Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman discuss the department of Justice's case against Google and whether this behemoth has gotten too all-powerful. They then do a deep dive on Chile as it recognizes it's 50 year anniversary of of the US backed coup that saw General Pinochet lead a reign of terror for decades. And pour one out for Chuck Todd as he ended his 9 year run hosting Meet The Press.
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Oh, chock full of events, I suppose, is the term we use these days, right?
We talked right before we started recording.
You went to multiple things in one day.
Oh, yeah.
It was exciting.
I went to a Chargers game with my son.
It was his first football game ever.
SoFi Stadium.
Brand new stadium.
We're kind of brand new.
Very exciting.
In a concert.
You're moving and shaking.
You're living that jet-set lifestyle.
Oh yeah, and this is what you can do in a place like Los Angeles, which you have a lot of things.
Like they talk about you can go to the beach in the morning, and then you can go skiing in the afternoon, right?
Well, you could go to the Chargers game.
And by the way, there are two NFL teams in LA, and I don't even know if half the LA Angelenos even know this.
I don't think that most people are even really keeping up with this stuff.
So, I'm glad you're recovered.
I'm glad that you are here.
I'm glad that we're able to, today is, we're recording on September 11th of 2023.
A lot of, we'll talk more about that here in a little while.
We have an absolutely jam-packed show.
Tons of stuff to get into.
Just a reminder, everybody.
First of all, if you want to listen to our weekly Weekender episode on Fridays, which why wouldn't you want to?
You already listened to the free preview.
You're going to want to do this.
Go to patreon.com slash my Craig podcast.
Also for our patrons, the ones who are already supporting the show and making sure that this continues to grow and move forward and progress.
We need your questions for The Weekender, so go to patreon.com slash mcgreggpodcast.
You can email us those questions, you can reply with questions, you can send us voicemails, and your voice will be on the air interacting with you and me, Nick.
We love this, do we not?
We love it.
Listen, can we actually give numbers?
Can we tell people how many people listen to the free version on Fridays?
Thousands of human beings are listening to the free version.
Yeah.
And it's just, you know, just a few of them.
It doesn't make sense.
There's that.
There's thousands and thousands of people listen to it.
Just the 15 minutes we give you for free.
Just go over the whole thing.
Come along.
I promise you we will make it worth it.
Meanwhile, Nick, let's go ahead and let's get into the news today.
A big, an actual big thing that is taking place, which shocker of shockers, isn't getting much press coverage whatsoever.
The United States government is dragging Google Into the courtroom.
That's right, everybody.
We're having an antitrust case against Google.
The United States government is bringing out the Sherman Antitrust Act to say that Google has acted illegally and unethically In the last few years, in terms of taking over the entirety of internet search, that they squelched competition, that they used underhanded means to do it.
This is the largest antitrust case that has been brought by the United States government in 25 years.
You might remember they made Bill Gates and Microsoft get into a courtroom.
There's a lot to unpack here, but this is what the government should be doing.
And there are reasons why it's happening.
There are things that we should expect from it.
Other things that we shouldn't expect from it.
I've got my thoughts about it, but this is a pretty momentous thing.
This is taking place on Tuesday.
It's a step in the right direction.
It's not everything it needs to be, but it's actually a really, really huge development.
You know, my mind is swimming.
Swimming!
You know, it's almost like there's an endless series of, well, we'll call them windows on top of each other that cause layers that, you know, make me think about all these things.
And by the way, we need to talk a little bit about the IBM-Microsoft, how Microsoft overtook IBM in the early 80s.
But before we do that, Leah, here's the thing.
Here's the business model.
Google goes to all these mobile devices and the makers and all the different software people and they pay them a fee to make sure that Google is the default search for everybody.
How is that not simply capitalism?
Why could that be outlawed?
Why is that unfair?
Why isn't Bing just paying more money to have Bing be the official search?
I mean, we have thoughts on that too, I'm sure, Jared, but that seems to me part of the crux of the matter and you'd like to think that DOJ wouldn't bring a case that they That was a slant dunk they're going to win, but I don't know about this one.
I don't know if they're going to end up succeeding in this case.
So I'm going to go ahead and start with my leftist ideas and what should happen.
Google should be broken into a thousand parts and scattered To every corner of the American empire to create multiple different groups that would innovate and do better things and keep power over.
And for those who don't know, Google is interested not just in using everything that you search and everything you've ever created and every book that's ever been written and every piece of media that has ever been put forward.
This is how powerful of a corporation it is.
They've put all of that towards creating artificial intelligence and creating programs that they can continue, including one of their goals is to overcome death itself, Nick.
To overcome mortality itself.
That's kind of when a corporation gets a little too large.
It should be broken up and just absolutely scattered.
That's not what's going to happen here.
You brought up, of course, Microsoft, what happened 25 years.
They got a slap on the wrist for basically creating one of the first modern mega-monopolies.
Before that, the only reason why Microsoft was able to become Microsoft is because the United States government said to IBM, It's getting out of hand a little bit.
And so Microsoft was able to raise up in the midst of that.
What happened, though, in the past few decades is that neoliberalism, there's that word again, and we'll talk a little bit more about it in a little bit, neoliberalism took off all of the brakes and basically said, get as large as you want to be, do whatever you want, particularly with the digital revolution in the 1990s, and said, good luck, everybody.
I hope this treats you well.
Meanwhile, what happened is the United States government and all of these tech giants, including Google and you name it, they intertwined, Nick.
They turned into one giant group.
And I just want to remind everybody, if they didn't see it this weekend, Elon Musk gave us a front row view into how dangerous this is.
It turns out that Elon Musk personally told Walter Isaacson this while writing a book, that he turned off all his Starlink satellites so that Ukraine couldn't attack Russia's navies.
It was one human being who has no credentials whatsoever.
No one voted for him.
Nobody gave him any power.
One billionaire made a wartime decision that completely threw off whatever military aims were there.
That's wild.
And that all happened because in the 1990s, they said, fine, go ahead and do whatever you need.
Meanwhile, all of these corporations, they've taken over government operations, right?
They supply computers, programs, the military-industrial complex, and Google and all these other tech corporations are one.
There's a reason why they haven't tried to rein them in, but there's also a reason why they're trying to rein them in now.
Well, you know, it's funny, my radar was going off when you read about these older cases that DOJ would bring against IBM or Microsoft.
You have to wonder, like, what is the impetus for this?
Is this like their competition somehow, you know, getting in embedded in the Department of Justice and somehow making them do these cases or, or influencing them?
Because this is all cutthroat business that can mean billions and billions of dollars for people in these companies.
But, you know, just to throw it out there, you know, the reason why Microsoft overtook IBM back in the day wasn't because that IBM got slowed down by one of these cases that the Department of Justice couldn't, you know, go through either way.
Anyway, it was simply because they invented Windows, and Windows is a much better alternative than MS-DOS, and IBM had no other alternative.
They were, you know, at the hands of You know, at Microsoft and doing that.
So it's like the innovation is there.
And when the product is better than anything else, that's what people want to use.
So we have to remember, like, have you ever used like Bing, for instance?
No.
Ask Jeeves.
I had my mini.
Oh, yeah.
So we were like, you know, there was a reason in the beginning.
And by the way, Google was brilliant when they had like their first slogan was, don't be evil.
Right?
And it really felt like, okay, here's an open source, you know, internet company that's going to really treat it the way we all believe in the Shangri-La, you know, values.
You know, it turns out that this is what capitalism does.
And again, legally.
So again, if they're going to end up outbidding everybody to make sure that they're the default, you know, search engine, that's not going to end up being illegal.
I think that there's some other ethical issues, like you mentioned, in terms of the AI stuff that becomes a problem, but I don't know exactly where we're going with this.
So, folks, we're going to jump in a time machine.
We're going to get in, it's going to spin around, the lights are going to go off, a bunch of digital effects are going to happen.
We're going back to the wild, wild west time, which is 2013.
We're going back 10 years ago, when the United States government was again investigating Google.
And what they found in investigating Google is a lot of what we found now, which is why Google is being hauled into a courtroom, why their ass is going on a witness stand.
Back then, though, Nick, and because this podcast calls balls and strikes, we're honest about what happens.
That was under the Obama administration.
Nick, what tech company was it that helped Barack Obama get elected?
Google?
That was Google.
That's right.
And what ended up happening was the Obama campaign and the entire Obama operation depended largely on Google.
That was one of the secrets.
Google Analytics, Google campaigns, all of that.
So for the longest time, particularly back in 2013, which is so long ago now, it feels like it's dog years, Back then, we all thought that Google, Elon Musk, Facebook, you name it, all this stuff was going to save us.
It was going to lead us into the future.
Everything was going to be so grand.
Eventually, of course, what happens is Google and all these other big tech programs, they outgrow the government.
They not only take over all the processes, they become more profitable, they don't have to pay taxes, they're working with all these other different countries, you know, they're basically going over to China and handing over dissidents on a silver plate.
What we're looking at now, why this is happening, it goes back, and I'm going to get another time machine, go back to 2021, back in June, when the G7 met, and we talked about this, where they got together and they said, we have to have international taxes on corporations.
We have to do something.
We all have to agree to charge them taxes.
Things have gotten too out of control.
As that order, that economic political order that we're covering all the time, as it started fraying, all of a sudden they looked around and they thought, we don't have power.
We can't rein in these corporations.
It's a wrestling match.
They're not trying to scatter Google to the different ends of the earth.
They're not going to make all these big tech corporations bow down and like kiss their boots.
They're just trying to wrangle back a little bit of power from them.
They're just trying to get a little bit more of governmental oversight.
That's what's happening now with the Biden administration, with the government where it's at.
Will that change in the future?
Will it become more aggressive as conditions deteriorate and as these struggles get worse?
Probably.
But this right now, it's like an opening salvo of something different.
It doesn't mean that this is going to be a revolutionary act, but it does point to exactly where things are moving right.
I hear you.
And listen, I am really concerned about our rights as citizens in terms of what we can protect in terms of information.
And that's the big war that needs to be fought is how much can we get?
And a lot of times we might just sort of shrug and be like, listen, I Whatever my life is, if people know about it, it's, oh well, it's not like, you know, I'm doing anything bad, but we have to remember that slope is extremely slippery, and that can get you, you know, especially with AI coming out, you can then, Jared, you could accuse me of doing something that I didn't do, and have a voice of me saying what I said I did, even though I never said that, and that's, we're gonna, it's gonna be a real challenge going the next, like, decade to figure out how to make this work with laws.
And let's be honest about this.
That fight should have been fought a long time ago.
That should have been fought years and years ago, back in that 2013, 2012, even back to 2009.
Like, that's when that stuff should have been decided.
But that's one of the reasons why we need people to represent us who understand this stuff.
If anybody remembers the testimony of Zuckerberg or Musk or any of these people, the senators and congresspeople had no idea what was going on.
None.
And back then, they were already beyond the curve.
They had no recognition of what was going on.
Now we're getting to the point, it's not just like, are people going to know what we're doing or whatever?
We're talking about cops running around with drones looking at heat signatures.
As the surveillance state that Google and other companies have already created, and they're going to get fed off of what's happening in China and other dystopias around the globe, that fight should have already happened.
And we need to get serious about this.
And again, I don't think that this is going to be what that is.
But my God, it has to start changing.
And this is like one of those signs.
Nick, it's like...
You know, well, you live in Los Angeles, so maybe you'll have to remember this back when you were in Wisconsin or Chicago.
Remember that first day in August where, like, it's kind of warm, but then a breeze comes through, and you're like, ooh, that breeze had a little bit of cold in it.
I think the season is changing.
The season is changing.
The question is, is it going to be the next logical season, which is where everything starts pushing back against this stuff, or are things going to get wonky in like a climate change type situation?
I hear ya.
Well, yeah, I mean, it might take some event that happens.
Someone reveals, oh my god, they were able to do all this stuff, whatever, to force them to do something.
Did you just, by the way, in case anybody missed that, did you try to imply, or maybe even state strongly, that somehow the Obama administration backed DOJ down from doing this investigation to Google in 2013?
Is that what you're saying?
So, the next segment of this show that we're going to talk about, and by the way, a natural segue that you had, Nick, you know, today, and we're recording this on September 11th, it's the 50th anniversary of the Chilean coup.
For those who don't know very much about it, I'm going to give a historical context in a minute.
The leftist president, and you had said, who knows if somebody's going to come in and challenge these things.
President Salvador Allende, a leftist socialist, had gotten elected as the leader of Chile, much to the dismay of, Nick, what's the country I'm thinking of?
The United States of America.
And eventually what happened is a U.S.-backed coup took place in which General Augusto Pinochet overthrew Allende.
We're still not sure exactly how Allende died, whether or not he was murdered or committed suicide.
But in short order, Pinochet took over the country, attacked every labor union, assassinated every leftist he could find, turned it into a right-wing authoritarian dystopia, and we'll talk more about what happened after that.
But this was One of the seminal events in the 20th century that showed what happened when the United States didn't agree with democratic results.
This was a Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger, CIA special in which they were trying to basically wipe out any leftist opposition whatsoever.
What happened in Chile, and eventually what occurred in the aftermath of all of this, and eventually how Chile sort of pushed back against this, It's a seminal event that not a lot of people understand, but is incredibly important in American history.
And also, we'll get into it, the spread of neoliberalism and the current era that we're in sort of was birthed from this.
It's a really, really important event, and we should know more about it.
I agree.
And you know, it's not hard to picture, and there's been movies about what that authoritarian state turned into overnight, where people went from, you know, if you were teaching at a university, they just abolished university subjects altogether, burning books, everything you can imagine in those societies, and when that happens.
What's interesting to me, that I try to quickly look up, would be, you know, what was so threatening to Nixon?
Why did they care that much about Chile and what Allende was moving them towards?
You know, even the cursory search shows that they were simply concerned it was going to turn into another Cuba.
And if you remember what happened with Cuba, it was a playground for all the wealthy people, like in the 50s before they had the forfeit, Al Castro took over.
And so at the end, it was nationalizing the resources they owned.
It was going to benefit everybody in the country properly.
And that was so threatening to them, that another country would fall into what they would consider a socialist, you know, run government, that it was worth, I mean, pitching a country for decades into authoritarianism.
Now, is it possible?
Jared, what do you think?
Did they consider that might happen when they decided to back this coup?
Well, they tried originally to keep him from getting elected.
Like, before he ever got elected, they were throwing tons of money into this area.
Also, they were bringing over the military to the United States.
It's important to point out, Nick, what America looked at was more or less what they thought That was sort of a benevolent overview, right?
Like, other countries could have elections, but they needed to go the way America wanted them to go.
And if they didn't, if it didn't fit into America's economic interest, what they were really interested in were useful dictators.
And this is one of the things that we have to understand about America post-World War II.
America was supposed to be, like, the champion of democracy, the benevolent, you know, hegemon everywhere.
But meanwhile, they wanted, like, first-tier countries, you know, the first-world countries.
They're the ones who, like, can have elections.
But the second tier, the third tier, they needed to be overseen, basically, by people who were in the pocket of American business and American interest, right?
So if you did something like elected Allende, They were going to set everything up in order to overthrow that person or possibly kill them.
Meanwhile, in all of these countries, Nick, there was one program after another.
In Latin America, you had Operation Condor, which is one of the largest terrorist organizations in human history that went everywhere and just assassinated every leftist person they could find.
You had Operation Gladio in Europe, Nick, which used fascists, I'm talking about literal Nazis and fascists, to murder any leftists that they could find in Europe, the same people they were fighting in World War II.
And all of this was about making sure that nobody was going to get in a position of power, like you said, whether it's Fidel Castro, Allende, you name it, nobody was going to get in there that was going to cause a problem for them or who was going to interrupt the economic political system in the United States 1 and 2.
So you're trying to tell me that there was a country that we're familiar with in the early 70s that tried to have an influence on another foreign country's election?
Yeah, it's weird, isn't it?
Wow.
So that really happens, huh?
It really happens.
And I want to point out that this has gone along an evolutionary path.
Nick, for a while, it was, you know, let's say, for instance, in the, you know, the early 20th century, let's say, for instance, that an island that produced bananas and fruits started getting a little crazy about changing things.
You might send the military in, in order to, like, take care of it on behalf of, I don't, I'll just name a corporation, Dole.
Right?
You go in and you do that.
Later on, you use assassinations.
The CIA loved assassinations.
They also loved these PSYOPs in which they interfered with elections and took things over.
This happened in Iran.
It happened, of course, in Chile.
You name it.
Eventually, though, what happens, Nick, is they create international structures, right, that can do it without any, well, I about said no blood being spilled, but obviously blood gets spilled.
But like, you know, you have like an economic forum, for instance, or you have like a World Bank that will say, hey, we would love to help you, but what you're doing right now, it doesn't work.
So we can't give you any money.
And basically what birthed out of Chile, was the neoliberal system.
We even sent in a bunch of people who were educated in America in neoliberalism to go in and say, this is great for Chile.
They will go ahead, they'll do the cheap labor, they'll give us the resources.
Meanwhile, we'll help out Pinochet, we'll make sure that everything works, and it will slot into globalism in order to be a perfect working gear.
And this whole thing It feels weird because it's about another country, you have to know stuff about the context and culture, but this right here, it's like one of the, um, it's one of the keystones, you know what I mean, of globalism in our modern era, and where it started was authoritarianism and dictatorships, and it seemed like America would just have the benefit of it, but sorry, it's come home, and we're having to deal with it ourselves now.
Well, I mean, what's most frustrating about it here now is that there's people who want it.
They literally want this authoritarianism, almost like to dunk on liberals, in a way.
It's almost like, again, in the same manner that maybe they play some lip service to what might happen if the CIA accomplishes its goal of getting Allende out of there.
Our foreign policy has never spent enough time thinking about the ramifications of these things.
It's the same thing that's going on here right now.
The right, who wants to get these authoritarian principles going and basically secede all of our democratic governmental policies, they don't have any concepts.
What they are focused on is how much better it will be, supposedly, for everybody.
They've been brainwashed into that.
There's no convincing them otherwise.
But if you really play all those things out, what America can turn into is a lot closer to Chile Then it would be whatever this city on a hill is that they like to think is going to happen.
Yeah, and you know, America had already wiped out major components of its leftist society.
This took place during the first Red Scare.
This was immediately after the First World War, you know, when Russia fell to the Russian Revolution and communism started to become a thing.
We took every labor organizer, every radical, every person who espoused anything even approaching a leftist ideology, and we put them on a ship.
Bon voyage, Emma Goldman!
Take care in the USSR, right?
Then, in the 1950s, post-World War II, we did it again!
Jaws did so well in cinemas last year, we gotta do Jaws 2 now.
So what did we do?
We took the entirety of the New Deal and turned it into communist ideology and we pushed against it.
It led us to where we are now, to where there's not really a functioning left in the United States.
But what they see as a left Whether, you know, it's CRT or quote-unquote wokeism, they want to squash it.
They don't want anything approaching a labor movement or a leftist organization to take root in this country.
And what you just said is exactly accurate.
If a Pinochet rose up in the United States of America—and Pinochet, for people who don't know, they just kind of look at this, like, weird uniformed dictator who hung out with every U.S.
president, by the way.
Like, they loved him.
Pinochet was Mike Flynn before Mike Flynn.
He did nothing but read newsletters about conspiracies, and he basically would have been QAnon if QAnon existed at that time.
They would love a Pinochet.
They want a Pinochet.
They need a Pinochet, and that's exactly what they're looking for.
And people might think that we're crazy and like that's ridiculous.
It would never happen here.
Is it safe to say that there are Americans living right now in America here in the United States that would tell you stories that sound just like what people would have said in Chile back then?
I have been around people who like talk lovingly about going to Chile when Pinochet was in charge or, you know, Franco, you know, like they people love this stuff.
There are people who are inherently anti-democratic.
But there are also Americans who have been detained and interrogated, you know, and things that look just like what was going on there too.
And like, so if we think it can't happen, you know, they've been testing the waters here and there a little bit, you know, it's not like widespread like we saw there, but like, that's how it all starts.
And these assholes want to vote this in and continue that and let it grow.
And that's why I've always, I've always thrown up a lot of respect to the libertarians who are so intent on keeping all their personal information as private as possible.
Whereas, you know, I might be a little bit more liberal that liberal, not liberal, but you know, whatever, what do I have to hide?
But they're always much more right than I am on that one, as far as how closely guarded our information is.
What worries me, to go ahead and just tie very quickly our first two segments together, the fear is that all of these tech companies, they have just licked the boot of every dictator in the world.
They are just like, oh China, do you want every piece of information on every supposed dissident?
Here you go, feel more than free.
We'll go ahead and censor whatever.
The frightening thing is the possibility of getting an authoritarian in power who can use this stuff.
Because they would!
I mean, if Pinochet had this, instead, like, going back to Operation Condor, that was like the beginning of personal computing, you know?
So it was like, we took the things that we had in Vietnam, the things that we used to go after, you know, our supposed enemies in Vietnam, we started handing it out to every right-wing fascist dictator in the world to basically go after the left.
It's the playbook and it's already been the playbook.
But by the way, let's not overlook the Liberty Safe Company just got into hot water because there was a subpoena of a guy for January 6th person and that the Liberty Safe Company gave the code of the safe to the feds and that has sparked a right-wing freakout because of that and the boycott of that company so that they want it but then they don't want it and it must be confusing to be in that situation.
They don't want them to use it against them.
They want it as a weapon.
Nick, on a different note, can you get the people up to date on a development that's taken place over the last couple of days?
This is a Nick Haussleman fastball over-the-plate special having to do with the JFK assassination, conspiracy theories, you name it.
We haven't discussed the particulars of this story, Nick.
I have some concerns.
You are excited.
I'm not going to just throw water on your parade, but I have some thoughts.
But would you let the people know what has happened in the past couple of days?
Yes, I will.
And also, I take umbrage at the fact that you think this is a different turn.
This is not a left turn.
No, you're right!
Right.
Like, you're exactly we need to pause before we get into this, because you're 100% correct, which is we're talking about deep state stuff.
We're talking about conspiracies.
We're talking about whether or not leaders are going along with certain plans.
You're exactly right.
But what happened was, there was a Secret Service agent who was in charge of Jackie Kennedy's deal.
Paul Landis is his name.
Yeah, Landis.
And he was there on the day that JFK was shot, and all of a sudden, out of the blue, with a book that he's writing that's coming out, which is probably what Jared has some, you know, spidey senses tingling about.
It's called, by the way, the book is called The Final Witness, a Kennedy Secret Service agent breaks his silence after 60 years.
Right.
Now, it might shock you, Jared.
It might shock you that this man was never interviewed by the Warren Commission, because the Warren Commission was dedicated to unearthing every piece of information.
You really would be surprised.
No, time out, time out.
I want to cut through the sarcasm, because sometimes sarcasm doesn't come through in an audio format.
Okay.
To hear that the Warren Commission didn't talk to this guy, and also that the Warren Commission didn't turn over every rock in trying to figure out what happened in the JFK assassination, like, I am shocked that there is gambling going on in this establishment.
Exactly.
That's what I meant to- I apologize if I didn't- I don't think- We're gonna get into this in a second, Nick.
I want to say, Things like the Warren Commission, which did a piss-poor job of even talking about the assassination and putting forth the official story.
I don't think that, again, I tend to move away from smoke-filled rooms.
I don't think the Warren Commission got together in a room and was like, here's our story, this is what we're gonna do, this is what we're gonna do.
I think this is the way that Washington, D.C.
works, which is nobody really wanted to know what happened here.
And they needed to put forward some kind of a story.
I just want to say that for the record.
But they completely botched it.
Completely.
Well, yeah, I mean, we can do a whole episode on the Warren Commission.
Tell them what Paul Landis told the people this weekend.
Okay, so Paul Landis says that when he was in the car, they took JFK's body out into the ER.
By the way, we were regaling people with tales of them trying to resuscitate the president at the hospital.
with you know he there's no brain left in his head and they were still trying to do stuff which also anyway that's the whole other conspiracy but he said that he found a bullet in wedged in the back seats behind where the president was sitting that he picked up and took and then realized he had it and then put it in a stretcher in the in the hospital which for the first time ever explains this pristine magic bullet that had fallen out of supposedly john connelly's
leg on a stretcher in the hospital which never made sense nobody could figure out that part of it the magic bullet for people who aren't into this in the same way that we are the magic bullet which you've probably heard of is a one bullet that was made to curve and go through both jfk and john connelly in order to prove that there was a single shooter and And it never made sense.
Ever.
Nobody's ever actually thought it made sense.
But all this time, it was the one thing that was supposed to show that there was a single shooter.
Right, because the warrant committee only had three bullets being shot.
The first one missed, the second one was in the neck from behind, and the third one was a headshot.
Hardly anybody could recreate shooting, all shot within like six and a half seconds on a bolt-action rifle that had a bad sight.
So no one could simulate this ever anyway.
But Paul Landis has now said, That he is the person who found the bullet in the back of the limo, he put it on the stretcher next to JFK, and he said it was because he thought that somebody would mess with the evidence.
And he just made a game-time decision, put it on the stretcher.
The theory now is that it fell off the stretcher onto John Connolly's stretcher, and that's where the magic bullet came from.
Yeah, or in the melee, in the chaos, whatever they thought they said was on the John Collins stretcher was on the other stretcher, like it was a stretcher.
And then now I don't know which stretcher it was and they're all moving and they're all whatever.
But either way, that has to be the bullet that was quote unquote found on the stretcher.
And it's a pristine bullet.
So, you know, the thing is, is I've always maintained as part of my research into this.
Well, first of all, there is a clear and uncontroversial evidence of a bullet hole in the windshield of the car.
We've seen pictures of that.
Remember, they got rid of that evidence very quickly after that all happened, but...
We have a picture of it, we have eyewitness testimony, we also have a number of people in the ER who claim that the neck wound in JFK was an entrance wound, meaning it hit him from the front, which again explains why he would have found a bullet in the back seat, wedged behind where he was sitting, because it went through his neck, and that's when he brings his arms up, and the bullet probably went through the windshield and hit him in the neck, because it was probably aimed at his head, but the windshield changes the direction of a bullet when it goes through there.
Uh, and so, um, we have a lot of that evidence of why I went into this testimony.
It was right there.
It sees all this stuff.
So that just plays into what my theory was independent of who, you know, got it, uh, organized that we can get into that later.
But, but this kind of ties in a lot of different things and makes a lot more sense.
Um, and then the fact that they would not have interviewed the Secret Service people because Remember, there's a whole other train of thought that a Secret Service guy shot JFK with his M16 from the other car behind.
Did they ever test the M16?
Did they ever test any of the Secret Service members for shooting?
Did they interview them?
No.
I mean, that's the other part of it that this becomes so galling.
But I like this.
This starts to tie a lot of things together.
So you find this to be compelling?
Yes.
Now let me ask you this.
Is your concern that he's trying to sell books for his legacy or for like his family?
He's probably closer to death than he's in life.
So is he just trying to like make some money here?
So Paul Landis, the Secret Service agent, who is 88 years old, this was an event that took place 60 years ago.
So, the final witness, a Kennedy Secret Service agent, breaks his silence after 60 years.
Right now, it's one of the best-selling books in the world.
It's being pre-ordered.
It's coming out in October.
This is from Chicago Review Press, right?
This is not a major hitting house, okay?
The reason, and by the way, October, for anyone keeping track, is about a month away.
This story is coming out one month before this book releases.
This is obviously a press push for People to get attention for this and for people to say here it is this is like one of the last remaining things.
I don't know if you've read the interviews with this guy.
His quotes are not compelling.
He says he doesn't remember why he did this.
It just occurred to him in the past couple of years that he did this.
It just occurred to him or whatever.
I have worries that this is a person who is near the end of their life.
They played a role in a massively historical event and all of a sudden things are just like coming out.
Why is it coming out now?
And it feels strange to me.
So, I agree that this would be something that would start to explain, like, some things that have happened.
I wonder if it explains things that might have happened because it's how they happened, or because it's people going out there and saying, Dad, Grandpa, Brother, whatever, you were there, do you blah blah blah blah blah.
It is a very interesting thing, and the point I wanted to make, Nick, This is kind of how capitalism works now.
Do you know what I mean?
Why wouldn't the Secret Service agent who was there, like inches away from these people, why wouldn't he say something about this?
So it worries me that this is a market opportunity, and at the same time, I'm very interested in this the same way you are.
This would explain a lot of things.
This would actually connect some dots, but I kind of feel like in this environment, we still have to sort of have like a cocked eye about these things.
You know what I mean?
Yeah, I hear you.
And it's the same thing with E. Howard Hunt and his deathbed.
Same idea.
He dropped some knowledge that allowed his son to write a book that, you know, the son had money troubles.
So he knew he would give, you know, that would give him a boost.
It's all possible, you know.
And by the way, let's just pretend that it did happen the way he said it did.
Like, my dad's the same age as this guy, and he's... My dad's really, really sharp, so it's not like guys... It doesn't mean he's not sharp, sure.
That's true.
But by the way, interestingly enough, while he's really sharp and he has good recall about things right now, he also can get pretty fuzzy about things that happened a long time ago as well.
So... And listen, I'm fuzzy about things that happened a long time ago.
I'm fuzzy about things that happened yesterday.
Yeah, and we all know by eyewitness testimony how unreliable it can be in all these different situations.
My problem, so the big article that came out, because every book publisher wants there to be a review in the New York Times, and they want there to be a feature about what's happening in the book in the New York Times, right?
Those are the two.
You want to get those two things happening, which this one has already gotten.
The quotes that he has in the New York Times about this The New York Times wants to promote this story.
The quotes are, I don't really know how this happened.
I'm barely remembering this, which is strange.
You know what I mean?
It's an odd confluence of things.
And I guess what I'm saying is, I'll be honest with you, Nick, and I don't know how you feel about this.
Go ahead and put a bow on it.
I don't know that we're ever going to know for sure what happened with the JFK assassination.
I really truly don't know that we are.
I don't know they're ever going to release these files.
I don't know because why would they ever admit, you know, some of the ties that were probably involved here.
I kind of feel like this is going to be a a MacGuffin that we're always going to chase.
I feel like this is going to be something that is going to like almost like a sore spot on your body that you wonder what it is, but you never really figure it out.
It just feels like something that's going to vex us our entire lives.
Well, I agree.
Remember, a lot of reasons why people push back against the notion that there was a conspiracy to begin with was, how is it possible that one person would have said something all that time?
Well, this is kind of your answer, right?
Here's a Secret Service guy, let's just say he had it, and he kept it quiet until he's getting close to the end, just like Deep Throat didn't say anything until the end of his life.
So it is possible that, like, there are people in the know that will be willing to go to almost their graves with this information.
So, listen, I cannot argue with your points.
Those are all very, very, very good points.
But I will say that as far as that bullet, Dan, that stretcher, which never, ever made sense.
This one, let's connect some dots.
Remember, they cleaned the limo right away.
This is evidence.
This is a complete whitewash.
And again, the Secret Service has always been implicated.
We don't have to look that far because with what happened with Trump, we see a lot of evidence that the Secret Service wants to cover for him.
Right?
They, um, what did they do?
They, the whole thing about the, uh, grabbing the steering wheel thing was trying to be hushed up.
Um, I'm, now I'm forgetting, oh my goodness, I'm just dropping this.
There's so much.
There's another big one where they, oh, they deleted all these, these texts by accident on January 6th, like that whole thing.
Supposedly they found a lot of them, by the way, so, oh well.
So you'll see the Secret Service a lot of times have some sort of weird, maybe not like Pinochet, but some sort of like allegiance to the people that they're, by the way, they have to die for them, right?
That's their pledge.
So there is this notion that they will, they're more allegiance to them than the actual government and the laws.
So a lot of weird things, but the bottom line is, if you're like me, and I've been to Dallas, I've done the research, I spent like more time than most, you know, anything that will help explain a bullet that came from the front, which again, opens, becomes a conspiracy works for me.
And there's even pictures of the, before they cleaned it up where there's indication that perhaps there was, you could see where the bullet had hit the back seat and made a dent in there, whatever.
And they pulled it out.
This is going to seem a little far afield, but I promise you it's not.
The, what this is, it's a lot like if you've ever had like a, an experience where you feel like there was a miracle that saved you.
You know what I mean?
Like you had a premonition and you didn't take a flight, or you moved your car before you got into a major accident, whatever.
It truly doesn't matter the factual nature of it.
If you believe the JFK was assassinated based on a huge conspiracy, this fits in!
It can become part of your cosmology, right?
Whether it's this, and there were multiple shooters.
Was it the Cubans?
Was it the mob?
Was it the CIA?
Was it all of them, right?
Was it a Secret Service agent who accidentally discharged his firearm and they were like hiding that in order to protect him?
Whatever it is that you believe, whatever it is you slot in there, it's like religion.
It's like faith.
You are just, you're creating a network and fabric of whatever.
And one of the reasons I think that we talk about JFK, not just as a society, but on this show all the time, it's another keystone.
It gives us a glimpse into how we deal with a world that we don't always know what's happening.
Right?
And the JFK assassination happened in the 60s when the CIA was, In everything!
I mean, you couldn't go around the world without the CIA interacting, changing things, carrying out coups, assassinations, you name it.
It's indicative of a larger societal problem.
That's why people are still obsessed with the JFK assassination.
And whatever story we want to put forward, we can.
Speaking of the corruptive nature of capitalism, Nick, I just want to talk about this very, very quickly.
Ari Fleischer, the former press secretary with the Bush administration, who is an absolute piece of shit.
Well, if karma is real, this guy is walking around with a tar black record, you know what I mean?
Ari Fleischer, For the past few years, on 9-11, has just spent the entire morning doing a minute-by-minute tweet of what was happening on September 11, 2001 in just a really grim, unnecessary spectacle.
But Nick, um, he stopped doing that.
And can we talk about why?
Is there any reason why Ari Fleischer would stop doing 9-11 minute-by-minute tweets?
For sure.
I mean, I'm sure it was really traumatizing to go through it every year and tiring and exhausting.
And, you know, what more could he add after all these different years?
So, you know, definitely some legitimate reasons why.
Oh, you don't think it has anything to do with the fact that he took a job with Live Golf that is owned and operated and funded by the Saudi Arabians?
No.
Oh, OK.
No, he's not getting paid that much by them.
What would that be?
It's too much, first of all.
But, Nick, I just wanted to talk about this for a second.
You know, we hear all the time about 9-11 and Always Remember and all this stuff.
Ari Fleischer has spent years of his life basically just continually reminding everybody that he was involved in this thing, a generational, defining, world-changing moment.
Apparently, like, him, like, being part of the administration during the War on Terror, like, it was akin of, like, some heroic struggle, good versus evil.
And he threw it overboard for golf money!
Like, do we need anything else to show us how corrosive and petty capitalism actually is?
No.
And I don't know if anyone will care, either.
Right!
That's the worst part about this.
But yes, the Saudis particularly have been really trying to scrub their reputations with blood money across the board for a long time.
Because they recognize the value of good PR, right?
That's what Ari Fisher is doing there.
He's a PR guy.
And at some point, PR and ethics, I suppose, intersect to some degree, and you're supposed to be better than that.
I'm going to say something.
Something I really appreciate about the Saudis and their blood money.
Do you know what that is?
It reveals true character.
What happens when the Saudis pull up with their dump truck of money is there's so much money, so much opportunity for these people, it makes them reveal who they truly are.
There's no more performative ethics, no more performative morality, performative principles.
You take the money and you just show the world that you are an absolute piece of shit.
Or you stay with your principles and you say that they're priceless.
Yeah.
They have revealed who people are time and time again, and for that, I'm grateful for that.
Well, it's because there's always a price tag.
There's a price you can buy that, and it's a lot of money.
It's a lot of money.
But let's not forget, like, why would they be concerned about talking about 9-11, Jared?
Because they have interesting ties to the attack on the World Trade Center on September 11th.
And by the way, the official and whatever you ask the average American, no one's going to implicate them in 9-11, but I suppose that is the success of this PR blitz they've been doing since it happened, right?
That's right, and it's another instance in which the United States has shown that it's not actually about clarity or openness, and even something like September 11th doesn't actually matter.
There's a reason why so many of their reports are redacted when they deal with Saudi Arabia.
All right, last segment of the day, Nick.
We gotta commemorate something important in the American media landscape.
This Sunday, Chuck Todd, the host of Meet the Press, after nine long years, he relinquished his duties as the host.
Here is Chuck Todd signing off mercifully for the last time.
My first day on the job at Meet the Press, I was handed an audience survey of Sunday show viewers, and the number one reason folks said they tuned in It was not because of who the person was behind the chair or the guests.
It was simply to get educated.
So for nearly a decade, I've had the honor of helping to explain America to Washington and Washington to America, as Kristen just quoted me about.
And it's that education piece that I'm hanging my hat on for the rest of my professional life.
One thing we will lament, we all lament lately, is the lack of knowledge and nuance in our politics and citizenship.
That's a vacuum I hope to continue to fill, whether in our continued news coverage here at NBC or via other venues like docuseries, docudramas, focused on bridging our divides, piercing these political bubbles.
And I will continue, of course, to be a big part of NBC's political coverage because, as Tom Brokaw said to me, he says, look, some networks do some things well, but nobody does politics like NBC.
And he was referring back all the way to David Brinkley.
And that is sort of the tradition I've always sent from Brinkley to Russert.
And that's the stuff I want to carry on.
That's the stuff Kristen's going to carry on.
I also could not have done this job for the last nine years without the team that you don't see on television.
The producers, the control room, the crew, the editors, the artists who make the show look like an incredible production every week.
I get up early, and they get up earlier.
Television is a team sport, and I'm proud to be a member of this team and stay a member of this team, even as a spectator, a cheerleader, and an advisor.
So that's all for today.
Thanks for watching.
And for so many years of loyalty to me and to this show, I'm happy to say my colleague Kristen Welker is going to be here next week, because it doesn't matter who sits in this chair.
If it's Sunday, it's Meet the Press.
Happy trails, Chuck!
It doesn't matter who's sitting in that chair.
And he proved it.
I have a lot to say about Chuck Todd's legacy.
What do you look at these last nine years, which were incredibly consequential?
And I think he's been one of the more destructive figures in the midst of all of it for a lot of different reasons that I'll get into in a second.
What are your takeaways from the Chuck Todd era of Meet the Press?
I really want to be sympathetic to him.
I really do.
Because if we were, we talked about this before, but not that long ago, he was Steve Kornacki before Kornacki.
He was the numbers guy, the whatever.
And you know, and after the, after it fell apart with David Gregory, again, I never understood why Because I thought he would be great at that.
You know, he just thrusts into it, right?
And he's not going to say no.
It's an amazing career opportunity for him.
And personality-wise, I mean, okay, here's the question.
Is it a personality thing that he could never push back and ask another, you know, question or two about an obfuscating?
Or was it a, you know, a Decisions that he made, I'm not going to be as good as Russert was or anybody in that chair before me.
And that's the big question.
And eventually, we know that they heard all the criticism over the years.
So he understood what we were expecting of him and what was expected of him.
And then he still wouldn't really, really do it until like the last, what?
Last month, right?
Nine years later, he finally did a little bit on one interview.
So that is the big criticism.
That is the big issue.
And I'm happy for him to go.
It was never compelling enough for me to listen to anymore.
They basically destroyed the brand of Meet the Press.
You know, I've spent... Since he announced he was going to go away, I've been thinking about it a lot.
And I finally came to an understanding of something that I don't think I had before.
And then he did this sign-off and it only crystallized it for me.
Was Chuck Todd terrible because he allowed Republicans to come on his program and lie without being challenged?
Unquestionably.
The fact that Chuck Todd couldn't understand what the Republican Party was becoming, and the fact that he didn't use his role to push back, was that destructive?
Absolutely it was.
I think the problem with Chuck Todd can be brought into focus this way.
Russert hosted Meet the Press as a news hound.
He wanted to get to the heart of a matter that was taking place in the country, and he actually wanted to inform people so that they could be an informed part of an elective process.
He wanted to be the main page of everything constantly that said, here's what's happening in the world, here's why it's happening, right?
What Chuck Todd has brought is what you just heard in that sign-off and what he said when he announced his retirement, which is this.
He sees himself as the educator.
He sees himself as the one who understands what's going on.
And everybody who criticizes him, everybody who's screaming, Chuck, fight back against this, ask better questions, those people just don't know any better, right?
If they would just shut up and consume Meet the Press, they would understand what the actual experts are about.
He's a technocratic figurehead.
And the problem in this, do you know, like, any normal people now who watch Meet the Press, Nick?
Yeah.
No, it's destroyed.
No, it's not relevant.
Nobody watches Meet the Press, and part of the reason is because Chuck Todd turned Meet the Press into something that journalists watched in order to get their cues of how to interact with the news.
Basically, Meet the Press gave an example of how you're supposed to approach the news, what kind of an opinion you're supposed to have, so that way you might get invited on Meet the Press.
I never got invited on Meet the Press.
You know why?
Because you wouldn't have your normal panel.
You wouldn't be sitting on there having your, like, Beltway brunch chat, right?
You had to approach the news in the same way now that all of these people are like, is Trump really a fascist?
Was January 6th really a coup?
He demonstrated what quote-unquote acceptable coverage of the political moment was supposed to look like.
And it wasn't just not pushing back against Republicans, Nick.
It wasn't treating the moment like it actually was.
It was living within the Washington D.C.
bubble and looking at all this like it's a game.
Looking at all this like it's just a spectator sport.
Who played the game better?
Nobody's actually getting affected.
And it goes back to all these people who say, can't you see the economy's great?
What are you, stupid?
Why can't we just make, why can't we just educate these people better?
And I think that's why he was so dangerous, is because he laid the example for the modern American political media who cannot deal with what's actually happening in this country because they want to appear respectable and professional.
I wouldn't lay it all on his feet.
But yeah, he's part of it.
Yeah, he was a big part of it.
And also because it was nine years ago.
Had he come along four years ago, after everything had started with Trump, then okay, he's just a bit he's a player in this.
But he did set the stage for a lot of this.
You know, the guy if they really wanted to return to what it stood for, and probably would get a lot better ratings anyway, would be Mehdi Hassan.
That's the person who you need to have on that show.
Mehdi Hassan should host Meet the Press.
Yes.
And by the way, his stuff goes viral now.
It took them forever to give him a shot.
He was doing stuff from across the pond, and MSNBC finally gave him a little bit of a thing, like a pod, and then they gave him a regular show.
He will maybe ultimately get slotted in there.
He's in the same company, right?
It's not down the hall or whatever it is.
So it's possible eventually, because Christian Welker is just another line of Of journalists who aren't going to really do much better than Chuck Todd either.
Kristen Welker is the hand-picked successor to Chuck Todd.
She will function much like Chuck Todd.
God knows what personal touch she'll bring to it.
I want to say something about Mehdi Hasan, and I'm glad you brought him up.
Mehdi Hasan absolutely should be the host of Meet the Press.
And if he was made the host of Meet the Press, it would become appointment television viewing.
Also, Republicans would stop going on there.
That's another thing that would actually happen if he took it over.
I will say this about Mehdi, because I've talked with Mehdi, I've worked with Mehdi, I've appeared with Mehdi.
He's incredibly intelligent, he's incredibly talented, but he's also a fundamentally decent human being.
He cares about what's happening to people, you know, like in the midst of this authoritarian push.
If I had to make a guess, and I don't know anything, I haven't talked to Mehdi Hassan about his future, you know what would be the perfect place for him?
Something like a 60 Minutes.
Like, where he could, like, go and do these big stories, stuff like that.
He's great on MSNBC.
I can't wait for the next time I get to go on there with him because he's, like, one of the few real ones out there.
But he absolutely should take over Meet the Press.
He's the type of person who should be on there.
And I also want to say one last thing about Chuck Todd, Pick.
We covered his retirement announcement.
We covered his sign-off.
What's he most proud of, Nick?
He's most proud of providing an example, and he's most proud of the fact that he took Meet the Press and turned it into a podcast and a daily show.
He's not a news person.
He's a branding person.
That's the entire purpose of this, and if that's what you're going to hang your hat on while you're walking out the door, best of luck.
I hope whatever you do goes well.
But get out of our way, because you hurt a lot of people.
All right, everybody, we're going to come back on Friday with the Weekender Edition.
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