:33]  Certainly, everyone stopped talking about the Epstein files because there's a major war going on that's very dangerous that does deserve our attention.
[02:06:42]  And I wonder if we'll go back to that.
[02:06:43]  You have an election coming, and we'll see.
[02:06:47]  I wouldn't say it's not a motive, but I also don't think it's like the main motive.
[02:06:52]  I think it's a lot more.
[02:06:54]  Plausible that the Israelis do have that Trump fears the Israelis for whatever reasons.
[02:07:01]  Yeah, it feels like there's obviously some big invisible leverage somewhere, right?
[02:07:07]  Like that they have over us.
[02:07:08]  Like, how do they have all this leverage or something?
[02:07:10]  There's something there.
[02:07:11]  It doesn't make sense, right?
[02:07:12]  It doesn't logically make sense how they could have all this control unless there's another element of leverage that we can't see.
[02:07:19]  And like any rational person can look at the landscape and see, okay, there's the Epstein files.
[02:07:24]  We know this guy was like in bed with a hood Barack and doing all this stuff for intelligence agencies and.
[02:07:30]  It's like if you want to go by Occam's razor, that seems like that's what it is.
[02:07:34]  Yeah.
[02:07:35]  I mean, but also, you know, the Israelis, their fanaticism means that they don't have very many limits, if they have any, on what they're willing to do to advance their interests.
[02:07:45]  And when you combine that with what is their skill in intelligence, you know, when I was doing the Snowden reporting, there was this I remember these documents that were about the U.S. Israeli intelligence relationship, intelligence sharing.
[02:07:56]  We give more, not just surveillance technology, but more hard.
[02:08:01]  Raw intelligence data, including about our own citizens, to Israel than we do to any other country.
[02:08:06]  And yet, the documents that were designed to assess what the greatest threats are to American privacy and American data, meaning who can spy on us with the greatest efficacy, put Israel as the greatest threat to our country, even though we finance them, even though we arm them, even though we feed them the surveillance technology that they use against us.
[02:08:25]  So, you're talking about very capable people.
[02:08:28]  Like, they're not a joke.
[02:08:30]  And if you didn't fear the Mossad, if you didn't fear the Israelis, you would be, you know, Yeah.
[02:08:38]  Yeah, that's what I've heard.
[02:08:39]  That's what I've heard from a lot of folks like John Keriaku, who's put in prison by the CIA, you know, is that, you know, there's a misconception that's kind of been out there that's like, oh, CIA, Mossad, two sides of the same coin.
[02:08:52]  But according to some people like this is that that's not the case at all.
[02:08:55]  Like there's a huge, like once you get in there, there's like, there's a lot of resentment and there's a lot of competition where it's like people in the CIA, they kind of know the Mossad is more aggressive, more ruthless and more effective.
[02:09:14]  at what they do.
[02:09:16]  Yeah, and the CIA is not a joke either.
[02:09:18]  Right.
[02:09:20]  But I would prefer to be an enemy of the CIA than the Mossad, that's for sure.
[02:09:26]  If I had to pick.
[02:09:27]  Right.
[02:09:29]  Right.

=== Political Hit Depositions (03:27) ===

[02:09:31]  You know, one of the craziest things that I've noticed in these latest depositions is that like, you know, Clinton's in particular, the one of Clinton where they're questioning him about Epstein and showing him all that stuff.
[02:09:45]  And, you know, not only is he just like without being asked, he's just offering up the Rothschilds, like just talking about the Rothschilds without even being asked about them, him and Wexner, odd.
[02:09:56]  But that after that deposition was done, he wanted to add to the record that he thinks Trump was innocent.
[02:10:03]  He was like, you know, I just want to, I think he said something along the way.
[02:10:06]  Well, they both have said that about each other.
[02:10:08]  He went something after the deposition with Clinton was done.
[02:10:10]  He's like, I just want to put, add this to the record.
[02:10:12]  I know it wasn't a question, but I think this is all like a political hit.
[02:10:15]  I think Donald Trump is innocent in these files.
[02:10:18]  And then you have Donald Trump also, like two weeks before that, saying, I hate, I like Bill.
[02:10:23]  I don't like seeing this, all these attacks on him.
[02:10:25]  I think he's a good guy and I think he's innocent.
[02:10:27]  When you have in the 2016 election, Trump famously did that press conference with all the people that were accusing Bill Clinton of raping him.
[02:10:35]  And then took them to the debate, the first debate.
[02:10:37]  And then took them to the debate.
[02:10:38]  And then humiliated him on national TV.
[02:10:42]  Humiliated.
[02:10:43]  But I think they know that's part of the game.
[02:10:44]  I mean, remember, the Clintons were at Trump's wedding to Melania, they were guests of Donald Trump.
[02:10:49]  At their wedding.
[02:10:50]  These are, they've been in the same club for a long time.
[02:10:53]  You know, I think one of my big realizations was, you know, back in like the early 2000s, Nancy Pelosi was the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee.
[02:11:05]  And at the time, Nancy Pelosi was really perceived as this like left wing, hard left figure.
[02:11:11]  She was from San Francisco and, you know, she was in the more liberal wing of the Democratic Party.
[02:11:15]  She's a complete, you know, like institutionalist the way Hillary Clinton is.
[02:11:20]  In fact, very like hawkish on China and, Iran and big APAC supporter.
[02:11:25]  But that was the perception of her.
[02:11:27]  And certainly for people who didn't pay super close attention or weren't in the middle, like I wasn't when I first started, that was my perception as well.
[02:11:34]  And then it turned out that Nancy Pelosi, even the Democrats were saying they were so outraged about NSA spying and torture and Guantanamo.
[02:11:42]  She was briefed on all of these things because she was the ranking member and she approved it.
[02:11:48]  She was supportive of it.
[02:11:50]  And when her daughter, Alexandra, who's a documentarian, not a very good one, but makes documentaries, Made a documentary.
[02:11:57]  One of the things she disclosed is that she considers she went on The View to talk about her documentary and she said, They said, 'Oh, there's so much stuff about the Bush family and how close your mom is to George Bush.' And she was like, 'Yeah, George Bush is like a father figure to me when I was growing up.
[02:12:11]  He and my mom were best friends.' So, you know, if you looked at it from a distance and you weren't part of this club, you'd be like, 'Wow, George W. Bush and Nancy Pelosi really hate each other.
[02:12:19]  They say awful things about each other all the time.' They're trying, but they know that's just part of the game.
[02:12:25]  They're playing the same game.
[02:12:26]  They're in the same club.
[02:12:28]  And until, like, once people that if I had the power to make people realize anything, it would be that this supposed, you know, conflict, this internecine war between Democrats and Republicans and all this, like, the fact they don't agree anything, all that is bullshit.
[02:12:45]  Like, they agree on 95% of what is there to agree.
[02:12:50]  And the media only focuses on the 5% where they disagree, where they'll go on CNN or some cable show and they have a Republican and Democrats, you know, yell at each other.

=== The Shadow Commission Club (15:25) ===

[02:12:58]  But most, they're part of the same.
[02:13:01]  Yeah.
[02:13:02]  Club.
[02:13:02]  That's what George Carlin said, you know, back in the 60s.
[02:13:04]  Big club.
[02:13:05]  Yeah, and you're not in it.
[02:13:06]  And I think that's the most important realization.
[02:13:08]  Yeah, no, I totally agree with you.
[02:13:09]  I see what you're saying 100%.
[02:13:11]  I just feel like that example, though, of that's the worst thing you can do to somebody publicly humiliate them and bring in people to claim that you were them on the most televised program in the world at that time.
[02:13:28]  I feel like that's a bridge too far.
[02:13:31]  So why?
[02:13:32]  I agree.
[02:13:33]  That was a low blow, right?
[02:13:36]  But evidently, maybe it's not repairable in the sense that they're going to love each other, but they're both going to bat for one another.
[02:13:44]  Remember, Donald Trump tries to fight for one another.
[02:13:46]  Because it's mutually assured destruction.
[02:13:47]  Exactly.
[02:13:48]  Yeah.
[02:13:48]  And they both have an interest in minimizing the Epstein files and its importance because they were both, I mean, Bill Clinton multiple times went on Jeffrey Epstein's plane.
[02:13:57]  Donald Trump was best friends with Jeffrey Epstein.
[02:14:00]  Everyone close to Donald Trump, not everyone, but a lot of people close to Donald Trump, like Howard Lutnick.
[02:14:04]  We're all over Jeffrey Epstein.
[02:14:05]  They all were all over Jeffrey Epstein, not just his friends in Washington, but in Riyadh, like we saw with the crown prince, in Dubai, like in Israel.
[02:14:15]  And, you know, everyone that is powerful, everyone that matters to Trump is at risk in the Epstein files, and Bill Clinton, the same thing.
[02:14:24]  And so they all have an interest in saying, oh, this is unfair and there's nothing to any of this.
[02:14:28]  How is it possible that Howard Ludnick still has a job in the White House?
[02:14:32]  How is it possible that the American people aren't enraged by this?
[02:14:34]  Like that.
[02:14:35]  Okay, you want to say involvement with Jeffrey Epstein isn't inherently incriminating or doesn't mean you're a pathfile.
[02:14:43]  I think it's true.
[02:14:44]  A lot of people who met Jeffrey Epstein who weren't necessarily pathfiles.
[02:14:49]  You need more to accuse somebody of that.
[02:14:51]  We got to the point where anyone who ever crossed his path is suspect.
[02:14:55]  So I think that's gone a little bit too far.
[02:14:57]  But Howard Lutnick, whatever you think of his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, it was way more extensive than just crossing paths.
[02:15:04]  He lied.
[02:15:06]  While he was in office, it wasn't like an interview 20 years ago where he pretended, even though Jeffrey Epstein.
[02:15:10]  I think it was in July.
[02:15:12]  Yeah, it was when the pressure was really building on Trump.
[02:15:15]  Why is he resisting?
[02:15:17]  Anyone who knew Jeffrey Epstein, and again, he was his next door neighbor for all those years in Manhattan.
[02:15:22]  You know, that story that I don't know if you guys have it, but it's shocking when you go listen to it, when you realize that every part of it is a complete lie.
[02:15:29]  It was called the name of their podcast, which is they should have deleted that.
[02:15:34]  They should have been fired this moment.
[02:15:36]  Named that podcast, but it was called Pod Force One.
[02:15:39]  I think it was the New York Post podcast.
[02:15:41]  Yeah, with Miranda Devine.
[02:15:42]  Yeah, exactly.
[02:15:45]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[02:15:46]  Yeah.
[02:15:46]  I mean, it's a human being.
[02:15:47]  But imagine, like, okay, we all probably have lied in our lives, you know, like I don't think any of us is pure in this regard.
[02:15:55]  Like we grow up lying to our parents and, you know, practice.
[02:15:58]  Okay, so I don't want to be too self righteous about this, but the ability to be in public office as a very high level cabinet position, Secretary of Commerce, And being in an interview when you know people are asking and wondering, and to invent and fabricate an extremely elaborate, detailed story that goes on and on and on with all these melodramatic flourishes, every single sentence of which is a complete and total lie.
[02:16:23]  And you know that there's a good chance people are going to realize you're lying because you know in the Epstein files, you know that you've exchanged these emails.
[02:16:30]  Like he has to know that.
[02:16:31]  Yep.
[02:16:31]  And that it could be proven at any minute.
[02:16:33]  And just these people live in a world where there's no chance they're ever going to be held accountable.
[02:16:37]  And so they're willing to, like, just the sociopathy required to lie on that scale, like just to be so straight faced about it.
[02:16:45]  Yeah.
[02:16:46]  It's despicable.
[02:16:48]  And it wasn't Howard Lutnick, wasn't his company the one who made those bets on the airlines right before 9 11?
[02:16:53]  Well, Howard Lutnick was the chairman of.
[02:16:56]  Cantor Fitzgerald, which occupied the two top floors of the World Trade Center.
[02:17:02]  And basically, the entire firm got wiped out, except Howard Lutnick wasn't there on that day at some kind of business meeting.
[02:17:09]  And a lot of people, you know, he took his kid to school that day.
[02:17:12]  Exactly.
[02:17:12]  Yeah.
[02:17:12]  And Trump was talking about that.
[02:17:14]  And then Howard Lutnick was like, had the most insane, nervous laugh I've ever seen in my life in the background.
[02:17:19]  When Trump was saying that, did you see Howard, the video?
[02:17:21]  No, I didn't see that.
[02:17:22]  So Trump was a couple months, maybe a month ago or so, Trump was talking about how Howard Lutnick wasn't there on 9 11 because he took his kid.
[02:17:29]  Kid to school.
[02:17:29]  It's like, imagine this guy, what a great father.
[02:17:31]  The one day he decided to take his kid to school and the planes hit the towers.
[02:17:35]  And then Howard Lutnick is just laughing uncontrollably.
[02:17:39]  And everyone else is just like straight faced because, like, oh my God.
[02:17:42]  And he is just uncontrollably laughing nervously in the background.
[02:17:46]  And then also, you know, you're right there.
[02:17:49]  This is when he was doing it.
[02:17:54]  Look at him.
[02:17:56]  And he had that.
[02:17:57]  He's like a troll from under a bridge.
[02:17:58]  Yeah.
[02:17:59]  Just nervous, like, Weird, creepy laugh.
[02:18:01]  He had that same exact laugh when they were asked on the tarmac about the Epstein files.
[02:18:05]  Him and Trump were standing next to each other.
[02:18:06]  He was doing that same laugh.
[02:18:09]  That's not really like your entire firm gets eradicated in one morning.
[02:18:14]  And he lost his brother too, right?
[02:18:15]  Yeah, his brother was killed.
[02:18:18]  But also, look how close to power someone who was very closely associated with Jeffrey Epstein was, who went to his island and then lied about it afterwards, and it doesn't affect his standing whatsoever.
[02:18:30]  Mm hmm.
[02:18:31]  What did you make of that email about the 9 11 Shadow Commission?
[02:18:35]  I mean, some of these emails, I do think, I don't mean I sound like I'm a defense lawyer, but I do think it's important.
[02:18:43]  A lot of stuff in these emails are people have made a lot about things, for example, like the FBI goes and interviews somebody and the person makes all these accusations.
[02:18:53]  It's treated as though it's gospel.
[02:18:55]  And I have experience with that as a lawyer and a journalist.
[02:19:01]  Client calls you and they say, Hey, I have a case.
[02:19:03]  And they come in and you start taking them seriously and you write down, you take notes.
[02:19:06]  And then by the end, you realize they're a complete lunatic and like everything, they're just like talking crazy talk to you, but you know, you still put your notes in a file somewhere.
[02:19:14]  The FBI has to go and investigate anybody who says they have evidence about Jeffrey Epstein.
[02:19:18]  Like they call the FBI and say, Oh, I have a really important revelation.
[02:19:21]  The FBI goes, they take notes on their investigation, they put it in the file, and anything in the file is being treated as gospel.
[02:19:27]  Right.
[02:19:28]  So I just think we have to be careful.
[02:19:29]  I'm not entirely familiar with that document that you're asking about.
[02:19:33]  There's 911.
[02:19:34]  So there was an email to Gaylane Maxwell from a redacted name, and it said, We're putting together a 9 11 shadow commission.
[02:19:42]  I'm sure you can find it, Steve.
[02:19:43]  It's pretty easy to find.
[02:19:44]  And it says, The membership list is private.
[02:19:48]  And she responds, Like, I'm not interested in being a part of the 9 11 shadow commission.
[02:19:51]  And on top of that, it was called the 9 11 shadow commission.
[02:19:54]  That was the title of the email.
[02:19:55]  Yeah, it's like, Are you interested in being a part of the 9 11 shadow commission?
[02:19:58]  And then also, if you noticed, someone put together all of the documents that were released, all the emails that were released.
[02:20:07]  Going back from like the 90s to whenever after he died or right when to when he died.
[02:20:12]  There's a huge tranche of missing emails from like 1999 to like 2002.
[02:20:21]  Like right before and after 9 11.
[02:20:23]  If you look at it on a graph, it's just like emails, emails, emails, emails, nothing for two years, then more emails.
[02:20:31]  Yeah, that's why I say I think the most interesting and important documents are the ones that have not been released.
[02:20:38]  I mean, and remember as well, like something very notable and odd that also didn't get a lot of attention was the deputy attorney general went and visited Glenn Maxwell in prison.
[02:20:49]  And this is a time when she was wanting a pardon from Trump.
[02:20:53]  Or commutation from Trump, and Trump even indicated, like, oh, that might be something I would consider.
[02:20:58]  He goes and meets with her, and afterwards, she gets transferred to Club Fed, where sex offenders never are put there.
[02:21:08]  It's a very lenient, comfortable, with flowers, the kind of where Martha Stewart went.
[02:21:14]  Can you punch in on it a little bit, Steve?
[02:21:17]  It says, to Gaylane Maxwell from Ed, Shadow Commission.
[02:21:23]  Oh, Edward Jabstein was a neocon.
[02:21:26]  Reporter who long worked for the Wall Street Journal.
[02:21:30]  Oh, really?
[02:21:30]  Yeah.
[02:21:31]  He actually wrote a book about the Snowden case that was filled with all kinds of lies.
[02:21:34]  Really?
[02:21:35]  Snowden to being a Russian agent.
[02:21:36]  Yeah.
[02:21:36]  So he said, any interest in being on the shadow commission on 9 11?
[02:21:41]  The membership list is secret, rough cut, and there's a list on his website.
[02:21:46]  He's dead now at Epstein.
[02:21:50]  I don't know.
[02:21:51]  I mean, it could be a bunch of people who thought, who didn't trust the 9 11 commission.
[02:21:55]  Yeah.
[02:21:56]  Maybe they had their own, like Edward J. Epstein was like a hardcore.
[02:22:00]  Neocon, like a very, he wasn't after the truth, whatever this shadow commission was.
[02:22:05]  Yeah.
[02:22:05]  This is not about, like, oh, let's tell the real story of 9 11.
[02:22:08]  Like, let's talk about Israel or whatever.
[02:22:11]  That's not what this was for.
[02:22:12]  Whatever it was for was nothing in the interest of truth or the American people.
[02:22:17]  Oh, it's interesting.
[02:22:18]  Yeah, it's interesting.
[02:22:20]  There's a lot of things that are in these emails that it's like shocking to me that they left in that they just lead to more like crazy conspiracies because, you know, we don't get answers on any of it.
[02:22:29]  Like, they dropped all this on us and the FBI didn't give us, like, what was their conclusion.
[02:22:35]  Right?
[02:22:36]  Like, what did you think this meant in the files?
[02:22:40]  Like, what was your analysis of this?
[02:22:42]  It's like the more we find out about the FBI, the worse it gets.
[02:22:47]  You know, it's like the JFK assassination or even 9 11.
[02:22:51]  At a certain point, things are so obfuscated that you're never going to find out the truth.
[02:23:01]  You know, like the thing that's always so amazing to me is that the Warren Commission that was appointed for the 9 11 Commission.
[02:23:09]  One of the main suspects publicly was the CIA.
[02:23:12]  Did the CIA kill John F. Kennedy?
[02:23:13]  And the reason was, he went to war with the CIA.
[02:23:17]  He especially went to war with John Dulles, who ran the CIA, was the most powerful person in Washington, fired John Dulles.
[02:23:24]  I'm sorry, Alan Dulles.
[02:23:26]  John Foster Dulles was his brother, Alan, who was Secretary of State, Alan Dulles.
[02:23:30]  And so, you know, a lot of people in the United States naturally thought, like, hey, did the CIA kill JFK because of this attempt to rein them in?
[02:23:38]  And They formed the Warren Commission, which was designed to get to the truth and tell the American people the real story, the full story of how their American president had his head blown off in Dallas.
[02:23:48]  And one of the first people appointed to the Warren Commission is Alan Dulles.
[02:23:53]  Like, basically, it would be like a woman dies, the chief suspect is the husband, and you point the husband to lead the investigation into finding out who killed her.
[02:24:00]  Right.
[02:24:01]  And he was extremely powerful.
[02:24:03]  Like, everyone feared him, Alan Dulles.
[02:24:07]  And once you corrupt an investigation like that, it's going to be very, very difficult because you have.
[02:24:14]  You don't know which witnesses have been excluded.
[02:24:16]  You don't know which documents have been altered, which ones have been destroyed.
[02:24:20]  And I think the 9 11 commission was very, very similar.
[02:24:23]  You know, the kind of people they put on there were just the hardest line, most loyal establishment institutionalists in all of Washington.
[02:24:29]  You know, these kind of like wise old men of the bipartisan community.
[02:24:33]  Yeah.
[02:24:34]  Lee Hamilton and Thomas Kane.
[02:24:36]  And, you know, the same thing.
[02:24:38]  There were people, like serious senators on like the Intelligence Committee and the Armed Services Committee who were saying the role of the Saudis has been like completely suppressed.
[02:24:47]  There were Like for a long time, like 22 pages about their role that were, you know, not public.
[02:24:54]  And a lot of that is meant to corrupt the investigation permanently so that we never get to the truth.
[02:24:58]  That's what these commissions are for.
[02:25:00]  Yes.
[02:25:01]  Yes, 100%.
[02:25:02]  And I think that's a lot of what this Epstein case, I mean, if you have something that has very damaging revelations about the richest and most powerful people on the planet, it's not an exaggeration.
[02:25:13]  That is what it is.
[02:25:14]  Yeah.
[02:25:15]  It just stands to reason that those people are not only going to be wanting to, but able to.
[02:25:20]  Corrupt the investigation.
[02:25:23]  Yeah, no.
[02:25:23]  And weren't we supposed to get like a bunch of JFK files as well?
[02:25:26]  Like, wasn't that, didn't Trump like tell them to release that?
[02:25:29]  Yeah, and what they got, I mean, I interviewed, you know, Jeff Shamor Lee, who's one of the independent journalists who has covered the JFK assassination for decades, like not a hardcore conspiracy.
[02:25:39]  Very kind of, in fact, a lot of people in the JFK community who don't think they got the truth hate him because they think he's too moderate.
[02:25:45]  I think I had one of his partners on.
[02:25:47]  I think John Newman works with him.
[02:25:49]  Uh huh.
[02:25:50]  John Newman, he said that they went and interviewed this lady, one of the last living people.
[02:25:55]  Who was in the JFK files because there was a CIA cable or something that went from the CIA office to the FBI office or something like the day before the assassination.
[02:26:07]  And it was something about like a flash stop.
[02:26:09]  Like, I guess Oswald had this like flash stop on his file.
[02:26:13]  Basically, if he ever came across their radar, it was like instantly all red flags would go up because he was being watched by everybody.
[02:26:20]  And it was like a couple days before the assassination, the FBI removed that from his file.
[02:26:25]  And this lady was attached to this CIA cable.
[02:26:29]  And they went and interviewed her about it before she died.
[02:26:32]  And they asked her, like, what is this?
[02:26:34]  And she, like, smiled.
[02:26:35]  And I think Morley was there, one of the people interviewing her.
[02:26:37]  And she goes, it's indicative of a keen interest in Oswald related to JFK that they did not want to be public.
[02:26:45]  And on that issue, that very issue about the tracking of Oswald, one of the key witnesses ended up committing suicide in a very kind of mysterious way.
[02:26:52]  I'm not, like, a JFK expert, but, like, when I interviewed Morley, it was after the release of what we were told with the JFK files.
[02:27:00]  And he was talking about how.
[02:27:01]  So many of the long sought after documents are not part of this release.
[02:27:06]  Oh, really?
[02:27:06]  Yeah.
[02:27:08]  So it's a story.
[02:27:08]  It was a partial release, like the Epstein release, like 9 11.
[02:27:12]  Yeah.
[02:27:12]  Oh, my God.
[02:27:14]  Well, now we're going to get the UFO files, apparently.
[02:27:18]  You know, there's this phrase, I'm sure you've heard it, being as obviously well versed as you are in these issues, called limited hangout.
[02:27:24]  Oh, yeah, yeah.
[02:27:25]  And for a long time, it used to really annoy me.
[02:27:27]  It just had this kind of.
[02:27:28]  In fact, a lot of people had discussed it being limited hangout when we did the Snowden reporting.
[02:27:32]  Like, we were pretending to disclose stuff, but the real stuff we were somehow, for some reason, keeping.
[02:27:36]  You know, it's this term that is very accusatory, but I used to resent the term, and that was part of the reason.
[02:27:43]  But as I, you know, look more and know more and understand more, it's absolutely, you know, it was like Nixon used to do that all the time.
[02:27:51]  Like, the Nixon administration would do that all the time.
[02:27:53]  Like, they knew they had to disclose stuff.
[02:27:56]  They couldn't hide it anymore.
[02:27:57]  The public appetite and demand was too high.
[02:27:59]  And then they would release relatively benign stuff that, you know, maybe a couple things seemed.
[02:28:05]  Just so it had the appearance of being transparency, when what it was really designed to do was placate the public and journalists and alleviate the pressure for full disclosure.
[02:28:14]  Right, right.
[02:28:15]  Press release or to pacify the public.
[02:28:17]  Right.
[02:28:17]  Yeah, that makes total sense.
[02:28:21]  So I want to kind of like rewind a little bit.

=== Nixon Style Disclosure (15:09) ===

[02:28:24]  I know we've been covering a lot of current events and stuff like that, but I want to explain to people who may not know, if there are any, your origin story and how you came to be a part of this, the release with Snowden and all of that.
[02:28:40]  So if people don't know, obviously you got your Pulitzer Prize for your reporting on Edward Snowden and you were there with him in Tokyo, Hong Kong.
[02:28:49]  Or, I'm sorry, Hong Kong.
[02:28:50]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[02:28:50]  When he was giving you guys all the information, you were there for like, I don't know how many days, a lot of days.
[02:28:55]  11 days.
[02:28:56]  11 days.
[02:28:57]  So, how did he initially get a hold of you?
[02:29:01]  How did you originally meet Snowden?
[02:29:03]  So, he had been, and by the way, there's a documentary about all of that that won the Oscar Citizen Four.
[02:29:09]  Citizen Four, yeah.
[02:29:10]  Amazing documentary.
[02:29:11]  Produced by my partner in reporting, Laura Poitras.
[02:29:14]  Yeah.
[02:29:15]  So, that's one of the best sources for people.
[02:29:17]  It's a great movie, just independently of anything.
[02:29:20]  But, He had been a reader of mine.
[02:29:22]  I was, you know, had a blog, then I moved to Salon and then The Guardian.
[02:29:27]  And he had been a longtime reader of mine.
[02:29:29]  And he was working inside the NSA and the CIA and then for Booz Allen Hamilton and, you know, contractors who they use and started to become very disillusioned about the government.
[02:29:40]  He had gone to enlist in the Iraq, for the Iraq war, broke both of his legs in basic training, so couldn't deploy.
[02:29:46]  But he believed the mythology that he was told and felt, you know, like a lot of people very betrayed when he found out that it was all a lie.
[02:29:53]  He thought it was a good war going to, you know, Do all the things we were told it was going to do.
[02:29:58]  And then, as he got more immersed in the CIA and the NSA and started seeing what these agencies really were doing, he understood that they were pernicious and that they were deceitful, especially the NSA, because the whole embedded taboo of this, you know, this US security state was created up in 1947 to combat the Soviet Union and communism.
[02:30:19]  And it was known to be this like very aberrational, anti democratic part of our government.
[02:30:25]  Like they had operated in secret.
[02:30:27]  They wouldn't have any transparency, any accountability.
[02:30:29]  And then quickly they became this unto its own force inside the government, like a deep state.
[02:30:35]  But the idea always was look, it's not that threatening because they're always going to direct these powers outward, never inward on our own population.
[02:30:42]  And what happened after 9 11 was the NSA started spying domestically.
[02:30:46]  All these other programs started to be used to surveil and control the domestic population.
[02:30:51]  And when Snowden realized that, he felt like, in good conscience, he just couldn't sit on the secret anymore, kind of like Ellsberg in the Pentagon Papers.
[02:30:59]  And the final straw was James Clapper went before the Senate, he was the director of national intelligence for Obama, and he went before the Senate and testified before the Senate in early 2013.
[02:31:11]  And Ron Wyden, this Democrat from Oregon, who's still, of course, there, they're there forever, asked James Clapper, knowing what the NSA was doing, does the NSA collect dossiers of mass surveillance on the American people?
[02:31:24]  And that was when James Clapper said, no, sir, not wittingly.
[02:31:28]  And Snowden was sitting there with a huge archive proving that they do exactly that.
[02:31:32]  And that was like under the point of no return.
[02:31:34]  So he emailed me in late December of 2012.
[02:31:39]  But of course, he couldn't say who he was or where he worked because he understood what most of us didn't, which was that the NSA had created a network of mass surveillance domestically.
[02:31:50]  Right.
[02:31:51]  And he was obviously being extremely careful.
[02:31:53]  And for that reason, I wasn't really that convinced of his authenticity because when you're a journalist, you probably get this too.
[02:31:58]  People write to you, oh, I have this like explosive story.
[02:32:01]  And you're like, what is it?
[02:32:01]  And they're like, my boss is on Mars controlling me with microwaves, you know, and torturing me with.
[02:32:07]  With things coming from the ocean.
[02:32:10]  So, you know, people, if they don't have anything to prove themselves and their authenticity, you kind of don't take them seriously, but you never, you don't want to just write them off because it could be an Edward Snowden.
[02:32:19]  Right.
[02:32:20]  And so we did this dance for a while because he was insisting that I install this like very sophisticated form of like high level encryption that was very difficult to install and operate unless you were like a cryptologist.
[02:32:33]  Were you already living in Brazil?
[02:32:35]  Yeah, I was living in Brazil.
[02:32:37]  And basically, he, he, I was talking to him a lot, but like he was walking me through encryption.
[02:32:43]  I wasn't really prioritizing it because I wasn't convinced that he was anything real.
[02:32:46]  I was working on a lot of the things.
[02:32:48]  So then he went to Laura Poitras, who is a director of documentaries, and she produced a documentary in 2005 about the Sunni insurgency in the Iraq War that was nominated for an Oscar.
[02:33:01]  And as a result of that film, she got put on a government watch list because they believed that she had prior knowledge of Sunni insurgent attacks in the Sunni Triangle, which is where she was making that film.
[02:33:13]  Where they attacked American soldiers, and she was there in a film.
[02:33:15]  And they concluded or suspected that she was like working with Iraqi Sunnis against the American military.
[02:33:23]  So they put her on this watch list.
[02:33:24]  So every time she came in and out of the country, they would take her laptops, they would detain her.
[02:33:27]  She's an American citizen.
[02:33:29]  And so she learned to use encryption because she knew she was being spied on.
[02:33:32]  So Snowden went to her.
[02:33:34]  I actually wrote the story on how she was being spied on.
[02:33:36]  She came to Brazil and we talked.
[02:33:38]  Anyway, so he went to her.
[02:33:41]  Like, I'm a lawyer.
[02:33:41]  He's like, I'm trying to work with Glenn Greenwald, but he's not able to install this encryption.
[02:33:44]  And he convinced her very quickly that he was real.
[02:33:47]  So she installed the encryption, said, You have to come to New York immediately to meet with me.
[02:33:51]  I went there with my husband, David Miranda, who was a member of Congress in Brazil.
[02:33:57]  And we met with her, and she laid out to me like everything he was saying.
[02:34:02]  And she said, Look, he's insisting that you do the story, you do the reporting.
[02:34:07]  So then I got in touch with him.
[02:34:08]  I installed the encryption with him.
[02:34:10]  We began talking for about two months.
[02:34:13]  And he said, I'm in Hong Kong.
[02:34:15]  And I like, I couldn't understand that.
[02:34:17]  Like, why would you be in Hong Kong if you work for the NSA?
[02:34:19]  Why?
[02:34:20]  Well, Like, of course, you would live in Maryland or Virginia.
[02:34:23]  He was in Hawaii, wasn't he?
[02:34:24]  He was, yeah, based in Hawaii.
[02:34:25]  Based in Hawaii.
[02:34:26]  Who's Alan Hamilton.
[02:34:28]  And I said, I'll come to Hong Kong, but you need to show me that you're serious first.
[02:34:31]  Like, you need to give.
[02:34:32]  I'm not flying on the other side of the world until I know that you actually have anything, knowing how these things often work.
[02:34:38]  Maybe it was like a plot or a trap.
[02:34:40]  You know, we were very uncertain.
[02:34:42]  So he said, okay, I'll give you like a tiny sample.
[02:34:45]  And he sent me like three dozen, maybe two dozen, three dozen documents that.
[02:34:52]  I remember when I got them, like I couldn't breathe.
[02:34:54]  I was like walking around my house just because one was about the PRISM program, which we ended up publishing, which was where the big tech companies had created basically drop boxes to give to the NSA anything that they wanted about their users, including American users.
[02:35:09]  And they just have this pipeline like Facebook and Yahoo at the time, Microsoft were giving.
[02:35:14]  It was called the PRISM program.
[02:35:15]  That was one of the things he sent me.
[02:35:16]  But he also sent me like other stuff about how the NSA was spying, and they were all very top secret.
[02:35:23]  And, you know, I had them in my hands.
[02:35:24]  And I had been working on this for years, like wanting to find out about the NSA, wanting to understand more how they were spying on the world and on us.
[02:35:31]  And then out of nowhere, I just had in my hands, you know, this batch of the most sensitive documents from the most secretive agency, the world's most powerful government.
[02:35:41]  So that night, I got on a plane, I flew to New York.
[02:35:43]  I was working at The Guardian at the time.
[02:35:45]  Wow.
[02:35:45]  Met with my editors, and I said, I need to go to Hong Kong.
[02:35:49]  And then the next morning, Laura and I were on.
[02:35:53]  The plane to Hong Kong, and right before we got on, she gave me the full thumb drive.
[02:35:56]  What had it was part of what he gave us, but she had gotten it like hours earlier.
[02:36:01]  She gave it to me, and I spent 16 hours on the plane over to Hong Kong, like kind of hiding it and just reading through the documents.
[02:36:07]  And that was when I found this court order that was from the secret FISA court that authorizes the NSA to spy.
[02:36:14]  It's all done in secret.
[02:36:15]  And it was a secret, top secret order authorizing the NSA and the Justice Department to force every phone company, Verizon and every other American phone company, to every three months turn over to the NSA every phone record of every American citizen.
[02:36:30]  So they would know who we called, who called us, for how long we spoke, where we were when we spoke.
[02:36:34]  It creates this incredibly invasive and comprehensive image of our lives.
[02:36:39]  Like who.
[02:36:40]  You call an abortion clinic, you call an HIV doctor, you call a woman at night who's not your wife, you can find out anything.
[02:36:46]  It's from this metadata.
[02:36:48]  And that ended up being my first story that I broke in The Guardian.
[02:36:52]  The first story was two days after we got to Hong Kong.
[02:36:54]  So we went to Hong Kong.
[02:36:56]  Up until this point, I had no idea who he was, like what his name was.
[02:36:59]  I didn't know anything about him.
[02:37:00]  I was picturing in my mind like this old, kind of like grizzled, like world weary guy, because I had talked to him a lot about, like, if you do this, there's a good chance you're going to end up.
[02:37:12]  Going to prison.
[02:37:13]  I wanted to make sure he understood the risks.
[02:37:16]  And not only did he understand them, he had researched everything.
[02:37:18]  He's like under the Espionage Act and citing every section.
[02:37:21]  And so I was picturing, I assumed he was old because if you're really willing to go to prison for the rest of your life for a cause, maybe you're more willing to do that if you're like 68 and you're talking about like another 15 years, not if you're like 25.
[02:37:36]  And so we went to this hotel in Hong Kong where he directed us to go the first day we got there to meet him.
[02:37:42]  And he said, I'll either be there at this time and if I don't show up at this time, I'll be there at this time.
[02:37:46]  And you'll know me because I'm going to carry a Ruby cube in my hand.
[02:37:50]  And that's how you'll know who I am.
[02:37:51]  Just wait in this spot.
[02:37:52]  And so we went there.
[02:37:53]  He didn't show up at the first time.
[02:37:54]  Like we waited 45 minutes later.
[02:37:56]  We went to whatever, to a cafe or something.
[02:37:59]  We went back.
[02:38:00]  And then suddenly he walks in and he's like 20.
[02:38:04]  He was 29 years old at the time, but he looked way younger.
[02:38:06]  He looked like a kid who worked at the mall.
[02:38:09]  And so I immediately thought, okay, either this is a scam, like this weirdo created this whole set of weird lies to lure us here to feel important.
[02:38:18]  Maybe he's insane.
[02:38:20]  Or even I thought, Maybe he's like the assistant of the source or the young lover of the source.
[02:38:24]  Now he's going to take us to the source.
[02:38:26]  And then when it turned out to be that he was the source, I was so disoriented.
[02:38:30]  I was like, what is going on here?
[02:38:32]  And we just went up to his hotel room and I started grilling him and interrogating him on camera.
[02:38:36]  Lawyer immediately turned on the camera.
[02:38:37]  That's what became Citizen Four, the film.
[02:38:40]  And after that, I was a lawyer.
[02:38:43]  So I was used to doing depositions where I would just sit across the table from somebody and pound them with questions in different directions.
[02:38:49]  So they didn't know how, like, if there were lies, there would be a Oh, that wasn't a reenactment.
[02:38:52]  That was the actual footage?
[02:38:53]  Yeah, it was the actual footage.
[02:38:55]  She immediately turned on the camera the second we got there.
[02:38:58]  That's what she does.
[02:38:59]  That's why she's such a great filmmaker.
[02:39:00]  She sits there quietly.
[02:39:01]  She's very unassuming.
[02:39:03]  And the way he unplugged the phones and did all of that stuff was insane.
[02:39:08]  Like, yeah.
[02:39:10]  Just the level of precaution.
[02:39:12]  Yeah, I just wanted to know from him, like, for the first four hours, like, you're 29.
[02:39:18]  You know, you're like we talked about before, you're like a well-dressed guy, a big future, was making a lot of money at Booze Hamilton.
[02:39:23]  Yeah.
[02:39:24]  He had a girlfriend, like who was his girlfriend, very beautiful high school sweetheart.
[02:39:28]  They were still together, living together, like a very assimilated, adjusted person with a bright future.
[02:39:34]  Yeah.
[02:39:35]  Like, why are you?
[02:39:35]  And like, we thought the chances were like 98% that he was going to end up in an American supermax prison, not like a joke of a prison.
[02:39:43]  Like, you don't go to a regular prison if you're accused of national security crime.
[02:39:46]  You disappear into like one of those cages where you stay there 23 and a half hours a day in an orange jumpsuit.
[02:39:54]  So I needed to know, like, why was he?
[02:39:56]  I didn't know if he was real.
[02:39:57]  So I wanted to know, like, but why are you willing to do this?
[02:40:00]  Why are you?
[02:40:01]  Most people would do this if it weren't for the consequences.
[02:40:03]  They don't because they'll go to prison for life.
[02:40:04]  Why are you going to prison for life for this cause?
[02:40:07]  And it wasn't until I got a satisfactory answer that I really started believing that he was genuine.
[02:40:13]  What made you believe?
[02:40:15]  What was the, was there one thing he said or was it something about his demeanor?
[02:40:19]  It was really hard because he's not a very, like, he's not like the kind of guy who goes to therapy.
[02:40:24]  He doesn't spend a lot of time thinking about himself.
[02:40:26]  He's not very introspective or sensitive.
[02:40:30]  I mean, he is, but he doesn't, like, that's not how he conducts himself.
[02:40:36]  He was raised in a very conservative military culture.
[02:40:40]  So it took me a long time to break that wall down and get something other than cliches.
[02:40:44]  But then I remember, like, finally, what he talked about was he said how the internet was the most important thing in his life because he was growing up in this lower middle class community.
[02:40:54]  He didn't have access to money to travel or to do much.
[02:40:57]  And the internet was like his gateway to the world.
[02:41:00]  It was also like the thing where he could express himself and experiment with things because it was all supposed to be anonymous.
[02:41:06]  You know, at the beginning, everything was anonymous on the internet.
[02:41:09]  Gave you this great freedom to just like do whatever you wanted to.
[02:41:12]  Do an experiment.
[02:41:13]  He thought it was like the greatest invention in all of human history.
[02:41:17]  And he said, to then learn that it had been like degraded or commandeered from what it was supposed to be, which is like this innovation of historic proportions of emancipation, this like liberatory technology into the greatest and most repressive weapon of coercion and control because it was used for comprehensive surveillance that was getting worse by the day.
[02:41:42]  He said that was like an evil.
[02:41:44]  That he could not live with himself for the rest of his life, knowing he had the ability to stop or at least expose, and out of cowardice was too afraid to do so.
[02:41:52]  And so just let it persist.
[02:41:54]  And I got to know Daniel Ellsberg in my work.
[02:41:58]  And I obviously asked him the same thing.
[02:42:00]  He almost went to prison for life.
[02:42:01]  And I wanted to know, like, okay, I get the cause, but like, why were you willing to?
[02:42:04]  He was at the time young.
[02:42:05]  He just died like, you know, three years ago, Daniel Ellsberg.
[02:42:09]  And he gave me a very similar answer.
[02:42:11]  Like, whatever they would do to me, put me in prison for life, it wouldn't be as bad as having to live the rest of my life knowing I was a coward.
[02:42:17]  And that I had the opportunity to stop this evil, but because I was too afraid, I didn't.
[02:42:23]  And it just, he like cited literature that he read, like Joseph Campbell, about what the meaning of life is.
[02:42:28]  And, you know, at some point, you have to, you know, you're a journalist, you're going to put your name on the story.
[02:42:34]  You can't prove 100%.
[02:42:35]  You have to really trust your intuition and get convinced.
[02:42:39]  And I got convinced enough that I didn't have any doubts.
[02:42:41]  And to this day, don't have any doubts.
[02:42:43]  How concerned were you for your own safety?
[02:42:46]  And, like, I'm sure you guys had to assume you were being spied on the whole time.
[02:42:49]  Yeah.
[02:42:50]  Not just fighting with the CIA or the NSA or whatever, the FBI, but also like we were in China.
[02:42:55]  Well, we were in Hong Kong, which isn't what now it's more mainland China, but at the time, the reason he picked it was because it had this sort of like it was a symbol of resistance.
[02:43:05]  Like Hong Kong was really fighting against the CCP and like mainland China to maintain its independence, to keep a lot of its political rights.
[02:43:13]  So it was, he needed a place where it would be safe from the United States or the United States can just easily grab you.
[02:43:19]  Yeah.
[02:43:19]  But he didn't want to go to some super repressive.
[02:43:21]  Place because there'd be like an inconsistency in what he was doing versus where he would.
[02:43:25]  So, Hong Kong is what that's why he chose Hong Kong.
[02:43:28]  And so, we weren't sure.
[02:43:29]  Like, we thought the Hong Kong police were following us, the Chinese authorities were following us.

=== Snowden File Corruption (15:19) ===

[02:43:33]  Like, we thought for sure, I mean, he was sitting there with like the mother load of stolen top secret documents.
[02:43:40]  And, you know, the more you learn too about how comprehensive the surveillance net was, the more concerned you got that he couldn't have done this without detection.
[02:43:49]  But he was, he's a genius and like very, he plotted everything meticulously for months, as you kind of alluded to.
[02:43:56]  Everything was so planned in terms of like how he did it and the precautions he took, like everything.
[02:44:02]  He's just one of those like anally retentive planners.
[02:44:06]  Like every detail is, no detail is overlooked.
[02:44:08]  Right.
[02:44:09]  And you guys launched the story from the hotel room.
[02:44:12]  Yeah.
[02:44:13]  I mean, I felt like the best way to guarantee our safety was to go public as soon as possible.
[02:44:20]  And I also already knew I had that document, that court order, which I knew was so explosive.
[02:44:25]  Like when people find out, like every single person that you talk to as an American citizen is being turned over and reported to the American government that then keeps a dossier on you.
[02:44:34]  And can connect all these different dots about who you are and who you talk to and who they talk to and what your network is and what your life is.
[02:44:41]  It's so foreign to what we're told to think our government is supposed to do when it comes to us.
[02:44:47]  And it was a very simple story in one sense because I had the quarter in my hands and then supporting documents.
[02:44:52]  And so I also, because I was at The Guardian, I didn't trust mainstream media.
[02:44:56]  And The Guardian is a very old British newspaper.
[02:44:59]  They had just opened an American bureau, you know, like four or five years prior.
[02:45:05]  I was very wary that they were going to.
[02:45:08]  Be too afraid to publish.
[02:45:10]  Because one of the things that actually made Snowden come to me was the New York Times in 2004, when Bush was running for reelection for the second term, discovered these two reporters discovered that the NSA was spying on Americans without the warrants required by law.
[02:45:22]  It was like a thing that the Bush and Cheney administration invented after 9 11 to justify oh, if an American citizen is talking to a foreigner, you don't need a warrant.
[02:45:30]  They just created this out of nowhere, completely contrary to law and the Constitution.
[02:45:34]  New York Times reporters found out about it in 2004.
[02:45:37]  They wanted to publish it before the election so people knew that Bush and Cheney had done this.
[02:45:42]  And the Bush administration called the New York Times editor and owner down to the Oval Office and said, if you publish this story, you're going to have blood on your hands.
[02:45:51]  You're going to help terrorists attack.
[02:45:52]  And so they blocked those reporters from reporting on it.
[02:45:56]  And it was only like a year and a half later that one of them, James Risen, who we eventually hired at The Intercept, wrote a book and he was going to break the story in his book.
[02:46:04]  Only then did the New York Times publish it because they didn't want to get scooped by their own reporter.
[02:46:07]  They published it, they won the Pulitzer, and they went around congratulating themselves for their bravery.
[02:46:12]  Wow.
[02:46:13]  So I knew about this.
[02:46:14]  I wrote about this a lot, hated the New York Times for it.
[02:46:16]  And Stonen was very afraid that if he went to the New York Times, they would just bury it.
[02:46:20]  And I was very concerned the Guardian would.
[02:46:22]  So I was adamant from like the first day we need to publish this right now.
[02:46:25]  I won't tolerate any waiting.
[02:46:27]  If you like delay, if you fuck around, I'm going to publish it somewhere else or even I'll just create a site and just get these documents out.
[02:46:35]  And so I was kind of unreasonable, but I was in like this very intense bubble.
[02:46:41]  And I felt an obligation to him to get these documents out.
[02:46:43]  I felt like it was safer for us.
[02:46:46]  And.
[02:46:47]  They didn't wait two days.
[02:46:49]  They had to consult with their lawyers.
[02:46:50]  They went to the government.
[02:46:51]  But for me, it seemed like, oh, they're playing this game already that the New York Times will play.
[02:46:55]  So I went to war with them.
[02:46:57]  Oliver Stone made a film about this whole thing.
[02:46:59]  I was played by Zachary Quinto, and Joseph Gordon Levitt played Snowden.
[02:47:03]  And they had that scene, and he played me as some hysteric who was screaming and spitting at The Guardian.
[02:47:08]  But I did have a war with The Guardian.
[02:47:10]  I won't tolerate delay.
[02:47:12]  I know you guys are trying to get your lawyers to tell you you can't publish it.
[02:47:15]  But eventually they published it and got really behind the story and worked really well with.
[02:47:20]  With the reporting?
[02:47:23]  It's such a crazy story, man.
[02:47:26]  One of the biggest stories of my lifetime, and it will go down in American history, is one of the biggest.
[02:47:31]  It's crazy.
[02:47:32]  You were a part of that.
[02:47:33]  It was a dream.
[02:47:34]  The weird thing, too, was Hong Kong, there's a 12 hour difference between Hong Kong and New York in terms of the time difference.
[02:47:42]  Literally, night is day and day is night, which, of course, took a long time to get adjusted to, but more so, I had to do media all day.
[02:47:48]  I was on US media all day explaining the story.
[02:47:51]  And then, like three days after, we decided Snowden was going to go public.
[02:47:54]  That was always the plan.
[02:47:55]  He didn't want to hide.
[02:47:55]  And I had responsibilities to the media.
[02:47:58]  So, all in like the middle of the night in Hong Kong, I was going to studios, doing American TV appearances.
[02:48:04]  And then during the day, I would have to do the stories and work with Snowden.
[02:48:07]  So, I was sleeping maybe an hour maximum a night.
[02:48:10]  I couldn't sleep.
[02:48:11]  I would even take sleeping pills and I still couldn't sleep because the adrenaline was so high.
[02:48:15]  Yeah.
[02:48:16]  And after that, like, what did you experience?
[02:48:19]  Any sort of like harassment or anything?
[02:48:21]  Like, I assume that you assumed that your phones were already tapped at that point when that came out and like, Was there any kind of like overt intimidation or anything like that from?
[02:48:30]  Yeah.
[02:48:31]  I mean, well, what happened was I had, when I left Hong Kong, I was planning to go to New York to do a bunch of media, and my lawyers called.
[02:48:38]  You know, we got good lawyers.
[02:48:39]  The Guardian got good lawyers.
[02:48:40]  The time, the type and like call the Justice Department, get the Attorney General on the phone.
[02:48:43]  At the time, it was Eric Holder, Obama's Attorney General.
[02:48:47]  And they said, yeah, the Justice Department is saying they can't guarantee they're not going to like arrest you or detain you.
[02:48:52]  So they said, you have to go back to Brazil.
[02:48:55]  Don't go through the US.
[02:48:57]  So I went to Dubai and then back to Brazil.
[02:48:59]  And then for like a year, I couldn't leave Brazil.
[02:49:01]  Laura went to Germany where she worked on her film.
[02:49:03]  We did the reporting.
[02:49:04]  I was in Brazil.
[02:49:05]  She was in Germany.
[02:49:06]  I did a lot of reporting about how the NSA was spying on Brazil.
[02:49:10]  So the Brazilian government looked very favorably upon the reporting, gave me a lot of protection.
[02:49:15]  But for a year, they were saying publicly and privately, like a lot of members of Congress, Glenn Greenwald should be arrested.
[02:49:22]  Andrew Ross Sorkin went on CNBC and said, I should be arrested.
[02:49:25]  This is like, I want to meet the press.
[02:49:27]  And David Greger asked me, why shouldn't you be arrested along with Snowden?
[02:49:30]  It was very much like, In the air.
[02:49:32]  Wow.
[02:49:33]  And we only went back when we won the Pulitzer, and we figured, like, okay, we gambled and said, like, it's too much of a bad look for the US to, like, have us win the Pulitzer, go back and then arrest us, you know, not be able to accuse other countries.
[02:49:46]  But one of the things that happened was, like, my, there was a part of the Snowden file that was corrupted.
[02:49:52]  Like, I couldn't get access to it because I just, the password was wrong, or it was like, and I knew it was an important part of the archive.
[02:49:58]  And by a miracle, Laura had the password.
[02:50:01]  Like, when Snowden entered the password, she was taping him.
[02:50:04]  She found it on tape and was able to reconstruct the password.
[02:50:06]  She got access to that part of the file and I needed it, but I couldn't leave Brazil.
[02:50:11]  She was in Germany.
[02:50:13]  So she didn't trust anybody at this point.
[02:50:16]  She hated the Guardian.
[02:50:17]  She had problems with the Guardian.
[02:50:18]  She knew my husband.
[02:50:19]  So she said, The only person I'll give it to is David.
[02:50:22]  So he traveled to Berlin, picked up the archive.
[02:50:25]  And on his way back, he was transiting through London back to Rio and he was detained and for 12 hours kept in this cage.
[02:50:34]  And they were threatening the whole time that they were going to arrest him on terrorism charges.
[02:50:38]  And the Brazilian government exploded with rage, and that was the only reason why they left him.
[02:50:42]  Became a huge story.
[02:50:43]  They arrested him, even though he was very peripheral to the story, just as a way of getting to me.
[02:50:49]  They sent the MI5 into the Guardian's newsroom and stood over them and said, You have to physically destroy these documents.
[02:50:56]  There were a lot of documents from the GCHQ, the British equivalent.
[02:51:02]  And they were saying, But this is so stupid.
[02:51:04]  Glenn Greenwald has copies stored everywhere around the world digitally.
[02:51:07]  This is going to accomplish nothing.
[02:51:08]  So does Laura Poitras.
[02:51:09]  And they said, We don't care.
[02:51:10]  And they forced the Guardian, Thugs, government thugs in their newsroom stood over them and forced them to physically destroy the computer.
[02:51:17]  So there was a lot of stuff like that.
[02:51:21]  Insane, man.
[02:51:22]  And what do you think the possibility is of him ever being pardoned?
[02:51:28]  Trump came very close in the first term in the transition to pardoning him.
[02:51:36]  And then January 6th happened.
[02:51:38]  Like, I really believed Trump was going to do it.
[02:51:41]  Everything I was hearing and talked to, the people I was talking to, I was very, I would say, I want him pardoned.
[02:51:46]  He should be able to come back to the United States.
[02:51:47]  He's a hero, not a criminal.
[02:51:49]  The criminals are the people who are doing this illegal spying.
[02:51:53]  And then January 6th happened, and then Republican senators.
[02:51:59]  This is Trump was threatening at the time to release the JFK files, and they knew he was talking openly about pardoning Snowden because Trump felt like he had been victimized by the same agencies that Snowden exposed, like the NSA and the CIA and the FBI that spied on Trump during 2016 and manufactured the Russiagate hoax.
[02:52:18]  So he felt like an affinity for Snowden.
[02:52:21]  They were also, it was a campaign to get him to pardon Assange, but join Assange, but he never really got close to that.
[02:52:26]  But he did get very close to Snowden.
[02:52:27]  And then Republican senators held impeachment over his head.
[02:52:30]  Like, why did they do an impeachment proceeding with a president on his way out?
[02:52:33]  It was because they were petrified, Republican senators, what he was going to do in the transition before he left, including pardoning Snowden, who was like public enemy number one of the U.S. security state, and releasing the JFK files.
[02:52:44]  And they made clear, like, if you do either of those things, we're going to vote to convict you and you'll be ineligible for life to run again.
[02:52:50]  Jesus Christ, man.
[02:52:51]  It's like the damage is already done.
[02:52:53]  You know, it's like the one thing you can do that would help everybody in the situation is give the guy a pardon.
[02:52:58]  But they don't, they like, imagine though, he would come back to the US, he would get like a hero's welcome.
[02:53:03]  Right.
[02:53:03]  They don't want that, they have to destroy every person who is a whistleblower because they want to discourage future.
[02:53:11]  Exactly.
[02:53:12]  They want people in that position to think, oh, if I do this, I'm not going to have book deals and I'm not going to be treated, I'm going to disappear into a hole for the next like 40 years.
[02:53:20]  Oh my God.
[02:53:22]  I mean, it's great that Snowden didn't.
[02:53:24]  He has two kids now, he's married to his high school girlfriend.
[02:53:27]  But he can't leave Russia, a place he never chose to be.
[02:53:31]  Yeah, wasn't his plan to go to South America and he got stopped there on the way?
[02:53:34]  Or something happened?
[02:53:36]  The plan was Julian Assange had asylum with Ecuador.
[02:53:40]  He was in the Ecuadorian embassy in London.
[02:53:45]  But it wasn't Ecuador, it was either going to be Bolivia or Venezuela.
[02:53:47]  Okay.
[02:53:48]  And the plan was he had to fly from Hong Kong to Moscow, Moscow, Havana, Havana onto either Bolivia or Venezuela.
[02:53:57]  The Obama administration canceled his passport on the way to Russia.
[02:54:03]  So, by the time he got to Russia, he no longer had a valid passport.
[02:54:06]  And they told the Cubans, Obama wants to do a deal with you, lift sanctions, lift the embargo.
[02:54:12]  But if you let Snowden, who they had given a guarantee of safe passage, pass through Havana without detaining him, there's no chance we're going to do a deal with you.
[02:54:20]  So, they bullied the Cubans out of it.
[02:54:21]  So, they trapped him in Russia and they did a deal with the whole country just to stop this guy.
[02:54:26]  Yeah.
[02:54:27]  So, this is what is so sickening.
[02:54:28]  They forced him to stay in Moscow.
[02:54:31]  And then they used the fact that he was in Russia to imply that he was a Russian spy, even though he never wanted to.
[02:54:39]  And why would he want to live in Russia?
[02:54:41]  He doesn't speak Russian.
[02:54:42]  But the other thing that's so amazing is they asked Obama, like, what are they planning on doing to get Snowden?
[02:54:48]  And he was like, I'm not going to activate a bunch of F 15s to go and pick up some young hacker, like trying to say, oh, we don't really care.
[02:54:57]  And then the president of Bolivia, Evo Morales, went to Moscow on a state visit while Snowden was there.
[02:55:05]  And.
[02:55:07]  They had a suspicion that Evo Morales' plane was going to pick up Snowden and bring him back to Bolivia.
[02:55:12]  He's like a left wing president.
[02:55:14]  And on his way back, they downed his plane over Europe.
[02:55:20]  They forced the plane down.
[02:55:21]  Like France and Spain and Portugal refused air rights.
[02:55:26]  So they forced his plane down in Vienna, which was very dangerous.
[02:55:29]  His plane lands in Vienna.
[02:55:31]  A bunch of government agents go on the plane thinking Snowden's on there.
[02:55:34]  Of course, Snowden wasn't on there, but it showed their desperation to get Snowden.
[02:55:41]  It's such a bonkers fucking story, man.
[02:55:43]  About a month after that, after they downed the plane, I was going to go visit Snowden in Russia.
[02:55:47]  Yeah.
[02:55:49]  And we filmed the scene for Citizen Four.
[02:55:50]  It was actually the last scene of the film.
[02:55:52]  And I had to go to get a Russian visa at the Russian consulate in Rio de Janeiro, in Brazil.
[02:55:58]  And when I got there, they recognized me, and the consul of the consulate came out and he said, You know, look, we don't support whistleblowing.
[02:56:06]  We don't think it's right for government officials, for people who work for us to go around deciding what they should disclose because, you know, they don't want that either.
[02:56:13]  But they said, The one thing I don't, so I understand why the Obama administration is angry, but the one thing I don't understand, they're being so crazy.
[02:56:18]  And they asked me, like, they're downing Evo Morales' plane, like, Have they gone completely insane?
[02:56:23]  Like, even for the Russians, they were shocked that that was something the Obama administration would do.
[02:56:29]  Wow, man.
[02:56:30]  So, how does that make you feel about the future of surveillance and these agencies in the United States surveilling our private communications and storing them all and creating this sort of digital techno grid?
[02:56:43]  Are you, is it possible to be optimistic about it?
[02:56:47]  Or what's your take on the future of this?
[02:56:49]  Well, there was some, like, after we did these series of reports, there was a lot of bipartisan movement to.
[02:56:57]  Reign in the NSA.
[02:56:59]  And it would have been the first time since 9 11 that government power got reduced rather than expanded.
[02:57:04]  And it was this John Conyers, this old black liberal representative from Detroit, and Justin Amash, who was like a young libertarian, right wing Republican congressman from Michigan, joined together and they co sponsored legislation that would have prevented the spine that we had exposed.
[02:57:21]  And it was headed toward approval, which shocked the Obama administration.
[02:57:24]  And there's a big headline in foreign policy.
[02:57:28]  You know, the US Security State Journal headlined how Nancy Pelosi saved the NSA.
[02:57:33]  And basically, like, she was the one the White House got to whip enough Democratic votes against it.
[02:57:38]  So it failed by like three votes.
[02:57:42]  But the, so there was no legislative reform, but the, but there was a lot of attention paid.
[02:57:45]  So people started using encryption more, which really did make it harder.
[02:57:49]  There was a lot of pressure on big tech companies to use end to end encryption to prove to their, you know, Facebook was petrified that if they didn't like assuage public anger that they were cooperating with the NSA, that a whole generation of people would go to like South Carolina.
[02:58:02]  Korea or German companies that promise privacy, social media platforms.
[02:58:07]  So they like, that's when they did end to end encryption.
[02:58:09]  They became a little bit more serious about proving privacy, but it also created like platforms like Telegram that was created by the Jura brothers, the Russian brothers, in the months after the Snowden reporting and became huge.
[02:58:23]  So there's now platforms you can use that have a lot more security.
[02:58:26]  So, you know, it did have some changes, but, you know, very quickly after the reporting, I remember like, That was when ISIS emerged, and we said now we had a new enemy, like worse than Al Qaeda.
[02:58:37]  And then right after that was 2016, it was Russia.
[02:58:40]  And so they very quickly recreated this kind of fear that in turn transforms into faith and trust in government security agencies to say, Look, we need these powers to protect you from scary ISIS or scary.

=== Substack Platform Security (01:36) ===

[02:58:52]  Right, right.
[02:58:52]  They're very good at that.
[02:58:53]  We need to catch the sleeper cells and stop terrorist attacks by enacting this sort of surveillance on you.
[02:58:59]  And I always suspected that those companies, I mean, I could be wrong, but I always had this.
[02:59:05]  Intuitive suspicion that, like, you download this app that's supposed to be safe and encrypted, you know, like Telegram or Signal or whatever.
[02:59:12]  I always thought those might have been just like a direct conduit to Langley.
[02:59:15]  Yeah, you should not trust those.
[02:59:18]  Like, anyone, like, if I'm the CIA, I'm like, let's make these apps where people want to be secure and we'll, like, it'll be just easier for us.
[02:59:27]  Yeah, or like, you know, a lot of they can break encryption.
[02:59:29]  They have not, like, that's a bad Tucker, right?
[02:59:32]  Yeah.
[02:59:32]  I mean, well, they, I mean, the government found out that.
[02:59:35]  Tucker was trying to get an interview with Putin before Tucker told a single soul, even his own wife, that he was trying to do that.
[02:59:41]  And, you know, if you are working in any kind of sensitive field at all or talking to people in sensitive fields, you need to, there's no such thing as being too paranoid or careful.
[02:59:51]  Right.
[02:59:52]  I wish I could be not so dreary about it, but it had some positive effects.
[02:59:58]  It definitely raised consciousness.
[03:00:01]  It made it harder for a while, but there's still ubiquitous spying going on by our government, including on the American population.
[03:00:08]  Glenn Greenwald, you are a national treasure, brother.
[03:00:10]  Thank you so much for coming and doing this, man.
[03:00:12]  I really enjoyed it.
[03:00:13]  Yeah, it was an honor to have you.
[03:00:15]  And tell people where to find your.
[03:00:17]  I think you have a Substack.
[03:00:18]  Yeah, I do all my work with Substack now.
[03:00:20]  I was at Substack for a while, went back, love it.
[03:00:23]  So, yeah, people can find me there and Twitter or wherever.
[03:00:25]  Fantastic.
[03:00:25]  We'll link everything below.
[03:00:27]  Thanks again, man.
[03:00:27]  Thank you.
[03:00:28]  Really appreciate it.
[03:00:28]  Good night, world.