Dems Desperately Revive Russian Interference Hysteria Ahead of Election; French Politics Analyst Arnaud Bertrand On Macron's Refusal To Accept Election Results
TIMESTAMPS:
Intro (17:07)
Russia Interference Hysteria Before Election (24:47)
Interview with French Analyst Arnaud Bertrand (1:13:10)
Outro (1:31:50)
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It is Wednesday, September 4th, and this is our live nightly show that airs every Monday through Friday at 7pm Eastern, exclusively here on Rumble, the free speech alternative to YouTube.
As you can see, we are still not in our regular studio.
That's because I continue to be traveling in relation to some Working.
Each time I get to a new place, we seem to have a little bit of technical issues trying to make sure it works.
Hopefully it is now working because there's a lot to talk about tonight, including a guest that I'm really interested in talking to.
So let's roll the dice and see what it is that we can do.
It's interesting.
I was on Megan Kelly's program for two full hours today using exactly this setup and it worked perfectly.
So let's try and give it a go.
So for tonight, Whenever a Democrat is nearby and encounters someone or something that they dislike, one thing is certain that they will start ranting and raving about Russia and accusing whatever or whoever is bothering them of being controlled by or being subservient to the Kremlin.
The list of their targets since 2016 is really too long to count, but today, with the election just two months away, they resurrected yet again this old, crusty, Cliche, tired Cold War script to try and claim that Vladimir Putin, yet again, while running Russia, overseeing a war in Ukraine, managing his country's complex oil economy, is, in his spare time, also trying to propagandize the American citizenry through all sorts of covert influence campaigns.
Earlier this morning, the Biden administration leaked to many of its favorite reporters that it was about to make a major accusation, a major announcement, accusing the Kremlin of trying to interfere in the 2024 election.
Exactly what they did in 2016, in 2020, and many times before.
Now, who could have ever guessed That with the election just two months away, the Democrats would start talking about Russia, but that of course is exactly what they're doing.
Hours later, after they made this leak, the Biden Justice Department issued a lengthy indictment of various Russians and the state-owned RT.
Purporting to detail how these influence operations are being carried out, the indictment very deliberately and purposely named, without naming, a wide range of conservative influencers who they accuse of either knowingly or unwittingly having accepted Russian money in order to deliver pro-Kremlin messaging.
Now, while this document, like all indictments, is filled with nothing but unproven accusations, They are being treated as gospel fact.
And as a side note, this is something I've seen many times.
The Justice Department issues an indictment based on allegations that come from the U.S.
security state, and it's almost like nobody questions it.
Whatever the DOJ said is what happened ends up being accepted as true.
And to do that in general Is misguided, but to do it about a highly politicized document just two months away from a national election when Democrats do exactly this, almost reflexively now, seems to me like madness.
But even if every single claim in this indictment is true, even if it ends up being proven to be true, the magnitude of the so-called influence campaign run by the Kremlin is laughably tiny.
It barely even rises to the level where it warrants being called trivial.
It's just clearly yet another act of standard Democratic Party reflex to scream Russia whenever they feel endangered.
So we're going to examine this indictment, the historical context surrounding it, and what the implications are.
And then Two separate elections were held in France over the past several months.
One was an election for France's seats to the EU, and that election was won by Marine Le Pen's right-wing party.
Following that, President Emmanuel Macron called new elections to have a vote to determine who should compose the French legislature.
And that election was won by a coalition of left-wing parties.
Now, one of the major messages, obvious messages, of both of those votes was a rejection of the Macron government, which won neither of those seats.
Now, we covered these elections, both of them extensively at the time.
We've had analysts on our show to talk about not only what drove the outcomes, but also what the impact on French politics would be in general, and specifically how it would change The French government, I mean, that's the idea of democracy is you have a vote, not just to be a symbolic expression of people's beliefs, but in order to let them determine the composition of their own government.
And yet, as it turns out, absolutely nothing has changed in France or with the French government since those votes.
And that's because President Emmanuel Macron and his party and his government have basically pretended that the election never even happened.
Even Macron's protege, Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, continues in office as the Prime Minister months after the election, even though he tendered his resignation after the first week of the election, on the obvious ground that since the Macronists no longer have a majority in the legislature, he can no longer continue to be Prime Minister, and yet Macron rejected that resignation, and he continues, his protégé does, to be the Prime Minister, overseeing the legislature until this very day.
Now, one of the guests we had on to evaluate the election results was the political analyst, Arnaud Bertrand, and he will be here to join us tonight to talk about, among other things, the bizarre spectacle Of a country that bombastically claims to be one of the leaders of the democratic world, simply ignoring a national election because it doesn't like the outcome.
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For now, welcome to a new episode of System Update, starting right now.
Now, as I start staying at the top of the show, I want to delve into this new announcement today, this new indictment by the Biden administration that I know this new indictment by the Biden administration that I know this will shock you.
According to them, Russia is interfering on our elections.
But before I get to that, I just want to tell you about some very breaking news.
It happened just maybe 20, 30 minutes ago.
Which is that Liz Cheney, whose political career is obviously owed to her father, Dick Cheney, who was the vice president from 2001 until 2009, played probably the largest role in things like the war on terror attacks on civil liberties, the torture program around the world, the invasion of Iraq, that whole litany of abuses that
Pretty much every liberal at the time accused of being a war crime, an attempt to drive up the stock of Halliburton, to profiteer off wars, to violate human rights.
Liz Cheney, in order to start her political career, essentially endorsed and defended every single one of those policies until about, well, until today she'll do that.
If you ask her whether any of those war on terror policies Was wrong.
Invading Iraq, putting people in Guantanamo with no due process, domestically spying on people with no warrants.
She'll tell you no.
All of that was justified by virtue of the fact that we have this threat called terrorism and civil liberties had to give way in order to do it.
Just about 20 or 30 minutes ago, Liz Cheney, who was a member of the Republican Party in the House until she lost her primary by a record-setting 36 points as an incumbent, In your own primary, to lose by 36 points is unheard of, but she got booted out of Congress but still is a hero of the establishment media and American liberalism, announced her support and endorsement
For Kamala Harris, who in 2020, she essentially accused of being a communist, somebody who would bring abortion on demand, said essentially every scary and negative thing she could about Kamala Harris in 2020, she now wants Kamala Harris to be president.
She said that obviously she would never support Donald Trump, but last election, she recommended leaving the ballot blank.
She said this time, we don't have the luxury of doing that, nor do we have the luxury of casting A vote for a third party, but instead we now have to cast the vote for the only person who can defeat Donald Trump, which is Kamala Harris.
So Liz Cheney joins a long list, not of Republicans, but of neocons and warmongers and militarists and corporatists.
Who only a decade ago were widely branded as fascist, as racist, as war profiteers, as war criminals, as satanic.
Those were the things that you pretty much were obligated to say about people like Liz Cheney or David Frum or Bill Kristol and yet they have now all become not just anti-Trump activists but vocal members, loyal vocal members of the Democratic Party.
So you might think That if you've been a long-time American liberal who thought the Cheney family was the root of all evil, along with neocons like Bill Kristol, and now suddenly they're on your side even though they haven't changed a single one of their views.
Liz Cheney has never renounced a single one of her views that is in full alignment with her father's political views, which is to be expected given that her whole career depended on her father.
None of these neocons have changed a single view.
They just now say that the Democratic Party is a better vehicle for their agenda than the Republican Party is.
And if I were a neocon, I would also think that.
And you would think an American liberal who spent 20 years calling these people fascists and racists and warmongers would wonder to themselves, wait a minute, what is it about my party that makes these people I had always considered the root of all evil Now suddenly a party in which they're extremely comfortable and welcome and applauded, but of course there's none of that self-reflection going on.
And I once wrote an article in Substack making the argument, which I would make as vehemently today as I did back then, that from a liberal perspective, from the metrics of American liberalism, The Bush-Tinney administration was so much worse, so much more destructive on almost every level than anything Donald Trump got even close to doing.
And so the idea that somehow, I mean, just the Iraq War alone, there's nothing that Donald Trump even got remotely close to that compares to the devastation and destruction and subversion of American interests.
And to say nothing of its immorality and illegality and the fact that it was based on a lie and destroyed trust in American institutions, not just in the United States, but for decades, just that alone, to say nothing of all the other abuses that I enumerated makes George Bush and Donald and Dick Cheney Infinitely worse!
And yet, liberals will tell you that even though they continue not to agree with those people, they consider them far superior to Donald Trump.
To me, it doesn't say very much about these neocolons who, again, haven't changed any of their views.
What it says is a lot!
About the Democratic Party, but also the Trump-led Republican Party that makes these people believe that the Democratic Party, for good reason in their view, is the better, more efficient vehicle for their agenda.
So I want to, from the bottom of my heart, congratulate Democrats and liberals, people who have been affiliated with the Democratic Party.
You now have the Cheney family, along with the Christels and the Frums.
All those neocons, Max Boot, on your side.
Now we add the Cheney family to it.
There's a lot of talk that soon George W. Bush, who was widely compared to Hitler when he was president by mainstream American liberalism, may also soon endorse Kamala Harris over Donald Trump.
So that's quite a collection of incredibly impressive people that the Democratic Party is collecting in terms of supporters.
All right, so let's get to The news of the day about Russia.
So early this morning it began breaking through leaks to their most loyal media figures like Jim Acosta that the Biden administration was about to announce a major revelation accusing the Russians of interfering in the 2024 election.
And Jim Acosta breathlessly went on Twitter and then on to CNN and all caps he wrote EXCLUSIVE BREAKING The Biden administration to accuse Russia of interference in the 2024 election as though this is some shocking development that nobody could possibly have expected as if the Democrats weren't saying and doing almost nothing but accusing everybody of being an asset of the Russian government and the Russians interfering in our elections.
That was Hillary Clinton's primary excuse for having lost in 2016.
It dominated our politics from 2016 to 2018.
The idea that Trump had been colluding with the Russians to break into the DNC email, something that Robert Mueller with infinite resources concluded there was no evidence for, That didn't deter them at all.
In 2020, right before the election, when there was reporting about the Biden family's exploitation of their name to profit in places like China and Ukraine, the intelligence community, the media, and Big Tech all joined together to lie and say that that was more Russian disinformation, which ended up causing Big Tech to censor that story weeks before an election that ended up being decided by about 70,000 votes.
So it's their go-to tactic, and they continue to use it all the time.
Now here's how the New York Times reported on this indictment today.
This is the headline from the New York Times, quote, US announces plan to counter Russian influence ahead of 2024 election.
American spy agencies have assessed that the Kremlin favors former President Donald Trump, seeing him as skeptical of US support for Ukraine.
So right away, You see that this allegation, this whole story, is coming from the U.S.
security state, from the CIA, from all those agencies that have proven over and over that they will do anything, including lie, as they did in 2020 and 2016, to sabotage the Trump campaign.
The article goes on, quote, the United States on Wednesday announced a broad effort to push back on Russian influence campaigns and the 2024 election trying to curb the Kremlin's use of state-run media and fake news sites to sway American voters.
The actions include sanctions, indictments, and seizing of web domains that U.S. officials say the Kremlin used to spread propaganda and disinformation about Ukraine.
The State Department has offered a $10 million reward for information pertaining to foreign influence in an American election and sanctioned five state-funded news outlets, including RT, Ruppley, and Sputnik.
The United States has said that Russian intelligence agencies have been using RT, the state-owned broadcaster, to spread disinformation through bots and other efforts.
U.S. officials have been looking more closely at how the Kremlin and its spy agencies use RT to influence the election.
Now, one word on this before I get to the specifics, which is...
Maybe in 2016, you could make the case that RT had some degree of reach within the United States and within the West generally.
Go try and find RT and listen to an RT broadcast now.
It will take you a long time to find it.
That's because it's off of the cable networks, right at the beginning of the war in Ukraine, the EU enacted a law that it is illegal, illegal, To platform any Russian state media.
So if you're a European adult and you want to hear RT so you hear the other side of the story, you're not allowed to hear it because no platform can allow it to be heard unless they upon threat of committing a criminal violation.
And this is why Rumble continues to be unavailable in France, because Rumble, unlike Google and YouTube, which immediately removed RT, so you cannot watch RT on YouTube the way a lot of people used to, Rumble was one of the only outlets, at least maybe even the only one in the West, that said, we're not removing Rumble and Sputnik because the French government ordered us to do so.
And that's the reason why Rumble is no longer available in France.
She's talking about an infinitesimal Organization and reach inside the United States because of everything that has been done to RT, including banning its existence in the EU, banning it from YouTube and from most other major platforms.
The idea that the influence of RT, even if you want to believe the indictment, they paid money to spread messaging.
In comparison to the overall propaganda that is drowning our discourse and flooding our elections and always does, it is infinitesimal, infinitesimal, the idea that RT has any ability to sway the results or outcome of the 2024 election.
Now, in addition to trying to pretend that our discourse is being manipulated by the Russians, and obviously the examples always are that they provide disinformation about the war in Ukraine, meaning that they counter the Western propaganda about the war in Ukraine, they also meaning that they counter the Western propaganda about the war in Ukraine, they also try to target some of the more popular conservative commentators such as Tim Poole and
They also tried to target some of the more popular conservative commentators such as Tim Poole and Dave Rubin and others who work for a company that they say was offered millions of dollars to provide content from a company that they thought was an American-based company, but was in fact a Russian-based company.
Here you see on the screen the indictment from African Americans.
Actually, this is the press release from the Justice Department.
Now, just remember, we're talking here about the Biden Justice Department indicting the Russians two months before an election based on the obvious narrative that the Russians are interfering in our sacred democracy in order, once again, to elect Donald Trump.
It is a complete politicization and abuse of the justice system in the most flagrant ways possible.
The headline reads, quote, two RT employees are indicted for covertly funding and directing US companies that publish thousands of videos in furtherance of Russian interests.
Quote, an indictment charging Russian nationals Konstantin Kalashnikov, 31, also known as Kostya, The Justice Department has charged the two employees of URT, a Russian state-controlled media, in a $10 million scheme to create and distribute content to U.S.
Restrictions Act and conspiracy to commit money laundering was unsealed today in New York court.
They're both at large.
The Justice Department has charged the two employees of URT, a Russian state controlled media, in a $10 million scheme to create and distribute content to U.S. audiences with hidden Russian government messaging.
So Attorney General Merrick Garland, quote, the Justice Department will not tolerate attempts by an authoritarian regime to exploit our country's free exchange of ideas in order to co-currently fund its own propaganda efforts.
And our investigation today into this matter remains ongoing.
Now, just to give you a little bit of context, Again, let's assume everything in the indictment is true, even though it's just a series of government unproven assertions that a grand jury accepted because, as the old saying goes, a grand jury will indict a ham sandwich because there's no defendant there to contest anything.
They only hear the prosecutor's version of events.
So let's assume that everything is true, that basically the crux of the allegation that the media predictably is trumpeting all over the place is that RT spent roughly $10 million In order to pay for the placement of videos that do things like question the war in Ukraine, that criticize US foreign policy, and the argument is that it was done with disguise.
In other words, they pretended that it was an American company that was actually offering this money, entering into a contract, when in fact it was the Russians behind it, and that that was concealed.
$10 million.
Put that into context.
$10 million.
In August alone, The Kamala Harris campaign, in one month, raised $230 million.
The Trump campaign, just this month, raised $180 million.
Presidential campaigns of the major parties now spend close to a billion dollars in total.
A billion dollars just on paid advertising.
Then you add all the free Media propaganda that comes from CNN and MSNBC, Fox News, the New York Times, from the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and then on to that, the entire independent media.
You're talking about billions and billions of dollars of messaging about the presidential candidates, the presidential campaign over this course of many, many months, usually about a year and a half.
That was one of the things that always made Russiagate such a joke to me from the start was that even if it were true, aside from the fact that the U.S.
does all of this and much, much more, but even if it were true, the idea that a few fake Russian accounts on Facebook with a couple of hundred followers and dozens of Russian bots with no followers on Twitter Somehow is sufficient to sway the election in favor of Donald Trump given the massive amounts of establishment money that are poured into this race to determine the outcome of this election.
It's just it is laughable on its face.
This is all designed to create that same narrative.
Now here's one of the specific Allegations, quote, according to the court documents, RT, formerly known as Russia Today, is a state-controlled media outlet funded and directed by the government of Russia.
Over the last year, RT and its employees, including the two indicted Russians, deployed nearly $10 million, $10 million, in an election where billions of dollars determine the outcome, to covertly finance and direct a Tennessee-based online content creation company.
In turn, U.S.
Company One published English-language videos on multiple social media channels, including TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube.
Now, they're talking there about that company I mentioned that pretended to want to pay for their content to be on a company that publishes people like Benny Johnson and Tim Pool and Dave Rubin, but even the indictment itself says They were deceived.
They had no idea that this had anything to do with Russia.
They thought that it was just a U.S.
company.
But again, you're talking about a minuscule amount of money in the context of what is spent on our elections, let alone what the U.S.
spends to influence the internal politics of other countries, including Russia.
Here is a tweet by Alan Foyer.
From earlier today, and he says this, quote, the US company at the center of this Russian plot uses the same slogan, the indictment notes as tenant media, the home of Warren Southern, Tim Pool, and Benny Johnson, among others.
So they both, or all three of them, actually, Tim Pool, Benny Johnson, well, I know both of them, at least, have issued statements saying, obviously, we had no idea that this was a company that had any links to Russia.
Tim Pool has I've been very critical of Russia, very, very critical of the invasion of Ukraine.
The idea that this even influenced anything that they had to say, let alone influence the American electorate in any way, is utterly laughable.
Here is the indictment itself.
You see the caption there, in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, United States of America versus certain domains.
Just to give you a sense for how central this tactic continues to be for the Democratic Party, namely accusing anyone and everyone who questions them, who opposes them, of being Russian agents.
Just yesterday, just yesterday, with polls starting to show Jill Stein in the Green Party, Once again, gaining 1%, even 2% of the vote in certain key swing states.
They first sent out Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who once pretended to be what Jill Stein is, namely somebody who is going to devote herself to subverting and opposing the Democratic Party from the left, not somebody who would be the most valuable shill of that party.
They sent out AOC on purpose To attack Jill Stein as some sort of predator, was what she called her.
She didn't just critique her strategy and say, I don't think third parties are very effective.
She attacked Jill Stein very personally, very directly, because Jill Stein is a threat to the Democratic Party, for whom AOC shills.
But that wasn't enough.
They also had to again claim that Jill Stein is some sort of Kremlin asset.
Here is the official site of the Democratic Party yesterday in a press release saying, quote, in case you missed it, Jill Stein is going to campaign today with alleged Russian assets.
Quote, today in Tampa, third party candidate Jill Stein is expected to express support for the three individuals facing federal charges for a quote malign influence campaign, which consists of conspiring to covertly sow dissent and discord in US society.
spread Russian propaganda, and illegally interfere in U.S. elections.
Stein participated in a press conference for the Yururu-3, is expected to attend the trial, and will host a panel discussion tonight.
She has previously expressed support for the Yururu-3 in a video campaign.
Engaging with foreign assets is a pattern for Jill Stein.
Now, let me just remind you that this case, the Yururu-3, is something that we covered several times.
The case was also covered by Tucker Carlson at the time that the DOJ announced this case, because it's one of the most abusive cases of free speech I've ever seen.
And...
And a clear sign of what the Democrats intend to do with this Russia tactic.
It's not just some trivial and fraudulent campaign tactic, although it is that.
It's also an attempt to limit free speech.
Basically, this group is a group of black socialists, black leftists.
And when I say black leftists, I mean real black leftists, not the kind who end up supporting Kamala Harris or the Democratic Party.
These are people who despise the Democrats.
They're all like 70, 80 years old.
The lead defendant, I think, is in his early 80s.
And they've spent their entire lives doing things like opposing what they consider to be imperialism.
American attempts to go around the world, use its military, use its money to influence and dominate various regions of the world.
They hate NATO.
They think NATO is one of the arms of U.S.
imperialism.
And so if you look at the context of these people's lives, of course they were opposed.
To the NATO and US funding of the war in Ukraine because it's completely consistent with their lifelong ideology that maybe you agree with, maybe you don't, but they've espoused for their entire life.
But last year, the Justice Department, obviously under Joe Biden, decided To claim that they were illegally acting on behalf of the Russian government when criticizing the war in Ukraine and indicted them on felony charges, including the ones that they've indicted these two Russians on, namely that they were acting at the behest of a Russian government without disclosing that.
And the evidence that this group of people, these old black socialists, were working on behalf of the Russian government is so dubious.
It's as thin as a piece of paper.
They have, you know, some receipts where they did an event and received a reimbursement of $150 that the DOJ claims somehow came from Russia.
So here you have a group of people, Black Americans, who are very charismatic.
They're real activists.
They believe in the things that they've been saying for decades.
And they're now facing prison.
Because of their opposition to the war in Ukraine, and the allegation that they received tiny amounts of money from people connected to the Russian government.
And that was what Jill Stein is supporting.
I support them too.
I think it's a grave violation of free speech.
That's what Tucker Carlson said as well.
A lot of civil libertarians believe that.
And simply because Jill Stein is supporting this group and opposing the prosecution, and intends to attend their trial, The Democrats released a statement saying, oh look, here's Jill Stein, yet again, keeping company with Russian agents.
Do you see what scumbags these people are?
How sinister that is?
None of them have been convicted, by the way.
These are all just allegations.
The trial starts this week.
We had on their lawyer.
We had them on as well.
We're definitely going to have them on again.
But the very idea that now if you even oppose U.S.
prosecution on free speech grounds, you somehow become under suspicion for being an agent of a foreign power, even though you've never been charged with that.
It's a core tactic of the Democratic government for criminalizing free speech, and it's exactly what they're trying to do to Jill Stein.
And they've been doing it to Jill Stein for years, going back to 2016, when she committed the crime of attending a peace conference in Moscow.
with dozens if not hundreds of prominent peace activists from around the world.
But because it was in Moscow, because Putin was there for about 10 minutes, they use that to accuse her of being a Russian agent, even though Jill Stein is someone like that, those black socialists who have been advocating for ideas her entire life that have never changed.
Here in December of 2018, NBC News, quote, Russia launched pro-Jill-signed social media blitz to help Trump win the election, reports say, quote.
Building support for Jill Stein was one of a, quote, roster of themes the Moscow-sanctioned internet trolls turned to repeatedly, the report says.
The report prepared by separate groups of cyber experts add to the growing body of evidence that the Russians work to boost the Stein campaign as part of the effort to siphon away votes from the Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton and tilt the election to Donald Trump.
Anyone who is a threat to the Democratic Party from the right, from the left, or from the media, or anywhere else who questions the Democratic Party, who impedes them, is instantly accused of being a Russian agent.
When Hillary Clinton lost 2016, she was kind of struggling to figure out who she should blame first.
She started to blame the New York Times for covering too much the FBI investigation into her private email server at her house.
She then began blaming Jim Comey for having given two different statements, including reopening an investigation close to the election.
And she finally settled on blaming the Russians and WikiLeaks.
That was her.
Obviously, she would never blame herself.
Where any of the people she paid a lot of money to, whose job was to help her win the election, she would never take responsibility for herself.
She was looking around for villains.
And she finally settled on Russia.
And this became the template for how Democrats think about the world.
That if they don't get what they want, if anyone questions them, it's because they're agents of the Russian government.
Here's Hillary Clinton in 2017. - I think Assange has become a kind of nihilistic, I think Assange has become a kind of nihilistic opportunist who does the bidding of a dictator.
I mean, he's a tool of Russian intelligence.
And if he's such a martyr of free speech, why doesn't WikiLeaks ever publish anything coming out of Russia?
There was a concerted operation between Wikileaks and Russia and most likely people in the United States to, as I say, weaponize that information, to make up stories, outlandish, often terrible stories, that had no basis in fact, no basis even in the emails themselves, but which were used to
Denigrate me, my campaign, people who supported me, and to help Trump.
All right, so there you have it.
That was one of her attempts to blame her loss on the Russian government.
She also has repeatedly, in her campaign, has repeatedly accused Jill Stein of being some sort of Kremlin asset.
Tulsi Gabbard decided that she was going to run for the nomination of the Democratic Party at the time she was a Democratic Congresswoman from Hawaii.
And it's worth remembering that the Democrats really were grooming Tulsi Gabbard for a major leadership position in the Democratic Party.
She's a very attractive politician in so many ways.
She's extremely well-spoken.
She has a very impressive military background.
And they looked at her and saw all the charisma and political talent that she had, and they made her the vice chairwoman of the Democratic Party in 2016.
And yet, Tulsi, from the inside, saw how the DNC was cheating to make sure Hillary and not Bernie won the nomination, and so she resigned as the chairwoman of DNC in protest, because she has integrity, and decided to endorse Bernie Sanders.
And when she was gearing up to run in 2019 as for president, here's what Hillary Clinton had to say about Tulsi.
Hillary Clinton is suggesting that Russians are grooming a 2020 Democratic presidential hopeful to run as a third party candidate and spoil the race for the Democrats.
Take a listen to her remarks in a new podcast from David Plouffe.
I'm not making any predictions, but I think they've got their eye on somebody who's currently in the Democratic primary and are grooming her to be the third-party candidate.
She's a favorite of the Russians.
They have a bunch of sites and bots and other ways of supporting her so far.
Now when asked if Clinton was referring to Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, Democrat of Hawaii, Clinton's spokesman said, quote, if the nesting doll fits, he added, quote, if the Russian propaganda machine, both their state media and their bot and troll operations, is backing a candidate aligned with their interests, that is just a reality.
It is not speculation.
Nia, I mean, Alright, so first of all, look at what a slimy way Hillary Clinton, and cowardly way Hillary Clinton, chose to accuse Tulsi Gabbard of being some sort of Manchurian candidate, but acting on behalf of the Kremlin.
She wouldn't even name her, even though she made so clear who she meant.
On top of that, Hillary Clinton's prediction, on which the entire thing was based, Namely that Tulsi's real plan organized by the Kremlin was to become a third party candidate ended up being totally false.
Not only didn't Tulsi become a third party candidate in 2020, once she dropped out of the race, she endorsed Joe Biden, the Democratic presidential nominee and not Donald Trump.
What a weird act for a Kremlin groomed candidate to engage in.
But on top of that, I've gotten to know Tulsi Gabbard pretty well over these years.
And I just want to ask you to think about that from her perspective.
Tulsi Gabbard has served in the military for almost 25 years now.
She went to Iraq and it wasn't the kind of deployment that was very safe.
Tulsi was a real soldier who was in Iraq in a lot of dangerous places.
After Iraq, she continued to serve in the Army Reserves and continues to occupy a great deal of her time.
She put her life at risk for a war that Hillary Clinton supported.
The Clintons notoriously have never been in the military.
Bill Clinton was the perfect age to have gone to the Vietnam War and yet invented every single excuse to avoid going.
Imagine what that's like, that you risk your life, you devote your career to a service in the military on behalf of your country.
And whether that's misguided or not, that's her intention.
That's her belief.
We're told that's one of our duties.
And then you end up being basically accused of being a traitor, or guilty of treason, or being disloyal to the United States.
By a woman who comes from a family who has never served anything or anyone in their entire lives other than their own personal aggrandizement, career, and power, and profit, and wealth?
Just think about what that says about the Democratic Party, the casualness and ease with which they put that onto someone's lap.
Now, just to give you another example of how often this has happened, and again, I said it's too often to count, but I do think it's worth highlighting some of the most egregious components of it.
In 2020, the Democratic establishment, especially Barack Obama, favored Joe Biden.
Joe Biden was President Obama's vice president for eight years.
But there were other establishment candidates like Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar, who they would have been fine with as well.
The one person they didn't want to win was Bernie Sanders.
Bernie Sanders won the first three primaries.
Iowa, where he basically tied with Buttigieg.
Remember, there was an extreme difficulty in counting the votes because of some Democratic Party operatives who made a lot of money selling an app that didn't work.
We still can't count votes in the United States, but it was basically a victory by Bernie and Pete Buttigieg.
He then went to New Hampshire, where he had another win, not surprising since he's from Vermont.
But what really scared them was when they went to Nevada, the Nevada caucus.
A non-obvious left-wing state is filled with union workers and Latino voters.
And Bernie Sanders had a spectacular victory.
I don't remember exactly what the margin was, but it was massive.
It was like 30-40 points.
So he won the first three Primaries and caucuses, it was obviously ahead in the delegate count, and the Democratic establishment began to completely freak out and lose their minds.
Remember, they cheated in 2016 to make sure Bernie couldn't beat Hillary.
Right as the election was going from Nevada to South Carolina, this is what happened in the Washington Post.
This is what the Washington Post released a article saying, quote, Bernie Sanders has been briefed by U.S.
officials that Russia is trying to help his presidential campaign.
Quote, U.S.
officials have told Senator Bernie Sanders that Russia is attempting to help his presidential campaign as part of an effort to interfere with the Democratic contest, according to people familiar with the matter.
Now, I don't have a lot of sympathy for Bernie there, because he has been one of the most obnoxious and vocal advocates of Russiagate, constantly saying, If I'm President, Vladimir Putin will know he can't mess with the United States.
Endorsing every idea from 2016, no matter how much the Democratic Party spits in the face of Bernie Sanders, he somehow gets even more loyal to the party, sort of like the...
American left, the DNC left in general does.
It's a very creepy dynamic to watch, but that is how it happens.
But in any event, they did that to Bernie.
They released, right at the peak of his campaign, this claim that the security services had briefed him that the Russians were intervening in order to help him win the election.
Here's a video from Fiona Hill, a hawk who served in the Trump White House on both Russia and China.
She's been around for a long time.
She went on 60 Minutes in March of 2020.
She's a major adversary of Russia.
And here's what she had to say on 60 Minutes, just to give you a sense for how this tactic works.
Talking about 2020, there have been a lot of stories saying that the Russians are hoping that Bernie Sanders will be the candidate, the Democratic candidate.
Does that make sense to you?
It does make sense, because what the Russians are looking for is the two candidates who are kind of the polar opposites.
They're looking to basically have the smallest possible number of people supporting those two candidates with everybody else kind of lost in the middle so that it exacerbates, exaggerates as well, the polarization in the country.
So that made it onto 60 Minutes, the idea that of course it's possible that the Russians are trying to help Bernie Sanders.
One of the weird things about this attempt to headline the Russian interference is that mostly what we've heard from the intelligence communities over the last year has been that the real party seeking to interfere in our democracy, our sacred democracy in 2024, is not Russia but Iran.
Here, for example, is the New York Times, which today reported the headline you see there, Iran emerges as a top disinformation threat in the U.S.
presidential race.
The article says, quote, with a flurry of hacks and fake websites, Iran has intensified its efforts to discredit the American democracy and predictably tip the race against, against, Former President Donald Trump.
In other words, obviously Iran prefers the Democratic Party and Kamala Harris because it was the Obama administration that entered into the Iran deal and ratified it with Iran, a very important deal that reintegrated Iran into the international community, lifted a lot of sanctions.
It also opened up their nuclear facilities to inspection.
Trump ran on a campaign of undoing the Iran deal.
He did that.
So obviously, if Iran has a presidential preference, it's clearly for Trump to lose and Kamala to win.
And that's why you're not hearing very much about this same narrative.
The New York Times has to admit that Iran is trying to possibly tip the race against former President Donald Trump, but compare how much you're hearing about that To this Russian narrative that the Russians are interfering to help Trump and defeat Kamala.
That is how this national security game is played.
Now, beyond Russia, we have also heard a lot about Chinese interference.
And yet, if you think about the Chinese perspective, It was the Obama administration and its Wall Street donors who were very close to the Chinese, and it was Donald Trump who got into office and basically initiated a trade war with China, imposed massive tariffs on Chinese goods because his claim was that China competes unfairly with American products and American workers.
And so if the Chinese are interfering in our election, you can also presume that a major reason is because not because they want to help Donald Trump win, but because they want to help Kamala Harris win and Donald Trump lose.
Just to give a little more perspective, there has been incredible amounts of reporting, including from Israel, about how much money the Israelis have been spending to manipulate public opinion in favor of Israel.
And in favor of the war in Gaza.
In The Guardian, Lee Fung and Jack Paulson, we had them on our show to discuss some of the investigative work they did on this.
From June of 2024, there you see the headline, quote, Israel documents expansive government effort to shape U.S.
discourse around the Gaza war.
Exclusive.
As the Gaza war wages, Israeli funds target U.S.
college campuses and a push to define Redefine sentiment to redefine anti-Semitism law in the US.
In other words, Israel ran a very well-financed campaign, not just to demonize the pro-Palestinian protesters, but to put pressure on Congress to expand the definition of anti-Semitism, basically to make it illegal to criticize Israel in all sorts of ways.
And that worked.
It passed the House by a bipartisan majority.
When's the last time you heard anybody In corporate media or anywhere else, complain about the Israeli attempt to influence and manipulate our democracy just to give you a sense for how selective this is.
Now, this is saying nothing of the fact that my view has never been, oh, I'm sure this isn't happening.
Countries like Russia and China and Iran wouldn't do things like this.
Of course, all great powers try and interfere in the internal affairs of other countries for their own benefit.
And I'm sorry to break it to people who don't already know this, but the United States is among the group of countries that does so.
In fact, you could definitely argue that the United States does it far more aggressively and far more intensely Than any of these other countries that we're told to hate because they're doing it to us.
From Reuters in June of 2024, here you see there was a Pentagon-run secret anti-vax campaign to undermine China during the pandemic.
They launched a clandestine program amid the COVID crisis to discredit China's Sinovac inoculation, payback for Beijing's efforts to blame Washington for the pandemic.
And it goes on to note all the different ways that the United States Try to interfere in those countries' politics.
Here is, just to give you a sense for how long this is going on, an article from 1991, 30 years ago, from David Ignatius, who has written for the Washington Post his whole life, who is essentially considered a loyal spokesman for the CIA, kind of the Natasha Bedford trend of his time.
And he basically wrote an article saying how aggressively and openly now that the Soviet Union has fell has fallen that the United States engages in influence campaigns that they used to have to hide but no longer do.
I think it's worth listening to this article.
It was entitled, Innocence Abroad, the New World of Spyless Coups.
Quote, the old concept of covert action, which has gotten the agency CIA into so much trouble during the past 40 years, may be obsolete.
Nowadays, sensible activities to support America's friends abroad or undermine its enemies are probably best done openly.
That includes paramilitary operations such as supporting freedom fighters, which can be managed overtly by the Pentagon.
And it includes political support operations for pro-democracy activists, which may best be left to a new network of overt operators.
What used to be called American propaganda now simply could be called information.
The CIA, who worked so hard in the old days to draw foreign newspapers and magazines into its web so as to counter Soviet disinformation, Frank Wisner, the head of CIA covert operations during the mid-1950s, once remarked that he could play his media assets like a, quote, mighty Wurlitzer.
The CIA boasted in the 1950s about how easy it was to manipulate the media.
Today, the mighty Wurlitzer actually exists.
It's called CNN.
The sugar daddy of covert operations has been the National Endowment for Democracy, a quasi-private group headed by Carl Gershman that is funded by the U.S.
Congress.
Through the late 1980s, it did openly what had once been unspokenly covert, dispensing money to anti-communist forces behind the Iron Curtain.
Quote, a lot of what we, uh, today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA is now done openly.
The biggest difference is when the activities are done overtly.
The flap, the tension is closed to zero.
Openness is its own protection.
Now, I think it's worth remembering the National Endowment for Democracy that David Ignatius is saying is the arm of the CIA funded by the U.S.
government, designed to Interfere in every other country's politics to finance and support the groups we like best, that serve our interests to undermine the ones we don't, is among other things the fund that funds Bellingcat, one of the favorite independent media outlets for the CIA, but it also, this National Endowment of Democracy, in 2012,
When Hillary Clinton was the Secretary of State for President Obama, actively interfered in Russian politics, and funded lavishly, and gave other support to anti-Putin activists.
Which is one of the reasons why Vladimir Putin hated Hillary Clinton so much, because the U.S.
State Department was actively and aggressively funding and interfering in domestic Russian politics.
And there's all kinds of stories about how the U.S.
Institute for Endowment for Democracy has done this repeatedly, not just in the past, but in the current as well.
So aside from the fact that this is all often so baseless, accusing Tulsi Gabbard or Jill Stein of people being Russian agents, It's also so trivial in the context of the vast amount of information that drowns our elections and shapes American public opinion.
The hypocrisy of it is suffocating.
Because when the United States wants to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries, including large countries like Russia, China, Iran, etc.
I promise you they do a lot more than just take $10 million and use it to fund a few independent media sites where they can place their messaging.
That is child's play to what the CIA and the U.S.
security state not just did in the Cold War, but continues to do to this very day.
And yet the Democrats are obsessively, reflexively dependent on screaming Russia every time they feel threatened.
It's almost like a crack addiction.
They don't care whether it's true or what the proof is.
They just scream it every day because they've been doing it for eight years along with their media allies.
Even though Robert Mueller said that the core conspiracy theory that started it all, the allegation that the Trump campaign conspired with the Russians to hack John Podesta and DNC's email, was proven to be without evidence.
It didn't bother them at all.
It didn't deter them at all.
They continue to use this tactic in today's indictment and major announcement two months before the election.
May have some truth in it.
We'll see if it bears out in court.
It may not, as prosecutorial assertions often don't.
But no matter what ends up happening with the indictment itself, it's so plainly one of the Democrats' go-to Tactics for manipulating elections.
And remember, one of the things on which they're running is their concern that Trump is going to politicize the Justice Department if he wins.
All right.
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One of the ways that you can support Rumble is by supporting its programs, by becoming members of the programs.
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All right.
One of the friends of our show is Anar Bertrand, who is an entrepreneur and political analyst on economics and geopolitics.
He is from France and French, but also lives in China, where he's become an expert in both countries.
He has published articles in numerous political journals around the world.
He's an archaeologist who has a doctorate in Sinology, specializing in relations between the Chinese and Central Asian Good evening, Arnaud.
It's great to see you.
He has become one of the most reliable, one of the most incisive, one of the most informed political analysts about France and EU politics, about certainly the relation with China and its neighbors and the United States, as well as foreign policy in the world.
And we are delighted to welcome him back to the show.
Good evening, Arnaud.
It's great to see you.
How are you?
Sorry, can you hear me now?
Yeah, now I can hear you.
Yes, I learned earlier that unmuting is very important.
Sorry, I didn't catch you.
Yeah, now we can hear you perfectly.
All right.
Okay, great.
So let's dive in because I'm finding what's happening in France so fascinating.
I followed both French elections.
The one that Marine Le Pen's party won shocked a lot of people.
A lot of right wing parties around Europe won as well for sending representatives of each country to the EU parliament.
And then I covered as well in large part with your analysis how President Macron kind of shocked a lot of people by dissolving the parliament and calling early elections apparently to try to show that Marine Le Pen's party doesn't have the support that that first election might have suggested she had.
And in a way that French election didn't.
Did that job in the sense that while Marine Le Pen's party got more support than it ever got before, it still came in third.
The issue, though, is that it wasn't Macron's party that won the election.
It was a coalition of this time of left-wing parties, many of whom are sort of considered far left, many of whom are considered A little bit more, I guess you could call them center-left.
And I remember you talking about, I remember reading all kinds of European journals about what was going to happen that first week.
Gabriel Attell, who is Macron's protege, who I think he's grooming to run once his term is over.
He's sort of a younger, gayer Macron.
He tendered his resignation, as he should have, because he said, look, our party lost.
We're no longer the majority.
I can't be prime minister anymore.
And Macron refused to accept that resignation.
He is the prime minister to this day, months later, and absolutely nothing has changed in the French parliament and legislature as a result of those elections.
What is going on?
It seems like Macron just decided to pretend the elections never happened.
Yes, it's very strange.
So basically, the results, as you said, is that the new Popular Front, which is the name of that left coalition, came first.
They have 193 seats in Parliament, out of a total of 577.
But the issue is that they don't have a majority, because for a majority you need to have the seats, so 289 seats.
Basically, Macron's argument is that if I appoint a prime minister from their party, which is normally the rule, you appoint a prime minister from the party that won the election, that arrived first, then that prime minister, that government, will be censored by the assembly because then the other MPs can
Join together and vote that government out.
But basically, once you have that argument, then it's like, so what?
Then you stay in power even though you have even less MPs than the New Popular Front?
It's very strange.
And so, you know, Macron has been stalling, really.
You know, the election was, I think, 50 and something days ago.
And, you know, he's been saying, I'm working on it.
I'm working on it.
Firstly, he said, you know, there should be a truce around the Olympics.
So he had that excuse.
And then the Olympics went by.
Just to interrupt you there, that excuse, oh well we have the Olympics now, has always been so funny to me because the reason the Olympics followed the election is because it was Macron himself who stepped up.
Exactly.
Right before the election and then right before the Olympics began and then when he didn't get the result he wanted he said, oh look the Olympics are here!
Who had any idea that we were going to vote right before the Olympics?
So let's just keep everything the same until the Olympics are over.
Exactly, it's very hypocritical.
So I think his original tactic actually was that, if you remember, he gave an extremely short timeline for the election.
He basically announced the election two weeks ahead, which is extremely short for any party to organize and run a campaign.
And so I think that his bet was He was the only one who knew there was going to be an election.
So he was the only one who could, you know, get prepared and run an actual, I mean, in his mind, run an actual, you know, proper campaign because he could get prepared in advance.
And he was betting on the others.
So mainly Le Pen and the National Assembly.
And the left of being, you know, completely taken by surprise by his announcement on running a very chaotic campaign.
And then he would emerge as sort of the stable, you know, competent party.
But that's not what happened.
Because, you know, as you pointed out, The left actually got organized extremely fast.
Within two days, they put together that new Popular Front Coalition.
And so then it's Macron that was taken by surprise.
Actually, you know, he showed in many occasions that he was extremely annoyed by that, because obviously his bet didn't pan out.
And so now that And so yeah, then after the election results came out and obviously Zbett didn't turn up, then it's a lot of stalling tactics and everyone is wondering, you know, what's going to happen because you can't have, actually France technically has no government now, so the ATAL and the government actually resigned.
They actually did, but they're still running the country.
It's a bit of a special situation.
But that can't be sustainable.
At some point, there needs to be something that happens.
Either Macron finally appoints a prime minister, or he resigns himself as president, or he has a bunch of other options.
In the Constitution, there is an Article 16 that basically gives himself almost a dictatorial One of the reasons why I'm so interested in what's happening in France, and we've had people on talk about the movement of Germany and right-wing populism in Europe,
Is because I think that, especially with the internet being so interconnected, the political culture in all of these countries is much more similar than they were, say, 20 years ago.
I really believe that if the Iraq War happened now instead of back in 2003, when Germany and France had such a radically different political outlook than the United States, I could easily see the majority of the French, the majority of Germans, all connected to the same propaganda that caused the United States to support the war in Iraq.
But nonetheless, what I also think is happening, and this has been one of my major concerns for a long time, is that European elites and American elites have seen that they can no longer control the outcome of elections.
They, I think, first began to realize the extent of that in 2016, when the British decided to leave the EU and ratify Brexit, something the entire establishment was opposed to.
And then, of course, three months later, Americans went to the ballot and voted for Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton, which shocked the entire world.
And since then, It's only gotten worse and that you have this paradox where all of these Western leaders constantly stand up and say, we have to control the Internet because we have to fight for democracy.
We have to prevent hate speech and anti and disinformation from undermining democracy.
And yet, you know, you look in the United States and you see how the Democrats decided to deal with Trump.
They banned him from the Internet.
Then they tried to ban him from the ballot.
Then now they're still trying to imprison him.
The sort of things we were always taught happen only in tyrannical countries.
And France has very much the same rhetoric.
We're part of the democratic world.
We stand for democracy.
And yet here you don't have one vote.
You have two votes.
And while the outcomes were different, Macron didn't win either.
But you have the left wing that won the legislative election.
And he just seems to continue to argue that you cannot have the left wing in control of the assembly, even though it got the most votes, because somehow in his mind, but not the voters, that would be a threat to the Senate.
To French stability and French prosperity and whatever.
It seems like these leaders are, as they increase their rhetoric about how only they protect democracy, are becoming more and more contemptuous of actual democracy.
I'm wondering what you think of that.
Yeah, I think you're 100% right.
So a rhetoric you always hear in France is the rhetoric of the so-called extremes.
You know, they call the extremes both the Le Pen, the Rassemblement National, and that left coalition, the New Popular Front.
And you even hear from Macron and his allies these days that what the vote was saying is that the French rejected the extremes.
That's what they're saying.
But when you actually look at the votes, What the French people expressed is the exact contrary, because when you add the votes to Le Pen, to the Rassemblement National, and to the New Popular Front, 60% of the French voted for them in the second election.
So, in fact, what the French absolutely reject is the Centre.
That's very, very clear from the vote.
They are saying we're effectively fed up with decades of being run by the centre.
France has basically alternated between the centre-left and the centre-right for Ever since the Second World War, really, although De Gaulle was a bit of a special case, and the French want dramatic change.
They don't want that anymore.
But when you listen to the rhetoric from that center, They're basically gaslighting the population by telling everyone that the French want them.
What Macron is actually likely to do, because you hear some names of prime ministers that he might appoint, and the two most likely names these days, from what's written in the French press, are a guy called Xavier Bertrand, who has the same family name as me, actually, even though I don't think we're, maybe he's a distant cousin, I don't know, or Bernard Cazeneuve.
And when you look at those guys, Xavier Bertrand is from the Republican Right, so basically the party of Sarkozy and Chirac, which is now extremely small in Parliament.
I think they have something like 60 MPs or something like that, far behind the New Popular Front, Le Pen or even Macron.
Or Bernard Cazeneuve, the other possibility, used to be Prime Minister of France under Hollande, François Hollande, who was historically the most unpopular French president ever.
I think at some point he was even at four percent.
So 96% of the French were against him.
And so they're thinking of bringing that guy back, well, his Prime Minister back.
So it's, you know, it's absolutely mad because you just know that the French absolutely don't want that.
And it is really a denial of democracy.
That's very, very clear.
All right, let me ask you, this is the last question.
One of the things I like about French culture, and there's several things, but one of the things I like is the propensity for citizens to go and protest in the streets.
It's something that they do commonly.
I think we don't do that enough in the United States, for example.
I think it's important that leaders see citizens out in the street expressing their anger.
How would you gauge public sentiment about the fact that there was this election that Macron wanted, both elections said very clearly, the majority is not with Macron.
And yet he's essentially ignoring those results.
And I realized his strategy.
I just saw again today that he's saying, oh, I think we found our candidate.
She's this, you know, I don't know if it's one of the people you mentioned, but it's someone from the very, very centrist wing of whatever the left wing coalition might be.
But it's still the case that it hasn't happened and it's been so much longer than it should.
Are the French angry?
Even angrier toward Macron than they were about the fact that they had this whole election and it seems to have changed nothing so far?
Yes, I think they are.
Electoral protests are planned for the day after tomorrow.
So I think they're angry on both sides.
On the side of Le Pen, you know, everyone voted for the National Assembly because Actually, when you look at the number of votes, they came first, but the French electoral system is a bit special.
So they actually came third in number of seats.
So there is a lot of anger about that because they feel that, you know, I think it's fairly legitimate.
They feel that their votes are not heard because, you know, it's the party that got the most votes and then they came They came third, it's a bit strange.
So there is a lot of anger for that, especially if Macron then goes to appoint basically a clone of himself as prime minister.
And of course there is a lot of anger on the left as well, because they produced a prime minister, they arrived first in number of seats, second in number of votes, and Macron is categorically refusing to To appoint a prime minister from their side.
From the side that won?
From the side that won in number of seats.
So there is considerable anger on both sides.
On top of that, there is a lot of anger about living standards in France.
Macron passed a lot of extremely unpopular reforms, like making the retirement I mean, you retire later and things like that.
So, yeah, you can really feel a lot of popular discontent in the country.
Yeah, it's so fascinating because I really think it is a microcosm of the growing contempt, the fear actually, and therefore the contempt that Western leaders have because they know that populations, rightly or wrongly, or regardless of that, their guiding belief is that ruling class elites don't care about them, have brought us on a completely wrong path, and the more freedom those people have, which is called democracy,
The more threatened the ruling class is, and the less freedom they have to be able to speak on the internet, to be able to speak freely, even to have their votes counted, the more secure they are.
And I think what you're seeing in France really is a microcosm of what is taking place in the broader West, where they really have lost the faith and confidence of the public.
Thank you.
Thank you Glenn.
continue to follow this story.
I think that you have been, at least for me, one of the two or three most informative sources on everything taking place.
So it's a delight to have you on our show and we hope to have you back again.
Thank you.
Thank you, Glenn.
All right.
Have a good evening.
You too.
Okay.
Bye-bye.
All right.
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