John Cardillo examines John Kerry’s alleged 2015 "shadow diplomacy" with Iran, including meetings with Javad Zarif to salvage the nuclear deal while reportedly downplaying Tehran’s plans for five 10-kiloton warheads—far deadlier than Hiroshima’s bomb. Guest Matt Schreier, a Syria veteran, argues Assad’s brutality is preferable to ISIS or Al-Nusra’s chaos, citing Christian families protected under his rule but fleeing as extremists advanced. The episode also critiques Broward County’s ban on the Fort Lauderdale gun show, dismissing claims of lax enforcement amid rigorous ATF checks, and exposes media bias in Black Cube "dirty ops" allegations against Trump’s team, calling it unethical journalism. Ultimately, it questions whether U.S. policy prioritizes stability or ideological purity in volatile regions like Syria. [Automatically generated summary]
Today, on off the cuff declassified, former Secretary of State John Kerry, is he engaging in shadow diplomacy?
Or is he just undermining anything Donald Trump tries to do?
Former hostage of Al-Qaeda's Al-Nusra Front Matt Schreier joins me.
We're going to discuss the growing instability in the Middle East and the psyche behind it.
Also, there were some really big crowds this weekend at a gun show in Broward County, Florida, only about 30 minutes from Parkland.
I was at the show.
I'll tell you what I saw.
And an Israeli private intelligence firm is debunking fake news that aides of Donald Trump hired them to dig up dirt on Obama associates.
Yep.
More fake news debunked on its face.
The weakest, most failed Secretary of State in history is now engaging in shadow diplomacy.
Shadow diplomacy.
John Kerry, Obama's failed Secretary of State, one of the weakest, most inept people to ever hold any office or position in Washington, D.C., is trying to undermine the Trump administration.
Remember, this is a guy who fell off a bike and broke his leg.
This is a guy who rides around on a little girl's bike.
He and Obama both rode around on little girls' bicycles.
Maybe that should be the new rule of U.S. foreign policy.
If you ride a little girl's bike, you're not allowed to negotiate on our behalf.
John Kerry is out there.
This from CNN, the Boston Globe, first ran the story.
I'm going to read you some excerpts from them, but first from CNN.
Former Secretary of State John Kerry has been engaging in shadow diplomacy to try to preserve the Iran nuclear deal.
A major diplomatic achievement of his, according to a new report.
Over the recent months, Kerry has been holding meetings and speaking with big players in the Iran nuclear agreement who, like Kerry, do not want President Trump to withdraw from the U.S. deal, to withdraw the U.S. from the deal, the Boston Globe reported.
Now this from the Boston Globe.
And here's what's one of my favorites.
So Kerry has been meeting with, oh, God, a whole host of bad guys, right?
Let's look at who he's been meeting with.
And let's look.
I always tell you on the show, in an investigation, timeline is everything.
So let's discuss a nuance of this timeline not being picked up on by most in the media.
Kerry sat down at the United Nations, excuse me, with Foreign Minister Javaj Zarif, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, to discuss ways of preserving the pact, limiting Iran's nuclear weapons program.
It's the second time in two months, very important, second time in two months that the two had met to strategize over salvaging the deal they spent years negotiating during the Obama administration, according to a source briefed on the meetings.
Second time in two months.
That's a little bit problematic.
Why is that problematic?
Many of you are going, I know why.
And you do know why.
Because we only found out.
We only found out what Israel had grabbed in that massive intelligence operation last week.
So why was John Kerry frantically meeting with, why was he frantically meeting with the Iranian foreign minister over the course of two months?
Trump hasn't been that vocal on the Iran deal.
He and Macron were sort of middle of the road on it.
Well, maybe we'll scrap it.
Maybe we'll keep it.
Maybe we'll get rid of it totally.
Maybe we'll rewrite it.
Maybe we'll renegotiate it.
They weren't really committed to anything until that Israeli intelligence dropped.
Well, that begs, that begs a really, really troubling question, a really important question, really a game-changing question.
Did John Kerry know that the Iranians were cheating on the deal?
Did John Kerry know the Iranians were enriching nuclear material to weaponize it?
I believe he did.
My personal opinion, I don't have any source information to back that up, but I believe John Kerry knew.
I believe that John Kerry architected this deal to protect Iran's nuclear weapons program because we found out in those documents from the Israelis that Iran themselves said they were looking to enrich and manufacture five warheads, each with a 10-kiloton TNT yield.
That's about equivalent to four to five times the power of bombs we dropped on Hiroshima.
Yes, but they're a 10-kiloton TNT yield, about four to five times what we dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Pretty damn powerful.
They would essentially eradicate Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Riyadh, Amman, Jordan, and pick another city in the region.
Doha Qatar, Kuwait City in Kuwait.
It's very, very troubling.
So is it possible?
Now I'm just throwing out, I'm just hypothesizing here.
I'm just throwing it out.
Is it possible that John Kerry and the Iranians cut a deal where Iran said, okay, we'll limit ourselves to five.
We won't build any more.
We won't put them on ICBMs.
We'll keep them on short to medium range missiles that could only hit the region.
You give us this deal, you give us no inspections.
Is it possible that John Kerry is frantically running around DC and the world, meeting with the Iranians, meeting with the French, meeting with the German president, meeting with members of the EU?
Is it possible that he's doing that to cover his own ass?
Is it possible he's doing that because he doesn't want it to come to light that he knew full well that Iran was enriching uranium for its and plutonium for its nuclear weapons program and not for medical or scientific research?
Like Netanyahu said, you don't bury centrifuges underground if they're for experimenting with medical isotopes.
You just don't do it.
What did Kerry know?
Why is Kerry so frantic?
Previous administrations, especially secretaries of state who are out there making a lot of money on the speaking circuit, Kerry's wife is worth $600 and some odd million dollars.
He's a very wealthy man.
Why is he walking around worried, running around really frantically, like a chicken with his head cut off, worried about this deal unless he's going to be personally implicated in something?
And other members of the Obama administration, maybe Obama himself, Valerie Jarrett, Susan Rice, Ben Rhodes, all the suspects I talk about, why are they running around like chickens with their head cut off trying to preserve this deal unless they're going to be implicated in something disgusting, something filthy, something nefarious, like them knowing Iran was enriching nuclear materials for weaponization, but not telling anyone.
And the U.S. government was helping them hide it.
Even worse, we funded it.
We gave them $1.8 million in cash.
We had another $150 billion coming.
Did the Obama administration cut a deal to fund Iran's nuclear weapons program?
Now, I don't know, but as an investigator, that's where it's taking me.
That's where what's going on, the evidence, the deal itself, the fact that the whole world knows Iran can't be trusted, the Obama administration's just obstinance on defending Iran as being compliant.
Everything about it is leading me.
It's pulling me.
I feel like a magnet.
It's pulling me to investigate John Kerry, what he knew before he sold the world on this deal alongside Barack Obama.
Now, collusion, collusion, collusion.
We hear about collusion, Russia, collusion, collusion, collusion.
The only collusion we keep getting irrefutable proof of is collusions.
It's collusion by Democrats, by members of Team Hillary and Team Obama with bad actors.
We have ironclad proof of Hillary Clinton colluding with Fusion GPS, Glenn Simpson over there, Christopher Steele, who created the dossier, her colluding with people like John Brennan, disgraced, horrible, far-left Obama CIA director, James Comeby.
Andrew McCabe, now both under criminal referral by Congress and or the OIG, to the Department of Justice.
We know Hillary was colluding with Christopher Steele, the foreign spy, who was colluding with Russian actors to create a fake news dossier on Trump.
That's collusion.
We know Hillary Clinton colluded with her law firm, Perkins Coey, to hide campaign money to pay Fusion GPS through that law firm, probably in violation of many, many campaign finance laws.
No prosecution.
I mean, the Clintons can do anything.
They could kill people in Times Square on New Year's Eve, and they'd get away with it at this point.
Disgraceful.
Disgraceful.
And now we know, we have irrefutable proof that John Kerry, former Secretary of State, Secretary of State weak failed, is colluding with Iran.
We know it.
It's irrefutable proof.
He's colluding with Iran.
It's terrible.
Now, the CNN story, the Boston Globe story, I'm sorry, goes on to say, the rare moves by a former Secretary of State highlight the stakes for Kerry personally, as well as for other Obama-era diplomats who are dismayed by what they see as Trump's disruptive approach to diplomacy.
Nobody cares what they think.
They're no longer in power.
They failed.
They failed.
Of course, CNN is doing their bidding.
Now, this is from Michael O'Hanlon, a foreign policy expert at the Brookings Institution.
He says, quote, it is unusual for a former Secretary of State to engage in foreign policy like this as an actual diplomat and quasi-negotiator.
Well, it's not unusual, Michael.
It's inappropriate, unprecedented, and probably, probably highly illegal.
Now, they go on to talk about Ernest Moniz.
Part of the equation is if Ernie, former U.S. Energy Secretary, who has hair like he's in some kind of, I don't know, he looks like one of Willy Wonka's employees at the chocolate factory or some kind of Hans Christian Anderson character.
I don't really know what his deal is.
Ernest Moniz, the former secretary, or John, meaning John Kerry, made a bold statement.
Trump is crazy and he might do the opposite just to spite.
Oh, this wasn't from O'Hanlon at Brookings.
Trump is crazy and he might do the opposite just despite them.
You're liable to spur this guy in a direction.
You don't want him to go in a direction.
You don't want him to go in just to be spiteful, said one source who has worked with Kerry.
Give me a break.
No, no, nobody's being spiteful.
Kerry's policy failed.
And like I said, it might be illegal.
And the crime would be 18 U.S. Code 953, more commonly known as the Logan Act.
Private correspondence with foreign governments.
Let me read you the Logan Act.
Any citizen of the United States, John Kerry, wherever he may be, who, without authority of the United States, John Kerry, directly or indirectly commences or carries on any correspondence or intercourse,
intercourse and being used in a different context in terms of communication here, with any foreign government or any officer or agent thereof with the intent to influence the measures of conduct of any foreign government or of any officer or agent thereof.
It's exactly what John Kerry is doing.
Letter of the law.
Now, morons say, well, General Flynn did that with Sergei Kislyak, and that's why he was investigated.
General Flynn was the National Security Advisor elect.
He was allowed to have those conversations.
He was allowed to have pre-meetings on policy.
John Kerry is not.
So, with any foreign government or of any officer or agent thereof in relation to any disputes or controversies with the United States or to defeat the measures of the United States, shall be fined under this title or in prison not more than three years or both.
This section shall not abridge the right of a citizen to apply himself or his agent to any foreign government or agents thereof for redress of any injury which he may have sustained from such government or any of its agents or subject.
Meaning, you can sue a foreign government.
So you can meet with a foreign lawyer to sue that government.
Can't collude and you can't engage in foreign policy that undermines the U.S.
Now, the Logan Act is thrown around.
Oh, you violated the Logan Act or you violated the Hatch Act.
You used your office to campaign.
Those terms, though, those laws are thrown around.
They're bantered around, and most people don't understand what they mean.
Not in this case.
This is exactly what John Kerry is doing.
So let me read it again, really quickly.
Any citizen of the United States, John Kerry, wherever he may be, whether it's at the United Nations in New York or in Europe, without authority of the United States, which John Kerry does not have, who directly or indirectly commences or carries on any correspondence or intercourse with any foreign government or any officer or agent thereof.
John Kerry, by his own admission, met with Yavid Zaraf, the Iranian foreign minister, twice.
Okay?
So right now he has satisfied every element of the statute with the intent to influence the measures or conduct of any foreign government or of any officer or agent thereof, meeting with them so that they put pressure on the United States.
He's meeting with Iran to influence their conduct towards the United States in relation to any disputes or controversies with the United States.
We're in a dispute over the Iran deal or to defeat the measures of the United States.
Trump wants to scrap the deal.
John Kerry is working to preserve the deal.
They'll be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years or both.
It is a, this is one of the easiest charges.
As a guy who was in law enforcement, telling you, this would be one of the easiest charges for federal law enforcement to level with John Kerry's own words, actions, and paper trail.
Doesn't even need to be an investigation.
He made the case for them.
If only we had an attorney general who was willing to act like one, if only Jeff Sessions would charge John Kerry with the Logan Act violation tomorrow, today.
But I fear we don't.
And I fear that morons like John Kerry are going to keep getting away with this.
It's an absolute disgrace.
What he is doing is subverting the United States of America, and he needs to be charged under 18 U.S. Code 953, the Logan Act.
John Kerry needs to be criminally charged today.
With all the volatility going on in the Middle East, John Kerry out there trying to engage in shadow diplomacy, and now Israel saying they have intelligence that Iran wants to launch missiles into their nation in retaliation for the strikes in Syria.
Iran's Threatening Retaliation00:04:51
We see many, many experts, put experts in quotes, out there on cable news, broadcast news, digital, radio, giving us advice.
But I wanted to talk to somebody who's been around the bad guys, been around the bad guys in an intimate way that he wished he hadn't.
Matthew Schreier, author of the Dawn Prayer, first American to ever escape al-Qaeda custody after seven months.
You've seen Matt on the show before when he told us his story.
Now I want to bring Matt in as a subject matter expert on the region.
Did a lot of work in Syria as a photojournalist prior to being captured.
Matt, thanks for being here.
Thanks for having me.
My pleasure.
Let's jump right in.
The strikes on Syria, positive, negative, did they help?
Did they do damage?
Did they make no net difference?
What's your opinion of those in regards to, well, let's go back a step.
Assad using the gas.
A lot of people say they don't believe it was Assad using the gas.
What's your take on that?
You were there on the ground.
I've seen no evidence in this case that it was him.
In previous cases, like the last one, which was way out in Idlib province, that was most likely him because you figure why would the jihadis smuggle gas all the way to the east to do something like that.
But in this case, the gas attack came in an area after he already won.
In eastern Ghouta, he basically took that area after like five years of it being besieged.
So there was really no point, militarily speaking, for him to do a gas attack.
I'm not saying it wasn't him.
I'm just saying I haven't seen any evidence.
You haven't seen any evidence being here.
No.
Let's run on the premise that it was him.
What would his end game have been there if he already gained ground?
Would it have been to do the bidding of Iran?
Would it have been maybe there was an insurgency rising up there?
What would have been?
You've been on the ground all over that country.
You know Syria better than many intelligence and special operations people I talked to because of the way you were able to navigate without restrictions.
What would the end game for him be?
Were it Assad who launched the gas?
In this one case, in this one case.
In this one case, I mean, the only thing that I can think of is just basically thumbing his nose at the international community saying that he's basically going to do what he wants.
It's his country.
They're his weapons.
And if he wants to launch gas, he'll launch gas, even if he doesn't need to.
I mean, that's the only logical explanation there is for it.
All right.
So the strikes.
We struck Iranian assets.
We struck some Syrian weapons facilities.
Does it make a difference?
Does it get Assad to look to the U.S. and think twice about what he's doing?
Does he move closer to Iran?
Again, you were on the ground there.
You dealt with the free Syrian army who were fighting his people.
You also dealt with Syrian army regulars when you were incarcerated.
Well, you were held hostage, really, held captive.
And you told me on the show last time that they treated you pretty well.
They were professional soldiers.
What does this do for Assad with regards to does he say, hey, I've got to cooperate with the rest of the world or I need to get cozier with Iran and Russia?
I think both.
I mean, in one regard, you know, there were multiple factors of that question.
But in terms of like, do we do damage?
No.
I mean, we're always going to give Russia a heads up, and Russia's always going to give them a heads up.
So, in terms of casualties and whatnot, it's always going to be limited, if not none.
And, you know, my friends who live over there, who I was locked up with, you know, they said they were laughing at the strikes.
They didn't do anything.
They didn't count on anyone.
But on the flip side, at least it shows that we have a president who's going to act.
He's going to live up to his word.
You know, you look at Barack Obama drawing a red line in disappearing ink and everything that happened after he made that statement.
You know, after he said there's a red line if you use chemical weapons and he did nothing, Putin moved in and took over the skies.
And now there's no getting rid of him.
You had ISIS form the Islamic State, their own country.
So when you don't back up your words with action, there are consequences.
So in this case, at least there were consequences.
Whether they were serious or not is not the issue.
But maybe that was the plan, right?
Send a message, say, I'm going to act, but not kill anybody in the process.
You know, destroy some material objects.
Right.
Don't kill anyone and then see if he doesn't get the message.
It was a polite, it was a really polite way to bomb somebody.
Yeah, it was a polite, expensive way to bomb somebody, right?
Message to give somebody.
But at the end of the day, it accomplished the goal.
Like he knows that there are going to be consequences for his actions.
All right.
So when you were held hostage by Al-Qaeda, the Albanians were front.
But in many respects, it was an unusual captor-captive relationship because they would actually share things with you.
A Polite, Expensive Way to Bomb00:03:32
You got to literally inside.
the inner workings of their organization.
The other groups in the area at the time that were the predominant insurgent factions were ISIS and the Free Syrian Army, correct?
And Ahadar Sham was another major power in the area.
Okay, what influence, if any, did Iran have on them?
Was Iran giving them any material support, financial support, military advisory support, or were they exclusively working with the Assad regime?
No, no, they hate, they hate Iran, the guys that I was with.
You know, Iran is exclusively with the regime in Hezbollah, which are their enemies.
So the guys funding Al-Qaeda and ISIS most likely are Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the nations that are against the regime.
So there's that line.
Yeah.
So the speculation that Saudi Arabia has always played both sides of the fence with us, you saw firsthand as being accurate.
Well, I mean, I didn't see it, but I presume, and Qatar, I pretty much know because they negotiated the deal for my cellmate.
And if you could pick up the phone and call the bad guys and do something like that, obviously you have a relationship with them.
And just to clarify for the audience, your cellmate was in Theo, what was his last name?
Theo Curtis.
Theo Curtis.
He eventually, Qatar brokered a deal where his release was secured with money, right?
Yeah, well, I mean, he's never admitted that.
They say a humanitarian act, but I know a little better.
You know, what people at home need to realize is when you keep somebody alive for 22 months, you have to feed them.
You have to shelter them.
You want to get a return on your investment.
Yeah, and they're not going to hand him over as a humanitarian act for Barack Obama, who's the one who needed the political victory five days after James Foley died.
That's right.
That's right.
They cut the deal for Theo Curtis right after Foley was beheaded.
Right, right.
So, I mean, you look at the timing, it was, and then, you know, John Kerry is proclaiming him a victory for America, even though he knew the guy was basically a traitor.
So you're talking about Curtis.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And you look at the Obama administration, you know, that's like a common theme where they bring home traders and portray them as victories.
And a lot of this is in your book, Don Prayer.
Building to read.
The book is outstanding.
I'm two-thirds of the way through, man.
With my schedule, I read it.
I got two-thirds through, and then my schedule got insane.
I have to find a Saturday to finish it.
But it really is a fascinating read because you knock out the first.
Well, you can knock out the whole book in a weekend if you've got the time to do it.
You really can.
It's a very, very quick read.
But a lot of this is detailed in the book.
And we're going to be, you and I are going to be doing another segment where we talk about all of the discrepancy that Theo Curtis had given the mainstream media as opposed to what he's then said while on tour.
I'm going to invite Theo on the show to refute or to confirm these things that he said.
So it's going to be an interesting segment for the audience coming up.
But I want to go back because you brought up John Kerry.
It's really important.
So now John Kerry is out there engaging in this, what he calls shadow, or other people are calling shadow diplomacy with Iran to try to get Iran to preserve this Iran deal, to get Iran to put pressure on the U.S. Give me a little bit about the psyche, the Muslim psyche, the psyche of a state sponsor of terror, in many respects, or a state sponsor of a group like Hezbollah.
They've got to be looking at John Kerry.
You and I have had these conversations offline.
John Kerry's Shadow Diplomacy00:10:44
These people don't respect weakness, right?
I mean, they've got to be looking at Kerry as some kind of patsy that they can roll over.
Pretty much, man.
I mean, that's the goal of Iran here, is to get as much as they can from us without giving anything.
And, you know, they're never going to keep their word, ever.
I mean, they're the, I mean, look, they're the biggest sponsor of terror in the world.
Okay, and we're cutting deals, billion-dollar deals with these people, and they're not showing us anything in return.
And, you know, that's the psyche of, you know, any third world country who's trying to be a power.
Right.
You know what I mean?
They're always going to try to cut deals, but they're never going to honor them.
I mean, you know, just look at history.
It's written.
let me ask you this though so what was the explain really quickly for the audience matt what the goals of the four factions It was the Free Syrian Army, Free Syrian Army, ISIS, on loose in front of Al-Qaeda.
And the other group you mentioned was called the... Aharasham?
Ahar Hashem, yeah.
Were they all trying to occupy as much of Syria as possible?
Was that the ultimate end game for each one?
Well, I mean, at first they were united, then they started splitting up and fighting with each other.
But yeah, they all wanted, like, El-Nosa wants their own Emirate.
They want to basically turn Idlib promise province into their own country.
ISIS just wanted to, you know, take as much as possible.
You know, we all know what they wanted.
The Kurds, you know, you have them too.
We have risen up since then.
They want their own country.
You have the Turks who want to get rid of the Kurds and clear the border out.
It's, you know, it's ridiculous.
And then you have the government fighting pretty much all of them with Iran and Hezbollah.
And there are all these other factions too.
I mean, there's the Army of Islam.
But I mean, where I was in the north, those were like the main factions at the time.
But I mean, yeah, they all want their own country.
But we've seen, we watch, you know, we, the audience, I'm sure you do as well.
We watch cable news, we read stories on the web, we listen to talk radio, and we hear all these experts saying, well, we've got these plans on how to stabilize Syria, post this wake-up call, bombing run, missile strike.
And it involves bringing Turkey into the fold and getting Iran to abandon the Shia Crescent.
And it all sounds very, very good.
But you were there.
You were listening to these guys talk from the inside, the insurgents.
You were able to hear what intelligence they were gathering about the Assad regime because they really didn't think you were a threat, right?
They didn't know you were a Jewish guy from Long Island.
They thought you were the German Christian American photographer who was being a good hostage and not trying to make too many waves, but for one escape attempt.
So it got to a point, you told me, where they started to be relatively free in front of you with the things they said.
Are these solutions?
Well, go ahead.
I'm sorry.
No, I mean, you know, they didn't share their plans with me, but they shared their opinions and their thoughts.
But in regards, so what was the exact question?
Well, what I was going to say was, so with regards to these theories or these plans, these strategic concepts floated by these experts, what is the likelihood of getting Iran to abandon the Shia Crescent?
What is the likelihood of bringing Turkey into the fold to stabilize the region?
Because to me, some of these proposals, they look great on paper, but they seem undoable practically.
Well, I mean, getting Iran to do anything is pretty much impossible.
You know, they've never listened to anybody.
Turkey, they hate the Kurds so much.
The only way you're ever really going to get their cooperation is if you side against the Kurds, because that's their enemy.
That's the whole reason why they're there.
I mean, they didn't care what was going on in Syria until the Kurds started building up a presence on their border.
And they were like, hey, you know, we're not going to let this happen.
And then they moved in with the tanks and whatnot.
And, you know, when I was in Turkey, you know, I would, you, you, you would turn on the TV and see Kurds protesting peacefully, and they would just move in with like the riot squash and start tear gassing them.
Yeah, cracking skulls, right?
I mean, yeah, yeah, literally, literally, like these peaceful protesters.
So they have been suppressed for a long time, the Kurds.
So the Turks do have a lot to worry about in that regard if they set up their own country.
So they are never going to settle for anything that, you know, builds up a Turkish legitimizes the Kurds and brings them to the table in a meaningful sense.
It also gives the Kurds some territory.
So Turkey would object to that until the end of time.
Right.
Yeah.
They're never ever going to go along with that.
So as long as you know, as long as we're backing the Kurds, which creates the problem.
So, you know, that's.
Turkey mean a NATO country.
The Kurds, Turkey's pissed off at us because we're NATO, they're NATO.
We're backing the Kurds.
The whole thing's a mess, right?
So what you're saying is we'd have to completely abandon the Kurds to get Turkey to the table.
But then it's, you know, questionable whether they would come to the table anyway, no?
That's always questionable, but it's not like we haven't abandoned the Kurds before.
No, absolutely.
You know, but look what we did in Desert Store.
We encouraged them to rise up.
They did.
Saddam gassed like 5,000 of them, and we just pretty much didn't do anything.
But I'm not saying that's what we should do now.
But it's just, yeah, no, the whole country's a mess.
And then, you know, you have all these other different factions.
You have the government and, you know, people like Hillary Clinton who are like, yeah, we should, you know, we need to get rid of Assad and this and that.
And it's just like, look, his military is fiercely loyal to him.
Yeah.
By the way, you know, tomorrow, if anybody watches this in the mainstream media, tomorrow, the New York Times headline is going to be Schreier recommends abandoning the Kurds.
Yeah, exactly.
Exactly.
They'll be cherry-picking my lines.
But so anyway, so yeah, no, as far as, you know, when people are like, you got to get rid of the Assad, got to get rid of Assad.
His military is fiercely loyal to him.
That's what people leave out of all these conversations.
And the only way to get rid of a dictator whose military is fiercely loyal is to go in and remove him.
And we already tried that in Iraq and it didn't really work out for us.
So in this case, you know, as terrible as he is.
That's a great point.
Let's go, let's dissect that a little bit.
Why is his military fiercely loyal?
Is it out of fear?
Is he heavy hand dissenters, or is it out of that he just maintains stability in the country for them?
Why are they so loyal?
You sat with these guys, right?
These guys, you were in Israel.
You gotta know these guys very, very well.
How many of them were there in there with you?
There were 18.
All right, this is high-quality intelligence, 18 soldiers.
Why are they so loyal to him?
Well, there are different reasons.
One is that they were all Alawi, which is a Shia sect of Islam.
And, you know, the Sunnis hate them.
They hate them.
They're like 10% of the population in Syria.
Bashar Assad is an Alawi.
So, you know, if they lost their dictator, they'd be facing genocide and basically, you know, deportation and stuff like that.
Tribalism and personal survival in some respects.
Partially, but a lot of his military is also Sunni.
Like, they threw a general in with us at one point who was a Sunni, and he was fiercely loyal to him as well.
And that is where what you just said comes into play, where it's like stability.
Like, they know that he brings a certain level of stability to the country without being too extreme.
So, I mean, under Assad, before all this happened, you know, women could walk around wearing makeup.
They sold alcohol.
They could smoke cigarettes.
You know what I mean?
Had basic freedoms that they know are gone the second the FSA or the extremists take over because let's face it, if the FSA takes over, the extremists are going to bump them out and take over anyway.
So they know that it's either Assad or basically Baghdad.
Or they turn into Iraq, right?
And Babdadi takes over somebody like him, right?
Somebody like him, Golani, who's the head of Al-Noshra.
So it's either you're with extremists or you have this guy, Assad, who, let's face it, he's not ideal.
But as far as we go and Israel goes, the guy knows his place.
You know, Israel flies in there every couple of, what, weeks, months, drops a bunch of bombs and goes home and he never does anything.
No, yeah, he doesn't want he talks stuff, but he doesn't want to dust it up.
But Israel, but you know what's interesting is that, you know, you know he's a bad guy.
You know he gasses his own people.
You know he aligns with bad actors.
But I've got a friend, a guy who, American guy, but he's Syrian and very successful family.
Both of his parents are doctors.
Very, very well off.
He's an attorney.
He was born.
He and his sister were born here and his brother.
But his parents are from Damascus.
And his mother was an Olympic swimmer and basketball player.
Secular Muslim.
His dad was a Christian.
Not only, you know, when they dated, there was no problem, right?
I mean, the country had been relatively stable.
His relatives only left when ISIS started to grow.
They were living in Damascus.
They were physicians, attorneys, they were CPAs.
They were living very, very well.
All Christian, the Christian side of his family, protected by Assad.
They had no problem.
When ISIS started to proliferate, they then moved to Dubai.
They were pretty well off.
They had money stashed other places because they knew Syria wasn't the most, I mean, it's stable in terms of Middle East ability.
So they fled to Dubai.
But they said, well, they lived in Damascus.
They never felt in fear of their lives.
They only started to feel fear once ISIS started to gain a foothold in the country.
And so it's a conundrum for the U.S. in many respects.
Yes, but I mean, these are facts that a lot of people don't know.
Like, Christians were protected, and they weren't only protected.
They were welcomed.
Like in the coastal cities, Tlatakia and Tartus, where most of the guys I was with were from, you know, they celebrate Christmas with their Christian neighbors.
Really?
The Aloui.
Yeah, the Alouis.
Like, I got a text from my friend Ali, who I was locked up with, wishing me a Merry Christmas this year.
Was he a soldier?
Yeah, he's an Alouey, and he's a soldier.
He's an Aloue, and he sent me a text like wishing me a Merry Christmas, saying that, you know, we're celebrating right now.
Because, you know, Jesus was one of their prophets.
Right, right.
So they, so they, so they're very, very open to that.
You know, they have, they say, you know, some of us have Christmas trees.
We love Christmas over here.
So yeah, I mean, they were very open-minded about stuff like that.
And, you know, it's a shame that more people don't know about it because, you know, maybe they'd be like, all right, you know what?
Dropped Gas Negotiations00:03:18
He's still a bastard, this Assad, but, you know, what's the alternative?
And that's the question.
That's what's so tough.
That's the question.
Right, about Syria.
You know what?
Look, I'm a hardliner in many respects.
And I talked to this friend of mine who's a pretty conservative guy, but his family lived it firsthand.
And, you know, I hate to sound elitist, Matt, but it carries weight when you've got a family that's wealthy, that was very prosperous, who left because of ISIS.
They didn't leave because of Assad.
And they had the means to go anywhere they wanted in the world.
It does make you think that, hey, maybe we have to examine letting bad actors be bad in their own countries if they can create stability in the world.
But my problem with Assad, where I keep coming back and saying, you know, the reason I can't fully get there is his coziness with Russia and Iran.
So tell me this.
What do you think we could do?
Now, just from what you've heard, I know you don't ever profess to be a foreign policy expert.
What do you think we could do to get him to back away from them and start listening to us a little bit more?
I mean, I think the time for that might be past.
Putin's a little suave like that.
You know, he's been giving them so much support for so many years to get them to abandon him for us is kind of, you know, I don't think it's really possible.
But I mean, in terms of, I mean, he just screwed himself with the gas.
Right.
You know what I mean?
Like before he dropped the gas, I would have had a whole bunch of answers for you on this.
But once you drop gas, and like I said, I haven't seen evidence to this, but I haven't seen evidence that he didn't do it either.
And he's done it in the past.
So it points strongly to him.
It makes it really impossible for us to negotiate with him openly under the table is the only way I would say that we should do it because, like I said, once you drop gas, you can't really negotiate with somebody in today's day and age.
But in terms of that, we can talk to Russia.
We can talk to Iran.
I mean, we're talking to North Korea for Christ's sake.
So, I mean, honestly, and whether we like it or not, Iran is a regional power over there.
Their intelligence is off the charts and their reach is extremely long.
So it suits us to maybe have conversations with them and Russia off the same table to figure out how to rein this in because the war, if you pay attention, is coming.
I'm not going to say coming to an end, but I mean, Assad is definitely wrapping things up.
He's winning.
He's winning, and he's doing it in a way where every time he takes an area, everyone surrenders.
They put him on buses and they ship him over to the Idlib province.
And basically, he's corralling all the bad guys into one area.
And eventually he's going to be in a position where he can just bomb the hell out of it and get rid of all.
He's going to gas him again.
He's going to wind up doing either gas or just a straight-up bombing campaign that doesn't end until pretty much they surrender.
Yeah, until everybody's dead or surrendering.
And, you know, that's where we're heading.
So he's going to remain in power no matter what.
And people need to get used to that.
So, you know, it's going to take everybody coming to the table.
And, you know, like I said, with the Turks and the Kurds, you know, it's Game of Thrones over there.
Fort Lauderdale Gun Show00:11:27
Yeah, Matt, I think this is going to be something to walk.
And I want to bring you back on soon.
Let's do it later this week or early next.
I really want to talk about the discrepancy in Theo Curtis's claims to the New York Times and was back in 2014 and what he said on the speaking circuit since.
He reminds me, he reminds me a lot of James Comey right now with the things he's told me.
And so I want to see if we can get him on.
You want to get him on and see if we can't, A, figure out the truth.
And if the New York Times didn't invent any of this, I would love to be able to call them out on more fake news.
That would be awesome.
So let's plan on doing that in the next few days.
No problem, Ed.
All right.
Thanks, Matt.
always a pleasure.
As I mentioned before on the show, my home and the studio here are both about 25-35 minutes from Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.
So that shooting, that massacre really hit home for me.
In fact, I know many people from the conservative political movement down here who were personally affected.
I know some people whose kids went to the school.
A very good friend of mine, I've had him on the show in the past, former Navy SEAL, who's been a national security expert on the show.
And he's a personal friend.
His son was actually a graduate of the school.
He graduated last year.
He was sitting in the parking lot when the shooting took place.
His girlfriend, a senior, was inside the school.
Luckily, they were okay and they carried out one of the wounded.
He ran into the school, as you'd expect the son of a former Navy SEAL to do, and they carried out one of their wounded friends, another student.
And so I know many, many people affected by it.
So believe me, it wasn't lost on me.
But I was still very, very incensed.
And the Broward County Commission held hearings to eliminate the Fort Lauderdale gun show held in Fort Lauderdale at the War Memorial Auditorium.
And that's literally just a couple of neighborhoods over from where I live.
It's maybe two, two and a half miles down the road, if that, from my home, five-minute drive.
And it's something I really enjoy doing.
So the gun show went down just this past weekend, the last two days.
I went on Saturday and I picked up a nifty little new toy, a little AR-15 pistol.
But I wanted to go because I wanted to see, A, if there were going to be protesters, B, how big the crowd would be.
And C, just wanted to see what new gear was out there.
And so I decided to go very early, well, relatively early on Saturday morning.
I got over there about 10.30, 11.
I thought the doors opened at 11.
They had opened a little earlier.
And typically when I go that time in the morning, it's not yet that crowded.
It typically gets crowded the show after one o'clock, noon, one.
Their concealed weapons class starts about two, and you see people start filtering in lunchtime right after lunch.
Not this past Saturday.
I got there, like I said, a little before 11 a.m. and the parking lot was packed.
I had a park rows, 567 rows back from where I normally do.
That show comes into town every few months.
It was packed, packed.
Inside was packed.
You could barely squeeze through the aisles.
There were only a few protesters on the sidewalk outside.
Somewhat of an increased police presence.
And the Florida Sun Sentinel, the paper of record for Fort Lauderdale, Broward County, said they did a story on it.
And I think the story with its slant, Parkland slant, was pretty accurate in terms of crowd size.
They said gun lovers flocked to Fort Lauderdale's gun show on Saturday, knowing its days may be numbered because the county commission wants to do away with it.
But it's ridiculous because you know what I saw in that gun show?
There were white people.
There were black people.
There were Hispanic people.
There were Asian people.
There were Muslims in hijabs.
There were people of all religions, all creeds, all races.
I saw a gay couple holding hands, looking at handguns.
You know what I didn't see?
No one was discriminated against.
Nobody was angry.
Everybody was polite.
Everybody got along.
People were chatting.
People were buying guns.
People were looking at the gear.
They were looking at ammo.
I saw kids in strollers.
I saw two people who were paraplegics in wheelchairs.
There were all kinds of people there.
I would say a quarter of the crowd, if not a third of the crowd, were women.
And like I said, many families walking around with their kids.
You know, young sons and daughters, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, looking at that first 22 rifle.
It was an everyday American activity.
The show is held, like I said, every other month or so.
It's held about seven, eight times a year, the Fort Lauderdale show at the War Memorial.
And really from the studio where I sit, it's only about two miles down the road.
It draws a nice crowd.
The police are there, but they don't bother you.
They're just chatting outside, kind of hanging around.
They're there.
I'm really more to deal with traffic control and just in case anything happens.
But they're incredibly polite.
And if you bring a firearm in, you can't bring a loaded gun in.
And if you bring in a firearm to have it repaired or looked at or sold or traded, the police inspect it, make sure it's unloaded, and they put a zip tie around the trigger.
So this notion that a bunch of, you know, weirdo right-wingers carrying loaded guns around the room with a million other guns, it's simply not true.
It's a false narrative.
I bought a firearm.
Was there some gun show loophole?
Was I able to take that gun, you know, look both ways and shove it in a paper bag and leave?
No.
When I bought that gun, I had to sit down with the dealer.
I had to show him my concealed weapons license and my driver's license.
The process is now automated.
Some of the dealers still make you write out the form.
The dealer I purchased from actually had a new software that links right to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives.
So I entered all my information on the form digitally.
He submits my information electronically, and there's a queue.
And in about five minutes, my background check had been run.
Everything was done.
And a little message came back approved.
He got a control number.
I was able to buy my gun.
But I underwent the background check.
I underwent all the paperwork.
In fact, my driver's license has my previous address on it.
So this dealer was so thorough that he actually had me digitally find a utility bill.
And I found a utility bill from the government, my water bill from the city in which I live.
And he had me PDF that on my phone and send it to him so he could attach that as a backup.
So he could say, okay, well, his driver's license has one address, which is fine, but this guy just wanted to be extra careful.
But he's renewing his license is up for renewal in a couple of months.
Here's the current address.
All the paperwork matches.
And after doing all that, I was able to take my gun home with me, but only because I have a concealed weapons license.
Had I not had a concealed weapons license, I would have had to wait five days to go pick my gun up.
And so I wouldn't have been able to pick it up until later this week.
So the gun show loophole is a silly, silly thing.
That refers to, that doesn't really exist, face-to-face sales that are very, very rare.
In fact, many of the gun shows now don't allow you to engage in those kinds of transactions while they're renting the property.
They basically say, look, if you want to do that, you have to be off our grounds to do it.
We don't want that happening on our grounds.
We want everybody to follow dealer rules.
And those dealer federal firearms license rules are filling out the paperwork.
And I was very encouraged.
Now, county commissioners informally agreed in April, about a month ago, April 3rd, from the Sun Sentinel, that gun shows will not continue past November.
That's when the gun show promoters, the host's license expires with the city of Fort Lauderdale.
And this guy, Dean Trintalis, the new mayor of Fort Lauderdale, I live in Fort Lauderdale, he's wrong.
He says, quote, I fully respect the right of people to own guns.
I just don't feel we should have a gun show in the middle of Holiday Park, a playground where children play soccer, volleyball, and baseball, end quote.
But he's wrong.
He's not being honest.
The park is a good 200 yards behind where the auditorium is.
100 yards to the fence, 200, 300 yards to the fields.
So it's not in the middle of the park.
It's literally around a major intersection and a good drive or a very long walk behind the auditorium.
The parking for the gun show, the ingress and egress, is the other direction from the park.
And so his assertion that this gun show is in the middle of a park is simply not true.
Just another Democrat who lies.
Another Democrat who's lying.
Now, families were bringing children to the gun show, and the mayor of Fort Lauderdale, my mayor, unfortunately, says, wow, what can I say?
I don't know how to respond to that.
How about responding by saying it's none of my business what families do with their children?
Because it's their family and their children.
Now, while all this is happening, of course, the liberal left will never tell you that gun shows are family activities where nobody goes to buy guns illegally and shoot places up.
Hollywood is still lying because the NRA convention went down this week.
The NRA convention went down this week in Dallas.
And actress Alyssa Milano showed up in downtown Dallas to protest downtown Dallas to protest the NRA.
An RA member, Will Haraway, asked Milano's security if he was armed, and the man wasn't amused.
The man, Milano's armed security guard, said, I'm going to ask you to leave, who's a big guy.
And he's this close into this guy, Will Haraway's face, pushing him, armed and pushing him out of a public park.
Now, is Alyssa Milano the president?
Why is Alyssa Milano allowed to have people, law-abiding gun owners, who are lawfully asking questions in a park, physically strong-armed out of that park by armed guards?
The guard said, I'm going to need you on the sidewalk.
The guy started saying, then the crowd started saying, hypocrite, Alyssa, you're a hypocrite.
You have armed security.
Now, Alyssa Milano and her friends were sitting there denouncing guns, denouncing guns, while Alyssa Milano's security strong-armed people and pushed them out of the park, her armed security detail.
If that's not the height of liberal hypocrisy, what in the world is?
But that's what liberals are about.
That's what they're about.
They want to lie to you.
They want you to have rules that they don't impose on themselves.
And I can tell you this: I'm going to work very, very hard, very, very hard to preserve the gun show in Fort Lauderdale.
I think our county commission is engaging in knee-jerk, reactionary policy.
The show was packed.
Estimates are it drew 5,000 to 7,000 people.
I enjoy it.
I live here.
I pay taxes.
I'm a resident.
I don't want the far left, the far left to dictate the policy.
Hundreds on the far left dictating policy that affects thousands of us.
And so we need to fight very hard to preserve American institutions like gun shows around the country.
But I can tell you, I was there firsthand.
The crowd was calm, going about their business, all races, all religions, all sexual orientations.
Trump Team Hired Private Investigators00:05:11
A group of Americans who got together for one purpose, to enjoy their Second Amendment, their constitutional rights.
More fake news about Team Trump debunked.
Now, last week, The Guardian wrote a story, revealed Trump team hired spy firm for dirty ops on Iran arms deal.
And the story said that aides to Donald Trump, the U.S. president hired an Israeli private intelligence agency to orchestrate a dirty ops campaign against key individuals from the Obama administration who helped negotiate the Iran nuclear deal.
The observer can reveal President Trump's camp contacted private investigators to get dirt on Ben Rhodes.
And the story went on and on and on.
New York Times picked up on it.
Washington Post picked up on it.
CNN picked up on it.
Oh my God, the Trump campaign is worse than Hillary Clinton, even though it wouldn't have been because he's sitting president and he can use whoever he wants to dig up dirt on people that are undermining his foreign policy as John Kerry has been.
Well, Story said, Story went on to say, And this is where it gets really good.
Sources said that officials linked to Trump's team contacted investigators days after Trump visited Tel Aviv a year ago.
It's going over a year.
His first foreign tour as U.S. president.
Trump promised things to Netanyahu.
A source with details of the Dirty Tricks campaign said the idea was that people acting for Trump would discredit those who are pivotal in selling the deal, making it easier to pull out of it.
We don't need, we don't need to discredit Team Obama.
They do it themselves.
Investigators were told to contact prominent Iranian Americans as well as pro-deal journalists from the New York Times, MSNBC television, the Atlantics, the Vox website, and Haretz, the Israeli left-leaning Israeli newspaper, among others, who had frequent contact with Rhodes and Kahl in an attempt to establish whether they had violated any protocols by sharing sensitive intelligence.
They are believed to have looked at comments made by Rhodes in a 2016 New York Times profile in which he admitted relying on inexperienced reporters to create an echo chamber that helped sway public opinion to secure the deal.
Well, seems like a pretty elaborate black ops, dirty ops operation by Trump team, right?
They discredit Ben Rhodes and Hillary Clinton and John Kerry and Barack Obama and Susan Rice and Samantha Power and all the other people around Team Obama who worked on this disastrous Iran deal.
Well, the only problem is none of it ever happened.
None of it ever happened because Horetz, one of the newspapers, one of the outlets that was cooperating with Ben Rhodes in selling the Iran deal, had to report, had to walk this back and report, quote, Israeli spy firm Black Cube denies Trump AIDS hired it to discredit ex-Obama officials.
A private intelligence company, however, does not deny or confirm that it was hired by Harvey Weinstead.
It goes on to say, Israeli private intelligence company Black Cube strongly denied on Sunday that it was hired by, this is just yesterday, that it was hired by aides to U.S. President Donald Trump to spy on former Obama administration officials.
And also Newsmax ran the story and ran with it a little bit in more detail.
Quote, Black Cube, this is from Black Cube, the intelligence firm, quote, BlackCube has no relation whatsoever to the Trump administration, to Trump AIDS, to anyone close to the administration or to the Iran nuclear deal.
Anyone who claims otherwise is misleading their readers and viewers.
Wow.
More fake news revealed.
Now, you would have thought at The Guardian, The Observer, The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, Horetz, and all these other outlets would have contacted Black Cube for this statement before running the initial story, right?
But no.
No.
They were far more interested, far more interested in spreading fake news than they will, fake news that would malign the Donald Trump team, Donald Trump's team, the Donald Trump administration, that would preserve the Iran deal, that would paint John Kerry and Barack Obama in a good light while smearing Trump.
They would much rather run that than fact check because walking back a story gets far more press than the original story itself.
But those days need to end.
And I'm going to expose things like this every single time they happen.
And I'm going to stay on them because this wasn't just fake news.
This was sloppy, unethical journalism.
They lied to you.
They lied to you based on anonymous sources to push an agenda.
When all they had to do was get a statement from the company, they chose not to do that until the company itself saw the reports, got out there and said, you're all a bunch of liars.