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April 19, 2023 - System Update - Glenn Greenwald

01:36:39

Senior Trump Official Richard Grenell on Assange, Ukraine, America-First Foreign Policy, DeSantis, & More. Plus, Left-Liberal Politics Ignores Personal Actions

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	- Good evening, it's Tuesday, April 18th.
	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, we'll speak to Richard Grenell, a former official in the Bush-Cheney State Department, and then, much more significantly, the Trump Administration's Ambassador to Germany and its Acting Director of National Intelligence.
	This interview happened originally because he objected to a claim I made over the weekend about the role I believe he played in the decision by Ecuador to withdraw its asylum for Julian Assange in 2019, the action which then allowed the London police and other British law enforcement to enter the Ecuadorian embassy and arrest Assange and then bring him to the high-security Belmarsh prison in the UK, where he has remained for the last four years.
	I posted Grinnell's response to my claim and then I spoke with him by email about coming onto the show to give his version of events, which he'll do, but we'll spend the bulk of the time talking about America First foreign policy, the war in Ukraine, how the U.S.
	security state uses and abuses its classification powers, something he saw uphand as Director of National Intelligence, what the foreign policy of a future Republican Party might look like under both Trump and Ron DeSantis, And how Ambassador Grinnell sees the role of the culture war and populist politics.
	Then, we'll examine the issue we intended to cover last night but ran out of time to discuss, namely the very common and popular argument in left liberal politics that there's no need to align your personal actions with your claimed political values and causes because, so this argument very conveniently holds, a person's individual sacrifices and actions are irrelevant to solving societal problems.
	Only collective action has value.
	There's new research demonstrating that those who refuse to live their lives in accordance with the causes they demand others honor have great difficulty speaking with credibility or convincing others to join their cause.
	The problem of John Kerry taking private jets to climate conferences or multi-millionaires living a life of gluttonous material consumption while they rail against the evils of wealth inequality and capitalism.
	We'll examine this issue, which might seem elusive and abstract, but in reality raises some very interesting questions.
	And then finally, just a couple of hours before our show aired, Fox News and Dominion announced a settlement to Dominion's defamation lawsuit, the trial for which was scheduled to begin today.
	We'll give some preliminary reactions as we do reporting on this and try and develop further thoughts and we'll outline what we think are, at least in this preliminary stage, the implications of this settlement.
	As we do every Tuesday and Thursday, as soon as we're done with our one-hour show live here on Rumble, we will move to Locals for our interactive aftershow to take your questions, comment on your feedback.
	To obtain access to that aftershow, simply sign up as a member to our Locals community.
	The red button to join is right below the video player here on the Rumble page.
	It also helps support our journalism.
	For now, welcome to a new episode of System Update, starting right now.
	One of the topics we cover most extensively on this show and that I've been writing about for several years now is the way in which Donald Trump's 2016 campaign both captured, but then also facilitated, major changes in how many conservatives and especially right-wing populists think about foreign policy, militarism, war, and the US security state.
	Those changes are not just my perceptions, but they're reflected in ample polling data, as well as the positions that populist right-wing leaders now regularly take.
	Those changes were a long time in the making.
	One can find their roots long before Trump in some of the key issues advocated by Pat Buchanan when he challenged George Bush 41 in the 1992 primary and which Ron Paul championed when running for the GOP presidential nomination far more successfully than anybody anticipated in both 2008 when the nominee was John McCain and then in 2012 when the Republicans nominated Mitt Romney.
	But it was really Trump's singular ability to attract attention and speak effectively to large numbers of ordinary Americans that not only reflected but really expanded The number of Americans who harbor serious distrust for the CIA, the FBI, Homeland Security, and the U.S.
	war making machine, and in particular to interrogate far more closely than ever before who the real beneficiaries are of endlessly posturing wars, pursuing wars far away from the U.S.
	that plainly have no effect on the lives of ordinary Americans except to drain their resources, risk their security, and prevent the United States from doing anything to facilitate an improvement in the material lives of them and their children.
	Finally, we're at the point now where questions are raised about who and what really are the objectives and who really values from this posture of endless war.
	Donald Trump himself dubbed this worldview and his foreign policy "America first." And while that phrase clearly has a fixed invisible meaning in some that the United States government should use its resources to improve the lives of its own citizens, not go around the world seeking conflicts and wars that enrich a tiny sliver of elites while immiserating everyone else, there are still not go around the world seeking conflicts and wars that enrich a tiny sliver of elites while immiserating everyone else, there And what
	More importantly, how it would apply to various conflict zones around the world, including in Ukraine, Iran, China, the Middle East, and beyond.
	Our guest tonight, Ambassador Richard Grenell, is one of the best positioned people to help explore these questions.
	Though he worked in the Bush-Cheney administration, whose foreign policy Trump relentlessly denounced and attacked during the 2016 campaign and since, he became one of Trump's most trusted confidants.
	Trump first nominated him to be as ambassador to Germany, and he was confirmed by a 56 to 42 vote in the Senate, winning the votes of all Republican senators along with five Democrats.
	But then in early 2020, Trump nominated him to become his Director of National Intelligence, the senior executive branch official in charge of the nation's intelligence community.
	As you might imagine, Trump's nomination of Grinnell came at the peak of Trump's battle with an intelligence community that was not only disloyal to him, but was actively working to sabotage him.
	Exactly as longtime Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer warned Trump in early 2017 would happen if he continued to, in Schumer's words, quote, take on the intelligence community.
	Something which Schumer said everyone in Washington knows not to do.
	The rage prompted by Trump's nomination of Grinnell among the establishment wings of both parties is hard to overstate.
	CNN, as just one example, published an op-ed with this headline, quote, Richard Grenell is a disastrous choice to head U.S.
	intelligence agencies.
	That was from February 22nd of 2020.
	Now, to me, in Washington, there are few compliments higher than provoking opposition from the two parties' establishment wings to your foreign policy views.
	And while both Trump and Grinnell decided that he would serve in this capacity only in an acting role until the permanent DNI was named, who would obtain Senate confirmation, it quickly became apparent why there was so much establishment fear to Grinnell's occupying this position, beginning with his decision to declassify and thus allow the American people to see House transcripts on Russiagate that California Democrat Adam Schiff, among others, was desperately attempting to conceal.
	Now, as I indicated, the original impetus for this interview was Ambassador Grinnell's objections to a statement I made over the weekend in reply to somebody asking me what his role was in the events leading to Julian Assange's arrest.
	So I certainly want to give him the opportunity to correct the record and give his version of events.
	But we'll also use this opportunity to speak with one of Trump's closest foreign policy advisors and confidants about a broad range of issues.
	Our interview with Ambassador Grinnell starts right now.
	Ambassador Grinnell, thank you so much for taking the time to talk with us.
	We're thrilled to have you on the show.
	Glenn, thanks for having me.
	I really appreciate it.
	I know we had a little exchange.
	I wanted to correct the record.
	You were amazing with allowing me to state for the record what the facts were, so I really appreciate it.
	Absolutely.
	I mean, just to so people know at home, the first thing I did upon seeing your objections was I posted your objections, encouraged people to read them, and then we had a private conversation.
	And I suggest you come on the show just to clear that up.
	Let people hear your version.
	I've never heard it, so I'm interested in hearing it, but then also talk about a whole bunch of other things as well.
	So let's start with that.
	My understanding had always been, based on reporting, talking to people in all the camps, the U.S.
	camp, the Ecuadorian camp, the Assange camp, that the effort by the United States government to persuade the Ecuadorians to withdraw asylum was an effort that you were part of.
	And prescribe some sort of partnership with Mike Pompeo, let's just say.
	For anyone who really knows the case knows that I didn't always see eye to eye with Mike Pompeo.
	I'll say it that way in a very nice way.
	Look, my role was pretty limited.
	I had been the ambassador to Germany and a lot of media reports had been pushing this idea that I was Trump's guy in Europe.
	And they thought it was kind of a derogatory headline and narrative.
	They pushed it quite a bit, you know, Trump's guy in Europe, Trump's guy in Europe.
	But it really backfired on them, because what it did is it made a lot of people in Europe who had not been able to have their voices be heard, Come to Berlin and try to get their voices heard.
	And so one day I was sitting in the office in Berlin at the ambassador's office and a senior person, foreign service officer that worked at the embassy, she came in and she said, the Ecuadorian ambassador is downstairs and wants to see you.
	Now, this is really odd for a diplomatic moment where you don't just show up at an embassy.
	You try to get an appointment.
	But he was adamant.
	We couldn't see him then, but I sat down the team to try to figure out what was going on.
	He wouldn't tell the team.
	He just said, I have to talk to the ambassador.
	It's an urgent matter.
	I wouldn't do this if it wasn't urgent, and I'd like to see him as soon as possible.
	So we scheduled a meeting for the next day.
	He came in, wanted to meet privately.
	And I always insisted on having one person with me.
	And so we had a very senior person at the embassy, we sat and listened.
	And the request was that the Ecuadorian government was tired of having Julian Assange at the embassy in London, it was getting very expensive, it was something that they couldn't keep up.
	And they were under all sorts of pressure to let him out.
	What the request was is, could the United States government agree that if the Ecuadorian government released him, that the U.S.
	government, if and when they took possession of him, had an extradition treaty request or some sort of an agreement, would the United States government agree not to Issue the death penalty or seek the death penalty.
	I was not involved in the case at all.
	But I like to be a diplomat and respond to the ambassadors who are in Germany.
	This was the Ecuadorian ambassador to Germany.
	And I said, you know, I'm happy to take this request to the Department of Justice and we'll get back to you.
	I called the Department of Justice that day.
	I spoke to, I can't remember actually, Glenn, if it was, if he was the acting Attorney General or if he was the Deputy Attorney General, but I spoke to Rod Rosenstein, got him right away.
	I said, here's the deal.
	The ambassador showed up.
	They would like to have our commitment Not to seek the death penalty.
	And immediately, Rod Rosenstein said, you know, Rick, we have done that deal before.
	This is something that is not that new for the United States.
	And we would absolutely agree to that.
	You can tell them, you know, we agree.
	And I said, well, I think it's probably best for you guys to know that this is something that they want.
	Why don't you go to the Ecuadorian government yourself?
	And so he agreed at that point that they would take it knowing that that was the request.
	I didn't do anything else.
	I didn't talk to Mike Pompeo about it.
	I didn't seek anyone's approval.
	I just tried to facilitate the request and the request was pretty easy from the U.S.
	government standpoint.
	Yeah, it doesn't surprise me that the DOJ would be willing to make that deal because it is... Sorry Glenn, I can't hear you.
	There you go.
	I got you.
	I got you.
	It doesn't surprise me that the US, the Justice Department, would agree to that deal because a condition to getting the extradited Assange, that is, from the UK or any country in Europe to the US would be that the US would have to agree not to seek the death penalty.
	That's always a condition for extradition from Europe.
	But you did, though, in that answer allude to the fact that he was saying they were tired of Assange being there because it was expensive and presenting other difficulties, but also they were being pressured in order to kind of let him go, in order to finally get him out of there.
	News reports said that.
	Three governments were the ones putting this pressure on him.
	The U.S., the U.K., and Spain.
	Spain had become angry with Assange because he was kind of inciting or siding with a lot of the protesters for independence, Catalan independence.
	Do you know who it is that was applying pressure on the Ecuadorians to withdraw that asylum that had been in place since 2012?
	I don't.
	I mean, I was the bilateral ambassador to Germany.
	We had Nord Stream 2 going on, which I had my hands full with NATO spending and a whole bunch of other issues.
	This was not something that was on my plate.
	However, I did see, you know, Mike Pompeo and others talking about Assange.
	And so I, you know, I wouldn't deny, I don't know, but I certainly wouldn't deny that the U.S.
	government was putting that pressure on.
	Great, so just last question on this then we can move on.
	It's certainly always been my view and it's still very much my view that the person inside the Trump administration who by far was most responsible for the decision to indict Assange, people should remember the Obama Justice Department decided not to do that but they tried and wanted to, it only happened In 2019, was Mike Pompeo.
	I don't even think he made any attempt to just conceal that.
	He very proudly, when he was the CIA director, stood up in 2017 and threatened and warned that he would personally put an end to WikiLeaks and their claim to free press and free speech.
	I don't know if you can confirm it, but at least part of what you're disputing is not that it was Mike Pompeo who was the leading impetus in the Trump administration for that to happen.
	Look, I really don't know.
	It wasn't on my plate.
	I have no idea who was leading that effort.
	Let me just say, separately, that as somebody who has a 20-plus year record of receiving classified information, as a public policy official, it's really important to receive classified information.
	I know how useful it is.
	I know how we use it and what kind of information should be presented.
	There are rules, obviously, for classified information.
	And there are different rules for media and reporters.
	I am not somebody who believes that we should go after reporters who somehow get classified information.
	I think we should go after the people who leak.
	And those individuals who have sworn to not leak, classified information because they've been given top secret security clearances, they should be punished.
	I am not somebody who wants to go to the receiver of that information, whether it's the media or NGOs or other people. - Or WikiLeaks. - Because I just, yeah, look, I don't think that the person receiving the information is the one, you know, We're all looking for transparency when you're not inside the government.
	But government officials, when you have your government hat on, you should be working really hard to make sure that we don't have anyone with a top secret security clearance with access to classified information that's lying or leaking.
	I think that's fundamental.
	All right, so actually that's a good transition into what I wanted to ask you about, which is there's obviously a current controversy surrounding somebody who's a 21-year-old member of the Massachusetts National Guard who is accused of leaking top-secret documents, classified documents.
	I personally haven't seen it.
	I personally haven't seen evidence that they're endangering specific people.
	They don't have names of covert agents or the like, but they are top-secret documents.
	They involve some things like troop deployments in Ukraine and stuff, things you would expect the government to protect with classified designations.
	Nonetheless, I'm curious, though, when you did become acting DNI, one of the first things you did that created a lot of controversy that I personally supported, a lot of people supported, was you declassified legally.
	You didn't leak, you declassified a lot of documents pertaining to things like the Russiagate investigation that Congressman Schiff and other Democrats were desperately trying to keep concealed.
	My view, having worked with classified information in the past and seeing a bunch of things marked top secret and classified that are really quite banal and not very informative, is that the US government wildly overclassifies, that it labels almost everything these days, almost reflexively, top secret and classified.
	Is that something you agree is a problem in Washington?
	A huge problem, which is one of the reasons why I was saying to you, I was an expert on receiving classified information, using classified information.
	I didn't collect it.
	I wasn't part of the collection process.
	But when I was appointed acting DNI, it was unbelievable how many media people We're screaming, this is a guy that is completely not qualified to be acting DNI.
	And my attitude was like, wait a minute, who better to be acting DNI than somebody who has a 20 year history with receiving classified information, knowing when it's good and when it's bad.
	And I can't tell you, Glenn, how many times I have been in a briefing with my briefer, telling me classified information or supposed to classify information.
	And I would push back and I would say, I read that in the newspaper.
	That's open source.
	That's not classified.
	Why is this classified?
	I think two things that are really important.
	One, it's absolutely true we over-classify information.
	We over-redact information, too, when we're giving information to the Hill.
	That was one of the things that I saw with the footnotes of many of the documents.
	They would just redact this.
	I pushed back hard with DOJ and with the FBI, and the leadership told me, you know, you're crazy, you can't do this, you're wrong.
	And I kept pushing and I pushed through to say, well, I'd actually like to talk to the FBI agents whose name is on the redaction.
	I want to go to that individual and I want to look them in the eye and I want them to justify that this is a source or a method.
	Because to me, I've seen it unredacted, and it's not.
	It's not a sorcerer method.
	It's an embarrassing fact about the agency.
	You don't want this out because of a PR exercise.
	This should not be redacted.
	When I finally pushed through, passed Chris Wray, passed Bill Barr, and demanded that I meet with these individuals, And by the way, I met with these individuals.
	I'm going to break a little news here.
	One of the big moments when I was acting DNI is I got caught by the media carrying a satchel into the Department of Justice.
	What I was doing is I was going to a meeting Where I demanded to meet with the FBI officials, and I was going to show them—they have a security clearance—I was going to show them the unredacted portions of information that had been redacted for years.
	I had the documents in that briefcase to say, this is not a source and it's not a method.
	It's a PR exercise.
	This is ridiculous.
	And if not for pushing through Wray and Barr, I would not have been able to unredact that information.
	Because when I looked at those FBI agents, They agreed with me.
	They said, you know what?
	I didn't do that.
	My name is on that.
	But my boss did that.
	I don't think that's a source.
	And I don't think that's a method.
	And I actually agree with you.
	So that was a big moment to push through.
	And it also empowered me and my team, actually, at D&I to say, there's a lot more here that we need to challenge.
	Yeah, it's amazing.
	I mean, sometimes when people ask me, what's the most significant thing you learned in the Snowden reporting or working with WikiLeaks, it's actually that a lot of documents that I've seen in unredacted form that are labeled top secret are utterly uninformative or are clearly being hidden, not because they endanger people if they're disclosed, but to protect the officials in government who have done things deceitfully or otherwise corruptly.
	Let me ask you, there was some Go ahead, go ahead.
	That we're not, that nobody's putting an assumption here.
	I actually believe, though, any document that is labeled classified, top secret, any classification should not be leaked.
	Right, you believe it should be done legally through the legal process of declassification.
	Correct, follow the process.
	I understand.
	You're not at all sanctioning leaks or anything of that kind.
	I definitely understand.
	Or individuals assuming what is really truly classified information.
	There's a process to declassify and people should follow that.
	The President of the United States is the top guy who can declassify without a reason and can do anything that he or she wants.
	That is what the law says.
	But if somebody inside the government finds evidence That senior government leaders are lying to the public or acting corruptly, and they try first to invoke legal whistleblowing procedures and don't get anywhere with them, and then they get to the point where they feel in good conscience as a citizen they can't sit silent and allow political leaders to deceive the public or to act corruptly.
	They have an obligation to show the truth to the public.
	Do you think there's never a time when that's justifiable?
	Look, I think that the system that's in place has a lot of ability to go to people who can go public.
	I'm thinking of senators or congressmen who are trying to seek the truth.
	Maybe it's the opposition, right?
	If it's a Republican administration, there are eager Democrats to show that something has been overly classified.
	So you could go to a Democratic senator.
	The same would be true in a Democratic administration.
	If you're not getting anywhere, if Avril Haines, for instance, Or the CIA director somehow not listening to you and you feel very strongly that this is inaccurate information.
	It's a lie.
	It's spinning.
	It's deceiving the public.
	I think then you go to one of these oversight But it is a crime just as much for a member of Congress to leak or disclose classified information because they believe the public should see it as it is for anyone else inside the government, right?
	It is, but there are instances where, let's say that Senator is on the Intelligence Committee, where they can go and they can ask for a classified briefing and demand that something be done.
	They can get a lot more done with the Director of National Intelligence, Averill Haynes, for instance, than just a staffer that maybe can't get the boss of the boss of the boss to notice something.
	Right.
	Just quickly on this issue as the last question.
	There was a lot of talk during the kind of transition in 2021 about the possibility that Trump, and even late 2020, that he would declassify certain documents, including the 60-year-old CIA documents about the murder of John Kennedy, other documents relating to the Russiagate investigation.
	It seems to me, and reporting confirms this, that I've done that, kind of the impeachment process that then was hovering over his head, that second impeachment that didn't make a lot of a sense except as kind of leverage over Trump, meant that he left office without doing things that some of his supporters hoped he would do, like pardon Julian Assange and Edward Snowden, but also declassify these other groups of documents that Trump had indicated previously he thought should be declassified.
	Were there groups of documents like that that you believe, and I know you can't discuss the intelligence itself, but just in terms of categories of documents that you believe ought to have been declassified during either the Trump administration or now?
	Sure, absolutely.
	I was there three months and six days and my priority was Russia and all of the transcripts where I have to say that I would watch people on television, CNN or MSNBC, and they would say one thing and then I would read their transcript where they were sitting next to their lawyer under oath.
	And they said the exact opposite.
	So for me, the priority was to expose these total hypocrites that were saying one thing publicly and another privately.
	I wish that I would have had more time.
	Although you are correct in the very beginning, I didn't want this job.
	I'm a 12 year diplomat.
	I care very deeply about the State Department.
	State Department needs massive reforming.
	And I just jumped in because the president asked me to in a temporary basis.
	Right.
	Let's talk about foreign policy since that is where you've worked for a long time.
	One of the things I find interesting about your trajectory, although it's not even rare at this point, is that you did work in the Bush administration, I believe as kind of a spokesman for the ambassador to the UN, which is a position inside the Bush State Department.
	When Donald Trump ran in 2016, he was relentlessly critical of Bush-Cheney foreign policy.
	Not necessarily how it was back then, but certainly arguing that, at least as of now, it no longer applies.
	And he kind of contrasted what he viewed as that neocon or war-seeking foreign policy with what he called America First foreign policy.
	Do you regard yourself as an adherent, in general, to America First foreign policy?
	And either way, what do you understand that term to mean?
	Yeah, great question.
	And the answer is yes.
	I've written several pieces on this issue, and I would encourage people to go find them.
	There's one that I did for Carnegie Mellon University.
	It's a very long, thoughtful piece on defending America First.
	I did a speech at the Nixon Library that also kind of talks about America First foreign policy.
	Look, I think that the opposite of America First is consensus with the Europeans.
	And that's not good for the Americans and our national security.
	So I would summarize it that way.
	I think you're exactly right.
	I spent eight years in the Bush administration.
	I saw up close.
	I was the spokesman at the UN during the Iraq war, the Afghanistan war, the war in Syria.
	I saw up close how the Department of Defense and the State Department interact, how we would go in and You know, enforce sanctions or enforce the rule of law as we saw it.
	And I think I learned a lot.
	I certainly saw the failures.
	I certainly saw people unwilling to kind of say, stop, uncle.
	This is a disaster.
	Let's do something else.
	And what I loved about Donald Trump in 2016 is that he wasn't beholden to any of the previous Republican ideas.
	He just sought for what it was, and he called it out.
	And it was very freeing for me to be able to go immediately on the campaign of somebody like that, because I was very frustrated.
	I didn't think that our policy was working.
	I think in my mind as a diplomat, I was an early diplomat back then.
	This is like 2001-2002 when I started at the State Department.
	Since then, I think the idea that the President of the United States gets two powerful agencies, the Department of Defense and the State Department.
	They get to duke it out.
	They get to fight it out.
	I love the idea of peace through strength.
	But so many times on peace through strength, people just emphasize the strength part and having a Pentagon that's really, really credible and ready.
	But I think that we missed the peace part.
	Because if you want to have a solution that is outside of war, and you want peace through strength to actually work, then you better have diplomats that are at that table before the war starts.
	Diplomats who are really tough.
	Not wimpy diplomats.
	And when I was in Germany, I got a lot of pushback for saying that we should not have a Western ally like Germany having a pipeline with Russia, the Nord Stream 2 pipeline.
	We sanctioned in the Trump administration.
	Merkel was not happy about that.
	She and all of her media allies relentlessly mocked us for being too tough.
	Then they added the NATO funding issue where we said, you know, pay your fair share.
	Germany is Is the largest economy in all of Europe with a budget surplus.
	50,000 American troops when you count the rotational troops, and yet somehow they're not paying their Wales Pledge obligation of 2014.
	I mean, it's really, it was too much.
	And so I was out there trying to defend American policy, American taxpayers, by saying, pay your fair share and don't build this pipeline.
	But as soon as Trump went away, Merkel and Senate Democrats came in immediately and dropped the sanctions on the Russian pipeline.
	I think that was a white flag signal to Putin to say, well, look, this administration, this Biden team is so weak, I'm going to go and finish the job that I started under Obama in Ukraine.
	And then what we saw is for a month, One month straight, Joe Biden messaging every single day saying, we've got the intelligence, the Russians are coming, they're going to roll through here, they're going to be all over you.
	And the only policy that the Biden team had then was, let's get Zelensky out of the way.
	They offered him a ride out of Ukraine.
	And we didn't see Anthony Blinken or the State Department or any peace option.
	But I'm sorry, if I was leading diplomacy for the United States, and the Department of Defense was messaging that a war was starting very soon, and we knew for sure that the Russians were about to roll in, I would be getting the foreign ministers in Europe together in Kiev, trying to forge some sort of a peace agreement.
	If you know war is coming, it's a moral tragedy.
	to think that you wouldn't offer a peace deal.
	And we didn't.
	We didn't offer anything.
	And so right now the State Department has been shoved aside and all we talk about is war, war, war and more funding for war.
	Yeah, so I think it's conspicuous that not only was there no attempt diplomatically on the part of the United States or NATO to resolve the conflict in advance, it seems like the interest of the United States was the opposite, that there are benefits that have accrued from it seems like the interest of the United States was First of all, it got the Europeans to disengage from Nord Stream, something that has been a long-standing policy under President Trump.
	When everyone was accusing him of being a Russian agent, he was working to undermine the most important vital interest the Kremlin has.
	Which is selling natural gas to Europe.
	But this war first very quickly caused Germany to say, OK, we're not going to proceed with Nord Stream 2.
	But it also has been weakening Russia the more this war goes on.
	Do you agree that the United States foreign policy leaders perceive it in their interest for this war to actually continue and that's why there's no diplomatic effort?
	And independently, Does the United States have a vital interest in fighting over who governs various provinces in Eastern Ukraine?
	Great questions.
	Let me take the first one.
	And I think the reality is if you go back and you look at what the Senate Democrats were saying on the floor of the Senate in order to drop the sanctions on Nord Stream 2, it's very revealing when you look at what they were saying.
	They were saying, you know, we don't want to stick it in the eye of the Russians.
	This policy of sanctioning the pipeline is dumb.
	You know, it's inevitable.
	It's coming.
	Our ally, Germany, wants us to drop these sanctions.
	And so the sanctions were dropped at the request of Merkel right at the end of her term when she was about to be done.
	That was her swan song.
	She wanted these sanctions dropped because it was important for the economy.
	Joe Biden decided that it was better to please the Germans and have an applause from the German public than to continue having sanctions on that pipeline, which would benefit Americans.
	And that's why I say the opposite of America first, what's best for America, the opposite of that is consensus with the Europeans.
	And I just don't think that we should have rolled over.
	I think we should have stood up to the Europeans or continued to stand up to the Europeans.
	So I would encourage you and our listeners to really go back and look at people like Chris Murphy, what they said about dropping the sanctions.
	All of the Senate Democrats dropped those sanctions on the pipeline.
	I believe that that was the moment that Putin decided, this Democratic Party, Joe Biden is so weak, I'm going to finish what I started under Obama.
	And That was the real problem.
	The second part of your question, you know, look, I want to remind people that I'm a diplomat.
	I've been at the State Department for 12 years.
	You're always going to get from me the diplomatic solution.
	I think it's really important to have the Pentagon there giving options to the president as well.
	But as a diplomat, what I would say is we owe the Europeans and the American public and taxpayers The ability to have a peaceful solution here.
	I don't believe that there are that many politicians in Washington that are focused on a solution.
	I think they see the power and strength of a war and the benefits of a war to the economy as the only option.
	I blame Anthony Blinken We've had the Chinese come forward with a decent peace agreement.
	Now a lot of people are going to scream and holler and say that I'm pro-China, which is ridiculous.
	I've never been pro-China.
	I think that the deal that the Chinese put forward is flawed.
	It's not great.
	But you know who liked the Chinese deal immediately?
	Zelensky.
	He came out and said, wow, the Chinese see territorial integrity as a priority, and he complimented the Chinese draft plan.
	But nothing has happened since then.
	I don't understand how we got outmaneuvered by the Chinese at the State Department.
	My State Department friends should be screaming, they should be outraged that they've been shoved aside.
	The State Department is totally irrelevant under Joe Biden.
	And it's sad because we have got really good diplomats who want to be tough, who want to solve problems.
	They're not even given an option to do it in this administration.
	Sure, so let me just explore a little bit more the kind of Trump-slash-MAGA critique, or America First critique of the war.
	It's definitely, they definitely share the critique you just offered, as do I, which was that there was no real attempt diplomatically to resolve the war, nor is there now, to the point, as you say, that the Chinese are doing more to try and resolve the war, or Brazil is doing more to try to resolve this war, even though we're the ones financing a huge part of it.
	But then there's the critique that even beyond that, even if we did try to foster a resolution but we failed and this war went on, that there's no reason why the United States government should be expending its resources in order to defend or involve itself in a war on the other side of the world in which we have no vital interest.
	Is that a critique or a view that you share as well?
	Look, I believe that we would not have had this war if Donald Trump were in office.
	And the reason why is because I don't believe Putin would have tried.
	He certainly, you know, we know the history.
	He did under Bush, grabbed Georgia.
	He did under Obama.
	They grabbed Crimea.
	You saw the European leaders like Merkel with the Minsk Accords just to really, you know, just kind of dismiss Crimea.
	There wasn't a push to get it back.
	There was a belief, oh well, it's kind of gone, maybe if we don't talk about it, then we don't get in trouble for not trying to get it back.
	All of that is a disaster.
	Europe constantly talks about territorial integrity, and if that's what we believe, then we should have been screaming about that in the beginning.
	To go back to the idea of what to do now, I think that we've been given terrible choices because of the Biden administration.
	It's weak and weaker.
	And so I stand by the fact that I do believe that Donald Trump would have never allowed this war to happen.
	It never would have happened.
	And I think that he could absolutely solve this in a very short period of time because he knows the players.
	And there is a, I'll tell you this very quick story with Chancellor Merkel.
	She once said to me, you know, the problem with your president is we just don't know what he's going to do next.
	And I remember smiling and thinking, That's exactly what we want, and I just said, well, Madam Chancellor, some people think that's a strength.
	Yeah, right, and you know, whatever else is true about Trump, he's the first president in decades not to involve the U.S.
	in a new war.
	I know people hate to hear that, who view him as the new Hitler, but he's proud of it also.
	He boasts of it a lot, and I think it's something that I wish more leaders would aspire to.
	Let me just ask you, On this question of America First and the doctrine, we just have a little bit more time, so I just want to ask a couple more questions.
	I want to ask you about the use of the United States of sanctions as an instrument to change governments in places we believe the government should change.
	We currently are doing that in Cuba, Venezuela, Syria, Iran, multiple other countries.
	That is, if you look at countries now like China and Brazil or India that are now trying to basically commit to de-dollarization, to overthrowing the dollar as the reserve currency of the world, their main argument is because of the strength of the dollar, the US gets to impose sanctions on the world, tell us who we can and can't trade with.
	It's a good question and I felt long and hard about the sanctions policy.
	the government, it just immiserates the population.
	Looking at the world from a kind of America first perspective, that our government should be devoted to improving our lives, not changing other governments, do you think those sanctions regimes should continue or we just go around trying to change the governments of multiple countries around the world?
	It's a good question and I've thought long and hard about the sanctions policy.
	Look, there's always a big debate within the US government about how to use the sanctions Do you target them?
	Do you come in with overwhelming force?
	I don't think that there's a rule.
	And I think the US government makes a mistake by pretending that every country is going to respond in a rational way to our sanctions, and therefore we have this process that we have to follow.
	Some countries would respond to a quick sanction, and other countries are going to ignore it and we might have to come in with really harsh sanctions.
	I do think sanctions are a tool, but here is what I firmly believe through my 12 years of working at the State Department.
	We have to reevaluate our sanctions constantly, and we're not doing that.
	We've got sanctions policies on countries that have been there for decades.
	They're clearly not working.
	Why do we have them?
	We go back and forth between full engagement and then, oh, we're not going to engage and we're going to put sanctions on them.
	I think that we should try things and we should constantly be evaluating.
	Whether it's Cuba or Venezuela, we need to admit This was a secret process.
	Policy is not working and there are other ways that we can engage.
	I think that having tough diplomats who go in and have a better conversation—this was a secret process.
	I can only talk about it now because it did hit the media.
	But President Trump had me meet in Mexico City with the Venezuelans and I tried near the end of the administration to have a conversation there.
	We had a very tough line.
	We were able to talk and were presenting our ideas.
	It wasn't a weak position.
	People who were not in the room have a lot of views about whether or not we should have even been Talking and presenting ideas.
	I still believe that if we would have started that process a little bit earlier, we would have been able to find a solution.
	But it was near the end, I think it was in September of 2020, and it just fell apart.
	But I am somebody who believes that if you have a tough diplomat, not a weak one, Not somebody who's there to present wine and cheese and a toast, but actually be the tip of the spear for the United States.
	I think you can solve these problems because they're actually solvable when you get down and start talking about what does the other side need.
	Just a couple more quick questions, two in particular actually.
	One is, one of the things that interests me about Republican politics, and I never imagined I'd be saying that to start off any sentence, but that's something I do say regularly, is the transformation in foreign policy, the view of the U.S.
	security state, and other things ushered in by Trump.
	If you look at polls, and it's incredibly early, I think around this time in 2008, Rudy Giuliani had like a 20 point lead in polls, so we should probably discard those.
	But the primary competitor to Trump when it comes to the Republican nominee seems to be Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.
	He doesn't speak much about foreign policy, which makes sense.
	He's running the state of Florida.
	But in the House, he had a voting record that I would say was fairly similar to Mike Pompeo, with a couple of exceptions, including that he was opposed to the clandestine war to overthrow Bashar al-Assad in Syria, whereas Pompeo was for that.
	But in general, it was a pretty classic, standard, old-school Republican foreign policy.
	Lots of people have changed their foreign policy views and have evolved.
	That's part of what we're discussing.
	Do you have a read or an idea of what Ron DeSantis' foreign policy framework would be?
	Would it be closer to the establishment wing of the Republican politics, the Bush and Cheney families, or would it be more like President Trump's?
	I think that's an interesting question.
	I think the answer is we don't know.
	We certainly know his voting record.
	We see politicians actually voting on these issues and pretending like they've done something.
	What I would say is we have the luxury of having President Trump and his record, right?
	You touched on this fact that here's a man who was President of the United States controlling all of the U.S.
	government.
	And we heard from the media constantly that there would be World War Three because of President Trump.
	And that was literally what Hillary Clinton was pushing, that he is untested and unable to have somebody have his fingers near the button, so to speak.
	I think that we have to admit that the opposite actually happened.
	Not only was there not World War Three, but world peace broke out.
	We literally had the Arabs and the Israelis doing peace agreements.
	We had Kosovo and Serbia coming closer to normalization than at any other time.
	It's time that we admit that what Donald Trump was doing as an outsider, not just as a voting politician, worked.
	It totally worked.
	And the establishment, the foreign policy establishment in Washington is flat wrong.
	They have been wrong.
	You know, Glenn, you know this.
	It's a jobs program, many of these NGOs in Washington.
	With no accountability.
	With no accountability.
	It doesn't matter how wrong you are, you just keep climbing up that ladder.
	Yeah, listen, I have now become the expert on the Balkans.
	And all those people in Washington, DC, who have been working on Balkans policy for 20 years, writing white papers and getting lots of grants, they have been wrong all along, and there's no consequences for it.
	So I think that you have to understand all of the attacks on Donald Trump, all of the judicial machinations to try to stop him.
	Are because that whole place in Washington DC is upended by somebody who comes in and says, You didn't do it.
	You failed.
	And we shouldn't follow your way anymore.
	So their existence is literally going to cease when somebody like Donald Trump comes in and starts pointing out to the donor class and to the American people just how wrong the foreign policy establishment and the NGO class is.
	They are dead wrong on so many issues.
	Absolutely.
	Well, I have a lot of other things that I wanted to ask you about that we don't have time for.
	I'd love to have you back on, but I'm thrilled you were able to come on and clear the air and kind of give the real version of events about what happened with Ecuador and Assange.
	I've been wondering for a long time and, you know, I'm always happy to have somebody on who disputes claims.
	So I'm glad you were able to do that.
	And it was a great conversation.
	I appreciate your taking the time to have it.
	Thank you for having me and giving me the opportunity.
	Absolutely.
	Absolutely, have a great night.
	So there's a very odd precept that pervades a lot of political discourse that is about the question of how important is it that if you're somebody who claims to be devoted to a political cause or are advocating that others adhere to certain political values So there's a very odd precept that pervades a lot of political discourse that is about the question of how important is it that if you're somebody who claims to be devoted to a political cause or are advocating that others adhere to certain political values, that you yourself have your life aligned with those political values.
	And the converse is also equally important, which is if you're somebody who goes around condemning other people for failing to support certain causes that you claim are important and yet your life is in contradiction to those causes, do you have any credibility to actually which is if you're somebody who goes around condemning other people for failing to support I've been wondering about this for a long time.
	I've been noticing for a long time that this is kind of lurking in a lot of political discourse, I would say, particularly in left-global politics, where there are explicit views and precepts that have been disseminated to relieve people of the responsibility to have their life aligned with their Political values.
	There's all sorts of arguments that have been concocted to excuse people from having a life completely at odds with the politics they say they believe.
	But I wanted to talk about that in light of some new research, psychological research, that is very much about this question and that has found that those people who live a life at odds with their political values have no credibility to convince others That their political cause is just and that they are genuinely devoted to it.
	So it was first mentioned in this article, in this op-ed, in the New York Times just a couple weeks ago on April 10th by Joe Fassler.
	And it was about the fact that there are a lot of extremely wealthy people, namely billionaires, who go around the world insisting that the greatest problem the world faces is the climate crisis.
	And yet, as they do that, they engage in extremely gluttonous consumption, particularly things like having a mega yacht that leaves a huge carbon footprint.
	In fact, some of these yachts create more carbon output than all kinds of automobiles combined.
	And the research suggests that if you're somebody who does that, you're going to have a very hard time convincing people that you should believe that the climate crisis is a great threat while you're constructing mega yachts that are the size of large apartment buildings.
	So first, let's take a look at the research that was presented in this op-ed.
	There you see the headline, the super yachts of billionaires are starting to look a lot like theft, and the article reads, quote, on an individual basis, the super rich pollute far more than the rest of us, and travel is one of the biggest parts of the footprint.
	Take, for instance, Rising Sun, the 454-foot, 82-room Megaship owned by the DreamWorks co-founder David Geffen.
	According to a 2021 analysis in the journal Sustainability, the diesel fuel powering Mr. Geffen's boating habit spews an estimated 16,320 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent gases into the atmosphere annually, almost 800 times what the average American generates in a year.
	And that's just a single ship.
	Worldwide, more than 5,500 private vessels clock in about 100 feet or longer, the size at which a yacht becomes a superyacht.
	This fleet pollutes as much as entire nations.
	The 300 biggest boats alone emit 315,000 tons of carbon dioxide each year based on their likely usage, about as much as Burundi's more than 10 million inhabitants.
	Indeed, a 200-foot vessel burns 132 gallons of diesel fuel an hour standing still and can guzzle 2,200 gallons just to travel 100 nautical miles.
	You're probably thinking, and this is the argument constantly offered in left-wing liberal politics when people bring up the gap between a person's private conduct on the one hand and the political values they publicly and flamboyantly claim to represent.
	You're probably thinking, quote, but isn't that a drop in the bucket compared to the thousands of coal plants around the world spewing carbon?
	It's a common sentiment.
	Last year, Christopher Bichoux, France's Minister of the Environment, dismissed calls to regulate charter flights as, quote, the buzz.
	Flashy, popular solutions that get people amped up, but ultimately only fiddle at the margins of climate change.
	But this misses a much more important point.
	Research in economics and psychology suggest humans are willing to behave altruistically, but only when they believe everyone is being asked to contribute.
	People, quote, stop cooperating when they see that some are not doing their part, as the cognitive scientists Nicholas Beaumont and Corelli Chablais wrote last year in Le Mans.
	In that sense, super-polluting yachts and jets don't just worsen climate change, they lessen the chance that we will work together to fix it.
	Why bother when the luxury goods mogul Bernard Arnault is cruising around on the Symphony, a $150 million, 340-foot superyacht?
	Last June, at Celebs Jets, a Twitter account that tracked the flights of well-known figures using public data, Then calculated their carbon emissions for all to see, revealed that the influencer Kylie Jenner took a 17-minute flight between two regional airports in California.
	Quote, Kylie Jenner is out here taking three-minute flights with her private jet, but I'm the one who has to use paper straws, one Twitter user wrote.
	As media outlets around the world covered the backlash, other celebrities like Drake and Taylor Swift scrambled to defend their heavy reliance on private planes.
	Now, it isn't just the, and here I think we have the tweet that mentioned, that that article mentioned, or maybe not, but it was the one that said, so Kylie Jenner is out there taking three minute flights on her private jet and I have to use paper straws.
	Now, this gap between a lot of left liberal discourse condemning other people for all sorts of political crimes on the one hand, And the people who are doing that condemnation, living lives completely at odds with those political values, refusing to sacrifice in any way for the cause they claim is so overarching, is very common.
	And that's the reason why I want to explore it, because there's a whole set of excuses that have been disseminated and accepted in liberal culture about why, as an individual, you never have to make any sacrifices for your political cause, why you never have to ensure that your own action aligns with The political values you want to impose on everybody else.
	Now, perhaps the most glaring example is the current climate czar, John Kerry, whose job is to go around the world convincing everybody that the climate crisis is the most pressing problem.
	It's an existential threat to all of us, and we have to radically transform our society and begin to engage in real sacrifice in order to Solve it.
	The problem is that John Kerry goes around the world saying this, constantly using private jets.
	As many of you remember, who lived through the 2004 election, when John Kerry was the presidential nominee, he married his colleague's widow, Theresa Hines, who is the heir to a gigantic fortune.
	So he lives in extreme wealth, John Kerry does.
	He's a billionaire, or his wife is, many times over.
	And so he flies around the world the way billionaires do on private jets, which, as that article just demonstrated, creates a bigger footprint of carbon than even entire countries.
	And so he was asked about that.
	How is it that you can, with credibility, claim that other nations have to radically transform their behavior while you can't even make the small sacrifice of flying a commercial jet when you go around the world to lecture everybody?
	He's asked that twice.
	Here is one of the instances in which he tried to answer that.
	It's the only choice for somebody like me.
	The time it takes me to get somewhere.
	I can't sail across the ocean.
	I have to fly to meet with people and get things done.
	But what I'm doing, almost full time, is working to win the battle of climate change.
	I'm not going to be put on the defensive.
	He's not going to be put on the defensive.
	The reason he takes private jets is because someone like him has to.
	There's just no other choice.
	There was a second interview he gave in which he was confronted about what this interview was referring to as climate hypocrisy.
	And here's what he said.
	Private aviation is an example of something where people are starting to pay more attention.
	And but when, you know, people who go to Davos to talk about climate change fly private, it seems like they don't want to make.
	Well, they actually I've talked to them about it.
	They offset.
	They buy offsets.
	They offset and they are working harder than most people I know to be able to try to affect this transition. - Thank you.
	So the people who fly to Davos to talk about the climate crisis and fly in private jets, they're the people who are actually doing the most to solve the climate crisis because they use their vast wealth to buy offsets to the carbon footprint.
	But if the climate crisis is really the grave and existential threat that these people insist that it is, why wouldn't they do both?
	Why wouldn't they take the very small sacrifice, not actually that hard.
	I don't know.
	I've spent my entire life flying to multiple places.
	I've never once been on a private jet.
	I've never really regarded that as a hardship.
	I don't think it's a big sacrifice to have to fly on a commercial plane, on a schedule, along with everybody else.
	And yet John Kerry is saying, no, no, it's totally fine that that's what they do.
	You shouldn't in any way doubt their sincerity when they impose demands on everybody else and condemn everybody else for not doing enough.
	John Kerry said the people who fly to Davos on private jets are the people who are doing the most for climate change because they're using their wealth to buy carbon offsets.
	So they're even better than you as they fly to Davos on private jets.
	So obviously, if you're somebody like John Kerry or all of these, David Geffen, or all of these people who keep telling you that you have to transform society, they may even be right.
	But as that article in the New York Times suggested, and as studies show, and it's not hard to understand, if you see somebody whose life is a complete violation of what they want everybody else to do for a cause, because they're unwilling to sacrifice in their life for that cause, you're gonna have a very hard time believing them when they tell you that you should sacrifice in your life in pursuit of this cause, or that that cause is even important.
	They lose all credibility as a moral messenger, or as a messenger at all.
	Now, there are a couple other examples.
	Let's look at the former Secretary of Labor under Bill Clinton, who has become one of the most We're gonna get that stuff here in just a second.
	One of the most vocal advocates of the idea that climate change is the most important cause, but he's also somebody who is very angry about the fact that there is a problem with wealth inequality and poverty and homelessness in the United States, and that's Robert Reich.
	Let's get this article up about what Robert Reich did when it came time to Came time to try and solve the homeless problem in San Francisco.
	There you see it on the screen.
	Left-wing University of Berkeley professor doesn't want the poor people moving into his posh neighborhood.
	It's an article from August of 2020.
	Quote, Robert Reich, a left-wing professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who served as labor secretary during the Clinton administration, is very concerned about income inequality.
	He urged Wall Street executives to quote, invest in cities by funding low-income housing projects.
	He also praised a quote, promising initiative to promote the construction of affordable housing units in San Francisco.
	Reich is not so keen, however, on a proposal to tear down a dilapidated building in his Berkeley neighborhood and replace it with a 10-unit development that would include low-income housing.
	Reich and some of his wealthy neighbors are imploring the city's Landmarks Preservation Commission to designate the dilapidated structure, known as the Payson House, as a Berkeley landmark in order to stop the proposed development.
	In a letter to the commission, Reich said the proposed housing units would destroy the, quote, charm of an older era of Berkeley.
	And like in the developer's actions to quote the illegal practices and corrupt politics of the late 19th century.
	Quote if historic preservation means anything it means maintaining enough of the character of an older neighborhood to remind people of its history and people and provide continuity with the present, Reich wrote.
	Development for the sake of development makes no sense when it imposes social costs like this.
	It is one of the more striking examples of the rich white liberals, particularly in the state of California, whose expressed concern for affordable housing, income inequality, and social justice disappears the minute their own property values and exclusive neighborhoods are targeted for corrective action.
	So, is anyone denying, can anyone deny that Robert Reich's ability to convince people of the sincerity of his beliefs, that wealth inequality is wrong, that homelessness is wrong, is sincere when it comes time for his own neighborhood, he blocks the development of low-income housing that would enable people who are living on the street, who are homeless, to Be able to have houses.
	It seems like he gets a lot of pleasure and a lot of satisfaction from condemning other people for being capitalists, and yet when it comes time for his own life, he enjoys the exclusivity of his own neighborhood and would rather have that preserved than open it up for poor people.
	Now, let me show you a counterexample or two of how people might try and be consistent.
	The current mayor of New York is Eric Adams.
	He is somebody who stridently views climate change as one of the greatest problems that the world faces.
	And as a result, he has looked at studies, which we're about to Show you that says that one of the worst problems for the climate crisis, one of the biggest impediments to solving global warming is the factory farm industry and particularly the consumption of meat because the more meat the people consume,
	The more trees are cut down to make way for them, the more greenhouse gases are emitted from meat, and therefore it would stand to reason if you actually are somebody who believes in the fact that climate change is this impending doom for the world and everybody has to radically transform, you would want to do something about this problem.
	Namely, you would want to stop eating meat.
	Here's the Guardian.
	With that evidence, you see it on the screen.
	Quote, meat accounts for nearly 60% of all greenhouse gases from food production, study finds.
	Production of meat worldwide causes twice the pollution of production of plant-based foods, a major new study has found.
	The article says, quote, the global production of food is responsible for a third of all planet-heating gases emitted by human activity.
	With the use of animals for meat causing twice the pollution of producing plant-based foods, a major new study has found the entire system of food production, such as the use of farming machinery, spraying of fertilizer, and transportation of products, causes 17.3 billion metric tons of greenhouse gases a year, according to the research.
	This enormous release of gases that fuel the climate crisis is more than double the entire emissions of the U.S.
	represents 35% of all global emissions, researchers said.
	Quote, "The emissions are at the higher end of what we expected.
	It was a little bit of a surprise," said Adel Jain, a climate scientist at the University of Illinois and co-author of the paper published in Nature Foods.
	Quote, "This study shows the entire cycle of the food production system, and policymakers may want to use the results to think about how to control greenhouse gases."
	Now, looking at that study, the current mayor of New York, Eric Adams, who, as I said, is a very vocal proponent of the idea that climate change is one of our worst crises, decided that it doesn't make sense to simultaneously claim that while refusing to sacrifice in some way, including by not even meet any longer.
	So today he made an announcement And we have the video here.
	Let's bring it up.
	That the city would implement policies to reduce the amount of meat consumption and replace it instead with a plant-based diet.
	Here's what he said.
	One in every five metric tons of carbon dioxide our city emits comes from food.
	But all food is not created equal.
	The vast majority of food that is contributing to our emission crisis Lies in meat and dairy products.
	We already know that a plant power diet is better for your physical and mental health.
	And I am living proof of that.
	But the reality is that thanks to this new inventory, we're finding out it is better for the planet.
	Now, as I said, the vast majority of people who are on the left, who are liberals, who say that the climate crisis is the greatest, number one threat the world faces, that we have to radically transform our society and sacrifice in all sorts of ways, are meat eaters.
	They continue to consume meat.
	And if you confront them about this obvious inconsistency between, on the one hand, claiming that the crisis of climate change is the greatest one we face, and on the other, refusing to take even minimal sacrifices in their own diet to cease consuming meat, which, as the Guardian article demonstrated, is one of the greatest fuels of the climate crisis, they have a whole variety of excuses, beginning with the argument, it's incredibly convenient,
	That says there's no value in my making individual sacrifices.
	Just like those yacht owners say.
	Just like the French minister said when people urged him to regulate mega yachts.
	He said, oh those are just things on the margin.
	They'll say individual action doesn't matter.
	Collective action is the only thing that counts.
	Imagine how lucky you are to be part of a political faction that tells you that you never have to make any changes to your personal behavior in pursuit of your political cause because individual action, the things you decide to do, the values reflected by your life actually don't matter at all.
	You can violate every single political value you want others to accept and then tell yourself it makes no difference.
	You're free to do that because only collective action matter and your own actions that you take as an individual are completely irrelevant.
	It really is this amazing component of left-wing liberal politics that when deciding how to judge people's character or deciding How to judge someone's values.
	They've managed to take the thing that should be the most important in judging other people.
	Namely, the actions they actually take in their lives.
	How people choose to live their lives.
	What values those choices reflect.
	And they've announced that that's the thing that matters least.
	That what matters in judging people is what hashtags you post to your social media account, what slogans you chant when others are watching, what political party you support.
	Those are all the things that determine whether you're a good or bad person, but how you live your life is totally irrelevant.
	Even to the point where they have a universally accepted view that if they accuse somebody of being a racist or white supremacist and the person responds by saying, what do you mean?
	I have great relationships with people who are non-white in my life.
	I have best friends who are black.
	I have some of my most important and closest relationships that are Latino or Arab or whatever.
	They scoff at that.
	They laugh at that.
	As though that's completely irrelevant.
	The way in which you live your life, the people with whom you choose to create friendships.
	Instead, all that matters is whether you're posting the right hashtags and whether you're voting for the right political party.
	They really have made it so that personal actions, personal behavior, personal choices, which should be the most important thing in judging other people, has become the thing that they value the least.
	So let's take a look at one of the more popular figures on the, let's call it the mainstream left, the Bernie AOC left, the people who call themselves leftists but at the end of the day always pledge their support to the Democratic Party to stay on the right side of mainstream lines.
	That's why it's called the Bernie AOC left because Bernie Sanders and AOC do that same thing.
	His name is Hasan Piker.
	He is a very popular person on Twitch, which is the Amazon-owned streaming and gaming site.
	He first came to prominence, if you can call it that, because he's the nephew of Cenk Aygar, the host of The Young Turks.
	He's Cenk's nephew.
	But he's now built a large audience that listens to him talk about left-wing politics.
	And I put that in the scare quotes because at the end of the day, it's really just a way of herding people into the Democratic Party.
	And he has become extremely rich by virtue of his popularity on Twitch.
	And not only extremely rich, but he lives a life of gluttonous capitalistic consumption at the same time that he constantly condemns other people for being capitalist.
	He claims to be a socialist.
	And the question, of course, is whether there's an inconsistency.
	Between the way in which he lives his life through extreme amounts of luxurious material wealth on the one hand, and his demands that society become more socialistic on the other.
	Just like John Kerry flies to conferences to yell at everybody about climate change, but then flies on a private jet, or the people who Davos Doe or Robert Reich doing the same thing.
	It's exactly the same thing.
	So let's look first at this inconsistency.
	That seems to be pretty evident.
	Here you see the headline from April of last year from Insider.
	The headline there is, Leftist political commentator Hasan Piker faces criticism for buying a nearly $3 million home in Los Angeles County.
	No, obviously the criticism isn't that he bought a home.
	Everybody needs a home.
	Everybody needs a place to live.
	You shouldn't be expected to have to live on the street.
	The question is, if somebody is so wealthy and uses their wealth for this kind of extreme materialistic consumption while insisting that wealth inequality is immoral, that we should restructure fundamentally our society and everybody that we should restructure fundamentally our society and everybody else should give up the kind of inequality he has in his life, whether there's some inconsistency in that way.
	So let's look at the article first.
	It says, "Hasan Piker, one of Twitch's leading political commentators, is facing a wave of criticism after purchasing a home in West Hollywood, as followers accuse the self-described, quote, "leftists of being hypocritical.
	The 3,800 square foot home with five bedrooms and 5.5 bathrooms This is a single person in his late 20s or 30s with no wife, no children.
	He has a five bedroom, 5.5 bathroom located in the Beverly Hills, Beverly Grove neighborhood.
	Cost 2.74 million dollars according to the Real Estate News website, DIRT.
	Now, he has invoked all of the standard arguments that people in left liberal culture use, why you should ignore the way in which they're living their lives, the choices they're making, the values reflected by those choices, and instead only focus on systemic questions.
	And not hold them accountable or find it odd that the way in which they're choosing their lives seems to be contrary to the values they want to impose on everybody else.
	So here's, by the way, a couple of pictures of his home.
	There's the interior, very, very spacious and very nice.
	Here's an outdoor shot of the home from the real estate listing.
	Now, he has a whole variety of excuses that, again, come from the way in which the left has insisted that Personal conduct doesn't matter.
	Here, let's just look at a couple of tweets.
	Here he is sarcastically complaining, quote, socialism is when you live in a shed built by hand off the grid.
	So in other words, he's saying people are attacking me for living in a house.
	I'm supposed to live in a shed.
	No one's suggesting that.
	It's just there's a big difference between living in a house and buying a multi-million dollar mansion in Los Angeles with five bathrooms and five and a half bedrooms while you claim to be a socialist.
	Here's another complaint in his video crying about my house and income.
	Ben Shapiro said, quote, is a worker not entitled to the fruits of his labor as a talking point in support of capitalism in the most reductive terms that is literally the core of socialism?
	And then here he is again attacking what he calls left Twitter weirdos for noting this inconsistency saying they and Breitbart are on the same page that socialism means you have no house.
	So this is the set of arguments that they have as to why you should ignore personal behavior.
	There's a comic, I think we have this, that has become very popular in left-wing politics.
	If we don't have that, we can put that up.
	It's essentially a comic mocking the idea.
	Here it is, it's a cartoon here, that anyone whose life wildly contradicts the political values they claim to believe in might have a difficult time acting with credibility.
	Here you see that the critique reduced to someone saying, we should improve society somewhat, and then the person that you're supposed to mock saying, you participate in society, curious, I am very intelligent.
	So this is what John Kerry would point to if you criticized him for flying in private jets to Davos to talk about the climate crisis, or it's what Robert Reich would point to.
	Oh, all I'm doing is participating in society.
	That doesn't mean I'm precluded.
	From arguing society should be better and should be changed.
	That's what David Geffen would say.
	Yes, I have a mega yacht.
	I'm just participating in the system.
	It doesn't mean that I can't argue that society should be different and that we should solve the climate crisis collectively.
	This is the argument they have built in to their politics.
	Now, so extreme is this refusal to accept any personal responsibility that they'll go around, oftentimes, the people who have these inconsistencies, criticizing other people for pursuing lives of material wealth.
	So I want to show you a couple videos that Hasan Piker recently posted in which he talked about both myself and Matt Taibbi and claimed that the reason Matt Taibbi and I have changed our politics, which is his view, is because we're the ones who are seeking material wealth.
	Let me show you a couple of these videos that he just recently posted within the last week.
	I just, I don't care.
	I, like, his defense of...
	This is, by the way, Hassan Piker on his very popular Twitch show that earns him millions of dollars a month.
	Responding to a conversation between the former New York Times reporter Chris Hedges, who left the paper because he was objecting to their support for the Iraq War, talking to Breonna Joy Gray, and Chris Hedges had defended myself, Matt Taibbi, Jimmy Dore, claiming that we haven't changed our political views at all, that instead the Democratic Party, people like Ahsan Piker,
	And others on the left have become tools of the establishment and since we continue to oppose establishment doctrine they see us as being on the other side and think we've switched sides whereas in reality they're the ones who have done so to stay on the right side of the mainstream mind.
	He's responding to that critique and here's what he said.
	Glenn Greenwald who makes like literally I think $250,000 a month or no more than that actually Glenn Greenwald makes like... Glenn Greenwald's substack makes him like a million a month or some shit like that.
	Like, Glenn Greenwald has... Glenn... Blalalala!
	Glenn Greenwald makes significantly more money than I do on a monthly basis from his sub stack.
	That's kind of weird since you are the same and Glenn and Taibbi fell off and went right wing.
	Yeah, I know, but he thinks that that's, like, truthful because there's agreements there.
	Okay?
	There is... He agrees with some of the things that, as an older guy, he agrees with some of the fucking things that Matt Taibbi and Glenn Greenwald say about, like, wokeness and woke culture.
	He's never heard me talk about it or criticize it.
	He's only seen me as the guy who buys a fucking house.
	I'm confronting, uh...
	So, first of all, almost everything he said about me there was completely false.
	They were lies.
	The amounts of money that he claimed I made, I make on Substack where I'm not even anymore.
	I've now moved to Locals, but even when I was at Substack, those numbers are completely made up.
	They're so wildly exaggerated to the point of just being lies.
	They're in a completely different universe.
	As well as the fact that Matt Taibbi and I have become right-wing because we obsess on the culture war, when I almost never talk about the culture war.
	When's the last time on this show I've ever talked about things like trans issues or abortion or LGBT debates?
	I just almost never talk about those at all.
	I actually wrote to Hassan when I heard this clip, when someone sent it to me, detailing his lies.
	And even though I wrote to him in a place that he and I have communicated before, he just ignored it.
	Imagine how cowardly you have to be to go on your show constantly and talk about somebody, and when you get caught lying, you write to the person and say, by the way, everything you're saying about me is false.
	You just ignore it and go back to talking about that person.
	I just, in talking about Richard Grinnell, he claimed I spoke inaccurately about his role in a much less extreme way than these lies Hasan Piker told about me.
	And the first thing I did upon getting his email was I ran to Twitter, I urged people to go read Richard Grinnell's version of events, disputing what I had said, and then invited him on my show to clear the air.
	That's what you do if you're a person who has even minimal integrity.
	What he did, Hassan Piker, was he ignored what I sent him.
	He didn't correct any of what he said about me there.
	And then he went back and again said that both Matt Taibbi and I have political views that we've adopted because we are interested in getting rich.
	Let's look at him saying this again.
	This is several days after I sent him those corrections.
	Straight up.
	He's like a hard listen.
	That's how big of a fan I was.
	And honestly, it's really sad to see him fall from grace like this.
	He's talking about Matt Taibbi here, and then he moves to me.
	You know, straight up.
	He's like a hard listen.
	That's how big of a fan I was.
	And honestly, it's really sad to see him fall from grace like this.
	But I think he's caked up, so he's doing all right.
	You know, good for him.
	But the thing is, you know, they...
	I mean, they just want to make money wherever they can.
	I feel like it's like half a genuine ideological separation from the rest of the left, which they, I guess, somewhat were a part of.
	They certainly were a part of it.
	And when I say they, I mean Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi.
	And partially because there is some money to be made in that other direction.
	Okay, so first of all, just this idea that someone like him is the gatekeeper of who's on the left and who's not.
	I don't care about these labels.
	I never have.
	I've never claimed any label other than civil libertarian or anti-authoritarian.
	I don't care who's on the left and who's on the right.
	It doesn't interest me at all.
	But the fact that somebody like him who urges his followers to go and support people like Gavin Newsom and Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden thinks he's the gatekeeper of who's a real leftist and who isn't.
	It is laughable.
	It's what you do when you actually want to pursue material wealth.
	There's a very clear way that you do that.
	Everybody knows the richest, the easiest way to get rich in media and politics.
	It is not by doing what Matt Taibbi and I did.
	The easiest way to get rich in American politics is to attach yourself to the liberal left wing of the Democratic Party, And constantly spout all sorts of claims in opposition to Donald Trump and the conservative movement.
	Go on air every day and say that Trump is a fascist, that Trump is beholden to Russia, that he's Putin's boyfriend.
	The way that everybody in media and politics have gotten rich over the last six years is by spouting left liberal trite.
	So here, for example, is the top Substack performers, the people who make the most money on Substack.
	And there you see at the top, this is very recent, so it's after I left.
	The number one earner on Substack, by far, by far, by millions of dollars, she makes an estimated $5 million a year.
	I believe it's more now, based on my knowledge.
	She's been the richest and highest earner on Substack from the start, is a Boston College history professor named Heather Cox Richardson.
	Who is the living, breathing embodiment of hashtag resistance politics.
	Every single day she goes onto this extremely lucrative Substack page and writes an article under the thinnest skies of academic scholarship In which she compares, uses her history credentials to compare Trump to Hitler and Genghis Khan and every authoritarian, tyrannical despot that has ever existed.
	She feeds these liberals, these left liberals, this whole narrative about Donald Trump and his movement and that's all she does.
	In fact, there was a recent report in Axios that the Biden White House is thinking about integrating the top influencers online who are loyalists to the Democratic Party in the White House.
	So they can actually work from the White House or have an open channel to the White House.
	And she's one of the people, the top person in fact, Who they named.
	She's making millions of dollars a year doing this.
	There you see number four, The Bulwark, which is the anti-Trump, never-Trump blog.
	Before Bill Kristol took the dispatch off of Substack, he was at the number two position.
	The way that people have gotten rich in politics, like the Lincoln Project, like all those people who wrote anti-Trump books, like Hassan Piker.
	Is by declaring yourself a Democratic Party loyalist at the end of the day, sometimes criticizing the Democratic Party along the way just to keep the disgruntled people in line so that like AOC and Bernie, you occasionally criticize Democrats but then tell everybody it's your moral obligation to go and vote for the Democratic Party.
	That's the people who have gotten richest in politics.
	If my motivation or Matt Taibbi's motivation We're even minimally to obtain material gain.
	We would have done what they all did, which is go every day on MSNBC or CNN or on our sub stack pages or write books about how Trump is the orange Hitler, how he performs fellatio on Vladimir Putin, on how everyone who's a Trump supporter is that because they're a white supremacist, they want to impose white nationalist dictatorship.
	The path to wealth in media and politics was never clearer over the last six years.
	But people who are in left liberal politics and media desperately need to believe, this is the lie they tell themselves, that capital, big capital, is their enemy.
	That there's no money in left liberal politics.
	Left liberal politics means that you're taking a vow of poverty.
	And therefore, the only reason somebody would be opposed to the Democratic Party, like myself and Nat Taibbi became dissidents to the liberal hegemonic narrative, is because we want to get rich.
	Based on the premise that the only way to get rich is by moving right, because there's no money in left liberal politics.
	And the person who is saying that about us is the living, breathing embodiment of how the easiest way to become extremely rich in media is by attaching yourself to left-wing politics, calling yourself a socialist, branding around Bernie and AOC.
	If Cenk Uygur's nephew Can make millions and millions of dollars a year as he's doing by cheering left liberal politics.
	That is living proof of how easy it is to get rich in left liberal politics.
	That's where all the billionaire money is from Pierre Omidyar and George Soros and Bill Gates.
	That's where all the NGO money is and that's where the affluent in this country now attach themselves to the Democratic Party.
	So here you have somebody whose entire existence is a testament To the fact that the way to get rich is to spout left liberal orthodoxy, accusing people like myself and Matt Taibbi who took a huge risk by standing up and saying, we don't believe any of this narrative and orthodoxy from the Democratic Party and from the left, that Trump is in collusion with Russia, that he is some singular evil.
	It was incredibly turbulent.
	Both Matt Taibbi and I always did very well economically when we were perceived to be associated with the left.
	No one needs to leave left liberal politics to get rich.
	That's where you get rich.
	If you're motivated by wealth, that's where you stay.
	But here's what we have is in left liberal politics, they tell themselves these lies, that to be a socialist or a democrat or a leftist or a liberal means you're basically gonna end up impoverished, and yet their most beloved figure in media is himself, someone who has gotten extremely rich and whose life is a complete contradiction to the values he claims, just like John Kerry's, just like Robert Reich's, just like David Geppin's,
	So just to conclude, let me show you one more counterexample, just like Eric Adams, which whether you agree with him or not, at least followed through the logical conclusion of his argument by saying, I think climate change is the gravest problem, therefore I'm going to move to a plant-based diet for my city and for myself.
	There's at least a consistency there.
	Here is Jimmy Carter, who obviously is a very polarizing figure when it comes to how he was president, but his post-presidency has been a testament, proof of how, if you're somebody on the left, and somebody who believes in left liberal politics, you can live your life in a way that's consistent with those values.
	It doesn't mean that he's homeless, but as the Washington Post called it, he became the un-celebrity president.
	The uncelebrity president Jimmy Carter shuns riches, lives modestly in his Georgia hometown, and he's devoted his entire life not to going around giving $750,000 to Goldman Sachs the way Bill and Hillary Clinton did, Barack Obama has done, Tony Blair has done, but instead building houses for poor people.
	His life is consistent with the values that he claims to believe.
	There's a consistency, an alignment between those.
	But I hope you can see why there is such an incentive in left liberal politics to tell themselves multiple lies, the two leading ones of which are, there's no value to be found in how somebody lives their personal lives.
	The way you judge people is in every other way.
	All the performative things they do, the theatrical things they do, the cheap and pointless hashtags they post, the political party to which they pledge allegiance, everything except
	The thing that actually matters, which are what values are reflected by how you live your life, and then the second lie they tell themselves is that to be in left-liberal politics means you're on the margins, that you're a dissident, that you're taking a vow of poverty, when in fact left-liberal politics, left-liberal media, left-liberal culture is the hegemonic force in American political life.
	If you're somebody motivated by wealth, The way you would pursue that is not by dissenting from left-liberal orthodoxies, but by embracing it.
	The more you embrace it, the more you spout it, the more you advocate it, the richer you become.
	And there's no better example of that than Cenk Uygur's nephew.
	So that concludes that segment that I've been wanting to do for a while, and I'm glad we finally had time.
	I want to just briefly comment on the breaking news that happened right before we went on the air, which is that both Fox News and Dominion announced a settlement to their lawsuit in which Dominion has been suing Fox for defamation for having several personalities on air tell viewers that Dominion voting machines were used to commit fraud in the 2020 election.
	Just earlier today, here you see the CNBC article, there's the headline, Fox to pay Dominion voting system $787.5 million to settle the election defamation lawsuit.
	Now, I am very surprised by this settlement.
	Dominion filed a lawsuit seeking $1.6 billion.
	But usually when you hear that amount, that's some crazy amount that is the highest amount the lawyer can claim without getting sanctioned, without getting punished.
	Anything that has a good faith relationship to that value, they will claim the highest value.
	It's almost never what ends up being paid.
	But it is the maximum that you can actually win in a lawsuit that does have a meaning.
	It's a cap on what you can actually win.
	So the most Dominion could have hoped to win if they convinced the jury to find in their favor was $1.6 billion, and yet Fox just agreed to hand them half of that, $800 million.
	That's a huge amount of money.
	But it doesn't make a lot of sense to me because it's very difficult to win a defamation lawsuit against a media outlet when it comes to defamation on a matter of public interest, which is the integrity of the 2020 election.
	You can't just prove that Fox made false claims.
	You have to prove that they did it with deliberate, malicious intent, knowing it was false and with the desire to harm you.
	And so the facts that Fox agreed to pay $800 million, or $778.5 million, is very odd.
	It is true that this judge was seemingly very hostile to Fox.
	He made a lot of rulings in favor of Dominion.
	And there definitely were some embarrassing emails, but most of them have come out in the summary judgment motion that Dominion filed with an eye toward the media.
	So it's possible Fox was afraid of disclosures that would occur in this trial and paid this gargantuan sum in order to prevent it.
	But at the end of the day, if Fox actually broadcast lies with malicious intent under the law, they ought to pay.
	And they're admitting that they did.
	The settlement is not secret.
	As part of this settlement, Fox acknowledged having broadcast false claims, apologized for it, and said they hope this settlement incentivizes media outlets in the future to be more journalistically careful.
	So I don't have a problem with Fox paying this money if they really concluded that they met the legal standard for defamation in this case.
	But what I think needs to take place, as always, and this is always my problem in the Trump era, is that this not be a one-off for Fox News.
	that this standard that media outlets should be held accountable when they get caught spreading falsehoods and telling lies without any basis in evidence be applied to every other major media outlet.
	So we did a show about a month ago examining the claims of the Dominion lawsuit for those of you who want to see it.
	In particular, we looked into a lot of the claims that were being made trying to claim that Fox's prime time host, Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham, were among the people who spread and endorsed these claims while privately admitting they didn't believe them, and that's just untrue.
	In fact, we showed you a segment from Tucker Carlson in which he provoked a lot of anger among his own viewers by criticizing Sidney Powell for making these claims without evidence and demanding that she present evidence.
	So we examine the legal claims, so we recommend that you watch that.
	And we will certainly have more on this tomorrow.
	As I said, the news of the settlement just broke a couple of hours before we went on air.
	I just started talking to people, trying to do some reporting, get a better understanding of why Fox made this decision.
	It is an odd decision.
	It's one I did not expect.
	But it is an admission of guilt by Fox that is pretty remarkable.
	And hopefully, as Fox said, although I certainly don't expect it, this will shed a or open a new era where media outlets are either required to refrain from spreading false claims or are held accountable when they do.
	So that concludes our show for this evening.
	I will look over here to do that.
	Thank you so much for watching.
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