Mark Meadows accuses the FBI of altering 302 reports in Clinton and Flynn cases, calling it "evidence tampering," while Peter Strzok’s lawyer dismisses his bias claims as political attacks. Sessions faces calls to resign over DOJ corruption, while Nielsen defends immigration policies amid protests. Meadows proposes DNA tests to combat cartel-driven child trafficking, citing 12,000 annual entries. A DoD-commissioned report warns synthetic biology could enable deadly viruses like polio or antibiotic-resistant bacteria, with genetic codes freely available online, raising global bioweapons risks. Meanwhile, Social Security disability applications drop to 1.5 million—lowest since 2000—as fraud concerns persist, despite systemic inequities. The episode underscores deep distrust in institutions and escalating threats from both foreign actors and domestic policy failures. [Automatically generated summary]
Congressman Accuses FBI of Evidence Tampering00:14:27
Today and off the cuff, he classified more problems for the FBI as a Republican member of Congress accuses them of evidence tampering and lying to the Inspector General.
The immigration debate rages with the left now engaging in ridiculous stunts.
And if we didn't have enough to worry about, are synthetic bioweapons coming our way?
Also, disability claims drop as the economy surges.
does that indicate prior fraud?
So much information coming out daily.
I always say it feels like every five minutes on what's going on with the FBI, DOJ, ObamaGate, Spygate.
But let's focus today on just the FBI and some of the problems.
Now, one of the people that I have really admired for several, several years now in the United States Congress is Representative Mark Meadows.
He's a Republican from North Carolina.
He's the Freedom Caucus chair.
And I've met Meadows.
I don't know him, but we've spoken offline.
I've met him at various events.
He's a very nice guy, but a very serious guy.
And he is probably one of the most common sense people right now in the United States Congress.
Well, Representative Meadows is now accusing the FBI of doing what many of us feel they have been doing.
And he feels they may have modified the 302s.
302 is an FBI witness.
He also feels that the FBI may have misled the DOJ Inspector General, Michael Horowitz's office, with what Representative Meadows called false information.
This from a Fox News story, but it's being reported widely.
So the story says the FBI may have edited and changed key witness reports in the Hillary Clinton and Russia investigation, the top House Republican charged in a hearing into FBI and Justice Department misconduct Tuesday yesterday.
Now, of course, that hearing was the joint hearing of two very powerful committees in the House of Representatives, the Oversight and Judiciary Committee.
Mark Meadows also raised a chair that the FBI, as I said, misled the Inspector General.
Now, here's what Representative Mark Meadows said to Michael Horowitz, the Inspector General.
He said, quote, the other thing that I would ask you to look into, there is growing evidence that 302s were edited and changed.
Those 302s, it is suggested that they were changed to either prosecute or not prosecute individuals.
And that is very troubling.
Now, I suspect the 302s he was talking about in particular were those of General Michael Flynn and members of Hillary Clinton's team.
Not sure if Hillary herself is included in his supposition because from what we're told, she was not put under oath.
There may not have been a 302 generated on Hillary.
I believe the fix was in.
I believe that they got Hillary in that building and they probably chatted about movies.
I don't believe Hillary was asked a question.
It was all just wink, wink, come, sit in the room for a couple hours.
Got to make it look like you're doing something here, Hillary.
And that was that.
Now, just to re-explain, 302s are reports on witness interviews compiled by federal investigators.
Horowitz, and this is a bombshell that the mainstream media is not reporting.
Fox's, a few others are.
I'm going to talk about it all day.
Horowitz said later he has additional information, this is in the Fox News story, suggesting that the witness reports were changed after the fact in both the Clinton and Russia probe.
Now, That is really, really troubling when you contrast that against Horowitz saying he found no bias in the FBI and DOJ's handling of these same investigations.
Both cannot be true.
Why would witness interviews be changed after the fact?
I've conducted witness interviews.
I've filled out the forms.
The witness says what the witness says.
There's another term for changing witness interviews or 302s, whatever you want to call it.
That term is called evidence tampering.
And it's a crime.
Evidence tampering.
Now, just yesterday, the day before here on the show, I said, Peter Stroke, we're going to get to Peter Stroke in just a second.
Well, he did some things that I think he should be fired for, but I haven't seen any evidence of a crime committed by Peter Stroke.
However, if Peter Stroke changed these 302s, my whole perception changes.
I'm not saying he was the guy.
I don't know who the agent was who changed them.
Maybe it was McCabe, Comey, could have been Stroke.
We don't know.
Hopefully we'll find out.
But if it were Peter Stroke, if we do find out Peter Stroke is the agent who changed the 302s, then to me, the whole game changes.
That's evidence tampering.
That is a crime.
That is a crime.
The only time, only time that's done is if the witness calls you back and says, hey, you know what?
I made a mistake.
I remembered something.
My wife just reminded me that I had made a note.
When I said I saw that car pulling away from the house where the guy was shot and I told you the car was red, I was wrong.
It was blue.
The red car was parked in front of the house.
My wife just reminded me of that.
And now thinking about it, she's right.
I had the cars mixed up.
It was the blue car that took off.
It was the red car that remained parked there.
Then it's okay.
Then you change it because you're getting updated, more accurate information.
But if it's not in that context, then it's a crime.
Then it's evidence tampering.
Then it's egregious, egregious investigative misconduct.
All kinds of crimes.
Start perjury, evidence tampering, bad, bad stuff.
Now, Meadows also, also hammered, hammered DOJ and FBI.
Meadows asked Horowitz.
So you've been watching my show.
You've been watching others.
You know that in this Inspector General report, in addition to named individuals, Peter Stroke, Lisa Page, there are unnamed individuals who were very, very critical of Donald Trump.
Right?
We know this.
We know that there were many, many unnamed individuals critical of Donald Trump.
Well, Meadows wants them identified.
So again, from the Fox News piece, in a dramatic moment, Meadows then directly asked Horowitz whether two anonymous FBI employees identified as making anti-Trump statements in the IG's report were named Kevin Kleinsmith and Sally Moyer.
Horowitz refused to confirm the employee's identity, which the FBI has declined also to publicly reveal, citing the supposed sensitivity of counterintelligence matters that they're working on.
However, however, Meadows is saying that excuse is a sham.
Representative Mark Meadows said, quote, they don't work in counterintelligence.
And if that's the reason the FBI is giving, they're giving you false information because they work for the FBI's general counsel's office.
Wow.
Wow.
So let's break that down.
You've got a sitting member of the United States Congress saying that he has reason to believe, and I suspect, I really suspect, let me leave it at that, that there are many whistleblowers right now inside the FBI talking to members of Congress, people like Mark Meadows.
And I really don't want to go beyond saying, I strongly suspect that there are many whistleblowers in the FBI speaking to members of Congress, okay?
You've got a ranking member of the chairman of the House Freedom Caucus basically telling, not basically telling, flat out telling, the Department of Justice Inspector General and the director of the FBI that he believes 302s were changed.
Now, that's not a statement a congressman would make unless he had pretty solid evidence of that.
Bolstering my suspicion that he has whistleblowers, excuse me, or solid evidence is that Michael Horowitz, the inspector general, said, yeah, I've got some evidence of that myself.
Okay.
So we can pretty much bank on the fact that it happened, 302s were changed.
Now, I give you my scenario.
If the change is, the witness calls back and says, well, I remember some information and I told you the car was blue and the car was red.
My wife reminded me.
She had made a note.
Well, that's okay.
But I don't think that's what happened here.
I don't think that's the kind of change they were talking about.
I think it was much more nefarious, much more improper, possibly illegal.
Then we find out that a couple of those anonymous agent number one or FBI employee number one or attorney number one, number two, number three, et cetera, who wrote texted things like, I am numb, one wrote on election day after Trump won.
Other, a lawyer, wrote, viva la resistance.
They're members of the resistance working inside the FBI, resisting the new president, elect at that point, and now president of the United States, Donald Trump.
This is as bad as it gets.
Or is it?
Because then you have the director of the FBI and the Inspector General saying, well, we can't give you the names because they work in counterintelligence.
And Mark Meadows saying, no, they don't.
And this is why I'm pretty sure he has sources inside the FBI.
They don't work in counterintelligence.
They work in the FBI general counsel's office.
They have nothing to do with counterintelligence.
That's a lie.
That excuse doesn't hold water.
The credibility of the FBI and DOJ is being crushed daily.
Now, Peter Stroke.
I used to say it all comes back to Andrew McCabe, right?
I said that on the show, excuse me, about 15 times, 20, 50 times.
It all comes back to Andrew McCabe.
Well, Andrew McCabe's out.
Cabe is out.
He got fired.
He's probably going to face criminal charges, hopefully.
The new guy that it all comes back to, the new hub of corruption at the FBI, in my opinion, is Peter Stroke.
Well, yesterday, Peter Strokes' lawyer confirmed that he was escorted from the building.
Stroke's lawyer, again, he confirmed this to Fox News.
Stroke's lawyer, Aiton Goldman, argued that even though his client has, quote, as a joke, played by the rules, he has been targeted by, quote, unfounded personal attacks, political games, and inappropriate information leaks.
Unfounded personal attacks.
The man on 49, almost 50,000 text messages to his mistress pretty much admitted he was trying to rig a presidential election.
And this is great.
His lawyer Goldman also says, quote, all of this seriously calls into question the impartiality of the disciplinary process, which now appears to be tainted by political influence.
Oh, it's the disciplinary process tainted by political influence, not your investigation in which you said we'll stop him.
I mean, these people are just caricatures of themselves.
His lawyer went on to say, quote, that Stroke has complied with every FBI procedure, including being escorted from the building as part of the ongoing internal proceeding.
The attorney did not say exactly when Stroke reported out of court news.
The attorney went on with his comment.
His attorney really should just be quiet.
Here's what his attorney, Aiton Goldman, said.
Quote, instead of publicly calling for a long-serving FBI agent to be summarily fired.
No, they're not calling for him to be summarily fired.
They're calling for him to be fired after a months-long 1.2 million pages of evidence OIG report was released, indicating he did wrong.
That's kind of how it works.
Politicians should allow the disciplinary process to play out free from political pressure.
I disagree.
The House and Senate oversight committees oversee the FBI and other agencies.
It's their job to make recommendations, to comment on who they think should be fired because of the things they see.
This lawyer's statement is asinine.
Our leaders and the public should be very concerned with how readily such influence has been allowed to undermine due process and the legal protections owed to someone who has served his country for so long.
Things undermining the process.
Peter Stroke was investigated.
He's now being administratively investigated by the FBI.
We'll probably soon be fired.
And Peter Stroke is free to give his lawyer Aiton Goldman more money.
And Mr. Goldman can go and file an appeals, an appeal in federal court.
Peter Stroke isn't being denied any due process.
Sure, it looks like Peter Stroke denied other people like General Flynn due process.
And if Peter Stroke was the guy who changed those 302s, well, damn, he did it illegally.
But nobody's denying him due process.
The courts are open.
His lawyer is free to file an appeal.
His lawyer is free to file grievances with the federal government if he's fired.
But Stroke wasn't fired.
Now, news of Stroke's removal came after DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz confirmed during a congressional hearing earlier yesterday that his office was looking into whether Stroke's specific anti-Trump bias played a role in the launch of the Bureau's Russia probe.
Peter Stroke's Due Process00:11:30
And you know what that all stems from those texts.
His mistress, Lisa Page, prior to Trump's win, said, quote, Trump's not ever going to become president, right?
Right.
And Stroke, of course, replied in the now famous reply, no, no, he won't.
We'll stop it.
Nearly 50,000, 50,000 text messages sent between Peter Stroke and Lisa Page.
50,000 text messages sent between this guy and his mistress.
Now, Representative Meadows again made a comment on that.
He told Fox News, quote, it's way past time for Peter Stroke to hopefully start to find a different career and restore some credibility to the FBI that most of us love and admire.
And certainly, Lady Justice has to be someone who wears a blindfold.
And with Peter Stroke, it was obvious with his text messages that that was not the case.
Other messages from Stroke showed an allegiance to Comey after his firing.
Look, Stroke was far too biased to remain on the FBI's investigation into Donald Trump, on Mueller's team.
Remember, Stroke was only fired from Mueller's team when these text messages came to light.
Had they not come to light, had the OIG's office not started releasing them way back when, we never would have known this.
God knows the damage he could have done.
Now, Stroke, as I sit here right now, and it could change by the time you watch this later today on Wednesday.
Stroke right now is in fact, is in fact still employed by the FBI.
Still has a gun.
He still has a badge.
He still has access.
And typically, because he's still an FBI agent with a gun and creds, he has his security clearance.
That alone is problematic.
But where is our Department of Justice?
Where is Attorney General Jeff Sessions?
The man is MIA.
The Department of Justice is rudderless and leaderless.
It has no direction anymore.
It has nobody at the helm.
Jeff Sessions is completely, has completely checked out.
Now, Donald Trump has pinged Jeff Sessions, but I would argue that the most damning, damning call for Sessions' firing, there have been many.
I've been one.
I don't believe in all this conspiracy nonsense.
5D, 6D, 427D chess.
You and on, this shadowy figure in the government telling you trust Jeff Sessions and Mueller's away.
Give me a break with all that conspiracy nonsense.
Sessions got there.
He wasn't the man for the job at these times.
This is the single most critical point in history for the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation to have rigidly rock-stolid, iron-willed, strong leadership, clear direction, a sense of house clean, and restoration of integrity, honesty, the FBI's values, fidelity, bravery, integrity.
We don't have that.
We've got Jeff Sessions, who looks very weak, very frail, who has no desire to fight the swamp in DC.
None.
None.
Jeff Sessions is MIA.
So the most damning call for his firing, in my opinion, most damning one recently is from Brad Parscal.
Brad Parscal, of course, was the data guru on Trump's 2016 campaign, elevated to campaign manager.
He's got Corey Lewandowski's older for the 2020 campaign.
And Brad Parscal put out a tweet yesterday.
Time to fire Sessions.
End the Mueller investigation.
You can't obstruct something that was phony against you.
The IG report gives Donald Trump the truth to end it all.
Now, I said that the other day, but for the campaign manager of Trump's 2020 campaign to open a tweet in the middle of the day, 12:25 p.m., this wasn't something tired musing at 3 in the morning, to open his tweet with fire, time to fire Sessions.
That is a really, really loud and powerful statement.
I mean, it doesn't get any louder and any more powerful than that.
He's screaming from the rooftops with that one.
And believe me, Brad Parscal did not do that without the knowledge and consent of President Donald Trump.
They're together all the time.
They're together all the time.
There's a rally in Duluth, Minnesota later today, around 6:30 p.m., a Trump rally, a big one.
I'm sure Brad Parscal will be there.
I'm sure he'll be on Air Force One with the president.
I've got to check the rules on that, though.
I don't know if campaign team can fly with him before official campaign season.
But I can bet he'll be in the VIP area at the rally if he wasn't allowed to be on the plane.
It's a rule I need to check.
Something I'm interested in and you're interested in.
I want to bring to you.
But Brad Porska would not have tweeted this without Donald Trump knowing.
And when the campaign manager for Trump's 2020 reelect is saying time to fire Sessions, you know that all confidence inside the White House was lost, is lost in Jeff Sessions because the campaign manager is going to make a policy statement like that on opinion.
he's not going to do it.
And so we need much more effective leadership at DOJ.
We need much more effective leadership at FBI.
Christopher Wray doesn't seem like the guy to do the job.
His style is apathetic.
He's rolling his eyes at people.
He thinks this is no big deal.
Make it go away.
Oh, I've seen this kind of thing at DOJ years.
Again, it goes back to DOJ lawyers humming a law enforcement.
I'm not a fan.
But one thing is clear.
One thing is clear.
We have only scratched the top of the scratch on the surface of just how corruptly the FBI and DOJ were weaponized against the Trump campaign.
And because of this weak leadership in Jeff Sessions, because of this weak leadership in Christopher Wray, I'm going to again say, I don't like, I don't like special counsels, but the White House needs to appoint, the president himself needs to appoint a second special counsel, someone loyal to him, someone tough as nails, someone from the outside, and someone who not only is willing to take on the swamp, but is dying for that fight.
The whole immigration debate is getting very complex and sometimes strange.
Now, Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council, not the actor from Psycho, is telling people that apparently Attorney General Jeff Sessions related to him, to Perkins, that Sessions wants to use DNA tests to confirm parentage of illegal immigrant adults.
In other words, if you're coming over with a kid and you say it's my child, they want to take a DNA swab, compare it and make sure parent.
Now, I like that idea.
But I don't know how accurate this is.
He interviewed Sessions on his radio, the Daily Caller report.
Sessions, he said, Sessions is talking to members of Congress.
Actually, let me read the quote.
Sessions is talking to congressional members and hoping for a legislative fix.
The AG wants an immigration policy that is just fair and enforceable.
They talked about making sure that these really are the parents of these kids.
They are looking at how to use DNA tests in the field to verify they are parents and not traffickers.
I have no problem with that.
The reality is, if American parents put their kids through what these immigrant parents have done to their kids, they would be charged with child abuse.
I kind of agree.
I sincerely and truly kind of agree with that.
I think that's very, very true.
Now, we know the facts, right?
About 12,000 kids are coming in.
10,000 are unaccompanied minors.
They're being used on many of those as probes.
About 80% is probes by the cartels and the human smuggling rings.
So these are not good people pushing these kids.
And in many cases, the parents are complicit.
And here's what Sessions told Perkins on the radio show.
Quote, we know for a fact that a lot of adults are taking children who are not taking along children.
Let me see.
Let me reread this.
We know for a fact that a lot of adults taking children along are not related to them.
They could be muggers.
I think he'd say smugglers.
They could be human traffickers.
It's a very unhealthy, dangerous thing, and it needs to end.
I agree there.
I mean, I think Jeff Sessions needs to go as attorney general.
needs to get the boot.
But I agree there.
We need to return to a good, lawful system.
And that's what Sessions told Tony Perkins on the radio show.
The daily caller sent an inquiry over to DOJ asking if the DNA test thing is accurate, and they didn't respond.
Now, look, Trump wants his wall.
We've done this border thing ad nauseum.
The left is absolutely hysterical because we're enforcing the law.
I went through this yesterday.
I don't need to belabor the point.
He got 10,000 and a company kid.
You can't send him back across the border.
All right.
Can't hand him a bottle of water and say, see you later.
Have a great time back in Gucci Galpa.
You just can't do that.
All righty.
You got to take the kids in.
We've got to put them in DHS shelters.
We got to do what we got to do.
We do it with American kids.
I told you that.
I'm not going to belabor that.
Every day in this country, kids are removed from adults for a host of reasons.
The adults committed crimes.
The kids are in danger.
The adult isn't a parent illegal guardian.
There's a sign of abuse, of malnourishment.
The house is too dirty.
There's mold on the walls.
For whatever reason, you can remove a kid if they're in a car and they're a baby without a car seat.
The police can remove them.
There's a lot of reasons why kids get removed.
And in every one of those instances, it's to protect the child.
Now, I could do 150 shows on the problems with departments of children and family services and how the kids might not even be better off with them, but in private foster care.
That's a whole nother issue.
But it just shows the unhinged nature of the left.
Now, new photos are surfacing from 2014.
Brandon Darby over at Breitbart did a great threat on Twitter.
I think I brought you that yesterday or the day before.
And the hypocrisy is that nobody said a word on the left.
You didn't have people like Representative Gerald Nadler and Nakeem Jeffries from New York, Nadler from New York, going in and basically barging in on a nice detention facility in New Jersey while Obama was doing it.
You didn't have that.
No, this is all political grandstanding.
They don't care about the kids any more than the anti-gun activists cared about the kids in Parkland or at Sandy Hook.
I'm sure somewhere in their heart, they see this and know it's a tragedy.
Hypocrisy In Homeland Security00:10:39
But that's not their real political agenda.
Their real political agenda is stepping over those kids, stepping over the bodies in a school shooting to push their far left political agendas, their far left political agenda.
Now, that all said, the left is going a step further.
They're acting like unhinged lunatics.
But the bias, the bias keeps on proving just how real deep state is.
And I at least tell you, deep state is not guys in a darkly lit room, high back chairs, and you only see the cigarette smoke in the back of their head.
No, it's nothing that sinister or nefarious or conspiratorial.
It's just people who want government to stay the way it's always been.
Big, powerful, doing nothing.
Solutions mean streamlining.
Streamlining means a loss of power, a loss of money, and a loss of jobs.
And the big government advocates on both the right and the left can't have that.
And that's the swamp.
That's the deep state.
All it is.
I mean, I wish I could make it as sexy as the guys in the high backed chairs and a dimly lit room and the IA and NSA and shadow government.
That's not bad.
It's like, you know, the person who works mid-management at the State Department or the person who's working upper mid-management at the Office of Management and Budget.
That's deep state.
But it is.
Nothing, sure, you've got the CIA players and the FBI players, and that's the sexier part of the story, but they're also just cogs in a wheel.
But it's starting to trickle down to even lower level.
The President of the United States is in the Capitol.
President of the United States of America is in the United States Capitol building.
Last night, going to meet with House Republicans, he's on his way to the office of the Speaker of the House and a congressional, now, a congressional intern yells across the Capitol Rotunda,
Mr. President F. Holeward, you, a congressional intern to the president of the United States.
Now, if you don't think this congressional intern was emboldened by the behavior of Peter Stroke and Lisa Page and James Comey and all of the other viva la resistance players, I've got a bridge in Brooklyn to tell you.
This is disgraceful, disgraceful.
But this far left staffer is eventually going to be, an intern, is eventually going to become a far left staffer, maybe a senior staffer, maybe an agency head one day, or a deputy secretary, an undersecretary, maybe run for office.
That's deep state.
That's how it starts.
Institutionally left, hysterical over border security, and thinking it's okay to scrap all decorum, all protocol, all professionalism, all appropriateness, and say, Mr. President, F you, in the Capitol Rotunda.
Now, no report on whether that intern was discharged.
No report on whether that intern was reprimanded, shamed, should be blacklisted.
Because you know, Democratic members of Congress are going to salute this intern.
And that to me is so disgusting.
Members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus are predictably screaming and yelling.
And Representative Michelle Lujan Grisham, a Democrat from New Mexico, is calling the separation from families at the border the worst thing she has ever seen in her career.
Didn't care about it when Obama did it.
Couldn't have cared less when Obama did it.
And we've got, you know, congresspeople arguing with each other.
They're calling the situations inhumane.
But the reality is, this is, see, here's where everybody's missing the boat.
And I'm going to do something.
I rarely do.
I don't think I've ever done it.
I'm going to say Barack Obama did the right thing here, too.
I didn't care when Obama had to remove kids.
I don't care when Trump has to remove kids.
One of the few things I think Obama did right, because the Department of Homeland Security, via the immigration and customs enforcement people, via customs and border protection, are giving recommendations to their bosses.
And their bosses are kicking those recommendations up to the Secretary of Homeland Security who's kicking those recommendations up to the White House chief of staff, who alongside the Secretary of Homeland Security sit in the Oval Office and say to the president, Mr. President, these are the recommendations from the people in the field.
And Barack Obama took and enacted those regulations, acted on them, and so is Donald Trump.
And that's what you're supposed to do when you're the president.
You talk to your experts in the field, or you guys listen to your experts in the field.
You talk to their bosses who come into your office.
They make the recommendations.
You discuss it with your advisors.
And then you make a call.
Obama did it.
Trump did it.
Bush did it.
Clinton did it.
Bush 41 did it.
Reagan did it.
Carter did it.
Every president does it.
Every president does it because that's what you're supposed to do.
But these morons think that by screaming, Mr. President FU, and basically causing a protest, members of Congress in the Capitol Rotunda, they're going to change law enforcement policy.
Want to change law enforcement policy?
Change the law.
Right now, Donald Trump is doing what he's supposed to be doing as the nation's chief law enforcement officer.
He's enforcing the law.
Now, other morons outside of government think they're going to make a dent.
Liberals are gloating.
Oh my God, they're gloating.
I think it's the greatest thing they've ever seen that Homeland Security Secretary Kirsten Nielsen was basically forced to leave a Washington, D.C. Mexican restaurant.
How ironic.
When a group from the Democratic Socialists of America started protesting her and calling her names.
They said, if kids don't eat in peace, you don't eat in peace.
Kirsten Nielsen, you're a villain.
Lock her up.
Quote, how can you enjoy a Mexican dinner as you're deporting and imprisoning tens of thousands of people that come here seeking asylum in the United States?
Apparently, you're not allowed to eat now if you're a law enforcement party.
You can't have dinner in a Mexican restaurant of all places, the effing gall.
So incredibly stupid that you can't even go out and have dinner if you're a government official who's a law enforcement official enforcing the law.
So Tyler Q. Holton, who's the Homeland Security spokesperson, tweeted, quote, while having a work dinner tonight, the secretary and her staff heard from a small group of protesters who share her concern with our recurrent immigration laws that have created a crisis on our southern border.
Secretary Nielsen encourages all, including this group, who want to see an immigration system that works, contribute to our economy, protects our security and reflects our values, reach out to members, meaning members of Congress, and seek their support to close immigration loophole that made our system a mess.
And I thought it was a classy response from the Homeland Security Secretary.
I think Kirsten Nielsen's doing a good job.
She's carrying out the orders of the president.
She's enforcing the law.
How do you even make you feel?
Do you hear the babies crying?
Look, I told you yesterday, tell you this all the time, law enforcement never looks nice, okay?
As an individual, as a human, as an American, as an uncle, you know, it breaks my heart to hear little kids crying.
It does, crying for mommy and daddy.
They're innocent.
They didn't do anything.
They're a victim.
But it's their parents' fault.
I'm not saying that to be cruel.
We can't just say to the parent, okay, you can come in the country illegally despite your criminal warrants because you have your baby with you.
No.
We need to de-incentivize this type of behavior.
And this is the only way to do it.
This is the only way to do it.
It's sad.
It's hurtful.
It's tough to watch.
It's tough to listen to.
But it's really, really necessary because they're right.
President's right.
The Homeland Security Secretary's right.
Our immigration system is a mess.
A terrible, terrible, terrible mess.
Every other nation pretty much in this world has much stricter laws than we do Mexico, Canada, Russia, the UK, Ireland, England.
Name them, Uk and England are the same, but name them impossible to get in there and work.
I was talking to a friend of mine who was born in Montreal, is a dual citizen of the?
U.s and Canada because she's lived in America her entire life.
She left Montreal at four months old.
Her her ability to work in Canada is about the same as any other American.
Her dual citizenship doesn't even matter.
Canada's immigration laws are draconian to Non-canadians.
Mexicos are draconian to Non-Mexicans, but we're supposed to just open our borders and scrap our Sovereignty?
It's ludicrous.
It's ludicrous.
And the hypocrisy coming from the countries telling us to do it is deafening.
Look, I think the president, I think the Homeland Security Secretary are doing exactly what they're supposed to do.
They have to ignore, they have to ignore opinions, follow the law.
And if the Democrats don't like it, and if some neocon Republicans don't like it, well, get together with a legislative solution and change the laws that they're required to enforce.
Scary Stuff in Synthetic Biology00:06:49
Well, you had to know this was coming if you read any science news, right?
So a report out of The Guardian is entitled, and it's pretty terrifying, Synthetic Biology Raises Risk of New Bioweapons.
U.S. report warns.
Wow.
A report, a review on the field report published just yesterday by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, but at the request of our Department of Defense, is saying that these weapons might very well be on the way.
And really what it is, is an intelligence, it's a scientific and an intelligence estimate of how new biotech research, biological research, could be weaponized.
And it's really sad that we live in a world where we have to look at all these angles, but we really do, right?
I mean, things that, you know, a few decades ago would have been easily obtainable by a high school chemistry teacher, as they should have been, because people shouldn't act like murderous terrorist savages.
Well, now those things are highly, highly regulated.
What Michael Imperiali, chair of the report committee, said, quote, we can't say how likely any of these scenarios are, but we can talk about how feasible they are.
See, the scary thing when it comes to terror and weaponization of things is that if they're feasible, we, well, it used to work, need to take these threats as actionable intelligence, get in front of them.
So let me read you the first two paragraphs because it's kind of scary.
The rapid rise of synthetic biology, a futuristic field of science that seeks to master the machinery of life, has raised the risk of a new generation of bioweapons, according to a major U.S. report into the state-of-the-art technology.
Advances in the area mean that scientists now have the capability to recreate dangerous viruses from scratch, make harmful bacteria more deadly, and modify common microbes so that they churn out lethal toxins once they enter the body.
These three scenarios are picked out as threats of highest concern, those threats of highest concern in that report published by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences at the request of the DOT.
This is going back, though, 20 years.
And it says also more than 20 years ago, a guy named Eckhart Wimmer.
He just sounds like a smart guy, a geneticist at Stony Brook University in New York, highlighted the potential dangers of synthetic biology in dramatic style when he recreated polio virus in a test tube.
Wow.
Earlier this year, the University of the Team of Alberta in Canada built an infectious horsepox virus.
And the virus is a close relative of smallpox, which may have claimed half a billion lives in the 20th century.
Today, the genetic code, it says, of almost any mammalian virus, virus and mammals, can be found online and synthesized.
It says, quote, the technology to do this is available now.
It requires, this is the same guy, Imperiali, the chair of the committee.
It requires some expertise, but it's something that's relatively easy to do and why it tops the list.
And if you don't think groups like ISIS, al-Qaeda, al-Nusra, al-Shabaab, Boko Haram, Boko Rama, and al-Shabaab are a little more primitive.
But the big guys, Hamas, Hezbollah, you don't think they have scientists capable of doing this and governments like Syria, Russia, North Korea, all of these nations that have no problem using weapons of mass destruction, chemical, biological weapons on their people, if you don't think they've already developed these, you're mistaken.
You are mistaken.
And when you read through this, it really, what jumps off the page at me, and I'm not a particularly scientifically proficient guy, but I'm interested in the weaponization of things as threats.
This, I can understand this very easily.
It's very easy to understand.
It also says other fairly simple procedures can be used to tweak the genes of dangerous bacteria to make them resistant to antibiotics so that people infected with them would be untreatable.
A more exotic bioweapon might come in the form of a genetically altered microbe that colonizes the gut and churns out poisons.
While this is technically more difficult, it's a concern because it may not look like anything you normally watch out for in public health, the chair of the committee says.
Now, here's what's really troubling about that for those who have to interdict terror.
The body is a very complex thing, right?
Thousands of nearly impossible for law enforcement, their partners at places like the Center for Disease Control, the National Institutes of Health, National Academy of Sciences, NASA, PIA, they have doctors there and things like the Army, Army units that work on infectious diseases.
There aren't that many people to get in front of all these threats.
And the bad guys get smarter, right?
This is something we can't even be reactive to because there's so many ways to alter the microbes, things like that.
So not you can even build an antidote because that could take years and you're focusing on one of thousands of scenarios.
And so this is, when you look at a threat matrix, when a guy like me who analyzes this, very interested in this, looks at a threat matrix that we as a nation, we as a world face, this becomes really, really scary stuff, really scary stuff.
And I'm very encouraged that some very smart people are working on this.
But man, man, it is terrifying to think of the world we live in now and the advances in technology essentially give the bad guys weapons.
They can smuggle.
Look, a vial with a virus in your pocket going through airport metal detector, that's not going to set anything up.
That's not going to set off the wand.
If it looks like a cosmetics case, you put it in your bag through the X-ray machine, who's going to know?
Who's going to know?
This is really, really scary stuff.
You released us on a plane, a large plane, you infect people, and that plane is going to, say, Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson Airport, and the hundreds of people on your plane, 150 people to several hundred people, depending on the size of the plane, then get on other planes and infect people on those planes, and they go to the next hub and get another plane.
And you see how this starts to spread very, very quickly.
Very scary stuff, and I'm glad we're researching it.
Good News: Economy Improves Disability Applications00:02:45
But man, we live in a very, very different world than we did even 20 years ago.
A lot more dangerous.
And really, we have to be so hyper-vigilant about these threats.
I'm glad that our government is up on this at least.
I'm critical of a lot of things they do with regards to privacy, but this is a threat you never see coming.
And let's hope that there are armies, literally, of very smart people figuring out ways to mitigate this.
There's some good news as our economy gets better.
A story from the New York Times: disability applications plunge as the economy strengthens.
The number of Americans seeking Social Security disability benefits is plunging.
Startling reversal of a decades-old trend that threatened the program's solvency and the latest evidence of a stronger economy, pulling people back into the job market or preventing workers from being sidelined in the first place.
But when I see this, when I read this, and here we'll analyze a little bit, it tells me that there was rampant disability fraud going on when the economy wasn't so good.
Thanks, Obama.
Because you didn't all of a sudden not become disabled if the economy did better.
Granted, more jobs mean companies can hire disabled people.
If you don't have a limb, there are more technology jobs for you where that doesn't matter.
It's really all about intellect and proficiency with coding, things like that.
But it also, it also tells us there was rampant fraud.
Now, in addition to stronger economic growth, in addition to stronger economic growth, the story says, the drop reflects newly tightened standards for eligibility and increasing the number of baby boomers who are leaving the program because they become eligible for Social Security retirement benefits and Medicare.
Good news.
Fewer than 1.5 million Americans applied to the Social Security Administration for disability coverage last year, the lowest since 2000 do applications, and applications are running at an even lower rate this year.
Again, all good news, as long as it stays that way.
And the numbers are this: all told, 8.63 million workers received disability benefits in May, down from a peak of 8.96 million in September 2014, about three, a little less than 300,000 left.
Now, a drop of several hundred thousand at times says may not sound like much, but it's a sharp turnaround from what seemed to be an inexorable rise in which the disability roles more than doubled over the past 25 years.
Thanks, Clinton, Bush, Obama.
That increase led some conservatives, law, some conservative lawmakers to describe the program as wasteful and riddled with fraud.
Rampant Fraud Declines?00:01:11
But again, it was riddled with fraud.
It was.
Now, I know people that are on it legitimately.
They're on it legitimately.
They went through some horrible things in their lives.
They want to work, but they can't.
And a friend of mine who in a very bad, bad place, a terrible, terrible workplace, I drove him not long ago to a Social Security disability office in South Florida.
And this is a guy who worked his entire life, worked his entire life.
He didn't even want the benefit.
I'm embarrassed to have them, but he needs them for the little bit of income, not so much, but the medical and the designation and other stuff.
And we looked around the room and there were perfectly able-bodied guys walking in and out of there.
And we were just shaking our heads at the rampant fraud.
So, I'm glad to see something is being done about this because the people that need it are waiting four, five, six hours, getting denied, having to go through the appeals process.
And it seems that the people that don't, especially when they're not white men, they're getting it very, very easily.
Very, very easily.
They're just getting these benefits.
Nobody's really asking them any questions.
It's terrible.
It's rampant fraud and abuse, but I'm encouraged by this story.