Former CIA Executive Philip Mudd | PBD Podcast | Ep. 189
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PBD Podcast Episode 189. In this episode, Patrick Bet-David is joined by Philip Mudd & Adam Sosnick.
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Patrick Bet-David is the founder and CEO of Valuetainment Media. He is the author of the #1 Wall Street Journal bestseller Your Next Five Moves (Simon & Schuster) and a father of 2 boys and 2 girls. He currently resides in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.
0:00 - Start
29:30 - Philip Mudd on Hillary Clinton's involvement in Benghazi
36:58 - Why do social media companies allow conspiracy theories from Hillary Clinton, but not Trump?
43:12 - Does the U.S. have a problem at the border?
48:40 - Are Americans 'racist' against immigrants?
58:33 - Was the investigation of January 6th 'worth it'?
1:03:52 - The importance of consistency
1:25:18 - Was the U.S. behind the Nord Stream pipeline attack?
1:41:26 - The future of India
1:47:23 - Will Iran ever see regime change?
Why would you bet on Jolieth when we got bet taving?
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This world of entrepreneurs, we get no value to hate it.
Ideally running, homie, look what I become.
I'm the one.
PDB or PBD?
PDB.
PDB.
Why PDB?
President's Daily Brief, when I started at the CIA, the gold standard is, do you get in front of the president every day?
The president gets what we call the book.
It's actually, depending on the president, it can be a pamphlet.
It can be a binder, but it's referred to as a PDB, the President's Daily Brief.
It's the short summary of stuff going around the world that you think he'd be interested in, three articles, maybe some shorts, you know, a couple sentences.
Now, let me ask you this.
Do you think the current president enjoys the PDB or he skips them?
No, he's not reading it because he was on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, so it's somebody's nationality.
He has to go through it.
Guys, welcome to the PDB podcast.
We're live.
We went right into it.
Guys, let me tell you, we're back at it again.
We're trying to solve a mystery.
So for me, I'm like, look, we got to bring X-CI agents here, ex-FBI agents.
So finally, we said, look, why don't we bring somebody that's been both CIA and FBI, and that's our guest today.
Let me properly read the intro so you know who we're talking to today.
He is an American political commentator, former counterterrorism official in the CIA and the FBI.
He joined the CIA in 1985 as an analyst specializing in South Asia, Middle East.
In 92, he joined the CIA's counterterrorism center, CTC, from 95 to 98.
He served on the National Intelligence Council as a deputy national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia.
In 01, he began policies assignment at the White House, detailed from the CIA to serve as a director of Gulf Affairs on the White House National Security Council.
And then he's done a bunch of different things after that.
I think he was back at the CIA from 2002, I think around 2010, a little bit of stuff from 2009, 10 with the FBI.
And then eventually the debate is whether he left, whether he got fired or he quit.
But I want to find out what happened.
Why did you leave the CIA at the end?
That's the mystery.
That's the question.
Okay, in 2010, let's be clear.
I did not retire.
I quit.
You're the first person, and you're starting off on the wrong foot to suggest that I got fired.
I did not get.
You know what this reminds me of?
Have you seen Larry King with what's the guy's name?
The comedian you like, the Jewish comedian.
Jerry Seinfeld.
Jerry Seinfeld.
He sits there.
He says, So, Jerry, why did they fire you?
Wait, you think I got fired?
Larry, you think I got fired?
Is this serious?
Have you seen this or no?
Yes.
Well, of course.
Classic on that.
What's the deal?
I'm going to start brawling here.
25 years of service.
You think somebody would say thanks and he says, did you get fired?
There's a real story.
One of the problems, a thousand problems in the American government is the president's responsible for nominating too many people for too many jobs.
So I got nominated by President Obama, whom I did not know.
One of my friends put me up for the job to President Obama to be the head of intelligence at Homeland Security.
I had been deputy director of the CIA's counterterrorism center at the time where we had so-called black sites where we kept al-Qaeda prisoners and we conducted what are called renditions.
That is transferring al-Qaeda prisoner to our CIA facilities.
So I was involved in some of that.
By the time President Obama nominated me for a position at Department of Homeland Security in 2009, the Congress was all over renditions and black sites.
And they said, when you come down for your open, that is public nomination hearing, the Democrats are going to kick your ass one way and the Republicans are going to kick your ass another way.
And I said, well, neither of you is because if that's your goal, I'm out.
That's not professional and I'm not going to participate.
So the real, to be really serious for a moment, challenge for me was after 25 years of a paycheck every other Friday, stepping out and saying, I don't have a job and I don't know what my job's going to be, and I'm going to lose my pension, and I still don't have it for a seven-year period from 55 to 62.
I'm 60 now, so it's still another couple of years till I get a pension.
So I know this is boring, but as a government bureaucrat, and I use that word, it's painful to say, but I was, to step away from a paycheck and say, I quit because I'm pissed off at the Senate, that was tough, but that's what happened.
I just said, I'm not going up for a hearing where you just abused me in public about the interrogation program.
That's what it was when you said, I'm done with this.
That's correct.
Yes.
I said, I'm out.
All my friends said, you're nuts.
Another seven years and you can get a pension.
I said, life is not about waking up in the morning for seven years of life and saying, you know, maybe six months I would have done it and saying, I'm going to do something because I could never get a great job.
After you turn down a presidential appointment, that never happens unless you don't pay taxes on your nanny.
You never willfully pull away, especially as a bureaucrat.
You never pull away from a presidential appointment when you start as a GS9 making $23,000 a year and the president appoints you to a position.
So my point is, after you pull away from one, my career would have been over and I'm not going to sit around for seven years just waiting for a pension.
That's not life.
Was that a shot at a man named Bernie when you said the taxes on nanny?
Carrick, remember the whole thing?
Oh, no, no.
That's where you and I'm like, that was a...
No, no, no.
Oh, okay.
Both...
There's a lot of, back you're going, I'm going to date myself 20 years or so.
There's a whole series of, there are a whole series of public officials, including justices, et cetera, who did not succeed in getting their jobs because they had a nanny from Latin America and they didn't pay taxes, which I thought was a bit much.
But yeah, people usually pull out from appointments where I was trying to say for cause.
And the cause is usually some ethical issue, not just because they're pissed off at the Senate.
Well, good for you for doing that.
So for some of us who are not CIA agents or FBI agents who live normal lives, can you kind of, you know, I know a lot of things are said here with the projects you worked on, assignments you worked on.
What were some regions, maybe even countries that you worked on, you know, since 1985?
Boy, a lot of India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Iran.
Worked a lot on Middle East stuff, including places like Saudi Arabia when I was deputy director of counterterrorism from 02 to 05.
So that's, you know, obviously after 9-11, dealing with dealing with Afghanistan.
I was in Afghanistan with a team to put together a new government in November and December of 2001, which was an incredible experience with a guy named Ambassador Dobbins, who was the man who basically put together the new government after we moved into the Army and intelligence, et cetera, moved into Afghanistan.
So Middle East, South Asia generally, and doing a lot of counterterrorism stuff for a lot of years.
From your perspective, what is the difference between the job duties of a CIA agent and FBI?
Obviously, we've heard it many times by folks.
I think in the last eight weeks, we've had two or three CI agents and FBI agents sitting right here on the podcast with us.
But what would you say is the difference between a CI agent and an FBI agent?
Well, let me do better than they did because clearly they didn't educate you.
So let me see if I can.
Shots fire.
You thought this was going to be a moment.
Yeah, it's going to be a good idea.
I like it already.
There's a couple.
One that's sort of clear and one that's less clear.
Let's do fact and culture.
Fact would be the FBI typically is domestically focused.
They have a lot of people overseas, but that is a secondary purpose for the FBI.
So investigating things like white-collar crime, Enron years ago, investigating organized crime, investigating obviously counterterrorism, child pornography, gangs, right now, white supremacists, and the CIA, which is obviously typically focused on overseas, the Iranian nuclear program, the North Korean missile program, what's going on in Ukraine right now.
But I think one of the most interesting things I saw, I spent 25 years at the CIA.
The last five, I was on detail to Director Mueller, the Mueller who did the Russia report.
I was his intelligence advisor at the FBI from 05 to 2010.
Culturally, the FBI is much more formal, much more hierarchical, much more rules-oriented because you have to bring your information into a court of law, and that's public, and you can be questioned by a defense attorney.
The culture at the CIA is fundamentally different.
Flatter, to be blunt, less respectful of leadership, which has ups and downs.
Yes, you can walk into the CI director.
In my case, my most frequent interaction was daily with CI Director Tennett, and the conversations can be pretty toe-to-toe.
You do not do that with the FBI director.
When you say toe-to-toe, yes, it's not impolite.
Director, we can't do that.
That's not a good idea.
We should do this.
I did not see people interact with Robert.
And Robert Mueller's personality was also, he's a different personality.
Maybe the best leader I ever saw in Washington, D.C.
And that's saying a lot.
So both have advantages, but I was saying the CIA is more informal, less rules-oriented because you're operating overseas and you're not collecting information on what we call non-USPRs, non-U.S. persons.
So the rights a non-U.S. person has to privacy when they're looking at their email is a lot different than the rights you might have, despite what people say in sort of conspiracy media, the rights you might have logging in in Fort Lauderdale or Chicago or Los Angeles.
Very different, very different worlds.
And Philip, how long were you CIA versus FBI?
25 years at CIA, but the last five, the CIA director said, you're going to go over to the FBI and help them build an intelligence program.
Back then, there were a lot of questions about how the FBI, how aggressively the FBI was trying to follow potential people in the United States who were joining al-Qaeda and later to become ISIS.
So I was paid by the CIA when I was at the FBI, but I sat in the executive suite of the FBI down the hall from Director Mueller.
So in essence, you're sort of, you're immersed, which was a weird, seeing both cultures was really instructive.
One of the best experiences of my life, personally and professionally, I'd say.
You said culturally wise, you gave a clear distinction between how people operate internally with the FBI versus the CIA, but you were F-CIA for 25 years, a little more less structure, everything you sort of encompassed with that.
But then when you went to FBI, you kind of had to more toe the line.
You had to be, I don't want to say less respectful.
I'm sorry, more respectful, but you basically had to kind of fall in line versus CIA.
You could be a more loosey-goosey with it.
How did you process that?
I think one of the, you know, there's a lot of leadership questions.
I do some executive coaching now and some public speaking.
It's surprising how many of the lessons of leadership and management you see outside government.
I didn't expect this outside government that I witnessed inside government.
The only reason I can say that is because in my first 20 years at the CIA, I knew one thing.
This is how we operate, especially operating in a world that's not visible to the public, where you think you're everything.
The lack of humility, I'll get in trouble with my friends for this, at the CIA is significant because they think that they're everything.
And again, in a secret world, you don't have competition.
You're not questioned.
Going over to the FBI, I started to realize, hey, these folks are much more rigorous in how they ask questions.
Now, again, that has some downsides.
That sometimes eliminates risk-taking.
But we can learn from that.
The FBI is much more metrics-oriented.
We can learn from that, how we measure performance instead of saying, you know, Joe's pretty good.
Let's assume that what he's doing, you know, what he's doing is succeeding.
Well, it's not.
So you're going to hold Joe's feet to the fire by adding a little metrics to the equation.
I just saw the differences as profound, and I don't mean to be critical of either organization, but I think both have something to learn from the other.
And sometimes they're incapable of it because there's still rivalry between the two.
So it's a little bit disturbing.
Why do you think the American people trust these organizations?
The lack of trust they have for these organizations today.
Why do you think it's gotten to that point?
I think it's pretty simple.
And this is a leadership question.
And I anticipated in the age of social media and the internet that people would become better educated, that more access to more information meant that people would be broader, that people would be open to looking at more stuff.
And what you realize, obviously, whichever end of the spectrum you're on, is that people go down and they want validation.
I think this, I'm going to have an avenue for information that reflects this.
I mean, I'm not giving you a revelation here.
In terms of your questions about lack of trust in institutions, people who are going down those rat holes left and right still value leadership.
And this is a positive thing, but it's also a negative thing.
If leadership, propaganda is about a consistent message over time that has some little kernel of truth.
If leadership consistently says don't trust these people, watch out for Ma-a-Lago.
Watch out for January 6th.
Watch out for the Russia investigation.
Left to right, don't trust them because they're not doing what an American should expect the CIA or the FBI does.
People are eventually, and people are susceptible to propaganda in this country.
We think we're not.
We are.
People eventually are going to say, I believe that.
If it's told consistently over the course of years, down a rat hole and someone's told the same message.
So I blame leadership.
I don't blame the institutions.
They're not responsible for public diplomacy and convincing Americans why they're doing the right thing.
The FBI is not a public affairs organization.
And I object to members of Congress saying the FBI should be more out there explaining itself.
They're an investigative organization.
They're not there to influence American perspectives.
I blame leadership for telling people not to trust these institutions.
And over time, they won and people don't trust them.
So let's go through a series of issues that have happened in the last few years that caused the public to kind of react to it.
Okay.
And give your feedback on each level of credibility.
And I'll kind of go through them one by one by one.
I'd be curious to hear from you.
And by the way, if I missed something, Tyler, jump in there and Adam, add your stuff that I forgot as well.
No, don't make this more complicated.
You just go toe-to-toe.
So for me, so let's go through Benghazi.
Let's write that down.
Benghazi, let's write down the 30,000 emails.
Let's write down Russia collusion with Trump.
Let's write down a January 6th insurrection.
Let's write down the two impeachments.
Let's write down the Mar-a-Lago raid.
What did I miss here?
Have I missed anything?
The Kardashians?
I mean, how much do you want to put it in?
No, I want to have Richard Witner kidnapping.
Is that something that's not?
That's interesting.
We can put it there, but I'm talking about some of the any of the stuff that's the big stuff that's happening.
Bertherism, Obama.
I don't know.
You want to throw that in there?
That's more marketing.
That's more marketing.
But, you know, it's not Biden dementia, everything.
I don't think Biden in Ukraine is specifically putting it on to do Hunter Biden.
Let's put that one.
Hunter Biden, the story.
New York Post, they knew it.
They held it back.
Even Zuckerberg talked about it on Rogan's podcast.
So these events happen.
The average person that doesn't have access to information like you do, like others do, they sit there and people want to believe it.
They want to believe, yeah, that's what's happening.
And then, you know, some sides, rather than, well, let's prove it.
We've become this society that everybody is guilty until proven innocent instead of innocent until proven guilty.
When you hear somebody's story, you know, where are you at with, well, that one, I don't know what they did with that.
There was no point with this one.
That one had credibility.
This one ended up being a hoax.
That one was a waste of time.
How do you process these?
Boy, that's a great question.
We'll spend the next.
It's 9.23 a.m. on the East Coast.
Let me just give you a couple thoughts and we can go into whatever direction you want.
The first is, I might have missed one or two.
Let me take birtherism off the table.
I look at all of these and say they're worthy of an investigation.
They're worthy of looking at to determine what happened.
Hunter Biden, 30,000 emails.
What happened in terms of Donald Trump Jr.'s meeting with a Russian to get dirt on Hillary before the campaign, I mean, before the election, all these things are worthy of looking at.
There's a couple of characteristics that I look at as someone who did this for a living to see which ones get over the bar.
Let me give you two or three.
One is you mentioned Benghazi.
That's loss of life.
That's not only worth looking at, that's worth stepping back and saying, is we have to have an after action to determine whether there's some way to prevent this in the future.
Loss of life to me takes a problem to a different versus the Hillary Clinton 30,000 emails.
I mean, there wasn't loss of life.
So you got to investigate that to determine whether there's a civil or criminal penalty, but that's at a lesser level.
The second thing, and this is where it gets really subtle, but to my mind, really important, is the difference between what you think and what you know, particularly when the question of what you know is going to go in a court of law where there's a defense attorney and a prosecutor.
So you can say, let's go to Mar-a-Lago, and I'll give you both sides.
You can say, as someone who looked at classified information, I can see the cover sheets on the photo that came out of Mar-a-Lago.
And I can say that stuff is extremely sensitive.
In my world, some of that stuff I would not have had access to.
And the reason it's sensitive is that if it were released to the public, the people we're collecting against, Iran, North Korea, Russia, for example, would be able to figure out where that came from in a heartbeat and shut down that avenue, including potentially, if it's a human informant, that's a traitor.
They're going to kill him.
So that's one aspect to it.
So somebody would say, well, if he's got that stuff in Mar-a-Lago, well, of course he's guilty.
Why haven't they charged him yet?
Then I look at it and say, well, if you want to talk about the former president of the United States, it's not clear to me exactly what he told the people when that information was removed from the White House.
It's not clear to me what happened when it got to Mar-a-Lago in terms of clear direction from the president.
I'm not talking about what you think and what we've heard reported.
I'm talking about what you can say in a court of law.
The former president doesn't write emails, so you're not going to produce an email.
And he's got a bunch of advisors who probably heard different things.
So you're going to have conflicting evidence going to a trial.
So when I look at stuff to really get over the bar on this stuff, I'm going through a process and analytic process of let me make arguments both sides.
And when I train analysis, I tell people, if you believe one thing, you are only a good analyst when you can go to the other side and make an argument to me that's compelling about what the person on the other side of the table thinks.
You have to have your mind at a level of flexibility where you're seeing both sides.
I would say on most of these, to close, Benghazi is an example.
The 30,000 emails are an example.
Mar-a-Lago's sort of an example.
The stories are subtler than people think.
And finally, there's far less conspiracy than people think.
We don't do conspiracies well in government.
And I'm not joking.
You know, if you have 100 people going looking at the Mar-a-Lago problem, one person trying to affect that because they don't like President Trump or they do is very, very, very difficult to do.
And let me rephrase that.
That's impossible.
I just don't see it.
So take the conspiracy crap out, but put your hat on of saying, before I go down a rabbit hole of my perspective, make the other argument.
And it's more difficult than it sounds.
You know how hard it is to believe what you just said, that The conspiracies of people not liking somebody is out the window or liking somebody is out the window because I think that's the biggest problem I have.
And let me explain what I mean by this.
For me, CIA, maybe CIA more than FBI, but maybe we can put FBI in that as well.
I have a hard time believing that they can stay neutral.
I have a very hard time believing that they can stay neutral.
And then the problem I go to is how the hell do you recruit people that don't have their own political leanings where they're not going to be jumping to conclusion with their own ideology or relationships that they have.
It almost hurts it, right?
Like when Stephen A. Smith talks, I don't know if you follow Stephen A. Smith or Persona.
Can we give our opinion here?
So check this out.
So with Stephen A. Smith, by the way, he irritates a lot of people, right?
But anytime Stephen A. Smith wants to give feedback about Magic Johnson, I don't hear it because it's his best friend.
So when you become too close to these players, you can't give real feedback because you're going to have dinner with this guy and you want to keep a relationship with them.
But where in CIA and FBI, a lot of these guys can't stand a lot of these types of personalities.
Like I can imagine in the CI, like what Peter Strzz did, it was very obvious when his text came out.
This guy hated Trump.
I mean, that wasn't a maybe, that wasn't a possibly, it didn't take a dummy to read some of these texts to say, this dude cannot stand who Trump is, right?
Well, people who are regular people sitting out there saying, dude, what the hell is he doing?
So you're telling me to not believe conspiracy theories?
These are all the text messages they have on what this guy said.
Hey, January 18, 2016, Martin Normale is a freak show.
Lisa Page, yikes, baby.
Yeah, that's what we.
Next one, he asked me to, if I'd vote for guest K6, seriously, what would you, I don't know, I suppose Hillary, I would be, Paige, God, Trump is a loathsome human.
He yet, humans.
I mean, when you go through this stuff, would he be worse president than Cruz?
Trump, yes, I think.
This is public information.
So when you say what you're saying, as much as the public wants to say, you know what, Philip, you're right, man.
We're just watching one too many, you know, conspiracy theory movies and we're just got caught up with this YouTube stuff.
And maybe we're smoking a little too much hash and we're getting a little too creative.
But no, I don't know.
I think there is some true hate involved, hate involved, and they're targeting certain people.
I think that's correct.
Let me go idealistic, which is rare for me.
I'm a realist, but then go practical.
Idealistically, when you join the entities that I joined, Peter Strzok did a lot of damage to the FBI.
What happened to him, you can argue about whether it was appropriate or not, but he did tremendous damage to the FBI.
The bottom line at the CIA and the Bureau is that most of the people, believe it or not, they do have strong views.
These are smart people.
The people I worked with at the agency, when I joined, I got a master's degree from a great university, the University of Virginia, in English literature.
My master's with defense was in Victorian novel, 19th century British novel.
My master's thesis was comparing medieval sermons with morality plays from 600 years ago.
I mean, I sat down with people and I said, this is game.
So they do have views, some very strong views.
You're discouraged from expressing them in the workplace.
Obviously, these folks on phones that were given to them by the Bureau, which means that's not your phone, were expressing views during the workplace.
But you're supposed to say, and a lot of people did, believe it or not, and I will get realistic in a second.
You're supposed to say the American people elected Mary or Joe or John as president.
When I go to the office, I wasn't elected.
I serve them.
So unless they're doing something illegal, unethical, or immoral, that's the will of the people.
And I don't represent the will of the people.
Now, let's go practical for one second and do a numbers game.
And let's look at the Russia investigation.
As someone who took stats in college, stats for non-mathematicians, along with logic, one of the best classes I ever talk.
It trains your mind analytically, not just mathematically.
Let's do a numbers game.
Let's say there are hundreds of people involved in the Russia investigation.
Those people are involved in reviewing things like who you're going up on with informants, whose emails you're looking at, how that stuff not only is investigated in the Bureau, but how it's overseen by many lawyers at the Department of Justice.
What I'm saying is statistically, you start to weed out fringes or people who want to take the investigation to a different place because you simply can't go through hundreds of people and have an aberration.
You know, we want to go up on, you know, Adam because we don't like him.
Well, a lawyer is going to look at that and then 10 lawyers are going to look at that and then it's going to be reviewed.
And then the FBI director is going to look at that.
And then the attorney general is going to look at that.
And they're going to say that's stupid and that's biased.
So if you don't believe me idealistically, I just say do your stats homework and tell me how likely it is that political bias in an investigation of several hundred people can be or that an investigation of several hundred people can be directed by one or two people who have a bias.
That just statistically doesn't work.
Well, you're talking about one-offs, right?
Like Peter Shook.
But what happens if it's at the top?
You know, whether it's a John Brennan or a Christopher Wray or even a Robert Mueller.
Yeah.
Like what kind of influence is that person?
Like John Brennan, as an example, not a fan of Trump.
I don't think that's like a secret.
If the person at the top has an agenda, how does that affect the trickle down?
Significant.
Leadership, and this is why you need to pay attention, you know, not to your third-level appointments, but to your first level appointments, Secretary of Defense, Secretary of State.
When you look at people like James Madison, Rex Tillerson, the first people involved in the cabinet for President Trump, you got to step back and say, like him or not, these are serious people.
So if you like President Trump or you don't, either way, you're going to say these people are going to provide advice that he should listen to.
My experience is that leadership, even in bureaucracies that look like they don't move, is huge.
So let me give you a specific example.
You look at the closeness of the CIA leadership pre-Iraq war to the White House.
And anybody who looks at history, and George Tennett, the former director, is a friend, but I think anybody who looks at history says, what are the questions you should raise about how distant a CIA director should be from the president?
George Tennett was very close to George Bush.
Is there a lesson that says, even though the CIA is supposed to be obviously a fundamental support mechanism to the White House, there should be a distance because there's a contradiction there.
If you're supposed to support the White House, obviously you should be close to them to understand what they think, what they want, whether you're supporting them properly.
I think there is a balance in leadership over time, but it's not easy enough simply to say that they should be distant from leadership because at some level, from the White House, at some level, you have to say, we're here to serve the White House.
What are your thoughts on the current leadership?
What's Christopher Wray at the FBI?
And the head of the CIA, I forget his name again.
That's secret.
I know the head of the CISM.
I do not know Christopher Wray.
I think in my now, man, 36 years of doing this, this is easily one of the best combinations if you're just doing one plus one, both of them together that I have ever seen.
In terms of experience, I look at characteristics of leadership, whether it's in the organizations where I consult or the executive coaching that I do, and the characteristics I saw with people like Condi Rice, Colin Powell, it's Bill Burns, by the way.
Bill Burns, yeah.
Mike Hayden, George Tenet, Robert Mueller.
The characteristics I see in both of them, experience, temperament, humility, intellectual curiosity, pure intellect, how they treat the workforce, how the workforce responds to them.
I think when you're looking at leadership, if you start to define it down in measurable areas, like the areas I just mentioned, communication skills, the ability to take a bullet.
Chris Ray doesn't talk much.
And I guarantee you, there are some lower level of the people at the FBI, some would say, can't you get out and defend us more?
Which would be a huge mistake on his part.
To getting out ahead of some issues, you're saying?
No, to raising your head above in a political fray, Democrats and Republicans, above the fray because you'll get shot at.
So if you stay silent, he doesn't stay silent all the time, but mostly if you stay silent, the likelihood you're going to get shot is lower.
Keep your head in trench.
Both of them have this variety of characteristics that is really unique.
I don't know Ray, but I know Byrne Summit.
I would say privately, he's pretty funny.
You can talk to him.
He's a nice guy.
I mean, you just don't get this range of people lack humility sometimes.
Sometimes they don't have the knowledge they need to because they have political connections, but they don't know the business.
Sometimes they're too political.
Sometimes personalities, I worked with a number of CI directors who had very difficult personalities, rude, impolite.
I'm like, I did 15 years.
Can you not even say, what do you think instead of kicking my ass?
That's not a very good leadership style.
So both of them might say A-plus.
Let's go back to this.
Let's go back to this because I really want to target this.
So Benghazi, 30,000 emails.
Russia, January 6th, two impeachments, Mar-a-Lago.
Okay.
And Hunter Biden.
Can we also throw in 9-11 to that?
Because he said loss of life and conspiracy theory.
We know just the episode we had a few weeks ago.
I'd love to get his thoughts on that.
I'll put that as well.
So let's go through some of these.
So Benghazi, the way we investigated it and the level of accountability that whoever was involved at that time, say Hillary Clinton, was justice served based on what happened to Benghazi and the four folks that we lost out there.
I'm not known for being subtle, so let me say yes for a basic reason.
You're talking about fairly isolated diplomatic facilities in a hostile country, and you want to anticipate in hundreds of facilities overseas that you can manage basically a mob trying to storm that facility.
If you want to make Fortress America, which if you travel overseas, we already see, you can do that.
These facilities are supposed to be open to people.
They're supposed to be open to visa seekers.
When I saw that, I saw a tragedy.
I saw a tragedy that should be investigated.
That's why I say I agree with an investigation.
That investigation should be looking at the question of whether there's culpability.
But there's a tougher question that says, how do we balance having hundreds of facilities?
So there is both a cultural issue here about how America wants to be perceived, but there's also a financial issue here.
Do you want to build fortresses in every tiny consulate around the planet?
How do you look at that and say, we should anticipate this kind of mob coming into this kind of location and have every place not only secured, but have a backup plan to ensure that we can respond in a vacuum?
I just, we do 45 seconds on TV, and that doesn't do a service to this problem.
It goes back to the question of saying, if you want to say that Benghazi was a Hillary Clinton problem and that we should have responded more quickly and prevented loss of life, spend some time making the counter argument about how difficult it would be to plan in sub-Saharan Africa and North Africa, in the Middle East and South Asia and Southeast Asia and East Asia for every diplomatic location we have to plan to make sure that never happens.
And I'm going to say, good luck.
You can't do it.
Perfect.
So if we hold that kind of accountability to her, then we have to hold a similar kind of accountability of lack of perfection doesn't exist anywhere, which is fine.
We have to stay consistent with that.
That's fair.
Okay.
So if we're going to say Hillary's not perfect, we have to keep going with that.
So 30,000 emails, okay, on what happened, her breaking the laptops, the phones, all that stuff.
Was the right level of accountability held to Hillary Clinton for what she did?
And every time they asked her question, she's like, Yeah, I don't know.
Yeah, I don't know.
That's you.
You mentioned earlier I'm a political commentary.
I'm not.
I comment on it because people ask, but I'll give a semi-political answer.
I think yes.
If you look at the information that was in those emails, it's not clear to me that revealing that information was hugely substantial for national security or could have led to loss of life.
So in terms of legal responsibility, I'd say, I don't know how much money the U.S. wants to spend on this case, going back to what I said earlier, if you can anticipate a defense attorney is going to have a good case too.
So we're going to spend a ton of money.
And remember, resources are finite.
If I'm the attorney general, I'm saying, man, this is going to be a ton of people.
How many, I'd rather put those people on child porn.
I'd rather put them on gangs.
The other thing, though, I'd say the flip side of this is I think she paid a tremendous price in terms of authenticity.
And this is where I will make a vague political comment in terms of people passing judgment.
And to be blunt, I think some of that was appropriate.
When I saw some of the answers about why this was on there, what I knew, what I knew was classified and didn't, I'm like, as a guy who did this for decades, that dog don't hunt.
I thought there was way too much bobbing and weaving, way too much avoiding questions.
And I thought a lack of responsibility in looking at a camera and don't give me yes, but.
Yes, but I didn't give me a break.
Anybody who deals with national security information knows what's going on here.
If you look at some of the information in there, it is classified.
Sorry, it is.
Now, I don't think, as I said, there should have been a criminal charge or a civil charge, but I do think the American people judged her.
And based on the answers I saw, I'm not saying you should solely judge her on that basis, but people who judged her and said this is inauthentic.
Okay, I'm with that.
That's fine.
Got it.
How about the you're going to get is this over yet?
Because I've not.
Let me know.
And the reason why I'm going to go through this, the reason why I'm going to go through this is because of the same level of accountability and softness the agency has on one side, they have to have on the other side, or else you lose credibility.
It doesn't matter what it is.
If you're going to be gentle with one and making this person, well, no one's perfect.
Well, it's this, well, it's that.
You can't go and say the other person is evil and they're this and they're that.
So the next one.
Okay, so Hillary Clinton loses 2016 election.
The world is shocked.
Nobody watching TV thought this was going to happen.
Nobody.
I couldn't believe it.
I was at my, I live on a farm at 3:30 in the morning, you're like, what the hell just happened, right?
So I can only imagine she's in her hotel room.
They're getting ready to prepare the party, the fireworks, everything, and then it's announced that Trump wins, Trump shows up.
For three years, four years, all she talks about is, you know, the election was a fraud.
It was a fraud.
Russia was involved.
Russia was involved.
The election was a fraud.
There's no way I've lost for four years.
But the media allowed her to keep saying that for four years, nobody said anything.
Should she have every chance she got that when she got on TV talk about that there was an election fraud for her losing to Donald Trump?
Was that okay, what she was doing?
The answer could be yes or no.
I'm okay with it.
I didn't particularly care for it.
I thought it was rehashing an election that she lost that was humiliating.
She lost to a candidate that was not the strongest candidate the Republicans ever put up.
I mean, just talking apolitically, if you look at polling numbers, I think a strong Democratic candidate, somebody of the caliber, I'm just talking about polling numbers and sort of reach across America.
She had to have been embarrassed.
And I think looking around saying, what happened here for someone, I'm going to quote someone who, and I won't use the name, once said, somebody who knows her said, there are no mirrors in the Clinton household.
I thought that was a great line.
In other words, not looking saying, maybe I, maybe I didn't run.
Maybe I should have campaigned in the Russ Belt and the Middle East.
Fair enough.
That's exactly right.
So I think, you know, media can put on whoever they want.
That's a choice of a producer.
But in terms of people to listen to, to me, it sounded like sour grapes.
I didn't think it did her any favors.
Yeah, the only reason why I say media.
Can't we do like sports or something?
We're about to get into some sports.
The CIA guy wants to talk sports.
But I asked this because when he said media can put whoever they want, that's the producer's job.
You're right.
But social media can also choose who they want to ban and they never banned her for keeping it.
Oh, but time.
Okay, this is America.
This choice.
I don't do Twitter.
I don't do.
I have a LinkedIn account because people sometimes send in interesting questions or hire me for a speech.
But if you choose to do that, you can.
As someone who does media for a living, my question is, why don't you check out?
If you don't like that stuff, check out.
Go have a glass of Cabernet.
Go run five miles.
Go learn to cook.
Check out from where?
What do you mean?
Check out from a life that says, I have to know every five minutes what Hillary Clinton said with Donald Trump.
No, that's not what I'm saying.
What I'm saying is actually the other way.
What I'm saying is the fact that social media companies allowed all those video clips of Hillary saying that this was a fraud election.
They allowed her clips to stay on.
But the other side of the moment, they said, no, this is, you know, you're just talking about a conspiracy theory.
So Hillary Clinton's, you know, loss wasn't a conspiracy theory, but Trump's was a conspiracy theory.
So which conspiracy theory is allowed and which one's not?
Well, you're asking me social media policy.
I'm going to punt on that one.
I think the American people give social media too much of a hard time.
If you want to sit down in Silicon Valley and say there's billions of tweets and I've got to figure out which one's violent, which one's semi-violent.
Preak.
Oh, no, you give me a break.
Give me a break.
So you think that they should sit down, an American company that's supposed to make money for America and influences the globe and go under because they're hiring dudes.
Dude, you think they should do it?
You're the same guy that said you can't put a, treat me like a dog and put a muzzle on my mouth.
I'm going to say whatever I want and you can't silence me.
You said that.
You said that on CNN.
You said this.
That's what I'm saying.
I think they should spend less time silencing PICA unless.
Okay, cool.
Then that's what I'm saying.
Unless.
Yeah.
When you get into suggesting violence, and I mean suggesting, I don't mean asking for, I think you're done.
I don't think, I think you're done.
Fair enough.
I believe that Congress should be saying these are American businesses making a lot of money.
How do we make their jobs more doable instead of kicking their ass?
So then if you're saying that to you can't put any violence, last week, the current member of parliament of Turkey got up and on his Twitter account put a video of him speaking saying if you can find a saying, hey, Armenia, let me remind you guys what we did to you.
We're starting to lose patience to you.
Don't make us, if we wanted to, we can choose to make you disappear off of history and geography.
That's genocide.
That's genocide.
And Twitter left it on.
No, he should be off.
Oh, so he should be off.
In my opinion, because you're advocating violence.
Well, then that's the part where, you know, again, this is where people lose trust in organizations who say they're fair.
And then the American people say you're full of shit.
You're not fair.
You're taking sides.
And that's why people are losing a little bit of trust in different institutions.
Look, I have four kids.
You know, family, when you got kids, they'll come up to you and they'll say, you like him more and you like her more and you like this more and you like that more.
Look, I like to talk sports with my younger son, but I like to talk, you know, weird topics of science and stuff like that with my oldest son.
I just like to hang out with my oldest daughter because last time we took her out because, you know, Hurricane sitting here, whatever, we took her out because we took the other guys to the Miami Dolphins game and whatever the game was, Buffalo Bills, sick game.
So she's like, hey, you're not spending time with us?
We took her on a date.
There's different things I like with everybody, but it's my job to try to stay as neutral as possible, whether I agree with one of them or not, right?
In companies, same way.
You have operations.
Operations says, well, salespeople, they don't know shit.
They're breaking everything.
And then sales says, operations, they're so slow.
So that is a sign of leadership.
And we have a hard time doing that.
I think you're exactly right.
I mean, I mentioned leadership before and the significance of leadership.
I thought leadership would decline in the age of social media because people would just look at different sources of information and absorb them.
And then you realize, you know, senators, members of Congress, presidents, Supreme Court justices, which is a different story, really still influence people.
The way they should influence people, and let me give you a specific example in a second, is by saying, let's have a conversation.
So let's take the wall.
If you're on one side, you'd say the wall keeps illegal immigrants out.
If you're on the other side, you say this is a land of immigrants and this violates the principles of what America is.
You know, a conversation might be, let's talk to CBP, Customs and Border Patrol.
Let's talk to immigration and say, are there parts of the border that are particularly susceptible to illegal to illegal immigrants that you have a difficult time policing that a wall makes sense on?
So let's say there's 120 miles where experts say, yeah, that would really be helpful.
I would say, well, let's fund it.
There's a compromise.
We're going to fund some of a wall, but we're not going to fund a wall in areas where maybe this is not that significant a problem.
There, okay, done.
We finished that because, of course, you agree with me.
We finished that in 30 seconds.
No, but what you're saying, excuse me, but then the lack of leadership is the fact that the border czar, a lady named Kamala Harris, who's the vice president, refuses to go to the border to see what's going on.
So you lose, again, credibility.
You know, if you like, listen, what I said just a week ago, I said, I have so much respect for a Nancy Losie.
China tells you, if you go to Taiwan, we're going to do this, she shows up and she shows up in Turkey.
Says, well, then she shows up to Armenia.
Listen, she's got some balls.
think she has more brass than biden and kamala combined if you ask me that's that's just but but to me is you don't have the audacity to show up to the border Listen, of course the American people don't believe you.
Even your own side doesn't believe what you're saying.
You've lost credibility.
Leadership is losing a lot of credibility right now in many different organizations.
And it's not just all the way at the top at the White House, VP, FBI.
It's a lot of different institutions.
And by the way, I don't think that's good.
You said something very interesting.
I think you were talking about the January 6th where you and Lemon were going back.
I don't know who it was you were talking to, but the whole conversation was about the fact that this is not a good idea.
The fact that we keep pushing it, the lady sitting to your right, I don't even know what she was saying.
She was saying, no, we should continue to push this because maybe the more, and she's saying this to the host, maybe what's going to happen is if we keep doing this January 6th committee, Trump's going to get so upset that all of a sudden he's going to say something on national television.
And this was Cuomo when Cuomo was done.
You were with Cuomo with the girl sitting to your right.
And then Cuo's like, no, that's not the right reasons to do this.
And then you say, I don't think we should do this because it's getting America to be more divided.
We keep getting more divided these games they're playing.
Well, and some of this, you know, goes back to, let me be a bit of a Pollyanna.
I wish this shows why I will never run for elected office.
You know, I think the American people, I sort of have faith in the American people, will respond to a fact.
The fact is we have a problem at the border.
Now, I'm not a child.
I'm a child of privilege.
But if you look back at, you know, my history going back to the 19th century as Italians and Irish, they were not treated well.
If you look, and I know American history, okay.
If you look at how Chinese were treated in the early 20th century, how women were treated, how blacks were treated, how gays were treated.
Every generation discriminates against somebody and the next generation has to reverse it.
And some of that's relating to immigration.
People are saying immigrants are not only bad, but they're giving American people a sense that immigrants are dirty.
And every one of us, I'd like to ask a Native American, what do you think of immigrants?
But the fact is that immigration is a problem.
There are too many immigrants taking advantage of the system.
There was, I thought, an underreported story this week about how the White House is giving more administrative authority to immigration officials to reject people.
I think that's part of the answer.
We should be setting a far higher bar for who gets in here and also supporting who gets over that bar much more aggressively.
Are you really saying that?
Yes.
If people, I would agree.
I think a lot of people would agree with you on that.
It took us a long time to come to America.
I went to Germany at a refugee camp before I came here.
We had to sacrifice parents getting a divorce, our entire money that we had, everything just to come to America.
So I think a lot of people in America, as a person I was born in Iran, 10 years there, two years in Germany at a refugee camp, year and a half, that finally made it here.
I value this place a ton on how long it took us to get here.
It was a dream that they would get.
But then to be clear, when you get here, support for your children, food and kindergarten, support for your family in terms of medical care, there's a cost.
Whose job is that, though?
I'd say partly that it's the job of the government.
Why is that the government's job?
To educate a child?
No, no.
To give help.
No, public school, you're right.
No, no.
Public school, you're right.
But what is my responsibility when I come?
Do you owe me more or do I owe you more if I come here?
I think both owe each other.
I disagree.
I disagree.
How could you say that?
How could you say that?
Well, how can a person, I pay a lot of taxes.
That person's not going to pay a lot.
I just paid a lot for them to go to school.
I don't have kids.
Wait, let me get this straight.
So an immigrant is wanting to come to your house.
Yes.
I want to come to your country.
Yes.
You owe me the same amount as I owe you?
I owe you a lot.
No, no, you don't owe me, bro.
That's incorrect.
I owe you.
You want to disagree?
You want to yell at me?
I'll come across the table.
I'll crush you like a bug.
I'd love to see it.
But the point I'm trying to make to you right now is the following.
I feel I owe you.
I feel I agree with you.
Okay, so that's the part where a little bit of the mindset right now is the fact that people are saying America owes the immigrant.
I don't agree with that.
I think if I so for example, let's just say Goldman Sachs gives me an opportunity to work for them.
Okay.
If I work for Goldman Sachs, Goldman Sachs was here before I was here.
I owe Goldman Sachs for the opportunity.
Michael Jordan is about, LeBron says we should retire to number 23 permanently.
Michael Jordan says, listen, man, this league is bigger than one player.
Jordan owes the league more than the league owes Jordan.
The immigrant owes America.
This whole concept about America owes the immigrant, I never came here thinking America owes me anything.
I think you're misunderstanding me.
I have a couple things to say.
First of all, to be clear about what I said before I get, we will get attacked from both sides.
I think the bar should be higher.
But when someone gets here, there's a couple things that go on.
To be idealistic, if you're a human being, I want to give you the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Totally get it.
But there's a brutal economic piece, and that is as someone who pays, like I say, a ton of taxes without kids.
So I'm paying for other kids to go to school.
I'm paying for everybody who doesn't believe in socialism.
Then I get to pay the same taxes you do.
And I don't.
We have socialism in this country.
And part of that means I pay a ton more than you do, and you use the same services.
But my point is just to be purely and brutally economic, a child who goes through a good education, particularly at the primary level, if that child doesn't have access to food, I want them to have access to food.
If they don't have access to medical care, I want them to, because I want to ensure that I don't have to pay for them in the back end.
To pay for someone, if a child is educated and healthy, the chance that they'll contribute, and I'm talking about money, they're going to get a better job.
They're going to be less likely to use public services.
They're going to be less likely in older age to be unhealthy.
They're going to pay more in taxes.
So there's a brutal economic piece to what I'm saying as well.
I get what you're saying.
And listen, the other day, if I can find this clip, man, if I can find this.
Matter of fact, if I'm going to find it, I'm going to have you play it.
So for me, this lady, a judge, is talking to this other person who her husband and her are getting a divorce.
And the judge asks her about what she's going to do for, you know, finding a job, making, I'll find it here.
We'll post it in a minute.
I think the concept of what you're saying is public schools being offered to immigrants.
Totally fine, of course.
Of course.
Yeah, you chose to let him in.
Of course.
But I think it's going back to this one guy named John who got assassinated in the 60s, who was beloved by people around the world and in America.
What was this guy's name?
John, he had a middle name, Fitzgerald.
Last name was Kennedy, right?
I was talking to his nephew yesterday, excited about what he's working on.
But, you know, you've heard this.
I'm not the first person that's saying, sharing this quote.
It's been shared a billion times.
You know, don't ask what your country can do for you.
Ask what you can do for your country.
I think it's more.
We got to kind of go back to that.
Hey, listen, guys, like, what are you doing for America?
Okay, yeah.
I think we're, and this is where conversation helps.
You got to get a job.
You can't go on the dole.
There's, you know, if I were a king, I'd say there's a lot.
Yes.
That's it.
We're on the same page.
But I don't, but we've encouraged people to say immigrants are dirty.
Immigrants are never.
And so we don't believe that.
Now I'm saying that.
Oh, come on.
You don't think there's a sentiment in America?
No.
No.
I don't.
No, you're talking about the Mexicans.
Let me see what he's going to say.
I don't.
Mexican rapists.
Mexicans are rapists.
No, those who are rapists, that they're sending their rapists here.
Yeah, we shouldn't have them here.
Yes, I agree with that.
Okay.
You know, most like, you know, Bill Maher said something very interesting when you were on with them.
And Bill Maher said to your face.
Bill Maher said, most Muslims are not terrorists, but most terrorists are what?
Muslims.
Yeah, he said that to you.
And you're sitting there saying, okay, how do you, and you didn't argue that.
You're like, that's right.
Okay.
So, but for you to say you were saying that, you know, immigrants are rapists, give me a break.
You don't think people have more of an anti-immigrant sentiment today than they would have 30 years ago?
No, I don't.
Okay, I disagree.
I don't.
And I'm an immigrant.
I'm the immigrant talking.
I'm not a white guy that's privileged.
I grew up in a family that went to Vanderbilt and has got, you know, lived in a nice community.
That's not this guy.
I'm the immigrant.
Listen, let me tell you when I experienced discrimination.
And I'll give it to you.
When I was in the Army and I'm shooting a rifle, it's a funny story, but it's a true story.
I'm shooting a rifle and I got the M16 on my nose.
My drill sergeant comes and says, I've never seen a nose like that in my life before.
He says, where are you from?
I said, I'm from Iran.
And he says, man, that's a massive nose.
I said, I appreciate it.
I said, drill sergeant, I got to tell you something.
He says, what's that?
I said, it'll take me $7,000 to make my nose look like yours.
It'll take you millions to make yours look like mine.
He starts cracking up.
We have a relationship together.
I go to Alabama.
I'm at a Waffle House, 1997.
I'm going to Panama City to party at Club La Villa and Spinnakers.
Apparently, Club LaVille is going out of business right now.
Or they went out of business.
On the way there to Alabama, I sit there at the Waffle House.
Everyone's white.
Waitress shows up.
She keeps looking at me like she's never seen a creature like this before.
And I said, ma'am, is there something going on?
You okay?
Sir, where are you from?
I said, I'm from Iran.
You from Iran?
Iran.
She says, where'd you run?
She says, yes.
Said, yes, I'm from Iran.
She says, what are you doing here in Alabama?
I said, I'm in your Army.
I'm in the U.S. Army.
They let you in the U.S. Army?
Yes.
What are you doing in the U.S. Army?
I said, can I feel comfortable telling you?
She says, yeah, of course.
I said, I'm a spy.
I'm taking all your content and I'm taking it back to Iran to train our soldiers.
So that, a little bit of that happens.
Yeah.
But to sit there and say, oh my God, I'm a victim.
Feel sorry for me.
Give me a break.
We have shit.
We should say that.
And Adam's going to police this.
What I said was I think there's more anti-immigrant sentiment today than 30 years ago.
Yes or no?
You did say that, but you also said that every generation we have to kind of trace back and fulfill what happened in the prior generation before that.
Yes.
Talked about you being Italian, Irish immigrant, the Jews and the blacks, everything that's happened since that.
But this sentiment that you're talking about, are you basically saying, because you went off on Trump with the shithole comments, right?
Yes, shithole comments.
Shithole country.
Is that what you're referring to?
You're saying that the sentiment against immigrants?
Is that where you're going with this?
Yeah, I mean, I can't look ahead far enough to say where people will judge us in the future.
I can guess based on history, they'll judge us for something in terms of how we treated people, maybe how we treated immigrants.
I don't know.
I'm not comfortable with the rhetoric I see about immigration in this country.
I would say the rhetoric has to be more fact-based.
Going back to where you started the conversation.
Both sides should say we have a problem.
And that problem goes back to the Congress to say the laws should allow more rapid and more sort of dispersed decision-making about whether a 19-year-old who wants a job should be allowed across the border.
And my answer is no.
But isn't that sort of emphasis?
I got a fact-based statement to you.
So, you know, I've been to restaurants where it's PAC 24-7.
You go there, okay?
And then you'll go on Yelp and you'll read a review.
This restaurant sucks.
The owner is terrible.
Their customer service is horrible.
They're going to go out of business.
And I'll be in the restaurant.
I'm like, dude, if this review is right, why the hell am I in line for 20 minutes?
What the hell is going on with this restaurant that's supposed to be the worst restaurant in the world?
If America treats immigrants so bad, why did we have a record-breaking 2 million people came through the border?
We're so horrible at immigrants.
If we're so terrible at treating immigrants, what do you say?
If you could stop twisting my comments, I did not say we treated immigrants poorly.
I think if you look at things like access.
I wish we could rewind this thing.
I said people's thinking and attitudes about immigrants has changed to the negative.
Because people like you keep saying it.
Oh, for God's sakes, you asked.
Because we keep saying it.
Okay, we're perfect to them.
I just have one question because we're pro-immigration here, correct?
Illegal immigration.
We all came from my family were Russian Jews who came over the Bolshevik Revolution.
You came over in 1992 after the Iranian Revolution.
You said that your family.
Right, 1990, sorry.
Your family came over, I don't know, wherever.
Italy.
Italy.
Okay.
But you're saying that there should be certain qualifications, that we want the best of the best, the best and the brightest.
But isn't that antithetical to what is literally written on the Statue of Liberty?
What does it say in the Statue of Liberty?
Give me your, you're tired, give me your poor, give me your huddled masses, give me your homeless.
Those aren't exactly the brightest minds out there.
These are poor refugees, immigrants, who are coming here for political asylum to escape what is going on in other countries.
Yes.
So what's the deal with that?
I think it goes back to the problem we have about conversations in Congress, especially with ease of movement in the 21st century.
To sit there and say that everybody who, because they're poor, wants access to America means that over time, the ability to absorb poor will decline.
You can't overwhelm the system.
So the conversation in Congress has to be there has to be a balance between saying we live by the standards of America.
And that might be a numerical judgment.
That is, we can absorb X number of people.
That's a legal judgment.
That means some people who might be qualified aren't going to get in because we can't absorb that many.
But I go back to saying Democrats and Republicans can't sit down and say we have a problem.
On the Democrat side, it has to say we need to have limitations.
It may lead to adjustments in law.
On the Republican side, it has to mean that we're going to allow a fair number of people here who are going to live off the system for a while because they don't have that many skills.
Maybe they come from a place where they're oppressed.
I just go back to saying I wish we could have realistic conversations among professionals instead of saying, you know, both tribes, Democrats and Republicans, say not only are they the adversarial party, what we're increasingly saying is they are the enemy and they don't represent American values.
That's in the past, I don't know, decade or two, and that is corrosive.
One more point here regarding skills.
All right.
I'm born and raised in Miami.
I can't tell you how many Uber drivers I run into, waiters I run into.
I said, oh, how long you been driving Uber?
Oh, you know, two years.
Oh, where are you from?
Colombia, Venezuela, Cuba, pick a country.
Oh, what did you do there?
Oh, I was a doctor.
What?
Yeah.
Okay.
Oh, I was an engineer.
What?
Right?
So you talk about skills.
You're talking about people who are of higher pedigree of other countries that show up here and they're just happy just because they're in a freaking America and they're okay driving an Uber.
Now, obviously, they want to make more of their life and they want to do more than that.
But, yeah, there's sort of a tipping point here where it's like, you might be a highly skilled doctor in Venezuela, but now you're an Uber driver in Miami.
How do you grapple that?
And to Pat's point, I think that shows that that proves my point.
We want to ensure that we maintain some sort of standards of immigration where people like that still see opportunity.
And at some point, I would be afraid that if we flood the system, there will be fewer opportunities.
Our ability to take care of, not take care of, but to allow for an opportunity for an immigrant will decline, which is sort of, I guess, half a Republican argument.
I still think this is a great place for people to come.
I mean, I look at my, this has been acrimonious for the past 10 minutes, mostly your fault, Pat, but I look at my childhood sensibilities in Philip Mutton.
It's funny growing up in Coral Gables.
I fished in the canals of Coral Gables.
You grew up in Coral Gables?
Coral Gables, yes.
Oh, Gables, South Miami.
South Miami, before I played Little League Baseball.
I rode around on my bike.
You know, we played in the park, and mom said, come home when the lights go on.
I look at my childhood, and you don't know it when you're a child, but man, what an idyllic life.
I don't know where you could live.
And I mean, I lived in Paris for a while.
Okay, let's take Paris off the table.
But I'd look at that and say, boy, I hope every immigrant and every American gets that opportunity.
It was awesome.
I never caught anything, but that wasn't the point.
It was a lot of fun.
To come down here.
So let's wrap this up before we go.
Let's wrap this up.
January 6th, how much credibility is behind what they did with, you know, every day on TV watching insurrection, insurrection, insurrection.
And I got two more and then we're wrapped up.
Not wrapped up with the whole episode.
We're wrapped up with this segment.
Correct.
Yeah, we're wrapped up.
We can go to sports.
We can go to sports.
You're giving me hope that we're right now.
It's like, I need to...
We've got one more hour, Phil.
His eyes have been on the time.
I love it.
As they say, it's 12 o'clock somewhere.
I know you're used to 45-second segments on CNN.
We go two hours here, baby.
January 6th.
Was it a shit show?
They were just trying to make it look like bigger than it really is.
Or was it credible?
Did they waste a lot of time and money?
Were they trying to divide?
Was it a good idea?
Was it not a good idea?
I think the investigation, the DOJ investigation into the individuals who went over into the Congress is worthwhile.
It's hugely, it may be the biggest investigation they've ever conducted in terms of the number of people you're looking at who were involved.
If you wrap in election denial, I think the political investigation is worth it because the prospect that people will go into a future election and do the same thing, I think, is worrisome.
I tend not to be sort of the sky is falling, but I would not want to encourage people to say it's now acceptable political rhetoric to say the election was stolen from me.
And Mitch McConnell supporting legislation that sort of changes the game on this, I think, is an indicator that are people on both sides of the aisle a little bit worried about attitudes in America on elections, election denial.
That's different from how culture dealt with it.
I think it once again divided culture into saying we ought to immediately prosecute people in the White House.
Try that trial.
Can you show me consistently how all these people told somebody to go break a law and break a criminal statute?
Or do you think that?
I thought the coverage encouraged people to say this is the only thing that's important in America right now.
It's important, but there's a lot of other things going on.
It's not the top thing I worry about.
So I thought some of the investigative work was valuable, especially in terms of not only holding people accountable, but looking forward and saying, how do we change laws to ensure that election denial isn't part of the American political culture?
In terms of cultural coverage, I'm like, this is like, whoa, this is overwhelming.
Too much.
Too much.
How about the two impeachments?
I thought, I'm going to say this again.
I thought the investigation that Robert Mueller conducted was serious and worthwhile.
As someone who did foreign policy for a lifetime, suggesting that it's okay to encourage foreign powers, Russia or others, to inject information into an American election, that is just, that needs to be investigated.
People who attacked Mueller for not filing charges, including people that I knew at the FBI who were on Mueller's team, Mueller was the most straightforward, the best leader I ever saw in government.
He looked at this and said, again, you got to look at both sides of this argument.
I'm not sure that we should or can prosecute these cases.
So worth investigating.
But I thought Mueller's decision was entirely defensible.
In terms of coverage, man, again, we made it the only thing people talked about in the midst of serious conversations we should be having about why our educational standards are modest in this country.
Educational or health care in this country is excellent.
Access is still compared to our peer countries.
Okay.
Life expectancy is dropping.
Things like obesity and diabetes, you know, you might call me again a Pollyanna, but if you want to talk about stuff that affects an American citizen, health care affects an American citizen a lot more than a Russian impeachment will.
So I thought the process was appropriate.
The attention was a bit much.
In terms of the final, the second impeachment, I thought that was an egregious abuse of presidential power to ask a foreign leader to investigate a rival son.
I think Hunter Biden is worthy of investigation.
That is some dirty stuff.
But you can't have presidential authorities pressing the president, pressing a foreign leader to conduct a political investigation against or a criminal investigation against a rival.
That's a no, you can't do it.
You can't do that.
You can't do that.
So when Obama did it and he got cop recorded, I'll do it after the election.
He shouldn't have done that either.
He should be investigated today.
That's what you're saying.
This I don't remember.
You don't remember when Obama said when he's talking on national television, he got recorded saying, we can first let's get this election knocked out of the way, then we'll address that?
No.
Talking about with Russia.
Yeah.
With Russia and the invasion of Crimea.
Yeah, I mean, I was like, it's fun.
I don't know what channel you watch.
If you didn't see, well, I can kind of see what channel you watch.
If you didn't see it.
I know.
See, you just made an assumption.
I don't have a TV.
But this, this right here was on a hot mic.
He gets caught.
By the way, this is the problem.
This is the problem that we have.
And not saying you're the problem.
The problem that we have is the fact that if a guy like you, your background is CIA and FBI, and you didn't see this, and this was all over television.
Time out.
Timeout.
A president asked a country overseas to conduct an investigation to a political rival.
Are you saying that's what this is?
Wait a minute.
Do you want to go to what Biden did when he told the Ukraine guy what he's going to do?
Like if you play this card, you're going to lose a lot.
Again, this is the part why I'm doing this.
Some people are watching this and they're saying, Pat, we don't give a shit.
Why are you doing it?
I'm not doing it for you.
I'm doing it for me.
Here's why I'm doing it.
Stay consistent is all I'm saying.
Because to the left, Trump is to the left, but Hillary is to the right.
Okay?
Yeah.
Let's just kind of put it there.
For me, if I'm going to go hard at someone, I have to go hard on the other one as well that maybe is on my side.
Well, unless they're not equivalent.
So to you, to you between the two, I'm assuming the lesser of the two evil to you is Hillary.
You're not.
I'm doing facts.
Did someone ask a leader of another country to conduct a criminal investigation against a child?
If we do that, I can bring a million and one different things that Biden has done and Obama's done and show it to you.
And then what are you going to say?
So this is a conversation about give me space on missile defense.
And you want to say that's the same as asking for.
Do you want me to pull up what Biden told the guy that here's what we're going to do?
I want you to answer the question I just asked you.
Are you saying this is equivalent or not?
I think every one of them at the same level, if you're asking for a favor that we'll do this afterwards, it should be held at the same level.
I disagree.
If the favor is about a diplomatic conversation that doesn't involve a political rival, I see that as diplomacy.
Now, you might not like the diplomacy, but that's not what I mean.
So let me ask you this.
Why the infatuation with Ukraine all of a sudden, with U.S.?
why this why are we why are we all of a sudden so so iran on the other end you know people are they're getting killed plummeted you know they're getting crushed they're getting destroyed and And our attention is only on Ukraine.
We're not thinking about that.
Why are we doing what we're doing with Ukraine and not some of the other places?
You know how many American people are sitting there saying, oh, so when he said that and the link between the sun and Ukraine and himself in the past, all this stuff that pulled up and the New York Post story was hidden.
And then afterwards, Mark Zuckerberg said that I was talking in communication with FBI, which he probably didn't even think he just said that.
And then, you know, the story of Pfizer announces the vaccine is ready three days after the election is over with.
All of this stuff you're sitting there watching saying, listen, man, I have a hard time believing what the hell is going on here.
Now I see what's going on with Ukraine.
You have to understand the same way when you say the conspiracy theorists from both sides, the left's got its own conspiracies that they follow.
Like Hillary said, the election was a fraud for three, four years.
All I'm saying is, if you're going to say that, we have to stay consistent.
We can only see, we can only see when people were saying Trump, Russia, Russia, Russia, I said, hey, if you think that's the case, prove it.
I don't know.
This recent guy that went viral, Tate, who's all over the place.
Do you know what Tate did?
I said, listen, man, there's a big difference between breaking the law and offending people.
That's good.
If he offended you, I don't give a shit if he offended.
I'm offended on a daily basis.
If he broke the law, that's got to go with the court.
I have no control over that.
I don't have the investigation.
So when a Russia thing took place, well, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Adam Schiff, okay, I don't have access to that.
Do your job and prove it, right?
That's right.
And then three years later, Durham comes out.
This was a dossier paid for Hillary, 35 million American people.
Now you're no longer talking about a CNN.
You just got to forgot about Russia.
And for three and a half years, that's all you guys ever talked about.
What happened?
Well, you guys, excuse me, I'm not, you're talking about Philip Nudd.
You're not talking about it.
You guys being CNN is what I'm saying too.
I'm a contractor for CNN.
I'm not an employee.
I go and speak what I say.
I attack President Trump.
I've said negative things about Hillary Clinton.
So I'm not here as a spokesman for CNN.
All I'm saying is, all I'm saying is when you're talking about holding one side to the fire, we have to hold all sides to the fire.
If we're going to do that, we have to stay consistent.
That's all I'm saying.
Well, CNN is clearly paying the price for having an agenda and being biased and not holding both sides accountable.
I think what you said is there is a major difference between fact and feelings, right?
So Trump pissed off a lot of freaking people.
That doesn't mean that he was a criminal.
I'm not saying that he's not a criminal.
That needs to be proven.
That's not my job, though.
Right.
My job isn't to prove that.
If the lady in New York, what's her name?
Letitia James.
If her in New York, she wants to file a lawsuit, a quarter of a billion dollars towards Trump and lose licensing, guess what?
Hey, it sucks.
But guess what?
You know, they can do that.
And then you can come back and make the argument.
You're going to have to spend a lot of money on legal fees.
So maybe that's a way of getting them to spend a lot of money on legal fees.
And she did campaign on the fact that if you elect me, I'm going to sue the Trump family.
Yeah.
She kept her promise.
To me, that's like, you know.
And there's where politicians, and this is one problem with the American political culture where people involved in civil and criminal cases are elected.
Politicians who argue during a campaign that somebody should be prosecuted to me is that's something that should be borderline illegal.
Suggesting that somebody, whether it's Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton, should be locked up should be the judgment of people at the Department of Justice.
Those people should be separate as they are or are supposed to be if you look at Bill Barr, for example, from the White House and political pressure.
We have gotten way too comfortable in this country with people saying, not only do I not like my adversary, I said this 10 minutes ago, but my adversary is an enemy to America and they should be in a jail.
That's third world.
Lock her up.
That is, yeah.
Or saying again that people who too quickly say, Mor-a-Lago, he should be charged.
Well, that's a legal process that should involve fact by professionals, not politicians.
And I object to the January 6th committee saying I want to make referrals.
They should not be telling the Department.
Like the Department of Justice doesn't have an investigation and know how to look at an investigation in facts.
As soon as you make a referral, one, you're saying politicians think something should happen.
And as soon as the Department of Justice moves, and I don't think the January 6th Committee has thought about this enough, somebody on the right's going to say, you're doing that because Congress told you to, not because that's a good case.
I think January 6th ought to do their own investigation and say nothing to the Department of Justice beyond here are some documents if you want them.
Can I just ask one quick simple question and just very simple.
Trump, okay?
I have a lot of conversations with people, wildly different opinions on Trump, okay?
So people on the left literally think he's the devil reincarnated.
He's the worst person that's ever lived.
He's evil, like the worst, the worst, the worst, the worst.
And the people on the right, I'm talking about fringe elements, people on the right, literally the next Messiah, greatest president we've ever had in U.S. history, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, don't hold a candle to Trump.
Talk about fringe, Clearly, there's some middle ground there.
I don't think either one of those.
I want you to put on your complete unbiased hat.
You've been covering Trump since, you know, forever.
Where do you genuinely think Trump stands?
He's not evil.
He's not a messiah.
Where's Trump?
I look at, in my relatively short lifetime, I was born in 1961, some of the people who showed characteristics of leadership in my lifetime, LBJ, Kennedy.
I thought in some way in Jimmy Carter, who I did not think was a great president, but has leadership characteristics.
Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, a man of great humility, a lot of wisdom.
I thought a courteous man, a thoughtful man, a curious man, which I think is important for a president.
If you look at the defining this by characteristics of leadership, intellectual curiosity, experience, humility, ability to deal with an adversary and rise above the fray, I don't see those characteristics in President Trump.
I'm looking for a characteristic that would lead me to say to someone in a poli-sci class or to a nine-year-old, you should emulate that characteristic.
And I'm including characteristics, personal characteristics like temperament, like courtesy, like kindness, like humility.
I just didn't see him.
I don't disagree with you, but isn't that why he was elected?
Because he wasn't the traditional political figure.
He's a businessman.
He grew up in the rough and tumble streets of New York.
He had to make it.
Isn't there something to be said about that?
I do, but I think that's because politicians have encouraged Americans to have started to say, if I take Americans down, which is easier than taking them up, if I take Americans down, I can win votes.
By taking him down, I'm saying you can sit there and tell people that person's evil.
That person's your enemy.
That person does things that are un-American, as opposed to looking at the country as Reagan did, as LBJ did, and saying, I can go to a higher place, which sometimes means telling people things they don't want to hear.
The Shining City on a Hill.
Correct.
Yes.
Which I, you know, I talked about my childhood.
I lived on a Shining City on a Hill.
It was awesome my childhood.
I wish my dad and mom were around.
They're not.
I would tell them once again I love them.
I didn't tell them enough.
They just did me a tremendous favor by the environment I had and the education I had.
I think that's a good reminder for everyone out there to just tell your parents you love them.
So listen, appreciate you for going through this with me while I'm going back to the story.
I had no story.
I'd still be in D.C., but that's okay.
Well, this is how we do it.
We all of a sudden.
I've seen you deal way worse than this, brother.
You know, if people come to this show, they kind of know we're going to talk.
And it's a long form.
You get a chance to talk.
We get a chance to give our arguments.
And I think at the end of the day, the audience wins, and that's what the outcome is.
There's a few topics I do want to talk about that's more current.
I want to talk about Iran, what's going on there.
I do want to talk about the Nord stream pipeline, what's going on there, the whole comment from the PM of Poland sabotage.
That's some very, very interesting stuff.
And then a few other topics that we may hit up here that we have.
But prior to doing that, I want to give a shout out to our sponsor, Aura.
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I'm only 32 years old.
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So having said that, let's go into, I want to do Nord Stream Pipeline Free.
I think we should say it's more current and it's a little bit concerning because this, some are saying, could be the tipping point to war, meaning the nuclear war that may be there.
Whether we're there or not, I don't know, but let me share three stories from you.
One is from Insider, the other one's from the post-millennial, and another one's from the insider.
So first one, German lawmakers break Europe's silence on suspected Nord Stream pipeline saboteur to point the finger at Russia.
On Tuesday, Swedish and Danish authorities reported three leaks on the pipelines running under the Baltic Sea from Russia to Germany, two in Nord Stream one and another in Nord Stream two.
Two senior German lawmakers have pointed a finger at Russia over suspected sabotage of Nord Stream natural gas pipelines.
Roderick Kieswether, a government spokesperson for crisis prevention, said that the attack was an act of sabotage by Russia to deter and threaten Europe.
Mary Agnes Srack Zimmermann, chairwoman of the Bundestag Defense Committee, also named Russia in comments and suspected attack.
The CIA warned Germany weeks ago about potential attacks on Nord Stream.
Very weird.
CIA is saying, hey, we have a feeling someone's going to attack.
It's a little weird for me there that you're like a Houdini type of situation.
So not Houdini, Nordstradamis type of situation.
So next one, European officials says sabotage likely caused of suspicious Nord Stream leaks.
So that's a post-millennial.
Danish Prime Minister Mette Fredriksen noted that while it is too early to conclude whether the incidents were act of sabotage, there are three leaks and therefore it is difficult to imagine that it could be accidental.
Polish Prime Minister Matuas Modowicki said, We don't know all the details of what happened, but we can clearly see that it's an act of sabotage.
He's not even saying maybe.
He said we can clearly see that it's an act of sabotage related to the next step of escalation of the situation in Ukraine.
And last but not least, the same story again comes with some of the commentary where the reporter said, but will you, when Joe Biden was asked February 7th, I'll read this on what happened between Joe Biden when this question was asked.
It's pretty intense.
President Joe Biden on February 7th promised to prevent Nord Stream 2 from becoming operational if Russia invaded Ukraine.
He said, if Russia invades, then there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2.
We will bring an end to it.
Reporter asks, but how will you do that exactly?
Since the project is in Germany's control, Biden, I promise you, we will be able to do that.
That's seven months ago.
So, based on what you've been following this story with and where you're at, what are your thoughts on what the hell is going on with Nord Stream 1 and 2?
Who's behind it?
One of the earliest victims in times of tension is the difference between what I think and what I know.
And one of the things I learned at the agency is, man, be very careful about crossing that line.
I think the White House has been more cautious than some of the people in Europe who spoke.
I think Russia did this basically because you're looking at multilateral warfare.
We define warfare in terms of kinetic.
I put bombs on something.
I put artillery on something.
Clearly, going into the winter with Europe that's dependent on gas from Russia, you would say on the surface, why would Russia want to sabotage pipelines where they're making money?
They want to tell Europe, this is very simple.
They want to tell Europe when it gets cold.
And you need to heat homes.
Careful.
We're your source.
And if Nord Stream 2 comes on, we're going to continue to be your source.
And this is what can happen if you guys don't sort of continue to import and also don't back off on Ukraine.
So I think Russia did it, but that's what I think.
That's not what I know.
I would want to have basic questions.
For example, technical questions.
When do we get overseas drones so we can see how these things were sabotaged?
Can engineers tell me what the causes of those sabotage might have been?
As a non-expert, my degree is in English literature.
I want to know what exactly happened and whether that could be explained by natural means or whether an engineer can guarantee to me that that's an external, that's an external event that was manipulated by a human being.
So I think Russia did it.
I think the reasons are pretty basic.
I think Biden over-promised.
I'd close by saying this is where foreign policy is interesting.
One of the things that fascinated me in three-dimensional, for example, there's got to be a lot of conversations, and these include people like the Saudis, a lot of conversations about energy security in Europe going on 10 years.
You know, that's where Anthony Blinken's involved.
Here's a really interesting conversation I would have liked to participate in if I were still in.
Let's anticipate that Putin will stay aggressive over the course of time.
What are we learning about vulnerabilities of Russian forces in Ukraine?
How do we push NATO without additional American backing to say we want to forward deploy in places like the Balkans and Poland to take advantage of those Russian vulnerabilities if Russia does?
There's a lot of planning going on here.
And I think the gas pipeline is part of it because you are guaranteeing that Russians or that the Europeans realize they're under threat.
So now is the time to go in and talk to them and say, we better prepare for the next threat.
And we don't know if that's Balkans.
We don't know if it's Poland, but be careful.
Baltics, not Balkans.
Quick follow-up.
By the way, I completely appreciate what you say about what you think versus what you know.
I think that's something we could all kind of take away from this episode is like you might think something, but you don't know for sure.
Saddam WMD.
Exactly.
I mean, we've tried America too many times.
It's such a powerful comment right there.
Just quick question.
What are the chances that the U.S. actually did this?
You know, what is that number?
Is it 1%?
Is it 5%?
What is that?
Zero.
Zero.
You don't think they did that?
But again, let me be for people who say, you know, you're just supporting the government.
If you do that, you're going to have to have an executive order.
That executive order is going to have to go through a chain of command.
You're going to have to have a number of people who were involved in the actual sabotage operation.
So going to my college stats class, what's the likelihood that not one of them has or will ever speak?
If you're doing the multiplication numbers, that's just not possible.
I never saw a secret that didn't get out.
Nothing we did that I can remember.
I'm sure there's some minor things, but the major operations we ran, I can't think of any that didn't get out.
Fair enough.
And then regarding Russia, I'm not the Nordstream guy, but I do understand supply and demand and imports, exports.
If they're making money from Europe, now they're not going to be able to make money because Nord Stream won't be working.
Europe's still going to need to import energy and oil from other countries.
Now they're going to go to Saudi or they're going to go to even America or they're going to go to Iran or they're going to go to Venezuela, whoever's pumping out oil, doesn't that just kind of shoot themselves in the foot if you're Russia?
But I think if this is where the job I used to have, which is basically understanding the world through the eyes of an adversary, to avoid that, the analytic phrase is to avoid mirror imaging.
Don't think the opponent sees the world the way you do, the adversary, or even the person you're just negotiating with.
What I think, not what I know, but what I think is that, and Putin has almost as much as said this, is that his priority is the restoration of the Russian Empire.
I mean, he talks about the decline of the Soviet Union and the Soviet Union as one of the biggest tragedies of the 20th century.
So if your priority is geopolitical and let's restore sort of a czarist state and the cost is economic pain for a few years, I can see him prioritizing, I want to restore basically the empire.
And if it costs us, you know, a couple of difficult years, a difficult decade, I have a bigger vision that goes, it's like the Al-Qaeda guys used to tell me.
I know this sounds like a strange parallel, but I'll never, never forget it.
They used to look at us in interrogations, and one of them said once, you know, you think of life in terms of years.
This, the caliphate, may not happen in my lifetime.
Maybe not my kids, but it might happen in my grandchildren's lifetime.
Americans don't think like that.
Right.
But some of our adversaries do.
We have a YOLO mentality here.
They've got a legacy mentality.
Well, partly.
Partly because life is so good here.
Pat, what was the quote that you've referenced before?
You guys may have all the watches, but we have all the time, I believe.
Is that what they said about it?
The Taliban, I believe.
So, okay, so let's process this on what we're saying.
That Russia is behind this.
And some are saying U.S. is behind this.
It's really the two main parties that people are saying is behind this: Russia or U.S.
He said zero U.S.
So clearly, we know based on what we 100% know, not what we're speculating.
What we 100% know, to take your argument, we know that the person in charge, his name is Joe Biden, said if Russia invades, then there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2.
We will bring it to an end.
So the only thing we know for a fact is that only one person in the world out of 7.7 billion people only said this.
Putin didn't say this.
Only one person said it.
And it's the leader of the free world, the president of the United States said this.
Okay.
Can we find that?
And then, not just a quote, the video.
Yes, I'm saying you can find a quote.
And then the reporter says, but how will you do that exactly since the project is in Germany's control?
Biden, this is what we know, not what we think.
I promise you, we will be able to do that.
Okay, so now let me go to the other part.
So for me, if you can find this clip somewhere, it's easy to find.
It's not hard.
It's all over the place.
Here's the other part.
Again, I'm going based on what we know, not what we think, and not what I'd like to.
If this is the one just played so the audience can see it, because it's not just a, it's exactly what I'm the border of Ukraine again.
Then there will be, there will be a lot of people.
No, no, go back, go back, go back, go back from the beginning so they can hear the whole thing going.
If Russia invades, that means tanks or troops crossing the border of Ukraine again.
Then there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2.
He said we will be able to do it.
But we do that.
Listen.
How will you do that?
The lady's confused.
Exactly.
Since the project and control of the project is within Germany's.
Exactly.
We will, I promise you, we'll be able to do it.
So you commit today to turning off and pulling the plug on Nord Stream 2?
You didn't mention it.
You haven't mentioned it.
You can pause it.
I think if somebody watches it, you can watch.
Okay, so this we know.
So the people that may debate the argument that it's really Russia are going to say, where's your proof?
Because this is proof.
And your leader said this.
This is a threat.
And we did invade Ukraine.
So guess what?
If the person that said they're going to do it, it's him.
So we can't say 0%.
That's my opinion on the, we can't say 0%.
So now let me go to the other part.
On Nordstream 2 pipeline, we have to look at who owns most of it, right?
If I own a company and I have leverage over you, and if I hurt the company that I'm the majority owner of, I'm an idiot.
I'm a qualified idiot.
I'm not a strategist.
I'm not a son Tzu guy.
I'm not one of the greatest generals of all time.
I'm a qualified moron if I hurt the company that I have control over and I lose leverage, specifically this kind of leverage.
We're not even talking about like company-free enterprise capitalism.
This is like leverage at the highest level of leverage where you get to control the world, Europe specifically where their winter is coming.
So let's see who owns the majority of Nordstream pipeline.
If you can kind of assure the shareholders here and zoom in, go a little bit closer, a little bit more closer.
So 51% is owned by GazProm.
So let's see who is GazProm.
They're the largest supplier of natural gas in the world, accounting for approximately 15% of world's gas production.
It was established as a joint stock company in 1993 and partly owned by the Russian state, over 50%.
Number two is another company called Wintershaw D, 15.5%.
Now, this company, with the merger of Wintershall Holding, AG, and DA Deutsch, German, Erdol AG, two successful companies with a long tradition have formed Europe's leading independent natural gas and oil company.
Huh.
Okay, cool.
Let's look at the next one.
The third company is Eon, Aeon, Eon, PG Infrastructure, AG.
This is an international investor-owned energy company which focused on energy networks and customer solutions as one of Europe's largest energy companies.
But it's not really one place.
It's all over the place.
Fire.
It's a German company.
Next one, NV, Netherland Gasuni.
Okay, 9%.
So I can keep going on and go to the next one.
NG by people of, you know, this next one is based out of a, you can see which one is this one as well.
Anyways, but the point is, 51% is Russia.
So if you cause this and you're Russia, you will go down in the history books as the biggest idiot of all time for giving up the leverage that you have during a time like this.
So if a lawyer wanted to make a case simply to a better, because he's going to go in Las Vegas and bet over a 30-year bet, because eventually CIA is going to leak this in a movie and we're going to watch an Argo in 2052 that's going to say Biden was really behind this and we're going to say, no, shit.
And I'm 74 years old.
I'm like, did you see that?
I'll be dead.
So that's what this is.
So at this page, you're probably going to be alive because we're living a long time today.
But the point is, this is pretty creepy for the people that are saying U.S. could have done it because there is documentation and proof that U.S. could be behind this.
What do you say to those crazy conspiracy theorists?
I'd give them a pretty simple answer, which is let's go back to fact.
Right now, we're making judgments based on no access or very little access to the places where there's damage.
We said it's either Russia or the United States.
I'm not an engineer, but you took one off the table that I would not take off the table because it's not a fact.
People say there's no way this is some kind of industrial accident.
I'm like, how can you tell me that if you haven't had access to the places where the event happened?
So first of all, getting back to the earlier point, the president should never have said that because we don't own this.
The Americans like to say we can snap our fingers and do stuff.
the Europeans and the Russians.
But he didn't say it, though.
He did.
A lot of things he shouldn't say.
He thought a person was alive two days ago.
He can't deliver on this.
But my point is, I would say, and this is why time sort of attention spans in America are difficult.
The right answer is, like the right answer on the Russian investigation, let's look at some facts.
And when we gather those facts, including undersea access to the locations where this happened, we will draw conclusions about what happened and start reacting to it.
But saying we're going to do XYZ based on no definitive answer about what happened, I don't get this.
I mean, I get it politically.
You have to give the American people an answer, but analytically, you don't have a fact, so you just jump from what I think to what I know and you're going to base policy on that.
Not me.
I'm an analyst.
I wouldn't do that.
Well, I'm just analyzing what my president said.
Yeah, my president said.
I have to follow my president because my president publicly with a microphone in front of him, he's the guy that's my president.
He's our president, right?
He said, if they invade Ukraine, we will shut it down.
The lady said, how exactly when you don't have control over it?
He says, trust me.
Well, he's wrong.
It doesn't matter whether he's right or wrong.
He said it, though.
That's a fact.
Yes, it does matter because it doesn't matter whether he's right or wrong because he can't do this.
The right answer is the difficult answer.
That is, you go to the Europeans and you go to the non-Russians who have pieces not only of the pipeline, but also have to deal with heat during the winter and say, we have to have a long-term solution, which is alternate access, and we have to have a short-term solution, which is what do you want to do in November?
And if we think we can tell them your people are going to be cold, we don't give a shit because the president said we're going to shut it down.
American arrogance at play.
The first question is to the Europeans who probably also have better ideas than we do because they have to deal with this every day.
They know what political opinion is.
They know what the attitudes of populations who have to be cold is.
What do you think we should do?
And let's start maybe taking somebody else's lead once in a while.
A little humility.
Let's go through some case study.
Okay.
Pearl Harbor happens.
FDR gets up and says they're going to pay a price for this.
Well, he dies.
The next leader comes in, Truman nuke.
Yeah.
Okay.
Boom.
Catastrophic.
What happens over there, right?
Hiroshima.
Reagan, Jimmy Carter.
Iran didn't fear Jimmy Carter at all.
They saw him as a weak man.
They didn't see him as a leader.
The day Reagan gets elected, seconds later, they release prisoners of war because they believed his threat.
And Khomeini said, hey, guys, let's kind of not mess with this guy.
I know he's an actor, but I don't think he's acting right.
Now let's release these guys.
By the way, so far it is two Democrats, one Republican.
This is not.
George Bush, hey, 9-11.
I don't want to do the conspiracy stuff with that part, but he comes up.
Hey, here's what we're going to do.
Okay.
Trump, hey, North Korea, I dare you.
See what we do.
Okay.
So you have to believe the threat when a president says a threat, whether we like it or not, whether he's your president or not, whether you voted for him or not, he made a threat to Russia publicly.
If you invade Ukraine, here's what we're doing.
So now, when you make a threat, you have one of two choices.
And we've all been in this position before.
We're at a bar, we have one too many drinks.
And we tell the guy, if I'm going to kick your ass, say something.
And the guy says it again like, shit, I either have to kick his ass or I have to walk away.
And it sucks when you're in that position.
Well, when Biden says it to 7.7 billion people, he has to follow through with his threat.
So you have to respect the fact that if he is behind this, at least your president, our president, followed through on his threat.
So respect to him for following through on his threat.
So now, let's just say it is him.
Let's play the game for shits and giggles because it's entertaining and we're having fun with it.
I'm going to kick your ass.
Say something, Philip.
Say something.
So let's just say he is following through on his threat.
Number one.
You know who respected the fact that he's following through on his threats in a dark way?
Putin respects the fact that he followed.
Oh, I would agree with that.
Putin's sitting there behind closed doors saying, this mother, he's probably, in his own Russian way, you know, he'll say something like that.
Okay.
So now, but Putin has also made some threats.
Okay.
Putin's also said, we will use nuclear if you keep supporting Ukraine.
Okay.
When I saw this happen a couple days ago, I sat there and we were talking about the last podcast.
What's the chance of a nuclear war taking place?
And I'm like, dude, it's less than 5%, 5 to 10%, less than 5%.
You know what I mean?
This kind of escalated some shit a little bit the last 48 hours when this happened.
This is not a joke.
To the average person, they're like, oh, look at that.
Bubbles in the ocean.
That's kind of cool.
It's a real entertainment.
Why is oil creating bubbles?
I'd be curious if I swim there.
Would it feel good?
The average person who's not following all of this stuff is like, ah, it's just bubbles in the middle of the ocean.
No, this is very, very political, very, very strategic, very, very intentional.
And I think the chess, the next move is on a guy named Vladimir.
And I think that guy knows how to play chess.
And I'm really curious what his next move is going to be.
Yeah, we had one move, another move this week beyond the pipeline, and that is going through the formal process of taking over pieces of Ukraine, which is him saying, you're never coming in again.
And we have a right to do this because this is Russian territory.
Yeah, there was breaking news.
He annexed four regions of Europe.
Yes.
So I think there's a couple of pieces of this.
The first, we already know the answer, which is the White House has towed a line between saying, how do I say this politely?
I think a lot of American people would say, I don't want kids, American kids to die in Ukraine, but I also don't want this to be extended across Europe.
We do have, I think there is some residual sense that, you know, we have a lot in common with Europe based on what happened during and after World War II.
But we've got to make it painful without making it cost American lives.
And I think that line has been towed, I think, pretty effectively over the past few months.
If you had said this was the result earlier this year in terms of pain to Putin, you'd say, that's better than I would have banked on in terms of how much pain Putin feels.
I raise that because I think to be brutal, I think the real question isn't Ukraine.
The real question is whether the pain pill is sufficient for Putin to be saying, I can't keep doing this elsewhere in Europe.
And that's where I think American policy has made some sense.
Make it really, really, really hurt.
But behind closed doors, I wouldn't say this to the National Security Council without the president.
But what I'm thinking is I may be in for a dime.
I am not in for a dollar.
I am not in for a dollar.
We had a very spirited debate last podcast, Tuesday, Tyler, Jedediah, myself, Pat, Vinny.
And I said, I basically took the side that we do need to do something in Ukraine.
Like, we can't just let Putin take over and redraw lines in the middle of Europe.
I don't stand for it.
I also agree that we shouldn't send American lives, but, you know, money, assets, resources, I stand by that.
They said we don't need to be doing anything in Ukraine.
Stop sending money.
Get the hell out of it.
What's your position?
My position is we should be telling Russia that you can't oppress people in a way that fundamentally violates American values without saying, again, we're in for a dollar.
And in for a dollar to me means risking Americans' lives by positioning.
Somebody told me we should have sent the 82nd Airborne into Ukraine before the invasion and the Russians would have been deterred.
And I'm like, you really need to be thinking about the law of unintended consequences because that's what you think.
That is not what you know.
And if a sabotage bomb shows up, you're talking about sabotage Hezbollah in Lebanon in the 1980s, shows up and 150 U.S. servicemen and women die, what would you then say?
I made a mistake.
So I think what we've done, I think to me, makes sense in terms of both bringing pain to Russia and representing American values.
And the fact that we haven't done more also makes sense to me.
This is not affecting everyday Americans around the dinner table and at the gas pump.
So we should be involved.
But until it does that, my definition of kinetic is an American's life is being fundamentally changed.
Afghanistan, yes.
Iraq, no.
I would say limited is okay.
This does not affect an everyday American's life.
Why are you sacrificing men and women overseas to do this?
What do you say about the billions that are being spent there?
Whereas it could be spent elsewhere, whether that's at the border, whether that's child hunger, the money that's being spent.
I personally think too much is spent on, if you look at our spending, military spending, security spending compared to China and Russia, that we spend too much on national security as a national security guy.
But I would say this investment is relatively modest.
If you go back to the earlier point of deterrence, we're spending a modest amount ensuring that Putin, and I'm not sure, I think this, I don't know this, that Putin is saying this is not exactly going according to plan.
So if I'm thinking about Poland or the Baltics, especially when you look at the lines leaving Russia now, man, people aren't that happy when you say, I'm going to conscript a bunch of people who maybe don't want to go.
Spending that amount of money to ensure that we don't have to spend trillions for a broader European front, that makes some sense to me.
You say Poland and the Baltics, even Finland joined NATO recently.
Is that a realistic concern that Putin would expand his vision beyond Ukraine?
If I were in government, I would say yes, because I don't anticipate there's a difference between capability and intent when you're in the intelligence business.
What can someone do in terms of their military capability, technical capability?
What do they want to do?
Intelligence professionals typically overrate their ability to understand what an adversary wants to do.
What does Al-Qaeda want to do?
What does Saddam want to do?
What would three years ago, what does Putin want to do?
I don't think that's likely in Finland, but for me to anticipate what an adversary wants to do, you better as an analyst come in and give me a damn good story because otherwise I'm going to grill your ass.
How do you know what somebody else thinks?
How do you know what you're going to do with your family next week at dinner?
You don't know, do you?
You don't know.
You are for pizza every Thursday.
You didn't go next Thursday.
Why is I changed my mind?
Don't anticipate that you can understand perfectly what the intentions of the adversary are unless your information is really good.
Do you respect Putin?
As an adversary, yes.
As a decision maker, no.
I respect the vision and I respect the execution.
But he's put a lot of people's lives at stake in not just being sort of soft, but for what is not a very successful operation and doesn't appear to be on the road to executing his vision.
So what's up?
So what's up, Putin?
What up, dog?
So, okay, so that's that part.
Let's go to the next topic.
India and China.
Okay.
And then we'll do Iran and we'll wrap up.
India, China.
There's a lot of animosity those two countries have for each other.
Okay.
And it's very obvious.
India is the only one that publicly banned 100 apps from China in India.
Okay, TikTok being one of them.
India is, I think, taking 25% of Apple's iPhone being made over there.
Tim Cook decided to move 25% over there.
I want to say it's 25% or it's going to be 25%, but they're moving a lot of the manufacturing over to India.
India's Star New produced the best engineers.
I've been doing this for a while with their school IIT Institute, which some people say schools, MIT Institute.
I've been there.
It's an incredible setup that they have.
It's on a whole different level.
People keep hiring Indian engineers, and they're fantastic on what they're doing.
Yes.
The reputation that they've had over the years on business is gradually changing.
30 years ago, 40 years ago, 20 years ago, 10 years ago, it's changing where trust is going higher around the world.
Modi is a pro-capitalism supporter on what he's done.
Obviously, he's not a perfect leader.
He's got his own flaws like everybody else does, but he's done some great work in a country with 44 different political parties.
I don't know what the number is, but I think it's 44 give or take political parties.
He's done a good job on bringing them to where they're at right now.
What do you think of China?
What do you think of India?
How important of a role India is to keeping the world not relying on 100% of China where China can impose themselves on everybody else?
And the only reason I brought up India and China is because you worked in those.
Yes, I worked in India.
I did not work on China, but obviously I watch it.
I think we have to deal with both.
And I'm a believer in typically in engagement, not because I think it's soft, but because I think if you don't want to use military power and you say you don't want to talk to somebody, where do you end up?
Like I would say you got to engage with the Iranians.
You have to do it because the alternative is say we walk away from the table and we have no capability to influence the outcome.
Well, you're like Iran, you want to support the government.
That's not what I said.
I said is here's got a few options.
So I look at China, which we can talk about in a moment, and I say, I think engagement and also understanding of what the trajectory is in the 21st century.
Realistically, if you look at population growth, economic growth, ability to plan decades in advance, ability to overlook when you're China and looking at Africa and elsewhere, they don't care about human rights.
We're just going to invest.
We don't do that in this country in America.
I think we have to figure out a way to deal with China because if you want to say we're going to compete with them over Taiwan in 2035, I'm going to say, okay, let's play that game.
I want to see it gamed on paper how we're going to do that.
And I want to make sure that you know the American people are going to support going across the Pacific to do that.
So China is a different case, obviously, than India.
I think I completely agree on India.
When I used to work on India, in terms of economic regulations, in terms of global engagement, in terms of politics and diplomacy, I thought huge country, huge potential, as you say, educational capabilities at the upper 1%.
Young, 28 years old.
Incredible.
Incredible intellectual talent, investment also in hard stuff like engineering and the sciences.
I think engagement economically makes sense.
Politically, in terms of things like countering China, I look at the attitude of India on issues like populism and human rights in the country, religious diversity.
Boy, I'd be cautious.
I would be cautious about getting too close in terms of seeing them as a natural partner because I think Modi.
This is who?
India.
I think Modi does not see the world in the way we do in terms of what he sees for the future.
That's a Hindu country.
It's not a multi-ethnic country for him, I think.
And that's going to cause, if you look at the history of violence, ethnic and religious violence in India, I would not have high hopes about stability in that country over the long term.
Really?
I'm not talking about revolution.
I'm just talking about stuff the government does where Americans in Congress and elsewhere cringe and say, wow, we don't want to be in bed with those people.
I, man, that country has a history of who do you fear more, them or China long term?
China.
Okay.
I wouldn't say fear.
I would say if we think we can control.
Formidable enemies.
Yes, that's exactly right.
That's how, yeah, that's right.
Just, again, population growth, economic growth, ability to plan, investment in the military, and geography.
If you look at access to the Pacific, obviously, into Taiwan, we keep thinking, you know, we will defend Taiwan.
Good luck.
Good luck.
And tell the Americans that we're going to do that over the course of time with a military and economics and a population of that size.
Good luck.
The American politicians say it.
I want to see it gamed out.
Yeah, I don't think there's any American fervor to go to war over Taiwan.
And Biden, once again, I think, speaks.
He said it, though.
Yeah, but he's, again, it's like when he got out in front of Obama saying, Obama supports same-sex marriage.
The guy speaks before he thinks.
He said that.
And I'd say, have you wargamed out that in the situation room?
Good luck.
Especially as the years pass and China keeps growing and keeps investing.
Good luck.
81 million people voted for this guy to lead the free world.
And so we have to trust in the fact that 81 million people chose him to be the right guy to lead these types of situations, Biden.
But unfortunately, every single time he says something, people who voted for him keep saying, yeah, but that's not what he meant.
And he shouldn't have said that.
I mean, how many times you shouldn't have to say that every day?
You should have better things to do in your life than say he shouldn't have said that.
You know what I mean?
It's a little bit of a challenge when you have to keep defending the person that you supported.
But, okay, let's talk Iran.
Let's go to Iran.
Iran.
We're seeing, obviously, what's happened in Iran.
This is day 13.
Yesterday was day 12.
Today is day 13.
It's constant, ongoing.
The 22-year-old lady, when this whole anti-job movement started, it's become a phenomenon.
Just to get some statistics on what's happened, day 13 of the revolution, martyrs, 240 people killed.
Injured, thousands.
Detained, 12,000.
Protests continue in 162 cities.
Yesterday I was on Iran International news channel.
They were interviewing me talking about what I think is going on in Iran.
But for you, you worked in Iran.
85.
This is Khomeini's era.
This is post-Shah, six years post-Shah.
CIA gets a lot of criticism and credit to helping the Shah become the emperor because they hurt Mossadegh.
You'll hear that story quite often.
But then you'll also hear that the CIA was also involved in helping the Shah fall and Khomeini show up.
So both ways, you know, you'll hear some stories that have come up on the fact that support wasn't given when it was promised.
That's what you're saying.
And when Carter goes in there and, hey, we're going to help you.
Kissinger says we got your back.
They never got his back.
Revolution got bigger.
It's too late.
The rest is history.
So from your experience, from what you know, whether it's Mossadegh to Shah, the revolution in 79 to today, are the chances of a revolution happening again.
And if yes, what's needed?
Just give me your story of Iran, your experience.
It's a fairly broad question.
How do I break this down?
I saw the security.
I followed the security apparatus, not in Iran, but outside Iran as an intelligence analyst at the agency.
I thought the security apparatus was brutal, aggressive.
And by that, I mean as a security professional, seeing what they were willing to do in terms of supporting, for example, for overseas militant movements in places like Lebanon, far more aggressive in some ways than we might be.
I thought the West, and this is something I talk about a lot.
People don't like this, but I thought the West had limited ability to analyze in Iran because there's something called the halo effect in intelligence analysis.
That is, you're looking at the Iranian opposition and making them, putting halos on them.
They think like we do.
They want a more liberal sort of democracy.
There's a theocracy now, as you know, in Iran, that prevents most candidates from running.
It is not a democratic system.
I think Americans tend to too quickly say, this is going to succeed because those people are doing the right thing.
Everybody must think like that.
Who doesn't want not to have to wear a hijab?
Who doesn't want to live in a democratic society?
And of course, there are a lot of people who think like that.
So I think the willingness of the Iranian security apparatus to suppress the people, coupled with maybe an overestimation in America about how many people might support the regime, means that I would say prospects of revolution are modest at best.
What percentage would you put on that?
Less than 5%?
No, 10%.
Really?
It's that high.
One in 10, I'm talking about over the course of, let's say, 10 or 20 years.
Got it.
So you're not even, it's the chance of it happening right now.
It's not high numbers.
No, I would look forward to this.
Analyzing one of the hardest things I saw at the agency is trying to analyze public movements.
I think it's easier with social media.
But I would be breaking this down into specific areas like geography, how many places are seeing unrest, geography over time.
Is that going on for months?
To be blunt, willingness of the people to take a bullet.
One thing I'd like to say, typically in these kinds of movements, you need some kind of leadership to coalesce around.
I don't see a great amount of leadership in the Iranian opposition.
And then on the converse side, tough questions like how willing is the security apparatus to kill people over time?
Is there dissonance within the military and political leadership about this?
There's a lot.
If I were doing hardcore analysis, which we're not doing, I'm not denigrating this.
I'm just saying this would take weeks to step through all those elements of successful revolution, successful counter-revolution, to understand whether that 10% figure is solid.
But my sense, going back to it, is there are a lot of people who still support the regime, and the security apparatus don't underestimate them.
Not only are they good, they will kill, and they will kill thousands if that's what it takes.
As far as regime change in the next 10 years?
Low.
Iran, North Korea, Russia, would you put those in order in terms of regime change?
Like toppled revolution.
Not necessarily, you're not saying like a new person is going to replace Putin because that's probably going to happen next 10 years.
Yeah, he's.
You're saying a regime change.
Yes.
Oh, okay.
Go ahead.
I'd put Iran third, Russian, North Korea.
The problem I'm facing with North Korea is that's one bullet, which I don't really, I mean, Russia is the same way.
Maybe Russia won, North Korea two, Iran three.
I'd have to.
In terms of likelihood of a regime change.
So you're putting Iran at the bottom of the list, meaning that's the least likely to happen over the next year.
But among three, they're volatile.
Now, you give me two beers, and I might reorder those out.
Something tells me if we had a couple of beers with Philip Mark, I actually think it would be a fun conversation.
You know, I think, listen, to me, people think like, oh, my God, like, I love bringing people that we may have disagreements with, and we can have the conversations, but I also love reading Tip O'Neill's book, not Tip One, Chris Matthews' book on Tip O'Neill and Reagan.
You know, like, these guys would go ahead, and then afterwards, they're having a beer, Irish, talking, laughing, joking, sports, all this stuff.
I think that's how it needs to be.
Have a discourse, have your debate, have your conversations, and then afterwards sit down and say, dude, we have differences, but let's talk.
How's life?
How you doing?
How's everything?
It's interesting to take you inside CNN for just a moment.
There's only been, and I'm not going to name names, maybe two people that I've been in the green room with I didn't care for.
And I used to do CNN regularly now before COVID.
I was on every day.
The definition of the people who I didn't like in the green room is they brought the conversation and typically the dispute to the green room.
I'm like, that's an amateur move.
We can debate on camera and the debates were real.
And in the green room, what are you doing this weekend?
What's going on?
Funny story, not that I disagree with me.
He's actually a very nice guy, John Dean, to talk about how pleasant and interesting the green room is.
I was telling John Dean, who's a senator from John Dean from Watergate.
Oh, gotcha.
To be blunt, I'm thinking of Howard Dean.
Yeah, John Dean, we're in there one day.
He's a super nice guy and a good sense of humor.
I'm a runner.
I'm like, man, my knees are starting to hurt me.
He pulls up his pant leg and he says, you need these kind of knee bands.
And I'm talking, John Dean from Watergate is in the green room talking about his grandkids and telling me what kind of kneebands to wear because he's got them on.
And then he rolls out.
That's the green room.
Not, what did you say on camera?
Screw you.
Nobody does that in the green room except in an amateur.
And I'm saying, as you're suggesting, Tip O'Neill and Reagan, we should have more of that in Washington.
I agree.
Well, we're at the end of the podcast.
This is fun.
Guys, we have to go because he and I have to fight outside.
But for everybody else that, you know, you watch it, if you enjoyed this, there's a couple things I want to tell you.
Number one, I am convinced the future looks bright.
I'm so convinced, I can't even tell you.
By the way, these hats that we customize, like literally, I've been working on these things for six months now to make it exactly the way I like it with the help of Kai and our team.
It's finally here.
Okay.
It's a value taintment logo on the front.
On the side of it, it says future looks bright.
And on the bottom here, it says future looks bright with the value tame logo on the inside.
We have them in black, red, and white.
Yes, two days ago, we announced this on a couple of the videos.
They're about to sell out.
Most people are ordering all three colors for themselves.
There's different sizes, large, small, that you can have.
But I'm about the mindset of having the concept of a future looks bright around you, affirmations around you.
There's a lot of mess going on right now in the world.
There's a lot of negative things going on around the world right now.
But if you haven't yet ordered yours, do so before they sell out.
We will obviously put another order in, but it'll take us another 12 weeks to come in.
But for those of you guys that want these future looks bright hats now, click on the link below to go to vtmerch.com to get your hats.
And I suggest ordering all three.
And if you got friends that are valued, order it for them as well.
Final, you have a book.
You wrote a, we were looking at the book that you wrote.
If you don't mind sharing that with the audience.
Well, I've written a few books.
The last one, which was a book called Black Side about CIA Facilities.
If you want to talk about it, you can find me on LinkedIn at Philip Mudd.
My photo is there.
I don't have any information up because you're looking at the entire Philip Mudd corporate enterprise, including, sadly, the ethics office.
You're very active on TikTok and Instagram, and I see you like hardcore active on you.
You're doing music videos, dancing videos.
I see you everywhere.
Did you know Coolio just died?
I'm 59 years old.
Crazy.
Unbelievable.
Thanks for watching.
Michelle Pfeiffer, the movie.
I'll sing that for you.
Higher learning.
Really?
I'm impressed.
By the way, you know that guy made an impact?
That was on the cover of the Wall Street Journal.
Coolio.
Crazy.
Really?
Straight up.
Best comment of the day.
Can I give you guys the best comment of the day?
Here's the best comment of the day.
Did you see it or no?
I don't know if it was.
It said, you know, Phil looks like he could be related to Adam.
