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Feb. 14, 2023 - System Update - Glenn Greenwald

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Wall St. Profiteering in Ukraine, Super Bowl's Pat Tillman Propaganda, & Russiagate Rats Turn on Each Other | SYSTEM UPDATE #40

Wall St. Profiteering in Ukraine, Super Bowl's Pat Tillman Propaganda, & Russiagate Rats Turn on Each Other | SYSTEM UPDATE #40 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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	Good evening, it's Friday, 13th, 2023.
	Welcome to episode 40 of System Update, our new live nightly show that airs every Monday through Friday at 7 p.m.
	Eastern exclusively here on Rumble, the free speech alternative to YouTube.
	Tonight, War is a Racket.
	That is the title of one of the most important speeches and short pamphlets in the 20th century about U.S.
	war Ever written by Marine General Smedley Butler based on his experiences as a soldier in multiple wars and especially his observations of Woodward Wilson's 1917 manipulation of the country into one of the most horrific wars ever, World War I, after Wilson ran for and won the presidency in 1916 by pledging to keep the U.S.
	out of that same war.
	To Butler, war is always about profit.
	News events over the last two weeks and numerous appeals from Ukrainian President Zelensky to America's banking and financial institutions follow the playbook Butler warned of perfectly and point to an increasing motive of profiteering from the U.S.
	role in the war in Ukraine, a war that will turn one-year-old next month with no end in sight.
	Then, the Super Bowl yesterday featured an inspiring commercial about Pat Tillman, the then safety for the St.
	Louis Cardinals, who enlisted in the Army after 9-11 and went to fight in Afghanistan, where, in the words of the commercial, quote, he was killed in action.
	The truth about what happened to Pat Toman is far murkier and much darker, and revisiting what we know and what we don't know reveals a great deal about war in general and the propaganda that convinces Americans to support every new one.
	And then, speaking of propaganda, a new article in the Washington Post today finally purports to fact-check numerous lies told by the corporate media, the U.S.
	security state, the Biden campaign, and leading Democrats in the days and weeks leading up to the 2020 election, namely that the materials on Hunter Biden's laptop That shed considerable light on Joe Biden's business activities in China and Ukraine were, quote, Russian disinformation.
	The propagandists who spread that lie in order to manipulate the 2020 election know the game is up.
	The House hearings investigated what happened, made it impossible to avoid confronting it any longer.
	And now those who work together to disseminate these falsehoods are turning on each other, blaming one another for what happened.
	As a reminder, every system update is now available the following day in podcast form on Spotify, Apple, and other major podcast systems.
	In less than a week, System Update has risen to number 7 on the Apple chart of most listened to podcasts in the U.S.
	and in the top 20 on Spotify's chart.
	While our program is designed to be watched live and on video here on Rumble, it is now available in podcast version to those who can't catch the show.
	Just follow the system update on whichever podcast platform you prefer.
	For now, welcome to a new episode of System Update, starting right now.
	Ever since the USB began involving itself in the war between Ukraine and Russia, one overarching question has hovered.
	Why?
	There is no rational argument possible that the lives of ordinary American citizens would be improved if various provinces in eastern Ukraine were subject to the governance of Kiev rather than be independent or if they chose to Moscow.
	Conversely, no harm to the lives of ordinary Americans is even plausible If the people of Donbass win the independence for which they have been fighting since 2014 and no longer are ruled by President Zelensky.
	So why exactly is the U.S.
	spending $100 billion, almost twice the total Russian military budget for the entire year, and giving it to Raytheon and the CIA for Ukraine, an amount spent before the war is even a year old?
	If you're an American citizen who is not an executive of General Dynamics or Boeing or the U.S.
	intelligence community, how has your life been improved by the massive expenditure of U.S.
	monies and the transfer of so many sophisticated American weapons into that war zone that the U.S.' 's own stockpile has been depleted?
	As usual when it comes to war, it is impossible to understand a war's true purpose without examining who benefits from it financially.
	War is a racket.
	That was the title of a 1935 speech and short book by Smedley D. Butler, a retired United States Marine Corps general.
	Examining the multiple U.S.
	interventions and wars he had seen personally, and primarily the aftermath of World War I, General Butler detailed how easily and frequently U.S.
	industrialists profiteer off wars.
	By having public resources fund military and reconstructive projects that private actors and bankers then swoop in and exploit for their own financial benefit.
	The first paragraph of his speech and book put it simply, quote, War is a racket.
	It always has been.
	It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious.
	It is the only one international in scope.
	It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.
	A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not that which seems to the majority of people.
	Only a small inside group know what it is about.
	It is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the very many.
	Out of war, a few people make huge fortunes.
	Now, while financial elites profit greatly from the war, he said, it is everyone else besides them who paid the price for the war.
	Quote, this bill renders a horrible accounting.
	Newly placed gravestones, mangled bodies, shattered homes, broken hearts and minds, economic instability, depression, and all its attendant miseries.
	Backbreaking taxation for generations and generations.
	General Butler emphasized that his observations were not abstractions, but the byproduct of his own personal experiences as a soldier, as one who fought in the wars, not profited from them.
	As he put it, quote, for a great many years as a soldier, I had a suspicion that war was a racket.
	Not until I retired to civil life did I finally realize it.
	Now that I see the international war clouds gathering as they are today, I must face it and speak out.
	Using World War I as his example, Butler explained how it works.
	"The World War, rather our brief participation in it, has cost the United States some $52 billion.
	Figure it out.
	That means $400 to every American man, woman and child.
	And we haven't paid the debt yet.
	We are paying it.
	Our children will pay it.
	And our children's children probably still will be paying the cost of that war.
	The normal profits of a business concern in the United States are 6%, 8%, 10% and sometimes 12%.
	But wartime profits, ah, that is another matter entirely.
	20, 60, 100, 300, and even 800%.
	The sky is the limit.
	All that traffic will bear.
	Uncle Sam has the money.
	even 800%.
	The sky is the limit.
	All that traffic will bear.
	Uncle Sam has the money.
	Let's get it.
	Of course, it isn't put that crudely in wartime.
	It is dressed into speeches about patriotism, love of country, and how, quote, we must all put our shoulders to the wheel.
	But the prophets jump and leap and skyrocket and are safely pocketed.
	Let's just take a few examples, he said.
	Take our friends the DuPonts, the powder people.
	Didn't one of them testify before a Senate committee recently that their powder won the war or saved the world for democracy or something?
	How did they do it in the war?
	They were a patriotic corporation.
	Well, the average earnings of the DuPonts for the period 1910 to 1914 were $6 million a year.
	It wasn't much, but the DuPonts managed to get along on it.
	Now, let's take a look at their average yearly profit during the war years, 1914 to 1918.
	$48 million a year profit, we find.
	Nearly 10 times that of normal times.
	And the profits of normal times were pretty good for them.
	An increase of profits of more than 950%.
	Take one of our little steel companies that patriotically shunted aside the makings of rails and grinders and bridges to manufacture war materials.
	Well, their 1910 to 1914 yearly earnings averaged $6 million.
	Then came the war, and like loyal citizens, Bethlehem Steel promptly turned to munitions making.
	Did their profits jump, or did they let Uncle Sam in for a bargain?
	Well, their 1914-1918 average was $49 million a year.
	Or let's take United States Steel.
	The normal earnings during the five-year war period to the war were $105 million a year.
	Not bad.
	Then along came the war and up went the profits.
	The average yearly profit for the period 1914-1918 was $240 million.
	Not bad.
	to 1918 was $240 million.
	Not bad.
	Now, if this general, Marine Corps general, sounds bitter, it's because he is.
	Bitterness is appropriate if you see his point.
	People like him go and risk their lives in wars, while ordinary citizens sacrifice financially by being deprived of services and paying higher taxes and being saddled with public debt.
	Meanwhile, industrialists and bankers and other financial sector vultures profit off of all of their suffering and all of their sacrifice for their own greed and gluttony.
	Quote, let us not forget the bankers who financed the Great War, Butler said.
	If anyone had the cream of the profits, it was the bankers.
	Being partnerships rather than incorporated organizations, they do not have to report to stockholders.
	And their profits were as secret as they were immense.
	How the bankers made their millions and their billions, I do not know, because those little secrets never become public, even before a Senate investigative body.
	Now General Butler, in response to this problem, saw only one solution.
	His only solution was to make everyone bear the burden of war equally.
	Rather than have the wealthy on Wall Street and the powerful in Washington send ordinary working class kids to die in their wars for their profit, let us, he argued, instead make everyone bear the burdens and risk of war equally.
	That, he argued, will ensure that the US involves itself only in wars that actually need to be fought.
	Quote, well, it's all a racket, all right.
	A few profit and the many pay.
	But there is a way to stop it.
	You can't end it by disarmament conferences.
	You can't eliminate it by peace parlors at Geneva.
	Well-meaning but impractical groups can't wipe it out by resolutions.
	It can be smashed effectively only by taking the profit out of war.
	The only way to smash this racket is to conscript capital and industry and labor before the nation's manhood can be conscripted.
	One month before the government can conscript the young men of the nation, it must conscript capital and industry and labor.
	Let the officers and directors and the high-powered executives of our armament factories and our munitions makers and our shipbuilders and our airplane builders and the manufacturers of all the other things that provide profit in wartime, as well as the bankers and the speculators, let them be conscripted to get $30 a month, the same wage as the lads in the trenches get.
	Let the workers in these plants get the same wages.
	All the workers, all presidents, all executives, all directors, all managers, all bankers, yes, and all generals, and all admirals, and all officers, and all politicians, and all government office holders.
	everyone in the nation be restricted to a total monthly income not to exceed that pay to the soldiers in the trenches.
	Let all these kings and tycoons and masters of business and all these workers in industry and all our senators and governors and majors pay half of their monthly $30 wage to their families and pay war risk insurance and buy liberty bonds.
	To say that this profit is the main reason why the U.S. fights wars, perhaps that's to overstate the case.
	But it is certainly a major reason why, as he knew, power centers rarely object and are all too happy to cheer for and facilitate these wars.
	They know that the only losers will be those they don't know or care about, the working class people, while they and their families will thrive.
	Call it the David Frum Syndrome.
	Ever since that Canadian neocon came to the United States to attend Yale University and then Harvard Law School, he has cheered and agitated for literally every war.
	Always ensuring that he and his family stay far away from the battlefield at a safe distance, while only Americans send their sons and daughters to fight and risk their lives in wars that make David Frum feel powerful and purposeful and strong.
	People like David Frum and the imbalance of risk and benefit he exploits for his own self-interest is why America not only continues to involve itself in wars, but it does so without the need for the support of the American people.
	Indeed, just as happened in Libya in 2011, when the House of Representatives, charged by the Constitution with declaring war, rejected the authorization for Obama to involve the US in that regime change war, only for Obama to ignore that vote and go to war anyway,
	General Butler explained in his tome that the same exact thing happened in World War I. Quote, looking back, Woodrow Wilson was re-elected president in 1916 on a platform that he had, quote, kept us out of war, and on the implied promise that he would keep us out of war.
	Yet five months later, after being re-elected, he asked Congress to declare war on Germany.
	In that five-month interval, the people had not been asked whether they had changed their minds.
	The four million young men who had put on uniforms and marched or sailed away were not asked whether they wanted to go forth to suffer and die.
	Then what caused our government to change its mind so suddenly?
	Money.
	Now, none of what he's describing is in the distant past.
	It's not a relic of history.
	It is happening right now and has been happening for the last several decades.
	As one attempts to figure out why the U.S.
	is willing to risk not only so many of its resources, but also the very dangerous and real prospect of escalation with a nuclear-armed power over who rules the Donbass, one would be well advised on this search for motive to follow General Butler's advice and follow the money.
	One person who knows that is Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky.
	As Fox Business reported this morning, JP Morgan, the nation's largest bank, has signed a memorandum of understanding with Ukraine's President Zelensky with the eye on attracting private capital for a new investment fund to rebuild Ukraine's infrastructure that has been destroyed in its war with Russia, Fox Business has learned.
	Jamie Dimon, JP Morgan's chief executive, has been particularly vocal about the consequences of the conflict, calling it, quote, an inflection point for the Western world for a hundred years.
	Do we get our act together to help win this war, help the Ukrainians, help rebuild Ukraine?
	Note that while he's insisting that the war is of great historic importance, Jamie Dimon has ignored President Zelensky's pleas for young, vibrant men or vibrant men around the world who support the cause of Ukraine to go to Ukraine and help them fight the Russian army.
	He just wants to profit from it and watch as other people die.
	The article went on, quote, "JPMorgan bankers were on the ground in Kiev and other cities dodging bombs and witnessing first-hand how the war has crippled the country's economy." After a series of meetings with various ministers, they met directly with Zelensky on Friday night.
	As a gesture of goodwill on the eve of Sunday's Super Bowl, the bankers also presented Zelensky with a New England Patriots jersey with the number 91 to signify the year Ukraine gained independence from the old Soviet Union, these people say.
	Wall Street has long had its sights on helping rebuild Ukraine, eyeing future investment opportunities as the country moves beyond its war with Russia.
	BlackRock, the world's largest money manager, has signed a memorandum of understanding as well with Zelensky as an investment advisor, and Goldman Sachs is also said to be eyeing opportunities.
	JP Morgan envisions itself as a capital markets advisor to the country, helping it raise money either through a large investment fund or a bank, these people added.
	Now, as we know, it's not going to be the private sector that funds the reconstruction of Ukraine.
	It will be the United States government already spending money for its reconstruction and the EU.
	And then these private vulture funds and corporations and banks will swoop in and profit off of it.
	It will just be yet another transfer of wealth from the American worker and taxpayer to these financial institutions.
	Now, just last month, President Zelensky recorded a personal video in which he explicitly cast himself as pitchman for his war, demanding, as always, a whole new set of weapons he wants the West to send.
	And in return, his appeal was directed to those whom he knows actually run Washington, not our elected leaders who we go and vote for, but the financial institutions that fund both political parties and thus own the government, the nation's multinational bankers and financiers who have been profiting off the backs of working Americans for decades.
	Watch Zelensky showing that he understands the lessons taught by General Butler.
	It is obvious that American business can become the locomotive that will once again push forward global economic growth.
	We have already managed to attract attention and have cooperation with such giants of the international financial and investment world as BlackRock, Morgan and Golden Sox, such American brands as Starlink or Westinghouse have already become part of our Ukrainian way.
	Your brilliant defense systems such as HIMARS or Bradley's are already uniting our history of freedom with your enterprises.
	We are waiting for Patreon.
	We are looking closely at Abrams.
	Thousands of such examples are possible.
	And everyone can become a big business by working with Ukraine.
	In all sectors, from weapons and defence to construction, from communication to agriculture, from transport to IT, from banks to medicine.
	And I believe that freedom must always win.
	Look at the carousel of profitable opportunities in Ukraine if only Ukraine wins the war.
	There's all kinds of different ways to profit.
	Come BlackRock and Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan, all of our benevolent institutions so renowned all over the world for fighting for democracy and everything that's noble.
	And he is barely hiding the fact that the reason that American institutions of power want this war to continue is because the profiteering motives are endless.
	His citizens are dying.
	He just had to increase the punishments for people fleeing the war.
	He's fighting not with a volunteer army, but a conscription army using citizens who are unwilling to fight and die as cannon fodder against the Russian army, all while the US Feeds him and feeds the war seemingly endlessly.
	And I suppose if you wish to, you could dismiss this all as a coincidence.
	The fact that the nation's most powerful, the globe's most powerful financial institutions stand to gain so much.
	You can disregard the observations of General Butler in 1935 if you want, that war is a racket, and pretend that, oh no, in this case it's noble, and it's just a coincidence that so many of the richest institutions will get even richer off the backs of those fighting and dying.
	But that's how war works every time.
	Now, no conspiracy theory is needed to know what's happening.
	You just watch President Zelensky himself explain it in the clearest possible terms, or at least as clear as he can make it while he's reading English from a teleprompter.
	But the official site of the Ukrainian government and its cabinet of ministers has on it a proud statement that says that the Ministry of Economy of Ukraine signed a memorandum with the world's largest investment company, and they're boasting of that, and this is what it reads, quote, The Ministry of Economy of Ukraine and BlackRock...
	The world's largest investment company have signed a memorandum of understanding agreeing on a framework for consultative assistance in developing a special platform to attract private capital for the recovery and support of Ukraine's economy.
	The platform will focus on mobilizing investment in key sectors of Ukraine's economy while taking into account the reconstruction needs resulting from the full-scale Russian invasion.
	In particular, In particular, the agreement signed on November 10, 2022 in Washington, D.C.
	provides that BlackRock's Financial Markets Advisory will consult the Ministry of Economy on creation of a roadmap for the implementation of an investment platform, which will primarily attract private capital.
	This includes the structure of the platform, its mandate, and its governance.
	So again, you have private funds coming from the United States and the EU.
	As people are suffering in winter in the EU, unable to purchase energy, suffering in all kinds of ways for this war.
	And now you have the vultures, BlackRock, that buys up all kinds of real estate property, driving up the prices so high that ordinary Americans can no longer afford to even rent.
	Right in the middle of all of this, seeking to profiteer in completely amoral ways.
	That is what, at least in large part, this war is about.
	Now, you don't have to go back to 1935 and World War I and the interventions of the 1930s to know that this is happening.
	You can look at America's most recent large-scale invasion, which was the war in Iraq.
	And that's exactly what happened There.
	So here we see this report from March of 2013 entitled, America's Other Dark Legacy in Iraq.
	And it puts into horrifying dissent the sectarian violence.
	And while that was happening, according to this report, the United States did a spectacularly poor job of governing the country.
	In fact, corruption was rampant.
	The report reads, quote, the US-led CPA was deeply corrupt.
	Much of Iraq's revenues from oil sales or other sources went to contracts with U.S.
	companies.
	Of contracts for more than $5 million, 74% went to U.S.
	companies, with most of the remainder going to U.S.
	allies.
	Only 2% went to Iraqi companies.
	So all of this oil went into the hands of American oil companies that swooped in on the backs of American soldiers fighting and dying in this war.
	Over the course of the occupation, huge amounts of money simply disappeared.
	Kellogg Brown and Root, KRB, a subsidiary of Halliburton, which was Dick Cheney's company, received over 60% of the contracts paid for with Iraqi funds, although it was repeatedly criticized by auditors for issues of honesty and competence.
	In the last six weeks of the United States occupation, the United States shipped $5 billion of Iraqi funds in cash into the company to be spent before the Iraqi-led government took over.
	Auditor reports indicated that Iraqi funds were systematically looted by the CPA officials.
	"One contractor received a $2 million payment in a duffel bag stuffed with shrink-wrapped bundles of currency," read one report.
	"One official was given $6.75 million in cash and was ordered to spend it one week before the interim Iraqi government took control of Iraqi funds." U.S.
	officials were apparently unconcerned about the gross abuse of the funds with which they were entrusted.
	In one instance, the CPA transferred some $8.8 billion of Iraqi money without any documentation as to how the funds were spent.
	When questioned about how the money was spent, Admiral David Oliver, the Principal Deputy for Financial Matters in the CPA, replied that he had, quote, no idea and didn't think it was particularly important.
	Billions of dollars of their money, he asked his interlocutor, what difference does it make?
	That was what happened in the Iraq War.
	Money flying all over the place with no safeguards and with the US profiteering in every conceivable way off the backs of the people who fought and died.
	Imagine What will happen in Ukraine, long documented as the most corrupt company in Europe?
	Now, again, you may think that this isn't the real reason for the war.
	The real reason is because we're so eager to protect democracy in Ukraine.
	We love the Ukrainians so much.
	We want them to have a democratic government, even while we prop up some of the most despotic regimes in the world in Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, and Jordan, and Qatar, and Egypt.
	Nonetheless, somehow you may believe that we're really there to fight for democracy.
	But what is unquestionably true Is that the war is a racket.
	That all of the institutions that always profiteer off everybody suffering in misery in the United States, who run the government for their own benefit, are like vultures circling Ukraine.
	And President Zelensky is very eager to partner with them, because he himself has gotten very wealthy in his career.
	He was part of the Panama and Pandora Papers, showing that he has large amounts of money in offshore accounts.
	And this war is the perfect opportunity to profit even more.
	So we will continue to follow this war and continue to search for a motive as to why the United States, a year into the war, is still so eager to pour its own resources into it.
	Now, let's move topics.
	Last night was the event that brings more Americans together in front of the television than any other, which was the Super Bowl.
	And as always happens, there was a lot of propaganda for corporate America and also a lot of propaganda for the U.S.
	military.
	And one of the ads run by the U.S.
	military, in addition to their flyovers with fighter jets and the like that they do, Was an ad that was paying tribute to Pat Tillman, the former NFL star who joined the military right after 9-11.
	Watch what they showed about him.
	As athletes we play a football game which, you know, times like this you stop and think about just how, not only how good we have it, but what freedoms were allowed.
	A day after 9-11, Pat Tillman knew he could do more.
	He gave up his NFL career to join the U.S.
	Army Rangers and ultimately lost his life in the line of duty.
	Today, Pat's principles live on in an organization that bears his name and its scholarship recipients who embody his spirit.
	Like Tillman, Dave Prakash felt compelled... Okay, so this is from the Pat Tillman Foundation.
	It's obviously a noble foundation that's trying to raise money for veterans who are injured or who are killed in the line of duty.
	But the case of Pat Tillman was an extremely disturbing one, because he was extremely important to American propaganda right after 9-11.
	It was obviously an inspiring story of this football player who had the opportunity to make millions of dollars playing in the NFL to get very wealthy and to pursue celebrity.
	And instead of that, he sacrificed all of that in order to go fight for his country out of anger over 9-11.
	That was actually a more common story than people realize.
	The source with whom I work to be able to report on the NSA, Edward Snowden, had a very similar trajectory.
	After 9-11, he became convinced that the best way he could devote his life was to fight for the United States or work within the security state.
	He was someone who came from a family that was lower middle class.
	His father was in the Coast Guard.
	He signed up for basic training.
	He wanted to go fight for the United States in Iraq.
	He was convinced that was a noble war.
	Broke both of his legs in basic training, instead ended up at the CIA and then the NSA, and from there became very disillusioned, realizing that what the US government had taught him to believe it was doing was the opposite of what it in fact was doing.
	That it wasn't actually directing its power to foreign terrorist organizations, but instead was using its technology to spy on American citizens en masse, and became a whistleblower.
	Something very similar happened to Pat Tillman.
	While over in Afghanistan, he became very disillusioned about the war, and in particular turned against the Iraq War, was opposed to the Iraq War, as a betrayal of what he thought he was doing in Afghanistan, namely fighting not against foreign countries that had no involvement in 9-11, but instead which We're the ones directly responsible for it.
	And he became vocal about his opposition to 9-11.
	And the story that was told about how he died in Afghanistan turned out to be false.
	The story that was told was that he died in the line of duty as a result of enemy fire.
	That was the story that was told from the very beginning.
	And he obviously became a major hero and symbol of the nobility of the war on terror.
	You may remember a woman by the name of Jessica Lynch, who we were told was somebody caught in a vicious firefight in Iraq and as she was watching her comrades around her being killed, she fought her way out of a ditch.
	by shooting a bunch of Iraqi insurgents and got her way to safety, that turned out to be completely untrue as well.
	Both of these stories, these iconographies of America post-9-11 propaganda, turned out to be based on a mountain of lies.
	That was one of the things that was eye-opening for me as a journalist early on, when I was, like most Americans, was supportive of the idea that we were going to go and take vengeance upon the people who had attacked us on 9-11, been only for the war to quickly morph into something very different.
	One that, as we just showed you, was based on profiteering, was based on lies, was based on all kinds of different motives.
	And Pat Tillman was one of the people who started to believe that.
	Now, I had been reporting on what happened in the Pat Tillman case for a long time.
	If you go back when I was writing Back in Salon in 2007, the headline under which I wrote was the Pat Tillman and Jessica Lynch frauds.
	There is nothing unusual about these frauds.
	They are the natural and common byproduct of our political and media institutions.
	Then I referred to House hearings that had taken place where family members of both Pat Tillman and Jessica Lynch had been complaining that the stories disseminated about their family members were false.
	And of course, as usual, the lies were cooked up by the US security state and then fed to gullible media outlets.
	The Washington Post in particular is the one that ran uncritically this story about Jessica Lynch and how she fought her way out of danger.
	And she was offended that her personal experience was distorted in this way for propagandists So I've been covering this for a long time.
	And it turned out that this story about Pat Tillman and how he was killed itself was actually quite fraudulent.
	And Pat Tillman's brother, who like him, ended up going to fight in Afghanistan and also became disillusioned about the war.
	Complained rather vehemently, as did the Tillman family, that they were lied to about how he was killed.
	It turned out he wasn't killed by enemy fire.
	He was killed instead by friendly fire, by troops behind him shooting and having those bullets end up buried in his skull.
	And the investigation to find out what happened, two separate investigations carried out by the Pentagon, ended up, according to the Inspector General of the Pentagon, to have been handled extremely correctly, to the point where they ended up affirming a series of events That were clearly untrue.
	Let me show you the testimony from Pat Tillman's brother before the house in April of 2007.
	This is Kevin Tillman who, as I said, like his brother, went and enlisted and fought in Afghanistan and became disillusioned.
	Mortal danger.
	Corporal Tillman illustrated that he would not fail his comrades.
	His actions are in keeping with the highest standards of the United States Army.
	This was a narrative that inspired countless Americans, as intended.
	It was one small problem with a narrative, however.
	It was utter fiction.
	The narrative was utter fiction about his brother and what happened to him and how he died.
	And as he said, it wasn't fiction by accident.
	It was fiction deliberately in order to give the American people a feel-good story about what we were doing over in Afghanistan and Iraq.
	And it came at the expense of the truth and about the expense of what really happened to Pat Tillman, something that yesterday's commercial completely obscured by making this feel-good story and this feel-good narrative repeated that he was inspired by 9-11 to go fight for his country and died in the line of duty.
	Listen to Kevin Tillman's brother continue.
	The content of the multiple investigations reveal a series of contradictions that strongly suggest deliberate and careful misrepresentations.
	We appeal to this committee Because we believe this narrative was intended to deceive the family, but more importantly, to deceive the American public.
	Pat's death was clearly the result of fratricide.
	Revealing that Pat's death was a fratricide would have been yet another political disaster, during a month already swollen with political disasters, and a brutal truth that the American public would undoubtedly find unacceptable.
	So the facts needed to be suppressed.
	An alternative narrative had to be constructed.
	Crucial evidence was destroyed, including Pat's uniform, equipment, and notebook.
	The autopsy was not done according to regulation, and the field hospital report was falsified.
	An initial investigation completed within 8 to 10 days, before testimony could be changed or manipulated, and which hit disturbingly close to the mark, disappeared into thin air, and was conveniently replaced by another investigation with more palatable findings.
	This freshly manufactured narrative was then distributed to the American public.
	And we believe the strategy had the intended effect.
	It shifted the focus from the grotesque torture at Abu Ghraib and a downward spiral of an illegal act of aggression to a great American who died a hero's death.
	So that's some pretty direct and incriminating things he's saying about the government and military he himself went to serve.
	He's not saying that they, in the fog of war, got the story wrong.
	He's saying they deliberately lied about what happened to his brother.
	And that the investigations that were carried out by the Pentagon were designed to destroy the evidence.
	For some reason, to this very day, nobody knows why, once Pat Tillman was killed, as it turned out by friendly fire, his notebook and his other possessions were burned.
	So that they were unavailable to investigators.
	This turned out, right as it was being emerged, that Pat Tillman had become, as I said, a critic of US foreign policy, of the Bush-Cheney and neocon foreign policy approach.
	He had been reading anti-war tracks, including Noam Chomsky, while in Afghanistan.
	He had become an outspoken critic of the war in Iraq, at a time that the war in Iraq was going very badly.
	And we have no idea why it was that he ended up being killed by friendly fire or why his possessions were burned and the evidence of what happened deliberately destroyed as part of two separate military investigations.
	But it's not only his brother who ended up saying that, it's also the Inspector General of the Pentagon that was tasked with With trying to find out what happened.
	Here you see the Inspector General's report of the United States Department of Defense.
	It's incredibly incriminating what they said.
	Let me just share it with you since Pat Tillman's image and this story was resurrected on a day that more Americans are sitting in front of their television together watching TV and having their brains injected with information than on any other day.
	We concluded that the first two investigations conducted by officers in Corporal Tillman's Battalion and Regiment under Army Regulation AR-15-6, quote, Procedures for Investigating Officers and Boards of Officers, were tainted by the failure to preserve evidence, a lack of thoroughness, the failure to pursue logical investigative leads, and conclusions that were open to challenge based on the evidence provided.
	More significantly, neither investigator visited the site to visually reenact the incident, secure physical evidence, take photographs, or obtain accurate measurements.
	In addition, the first investigative officer, with advice from his legal advisor, withheld information concerning suspected fratricide from medical examiners who raised questions based on anomalies they discovered during the autopsy.
	As a result, the first two investigations lacked credibility and contributed to perceptions that Army officials were purposely withholding key information concerning Corporal Tillman's death.
	Witnesses testified that Corporal Tillman maintained a personal journal and that after his death, unit personnel searched for the journal but failed to locate it.
	SFC, redacted, and 1SG, redacted, their names are redacted, testified they searched Corporate Tillman's belongings to include his rucksack, duffel bag, and equipment without finding the journal.
	1SG further stated that before burning the mole vest and uniform, he put on rubber gloves and went through all of the pockets on the desert camouflage uniform, shirt, and pants, and the pouches of the mole vest, several times specifically looking for the journal, but did not find it.
	Two other Rangers each reported locating a memo pad or notebook in equipment Cpl.
	Tillman was wearing at the time of his death.
	SSG Redacted, who assisted the CPT, stated he found a small memo pad in the pocket of Cpl.
	Tillman's Ranger body armor vest cover.
	He described the pad as an olive drab colored field weatherproof memo pad approximately 2 inches by 4 inches by 1 quarter inch thick with light green pages marked with grid lines.
	He said he did not see a name on the pad and only examined the first few pages which contained what appeared to be handwritten notes from an operational briefing.
	SSG stated that because of the operational information in the memo pad, he burned it along with the clothing and Ranger body armor.
	They burned his journal.
	Additionally, SFC recalled finding a notebook, pens, and pencils in one of the pouches of Colonel Tilghman's molly vest.
	He testified that he placed the items in a Ziploc bag, which he gave to FSC Redacted.
	When asked about this, FSC Redacted stated he did not receive those items from FSC and would have remembered such an event since he had been searching for the journal.
	We could not resolve the discrepancy in the testimony.
	So, some people have put this together to try and allege that he was deliberately killed to silence an anti-war voice.
	I don't think the evidence proves that that was the case.
	But what definitely, definitely happened was that the U.S. military lied, according to the Tillman family, on purpose about what happened so that they could produce a feel-good propaganda story about his death at a time when the Abu Ghraib revelations by Seymour Hirsch, by the way, were being divulged, and they needed on purpose about what happened so that they could produce a feel-good
	And having Pat Tillman be this hero who died at enemy fire by the terrorists and by the Taliban and by al-Qaeda was something that served the government's interest, even though it turned out to be completely untrue.
	There's no question now that he died by enemy fire, by fraticide.
	And then the army covered up in two separate investigations exactly what happened and there were witnesses said that they personally burned his journal, the place where he was writing down his ideas and thoughts about the war and the military among other things.
	So to watch the Super Bowl, Which already contains enormous amounts of disturbing propaganda, including having fighter jets fly over the stadium and making us at the moment that we're already connected to this feeling of national identity and pride when it comes to football and the feelings of power and aggression and strength that it brings, connect that to pride in the military?
	We just saw this bizarre spectacle when the military went and blew up out of the sky what is called the Chinese Sky Balloon.
	And the thing that really struck me about that, and I found very bizarre, was the clear sense of pride that so many people seem to have in this.
	People like watching their country blow up things.
	Adam Smith warned of this back in 1776, that there comes this kind of pulsating sense of excitement and purpose and strength that comes from watching from afar as we blow up things, your government blows up things.
	Of course the U.S.
	military well would hope After all, these hundreds of billions of dollars every year to build the world's most sophisticated military has the capacity to blow an unarmed balloon out of the sky.
	That shouldn't be particularly exciting and yet news outlets were made sure they filmed it at the exact moment that it happened because they knew people would find it so entertaining.
	That kind of propaganda is very powerful, this display of military force.
	And I would suggest that it plays a big role in why we are able to be convinced every time our government has a new order present to us, connected to some kind of propaganda about the positive things it's intended to do in the world, the way it makes us feel good about ourselves, to convince us to support it each and every time.
	But the Pat Tillman case was particularly disturbing to see included in that because the way in which he died and the behavior of both the military and the media in disseminating false narratives about it and then covering up the truth
	was really quite a dark and disturbing moment in recent American war history and to see that now turn into this feel-good story stripped of all its context as part of the Super Bowl was something that I thought deserved at least some comment and correction.
	Now turning to our final story of the day, which is this remarkable fact that the truth about Russiagate and particularly the lies told right before the 2020 election to protect Joe Biden from the New York Post reporting are finally emerging.
	Everybody now knows The CIA and the intelligence community disseminated a false narrative, namely that the materials on that laptop were Russian disinformation and therefore should be ignored.
	The media disseminated that mindlessly over and over.
	They ratified that lie right before the election.
	And then big tech censored on the basis of it.
	And we all know now that's false.
	Even the New York Times, CNN, the Washington Post all acknowledge that laptop all along was not Russian disinformation, but instead was authentic.
	And now what's happening is they're all turning on each other.
	It's too much any longer to ignore that they all did this.
	How can these major media outlets continue to ignore A major lie that was disseminated by all of our nation's most powerful institutions at the same time that they claim that they stand for protection of the public against disinformation.
	It's too brazen even for them.
	And so look what we have here.
	In February 2023, almost two years and three months later, a fact check by the Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler who finally went and fact-checked
	Joe Biden's claims, which he repeated over and over during the 2020 election, whenever it was brought up, about his son and about his own business activities in China and Ukraine, that the materials on which those claims are based and those questions were Russian disinformation.
	Everyone knows what Biden said was a lie.
	It came from the CIA and the media, and that enabled Biden to lie about it.
	For whatever reason, two years and three months later, The Washington Post is doing what they should have done in October of 2020, fact-checking those claims.
	So here's the claims the Washington Post is purporting to fact-check today.
	Donald Trump, this is from the debate, quote, it's the laptop from hell.
	This is how Joe Biden responded.
	Look, there are 50 former national intelligence folks who said what he's accusing me of is a Russian plan.
	They have said this has all the characteristics.
	Four or five former heads of the CIA, both parties, say what he's saying is a bunch of garbage.
	Nobody believes it except him and his good friend, Rudy Giuliani.
	And then Trump replied, you mean the laptop is now another Russia, Russia, Russia hoax?
	You've got to be, and Biden interrupted and said, that's exactly what I'm saying.
	That's one statement from Biden that the Washington Post two years and two months later decided spontaneously to fact check.
	The other is this from 60 Minutes.
	60 Minutes asked the then-presidential frontrunner, do you believe the recent leak of material allegedly from Hunter Biden's computer is part of a Russian disinformation campaign?
	Biden, quote, from what I've read and know, the intelligence community warned the president, Trump, that Giuliani was being fed disinformation from the Russians.
	And we also know that Putin is trying very hard to spread disinformation about Joe Biden.
	And so when you put the combination of Russia, Giuliani, and the president together, you assess what it is.
	It's a smear campaign because he has nothing he wants to talk about and is, what is he running on?
	What is he running on?
	So there was Joe Biden twice in the debate and on 60 Minutes affirming an absolute lie that these materials were spread by Russian disinformation.
	Now, the fact check should be very quick and very easy.
	Glen Casler should assign four Pinocchios, or whatever the rating is, that childish rating is, to lies.
	But instead, he has this remarkable nuance that he brings to it.
	But within it, some very interesting thing happens.
	So he begins by saying, quote, nothing happens in a vacuum.
	For many political journalists and social media companies, the New York Post reporting on the emails was déjà vu.
	The leaks of emails from the DNC and Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta may have contributed to Donald Trump's unexpected victory in 2016.
	News organizations vowed to do better in 2020 and be extra cautious with hacked materials.
	Now let's just stop there for a minute.
	Because that's exactly what happened.
	In 2016, accurate and true information about Hillary Clinton was released.
	News outlets did what they were supposed to do, which was report on those materials.
	Maybe that helped defeat Hillary Clinton.
	That's what happens when secrets about a candidate get exposed, as what happens with WikiLeaks.
	It reflects poorly on the candidate and fewer people want to vote against her.
	And what the Washington Post is admitting is they wanted to prevent a repeat of that.
	They wanted to ensure that what happened in 2016 didn't happen in 2020.
	Namely that true information that was incriminating about Joe Biden would be exposed because that would risk having Donald Trump win again and they wanted to make sure that didn't happen.
	And so media outlets implemented new plans about how they would deal with true documents about Joe Biden and how they would make sure they didn't get reported this time but instead got hidden.
	They're now admitting that that's what they did.
	Now, the Washington Post recounts how this happened.
	They're saying, that night, meaning after Donald Trump was accused of spreading Russian disinformation, quote, Politico published a story with an explosive headline, quote, Hunter Biden's story is Russian disinformation, dozens of former intel officials say.
	That article, the one from Politico, the first to report it, said that more than 50 senior intelligence officials, including five CIA chiefs, had signed a letter saying the release of the emails, quote, has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.
	That's what Biden referred to in the presidential debate in on 60 Minutes, though his wording was much stronger than the letters.
	Biden said the letter said the laptop story was, quote, a Russian plan, a bunch of garbage, disinformation from the Russians, and a smear campaign.
	The letter artfully did not say any of those things.
	So the intelligence community issued a letter saying, look, we don't have evidence for this, but we believe strongly this has all the hallmarks of a Russian disinformation campaign, knowing that the way this would work is that the Democratic Party and the media would take this letter and would discredit the reporting by saying it was Russian disinformation.
	And that's exactly what happened.
	Now, let me show you this tweet from October of 2020.
	This is by Glenn Kessler, the fact checker for the Washington Post.
	And this is what he said two weeks before the election.
	Here's the Washington Post's policy regarding hacked or leaked material during the final weeks of election season.
	Be careful what is in your social media feeds.
	The reporters and fact-checkers from our nation's leading media outlets were warning people to ignore that story, to proceed with caution on this story, because they were afraid that what happened in 2016 would happen in 2020, and Donald Trump would get re-elected.
	Namely, that true information would be revealed.
	And they implemented this new policy specifically to suppress that information.
	After he describes what happened in the political article and he says that Joe Biden essentially lied about what was in the letter, went way beyond what the letter said.
	They, Glenn Kessler says, quote, he reached out to the 12 people who received Jim Jordan's letter.
	So Jim Jordan, now in control of the committee, is investigating what happened here.
	He sent a letter to 12 intelligence officials who signed on to that letter back before the 2020 elections, saying falsely that the laptop was Russian disinformation.
	According to Glenn Kessler, most of those people did not respond to the Washington Post inquiry, but we learned the letter was organized by Michael J. Murrell, former deputy director of the CIA, and written and edited by a number of senior intelligence officials who had served in both Republican and Democratic administrations.
	Morrell had long been considered a top candidate for CIA director in a Biden administration, news reports say, but key Democrats objected, claiming he publicly supported the CIA's enhanced interrogation methods after the September 11th attack.
	So the person who organized this lie, this letter, saying that the information about Joe Biden was based on Russian disinformation, Michael Morrell, was a leading candidate to become CIA director if Biden won.
	And that was how the letter got assembled, and that was the reason why.
	They wanted to ensure Donald Trump got defeated, and to do that, they invented a lie that they vested their credibility in as intelligence officials, knowing the media would eat it up.
	Now, one of the people the Washington Post did get to speak to finally was James Clapper, who signed onto the letter and is always at the center of all of this.
	And they asked him about the Politico article.
	Let me show you the Politico article, and then I'm going to come back to this, because this is a crucial part of it.
	So here's the Politico article.
	Here's the first time that a media outlet reported that the New York Post's reporting was, quote, Russian disinformation.
	It was by Natasha Bertrand, who, as we've shown you before, was at the center of almost every Russiagate lie.
	She was the one who started the lie about, Trump having a direct server to a Russian bank, Alpha Bank.
	And every time she told a lie, she got promoted.
	She went from Business Insider to MSNBC, to The Atlantic, then to Politico, which is where she did this lie.
	And for being the one to break the story first, this lie, here you see the headline of the political article.
	Quote, Hunter Biden story is Russian disinformation, dozens of former Intel officials say.
	She was the first one to uncritically report this.
	Quote, "More than 50 former intelligence officials signed a letter casting doubt on the providence of a New York Post story on the former Vice President's son." This article should go down the annals of journalistic disgraces.
	It did nothing but take the claims of the intelligence community that they admitted they had no evidence for and declared it to be true.
	Hunter Biden's story is Russian disinformation by Natasha Bertrand, published by Politico.
	And as a result of that lie, she got promoted once again to CNN, which is where she now appears and works on camera all the time.
	That's how you get promoted.
	By CNN, you lie.
	Also at CNN is James Clapper, who signed on to this letter.
	So all of the liars involved in this propaganda ended up at CNN.
	Now, James Clapper is confronted by the Washington Post, who wants to understand why it was that he signed a letter containing this false claim.
	And Clapper is trying to say, look, it wasn't us who lied.
	It was the media.
	It was Politico.
	We didn't say these documents were Russian disinformation.
	We simply said we believe it might be.
	He's trying to parse it that way.
	And that the Politico then took that letter, which is very reasonable in his view, and they're the ones who turned it into something that it wasn't.
	So now James Clapper is blaming His CNN colleague Natasha Bertrand and Politico for lying about what the letter said.
	They're all turning on each other.
	Listen to what James Clapper is doing now to get the blame off of himself for this lie and put it on to Politico and Natasha Bertrand.
	Quote.
	There was message distortion.
	Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told the fact checker in a telephone interview, all we were doing was raising a yellow flag that this could be Russian disinformation.
	Politico deliberately distorted what we said.
	Deliberately distorted what we said.
	He said he was unsure of how Biden described the letter during the debate.
	So Clapper is trying to say, all we did was say it might be true.
	The people who took it and made it a lie was Politico, Natasha Bertrand, and the Biden campaign.
	They're the ones who said this was Russian disinformation.
	Now, all these parties are to blame, including James Clapper.
	Let me show you, in case you are inclined to believe James Clapper, which is never a good idea, what Clapper himself was saying at the time.
	First of all, note that at no point when Politico and the media was saying this, That these 51 intelligence officials concluded that the laptop was Russian disinformation.
	At no point did James Clapper, back then, stand up and say, wait a minute, the media is distorting deliberately our letter.
	Our letter doesn't say that.
	Our letter just says it might be Russian disinformation.
	And these media outlets have gone too far.
	The Biden campaign, Joe Biden himself, are going way too far in stating that it is.
	Why didn't he say that back then?
	Why is he only saying it now?
	Because he wanted the media to disseminate the lie back then.
	He knew exactly what he was doing.
	He knows how the media works.
	And if you have any doubt about that, listen to what Clapper himself said right at the same time.
	Watch what he said on CNN to Aaron Burnett.
	And you tell me, was James Clapper being this cautious, nuanced, careful, sober analyst of the facts as he's now trying to depict himself, or was he feeding that lie on purpose?
	Listen to your, in your own words, in his own words in October of 2022.
	Obama.
	So, Judge, there are a bunch of questions from this.
	Let me just start with this.
	How much does the source matter, right?
	So you hear the story of this laptop, we don't know a lot.
	We do know that the way that this information is getting out is through Steve Bannon and Rudy Giuliani.
	How much does the source matter here?
	Well, the source matters a lot, and the timing matters a lot, I think.
	And to me, this is this classic textbook Soviet-Russian tradecraft at work.
	This is classic Soviet Russian tradecraft at work.
	Period.
	It's a declarative statement.
	He's not saying this could be the Russians.
	He specifically said, and there you see he worked for CNN.
	He's not a guest.
	He's their national security analyst.
	Somehow now these media outlets take people from the U.S.
	security state who get caught lying and hire them to deliver the news.
	And here's Clapper doing exactly what he denied he did, which is stating outright that this came from the Russians.
	Listen to the rest.
	The Russians have analyzed the target.
	They understand that the president and his enablers crave dirt on Vice President Biden, whether it's real or contrived, it doesn't matter to them.
	And so all of a sudden, two and a half weeks before the election, this laptop appears somehow, and emails on it without any metadata.
	It's just, it's all very curious.
	So here you have a willing target and the Russians who are very sophisticated about how to exploit a willing target.
	And to me, that's what's at work here.
	So first of all, his claim that they had no metadata.
	He had no idea whether that was true.
	It was in the possession of the FBI and the New York Times.
	Beyond that, the FBI itself had concluded that the laptop was authentic.
	They knew it wasn't Russian disinformation.
	They were investigating Hunter Biden based on the materials they found there.
	That's why there's a criminal investigation against Hunter Biden for tax evasion and fraud because of the documents they found on the laptop, which the FBI knew was true.
	But it was all of them Who are spreading this lie.
	There's Erin Burnett sitting there quietly nodding her head.
	She doesn't ask a single critical question.
	This was a lie disseminated by every major institution of power in the United States that wanted Donald Trump to lose the election.
	And for a year and a half or two years now, it's been incredibly clear that they did that.
	But they just refused to acknowledge it.
	Not a single media outlet, not one, that spread this lie.
	This is all over CNN, MSNBC, and NBC.
	Not one of them went back and said, you remember how we spent two weeks before the election telling you that these materials were not real, that they were instead Russian disinformation?
	Well, we have something to confess.
	It turns out what we told you is false.
	The New York Times, the Washington Post, even we, CNN, have now authenticated these materials.
	It turns out they were real all along.
	They didn't come from Russia.
	They came from exactly where the New York Post said they came from.
	Hunter Biden left the laptop at a repair shop in Delaware and never picked it up.
	And because of that, the owner of the store handed over the laptop to the FBI and then to Rudy Giuliani.
	The only media outlet that had to acknowledge that they lied was the Daily Beast because they were sued by the owner of the repair shop because they had described it as a stolen laptop attributing a crime to him.
	And he sued them and they had to admit, there's an editor's note saying, we described this as theft and we apologize, it wasn't.
	It was his right to have it because after 90 days it becomes the property of the store.
	But all along, throughout the media, this lie was pervasive.
	And now, finally, they're forced to confront it.
	It took the Washington Post two years and two months to fact check this story, because the House hearings are forcing them to acknowledge what they did.
	But instead of accepting blame, they're doing what they always do, which is turning on each other, parsing words, and lying about what it is that they said to escape blame.
	Nonetheless, the fact that James Clapper, a CNN employee, is accusing Politico and Natasha Bertrand of, in his words, deliberately distorting the letter, lying, in other words, is very significant.
	How can CNN continue to just ignore what it is that their own employee is saying about what Natasha Bertrand, who now works at CNN, did?
	Let's just put one more time back on the screen this political article from October 18, 2020.
	This, to me, is worse than what the New York Times did in the run-up to the Iraq war.
	And I'm going to explain why.
	Obviously, the impact isn't worse, necessarily, although we'll never know whether the bearing of the story about Joe Biden's pursuit of profits in Ukraine and China could have swung the election.
	We'll never know that counterfactual.
	But what happened here is it is true to defend the U.S.
	security state, something I don't normally do, that in that letter, they did say, we don't have proof.
	They said, it's our belief based on our experience.
	This seems like, they use those kinds of words, knowing how the media outlets and the Democratic Party would take it.
	They would just interpret it to say, oh, look, this is Russian disinformation trying to help Trump win again.
	But the political article has none of these nuances.
	You can see the headline right on the story.
	Everybody involved in this article, especially now that James Clapper is accusing them, not of getting it wrong by accident, but of deliberately lying, should have their careers over.
	They spread a story for which there was never any evidence.
	And there was so much evidence at the time, before the election, that this archive was true.
	There was all kinds of independent verification of it.
	I've gone over this so many times before.
	People on the emails with Hunter Biden, showing Fox News and the Daily Caller, that the emails they got in real time match word for word the key emails in the archive, exactly how archives of this sort are verified all the time.
	I knew enough to know it was authentic, which is why I was willing to stake my career on it to write about it, and then quit the intercept and protest when they wouldn't let me.
	Had it turned out to be fake, that would have been a mar on my journalistic reputation that never would have gone away, and I knew that at the time.
	I was very confident it was authentic.
	It was clear at the time that it was authentic, and they were lying on purpose.
	But whatever else is true, they never had any evidence.
	To allow people to state that this was Russian disinformation.
	There was never any, an iota of evidence that Russia was involved in the production of that laptop or that anything on that laptop was forged.
	And yet here you see it in black and white, Politico and many other news outlets, just as I showed you CNN, disseminated to millions and millions of American voters right as they were going to vote.
	The definitive statement that it was.
	That is a major journalistic scandal, not only because they lied to manipulate an election, but because to this very day there's been no accounting for it.
	That is the hallmark of a rotted and corrupt media outlet.
	When you get something wrong, as you do, and then it's shown to you that you got it wrong, you go and apologize quickly.
	You retract it and you apologize and explain how it happened.
	It shouldn't happen often, but it happens to everybody.
	We're all humans.
	We're going to err over the years.
	There's two or three articles of mine where I had to go do that.
	Nobody likes it, but you go and do it promptly.
	You add a prominent correction to your story saying, I misread this.
	I got this wrong.
	And you tell your readers how that happened, and then they trust you more, because they know that if you get something wrong, you're going to correct it.
	You're trying to get it right.
	What these outlets are doing is trying to get it wrong.
	They're trying to lie.
	And that's why when they get caught lying, they have no incentive to apologize, no desire to apologize, no inclination to apologize, because lying is what they're trying to do.
	They did their job.
	Their job was to elect Joe Biden through lies, and that's what they did.
	In their minds, they have no reason to apologize.
	It's just amazing and encouraging and entertaining to watch them finally have to account for it, though, and to start pointing the finger at one another.
	And whatever else is true, as of right now, James Clapper, the national security analyst for CNN, is accusing Politico and his CNN colleague Natasha Bertrand, in his own words, of having deliberately distorted the story in order to help Joe Biden win.
	That is a major problem for CNN, and I'm sure they will ignore it, and that's why the media itself is collapsing.
	Nobody trusts them.
	Nobody puts faith in what they're saying, because everybody knows that this is what they're for.
	So I'm grateful that this is all happening.
	I want to watch them point fingers at one another over and over and over.
	Whatever they do to finally have to live up to the fact that they disseminated a lie right before the election is, in my view, something very positive.
	So that concludes our show for this evening.
	It is Monday so on Tuesday and Thursday we have our after show on Locals.
	We'll be back not only tomorrow night for a full show on Rumble here at 7 p.m.
	Eastern but also our after show on Locals.
	To join our Locals community just click join which is the right the red button in the

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