NEW POLL: Most Americans Reject Biden’s War in Ukraine, Dianne Feinstein Desperately Clings to Power, & the Media’s Creepy Love Affair w/ Trump’s Special Prosecutor | SYSTEM UPDATE #124
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Welcome to a new episode of System Update, our live nightly show that airs every Monday through Friday at 7 p.m.
Eastern, exclusively on Rumble, the free speech alternative to YouTube.
Tonight, a year and a half into what is clearly yet another endless war, this time a proxy war in Ukraine.
Americans finally have had enough.
A new CNN poll conducted by SSRS and released today finds that, as CNN put it, quote, a majority of Americans oppose more U.S.
aid for Ukraine in its war with Russia.
55% of Americans want no further American funding going to feed that war, while only 45% of Americans favor additional U.S.
support.
That is a radical reversal From February 2022, just 18 months ago, when large majorities of both political parties strongly backed U.S.
financial and military support for Ukraine.
Public support for this war has been eroding for some time.
That was why Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy pretended before the 2022 midterm election to vow opposition to a blank check for Kiev.
Only to then turn around as soon as the GOP won control of the House and McCarthy was safely elected Speaker and made clear that he didn't really mean it, that he fully supported Biden's policy in that war.
Indeed, the spigot of funding has not even slowed down a little bit as control of the House passed from Nancy Pelosi to Kevin McCarthy.
But Americans are clearly growing tired of this bottomless pit of war spending.
As the details of the poll make clear, which we will show you, the only reason the numbers are even this close, 55-45, is because those who identify as liberal Democrats overwhelmingly still support indefinite funding on the war.
Then, Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein of California is 90 years old.
She's in her sixth term in the Senate.
She often does not know where she is.
She relies almost entirely on her staff to tell her what to say and how to vote, yet nonetheless refuses to release her desperately tight grip on power.
Beyond all that, the New York Times revealed on Wednesday that Feinstein's daughter now possesses power of attorney over the senator's personal affairs.
Meaning, Dianne Feinstein is not even competent to run her own personal life as she continues to act as a senator.
And Feinstein's children and the children of her third husband, the exorbitantly wealthy and now deceased Richard Blum, a military contracting mogul who often benefited personally from the policies Feinstein supported in the Senate, those children are already fighting in court over Feinstein's extremely ample wealth.
We will examine this refusal of our political elite to ever relinquish the power they wield even long after it is obvious that they are no longer capable of even orienting themselves in space and time.
And we'll also take a look at the rotted legacy of Dianne Feinstein as a senator.
This Democrat from this very blue state has long been one of the most steadfast defenders of the CIA and the US machine of endless war.
And her personal ethics are even worse.
Finally on Wednesday night here we showed you the attempt by the Washington Post to convert Trump prosecutor Jack Smith into some sort of a matinee idol in what was billed as a comprehensive profile of Smith titled, Who is Jack Smith?
What you need to know about the special counsel who charged Trump, instead it read like a ninth graders report, or a Tiger Beat fluff piece about some pop star.
Does anyone remember Tiger Beat?
We learned from the Post that Smith has a reputation as a quote, hard worker, he enjoys fitness and triathlons, and believes that the key to happiness in life are quote, enthusiasm and high energy.
The only thing missing from that profile was his favorite color.
Since then, the American corporate media has proven that they can barely hide their arousal, and I mean arousal, when they cast their eyes on and speak about this sturdy and hunky 52-year-old prosecutor.
Some of the television news discourse about Jack Smith is borderline pornographic and genuinely uncomfortable to watch.
With apologies, we'll show you some of it just to get a taste for how lowly and tawdry it is.
And we'll ask what it says about liberal political and media culture that they are constantly on the hunt for prosecutors and lawyers from Robert Mueller and Andrew Cuomo and Michael Avenatti whom they can venerate and lust over in public.
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12 hours after it first is broadcast live, It was February 2022, 18 months ago or so, when Russia invaded Ukraine.
view the show on those platforms, which helps spread the visibility of the program.
For now, welcome to a new episode of System Update, starting right now.
It was February 2022, 18 months ago or so, when Russia invaded Ukraine.
And in terms of the political dynamic that's prevailing in the United States, it seems like that was an eternity ago.
The support for that war was instantly generated and was overwhelming in both political parties.
The establishment wings of both political parties, in fact the entirety of the Democratic Party and the establishment wing of the Republican Party, united as they almost always do when there's a war, to urge that we must do everything to support Ukraine, handing it tons of money, giving it lots of our weapons to the point that we depleted our own stockpiles.
And the war propaganda was unlike anything I've ever seen before, and that includes the Iraq War, there was barely any dissent in the entire corporate media.
They were all in favor of this war.
There were a few outposts on Fox News, the leading one of whom, Tucker Carlson, ended up being fired and removed from there, so he's not even there anymore.
And the program that immediately followed Tucker in the 9 o'clock hour, Sean Hannity, was as fervently in support of this war as Joe Biden, Chuck Schumer, and Nancy Pelosi.
So from almost every direction, Americans were getting bombarded with very emotionally effective propaganda.
About the feisty Ukrainians and their noble battle for democracy and our obligation as Americans to stand up for them and to stand by them and help fend off this war of aggression from the Russians because after all we're Americans and that's what we do.
And then you simultaneously have the fact that Americans have been feeding, especially Democrats, have been feeding on intense anti-Russian sentiment for at least going back to the Obama administration,
When Hillary Clinton and others wanted to confront the Russians in Syria, wanted to arm Ukraine with lethal arms, but especially in the 2016 election when the Russians and Putin and the Kremlin were blamed over and over and over again for the worst event in the psychological lives of American liberals, which is the 2016 defeat of Hillary Clinton by Donald Trump.
So you can imagine how much they hate Russia.
And then for years they were fed stories from media outlets that gave themselves awards and Pulitzers for it, telling them falsely that Donald Trump was in bed with the Kremlin, that the Kremlin had blackmail control over Donald Trump, was controlling the levers of power in our country for their own benefit at the expense of American interest.
So the anti-Russian sentiment among Democrats was so intense, and you have Republicans who just instinctively often support American wars, especially when the establishment wing and their leaders are behind it, as they were in this case.
And there were very few people standing up in the media and saying, That this is not a war that the United States should be feeding.
We should be trying to stop this war, not spreading it because of how dangerous it is and because it's not in our interest or the interest of American citizens to spend hundreds of billions of dollars without end trying to increase and spread what is an extremely dangerous war involving the world's largest nuclear power on one side, which is Russia, and then the United States on the other.
And yet, because there were so few people in media who were saying it, and those of us who did, were instantly accused of being Kremlin propagandists.
I don't know how many formal lists I was put on by the Ukrainian government, but it was many, as was true of most people in politics or in media.
Tucker Carlson and Tulsi Gabbard and Rand Paul and others who were in opposition to this war.
So there was a lot of pressure.
on those who opposed the war, and there was a lot of propaganda convincing people to open up the treasury of the American government and just allow the spigot of money to flow uninterrupted.
And I remember I had a friend early on, a very wise friend, who told me, don't ever back down from your position if you feel it strongly due to this pressure, because the history of American wars, and that will definitely be the case here, is that in a certain amount of time, whatever it is, six is that in a certain amount of time, whatever it is, six months, twelve months, Americans will ultimately be on your side.
They will come to see that they have been manipulated into financing this war, even though it's not in their interest.
And we are now at that time where a very comprehensive and reliable poll has demonstrated that a fairly sizable majority of Americans do not want to support or finance this war any longer.
So hear from CNN, which is the media outlet that sponsored this poll today.
My guess is they were expecting a different outcome.
But they got the one that they got and they reported it from today.
There you see the headline.
Majority of Americans oppose more U.S. aid for Ukraine in war with Russia.
And here's what the article says.
Quote, most Americans oppose Congress authorizing additional funding to support Ukraine in its war with Russia, according to a new CNN poll conducted by SSRS, as the public splits over has already done enough to assist Ukraine.
Overall, 55% say the U.S.
Congress should not authorize additional funding to support Ukraine.
Overall, 55% say the U.S.
Congress should not authorize additional funding to support Ukraine.
Versus 45% who say Congress should authorize such funding.
So that's 55-45, a majority of Americans who want nothing further to do with this war in terms of financing it.
51% of Americans say that the U.S.
has already done enough to help Ukraine, while 48% says it should do more.
A poll conducted in the early days of the Russian invasion in late February 22 found 62% who felt the U.S.
should have been doing more, so an overwhelming majority at the beginning of the war who thought the U.S.
should be doing even more than the Biden administration was already doing.
Partisan divisions have widened since that poll too, with most Democrats and Republicans now on opposing sides of questions on the U.S.
role in Ukraine.
Republicans broadly say that Congress should not authorize new funding.
71% of Republicans say that.
And that the U.S.
has done enough to assist Ukraine.
59%.
Among Democrats, most say the opposite.
62% favor additional funding and 61% say the U.S.
should do more.
Within both parties, these are splits along ideological lines.
On providing additional funding, liberal Democrats are far and away the most supportive.
74% back it, compared with only 51% of moderate or conservative Democrats.
That's the only reason why the poll is even this close, because three out of every four liberal Democrats in the United States wants to continue to fund the CIA-NATO war in Europe.
Among Republicans, about three quarters of conservatives oppose new funding, 76%, compared with 61% of moderate and liberal Republicans.
So that is a pretty substantial partisan difference where the Democrats want to fund the CIA proxy war in the Ukraine, which does not surprise me in the least, while Republicans are largely now opposed to it.
Remember, Republicans nominated a president in 2016 who ran On a vow not to involve the United States in any more foreign wars, not to do any more regime change wars, and ran against not just the Democratic Party foreign policy, but the Bush-Cheney-Miokon foreign policy as well.
And Republicans overwhelmingly elected him despite establishment money overwhelmingly being behind his rivals such as Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush.
So the fact that the Republican Party membership No longer wants these intricate, endless commitments of U.S.
funds and U.S.
military strength to fueling foreign wars has been clear for some time, and it's very clear in this poll.
But even with three-fourths of liberal Democrats wanting to fund the war even more, a majority of Americans now oppose it.
Imagine time traveling back to 2005.
And that was the year that I started writing about politics and telling people this was the height of the growing opposition to the War of Terror and the Iraq War.
Imagine going back then and telling people in 15 years there's going to be a war that is the CIA's top priority.
It's going to be against Russia.
We're going to spend $100 billion or more while we tell people they can't afford Medicaid and need Medicare cuts.
And all sorts of other cost of living problems.
And it's going to be liberal Democrats who overwhelmingly want to fund this war and send more and more money to arms manufacturers and the arms industry and the CIA to keep this war going.
And it will be Democrats who tell anybody who's against the war that they are traitors and disloyal to the United States and on the side of our enemies.
Just imagine how crazy people would think you were if you were able to time travel back to 2005 and tell them, and yet 15 years later, that's exactly the reality in which we live.
So if you look at the actual polling data...
Here from SSRS is the polling firm, and you see it was released only today.
Here is the top line polling data, which is whether you approve of the situation in Ukraine.
And here you see the key number, which is that by a margin of 45 to 53 percent, 53% disapprove of Biden's handling of the situation in Ukraine or the situation in Ukraine itself by only 45% approve.
And you can see that's basically a reversal when the country was split as recently as December.
Here is the issue of the US relationship with Russia.
And whether people approve or disapprove.
And by 56 to 43 percent, Americans disapprove of the U.S.
relationship with Russia.
And then here's the question, do you approve or disapprove of the way Joe Biden is handling the U.S.
relationship with Russia?
Now, part of this is just the fact that almost anything that you ask people if they approve of Biden for, they will say they don't.
Biden is a very unpopular president.
But here you see the total 43 percent Of Americans disapprove of how Joe Biden is handling the U.S.
relationship with Russia, which is very antagonistic and aggressive, while 56% disagree.
You have 8 in 10 Democrats who approve.
You have 9 out of 10 Republicans who disapprove.
And then here's the independents who make the difference.
By a margin of 61 to 38%, they disapprove of how Joe Biden is handling the relationship with Russia.
And then here is one of the key polls, which is, do you think the United States should do more to stop Russian military action in Ukraine, or has it already done enough?
And here is that number, which is 51% to 48%.
Americans believe the United States has already done enough and should not do any more.
And this is the partisan difference you see here, which is very stark, 61% to 40%.
61 to 40%.
Democrats believe we should keep doing more to stop Russian military action, whereas Republicans by 59 to 40% and independents by 56 to 43% believe that the United States has already done enough.
And you have the top line figure, which I cited in the CNN article, which is by 55 to 45%, Americans, a majority of them, simply want no more funding going to Ukraine.
That is a major change in just 18 months.
And at some point, this is going to start to turn into a major problem for Kiev and for the United States and for NATO.
Because in Europe, populations are becoming extremely unrestful as well over how much an economic sacrifice they've had to endure in terms of higher heating prices and questions about where they're going to get their natural gas.
And also how much money and defense budgets are going to sustain this war in Ukraine.
In the United States, we've depleted our own stockpiles.
We don't even have any ammunition or artillery to send to Ukraine.
We're low on our own supplies.
Over what?
That's always the question.
Now, as I said before, it's not like this is an outlier poll.
These trends have been evident for some time, and we've shown you those along the way.
We've been reporting on them as we've As they've emerged.
So here from the New York Times in June of 2023.
Here you see the headline on the screen.
Congressional support for aiding Ukraine frays amid spending battle.
Spending caps set by the debt limit bill have empowered critics of USAID to Ukraine, threatening the bipartisan coalition that has kept military assistance flowing to Kiev.
And that seems to make sense.
If Americans are being told that the United States is facing a debt crisis, a massive deficit, there's no money for infrastructure projects or for universal health care, millions of Americans without access to health coverage, they're being told that their Medicaid or Medicare is going to elapse, that all sorts of cuts are coming to Social Security and Medicare according to the New York Times are needed.
Because there's not enough money.
And at the same time, they see tens of billions of dollars flying out the door to this war on the other side of the world.
But they never really were given a good reason why they should care enough to sacrifice for.
There was never an argument that if the Russians, rather than Zelensky, gets to rule Russian-speaking ethnic Russian provinces in eastern Ukraine, that that will somehow endanger the lives of American citizens or affect the lives of American citizens at all.
It was purely an emotional appeal.
That was only going to endure for so long and that appeal has ended.
Of course it makes sense that people in Congress who have to go back to their districts and explain that they need cuts in the social programs that keep people at a certain quality of life are going to have to be sacrificed and cut while those same members of Congress are voting to send those people's tax dollars to Ukraine.
Of course at some point that's going to start to create political pressure.
And it was already doing that even before a majority of Americans now are saying they don't want any more money going there.
So as a reminder, here's this report from the New York Times from just a little over six weeks ago.
Quote, a strong and longstanding bipartisan consensus in Congress around providing huge sums to aid Ukraine's war effort is beginning to fray as a pivotal counteroffensive against Russia is underway.
And as Republicans bent on slashing federal spending gained traction in their effort to limit or block future military assistance for Kiev, right-wing House Republicans have long opposed U.S.
support for Ukraine.
But until recently, they lacked the numbers to threaten any aid package, which have sailed through Congress with the support of a critical mass of GOP hawks, including the party's top leaders and Democrats.
Look at that phrasing there, because this is the coalition that has been dominating American foreign policy for at least two decades now, if not longer, with the support of a critical mass of GOP hawks, including the party's top leader and Democrats.
We're constantly told that the two parties have nothing in common, that the glorious days of bipartisanship are over, That Tip O'Neill and Republican, like Ronald Reagan, used to sit down over a beer and get things done and that never happens anymore and the reality is the exact opposite.
On the most consequential questions, The ones we don't hear that much about precisely because of this, the establishment wings of both parties are in full agreement, and that's certainly been the case for Ukraine.
This is the coalition that fueled the war in Iraq, that generated the war on terror, that led to the CIA dirty war in Syria, the regime change war in Libya, the 20-year occupation of Afghanistan, Which ended about six months before they found this new war to spend all this money on and keep the arms industry afloat.
And this coalition right here, GOP hawks, including the party's top leaders, and Democrats, all Democrats, from Joe Manchin to Ilhan Omar and everything in between, Is the unity, the unified coalition that drives U.S.
foreign policy and has for a long, long time to the detriment of the American people.
And I don't know why it is that people get called right wing if they oppose sending hundreds of billions of dollars, which is likely what it's going to be if it continues.
Over to a foreign war that the United States is not actually involved in and where our national security is not threatened.
That doesn't seem right-wing to me.
I don't really think it seems left or right or anything to me.
It seems the question of whose priorities do you put first?
The American people or somebody else's?
But that is the coalition right there.
The article went on, quote, The bill that passed this month, suspending the debt ceiling, set spending limits that strengthened their hand and increased the political pressure on Speaker McCarthy to keep a tight lid on federal expenditures.
It also intensified the skepticism to New Aid for Ukraine among some progressive Democrats who were angry that the fiscal agreement capped spending on domestic programs, such as education, housing and food assistance, while it allowed military funding to continue to grow.
They are now hinting that any future assistance to Kiev must be accompanied by a more non-military spending, a non-starter with Republicans.
Since the Russian invasion, Congress has extended military and humanitarian assistance to Kiev through a series of emergency spending measures, totally more than a hundred billion dollars.
And the view of every single American leader That has a leadership position in Washington is that we're going to keep doing this forever for as long as it takes.
The Russians are not going to be expelled from Crimea and Eastern Ukraine.
Because they see it as an existential threat, rightly or wrongly, that's how they see it.
This is a word designed to go on forever.
And unless these political sentiments that are now majoritarian in nature, wanting US funding for this endless war to cease, turns into political pressure, this is going to go on for a long, long time.
And the final price tag is going to be much, much higher than $100 billion.
It's already above $100 billion.
So what is the end game for any of this?
And who is benefiting in the United States from this?
A very tiny number of people.
Now, this vaunted counter-offensive That we kept being told it was coming.
We should be excited by.
It's exactly the same script they used when support for the war in Iraq faded.
We were told it was going to be a two-month war by people like Bill Kristol and generals and neocons.
And then it was four years later, five years later, the war was still grinding on and there was a massive insurgency.
That obviously was not going to be destroyed by the United States because it was integrated into the citizenry like the one in Afghanistan was.
And then suddenly they said, oh, we have this great new idea.
We created this thing called the Surge.
We brought in this brilliant new general called David Petraeus.
He's an expert in counterinsurgency.
He did his PhD on it in Princeton.
And the Surge is going to change everything.
So we know you're tired of this war, but don't worry, the Surge is coming.
That was the same exact thing they did here.
They had David Petraeus, in fact, go to the Washington Post with Max Boot and say, we know you're getting tired, but we have this great thing planned called the counterinsurgency that's going to completely change the outcome of this war.
It's going to destroy the Russian defensive lines.
It's going to break through these lines.
It's going to drive them back to Russia.
They're currently occupying 23% of Ukraine, Russia is, between those provinces in eastern Ukraine and southern Ukraine and Crimea.
And they're incredibly entrenched, these defensive positions.
And the Ukrainians don't have artillery, and the United States has none to give them, while Russia just produces it en masse.
Remember those reports from February, March, April, May, and June of 2022 when we were told that the Russian military was on the verge of collapse.
They were days away from running out of ammunition.
They were mocked for going to Iran to get primitive drones.
It's that capacity to produce that kind of ammunition and those Iranian drones that totally dominated the battlefield for the Russians and enabled them to occupy this territory and dig in.
So all those promises that were told to you as usual ended up being unfulfilled and false.
And of course, the only people we ever hear from on the war are the same people who made all those promises going back all the way to the Iraq War, all of which turned out to be untrue.
And that's just the game that will be played for as long as they can get away with it.
They did it for 20 years in Afghanistan, for more than a decade in Iraq.
They spent billions in Syria trying to unseat Bashar al-Assad.
He's still in power.
They succeeded only in destroying that country.
And that's what that wise person told me at the beginning of the wars.
The history of these wars is that they get Americans to support them by appealing to their good nature, appealing to people's genuine desire to help others, and their sense of patriotism.
So Americans always say, OK, we're going to support one more war.
They realize they were lied to.
None of the things they were told are going to happen.
They get tired of it because there's no benefit from it.
And then they turn against it.
That happens every single war going back to Vietnam.
I know it's happening here, too.
And it was totally predictable.
And this counteroffensive that was referenced in that June article, that's how long we've been told it had already started.
And then every time when it fails, we're told, no, no, it hasn't really begun yet.
Now the real counteroffensive is starting.
The corporate media has had to admit that it is largely a failure, even though they don't want to.
We hear from the New York Times in the beginning of this month, in August, Ukrainian troops trained by the West stumble in battle.
Imagine how bad things have to be for these media outlets who serve the U.S.
security state and who support this war to admit any of this.
The first several weeks of Ukraine's long-awaited counteroffensive have not been kind to the Ukrainian troops who were trained and armed by the United States and its allies.
That is an understatement.
It has not been kind to them.
Equipped with advanced American weapons and heralded as the vanguard of a major assault, the troops became bogged down in dense Russian minefields under constant fire from artillery and helicopter gunships.
Units got lost.
One unit delayed a nighttime attack until dawn, losing its advantage.
Another fared so badly that commanders yanked it off the battlefield altogether.
These are the battalions that were trained by the West.
They were flown to all different parts of NATO countries, given sophisticated training, and they don't know how to use it.
While Ukrainian troops have retaken a few villages, a few, they have yet to make the kinds of sweeping gains that characterize their successes in the strategically important cities of Kherson and Kharkiv last fall.
Their complicated training in Western maneuvers has given the Ukrainians scant solace.
In the face of barrage after barrage of Russian artillery.
They don't have ammunition to compete with Russia.
They're a fraction of the size of the population of Russia, which means they have far fewer men to fight the war.
They have so many strategic disadvantages.
Now maybe this counteroffensive will work one day.
Maybe they'll break through these front lines.
Maybe they'll drive the Russians out of How long are you willing to have the United States keep funding that war and depleting its own stockpiles to make that happen?
And if you go and think about your own life and the fact that your government is supposed to think about and prioritize your life and how better to make your life and your children's lives, How is it going to affect you one way or the other, whether President Zelensky gets to sit in Kiev and order around these people who don't want to be subject to the central rule of Kiev, at least for a long time they didn't.
Who knows if it's changed now.
Or whether those people end up semi-autonomous or under the governance of Moscow.
Crimea in 2014 decided that they wanted to be under the governance of Moscow and not Kiev after the United States forcibly changed the government.
Did your life change as a result of that?
Did you feel less safe?
Did you feel more threatened?
If the United States were in a position where it could provide its citizens with all the things that people need to be just minimally happy and fulfilled in life, then maybe you say, okay, let's go around the world and look for charity projects where people are oppressed and we get involved in wars because we're very magnanimous and benevolent.
That's nowhere near the case.
And that's why a majority of Americans have finally broken free of this propaganda as it was inevitable that they would and now oppose this war.
Now, As a reminder, it's not just Americans who don't want to fight this war, but also Ukrainians.
For all the stories we've heard about these feisty, creative, brave Ukrainians fighting the Russian army, the reality is that Zelensky has not been fighting with a volunteer force since the beginning.
He's been fighting with conscripts, people forced to fight against their will.
From the very beginning of the war, Ukraine closed its borders.
They imprisoned any men between 18 and I believe 54 trying to flee so that they didn't get used as cannon fodder.
They constantly had to increase the punishment of deserters.
Because of how many Ukrainian men understand that they are being used as cannon fodder in a war in which they don't even have sufficient ammunition, that is being fought like that World War I type of trench fighting where people just died in huge numbers to advance a few yards back and forth every day with no ultimate effect.
And there too in World War I they used to have to either shoot people who were trying to desert from the front lines or force them to just run into gunfire.
So hear from the BBC in June of this year.
Ukraine war deserters risk death fleeing to Romania.
They're risking death Ukrainian men are to get out of the country rather than going to fight because they perceive that the risk of death from fleeing is not as high as the risk of fighting.
Quote, enforcing the draft in Ukraine can be difficult and corruption is recognized as a major problem by the authorities.
Reliable sources in Western Ukraine speak of the existence of quote a monthly rate, a payment made to keep someone out of the army.
There are also reports from the Ukrainian front lines of commanders asking the recruitment office to stop sending the men who don't want to or are too scared to fight.
They are just a burden in battle.
But many men see fleeing to another country illegally as their only chance of avoiding combat.
The Ukrainian army stops cars and buses every dozen kilometers on the road besides the Tisza River, looking for draft dodgers.
Their database, chaotic at the start of the war, is improving.
The Ukrainian border police recently reported that they are detaining up to 20 men a day.
The BBC has approached the Armed Forces of Ukraine for comment on rates of desertion and draft dodging, but according to the Romanian Immigration Authority, 6,200 Ukrainian men of military age have crossed the 600km border into Romania illegally since Russia's full-scale invasion last year and have been granted temporary protection.
Some 20,000 others made it there illegally, armed with exemptions, sometimes paid for, sometimes not, and chose not to return.
And according to unofficial Ukrainian figures, 90 men have died on the journey to Romania, either drowned in the Tisza or frozen to death in the mountains in the past 15 months.
This is all just tragic.
Ukraine is being destroyed.
Ukrainians are the ones who are dying in the highest numbers.
And all that talk about protecting Ukrainians and helping Ukrainians, I understand why it's emotionally compelling.
If you don't have a full context for what the motives, the real motives of the United States are when they get involved in wars, you might be led to think that it's a noble and benevolent war that we're helping people who actually want to be free of Russian control.
It is the case that people in Ukraine want to be free of control by Moscow.
They do fear being reintegrated back under Russian control the way they spent so many years during the Cold War in captivity to Moscow.
That is genuine.
Although there are a lot of people in Eastern Ukraine who feel the same way about Kiev, especially now that there's martial law, that Zelensky has canceled all elections or claimed that under the Constitution, because there's martial law, he doesn't need ever to seek re-election.
He's there indefinitely until the war is over.
Political parties are banned.
Dissenting media outlets are shut down.
People are increasingly being punished for and limited in the way they can speak Russian, even though they've spoken Russian for hundreds of years through generations.
That's part of why there was a movement for the last eight years of civil war to seek independence from Kiev because they feel oppressed and don't want to be part of Kiev.
And so while the propaganda is that we are there to protect Ukrainians and protect Ukraine, the reality is that our proxy war has helped destroy it.
And that will continue.
And BlackRock and JP Morgan are very excited about that because they see profit opportunities there and they talk openly about them.
But for the people of Ukraine, you can see how horrific this war is.
Here is a report from, I believe it's the BBC.
Is it the BBC?
Oh, it's a compilation that we made of various video reports, so various news reports on the Ukrainians who are being forced into conscription.
Let's take a look at that. - Biki was Biki.
These are social media reports of people who are being detained for drop dodging.
You saw the BBC report.
There's a lot of other reports about increasing punishments under President Zelensky for it.
So a lot of these Ukrainians don't even want to fight this war.
It doesn't mean they want to be under the control of the Russians, but it means they don't see this war as worth fighting.
And now Americans don't see this war as worth financing any longer.
Now, the reality is that the American elite, the American ruling class, doesn't care what people want at all.
At all.
I just saw some discussion posted to social media on Morning Joe with that historian Doris Goodwin Kern, whatever her name is, and she was basically saying that The Republican leadership, meaning the establishment, needs to do a lot more to tear the Republican Party away from Donald Trump.
They tried that.
They've done everything they could to do that.
The reason they can't do it is because the people who are Republican Party voters support Donald Trump.
They want Donald Trump as their nominee.
And their establishment did everything they could in 2016 and then again in 2020 to sabotage and undermine him and are doing that now and they can't win because the people are loyal to President Trump, the people who vote in the Republican Party politics.
And the way they talk about that is we have to do something about this.
And that's why they were so shocked that Trump won.
Because they thought, OK, Trump can have his fun in 2015.
He can lead the polls.
But of course, at the end of the day, everyone knows the rules of American politics.
If you're not supported by the establishment, if you're not financed by big donor money, you don't win.
That's just the rules of the game.
Bernie Sanders tried twice and got crushed, ultimately, both times.
The DNC cheated in 2016 to make sure he didn't get the nomination, according to Donna Brazile and Elizabeth Warren.
Steadfast partisan loyalists, if ever there were ones, who said that the DNC cheated and in 2020 they just took a couple phone calls from President Obama with some threats mixed in with some promises to people like Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg and they all dropped out of the race, left Bernie facing only Biden and Biden proceeded to crush him.
So Democrats are still fully in line and captive to those rules but Republicans aren't.
And these people speak of such contempt for what ordinary people want.
They don't care.
They look for ways around that.
And that's the same that they're going to do here.
So my guess is that these polls are going to continue to show a majority in opposition to funding this war.
This is their money that's being used to be sent to this war.
That's not their priority.
And unless they force the issue, For our second story tonight, we are going to look at the 90-year-old Democratic Senator from the state of California.
but he cares about who runs this country, is what the people of the country want and don't want.
For our second story tonight, we are gonna look at the 90-year-old Democratic Senator from the state of California.
She is currently in her sixth term in the Senate, her sixth year term, and that is Dianne Feinstein.
She has a term that extends to 2024.
It has been very clear for quite some time.
She is unable to know where she is.
We showed you the video before when she was gone with shingles for several months, and Democrats were outraged because her vote is the vote that enables them to confirm judges on the Judiciary Committee, and with her gone, they were unable to do so.
Things were at a standstill.
And a lot of Democrats are saying, get rid of her.
There's a Democratic governor in California who will replace her.
But between her not wanting to leave her aristocratic post, which she believes is a lifelong title to which she's entitled for as long as she wants it, which apparently is until the day she dies, and the fact that the Democratic establishment is petrified that Gavin Newsom, who has promised to appoint a black woman to that seat,
We'll probably appoint Barbara Lee, the longtime House member who's running in a primary for that Senate seat in 2024 against Adam Schiff.
And the entire Democratic establishment wants Adam Schiff in that seat, the white man, and knows that if Barbara Lee, the black woman, is appointed, she will become the incumbent, be much more difficult to beat.
They don't want Feinstein to leave.
They don't care about whether California voters are served, obviously.
That's not the game they're playing.
Now, why Democratic Party leaders can just so openly try and block a black woman from getting that seat in order to make sure a white man gets in there is, your explanation is as good as mine, obviously if the ideology was reversed and they wanted the black man and the American left wanted Now, we showed you Dianne Feinstein.
women and they would accuse them of being racist and misogynist the way they did to supporters of Bernie Sanders who were told they were misogynist for opposing Hillary Clinton.
But they exempt themselves from that accusatory framework at will.
You don't need me to explain that.
That's the rule of the game.
Now, we showed you Dianne Feinstein.
She got back from being away for months from the Senate with shingles.
And when she got back, a reporter asked her, what was it like to be gone?
Are you happy to be back?
She was enraged.
She was in a wheelchair being wheeled around and she said, I wasn't gone.
What are you talking about?
I've been here the whole time.
She thought she was.
She didn't remember that she had been gone for months.
And now here's a video where there was a roll call vote on a bill to increase military spending and to approve the military budget.
And Dianne Feinstein, who has been doing this for 35 years, Was supposed to say yes.
She was supposed to vote yes.
And she didn't, she didn't know where she was.
She couldn't do that.
So she just started babbling.
And watch what happened.
And there's this moment that just happened in a committee meeting today where she seems to need help to vote in that committee meeting.
Here is that moment.
Senator Feinstein.
Um.
Now let me just say, the context here is they were calling the names of every senator, and every senator on the committee was just saying I or an A, like they always do when they vote.
So they got to Dianne Feinstein, and this is what happened.
Say I. Pardon me?
I. Yeah.
So there's her staffer saying, just say aye.
And she said, pardon me?
And the staffer said, just say aye.
Just say yes.
You're voting yes.
Just say yes.
And Dianne Feinstein heard that and said, yeah.
And then this is what she proceeded to do.
Say aye.
Pardon me?
Aye.
Yeah.
I would like to support a yes vote on this.
It provides $823 billion.
That's an increase of $26 billion for the Department of Defense.
and it funds priorities submitted.
- Yeah, just say aye.
- Okay, just, aye.
- Aye.
- So that's a part in that committee meeting where they vote on various measures of legislation.
You saw what looks like a male staff member go over to the senator, because instead of voting, the senator begins what appear to be prepared remarks, and then Patty Murray, a fellow Democrat and the chair of that committee, tells Senator Feinstein to just say aye, and that's what the senator does.
So another concerning moment for a lawmaker here, caught on camera.
Haha, another concerning moment.
Just a concerning moment, meaning she has no idea where she is, what she's saying, what she's doing.
And I think it's so telling in a way, just sweet justice, that...
She was eager to start talking about the importance and the nobility of giving another $26 billion to the Pentagon.
Here, you already have $830 billion a year.
Here's another $850 billion.
She's become proud to give another $26 billion to our Defense Department.
So I hope you're comfortable with a person who has no idea what she's doing being a major decision maker and just throwing hundreds of billions of dollars around.
That's pretty much what Dianne Steinstein has been doing her entire life, which is serving the CIA, being its most steadfast supporter on the Senate Intelligence Committee, urging greater and greater military spending and war spending.
Of course, she voted for the Iraq War.
She's been a supporter of almost every war in her history in the Senate, while her husband was profiteering as a military contractor, making lots of money on many of her votes.
Now the New York Times, the media has kind of been out for blood because I think that the embarrassment of this is so manifest, it's so flagrant that it makes them uncomfortable.
So here in the New York Times this week is a profile about Dianne Feinstein's family fighting over her family fortune.
And it provides a little bit of insight into who Dianne Feinstein is.
And the great working class heroes the Democratic Party has in their ranks.
And the fact that from the perspective of Dianne Feinstein's children and the children of her third husband, she's basically gone because they're already fighting over her money the way really dysfunctional and morally broken families do when people die and they start fighting over their wealth in court.
And that's exactly what's happening to Dianne Feinstein, even though she's not technically dead.
I don't take joy in talking about any of this, but the reality is that if she's going to continue to remain in the Senate and perform these functions, it is worth commenting.
In fact, it's urgent to comment on what this says about her ruling class, the fact that this is what they do.
So I wish Dianne Feinstein would just go away, take care of herself.
Have her health attended to and have the kind of life that you ought to have in the last stage of your life, where you're being with your family, where you're reflecting on your life.
She won't give up this status as senator and all the power that comes with it.
So here's what the New York Times reported, as Dianne Feinstein 90 struggles to function in the Senate, a dispute within her family over control of her late husband's estate is another difficult chapter at the end of a long career.
Senator Dianne Feinstein of California has been engaged in a long and painful public drama about her health and ability to do her job as she winds down a storied career as a lawmaker and former mayor of San Francisco.
Now, Senator Feinstein is also navigating an increasingly bitter legal and financial conflict that pits her and her daughter, Katherine Feinstein, Against the three daughters of her late husband, Richard C. Bloom, who was a wealthy financier.
In one legal dispute, the family is fighting over what's described as Senator Feinstein's desire to sell a beach house in an exclusive neighborhood of Stinson Beach, north of San Francisco.
And in another disagreement, the two factions are at odds over access to the proceeds of Mr. Bloom's life insurance, which Senator Feinstein says she needs to pay for her growing medical expenses.
Raised in affluence, Shocking!
A Democratic Party leader who was raised in affluence?
That's so rare.
Senator Feinstein has long been among the wealthiest members of Congress.
She was rich in her own right in 1980 when she married Mr. Bloom.
After she entered the Senate, she placed securities into a blind trust that is valued at between $5 and $25 million according to her most recent financial disclosures required of lawmakers.
Combined, the couple's fortunes flourished.
To an extent that eclipsed even the Senator's prior standard of living.
Her main residence is a 9,500-square-foot mansion in the upscale San Francisco neighborhood of Pacific Heights.
Their vacation homes until recently included a 36-acre bear paw ranch in Aspen, Colorado, which sold in March for more than $25 million, and a seven-bedroom Lake Tahoe compound that sold in late 21 for a reported $36 million.
Current holdings include a property on the Hawaii island of Kauai and a home in Washington D.C.
Catherine Feinstein, 66, Senator Feinstein's only child, who has power of attorney over her mother's legal affairs.
That is something that We did not know.
That is really remarkable if you think about it.
Dianne Feinstein's daughter, who's 66, that's the gerontocracy we live in.
These people's children are almost 70.
Dianne Feinstein's daughter, Catherine Feinstein, her only child, has power of attorney over her mother's legal affairs.
Why?
Why can't Dianne Feinstein manage her own legal affairs?
Because she's mentally incompetent to do so.
And yet they're keeping her propped up in the Senate.
Patty Murray's telling her how to vote.
She doesn't know when to vote.
She doesn't know where she is.
And these, they just keep her there confirming nominees to the judiciary, all the constitutional functions she's supposed to exercise to make government run.
And she can't manage her own life.
Her daughter has a power of attorney over her own affairs.
It's sad, but from the perspective of public life, it's pathetic that every Democrat is fine with this.
The first lawsuit over the beach house says the property is in disrepair, that Senator Feinstein no longer wishes to use it, and that she wants to sell it this summer or fall.
The suit also accused Mr. Bloom's daughters of seeking to use the beach house at Senator Feinstein's expense and to limit her ability to sell off parts of the trust in order to increase the value of their inheritance.
After Senator Feinstein's, it's amazing to me that they're fighting over her money as though she's dead.
Because I presume they believe that's imminent.
Although Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer and Hillary Clinton are praying, praying she holds on long enough to complete her terms so that Gavin Newsom doesn't appoint Barbara Lee and endanger Adam Schiff's Senate candidacy.
That's how ghoulish these people are.
Imagine treating all of this this way as just a power game.
And you just keep this 90-year-old woman, who's ailing and mentally incompetent, propped up like some toy, like some prop.
All because you want to keep Barbara Lee out of the Senate for whatever reasons and ensure that allonymship gets that spot.
And who cares about the country or California or whether, none of that matters to these people at all, at all.
This is real late empire ruling class decay.
Just in its most, in its tawdriest and most explicit form.
The second lawsuit which challenges whether the trustees were properly appointed concerns Mr. Bloom's life insurance proceeds and claims that the funds, which are supposed to be dispersed through a trust, have been held back by the trustees.
The suit says that Senator Feinstein has, quote, incurred significant medical expenses.
So they're questioning whether they're really as wealthy as they Have long been perceived to be Dianne Feinstein's daughters, claiming they need this money to pay for medical expenses.
I find it a little bit hard to believe that somebody with those kind of real estate holdings, with multiple homes that are all extremely exorbitant and lavish and worth tens of millions of dollars each, can't afford to pay her medical expenses.
But I don't really care about this.
What I do care about is the fact that this article reveals not only that they're treating her like she's dead, and it totally does not surprise me at all.
Imagine just how ugly the energy has to be to go to war in court with your siblings.
To fight over your mother's wealth that none of you earned.
All with lawyers and accusations flying around.
There's people in their 60s and they're spending their life Fighting over this money that doesn't belong to any of them?
Now, Dianne Feinstein has been somebody who I've been covering for a long time because she was at the center of a lot of the war on terror controversies I covered when I first started reporting about politics and she was one of the most steadfast supporters of the Bush war on terror policies, the Bush-Cheney war on terror policies.
Here you see back in 2007, When I was at Salon.com as a columnist and reporter, I wrote this article entitled, Dianne Feinstein, Symbol of the Worthless Beltway Democrats.
Understanding the Bush-enabling and base-hating behavior of the liberal California Democrat reveals much about the failures of the 2007 Congress.
And what amazed me was that, and again, there was a little bit naivete going on here.
I was still young and new in this work of focusing so much on politics.
I was kind of rethinking all the things I thought I knew about politics because I was able to kind of delve in in a full-time way with original documents and not have to have my political beliefs mediated by The New Yorker and The New York Times and The Atlantic and all those high-end journals.
I thought that if you consume, you pretty much were well-informed.
I was able to kind of liberate myself from that.
But I still thought that because Dianne Feinstein was from this blue state that was a safe democratic state, that they should send somebody to that position willing to fight against Bushini attacks on civil liberties in the war on terror.
And it was amazing to me always that while she had this military contractor husband, - Okay.
Making enormous amounts of money on her vote.
She was a steadfast supporter of almost everything Bush and Cheney were doing.
And that's what I wrote.
Quote, Feinstein represents a deep blue state and was just easily re-elected to her third term last year.
So she was only in her third term when I started writing about politics.
She's now in her sixth.
And yet her votes over the last several years, and especially this year after she was safely re-elected, are infinitely closer to the Bush White House.
In 2006, Feinstein not only voted in favor of extending the Patriot Act without any of the critical safeguards sought by Senator Russ Feingold, the civil libertarian Democrat from Wisconsin, but she was one of the most outspoken Democratic proponents arguing for the extension of the Patriot Act.
Quote, she said, I have never been in favor of allowing any provision of the Patriot Act to expire.
She voted for the Iraq War.
She defended the CIA more than anybody else in the Congress, in the Senate.
Here from the Wall Street Journal in December of 2010, right after WikiLeaks published its groundbreaking reporting about the Iraq and Afghanistan war logs and the diplomatic cables that unveiled all kinds of war crimes and corruption, she went to the Wall Street Journal and wrote an op-ed urging the prosecution of Julian Assange under the Espionage Act.
She was demanding Assange's prosecution.
There you see the sub-headline, quote, just as the First Amendment is not a license to yell fire in a crowded theater, it is also not a license to jeopardize national security.
And this is what she wrote, quote, when WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange released his latest document trove, more than 250,000 secret State Department cables, he intentionally harmed the U.S.
government.
The release of these documents damages our national interests and puts innocent lives at risk.
That was a lie.
He should be vigorously prosecuted for espionage.
The law Mr. Assange continues to violate is the Espionage Act of 1917.
That law makes it a felony for unauthorized persons to possess or transmit information relating to the national defense, which information the possessor has reason to believe could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation.
Julian Assange is not an American citizen.
He never was an American citizen.
And yet, for some reason, she believed that if you do reporting that harms the United States, even if you're not an American citizen, you should be treated as a criminal under a 1917 law that was designed to criminalize dissent from Woodward Wilson's effort to get the United States involved in World War I. And there were people like Eugene Debs and others imprisoned under that law.
And she wanted to dig that up and use it against Assange.
Quote, "Mr. Assange claims to be a journalist and would no doubt rely on the First Amendment to defend his actions, but he is no journalist.
He is an agitator, intent on damaging our government whose policies he happens to disagree with regardless of who gets hurt.
As for the First Amendment, the Supreme Court has held that the protections of free speech and freedom of the press are not a green light to abandon the protection of our vital national Why does Julian Assange have loyalty or a duty to protect America's vital national interests?
He's not an American citizen.
Then she hauls out this idiotic cliche.
Just as the First Amendment is not a license to yell fire in a crowded theater, it is also not a license to jeopardize national security.
The latest WikiLeaks releases demonstrates Mr. Assange's willingness to disseminate plans, comments, discussions, and other communications that compromise our country.
And let there be no doubt about the depth of the harm.
Considering the sober assessment delivered in an email to employees of a U.S.
intelligence agency last month by Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, Quote, the actions taken by WikiLeaks are not only deplorable, irresponsible, and reprehensible, they could have major impacts on international security.
The disclosure of classified documents puts at risk our troops, law enforcement, diplomats, and especially the American people.
All of that turned out to be a lie.
There had been a lot of subsequent reporting that at no point was any individual harmed by WikiLeaks' publications.
There was no foreign undercover agent exposed.
There were no foreign agents revealed.
They were very careful about how they did these releases.
Remember they partnered with the Guardian and the New York Times and El Pais and other news outlets around the world to publish those documents.
And yet she was too much of a coward to call for the prosecution of the editors of those newspapers even though they did exactly the same things Julian Assange did.
That's what Dianne Feinstein has been her whole life.
She's been an agent of the U.S.
security state.
She was speaking there for the CIA that hated Assange and wanted him dead.
And she was ahead of her time.
She was back in 2010 calling for his prosecution under the Espionage Act.
She, needless to say, was also one of the most aggressive critics of Edward Snowden.
Here from Ars Technica, November of 2013.
U.S.
officials say forget about clemency for Snowden.
But Snowden tells Der Spiegel he's justified due to the call for reform he sparked.
Quote, if it wasn't already clear that the U.S.
government was unhappy with National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden, and the feds want him extradited, President Obama denounced him, it is now.
Today, the chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Dianne Feinstein, and her House counterpart, Mike Rogers, Republican in Michigan, there's that fantastic inspiring bipartisanship that we're told doesn't exist, both emphasized there would be no mercy coming from Washington.
Quote, He was trusted.
He stripped our system.
He has an opportunity, if what he was was a whistleblower, to pick up the phone and call the House Intelligence Committee, the Senate Intelligence Committee, and say, I have some information, Feinstein told CBS's Face the Nation, quote, but that didn't happen.
He's done this enormous disservice to our country, and I don't think, and I think the answer is no clemency.
Imagine, Edward Snowden discovers That James Clapper is lying to the Senate on purpose by denying that the NSA is spying on Americans by the millions.
And he discovers this mass system of suspicionless surveillance aimed at the American people.
That Dianne Feinstein knows about.
And Mike Rogers, the Republican from Michigan, knows about.
And he's supposed to pick up the phone and say, oh, hello, Senator Feinstein.
Hi, I'm Edward Snowden.
I'm calling because I discovered some disturbing things that I wanted you to know about.
What do you think would happen to him?
The first call she would make would be to the FBI.
And he would be arrested.
And none of that information would get out, and he would be in prison.
And that's why he left the country and asked for journalists to work with instead.
Because he knew that was the only way this information was going to get out to the public.
So here you see Dianne Feinstein.
Her whole career has been in servitude to the CIA, the FBI, the NSA.
And all along she has been profiting from her public service.
That New York Times article talked about how her wealth coincidentally flourished.
And she became even richer while in the Senate.
Oh my God, it's so amazing how often that happens.
Like Nancy Pelosi making incredibly successful stock trades.
While she's the Speaker of the House, in contact with every major American corporation in whose stocks she's buying and selling.
Here from the San Francisco gate in April of 2003.
Army contract for Feinstein's husband.
Bloom is the director of a firm that will get up to $600 million.
URS Corp, a San Francisco planning and engineering firm partially owned by California Senator Dianne Feinstein's husband, landed an Army contract Monday worth up to $600 million.
Congratulations to Dianne Feinstein's husband!
Government contracting has come under increasing scrutiny by Congress and citizen groups, with critics denying the political connections of firms winning lucrative jobs.
Richard Bloom, Feinstein's husband, serves on the company's board of directors and controls about 24% of the firm's stock, according to Hoover Inc.' 's research firm.
A Feinstein spokesman Monday declined to comment on the contract.
Bloom and several URS representatives could not be reached for comment.
A Pentagon spokesman said he was unfamiliar with the contract.
So when you hear about Dianne Feinstein's massive mansion in San Francisco, her $25 million vacation house in Lake Tahoe, Her other home in Utah, her home in Hawaii, her gigantic mansion in Washington, D.C., all these trusts worth many millions of dollars.
A major reason is because her servitude to the U.S.
security state and the endless war machine of the Pentagon has been extremely profitable to her and her husband.
That's where a lot of that wealth comes from.
In 2007, The Hill reported, quote, Dianne Feinstein violated rules in awarding military contracts.
Quote, according to Senate ethics rules, members of the U.S.
Senate and their families cannot benefit personally and financially from legislative decisions they make.
Senator Feinstein apparently either doesn't agree with this principle or she has chosen to ignore it.
As a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee's Subcommittee on Military Construction, Feinstein reviewed military construction government contracts.
Some of the projects reviewed by Feinstein's subcommittee were ultimately awarded to U.R.S.
and Parany.
That's why I don't really feel that bad about talking negatively about her at the end of her life.
She has been toxic and destructive and malevolent in how she has wielded political power that she refuses to give up.
Even though she doesn't know her own name.
CBS News 2020.
Dianne Feinstein faces scrutiny over her husband's biotech stock transactions amid COVID-19 market freefall.
Quote, In the wake of the stock market collapse spurred by the economic impact of the COVID-19 crisis, U.S.
Senator Dianne Feinstein has had to answer questions about stock trades involving her husband just prior to the market tanking.
Feinstein has served on the Senate Intelligence Committee since 2001.
Stock trades her husband made earlier this year came under scrutiny last month.
Quote, it turns out her husband, Richard Bloom, did sell biostock tech right when word about the coronavirus was starting to peak, said Mark Sandelow, who teaches media and politics at the University of California in Washington.
And quote, Dianne Feinstein, as a senator, certainly had some information the rest of the country didn't.
So the question is, did Dianne Feinstein tip her husband into making the stock transaction?
Through her spokesperson, the Senator disclosed that she, quote, answered some basic questions by law enforcement about her husband's stock transactions and, quote, provided additional documents to show she has no involvement in them.
The stocks in question involved the California biotech company that pioneered cancer therapies.
Feinstein's husband sold millions of dollars of its stock twice right before the market crashed.
Congratulations to Dianne Feinstein's husband again for having some incredibly intuitive sense.
About when the market was going to crash due to COVID while his wife was getting highly classified intelligence briefings from health agencies and national security agencies on exactly that question.
And I hope none of you are cynical enough to think that perhaps he shared some of that information with him because it affects their personal finances.
It was a gigantic coincidence that he sold at exactly the right time.
Just like it's a huge coincidence that Nancy Pelosi and her husband make incredibly astute stock trades.
Now, it is worth revealing one story that I think many of you might have forgotten.
There was one time when Dianne Feinstein opposed the CIA.
It was when the committee on which she sat and which she led, or on which she was the ranking member, and was investigating the torture program in the CIA, the CIA's use of harsh interrogation techniques.
And they discovered, this committee did, that the CIA under John Brennan, the Obama administration, was spying on them as they were investigating the CIA.
And John Brennan vehemently denied it, he was Obama's CIA director, until the proof emerged that he did.
And then he was forced to admit it.
From The Guardian in July of 2014, CIA admits to spying on Senate staffers.
Quote, the director of the CIA, John Brennan, issued an extraordinary apology to leaders of the US Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday, conceding that agency employees spied on committee staff and reversing months of furious and public denials.
Oh wow, John Brennan lied like James Clapper?
James Clapper now works for CNN, John Brennan now works for NBC.
So you go and you get caught lying at the highest level of the U.S.
security state, then media outlets go and hire you to deliver the news while preaching to you that they hate disinformation.
Quote, Brennan acknowledged that an internal investigation had found agency security personnel transgressed a firewall set up on a CIA network, which allowed Senate committee investigators to review agency documents for their landmark inquiry into CIA torture.
Among other things, it was revealed that agency officials conducted keyword searches and email searches on committee staff while they used the network.
The admission brings Brennan's already rocky tenure at the head of the CIA under renewed question.
One senator on the panel said he had lost confidence in the director, although the White House indicated its support for a man who has been one of Barack Obama's most trusted security aides.
So there you have it, the life of Dianne Feinstein.
It is ending like it was conducted with complete corruption and deceit and dishonor and dishonesty.
Trying to harm as many people as possible purely for the benefit of herself and her wealthy comrades in the DC ruling class.
And on one level it's totally unsurprising that that's how Dianne Feinstein's career is culminating because that's exactly what these people are.
On the other, it's rare that we get such a explicit and glaring look into the corruption that is oozing out of these people's pores the way it's oozing figuratively for sure and maybe literally out of Dianne Feinstein's.
And I think it's really worth keeping an eye on this situation because I guarantee you that because of that self-interest that they have, that Democrats have in keeping her in that seat, she will remain in that seat until her last breathing moment and maybe even after.
And we will certainly keep, as unpleasant as it is, following the rapid decline of Dianne Feinstein.
On Wednesday we talked about the incredible propaganda that has quickly emerged around Trump Special Prosecutor Jack Smith, the person who is overseeing the criminal prosecution of former President Trump in connection with the classified documents case in Mar-a-Lago and now just brought this latest indictment pertaining to President Trump's behavior after the 2020 election and on
January 6 and we talked about a Washington Post profile that purported to be a Article about everything you need to know about Jack Smith.
Here's Jack Smith Here's what you need to know and it began by saying he has earned a reputation as a hard worker I mean it really read like a ninth graders book report like if you wanted to get up and as a like a
Maybe an eighth grader give a book report on like Abraham Lincoln or just some like historic figure that you're supposed to say good things about and you'd get up and you read and you would say like he was known as a hard worker and he believed that the important things in life are being enthusiastic and showing up on time and being energetic.
That's really what the Washington Post article was like.
It was amazing to read.
Obviously it omitted a huge series of Highly questionable behavior in Jack Smith's career as a prosecutor, including highly excessive and abusive prosecutions he brought, including one that was rejected by the Supreme Court as overly zealous and overreach.
In favor of talking about how much he loves Iron Man fitness and triathlons and the like, lots of space devoted to that.
But I'm returning to this because it's gotten way worse.
These people have no dignity in the media.
The way they're talking about Jack Smith is almost explicitly sexualized and it's uncomfortable to watch.
I almost wish, it's like the Dianne Feinstein segment, I almost wish I didn't have to think about it or show it to you.
But we have our duties as journalists, and that's to inform you.
And I'm afraid you're going to have to see what I saw, which is the CBS News panel led by Norah O'Donnell, the CBS News anchor, on the day that President Trump appeared in court.
They were so happy that he had to go to court and meet Jack Smith.
And here is what ensued.
Just listen to this.
We've just been told that Donald Trump has entered the courtroom.
Also in the courtroom is the special counsel, Jack Smith.
And I want to spend a moment on Jack Smith, because he is essentially who Donald Trump is up against.
I mean, why would you say that?
You're on air live on a network news show.
of course, the classified documents and the January 6th one.
And they are sitting across from each other inside this courtroom.
Jack Smith is someone who has run over and competed in over 100 triathlons.
I mean, why would you say that?
You're on air live on a network news show talking about a criminal case brought by this prosecutor whose allegations are supposed to be subject to critical scrutiny.
He's trying to put someone in prison.
Donald Trump is presumed innocent until proven guilty.
And within 15 seconds after starting to talk about him, you start talking about his athletic hobbies.
Let's listen to more.
He was reportedly at one point hit while he was on his bike by a truck.
All right, let me go back to this.
This part is... Okay.
He's Superman.
He gets hit by a truck.
- And competed in over 100 triathlons.
He was reportedly at one point hit when he was on his bike by a truck, and 10 weeks later, he ran another triathlon.
- Okay, he's Superman.
He gets hit by a truck, the truck runs him over.
Most people would spend two years in a hospital.
He got run over by a truck, but not Jack Smith.
He got up, put on his cape, and he went back and did another triathlon ten weeks later.
This is a tough, tough guy.
Impressive.
Really impressive.
Strong.
Very, very strong.
And I want to see the truck that ran him over and I understand what his injuries were that then let him go do another triathlon ten weeks later, but she's very impressed by this, Norah O'Donnell of CBS News is.
This is a man of a lot of grit and a lot of determination.
She's, he's a man of, this is a man of a lot of grit and a lot of determination.
How does she know that?
What does she know about him?
Nothing.
She knows nothing about him.
They should be talking about his history as a prosecutor, including the cases that he was found to have abused his prosecutorial power in.
But she's breathlessly talking about his personal hobbies and his athletic prowess and his grit.
His grit.
Listen to the tone of her voice.
Of grit and a lot of determination.
And even what we have seen in these indictments is just a sliver of what they know and his prosecutorial team knows, right?
They always do that.
They do that with Robert Mueller all the time.
There are a lot of secret things they know.
They're not—they're way too disciplined to tell us, but they have a whole big pile of powerful secrets that they're keeping that is going to scare Donald Trump.
Now, remember, they did this for Robert Mueller.
Talked about Robert Mueller this way for two years.
Only for Robert Mueller to close shop, not prosecute anybody on the court charge that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia, issue a report saying that after 18 months of looking they could find no evidence to establish that core allegation.
And then he appeared before Congress just slightly more alert than Dianne Feinstein and so they turned around and had to smear him as being senile.
That's what Adam Schiff basically wrote in his book because he refused to lie and say that Donald Trump had colluded with the Russians.
And now they have their new Robert Mueller, their new Michael Avenatti, their new Andrew Cuomo.
This man of great grit and determination gets hit by a truck and he goes does another triathlete.
Triathlon.
He doesn't even have to go to the hospital.
He dusts himself off.
The truck goes away.
He's like, no, no.
No, thank you, sir.
I need nothing.
I'm good.
I'm good.
He just went home, maybe took a nap a little bit, ate something, started working out again, real sweaty, real hard, real strong, and did another triathlon 10 weeks later.
This is the news.
This is CBS News.
His aggressive approach to his personal health and exercise correlates to how he approaches his prosecution and his strategy.
We've talked a lot about it.
That's Robert Costa, who began his career as a conservative at National Review, made his way to the Washington Post, is at CBS News, and they just, amazing, these people just transform into the herd animals that they're hired to be.
His personal, what was that?
His personal aggression and how he works out correlates to how he, what does that even mean?
Correlates to how he approaches his prosecution and his strategy.
We've talked a lot about how the former president is under pressure, but Jack Smith is also under pressure today.
Alright, so that was the CBS News Report, helping you to understand who Jack Smith is.
There was a reporter who was in the courtroom, Hugo Lowell, I believe he's a reporter with The Guardian.
He was in the courtroom and this is what he wanted you to know about the proceedings.
Quote, Trump is sitting in special counsel Jack Smith's direct line of sight in the courtroom.
And Smith almost certainly just looked at Trump.
This is a real man we're talking about.
He looked right at Trump.
He's not sure, but he's pretty sure, and he reported that unflinchingly.
He stepped forward and he said, I don't, I'm, I'm, I'm adversarial to power.
I don't care who I anger.
Jack Smith looked at Donald Trump in that courtroom.
You know what he used to look at Donald Trump with?
Bill Kristol's The Bulwark tells us he used his steely-eyed gaze.
Jack Smith, his gaze is steely-eyed.
And that's the thing that he used to look at Donald Trump with.
A steely-eyed gaze.
You probably remember some of the similar things that were done here.
For example, Billboard Magazine.
I'm so glad I thought we had this video.
I'm so glad we don't because I could not endure watching it.
But the Women of Saturday Night Live sung a song for Christmas entitled, All I Want for Christmas is You.
And it was a song to Robert Mueller.
The woman of Saturday Night Live saying, and I quote, all I want for Christmas is you, parody.
It wasn't a parody.
It was very earnest, directed at special counsel, Robert Mueller, pleading for an indictment of President Trump.
There you see them, the ladies of Saturday Night Live, saying all they want for Christmas is you, Robert Mueller.
And a picture of him came down and they were dancing and singing.
And then in Vogue magazine, they have this picture of Robert Mueller standing tall with that steely odd gaze.
And the headline, and this is very earnest, is Step Aside Idris Elba and Chris Hemsworth.
Robert Mueller is America's new crush.
They turned Robert Mueller at the age of 73, before they declared him senile, into some kind of matinee idol, into a sex symbol.
They were lusting for Robert Mueller.
Because he was the one who was coming to get Trump previously.
Think how unhealthy this is.
These people are venerating and idolizing prosecutors as object of sexual desire because they believe they're coming to get their main enemy, Donald Trump.
They're like superheroes, saving them and protecting them from the bad guy.
These are reporters at major media outlets saying this.
Here's from Vice.
They have a picture there of Robert Mueller with little hearts around it, Valentine hearts.
Inside, Robert Mueller is horny, joking, but not really fandom.
The special counsel quote has all of the qualities of a super crush.
He's mysterious.
He doesn't return phone calls.
He plays hard to get.
Here's what this article said, quote, ever since the special counsel investigation into Russian interference during the 2016 presidential election was launched, the silvered hair former FBI director at its head has been idealized, lusted after, and nearly deified by a resistance badly in need of heroes.
In other words, many people really seem to be increasingly in love with Robert Mueller.
Case in point, the countless, never-ending streams of articles about the subject, including this one.
In August 2017, Vogue crowned Mueller, quote, America's new crush, rounding up responses to comedian Chelsea Handler's tweet professing her adoration.
That October, the A.V.
Club reported on this, quote, bustling Reddit fan club.
A few months after that, M.E.L.
referred to him as a daddy.
Sighting memes of him rendered as Superman are atop a shark shooting firearms in tweets that refer to him as the sexiest man alive.
Last March, the New Yorker analyzed the numerous media claims that he was a style icon, evaluating his choice of ties and his insistence on only wearing white dress shirts.
And then this January, just a few weeks before Chad Okunnachi Johnson would watch the FBI arrest Roger Stone, Vanity Fair published a letter, a love letter, to quote Robert Swan Muller by Rachel Dodis.
These are adults.
And I think that one of the reasons this happens is because these people have nothing in their lives but politics.
And especially politics in its lowest form, which is like the cable news kind of politics.
Every day, Robert Mueller's coming to get Donald Trump.
They don't have any religion.
They feed on this all day long.
Remember, we showed you that video of Chris Hayes on the verge of tears, genuinely, talking about how reading Jack Smith's indictment was personally gratifying to him because it vindicated his sense of sanity.
He's like, you know what?
I'm not crazy.
I'm not crazy.
This proves that all the things I've been wanting for so long, Donald Trump's prison, are really true.
This is mentally unwell.
There were all those reports at the beginning of Trump's presidency from therapists talking about all these neurotic episodes and anxiety disorders that their patients were reporting as a result of Trump's election.
That's what the media has done to them.
And then the converse is that they start lusting after technocrats in Washington because they think they're viewing this as some kind of morality play.
It's like a film.
And they're falling in love with the protagonist, with the matinee idol, with the hero who's coming and protecting them from these bad people.
And the amazing thing is, there was just an NBC report from two weeks ago warning that extreme emphasis on fitness was now becoming a right-wing, neo-Nazi, fascist trend.
In right-wing fascist culture, there's a great emphasis on fitness because it's part of toxic masculinity.
And yet the minute they need their own kind of deity or sex symbol to fulfill their empty lives, they turn to these same themes.
He's muscular.
He works out.
He's an FBI agent.
He's sturdy.
He's strong.
All these themes of toxic masculinity, they just embrace.
They gush over them openly.
Here was the Christian Science Monitor in 2019.
The title was Unlikely Pop Icon, Robert Mueller.
He inspires creative tributes.
Quote, special counsel Robert Mueller has assumed a sort of folk hero status for some Americans across the political spectrum.
Then it says, his persona has inspired a range of artistic tributes, including handmade makeup bags and earrings adorned with his profile.
Quote, the world has gone completely insane and topsy-turvy, Mr. Schallenberger says.
Mueller's hair is one little shining piece of sanity in a sea of madness.
So precise and sober and straightforward.
We're talking about his hair this way, okay, this is what, this is Mr. Schellenbarger, this is what he's saying, quote, the world has gone completely insane and topsy-turvy.
Robert Mueller's hair is one little shining piece of sanity in a sea of badness.
Why?
Because his hair is so precise and sober and straightforward and without deceit, absolutely by the book, the opposite of everything that's going on in the world.
This is not really something that should be analyzed and dissected by political scientists.
It's something that should be deciphered and explored and accounted for by the field of psychology and sociology.
This is cultural and psychological in nature, and it is very, very sick.
It's dreary and depressing.
This is liberal culture.
This is what they feed on all the time, and these outcomes are very, very Creepy and bizarre.
Let's remind ourselves of what they did when it came time to talk about Michael Avenatti.
The person who ended up being one of the world's greatest con men in fraud.
He's now serving many years in prison because he stole from his clients and defrauded all sorts of companies.
It wasn't that long ago that they tried to make him president and they were talking about him as a sex symbol.
Let's watch this.
He's Donald Trump's worst nightmare, Michael Avenatti.
Joining us once again is Michael Avenatti.
Let's bring in Michael Avenatti.
Michael Avenatti.
Michael Avenatti.
Michael Avenatti, thank you very much.
He's out there saving the country.
Don Meacham says he may be the savior of the republic.
You are something of a folk hero now.
I owe Michael Avenatti an apology.
I've been saying, enough already, Michael.
I've seen you everywhere.
What do you have left to say?
I was wrong, brother.
You have a lot to say.
I am just dying to hear what you think.
These people all like you.
I'm the only person right here Donald Trump fears more than Robert Miller.
We think you guys are the tip of the spear that's going to take down Donald Trump.
Michael Avenatti's a beast.
Okay, that's true.
And he's a beast.
He's a beast.
But he has a bigger calling here, that being a lawyer is minimal compared to what he's doing.
No one has talked tougher directly to Donald Trump on TV than Michael Avenatti.
And Donald Trump is afraid to mention his name.
That's fascinating.
Donald Trump is terrified of Michael Avenatti.
Trump will run for his money more than anybody else, Michael Avenatti.
An existential threat to the Trump presidency.
The Democrats could learn something for you.
You are messing with Trump a lot more than they are.
He has no doubt created sheer panic in Donald Trump's very fragile mind.
Michael Avenatti is laying down the law as guest co-host.
And is he really thinking about running for president?
One reason why I'm taking you seriously as a contender is because of your presence on cable news.
You look at the field of Democrats right now and Avenatti's the one who stands out.
If they decide they value a fighter most, people would be foolish to underestimate Michael Avenatti.
I have always said that they need a fighter.
Look, I mean, we're going to continue to use the media.
I think we've used it with great success.
All of my sexual fantasies involve handcuffs.
Aww.
Aww.
I don't even know what to say about that.
Especially after having consumed all this other stuff that they're now doing to Jack Smith that they did to Robert Mueller.
They did the same thing to Dr. Fauci as well.
You can actually go and find articles talking about Dr. Fauci as a sex symbol.
Anybody who ends up in the public mind being opposed to Donald Trump, in some way they regard as effective, they end up revering on a sexual level, on a visceral level, on a religious level.
All of those at once.
Democratic Party politics has been doing this for a while.
They really do worship their leaders as celebrities, as like cultural icons.
Going back to 2010, here's a New York Times article, all that time serving the public, very sexy, it was about how Andrew Cuomo was named one of People Magazine's sexiest men alive when he was governor of New York.
He is hailed as a paragon of timeless male beauty.
His face is likened to the chiseled visages of Antonio Banderas, David Beckham, and Ricky Martin.
He is called, without irony, a sizzling stalwart.
One of the sexiest men alive?
According to People Magazine, it is Andrew M. Cuomo.
No, New York's governor-elect does not bear his chest or appear clad in a t-shirt atop a motorcycle.
The truth be told, he does own a Harley.
In fact, you can barely see the top of Mr. Cuomo's tie in the photograph in the magazine's current edition.
An unabashed celebration of virility.
Mr. Cuomo, 52, snagged a coveted slot in the double issue of People with surveys of international landscapes of bouldering pectorals and rippling abdominals.
Quote, I was, Mr. Cuomo said in an interview, slightly surprised initially.
He was not, however, entirely humbled by it.
Asked what kind of regimen he had followed to make the cut, Mr. Cuomo responded wryly, quote, a lot of it is just natural.
It's genetic sculpting.
All right, I can't take any of that anymore.
But I did want to actually go through that because it does say a lot about liberal culture.
And by liberal culture, I mean the dominant part of corporate media.
They're the ones who are doing this.
And they're just reflecting and refracting the sentiments of their viewers.
Their viewers influence them.
They influence their viewers back.
It's very symbiotic.
The idea of worshipping political leaders, secular leaders, is by itself already extremely misguided.
But to take it and turn it into something religious, something sexual, something visceral, something emotional, something psychological, so that you have Chris Hayes practically weeping and talking about his sense of sanity being restored because of an assertion by a prosecutor in an indictment.
These people are so connected relentlessly to this continuous morality play that they see themselves as the protagonists then.
That they're involved in this kind of historic world struggle.
They're fighting on the front lines of America.
They call themselves the Resistance.
Even though the only thing they do is tweet.
They name themselves after the people in ghettos in Europe, including in France, who fought against Nazis and who hid from Nazis and fought against them and created networks to transport Jews and other people who were sought by the Nazi occupiers to safety.
They name themselves after those people with a hashtag.
That's the warped and sick world in which they've been living since Donald Trump's election and even a little bit before.
And this is why that anything is justified to them.
They are kind of this like, this kind of cult of mental illness.
And if you are at this point where banal everyday politics is occupying such a central place in your psyche and your soul because nothing else is there and it crowds out everything, I don't.
I think personally those people should be asking a lot of hard questions introspectively about themselves.
But for us, that's their own business.
But for the public, part of that, this is why they come to believe that anything and everything is justified.
They crave the imprisonment of their political enemies.
They want them censored in silence.
So much of liberal politics is about that.
And this sort of thing of the media venerating and worshipping any political figures who end up in any way adversarial to Donald Trump obviously shows the extent to which journalism has disappeared as pure partisan tribal identity.
But it's gone way beyond that.
This is not only political.
It is deeply personal and emotional and psychological.
And that's why Even though I have my criticism of Donald Trump and the Trump movement, in so many ways my focus has been on their reaction to him and the way in which all these centers of power have united the U.S.
security state, corporate media, big tech, all united, feeding on this sort of narrative, believing in it, and talking themselves into ever more extreme versions of it.
Because when people convince themselves of this sort of thing, That's when there really are no limits on what they're capable of.
So that concludes our show for this evening and our set of shows system update for this week.
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