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March 31, 2023 - System Update - Glenn Greenwald

01:34:19

BREAKING: New York Grand Jury Indicts Donald Trump

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Time	Text
	.
	Good evening.
	It's Thursday, March 30th.
	Welcome to a new episode of System Update, our 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, the most breaking of breaking news.
	Democrats finally have what they have been openly craving for more than six years.
	The indictment of former President Donald Trump.
	A grand jury in Manhattan working at the direction of the liberal Manhattan prosecutor Alvin Bragg voted this afternoon to indict Trump on still unknown charges, but we do know they're relating to the claim that he and his then-attorney Michael Cohen paid $130,000 to a former porn star who claimed she had sex with Trump, Stormy Daniels.
	And then, according to the indictment, they used deceptive bookkeeping practices to conceal from the public the motive for that payment.
	To say that this is an extraordinary step is to radically understate the case.
	There's almost no way in words to adequately convey the significance of what just happened.
	Trump has now become the first former president in American history to be indicted.
	Not over actions he allegedly took as president, but over an alleged hush payment and a sex scandal prior to becoming president.
	And not based on clear-cut or well-established precepts of criminal law but instead grounded in dubious and novel theories yet to be approved by any court about whether this would even be a crime if they could prove it.
	And it is not being done with an apolitical appearance but the exact opposite.
	At ground zero for American liberalism in Manhattan.
	Carried out by a just elected Democratic Party prosecutor of the strain heavily supported by Democratic Party mega-donor George Soros, who in fact gave money to the PAC that then promoted Bragg's candidacy.
	We'll look at all the implications of this historic breaking news, examine every angle of it, and as well Try and speak with people who may have insights into it as well.
	Obviously, this is breaking news.
	We restructured the show we had planned because we want to delve as deeply as possible into this breaking news.
	As a programming note, this program is a nightly show that airs every Monday through Friday, every night.
	But both yesterday and on Tuesday, we canceled the program, as we've had to do on several other occasions over the last couple of months.
	As many of you know, my family is still in the middle of an ongoing health crisis precipitated by the hospitalization of my husband last August 6th.
	On that day, he was at a campaign event for a re-election to the Brazilian Congress, experienced severe pain in his abdominal region, went to the ER and was admitted to the ICU with severe inflammation and infection in his bloodstream.
	The medical term for that is sepsis.
	Over the weekend, I published an article, which you can see there on the screen.
	Essentially, it was an essay to describe what this experience has been like, as well as a few insights that I believe I've learned over the past eight months regarding things like gratitude and priorities and the like.
	And we decided to publish that.
	Basically because I felt I had thoughts to share about what this experience has taught me in a way that I thought could help others, not only going through similar things, but just in life in general.
	For those interested, you can read it right here on our local platform, which is part of the Rumble site, where instead of Substack is where I now publish my written journalism exclusively.
	David, though, improving, is still in the ICU, and suffice to say, having to navigate this, and especially having to support and guide our kids as they navigate it, has been, by a great distance, the most difficult challenge of my life.
	So I'm going to cancel the show here, as we did over the last couple of days, and on a few days over the last few weeks.
	It's almost always because of a complication or negative event that he still occasionally confronts.
	On his road to recovery and the need to prioritize that situation and my family and our kids sometimes necessitates cancellation.
	I'm really grateful for the outpouring of support I've received from my longtime audience over this since this began and I felt the occasional cancellations of the show was worth briefly explaining, especially since I hope all of you will read the thoughts I've shared about it over the weekend on our Locals platform and we will provide the link to that article in the notes to the show once it's published on the Rumble page.
	As a reminder, every episode of System Update is available in podcast form on Spotify, Apple, and every other major podcasting platform.
	To follow our show, simply follow us on those platforms.
	The podcast is published 12 hours after the show appears here live every Monday through Friday on Rumble at 7 p.m.
	For now, welcome to a new episode of System Update, starting right now.
	I don't think there is any way to overstate the importance of the news event that broke just a few hours ago as we were preparing our show about other matters, including the pending bills that are allegedly designed to ban TikTok, That's the government with far greater powers and Rand Paul's opposition to those bills and the growing awareness of just how authoritarian they are.
	Those are important topics, but don't compare in terms of significance or, I think, consequence and implication to what happened earlier today in a Manhattan courtroom.
	A grand jury convened by the Manhattan District Attorney, Alvin Bragg, who is a member of the Democratic Party, who was elected by an overwhelmingly liberal and Democratic electorate in New York City, voted to indict former President Trump. who was elected by an overwhelmingly liberal and Democratic electorate The charges specifically are not yet published, which means we don't know exactly what the charges are, but we know what this investigation is about.
	We know what the charges relate to.
	And it's something the public has known about for a long time, knew everything about this case when they went to the voting booth in November of 2016 and voted for Donald Trump despite knowing about this case.
	They knew about it throughout Trump's presidency and they knew about it in 2020 when, despite the extraordinary harms of the COVID pandemic and the economic devastation accompanying the lockdowns, they almost Re-elected him.
	That was a very tightly contested election.
	The article in Time Magazine that's now notorious basically acknowledges the establishment and centers of power in the United States assembled and united in a previously unprecedented way to ensure his defeat, according to that Time Magazine article.
	Virtually every major, powerful institution in the United States that wields significant influence, with a couple of exceptions only, Not only was devoted to Trump's defeat and ensuring he didn't win, but actively conspired to ensure that it happens.
	We've many times gone over the extreme acts undertaken to ensure that Trump would not get reelected, including outright lies that were concocted from the bowels of the CIA and fed to the corporate media, which often mindlessly published them or even published them
	Knowing that they were false, things like the censorship, the brute censorship, not just by Twitter but Facebook as well, the investigation into Joe Biden's activities both in China and in Ukraine that they published right before the election, Twitter and Facebook citing lies told by the CIA and by the corporate media that this was Russian disinformation, suppressed it, prevented it from circulating, ensured that
	An unknown number of American voters, we'll never know how many, didn't hear of that story because it was barred from disseminating, being disseminated on social media.
	As I said, most of the contested states were decided by tens of thousands of votes only.
	We'll never know whether that might have made the difference.
	So you could spend the entire show, as we've spent many months and my years before that doing written journalism, documenting the Radical steps undertaken by the establishment in the United States to ensure that Trump's reelection could not happen, that it would be sabotaged, and they would do everything possible for Joe Biden to win.
	As many of you know, I saw that uphand when I was working inside a media outlet that is, although not perfectly defined as such, is part of the corporate media, which is The Intercept, a media outlet I founded.
	back in 2013 with the funding from Pierre Omidyar, one of the richest men on the planet, and the founder of eBay, who became fanatical in his belief that Russiagate was true, that Trump had conspired with the Russians, that there had who became fanatical in his belief that Russiagate was true, that Trump had conspired with the Russians, that there had never been any evil greater than Donald Trump or Vladimir Putin in the history of the world, that this collusion that he thought had taken place that this
	He devoted all of his resources from what he had previously been doing, which was a wide range of all kinds of political and apolitical activities, into a single-minded focus on ensuring that Donald Trump didn't win.
	As a result, or not as a result directly, but at the same time, senior editors of The Intercept, like most senior editors at most corporate media outlets, were essentially unwilling to even report negatively on Donald Trump out of fear that it would help him get reelected or would help Joe Biden were essentially unwilling to even report negatively on Donald Trump out of They were afraid of what their colleagues and friends thought.
	They had their political ideology overwhelmingly suffocating and drowning out any sense of journalistic ethos.
	And just in case after case after case, the institutions of authority in the United States engaged in extremist conduct to ensure that Donald Trump would not win in 2020.
	But that was never enough.
	That was never enough.
	It has been, since Trump won the 2016 election, the number one priority of the Democratic Party and its leaders, and of American liberalism writ large, by which I mean all the other institutions that became part of this establishment plot to sabotage Trump's reelection.
	And again, that's not my saying that there was a plot.
	The most mainstream of mainstream outlets, Time Magazine, the thing we all read in our dentist's office when we were children.
	wrote a long article explaining what this establishment collusion was.
	And we all saw it with our own eyes.
	The leaders of both parties in the intelligence community, throughout the corporate media, even longtime Republicans, petrified that Trump's challenges to longstanding bipartisan orthodoxy were too destabilizing and too threatening, not just to the country in their view, but to their power.
	Did everything they could to ensure he lost, and he still almost won despite that, despite COVID, despite the economic harm from lockdowns and everything else.
	And yet, as I said, that's still not enough.
	And the reason it's not enough is in part because they're bloodthirsty.
	They absolutely believe in the deepest part of their soul that what Donald Trump did in 2016 was criminal.
	And not just criminal, but one of the worst crimes in American history.
	Namely, he took the presidency away from its rightful owner, which is Hillary Clinton, and he defaced and vandalized all of the secret symbols of Washington.
	And in a way, he actually did do that from their perspective.
	That is a valid perception.
	Trump succeeded in shining a light on all sorts of institutions of authority and power that American leaders, in order to become American leaders, essentially and implicitly agree to keep hidden, not to talk about in terms of it essentially and implicitly agree to keep hidden, not to talk about in
	From the beginning, during the 2016 campaign, Trump would say things like, the way Washington works is, if you're rich like me, you just write a check to anyone that you need a favor from, and the minute you write that check, they get on the phone and they say, hello Mr. Trump, what can I do for you?
	Things that you're not supposed to say and really aren't allowed to say if you want to be an American leader.
	He questioned the viability of NATO.
	He mocked the intelligence community.
	He disputed all sorts of bipartisan tenets, including whether the United States should be going around the world changing governments at our whim.
	He head-on attacked free trade agreements and the entire institution of global neoliberalism.
	And on a lot of those things, he didn't carry through.
	Whether because he was incapable or undisciplined or got surrounded by people who deceived him through flattery and other exploitation of flaws in his character, all things that are on his ledger.
	But whether it's because of inability or a lack of effort or just simply the fact that, as supporters of Barack Obama claimed, you really can't take on these permanent power establishments easily, even if you do try, Whatever the reason is, he failed to carry through on a lot of those things, but the fact that he even said those things was very menacing to institutions of power and authority.
	And you can see in polling data, we will show you the profound changes that had on the Republican Party in terms of how it viewed Wall Street and crony capitalism and the CIA and the FBI and Homeland Security and other American institutions of power on war, on militarism, on corporatism.
	But so in part the reason why they weren't content with having him declared the loser of the 2020 election and Biden inaugurated is in part because they're just so bloodthirsty they fed on a narrative for years that Trump is essentially a Hitler-like figure.
	And if you come to believe that, as most of them did, by them I mean liberal elites, elites who work in these institutions of authority I was just describing, that Time Magazine described, You want that person's destruction.
	You crave it and need it.
	It's a moral imperative.
	You go to watch a film and the bad guy has to die at the end.
	Or has to be, in some way, stopped and destroyed and humiliated.
	And that's all they've been feeding on for years.
	That's what modern mainstream entertainment has become.
	It's what late night TV is.
	It's not just political shows.
	It's everywhere in the cultural ethos.
	People watch anything about Hollywood.
	That's all that you hear.
	Everything is based on this premise.
	The only admission ticket to decent liberal society is that you affirm that Trump is a singular evil, not a reflection of American pathology, not a symptom of it, but the cause of it, the author of it, and that anything and everything that can be done should be done in order to destroy him.
	That was the notorious Sam Harris video that went viral precisely because he so perfectly and honestly articulated his rationale For why he thinks like things like censorship and even disinformation are justified because Trump is such an evil that no other evil even compares to it and therefore it makes it inherently justified.
	So part of it is they believed in their own morality play but the other part is they are petrified for obvious reasons that Trump will return.
	That he will run again as he's doing and that he will win.
	It is almost certain that if Joe Biden survives and is still living at the time that 2023 comes around and into 2024, he will be the Democratic nominee.
	That means that if Trump gets the nomination and polls currently at least show him with a very large lead, To do so, you can take some of those with a grain of salt.
	Around this time in 2000, for the 2008 election cycle, Rudy Giuliani had a 15 or 20 point lead for the Republican nominee nation.
	He didn't get close to that once it actually began.
	So you take this with a grain of salt, but Trump has already proven Trump's not Rudy Giuliani.
	He's actually been the Republican nominee.
	He was the Republican president.
	He's ran twice.
	And is going to run again.
	There's a lot more of a track record for people's opinions of him to be fixed and not subject to easy change.
	That means that Trump is likely to be the Republican nominee and he's going to run against an 82-year-old Joe Biden, who if he wins and is re-elected will be 86, four years short of 90, at the time that his second term ends.
	So when you combine the fact that Trump Almost won in 2020 against Biden, even by the official numbers, and that he had to run despite everything that I've described.
	And then you add to that that Joe Biden will then be the incumbent responsible for all of America's ills, not somebody who can credibly claim to be the opponent to the status quo.
	He will be the status quo.
	It is, anybody rational or serious would have to admit, at least highly likely, if not probable, that Trump will get re-elected in 2024.
	And there is no sure way to stop that, except by criminally charging him, and indicting him, prosecuting him, and convicting him of a crime.
	And that's what happened today.
	That's what this is about, obviously.
	I'm sure they'd love to see Trump in prison.
	These are not the kind of crimes for which people typically go to prison for any long period of time or even at all.
	Non-violent crime that is about some bookkeeping deception.
	That nobody was defrauded, no one was victimized.
	There's an attenuated legal theory that by not disclosing it to the public as what it actually was, namely a hush payment to a porn star, that instead by pretending it was for legal fees, the public didn't get the information it needed.
	But there's no direct victim, there's no violence, there's no serious felony of any kind.
	We're not talking about jail time.
	What we're talking about is the way to stop Trump.
	The only sure way is to render him a felon and render him ineligible or in some other way to try and bargain with him that if you agree not to run, all of this will go away.
	Now, let's just put a few facts on the table that I think are very important.
	Let's start with what I was just talking about, which is the current polling data.
	Remember, the indictment was not just of a former president, but of a current presidential candidate.
	In fact, the one leading Essentially every poll right now.
	There you see on the screen from CNBC just two weeks ago, Trump extends lead over DeSantis in new poll possible GOP primary field.
	Quote, Donald Trump is extending his lead over Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who will likely start as the former president's top competitor in the 2024 Republican presidential primary if he runs.
	According to a poll, a potential GOP field will be released Wednesday.
	Quinnipiac University's latest survey of Republicans and Republican-leaning voters found Trump winning 46% of support in a hypothetical GOP primary field, with DeSantis receiving 32%.
	Now, as I said, polling data can be subject to swings, it can be based on future unknown events, subject to change, but the reality is when it comes to Donald Trump, You don't get much more of a known commodity than he.
	And this poll shows half of the Republican electorate, just short of half, definitively stating they intend to vote for him.
	It is going to be extremely difficult for anyone to change that.
	Even Ron DeSantis.
	And the problem for DeSantis supporters, or for anybody who wants Trump not to win is the only possibility to defeat Trump in a Republican primary would be to have only one alternative behind which everyone who wants Trump's defeat to unite.
	And that could work if politicians weren't completely egotistical or craving publicity and attention.
	Politicians almost by definition are that, and so it's almost impossible to imagine that happening already.
	You have people like Nikki Haley and Mike Pence and Mike Pompeo and potentially others, probably John Sununu or one of those Sununus that constantly get selected in New Hampshire based on nepotistic knowledge of their last name is likely to run.
	So you're going to have maybe Liz Cheney.
	So maybe you're going to have, you know, seven or eight people in addition to Governor DeSantis, but even if it were just Governor DeSantis, you have 46% of Republican voters after seeing everything there is to know about Trump, including the alleged hush payments to Stormy Daniels.
	I doubt that among this 46% of Republican electorate, More than a couple of dozen believe that Trump has been monogamous entirely in his life to his three wives.
	I don't think they care about Strummey Daniels and the proof of that, the best proof, is everyone knew about her before Trump ran the first time and yet he still won.
	So it's almost inconceivable that this would change it except In the sense that it would make it more likely he would win because people will now rally behind him based on the perception that there is a very liberal Soros-funded, and we'll get to that, prosecutor in Manhattan, of all places, trying to imprison Trump based on what just is not about anything significant.
	And so they're scared and they're petrified of that.
	He's been surging, as the article says.
	That's a welcome change for Trump, who held just a 6 percentage point lead over DeSantis in Quinnipiac's February poll of the prospective primary field.
	The ex-president led his possible rival by 42% to 36% margin at the time.
	That was sort of DeSantis' peak.
	to 36% margin at the time.
	That was sort of DeSantis' peak.
	Trump had 42% though even then.
	Asked in the new poll who they would support in a head-to-head matchup between Trump and DeSantis, 51% of respondents chose the former president versus 40% who picked the governor.
	Now, again, if anything, DeSantis has an advantage, which is that people know about him, but they don't know much about him.
	They know that he is somebody who is popular among the Republican base, who is defiant when it comes to the establishment, who was somewhat aggressive in ensuring that Florida remained more open during COVID than closed, something Republican voters certainly like.
	There's been a lot that DeSantis has done that Republican voters know about.
	But there are a lot of spaces to fill in.
	Obviously Trump is a much more known commodity than DeSantis.
	And those spaces are only going to be filled in with negative attacks from Trump, from the media, which I believe wants Trump to get the nomination because they profit and thrive when Trump gets more attention.
	Now here it's not just DeSantis that he's doing very well against, but also Joe Biden.
	So here from the Washington Post-ABC poll in both 2022 and 2023, The question was, if the 2024 presidential election were being held today, and the candidates were Donald Trump, the Republican, and Joe Biden, the Democrat, for whom would you vote?
	There you see Trump in February of 2023 with a three-point lead, 48 to 45.
	And in September of 2022, had a similar lead of 48 to 46.
	So there's absolutely no way to argue that Trump has no chance.
	Or to dispute that, he is an extremely viable candidate in 2024.
	When you have 48% of voters saying two years from the election that they will vote for him and not the incumbent, that is proof that that candidate is extremely viable in order to win.
	And as we know, You don't need to win, especially if they're a Republican candidate, the popular vote, the overall vote, in order to win the Electoral College, as Trump proved in 2016.
	So this shows that he actually has a lead in the overall poll, the overall population against Biden.
	The breakdown of state by state, presumably, would be more favorable.
	So that is what I think the headline needs to be, how we have to conceive of this from the start.
	That a Democratic District Attorney in Manhattan indicted a former president for the first time in American history, but that a very liberal Democratic Manhattan District Attorney indicted the current presidential frontrunner for the 2024 presidential race.
	That is what makes this particularly significant.
	You can deny, if you're really eager to do so, that that was part of the motive.
	But I don't think very many people are going to believe that.
	And that's what makes it so remarkable.
	So I want to just delve into the underlying issue here about whether we should think about former presidents or other top leaders being immunized from being prosecuted because only banana republics prosecute political opponents or whether we should view presidents like any other citizen or former presidents as any other citizen and we should prosecute them when they break the law the way we do every other citizen.
	I have very strong views on that.
	In part because I wrote a book about it in 2011 and in part because the reporting I did in 2019 and 2020 here in Brazil related very, very directly to that principle.
	So first of all let me show you the cover of the book that I wrote.
	You see it there on the screen.
	It's called Liberty and Justice for Some.
	It was published in 2011 and the entire Purpose of that book, there you can see the subtitle, it's How the Law is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful.
	So that gives you a sense of what this book was.
	This book was written in the wake of the announcement by President Obama That although he believed that the Bush administration and leaders of the CIA committed serious crimes as part of the War on Terror, namely instituting camps of torture around the world, which has always been considered a crime internationally and domestically,
	And because he ran in 2008 and won in 2008 based on a promise to be open-minded about whether those responsible for those war and terror crimes should be prosecuted.
	That was one of the promises he made in the 2008 election.
	I was covering it at the time.
	He said, this is not something that should be decided in advance.
	People who work for the CIA, who work for the Bush administration, are citizens like everybody else.
	And if they committed crimes, they should be prosecuted for those crimes.
	We don't have a two-tier system of justice in the United States, he said.
	And he said, I'd be very open to it.
	I'm going to hand it to my attorney general.
	And if he determines the crimes were committed, they will be prosecuted the way any other would.
	But what happened instead is the minute that President Obama was elected, the question became early on in his administration, are you really going to follow through on your promise about whether or not to prosecute people you believe or the Justice Department concludes
	broke the law even though those people are top officials of the CIA who approved this torture regime or even people who worked at the Bush White House who orchestrated and implemented it like Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell and others, Donald Rumsfeld, and in
	January of 2009, so nine days before Obama's inauguration, he was interviewed by ABC News' George Stephanopoulos, who, of course, used to be an official in the Clinton White House.
	And Stephanopoulos raised that issue with him about whether President Obama or President-elect Obama intended to follow through on those commitments.
	Here's what he said.
	The most popular question on your own website is related to this on change.gov.
	It comes from Bob Furtick.
	Will you appoint a special prosecutor, ideally Patrick Fitzgerald, to independently investigate the gravest crimes of the Bush administration, including torture and warrantless wiretapping?
	We're still evaluating how we're going to approach the whole issue of interrogations, detentions, and so forth.
	And obviously we're going to be looking at past practices.
	And I don't believe that anybody is above the law.
	On the other hand, I also have a belief that we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards.
	And part of my job is to make sure that, for example, at the CIA, you've got extraordinarily talented people who are working very hard to keep Americans safe.
	I don't want them to suddenly feel like they've got to spend all their time looking over their shoulders and lawyering.
	So no 9-11 commission with independent subpoena power?
	We have not made final decisions, but my instinct is for us to focus on how do we make sure that moving forward, We are doing the right thing.
	That doesn't mean that if somebody has blatantly broken the law that they are above the law.
	But my orientation is going to be to move forward.
	So let me just press that one more time.
	You're not ruling out prosecution, but will you tell your Justice Department to investigate these cases and follow the evidence wherever it leads?
	What I, I think my general view when it comes to my Attorney General is he is the people's lawyer.
	Uh, Eric Holder's been nominated.
	His job is to uphold the Constitution and look after the interests of the American people, not to be swayed by my day-to-day politics.
	Uh, so, ultimately, he's gonna be making some calls, but my general belief is that when it comes to national security, what we have to focus on is getting things right, uh, in the future, as opposed to looking at what we got wrong in the past.
	You know, you mentioned Eric Holder.
	Now, in a lot of ways, that was such classic Obama, as I sat there and listened, that I haven't seen that until just now in quite a while.
	Because in each, every ten seconds, he's affirming contrary principles, which is what he was a master at doing.
	If you wanted to hear one principle affirmed, nobody's above the law, he gave you that.
	If you wanted to hear the principle that the CIA officials who tortured our patriotic Americans, who love their country and shouldn't be punished for that, and we should look forward and fix our problems and not look backward vindictively, you got to hear that as well.
	Completely contradictory principles that he affirmed.
	He did that all the time.
	But you'll notice that, as George Stephanopoulos said at the start, They set up on his website a ranking system.
	This was part of the genius of the Obama circle.
	They had a bunch of internet experts and they were able to rank the questions of greatest importance to those who had just voted for him.
	And that was the number one question on that site as voted for by his own supporters.
	Will you actually follow through on your promise?
	To prosecute the people who the Justice Department concludes committed crimes, which is what he repeatedly promised to do.
	And you heard him say, although it was again in between completely contradictory statements, that nobody's above the law and if the Justice Department concludes that there were crimes committed, then they should be held accountable.
	But he quickly added, My inclination as Obama, the president, who just got done saying it's not for me to decide, I'm letting you know and I'm letting Eric Holder know, my orientation is we shouldn't do that because we should leave well enough alone.
	Now, this idea that we should look forward and not backward, it's a nice one, but there is no such thing as a criminal prosecution that doesn't look backward.
	That's the whole point of a criminal prosecution is someone did something in the past, That was illegal.
	And then you look backward and you say, what is it they did?
	And the whole point of punishing them...
	It's not to be vindictive, it's to make for a better future going forward because it sends the signal that you actually can't break the law, that if you do, you're going to be punished, otherwise there's no incentive to abide by it.
	And very shortly after that claim, in February or March, President Obama implemented a policy Even though he said it was for Eric Holder to decide who gets prosecuted and who doesn't, he announced immunity, full-scale immunity for anyone involved in what was then called the Enhanced Interrogation Program.
	Now, leave aside whether you believe in torture or not, whether you thought it was right to use it or not.
	There were other crimes committed as part of the War on Terror as well, including spying on American citizens without the warrants required by law that courts ultimately ruled were unconstitutional.
	There were a lot of crimes committed in the name of the War on Terror.
	And when President Obama announced this immunity, I was vehemently opposed to it.
	And I wrote about it frequently.
	So just as one example, here in August of 2012, the article I wrote in The Guardian, I was at The Guardian at the time, Reads, Obama's Justice Department grants final immunity to Bush's CIA torturers.
	And I'll get to the details of this article in just a second.
	But it was essentially the kind of final blow.
	They closed all the remaining cases that left open at least a possibility that somebody who tortured in a particularly gruesome and violent and barbaric way, even ones that deviated from the torture rules that had been authorized, could be prosecuted.
	They closed every single case.
	And so immunity had been bestowed in full to the CIA and the Bush administration.
	And that was the event that prompted me to write that 2011 book.
	Because at the time, and maybe it was naive, I thought it was bizarre that essentially everybody in the media was in agreement That nobody should be prosecuted for things they did as part of the Bush administration on the grounds that we should look forward and not backward.
	I thought to myself, we're in a country in which more of our citizens are imprisoned than any country in the world, both in terms of absolute numbers, even though countries like China and India have far, far, far larger populations.
	We imprison more of our citizens than any other country in the world, including those much more populous countries, and by proportion.
	Not just in terms of raw numbers, but more citizens proportionally as well.
	And there's all kinds of statistics that illustrate how extreme that is, including the fact that America is 5% of the world's population, meaning if you're an American citizen, only 5% of the world's population are Americans, and yet 25%, 25% of the world's prison population and yet 25%, 25% of the world's prison population is in So we are a country that does absolutely believe in imprisoning people.
	Far more than almost any other country.
	And the idea that suddenly when it comes to senior political officials or former presidents or CIA leaders, we have a principle that says they cannot be prosecuted even if they committed crimes.
	Notice Obama wasn't saying they didn't commit crimes.
	He always said he thought they did.
	He was saying, even though they committed crimes, I don't think they should be prosecuted because we need to look forward and not backward.
	I found that bizarre.
	And so I went to write a book trying to find the roots of where this principle came from.
	This principle that while we in prison, Working class people and poor people in gigantic numbers.
	We don't imprison senior political officials except in the most extreme cases, usually when they offend other elites or victimize other elites.
	And what I found was that the root of this principle was the pardon of Richard Nixon by Gerald Ford.
	I don't know if we have that video yet, but Gerald Ford, when he decided to pardon Richard Nixon, and most historians know that that was part of the deal, that Ford would be named vice president, would become president in exchange for his agreement to prosecute Richard Nixon, to pardon Richard Nixon instead of allowing the prosecution to go forward.
	He enunciated principles and he did not say, I'm pardoning Richard Nixon because I don't believe he committed crimes.
	He created this framework that the media now believes in that says, if you are an important enough person, you're a president, you're somebody who people value, you're very important to the economy, Then the harms from prosecuting you are so great, we'll have political disruption and turmoil.
	Everyone will focus on these things instead of the things we need to focus on.
	That essentially, if you're important enough, you have immunity.
	We will pardon you in the name of the public good.
	We will immunize you.
	We will protect you.
	Now, again, the pardon of Richard Nixon by the Earl Ford was a very complicated and controversial decision.
	So I'm not suggesting that you look at that in isolation.
	I'm suggesting you don't.
	You may be somebody who thought that was the right decision.
	It's really worth going back and digging into the history of that as I did for that book because that was an unheard of principle by which I do not mean that prior to the pardon of Nixon the American justice system was equal.
	Of course it's always been the case and always will be the case that if you're very wealthy and powerful As a rule, you will be less likely to be prosecuted or convicted or imprisoned because you can hire the best lawyers and for lots of other reasons.
	It was the first time it was enunciated so explicitly by the political class that certain people are too important to be prosecuted because of the turmoil they will create.
	That was the argument for President Obama's refusal and his Justice Department's refusal to prosecute anybody who committed systemic fraud that led to the 2008 financial crisis.
	Apologists will say none of them committed real crimes.
	There was plenty of evidence of criminality.
	But you can hear Obama, you can hear Eric Holder, you can hear Timothy Geithner, Obama's Treasury Secretary, using this principle first enunciated by Ford.
	That our economy can't withstand the turmoil and disruption of prosecuting major Wall Street institutions when we're so fragile as an economy.
	So we got re-invoked to protect Wall Street.
	It got re-invoked to protect people who committed crimes.
	And this is the standard principle of our elite class.
	You could almost find nobody who worked for corporate media who thought that CIA torturers or criminals in the Bush administration should be prosecuted.
	Almost none.
	The same thing happened in the Iran-Contra scandal where George Bush I, 41, pardoned all kinds of officials in his own administration, in the Reagan administration, even though he himself was implicated by that prosecution, and everybody applauded.
	There's a liberal columnist at the Washington Post, Richard Cohen, who's been around for So many years that he was probably writing before Joe Biden went to the Senate.
	And he had a famous column where he said, Kaplanberger walks free and I'm cheering.
	And it was all about how he knows Kaplanberger.
	He sees him at the Safeway in Washington.
	He knows him.
	He likes him.
	He's not the kind of person that should be inside a criminal courtroom.
	This has been the ethos for decades.
	That we do not prosecute former political officials.
	That's something that's done only in third world countries.
	And I wrote a book arguing against that principle.
	Saying that we cannot have an immunity for our elite class because if we do, you incentivize lawbreaking the same way as you incentivize lawbreaking if you allow ordinary citizens to go unpunished when they break the law.
	So I am not somebody Who believes that inherently Donald Trump should be immunized from prosecution because he's too important.
	I'm not somebody who believes that because there'd be political turmoil, we should not prosecute a former president, Donald Trump or anyone else, if he actually committed serious crimes.
	I'm not somebody who believes that.
	I believe the opposite.
	That it is very dangerous to immunize political elites.
	And that's what this Guardian article was about.
	That's what that book was about.
	I've been arguing this for a long time.
	So I say all that to make clear that I am not on board this view that Trump should just be inherently immunized from prosecution because he's a former president or even because he's leading in the polls to be the new president.
	That's not something I believe.
	I think it's a very dangerous thing.
	I think banana republics, or whatever you want to call them, third world countries, however you want to disparage other countries, sometimes they do prosecute political officials for political reasons.
	But oftentimes, what defines a banana republic is that the law is only for the powerless and not for the powerful, not for elites.
	Elites break the law with impunity, and jails are only for the powerless.
	That, to me, is what defines a banana republic, a two-tiered system of justice that I do not favor.
	This is not an indictment that triggers that principle.
	I absolutely think that it's appropriate in cases of serious criminality to prosecute a former president or prosecute a leading presidential candidate if you have compelling evidence A, compelling evidence.
	B, of a serious crime that has been committed.
	And C, a process that is guaranteed to be apolitical.
	So that we can be assured that this is not about abusing the law toward partisan or political or ideological ends.
	All three of those elements are not just missing, but are completely assaulted by this prosecution in Manhattan.
	You cannot find a worse example To abandon this principle.
	This principle that I've been arguing for for more than a decade, that political elites should be just as susceptible to prosecution when they commit serious crimes as anybody else, has probably never been more weakened than it is today by this preposterous prosecution that is so overtly and transparently politicized about a joke of a case.
	A joke of a case.
	That makes a complete mockery of that principle and of the entire justice system, and that is motivated by such political objectives that it's embarrassing and shameful.
	Now, one of the things that you see happening now is that I think liberals and Democrats are embarrassed by this case.
	They know this is a favor to Trump.
	They would much rather see Trump prosecuted for cases that they regard as more serious than this one, including the possible prosecution by the Obama Justice Department based on the theory that he inspired an insurrection on January 6th.
	I actually think that would be wildly dangerous, that theory, for reasons I've talked about before.
	But at least that would be an actually significant decision or significant crime that was being alleged.
	A payment to a porn star to keep her quiet about an affair?
	It's a joke!
	To prosecute the leading presidential candidate based on that?
	Now, the other thing that is worth noting here is that Liberals have made very clear their view in 2016 that they think there's almost nothing more frightening and anti-democratic and authoritarian than prosecuting your political enemies and trying to put them in prison.
	As you all recall, a major motto or slogan of the Trump campaign in 2016 was Lock Her Up, demanding the prosecution of Hillary Clinton for maintaining an illegal private email server at her home that allowed her to keep classified documents and other material on a server that could be hidden from prosecutors or FOIA requests that risked Uh, the negligent release of classified information.
	I was very ambivalent about whether that rose to the level of whether a presidential candidate should be prosecuted, but liberals at the time were saying that prosecuting Hillary Clinton or even calling for her prosecution or even thinking about it or talking about it out loud is a major Threat to everything good and decent in the world.
	Here, for example, from Vox.
	I'm just gonna flip through some of this.
	Can we bring the Vox article up?
	Oh, we have it up already.
	As usual, the people with whom I work are a couple of steps ahead of me.
	There you see from July 19, 2016, an article written by a Vox writer who was extremely disturbed.
	His name was Andrew Prokop.
	Pro Cop about the mere fact that Republicans wanted Hillary Clinton prosecuted and were expressing that desire or belief that she should be.
	Listen to what he said just about the mere calling for it, not the actual doing it like they're now doing to Trump.
	Quote, it's pretty disturbing to hear a large crowd at the major party convention repeatedly call for the jailing of the leader of the other major party, which is exactly what Donald Trump is.
	He is the leader of the other major party.
	And I've heard that happen again and again at the Republican Convention so far, as the clear favorite chant of the attendees is, lock her up, lock her up, lock her up.
	It's not just the crowd.
	Three speakers on the podium on the first day of the convention called for Hillary Clinton to be jailed.
	And Chris Christie's speech on day two, while nominally a critique of Clinton's foreign policy judgment, was framed as a quote, prosecution of Clinton, in which he repeatedly asked the crowd whether she was guilty or not guilty.
	Naturally, the crowd interrupted Christie four times with a chant of, lock her up.
	Indeed, the idea of sentencing Clinton to prison Has been the only thing that's really excited the crowd so far in this listless second day.
	To me, all this seemed like a new crossing of a line.
	A new crossing of a line and an ugly degradation of a norm in American politics.
	Remember that?
	Those norms that they were so upset about nobody disturbing?
	It's the latest sign that in the age of Donald Trump, the GOP's elite gatekeepers are gone.
	The Republican grassroots strongly believes Hillary Clinton is an evil, lying criminal who should be locked up.
	And with Trump in charge, a man who has no shame whatsoever and is willing to viciously insult anyone who gets in his way, that's essentially become the official position of the Republican Party.
	Now, I can't really believe I have to say this, but here goes.
	In a democratic society, it's really disturbing for a political party's leadership to basically endorse the idea that the main political rival should be jailed.
	Please go back.
	I have to read that again.
	Listen to what he said in 2016.
	This is Vox.
	Kind of the living, breathing embodiment of mainstream American liberalism and the ethos of the mainstream media cannot be found in any greater clarity.
	Other than in box, and this is what he wrote, quote, now, this liberal journalist, now, I can't really believe I have to say this, but here goes, in a democratic society, it's really disturbing for a political party's leadership to basically endorse the idea that its main political rival should be jailed.
	I mean, if Clinton were taking bribes or murdering people, that would be one thing.
	But we're talking about our use of a private server and personal email account for State Department business here.
	In other words, look, if some political leader does something really grave, like murders people or takes bribes, fine, then you prosecute them.
	But not for maintaining an email server in a house or issuing a payment to a porn star.
	Quote, it's the latest sign that in the age of Donald Trump, the GOP gatekeepers are gone.
	The Republican grassroots strongly believe Hillary Clinton is an evil lying criminal who should be locked up.
	And with Trump in charge, a man who has no shame whatsoever, that's essentially become the official position of the Republican Party.
	Oh, let's keep going.
	I think I read this a lot already.
	The whole, now I can't believe I have to say this, there I mean if Clinton is, OK, keep going.
	All right, so we're done there.
	So I could show you 20 of those.
	As I said, we prepared the show very quickly.
	Once we learned that this indictment came down today, we revamped the show.
	But in 2016, the idea was that even wishing for the prosecution of your political enemy is what authoritarians do.
	And now you have a very liberal prosecutor in Manhattan Ground zero of American liberalism, doing that in the most trivial case imaginable against Donald Trump.
	So as I said before, I think Democrats who desperately want Trump imprisoned, or at least prosecuted, for all the reasons I said earlier, wish it weren't this case.
	And in part it's because, if you were Donald Trump, and you knew you were going to get prosecuted, how much better could it possibly be for you than this?
	You have a prosecutor in Manhattan, of all places, who had a campaign funded in part by a PAC that got a million dollars from George Soros.
	I mean, this campaign wasn't funded by it.
	The PAC promoted his campaign.
	That's how campaign finance works.
	It didn't hand the money to Alvin Bragg.
	The PAC ran ads urging his election using George Soros' money.
	And so what they're trying to do in advance is prevent you from talking about that.
	They want to prevent you from noting the political inclinations and proclivities of the prosecutor and want to prevent you from mentioning that this prosecutor was elected using the money of one of the world's richest Liberal billionaires, George Soros, because they know it's embarrassing.
	And so they're trying to create a framework that says, if you mention that fact, that Alvin Bragg is a liberal Democrat, then you are a racist because he's black.
	And if you mention the fact that he received Extraordinary help.
	With George Soros' money, it means you're an anti-Semite.
	You're not allowed to talk about George Soros and the extreme campaign financing that he does in this country to help candidates and to help causes.
	So let me show you a segment that ran last week on the Morning Joe program on MSNBC hosted by Joe Scarborough, the former Republican congressman who is like, Most MSNBC people who used to be Republican and now knows his career depends upon cheering for the Democratic Party with his wife, Mika Brzezinski, whose father used to be the National Security Advisor for Jimmy Carter.
	Talking to Mehdi Hassan, my former colleague at The Intercept, who Has been a personal friend of mine.
	So I don't like to criticize Mehdi, but I'm going to anyway, because there's no way around it.
	I think what they just did here was despicable.
	So they convened a panel of three non-Jews.
	I don't know, maybe Minka Brzezinski is Jewish, I'm not really sure.
	Joe Scarborough is not, Mehdi Hassan is not.
	And they, it was really just Joe Scarborough and Mehdi Hassan talking, and they announced That if you note that this prosecutor was elected through $500,000, that's a lot of money in a local district attorney race, provided by George Soros, it means you are anti-Semitic, which means you cannot talk about that, or you will have one of the most destructive and radioactive labels placed on your forehead in American public life, an anti-Semitic.
	It doesn't matter that it's true, which it is.
	You're not allowed to talk about it.
	Let's show the video of them setting up this attempt to prevent what they are embarrassed about, namely how politicized this prosecutor is and his prosecution is from being discussed.
	Let's show that video.
	Talk about how off they are trying to paint this DA as some tool of a Jewish international banker.
	Yeah, it's become kind of fact on the right, but as so many facts on the right turn out to be, they're not factual at all.
	And we did some digging on my show into this nonsense.
	You heard Stefanik say he got a million dollars from George Soros.
	None of that's true.
	Alvin Bragg, just hear the facts, Joe.
	Alvin Bragg announced his candidacy for DA in June of 2019.
	In May of 2021, a PAC called Color of Change said, We're going to spend some money promoting Alvin Bragg's candidacy.
	George Soros, a few days later, gives them a million dollars.
	They end up spending a half a million dollars on Alvin Bragg's campaign.
	They don't give the money to Bragg.
	It's their own ads promoting Bragg.
	No money changes hands.
	So Color of Change gave no money.
	To Alvin Bragg.
	George Soros gave no money to Alvin Bragg, not even indirectly.
	No million dollars, no half a million dollars.
	We reached out to the Soros people.
	George Soros, they say, has never met with Alvin Bragg, never spoken to Alvin Bragg, never phoned Alvin Bragg, never emailed Alvin Bragg, never been on a Zoom call with Alvin Bragg, never given a dime to Alvin Bragg.
	So in what world, in what world is Alvin Bragg a Soros DA or a Soros-backed I honestly find that repulsive.
	Donald Trump, only in the fevered imagination of the anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists who now dominate the American conservative movement.
	By the way, Joe, quick point.
	Republicans say they love money in politics.
	Money is speech.
	So even if he did give money to Bragg, which he didn't, what's wrong with that?
	What objection could they have to the Jewish billionaire Holocaust survivor?
	I can't possibly imagine.
	I honestly find that repulsive, repulsive, that segment they just did there.
	I find it so deeply disgusting for Mehdi Hassan and Joe Scarborough to take anti-Semitism and the Holocaust and treat it like their little toy to prevent you from talking about the truth.
	Which is that George Soros' money was fundamental for the election of Alvin Bragg, and to claim that anyone who mentions it is an anti-Semite, who's somehow mocking the whole... Who is Mehdi Hassan and Joe Scarborough to take anti-Semitism and trifle with it in that manner?
	It's repulsive.
	And the reason it's repulsive is because it is a fact, despite what those liars you just watched said, That George Soros' money was fundamental in the election of Alvin Bragg.
	It is true that George Soros didn't give his money directly to Alvin Bragg because that's not how campaign finance works.
	A individual like Sheldon Adelson or George Soros or anybody else who wants to use money to influence elections, and we're going to get to Sheldon Adelson in a minute because people like Mehdi Hassan and Democrats had no qualms at all.
	Constantly talking about how Sheldon Adelson, the Israeli-American Jewish billionaire, used his money to turn the Republican Party into a puppet of Israel, in their view.
	That was totally fine.
	I'm going to get to that in a minute.
	But what they're trying to say is that this is not just anti-Semitic, but it's a lie because George Soros never gave any money to Alvin Bragg.
	This is actually what happened.
	Smetty actually acknowledged this in passing to try and say that it was actually disinformation because he had to.
	The way that it always works is that when very rich people want to give their money to influence an election, they can't give it directly to the candidate.
	They instead give it to a PAC.
	That PAC then goes off and does campaigning for the candidate, runs negative attack ads against his opponent, runs favorable ads on TV on his behalf.
	And as long as there's no coordination between the PAC and the campaign, it's not considered a direct donation to the candidate.
	And that way, people like George Soros can give as much money as they want.
	To PACs that are working to elect people like Alvin Bragg, and that's exactly what happened here.
	So here you see on the screen, on May 8th of 2021, the Color of Change PAC, which is a PAC that works to elect progressive prosecutors, people who believe in imprisoning people as for non-violent crimes.
	Things that actually, some policy I actually support.
	Criminal Justice Reform was a policy that Donald Trump actually implemented, working with the ACLU.
	And Caller of Change, though, believes in basically prosecutors who don't want to put violent criminals in jail.
	They want to put people like Donald Trump in prison, but not violent criminals.
	They want to use prison much less.
	And this is a major cause of George Soros is to elect DAs like that.
	So the Caller of Change saw Alvin Bragg as one of these kinds of prosecutors, because that's what he ran on.
	We're over-imprisoning people.
	We should use non-prison methods of punishment.
	This was in 2021, so less than a year after the George Floyd protests, when all of that defund the police and abolish prisons was in the air, especially in New York and Manhattan.
	So Alvin Bragg ran on that platform, the Caller of Change PAC, endorsed him because of it.
	And then Shortly after, so that was on May 8th, 2021, they announced their endorsement of Alvin Bragg, and then six days later, not even a week, there you see on the screen, George Soros donated a million dollars to that pack, to the Color of Change pack, and that's from Open Secrets.
	So Alvin Bragg announces his candidacy, From Manhattan District Attorney, the Caller of Change PAC endorses Alvin Bragg, and then six days later, George Soros gives that PAC that endorsed Alvin Bragg a million dollars, and that PAC used $500,000 of that money, given to it by George Soros, to promote Alvin Bragg's candidacy.
	So there's nothing illegal about it.
	That's how campaign finance works.
	That's why George Soros did it that way.
	You can't give $500,000 to Alvin Bragg.
	You can give $500,000 to a PAC that supported Alvin Bragg.
	So Alvin Bragg absolutely got elected, in large part, because of George Soros's money.
	That is a fact.
	And you can argue whether it's relevant or not, but to call that anti-Semitic To point out that this is such a liberal prosecutor that George Soros, who only wants to elect liberal prosecutors, helped elect him.
	Of course that's relevant to showing whether this is a politicized prosecution or not.
	But again, they're embarrassed by it, so they want to call you an anti-Semite if you want to point it out.
	Now what makes me so sick about that, and genuinely makes me enraged and sick, is that Because there are a few things I hate more in American political life than people like Mehdi Hassan and Joe Scarborough playing with, toying with, racism accusations or anti-Semitism accusations or accusations of homophobia.
	cynically in order to smear the reputations of their political opponents, to silence other people from participating in debates, to prevent them from pointing out facts that are inconvenient to the Democratic Party.
	It's unethical in its own right to unfairly and baselessly brand other people bigots, racists, misogynists, anti-Semites, homophobes, transphobes, droogs, but it also is the thing that more than anything trivializes those accusations so that when there is an actual anti-Semite, Or a racist.
	They've completely diluted the sting of that term because everybody sees them toying with it so cynically as they just did here.
	Now, the most amazing thing is, as I said, the Democratic Party and liberals and people not just like Mehdi Hassan, but Mehdi Hassan himself spent years talking about Sheldon Adelson, who's just as Jewish as George Soros.
	In fact, he's a dual citizen.
	He was.
	He recently passed away.
	But Sheldon Adelson was one of the biggest donors to the Republican Party over the past decade or two decades.
	He was a billionaire many times over.
	And it was constantly claimed that the reason the Republican Party was pro-Israel was because Sheldon Adelson gave them so much money to ensure that they supported the Israeli government.
	And I will say, that was a critique of mine.
	I think that's true.
	When you look at how much energy members of all political parties spend on the welfare of this foreign country way on the other side of the world, how obsessed they are with talking about it.
	Of course, part of the reason is because their voters care about it.
	Both evangelical voters and Jewish voters in the United States care a lot about Israel, but also because there's a lot of money in the Israel lobby.
	Stephen Walton, John Mershheimer wrote a book about that, The Israeli Lobby.
	Again, there's nothing illegal about it.
	There's lots of powerful lobbies like the NRA and Planned Parenthood and Wall Street and Big Tech.
	And we talk about the influence of that money all the time in our politics.
	So, of course, we're entitled to talk about the influence of people like George Soros and Sheldon Adelson or the Koch brothers or whomever.
	It's talked about all the time, all the time.
	And many, you could almost say, was obsessed With the influence of Sheldon Adelson's money on Republican politics.
	When it came time to talking about the influence of big money from a big Jewish billionaire, an Israeli Jewish billionaire, many talked about that all the time.
	Using the kind of tropes that he's claiming now are anti-Semitic.
	Let's just look at a few instances where he did that.
	Here's one tweet that he published in May of 2016, where he writes, quote, those of you on the left who foolishly thought Trump would be neutral on Israel should ask Sheldon Adelson why Sheldon Adelson is giving him $100 million.
	I think that was actually a subtweet of mine.
	Of me?
	Because early on, people forget that one of the things Trump said early in his candidacy was he thought the United States was too pro-Israel, was too often acting on behalf of Israel, and therefore lost credibility as a peacemaker and should be more neutral when it comes to Israel and Palestine.
	I found that interesting.
	It's one of the things that turned neocons against him early on.
	And so I frequently pointed out that Trump said something that had never been said before in Republican politics, that the United States was too pro-Israel and should be more neutral.
	This is Mehdi, who cares if he's subtweeting, basically saying, obviously that's not true.
	Sheldon Adelson, the Jewish puppet master, just gave Trump $100 million.
	Obviously Trump's not going to be neutral when it comes to Israel.
	That's why Sheldon Adelson gives his money.
	Sheldon Adelson, the rich Jew, gives his money to politicians so that they do what he says on Israel.
	That's Mehdi Hassan in May of 2016.
	The same Mehdi Hassan who's now telling you you're not allowed to talk about how George Soros' money influences politics.
	Constantly!
	depicted the Republican Party as the puppets of the very rich Israeli-American Jew Sheldon Adelson.
	Here again is Mette in 2018, two years into the Trump presidency.
	Donald Trump said Sheldon Adelson is looking to give big dollars to Rubio because he feels he can mold him into his perfect little puppet.
	I agree.
	So that was Trump in 2015 accusing Rubio I'm becoming a puppet of Sheldon Adelson because of all the money Sheldon Adelson was giving to Rubio.
	And Mehdi Hassan responded in 2018 by saying, guess who's turned out to be Adelson's puppet?
	And gave his wife the quote, Presidential Medal of Freedom.
	There is always a Trump treat in the archive.
	So Mehdi Hassan was saying, maybe Marco Rubio was Sheldon Adelson's puppet.
	But Donald Trump is also the puppet of this rich, Israeli-American billionaire Jew.
	Someone tell me why it's okay for Mehdi Hassan to say this about Sheldon Adelson, but you're not allowed to mention the role that George Soros' money played in electing Alvin Bragg, the prosecutor now trying to put Donald Trump in prison.
	Here's yet another one.
	I could do this all night from November of 2015.
	Maddy Hassan said, quote, we had always really tried to promote Trump as pro-Israel, the source said.
	He's always wanted Adelson money.
	So that's Maddy quoting an anonymous person in Politico, probably some person from Jeb Bush's campaign or Marco Rubio's campaign, claiming that Trump was dancing to Sheldon Adelson's tune because he wanted the money of this rich Jew.
	That was what Mehdi said.
	There's so many more tweets like this.
	This is a very common theme in Democratic Party politics.
	Here was an article published at The Intercept.
	Let's bring that one up about Sheldon Adelson.
	You'll see here the title.
	I'm about to show it to you.
	It says, Sheldon Adelson's fortune helped turn the GOP into the party of Israeli apartheid.
	With Donald Trump's help, Adelson spent the last years of his life helping to make the dreams of the Israeli right a reality by Alex Kane, January 12th, 2021 at The Intercept.
	Look at that headline.
	The Republican Party became the party of Israeli apartheid because the very rich Jew, the rich Israeli-American Jew, Sheldon Adelson, turned them into that.
	They marched to his tune.
	This is a very, very, very common theme in Democratic Party politics, that Sheldon Adelson is this extremely rich Jew who runs the world with his money.
	They said it over and over and over and over.
	That was, remember, part of what Ilhan Omar said when she responded to my tweet.
	That was the first time she really got into trouble when I actually commented that Republican Party leaders like Kevin McCarthy seem to spend an awful lot of time talking about Israel.
	Why is that?
	I don't think that people in their district care that much about Israel.
	Why are they so focused on what's happening in Israel instead of the United States?
	And that was when Ilhan Omar responded by saying it's all about the Benjamins.
	Meaning, the reason Republican politicians care so much about Israel is because their rich Jewish donors tell them to.
	So, do not let these people tell you now, the same people who did all that, tell you now that you're not allowed to talk about the effect of George Soros' money on the prosecutor in Manhattan who's now trying to imprison Donald Trump on completely dubious charges.
	We haven't even really talked all that much about what the charges are, in part because The charges themselves are not yet known, but the reality is that this transaction, the theory of it, which is that Michael Cohen paid Strummey Daniels in order to remain silent, Before the election about her affair with Donald Trump.
	And then Trump reimbursed Michael Cohen for that money, which means it was a direct payment from Trump to Stormy Daniels.
	And then they called it legal services to make it seem like it was a payment that Trump was giving to Michael Cohen for legal services, when in reality it was reimbursement of the hush money payment to Stormy Daniels as some kind of violation of election law.
	Or campaign finance?
	That was looked at by federal prosecutors.
	It was looked at by campaign finance regulators, none of whom thought it was worth pursuing or that they could actually obtain a conviction, in part because the theory that you need to demonstrate, even if you prove all that happened exactly as they claim, to prove that that's a violation of campaign finance law requires the invocation of a legal theory that courts in New York have yet to endorse.
	That's what makes this so remarkable, is that even if they're able to prove everything happened the way they claim, it's not even clear that it's a crime under New York law.
	Which is why I say before that the only way to properly prosecute people is if you have A, compelling evidence, B, of a very significant crime, C, based on currently established law.
	None of those actually happened here.
	Now, a major part of What happened here that I think is so important to recognize is that Alvin Bragg himself is being very politically pressured because by all reports, including the reports of two prosecutors who worked for Alvin Bragg but then who quit claiming he was reluctant to bring this case, Alvin Bragg was reluctant to bring the case because he thought he would lose.
	Imagine if you put your name on an indictment of a former president, the leading presidential candidate, and then you end up losing in court.
	He's acquitted.
	That's going to be the first paragraph of your obituary.
	That's going to be the thing that shapes your life forever.
	That you tried to prosecute Donald Trump when he was leading in all the polls and you couldn't even convict him.
	So Alvin Bragg was scared to do it, and two prosecutors quit.
	And when they did, they went public and said that Alvin Bragg was afraid.
	So March 6, 2022 is last year, about a year ago.
	In CNN, you see there, prosecutors resigned after New York DA said he wasn't prepared to move forward with the indictment of Trump.
	Quote, two top prosecutors leading the criminal investigation to former President Donald Trump and his business resigned after the Manhattan District Attorney said he was not prepared to authorize an indictment against the former president, a person familiar with the investigation said.
	Kerry Dunn and Mark Pomerantz, two senior prosecutors on the team, resigned last month.
	One day after Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg informed them that he wasn't prepared to move forward with criminal charges.
	The resignations followed weeks of internal debate and discussion over the strength of the evidence against Trump and whether it could pass the hurdle of proving a crime.
	So...
	Within Alvin Bragg's office, there was a lot of pressure being placed on him, and he was scared to do it because he didn't think he could obtain a conviction or meet the standard for when to indict, especially someone who's running for president.
	And you can imagine the pressure Alvin Bragg faces, given that these prosecutors went public with that dissatisfaction, which is completely unethical.
	If you're a prosecutor, you're duty-bound to keep silent about what you investigate.
	You either indict or you don't indict.
	You don't get to investigate and then go public and accuse the person of a crime because if you're not indicting them, they have no way to defend themselves.
	That was part of the valid complaint.
	The Democrats had against James Comey in the middle of the campaign in 2016 when he announced that he wasn't indicting Hillary, but then nonetheless went on to criticize her, claiming she probably committed crimes or at least acted unethically.
	And Democrats said, and I think it was a valid critique, that if you're a prosecutor like James Comey, you can't publicly accuse people of wrongdoing if you're not going to indict them because they have no chance to exonerate themselves.
	In that case, Comey said it was a special, difficult case.
	Because people rightly wanted to know why he wasn't prosecuting Hillary Clinton and he had a duty to explain to the public why the FBI or the Justice Department decided not to do it?
	But nonetheless, it's something prosecutors cannot do, but they did it here because they wanted to pressure Alvin Bragg to bring this case and prosecute Donald Trump because these are all liberals.
	So you can imagine how pressured Alvin Bragg is by the PAC that George Soros funds that got him elected, by everybody who he goes out to dinner with and who he knows professionally in Manhattan, all of whom obviously are liberals who want to see Donald Trump in prison.
	One of the things that we were going to talk about on the show tonight anyway, and this actually gives an opportunity to discuss it, is that for all the times that I hear, which is basically daily, from liberals and democrats, claiming that I've changed my ideology, people saying, what happened to you?
	You used to be such a good journalist.
	You used to be such a good left-wing liberal journalist.
	I really liked you.
	You were such a good journalist back then, and now you're terrible.
	You completely changed all your views.
	Well, in reality, I haven't changed any of my views.
	My focus has always been, in my reporting, on the corruption and criminality of the U.S.
	security state and my support for free speech.
	And in 2010, that was a view more associated with the left than the right.
	As you can see here, here's a poll, I believe it's from Pew.
	In which the federal agencies such as the FBI, CIA, Homeland Security were found to be much more popular among Republicans than Democrats back in 2010, the first two years of President Trump's administration, sorry, President Obama's administration, this is due to the war on terror, Republican support for the war on terror carried out by the US security state, of which I was a critic.
	So the FBI was approved of by 58% of Republicans, 55% Democrats, so kind of even.
	But the CIA, Republicans approved of the CIA 54%, Democrats only 41%, and Homeland Security 48 to 38.
	So it was Republicans who, by a significant margin, approved of the CIA, the FBI, and Homeland Security much more than Democrats did.
	So I was critical of those agencies.
	And what they do, I always have been.
	And so I was considered to be on the left or associated with on the left, even though my journalism was just journalism.
	But that was where it aligned.
	Fast forward 13 years, I'm still every bit as much of a critic of those agencies, but what changed is not me, but the politics around me.
	Meaning, the Democratic Party now worships and reveres these agencies, whereas skepticism is found almost entirely on the Republican Party or on the right-wing spectrum.
	So now when I criticize the FBI and the CIA, that codes as being on the right as opposed to on the left.
	To me, it codes as just my principles, the things I've always said.
	I don't care how it codes or what side is served by it.
	But here you see a new poll this out this week from Pew that reveals what we've shown many times over the past several years.
	And it's not just when the Democrats control the executive branch.
	We saw the same dynamic when the Republican President Donald Trump was in control of the executive branch as well, namely that the Democrats love the Justice Department and the FBI and the CIA and Homeland Security, and Republicans are highly skeptical.
	There you see the question, do you approve of the FBI? 65% of Democrats approve of the FBI.
	65% compared to 37% of Republicans.
	43% of Republicans have an unfavorable view of the FBI.
	Only 22% of Democrats do.
	The CIA, very similar.
	54% of Democrats have a favorable view of the CIA compared to 37% of Republicans.
	So almost a 20 point gap.
	45%, basically half of the Republican Party, views the CIA unfavorably compared to a quarter of Democrats.
	A similar dynamic with Homeland Security.
	56% of Democrats love Homeland Security.
	47% of Republicans have a positive view of Homeland Security.
	Probably because that's where ICE is, that's where immigration enforcement agencies are.
	But still, 43% of Republicans have an unfavorable view of Homeland Security.
	Only 29% of Democrats do remember it was Homeland Security that was created by George Bush.
	In 2002, it was a Republican initiative, and yet, look at this, 56% of Democrats favor the Homeland Security Department, in part because, remember, that was the agency that wanted to create a disinformation czar within Homeland Security.
	It was only Democrats who, only Republicans who were angry about that, and a few journalists, such as myself, who don't like Ministries of Truth, sponsored by the US government.
	And barely any Democrat opposed.
	So the reason I nonetheless am mentioning this, even though our show is about the indictment tonight of Donald Trump, is because I believe a major reason for this change is twofold.
	Number one, Democrats began recognizing validly that these agencies, the CIA, the FBI, the Justice Department, and by the way, similar dynamic of the Justice Department, we didn't highlight that, but 57% of Democrats view the Justice Department favorably.
	So they love federal prosecutors apparently, 40% of Republicans do, but 50% of Republicans 50% of Republicans view the Justice Department unfavorably.
	Part of the reason why Democrats began viewing these agencies so favorably is because they perceived that they are their allies in the effort to destroy Donald Trump.
	These were the agencies that manufactured all the Russiagate lies, the lies about the Hunter Biden laptop, All the stuff about Chuck Schumer warning Trump that everyone in Washington knows that you don't criticize the CIA like he was doing because they'll destroy you.
	The Democrats moved to embracing these agencies because these agencies began far more aggressively and overtly than ever before interfering directly in our politics.
	against Donald Trump because they view Trump as an impediment to the things that they wanted to do.
	As I started off by saying, he was a threat to the prevailing bipartisan consensus that the CIA and the FBI and Homeland Security wants to maintain.
	But another reason for it is because if your main goal in life is to imprison your political opponents, which is absolutely the main goal of the Democratic Party, you see them so excited by it, They hate Merrick Garland because he hasn't done it yet.
	That's the only Democrat they're willing to criticize, Merrick Garland, for their crime of not yet indicting Donald Trump about January 6th or other crimes.
	They turned on Robert Mueller, remember, with an incredible viciousness.
	After revering him to the point where they were singing songs in his honor on Saturday Night Live, they instantly turned around when he closed his investigation without indicting anyone in the Trump family or anyone in the Trump administration for criminally colluding with Russia.
	Adam Schiff wrote a book calling him senile.
	They all said he was weak, that he lost his nerve.
	I mean, they just began destroying his reputation.
	Because all they care about is putting Donald Trump in prison.
	And that's why they love these agencies as well.
	The FBI, the Justice Department, the CIA, Homeland Security.
	If you want to imprison your political opponents, these are the agencies to which you turn.
	These are the agencies that do it.
	And they know these agencies want to do it.
	And that is what the Democratic Party has become.
	And in 2016, all they said over and over and over was what that Vox article said, which was, if your goal in life is to imprison your political opponents, if that's what you're dedicated to doing, you're basically a fascist and an authoritarian.
	Donald Trump was in office for four years.
	His attorney general, first Jeff Sessions and then Robert Barr, Bill Barr, sorry, William Barr, did not indict a single Democratic Party official in a way that anyone claimed was politically motivated, let alone indict Hillary Clinton.
	So it was all talk.
	And they said this talk alone was fascist and authoritarian and crossed a line that has never before been crossed.
	Now you have multiple investigations.
	All geared toward preventing Donald Trump from being re-elected, not by trying to defeat him at the ballot box, which they are convinced they cannot do, even though they barely scraped by in 2020.
	Because of all the caveats and exceptions I described, they're petrified that an 82-year-old Joe Biden will lose to Donald Trump.
	And they are desperate to ensure that he's not the nominee.
	And they're abusing the political process to do it.
	Now, it is somewhat ironic, because I mentioned before that I did a lot of work in Brazil that has similar overtones, where even though many on the American right won't agree with my perspective, what actually happened was, in 2014, In Brazil, the Workers' Party, which is actually a center-left party, it's not a communist party, Lula da Silva, Lula governed Brazil from 2002 to 2010.
	I've talked about this before.
	He didn't turn it into Venezuela or Cuba.
	Brazil had massive economic growth under Lula's presidency.
	Whether it's because of stuff he did or not, it's nonetheless the case that Brazil became the sixth largest economy in the world.
	They surpassed the UK and other countries that have long been, quote, part of the developed world.
	There was no communism of any kind.
	But it's a center-left party.
	You can call it a left-wing party if you really feel like it.
	But it won legitimately in 2002, 2006, and 2010.
	And the establishment in Brazil, and especially the center-right in Brazil, were desperate to finally defeat the Workers' Party at the polls.
	They couldn't do it.
	They tried three elections in a row, and they got crushed.
	Whatever else you want to say about him, Lula is a spectacularly talented politician.
	So, leading up to 2014, where they had won three times in a row, they were sure that they finally found the way to win.
	Lula won in 2002 and 2006.
	He then chose his hand-picked successor, a not very charismatic kind of bureaucrat, technocrat, Dilma Rousseff.
	She was a radical when she was younger.
	She picked up arms and went to prison fighting against the Military dictatorship in Brazil, where she was tortured in prison.
	But in her adult life, she became this kind of very technocratic figure.
	She never ran for office previously.
	She didn't really have a lot of political talent.
	But he handpicked her, and based on his popularity when he left office, 86%, she won that election pretty easily.
	She's now the president of the BRICS Bank in China, where she was picked by President Luo.
	But anyway, in 2014 they thought finally they had their candidate.
	This kind of very charismatic playboy who was part of a very rich and politically well-known family.
	Who had some charisma, most of these center-right politicians in Brazil, like in the U.S., are kind of Jeb Bush types.
	No one likes them, they don't excite anybody, they're just pro-bankers.
	So they had this candidate, Ecio Neves, who they were convinced was finally going to win.
	And it was a very Tightly contested election, viciously contested.
	And Dilma and the Workers Party won by a tiny amount, by less than two points, I believe.
	And they just never accepted.
	The establishment never accepted.
	The center-right never accepted that defeat.
	And so they thought, you know what?
	We're never going to be able to beat the Workers Party fair and square.
	And so in 2016, they concocted the dumbest and most trivial claims possible.
	to impeach her, which they were able to do because the economy was plummeting.
	She was extremely unpopular by that point.
	And ultimately impeachment is just a political act.
	But the charges against her were more trivial than even this prosecution against Trump.
	They impeached her, removed her from office, installed in her place the center-right kind of establishment vice president that she had selected as part of the coalition politics Brazil does.
	And then, because of his unpopularity, he literally had 5% approval.
	Lula announced that he was gearing up to run again in 2018, and polls showed he was clearly the frontrunner.
	He had the most name recognition by far.
	Most popular candidate running.
	Bolsonaro was in second.
	But for a long time, no one believed, even Bolsonaro supporters, that he was going to be able to win.
	Polls were showing him 15, 20 points behind Lula.
	And then a corrupt prosecutor backing on behalf of the establishment media.
	Globo and the other establishment media propped up this prosecutor into a national hero of the kind that Democrats did with Robert Mueller.
	And he indicted and then convicted Lula and rendered him ineligible to run for president in 2018.
	And as a result, that was when Bolsonaro won.
	Now, the establishment did not want Bolsonaro.
	They hated Bolsonaro before the election and after.
	The Brazilian establishment hates Bolsonaro the way the American establishment hates Trump.
	They kind of created their own monster.
	What they really thought they were going to achieve was by making Lula ineligible.
	They never thought Bolsonaro would win.
	Just like nobody thought when Trump ran that he was going to win.
	Remember, they would all laugh at Ann Coulter or Keith Ellison or anybody who said Trump had a chance to win.
	They thought it was absurd.
	Because by the rules of their game that they thought they owned and controlled, Trump had no chance.
	No one thought Bolsonaro was going to win in the establishment.
	They thought they were opening up the chance for a center-right, kind of Mitch McConnell type, to finally win.
	And instead they got Bolsonaro because everybody hates the establishment in Brazil, the center-right and the center-left.
	But the way they achieved that was by putting Lula in prison, and the journalism we did exposed that the prosecutors cheated.
	A lot of people still think Lula is a criminal.
	But be that as it may, the prosecutor and the judge cheated, they colluded, and the goal of the establishment was to remove Lula through convicting him and abusing the legal process in order to prevent him from Re-winning or getting re-elected in 2018.
	Once his conviction was nullified and he was rendered eligible, he ran again in 2022 and he did win by a tiny percentage over Bolsonaro who had all the same obstacles I talked about earlier that Trump faced when he ran, including COVID, the economic damage from that, and the establishment aligned against him.
	So it's a very similar pattern.
	And it's the use of lawfare in Brazil to remove Lula from the race in order to render him ineligible because they were afraid they couldn't beat him.
	And they ended up being right.
	They couldn't beat him.
	And that's exactly what is being done here.
	This is a joke of a case.
	It is, I think, going to help Trump immensely.
	It angers me because the principle that we need to be able to prosecute former officials or current leaders when they actually commit crimes has never been more degraded by what this prosecutor in Manhattan is now doing.
	Democrats have to cheer it and support it because they're petrified that if they don't, Trump is going to get strengthened and he'll be even more likely to win.
	And so now we're going to have this incredibly egregious abuse of the criminal justice system for overtly political ends, where Democrats now try to do exactly that, which in 2016 they said was a sign of authoritarianism and fascism, namely trying to imprison your political opponent in lieu of beating them at the polls.
	It is everything the Democratic Party is.
	It shows everything that our elite media class is, which will absolutely be with the Democratic Party in cheering for this.
	And it shows that whatever you want to say about Trump, whatever you think he threatens, whatever you think he menaces, whatever values you think he undermines and degrades, the institutions of power aligned against him are vastly worse.
	Because they do believe in the Sam Harris principle.
	They just don't have the candor that Sam Harris has to admit it, namely that they will do anything.
	And believe that anything is justified as long as the goal is to defeat Donald Trump and prevent him and his movement from regaining power democratically.
	That is who they are.
	There is no bigger threat to democracy than they.
	There are no more worse enemies to all the values they claim to believe in them.
	Just like they and their media are the most aggressive spreaders of disinformation as they claim that they're protecting you from it.
	And on some level, As abusive and corrupt as this prosecution is, I do think it will end up shining even brighter light on just how corrupt our establishment is.
	And at the end of the day, ironically, there's nothing that helps Trump more and nothing that strengthens Trump more than when people see with their own eyes just how corrupt the bipartisan establishment in the United there's nothing that helps Trump more and nothing that strengthens Trump more So that concludes our show for this evening.
	Usually on Tuesday and Thursday we have our after show on Locals where we take your questions and respond to your feedback for the reasons I mentioned at the start of the show.
	We're going to postpone that until tomorrow night, but we will be back there tomorrow night.
	For those of you who want to have access to that show, you can join our Locals community where you not only have access to that show, But also, we'll have early access to all the written journalism I do, which we try never to pay well so that we maximize its impact.
	But in order to be able to do that, we need your support as well.
	So if you want to help support the kind of journalism we do here, you can do so by joining the Locals community.
	The red join button is right below the video on our Rumble page.
	For those of you who have been watching, we have had our audience size growing immensely.
	The show that we did on Monday night about the shooter in Nashville, which we intended to cover again tonight, was watched by more than a million people, which is an audience that most cable shows, including a prime time, crave.
	I believe our audience tonight was even larger than the one on Monday, so we're really appreciative of those of you who have been watching our show.
	We're only five months old, or four months old, even with the interruptions that we've had.
	The audience size has exceeded our wildest expectations.
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	Thank you to everybody who's been watching.
	We hope to see you back tomorrow night and every night at 7 p.m.
	Eastern, exclusively here on Rebel.

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