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April 1, 2023 - System Update - Glenn Greenwald
01:07:14
Rand Paul Blocks Authoritarian “Anti-TikTok” Bill. Plus: Darren Beattie on Douglass Mackey Guilty Verdict, Trump Indictment

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Good evening, it's Friday, March 31st.
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 indictment of President Trump is obviously a massive story, which is why we devoted our entire show to it last night, a full 90-minute episode.
But it's important that we not let it distract us from everything else the government is attempting to do, beginning With two bills in Congress that are being justified in the name of banning the social media app TikTok, one called the Data Act, the other the Restrict Act, that would in fact do far, far more than just ban TikTok.
They would empower, both bills would, the Biden administration, then future presidents to ban any social media app or platform if they decide in their sole discretion that the app in some way poses a threat to national security.
Earlier this week Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky blocked one such bill offered by Missouri Senator Josh Hawley and others that those senators hope to fast-track with bipartisan support and send to the White House with very little debate or deliberation.
We'll report on the issues raised by that debate in the Senate.
And why Senator Paul opposed this bill and why even if you were eager to banish TikTok from the United States, high levels of skepticism and scrutiny are urgent in the face of any attempts by the U.S.
government to claim the power to regulate and especially to ban the Internet and entire social media platforms.
Then for our interview segment, we'll speak with Darren Beatty, the independent journalist at Revolver News and the former Trump White House speechwriter about those pending bills justified in the name of banning TikTok, as well as the indictment of former President Trump obtained, and the conviction by a jury just this afternoon, just a few hours ago, in a Brooklyn courthouse of the pro-Trump social media influencer Douglas Mackey, better known as Ricky Vaughn, whom prosecutors claim deliberately deceived people into not voting.
By use of his Twitter memes, he now faces many years in prison.
Before we get into tonight's show, we prepared our show last night very quickly because the Trump indictment was announced only a few hours before we aired and there as a result we didn't have quite the same time for preparation as we normally do.
There were two statements I made that were incorrect and we wanted to correct them very prominently.
First, The Stormy Daniels story that I mentioned and talked a lot about had been reported by a few websites prior to the 2016 election but was not widely known until 2018 and I had suggested it was widely known before the election.
Secondly, in the context of pointing out the effort by liberals to suppress any discussion of George Soros's support for Alvin Bragg's candidacy, the DA who obtained Trump's indictment, I highlighted how Democrats have spent years alleging that the Republican Party were the puppets of the Jewish billionaire Sheldon Adelson, yet now suddenly want to ban any discussion of George Soros.
Talking about Soros' spending is anti-Semitic.
During that discussion, I said that Adelson was a citizen of both the United States and Israel.
That was incorrect.
He is in fact, or was in fact, only a citizen of the United States and not Israel.
So those are the two corrections from last night's show.
For now, welcome to a new episode of System Update, starting right now.
In the world of politics, it's very easy to forget what has happened before some massive event.
And that's certainly the case with yesterday's indictment of President Trump that landed without much warning and obviously is a great shock.
It's a historic event to have the first ever former president of the United States, and more importantly in my view, the current front runner for the presidential race in 2024, criminally indicted, the first time in American history.
But it's important not to let the shock of that event and the magnitude of it let us get distracted from what was taking place and what we were focused on previously.
Namely, a whole variety of issues, but the issue that I think was getting the most attention, and rightfully so, was the argument supported by most of the Democratic Party and the Republican Party, supported by the Biden White House and the Republican Party and the Democratic Party in both houses of Congress, that it was urgent that either TikTok
The social media platform that has become the most popular among American teenagers and American youth and one of the most popular among all Americans, according to the company's data, 150 million Americans voluntarily use that app, that it's urgent that either they be forced to sell the app to American interest or American companies, and if not, to actually ban the app entirely, to banish it, to make it illegal for anyone in the United States to use it.
Now obviously there is a major debate that we ought to be having in general over how to view China, over whether we should view China as an irredeemable enemy or as an adversary or a competitor, in what steps we should take once we make that decision.
About what it is that we ought to do in response to what is clearly the second most powerful country on the planet, a nuclear-armed power like Russia.
These are extremely important decisions and I would hope and expect that the debate does not simply consist of, we hate China and therefore we're going to say yes to everything the United States government wants to do in the name of stopping it.
That instead whatever steps we take when it comes to how we treat the question of China be at least undertaken with a lot of deliberative thought because whatever steps we take will have very serious consequences.
It can have very serious economic consequences.
The United States and Wall Street in particular are very reliant on the Chinese and we can punish the Chinese in all sorts of ways and the Chinese can punish American companies and the American economy in all sorts of ways.
But obviously, militaristically, talking about the country that has the second most powerful military in the world and, as I said, a nuclear armed power.
And so if we're going to undertake a decades-long Cold War with China, the kind that we had with the Soviet Union for five or six decades during the 20th century, one that led to multiple wars around the planet, the explosion of the US security state, that was all done under the explosion of the US security state, that was all done under the Cold War, then we ought to at least have an
I think people ought to be able to participate in that debate and question things without being accused of being puppets of China or servants of the Chinese Communist Party.
Like with Russiagate, people were accused of being servants of the Kremlin or assets of the Russian government or Vladimir Putin for questioning things the government or the US security state was saying be done there.
In other words, the debate itself is crucial.
Now, on Thursday, or actually earlier this week, we devoted an entire show to the question of whether TikTok should be banned.
We did it on the day when the TikTok CEO appeared before the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
We reported on some of the key exchanges that took place at that committee.
We talked about the different aspects of the policy question of whether TikTok should be banned.
And I don't want to revisit that or repeat that.
I want to instead For those of you who already watched it, and even if you didn't, you can watch that show, and that's where we covered that question, instead raise a couple of related issues that we didn't really talk much about as part of that show, in part because they're new developments, but also because these things extend way beyond the question of whether you should ban TikTok.
In other words, if you in your mind already have a position fixed about whether you want the U.S.
government to ban TikTok, which is the position of the Biden administration, There's still a lot to think about in terms of the bills that are pending in Congress because those bills do far, far more than just allow the government to ban TikTok.
They empower the Biden White House and then future administrations to ban any social media platform, not just TikTok, that is owned by a foreign entity that the government deems in its discretion threatens national security for reasons such as that is owned by a foreign entity that the government deems in its discretion threatens national security for reasons such as interfering in our politics the way that the
The Democratic Party claims Twitter and Facebook and YouTube did in the 2016 election or any platform that is designed to serve the interest of a foreign country, which is how the U.S.
proxy war in Russia.
So if you're somebody who is using the internet or a social media platform such as Rumble is allowing People to come on and say we're against the proxy war in Ukraine.
That could be interpreted as serving the interests of the Russian government.
This would give the government, the U.S.
government, the power, the unilateral power to simply ban those social media sites or regulate them.
That is a power that I think we ought to be extremely Extremely reluctant to want to hand over to the government.
And yet the two bills that are pending, the Restrict Act and the Data Act, if you read them, unquestionably empowered the federal government to ban and regulate platforms extending far beyond TikTok.
And in fact, The key Democratic senators of these bills, such as Mark Warner of Virginia, once it became understood that these bills do that, began boasting about it, saying, you're right, this bill does allow the government to ban other platforms beyond TikTok because there are many platforms that are threatening and problematic.
Besides TikTok, we need to give the Biden administration this power to go way beyond that.
Now, as I mentioned earlier, This week, Josh Hawley, with bipartisan support, tried to get a bill passed by unanimous consent, meaning that it gets to skip over a bunch of Senate procedural hurdles and get fast-tracked to being approved by the Senate, and then hoped Kevin McCarthy would do the same in the House to send the bill and then hoped Kevin McCarthy would do the same in the House to send the bill to Joe Biden, who already
But Rand Paul stood up, the only member of the Senate to do so, and refused to allow that to happen.
By definition, unanimous consent means every member of the Senate has to agree.
That's how you get unanimity.
And if even one senator stands up, you don't have unanimous consent, which means it has to go through the process.
And his argument was, look, we need to be very deliberative about this.
So here is-- if we could bring up the-- Washington Post article that talks about what Rand Paul did.
There you see on the screen, Rand Paul blocks Josh Hawley's bid to ban TikTok in a GOP split.
And we're going to show you the debate that happened on the Senate floor because it's very interesting and I think important to watch.
But here you see the text of the article, quote, Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, An effort by Senator Josh Hawley, Republican of Missouri, to fast-track legislation he introduced that would ban the popular Chinese-owned social media app TikTok nationwide.
On Wednesday evening, Hawley took to the Senate floor to ask for unanimous consent to begin work on his, quote, No TikTok on United States Devices Act.
Although Republicans have long said TikTok should be limited, Paul said he objected, arguing Hawley's ban amounts to an attack on the First Amendment.
Quote, to those who were worried that the Chinese government might somehow have access to millions of Americans' teenager information, realize that all social media sucks up personal data that people voluntarily provide, Paul said.
If you're going to ban TikTok, what's next?
Holly's bill comes in the wake of allegations that the app is spying for Beijing and worries it could be used to spread propaganda.
TikTok chief executive Xiao Zhiqiu denied the accusations last week in a five-hour House hearing.
Separate from Holly's proposed legislation, a bipartisan White House-backed bill known as the Restricting the Emergence of Security Threats and that Risk Information and Communications Technology, that's the Restrict Act, was introduced in the Senate this month.
The bill would give the Commerce Department broad authority To ban or restrict TikTok and other apps rooted in foreign countries.
It also mentions, kind of says, WeChat and Alibaba's Alplay, both of which are Chinese-owned.
Those are examples that provide you, knowing that people right now regard China as a big threat, and if you feed them ideas about China, oh look, this has been being done to protect you from China, people are likely to approve it.
And that's what I'm here to urge skepticism of.
That even if it's correct that we ought to view China as a grave threat to the United States, and even if you favor taking greater steps to limit Chinese power or confront China, and you're okay with risking a decades-long Cold War or anything else of that nature, we also have rights that we have to be very protective of here in the United States that could easily be endangered by exploiting those sentiments.
And that is exactly what is happening here, which is the Biden administration and members of all parties in Congress that want there to be greater control over the internet by the U.S.
government understand that most Americans regard China as a threat and see TikTok as a negative influence.
Those are valid views.
Many people share them.
Most people share them, according to polls.
And so what they're trying to do to you is say, look, we are on your side.
We agree with you that China is a threat and that TikTok is bad.
And that's the reason we need you to give us this power in these two bills that will allow us any time there's a threat like TikTok that we see, we will ban it for you to protect you from these dangers.
And that is exploitation.
They are pretending that they're debating whether to ban TikTok when in fact the bills, not Josh Hawley's bill, but the two bills including the one most likely to be passed that the White House backs with the leadership of both members of Congress, Would actually provide far greater powers than just that.
Now, I think it's very important to remember history.
Not necessarily very distant history, but recent history.
And this was the lesson that we ought to have learned from 9-11 and the war on terror that followed.
Of course, the government was correct that Al Qaeda was actually a threat.
They were an evil threat to the United States.
They had perpetrated an attack that was traumatic and devastating.
They killed 3,000 Americans, civilians.
On one day, they flew planes with enormous amounts of fuel into the World Trade Center, into the Pentagon.
There was a fourth plane likely headed to Congress or somewhere else like it.
It was a genuine act of war and we most Americans just about everybody united in anger and toward and fear of terrorism and Al Qaeda and the government saw that and they said here is a long list of powers we want you to give us Because we need these powers to protect you from Al Qaeda and to protect you from future terrorist attacks.
And most Americans, traumatized by that event, said yes to almost everything the government asked.
That's how the government got the Patriot Act in the weeks following 9-11.
The rubble was not even cleared from Manhattan when the Patriot Act was passed by an overwhelming bipartisan majority in Congress.
Something that was justified on the grounds that, yes, we know this is very radical.
We know this lowers significantly the burden we have to meet to spy on you.
But don't worry, it's temporary.
It's only going to last for as long as the threat Pose by Al-Qaeda last.
And every four years, the Congress will have to go back and renew it, and it will expire unless Congress renews it.
And here we are 23 years later, 22 years later, the Patriot Act is very much in place.
That's how we got the entire surveillance state of all kinds of warrantless spying on millions of Americans by the NSA, by the FBI, by the CIA.
And it's how we got the Department of Homeland Security I think a lot of people have forgotten.
We talk now about Homeland Security like it's existed forever alongside the CIA, the FBI, the NSA and the like.
That's not the case.
When 9-11 happened, there was no such thing as the Department of Homeland Security.
Homeland Security was an idea that Dick Cheney created and got George Bush to support to create a brand new bureaucracy.
The CIA, the FBI, the Pentagon, the NSA, that wasn't enough.
They needed a brand new bureaucracy, a sprawling, huge, multi-billion dollar agency with all new authorities and powers that we now know, 20 years later, is often used, aimed at American citizens, not aimed at Al Qaeda.
And anybody who stood up during that moment and said, I don't think we need a new bureaucracy.
I think this bureaucracy can be very costly.
I think it can be very dangerous.
It's consolidating an enormous amount of power in secret.
In this brand new agency, we already have a sufficient U.S.
security state that allowed us to fight the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
We don't need another gigantic bureaucracy.
Whoever said any of that, whoever questioned any of these things, including the Patriot Act or anything else, was instantly accused not of being Wrong, but it being a sympathizer to terrorism or Al-Qaeda, an ally of Al-Qaeda.
And I want to show you, I believe we have it.
Just can you confirm that we have this video of a campaign ad that was run against a Democratic Senator named Max Cleland in 2002.
Max Cleland, for those of you who don't remember, was a veteran of the Vietnam War, a combat veteran.
And at the age of 25 in Vietnam, a bomb went off and he lost three limbs, two legs plus his right arm up to his elbow.
So he was a triple amputee by virtue of having gone to fight for the United States in the Vietnam War.
And he was a Democratic senator from Georgia.
So his opposition to Homeland Security was based on the arguments I just articulated.
I saw what happens with this war in Vietnam.
We don't need another bureaucratic arm of the national security state.
It will be both expensive at best and abusive at worst.
This is a threat to the civil liberties of the United States.
And as a result of standing up and just asking Americans to question whether that was necessary, yes, of course we all hate Al-Qaeda.
And we all want to fight Al Qaeda, but that doesn't mean everything done in the name of fighting Al Qaeda is right, like the Patriot Act, or like the Department of Homeland Security.
Watch this ad that was run against him.
This was an ad that was run and created by Rick Wilson, who is now with the Scumbag Lincoln Project.
Rick Wilson was a Republican operative who was hired by Saxby Chambliss, the Republican challenger to Max Cleland, and they morphed Max Cleland's face into the face of Osama Bin Laden and called him a coward by virtue of his opposition to certain aspects of the war on terror, including the creation of the Department of Homeland Security.
Watch the ad.
As America faces terrorists and extremist dictators, Max Cleland runs television ads claiming he has the courage to lead.
He says he supports President Bush at every opportunity, but that's not the truth.
Since July, Max Cleland has voted against the President's vital homeland security efforts 11 times.
Max Cleland says he has the courage to lead, but the record proves Max Cleland is just misleading.
So it very clearly called him a coward repeatedly.
He says he has the courage, but obviously he doesn't.
And the proof that he lacks courage, this triple amputee who went and fought the United States in the Vietnam War, Was called a coward by one of the worst scumbags in American politics, Rick Wilson, who never got near a battlefield and never would.
And he had his face morphed into Osama Bin Laden's simply because he questioned and opposed the creation of the Department of Homeland Security.
So this is the lesson that we should learn from that moment in history.
That yes, fine, we're all united and believe China is a threat.
We don't want to live under the Chinese government.
We don't want to live in China or under its ethos.
And maybe we hate TikTok as well.
But that doesn't mean that everything the government says they need from you or want from you or powers they demand in the name of anti-Chinese activism is something that we should say yes to because so often, as was the case in the War on Terror, the powers they're seeking have nothing to do with the stated goal.
They're exploiting The sentiments people have about China and that's the case with these two bills that would give the government way broader powers than the powers we should ever be comfortable with the United States government having.
We've been talking for months or longer about how dangerous it is that the United States government, the security state, homeland security, the FBI, the CIA are trying to control the flow of the internet.
what is and is not censored, and now we're going to hand them the power to decide what platforms can be banned based on their unilateral say-so?
That is madness.
And just to show you what is really going on kind of underneath all of this, here from The Washington Post just this week is a report that indicates that Facebook, I'm sorry, this is actually from last year, from March of last year, that Facebook this is actually from last year, from March of last year, that Facebook is paying a Republican firm So, they hired Republicans to convince conservatives to view TikTok as a grave threat.
Why would Facebook want that?
Because Facebook is a competitor of TikTok.
The firm targeted victory, pushed local operatives across the country to boost messages calling TikTok a threat to American children.
Dream would be to get stories with headlines like, from dances to danger, one campaign director said.
So there you see the reporting.
Facebook parent company Meta is paying one of the biggest Republican consulting firms in the country to orchestrate a nationwide campaign seeking to turn the public against TikTok.
The campaign includes placing op-eds and letters to the editor and major regional news outlets, prompting dubious stories about alleged TikTok trends that actually originated on Facebook, and pushing to draw political reporters and local politicians into helping take down its biggest competitor.
So It's always important to think about why certain stories are being pushed and where they're coming from because it is true that most of what I heard that was being said about TikTok Applies to every single other social media app, including Facebook and Instagram and YouTube.
You can find all of those same pathologies that you see on TikTok.
These are not coming from the Chinese government.
These are coming from American citizens who are uploading that content onto TikTok because they represent their views.
And a lot of these social pathologies are being spread and reinforced On TikTok, but TikTok is reflecting these pathologies.
They're not causing them, at least no more so than these other social media platforms are.
Now, it isn't just Facebook.
Hear from the Wall Street Journal this week.
It was actually a year to the day of the Washington Post article.
TikTok is also hiring behind-the-scenes help in Washington, including several former Obama advisors, including Xenia Mucha, Jim Messina, and David Flelf, the former Senior advisors or senior officials of the Obama campaign in the White House were brought on to advise the video app CEO on handling U.S.
criticism over China ties.
So while they have you looking over here at TikTok in China, there's a lot of this kind of competition taking place underneath that is about everything but that.
Now, I want to get to Darren in just a second.
I actually want to talk to him about a lot of this and so we can show some of this here.
But I wanted to show you A interview that Lindsey Graham did, the Republican Senator from South Carolina, with Fox News host Jesse Watters.
Earlier this week, Lindsey Graham is actually a sponsor, a co-sponsor of the Restrict Act, and Jesse Watters confronted him about the fact that Lindsey Graham and his colleagues are claiming to Americans this is about banning TikTok, but in fact the bill extends far beyond that.
Watch what happened.
I don't think I support the Restrict Act.
You don't support this because you were named as one of the supporters because this is garbage.
Is this the one with John?
There's two bills out there.
One allows a review of businesses that are connected to China and gives the Secretary the ability to protect our data.
Is that the Restrict Act?
We got S-686.
Right here.
March 7th.
And we got a bunch of Republicans supporting it.
Because this thing is crazy town.
You don't want the government looking into your private phone.
No, I don't.
If they have a hunch you're colluding with the Russians, we remember how that turned out.
Yeah, no.
Well, the Constitution trumps a statute, so let me come back and, you know, give you a better explanation.
Here's the problem as I see it.
China is the parent company of TikTok, and my nieces like TikTok.
I don't mind them using TikTok.
I just don't want the Chinese government to seize all their data and manipulate the information Americans sees for political purposes.
China is helping drug cartels in Mexico.
China is not a friend.
Chinese espionage is at an all-time high against American business interests.
So I want to push back against China, but within a constitutional framework.
You're right about that.
So you made these allegations, and I'll come answer better next time.
Well, I mean, because on Congress, I'll go if you're listed as one of the co-sponsors of this thing.
Maybe it's like Fetterman when your chief of staff does all your work for you.
But, Senator, you've got to go back and talk to these other senators about this.
This thing is nuts.
And it's going to get abused like it always does, so we've got to clean this up.
Yeah, I'm definitely going to push back against China being able to steer your data, but I want to do it in a constitutionally sound manner.
So, the problem is real with China, but the solution can be more damaging than the problem.
That's sort of what you're telling me.
Don't push back on the United States.
Citizens.
I mean, pick your poison.
Either Lindsey Graham co-sponsored a bill, the contents of which he was completely ignorant of, has no idea what's in this bill.
you just said.
So let me get back with you.
But let me just get back with me because you co-sponsored it two days ago.
Okay.
I mean, pick your poison.
Either Lindsey Graham co-sponsored a bill, the contents of which he was completely ignorant of, has no idea what's in this bill.
I guess you can believe that if you want.
Or they were attempting to enact a bill that is a huge power grab and didn't want the public to realize they were doing that because they had the public so worked up over the evils of TikTok through a campaign financed by Facebook and over anti-Chinese sentiment.
That's your responsibility as a citizen, is to not allow them to do that to you.
That even if you believe China's a threat, even if you hate TikTok, Be very careful with these people when they start trying to speak to you as if they agree with you and start demanding powers in the name of protecting you.
So often, that is how we got many of the worst abuses that we continue to have to confront and fight against to this very day.
So for our interview segment, we are delighted to welcome to the program Darren Beattie, who is a journalist at Revolver News, where he has done some of who is a journalist at Revolver News, where he has done some of the best and most important reporting on a wide variety of topics, particularly the January 6th riot and prior knowledge of agencies such as the FBI in it.
Prior to that, he was a speechwriter at the Trump White House, and he has also been a professor of political science at Duke University.
He always has opinions that are based in lots of learning and are often provocative and well-informed.
He's been on our show before.
We are always happy to talk to him, and we have a lot to cover with him tonight, so we're delighted to have him.
Darren, good evening.
Great to see you.
Thanks for coming on.
So great to be back.
Thank you.
Absolutely.
So let's start with the topic that we covered last night for 90 straight minutes, which is the first ever indictment of a former president of the United States, Donald Trump.
Before I get into some specific questions, just tell me what your reaction is to that.
What do you make of that?
Well, you know, it's a remarkable thing.
It's unprecedented and all the things that everyone's heard.
But I think what I would add to it is that it was kind of baked into the cake from the very beginning.
It is the inevitable culmination of the forces that were set in motion when Trump ran against the coordinated opposition of every powerful interest in the entire country.
and one and humiliated them in doing so.
And you're well familiar with the unfortunate fact that there is no graver sin than defeating and humiliating the corrupt regime in the United States.
Unfortunately, people like Julian Assange have learned that the hard way.
And now Donald Trump that stands, I think, as the most vital and viable symbol of opposition to the regime, is just getting what comes with the territory, what comes with the territory of starting and leading the most significant movement in the country opposing our corrupt regime.
You know, I guess I'm kind of left wondering what the strategy here is, or actually if there is one.
I think a lot of Democrats were hoping that when Trump finally got indicted, it would be about something more serious at least, Like some kind of claim from the Justice Department that he had in some way incited what they continue to call this insurrection on January 6th, or the sedition, or they've actually convicted people for conspiring to engage in sedition and to be able to tie Trump to that through the Justice or they've actually convicted people for conspiring to engage in sedition and to be able to tie Trump to that through Would at least seem like it was a serious thing.
They could bring on a Robert Mueller figure who seems more apolitical to oversee it.
Instead, you have basically the worst of all worlds in terms of trying to make this seem like something apolitical and serious, which is a very liberal district attorney elected by the overwhelmingly liberal Democratic voters of Manhattan
Not about some serious case anyone cares about, but about the most tawdry and trivial matter, which is the allegation that Donald Trump paid a porn star to not talk about the affair she says she had with him prior to the election.
And paid with his own money.
Yeah, with his own money.
I mean, John Edwards in 2011 was charged with a similar crime because there the allegation was two rich supporters of his paid his mistress $900,000.
So the allegation was that was a campaign finance violation because he had two people paying $900,000 to help his campaign.
And there John Edwards got acquitted.
It was a hung jury.
He got acquitted on their charges and they just forgot about the whole thing.
So you're right.
It's Trump's own money.
So, and on top of that, whether, even if they prove everything that happened the way they said that they did, whether this is even a crime is something undetermined under New York law.
They'd have to convince a court to adopt the theory that no court has ever adopted.
All the kind of cards are lined up for this to be a failure and even if they win I question whether it would even help them, might help Trump in fact.
What do you think happened here?
Is this part of some like coordinated theory or was this just a Manhattan district attorney being swarmed by the liberals surrounding him who just weren't going to take no for an answer and wanted him indicted even under such stupid circumstances?
Yes, I think, again, I think this is the inevitable culmination of the energies that were set in motion when Trump won.
I don't think there's any grand strategic plan governing this particular indictment.
I think it's a case of, I mean, to use a phrase deployed in another context, it's a kind of mass psychosis.
It's a form of derangement.
And there's unfortunately a tremendous amount of demand for this.
I question how many of Trump's detractors will get beyond the headline of unprecedented indictment.
Hush money.
Hush money sounds bad.
I question how many people will look beyond those kind of superficial sort of headline terms and just see how trivial and ridiculous the substance is.
And I don't think a lot of his detractors care.
I mean, they'll try everything.
They tried two impeachments, and they tried the January 6th stuff, and now they're doing this.
And there could be more indictments to come, frankly.
So they're just doing everything they can to take him off the table.
Yeah, I mean, the reality is that with everything that's happened, two impeachments, COVID, January 6th, he's still the frontrunner in the sense that he leads the Republican race by a good margin, and in head-to-head matchups with Biden, though it's close, we are a divided country, he nonetheless and in head-to-head matchups with Biden, though it's close, we are a divided And it's not easy, it's not hard to imagine him winning against a then 82-year-old Joe Biden.
He's going to deteriorate even further by the time 2024 comes around and I think you're right.
They're just very petrified and are willing to do anything But you know, I just wonder, just not to try and be a political prognosticator, but if you look at how the Republicans overplayed their hand when it came to the Clinton scandals of the 90s, it never really got past the point in people's minds that this was really just kind of a tawdry sex scandal.
And Bill Clinton left the White House fairly popular.
The attempt to impeach him failed.
The last election was pretty favorable to the Democrats.
So it didn't seem to work to try and pin all this kind of scurrilous stuff on Bill Clinton.
I just wonder, is it, and that's why I'm really wondering what happened here.
Is this really this kind of nefarious strategy, or is it just Democrats kind of spastically reaching for anything they can find blinded by hatred and just doing even dumb stuff just to satisfy this craving?
thing.
Right, I think it's neither strategy nor sort of kind of some performative and ultimately trivial gesture.
I think it really is a manifestation of the underlying profound energies animating the regime's opposition to Trump.
It simply had to express itself this way.
It's a form of derangement.
It's a form of obsession, informed by the sense that he poses an existential threat to the regime and humiliated the regime when he defeated Hillary Clinton in 2016.
One other quick point I'd like to get in on this is that I think the idea of these Democrat-aligned DAs indicting Trump, indicting basically the frontrunner opposing the current president in future indicting basically the frontrunner opposing the current president in future presidential election, I think that puts to rest any question as to whether all of
I think that puts to rest any question as to whether all of their lip service to democratic norms like peaceful transition of power were disingenuous or not.
I think it's very clear that there are This is all disingenuous.
The whole reason they made such a big deal about January 6, whose purpose really is to justify the weaponization of the national security state against Trump supporters, but to the public, they'll go on TV, they'll go on MSNBC, they'll look in the camera and say, this is about the democratic norm of peaceful transition of power.
A norm which they themselves have violated in an unprecedented way.
You know, if you go back, as we did for last night's show, and we only had a few hours to prepare because it broke kind of late in the day, but we did have some time to do it, and look at what they were saying in 2016 about the mere possibility that Hillary Clinton would be criminally charged for keeping a private email server at her home on which classified documents were maintained recklessly and illegally, and, you know, there were those lock her up chants as a result, the mere
The notion that someone might want her prosecuted was considered a grave affront to democratic values, a manifestation of authoritarianism and fascism.
And here they are doing that exact thing to Donald Trump, not talking about it, but actually doing it on multiple fronts.
And there's not even an attempt to reconcile what they were saying in 2016 with what they're doing now, as is so often the case.
Do you think that's going to hurt them?
The reconciliation is the same.
Originally, the point was intended to undermine the political prospects of the evil, uniquely evil Donald Trump.
And now it's the same.
It's intended to undermine the prospects of the uniquely evil Donald Trump, in both cases, it's again this manifestation of this obsession, this sense that no means are off the table when it comes to not only neutralizing Trump politically, but neutralizing the energies associated with his movement in 2016.
Yeah, that's why I've talked so much about it since it happened, the video of Sam Harris candidly acknowledging
The mentality that drives not just him but essentially you know all liberal institutions of authority which is that look it doesn't matter what constraints there are ethically or morally or anything else of course we should censor and engage in deceit and disinformation if it's designed to sabotage Trump and his movement because the greatest evil
By a long distance is Trump and his movement and therefore anything and everything done in the name of stopping that is inherently justified and I think he deserves credit for having acknowledged and admitted what most of them pretend isn't true and I think this is the perfect expression of that.
That's a great point and again you know we can kind of Disparage this kind of disposition.
We can lament this disposition all we want, but the sad Fact is, it's a winning disposition.
You'll, you know, lose everything that's desirable about your country, but you'll win the political fight.
It's a winning disposition, and that's just the reality that I think people need to face, especially people sort of on the right, the people being targeted by this.
One way I would put it, and have put it in the past, is a political movement animated by A slogan such as silence is violence will always beat a political movement animated by a slogan don't tread on me.
Silence is violence will always beat note don't tread on me.
Moral aggression, moral imperialism will always defeat leave me alone and that's that's kind of the reality and we see it play out over and over and over in how aggressively the
Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, the best way to describe it is just the establishment at this point, because a lot of the people who are participating in it are Republicans in the kind of archaic sense of that framework.
Let me switch gears slightly because I do want to ask you about solutions and kind of reactions and like at what point lines get crossed that will provoke reactions that could be destabilizing.
So we had Trump's indictment yesterday.
Today we had the criminal conviction of Douglas Mackey who's a pro-Trump social media influencer who used the name Ricky Vaughn.
And in 2016 posted a variety of memes that mocked Hillary Clinton and her supporters including ones that encourage people instead of voting or said if you want to vote for Hillary Clinton send a text to this number.
He was clearly mocking the stupidity of her supporters by doing that, but some of them Actually believed it and fell for it, according to evidence presented by the prosecutors.
A couple thousand people or so texted that number, presumably thinking they were voting or maybe they just did it to build that case.
Who knows?
But it's remarkable that they actually prosecuted, four years after the fact, this citizen for posting memes on Twitter in federal court and today obtained a conviction That from a jury that said that the intention was a plot to deprive people of their voting rights and he now faces multiple years in prison as a result of what were very obviously frivolous memes.
You can find very similar ones from Hillary supporters, people who did not get prosecuted.
What do you make of this case?
Well, it's an extremely significant case, but I'd like to begin by just correcting some of your description there, to the best of my knowledge.
Sure.
Yes, people texted the number that he gave saying, vote for this, but they texted the number after the media had covered these memes widely.
And in fact, the government has not produced a single person that they say was tricked out of voting on the basis of these memes.
So there's not a single specific aggrieved party claimed to have been deceived out of voting by these memes that were, as you point out, clearly satirical.
I think it's the most important First Amendment case in the country, and here's why.
The statute under which Mackey was prosecuted and just today convicted, it's a Ku Klux Klan Act.
It was a statute originally designed to prevent the Ku Klux Klan from physically preventing African Americans from going to the polls.
They have They've innovated upon this statute in order to encompass a term that we're all familiar with, disinformation.
They've tortured this old statute in order to codify the disinformation scam into criminal law.
And this represents a really important next stage of the regime's war on Americans.
No, we've been learning from the Twitter files, the collusion between the national security state and the big tech companies to shut people up and de-platform them.
Now what we're seeing with Trump's indictment and this Mackie conviction, the meme conviction, is the next stage.
We're beyond de-platforming from social media, which is the national security state issue.
Now we're in a Department of Justice issue.
That's promulgating the next stage of deplatforming, which is putting people in prison, which I think is the penultimate stage.
I think we can all imagine what the stage after that is.
But we're seeing a real weaponization of the Justice Department as such.
It's very dangerous.
This Mackie Meem case, I've said, is The first is just as important to the First Amendment as the Kyle Rittenhouse case was to the Second Amendment.
It's a critical case.
It's the most important First Amendment case.
It's going to appeal.
It could go all the way up to the Supreme Court.
Yeah.
I mean, I think, you know, I wouldn't be so skeptical of the possibility that some people fell for satire.
That's kind of the idea of satire is that sometimes people get confused.
Good satire generally confuses people about whether it's authentic.
The notion that some people might have seen something like this floating by and were dumb enough to believe they could actually vote that way is something I'm willing to believe.
But clearly the intention to prosecute him four years later had nothing to do with some genuine attempt to subvert the election or voting rights.
Instead, it was to concoct any possibility for thinking of ways to prosecute people who were influential supporters of Donald Trump.
But I think this is the important point, Darren, that sometimes I think people lose sight of, which is what bothers them is not the Republican Party.
If Jeb Bush had won, if Marco Rubio had won, if, you know, some traditional, like John McCain or Mitt Romney or whomever, Lindsey Graham for sure, they would be fine with that.
That's all part of the game.
The problem with Trump is that he ran against both Democrat and Republican orthodoxy and became a threat to the system to the point where, you know, and I think that's why they're so intent on calling this three-hour riot by people who, you know, never brandished a weapon inside the Capitol, who hadn't gotten off their couch in, you know, a long time, many of them.
Calling it an insurrection because that is a way, as you suggested earlier, you can criminalize the entire movement, not just Donald Trump and a handful of people, but the entire movement itself becomes an ongoing insurrectionary movement.
That's when you get the U.S.
security state involved in national security grounds.
So I guess the question becomes, you know, we lament these things.
We talk about how the Democratic Party and its followers now reveres the CIA and the FBI and Homeland Security, and rightfully so, those are their allies.
In their intention to criminalize the Trump movement and to prosecute as many of the people in that movement as they can, beginning with Donald Trump.
What is the proper response to all of that?
That's a great question, and just very quickly on the point about whether any voters were deceived, you're absolutely right.
Even if there were people who were deceived by the satire, it's still, I think, First Amendment-protected speech if it's satire.
But my point earlier was simply to say they're not even alleging any such aggrieved party.
They haven't presented a single person who even claims to have been deceived.
Right, they have evidence that number was called.
But they can't prove why- The number was texted.
Right, was texted, exactly.
Right.
And they were texted, I believe, after his Twitter account had been deactivated, and the mainstream media was covering the story.
So it could very well be people were texted just to see what happens.
So, you know, they don't know why people would, or they could have texted and voted still.
So the point is simply that there's not a single person the government presented to say, I texted and didn't vote because of this meme.
And even if there were such people, which the government hasn't presented, you're right, it's satirical speech covered by the First Amendment.
So I guess one of the points I make in Brazil oftentimes is that where the censorship regime makes the United States look like a bastion of liberty, where you have a Supreme Court that is constantly, you know, not just censoring individual where you have a Supreme Court that is constantly, you know, not just censoring individual posts but entire social media accounts of elected officials who are supporters of
That if you signal to people that they have a fair democratic process, that they can devote their anger and grievances toward and vindicate their political causes with, if they lose and they believe that they've at least been given a fair process, generally people like that accept it.
But if you start signaling to people that the basic political rights that they're guaranteed are no longer available to them, the means of nonviolent resolution of conflict and grievances, things like free speech and free debate, the ability to support the candidates you want without being prosecuted or censored, that's the kind of stuff that historically incites
violence incites instability because you're basically forcing people to the conclusion that the only way now that their voices can be heard are outside of the democratic system because that is now closed off to them.
Do you think we're reaching that point here where just kind of one thing piled on top of the other, on top of the other, on top of the other is going to start to bring about events like that might make January 6 look like finally the trivial three-hour riot that it actually on top of the other is going to start to bring MR.
You know, that's a good question.
And I could see why that would be an expectation.
It's not something that I really expect.
I think it's something that the regime would invite simply because it could be used to justify even further clampdowns.
But I think we have a kind of demoralized population and It's very hard to kind of organize and reach that kind of level of resistance.
So I wouldn't predict anything.
For instance, I wouldn't predict anything remotely resembling the BLM protests coming from the right.
It's just, that's not really how the right That's a function of a specific type of political outlook and political style of organization that is not associated with the right, and certainly not associated with the American right.
So I don't expect it, but I do think, and rightly so, that the system simply further delegitimizing people's Minds, and it remains to be seen how this underlying fundamental conflict between the fact that the national security state and all these institutions are attacking, you know, conservatives attacking opponents of the regime.
And this is the very same population pool that the national security state depends on to consume its anti-China propaganda, to consume its anti-Russia propaganda.
How long will they be able to sell this idea that China's this dystopian state and we're the free state and we need to defend the world against the threat to liberty posed by the CCP when we're locking people up just like they are.
I've characterized it, you know, we're becoming China plus drag queens.
Well, and that actually does lead to the last thing I want to talk to you about.
We only have a few minutes, but I do want to get your view on it, which is, you know, I just talked about all the stuff that's being offered in the name of stopping TikTok.
The irony, of course, of the many ironies, is that one of the things that the Chinese government was accused of as evidence of their despotism, along with Iran and Russia, was that they did not want American social media platforms in their country because they claimed that those social media platforms would was that they did not want American social media platforms in their country because they claimed that those social media platforms would be destabilizing, would disseminate
And so they said, we don't want your Google and your Facebook, or if you are going to try and penetrate our market, you're going to have to live with a lot of really difficult restraints, a lot of heavy controls on what you can do because this is our country and we're not allowing your social a lot of heavy controls on what you can do because this is our country And they were accused of disrespecting the free flow of information, added proof that they were tyrannical.
And now we have the United States government not only wanting to ban TikTok, but wanting the power at will to ban any other app that in their own judgment they declare to be a threat to national security.
What do you think is happening there, and what do you make of all that in connection with what you just said?
So many, so many important things to say about that.
The first thing is, like, it's absolutely right.
You know, the Chinese are hopelessly naive across a number of dimensions, including their foreign propaganda efforts, a subject that we've written about at Revolver News recently.
But they're very smart in one critical respect.
They know to keep American tech companies the hell out because the reality is the American tech companies like Google, Facebook and so forth are just as much and probably far more instruments of American influence than TikTok is an instrument of Chinese influence.
Let me just interject there quickly, which is whenever there's an attempt in the Congress to break up these big tech monopolies or to dilute their power, The first people who stand up and say you shouldn't do that are officials of the U.S.
security state or people from the U.S.
who used to work for the U.S.
security state or are now lobbyists who now work for Big Tech and they openly say we need the power of Facebook and Google to be unlimited and massive because they are an important tool of our foreign policy.
They acknowledge that openly.
Oh, yeah.
Yes, look, Feng is far more important to the United States national security apparatus than the nuclear bomb at this point.
These are formidable weapons of soft power, of influence, of shaping hearts and minds of propaganda on so many different dimensions.
And that kind of suggests why it's a fool's errand.
It's really an impossibility for American politicians to bring these American tech companies to heal.
Precisely because one of their chief functions is as instruments of foreign influence.
Of course, we learned from the Twitter files, they're also instruments of domestic influence.
And that's really the problem.
The problem there recapitulates the broader problem that the national securities, the very same national security state that's been weaponized against the American people, specifically conservatives, is the one that conservatives are supposed to embrace in all of these sort of jingoistic campaigns against China and other alleged foreign adversaries.
The unfortunate thing is a lot of people eat it up.
And here's the reason why, especially at the level of elected officials, because for the reasons I've described, it's just a non-starter to bring Google, bring Facebook to heel in any meaningful respect.
So saber rattling against TikTok is the consolation prize.
It's the one area where the regime gives permission to the American Uyghurs That is the people on the right, the American representatives on the right.
So one is where the American regime gives them permission to flex their muscles and be the big tough guy.
And boy, do they eat it up.
But ultimately, it's a consolation prize for the fact that pointing fingers at TikTok, pointing fingers at China is the consolation prize For not taking care of the real problem, which is the corrupt people that run our own country.
Trump said it best.
He said it very bravely in a recent policy statement.
The number one threat to American citizens at the moment isn't any foreign adversary.
It's the people who control America.
Yeah, and you know, I think it's because we're just inherently tribalistic, right, that's in our DNA, that we do fall prey constantly, even as we kind of rationally know that we no longer trust these agencies, to any sort of tribalistic appeal of we have to unite
In defense of this far worst foreign tribe over there, that foreign threat, that thing outside of our tribe that's trying to harm us and attack us and take our things and steal from us.
And so it is kind of remarkable to watch the very same, not just Republican members of Congress, but even conservatives, Spend years worrying about and objecting to the interference by the US security state in the internet for their own political purposes and then at the same time be willing to hand the Biden administration the power to ban an entire social media app and others
Simply because they get worked up over China and and not only that but you know there was this I don't know if you saw but there was this TikTok video by some random user where sometimes you just if you step outside the media discourse you just hear wisdom that you forget exists because In our kind of insular discourse, it's things that are just so propagandized and papered over that you forget it.
But his argument was, look, I'm on TikTok because it's like the one place you can go that isn't dictated to or controlled by Homeland Security, the FBI, the CIA, the Washington Post, you know, the New York Times.
Like, it's the one place that Right, no, it's really funny.
respond much to censorship pressures.
And that happens to be the one platform that both Republicans and Democrats are getting Americans to want banned.
You know, no one's forced to use TikTok.
Yeah, but it is amazing. - It's really funny.
You know, famously, you know, another bit in the news is that this very controversial individual called Andrew Tate, I guess, was just let out of prison in Romania.
And he was very famously canceled across the Internet, but particularly in people going after him on TikTok, where he's like one of the top influencers in the world and the funny, you know, he does a lot of stuff.
He has a pretty aggressive approach to combating feminism, I think it's fair to say, and is definitely not politically correct.
But the thing is, is that was an instance of, you know, censorship on the part of TikTok.
But the funny thing is, does anyone for a second think that this was coming from the CCP and not demands from whatever kind of the Western, you know, subsidiary version is saying we need to censor?
The demands were coming from the West for that kind of censorship.
Now, people, I don't want people to get me wrong.
The Chinese censor, but the thing is they censor very different categories of speech.
And that's why, you know, even though China is an authoritarian country, the globalist American empire has become an authoritarian country.
I'm glad that at the very least we have two Different authoritarian countries that censor different things because it at least creates the possibility to arbitrage the difference and maybe have some things that are, you know, some platforms in China that don't censor the stuff that we censor.
And then reciprocally, hopefully Chinese can use VPNs and get information critical of their government.
So it's kind of a two way street in that respect.
But it's something I call taboo arbitrage.
But I think it's absolutely right.
The Chinese are smart to keep Google and basically Feng out.
And those are tools of foreign influence.
The TikTok thing is a distraction.
It's the consolation prize for the fact that we don't have people, yet at least, who are able to tame Google, Facebook, and the like.
Yeah, you know, we did, just to wrap this up, we did a show a couple of months ago about the war in Ukraine, and obviously we're critical of the U.S.
posture toward it and the narrative of the U.S.
media, the kind of thing that gets you censored from big tech, if you say.
One of the videos that our social media manager posted to TikTok ended up getting immediately taken down about Ukraine with a warning saying if you do anything like this again you're on very thin ice you will be banned permanently and obviously that's not the Chinese government banning dissent to the war in Ukraine.
That's the US government doing that.
And that's because TikTok is desperate to stay in the United States.
Because if you look at the CEO of TikTok, you see exactly what he is.
He's a guy who left Singapore at 18 to go study at the London School of Economics, worked for Goldman Sachs in London, went to go and intern at Facebook after he got a degree from the Harvard Business School He's an entrepreneur who wants to make a lot of money.
And he has basically said, TikTok has basically told the US security state, as in order to stay in the United States, we will do your bidding.
We will censor for you.
We will, you know, tell us what you want banned and we will do it just like Google does with China in order to stay in China.
And so I think, you know, this idea that just this kind of like comic book narrative that TikTok is here at the behest of China to spy on all of us and to propagandize all of us and to censor our discourse.
There is some bits and pieces of that that are true, but there's so much more going on underneath.
And ultimately, I think you're exactly right at best.
What all of this is, is a distraction from the war over who gets to control the Internet.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
And you know, it's just such an incredibly stupid conversation at the political retail level.
But it reflects, you know, that it's the retail conversation is downstream of very, very important things like how the Internet's version of multipolarity, the splinternet, will play out.
And I do think it's important that we have multipolarity on the Internet, if only to arbitrage Yeah, it's a depressing but a very interesting way of looking at it, that we have two authoritarian governments and you kind of fill in the holes of where you get to speak.
Darren, as always, it's great to talk to you.
You always bring a lot of very independent insight and so we're thrilled whenever you come on.
We hope to see you on again shortly and have a great evening.
Same to you.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Bye bye.
So that concludes our show for this evening.
We will not have our after show tonight because I am scheduled to appear on Tucker Carlson's program in just a few minutes to talk about the criminal conviction In Brooklyn Court of Ricky Vaughn.
And so I'll be on that show in just I think about 10 minutes or so.
But we will be back on Tuesday for our after show.
Tuesday and Thursday is when we have our after show on Locals.
If you want to join you just go to greenwald.locals.com or click the join button and you'll be part of our Locals community.
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For those of you who have been watching we really appreciate it.
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