Dave Smith and Robbie Bernstien dissect Mark Zuckerberg's alleged admission that the FBI warned Facebook about Russian disinformation, suggesting federal interference silenced the Hunter Biden laptop story. They contrast this with Twitter's bans, critique third-party fact-checkers as government-aligned tools, and analyze Karine Jean-Pierre's labeling of MAGA Republicans as fascists to justify aggressive tactics. The discussion culminates in speculation regarding Donald Trump's prosecution after the Mar-a-Lago raid, questioning whether charges will proceed or if the investigation will retreat after gauging public reaction. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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FBI Warning and Delta Promo00:12:22
Fill her up.
You're listening to the Gash Digital Network.
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You're listening to part of the problem on the Gash Digital Network.
Here's your host, Dave Smith.
What is up, everybody?
Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
I'm Dave Smith.
He is, of course, the king of the cocks, Robbie the Fire, Bernstein.
What's up, my brother?
How are you?
I'm doing well.
I had a blast out in Colorado.
Summer porch tour is over, but it was a good time.
Wow, this is the biggest summer porch tour ever.
Yeah, absolutely.
We actually did real big shows in people's yards.
Hundreds of people showed up.
It was cool.
That is pretty goddamn crazy because you started it off as like such a like, I don't know, like it started so small and has kind of like grown into this cool thing.
I'm proud of you, dude.
That's awesome.
I've heard a lot of great things from people who went to some of these shows.
Yeah, Colorado, we did the smoke out bug out.
That's going to be coming out soon.
Me and Robert from Sheath raced up a hill.
It was a good time.
Oh, nice.
There you go.
The guy who makes my underwear.
I know him.
Yeah.
Oh, I should let you guys know I will be down in Austin, Texas, one night only at the Creek in the Cave.
Two shows on the 25th of September.
I should have the ticket links for those up on my site, comicdave Smith.com.
I think tomorrow we should have the ticket links out, but please come out.
Want to fill up these shows real quickly.
So yeah, Creek in the Cave, Rebecca Trent's great club out there in Austin, Texas.
Should be a real fun time.
All right.
So we've, it's been a few days since our last podcast, and there was, there's a lot going on, but there was one thing that happened that really caught my eye.
I'm sure caught your eye as well, Rob.
And the people who noticed it seemed to really notice what a big deal this was.
It's a, man, it's such a crazy thing because there's just like in this age where there's so much information, there's so much content, there's so many people saying stuff, there's so much hyperbole, you know, like people just making wild accusations and all of this.
It's like, you know, these things that really matter get lost.
They get lost in, you know, like a needle in a haystack.
But this was a big one.
And this was on my good friend, Joe Rogan.
He has a podcast, an experience, some would call it.
And he had Mark Zuckerberg on his show.
And this happened.
How do you guys handle things when they're a big news item that's controversial?
Like there was a lot of attention on Twitter during the election because of the Hunter Biden laptop story, the need that we had.
Yeah, so you guys censored that as well?
So we took a different path than Twitter.
I mean, basically, the background here is the FBI, I think, basically came to us, some folks on our team, and was like, hey, just so you know, like you should be on high alert.
There was we thought that there was a lot of Russian propaganda in the 2016 election.
We have it on notice that basically there's about to be some kind of dump of that's similar to that.
So just be vigilant.
So our protocol is different from Twitter's.
What Twitter did is they said you can't share this at all.
We didn't do that.
What we do is we have, If something was reported to us as potentially misinformation, important misinformation, we also have this third-party fact-checking program because we don't want to be deciding what's true and false.
And for the, I think it was five or seven days when it was basically being determined whether it was false, the distribution on Facebook was decreased, but people were still allowed to share it.
So you could still share it.
You could still consume it.
When you say the distribution has decreased, it got shared.
How does that work?
It basically the ranking in Newsfeed was a little bit less.
So fewer people saw it than would have otherwise.
So it definitely, by what percentage?
I don't know off the top of my head, but it's it's it's meaningful.
But I mean, but basically, a lot of people were still able to share it.
We got a lot of complaints that that was the case.
You know, obviously this is a hyper-political issue.
So depending on what side of the political spectrum, you either think we didn't censor it enough or censored it way too much.
But we weren't sort of as black and white about it as Twitter.
We just kind of thought, hey, look, if the FBI, which I still view as a legitimate institution in this country, it's a very professional law enforcement.
They come to us and tell us that we need to be on guard about something, then I want to take that seriously.
Did they specifically say you need to be on guard about that story?
No, I don't remember if it was that specifically, but it was, it basically fit the pattern.
All right.
So this, to me, this was a very big deal.
This is really quite something that Mark Zuckerberg kind of said that the FBI interfered in the 2020 election.
Now, there's a little bit of a caveat there, right?
Like he didn't exactly say that the FBI specifically told them not to, but it sure does seem like, look, I mean, it seems like they knew this was coming out, that this is what it was about.
Also, try to keep in mind, right, that then after the Hunter Biden story, like think this through.
If the FBI goes to one of these social media companies and goes, there's about to be this huge dump of Russian disinformation, right?
And then the Hunter Biden story comes out.
And then Joe Biden and all of the establishment corporate media and what is it?
How many people in the CIA and four former heads of the CIA and all these different people are saying this is Russian disinformation?
Then isn't this message pretty clear what they're sending to Facebook and Twitter?
That remember we warned you about this?
Well, now we're telling you that this is it.
So in many ways, this is confirming what we've kind of long known to be the case.
That this is not simply that, you know, all of these social media companies are working in tandem with the Democratic Party or something like that, that they're all, but actually that federal law enforcement is in on this and that they are that the censoring that you see in social media is not just some random phenomenon of the market of, you know,
all these people at big tech are kind of progressive and therefore they all kind of have the same worldview and they all decide to, you know, silence these stories.
No, It's much more blatant than that.
It has this direct involvement of the government coming in.
And, you know, also when you keep in mind the contents, the context that these guys have all been hauled before Congress and blatantly, explicitly threatened for, you know, like the fake news that's on their site, on their site.
And then the FBI is like, hey, you're going to keep your eye out on this.
This is not exactly a coercionless interaction.
You know what I'm saying?
Like, this is the FBI coming and telling you this is happening and this is what you're going to do.
I thought this was like a really, I was really surprised Zuckerberg said it.
He almost said it in a way like he didn't think it would be that big of a deal.
But a lot of people have been jumping on this.
Like, no, no, no, I'm sorry.
What you just said is a really, really big deal.
Yeah, I think we need some new government policies here.
And to simplify it, it's no more weasel shit.
And even though I defended Trump when he basically called that Ukraine prosecutor and he pulled a weasel shit move where he goes, Hey, I want you to look into if anything illegal is there.
And he was very smart with his wording.
It seems like the FBI is pulling the same thing here where they're calling you up and going, Hey, I want you to be on the lookout for this, which is kind of when you sit down with the mob boss and they go, Hey, I'm going to and like the government doesn't care if they ruin your business.
So, like, if you go to them and go, Hey, we're kind of in the business of having good materials on it and we don't censor, they don't care about that.
They don't care if all of a sudden your profits are down because you can't do the kind of marketing that actually makes you know marketers money.
They don't care, they just want to make sure that they can stay in control.
So, they kind of pull you in, and then it's always with like a veiled threat, which you don't even know if they have the authority for.
But they're basically saying, Hey, listen, we want your cooperation, and if you don't cooperate, it's going to be a little bit of a mess for you.
And then, if you want to challenge them and go to court, you might find out that it's illegal.
But I mean, how many people lost their jobs to find out a year later the government, you know what I mean?
It's like everything's under the guise of, oh, you can't be in school, like it's all under very not clear authority where they just threaten you and then they can go, Well, you volunteered to not show up.
I didn't tell you you couldn't show up, you know what I mean?
Like, no, I know.
It's all very vague.
It's like the government should have to call you up with very clear authority so that they can be held responsible if they overstep.
Like, they shouldn't be allowed to kind of, you know, just make that's what these are.
They're threats.
Yes.
Well, it's kind of like the um, like, I don't know if you, I mean, I grew up in Brooklyn, so this is like just resonates with me, but I don't know if you've ever like if people have been mugged before, but quite often when you would get mugged, it wouldn't be like someone pulls a gun on you and says, Give me your fucking wallet now.
It would kind of be like three like thugs surrounding you and then being like, Yo, let me borrow a dollar.
You know what I mean?
And like, you would just kind of know you're like, Yeah, I'm getting robbed right now.
Like, this isn't, this is not them asking me if I can borrow a dollar.
So, it's now where exactly that line is drawn is, you know, either it depends kind of on the situation.
But, yes, I mean, if it's what you have here, you know, it's like the same thing, like when Alex Berenson released that info that we covered last week, that where he was saying, Look, that even people at Twitter were saying that the administration asked them why Alex Berenson was still on Twitter.
Now, I guess technically you can say that they didn't say you should kick Alex Berenson off of Twitter, but they just kind of went like, Why is this guy still on your site?
Why has he not been kicked off yet?
And essentially, what they're doing is surrounding you and asking to borrow a dollar.
They're, you know what I mean?
Like, they, okay, yes.
And the Trump analogy is a good one.
Like, it's, it is this kind of mob-like tactic of being like, Look, like, we got all the guns in the room here, and it would please us if you would do things this way.
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All right, let's get back into the show.
So anyway, there's a lot of different angles to this that are very interesting.
It's also something that you can't, you know, like you have to keep in mind all of the context of what's going on here.
Fact Checkers and Credible Institutions00:07:57
Like this FBI, this institution, the FBI, it's the same institution that like went and got the three bullshit FISA warrants to spy on Carter Page, to spy on the Trump administration, who, by the way, was not a Russian spy, despite what they were telling you all those.
I mean, we had three FISA warrants on him.
They were listening to all of his shit.
No evidence of this whatsoever.
No charges of being a Russian spy have come out of all of this.
The same FBI that just raided Trump's home in Mar-a-Lago, right?
This is the same organization going to Facebook and being like, oh, yeah, there's going to be a big dump of Russian misinformation.
Also, keep in mind where they say to them, they go, oh, just like in 2016, just like the last election, we think there's going to be another big dump.
Now, again, there has been no evidence at all presented that the dump of information of the Podesta, the DNC emails, all of that stuff, that that was Russian disinformation.
In fact, it wasn't disinformation.
We know that much for sure.
We know that all of that shit was real.
And none of them even denied it, that it was, that it was really their emails.
Even the people at the DNC, they weren't saying like, oh, no, this isn't real.
They just kind of kept their mouth shut about it and said, Russia, Russia, Russia.
That was their only, you know, and so, and we now know everybody is admitting now that the Hunter Biden story was legit.
They're all acknowledging that this was not a Russian operation.
This was a, so at the very least, you'd think that these people would have to admit, like, oh, shit, we got it wrong.
And the most generous interpretation would be that we unwittingly, without meaning to, interfered, as Zuckerberg would put it, meaningfully in the 2020 election.
You know, it also kind of, it's funny to me that like for all of the people who, you know, all the Trump supporters who make the argument that the election was illegitimate, you know, the ones who tell the big lie, whatever the corporate press is calling it, it's like, it's amazing how much they go off on this wild goose chase and ignore what's right in front of them.
It really reminds me of like the 9-11 conspiracy theorists, you know, who'd be like all off on this like shit about like whether there was, you know, it was a controlled demolition or like all of this shit.
And look, even if you believe that, or even if you believe the like 2000 mules shit about the election or any of that, it's like, why waste your time on that when this clearly you don't have proof of that?
And you have an ironclad case, like you have an open and shut case right here in front of you.
Here is the head of Facebook admitting it, just telling it to you that it's like, yes, this was all an effort that resulted in us in a meaningful way, you know, making sure that this Hunter Biden story couldn't have been shared.
And then of course, Twitter, as he said, they went a little bit further and straight up banned the link and shut down one of the biggest newspapers in the country's Twitter account so that nobody could share.
You can even DM it to somebody.
And this turned out to be a real story.
I mean, however you feel in an election that came down to like, if you look at what the election actually came down to in all like the districts that actually mattered, it's like a few thousand votes, you know?
Could that have been the difference?
No question.
No question that it could have been.
So there you go, right there.
You have the same FBI who's targeting Donald Trump now swinging the election, at least potentially swinging the election in favor of Biden.
That's a really big story.
This is, this is not just like, oh, like, you know, some of the other shit that even we cover.
This isn't like, oh, Brian Stelter's leaving CNN.
This is like a really fucking big story that really had drastic, you know, implications.
Well, we heard from the last press secretary that they spoke to the social media companies about misinformation.
Government gets to decide what is misinformation.
We saw with COVID how much was labeled as misinformation that then later became regular science.
Also, quite humorously, Zuckerberg references that his fact checkers, I think at the time were saying that the story was false.
I know that the fact checkers for COVID turned out to be the guys that gave the money over to like, so who are over to the lab, the Wuhan lab, the ones that were running the fact checking.
So it's like, who are your fact checkers?
They also appointees of the FBI.
This is like that same appeal to authority game where it's like, well, the people who are in charge of telling us whether or not there's a security risk to the country called me up.
So I have to listen to them.
And then my fact checkers said that that's not true.
Well, it's like, are your fact checkers ex-people that used to work at the FBI?
Like liberal professors?
This is what ends up happening, right?
Is that they go there, right?
It gives them this plausible deniability where he goes, hey, look, we didn't want to be making these decisions.
So we hired a third-party fact checker.
And it's like, right, but did you hire the company that the FBI told you to hire?
Because if so, you still made the decision to do that.
You know, we, oh, we have these third-party fact checkers that fact check you on, you know, COVID information.
It's the group that Fauci told us to hire.
It's like, oh, okay, but then you made the decision to go with who that guy.
And that guy is the guy in question.
So this is what they do every single time.
It's the same thing with like the like climate change shit.
John Stossel had a great piece about this.
One of his videos got shut down on climate change.
And then he would like did a thing on the third party group that determined it was misinformation.
And of course, they are like all completely in bed with like all the green energy companies and shit like that.
So you're like, yeah, this is really the, especially when you have this kind of like corporatist statist world that we live in, the third party fact checking thing doesn't work any better than just government telling you what is truth or what isn't truth, because they always get these big companies that are completely in bed and completely like, you know, like incentivized to push things in one direction.
So how about like it's unbelievable that we, all these people, especially guys like Zuckerberg and these other people who all, you know, claim to be these kind of like idealistic, we're going to make the world a better place with all these companies that connect people who are so far away and stuff.
We're like, how about just let people share what they want to share?
And fucking no one should be stepping in there deciding, no, this is truth.
This is misinformation.
This is that.
Because obviously that's just, it's just begging for corruption, begging for it.
Anyway, this, this to me was, it was, I was actually kind of like, I was shocked that he said it, you know, as I thought that he would probably have been more guarded to go like, oh shit, this sounds really bad.
And it does sound really bad.
But I also, I think he was just telling the truth there.
I think not only did he, did he not just let it slip, the general vibe I get from these people is that they'd like to just be able to run their businesses and they're not able to.
Like, I actually think people, specifically Mark Zuckerberg, were not playing as much ball with government.
And then they got pulled into these congressional hearings and meetings, and they realized, like, all right, fine.
I guess we got to start censoring our platforms.
Like, I don't think that's their ideal business model.
They just know that they have to play ball with government.
I think in this case, he's actually being almost careful with his words because he's not trying to indict government, but it's like he doesn't think to not mention it because it's like, I don't think he likes the situation either.
Like, I think he'd rather just have an open platform.
He's not allowed to.
So now he's being asked and he's kind of being careful with his words, but he's being honest that the FBI told us that there was a security threat.
I don't know if you use those words, but basically, hey, this is bad misinformation.
Stamps.com Shipping Sponsorship Offer00:02:56
So be on the lookout for it.
So like he's being careful, but like he's not, he's not like a government agent where he's slick enough to just totally deny this.
Yes.
Well, I also think that a lot of these guys probably, it would seem reasonable to me is that, look, they're not looking at all this shit through the lens that we look at it through, right?
So like, even as he says there, he goes, look, I mean, it's the FBI.
Like, this is a really credible institution, you know, and they're coming in here and telling you that like Russia is trying to, you know, like affect the outcome of an election.
So would you want to let that happen on your platform?
Come on.
Don't you have some responsibility to not let that happen?
And I could see where to like people who aren't coming at this from our perspective, they'd go like, okay, well, yeah, I guess if the FBI is telling me we do have to do something about that, you know, whereas like what's really going on here is that the FBI is the ones who are trying to like subvert the results of an election.
And then, of course, if you get the Democrat, I mean, if you get the Republicans actually pulling the FBI in to do an investigation into this specific moment, we'll fire one individual and go, that doesn't represent us as an institution.
That was a bad call.
And that one guy made that error.
Yes, exactly.
Right.
And that, so that's how the institution always remains protected.
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Foreign Concerns and Clear Directives00:10:05
Again, just a very, it's like, this in itself is pretty like damning, but man, when you put all of the pieces together of like what the response from all of them was when the Hunter Biden story came out, you know what I mean?
And then what the what the FBI's position on Trump in general has been over the last five years.
It's just so damning.
It's just like, there's no way this could pass like the sniff test.
Like, you're just like, wait a minute, wait a minute.
So, the same institution that's been targeting Donald Trump with an investigation into him being a Russian, you know, involved in a conspiracy with the Russians, which turns out to be bullshit, where they blatantly miss, you know,
like blatantly lied about the facts, like things like Carter Page, where the CIA had already told them he wasn't a Russian spy and they still got three FISA warrants and withheld that information from the FISA courts that they had gotten from the CIA in order to get those FISA warrants.
So when they get, you find out that, and then they lead this whole investigation, which turns out to come up with absolutely nothing in that direction, right?
And then that same organization is going to these social media companies and telling them, like, hey, there's this big fucking dump from Russia coming in, which I suppose never came.
You know what I mean?
But then this Hunter Biden thing comes, and then that same organization is out on TV telling you, this is the Russian disinformation right here.
I mean, put it all together.
But now somehow, when they tell you, oh, no, he had classified documents and we had to raid his home.
How are we supposed to look at that after all of this other stuff?
How, like, what is your, how are you supposed to feel?
Just put all these things together and tell me that, like, I think we know what's going on here.
Anyway, so you sent me this.
I actually hadn't seen this until you sent it to me, but evidently the FBI did respond to Zuckerberg's claims on Joe Rogan podcast about this whole thing.
So let me get down to this.
In a statement released to Fox Business, the agency said it has provided companies with, quote, foreign threat indicators to help them protect their platforms and customers from abuse by foreign malign influence actors.
The FBI will continue to work closely with federal, state, local, and private sector partners to keep the public informed of potential threats, but the FBI cannot ask or direct companies to take action on information received.
I mean, talk about that.
They go on to say the FBI shared general warnings about foreign interference, nothing specific about Hunter Biden.
So weasel shit.
Yeah.
I mean, talk about just like not that, like, it's obviously a direct concern here, right?
Like, it's a very, it's like, look, you said you told them that there was this Russian, you know, misinformation coming out.
Then you told the world that the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation.
They then silenced the Hunter Biden story, which turned out to be correct.
So what the hell?
You know, and it's just this like weasel words of like, well, we do work with state, local level law enforcement, as well as the private sector to protect the people from this shit.
And you're like, dude, you're not saying anything.
And clearly in this case, what happened was the people were not protected from misinformation.
The misinformation was that this was Russian disinformation.
That was what was wrong.
So this is what the entire American voting population got told.
And that was wrong.
And does there seem to be any concern about that?
Yeah, it's almost like your concern isn't really misinformation, is it?
You know, like, is there concern that like, oh, we really misled everybody to believe that this was a Russian operation?
And it wasn't.
It was a legitimate news story, however you feel about it.
It was really the president's son's laptop, where you at least know that he's making all types of money off trading in his father's possession.
And at the best case, there's just that corruption.
At the worst case, there's, you know, the big guy is Biden and Biden's in on the corruption.
And then at the worst, worst, worst case, biddling kids.
So there's just saying, there's this is the fact that the federal law enforcement has worked, even if you grant them the most charitable explanation, inadvertently, let's say, to end up affecting the results of an election.
That's, I mean, look, Rogan asks about the Hunter Biden laptop story.
And Zuckerberg's response is, well, here's what happened.
The FBI came to us and said this.
So clearly, at the very least, from Zuckerberg's perspective, that's what they thought when they saw the Hunter Biden thing.
They went, oh, here's this thing.
We're going to turn down in a meaningful way.
We're going to make sure that you can't share this story or that not as many people see this story.
So at the very least, that's what just happened here.
For all these people, you know, they care so much about democracy and undermining our democratic institutions and blah, blah, blah, all this.
No concern about this.
They all become Sam Harris when it comes down to this issue.
Yeah, there needs to be, and you could start it with social media, that if the government's going to write to a social media company that they have to remove something from their platform, it has to be a clear directive.
It has to, they have to say specifically the materials that need to be removed, the authority by which they're making the declaration.
Like you can't just keep having these veiled threats from government.
And then they go, oh, yeah, well, we were just, we're just trying to keep everyone safe.
We're just trying to be careful.
So we were just letting them know, hey, maybe this one wouldn't be a good idea to have over there.
But we never told them what they could or couldn't do.
And, you know, the truth is that who knows what goes on, you know, behind closed doors and what's not being said and how bad it is.
Because like you, you alluded to early that Jen Sackey, the former press secretary there for Biden, his first press secretary, she said that they had given lists of people who they thought should be banned from social media companies.
So at least in some cases, they are straight up just saying, we think you should do this.
We think you should do that.
But then they all agency, they go, well, we're taking from the health authorities that this is bad information that will get people sick.
And so we're just trying to act in the best interest of the American public.
But it just comes back to the point where like, if the government is wrong and you're censoring the dissenting voices, then how do we ever find out that you're wrong?
And like, why is it that your select experts are better than the free market when we can have a hive mind of individuals going, well, wait a second, have you thought about this?
Like, in other words, if we're looking for the best outcome here, if you want it to government's not, but let's just say as a theoretical, they were looking for the best outcome.
If you throw it to the market and go, hey, do you think that this would be a good idea?
And everyone can weigh in, you might end up with better results of people going, hey, I don't think you considered this.
Or, hey, I actually just looked over the graphs that you just put out.
I'm a theoretical whatever from MIT and I think here's something you missed.
And they go, oh, shit, we did miss that.
Right.
Right.
Oh, that presupposes that they're interested in the truth.
Well, they're obviously not.
Yes, yes, that's right.
And so, and again, the other thing that the FBI makes clear here is, you know, it's like the same thing you were saying.
They go, oh, they go, oh, we can't force any of these companies to do it.
And it's like, yeah, exactly.
It's the guy, you know, robbing you on the street.
Like, well, I just asked to borrow a dollar.
I just happened to be making a fist while I asked it.
You know, it's like, yeah, no, the FBI coming in and telling you this shit is not just a request, no matter how you try to spin it.
And clearly, again, the evidence is by the fact that when asked about the Hunter Biden story, this is what Zuckerberg tells you.
Well, here's what happened.
The FBI came to us and said this.
And so obviously that throws off everything about how we were going to think about this.
Like, oh, okay, this is fucking, you know, and you could look.
I'm just saying, if you want to try to give the most charitable interpretation of something like this, right?
I know Zuckerberg kind of comes off like he's like, you know, not human and some type of cyborg sent from outer space to change human activity or something.
And maybe he is.
But, you know, you could understand where if the FBI came in and said that and then you went, oh, this, this is the Russians making a fake fucking Hunter Biden laptop story in order to swing the results of the election.
Yeah, we'd want to clamp down on that.
You know what I mean?
Like you wouldn't want to allow a foreign government to come in here and, you know, swing the results of election.
It's just that in reality, if you actually know what's happened here, and now, of course, with the benefit of hindsight being 2020, although I got to say, you know, we knew that we were saying this the week of the Hunter Biden story, the week of it, that it was clear.
There was already enough evidence that this was his computer.
This was not Russian disinformation.
But okay, whatever.
It took the New York Times and the Washington Post another year and a half to come to that conclusion.
But whatever, they all came to it now.
But so when you look back at it, you go, oh, yeah, no, the foreign government that was interfering in the election was the FBI.
That's the foreign government.
And, you know, in the name of protecting against interfering in the election, this is what they did.
Fascist Movement and Burying Stories00:09:46
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There was another clip this week that is seemingly a little bit different, but I think kind of ties into all of this.
But there's also just other interesting things to mention on that.
So let's go to the new press secretary, Carjean-Pierre-Francais, and listen to what she said.
This is, to me, very, very interesting little moment.
Only semi-fascism comment.
Yeah.
Is this something we're going to hear more of?
That phrase?
Is it something the president's going to kind of embrace?
Or is there any sense that it was a little impromptu and it's going to turn into a kind of basket of deplorables thing that he regrets and tries to speak quiet about?
Look, I was very clear when laying out and defining what MAGA Republicans have done.
And you look at the definition of fascism and you think about what they're doing in attacking our democracy, what they're doing in taking away our freedoms, taking away, wanting to take away our rights, our voting rights.
I mean, that is what that is.
It is very clear.
And that's why he made that powerful speech that you heard from him last night.
And he has not shied away from saying that.
All right.
So I found that to be a very interesting and kind of revealing comment.
Jeff Dice, the great Jeff Dice from over at the Mises Institute there, he said, he tweeted it out and said something like he goes, and the pretense is dropped.
You know, and but basically his point has always been that, you know, politics is war by other means, but at least there was always this pretense of like, no, no, no, we represent all the people in all of this.
But it's really something to see the administration calling MAGA, you know, not Trump, but MAGA fascist.
It's like, what who are you talking about?
The 74 million people who voted for Donald Trump?
I guess, you know, nearly half of the voting population, that's who they're, they're all fascists.
So, okay.
Now, by the way, me and you could probably make a stronger, much stronger argument than her that, you know, politicians from both parties could be considered pretty damn fascist.
But this is a little bit different.
This is talking about a huge portion of the country.
And so, so, number one, you're like, wow, that's really quite a it's quite an admission, particularly for the president who ran on this kind of unity message to now be like, oh, no, all of the people who disagree with me politically, they're the fascists.
But it also leads to some other questions, right?
Like keeping this in perspective of the stuff we've been talking about for this whole episode.
So let's say MAGA really represents fascism, right?
And Donald Trump in the year 2020, he's who?
Mussolini?
Hitler?
I mean, the leader of a fascist movement, right?
Okay.
So that's how you see things.
Well, what would you do?
What would you do if a fascist movement was about to take over your country?
By your own admission, that's what you considered this, right?
Would you lie?
Would you maybe use the FBI to undermine that election?
Would you maybe bury a story that was going to help this fascist in the last couple of weeks of an election?
I mean, I don't know.
It seems to me that if you really felt that the other side represented a real fascist movement and you're the good guys, you're the anti-fascist Democrats, maybe you'd be justified in doing anything.
Maybe killing them.
Maybe throwing people in jail for the crime of entering a government building.
Maybe keeping them in solitary confinement for a year.
Maybe subverting an election.
You know what I'm saying?
Like, once you go down this path, if you're going to call this whole, this whole MAGA movement is just a bunch of fascists.
I mean, no, not Dick Cheney and George W. Bush, not Barack Obama, not Joe Biden, but MAGA.
They represent fascists.
It seems like it would probably justify doing any of this shit.
And I think that that's something that we saw throughout the whole, you know, witch hunt to get Donald Trump through the whole fucking coup attempt.
Whenever you would see, you remember when they would get the text messages of like the FBI agents released, like Strzok and all those people, Paige and all the other ones.
That was kind of what would stand out to me.
That these guys felt very much like they were convinced that what Donald Trump represented was this kind of fascist takeover of the United States of America.
And therefore, they felt completely justified in any of the underhanded tactics they were using.
Because it was like, well, I mean, we're saving our constitutional republic or whatever.
You know what I mean?
Like that was what was in their minds.
And this is kind of what's interesting about this mindset here.
It's like, okay, well, if all those other people are so bad, then what are you justified in doing?
My guess would be a lot.
And who knows what more is coming?
I mean, we still seem to be at the beginning of them trying to label people domestic terrorists and create these ministers of truth for the internet and threatening social media companies to take down information.
Like we're at level one of this shit.
Yep.
And that's, that's why, so almost like the question to ponder that I'll leave you with for today's episode, but it's kind of like, what did the press secretary just admit?
Like, what did Mark Zuckerberg just admit?
Really think about this.
What are the implications of all of this?
They really kind of admitted a lot.
And not that, like, those were two fairly short clips, but in there, they both kind of admitted a lot.
And I think they go together.
It's like, oh, yeah, the FBI undermined the election in 2020.
In effect, at least that's what was done.
And oh yeah, we view MAGA as fascist.
So in a sense, we're kind of justified to do that, you know?
And as you point out, Rob, yeah, it's just getting started.
Who knows what the next attempt, what's going to happen here.
I got to say, of course, the biggest story that's happened in one of the biggest stories of my lifetime, definitely the biggest story in the last month was this raid on Donald Trump's house.
And I tend to feel like Merrick Garland is going to have to prosecute Trump.
I think to make such a big move like that and then not bring any charges is going to just look so bad and backfire so hard.
And they all know that, that he's got to bring something and see if it can stick.
That's that's kind of my guess.
I'm guessing, I'm actually guessing the opposite.
Rarely do we disagree?
No, I think that they're going to walk it back and go went through all the materials and we've restored everything that was supposed to go to the library, the library, and move on.
I think that they've tested the public here.
I think that's actually the way they almost do it is that they kind of test to see what storyline they can run with, which is why the story keeps changing of, oh, he had nuclear materials.
And then everyone goes, well, that doesn't make any sense because why'd he let it sit there?
Oh, well, he had classified information.
And people are like, well, that doesn't make any sense.
You're allowed to declassify.
Well, he had things that we still see as being a threat and we're allowed to make that determinate.
It's like, and then they went back to, well, it was classified and they keep kind of like circling around.
And then they self-reference themselves where they go, well, we're most concerned that he might have had materials that could get our assets in trouble.
And then they put out the notes and the notes are redacted.
Why?
Because once again, they don't want to get their assets in trouble.
Then they put out their reason for their redactions and that's redacted.
So there's something very Ponzi scheme circular self-referencing that if I think they had something that was golden, there still could be that they're building a case and he had something terrible.
It's possible.
Everything thus far would seem to indicate that they're phishing and that they're almost trying to see what story they can sell and they don't have anything, which will make makes me think that they might just walk this one back.
Midterms, Phishing, and Classified Notes00:01:16
Yeah, maybe yeah, yeah, right.
After the midterms.
Yeah.
No, you know what?
You might be right about that.
And that is true that they do this kind of thing a lot where they kind of like almost like put their finger in to feel the temperature of the water.
And then it's like, oh, okay, no resistance to that.
All right, we're going to go in further.
And then, like, too much resistance.
Oh, okay, we'll pull back.
And then they'll just kind of wait.
So you might be right about that.
Anyway, I got to say, I completely agree with you.
Whatever it is will be after the midterms.
They'll allow this to hang over the Republicans until then.
But anyway, I'm pretty damn interested to see.
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