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Nov. 21, 2024 - Jimmy Dore Show
01:02:58
20241121_11_22_2024_TJDS_Podcast_-_112124_11.47AM
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you establishment media sucks all gaslighting so good luck bullshit we can't afford fomenting this Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh Watch and see as a jackdog comedy who speeds and jumps the medium and hits them head on.
It's the Chimitor show.
So I just want to show you that they've been doing this to Tulsi Gabbard since I was a surrogate for her presidential campaign.
And now, so this is Donald Trump's pick to oversee U.S. intelligence.
Tulsi Gabbard has raised alarms as she embraces a worldview mirroring the Kremlin's playbook.
It also mirrors my playbook.
We should not put Ukraine into NATO.
We should not arm NATO and we shouldn't expand NATO, which is what we did to provoke Russia.
That's why they're trying to get us nuked with Russia right now, because America also embraces that worldview, and that makes America complicit with Putin.
Right.
So this is the New York Times.
So most Americans agree with her, but they're going to call that Kremlin's playbook.
That is just right.
That is like North Korean old Soviet Union, China-style propaganda.
But here it is right in the New York Times because that's what the New York Times is.
And that's why we have a show.
By the way.
North Korea had nuance compared to the New York Times.
That's right.
That's right.
So this is, it used to be called McCarthyism.
That used to be the worst thing you could do.
You know, a lot of people did a movie.
Oh, who's George Clooney?
Meryl Streep.
They were the star of a George Clooney was a star of a movie that was all about McCarthyism.
You remember that?
What?
Oh, yeah.
What was that?
What was that?
Good night, good luck.
Good night and good luck.
Oh, well, he's the one that decided for the DNC to kick Biden out.
George Clooney.
So I'm not speaking to him.
So here it is, how Tulsi Gabbard became a favorite of Russian state media.
So this is what they do.
This is why people hate the media.
And so this is Barry Weiss.
She used to work.
She used to work for the New York Times, and she is in many respects, a horrible person.
But in many respects, she's just an average, your average New York Times chump.
She's since left the New York Times, and now she goes and simps for Benjamin Netanyahu and a genocide.
What's turned on her?
I mean, she's like, I talked to her on the phone one time, did I tell you that?
No, she used to be, she used to be for free speech.
Now she's not because she found speech she doesn't like, which is pro-Palestinian protester speech.
Back in the day, she was like that.
Way back in college, she was like that.
She was like a history of that, of attack, trying to suppress other people's speech.
Then in New York Times, it blew back on her and she left.
But that programming of like, you dare not criticize the Likud party.
Yeah.
Not even Israel.
It's not even supporting Israel.
You got to support Likud.
You have to support one party.
Yeah.
Likud.
You talk to her on the phone.
Yeah, because I was going to maybe do a show.
Me and Kyle were going to maybe do pussies at this event called Did Women, Was the Sexual Revolution Good for Women?
And we were going to go on to a comedy thing, but they were like, maybe we should get a female comedian instead.
So they did that.
So, but I mean, your characters are basically females.
Anyway.
Yeah.
We are the new men.
So she went on Joe Rogan and she smeared that back when the old smear against Tulsi was that she was in bed with Assad of Syria because she told the truth about Syria and that, again, the United States was funding a proxy war and we were trying to do we trying to decapitate the leader of Syria like we did in Iraq,
like we did like we did in Libya and we lost like we did in Afghanistan, like we did like we did in Iran in 1953.
This is what we do.
Not a single thing has been good for America that we did.
Not a single thing.
It's been good for very a small amount of people.
That's the goal is to lose the war.
Not to win it because then how we get all those resources.
So Tulsi Gabbard called out the United States policy in Syria.
And so they immediately go into and they start smearing her.
Well, Barry Weiss revealed herself to be one of the more empty-headed idiot smearers of Tulsi.
And we did a live show and we took her down.
So people have been passing this video around on Twitter.
So I figured I'd show it to you again to show you what kind of moronic morons.
Is that a term moronic morons?
That might be redundant over and over again.
It's not like willfully stupid.
It's not like she couldn't know things.
She's smart enough to know things, but they on purpose for status, maintaining status, there's dumb on purpose.
So this was our most popular video we've ever done on this channel.
It got over 5 million views.
So I'm going to show you a snippet of it and let's enjoy it.
And here we go.
Kristen Gillibrand.
So they're talking about people who were running for president in the Democratic Party in 2019.
And she says Christian Gillibrand.
And Joe Rogan says Tulsi Gabbard.
And she says, oh, monstrous.
Watch this.
Kristen Gillibrand.
Monstrous.
Monstrous.
Ideas.
Well, when she was 22, she had...
What does that mean?
Okay.
I don't know if you heard Joe goes, what does that mean?
And she says, it's a toady.
I think that I used that word correctly, Jim.
Go to Jamie to back it up.
That's what's called a received opinion.
Right?
That's not her own opinion.
She's heard other people in her neoliberal bubble say that stuff.
So she just repeats it.
She doesn't even know what the insult means.
She writes for the New York Times.
Fucking, of course, she does.
Of course, she writes for the New York Times.
Better than an Israel toady.
Yeah, here we go.
I'm Barry Weiss.
I've got strong opinions.
Wait, will you look that up?
Just take a sec.
She literally tells so much.
Can you check what Today means?
Toe in the line.
Is that what it means?
No, I think it's like a.
It's like an angry toad.
It's like a CIA talking point.
I think it's a CIA talking.
Jamie, is there a word describing somebody who has no point of view of their own or someone just regurgitates views they read on Twitter?
Oh, you have that?
Is that a picture of me next to that?
It's called a Tody.
It's called a Tody.
This gets worse.
This doesn't get better, by the way.
It's going to get worse.
A-D-I-E.
I think it means what I think it means.
Ah!
Three times he asked her, what does it mean?
And she's scratching her head.
She's chewing her pen.
Definition of toadies.
So they bring it up.
She's a bad person who flatters or defers to others for self-serving reasons.
A sycophant.
So she's an Assad sycophant.
Is that what you're saying?
Yeah, that's proof.
That's proven about her.
It's known.
What did she say?
I don't remember the details.
I've read it.
She's atrocious.
A monstrous fuse.
What are they?
I don't know.
I don't know.
I bet they're pretty bad, though, right?
Right, Joe?
Don't you know about?
Can you look them up?
They're horrible.
I bet.
Somebody look them up.
What the fuck's going on?
Wait a minute.
Everybody at the New York Times always agrees with me.
Say that before we say that about her.
We should probably read it rather.
Well, I have read it.
So, Joe Rogan, Joe Rogan, comedian, Fear Factor host, Joe Rogan, who announces guys fighting in cages is now schooling the New York Times journalists.
Ah!
That's how shitty they are.
That's how easy it is.
All my friends ask me, Jimmy, what do you do with the news?
It's easy.
This is what I'm up against.
It's easy.
Easy.
So Joe Rogan just asked her, well, maybe we should know what we're saying before we say those things.
I'm not a journalist, and I just spoke pot, and I'm pretty sure I'm better than you.
Oh, it gets worse.
Do you think it gets not over?
It gets worse.
I did it right now.
Oh, yeah.
Okay.
Just so we know what she said.
Look up Tulsi Gabbert.
I really enjoy talking to her.
I like her a lot.
Are you serious?
Yeah, I like talking to her.
Okay.
I like talking to her.
I don't know about.
I think she's like the mother load of bad ideas.
I'm pretty positive about that.
You're positive that she's the motherload of bad ideas.
Do you understand how words work?
I'm pretty positive.
The mother load.
I can't even name one of the loads in the mother load.
Google mother.
Google the Tulsi Gabbert mother load.
Tulsi Government.
Don't tell me about motherload.
Let me Google it.
Right now, I think she's taking a load in her pants because she didn't expect pushback from Joe Rogan.
Nobody ever pushes back at the New York Times.
Everybody just lets me call Tulsi Gabbard a Tony, and everyone pats me on the head.
It's a nice work.
But maybe I'm wrong.
Maybe I'm wrong.
Maybe.
Maybe you're wrong about the mother load of bad opinions.
You just did.
Maybe I'm wrong about the mother load.
The fucking mother load.
How do you say that?
How do you say that so convincingly?
Everyone in here is a fucking Russian apologist.
I think.
I'm not sure.
I'm going to maybe.
Could you look that up?
Could you look up?
Are you guys?
Could you look up what you are?
I just said something emphatically.
I saw 10,000 guys shooting guns the other day.
Oh, I don't know if I did.
Maybe I didn't.
It might have been water balloons.
Anyway, but you know what I mean.
Basically, it's the same thing.
We don't like Tulsi, right?
I work for the New York Times.
We've been endorsing coups since 1954.
We were on the Mosa Deck.
We were on that.
New York Times.
We were for overthrowing it.
Thank you very much.
We were on upsetting the Middle East before people even knew there was a Middle East.
So here it gets worse.
You think I'm kidding?
There's more to this.
Watch this.
Well, my take on her was that I think as a person who's coming from the left, who's also a veteran and is very articulate and sensible and a woman.
And in talking to her, we didn't get into Assad or any of those things.
But talking to her about what she feels is wrong with the current administration and the way things are running and a direction she thinks things could go in.
She had some very promising ideas.
I didn't know about this.
But doesn't she also, did she ever apologize for believing in conversion therapy?
Oh, so we just moved off your mother load where we left Assad and your mother load.
And boom, oh my god, you just, oh, do you ever get whiplast when you switch fucking topics that fast?
I thought we were talking about the Assad mother load.
What happened to that?
That's all gone.
Now, does she ever apologize for this horrible thing that she fucking apologized for a million times that she did when she was a goddamn teenager?
You mean that?
Yeah.
Yes, she did.
Yeah, she did.
And her voting record that now has 100% approval rating from Human Rights Watch, that thing?
Is that that?
You mean the biggest LGBT organization in the world?
You mean that?
That one?
Monstrous.
So here we go.
Here we go.
I didn't even know she believed in conversion therapy.
Am I crazy?
Yes!
No, no, stupid.
It's a difference.
No, you're stupid on purpose.
And if you were crazy, you wouldn't be worried right now that Joe Rogan is exposing your bullshit.
As a crazy person, doesn't know they're crazy.
See, you know you're full of shit.
That's why you keep using bullshit terms like, I don't know.
Maybe, am I wrong about that?
Could I be wrong about that?
Maybe.
I'm pretty sure I'm right about that.
Here we go.
I'm almost positive this is real.
Oh my God.
In the cafeteria at the New York Times, they just tell us to say Tony and apologist just to say this.
I think the sign in the caveat of the New York Times says, I'm almost positive this is real.
And they all tap it like before they go right.
Like Notre Dame locker room.
I'm almost positive this is real.
And their editor gets them all in the room at the beginning of Newsday.
Guys, let's try to kind of maybe get it right if you can or don't worry about it.
That's the good grandma wood.
Like a center.
That's the old grandma.
I've missed that guy.
Oh, you're right.
I missed that guy.
I had so much fun with him.
You're talking about KPP.
No, I didn't know that.
I never heard that.
I did hear something about when she was very young, she was like 22, she had said something about gay marriage and civil unions that she apologized for.
Is she promoting her book?
I'm pretty sure.
And the subtlest words I've heard.
It doesn't get better.
Here we go.
It's not in Syria without informing top Democrats.
Okay, so now the guy who works with Joe Rogan brought up her thing about Syria, and here we go.
She said she went on a fact-finding mission in support of peace for Syrian people, but characterize U.S.-backed rebels as terrorists.
Because they are.
You know why?
Because they're fucking terrorists.
And we've been arming and funding the El News for Al-Qaeda and ISIS in Syria.
The goddamn CIA admits it in her own fucking paper, but it's on page 68.
Okay.
Yeah.
So she doesn't know this.
She doesn't know.
Barry Weiss has not been told this.
You know what, Jimmy?
I just want to say that if anybody wants to smear me, go right ahead as long as my photo looks this great.
Yeah, no kidding, right?
Why can't gals smile more?
Jesus Christ.
So don't you think most of the world's problems come down to gals just frowning too much?
There was a time when we'd come home and you'd greet us with a smile and we'd forget about the coup that we just organized.
Okay, so that's a snippet.
I wanted to play that for you.
That's the hilarious Paul Gilmartin at Mental Pot.
He does a that's a character he's playing, by the way.
He used to be a Republican congressman, Richard Martin from the 29th District of Ohio.
Anyway, when I talked to her on the phone, by the way, it was funny.
It was when Pasta was hosting and we were talking to that guy from that Pakistani, it's like a huge band out there when we cooed what's the soccer player, Imran Khan.
Yeah.
So America had just cooed Imran Khan because he wasn't backing the Ukraine war.
And I was talking to her on the phone about that.
And she goes, oh, that guy's crazy.
He was stalking his ex-girlfriend that I'm friends with.
She's like an airhead.
She doesn't know anything about world events.
She hangs out with very rich, fancy people.
And by the way, when she said mother load of bad ideas, she was cribbing from Sam Harris.
That's right.
That's a famous Muslim thing.
When it turned out, Sam Harris has worse ideas than Islam by a mile.
By a mile.
Quite a lot.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So I wanted to show you that.
That was our most famous or most popular video we've ever done.
It's a great panel.
Lee Camp, Paul Gilmartin, Steph Samirano, the good Graham Elwood.
Uh...
There it is.
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We have a special guest with us.
Matt Stahler is here.
He's former policy advisor to the Senate Budget Committee, who now works as director of research at the American Economic Liberties Project and serves as a visiting lecturer in the history department at Columbia University.
He's also the author of the best-selling Goliath, The Hundred Year War Between Monopoly Power and Democracy.
And you can sign up for his newsletter, big at mattstaller.substack.com.
Welcome back to the show, Matt Stahler.
Hey, Matt, how are you?
Hey, thanks for having me.
Great to see you.
I wanted to bring you on because Matt Gates is in the news.
And the big news I want to show people, I don't want to bury the lead, but Sonny Hoston was forced to issue a legal note on the view that Matt Gates was found to have done nothing wrong after a three-year Department of Justice investigation.
So one of the big smears of Matt Gates is that he somehow was having sex with underage women.
The FBI leaked that all over the media.
But of course, not only could they not substantiate that, they didn't even charge him.
They could even charge him.
Not only did he not have to get exonerated in a court of law, they couldn't even charge him.
And so Sonny Hoston, is that how you say her name on the view?
She had to say this after smearing him.
Here we go.
On screen.
Okay, Sonny, you have a legal note.
I do have a legal note.
Thank you, Whoopee.
Matt Gates has long denied all allegations, calling the claims, quote, invented, and saying in a statement to ABC News that this false smear following a three-year criminal investigation should be viewed with great skepticism.
That DOJ investigation was closed with no charges being brought.
We'll be right back.
Okay, so that's one of the greatest things.
She looks like she's in physical pain from having to admit that Matt Gates has done nothing wrong.
Awesome.
So, this is the kind of smears they're doing at this Tulsi.
They're doing it to him.
They're doing it to RFK, anybody who upsets the establishment.
So, Ezra Klein says it is worth running this thought experiment when reading these pieces.
If you've asked 10 people who care deeply about antitrust to draw up a short list of people Trump should nominate to lead the Justice Department, would any of them have named Matt Gates?
There are many.
So, you then, Matt, you replied to this, said, I deeply care about antitrust, and I can't think of anyone better on that particular issue to run the Department of Justice than Matt Gates.
That's not an endorsement of Gates.
It's just an observation that his track record on antitrust as a member of Congress is exceptional.
So, Matt, tell me what is his record as a member of Congress on Congress on antitrust legislation?
Yeah, so first, I want to give some context so people know where I'm coming from.
So, I'm a Democrat.
I voted for Kamala Harris.
I am a, I believe the Democrats run better policy.
I think they have a better track record on corporate power.
I think they are more serious about it.
So, when I said that about Matt Gates, I'm not coming from the perspective of this is a great pick.
I'm coming from somebody who wishes that Kamala Harris had won the presidency.
I mean, you know, not a huge fan of hers, but I thought she would have done a better job than Trump.
So, that's just to give you some context about who I am, what I think.
I also don't know if Matt Gates would do a good job as attorney general on corporate power because, you know, it's a different job and different priorities and whatnot.
So, I just kind of want to get that out of the way because I think it's important to sort of say who I am and what I think.
So, Matt Gates was over the last, I don't know, five years or so, starting at the tail end of the Trump administration and into the Biden administration, there's been actually a concerted attack on corporate power out of a few small agencies, the antitrust agencies.
It's not something that a lot of people have heard about, but it's very serious, and tech lobbyists are freaking out.
So, there are antitrust suits against Google, Meta, Apple, Amazon.
There's one to break up Ticketmaster.
There's some against corporate landlords, against meat packers, just like a bunch of companies.
It hasn't really, I mean, a little bit has hit what people feel, but like mostly these things take forever in the courts, which is why you probably haven't heard about most of them.
But there's been a big fight over them.
And the dynamic is essentially like 80% of the Republicans are against stronger antitrust, and 20% are for it.
80% of Democrats are for stronger antitrust, and 20% are against it.
And so, you have people on both sides.
And Matt Gates is one of the 20% of Republicans who want stronger antitrust.
And he is on the antitrust subcommittee in Congress, right?
So he has written laws about antitrust.
Most of them didn't pass, but one of them did.
That's very important.
And he has, you know, I saw him in when they were writing bills and fighting about them.
And this was kind of what led me to think he's exceptional.
Is it 3 a.m.?
So this was in 2021.
And there were a bunch of bills, none of which passed to go after big tech.
And it was this bill writing session that happened in committee.
It's called a markup had been going on all day.
And actually, going into the night, and it was an all-nighter, and it was 3 a.m. and everyone was exhausted.
And the guy who was leading the fight on antitrust said, fine, I will accept, you know, his opponents said, accept this stupid loophole that's a minor thing to help big tech and we can move on.
And people were like, it's 3 a.m.
We'll just do it.
It's not that big a deal.
And Matt Gates stood up and said, no, this is a bad idea.
And he argued against it.
And he lost.
Okay.
Everybody took a vote and we're like, we don't care.
But he was saying, we're going to fight for every inch.
And I'm going to do it even if I lose.
And I'm going to do it when no one except trillion-dollar corporations are paying attention.
And I thought that is actually astonishing.
It is rare to see people do that.
Well, there's a lot of grandstanding when the lights are on, but when it's 3 a.m. and everyone is tired and like it doesn't matter and the only thing you're going to do is piss people off.
That's when you see who people are.
And that's when I was like, oh, this guy actually does care about, in this case, big tech.
He has a good record on other parts of antitrust as well.
So why do you think that is?
I mean, why do you think a guy?
So, I mean, I have a video here I want to play because he talks about not taking money from big money donors.
Do you think that plays into it?
I think it's all part of his philosophy.
He is somebody who, you know, is anti-establishment and he's anti-establishment on national security.
He's anti-establishment on economics, on corporate power.
He's not, you know, he's not a Democrat in the way that he wants, he doesn't want to protect the institutions.
He doesn't care about norms.
And he really doesn't like big business.
He doesn't like big government and he doesn't like big business.
I don't think it's a totally coherent worldview, but it is real.
It is sincere.
It is aggressive.
It doesn't mitigate other things, but it is real.
And so what kind of person do you think Kamala Harris would have proposed for that position to fight to the antitrust to take that fight?
Can I, I just want to, before we get to that, can I just mention one thing that he did on sexual assault and sexual harassment that I think is really meaningful that nobody kind of knows?
That there are, you know, when you got, when you buy like a piece of software or you buy something and you like click on an agreement and it's a bunch of stuff in it that you don't read and you know that you're like selling your soul or whatever, right?
So people have to go through those and, you know, for everything, for their jobs, for every product we buy and so on and so forth.
And it's bullshit and the courts have said, no, no, these contracts are ironclad, even though they really shouldn't be.
Well, one of the things that you have to do when you get a job, a lot of people, they have to sign agreements saying that you give up your right to sue in court over like all sorts of different matters, right?
If you get injured or whatever, you can't sue, right?
You have to go to a private arbitration panel that's usually hired by your boss.
Well, there's one exception to that.
There's a few exceptions.
One of them is if you are subject to sexual harassment or sexual assault, you get to go to court.
They cannot force what's called an arbitration agreement on you.
And the reason for that is because a bunch of Democrats and then some Republicans fought bitterly against the Republican leadership, Jim Jordan, to actually push that through and get that signed into law.
And one of the key members who did that on the antitrust subcommittee was Matt Gates.
Now, you don't hear that.
I'm not going to speak to his character.
I'm not going to speak to anything in these ethics investigations.
But what I will say is this is really important and it probably helped a lot of people who are subjected to actual sexual harassment and sexual assault.
And that's something that we're not actually talking about.
And that is actually something that I think is worth talking about because it is an important public policy problem.
And it's something that the government, Congress, actually addressed.
So it's funny, you know, like he sounds, he sounds like he would see very little difference.
I'm one of the people who see very little difference between the parties, especially the establishment wings of each party.
And I think Matt Gates is kind of an outlier inside the Republican Party, where he's against our foreign adventure and he's against the Ukraine war funding.
And so that's what, and, you know, he's he's held the FBI's feet to the fire on corruption and investigations and his antitrust work.
I mean, everything I see, he reminds me a lot of like a Thomas Massey or a Ron Paul or something like that.
And, you know, those people I have a soft spot for.
And so I came across this video.
I just wanted to show, let me see, I might have to fast forward.
Gentlemen from Makali says we've got the strongest border bills in history.
Well, guess what?
Look at the border right now.
We didn't use sufficient leverage in the debt limit or in any other thing to actually get results on the border.
The border is a disaster, really something I don't think you're going to be campaigning on that you fixed the border.
Second, you said you streamlined regulations.
What the gentleman from Louisiana doesn't tell you is that all of the regulatory reform he was just bragging about is waivable by the stroke of a pen of someone in the Biden White House.
Do you really think you got anything for that?
It's a total joke.
And then finally, the welfare to work that the gentleman from Louisiana said we got the welfare programs that they said that they streamlined with their welfare to work stuff, they're actually going to grow because while they did work requirements, they blew out those programs with expanded eligibility.
I'm real glad you guys didn't put work requirements on Medicaid.
It probably would have resulted in Medicaid expansion.
And when it comes to how those raise money, I take no lecture on asking patriotic Americans to weigh in and contribute to this fight from those who would grovel and bend knee for the lobbyists and special interests who own our leadership, who have, oh, go all you want, who have hollowed out this town and have borrowed against the future of our future generations.
I'll be happy to fund my political operation through the work of hardworking Americans, 10 and 20 and $30 at a time.
And you all keep showing up at the lobbyist fundraisers and see how that goes for you.
I reserve.
So that's, you know, I disagree with him.
I like the idea of expanding Medicaid, but I like that he's willing to stand up against the big money donors, against his own party, his own party leadership on principles, and that he's willing to fund his, like he said, his campaign on small donations, small dollar donations, and he's not going to suck up to the.
So that's, you know, it's very rare.
I mean, this whole, our whole government, our whole country, our whole culture is run by, you know, as far as I can see, just a handful of money and interests that run everything.
And they have captured both political parties, which is why we're in the, you know, now we're forced to somehow vote for someone who's funding a genocide.
And as that is somehow the lesser of evil of anything.
So that's why I'm willing.
I like that.
That's what makes him attractive to me.
And then when I saw you tweet and the things you've told me about his antitrust, it just so why do you think what if you had a so I my guess as to why the establishment is going so overboard to try to smear him why I think they did that bogus you know why the FBI leaked their investigation into his alleged sexual crimes which they never even charged him with right was because they always knew that they couldn't control him that's a way to try to marginalize
someone discredits someone, get somebody to get on board with the establishment agenda who isn't?
What do you make of it?
Well, I don't know.
I mean, look, you know, these are always very weird, tricky things.
I've worked for politicians before and someone, you know, alleges some sort of salacious scandal and they're like, you're a staffer or you're a, you know, but what do you think?
And you're like, how am I supposed to know?
Like, I don't know what happened.
Like, I wasn't there.
I mean, like, what are you coming to me for?
Like, you're just, it's just a way of like, if he, you know, engaged in serious unlawful behavior, they should bring charges.
And, you know, one of the reasons you would say like, oh, well, they didn't bring charges.
So he didn't do it.
It's like, they didn't bring charges for a lot of people who did bad things.
So I'm not super trustworthy that like, oh, they didn't bring charges.
Therefore he didn't do anything wrong.
But on the other hand, what other choice do we have?
Right.
Due process does exist for a reason.
So I'm not inclined to be, you know, to give like huge amounts of weight to these, to these kinds of, of salacious arguments, but I think they should release the house.
You know, there's an ethics report.
I think they should release that.
I think it's worthwhile.
I mean, it is the chief law enforcement officer of the United States and that there is, you know, awe inspiring power in that position.
It isn't just a corporate power question.
He has control of the criminal division, the FBI, significant roles in national security, control of actually alcohol regulation.
Like there's all sorts of weird stuff inside DOJ.
And like, this is a big deal, right.
To be, to run this, this agency.
And I think we should know more about the nominee than less about it.
But yeah, I mean, it is like, you know, Elliot Spitzer was going after the banks and then they, you know, and then it's like, oh, he slept with, with prostitutes.
No one in politics has ever done that before.
Right.
I wonder if that's the reason.
Like, so, I mean, I think like we've seen plenty of attacks.
I mean, the, the Russiagate stuff was all made up like there's you know and I i thought trump should be impeached for you know january 6th and a number of other things but like there are there are enough conspiracies you know the war in iraq a lot of stuff around the financial crisis um you know, a lot, like, just going back that I think there's like a reason that people feel a lack of faith in the establishment in our law enforcement agencies.
I am on the payroll, so I don't feel that way.
I feel like, you know, I want to be dismissive of everybody who disagrees with people in DC because we're awesome and we always make good decisions.
But I get it.
And we've got new talking points that we're supposed to sympathize with the people, I'm told.
Sorry.
I don't know.
I sort of got sarcastic there, but I realized it wasn't that funny.
So it was off.
I'm sorry.
I do antitrust.
I'll get back to that.
No, I was smiling, Matt.
No problem.
I always find it's better when you have to explain your jokes.
That means they're good.
That's it.
The best jokes need explaining.
You need to explain it, right?
Anyway, well, I appreciate you.
I appreciate that tweet.
I appreciate your insight into Matt Gates' nomination.
And thanks for coming on.
Anything else you want to say?
I didn't give you a chance to say.
Yeah, I mean, if you want to know more, I linked in the tweet to a longer article, which really kind of goes over his record in more detail.
So that's at thebignewsletter.com where I write about antitrust.
And I think this is super interesting.
And the Trump administration is just weird and chaotic.
And I don't think he's going to go in a true anti-establishment direction, but the Gates pick did throw me and does suggest that there is something there.
So I don't know.
I mean, we'll see, but like, I don't know if he'll get confirmed and all the rest of it.
But it's like when that happened, and I'm someone who's very skeptical because I'm like seeing all these Wall Street guys in the cabinet.
I'm like, that's interesting.
That's different.
I mean, I, you know, Democrat, Kamala Harris, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
But like, this is something where like it's notable, right?
And there are big factional fights within the Trump world.
And that's what this tells me.
Yeah, there's definitely big fights happening.
There's definitely a lot of contradictions.
So all I can, as George Bush I say, it'd be prudent to wait and see how it plays out.
That's right.
Matt Stoller, I appreciate you coming on.
Thanks for your insight, pal.
Everybody check out his sub stack, mattstoller.substack.com.
Hey, thanks a lot.
Okay.
Right now, we are going to introduce our guest for the hour.
Scott Ritter is a one-time Marine intelligence officer who served in the former Soviet Union, implementing arms control agreements.
And from 1991 until 1998, he served as a chief inspector for the United Nations in Iraq, leading the search for Iraq's prescribed weapons of mass destruction.
He was later a vocal critic of the American decision to go to war with Iraq.
He is also the author of nine books, including his latest Disarmament in the Time of Perestroika: Arms Control and the End of the Soviet Union.
Pleasure to welcome Scott Ritter.
Scott, great to see you.
Thanks for having me.
Hey, Scott.
How are you, man?
Hey, Russell.
How are you doing?
Good.
Yes, you're in my neck of the woods.
I'm in the capital region.
So are you.
So I hope you're enjoying the temperate, the moderate weather today up here.
So, I mean, great to talk to you.
I would say it's ideal circumstances, but I guess that means it's less than ideal circumstances given the events of the past 24 hours.
So we're, of course, you know, here to talk primarily about Biden's recent authorization of long-range missile strikes deep inside Russian territory.
But before we get into that, I'd like to go back in time a couple of months when you spoke at a peace and freedom rally in Kingston, New York, which I actually was at.
We talked for a brief couple of minutes, and then I actually filmed this speech.
We're about to play an excerpt of in just a moment, because you spoke about how close we came to a potential nuclear war at the time when Biden almost authorized an extremely reckless escalation, similar, I suppose, in kind to the one that he just did.
So here is a brief excerpt of the speech that you made in Kingston, New York just a couple months ago.
I want to put you on notice that, and not too many Americans recognize this, on September 14th, the world almost ended.
I don't know what you're doing on Saturday, September 14th.
I don't know what you're doing with your lives.
Hopefully it was a nice day.
You're out enjoying it.
But are you aware that a politician in Washington, D.C. almost signed his name to a piece of paper?
That politician's name is Joe Biden.
He is the president of the United States.
Had he signed his name to that piece of paper, the British government, which brought that, Kier Starmer, the prime minister, would have worked with the Ukrainian government to take storm shadow cruise missiles, target them with intelligence prepared by the United States of America, load it into these missiles with British hands, then put on Ukrainian aircraft to fire against Russian targets.
This would have been an act of war by Britain and the United States against Russia.
An act of war that would have prompted an immediate Russian retaliation that would have gone outside of the borders of Ukraine, striking targets in the United Kingdom and the United States.
Now, this would not have been a nuclear attack yet, but it would have been a very serious strike, one that would have prompted the United States and NATO to strike Russia back in turn with conventional weapons, but this would have been a strategic strike, one designed to take out command and control, logistics, strategic nuclear capability.
And this would have prompted a Russian nuclear retaliation by doctrine, which in turn would have prompted an American nuclear retaliation.
And 72 minutes after this nuclear exchange began, we'd all be dead.
The World would be over.
This almost happened.
This isn't a joke, ladies and gentlemen.
This is not a drill.
This is reality.
This is what's happening right now.
The United States government is considering signing these documents still because there are people in the U.S. government that think the Russians are bluffing.
Did we, the people, empower our elected representatives to play Russian roulette with our lives?
Because that's what they're doing.
But this is Russian roulette where the gun is loaded, fully loaded.
Every time you pull the trigger, you will die.
This is the reality.
It's not one that I'm happy about.
So, you know, that was an outdoor event at a pretty busy intersection.
And I remember just being in the audience.
People were quite spellbound that.
They were quite disturbed by that.
And, you know, you went on to describe in that speech how Biden was ultimately persuaded to back down that time.
And you also described in very chilling and disturbing detail what may have happened if he hadn't.
So would you like to relay that message to the audience here to sort of set the stage for how urgent this is?
Well, I think most people, when they think of nuclear war, think of the experiences that history provides us.
That is, first of all, the United States is the only nation to have used nuclear weapons against other nations.
We dropped two atomic bombs on Japan to end World War II, one on Nagasaki, one on Hiroshima.
And these inflicted devastating casualties on the Japanese, so much so that it, even though the Japanese were moving in the direction of surrendering, it immediately broke the spirit.
And the emperor said, we're done.
It's over.
Finished.
But we take a look at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
And yes, it was devastating.
But I mean, what I hear a lot of people say is, but Scott, people are living there today.
The cities have been rebuilt.
Didn't they firebomb Dresden?
Didn't they firebomb Tokyo, Hamburg, Berlin?
I mean, you know, other cities suffered more casualties than Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Are we making a big deal out of nothing?
Is this something that really we need to worry about?
Yes, it's devastating, but it's not something that, you know, clearly Japan has come back from it.
Couldn't we?
And the point I want to make is that the bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima was a 12-kiloton bomb.
That's 12,000 tons of TNT equivalent.
The radiation was considerable.
People did die of radiation poisoning, tens of thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands.
Tens of thousands of people died immediately from the effect.
The fallout was, it haunts Japan to this day.
But it was only 12 kilotons.
The Nagasaki bomb was a little bit bigger, 15, maybe 20, different design, plutonium design.
It killed similar amounts of people, similar amounts of radiation.
If we go to war with Russia, thousands of nuclear weapons will hit the United States, averaging 500 kilotons each.
Some will be up to one megaton in size.
Some will be 750 kilotons, but the average size of the warhead will be about 500 kilotons.
I'm not much of a mathematician, but that's a lot bigger than 14 or 15 kilotons.
Yeah, that's what Donald Trump would say, not good, believe me, not good.
It's not good.
When it goes off, I don't know.
Where do most people live?
I live in Del Mar, New York, small little town of Bethlehem, small little town.
If this weapon went off over four corners, 10 miles to each side would immediately vaporize 100 million plus degree temperature instantaneously.
Everything disappears, everything, that quick.
And then the shockwave goes out even more and flattens everything.
And the heat continues to come up.
Fires will build up.
But the damage is going to be done because the bomb is going to be an airburst.
And so that means it's going to burst out but come down.
When it comes down, it's going to churn into the ground and it's going to suck everything that just got vaporized up into the air.
And it's going to inject it up there into the jets.
This is going to be highly radioactive material.
It's now going to come into the jet stream and start moving downrange, spreading deadly radiation.
Even the people that live, they're going to die because they're going to die of burns.
They're going to die of immediate radiation.
I'm talking about as they walk within minutes, their organs will liquefy.
You want to die in a nice way?
Try having your organs liquefy on you.
Other people won't be so lucky.
They're going to live another day or two before their organs liquefy.
If you guys want to know what I'm talking about, go.
HBO did a series on Chernobyl.
And the Soviet firefighters that responded initially, very brave men, didn't know what they were getting into, but they went in there and they got sick.
And they tell the story of the wife of one of the firefighters as she went to be with him.
And you get to see what having your organs liquefy looks like played out on TV.
Of course, it's not real.
It's theatrical, but it's horrible enough.
And that's what's going to happen to millions of people.
So basically, Del Mar is gone.
Town of Bethlehem is gone.
City of Albany has been flattened, radioactive.
The whole capital district is dead.
Everybody here is dead.
And that's just one weapon.
But the Russians aren't going to hit us with one weapon.
You see, this is going to be played out over and over and over again, thousands of times, each one injecting similar clouds of radioactive dust into the jet stream, darkening the skies.
History shows us there's an Indonesian island with a volcano, Krakatoa.
I think sometime in the 19th century, 1880s or so, it erupted.
It erupts with the force of one of these one megaton bombs.
The ash that was injected in the sky darkened the globe for years to come.
Temperatures dropped.
In the United States, the sun was blotted out by this.
So as these nuclear weapons go off, and they're going to go off not just here in the United States, killing everything, but also in Russia and China and everything around the world, all this highly radioactive dust will be injected.
Orders of magnitude more than what Krakatoa did.
And we will be hit by something known as nuclear winter.
Nuclear winter will kill everything that remains.
Certain areas will immediately become ice fields.
And they will remain ice fields for a decade.
That means that the hundreds of millions of bodies of dead people, dead animals, dead biological masses will be covered with ice frozen there.
Now, this is important because 10 years from now, if you live, the world will fall out.
And you're going to have to deal with billions of rotting corpses.
It'll spread disease and everything.
So as bad as your life was, if you even make it, it's going to be much worse as the world just becomes this giant, you know, disgusting, open air pit of rotting flesh.
But you're not going to make it that far because how are you going to eat?
There won't be any food.
The water you're going to be drinking is going to be radioactive.
What if I have a bunker?
You're not going to make it.
There's no bunker that's going to last 10 years.
Something goes wrong.
Nothing works for 10 years.
The generator is going to give out.
You're not going to have fuel.
You're going to die.
Ladies and gentlemen, there's no surviving a nuclear war.
There's no surviving a nuclear war.
You think you can go to Australia.
You think you go to New Zealand.
You won't survive it.
Again, 1957, Neville Schutt wrote a book called On the Beach, made into a movie, 1959.
Fantastic movie.
Remade later on, but I like the original.
And it tells the stories of the Australians as they waited for the radioactive cloud to come their way.
And it does come their way.
And eventually everybody dies.
A very sad story, a very touching story.
But the finality of all life on Earth because of a nuclear war.
That's the direction we're heading right now.
Okay.
And when people say, well, Scott, aren't you, you know, surely the Russians wouldn't do anything like this.
Well, the Russians don't want to do anything like this.
But this is an existential issue we're talking about here.
We're talking about, first of all, how many Americans realize that the national security policy of the United States towards Russia is the strategic defeat of Russia?
Today, right now, as we speak, the goal of the United States is the strategic defeat of Russia.
Now, what does this mean?
It means the collapse of Russia, the destruction of Russia, the end of Vladimir Putin's regime, the breakup of Russia.
Okay.
That's what strategic defeat means.
That's the goal right now stated by the Biden administration.
Our goal is to strategically defeat Russia.
So, therefore, Russia must evaluate everything the United States does within that framework.
That this is about trying to kill Russia.
Not, you know, solve a problem in Ukraine.
Not do this.
Not do that.
To kill Russia.
We are using the Ukrainian conflict to strategically defeat Russia.
The Russians have said, you know, we dodged a bullet back in September.
You see, we were talking about allowing these missiles to be, you know, freed up to use.
Now, just so people understand, these missiles that we're talking about aren't game changers.
This isn't, you know, technology that if unleashed by Ukraine, Russia loses the war.
That's not what's at stake here.
This is a matter that's even far worse.
You see, Ukraine's already using attack on these missiles.
They're using them against Russian forces in the Donbass region, in Zaporizhia, in Kherson.
They're using them to strike Crimea.
You know, and you're like, well, isn't that Russia?
Well, these are Russian territories under dispute.
And so, Russia has given the West a pass, saying, all right, we're at war in these areas.
You can use those weapons.
We won't nuke you because these are areas.
And Russia's winning.
I mean, we were using attack arms.
We were using storm shadows.
They're using the scalp, which is the French version.
And the Russians are winning.
They've solved this all.
So then the question is, well, why is it a big deal now than if they use it against the rest of Russia?
Why would this suddenly bring about the end of the earth?
Well, according to the reports, the Biden administration has approved these weapons to be used for now only in Kursk, which is not part of the disputed territories.
Kursk is an obelisk north of the Ukrainian province of Sumy.
But it is, without a doubt, Russian territory.
Earlier this year, the United States enabled Ukraine to invade Kursk.
We provided them with the manpower.
We trained the manpower.
We gave them the equipment.
We taught them the tactics.
We provided them all of the new modern communication equipment so they could fight just like a NATO force would fight.
And we sent a 30,000 strong NATO proxy into Russia.
Just so people get it again, this is as if Russia put together an army of, you know, Latinos down in Mexico and sent 30,000 of them into California and occupied San Diego.
Big deal.
We invaded Russia and occupied, you know, Texas came across the board, occupied parts of Texas, New Mexico, American states.
It's a big deal.
We invaded Russia and occupied a significant chunk of it.
So now the Russians are countering the attack, you know, countering it.
But we don't want Russia to kick the...
Ukrainians out before January 20th.
You see, the Biden administration is trying to tie Donald Trump's hands.
They're trying to create a situation where he can't resolve this conflict.
He will be married to this conflict, stuck.
In order to do that, you have to have the Ukrainians stay in Kursk and be caught up because now when you talk about bringing an end to the conflict, the Russians will be like, well, we can't end the conflict if they're in Kursk, so the Russians won't be inclined to come about to an end and it'll sabotage the Trump peace plan.
This is the goal of the Biden administration.
So again, just to put in perspective, we invaded Russia with a proxy force, and now we want to give them long-range missile strike capability to defend the invaders.
That's again, the Russians providing the Mexicans with missiles to attack Texas.
We wouldn't put up with it, and Russia's not putting up with it.
The last time this was being discussed, Vladimir Putin on September 12th said, if this happens, then the United States, Great Britain, France will become active participants in the conflict, and we will treat them as such.
And our response will be decisive.
He also said that the decisions have already been made.
There won't be any discussion.
There won't be any phone calls.
There won't be any warning that the decisions have already been made.
The orders have been given.
So when this happens, the Russians will automatically respond.
Apparently, Biden didn't believe him because this was on the 12th, on the 13th.
Starmer came in and they met.
So the Russian ambassador to the United Nations gave a speech at the United Nations, just underscoring the seriousness of this, where he said if the U.S. sign, if Biden signs that document, he will be signing a declaration of war against Russia.
If Biden signs that document, he'll be signing a declaration of war against Russia.
Now, this caused people in the Biden administration to get a little nervous.
So they called their people because we don't talk to the Russians.
That just shows how stupid everything is right now, even during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Right.
Jack Kennedy talked about the hotline.
They had the hotline.
They had the back channel.
They had all these things going.
But this time, the administration had the former administration people call up Anatoly Antonov, the Russian ambassador to the United States, and ask him, is this serious?
He said, not only is it serious, let me just make it one step clear.
The United States will not be hiding behind the Atlantic Ocean.
That if they do this, our response will not be limited to Europe.
We will strike the United States and we will use nuclear weapons.
And they went, really?
And he went, don't play with fire.
You're going to get burned.
And they called up Biden and went, you got to stop.
So he did.
Everything I just told you is in play today.
Somehow, we have convinced ourselves, we, the Biden administration, the British, that the Russians are bluffing, that they're not going to do this, that if we can just limit this to Kursk, the Russians won't overreact.
But this is a matter of principle.
Again, we invaded Russia.
We sent a NATO proxy that we trained, equipped, and directed to invade Russia, Russian territory.
And now we're giving them the weapons that they're going to use to defend this force from Russia reclaiming its territories at the time when we have embarked on a policy that seeks the strategic defeat of Russia.
I spoke to somebody today who sits with Vladimir Putin on a regular basis.
And this is important because when you sit with somebody, that means you get to look in their eyes.
You get to look at their body.
I mean, you guys have done, you've interviewed people in person.
Sure.
It's a much greater impact to interview them in person because you see so much more.
You look at the twitching.
You look at the hands.
You look at the facial ticks.
You look at when they're confident, when they're not confident, things like that.
This guy has sat with the leader, including recently.
And he said he's never seen a man more calm, at peace with the decisions that have been made, and ready to carry out the actions that are necessary.
This is not a man who's bluffing.
This is a man who's ready to do that which, in his opinion, must be done to save Russia.
Now, there's one piece of good news that came out of this conversation.
Oh, thank God.
I was about to say we should have booked Rob Schneider tonight.
I'm sorry.
This is one piece of good news.
I've been rating this.
You were talking about this.
Yeah, that book scares the crap out of me.
And that book is exactly what's about ready to happen.
It's pretty terrifying.
It's pretty terrifying.
But the good news is the man who makes the decisions in Russia is waiting for Biden to say something.
See, he believes that this could be a information warfare game played by the New York Times.
Remember, the Washington Post, there's a time in the United States when we considered the New York Times, the Washington.
I remember when I went to college, we were encouraged.
I was encouraged as a history major and political science guy to subscribe.
And I got the special college rate back then.
He had the card with the punch holes.
And you come in every morning like a dutiful kid to the bookstore and give him your card and you'd click, click, and then you could pick up your two papers.
And if it was in either the Washington Post or New York Times, you could cite it as a definitive source.
Footnote it.
It was in the New York Times.
It was in the Washington Post.
It must be real.
Well, the Washington Post, just a little while back, you remember they reported that Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin spoke?
They had a phone call.
And Trump threatened Putin and Putin caved and all this kind of stuff.
Phone call never took place.
They made it up.
They literally made it up.
Why?
Because the Washington Post hates Donald Trump.
The Washington Post is actively trying to sabotage the Trump transition to put poison in the well between Trump and Russians and prevent any opportunity for betterment of relations.
So they made a story up.
The New York Times may have just made a story up because they didn't name their sources.
These are two anonymous sources.
I mean, we're talking about one of the most critical.
And does the Biden administration, it doesn't have a history of making major decisions like this and letting unnamed people leak it to the New York Times and that be the story.
Today, the this is the headline we're talking about.
Sorry to cut you off, but just so everybody knows this is the headline, right?
This was the report yesterday that you are talking about now, right?
Yep.
And just so you know, that means a declaration, according to the Russians, that's a declaration of war that will result in a Russian retaliatory strike of devastating consequence.
I'll get into that in a second, too.
Mel, you tweeted about this.
I have your tweet to show you.
In short, the U.S. is now at war with Russia.
Now, you went on far beyond that in this tweet to talk about potential off-ramps, which I assume you might be getting into now.
Well, yeah.
I mean, an off-ramp depends on the journey that we're on.
Are we on a journey to war made by the Biden administration or are we on a journey of fabrication made up by the New York Times?
Right now, the Russians are acting as if this is disinformation.
They're ready in case it turns into reality, but the Russians aren't overreacting here.
They're very calm, very, I wish I had spoken to them first because it would have calmed me down.
Because I am still, look, I was in the military.
I know a thing or two about nuclear weapons and nuclear war planning.
And I don't want my family to die this way.
I don't care how I die.
I mean, screw it.
I'm 63 years old.
I've had a good life.
You know, you want to take me, take me.
But I don't want my family to die.
I don't want my friends to die.
I don't want this planet to die.
I like Earth.
I like America.
I like the land we live in.
This land is your land.
This land is my land.
From California to the New York high.
I mean, come on, man.
This is whatever you want to call God, whether you believe in God or you believe in Yahweh or you believe in trees.
We've been blessed with the miracle of life.
And it is a blessing.
Now, we've screwed it up over and over and over again, but normally when we screwed up, the miracle of life is we tend to recover.
We can recover from most of our mistakes.
We can't recover from nuclear war.
It's over.
So the Russians are relatively calm right now, but it's still not a time to mess around.
I really do think the Trump administration needs to take the bull by the horns.
And I'll tell you why.
The Biden administration lost an election.
The American people said no.
So why in God's name will the president who has two months left make a decision that it doesn't have to be made now?
America is not at threat.
That's the other point I went away.
No one's threatening us.
We're not at risk, guys.
This is about Ukraine.
I don't care where you stand.
I view them as a bunch of Nazis, Banderists who deserve everything they have coming to them.
But you could be sitting there going, go, Ukraine, support Ukraine, whatever.
None of that means America is at risk.
None of that means America's at risk.
So why is this president now making a decision to put everything on the table?
We're going to commit suicide for Ukraine, for Ukraine, even if you love Ukraine.
You can't support that.
And yet that's the direction we're heading with two months to go in this old man's tenure.
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All the voices performed today are by the one and only, the inimitable Mike McRae.
He can be found at mikemcray.com.
That's it for this week.
You be the best you can be and I'll keep being me.
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