Jimmy Dore Show - 20210805_TJDS_20210805_Podcast

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Aug. 5, 2021 - Jimmy Dore Show

01:03:38

20210805_TJDS_20210805_Podcast

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	Hey, hello, this is Jimmy.
	Who's this?
	This is Governor Andrew Cuomo.
	Oh, hello, Governor.
	How are you?
	I'm fine.
	I wanted to talk to you and your listeners and address this whole elephant in the room, these accusations against me of sexual harassment and inappropriate behavior.
	Okay.
	First of all, let me reiterate my apology.
	I am truly sorry if my words or actions made anyone feel uncomfortable.
	That was never my intention.
	I joke around with people.
	My staff, I try to keep an ass levity with jokes like, hey, have you ever dated an older man?
	Would you date an older man?
	Classic jokes such as that one.
	Classic joke.
	Classic.
	This is clad.
	You're doing crystal clear.
	I respect women.
	Who doesn't?
	I mean, look at it.
	I love women.
	I always have.
	I wish to be perpetually surrounded by women.
	So it pains me to learn that some women have been put off by my behavior towards them.
	But Jimmy, all of this has been misconstrued.
	Misconstrued?
	Misconstructed.
	I never sexually harassed anyone.
	I never put forth a genuine sexual advance.
	Well, what about the young lady who claimed at a wedding you touched her bare back and then grabbed the sides of her head and asked her to kiss you?
	Yes, I asked.
	It's called consent.
	Is that what we're getting in trouble for now?
	Asking permission like we're supposed to?
	You should have seen the shit I was trying to pull this up.
	You know, I think grabbing the sides of her head while you asked is the problem, probably.
	Oh, okay.
	All right.
	Well, let's get down to brass tax here.
	I think the underlying issue here is that I am Italian American.
	We are a passionate, expressive people.
	La person.
	We hug and kiss.
	This is how we greet people.
	I got it.
	I see.
	It's affection, but it is also respect for your fellow human being.
	It is recognizing another's humanity, male or female.
	You grab them, hug them, kiss them, grab their shoulders, rub their shoulders, look them up and down and say, hey, fascino.
	Look at those fucking breasts.
	Emotional people.
	Emotional.
	So, Governor, I know plenty of Italian Americans, and none of them treat other people like how you're describing.
	Well, okay, then there are people who are probably ill norte from the northern part of Italy.
	You gotta get far down into the boot to get to the real good gravy, if you know what I mean.
	My God.
	So if we're really being honest here, there is an element of...
	So if we're really being honest here, there is an element of...
	Anti-Italian discrimination or bias.
	Please don't do this.
	Why not?
	It's the obvious play here.
	Don't try and make yourself the victim.
	Growing up a poor Italian boy in New York City, I was called every slur in the book.
	Guinea, Dago, Wop, Greaseball, Doc Bunny, Boot Bum, Noodle Snapper.
	I came up with those last few myself.
	That's how low my self-esteem was from all that bully.
	My God.
	But as I grew up, I learned to be proud of my Italian heritage and identity.
	Did you know that an Italian invented the telephone?
	What does that have to do with you hitting grabbing women?
	Ring, ring.
	Okay, who's there?
	3,000 years of history, art, and culture at your service.
	Look, we're going to get through this.
	Obviously, I need to change my behavior.
	Times have changed.
	Every woman under 40 acts like she's on fucking little house on the prairie now.
	I don't get it, but that's just how it is.
	There's nothing you can do about it, but I'm not resigning.
	Oh, really?
	Why not?
	Because I'm still a fucking bull.
	I'll do this little dance if I have to.
	I'm smart.
	But I'm not going to be pushed too far here.
	Kirsten Gillibrand calls on me to resign.
	Up your ass, KG.
	She got Al Franken to resign.
	Yeah, exactly.
	Exactly my point.
	And 20 Al Franken balls could fit inside one of my balls.
	Fucking stuck.
	You hear me?
	Loud and clear, pal.
	All right.
	Well, I got to go.
	I have to gaze wistfully at a large marble statue of a nude woman that's in my office.
	Let's be honest.
	The fact that we personify the concept of liberty as a female goddess has allowed us to get away with a lot of wild decorating choices.
	Thanks for calling, Governor.
	Forget about it.
	Establishment media sucks All gaslighting so good luck Bullshit we can't afford Fomenting this Watch and see as it's jack off The median speeds and jumps The medium and hits them head on It's the Chimitor Show Music So Governor Andrew Cuomo's, he's in trouble, but so you used to remember that he was given an Emmy, right?
	He's going to receive an International Emmy Founders Award in recognition of his leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic and his masterful use of TV to inform and calm people around the world.
	So just so you know, I'm going to show you why this is garbage in a second.
	Because he actually was responsible for killing thousands of elderly people in New York and cutting the medical budget during the middle of a pandemic.
	But right now, this is the breaking news on him: is that there's a attorney general has come out and said that, yes, he did sexually harass multiple women.
	That's what the probe says.
	That's what the probe says.
	Okay.
	An investigation found that New York governor Andrew Cuomo sexually harassed multiple women inside and outside, inside and outside, state government and worked to retaliate against one of his accusers.
	Wow.
	The nearly five-month investigation that spoke to 179 people found that Cuomo administration was a hostile work environment and that it was rife with fear and intimidation.
	Wow.
	You're telling me working with the elder Fredo is no bueno?
	Do they have glass door ratings for these kind of things?
	Come on.
	Okay.
	These interviews and pieces of evidence revealed a deeply disturbing yet clear picture.
	Governor Cuomo sexually harassed current and former state employees in violation of federal and state laws.
	New York Attorney General Letitia James said at a press conference.
	Investigators said they found all 11 women were credible, noting that their allegations were corroborated to varying degrees, including by other witnesses and contemporaneous text messages.
	11 women, that's enough for a spinal tap approval.
	Come on, am I right?
	11?
	They go all the way to 11.
	Some suffered through unwanted touching and grabbing of their most intimate body parts, the legal investigator stated.
	None of them welcomed it, and all of them found it disturbing, humiliating, uncomfortable, and inappropriate.
	I'm going to say it was all a miscommunication.
	Cuomo's position on all allegations has hardened into one of defiance.
	Cuomo has always denied touching anyone inappropriately, but he initially said his behavior with women was misinterpreted.
	I think that's what that says there.
	New York's Attorney General released findings that is certain to renew calls for the Democrats' resignation or impeachment.
	And just to show you how funny this is, this is from 2013.
	Andrew Cuomo himself tweeted out there should be a zero tolerance policy when it comes to sexual harassment and must send a clear message that this behavior is not tolerated.
	I remember someone else who tweeted out something like that, and he was sleeping with a hire.
	He had just hired somebody and he was sleeping with her.
	He had also tweeted out some.
	So it's people who tweet out stuff like that.
	You've got to be scary.
	I would be suspicious.
	I know somebody who tweeted out zero tolerance and he was banging someone he had just hired.
	And here is Andrew.
	Here is Joe Biden, by the way.
	He's going to be speaking of great allies for women.
	Joe Biden has asked about Andrew Cuomo.
	Governor Cuomo of New York.
	I know you've said you want the investigation to continue.
	If the investigation confirms the claims of the women, should he resign?
	Yes, I think he probably ended up being prosecuted, too.
	When they gave him this award, they gave him an Emmy award.
	So this is what's going to take, it seems like that's what's going to take Andrew Cuomo down, is now this new report.
	It seems like it.
	We'll see.
	He's been able to ride this out so far, but now there's a credible report that's saying this actually happened with 11 women.
	And can I tell you that NPR just had an article, Biden calls on New York Governor Andrew Cuomo to resign after harassment report?
	So it's just in.
	So here's what here's so that's what's probably going to take him down.
	What is amazing that it didn't take him down, which is I think killing thousands of people is actually a bigger scandal.
	I think they're both bad.
	I think killing thousands of people is a big scandal.
	He totally was able to, nope, nobody was going to hold him accountable for that.
	No one is going to.
	So when they gave him the Emmy for his COVID handling, I said this is what's known as establishment mindfuckery.
	His handling of COVID was disastrous.
	He also presided over a decade of hospital closures and consolidations, prioritizing cost savings over keeping popular health care institutions open.
	He killed thousands of old people.
	And here it is.
	New York hospitals face $400 million in cuts, even as the virus battle rages.
	State lawmakers said that slashing hospital budgets to rein in Medicaid costs while the coronavirus is spreading is cruel, inhuman, and unacceptable.
	Wow.
	Hey, sorry about the no medical care.
	Take this thumbs up instead, huh?
	Cuomo won't back down on Medicaid cuts, even if it means spurning billions in coronavirus aid.
	Wow.
	Wow.
	Cuomo aide Melissa DeRosa admits that they hid nursing home data so the feds wouldn't find out.
	New York State nursing homes residents were dying from COVID-19 at a much higher rate than what was reported by the governor Andrew Cuomo's health department on purpose.
	They were lying.
	So this is they're admitting that they were lying.
	Cuomo gave immunity to nursing home executives after big campaign donations.
	So did you think this would be a big scandal that Joe Biden would ask him to step down over this?
	No.
	No.
	This is business as usual.
	Joe Biden kills lots of people for money.
	Kamala Harris imprisons lots of people for money.
	They kill people all over the world for money.
	That's what they do.
	They're hired killers and they kill people for money.
	I love this is a Brooklyn dad defiant.
	That's that corporate guy who's he's paid to tweet.
	He says, I love that Andrew Cuomo was getting an Emmy for keeping folks calm and informed during the pandemic while Trump was busy telling folks to inject bleach.
	Fun fact, Trump never got an Emmy.
	So that's the kind of shit lived.
	That's what's wrong with America is people like that.
	You know who's the most progressive president, the last most progressive president?
	Richard Nixon.
	You know why?
	Because he was scared.
	He was scared of the people.
	So there's Andrew Cuomo.
	He's going to, he's probably going to, he's, we'll see.
	We'll see if he steps down.
	I predict he fights it.
	I don't care how many people ask him to step down.
	And the irony of Joe Biden asking someone else to step down because of that is freaking hilarious.
	Why don't you just have, oh, who's the guy from CNN?
	Jeffrey.
	I'll just have Jeffrey Toobin ask him to step down.
	The guy who got caught shirt.
	Why don't you ask him?
	So there you go.
	So that's what's going to take.
	Looks like that's what probably will take Cuomo down if something does.
	What won't take him down is killing thousands of people and lying about it.
	That's okay.
	That's politics as usual.
	Chicago, we've added a second show, August 7th.
	Go to jimmydoorcomedy.com for a link for tickets.
	We're going to be in Chicago August 7th, and then we're going to Portland.
	We're going to Sacramento.
	We're going to, where else are we going?
	We're going to Las Vegas.
	We're going to lots of places.
	Go to jimmydoorcomedy.com for a link for all the tickets.
	So I'm here with Max Blumenthal and he confronted Adam Schiff at the protest for the eviction moratorium over the weekend.
	And I want to let you know who Adam Schiff is, and this is important because of the stuff that Max says to him.
	So, Adam Schiff, there was no bigger Russia Gator than Adam Schiff.
	Here he is.
	Adam Schiff, Trump colluded with Russia in plain sight.
	Okay, there we go.
	So, Schiff's conspiracy theory, diatribes, made him an overnight star of the Russiagate drama.
	This is from Truthdig.
	He had once been a milquetose moderate, as journalist Ryan Lizza put it, but through his grandstanding, the once obscure centrist suddenly emerged as an unlikely face of Democratic resistance to the new president, a liberal hero.
	And when the House Intelligence Committee opened its investigation into allegations of Russian meddling in the U.S. elections, Adam Schiff zeroed in on conspiracy theories.
	Desperate for evidence of Trump-Russia collusion, Democrats latched onto the dossier produced by Christopher Steele, a former agent of Britain's MI5, who was funded by the law firm tied to Clinton and the Democratic National Committee.
	Given Schiff's history, it was a little surprised when he thrust himself headlong into the paranoid theater of Russia Gate.
	By casting suspicion on every attempt at diplomacy and driving the resurgence of Cold War hostility between Washington and Moscow, Adam Schiff was poised to deliver another cash cow to his benefactors in the arms industry.
	Since entering Congress in 2002, Adam Schiff hasn't met a war he didn't like.
	He has backed the invasion of Iraq, cheered on NATO's regime change operations in Libya, heartily endorsed the U.S.-Saudi war on Yemen, clamored for direct U.S. intervention in Syria, and lent his signature to virtually every AIPAC crafted resolution that has landed on his desk.
	The arms industry has rewarded Adam Schiff handsomely, pumping over $70,000 in his campaign coffers in just 2016 alone.
	Schiff's largest donor this past campaign cycle was Northbrook Grumman, the defense giant.
	Raytheon was close behind it in its contributions.
	So, Max, you went up to Adam Schiff, one of the most pro-war anti-Palestinian Democrats in Congress.
	He showed up at the eviction moratorium for a photo op with Jesse Jackson.
	I asked him if the $4 billion for apartheid Israel and regime change he supports should instead be spent on free housing.
	So here we go.
	Here we go.
	Representative Schiff.
	Representative Schiff, do you think we could reallocate $4 billion from apartheid Israel to free housing for Americans?
	The $4 billion that you allocate every year to apartheid Israel?
	Thanks for coming out here with you.
	It's great.
	Jesse Jackson opposes all the wars you support.
	Representative Schiff, Jesse Jackson opposes all the wars you support.
	Can we give them a quick moment, please?
	Can we just give them a moment, please?
	Woo!
	What about the motivation?
	Is there any war you have opposed, Representative Schiff?
	Is there any war you've opposed?
	Those wars cost a lot that could be spent on housing the Americans.
	Give them a moment.
	No.
	No.
	Why would you give a powerful person a moment?
	Why would you left them alone?
	Why would you not make them answer a question?
	He's there for a photo op.
	The guy's the biggest corrupt warmongering maniacs in the world.
	And he should be confronted, not embraced.
	Yeah, here's Adam Schiff lining up for a photo op and praying with Jesse Jackson, who has consistently spoken out against the costly and inhumane wars Adam Schiff supports.
	So that's Jesse Jackson Sr. was there?
	That's what it says.
	Yeah.
	While Barack Obama was preparing for his 60th birthday at his 30-acre seaside Martha's Vineyard mansion, where 500 guests will enjoy a concert by Pearl Jam, Jesse Jackson was fighting through very visible health issues in order to be there to make a statement against mass evictions.
	And then he was seated in a chair.
	He was struggling to walk.
	And then he became the target of a giant photo op featuring this warmonger.
	I mean, he had no power to resist it.
	I don't know if he would have anyway, but, you know, Adam Schiff just swooped in out of nowhere.
	So here.
	It was disgusting.
	Disgusting.
	There's more.
	Here we go.
	Adam Schiff done but talk about a new Cold War with Russia, supporting Israel, giving money to war instead of the poor.
	He stands for everything Martin Luther King was against.
	And he's here for a phony photo op.
	This pro-war right-wing Democrat wants a photo op with Jesse Jackson when Jesse Jackson opposes every war.
	Why did you support the genocide in Yemen?
	Why do you support the brutal assaults on Palestinians?
	Hey, he's a pro-war legislator.
	Can you please public speaking?
	This is something I don't control this department.
	I don't know.
	They're here with their time.
	They are taking time for us to support them.
	They're not taking time.
	Please stop.
	War is part of the topic.
	Look, you have the freedom of speech, but this is about something else.
	This is about people's homes.
	People are going through a crisis right now.
	I'm spending $4 billion on Israel every year instead of free housing for Americans.
	You're 35.
	$4.5 trillion.
	Shadam Schiff doesn't agree.
	He should be pressured.
	This is not your friend.
	$4 billion a year to apartheid Israel.
	We need to put pressure on these people who are giving our money away that should be spent on free housing.
	So it's amazing.
	So it looked like that woman was going to ask for your manager.
	That's what I are calling her a Karen.
	I didn't.
	I just said it looked like she was going to ask for your manager.
	That's what.
	Hey, they're acknowledging the plebs, so please stop asking questions.
	Yeah.
	This is about people's housing, except for people who live outside the United States, whose housing Adam Schiff wants to destroy.
	Like people in the Gaza Strip, where he lusts to see homes bombed with bombs made by his campaign contributors, like people's homes in Venezuela, where Adam Schiff is aggressively supporting sanctions that explicitly aim to destroy Venezuela's Mission Vivienda, the free housing mission that has provided free homes to 3 million people in a country that is basically blockaded.
	That's Adam Schiff.
	And so those people don't exist.
	We're just talking about people's homes in the United States.
	I can't make those connections, according to that woman.
	And I mean, it was like something out of central casting of the kind of person that would try to shut me down.
	That's just amazing to watch somebody who has an opportunity to ask a question of a very powerful warmonger who's supported by the arms industry.
	And someone else, another citizen, would say, please leave him alone.
	He's taking time out of his life to come help us.
	Oh, Tim.
	Yeah, yes.
	She actually, I heard her before say, what an, I love you to AOC and I admire you.
	And she was there just to take selfies.
	And It's like, don't even pretend to believe in democracy and talk about free speech.
	And it's pathetic.
	The amount of sycophancy that they're enjoying was disgusting to watch.
	But I'm not going to go scream at AOC and Corey Bush.
	If they will give me interviews, then yes, I'm going to ask some critical questions.
	But Adam Schiff is someone who is just such a vile chickenhawk warmonger who actually, I mean, this is the crazy part because you saw him engaging with Corey Bush and he was giving her a big hug.
	She was clearly grateful that he was there.
	He favors putting Corey Bush in jail or fining her because she is on the record supporting the movement to boycott, divest from, and sanction Israel.
	And Adam Schiff has actually supported legislation to criminalize the BDS movement, to criminalize the speech of Americans who are in solidarity with Palestine.
	So he favors criminalizing Corey Bush.
	There are so many contradictions there that it was impossible not to say something.
	So here's what you tweeted.
	During right-wing Democrat Adam Schiff's photo op, I asked him why he focused virtually all his energy spinning out hysterical conspiracies to ramp up a new cold war with Russia, driving up a military budget that should be massively slashed and spent on free housing.
	And here we go a little bit more.
	Representative Schiff, is Putin responsible for the eviction crisis?
	Hang on, let me play that again.
	That's very funny.
	Hang on.
	Representative Schiff, is Putin responsible for the eviction crisis?
	Is Putin responsible?
	Is it Vladimir Putin's fault again?
	Does anyone know where the DNC hard drive is anyway?
	All you talk about is Putin in Russia raising the military budget that could be spent on housing for Americans.
	How about Venezuela, which builds free housing for its people?
	You support sanctions to destroy their housing program for their people.
	You support every war.
	What are you doing here pretending to be on Jesse Jackson's side when Jesse Jackson has stood against all the wars you support?
	He stood against the war.
	You should be challenged from the left.
	Jesse Jackson stood against the U.S. war on Cuba that you support the U.S. economic.
	Wow.
	That's remarkable.
	Great job, Max.
	That was fantastic that you did that.
	Thank you.
	It really, you know, that really thrills me to see someone actually confronting powerful people in public.
	And it's awesome.
	And that's the access that we have if you're there.
	So again, it's just another reason people should show up if it's still going on.
	I encourage people to show.
	I certainly would have been there had I not had two live shows to do this week.
	And those are books sold out and I have to do them.
	And so I have to write them.
	It takes a lot of writing and time.
	And so that was a bummer.
	I was hoping if it was still going on next week, I was going to be there.
	Well, if it is still going on next week, I'll be there.
	So we'll see.
	But, all right.
	So you so you think that what Joe Biden did today, because we just, I'm getting announced, I'm getting information that he's going to announce a targeted eviction moratorium.
	Targeted, so wherever the COVID rates are the highest, they're going to not be able to evict people according to what I'm hearing.
	And that's done for health reasons, public health reasons.
	Those people who want their homes better start getting some COVID.
	Yeah, right?
	So if you can prove you have COVID, will they not kick you out of their house?
	Again, if they really cared about people's health, they would give us health care.
	How about that?
	How about give us health care?
	If they really cared about people's health.
	Exactly.
	How about, I mean, it just goes back to Medicare for all.
	This is what they get instead of Medicare for All is a targeted moratorium in places where people are very sick and don't have health care.
	And we all know, people who watch this.
	Go ahead.
	Sorry, I got to get this off my chest.
	There's this disgusting op-ed that just appeared in the New York Times by a person who writes for the Kaiser Family Foundation calling to raise insurance rates on people who refuse to be vaccinated.
	So basically someone who works for the nonprofit arm of the insurance industry is calling to raise insurance rates.
	And I see all these resistance accounts and Democratic accounts actually promoting that.
	I mean, it just shows how detached they are from creating any program that would actually answer these problems.
	And they actually want to raise insurance rates.
	So it's just this detachment there.
	And now that the celebration and the self-congratulation over the targeted moratorium, it's just pathetic.
	So the study, we reported on the show, they did a study that showed that single-payer healthcare, if we had single-payer healthcare in the United States, would have saved one-third of all the deaths from COVID.
	I'm pretty sure 600,000 people are dead from COVID.
	That would be 200,000 people that could have been saved if we had single-payer health care.
	So this idea that Trump was the irresponsible one and he doesn't give a shit, he didn't.
	Neither does Joe Biden and the Democrats.
	They're all, it's again, it's one-party system, and we're seeing it play out right now.
	This is a one-party, you're not getting health care.
	We're not ending the wars.
	They're ramping up the military budget.
	They ramped up the military budget so much already under Joe Biden, enough to end homelessness.
	They could have done that.
	They could have given people homes.
	They're not doing that.
	They're doing the exact opposite.
	They're bankrupting people and they're not giving them a living wage.
	They're not giving them health care.
	They're not getting them student debt relief.
	And they're ramping up the drug war.
	That's what Joe Biden's doing.
	He's ramping it up the drug war.
	I'm not kidding.
	Well, that was going to be my next question to Corey Bush is, you know, what do you think of your colleagues abstaining on the vote, voting present on the vote to increase funding for the Capitol Police, which would have been arresting everybody if this actually turned into a proper occupation?
	I thought we were about defunding the police.
	And I never got to ask that.
	No.
	I never got to ask Ilhan Omar, why did you vote for the State Department Appropriations Bill, which pays for military aid to Israel?
	I mean, you're supposed to be on our side there.
	What's the deal?
	But these are questions that should have been asked.
	And, you know, we had that opportunity.
	I don't know if this is going to end, but I just wanted to make another point about Adam Schiff's presence there.
	It really does feel like, you know, in Congress, there are structural issues that explain the squad's pathetic performance, but there are also personal reasons.
	You know, you form personal relationships with people, and you could see AOC becoming part of the team after January 6th.
	They all felt traumatized and they were psychologically bonding with one another despite whatever political differences they had because they were brought together by the out group, the scary Trumpers who had run up in the Capitol and made them feel threatened for their lives.
	And that's happening again here with Adam Schiff and these, you know, this absolute warmonger and Chuck Schumer, like the ultimate tool of Wall Street, coming down there to blast Their protest.
	And you lose that personal relationship with these power players who are veterans if you start actually withholding your vote and using it as leverage.
	And then they start to assassinate your character and demonize you, do what they did to Tulsi Gabbard, who was effectively castigated from the party.
	And you don't want that.
	I see it happening.
	I saw a disturbing display with Nina Turner yesterday where she's running against a Democrat who's backed by Hillary Clinton, also backed by Democrats for a pro-Israel majority, whatever that AIPAC front group is, which is one of its major funders, is Bob Kraft, who gave Donald Trump a million dollars.
	So you basically have a Trump supporter supporting Nina Turner's opponent.
	But Nina Turner got a big boost from someone named Bukhari Sellers, who is a literal creation of the Israel lobby, whose whole career has been backed by APAC.
	He's basically APAC's main black surrogate.
	He speaks at their convention all the time.
	His father is a famous civil rights leader, Cleveland Sellers, but he chose to embrace apartheid Israel and to basically become Bukhari sellout.
	Why is he endorsing Nina Turner?
	It feels like if I want to be conspiratorial, that the lobby is hedging its bets and that if she wins, they want to have some skin in the game and they want to have someone who's close to her who can limit her propensity to actually speak out against this monstrous lobbying force and in support of Palestinian rights.
	And it feels like that the process where we see the squad getting brought deeper and deeper into the Democratic Party might have taken place again today by claiming that they moved mountains because Biden gave them what they want, met their very limited demand.
	Chicago, we've added a second show August 7th.
	Go to jimmydoorcomedy.com for a link for tickets.
	We're going to be in Chicago August 7th, and then we're going to Portland.
	We're going to Sacramento.
	We're going to, where else are we going?
	We're going to Las Vegas.
	We're going to lots of places.
	Go to jimmydoorcomedy.com for a link for all the tickets.
	I'm here with Max Blumenthal.
	He's the editor of their investigative journalism website, The Gray Zone, and he's a co-host of the Moderate Rebel podcast with Ben Norton.
	And recently, they got a frivolous lawsuit that almost bankrupted them, almost took them down.
	Here's the headline: A judge tosses frivolous lawsuit by heiress Sulome Anderson seeking to destroy the gray zone.
	The District of Columbia Superior Court has rejected a frivolous million-dollar lawsuit claiming libel, defamation, and tortuous conspiracy filed by writer Suleiman or Anderson against the Gray Zone editor, Max Blumenthal, and his assistant editor, Ben Norton.
	The judge's decision put an end to the entitled ERA's three-year-long campaign to smear and bankrupt the gray zone with the help of a powerful DC lawyer closely linked to the Israeli lobby.
	It was a humiliating resolution to a legal assault that threatened to impose serious chilling effect on independent media and press freedom had it been successful.
	Sulome's suit was triggered by a May 2018 Grey Zone article entitled, Sulome Anderson's Admits Her Supposed Hezbollah Source Incredibly Unreliable, which showed she published blatant misinformation falsely alleging Iranian attacks on Israel-occupied territory that, if true, could have triggered a regional war.
	A clearly embarrassed Sulome retaliated against the report, which consisted primarily of her own admission that her sources were not credible, with social media tirades defaming the Grey Zone as a Russian propaganda conspiracy site.
	Now, Max, give me the details on this.
	Who is she?
	Why did she get in your crosshairs and tell me all about this?
	Your audio's off for some reason.
	No, no, no, it's good.
	I was just on mute.
	But I barely knew who Salome Anderson was before she started appearing out of nowhere in all of these mainstream publications, foreign policy, the nation, there were other places,
	where she was basically claiming that she had inside high-level sources in one of the most secretive organizations in the world, which the intelligence services of Israel and the United States have been,
	have struggled to penetrate, that she had gotten inside Hezbollah, the Lebanese political and military movement, and was able to provide all of these details, which always cast Hezbollah in a very bad light from the field.
	And it was obviously fake.
	And she was obviously being led around by a con artist fixer.
	And I've spent time in Lebanon.
	I have good connections there with journalists who spend, who live there and other people who are around the scene there and who are in the Dahia district, for example, in Beirut, which is one of the bases of Hezbollah, Shia majority district of the city of Beirut.
	And they just laughed at these reports.
	There's no way she would have gotten this access.
	And they knew that there was this fixer who was basically making a lot of money with these parachute journalist dupes coming in and dropping as much as $10,000 on him to basically round up some guys to say that they're Hezbollah commanders or high-level Hezbollah figures and then provide quotes for journalists.
	And of course, then they dupe the editors and make this organization look exactly like Mike Pompeo would want it to look and provide all these military details about how they're planning to strike Israel at any moment.
	Basically, one night, she just went on a rampage on Twitter where she said that Iran was attacking the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights.
	So basically, she was announcing that a regional war that could have turned into a world war had begun.
	And she kept going, my Hezbollah source says Iran is striking Israel and showing footage of missiles.
	And then she comes in for derision and mockery and deletes the tweets and says, my Hezbollah source is proven unreliable.
	This is wrong.
	So Ben Norton, who is an editor at the Gray Zone, he writes an article.
	Salome Anderson's Hezbollah source admits her Hezbollah source is unreliable.
	It's like the first admission on the record that all these stories are basically fake.
	And there's nothing legally actionable about what he wrote.
	But what she did was obviously she was conferring with all of these kind of neocon sources and the Syria regime trolls that had come after you, Jimmy.
	And they decided that they could weaponize her because she was careless enough to do it and her powerful connections, which I can talk about in a second, to stage this legal action against us that was going to be a phishing expedition.
	And they thought that it would prove that the gray zone was like this Russian propaganda site that Vladimir Putin had recruited me to set up.
	They somehow thought they would prove something for which there is no proof and never will be because it's just a gigantic McCarthyite lie.
	But they wanted to also just harass me, and she was willing to put herself in this situation.
	Why?
	Because Salome Anderson turns out to be the daughter of Terry Anderson, who is one of the most high-profile U.S. hostages in history.
	He was taken hostage in Beirut while he was working there during the Lebanese civil war as a reporter.
	And once he got out, he worked with this high-powered lawyer named Stuart Neuberger to sue the government of Iran in a U.S. federal court.
	And Iran isn't exactly going to show up with its own lawyer.
	They're not going to have the Iranian Dershowitz come to court and actually argue a case.
	They're not even able to.
	This guy Neuberger, he basically made a career out of suing al-Qaeda and Iran and the government of Sudan and all these sanctioned official enemies that can't show up in court.
	So he really, like, who is he arguing against?
	Nobody.
	And he's arguing, and he's the defendant is one of the most hated entities in a U.S. federal court.
	So Terry Anderson gets something like, I can't even remember the sum, tens and tens of millions of dollars.
	I mean, close to $100 million.
	And Neuberger clearly becomes like the family lawyer.
	So she has this powerful lawyer who works for Crowell and Mooring, the most powerful law firm in D.C., one of the biggest corporate law firms in the country.
	And she starts threatening us after this Ben Norton article comes out, factually reporting on her own admission that her sources are bogus.
	And she said, she's taunting us.
	I wish I could see your faces when your client is served and you see the letterhead.
	You're playing with the big boys now.
	She said it to my friend Bill Moran, who has defended me before.
	I wish I could see your faces.
	I'm done trading insults.
	She says, this has very little to do with defaming me, even though it's going to be a defamation suit.
	It has to do with your assault on a free press and the reasons behind it.
	So criticizing her, this entitled Trust Fund Neocon, is an assault on the free press.
	And she's going to sue us for publishing a critical article about herself.
	And she then, you know, promotes her lawsuit on Medium.
	This is about something much more important than my feelings.
	It's about fighting a coordinated effort to attack, discredit, and endanger journalists whose work counters a certain political line, which is exactly what she was doing with us and all of her Russia Gator and Syria regime changer buddies who wanted to target the gray zone because we were busting all their propaganda.
	So we actually had to show up in court.
	We had a hearing in July 2019.
	We actually had to see her lawyer, Neuberger, in action.
	And I guess he wasn't used to arguing against a real lawyer or anything.
	But it didn't work out too well for them.
	Their lawsuit was based on accusing us, me and Ben Norton, of controlling 10 anonymous John Does on Twitter.
	And basically, because anonymous accounts, including an account that went by the name Time Traveling Russian Hacker, said mean things about her or joked that she was a Mossad agent, we were responsible for them.
	And they needed discovery and all of our direct messages and email records and chats and everything to prove that we were controlling this secret troll farm to make Salome Anderson look bad and to destroy her wonderful journalistic career, which she was doing a good enough job of destroying on her own.
	And so as we had to deal with this assault, I learned that Salome Anderson had inherited tens of millions of dollars for herself.
	And she was basically spending it on a drug-fueled lifestyle of decadence.
	And the money, where did it come from?
	The money came from the people of Iran.
	Basically, all the money that her father got and that she got that went straight up her nose, according to her own admission in her own memoir, which is all about being the hostage's daughter, it came from stolen Iranian assets.
	Basically, because Iran was put under sanctions, all of the assets that it held abroad in U.S.-controlled banks and elsewhere was taken.
	And then it was given to her to spend while people in Iran were experiencing terrible deprivation.
	I mean, right now they're suffering enormously under U.S. sanctions.
	And so this just added another layer of just sheer sleaze to this person, the plaintiff, Salome Anderson, and her attack on us because she was actually seeking no less than $1 million in this lawsuit.
	She and her personal troll squad online would talk about their plans to seize my house, which is not exactly some suburban McMansion.
	They were talking about plans to take everything I had and to destroy the gray zone while she and her family had basically pissed away the stolen wealth of the Iranian people.
	I mean, the levels of sickening sleaze just get deeper and deeper until you reach the conclusion where Salome Anderson finally got shut down by a DC circuit court judge.
	So this is a big victory, right, for you personally and the gray zone.
	Now, shouldn't she, isn't there a thing called anti-slap legislation, which is supposed to fight against that, what she's doing to you?
	Yeah, I guess it's been a while since I thought about this case because it's been like over a month since it was decided.
	But it does seem that they're actually attempting to appeal this decision to avoid having to pay legal fees under anti-slap legislation.
	This was a textbook, strategic lawsuit against public participation.
	And there is anti-slap legislation in Washington, D.C., where they brought the lawsuit, where Salome Anderson showed up after complaining on Twitter about missing her flight and drinking wine all night and then sat there while her lawyer ranted against the judge and demanded discovery and that he allow additional defendants to come in.
	That absurd lawsuit fits perfectly under anti-slap legislation.
	And so what they should do is pay for the hard work that our lawyers had to do.
	And that's hopefully what will happen.
	That would be the best resolution here.
	That would be partly justice, but it also felt like justice for us to be able to speak After years of just being smeared by her while we were unable to speak about this.
	And she really doesn't have any response to what we had to say.
	Well, she got embarrassed in court, and she's going to have to pay your legal fees.
	But this is the same crowd of people that came after you, the Danny Golds, the Oz Katterje's, the Francesca Fiorentinis.
	I mean, her, I don't know if she promoted the lawsuit, but Jonathan Chait promoted the lawsuit and called us domestic extremists.
	He was basically suggesting we should have been prosecuted by the FBI for our political beliefs because they diverge from his repulsive neoliberalism.
	Jake Tapper retweeted Salome Anderson promoting the lawsuit.
	So he effectively endorsed it.
	But, you know, just a who's who of fanatical regime changers were supporting this lawsuit.
	And let's look at what this lawsuit would have done.
	This lawsuit would have ended independent media.
	It wouldn't have just ended the gray zone if it succeeded.
	It would have ended independent media and it would have ended social media because anyone would be liable for anything anyone who might be seen as ideologically agreeing with them said on social media.
	You don't have to know them.
	You don't have to be commanding them to say certain things, but we were being sued for people simply because they had similar views.
	And if we hadn't been able to have access to a lawyer, who knows what would have happened?
	There could just be, there would be a flood of lawsuits like this.
	And it would just absolutely obliterate online media.
	So this was the real attack on the free press.
	And then she even admitted that we didn't defame her, and it has nothing to do with defamation.
	It was just about smearing us and trying to go on this phishing expedition.
	So this is a direct attack on the free press.
	And you have all of these journalists promoting this assault on a free press.
	It shows that they don't believe in anything except assaulting their own enemies.
	I mean, Liz Wall promoted it.
	This is the lady who did the fake Russia gate stunt, resigning from RT, supposedly over the annexation of Crimea and was coordinating with neocons and thought it would make her a celebrity journalist.
	And she wound up becoming, she couldn't even make it to the D list.
	You have CJ Worleyman, Whirleyman, one of the biggest doofuses on Twitter.
	He's a big plagiarizer.
	That guy's a, he's a, he's a self-admitted plagiarizer.
	He's been caught many times plagiarizing, no?
	I think there were over 40 cases of plagiarism with him at Alternet.
	Yeah.
	And now, you know, he went from being an Islamophobic new atheist to being basically, you know, the white jihadi ally who promotes al-Qaeda and praises Turkey's military assaults inside Syria, calling it a humanitarian and righteous war.
	This like himbo doofus surfer is like one of the top pro-al-Qaeda influencers on Twitter.
	It's absolutely absurd.
	I mean, his love for jihadist forces in Syria is so extreme that the media spokesman for Javed el-Nusra, which is the Syrian wing of al-Qaeda, actually personally reached out to thank him for what he was doing.
	And then Natasha Bertrand promoted the lawsuit, one of the greatest upwards failing Russia gate frauds of our time.
	I mean, she was pushing the steel dossier left and right.
	She was pushing the, you know, the documents claiming that, you know, that all the everything we learned about Hunter Biden in Ukraine was Russian disinformation.
	And she was pushing the phony Russian bounty story.
	And so, of course, she wanted to shut us down.
	You have, I don't know, Jonathan Katz.
	I mean, you're this guy from the New America Foundation pushing it.
	The New American Foundation is like a Clintonite.
	It's basically where the Clintonites go to.
	So why do all these people, why they all hate you?
	Because they all love war.
	They all love the State Department CIA propaganda.
	I mean, John Schindler, the prolific sender of unsolicited dick pics, is a former NSA spook who loves.
	I mean, I don't know if he got erect from revelations of mass surveillance and bulk collection or what, but this is his agenda.
	And we represent everything they hate.
	Casey Michelle, this little McCarthyite, he's constantly trying to prove that everyone's a traitor to the U.S. He works with all these U.S. government-funded cutouts while calling everyone else a Russian spy.
	He promoted Salome Anderson's lawsuit.
	And this is a guy, besides being obsessively pro-war and these people just being a bunch of imperialist operatives, they're dumb as fuck.
	I mean, Casey Michelle actually thought that he nailed us when he wrote, still have no idea who's funding that pro-Assad, pro-Kremlin, pro-Maduro gray zone project site, but someone's running their social media operations from Nicaragua.
	And he thought he nailed us.
	He got us.
	He proved showing where page management on Facebook is emanating from an IP address in Nicaragua that the Ortega regime was managing our social media because they were secretly the ones behind the gray zone.
	We're actually a Nicaraguan propaganda site.
	It turns out that Ben Norton lives in Managua.
	So that's what Casey Michelle's journalism is basically worth.
	So Ben tweeted a hilarious tweet of himself in front of a Sandinista monument in Managua.
	Wow, it's sure a mystery who that could be.
	I mean, who else?
	I mean, who else would be?
	We have so many people that we named who promoted this lawsuit, but they all share in common a love for empire and strong belief in all the regime change propaganda that we got about Syria and Russia gate.
	So this goes to show you what if you push back against the war narrative, you will have many enemies.
	I've experienced that here.
	Me, just a Jagoff comedian in my garage.
	I've gotten hit pieces on me by the Washington Post and the CNN calling me a conspiracy theorist who denies the gas attacks in Syria, which and call them a flat false flag.
	They were.
	They were false flags.
	Yeah, and then they'll never in those reports mention the names of the OPCW whistleblowers who were on the fact-finding mission.
	They'll never mention those names.
	And they'll never mention that I was proven correct.
	They just leave that smear up there on Wikipedia, which is why you can't trust Wikipedia.
	But listen, so you guys are getting a lot of powerful enemies.
	Why?
	Because you're telling the truth.
	Just like I have someone like Neera Tandon wanting to get me banned from social media.
	Same thing, Keith Olberman.
	I mean, if you tell the truth about pro-war People, they want to immediately censor you and put you out of business.
	That's what they want to do.
	Go ahead.
	Yeah, I mean, this was a private intelligence operation.
	And I noticed that before Salome Anderson announced her lawsuit, Michael Weiss, who's someone who is at least U.S. intelligent adjacent, who ran something called the Interpreter through a U.S. government propaganda organization spun out of the U.S. out of the CIA,
	Radio Free Europe, who was involved in advising and doing all sorts of propaganda for the CIA-backed Syrian opposition throughout the Syrian dirty war, who was an editor at the Daily Beast.
	He's an editor at Coda Story, which is backed by the State Department.
	He's got his hands in all these kind of spook cookie jars that he called for me to be sued and basically called for a journalist who I exposed as basically working with the U.S.-backed opposition in Nicaragua.
	He called for him and his family to sue me.
	He called for him to sue me to get the right of discovery to determine if the hit piece on him was done in coordination with the government whose abuses he reported on.
	So he's talking about the Nicaraguan government.
	And won't that be interesting, Weiss said.
	So basically, that tweet looks a lot like it reminds me a lot like the strategy that Salome Anderson employed.
	So we were targeted with what I would consider to be a private intelligence operation.
	And when you actually have an effect in mobilizing people and promoting awareness about the national security state, about the empire, and having a real effect, they will try to assassinate you, but not physically.
	They just use character assassination and discrediting and playing, catering to popular prejudice without actually engaging your real arguments about the Syrian gas attacks, for example, to paint you as a conspiracist,
	to paint you as insane, to paint you as not just a Putin supporter, but someone who is directly controlled and financed by Vladimir Putin or some other official dictator, all of these frames.
	And it was very, I don't know if I would say very effective, but it was potent during the Trump era because of the Russia Gate narrative.
	And I always said, you know, RussiaGate will blow back on the left.
	It's going to make it so much harder for those of us on the left who are advocating just peaceful relations between powerful nuclear-armed countries to not be painted as secret agents and be targeted with these McCarthyite attacks.
	And that happened.
	It happened just through this and through all the attacks you're seeing against you.
	And so now, you know, Russia Gate's over.
	So what are they going to do to us?
	Well, there's the Brown Red Alliance that is secretly in league with Trump supporters and MAGA.
	Then there's the COVID issue.
	If you question the quote-unquote science in any way, you're immediately removed from platforms.
	But having been through all of these different sagas and come out of the other side against this private intelligence operation, it's hard to believe that all of these mechanisms being imposed on social media are there to actually protect the public from misinformation.
	It's pretty obvious.
	And we should also talk about the jailing of Craig Murray.
	It's pretty obvious that it's there to protect the public from alternative sources of information that contravene the agenda and the imperatives of a failed imperial establishment.
	And Craig Murray's jailing, if you read the judge's decision, this wretched judge, in her decision, jailing Craig Murray under an obscure charge of jigsaw identification, making him the first journalist in the UK prosecuted and jailed in 50 years for anything like this,
	she distinguished between him as an independent citizen journalist and credentialed established media, basically corporate media or Western state media, you know, the BBC or Sky News or whatever.
	So that, The Guardian.
	So basically, if someone from The Guardian had done what Craig Murray had done in Alex Selman's trial, then they wouldn't have gone to jail.
	But Craig Murray's going to jail because there's no manager that you can call on him.
	You can't control him.
	And Craig Murray has just routinely embarrassed the British national security establishment, being punished for it.
	He's being thrown in jail.
	He's just had a new child.
	He's suffering health issues.
	And he's going to jail for eight months.
	So they're coming for us.
	We need to band together and see what this is about.
	They're coming for us.
	There's no doubt about it.
	They have been coming for us.
	All right.
	And that's why Keith Olbermann said that.
	If he could get you to push a button, get you thrown in jail, he'd do so.
	They're the real authoritarians.
	That's right.
	There's an authoritarian left.
	I saw it immediately.
	I saw it with Stephen, with not only Crowder, but Carlos Maud.
	I saw it with the Humanist Report, who considers himself the leftist, super pro-censorship, super in support of TYT.
	These people are gross.
	And now we're getting visited.
	And now they're coming for us.
	And those are the people who never stick their chin out to do anything, right?
	Those are the people who'll never stick their chin out to do something controversial, like report against the war narrative in a real way or even debunk RussiaGate.
	Those are people who were afraid to even talk about RussiaGate.
	Those are cowards and pussies who hide behind censorship.
	And it's horrible.
	And you're right.
	Keith Olbermann is now getting it out there to say I should be banned from all social media.
	And you heard the president's press secretary say, if you're banned from one platform, you should be banned from all of them.
	We also, I also have tweets from Nera Tandon, who's in the Biden administration, saying that I'm doing vicious attacks on her and should be taken down, just like just like Steven Crowder.
	It's nuts what's going on.
	You know, that's real.
	So there's people inside the White House targeting independent journalists.
	And that's happening.
	It's all on the basis of misinformation or disinformation, which means that they determine what the truth is.
	What's the ultimate aspect of the ultimate distillation of the authoritarian mentality is that only they know what the truth is.
	Except the truth is constantly shifting to the point where Fauci will admit things now that were considered misinformation or dangerous six months ago.
	Yeah, or conspiracy theories, right?
	Like that the virus originated in a lab.
	That was, you weren't even allowed to say that.
	You weren't allowed to say that.
	I don't, you know, yeah, you weren't allowed to say that.
	Now everyone's saying that now because U.S. intelligence and the Biden administration decided they could embarrass China by starting to stir up This conspiracy, which could ultimately blow back on them.
	I mean, China's now pushing the Fort Dietrich conspiracy.
	So, yeah, well, I'm just giving that as an example of how what's being allowed to be talked about is always constantly.
	So, you couldn't talk about it, correct?
	You would be considered if you had said that vaccines do not prevent transmission and that you can still carry the same viral load as a double vaccinated person as someone who is unvaccinated.
	If I had said that like a couple months ago, that you'd have been taken down.
	Always the case, and that we were going to suffer some social problems as a result of it.
	But I was afraid to say it.
	I've been afraid to say it because that's what will get you kicked off social media.
	And now, Fauci has come out and admitted it when this was known from the beginning.
	All right, we got to run.
	Max, I appreciate you coming on.
	Thanks for your great reporting down at the protests at Capitol Hill.
	And thanks for all the reporting you guys do at the Grey Zone.
	Your anti-imperialism work is fantastic.
	Everybody, check out Max's work over at the Gray Zone and his podcast, The Moderate Rebels with Ben Norton.
	Thank you so much for coming on.
	Thanks, Jimmy.
	And also, check out my new live stream.
	It's just a live stream project I'm doing at Rockfin called Foreign Agents.
	And I should be on tomorrow talking more about the eviction moratorium when we know more about if and how it resolves.
	So, yeah, join Rock Finn.
	You get access to everyone there.
	And I'll launch, you know, I'll do an intro at our YouTube channel at the Gray Zone.
	So you can find me there too.
	And I'll put up the announcement on Twitter.
	But that's a new thing we're doing.
	So thanks a lot.
	Thanks as always.
	Okay, fantastic.
	Hey, former President Barack Obama is calling me.
	Hello.
	Hey, Jimmy.
	I'm former President Barack Obama.
	How are you doing?
	Good.
	Always good to hear it.
	Hey, have you been listening to my new podcast with the boss?
	The boss?
	No, not Jamie Dimon, Bruce Springsteen, the boss.
	We got a podcast together called Renegades.
	No.
	We're renegades.
	Look out, America.
	For Mavericks.
	And he's the boss.
	Wow.
	What do you guys talk about?
	You know what I do?
	I'm just a boy from New Jersey.
	Hey, you know, there's a lot more to that phone call, but we don't have time in today's podcast.
	How do you hear the entire phone call?
	You got to become a premium member.
	Go to JimmyDorkomedy.com, sign up.
	It's the most affordable premium program in the business.
	Today's show was written by Ron Placone, Mark Van Landowitz, Steph Zamorano, Jim Earl, Mike McRae, and Roger Rittenhouse.
	All the voices performed today by the one and the only of the inimitable, Mike McRae, who can be found at MikeMcRae.com.
	That's it for this week.
	you be the best you can be, and I'll keep being me.
	Don't freak out!
	I'm not kidding!
	Don't freak out!
	Don't freak out!
	Do not freak.
	Don't freak out.
	Do not freak.
	Do not freak.
	Do not freak out.
	Don't bring out.

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