Dave Smith and Robbie the Fire Bernstein dissect the Mar-a-Lago raid as a "deep state" weaponization of agencies against Trump, arguing corporate media propaganda labels supporters fascists to suppress his return. They critique MSNBC hosts for contempt toward the public and dismiss Mueller's obstruction findings as weak, noting the Special Counsel's failure to prosecute despite evidence. Ultimately, the hosts warn that cracking down on Trump risks driving populist energy toward authoritarian figures, suggesting the ruling elite's fear of a second term reveals their true intent to dismantle democratic norms. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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The Illusion of Democracy00:12:12
Fill her up.
You are listening to the Gash Digital Network.
We need to roll back the state.
We spy on all of our own citizens.
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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.
What's up, what's up, everybody?
Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
Of course, I'm Dave Smith.
Of course, he is Robbie the Fire Bernstein, king of the caulks.
COVID Jesus.
Good to be with you, my friend.
How are you?
I'm doing well.
How are you, Davey Smith?
Doing good.
Doing good.
And I'm ready for today's episode.
I know, but before we start, you got the big tour coming up continuing.
Where can people come to you?
Oh, yeah.
Some reports for this weekend out in Michigan on a beautiful farm.
Come hang out if you live in the area.
Then I've got DC, Maryland, North Reading PA, which is going to be a big old NECOK barbecue, and then closing out in Denver.
Hell yeah.
I love it.
Beautiful.
All right.
Make sure you go see Robbie the Fire if you're in the area for any of those shows.
All right.
So, of course, our last episode was all about the raid on Donald Trump's Mar-a-Largo home, his big, beautiful home, the most beautiful home there is.
And it's been very interesting to see what's kind of come out over the next few days since then.
Or I guess as we're recording now, it's this Thursday, and this happened on Monday night.
So it's been a few days.
And it's kind of interesting what we've learned from that.
And it's been, to me, very fascinating to see some of the way this is being discussed, spun, propagandized in the corporate press.
It brings up all of these interesting themes, which is really, it's unbelievable.
I mean, obviously, it's people who've been listening to the show for years know we, you know, we've been very focused on the COVID regime over the last two and a half years, because, you know, of course.
But before that, this was really the thing that we were really probably the most focused on on this show was the kind of the rise of Donald Trump, what this meant for the country, and particularly the entire kind of cathedral apparatus, as it's deemed.
The entire, you know, meaning the corporate press and academia and Hollywood and the deep state, all the three letter agencies all being weaponized and turned against the elected president of the United States.
It was a fascinating thing to see on so many different levels.
And it's really hard sometimes because everybody kind of knows how what a crazy place this country is in.
But it's very easy to get lost in the day-to-day craziness.
And it's a little bit more challenging to kind of zoom out and really try to get a grip of what the hell is going on here.
And it's almost like with all the crazy like COVID shit and all the crazy, you know, Joe Biden being a dementia patient and all this stuff.
And it's, it almost like Donald Trump, the rise of Donald Trump almost seems like something like a couple decades ago.
You know what I mean?
Like it almost seems like something in the rearview mirror, but this is, it's been interesting to almost be reminded about this.
Like, oh yeah, this happened.
This guy, like somehow, this New York City billionaire who was very in with like establishment figures somehow decided to run for president and captured this populist, like anti-establishment energy and wrote it all the way to the White House and just drove everybody crazy.
Everybody in positions of power, that is.
So anyway, it's been interesting to see so much of this come up again.
And one of the things that me and you talked about on the show many times was the dynamic of Trump being able to rally that populist energy and why these people love him so much, why they loved him so much back then and why they continue to love him.
And as I've said many times on the show before, a huge part of it was just that the elites in the corporate press and in the political class hate middle America's guts.
Like they actually hate the people.
Hillary Clinton clearly hated half the country that she wanted to be the president of.
And Trump looked at those people and said, I don't hate you.
In fact, I love you.
I hate all of the people who hate you.
And look, we're going to drive them nuts together.
And this was incredibly appealing to huge swaths of the American public.
Anyway, that's where I wanted to start with.
No, I think what you're pointing out is they're pulling more dirty tricks again.
Like, well, that entire Russia collusion thing was a big old dirty trick.
And now they seem to be so concerned about Donald Trump running again.
They're going into their basket of what dirty tricks do we have.
What I'm reading is on the table, even though I just don't think they're going to get away with it because it's like a little too obscure.
But apparently there is a law that you're not, if you've handled documents improperly, you can be barred for running for office again.
But I guess that's not clear whether or not that includes the presidency.
And I think everyone would be really outraged if something that obscure and minuscule actually prevented him from running again.
But it does seem like that's the game they're trying to play.
Well, yeah, they do.
One of the things that, and we'll get into this more in a second, but one of the things that's been really interesting about all of this, and I guess this is something that is a major theme throughout a lot of the American system over the last few years,
is that it actually is mind-blowing how stupid so many of these people are.
It's not like I had figured out a long time ago that they were all evil and that the system was corrupt and all of that, but just how unimpressive these people are.
We're living, I guess this is part of living in like a crumbling empire where you're living under this system where it's almost like, you know, you know how you'd have like some great king who rose to power and then you fast forward like 60 years and it's that king's grandson and he was just like some idiot who was born into this who never rose to power, never did anything.
It's just like that.
It's like as there's like this corrupt system, but at least the men who rose up and like installed this corrupt system had some like genius to do it.
And now you just have like the generations later where it's just, there's just been all this rust and nobody.
So it's almost like you see the corporate press freaking out now that this might backfire.
Like, oh, geez, there might actually be some costs associated with, you know what I mean?
Like as if, you know, even when the people who are floating out the idea of like we can ban him from running for office, like are any of them like thinking this like two moves ahead, you know, like if you were playing chess, like I'm not asking you to think 10 moves ahead, but just like after this move, what's the next one after that?
Could you think one move ahead, maybe two moves ahead?
Because yeah, what is that?
I mean, like, okay, but that would that would literally just be an announcement to every single non-progressive in the country, and probably some of the progressives as well, but to everyone who's not a progressive in the country, it would be an announcement that the illusion of democracy is gone.
We knew we knew we couldn't win against this guy, and so we had to come in and stop it.
And I think that a lot of, you know, so much of the Trump dynamic of what happened here was that, you know, because a lot of people will say, and I think this is fair, a lot of people who really know and kind of follow what's going on, they'll be like, well, look, I mean, Trump is like, he didn't really threaten the establishment as president.
He went along with so much of what they wanted.
So it's not as if like, you know, it's not as if like big banks stopped running the show under Donald Trump or weapons companies stopped running the show under Donald Trump.
It's not as if he really took on any of these like entrenched, crazy, powerful interest groups.
So why?
Why are they freaking out about him?
And I think there's several factors.
I think like the main thing is that he was this uncontrollable guy.
Like he was controlled by no one including himself.
And he would just say anything and he would just spout off and say things that you're not supposed to say.
Like, you know, like, we never should have fought any of these wars and Obama created ISIS and like all these other things that he would just say that there was a lot of truth to.
And or just flat true.
And also the he riled up a group of people who the ruling elite have a serious interest in not being riled up.
I think that was a big part of it.
And I think the fact that the media told you that this guy was not an option from the very beginning told you this guy, well, you can't pick this guy.
We all know this guy is not an option.
And then the fact that they said, no, fuck you, we're picking him.
That was a big part of it.
And then, of course, as you alluded to before, as we've covered many times, the entire, you know, deep state was mobilized to attempt to overthrow him.
And then when that didn't succeed, just attempt to box him in at least as kind of a contingency plan.
But now they're almost, I think, staring down something even scarier than any of that.
What they're staring down is this very real possibility that you went, okay, so after Donald Trump gets in for four years, you run on not Donald Trump, a return to normalcy, right?
I mean, what did Joe Biden in 2020 represent?
If anything other than that, not Donald Trump back to the establishment being in charge.
And to then see when you get that, that Joe Biden will now have the lowest approval ratings of any modern president, that this would be such a rejection.
Like if 2016 was a rejection of the establishment, what would it be when the establishment wrestled back control?
And then, and right now they're staring down this possibility of, and then Donald Trump gets back in there.
Then the American, like the people actually said, oh, no, we tasted that again.
We want this.
We prefer this to what you were offering us.
It's just that seems to be it.
when you look at it right now and you see that Donald Trump is um he's crushing DeSantis in the polls of who like it seems pretty clear that he could win the Republican nomination nomination and then you just think about a one-on-one matchup between Trump and Biden Biden two years older even than he is now a one-on-one matchup between what Trump and Kamala Harris and who else do they have you realize oh there's a very strong possibility that that could happen Okay, so go ahead.
It's interesting that the Jan 6 hearing stuff didn't seem to go, didn't do much for the Dems.
Like they were hoping to make this big old fucking show trial with the TV producer and really persuade public opinion and Merrick Garland.
And I don't think anything that interesting came out of it.
Investing with iTrust Capital00:02:55
And now, yeah, yeah.
I'm sorry, guys.
Now, even the Democrats, I'm watching the news channels a little bit and they're like, hey, they must have something more than just some documents because like even the liberal news channels are like, if this is just over some documents, this is an overreach.
So whatever the story, unless they actually came up with something more, if it's really that they're just trying to pin him on the documents and then get him on a technicality that he can't run again, it seems like even like the left liberal cable news channels that are very pro-propaganda, even like, I don't think I can push this one.
Yeah, no, I think, I think that's right.
And that's a real, that in itself is a really interesting dynamic, which we're going to talk about a bit more on the show today.
I think it's just very interesting to start to see all of this and how it unfolds and what this could mean going forward.
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January 6th Violence Exposed00:13:55
So definitely go check that out.
All right, let's get back into the show.
Okay, so the first clip I want to play Has to do with the topic that I mentioned up front about how so many of these people in corporate press in the corporate press, and I've seen some of this myself.
But of course, I've more than that, we can just all see this.
There's lots of examples.
And this is one of the things about Donald Trump that I think was always so fascinating.
One of the best qualities of having Donald Trump as a candidate and then president was that he got such a reaction out of the media.
And he was almost, I think, unintentionally in many times, but he would get them to reveal themselves.
So, in the sense that when you're rattled, oftentimes you reveal more about yourself than when you're calm.
I mean, this is true in general.
It's kind of like the way people say things that they really mean when they're drunk that they wouldn't normally say sober.
You know, the truth kind of comes out because you're a little off your game, and then it just all comes out.
It's kind of similar to like when someone's really angry, you know, like if someone's really in a relationship, you're in a huge, you know, blow-up fight.
And when you're furious, you say something and it's something you mean that you've been holding in the whole time.
You know what I mean?
Like, you expose yourself when you're off your game a little bit.
I've compared it before to like, you know, like in boxing or in MMA, like people who are kind of like try to draw reactions out of their opponents.
You know, you try to use a lot of feints to see how they react to these different things.
So they expose themselves.
So here is a clip from Morning Joe from Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski.
These two, just so you understand, hate Donald Trump in a very personal way with a passion because he talked a whole bunch of shit about Mika's facelifts and shit.
And so anyway, so he they really hate him personally.
But look what's drawn out of them in this clip because I found this to be a great, another great little example of it.
So let's play that.
And the law.
Well, you say appeasing the public, you're talking about appeasing conspiracy theorists, insurrectionists, weirdos, crazy people, freaks, fascists, fascists who are now going online talking about violence against the cyber.
So let's pause already.
Because it's already made my point, right?
And this is really what I think is interesting about all of this, right?
They're not talking about Trump.
They're not talking about Mitch McConnell.
They're not talking about Steve Bannon.
They're not, you know what I'm saying?
Like, that's not who they're talking about here.
Who are they talking about?
The people.
They're talking about the people who support Donald Trump.
And this is the whole thing.
It's like they, it's unbelievable that they don't realize it enough to stop themselves.
Like they can't stop themselves from revealing this.
That it's like, yes, Donald Trump's whole selling point to his base is that they don't really hate me.
They hate you.
And they hate you because I love you and I represent you.
Like that's the selling point.
Then how perfectly does this feed into it?
Because it's because at least it's partially true.
It's true.
They really do have this contempt.
Look, you're not when they say all these things, conspiracy theorists, insurrectionists, fascists.
I mean, they're talking about all of the people who were upset about this raid.
And whatever you want to say about those people, Donald Trump got assuming that the election was all completely 100% accurate, right?
Donald Trump got what, I think, 63 million votes in 2016 and 70, 71 was it?
I can't remember off the top of my head.
It might have been 74 million votes In 2020, I mean, talking about a large percentage of the American people, this isn't just a handful of people.
That's who they're talking about: Trump supporters with absolute hatred and contempt in their voices.
Sick people, Mika Brzezinski jumps in to add.
It's like, okay.
I don't know.
It's like, it's just like lunchroom politics.
It's kind of what they did with the vaccine where they're like, only crazy idiots aren't getting this.
And then you found out the percentage of people that weren't interested in it up until the mandates.
It was a substantial percentage, but they tried to pretend like it was nobody and that you were a kook.
So it's the same thing here where they want to pretend like, hey, if you're listening to this channel, everyone that opposes this is completely insane.
They're terrible people.
You know what I mean?
It kind of like bullies their listeners and almost thinking that that's reality.
And then also, I don't know, they almost think like they can really shame people into just not existing and go, yeah, you know what, you guys are the dignified ones.
Yeah, right.
We're like hot chicks in the lunchroom type thing.
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, absolutely.
Absolutely.
All right.
Let's keep playing the rest of this clip.
Like you said, you're never, you're never going to win with this group.
But, you know, you look at the people that are squawking the loudest.
They're the people.
It's, you know, it's what you expect someone who's guilty and know that justice is about to come down on them.
It's, but it's how you expect them to squawk.
So I really, I think there's way too much chatter about the concern about these right-wing extremists and fascists.
I think you call fascists fascists.
And if people are, and if fascists are going out making threats, I think what you do is, you know, you go after them with the law.
And there's that, but there's also the rule of law.
And if you have people on cable news channels that inspired violence leading up to January the 6th, and then were shocked on January the 6th by the violence that took place.
And then after January the 6th, pretended like they weren't shocked by the violence that took place on January 6th and they're doing it again.
Well, you know, there are legal channels for that too when people obviously get hurt.
They're being very reckless.
They're being irresponsible.
All right.
We can end it there.
That's basically the clip.
So just to be clear on this, because it really is kind of a remarkable little thing.
I mean, this is just the shit that's like aired on MSNBC.
It was really first off, this kind of like mumbling word salad of insults about Trump supporters.
You know, just I don't know.
They're sick people.
They're losers.
They're conspiracy nuts.
They're squawking.
They're all types of horrible.
And they're fascists.
And, you know, you call fascists fascists when fascists want to do fascisty things.
You're all a bunch of fascists.
And then it ends with him very blatantly saying that people on TV who wanted to, you know, talk about whatever and that this led to January 6th.
And then they want to go, oh my God, you can't believe the violence of January 6th.
And now they want to keep talking this.
Well, there's legal channels to go through for those people too.
It's really, it's remarkable, you know, to just like label other people fascists and then close your sentence, your little rant with like, oh, and by the way, the people on TV who are saying things I don't like, like maybe we can bring down the heavy hand of the state on those people.
I'm sure there's ways we could do that.
That is really something.
It's not just like, I hate this group of people in America.
It's like, I hate this group of people in America.
I hate the person that they, you know, voted for for president.
And even the shows that they prefer to watch, I'd like to have those people arrested also.
This is like just blatantly, I mean, and then these same people will have the nerve to talk about like democracy and how the country is polarized and we need to come together and all of this shit.
This is like a declaration of war against half the country.
That's what this has all been in response to.
People are incredible elitists.
It's just they really got this attitude that the two of them should be like crowned king and queen and everyone should just kind of fit in with their vision of reality.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And it's, it's, it's interesting to watch them realize that, yeah, this isn't, it's not as simple as they wish it was.
You know, they always said, or they always like had this attitude when Trump was president that Trump was the problem.
And if they could just get Trump out, then the problem goes away, which is true if Trump was the problem.
It is not true at all if Trump was merely a symptom of the problem, which I think is pretty obvious at this point.
I think it was obvious then.
But so they'd have this attitude of Mueller can just get him, then we go back to, we have the country again, you know, everything's fine.
And then Trump lost to Joe Biden, or at least Joe Biden, well, you know, was installed, depending on how you look at it.
You know, I actually think it would favor the Republicans right now if Trump actually went away because they got some players.
They got DeSantis, they got Holly, they got Cotton, and then they got what I would call the old guard who I don't think is going to go anywhere, but like Iran Paul's or Ted Cruz's.
But like they actually have some talent on their bench that I think could make a run for it.
There's literally no one for the Dems.
Like the best option is that Trump runs.
Yeah, I actually think it would be.
Yes, I think it would be best for the Republicans.
I think it would be best for the country if Trump went away, but that's a whole, you know, kind of separate issue.
But I do agree with you on that.
But what's interesting about all of this, right, is that like, even if, you know, they try to cast Trump as the cause of all problems, and then Joe Biden is the president.
And like, it's so obvious.
All the problems still exist.
And so now, of course, they've got to cast Trump again as the problem.
They're like, it's always like they think there'll be this one fix to get them back to having this kind of like dominant, unquestioned rule.
You're saying it's a midterm elections thing.
Well, yeah, I mean, that's a big part of it, right?
It's a big part that a lot of the a much more Trumpian Republican establishment is about to take to Congress.
But I'm just saying that now they're acting as if, well, if we could just arrest Trump, if we can just get him banned from being able to run, then all of our problems go away.
And what they're starting to see is that it's like, no, man, this is this is not, you're dealing with things on a very surface level analysis, whereas this thing goes much, much deeper than that.
And even now, this is what they're starting to come to terms with is that, oh, yeah, this, you go have this raid on Donald Trump's home.
Okay, what do you think the next move is?
And the next move and the next move after that.
It was the same way when they wanted the New York prosecutor to the Southern District Prosecutor to charge him with something.
It's like, okay, well, what do you think happens next?
Then what happens next?
The seeds of racism, they go away.
All these evil racists, and then it dies down and the spiritual energy will be fixed and will be healed.
And then the inflation will just go away.
It's the spiritual corruption of the racists that love Trump that have brought these high prices.
Yeah, something like that.
I think what they really are underestimating, and I don't say this as somebody who like is happy with this development.
I think it's a very dangerous thing.
But I think what they don't realize, and I've been talking about this, you know, for years, but that they, you know, they have this kind of like mindset of like Donald Trump is this Hitlerian right-wing authoritarian figure.
He's pure evil.
We need to get him out at any cost possible.
The truth of the matter is that Donald Trump is like a kind of buffoonish billionaire, brilliant self-promoter, ignoramus on everything else, who basically socially has the views of like a 90s liberal, fiscally has the views of like an 80s Democrat,
and knew very well how to market himself to the populist right-wing energy in the country.
What they don't realize is how much worse it can get and that what they describe Donald Trump as could actually really come to fruition at some point.
And I'll tell you that even if you got, you know, if you got Trump on, you know, they were hoping that the Southern District of New York there was going to prosecute him for some financial crime or something like that.
And if you got Donald Trump for some financial crime, or if you got him for some mishandling classified information crime here, what they don't understand is that the people who voted for Donald Trump, they believed, and I think rightfully so, that they had been completely screwed over by their own government, by their own country, by their own ruling elite, that they themselves had been, you know, oppressed by this system.
And then on top of being oppressed by this system, in top of being taken advantage of and robbed from and lied into wars and all this stuff that they were laughed at, that they were hated and that they were ridiculed by the elite of their own country.
Auto Parts and Political Pushback00:07:10
And so they went for this guy.
Now, if you send a message to them that then that same elite is going to come down and crush your guy, and also now they're going to mock and ridicule him and you and name call all of you while you do it, the response to that is not going to be to bring those people back into the fold.
The response to that is that they will support someone far more authoritarian than you can imagine.
And so like, it's not just like the other talent that the Republicans have lying around.
It's like, you don't know where, what direction this could go in.
And so right away now, you just see people starting to wake up to this fact that they're like, oh, well, we went and did this raid on a former president's home.
Oh, shoot.
There's a lot of pushback over this.
Oh, this didn't vanquish anybody.
In fact, all the people who supported Trump are saying, oh, they seem pretty upset about all of this.
And then they're like, oh, wait, well, what do we have as a justification for this?
And that's the point you were making, where you actually started to see some of these people in the corporate press going like, hey, do we, we have a really good justification for this, right?
Do we?
This wasn't just over like some boxes of documents that weren't supposed to be in one office were supposed to be in another, right?
Because yeah, that does, that does look pretty bad.
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All right, let's get back into the show.
Here, let's uh let's go to the next clip.
I thought this was interesting too.
This is another uh MSNBC one.
Arian, um, uh, spy magazine, which he once co-edited, uh, called him, you know, I, I, yesterday, the DOJ did not make this public.
That was not, they did not publicize this, this, this search of the marlar.
Donald Trump did.
And it seems to me, for the reasons that the Joyce is kind of implying, that that's what this is all about.
Trump, Trump took this public because he thought it was in his interest to not just to spur these conspiracy theories, but then to put pressure on the DOJ.
What would they say?
There's nothing they could say that wouldn't, that Donald Trump and the right wouldn't make part of their narrative.
They'd be attacked for breaking with policy.
They'd be attacked for dirtying up Donald Trump, no matter what the words that came out of their mouth are.
Well, let's remember.
Okay, so it's just a short little clip, but isn't it interesting now to see kind of some of these hosts over to MSNBC grappling with this fact?
Like, oh, this isn't playing well.
Now, of course, they're so like, I don't know, there's such one-trick ponies, or they so exist within this very like truncated little space that you're allowed to like have opinions within.
So they can't step outside of their box and like actually think about what's going on here.
So they're blaming, here they are, blaming Donald Trump for the response.
This because, you know, the Justice Department didn't even make this public.
Trump's the one who made it public.
You're right.
He should get raided by the FBI and not tell anyone.
And it's like, oh, well, he only told people because he thought that would play well for him.
Like, well, yeah, of course.
But what a weird response to have that it's like, oh, well, you, yeah, of course.
But the point is, why is it not playing well for you guys?
Yeah, if it was justified by the DOJ, it might not play well for Trump.
He's literally just telling you what happened in this case, which is they raided my house over documents and the DOJ is not stepping up to go, no, it wasn't over that.
It was over this instead, which then wouldn't play well for Trump.
Yeah, well, that's right.
I mean, it's like it's, they can't actually say that he's lying about anything.
So they have to say he's putting this out there because it'll play well for him and fuel conspiracy theories.
And like, well, again, conspiracy theories, it's this term that they like to use all of the time to just kind of dismiss information.
It's like, okay, is it a conspiracy theory that people at the Justice Department conspired to get Donald Trump out of office?
Yes.
Very literally, that was a conspiracy.
But the theory was put forward by Andrew McCabe on 60 Minutes.
He told you that that's what they did.
So, okay.
I mean, yes.
And now are we theorizing that perhaps that same Justice Department was conspiring to get Donald Trump?
Yeah, listen, we've never seen a president's house raided by the FBI before.
So yeah, it's worth considering that, oh, yeah, this guy who had the Justice Department completely weaponized against him, maybe this is part of that as well.
This is like when they were asking, what's her name?
Jen Pierre?
I don't even know her name.
Yeah, the new press secretary.
Yeah, they were asking her about the busing in of the immigrants.
And she goes, well, the problem is he's politicizing like the immigration.
Well, I don't know.
It's a failure.
And mentioning a failure and then going, well, you're politicizing it.
Well, isn't that what the job is?
You guys are in politics.
And I point out if you have a failed policy.
Yeah, it's always politicizing things if you're on the other side of the issue.
You know what I mean?
So it's never politicizing things when you give your opinion on the issue.
It's only when someone like disagrees.
Literally, the job is politics.
That's what that's the job you're doing.
And so I'm commenting that you're not doing the job well.
Like, yes, that's politicizing it.
That's literally what we do here.
No, but I just mean my point is like, if they're commenting on what a great job they're doing, that's not considered politicizing.
It's only politicizing it when you're on the other side.
I've got this a lot of times.
This is something that it's just, it happens a lot in politics.
Like I, you know, like when people will say that, you know, oh, they'll accuse like the us at the Libertarian Party of trying to fight a culture war.
Oh, you guys are so concerned with these culture war issues or something like that.
But then from their perspective, they're, you know, like they're, they are too.
They're just on the opposite side of it.
You know, it's like, it's not like they're not like, you know, they'll have some post about like, you know, I don't know.
They'll, they'll put out stuff like about how, you know, misgendering people is wrong or something like that.
And then if you go like, oh, this is pretty stupid, they'll be like, oh, look at you.
You're fighting the culture war.
You're like, well, you, but you are too.
You're just on the other side of it.
If you're in the UFC complaining, hey, the other guy's training for a fight with me.
Evidence vs. Politicized Norms00:15:49
Yeah.
I don't know what to tell you.
So anyway, this was there was an article that was up on CNN.com, which I do not go to very often these days.
But after seeing some, I was curious about, you know, this topic we've been talking about, the kind of corporate press response to all of this.
And so this grabbed my attention.
This is by Stefan Collison, who's like the worst guy at CNN and writes all these terrible pieces.
We used to take his pieces apart sometimes on the show.
Haven't done one in quite a while, but he wrote this and they changed the title, which they do sometimes on CNN.com, but it was actually more interesting before.
I can't remember exactly what it was, but now the current title is The Justice Department is in a no-win situation as Trump's Fury Rages.
I just love all of this.
It's like, look, it's so funny because it's like, the question is very simple, obviously.
It's like, is Trump right or wrong?
Was was it justified and proportional to raid his home?
Or was it a political act?
You know what I mean?
Like, that's it.
That's the question.
Yeah, I guess when you mess up at the job and then they want to look into it, you're in a no-win situation.
And then, right.
And then, right.
So they're in a no-win situation.
It's like because of what they did.
Right.
Like, were they right or wrong?
That's the question.
And then Trump's fury rages.
Like, oh, he's just angry.
Well, if they were wrong, then what does he not have the right to be furious?
It just doesn't make any sense.
Okay.
Anyway, here's the article.
The FBI and the Justice Department are damned if they do and damned if they don't on the question of whether to promptly explain in public why they searched for missing documents at former President Donald Trump's Florida resort.
Attorney General Merrick Garland is facing, how do you say this word?
Cacophony of demands from Republicans to address the operation, including being threatened with withering oversight in the GOP, if the GOP wins the House in November's midterm elections.
So yeah, so they're right.
They're getting a lot of demands from Republicans to give us some information.
How outrageous.
And they might even lose some power if the Republicans take office.
Don't worry, Collison, probably not.
But anyway, all right.
His failure to do so already created a vacuum filled by Trump's furies, fury, misrepresentations of the search, and now conspiracy theories that the Bureau planted incriminating evidence at the home of the former president.
Well, I mean, cops have planted evidence before, so I don't know.
I don't think anyone's claiming to know for sure because none of it's come forward.
But yeah, I don't think it's unreasonable to say that.
So, Trump's fury and his misrepresentations.
And now there's conspiracy theories about all of that.
Anyway, okay, the conservative media machine is in meltdown mode.
Several of their most pro-Trump lawmakers and pundits who exist, Jesus, excoriated liberal defund the police rhetoric are now demanding the defunding and the flushing out of the FBI.
This is quite a slogan for a party that prides itself on supporting law and order.
Well, I mean, whatever.
Yes, obviously, as we talk about all the time, there's all types of contradictions amongst conservative Republicans about support of police versus being for small government and all of this type of stuff.
But yeah, it is a little bit different to want to defund local police departments than to want to defund federal cops.
And it is a little bit different to support law and order.
And you could still be against like politicized, you know, weaponized federal cops.
So it's not that much of a contradiction right there.
And it could, and it could point, I'm sorry, and it could portend serious damage to the Bureau under a potential future Republican Congress or president, not to mention the neutering of the country's capacity to fight foreign espionage, violent crime, drug trafficking, and domestic extremism.
So this is, of course, the straight news at CNN.
Their objective reporting is always that, well, obviously the FBI is all good and does all these wonderful things.
And this could neuter its ability to do all of that.
It could also, you know, if we want to be fair, it could neuter the FBI's ability to, you know, you know, entrap innocent people into creating crimes and then create terrorist events that they just try to bust up themselves later.
You know, it could do a lot of that too.
Open up doors at the Capitol building.
Yeah, yeah, right.
Yeah.
All types of horrible things.
In using terminology like raid and siege to describe the legally sanctioned search, Trump and his allies are again painting him as a victim of political persecution, a technique that bonds him together, him tighter to base voters and will underpin his likely 2024 White House campaign.
So that's their big.
This is what when he said before that Donald Trump is misrepresenting it, it's that he referred to it as a raid when really it was a legally sanctioned search.
I mean, talk about grasping at straws.
I guess he didn't agree with the FBI.
The FBI was just here to agree with him, to say, hey, what's up, and help him relocate some misproperly placed documents.
It's really something for how like fucking over the top and bombastic their language will be about all of these things.
They become such sticklers for what they consider misinformation.
Oh, he said raid.
It was a search.
Because, okay, like over 30 armed FBI agents showed up.
I don't know.
I think describing that as a raid is fairly legit.
I don't know.
To help him relocate some documents just there to help him out.
All right.
In the face of this relentless assault.
I'm sorry.
It's just so funny that that's the next sentence, right?
It's so awful.
He misrepresented this as a raid, but it was really just a search in the face of this relentless assault.
The FBI and the Justice Department, both of which Trump sought to weaponize.
I'm sorry, how funny is that that they, in their next sentence, refer to Trump's comments as a relentless assault.
See, all of a sudden, it's fine to use language like this for CNN, but Donald Trump was so, you know, calling it actual fucking, I don't know, the FBI pounded on the door and said, we have a warrant, we're tossing this whole place to call that a raid.
See, that's just really misleading.
It was a search, it wasn't a raid.
However, him calling it that was a quote relentless assault.
The FBI and the Justice Department, both of which Trump sought to weaponize for his own political ends in office, are relearning one of the truisms of the Trump era.
Playing by the rules and observing legal and legal and protocol norms, like not publicly speaking about open investigations, might be the foundation of sound governance and impartial justice, but it is ineffective as a public relations strategy when the ex-president and his acolytes obliterate all perspective in a gusher of chaos and falsehoods designed to obscure the facts.
So it's just, I don't know, I find this so interesting of like how they're trying to deal with this.
So first off, the Trump sought to weaponize, you know, the FBI and Justice Department while he was in office.
I mean, Trump sought to keep them off his back.
Let's get real.
Trump sought to not have them fucking, you know, get him kicked out of office.
You know, if you, so it's a little bit there.
But, you know, he says, playing by the rules, observing legal and protocol norms, like not publicly speaking about open investigations.
Like, okay, you can argue that that is a norm.
What's the norm about raiding former presidents' homes?
What's the norm on that?
Okay, you're already outside of a norm.
So I understand where typically maybe you'd say we don't speak about these things publicly.
But if you're going to take this unprecedented step of raiding a former president's home for the, you know, for political stability in the country, you would think maybe that would be a little that that's not just a protocol.
That's not just a norm.
This is a different situation where you'd want to, at least at some point, demonstrate to the American people, like, okay, obviously, this is Joe Biden's Justice Department raiding his former and quite likely future competitor for the presidency.
We'd want to make it clear that this was not politicized to shows like we really had no other choice but to do this.
Okay.
So, you know, but anyway, it's this is something interesting that he, so he's kind of laying this out.
Look, this is just, it's, it's a, this might be the foundation of sound governments and impartial justice, but it's an ineffective as a public relations strategy.
Um, so he's saying, look, these guys are, this is great because they're impartial and they're just impartial justice.
But, you know, this isn't good as a public relations strategy when the ex-president and his acolytes obliterate all perspective.
So, in other words, there's kind of an admission here where you're saying, look, they're, yeah, this is all good for impartial justice, but it's not good public relations to counter Trump.
But if you're in the business of public relations to counter Trump, then you're not impartial, are you?
See, this is exactly the point we were making before when I was saying they think they're not fucking the culture war.
They think it's not, you know, they're politicizing or anything like that.
They take it from their perspective.
It's like, yeah, Donald Trump's guilty.
That's the impartial truth.
So being impartial means you're against him.
They don't even see that actually that is by definition partial.
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All right, given Trump's power over his supporters and the right-wing media Fuhrer, the Department of Justice's investigation has already been tainted in the eyes of millions of people.
However, it turns out, Trump is adopting the exact same playbook he used in his campaign against the Russia investigation of special counsel Robert Mueller, who mostly interesting sentence here, who mostly stuck by his code of working behind closed doors and pursuing justice quietly.
Yeah, by keeping a news story in the headlines for two fucking years while you have nothing and spend a shit ton of money and then show up in front of Congress, well, what guy was doing a Biden impression when he finally had to answer questions about what was going on.
Never asked the question, hey, sir, are you actually this incompetent?
And do you feel bad for defrauding the American people out of spending hundreds of million dollars running an investigation with a person as incompetent as you are?
Yeah, well, that's right.
And of course, and we've discussed this before, but it's interesting.
The wording here, he says he mostly stuck by his code of working behind closed doors.
And that is true.
He did mostly, but not entirely.
And that's what's kind of interesting here.
Like we've mentioned this before, but actually, when BuzzFeed had that story about how they had seen evidence that Mueller's team had that Trump had instructed Michael Cohn to lie before Congress, Mueller's team came out and said, no, that's not true.
Because they didn't want expectations to be set so high because they were about to deliver in a few weeks.
And they were like, yeah, that's we don't have anything like that.
So it's not like he always stuck by that code.
And as acknowledged here in the article, mostly stuck by that code.
But if you were ever going to come out and say one thing, as the entire country, like if the country was speculating that Trump told his lawyer to lie and you came out and said that wasn't true, how did you not, as the entire media class was speculating that he was involved in a conspiracy with Russia, you never felt it necessary to come out then, seeing as how you're willing to violate this code at certain points, and just go, just so you guys know, we have nothing in that area.
We have no evidence of that.
You know, like we're going to continue our investigation, but just so you know, everyone's speculating that, you know, a fairly big claim that the sitting president is a traitor to his country.
It's a fairly serious claim.
We have no evidence that that is true.
So, you know, we'll let you know when we're done with our investigation.
But just so you know, I wouldn't get caught up as that.
No, that, you know, is when he doesn't do that, it's sticking to his code, right?
But you can see how that's kind of one-sided, especially since ultimately, and really for someone who works at CNN, isn't it amazing to fucking say, like in hindsight, you guys were the ones like pumping out every single day that the president is a traitor to his country, or at least asking the question every single day.
Now, when we find out he wasn't, you go, well, wasn't it so honorable of that guy to stick to his code while we kept speculating about all of this?
All right.
Here's an interesting.
So he writes, sticking to his code of working behind closed doors and pursuing justice quietly.
And then in parentheses, this is what's in the article in parentheses.
Mueller did not find that the Trump campaign conspired with Russia to win the 2016 elections, but he unearthed multiple odd contacts with Russians and plentiful evidence Trump may have obstructed justice.
I don't know how many times we have to go through this, but yeah, he unearthed multiple odd contacts.
No, not really.
There were contacts between the Trump people and the Russians.
There were also contacts between Obama's transition people and the Russians and Bill Clinton's transition team and George Bush's transition team and the Russians.
That's what transition teams do.
They speak to other governments.
It's like, yeah, and it's good that they do.
I'm not pro-government at all, but it's damn good that the two countries who have 90% of the world's nuclear weapons, that they, they're communicating.
That's much better than not communicating.
Trump Raid and Russian Contacts00:08:43
And also Donald Trump ran and won on working with Russia.
None of this was ever a secret.
Nothing was odd about this.
And then to say he unearsed plentiful evidence that Trump may have obstructed justice.
It's interesting when you have CNN every single day for years saying Donald Trump is a traitor to his country and this investigation is going to prove it.
Donald Trump saying this is a complete witch hunt and I've done nothing.
I'm not at all a traitor to my country.
And then when he's proven right, you go, well, he tried to obstruct justice.
Just to keep it clear, in the 10 examples that Mueller gave where he said, these are incidents that could be considered obstruction of justice.
These were things like firing Comey, firing his FBI director, who was working to sabotage him.
It included things like tweeting that this was a witch hunt.
Like literally, these are the type of things they included in him obstructing justice.
It's literally like, like, I like, you haven't done anything wrong.
And I go, Rob, you're a murderer.
I'm going to investigate you for murder.
And you go, this is bullshit.
And I go, you just obstructed my investigation.
See, you're still guilty.
Even though I was wrong about everything, you're still guilty.
Two years, hundreds of millions of dollars, some of the most expensive and best lawyers in the country.
And they decided not to move forward with prosecuting the guy.
Yeah.
That means he got off.
Like, quit pretending.
Two, three years later, you're still writing articles as if, well, they uncovered, well, not enough that they wanted to go to trial.
They had the funding, the expertise, and they chose that they didn't have enough.
That's called not having enough.
Move on.
Yeah.
And, but here's what's interesting when you kind of like zoom out on all of this.
It's that, okay.
So their response to this is basically to say, oh, Trump's handling this the same way he handled the Russia investigation.
And you're like, oh.
So in other words, this is bullshit too.
And now they're freaking out about the fact that they're like, oh, shit, that whole thing fell apart for us.
This might be falling apart for us too.
Now, again, like I said on the last episode, I'll maintain maybe there's a chance here that they actually got something.
They actually found something on Trump this time.
But I'll tell you, it's looking more and more like that isn't the case.
It's looking more and more like this is just in the same line of everything.
Then they really gone fucked up.
It's like they want him to win.
It's like they empower him enough or they make him the underdog where everyone's like, all right, let's go see him, go beat them.
You know what I mean?
It's like, what are you guys doing?
Just like, leave it alone.
I don't know.
It makes no sense unless they have something else, unless like they're really interesting.
It really, right, which is a possibility.
I just, I really, I doubt it at this point.
It's almost like in a relationship when if someone's like, you know, like if you had a chick who is like so paranoid about losing the guy she's with that she didn't want to lose him, you know, and then she's so paranoid about him cheating and stuff like that that she's constantly like, are you cheating?
Are you cheating on me?
Blah, blah, blah, blah.
And then she completely sabotages the relationship.
You know what I'm saying?
Like something like that, where it's like, it's like they can't help themselves from helping him.
Which has been the story with Trump from the very beginning, right?
That they just couldn't help themselves from making every story all about Donald Trump.
And where does Donald Trump do his best when everything's about Donald Trump?
That's what he loves.
That's really all he has is himself.
You know, this is a guy who couldn't not brag about his beautiful home in the memo about it being raided.
Like that's it, but they just had a shitty house breaking in the doors, but this, this is a nice door.
Yeah.
Get right in there.
The doors probably fell right over on these peasants' homes.
But my big, beautiful door, you're going to knock that in.
Okay, so here, I'll just read a little bit more from this, then we'll stop.
But CNN's Evan Perez reported on Wednesday that some Justice Department officials are chafing against the silence of the Attorney General and believe there should be a public statement about the unprecedented search of Trump's home.
Look at that.
Even some of them see this is an unprecedented search.
So it's not just following protocols and norms, is it right?
This is that we're outside the realm of protocols and norms, right?
Okay.
Those officials believe that the silence is harmful to the departments and the public's interest since Trump has filled the void and defined the aftermath of the search, Perez reported.
That's interesting, right?
Usually you can kind of dismiss CNN's like you know, anonymous officials say, but that does seem to me to actually be quite plausible and seems kind of right.
That even they're going, this is really kind of the theme of the whole episode, right?
But even they're going like, fuck, this doesn't play well.
I said on the last episode and I tweeted while this was happening.
So just to see the exact time, I think it was around 8 p.m. when it was when Donald Trump put out his statement that put out his statement that they had been raided, or maybe it was a little bit before that, like 7:30 or something like that.
And I tweeted.
Sure, go ahead.
I was going to say, maybe DT is such a genius, he kept pretending like he had things that he didn't to get them to show up.
Well, I'll tell you, maybe I'll tell you, I tweeted at 7:59 p.m. on the 8th.
I said, they better have something big on Trump, because if not, they just made him a living martyr and a pissed off one.
So that it's kind of like what they're saying now in this article today.
It's kind of like that.
They're like, well, look, if we can't come out and tell people, like, there was a real clear justification for this.
Yes, this was an unprecedented step.
Yes, this is something that we don't want to do.
Yes, it kind of smells like a banana republic when people start prosecuting their political opponents.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
All of that's bad.
Yes, this is a guy who had 70 plus million people vote for him because they really like him.
And so we want to let those people know that this isn't what it looks like, you know?
Okay, yes, after framing this guy for the Russiagate shit for years and years, and after going after him for all of these things that we never got him on, you know, I mean, look, just on the face of it, even if you're not as dug into the weeds as me and you are here, right?
Like just regular Joe Sixpack American knows there was a special prosecutor investigation on this guy who came up with no charges.
There were two impeachments.
He was acquitted on both impeachments, right?
Like you just know that.
And now there's this raid of his home.
You go, so they're basically telling you, this looks really bad for us.
This is going to play well for him and not for us if we don't have something here to say, no, no, no, look, we can show you this.
This was really justified this time.
And, you know, as Collison mentions in the piece, and I think he's, there's a kernel of truth to what he's saying.
Yeah.
If the FBI at this point goes, look what we found in his home.
Yeah, there'll be a lot of people who don't believe it.
There'll be a lot of people who go, I bet they planted that there.
I bet it wasn't even his, you know, now, whether it's even, whether that's even right or wrong, like whether that's factual or in fact, whether they did or didn't plan something there, they've earned that reputation.
The FBI has earned that level of trust to not trust them at all.
That I wouldn't put it past that.
We've seen text messages from these guys struck, these guys saying that they will stop Donald Trump, right?
So anyway, it's just kind of interesting to see, even as you kind of pointed out earlier, that even amongst some of this kind of like the progressive news outlets, even they're going like, I mean, we got something here, right?
Like there was like, what are my talking points here?
Because what you're giving me isn't enough.
You know what I mean?
Like you're giving me just isn't enough.
It's like, oh, he did the same thing that lots of other politicians have done, but we raided his home for it.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
Searched.
Searched his home.
That's not meeting and greet.
FBI meeting.
There was an FBI meet and greet at Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort.
I apologize.
We don't want to spread that.
They knock in your doors just to test the hinges.
It's a FBI hinge test, making sure you got good hinges.
Yeah, totally legal.
Totally justified.
All right.
All right.
We're going to wrap up there.
That's our episode for today.
We will catch you guys next time.
Thank you for listening.
Go check out Rob on the summer porch tour coming around in the next few weeks.