Dave Smith critiques Chuck Todd's MSNBC coverage of the Trump impeachment, arguing that requesting foreign investigations into Biden corruption is not election interference. Smith contends Todd exaggerates a "national nightmare" while dismissing valid concerns about intelligence community bias, citing Senator Lindsey Graham's allegations of coordinated leaks by figures like Peter Strzok and John Brennan. By framing Graham's skepticism as conspiracy theories, Todd allegedly validates claims of a low-grade war between the president and unelected agencies, ultimately obscuring whether actual crimes occurred rather than focusing on the method of information gathering. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Welcome to Part of the Problem00:01:46
Fill her up.
You are listening to the Gas Digital Network.
We need to roll back the state.
We spy on all of our own citizens.
Our prisons are flooded with nonviolent drug offenders.
If you want to know who America's next enemy is, look at who we're funding right now.
Every single one of these problems are a result of government being way too big.
You're listening to part of the problem on the Gas Digital Network.
Here's your host, Dave Smith.
What's up, everybody?
Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
I am Dave Smith.
He is the fire.
Robbie, the king of the caulks, Bernstein.
What's going on?
How are you, sir?
I'm good, man.
Good to be here in Studio B, a little bit earlier than usual.
So today, if you guys listened to the show and you haven't picked up on this, I am borderline retarded.
But so I forgot that I had the Soho Forum tonight.
And then Rob texted me a few hours ago and was like, hey, so what are we doing with the podcast?
I mean, you got the Soho Forum tonight.
And I was like, good question.
So we scrambled and we got in earlier.
We're in Studio B. Thanks to everybody for moving up last night.
And it was a big deal.
I just, you know, I had to push off my second lunch to a little bit later in the afternoon, but it's okay.
You get a first dinner?
Yeah, first dinner instead of a second lunch.
Hit the AC.
Oh, yeah, I got you, brother.
Hot as balls in here.
Anyway, so we were able to all make it work.
Rob pushed around his second lunch.
Luckily, I think BYM is out of town, so the studio is available.
Everything kind of worked out.
So we still get you guys an episode, and I can make it over to the Soho Forum to do my opening set there.
Studio Logistics and Soho Forum Plans00:03:17
Won't be debating this time.
It was hard for me because I wasn't even sure they were going to continue doing Soho forums after the dominant performance last month.
I got the big one coming up with what's his name?
The War debate.
Scott Horton Bill Crystal, but that's not till next May.
There's a lot of time before that one.
Oh, I thought that was AC.
Well, they announced that really early.
They announced it very early.
But the big one that is coming up is Gene Epstein is debating, what's his name?
Richard Wolf on socialism versus capitalism.
Well, it's always fun watching Gene debate.
I love it.
What's tonight's debate?
Do you know a fan?
I think it's something Bitcoin related to the future.
No, it's drugs.
Drugs.
It's the legalization of drugs.
I forget the exact debate resolution, but go to the Soho Forum.
It'd be great if the debater just approvis pointed every drug through the debate.
Like, heroin, this one's not that bad.
This goes, so you guys are going to demonize crack.
I've been on crack this entire debate so far.
Am I making good points?
Sir, you are humping the wall.
I'd be like, oh, all right.
You know what?
This is the first time I've ever done crack.
Didn't work out that well.
But I think I've proved my point.
I'm still here.
Okay, so there's a couple things that I thought would be fun to talk about on the show today.
The first piece of news, big news, the biggest news sweeping the nation right now.
I got my fight pick right for the middleweight title fight.
Israel Adesanya, undisputed middleweight champion.
I'm back, baby.
This is the one.
This is the one that broke the curse.
Biggest fight, middleweight championship, Australia versus New Zealand.
I was telling people Israel Adesanya was going to win this fight, and a lot of people were like, you're crazy.
Whitaker is going to go in there.
He's a better mixed martial artist, blah, blah, blah.
Called it.
Called it perfectly.
And I called it for exactly the right reason because I knew Whitaker would have no other option but to stand with this guy and try to knock him out.
And I just don't think you're going to, that's a very effective way to fight Israel Adesanya, who is probably the most decorated striker in the UFC right now.
You got to make it dirty.
You got to be pushing that up against the fence.
He didn't even lynch.
He tried to leap in and out and throw haymakers.
And Adesanya was just making him miss everything.
I mean, like, I thought people were...
No, Adesania's got a chin.
I mean, even though he took some shots.
Took a couple shots and he proved he had a chin in that Kelvin Gaslam fight.
Kelvin Gaslam hits like a fucking truck.
And he took shots from him for four rounds and then came back and fucked him up in the fifth.
But I thought a lot of people were like, oh, Whitaker was winning that fight till he clipped him at the end of the first round.
I thought Adesanya was fighting a great game plan.
There was no way Whitaker was going to be able to keep that up for five rounds.
He was throwing everything into every shot and coming up with next to nothing.
And I thought Adesanya was just moving around.
He was relaxed.
There was the really interesting difference in like pace and intensity.
Whereas, even the way they came down to the ring, Whitaker came down, he's pumping his chest and he's like, and Adesanya's like breakdancing his way down.
That made me hate him, though.
Oh, no.
It wasn't that just a goddamn nightmare.
But in terms of just breaking down the fight, even as they were fighting, you see Whitaker just loading up with everything.
And Adesanya's just cool and calm.
And it's almost like he was dancing in the ring.
And I, anyway.
So the point is, I'm back to being excellent at picking MMA fights.
Big news in the country.
The second story, the story that's not quite as big, looks like the impeachment's moving forward of Donald Trump.
Unsubstantiated Allegations and Whataboutism00:08:54
Also, a story that people around the country are talking about.
It's so, look, man, I got to say, I've actually really been enjoying this whole process and watching the media coverage of it.
So the big story that's broken since last time we were on the podcast is that it's Monday.
So since Friday, what happened over the weekend is that it looks like a second whistleblower is coming forward.
And this is the like, it's so funny.
Two CIA sponsors.
Yes.
Yes.
This is like the media's like death by a thousand cuts strategy.
It's like the same, it reminds me of the Kavanaugh thing.
We'd be like, at first, it's like, well, here's one completely unsubstantiated allegation, but now we have two unsubstantiated allegations.
And you go, wow, there's two.
But it does have a weird psychological effect on people where they go, oh, well, now there's smoke.
There must be fire.
I mean, there's you've got two CIA agents coming out and saying, now we don't know the second guy's CIA.
All we know is that the lawyer representing the first whistleblower says there's a second whistleblower.
We don't know who he is.
We don't know what he's had, but this is their like, throw one more thing there.
And now let's see.
Did this guy strategize with Schiff first also?
Yeah, well, we don't know.
Yeah, a lot of people.
It's a good question.
Yeah, a lot to find out here.
Now, I, one of the things that I think has been really interesting about the coverage of this is that because there's no, I mean, look, you can say it was a quid pro quo.
You can say it was an abuse of power, whatever you want to, but there's just nothing in the transcript, even in the text messages, that you'd be like, oh my God, this is, you know, like such a scandal.
And the best case scenario, the best case scenario, the accusation that they've got from like what they're putting forward, right?
Is that Donald Trump said in a conversation with the Ukrainians that he'd like to see them look into the Joe Biden, Hunter Biden thing.
That's off the transcript.
That's the big thing that you've got.
Oh my God, what an like how you try to make this a national emergency, especially when you've been saying the guy's a puppet of Vladimir Putin.
You've been saying it's literally Hitler, all these terrible things he's going to do.
It's just hard to really sell that as like, oh my God.
And then, according to the text messages, and this is the official story of what's impeachable, why we have no choice.
Nancy Pelosi's out there saying, like, I really didn't want to impeach, but my constitutional duty I have, I have to impeach.
We have to go through this horrible process because Donald Trump, it was communicated by people around Donald Trump that he was withholding military aid unless they tried to get to the bottom of the origins of the Mueller investigation, which he then relinquished the foreign aid to them.
That's what they've got.
That's the story.
That he temporarily held off on military aid because he wanted to look.
By the way, not that he wanted to them, even by the own, the text messages, not that he digging up dirt on Joe Biden.
Not that, you know, it's looking backward.
It has nothing to do with interfering in an election going forward.
It has to do with who interfered in the last election.
So there's even that.
I mean, look, maybe you can find some constitutional, you know, scholar who will say this is not, you know, following a certain protocol or something.
But the idea to any normal person, you would look at that and be like, oh my God, what a scandal is a hard sell.
It's a hard sell.
So in order to sell it, the media has to really sell it.
Because there's nothing, there's really no there there.
There's nothing to look at and go, oh my God.
Now, if you're selling Donald Trump is conspiring with a hostile foreign power to change an election, now that's a real, oh God, there's there.
I mean, there wasn't, but that the claim, there's something to.
So that wasn't as necessary.
This, you got to really sell.
And the person who has been the most entertaining to watch on this this week has been Chuck Todd.
Now, Chuck Todd is the moderator, as they call him, of Meet the Press, although not such a moderator recently.
But he's a guy, you know, Chuck Todd was like the numbers guy at MSNBC years ago, and he ended up like really going and becoming one of the big players on the network.
And it's just been, I don't know, hilarious and ridiculous watching him watching his reaction to this whole thing.
So the first clip I want to play is a clip of Chuck Todd.
He hosts Meet the Press every Sunday, and then he has a show Meet the Press Daily that he hosts every day on MSNBC.
So the first one is from his MSNBC show.
And this was Chuck Todd.
So what I just told you, this is not me adding anything.
This is factually what's going on here.
Donald Trump mentioned on the phone to the Ukrainian president that he'd like to see him look into Joe Biden.
And then it looks like he held up some military aid and some people around him were like, hey, you may not get this aid unless you look into the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation, which he then ended up giving them anyway.
Doesn't really look like they got to the bottom of anything, but that's the actual story.
Here's Chuck Todd describing me neither.
It's too perfect, you know?
You need a little bit of a turn.
Hey, it's Meet the Press Daily.
Good evening.
I'm Chuck Todd here in Washington.
I don't say this lightly.
But let's be frank, a national nightmare is upon us.
The basic rules of our democracy are under attack from the president.
We begin tonight with a series of admissions by the president that all but assures his impeachment in the House of Representatives.
All right, so let's pause.
What normal human being could take what I just told you, which is not my opinion on it.
This is what's going on, and say a national nightmare is upon us.
The fundamental rules of democracy are being undermined by the president.
What exactly are take it back to the beginning of this?
I want to make sure I get this wording exactly correctly.
Let's go back to the video.
Welcome to Thursday.
It's Meet the Press Daily.
Good evening.
I'm Chuck Todd here in Washington.
I don't say this lightly, but let's be frank.
A national nightmare is upon us.
The basic rules of our democracy are under attack from the president.
All right, let's begin tonight.
The basic rules of our democracy are under attack by the president.
I don't say this lightly, but it's a national nightmare.
Well, actually, Chuck Todd, I think you are saying it kind of lightly.
That, yes, to say this is a national nightmare might be a little bit of an overstatement.
Trump took the military into Washington.
He killed off all the senators and told Congress that if they don't secede authority to him immediately, they were going to die as well.
And he finally did become the Hitler that they warned us about.
That's the national nightmare.
I mean, right.
To say, like, so what, this is the thing that you almost wonder, and that's, I mean, you're spot on with like the point you're getting at, which is like, so what would you describe that as?
Since you're already using this language for talking to the Ukrainian president and saying, hey, I'd really like you to look into this, this corruption with Joe Biden and his kid.
Okay, that's a national nightmare, a fundamental attack on the most basic rules of democracy.
What would you call it if a president like suspended elections and was like, I'm serving out indefinitely?
Like, what?
You'd just be sitting there.
Oh, now you've really done it.
This is a super duper national nightmare.
No, okay, of course, the fundamental rules of democracy would be what?
That people have a right to vote, that our leaders are democratically elected.
I mean, the idea that the fundamental rules of democracy are that you're not allowed to ask foreign governments to do investigations.
I mean, okay.
I mean, obviously, one of the problems with this, which, you know, you get accused of like whataboutism or something like that, which is, god damn it, I hate that fucking term so much.
I tweeted this recently, but I think that I've never heard the term whataboutism used when it wasn't responding to an excellent point that somebody couldn't answer.
And they go, well, that's just whataboutism.
It's like, well, yeah, I'm putting things in historical context.
I'm pointing out if my point is this, right?
If it's a national nightmare and it's a fundamental attack on the most basic rules of democracy to ask foreigners to investigate something, well, okay, but when exactly did we start that standard?
Because the big story for the last three years was Trump-Russia collusion.
And all of it was started off this Christopher Steele guy who put together this dossier, who is a British intelligence agent who says he had, he put together, the claim was that it was high-level Kremlin officials who gave him all this dirt on Donald Trump.
Why You Need Stamps.com00:02:05
So it was all investigating done by foreigners.
And yet that was fine.
The only thing we wanted to worry about then was, can we get to the bottom of this?
Is there collusion between Trump and the Russians?
That was the only thing we wanted to worry about.
Yet when Trump does it openly, not in a secret process, he's saying openly, hey, I want you guys to look into this.
No one cares about looking into whether Joe Biden was actually corrupt.
No one cares about looking into the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation to begin with.
It's just, no, you're not allowed to do that.
That's a national nightmare.
So just curious, when exactly did these rules get written?
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Exposing Corruption vs Election Interference00:12:39
All right, let's get back into the show.
And the other thing is that if you're talking about foreign governments influencing America, like if you really care about that, well, isn't the Joe Biden thing an example of that?
I mean, come on, dude.
Whether or not they'll say all day long on MSNBC, they'd be like, there's no evidence of any illegal activity by Hunter Biden and Joe Biden.
And they were being investigated in Ukraine before that prosecutor got fired.
But I don't even really think, at least from my perspective, my accusation isn't actually that it was illegal.
What they did.
I think it's legal is more or less my take.
I don't know.
I'm not a lawyer.
I'm not an expert in Ukrainian law or international law or constitutional law.
I don't know.
But I don't actually think there's anything illegal about saying, hey, we're going to hire the vice president's son and give him $600,000 a year to be on our board.
I don't think there's anything illegal about that.
But everybody knows the reason the guy's there is to try to gain influence over the vice president.
So if you are so concerned about foreign governments interfering or influencing our system, it seems like you'd go, well, this is obvious what they're trying to do right there.
Here's another example, okay?
Hillary Clinton's fucking foundation.
The Clinton Foundation took like $10 million from the Saudis.
And then, by the way, as soon as Hillary Clinton wasn't president, the whole foundation dried up.
That's actually, Ukraine was the biggest, the biggest donator to the Clinton Foundation.
Were they the biggest?
Yeah, 10 million.
Saudi Arabia's a little bit underneath that.
And what's really wild about the Ukraine one was that you guys fact check me on this, but I believe the donations came in when she was at the State Department after Obama approved the massive foreign aid to them.
So it seems to be very highly tied in that essentially we gave money to them for them to hand back to Clinton.
Now, I still don't think, technically speaking, there's anything illegal about that.
It looks like the laws are written in a way where you basically can get around the system and you could give, you couldn't give money directly to Hillary Clinton.
You couldn't give money directly to her campaign, but you certainly can give money to her charity.
And by the way, the point that all of this money dried up as soon as she wasn't president.
Yeah, which shows the correlation.
Oh, all of a sudden, these people who were so into charity just don't really care about charity anymore.
It's like, well, no, they were trying to influence power and she doesn't have power anymore.
So there was no, there's nothing to influence there.
So I'm just saying, if your concern was that there's foreign influence of our system, then obviously you'd be outraged by all these things.
But for these people who don't care at all and actually just mock you, if you care about all these things, to pretend this is some national emergency when this is a far, far, far, far Less egregious violation of the same principle because nobody is actually thinking here, at least there's no accusation that's actually like, oh, the Ukrainians were influencing policy X and policy Y of Donald Trump.
They're just saying Donald Trump wanted to dig up about what happened in the Russia collusion and what happened with Joe Biden and his son.
That's all.
Now, sure, is there something to did?
Donald Trump partly want information on the Biden corruption because Biden was the frontrunner against him?
I'm sure.
I'm sure that's true.
It's still a very much less.
I mean, if you think when Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State, very influential figure in the Obama administration, and they're actually fighting wars on behalf of the Saudi Arabians, getting involved in military conflicts on behalf of the Ukrainians, and then her foundation is taking all of this money.
By any sane human standard, that is a far more egregious violation of allowing foreign influence, of quid pro quo, of any of that stuff.
So, yeah, it's just a little bit, it's a little rich to hear Chuck Todd put on his serious, I'm about to cry voice and go, a national nightmare is upon us.
All right.
By the way, one of the best things that happened over the last week was Donald Trump, in real Trumpian fashion, which I got to say, God damn, the guy is fucking ballsy.
He just came out and said at a press conference, and he goes, I think Ukraine should look into Joe Biden.
I think China should look into not Joe Biden, Hunter Biden.
I think China should look into him too.
So he's just like, yeah, I'm going to out in public call on them to investigate this guy.
But then you have to stop and go, like, well, what is it actually a crime?
I mean, the answer is no to it being a crime.
But is there actually anything wrong with a president or anyone else saying, hey, I think this foreign government should investigate this?
What's wrong with that?
Like, what exactly is the problem there?
Now, you can make a connection and say, well, he would benefit from them being investigated.
It's like, okay, possibly.
But how.
If they weren't corrupt, then there would be nothing for him to investigate.
Well, right.
It doesn't change like it was the same exact thing with Hillary Clinton when she was like, well, this came from a foreign power.
Well, they're still your emails.
Well, right.
And he's still fucked up.
It doesn't change the fact.
And the idea that something would help you in an election, it's like, well, how exactly do we define where that starts and where that ends?
So, in other words, if Donald Trump were to give a bunch of money to a charity, you could say, well, that's going to help you in your next election because people will look at you as a really great guy for giving all this money to charity, right?
But is that influencing an election?
I mean, you know, like you, you could just literally say that, like, I don't know, like when that dumb video of Beto O'Rourke doing push-ups that he put up online, you're like, oh, this is trying to make you look better so you get more votes.
Everything politicians do is trying to build up their own electability.
There's something interesting here that if you're trying to expose legitimate corruption, if you're trying to expose corruption that actually happened, that people will point and say, hey, that shouldn't be a part of the election process.
In other words, if you're fabricating corruption, there was no corruption, and now you're trying to, you know, I don't know, hack into someone's computer and make it seem like they got a payment that they never did that you can then present.
So that's illegal.
You can't, that shouldn't be sure, of course.
But I'm just saying, if you're taking measures to expose legitimate corruption, why would anyone in the voting public or in government go, hey, that shouldn't be a part of the political process?
And here's the difference between that.
Yes, but this is what's beautiful about being not on either one of these teams.
We're not like a MAGA podcast and we're not a fucking, we're certainly not lefties or Democrats or anything like that.
So it's like, let's just say hypothetically that they had figured out that Trump was actually working with Putin.
We would have been the first ones to be like, oh, this guy's fucking corrupt as shit.
Like he should go down for that.
I wouldn't be like, but you used a foreign government to find out.
It's like, no, no, no, I don't give a shit.
I don't care if it's WikiLeaks exposing Hillary Clinton's corruption or Christopher Steele exposing Donald Trump's corruption.
I don't care who exposed it.
If it's real and there's real crimes and real corruption, let's expose it.
It should be a win for us.
Yes, but that's any journalist should agree with that for sure.
But just as a fucking person, I agree with that.
Like, yeah, I want to know.
And particularly if you believe in democracy, which is Chuck Todd's whole point here, you know, this is a national nightmare because democracy has been undermined.
Well, what good is democracy if the voters don't have the relevant information?
Yeah.
Right?
So that was...
If anything, they should say we shouldn't have to leave this to Trump and foreign governments.
This looks like it's fishy.
We better have ourselves an investigation.
Well, that would be one.
And they love investigations.
Well, that's right.
Well, they do when they're going in the right direction, evidently.
All right, let's keep playing from Chuck Todd.
I hope he doesn't cry.
With a series of admissions by the president, that all but assures his impeachment in the House of Representatives.
It's a moment of truth for Republicans, and they've been largely silent on what we've seen from the president.
Today, he publicly called on two foreign governments to interfere in the presidential election by investigating his chief 2020 political rival.
What exactly did you hope Zelensky would do about the Bidens after your phone call?
Exactly.
Well, I would think that if they were honest about it, they'd start a major investigation into the Biden.
It's a very simple answer.
They should investigate the Bidens because how does a company that's newly formed and all these companies, if you look at, and by the way, likewise, China should start an investigation into the Biden because what happened in China is just about as bad as what happened with Ukraine.
So I would say that President Zelensky, if it were me, I would recommend that they start an investigation into the Bidens because nobody has any doubt that they weren't crooked.
That was a crooked deal, 100%.
All right.
So what you just said.
First, it's like he couldn't pronounce the word China and someone's like, you know, the word vagina?
Just take the V out.
And then, yeah, did you see SNL did a funny joke that why is he doing every press conference while there's a helicopter in the background?
Oh, that is.
It's so.
He just keeps taking like these things like they're yelling at you.
Maybe he just thinks it's more presidential sounding or something.
It's so stupid.
But it's really the thing that stands out to me the most out of what Chuck Todd just said that I just find to be so outrageously disingenuous and just like that he goes, Donald Trump invited foreign governments to interfere in the 2020 election.
Like they keep using this term, interfere in the election.
I mean, I guess if they were to uncover crimes that Joe Biden committed, it might have an effect on the election outcome.
But again, like we said, that would just be voters having more information and using that information to make their decision.
I thought that's the idea of democracy.
Look, I'm a guy who doesn't believe in democracy, but clearly you do.
So explain to me how you don't want voters to have more information.
Voters having more information is interfering in the election.
I mean, okay.
But by that logic, right?
By that logic, it's like proposing a tax policy is interfering in the election, right?
Because that might influence people to vote for you.
Like, is anything that might influence somebody to vote for you that's that's interfering in an election?
I understand it's not using a foreign government, but you're just using within our own country.
Would you call that interfering in the election?
How about campaigning?
That's certainly interfere.
That's interfering in the election with the express goal of interfering in the election by this definition, right?
I'm going to go visit Pennsylvania and tell them what I'm going to do for them.
So more of them vote for me.
Now, I understand it's a foreign country versus our country, by the way, for a whole press corps who's so adverse to the term nationalist, seems a little bit nationalistic to be like, we can do anything, but if a foreign government does it, it's evil.
But would you call that, if you said Donald Trump had a campaign rally in Pennsylvania this week to interfere in the 2020 election, wouldn't you go like, what do you mean interfere?
And he's trying to persuade people.
I don't know.
And then again, of course, if your issue is interfering in the election, after what Hillary Clinton did, what Barack Obama did to Donald Trump, what the NSA and the CIA and the FBI did to Donald Trump, and you're silent through all of that, but now all of a sudden this is interfering in an election process.
I mean, come on.
This is just, I don't even know how to deal with this.
But again, it's not like they're not idiots.
They're actually kind of brilliant because there's something brilliant about saying, you know, if you were to just say, once again, Donald Trump calls on foreign governments to investigate whether there was criminal activity with Joe Biden's son.
That doesn't sound so bad.
But if you go, Donald Trump calls on foreign governments to interfere in the election.
I mean, technically, by the lettering of the word, I guess you could describe it that way, you know, but it sounds like the image that's invoked by saying that sounds like he's calling on them to hack into voter, you know, like machines and change the ballots.
It's the same way Mueller and Mueller's investigation interfered with our ability to have a duly elected official government.
Well, how about that?
I mean, right.
So if you get out of this nationalistic mindset of Chuck Todd and you talk about influencing, interfering in an election.
They didn't just interfere with the election.
They interfered once the guy was elected.
Mueller Investigation and Nationalistic Mindsets00:03:23
Well, you had both.
Well, I'm talking about the midterm election.
Oh, yeah.
You had Adam Schiff, the head of the House Intelligence Committee, Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House, as well as several other prominent Democrats, say that they had seen evidence of a conspiracy with Donald Trump and the Russians.
They just let that sit.
Mueller's investigating.
Mueller now, I know we've pointed this out before, but this is worth pointing out again.
Mueller, when BuzzFeed came out a couple months before the Mueller investigation finished, and they said that they had it, that Donald Trump had instructed Cohen to lie to Congress.
There you go.
There's the crime that was committed.
Mueller had his people come out and say this story is inaccurate because it was about to wrap up.
This was after the midterm elections.
There was nothing to be gained from this except people's expectations being, you know what I mean, dropped.
And we said right here on the show when it happened, we go, this is Mueller trying to control expectations because he's got nothing.
That's what it is.
And we were absolutely right about that.
But if Mueller's willing to do that, he's willing to come out and say, hey, hey, hey, that's not true.
We don't have that.
So don't buy this story.
By the way, still haven't heard from that BuzzFeed.
Remember the reporter who came on CNN and swore up and down that he had seen the evidence.
He had seen the, well, what happened there?
There's two options.
Someone showed you fake evidence or you were lying through your teeth.
He must not have a job anymore.
I see.
He must be out of the whole thing.
Professional buzzfeed.
There's no way.
That doesn't even make sense.
You know, yeah, exactly.
But, you know, you would think, right, one of two things would happen there.
See, because there's only two options there.
Either he was lying or someone showed him fake evidence.
Now, if someone showed you fake evidence, I would think you would reveal that source, right?
You don't need to protect that source anymore.
You go, this guy made me lie and made me look like an asshole.
And if you were lying, you'd think, as user saying, he'd be fired.
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Debunking Trump-Russia Collusion Theories00:14:49
Anyway, talk about.
So, my point I was making with Mueller is that he was willing to come out and say that story was bullshit.
But going into a midterm election, you have the head of the House Intelligence Committee saying, I've seen the evidence.
Indictments are coming down from Mueller.
Why wouldn't Mueller come out and go, hey, hey, guys?
Because obviously, Mueller had no evidence of a conspiracy at that time, seeing as how he never got out.
He did not have evidence.
Right.
It didn't happen.
Right.
So that wouldn't have been in good conscience.
Let's talk about interfering in an election.
Just allow that to be sitting out there while you go have a close midterm election.
I mean, that's by this standard, again, a far more egregious violation of the same principle that you're talking about here.
Okay.
Let's play a little bit more from the clip.
Is a public admission of the allegations at the heart of the House's impeachment inquiry and at the heart of the whistleblower's complaint that the president of the United States, Donald J. Trump, is using the power of his office to solicit foreign interference in the 2020 election while doing it relying on a debunked conspiracy theory or two.
By the way, this is not hearsay.
This is not a leak.
This is not a whistleblower complaint.
It's not a memorandum of a phone conversation.
You heard the president himself do it.
You mean all the things we usually use just to make shit up.
Yeah.
Like literally, he just outlined, like, usually we just make shit up, and here's the kind of quasi-evidence that we'll pull from.
But in this case, by the way, I love that it's like, it's so funny is that this is how.
So I've spent quite a bit of time on this show talking about the conspiracy.
I mean, our last episode, we pretty much went through prosecuting the case of the deep state conspiracy against Donald Trump.
I've also, you know, talked a lot about how obvious, obviously it was an attempt to gain influence by hiring Joe Biden's son at this company.
And think about how much time I've spent going through the whole conspiracy.
And what's Chuck Todd's response to that?
Debunked conspiracies.
That's it.
It's debunked.
Your conspiracy theory is debunked.
I love just three words.
Debunked conspiracy theory.
There you go.
Well, I guess that cancels everything I've been saying for the last year because he said three words.
It's like, hey, Chuck Todd, do you care to point me to where this has been debunked?
I mean, I'm like on the last episode, I'm playing, I'm not making up a conspiracy out of my own head.
I'm playing the words of Chuck, Chuck Todd, of Chuck Schumer, of John Brennan, of Phil Mudd, of Rod Rosenstein, or excuse me, Andrew McCabe talking about what him and Rod Rosenstein did.
So what, I mean, like, what's debunked about that?
But you can just say that.
Oh, and he's saying these debunked conspiracy theories.
It's just, they just do that.
And then what's so fucked up about it is that there are still people out there, only like 50 of them, but there are still people out there who think Chuck Todd's a journalist.
And they go, oh, well, this journalist told me these are debunked.
So, I mean, he wouldn't just say that with such certainty.
This is, by the way, this is not Rachel Maddow.
And this is what's so infuriating about guys like Chuck Todd.
It's one thing if you go, like, hey, here's this progressive woman who has an opinion talk show.
But Chuck Todd is the moderator of Meet the Press, NBC News' top objective news store.
You know, like we're journalists here.
And this is just so outrageous.
They're just debunked conspiracy theories that the deep state was working against Donald Trump.
Like nobody, and I've seen a lot of people try this.
Nobody could, against somebody who actually knows this whole story, could win a debate against somebody arguing that the deep state was working against Donald Trump.
It's literally can't be done.
It was so obvious from the very beginning.
And you have all these people, like we played last episode, all these people just admitting it openly.
Look, what Tucker Carlson said is the only argument you could make is that it's technically not a conspiracy because it was out in the open.
They're not even being secretive about this.
But that's Chuck Todd's response to it.
And then, like you said, it was pretty funny that he goes, this isn't a whistleblower.
This isn't a viz.
It's like, oh, so what's wrong with those now?
Because that's what the whole impeachment proceeding was relying on, I thought.
But Donald, so this is it.
This is the, in Chuck Todd's words, a national nightmare was what we just saw.
I think Ukraine and China should look into this.
Oh my God.
This is so much worse than fucking the last seven wars that we've fought or spending the country into debt that will never pay off or you know what I mean?
Like all the scandals we talk about all the time.
This is so much worse.
Hey, I think these two countries should look into this.
That is really something.
All right.
You know what?
Let's go to the next video because what happened here, which is funny.
So this is Chuck Todd on Meet the Press this Sunday.
And here's how he opened up.
Now, I think Chuck Todd's been eating some shit for this video that he had the other day because people are making fun of him like a national nightmare.
You like, what are you talking about?
So he opens Meet the Press by addressing his content.
Do you ever actually get to Meet the Press on a show?
That's the show.
Oh, like you're meeting him and he's the press?
Well, okay, so the show started where the moderator would just, they'd have like a panel of journalists on back in the day.
And by the way, there's old episodes of Meet the Press that were really interesting.
You can watch some of them on YouTube.
I watched this one.
I remember years ago, I watched it, but it was like 1968 with Martin Luther King on.
And it was the year Martin Luther King died.
So I guess a few months before he got killed.
Was this before or after his dream?
It was after the dream.
After the dream, right before the death.
Okay.
And right in the middle of a big old pile of pussy.
Martin Luther King was getting crazy pussy.
But so he goes, but it was, there's just something really funny about the way they interviewed Martin Luther King because it's like they'd have like these like southern journalists on and it's like before a time of political correctness or anything like that.
So like they would ask Martin Luther King these questions and they'd be like, what do you say to the claim that the Negroes are an angry people, not capable of civilized function?
Like just straight up questions like that.
And Martin Luther King would have to be like, well, there are some angry Negroes and some angry white people.
And I think that the Negroes are angry over the oppression of it.
But it's just really fascinating to look at like how they talked about shit in that time.
Anyway, but so Meet the Press was a big panel of people from the media.
He still has a little bit of a panel, but now it's more of just a typical cable news show.
They'll interview people and shit like that.
But here's the opening of Meet the Press on Sunday, yesterday.
Good Sunday morning.
I made the point earlier this week that a national nightmare is upon us.
It's not something I said lightly or say it now.
But the stability of our democracy is at stake.
It's a moment that so many people, including Donald Trump's Republican primary opponents, predicted what happened.
And now it's upon us.
In less than three weeks, we've moved from a simple Washington Post story about a complaint in which a whistleblower said President Trump was pressuring Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden and the origins of the 2016 election interference investigation to this Thursday, when President Trump himself said out loud that yes, Ukraine and for that matter, China should investigate Biden.
In other words, you're darn right I did it.
There's nothing wrong with it.
And here I'm doing it again.
What are you going to do about it?
So this is where we are.
The President of the United States calling on foreign governments, plural, to help him in next year's election.
House Democrats are now all but certain to impeach him.
Senate Republicans, perhaps, are all but certain to acquit him.
A country more divided against itself than at any point in our lifetime.
Perhaps every member of Congress, Republican and Democrat, would do well to heed the words of Kurt Volcker.
He's the former diplomat caught up in this Ukraine issue.
Here's what Volcker said in his opening statement to congressional investigators.
I at some stage found myself faced with a choice, to be aware of a problem and to ignore it, or rather to accept that it was my responsibility to try to fix it.
So that's where Chuck Todd, and this is where the quote, objective journalists are today.
It's no longer their job to report on the objective facts of a story and let the viewer decide.
What Chuck Todd's telling you is that, look, I'm aware of a problem and it's my job to fix it.
It's okay, but that is the role of an activist, not a supposed journalist.
Those are two different job titles, two different endeavors.
And again, you know, just he's doubling down on the national emergency story.
It's really funny, like, as you kind of alluded to earlier, Rob, but like, so what would you call, like, it's this funny thing where like, what, and this is part of the danger almost of the press keeping everything at 11.
It's like, what if they're really, like, what it, what if Pearl Harbor 2 happens tomorrow?
What if another 9-11 happens tomorrow?
What do you call that then?
There's another national emergency.
You know, both.
And this is the problem with the media's attempts to take down Donald Trump.
And this is why they've been largely so unsuccessful so far, is because if everything is the most outrageous scandal of the day, everything's at 11, it all just kind of becomes white noise after a while.
The problem is that, yes, Chuck Todd, I know you think it's a national emergency today.
Guess what?
You thought it was a national emergency last week and the week before that and the week before that.
And basically since Donald Trump came down that elevator at a stupid hotel, you've thought we were having a national emergency.
Okay.
So basically nothing's a national emergency.
All right.
Then Chuck Todd, after all of this insanity, he had on a Republican, Johnson, I believe the fellow's name is, Republican congressman.
And I have, I've watched Chuck Todd for many years.
I've never seen anything like this before.
And we don't have time on today's show, but he also had John Brennan on.
And you should see the softball interview he gives John Brennan.
I mean, they just, it's really something.
We should play just his opening question to that, because his opening question.
You heard it?
Yeah.
He goes, you've been, his opening question, I mean, I could basically tell you, he goes, you've really had your character assassinated in the media.
What's it like going through all that?
It's like right away.
You're like, wow, man, we might as well have state-run media.
Like, there would be no difference between that and what Chuck Todd does for you.
Hey, CIA, can I get you another car?
Are you good?
You want to die at Coke Zero?
If that's better for you.
See, you're such an awesome guy.
What's it like being you?
This is like how you talk to the former CIA director, a man who's right in the middle of this huge, like, you know, scandal, to put it mildly.
But anyway, so here was Chuck Todd interviewing Congressman Johnson.
Our discussion this morning with Senator Johnson.
Senator Johnson, welcome back to meet the press, sir.
Excuse me.
Morning, Chuck.
Let me start with something you told the Wall Street Journal late last week.
You had said when Mr. Sundland seemed, Gordon Sundland seemed to imply that the frozen military aid was connected to a promise by Zelensky for investigations.
You said at that suggestion, I winced.
My reaction was, oh God, I don't want to see those two things combined.
Why did you wince?
And what did you mean by those two things combined?
Well, first of all, your setup piece was typically very unbiased.
But let me first, before I start answering all the detailed questions, let me just talk about why I'm pretty sympathetic with what President Trump's gone through.
I'm 64 years old.
I have never in my lifetime seen a president after being elected not having some measure of well-wishes from his opponents.
I've never seen a president's administration be sabotaged from the day after election.
I've never seen no measure of honeymoon whatsoever.
And so what President Trump's had to endure, a false accusation, by the way, you've got John Brennan on.
You ought to ask Director Brennan, what did Peter Strzok mean when he texted Lisa Page on December 15, 2016?
Senator quote, can we?
No, no, no, let me finish.
Think our sisters have begun leaking like Ukraine scorned and worried about.
What does this have to do with Ukraine?
It has everything.
Positive, here's what it has to do with Ukraine.
What Donald Trump, what you're alleging Donald Trump did, was hold up military aid unless they tried to get to the bottom of the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation.
What he's talking about are involved in the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation.
Now, do you remember what I said last week on the show when I said it's really important if you want to draw the right conclusions to frame things in the proper way?
And that's what Senator Johnson's trying to do here.
So he's trying to start him with, look, you said this one little thing that this would be bad.
So this is bad, right?
And he goes, well, listen, let me just tell you what's going on with Trump here and why I'm kind of sympathetic to him.
From before, you know, the day after he was elected, forget even taking office.
He's been dealing with all of these things.
Look at this text message.
You got Brennan on.
Why don't you ask him about this text message?
And of course, Chuck Todd's furious because this now pops a hole in his entire narrative, which is like, no, very simple.
You said this was bad and it happened.
So it's bad, right?
So Chuck Todd gets frustrated, but I thought that's a completely reasonable way to start the interview.
So anyway, let's keep playing.
Now, listen, think our sisters have begun leaking like mad, scorned and worried and political.
They're kicking into overdrive.
Now, that was December 15th.
Six days before that is when we first started hearing the CIA leaking about Russia supporting the Trump campaign.
That is why Trump is so upset.
He had this false narrative that resulted in him being set up by James Comey on January 16th.
Then he has a central council appointed that has hampered his entire investigation, his entire administration.
And now, once he's been, that was proven false, he would like to know, and I would like to know, and I know his supporters would like to know, where did this all come from?
Who planted that false story?
Senator Leak.
I have my third letter in to the Inspector General of the Intelligence Committee asking to just confirm, just confirm, are you investigating those leaks that Peter Strzok talked about in the United States?
Senator, I have no idea.
I'm popping down.
It is entirely relevant to this point.
Why a Fox News conspiracy propaganda stuff is popping up on here.
I have no idea.
It is not that at home.
I have no idea.
Oh, how just how infuriating is that?
Again, it reminds me of the Democratic candidates when Bernie Sanders, you know, they'd be like, Senator Sanders, you've proposed $600 trillion in new spending.
How are you going to pay for that?
What is this?
Fox News talking points?
You know, you're like, what?
Just asking where this fucking money is going to come from.
But so he just takes him through all these things.
And Chuck Todd, the great, the moderator of Meet the Press, this great journalist, his response is, like that, he just gives you one of those.
Trust Issues with the CIA00:15:41
That's like a tell when somebody's got no rebuttal to the argument that you have and then goes, oh, there's Fox News talking points, debunked conspiracy theory.
Just like that.
Just the three words that can just, oh, that's it.
You don't get, you don't get to make any of those points.
What this guy just said is that the whole Trump-Russia collusion thing turned out to be bullshit, right?
The number one story that people on your network, Chuck Todd, were running with like crazy turned out to be wrong.
So doesn't Trump have a right to know where did this come from?
How did this story get out there?
That's his point.
Fox News talking points.
First off, that's very rude and shitty if you're a host to somebody say that.
And it's like, I don't know, dude, instead of just claiming something's a debunk conspiracy or claiming their Fox News points, since it's so stupid, right?
And Fox News is so dumb and their talking points are so wrong and the theory has been so debunked.
How about just win the argument then?
So show me where it's been debunked.
Well, this has been debunked because X, Y, and Z.
So we know this isn't true.
Or this is just what Fox News says, but the truth is blah, blah, blah.
None of that.
Just debunked Fox News.
Well, okay.
I guess you win, Chuck Todd.
All right, at least keep playing.
Idea why we're going to be exactly asking exactly why President Trump is upset and why his supporters are upset.
The news media.
Okay, this is not about the media.
Senator Johnson.
Senator Johnson, please.
Can we please answer the question that I asked you instead of trying to make Donald Trump feel better here that you're not criticizing?
I'm just trying to ask you a simple question.
What made you wince?
I'm asking a simple question about you clearly were upset that somehow there was an implication that military aid was being frozen because the president wanted an investigation.
Why did you win?
Because I didn't want those connected.
And I was supporting the aid, as is Senator Murphy, as is everybody that went to that initial inauguration.
But here's the salient point of why I came forward.
When I asked the president about that, he completely denied it.
He adamantly denied it.
He vehemently, angrily denied it.
He said, I'd never do that.
So that is the piece of the puzzle I'm here to report today that unlike the narrative of the press that President Trump wants to dig up dirt on his 2020 opponent, what he wants is he wants an accounting of what happened in 2016.
Who set him up?
Did things spring from Ukraine?
You know, there's a good piece we've got, an oversight letter on from Politico in 2017, where let me quote the article.
It says, Ukrainian government officials tried to help Hillary Clinton undermine Trump.
They did so by disseminating documents implicating a top Trump aide in corruption suggesting they were investigating the matter.
Ukrainian officials also reportedly helped Clinton allies research damaging information on Trump and his advisors.
There is potential interference in the 2016.
That's what Trump wants to get to the bottom of, but the press doesn't want to.
Ambassadors with this article are being pilloried.
I'm being called a conspiracy theorist.
John Solomon's being called a conspiracy theorist because the press is horribly biased.
And Trump and his supporters completely understand that.
I understand that a way to avoid answering a question is to attack us in the press.
I'm well aware of that.
And that's how it works.
Let me ask you something that Ambassador Volcker said.
Let me tell you what Ambassador Volcker said.
What a weasel this Chuck Todd is.
It's like, so you're just not going to respond to anything that was brought up there?
By the way, it's a pretty big point.
And this is the dangerous position that Chuck Todd and his ilk have put themselves in, is that what he just said right there, what Senator Johnson just said, blows up their entire narrative.
Like, he wasn't trying to get dirt on Joe Biden.
I mean, he made a one-off comment about that in the telephone call, but he said he wanted them to look into the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation.
So here's the problem for Chuck Todd to deal with that.
His whole national nightmare rhetoric comes from the idea that you're asking a foreign government to interfere in our election, to, you know, to, what is it, to undermine democracy or whatever, right?
But if we're looking backward at the last election, that all falls away.
That has nothing to do with interfering in an election anymore.
That's just getting to the bottom of what happened in this last election, what happened during this whole, you know, investigation that was like took up the first couple years of Trump's administration.
So if you're asking that, then your only argument is like, well, foreign governments shouldn't look into this stuff, which is a pretty weak argument, especially if the foreign governments were involved in this stuff to begin with.
So they were already involved.
Why shouldn't they be involved in uncovering it?
So he's got nothing to respond to that on.
So he's got to just go, I know, you try to attack the media.
I'm well aware.
You just blame the media.
It's like, well, maybe the media should be blamed.
How about defend yourself?
How about tell me why the media shouldn't be blamed for all of this?
Really, really outrageous.
And I love the moment where Chuck Todd just gets big.
Senator Johnson, Senator Johnson.
And then, as you pointed out later, then, of course, he has John Brennan on and does nothing but kiss his ass through the whole interview.
Can we get a little bit of that, you know, angry journalist?
Could we get that out for the CIA or no?
Anyway, let's keep going because that actually comes up.
Said, under oath, and I'm curious if you shared this concern.
Ambassador Volcker said this.
I explained that I believe that Mayor Giuliani continues to have a negative view of Ukraine based on assertions of actions that happened in 2016 and that this viewpoint is likely making its way to the president.
Were you concerned that Rudy Giuliani's disinformation campaign, sort of Ukrainian propaganda campaign, was negatively influencing the president's views of the current Ukrainian president?
Well, certainly the reports, not only from Rudy Giuliani, but from Ken Vokel out of Politico and John Solomon doing some pretty good investigative reporting.
Now the Washington Post is attacking him, undermining him.
All that information, we have never got the answers to those questions.
Chuck, I want to get to the truth.
I'm not here defending the president.
I'm not here to denounce him either.
What I'm here is telling you my piece of the puzzle here, giving you my honest assessment of what I heard, how the president told me repeatedly in the May 23rd Oval Office visit on the phone on the 31st, the reason he had very legitimate concerns and reservations about Ukraine is first corruption, generalized.
It's endemic.
We all know that.
And then specifically about what was in the 2016 election and also analyzing Paul Manafort.
The fact that Europe was not stepping up the plate.
You think Paul Manafort was framed?
No.
Obviously, he was convicted, but there's a lot of other stuff going on back then, too.
You know, Hillary Clinton's campaign was searching for dirt, maybe not only on Paul Manafort, but trying to keep Vice President Biden out of the primary for the Democratic campaign.
So again, again, the bottom line is there are so many questions unanswered.
So again, ask John Brennan.
What did Peter Strz mean when the sisters began leaking like mad?
What was the CIA scorned and worried about?
What were they kicking to overdrive?
There's a key question I want answered among, I don't know, about 100% of the time.
So Senator, do you not believe the Russians interfered in the presidential elections to benefit Donald Trump?
They absolutely did.
They absolutely did.
And I don't know to what extent the Ukrainians did.
I don't know to what extent DNC and Hillary Clinton campaign were involved in kind of juicing up the Ukrainian involvement.
This is what you just asked.
There are a lot of unanswered questions.
Chuck, I just want the truth.
The American people want.
So do you not trust the American people?
Do you not trust the FBI?
You don't trust the CIA on this.
Just bring it back a few seconds.
Bring it back a few seconds, just like right there is fine because it's going to get to the best part of this.
But go ahead.
I want to comment on that.
So do you not trust the FBI?
Oh, that's not trusting the CIA.
Yeah, yeah, that's what I want to do.
Just that question alone.
So, I mean, if you're so concerned about protecting our democracy, from what I understand of our government, there's supposed to be three different branches that kind of keep each other in check.
So the answer is, well, I'm an elected official and I represent the American people and I'm a branch of government, same as they are.
And part of my job here is to make sure that they're doing their job well.
It's not an issue of trust.
It's an issue of we all function together.
Just go a little bit further with the fact that, listen, there's a Justice Department investigation into these activities.
That's a legitimate branch of the government the same as the CIA is.
Well, if you care about democracy, there's nothing democratic about the CIA or the deep state.
None of them are democratically elected.
And there's certainly if your whole thing is democracy and that's how you get your legitimacy to rule is the consent of the governed or whatever the whole myth is.
Okay.
Well, none of them have any legitimacy to rule.
Excuse me, I'm a democratically elected senator.
I don't give a shit about it.
I don't just blindly trust them.
But let me just play this and get his whole thing on statement and then we can respond.
So let's play.
Involved in kind of juicing up the Ukrainian involvement.
This is what I'm saying.
You just asked me.
There are a lot of unanswered questions.
Chuck, I just want the truth.
The American people want trust.
So do you not trust the American people?
Do you not trust the FBI?
You don't trust the CIA.
I'm just getting confused here.
Absolutely.
After Peter and Lisa Page, after James Coley, you believe the FBI and the CIA.
John Brennan administration.
I don't trust any of them.
You don't trust them now.
Do you trust them now?
No, I didn't trust him back then.
And you don't trust them now.
I do not trust John Brennan.
I do not trust him.
Do you trust the CIA and FBI now?
No, because none of them have trouble.
Andrew McCabe, I don't trust you.
That's true.
I'm just curious.
Do you trust them now?
Now, who are you talking about?
The CIA and the FBI?
I don't trust Andrew McCabe.
Do you trust Andrew McCabe?
I don't trust James Comey.
I don't trust Peter Strzok.
I don't trust John Brennan.
Senator, let me ask you this.
I've got a lot of things.
One of the things that you want.
So here is the extent of Chuck Todd's argument.
Do you trust the CIA?
He goes, no.
No?
Just imagine that that's a journalist.
In quotes, journalist.
And that's so all the points you were making before, like, of course, even by our system of government, you'd go, excuse me, the CIA serves the president.
And no, you don't blindly trust anybody.
It's my job.
He's a senator.
I oversee the CIA.
Are you out of your mind?
I don't trust them.
But imagine a journalist just going, you don't trust the CIA?
Of course, because you should trust.
If there's one thing in the long history of the CIA that they've always been known for, it's telling the truth and being trustworthy.
But imagine being a journalist.
Imagine being a journalist and thinking this way about any powerful organization.
Forget even government, be it a corporation, be it anything.
Imagine feeling this way about any powerful organization.
You're a journalist.
You go, you don't trust them?
Wait, you want to like get to the bottom of this?
You want to verify that what they're saying is actually true?
You want evidence?
You don't just blindly trust the CIA.
We were going to send one of our field guys out to Syria to see who we're really arming, but then the CIA told us that it was the moderate people.
So we don't even need to send anyone out there.
What are you going to not trust them?
I mean, why would we even send someone out there to look at the situation?
I mean, the CIA gave us the info.
One, I mean, look, man, you could go through examples of the CIA.
Holy shit.
I mean, okay, there's a really great one that you said.
The CIA told us that they were just arming the moderate rebels, which I always loved Scott Horton, the great Scott Horton, made this point when he just said he was like, look, anybody who's picking up guns and jumping into a civil war, willing to go fight and die, is by definition not a moderate.
Like, there's no moderate soldiers.
You know what I mean?
Like, so anyway, they told us they were arming the moderate rebels.
Turned out all of these weapons got into the hands of ISIS, who are, last I checked, not moderate.
Not very moderate.
Take it from one moderate.
The ISIS rebels, not super moderate, okay?
So that was what the CIA told us there.
Of course, the CIA told us that Gaddafi was about to go genocidal, and that's why we had to go depose him.
The British parliament did an investigation into it, determined those were all lies.
None of that was true.
The CIA told us that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.
That was all complete bullshit.
They said they were working with al-Qaeda.
This is literally what a war where hundreds of thousands of people died based on this information where they were wrong.
It would have been a good move to not trust them at that point.
The CIA has gotten things wrong for their entire history.
I mean, they've missed everything.
The CIA missed Russia getting nukes.
They were unaware that Russia was going to get nukes.
They were unaware of North Korea getting nukes.
They were unaware the Soviet Union was going to collapse.
The CIA is the idea that you should just trust them.
And then, of course, they've also, you know, like done experiments on unsuspecting Americans.
They've, you know, tried to influence the media.
They've all types of like horrific things.
Started wars, overthrown elected leaders throughout the world, in the Middle East, in Latin America, in Eastern Europe, all over the place.
CIA is like a war machine.
Oh, they've also, you know, worked with drug cartels, shipped drugs into America.
I mean, the idea that we should just trust the CIA and that this is the meet the press host telling you, not only does he not need to.
Like, the thing that's infuriating is it's not even like he's making an argument as to why we should trust the CIA.
An argument I would love to hear somebody attempt to make.
Talk about a difficult argument.
Explain to me why we should trust the CIA.
It's just as simple as, do you not trust them?
I'm just saying, I just, I start to wonder if we had state-run media, how would it look any different than what we have right now?
Like if the CIA just got to run the media, if the, if, if NBC News was a branch of the Central Intelligence Agency, how could it look any different than this right now?
I mean, think about those clips I was showing you on CNN last episode.
How would it look any different if the CIA just ran the news?
It's almost like they do.
All right.
So we got to wrap up here.
A little bit of a shorter episode.
I apologize for that.
You know, my whole day got screwed up.
Huh?
Oh, the Brennan clip?
Oh, okay.
Yeah, let's just, that's a good point.
Let's let's play just the very beginning of the Brennan clip just to get the Brennan is so nice and soft-spoken, so you know you can trust him.
Welcome back.
Virtually from the moment he was elected, Donald Trump has been in a low-grade war with the intelligence community.
Most notable was that moment in Helsinki last year when Mr. Trump said he did not believe Russia interfered with the 2016 election, excepting Vladimir Putin.
He said, not only did Senator Johnson not trust the CIA, even Donald Trump said he didn't trust the CIA.
But isn't that an interesting admission by Chuck Todd that Donald Trump has been in a low-grade war with the CIA?
See, all you people out there who say I'm a conspiracy theorist or whatever for thinking there's a war between the deep state and Donald Trump, well, guess what?
Chuck Todd agrees with me.
He just said there's a low-grade war between the CIA and Donald Trump, except in Chuck Todd's mind, it's a given that we have to trust the CIA and know that Donald Trump's the bad guy.
Obviously, the CIA is the good guys.
Troop Withdrawals from Syria00:07:07
Who believes that?
Who even hears the word CIA and thinks good guys?
I mean, like, what?
Okay, so that's him saying it too.
But he doesn't find that at all interesting.
He doesn't find it interesting that a president's in a low-grade war quote with the CIA.
Well, maybe we should look into that.
Who started that war?
What does this war consist of?
You know, like you care about democracy so much.
Well, guess how the president got his job?
He won an election.
How'd the CIA get their job?
Well, they were created by Truman to be an intelligence gathering organization.
And Truman himself said he wished he never created them.
Like about 10 years later, it was in the 50s, I think at some point, Truman was like, this has become a nightmare.
I never should have created the CIA.
That was by the 50s because they were going around overthrowing governments and shit.
And he was like, this is never what they were supposed to do.
They weren't supposed to go install the Shaw in Iran.
That's what we did.
We overthrew an elected government in Iran and installed a dictator.
And everything with Iran has been smooth sailing since then.
Anyway, all right, let's play.
Agency's conclusions.
One aspect of this fight has been the extent to which Mr. Trump and his allies have questioned the credibility of his critics in the Intel community, which you just saw firsthand yourself here this morning.
Among them, John Brennan, who was President Obama's CIA director for nearly four years and is now the senior national security and intelligence analyst for NBC News.
Mr. Brennan joins me now.
Welcome back to Meet the Press.
Good morning, Chuck.
Look, I was going to say the focus on you to the second half of our interview, but obviously I have to bring this up right away.
The importance of creating you as the boogeyman, as the person, as whatever it is, your mere mention to be on the show triggered Senator Johnson in this.
Do you understand how we got here?
And how would you explain to somebody you have been completely character assassinated and eviscerated?
And it doesn't matter whether people like you or hate you.
I think everybody can agree.
You've been put through this.
You understand?
This is a different show.
This must be blow the press or something, right?
Yeah.
Bring him on and jerk him off.
Blow the CIA.
Welcome to Blow the CIA with Chuck Todd.
But can you imagine?
He's screaming at Senator Johnson.
And then the CIA director comes in and he goes, hi, how are you?
Can I bring you a tea and a blanket?
How's the temperature here?
We got it at 69 degrees.
Would you prefer 68 or perhaps 71?
Like, that's, I mean, unbelievable that now everybody can agree that you've just been put through the ring.
So horrible what's happened to you.
It's, man, what's it like?
Are you okay?
Are you doing all right?
This is just, by the way, you can watch the rest of the interview.
We're not even going to play the whole thing, but just the way that he talks to the CIA director.
That'd be one thing if he was real hard on Senator Johnson.
And then he asked him, he goes, and I hate this thing.
By the way, people on the left do this all the fucking time.
Oh my God, it drives me fucking crazy.
Where now they, because basically there was this whole move over the last three, four years on college campuses by these fucking leftist fucking kids to be like, you know, require trigger warnings and stuff like that.
And they'd be like, oh, it's triggering to, you know, minorities or rape survivors or whatever, all these people.
If we have, if we read Huckleberry Finn or whatever, you know, like, and they set up safe spaces and all these things.
So now, since the right would make fun of that so much, the left likes to accuse them of getting triggered.
But this is something that happens on like between 19-year-olds on college campuses.
But the moderator of Meet the Press going, Senator Johnson was triggered that you were on the show.
It's like, I don't know if he was triggered.
He told you to ask him about Peter Strzzok and what he meant when he said we were going to stop the president of the United States.
Like, I'm not triggered by you kissing the CIA director's ass.
I'm fucking pissed off.
Like, I'm outraged and appalled.
It's a little bit different than being triggered.
Oh man, that just fucking infuriates me.
Okay, we got to get out of here.
I just want to spend a couple minutes real quick.
I don't want to go too long on it anyway, because I don't have that much to say new from the last time.
But Donald Trump did announce today that they're pulling the troops out of northern Syria.
Just a few things about this that are fun and interesting.
Number one, my biggest takeaway.
Look, last time he said they were going to pull the troops out of Syria, I kind of gave you all of my thoughts on this, so I don't want to just repeat myself.
I don't buy it anymore.
They're doing, I don't buy Donald Trump this thing that he's going to pull troops out.
Eventually, you got to actually do it.
I got to actually see some troops come home before I buy it.
But we'll see.
We'll see where this goes.
But there's something interesting about the idea that kind of typically what a president would do when impeachment talk is going on is what?
Get into a military conflict.
Get into a military conflict.
Divert the news over there.
Get the media behind him.
Get the whole thing going.
What Donald Trump's doing is the opposite.
He's going, I'm pulling out of military conflict and he's triggering everyone.
And everyone in the media is like, oh my God, this is crazy, horrible foreign policy.
The idea that we'd be pulling troops out that we'd ever end a war is crazy.
Just that we're pulling troops out of half of Syria is enough to make them all go crazy.
And I got to say, I love how pathetic the reasoning for why we have to stay at war in Syria is now, which is the Kurds.
But no, what about the Kurds?
It's not Saddam Hussein's working with the terrorists.
It's not, oh, there's a genocide going on.
It's not like, oh, there's going to be nuclear bombs dropped over Manhattan if we stay there.
We're like, but what if something bad were to happen to the Kurds?
So it's just a given that the role of the U.S. military is to protect the Kurds in Syria.
Okay.
We started a civil war in Syria where hundreds of thousands of people have died.
But you're worried there might be death if we're not there in the war.
All right.
Anyway, the whole thing is ridiculous.
Good, good on Trump if he actually does this and pulls out.
Good for Rand Paul for being one of the people who supported him through it.
And that's all I got for my thoughts on that.
We'll probably get into it more later in the week.
Oh, I have on Wednesday coming in, Nick Fuentes is going to be my guest for the show.
Fancy last name, though.
Very fancy.
Very fancy.
You know, I've seen a couple videos of his, and he's got a big following on YouTube.
And he hosts a show called America First.
I think he's like a nationalist kind of guy.
I'll do a little bit more research into him over the next day or two.
So he's going to come on and convince us why we should be going to war?
No, I think he's anti-war.
Oh, which I like.
I believe that he doesn't like free trade.
Not a free trade guy.
No.
That would be my guess.
I got to do a little bit more homework on him.
But people on Twitter were telling me I got to have this guy on the side I was down.
Fuentes.
So he'll be on Wednesday's show.
So looking forward to that.
I know there was a lot of excitement on the Twitter about us having him on.