Pam Bondi's Malicious Ineptitude on Full Display During Senate Hearing; Pro-Spying Senators Complain About Being Surveilled; What New Candace/Charlie Kirk Messages Reveal
Glenn breaks down Pam Bondi's disastrous Senate hearing. Then: the same senators who constructed today's government spying apparatus complain about being surveilled. Finally: what Candace Owens's newly released messages reveal. ------------------------ Watch full episodes on Rumble, streamed LIVE 7pm ET. Become part of our Locals community Follow System Update: Twitter Instagram TikTok Facebook
It's Tuesday, October 7th, the two year anniversary of when we were told that there were 40 babies beheaded in an invasion of Israel by Hamas, as well as babies cut out of the fetuses of Israeli women, as well as babies killed by being baked in oven.
None of which was true, but it was very sad, very jarring at the time.
And then that was followed by two years of a destruction and the genocide in Gaza that hopefully will be coming to an end soon.
We'll see.
Welcome to a new episode of System Update, our live nightly show that airs every Monday through Friday at 7 p.m.
Eastern, exclusively here on Rumble, the free speech alternative to YouTube.
Tonight, Attorney General Pam Bondi appeared today before the Senate Judiciary Committee, where she was unexpectedly bombarded with questions about things like the Epstein files and our handling of them, the legal authority of any for blowing up Venezuelan boats, corruption allegations involving her former lobbying firm, and much more that the public has a right to know.
Almost none of which she answered.
Now many conservatives were cheering this despite the fact that he answered nothing because she adopted a defiant and aggressive tone and hurled arbitrary talking point accusations of the Democratic members of the committee, but none of that should mask the fact that she's really, and I do hate to say it, but it's just really true.
She's as dumb and inept as she was malicious.
And nobody should be satisfied with an attorney general who won't and can't provide the most basic transparency on matters of critical public interest, and as we'll show you, lacks a basic grasp of what her job is supposed to be.
Then revelations suggest pretty clearly that Jack Smith's prosecutorial team, working in conjunction with the Biden FBI, obtained phone records for at least eight Republican senators, ostensibly as part of Smith's investigation into the aftermath of the 2020 election.
I absolutely do regard this as an abuse of FBI power for reasons we'll discuss, but I'd be a lot more sympathetic to the Republican senators who are ranting and raving with indignation today about their privacy and the invasion of it, if not for the fact that many of them, if not most, have spent their entire careers defending mass warrantless surveillance by the NSA and FBI when it came to ordinary American citizens.
They seem enraged that what they support got directed at American senators.
And then finally, Candace Owens has claimed for weeks that she has evidence showing just how much anger Charlie Kirk harbored toward his pro-Israel donors who were abandoning him in the weeks leading up to his assassination, and also how much he was threatening explicitly to abandon his pro-Israel advocacy as his backlash to that pressure.
Yesterday, despite being accused of not having any evidence, Candace released text messages, which Talking Point itself verified the authenticity of, that were exchanged shortly before Charlie Kirk's death, where he expressed exactly those views.
We'll examine those texts and what their meaning is.
Before we get to that, a quick couple quick promo notes.
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For now, welcome to a new episode of System Update, starting right now.
Attorney General Pam Bondi appeared today before the Senate Judiciary Committee, and the reason she did so is not because she was being generous with her time.
It's because it's a requirement of her job, namely the Senate Judiciary Committee is there to exert oversight on behalf of the American people of the parts of the executive branch under its peer view, and that begins for the Senate Judiciary Committee, not just with judges, but also with the Justiment, which is intended to be the chief law enforcement agency in our country overseeing things like the FBI.
So Pam Bondi went there out of obligation, not out of uh kindness.
And the reason attorneys general go to the Senate is because that is the mechanism By which we, the American people, and I realize this is theoretical and a little bit idealistic, but it's nonetheless true.
It's the mechanism by which we demand answers from critical executive branch officials to the questions that we have, the information that we are entitled to, such as, why did you say multiple times that there's a client list for Jeffrey Epstein that the government is refusing to uh disclose, and then earlier this year say that it was sitting on your desk for review and you would release it and now say there is no such thing as the Epstein client list and we'll never see that.
What is in the Epstein files that you've refused to release?
Does any of it involve well-known politicians, including Donald Trump, she just refused to answer any of this, what the legal authority is for Trump's new policy of bombing the votes out of existence off the coast of Venezuela with no evidence, no process of any kind, questions about whether he could do that to American citizens,
either off the coast of Venezuela or on American territory questions that were often asked and needed to be answered, often weren't when Obama claimed to very similar power, not justifying it through drug trafficking, but through terrorism, she just basically refused to answer anything.
But because what she did in lieu of answering the questions and giving not the Democratic senators or senators in general the information that they were asking, who cares if they get information?
The point of the hearing is to give us information, American citizens information.
In lieu of providing that, she instead just had prepared a whole bunch of talking points for every Democratic senator of whatever scandals they have had in their past for whatever they did that she thinks was worthy of act uh of condemnation, and they were entirely unrelated to the question.
So she would be asked, have you ever seen any documents in the Epstein files showing X, Y, and C?
And she would say, I'd like to remind you that so-and-so, Reed Epstein, who knew Jeffrey Epstein well, donated money to your political campaign and just refused to answer the questions.
And a lot of conservative, not all by any means, but a lot, thought this was really great.
Like, yeah, we love seeing her defiant and hurling accusations at these democratic senators.
And before I get into the specifics and show you some of these exchanges and the reasons why I think no matter how much you love Trump or hate Democratic senators, you ought to find this very disturbing and Pam Bondi in general, her ineptitude disturbing.
I just want to point out that, and I promise you this is true, and I have years of evidence to demonstrate it, that nobody, I stand second to nobody to nobody in my contempt for like the Senate, just the Senate as an institution, and for senators,
most of them, and the senators, the Democratic senators on this committee, people like Sheldon White House and Richard Blumenthal and Corey Booker and Dick Durbin, I promise you, I should go without saying, that nothing I'm saying here is in defense of those people or in a out of a belief that they deserve respect or deference of any kind.
I'm not offended in any way that she mistreated them or treated them without deference or respect.
I couldn't care less about that.
I would treat them the same way.
Their windbags are so pompous.
There's really nothing more sanctimonious and filled with blowhards than the U.S. Senate.
It's really like an out-of-touch, detached country club for rich people who are really enamored of themselves.
I mean, there's no more self-love, no greater self-love that you will find anywhere than in the United States Senate.
They just really regard this as like a revered institution.
And so that isn't my concern at all.
The reason she's going there isn't to show respect for Democratic senators, it's to show respect for Americans.
This is how we understand what our government is doing.
This is how we ask questions of people like the attorney general through our elected officials that we vote for and put in in the Senate and put in Congress.
And that's why you ought to take it seriously.
It's actually an important venue to extract information.
And not only did Pam Bondi go there with the full intention of disclosing nothing, of making very clear she would respond to nothing, she would provide no information and she would be proud of it, as she kind of like adopted these sort of very angry girl boss gestures, really like a theater, you know, she would like shake her head a little bit as she like chastise them and then drink from her water, hoping to create gifts.
It was pathetic.
But if it were clever, if it were executed well, if there were like a real strategy behind it, I would still be irritated as a journalist.
I wasn't getting the transparency I think we should have.
But I could at least respect it.
The problem with Pam Bundy Bondi is, and I don't say this lightly.
I I know It sounds rude to say it, but sometimes when it comes to very powerful people, you have to be clear about who they really are and what their failings are.
Pam Bondi is genuinely dumb.
I didn't have that opinion when she was chosen as her attorney as Trump's attorney general.
I knew of her.
I didn't know much about her.
I was open-minded.
But after seeing her over nine months in countless interviews, testimony, speeches, extemporaneous remarks, she she doesn't know what she's talking about.
She is, she this job is so much bigger than she is, is so beyond the can of her understanding and knowledge that it's hard to describe.
I don't think that about people with whom I disagree easily.
There are a lot of people with whom I disagree who I think are very smart.
She isn't.
And I'll just give you one example before we get into the hearings of today.
In September 15th, a few days after Charlie Kirk's assassination, Pam Bondi went on the podcast of Katie Miller, who is the wife of Stephen Miller.
So even here, White House officials go on the podcast of the spouses of other White House officials, or in this case Trump administration officials, go on the podcast of the the wife's of Trump White House officials.
This kind of incestuous behavior is something, just as again, as a journalist, I dislike.
Obviously, she's not going to be asked any pressing questions, any hard questions.
And she wasn't, nonetheless, she uttered a statement that created a huge amount of backlash among conservatives, rightfully so.
And everybody is prone to misspeak.
Everybody might have a bad moment where they just say something in a poorly expressed manner.
We have all had that, where we have to go back and clarify what we've what we think.
But what she said here is such an egregious and obvious violation of just basic constitutional doctrine of free speech in the First Amendment, that nobody who ever went to law school, let alone practice as a lawyer, let alone somebody who is elevated to attorney general, it shouldn't even be able to pass their mind and through their lips.
And yet, because of her just lack of grasp of basic governmental and constitutional dogma, I'm talking about complex and esoteric issues.
I'm talking about basic minimal knowledge.
This is what she said.
There's free speech and then there's hate speech.
And there is no place, especially now, especially after what happened to Charlie in our society.
Do you see more law enforcement going after these groups who are using hate speech and putting cuffs on people so we show them that some action is better than no action?
We will absolutely target you, go after you if you are targeting anyone with hate speech, anything, and that's across the aisle.
I mean, that is one of the most pathetic things I've ever heard.
And it wasn't just an off-the-cuff comment.
I mean, she gave two separate answers.
The first of which said, here you have free speech and here you have hate speech, as though hate speech is not part of free speech.
This is the understanding of like the dumbest liberal who wants to justify a censorship regime.
Like we're not sponsoring free speech.
This is hate speech.
This isn't kind to incite animosity toward marginalized girls.
You know, you know the whole moronic framework.
It was remarkable.
I already had a low opinion of her competence before that interview.
That really shocked me.
And then Katie Miller actually endorsed it as well and said, went so far as to say, okay, you just said that hate speech is separate from free speech, despite how many decades the Supreme Court has ruled that there's no such thing as illegal hate speech.
Charlie Kirk himself kept emphasizing there's no such thing as hate speech in the United States, just all free speech.
And Katie Miller, the wife of Stephen Miller, who is also a podcast host, who can get top Trump officials on her show, also said Naster then, like, yeah, you know, we're sick of hate speech.
Are you gonna put handcuffs on people on Americans who who express hate speech?
And instead of Pam Bondi saying, Oh, you know what, actually, I I might have expressed myself wrong.
It's totally constitutional to express what I regard as speech that's hateful.
The government doesn't differentiate.
She said, she doubled down, she said, yes, we're gonna go after you if you aren't American spouting hate speech.
And as I said, this provoked immense amounts of, to their credit, anger on the part of conservatives as well, but it really to me illustrated just how poor of a grasp she has on what her job is.
She's you there's this business school concept called the Peter principle, which is that everybody keeps getting promoted and they rise up until the level of their incompetence.
So you do your job, you get promoted, you do your job well, you get promoted.
You keep getting promoted until you finally arrive at the point where you're incompetent to do that job.
The job is beyond your kind of knowledge and skills.
That's Pam Bondi is the perfect illustration of that.
I realize she's a very loyal Trump supporter, very loyal to Donald Trump.
She kind of has the ethos of she looks like she could be a Fox News newsreader.
You know, so I get the aesthetic of her.
I she's speaks in this like pseudo-aggressive tone.
I get all that.
But there's no substance there.
She's extremely unimpressive.
And if you're somebody who wants, has aspirations for the Trump Justice Department to do things that we may not even disagree that they should do, but if you're somebody who does, she's not going to be capable of doing it.
She's a mess.
And that was very apparent when she showed up today at the Senate Judiciary Committee.
They had a lot of questions, and I think not just Senate Democrats, but a lot of conservatives also have questions about, including what happened with her mishandling of the Epstein files and the various conflicting statements she made about it.
So as a reminder, here's what she said on February 21st on Fox News.
Jay may be releasing the list of Jeffrey Epstein's clients?
Will that really happen?
It's sitting on my desk right now to review.
Um that's been a directive by President Trump.
I'm reviewing that.
I'm reviewing JFK files, MLK files.
That's all in the process of being reviewed because that was done at the directive of the president from all of these agencies.
So have you seen anything that you you said, oh my gosh?
Not yet.
Okay.
Well, we'll check back with you.
You know, so she said, yeah, the Epstein list is on my desk.
Now, maybe there are explanations for what she meant to say, maybe she misspoke, which would go into the ineptitude column again.
I mean, how do you say the Epstein list, which she knows is something everyone's interested in, is sitting on her desk for a review to be released if there is no such thing as the Epstein list, at the very least, if not dishonest, it's utterly inept as well.
So naturally there were journal there were uh journalists who have been reporting on things that have been going on here uh in terms of the handling of the Epstein file, including a Wall Street Journal article from July, the headline of which is the DOJ told Trump in May that his name is among many in the Epstein files.
That's what they reported, that the attorney general told Donald Trump in May that his name is among many in the Epstein files, which isn't necessarily even incriminating about Trump.
He knows Jeffrey Epstein well.
He spent a lot of time with him prior to that first conviction.
He had terminated his friendship with him before that, but it's normal that Jeffrey Epstein would be talking a lot about Trump.
But he is in the Epstein files.
Remember, Elon Musk said Donald Trump is in the Epstein files.
And then the article reported this quote among many in the Epstein files, Pam Bondi told the president at the meeting that justice decided not to release more Jeffrey Epstein documents because of the presence of child pornography and the need to protect victims.
Which never made any sense.
You could just not release the child pornography, you could just uh redact the name of the victims.
But of course, it's a completely legitimate question, not for Democratic senators, but for you to want to know like did Pam Bondy tell Donald Trump that his name appeared repeatedly in the Epstein files, and that he even flagged, she even flagged those documents as the Wall Street Journal reported.
And so Dick Durbin, again, zero i concern, respect, support for Dick Durbin, zero, literally zero.
But the question he asked is one of the questions he should ask that you should want an answer to, and here's how she responded.
Reed Hoffman.
So who gave the order to flag records related to President Trump?
Now, again, she she's constantly saying, Oh, you're so concerned with the Epstein files.
You have a donor, Reed Hoffman, who is a liberal billionaire who was friends with Jeffrey Epstein, he gave you money.
And he's saying, like, I don't even know Reed Epstein, maybe he's lying, maybe he's not, probably is lying.
Dick Durbin wasn't interested in the release of the Epstein files during the Biden administration, wasn't criticizing the Biden administration for disclosing for concealing them.
All fair point, but totally irrelevant to what she should be answering.
And that's what she did all day.
Like these irrelevant, maybe valid criticism, but she's not there to criticize Democratic senators.
She's there to give information to the American people.
Reed Hoffman.
So who gave the order to flag records related to President Trump?
To flag records for President Trump?
To flag any records which included his name.
I'm not going to discuss anything about that with you, Senator.
Eventually you're going to have to answer for your conduct in this.
You won't do it today, but eventually you will.
I yield, Mr. Chairman.
What first of all, are you somebody who thinks that the public should have the right to know that?
Whether or not the Attorney General went through and flagged all the pages in the Epstein files that mention Donald Trump, her boss, especially given that we haven't seen these documents and the Trump administration has decided to conceal them.
I'm not saying there's anything incriminating there that's proof of his wrongdoing.
I'm not saying we don't know because we haven't seen them because they won't show it to us.
And she has no basis for refusing to answer that question.
There's no privilege that applies.
And this is another point I just want to make, because although it seems very legalistic and even a little idealistic, it's still extremely true and very important.
Pam Bondi, her understanding of her role as attorney general is that she's Donald Trump's lawyer.
And often during the hearing today, when she was asked questions about things she discussed with Donald Trump, or even things like this, did you flag his name?
And she would say, I'm not going to answer.
Often she would explicitly say, you understand that my role as a lawyer is I can't disclose legal advice that I gave to Donald Trump as though that's her client.
The Attorney General is not the lawyer for the president.
This is not a controversial issue.
Donald Trump is not Pam Bondi's client.
I mean again, I know this formulation sounds idealistic, but it's still that the it's the truth.
Pam Bondi has one client as attorney general.
That client is the American people.
It's not the president.
And that's why the Justice Department is expected to act independently because she's not working at Donald Trump's behest as a lawyer.
Yes, she works for him, and that is a blurry line, but she's not his lawyer.
Donald Trump has lawyers.
The people who give him legal advice, the people who are there to defend his interests, they are they they're people who work in what's called the White House counsel's office.
The President picks a White Held Council, he creates a little mini law firm inside the White House.
Those are his lawyers.
And there, there is an attorney client privilege that applies for things those lawyers talk about with Donald Trump.
Pam Bondi doesn't understand this.
She really doesn't.
She thinks she's Donald Trump's lawyer and he's her client, and that was part of the basis for her refusing to answer even the most basic questions.
And yet she just refused to.
And it's not disrespectful to the Democratic Senators.
It's disrespectful to you and to me.
And to just the whole democracy.
And yes, there have been other attorney generals who have been extremely partisan.
That's not the problem with Pam Bondi.
She's very partisan.
So were Loretta Lynch and Eric Holder.
So was Merrick Garland.
So was Alberto Gonzalez and the other Bush Cheney attorney, attorney general.
So was Jeff Sessions and uh Bill Burr, Bill Barr, to some extent.
But that's not the issue.
The issue is that it's not that she's partisan.
Unfortunately, attorneys general have become partisan.
It's that her only obligation in her mind is to Donald Trump.
And that is not the truth.
That is not the case.
That's not what the Attorney General is there for.
That's not what the Justiment is there for.
Here is another exchange she had with uh Senator Durbin over a very significant policy of the Trump administration was to deploy National Guard troops to states, even though the governors of that state those states don't want them.
And any time you see either the National Guard or the military being deployed on American streets, especially when the governor hasn't requested them, deployed by the President, that is a matter that's serious.
We're not supposed to have the military on the streets of the United States engaging in law enforcement.
And even if it's support services for ICE or anything else, or to pick up trash in Washington, D.C., it may be justified, but it's something that should be done very rarely, and every time it happens, we should absolutely have a very robust debate About why we see military troops patrolling the streets of American cities against American citizens or people in the United States.
It's just a valid debate.
We should hear from the Attorney General.
She should answer questions about what's happening and what that policy is, and yet, as this exchange demonstrates, again, she just either out of inability or just a refusal, just didn't.
Thanks, Mr. Chairman.
Uh Madam Attorney General, let me ask you this question.
Were you consulted by the White House before they deployed National Guard troops to cities in the United States?
I am not going to discuss any internal conversations with the White House.
You won't even say whether you talk to the White House about this?
I am not going to discuss any internal conversations with the White House with you, Chair ranking member.
I notice that.
What's the secret?
Why do you want to keep this secret?
American people don't know the rationale behind the deployment of National Guard troops in my state.
The word is, and I think it's been confirmed by the White House they are going to transfer Texas National Guard units to the state of Illinois.
What's the rationale for that?
Yeah, Chairman, as you shut down the government, you voted to shut down the government, and you're sitting here, our law enforcement officers aren't being paid.
They're out there working to protect you.
I wish you loved Chicago as much as you hate President Trump.
And currently the National Guard are on the way to Chicago.
If you're not going to protect your citizens, President Trump will.
I've been on this committee for more than 20 years.
That's the kind of testimony you expect from this administration.
A simple question as to whether or not that illegal rationale for deploying National Guard troops becomes grounds for personal attack.
I think it's a legitimate question.
It's my responsibility.
She refuses to answer as to whether she had any conversation with the White House about deploying national troops to my state.
That's an indication, I'm afraid where we are politically in this place.
You know, sorry, I don't think I've ever said this in 20 years, but Dick Durbin has a very not just a uh a valid point, but an important one.
Yeah, it is a valid like political debate to have like why aren't you Dick Durbin more concerned about law enforcement in in Chicago?
But that's not what she's there for.
She's not a Fox News pundit engaged in a cable news debate.
She's not a political candidate engaged in a candidate for election.
She's there as the attorney general.
And they're supposed to exercise oversight over her department.
That's foundational to our system.
And of course, they have the right to know whether there's a legal rationale justifying the deployment of these troops, whether Pam Bondi or the Justice Department participated in the creation of this legal rationale, and even what is it?
What is that legal rationale?
I mean, the White House is gonna have to provide that at some point.
Why can't she tell the American people we're doing this based on this legal right that we're asserting, based on this statutory authority, based on this understanding of the Constitution, so that we have an understanding of it?
What why would you cheer Pam Bondy refusing to give you that information?
And in lieu of that, just launching some crappy, vapid talking point that you can hear on cable news any time you turn it on about Dick Durbin.
Again, I'm not even saying it's invalid.
It's just not the place for it, it's not the time for it.
That's not what she's there for.
Uh, Pam Bondy's even going to make me defend Sheldon White House.
Here's an exchange about the Epstein files with Sheldon White House, and he's asking her questions that they may be in bad faith, they may be designed to impugn Donald Trump's reputation.
Then just say no, they don't exist.
Here's what happened.
Let me ask you something else.
There's been public reporting that Jeffrey Epstein showed people photos of President Trump with half-naked young women.
Do you know if the FBI found those photographs in their search of Jeffrey Epstein's safe or premises or otherwise?
Have you seen any such thing?
All right, now let me just interject here after the question that I think we could all agree, can we not, that if such photographs did exist in the possession of the FBI, the Justice Department, or any other part of the government, which were obtained as part of the investigation into Jeffrey Epstein, the multiple investigations into Jeffrey Epstein.
Documents that we were promised would be released if Donald Trump won by multiple key supporters of his who are now at the highest levels of the government, including Trump himself and J.D. Vance, over and over.
And now it turns out we don't aren't getting these documents.
And the explanation we're given is always shifting.
It's very vague.
Trump basically is banging the table and saying, move on.
It doesn't matter, focus on other things, like an order.
And again, to their credit, a lot of conservatives are not satisfied with that.
Some are, but many aren't.
I would say most.
And it's not like he just invented this.
Like, hey, is there a picture of Donald Trump with four-year-olds?
Is there a picture of Donald Trump with five-year-olds?
That would be kind of questions that maybe not merit or apply.
There are witnesses who have said, who knows if they're telling the truth, but Jeffrey Epstein showed them pictures of Donald Trump with scantily clad young women, young girls, whether that means they're 15 or 17 or 20, who knows?
That's what he's trying to answer.
That's the answers he's trying to get.
Do we not deserve that answer if these qu if there were photographs like this in the Epstein files?
Or similar to them.
Or maybe they're totally innocent.
Maybe they're with adult women.
Don't we have a right to see those if they're part of the Epstein files, the release of which we are promised, no matter how much you love Donald Trump, no matter how much you hate Democrats, isn't that as an American citizen?
Don't you have the dignity to say, yeah, this is something I want to know?
Here's what Pam Bondi thinks about that.
You know, Senator White House, you sit here and make salacious remarks, once again trying to slander President Trump left and right, when you're the one who was taking money from one of Epstein's closest confidence, I believe.
I could be wrong, correct me, Reed Hoffman, who was with Jeffrey Epstein on multiple occasions.
And the senator sitting right next to you tried to block the flight logs from being released.
Yeah, you're grilling me on President Trump and some photograph with Epstein?
Come on.
The question is, did the FBI find those photographs that have been discussed publicly by a witness who claimed Jeffrey Epstein showed them to him.
You don't know anything about that.
Okay.
Um if such photographs don't exist or are not in the possession of the U.S. government, or Pam Bondi hasn't seen them, why can't she just say that?
Why can't you just say, you're slandering Donald Trump because those photographs are non-existent, or we don't have, we're not, we've never seen anything like that.
Or we're not in possession of any of those documents.
Obviously, they should be released, but in lieu of releasing them, they should at least answer questions like that.
And instead of that, she just launches some, again, some unrelated attack about Reed Hoffman.
Again, talk about Rita Hoffman all you want.
Can't stand Reed Hoffman.
He's a plague on the Democratic Party, and just in general, what's wrong with Democratic Party is a perfect representation of that.
He was an associate of Jeffrey Epstein, did hang out with him a lot, probably did contribute money to Sheldon White House and Dick Durbin's campaign.
I don't know, but probably he did.
That's the kind of thing he does.
But what does that have to do with any of this?
What does that have to do with that?
If you have documents incriminating about Sheldon White House or Reed Hoffman or Dick Durbin regarding Jeffrey Epstein, stop insinuating it and just release those.
But don't use that as a crutch to refuse to answer the questions that you're being asked that are extremely reasonable and relevant questions.
Now, this is the point I was getting at earlier.
I'm not naive.
I know that that attorneys general have been corrupting the Justiment.
I've reported on it, I've talked about it, I've denounced it.
Going back to George Bush and Dick Cheney and Obama, and the first Trump presidency, where the Just Department was unleashed with special counsel against him in the form of Robert Mueller.
And then obviously with the Trump, the Biden trust uh Just Department that was weaponized for political ends.
But that isn't the critique against Tim Bondi.
The critique against Pam Bondi is that she's creating an entirely new function and a conception and understanding of what the Attorney General is, which is that it's supposed to be the lawyer for the president, not for the American people, even though he already has lawyers in the White House.
And she actually issued a memo to clarify this, that she has a different understanding of what her role is than pretty much attorney general have had for the last 200 years in the United States.
Here's from February 5th, shortly after she was confirmed, issued by Pam Bondi, Office of the Attorney General, the title of which is General Policy Regarding Zealous Activity on Behalf of the United States, quote, it is the job Of an attorney privileged to serve in the Justice Department to zealously defend the interests of the United States.
That is true.
Those interests and the overall policy of the United States are set by the nation's chief executive, who is vested by the Constitution with all quote executive power.
That is not true.
Congress passes laws and then ask the president to implement them.
Sometimes the president ignores them, sometimes he violates those laws.
There's other parts to our government besides the great leader.
And when you say I am here to defend the American people, I represent the U.S. government, in many cases it might align with the president.
In many cases, it doesn't.
Many cases doesn't even have anything to do with the president when you're prosecuting people involved in wire fraud or money laundering or RICO or murder or or whatever.
It's often it's a job that doesn't even have anything to do with Donald Trump often.
But that is not what the job is.
She goes on, quote, more broadly, attorneys are expected to zealously advance, protect and defend their clients' interest.
Department of Justice attorneys have signed up for a job that requires zealously advocating for the United States.
So it doesn't quite go so far to blatantly say that Donald Trump is the client, but it there's no way to read it without that meaning.
She's saying your job is to defend the United States, that is your client, and that means Donald Trump.
And that has never been the understanding previously.
Now here's a statement from January of 2020, which is regarding the special counsel that was for the impeachment.
And in this case, and this is one of the reasons why Pam Bondy was chosen to be Donald Trump's attorney.
There are a lot of personal attorneys for Donald Trump.
There you see, on behalf of Donald Trump, former Pam Bondi, former special advisor to the president and former agenda general attorney general Forders.
She has been his personal lawyer before, but that's not what she's there to do now.
Recently there was a article in the New York Times about a Justiment investigation that was started under the first Trump presidency, picked up a lot of steam under the Biden presidency, and then was closed by the second Trump administration with them to the Justice Department of Pam Bondy.
And it related to a bag of money, $50,000 in cash that was given to Tom Holman, who's the immigration star very popular among conservatives.
I have no idea if Tom Holman did anything improper.
I genuinely have no opinion about it.
I don't know anything about the case because it's all secret.
But what's been publicly reported, namely that he got $50,000 in cash in a paper bag, maybe he returned it.
Maybe he was in on the scheme.
Maybe it was really a bribe that the FBI was setting up to see if he would take it.
But it seems confirmed that he actually did get a bag of $50,000.
We don't know why or what he did with it, but obviously that's something we should know.
Tom Holman's personal net wealth has net worth has skyrocketed since the first Trump administration.
And I'm not suggesting Tom Holman did anything wrong.
I don't know if he did, but I think we ought to know the answers to the questions posed by Senator Alex Padilla, the Democrat from California, to Pam Bondi about this case, and yet here's how she handled those questions.
I won't reiterate what some of my colleagues have already brought up in terms of the uh uh dismissal of the investigation into Tom Holman and his alleged acceptance of $50,000 as payment by undercover FBI agents posing as business executives looking to secure contracts with a future Trump administration.
Because if the reports are true, it's not just the underlying conduct of Mr. Homan, which would be absolutely unacceptable, but the dismissal of the investigation charges raises concerns about the influence of the White House on the Department of Justice.
Again, a simple question, and I'd appreciate a simple and brief answer.
Whose decision was it to end this investigation?
I have answered that question multiple times, yet you didn't have the courtesy to be sitting in here for the hearing.
I'm not going to answer it again.
And I find it interesting that you want order in this in this proceeding now, excuse me, Senator.
You want ordering this proceeding now.
He sure didn't have order when you stormed Secretary Noam at a press conference in California, did you?
Do you see this crappy behavior?
I I don't, it doesn't matter what your ideology is.
This should be This is pathetic.
It's like grabbing every Fox News scandal from every Democratic senator and coming with repair talking points, and then no matter what you're asked, you just bring up some unrelated political accusation.
Oh, yeah, you want order?
Remember that time you were pretty disorderly with Christine Ohm?
You know, what he's asking her is a very legitimate question, which is who is specifically in the Trump department decided to close the Tom Holman investigation?
And she didn't have that previously.
She came with a little piece of paper, and it was a statement from the Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche.
And all it said was, we reviewed this case and determined there was no prosecutable impropriety.
And every time she was asked, like, what happened to the $50,000?
Did he return it?
Was he in on it?
What was it?
She would just read that vague conclusory statement from Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general, saying nothing here to see.
And maybe there isn't anything there to see, which again, like with those Trump photos, is all the more reason why she should answer it.
Yeah, he got the $50,000 in a paper bag because it was part of a setup, and he was participating in this setup for other people.
Or, yeah, he got it, and then he immediately alerted the FBI and he returned it.
Like, why can't we know of course we should know that?
Tom Holman is a very high official in the Trump administration.
Here's the rest of this.
I will ask a follow-up question.
Would you commit to either release the tape or at least making it available for members of this committee to review yes or no?
Senator, you have not been sitting in here this entire hearing.
I've answered the question.
And I also want to tell you that our ATF agent sees 25,000 tape.
Illegal firearms.
So we will try again and move on to the city.
In your home state, we are prosecuting illegal families who have raped and murdered young girls.
You know, I I've gone on the Piers Morgan show a few times to participate in panels, which I generally have a policy I don't do panels because it degrades into this sort of spectacle where there's usually just some crazy person, often like a crazy woman who just doesn't shut up.
And no matter what trying points you make, no matter what kind of arguments you advance, she's just like go over there.
And I've been on the panels with males who do this too.
So let me be more less gender-specific about it, although it is a little gender-specific behavior, but whatever.
And it's a completely worthless discussion because can't follow the basic rules of conversational exchange.
And it just turns this into a pathetic partisan screaming match.
And it's degrading to the government, to the Justice Department, and to these issues that are not frivolous.
These are very serious issues.
All right, one more, which is Democrat Chris Coons.
Honestly, I there's nobody on this planet who could make me defend these people, Chris Coons and Alex Padilla and the Sheldon White House and Dick Durbin, Corey Booker, I think don't think we have any exchanges from him, but he was one of the people there.
Only Pam Bondi could do this.
Chris Coons was asking her about something we've discussed and reported on, which is the assertion by President Trump that because we're at war with drug trafficking gangs, many of which are based in Venezuela, that he has the right to just go around wherever and just blow up ships, boats, kill people, exterminate their lives.
No process, no evidence presented.
And this was a major part of my objection to the Obama administration when the Obama administration asserted the exact same theory.
We have the right to go anywhere in the world, and as long as we assert the person we're trying to kill as a terrorist, we can evaporate not only them, but everyone near them.
And they did it repeatedly.
And ultimately they did it against American citizens, including targeting an American citizen and killing him on purpose.
No evidence provided, no accusations made, and then two weeks later killed his 16-year-old son who was born in the United States and was an American citizen.
Not on American soil, but American citizens.
And so the question is, okay, maybe there's evidence that there's this massive narco trafficking gang coming from Venezuela to bring drugs to the United States, even though U.S. government reports have always said the amount of drugs that enter the United States, only a tiny percentage of them come from Venezuela.
Maybe suddenly there's this big onslaught of drugs in Venezuela, we have to go to war.
Maybe this really isn't about regime change.
Let's just indulge that fantasy for a moment that it's really about drugs.
Obviously, you you want to know like is there any process required?
Can Trump just wake up and see a uh or Pete Hagseth and see a boat like on the radar and just pick, get rid of that one, bomb that one.
Is there like a process?
Does evidence have to be presented?
Does it have to meet a certain level of evidentiary reliability in order to order these strikes and blow people up?
Is it only off the coast of Venezuela?
Is it worldwide?
What if there are American citizens on the boat?
Can he still do it?
And then can he do it on American soil?
These were all the questions that never really got addressed under the Obama administration when his theory was the war on terror.
And we ought to know what the answers are, as well, as I was demanding throughout the entire Obama administration when President Trump asserts an identical theory, this time justifying it through the war on drugs, which is really part of the war on terror because now they declare these drug gangs terrorist groups, and they're using the same war on terror framework that Bush and Obama used.
These are basic questions.
Of course, the attorney general has to answer those.
The attorney general addressed this all throughout the Obama administration and the Bush administration, not very well, but still understood.
Like they didn't just say, Oh, who are you?
You you have a donor who who is involved in corruption.
They all answered the questions by providing some explanation.
Here's what Pam Bondi did.
The government's asserting the authority to summarily kill people.
It says our cartel members through military strikes against boats on the open ocean in the Caribbean.
Congress has never authorized such a use of military force, and it's unclear to me how the administration has concluded that these strikes are legal.
I'm concerned with what the limiting principle is, whether the government could summarily kill people.
It just declares our cartel members as well as unlawful combatants inside the United States or if they were American citizens.
This isn't about defending cartels, and these aren't hypothetical questions.
President Trump assembled military leaders and said they would be needed to fight the enemy from within and to train in cities in the United States that he describes as chaotic and violent.
Due process is the cornerstone of our constitution.
I'm deeply concerned about the authority our president seems to be asserting to summarily kill people suspected of criminal activity outside the law.
As the chief lawyer for our federal government, you have a unique responsibility to ensure maintenance of our constitutional standards.
How did you conclude that these strikes on ships or boats in the open ocean are legal?
Senator Keynes, I'm not going to discuss any legal advice that my department may or may not have given or issued at the direction of the president on this matter.
Regarding Venezuela, what I can tell you is Maduro is a narco-terrorist.
You know, just like Maduro is a narco-terrorist.
The thing you say when you go on Fox News and like Harris Faulkner or like the guys who host the morning show, like just nod, like yeah, Maduro, terrible guy, narco-terrorist.
But that was a serious question.
That was a serious, reasonable, important question.
What is the legal framework that has been adopted?
What role did you play in that legal framework?
And she just said, I'm not going to give you, I'm not going to talk to you about the legal advice we may or may not have been given.
Again, assuming Trump is her client, which he isn't, there's never been an application of attorney-client privilege between the attorney general and the White House.
Not even Nixon tried claiming that.
And there may be executive privilege, which is a privilege that applies whether you're a lawyer or not.
He can claim that with the Treasury Secretary, just the right of the president to have internal conversations that might be confidential.
But not for what the legal authority is to murder people in a war that Congress never authorized.
Of course, that's her responsibility to explain that.
And again, she came with this like snide, snarling, partisan attack dog posture, which of course she knew would play well for Donald Trump and his supporters.
And if you just want to abdicate all your autonomy and agency and critical thought at the altar of supporting Donald Trump, you can do so.
Lots of Democrats do that as well.
I don't think that's the kind of people watch this show.
But even if that's what you want To do in this case, it's it's not something that as a citizen you should be happy with or content with.
And I believe very strongly that the main reason she's so adamant about refusing to answer these questions is because she's an imbecile.
And she understands that if she sat there, even for an hour, let alone hour after hour, answering these difficult questions and complex questions about the law and her role in them, she'd have a repeat over and over of the kind of thing that happened, which I explained at the beginning of the segment when she was with Stephen Miller's wife, where she just started like pontificating angrily about how hate speech is in free speech, and we're gonna put handcuffs on you if you engage in hate speech, no matter what side of the aisle you want.
I mean, that is a name madness.
So if she's capable of that level of anity or telling Fox News, oh I have the Epstein client list on my desk.
We're reviewing it right now and we'll release it shortly, and then has to backtrack it for months and say, oh, there's no Epstein list, even though I said that it was on my desk and I was reviewing it.
Think about her complete ineptitude to answer these kinds of more difficult questions.
She's not capable.
She has no understanding of any of these issues.
I'm absolutely certain of it.
And I say that because I have heard her in more friendly venues, like on Fox, like on the podcast of her friends, trying to talk about this, and she just always she sounds like a mid-level, like White House communication aid at best, or like I said, like a Fox News pundit.
The job of attorney general is so beyond her and her abilities that even if you are a steadfast Trump supporter, you should not want an idiot in this job because nothing that she does is going to be helpful to anything that the Trump administration wants, except for just looking sort of like a woman of conservative good aesthetic and snarling her lip at Democratic Senators.
I'm fine with that.
I like that too.
It's good to see these Democratic senators be talked to this way.
It's fine.
I I that's not my issue at all.
And if she had accompanied that with answers, I wouldn't even be having this segment.
I would be reviewing her answers.
The fact that she didn't is what makes the behavior so pitiful.
And again, the victim here is not Democratic Senators, but you, me, every other American as well.
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I wouldn't say anything is a failure, especially because we all grow every day.
Obviously, the goal is a championship.
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We want to win a championship.
I'm Christina Williams, host of the podcast.
In case you missed it with Christina Williams, the WNBA playoffs are here, and I've got the inside scoop on everything from key matchups and standout players to the behind-the-scenes moments you won't find anywhere else.
It's really, really hard to be the champions, but we have to remember how it feels and embrace the new challenge that we have.
For all the biggest stories in women's basketball plus exclusive interviews with the game's brightest stars.
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So listen to In Case You Missed It with Christina Williams in iHeart Woman's Sports Production in partnership with Deep Blue Sports and Entertainment on iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.
Would you guys consider anything less than a championship to be a failure from this year?
I wouldn't say anything is a failure, especially because we all grow every day.
Obviously, the goal is a championship.
That's there's no doubt in that, and that's the goal.
We want to win a championship.
I'm Christina Williams, host of the podcast.
In case you missed it with Christina Williams, the WNBA playoffs are here, and I've got the inside scoop on everything from key matchups and standout players to the behind-the-scenes moments you won't find anywhere else.
It's really, really hard to be the champions, but we have to remember how it feels and embrace the new challenge that we have.
For all the biggest stories in women's basketball plus exclusive interviews with the game's brightest stars.
So to be here, I think it's one that we definitely don't take for granted.
But we also know, you know, that's just one stop along the way, and we're hoping to, you know, make it run.
So listen to In Case You Missed It with Christina Williams in iHeart Woman's Sports Production in partnership with Deep Blue Sports and Entertainment on iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.
Thank you.
All right, let me ask you something, and don't be like Pam Bondi and refuse to answer, really think about it.
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Take back your time online with comment.
Take back your time online with comment.
Opposing government surveillance, revealing government surveillance on Americans, denouncing it, has been a central part of my career as a journalist.
It is a cause that is of high priority to me.
And so when I hear, as I did yesterday, that the FBI was spying on the phone records of multiple Republican senators under a Democratic administration and a prosecution led by Jack Smith, that's obviously something that is going to capture my attention and my concern and even my anger, and that's all true in the case of this new story.
Turns out that for those of you who haven't heard it, Jack Smith, who led the prosecution of Donald Trump with respect to his behavior after the January 6th election, was leading an investigation, and he decided to investigate Trump's communications and other people's communications with multiple Republican senators who were also attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 election by alleging fraud.
And one of the quote unquote schemes, as he puts it, was to appoint a separate set of electors for various states, which he regarded as illegal, not just a option that politicians have if they believe there's fraud.
And he decided that he would investigate the senators by obtaining their phone records.
And this, coincidentally, the very first story that we did that kicked off the Snowden reporting that created massive controversy all throughout the United States and around the world, was done on June 6, 2013.
I was the author of that article in The Guardian, and it was about the fact that the NSA, and this shocked a lot of people, the NSA and then the FBI had obtained the telephone records of basically all Americans.
They were just getting fed to them by the telephone companies, the telephone records of all Americans.
They weren't listening in on the calls necessarily.
That wasn't the story.
They weren't reading emails, but they were finding out who you called, who called you, how long you spoke, where you were when you called, where they were that when they called.
And that's called metadata, and that enables the FBI or the NSA or the government to put together an extremely comprehensive and invasive picture of your life, who you talk to, who you're the people you talk to talk to, to create like this vast network, mapping out your life and your communication activity.
And that was just the first story.
There were obviously a lot of others, including invading the content, but that alone created this massive scandal because people said, I'm an American citizen.
I'm not suspected of being a terrorist.
I'm not suspected of committing crimes.
I'm a law-abiding citizen, and there were no warrants obtained, no evidence presented that I did anything wrong.
And yet, why does the government have my phone records?
Why are they entering it into a system?
Why are they analyzing it and mapping it out?
And there were a lot of members of the government, both in the Republican and the Democratic Party, who defended this program of mass wireless wireless surveillance on American citizens.
And a lot of them were Republican senators, including several who found out that they were the target of exactly this kind of surveillance today.
And they went around kicking and screaming and ranting and raving as people do when they found out their private find out their privacy has been invaded by their government.
And obviously, on the one hand, I do agree that this is an abuse of FBI powers, and I think it ought to be investigated, and people who abuse their power should be punished, although it was done pursuant to authorization and legal authorization that the FBI has been given.
Again, often by these Republican senators, this is part of the war on terror.
The Patriot Act allowed the FBI to get a bunch of documents without even a subpoena, let alone a search warrant.
They're called national security letters.
We don't have a lot of clarity on exactly the mechanism that was used here.
That's what needs to be investigated.
But this is something Republican senators, including the ones so upset that they got targeted, have been defending for years.
Not only defending it, but they implemented the system that they are now victimized by.
One of them is Lindsey Graham, who participated in that hearing that we just covered, where Pam Bondy appeared before the committee.
He's on the Judiciary Committee, the Senate Judiciary Committee.
And he afterward, he uh this is Fox News coverage of the hearing, he expressed his deep rage and violation.
He was very violated, Lindsay Graham, by the fact that the FBI seems to know who he called and who called him and what time of the day or what time of night he was calling those people, or they were calling him.
Here's what he had to.
I don't even want to say, it was more like a moat.
You can't, can you?
I can't, Senator, and I can't.
Can you tell me why my phone records?
When I'm the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, were sought by the Jack Smith agents.
Why did they ask to know who I called and what I was doing from January 4th to the 7th?
Can you tell me that?
No, Senator, and there were eight senators in total.
You know, one of the things that I heard so often from Lindsey Graham over the years and from people like him was look, what do you care about government surveillance?
Who cares if the government is collecting your phone record?
If you're not a terrorist, or you're not a pedophile, you're not a criminal, you don't have anything to hide.
Who cares?
You don't have anything to hide, you shouldn't have anything to worry about.
Let the government have your phone records.
That's what we were told for years, including after the Snowden reporting.
And while the Patriot Act was being implemented, all with Lindsey Graham's support.
And this is something that I've seen over and over, not just the Republican senators today, but multiple Democratic senators as well.
Diane Feinstein was one of the biggest supporters of NSA surveillance.
She hated Snowden, she hated our reporting, she defended the NSA to her grave.
And at one time she learned that the CIA was spying on the work of her committee, not even tapping phones or collecting phone records, just uh invading their computer systems.
And she was outraged that that would be done to a senator.
Supposed to be done to a peasants, ordinary Americans, not to senators.
Here is uh Business Insider March of 2014.
This was right in the middle of the Snowden reporting.
She had spent all of 2013 defending the NSA spying, and then she learned that she was being spied on by the CIA.
Here's the headline.
Senator Diane Feinstein rips the CIA said it may have violated the Constitution by spying on the Congress, by which he means her.
And here's Time Magazine October 4th, 2013.
This is three months after we started the Snowden reporting.
And there were a lot of people in Congress who wanted NSA spying, FBI spying reformed, especially limited with respect to how they could spy on American people on the American people.
And the title of this article is Diane Feinstein and the fate of NSA Reform.
Quote, there are many bills moving to constrain the NSA's domestic data mining and surveillance programs, but the senior senator from California, Diane Feinstein, is in control.
Quote, I believe that if 9-11 were to happen again with this program and other programs working in combination, we have an opportunity to pick that up.
Absent these kinds of technological programs, we do not have the opportunity to pick that up.
And in case it wasn't clear where she stood on the constitution of the program of bulk collection of America's metadata, by which she meant the collection of all Americans' phone records, she said, quote, I will do everything I can to prevent this program from being canceled out.
She was one of the biggest supporters of warrantless Mass spying on Americans.
Especially the revelations we were able to report from the Snowden file.
Here from the New York Times, July 1st, 2013, that is three weeks after we started the Snowden reporting.
Diane Feinstein's support for the NSA defies liberal critics and repute.
Quote, I feel I have an obligation to do everything I can to keep this country safe, said Ms. Feinstein, who was his chairman, uh chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee is one of the few Americans with detailed knowledge of the NSA's efforts.
Quote, so put that in your pipe and smoke it.
So she was like, You think I'm gonna care about privacy?
I know a lot of you are whining about privacy, and you're bad that the government and the NSA is collecting all your phone records.
F you.
That's what she said.
Just the old lady version.
Put that in your pipe and smoke it.
And then nine months later, she learned she's being spied on by the CIA in a much less invasive manner, just reading the computers of her committee staff when they were investigating the CIA.
That was under John Brennan, by the way, as CI director.
He first falsely denied the CIA was doing that and then forced to admit they did it and apologized for it, got caught lying as always.
But that's Lindsey Graham.
And this isn't the first time he did it.
Here's 2017, The Voice of America.
Lindsey Graham, very angry that he might be monitored by the government.
U.S. Senator wants to know if his communications were intercepted.
Quote, is it possible to find out if I, Lindsey Graham, was incidentally collected talking to a foreign leader abroad?
Is that possible?
The Senate questioned at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing.
Graham wants to know how many of those cases involve presidential candidates or members of Congress.
He also is speaking, seeking to know who made the requests.
He seems very guarded about preventing anybody from learning who he's been talking to or who's been calling him and at what time of the day or night.
Even though he is a one of the leading supporters of mass warrantless surveillance on you, on American peasants, not on senators.
Don't do it to senators.
He said, I'm that.
I'm the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Why should the government be getting my phone records?
Here's June 6, 2013.
This is the day we I reported that first program, that first leak, where the Pfizer court told phone companies you have to turn over these phone records of all Americans to the government, to the NSA.
And Lindsey Graham on Unfox News, and here's what he said in defending the NSA program.
Yeah, we're very much under threat.
Radical Islam is on the rise throughout the region.
Homegrown terrorism is one of my biggest concerns.
It's happening in our own backyard, and I'm glad the NSA is trying to find out what terrorists are up to overseas and inside the country.
Well, Senator, I don't know about you, but I've got Verizon.
That means the government did too.
Okay, you and I. So just to be clear, the very the very first report, the very first Pfizer court or the top secret FISA court order that we obtained and published was only for Verizon.
It the policy was for all phone companies.
But the reason they're talking about Verizon is because my first story on that day, June 6th, was about the Pfizer court, top secret FISA court order that ordered Verizon to turn over all phone records for Americans to the NSA, but there was a similar order for every other phone company.
Okay, you and I, and a lot of us here in the studio have been tracked by the NSA following all of our phone detail.
Apparently, this program will expire on June the 19th, unless it's renewed.
Why do you think somebody somewhere is leaking this to this uh UK newspaper so that we would know about it right now?
What an idiot, the UK newspaper.
He means the Guardian.
It is a UK newspaper.
This is the US version of it.
We were all American journalists working on the story, but whatever.
He wanted to imply it was some like leak to a foreign government.
Oh, and even if, like to the UK, not exactly like some Chinese menace.
It wasn't leaked to the to Iran.
It came out in a newspaper that was based in the UK, the scary menacing UK that was our primary partner in the surveillance program and was published by the U.S. version of it.
But anyway, this is Fox News tendentious tactics.
Right now.
You know, that's a good question, but uh I'm a Verizon uh uh customer.
I don't mind uh Verizon turning over records to the government if the government's gonna make sure that they try to match up a known terrorist uh with somebody in the United States.
I don't think you're talking to terrorists.
Uh I know you're not.
I'm no, I know I'm not, so we don't have Anything to worry about.
You know, this whole idea of talking to terrorists, of course, that's all in the eyes of the beholder who's a terrorist who's not.
Journalists talk to terrorists, government officials talk to terrorists all the time.
But it was a mass surveillance program.
It wasn't just for people talking to terrorists.
Everyone's phone record got turned over.
Lindsay Graham was a big supporter of it.
And now today that he finds out that he's one of the people who was spied upon.
He's throwing a big fit on Fox News at the Senate.
Wow, where my phone records.
It's like because you've been cheering for every for 20 years now, the creation of this system where we have no privacy, where all of our data is turned over to the government because of laws that you supported and defended because of practices of the FBI and NSA that you cheerled until you found out that it was turned against you.
Ron Johnson is another Republican senator.
He's from Wisconsin who was targeted by the obtaining of these phone records.
Here's an article from in the Intercept by my colleague Lee Fong, the high title of which is Senator Ron Johnson dismisses Russ Feingold's opposition to the Patriot Act, how it's his own ties to the NSA.
So Russ Feingold was one of the very, very few people in the entire Congress who actually cared about civil liberties.
He was the sole vote against the Patriot Act.
It was enacted in 2001 by a vote of 98 to 1 in the Senate.
He was the one lone no vote against it.
And when Ron Johnson ran against Russ Feingold, that's how Ron Johnson got into the Senate.
He defeated the incumbent Russ Feingold.
He ran by attacking Russ Feingold for his opposition to the Patriot Act and doubted how much he loves the Patriot Act and surveillance in general and his connection to the NSA.
Quote, Russ Feingold was the lone vote in the U.S. Senate against the Patriot Act in 2001, whilst Ron Johnson has become a powerful champion of the NSA.
Johnson is pushing for full renewal of the Patriot Act and for additional new domestic surveillance legislation, including the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act, discussing the differences between him and Feingold on the Patriot Act, Johnson has the quote, advantage of talking to folks at the NSA, talking to Pfizer court judges whom Johnson said, quote, do not do want not want to snoop on Americans.
So I think Ron Johnson has actually become a lot less uh vocal and aggressive about his support for the NSA as after he saw the way it was abused.
This is 2015, but he he he's been a long time supporter of the NSA.
He's never really pushed for reforms or of the Patriot Act.
He got into the Senate by promising to expand the Patriot Act and criticizing Russ Feingold for his very noble and prescient vote against it.
Here's Ron Johnson talking to Newsmax.
Uh this is today about learning that he was one of the GOP senators who Jack Smith targeted for collection of their phone records.
Among the senators targeted, Wisconsin Senator Ron.
Among the Senators targeted, Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson.
He's also a member of the Senate Finance Budget and Homeland Security Committees.
He joins us now here live on Newsline.
Uh Senator, it's great to have you with us.
I know you were informed a few days ago about this, but all of us are just learning.
I mean, your reaction and also the way it was discovered, this wasn't a whistleblower.
Walk us through how you found out you were being tracked by Jack Smith with no knowledge.
Well, having investigated the FBI for about a decade now, uh, sadly, this doesn't surprise me, but but it should shock and outrage every American.
Uh what's maybe even more revealing is the fact that we still have leftist partisan actors inside these agencies that are frustrating.
Cash Patel and Dan Banginos and Pam Bonnie's efforts to clean house, to come clean, to provide this information.
We found out about this because the agent that apparently was able to obtain these records uh was applying for recertification with this caste system, the cellular analyst uh survey team.
And in in reapplying, this agent apparently you listen, this is an accomplishment, kind of a bow sheet.
So, no, I should definitely be able to, you know, do do be on the cast team because I scooped up these records from eight uh senators and one one house member.
You know, look at me, didn't I do a good job?
So again, he either shows it just a jaw-dropping ignorance on the part of that uh agent or just a cavalier attitude inside the the leftist Biden Department of Justice and uh the FBI towards scooping up the phone records of the branch of government of their political opponents.
One of the things the Patriot Act did that Ron Johnson got into office and got elected to the Senate by supporting and promising to expand was it empowered the FBI to get phone records from phone companies from telecommunication companies without having to get a warrant.
Even without having to issue a subpoena, they're called national security letters.
Again, I don't know if that was the specific instrument used, but this is something that Ron Johnson has supported.
You know that old phrase that a conservative is a liberal who got mugged and they're angry about crime and they become a conservative.
It's like a civil libertarian is a senator who found out that they themselves were being spied on by the system they helped create, instead of just unleashing it on meaningless Americans who don't have the Senate title.
As I said, Ron Johnson over the last decade has objected to deep state abuses.
But he's also been somebody who has cheered this very system.
Another person who has done that is Josh Hawley of uh Missouri.
He was also another Republican member.
And I should say I agree with Ron Johnson completely here, by the way, that this is an outrageous abuse.
The Jack Smith investigation was dubious at best against Donald Trump to expand it and just so indiscriminately collect phone records of Republican senators is something you should do only when absolutely of the highest urgency or completely imperative as part of a law enforcement investigation.
This was obviously a politicized fishing uh expedition to just be able to read who these senators were talking to in the hope that you could create some incriminating theory.
I absolutely agree it should be investigated.
The problem is they made it legal.
It's almost certainly not illegal because of their work.
Here is uh Josh Hawley on Fox News today talking about learning that he was part of this probe.
Judiciary committee member just stepped out of that hearing.
What did you hear from Dan Bangino and the FBI last night on this?
Well, what I know, Bill, is that they targeted the DOJ, the Biden DOJ specifically targeted a group of us.
They asked for our call records so they could see who we talked to, who called us.
I believe also track our location over a period of days.
This is outrageous.
I mean, this is really unbelievable.
It's blatantly unconstitutional, it's a violation of the First Amendment, it's a violation of the separation of powers, and it also goes to show you the extent to which the Biden administration was so corrupt using the FBI to target their political enemies.
And let's not forget, they didn't just do it to senators, they did it to school board parents who went and spoke up at those school board meetings.
They did it to 92 conservative organizations, including Charlie Kirk's turning point USA.
They tried to recruit spies into Catholic parishes.
That's the kind of people we're dealing with here.
Bill, we need a total investigation, a thorough investigation into everybody who was responsible.
And I think there needs to be prosecutions.
Okay.
Now, Josh Hawley wasn't in Congress at the time of the Snowden reporting, so I don't have him on record defending the NSA.
I don't want to guess what he would have done, although I could.
But I think what's very important to note here is that the uh structure that Josh Hawley is talking about, the idea that you can just gather up the phone records of all Americans, even if there's no evidence you've done anything wrong and still learn who you're talking to and who you've been talking to and when and for how long and where we revealed that at a time when it was not legal, but then the Senate ultimately, along with the House, ended up legalizing it retroactively.
And part of what did that was the FISA Amendments Act and the current iteration of FISA, which every four years has to get renewed.
That's the law that Ron Johnson came on my show two months before he got named Speaker to announce was one of the worst things imaginable that this could get renewed without serious reforms restricting their ability to get phone records and other data on American citizens, and then he became speaker, and within two days, he said, no, actually, this legislation is crucial, and he became the spearhead to ensure that it got renewed without any reform.
Do you remember that?
This is that power.
And so this is part of a legal framework that has been constructed in the name of fighting terrorism, in the name of fighting All sorts of other scary things.
And now the Frankenstein machine that they created has turned against them.
That was Josh Hawley complaining about the unleashing of this surveillance machine against political opponents, which the Biden administration actually did.
But here was the same Josh Hawley in October of 2023 when student protests on American campuses were underway where they were exercising their First Amendment rights to protest and to speak against the Israeli war in Gaza.
And this is what Josh Hawley said quote the Justice Department should investigate these quote student groups calling for the destruction of Israel.
Where is the money coming from?
Josh Holly is a fanatical supporter of Israel.
Saw a bunch of protesters on American College campuses and said, DOJ, go use your powers against them.
Go dig into them, surveil them, find out who their support is.
So I want this Jack Smith abuse investigated.
I'm glad that Republican senators are finally understanding why it's so dangerous and invasive to allow the government to collect this kind of data about you.
As I said before, I watched the same thing happen with Diane Feinstein.
There was a Democratic member of Congress named Jane Harmon.
You should Google her if you don't know who she is.
She was exactly like Diane Feinstein.
She was a hardcore pro-national security state member of Congress.
She was a California Democrat, supporter of the Iraq War, hardcore neocon.
And a lot of people know this is why I'm going to tell this quick story.
In 2009, a someone inside the Pentagon, the Obama Pentagon, leaked top secret documents to two senior APAC officials who then gave them to Israel.
Two senior officials of AIPAC were involved in espionage against their own country, their own country.
APAC's an American organization, not an Israeli one, but they were taking top secret documents that they got from the Pentagon and giving it to ostensibly a foreign government, what are really their bosses, APAC's bosses, which is the government of Israel.
The Pentagon official pled guilty.
The two APAC officials were charged and were being investigated.
And as part of the investigation, they spied on numerous people who the APAC officials were speaking to, one of whom turned out to be Jane Harmon, the Congresswoman from California, big supporter of the national security state.
She was a big APAC supporter, big big Israel supporter.
And those two APAC officials, unbeknownst to them, are being surveilled by the FBI as part of a criminal investigation into their leaking to Israel, and they caught on surveillance their conversations with Jane Harmon, where Jane Harmon said to them, I'm gonna make sure the DOJ drops the charges against you.
It was the Obama DOJ at the time, and she was saying I'll use my influence to get these charges against you dropped.
And you know what?
The DOJ did drop the charges against those two APAC officials, claiming that there was problems with the process.
They didn't exonerate them.
Remember, the the Pentagon official who gave them the documents pled guilty.
They just claimed there were some procedural problems, the conviction was difficult.
And when Jane Harmon learned that she had been spied on, even though she was saying something so corrupt, which is listen, senior APAC officials, I'm gonna use my influence to coerce the Justice Department to drop the charges against you.
When she found out she was being spied upon, she was outraged.
She went around standing like she was the head of the ACLU for like weeks, ranting about privacy and civil liberties and all of this.
And she was as fanatical a supporter of the CIA and the NSA, just like Diane Feinstein, where both California Democrats.
So this is something that's not unique to these Republican senators.
But it is, I think, very illustrative of a serious pathology among political leaders, which is they love to unleash all sorts of policies as long as it's just gonna be the American population that pays the price.
And as soon as they start paying the price, soon as it gets turned on them, then and only then do they start to understand why what they've unleashed is is so dangerous.
And we should hope that they wouldn't have to be affected before they actually care.
Their job is to protect the rights of the American people, not just themselves, but I think it's pretty clear what their actual priorities are.
Would you guys consider anything less than a championship to be a failure from this year?
I wouldn't say anything is a failure, especially because we all grow every day.
Obviously, the goal is a championship.
That's there's no doubt in that, and that's the goal.
We want to win a championship.
I'm Christina Williams, host of the podcast.
In case you missed it with Christina Williams.
The WNBA playoffs are here, and I've got the inside scoop on everything from key matchups and standout players to the behind the scenes moments you won't find anywhere else.
It's really, really hard to be the champions, but we have to remember how it feels and embrace the new challenge that we have.
For all the biggest stories in women's basketball, plus exclusive interviews with the game's brightest stars.
So to be here, I think it's one that we definitely don't take for granted.
But we also know, you know, that's just one stop along the way, and we're hoping to, you know, make a run.
So listen to In Case You Missed It with Christina Williams in iHeart Woman Sports Production in partnership with Deep Blue Sports and Entertainment on iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.
Would you guys consider anything less than a championship to be a failure from this year?
I wouldn't say anything is a failure, especially because we all grow every day.
Obviously, the goal is a championship.
That's there's no doubt in that, and that's the goal.
We want to win a championship.
I'm Christina Williams, host of the podcast.
In case you missed it with Christina Williams, the WNBA playoffs are here, and I've got the inside scoop on everything from key matchups and standout players to the behind the scenes moments you won't find anywhere else.
It's really, really hard to be the champions, but we have to remember how it feels and embrace the new challenge that we have.
For all the biggest stories in women's basketball plus exclusive interviews with the game's brightest stars.
So to be here, I think it's one that we definitely don't take for granted.
But we also know, you know, that's just one stop along the way, and we're hoping to, you know, make a run.
So listen to In Case You Missed It with Christina Williams in iHeartWill Miss Sports Production in partnership with Deep Blue Sports and Entertainment on iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.
All right, so as you undoubtedly know, when Charlie Kirk was assassinated, there were all kinds of rumors and conspiracy theories and debates and shadowy speculation about who might have been responsible for killing him.
The person they charged and said acted alone.
There's some evidence against him.
It's not a very convincing case, but we're still at the beginning of the investigation.
The evidence hasn't really presented to the public.
But I'm just saying what we know is certainly something that ought to be questioned.
I'm not saying it's clearly untrue.
I'm not saying I'm just saying there's there's questions about it.
And for a case of this magnitude with such repercussions, we have every right, in fact, the obligation to be skeptical about what we're being told.
And one of the questions leading up to the uh assassinate of Charlie Kirk, one of the questions afterwards about the events leading up to it was the extent to which he was being pressured and battled against uh by major pro-Israel donors and pro-Israel billionaires, and by the Israeli government itself.
And there's been a lot of reporting about Charlie being badgered and threatened and cajoled by people like Bill Ackman and pro-Israel billionaires who donated to Turning Point, who ended up withdrawing their support for Turning Point because Charlie hosted a debate just a few weeks or maybe a couple months before he was killed at the big turning point conference about Israel,
where he had Josh Hammer, a super neocon Israel fanatical supporter, support fanatical Israel supporter on the one side and Dave Smith, a very aggressive Jewish critic of Israel on the other, and they debated Israel and Dave Smith had things like Israel is committing genocide and the US shouldn't be supporting them.
The kind of thing that if you're a major pro-Israel billionaire donor of turning point, you don't want being aired.
And they were even angrier that Charlie Kirk allowed Tucker Carlson to come and speak that he invited Tucker Carlson to come and speak.
And one of the main points of Tucker Carlson's speech was about the Epstein files and his belief that Jeffrey Epstein had a relationship with the Israeli government and specifically the Mossad, and they were indignant about that.
They were telling Charlie Kirk, unless you promise to cut all ties with people like Tucker Carlson and not host people like Dave Smith, we're gonna withdraw our funding from you.
And Charlie was by all accounts defiant and said, I don't care, I'm not being told what to do, I'll invite whoever I want.
And some people leapt to this conclusion that you know, we don't know anything, maybe true, but I'm not at all someone who's affirming this or implying it, that because of his anger, because of the way he angered pro-Israel donors, and even because of the uh reaction that Charlie Kirk had in becoming less pro-Israel, that that was one of the reasons why he got killed.
Again, I'm not somebody who says that, but there are a lot of people who used it to say that.
But either way, I think it's very important to understand the pressure that was being applied on him to understand the reality of our political culture.
I'm talking about the single most influential person among young conservatives and a lot of independents, too, the person who was the head of this massive, majorly funded organization.
What he believed and didn't believe, what he advocated and opposed, it mattered a lot to a lot of very powerful people.
And so again, it doesn't have to impact on the question of who killed him to be really important to understand what kind of pressures was he under.
And remember, he went on Megan Kelly's show.
One of the last interviews he gave, and both of them, but Charlie Kirk in particular were enraged by the fact that they were being cajoled and heckled hectored and uh pressured and accused and maligned by Israel supporters, saying, You're not supporting Israel enough.
I think you're anti-Semitic.
And Charlie was enraged in this interview, saying, How dare you call me anti-Semitic?
And Megan was saying the same thing.
And both of them were saying, you may lose us if you keep this up.
We're not gonna stay supportive of your cause while you're demanding that we become even more loyal to your agenda.
So I heard that interview at the time, I commented on it with that he gave with Megan.
It was Charlie Kirk in his own words saying that.
And it was right after this weekend summit hosted by Bill Ackman at Bill Ackman's massive sprawling estate in the Hamptons, where a bunch of pro-Israel influencers like Josh Hammer and others were present, and by all accounts, they were trying to persuade Charlie to become more pro-Israel to cut his ties with these people.
And then the next day goes on Megan Kelly show and he starts angrily denouncing the pressure campaign on him.
You can say it's unrelated to that.
Bill Ackman weekend doesn't seem likely to me.
It was the day after.
Meanwhile, Candace Owens, who is somebody who knew Charlie very well for a long time, no question they were friends.
She has been strongly suggesting and outright stating that a lot of what is being claimed about Charlie and his support for Israel is deceitful.
She did claim that the letter that Netanyahu was holding around and whirling around to say Charlie was Israel's best friend.
She claimed that that letter was parts of that letter were actually contrary to what Netanyahu was saying.
And then they released the full letter, and it basically was Charlie telling Netanyahu I'm a huge supporter of Israel, but I'm very concerned about the lack of support, the loss of support that you're suffering in the United States.
And here are the things I want you to do that you should do to better your communications, to recapture Americans to be on your side.
It wasn't really a letter critical of Israel, but it was a critique of their communication strategy.
If it was written as like, I'm a friend of Israel, here's what I think you should do to have better PR among Americans.
So I don't think that panned out, at least in my view, I haven't heard Candace's explanation about that.
But one of the things she's been saying is that there are texts where Charlie went even further than he did on Megan Kelly's show, talking about the pressure that was being applied to him by pro-Israel donors and what his reaction was, what he was threatening to do as a result, namely abandon his support for Israel.
And a lot of people were saying Candace Owens is lying.
There are no such texts.
And yesterday on her show, Candace Owens released her text, these texts.
And at the time I was, you know, skeptical.
I wanted to see them be confirmed, their authenticity confirmed.
And they have been by the head of Turning Point USA, Andrew Colvet, as we're about to show you, as we'll show you after.
But the authenticity has been confirmed.
That's why I'm talking about them.
These are real.
And these are texts.
We'll let Candace show you in her own words.
Take a look.
So Charlie writes in the screw chat, just lost another huge Jewish donor, uh, two million a year because we won't cancel Tucker.
I'm thinking of inviting Candace.
Somebody writes, ugh.
Charlie writes, Jewish donors play into all of the stereotypes.
I cannot and will not be bullied like this.
Leaving me no choice but to leave the pro-Israel cause.
Leaving me no choice but to leave the pro-Israel cause.
Which again is a much more blatant and explicit expression of that thought than the one that he expressed on Megan Kelly's show.
But what he said on Megan Kelly's show is very similar to that.
It was just a little more subtle, a little more obscured and nuanced, but not much.
So he's saying, like, I can't stand it anymore.
These pro-Israel donors that think they can demand and manipulate me to talk to people they want me to talk to and not talk to people that they I don't want to.
They're pushing me in the other direction.
I just lost another two million dollar donation because of this from a Jewish billionaire, a big Jewish donor.
And he said Jewish uh donors play into all the stereotypes, meaning they use their money to coerce people into supporting Israel.
And he said, This is leaving me no choice but to leave the pro-Israel cause.
This was in the days before he was assassinated.
Here's the rest of what Candace uh shows.
And somebody writes, a donor rights, please do not invite Candace.
That might feel good short term, but it's not good long term, in my opinion.
Like all groups, you're going to get a wide variety of opinions.
That nasty free will thing that God bestowed on us makes life frustrating at times after the dust settles a bit, maybe.
So again, this is 48 hours before Charlie Kirk was assassinated.
He was very clear and he's very explicit, and he did not back down in that Hamptons meeting, which they're all lying about, nor in this text thread.
I'm not going to reveal the names of the other seven.
Actually, you know what?
I disagree with myself four seconds ago.
Let's just throw in Josh Hammer for funsies.
He's on this chat.
Okay.
So Josh Hammer is a, like I said, a fanatical supporter of Israel.
He was the one that was invited to debate Dave Smith.
Josh Hammer used to write to me all the time, praise my work.
He was an editor at the time at Newsweek.
He said, Please come and write for Newsweek.
Your work is fantastic.
It's so uniquely valuable.
This is before October 7th.
And then after October 7th, I forget what prompted it, but he sent me a DM basically saying, you're an evil, horrible person.
I was criticizing Israel, his beloved country.
And I take back all the praise I ever expressed for you.
He's like, yeah, before you were doing something unimportant.
You were talking about the United States and the rights of Americans.
And I like that, but relative to Israel, that was unimportant.
The real issue is Israel.
Now that you're critical of Israel, I think you have no value.
I think he stopped following me on Twitter or blocked me or whatever, but sent me that kind of nasty note.
I just, maybe it was on Twitter itself, I believe it was by DMs.
But in any event, that's who Josh Amber is.
And he was part of this chat.
Now, here's uh Andrew Colvert Colvet, uh, who was Charlie's right-hand man, the highest ranking person at turning point after Charlie.
Uh obviously somebody who understands exactly what happened.
He was Charlie Kirk's producer for the show as well.
And so he went on the Charlie Kirk show today to address these texts that were released.
and here's what he said.
...start of this show to address some of the things that have been going around on Public...
Namely about a text, a group text chain that has been made known uh and released uh by Candace Owens.
And I just want to address it head on because uh, you know, that was a text grab, a screen grab that I had shared uh with people.
So it it is authentic.
And I want to go into it because I actually am really excited that the the truth is out there.
I first no, I don't know what he went on to say.
I should have checked, you know, my if I had to guess, since he's been really downplaying this a lot, in part because it's in his interest to do so.
I'm not questioning his integrity, but he needs talking point to continue.
He wants talking point to continue, he is employed by talking point.
And uh my guess is he turning points.
I don't know why he keep saying talking point.
Uh turning point, um, he wants it to continue, and so he has an interest in placating its current donors.
So, but I don't want to represent what he went on to say.
That's my guess based on that I hearing him say other things.
But the important point for our purposes is that he said this is an authentic part of the chat.
And a lot of people were claiming Candace Owens was lying, they were mocking her when she was saying she had receipts.
Like I said, Candace, like everybody makes mistakes.
I think what she said about the Netanyahu letter, once we saw the full Netanyahu letter, assuming that's the full Netanyahu letter.
It wasn't quite Charlie expressing opposition to Israel, more criticizing them for not being better at communicating.
But Candace is also right about a lot of things, and she has a lot of sources.
And I know Candace, I don't want to say well, I say reasonably well.
And she's a serious person insofar as her ability to get facts, to get documents.
When she showed this text, I was pretty sure it was authentic, just knowing how she operates and knowing who she knows and her connections and the like.
I just didn't want to myself vouch for that until I heard confirmation.
Now we have confirmation that it was authentic.
So again, it doesn't mean that there's evidence now that Israel killed Charlie Kirk, but I think it's pretty significant that this young, extremely influential conservative who was pretty much groomed from the time he was 18.
People saw his charisma and his abilities.
To become kind of this charismatic conservative leader for young people to basically evangelize on behalf of BAGA and Donald Trump in a way that by all accounts, I mean, was very successful.
I mean, Charlie Kirk was very well known among especially this younger cohort of voters.
He obviously could inspire huge amounts of people.
He was very influential.
He was he spoke regularly to Donald Trump to Benjamin Netanyahu.
And if Charlie Kirk was being driven into a more anti-Israel stand, either because his generation that he represents has moved there, which they have, and he felt, as Megan suggested, afterward, obligated to kind of go with them and to give voice to what they were saying.
And he you might have remembered he he assembled a panel of younger talking point, affiliates members and talking points, mem uh turning point.
I don't know why I keep doing that.
Member members and affiliates and the like to talk about Israel, and a lot of them expressed the view, like, yeah, we don't hate Israel, we don't hate Jews, but why are we financing Israel?
Like I thought we were America first.
And he was clearly delving deeper into this debate as a debate.
Not any longer as dogma.
He was hardcore pro-Israel for a long time, but definitely changed in the months leading up to his assassination.
And so when he's saying privately, Jewish billionaires are living up to the stereotype, that's his words, not mine, by demanding that I be as absolutely pro-Israel as possible, or they're gonna threaten to withdraw their money, and some of them did, and then explicitly says that is gonna drive me to abandon the pro-Israel cause.
That in and of itself is significant, just as a development to demonstrate how much pressure there is with regard to this foreign country on pretty much everybody of any degree of influence.
We've been talking about Larry Allison buying up CBS and CBS News and Paramount putting Barry Weiss at the head of CBS News, trying to buy CNN, but assuming a lot of control over TikTok.
And it absolutely matters the extent of this influence, and Charlie Kirk in his own voice in so many ways, including these texts that Candace just released that have been authenticated by Turning Point, all illustrate the same thing about the intensity and depth of this pressure that gets applied to American citizens, basically trying to force them to maintain support for a foreign country.
And this investigation will unfold and we'll hear and see all the evidence as they prosecute the suspect that they've arrested for Charlie's killing.
I'm sure there will be lots of inquiries and investigations into whether there are people involved with him, whether he was a sole shooter, whether there were other people involved, whether he's a pathy.
There always are in these kinds of politically important murders, and there should be, given their repercussions.
But what we know in and of itself for sure, well, we already knew, and what we know even more now, the extent and severity of it as a result of these texts released by Cannon Sowens, just deserves attention in and of itself.
And that's why we thought it was important to give it, and we'll continue to give it attention as more of this uh is released.
Candace says there are more tax.
I've heard there are more tax.
I'm sure they'll be coming out soon, and we will definitely keep covering it given its importance.
Would you guys consider anything less than a championship to be a failure from this year?
I wouldn't say anything is a failure, especially because we all grow every day.
Obviously, the goal is a championship.
That's there's no doubt in that, and that's the goal.
We want to win a championship.
I'm Christina Williams, host of the podcast.
In case you missed it with Christina Williams.
The WNBA playoffs are here, and I've got the inside scoop on everything from key matchups and standout players to the behind the scenes moments you won't find anywhere else.
It's really, really hard to be the champions, but we have to remember how it feels and embrace the new challenge that we have.
For all the biggest stories in women's basketball plus exclusive interviews with the game's brightest stars.
So to be here, I think it's one that we definitely don't take for granted.
But we also know, you know, that's just one stop along the way, and we're hoping to, you know, make it run.
So listen to In Case You Missed It with Christina Williams in iHeart Woman Sports Production in partnership with Deep Blue Sports and Entertainment on iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.
Would you guys consider anything less than a championship to be a failure from this year?
I wouldn't say anything is a failure, especially because we all grow every day.
Obviously, the goal is a championship.
That's there's no doubt in that, and that's the goal.
We want to win a championship.
I'm Christina Williams, host of the podcast.
In case you missed it with Christina Williams, the WNBA playoffs are here, and I've got the inside scoop on everything from key matchups and standout players to the behind the scenes moments you won't find anywhere else.
It's really, really hard to be the champions, but we have to remember how it feels and embrace the new challenge that we have.
For all the biggest stories in women's basketball plus exclusive interviews with the game's brightest stars.
So to be here, I think it's one that we definitely don't take for granted.
But we also know, you know, that's just one stop along the way, and we're hoping to, you know, make a run.
So listen to In Case You Missed It with Christina Williams in iHeart Woman's Sports Production in partnership with Deep Blue Sports and Entertainment on iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.
All right, so that concludes our show for this evening.
As a reminder, system update is also available in podcast form.
You can listen to every episode 12 hours after their first broadcast live here on Rumble on Spotify, Apple, and all other major podcasting platforms, where if you rate, review, and follow our show, it really does help spread the visibility of our program.
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