Democrats Campaign Just Went From BAD To WORSE As Biden Event Collapses And Media Praises Trump App
Democrats Campaign Just Went From BAD To WORSE As Biden Event Collapses And Media Praises Trump App. Joe Biden tried hosting a virtual town hall but it ended up plagued by technical glitches and major errors with the speakers even looking confused half the time.This isn't even the first time joe Biden failed to do a simple livestream for his supporters. At one point in March his stream was laden with errors and he even muttered and wandered off camera.At the same time Democrats are starting to panic due to Trump's consistent wins in various campaign areas.Writing for the Washington post Dave Weigel notes that Trump's campaign app is "gamified" and very engaging while Biden isn't even trying.
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You see, the Democrats are playing a very difficult balancing act.
They know that if Joe Biden remains unseen, it's good for him up until a certain point.
Keeping him hidden has actually helped him because, well, he's prone to gaffes and he's kind of losing it, right?
But they know that if they keep him hidden too long, people start asking questions.
We saw the hashtag a little while ago, where is Joe Biden?
And everybody arguing that Joe Biden is missing, which sparked a panic among some Democrats that he wasn't getting any airtime.
But then he does get airtime and we see this.
A complete and total disaster.
It's a very difficult position to be in.
Meanwhile, enthusiasm for Donald Trump is through the roof.
Now, I know you may be saying, Tim, you're biased.
You just rag on Democrats all the time.
Trust me, I don't just arbitrarily choose to do these stories.
Dave Weigel of the Washington Post signed up as a Trump supporter and a Biden supporter.
Here's what happened next.
And I guarantee you, you already know the answer.
The Trump campaign was informed and active, rallying, asking for money, and the Biden campaign was nowhere to be found.
Look, the app didn't do anything.
It was missing for hours.
The point is, we can see it over and over again.
Joe Biden's campaign is, like, non-existent.
And I have some theories as to why this is.
I honestly kind of think Joe Biden's not really running for president.
Let's be honest.
He's hundreds of millions of dollars behind Trump.
He's barely doing anything as it is.
Now, again, you can argue they're trying to keep it hidden because he's an awful candidate.
But a lot of people speculate.
The Democrats know they will lose no matter what, so they're putting in a sacrificial lamb.
You know, they could put up a Buttigieg or a Klobuchar or a Warren, but they're worried that might spoil the candidate for 2024.
Now, it probably won't be Warren in 2024, because she's getting on in years.
But they don't want to waste an opportunity with a young candidate, so they put in Joe Biden for now.
Then Joe Biden ends up losing, and they say, oh gosh darn, we tried as hard as we could.
But you didn't.
I think it's actually unfair at this point to even argue that Joe Biden's campaign is a disaster, because it seems to be by design.
This story about Biden's virtual Tampa rally running into glitches, it's not even the first time this has happened.
You'd think after the first mistake.
You know what?
No, no, no.
Let me walk it back.
I can't— I'm not going to argue it's intentional or there's some plan or conspiracy.
The fact remains, the simple solution is, they are totally and completely incompetent.
It's the only way I can really put it.
And with the documents coming out about the Russia investigation, with Michael Flynn now having his charges dropped, it is win, win, win for Donald Trump.
And I know people are going to look at me and they're going to be like, that's just because you're biased for Trump.
Fine.
Wait till I get the story from Dave Weigel about how the campaigns are being run.
And you're not going to be surprised in the least bit.
Let's read the first story.
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But let's read the news from the Washington Post.
This story is not surprising.
It's actually kind of sad that they're doing this to Joe, to be honest.
They introduced me, a blurry Joe Biden asked five seconds after he appeared on screen.
Am I on, he added, as he walked towards the camera on choppy video and removed his aviator sunglasses.
What was supposed to be a crisp and cool introduction instead stoked confusion.
Good evening, Tampa, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee said.
I wish we could have done this together and it had gone a little more smoothly.
This was an event Thursday billed as virtual rally with Joe Biden in Tampa.
It was an hour plagued by technical glitches, awkward pauses, delays, and even some blank screen time.
Do you remember the last time Joe Biden tried doing that?
Okay, he's done virtual events that have gone off without a hitch before.
But this is not the first time he's been plagued with these weird glitches.
And I kid you not, at one point, he actually wandered off camera.
We have this story from The Verge.
Joe Biden's first virtual town hall was an absolute technical nightmare.
The coronavirus has forced the campaign to get creative.
He actually was muttering incoherently and then wandered off camera.
But let's get back to the current news.
We'll come back to this story.
They say for a campaign seeking a substitute for the rousing events that Biden would be holding.
Excuse me, rousing events?
Apparently, you've never seen a Joe Biden event before.
There was one event where he turned away from the audience and started talking to the wall.
I kid you not.
It was like a screen or something.
He's done this.
There are events where he just doesn't know what's going on.
Rousing?
No, maybe rousing to him because he's a tired old man and his staff has to keep rousing him so he can speak.
Let's read.
For a campaign seeking a substitute for the rousing events that Joe Biden would be holding,
if not for the coronavirus, the first of its kind rally, first of its kind, served as a
tough lesson about the perils of remote campaigning that played out in real time.
At the start, it had all the trappings of a typical Biden campaign rally.
A high schooler led the Pledge of Allegiance from his room.
DJ Jack Henriquez played upbeat tunes and MC welcomed speakers by name.
But as the rally went on, problems surfaced.
There was the cut of Janet Cruz, a state senator, who sat silent before the screen cut away from her only to cut back without explanation moments later.
There was the shot of Rep.
Charlie Crist dabbing his chin, dabbing his chin as he waited in silence against a backdrop of palm trees and high-rises.
It was unclear whether he knew he was on.
It's this.
And throughout, there was distorted video and audio that some on social media likened to transmissions coming in via a dial-up modem.
What?
The event showed how the pandemic has dramatically changed the campaign.
It also underlined the growing pressure on Biden to expand his footprint in the battleground states expected to decide the November election.
Even before it kicked off, Biden's supporters acknowledged the virtual rally was a far cry from the excitement generated by a candidate's actual visit to a crucial swing state.
John Morgan, a top Biden donor from Florida, said he was not even planning to tune in.
Still, Biden has few options, he added.
You have to try, Morgan said.
If not, you just sit there on your Peloton and look out the window.
It's like these restaurants who are serving takeout.
Is that the best option?
No, but it's an option.
At one point, as footage of Chris speaking became so hard to follow, the screen went to black, piping in his audio with no video feed.
When Biden finally appeared from his home in Delaware, he was clearly aware of the issues.
As he spoke, the technical issues continued, making parts of his speech indiscernible.
We need to remember who we are.
We are the United States of America, he said toward the end, a line he has often used on the campaign trail.
As he spoke, a bird could be heard singing loudly in the background.
Do you not have directional microphones?
Come on, man.
A Biden campaign spokesman did not immediately respond to a question seeking clarity on the cause of the technical issues.
Incompetence!
Look, man, I'd love to believe there's a conspiracy where Biden's purposely failing because they want to lose or they just don't care.
But the reality is you have chosen a man who can barely stay awake, who can't speak, and he can't run his own campaign.
Why would anyone in their right mind vote for this guy?
Even the progressives are saying they're going to vote for him, which means Trump is going to win.
Thursday's event was broadcast on the Biden campaign website and on YouTube, allowing anyone to view it, including those outside of Florida.
Biden Digital Director Rob Flaherty said before it started the campaign collected sign-in information from supporters, as it would at a traditional rally.
Organizers promoted the event via Facebook ads in the Tampa area and sent people reminders.
For the future.
The campaign is contemplating enabling people to sign in and get an exclusive watch and chat experience.
Biden's rally was the second of two Florida virtual events on Thursday.
At a roundtable with African American leaders from Jacksonville, Biden made his most forceful comments yet on the Ahmaud Arbery story.
But I don't want to get into that.
It's entirely other issue.
So what I want to show you is what's going on with this campaign.
Now, of course, Biden is being mocked for tech glitches in virtual Tampa campaign rally.
Of course, many people are bringing this up.
He had no idea what was going on.
Evan Axelbank says the candidate's own audio was going in and out and all glitchy.
How can a national campaign allow this to happen?
Do they not have Zoom?
And this is just apparently a local affiliate reporter.
Well, we get it.
A story on Vice described the rally as so plagued by technological problems, it looked like it was being run by local seniors attempting Zoom for the first time.
It was.
It's Joe Biden.
The dude doesn't even know what an app is.
I'm exaggerating, but come on.
This happened before, back in March.
This is from back in March.
Friday night's town hall wasn't even supposed to take place online.
Earlier this week, two major Democratic primary candidates, Biden and Bernie, were forced to cancel some campaign events.
The Zoom call was plagued with technical problems from the beginning.
First, it began over three hours late.
Once Biden did start speaking, his staff had to restart his entire speech because there was no audio, fading his campaign logo in and back out again to signify that they were redoing the address.
As he started reading off his prepared remarks again, Biden's audio was suddenly painful to hear and impossible to understand.
At least until they replaced whatever mic he was using with a smartphone.
Dude.
After a couple months, this is what we get.
Remember when Biden fell asleep?
Social media reacts after Joe Biden appears to fall asleep during his town hall with Hillary Clinton.
Now, I don't know if he actually did fall asleep, but for like 20 seconds, his eyes are closed and he's not moving.
Even if he was reading and looking down, you might still see his eyes moving.
It really did seem like he fell asleep.
Inquisitor writes, During a virtual town hall with Hillary Clinton, presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden appeared to fall asleep while the former Secretary of State spoke about the role of women in the United States workforce.
In response, many took to social media to react to the moment, which many found humorous.
Quote, Joe Biden falls asleep as Hillary Clinton speaks instantly becomes more relatable to Americans.
Quote, to be fair, everyone else watching was also asleep, wrote JT Lewis, a candidate for Connecticut State Senate.
But the Inquisitor does also bring up that it's not just Joe Biden here.
Donald Trump has also been accused of falling asleep at a meeting, and this was just back in March.
And I gotta say, you know what?
To be fair, it really does seem worse that Donald Trump was falling asleep.
He didn't really fall asleep.
He was just like, you know, his eyes were blinking a lot, and he really did seem tired.
But I'll tell you what, man.
Well, you could argue that it's worse that Donald Trump was falling asleep during a meeting.
Joe Biden should be ready for his own campaign events.
He should be invigorated.
But more importantly, a story about Donald Trump once or twice, you know, being tired is substantially different from Joe Biden's pattern of behavior where he's consistently falling asleep.
Here we go, CNN.
Biden's invisible campaign is winning.
See, this is the dangerous balancing act, the difficult balancing act they're struggling with.
Keep Biden off camera and you avoid these mistakes.
The more Biden appears in the press, the more insane things he says.
In fact, there are some things he said that were supposed to be innocent.
I can't even repeat on this channel.
I'm not kidding.
In the past week or so, Biden has said twice about... I can't say it.
I really, really can't because YouTube will get mad at me.
But he talked about certain behaviors that seemed like strange innuendo that resulted with people questioning his choice of words.
They gotta keep the guy off TV.
They really do.
But if they do it too much, he looks bad.
And so the problem is, the amount of airtime Biden needs is too much for the poor man because he can't even handle his own planned events.
So again, criticize Trump.
Looked like he was getting tired.
But yeah, sorry, man.
Now we get to the good stuff.
Dave Weigel for The Washington Post downloaded both apps, Trump and Biden, And what do you expect?
Well, here's the funny thing.
He says, signing up for the Trump app subscribed me to not one, but two automated text chains.
The first came from the Trump campaign within seconds of signing up, informing me that I had just gotten reward access unlocked, thus qualifying me to earn points and meet President Trump during the campaign in fall.
One minute later, the Republican National Committee thanked me for joining the team and asked whether I could let the president know what you think of this week's accomplishments.
Okay, okay, you get the point.
The point is, he almost immediately gets interaction from the Trump campaign.
page. Following the second gave me a yes or no poll on whether I approved of the president.
They also sent him a text two hours later. You were one of the 25 president Trump. Okay,
okay. You get the point. The point is he almost immediately gets interaction from the Trump
campaign. They're asking for him to make donations saying, Hey, you've won. Check this out.
He says all of that happened within two hours.
The Biden campaign did not contact me until seven hours after I downloaded the app, thanking me in the late afternoon.
Quote, it's Joe Biden and I owe you my sincere thanks, David.
You all have been so great to this campaign.
You all?
Like, who is that to?
I've been calling donors and so it's great to thank people personally.
I'm calling more this week or helping us start May strong.
If you aren't a May donor yet, you can chip in here and I might be calling you soon.
He goes on to say, over the next few days it was easy to forget the Biden app existed.
Push texts were infrequent and unlike the Trump app, the Biden app didn't let me check virtual campaign events.
That was on the website.
Team Joe offered me a few options and news items, all of which directed me from the app back to the campaign website.
For 24 hours, the top news item was a new Biden campaign pledge, which I could take, committing myself to empathy, keeping faith, humility, and no malarkey.
Among other nice things, if I wanted to volunteer, the app made it easier, but not addictive.
Trump 2020 did not let me go so easily.
A news feed led me to read the latest messaging, just as it would appear to a reporter on the media list.
Or the campaign's curated tweets, which prioritized big names like campaign manager Brad Parscale, an engage button Educated me on ways to fight with President Trump, from hosting a MAGA meetup to joining the campaign finance committee as a high-dollar bundler.
Sharing the app with a friend would award me 100 points, while sharing any news item to Twitter or Facebook would give me a single point.
A good prize like expedited entry at any to-be-scheduled rallies costs 25,000 points.
This is amazing.
The gamified Trump app has made some Democrats nervous, not least because Biden hasn't tried to compete with it.
Everything that came from the Trump campaign had an act-fast, as-seen-on-TV feeling.
Nothing from the Biden campaign did.
Biden's campaign texted me a poll.
Are you planning to vote for Joe Biden in the general election in your state?
And a longer strategy survey asking if I wanted to volunteer and what issues I cared about.
The Trump campaign and the RNC in the same time period invited me to the Trump 100 club.
I'm pretty sure Dave Weigel is completely wrong about that.
We are in the midst of a lockdown and a pandemic, but of course I could be wrong.
It's his story.
campaign, and a poll that claimed the president had closed all the borders to keep America
safe.
While citizenship applications have been halted, and while resources have been sent to the
Mexican border, the nation's borders are not closed.
I'm pretty sure Dave Weigel is completely wrong about that.
We are in the midst of a lockdown and a pandemic, but of course I could be wrong.
It's his story.
We'll leave it to him.
Look, I don't think I need to read too much more.
This story makes it clear.
Donald Trump's campaign is active.
It's engaging people.
It's offering them something.
I mean, think about the point system.
You share one of these stories that they like, and they'll give you points.
And if you get 25,000 points, you get expedited entry to a rally.
Have you seen the lines to Trump's rallies?
They stretch blocks, thousands of people.
You really, really want that.
Trust me.
As a member of the press who has been to many a Trump alley, I have had the privileged benefit of getting to bypass the line to get into those rallies.
It would be impossible for anyone to get in.
Well, I'm exaggerating, but you got to show up so early.
I mean, people were showing up in New Jersey like the day before or even like two days before camping out to get access to these rallies.
Man, people love this man.
And you know what?
We all know it.
Trump supporters are more excited to vote compared to Biden voters poll.
Do I even need to show you the poll?
Come on, man.
Now look, I think it's fair to say that the Biden campaign is doing an awful job, but it really is relative to the excellent job that Trump's campaign is doing.
No, you can't deny it.
The Washington Post lays it out right in front of you.
We know it.
Trump's app is gamified.
He's having fun.
His campaign managers, they're posting memes.
They encourage you to post the memes because the memes make you feel good, man.
You're laughing.
You're part of the crowd.
You're having a good old time.
But before you realize it, you're loving everybody who's laughing along with you.
What is Biden doing?
He's at war with the far left.
They don't like him.
The Democratic establishment is in shambles, and he can't even do a live stream.
Think about the disparity here.
Not only is Donald Trump's app apparently amazing, according to the Washington Post, Joe Biden can't even livestream himself.
How is this campaign even considered a campaign at this point?
Look at this.
Joe Biden starts general election nearly 187 million dollars behind Trump.
You know what?
Just stop.
Enough.
It's already over.
Biden should just go off, go in his rocking chair in the sun, you know, put a little blanket on his lap and just lull himself to sleep like he did on that, you know, that livestream with Hillary Clinton.
And we know where this is going.
Donald Trump is gonna win.
This is a story from today.
Early morning, supporters of President Donald Trump are more excited to rally behind him than those who support Joe Biden, according to a new poll.
Of the president's supporters, 48% said they were extremely excited to support him.
In a survey of voters in Massachusetts, in comparison, 24% of the presumptive Democratic nominee backers felt that way.
Well, on the other end, 15% of Trump supporters said they were not that excited compared to 28% of Biden supporters.
Yeesh.
So this was just done by Emerson in Massachusetts, but Emerson's pretty legit.
The polling also showed 60% of those in the state were planning to vote for Biden, with around half backing Trump.
Around 9% were undecided, of which the majority, 70%, were leaning towards Biden.
We get it.
It's Massachusetts, right?
It's a blue state.
Despite this lead for Biden, voters were fairly evenly split on who might win November's election, with 54% predicting a Biden triumph.
Are they saying that just because they hope it's true?
You know, it is true that opinion polls do have an influence, right?
The idea is if people assume Biden will win, they want to vote for the winner, so they do.
Maybe that's why they're saying yes.
I have no idea.
But I'll tell you what, if 70% of the people in that state are saying they're going to vote for Biden, but only 54% are saying Biden would actually win, that's a decent amount of people, 16% or so of those Biden voters, who don't think Biden's going to win.
Hey, at least they're being honest.
I can respect that.
Yeah, I don't see Biden winning.
But I'll tell you what, We all thought Trump would never win.
And then he won.
We all think Joe Biden will never win.
Hey, he might win.
Now, the enthusiasm gap is really important.
With more people, much, you know, people are much more excited to vote for Trump.
And they're going to come out in droves, no matter what happens.
And for Biden, I can't say the same.
But while this is all going on, there's another story occurring, and it's the allegations against Joe Biden.
Now, I'm not going to get into all the allegations, but I'll save this one for 6 p.m., so make sure you check us out at youtube.com slash timcastnews.
More corroborating evidence.
Let me say that again.
More evidence comes out.
Documents filed with courts backing up the claims against Joe Biden.
I bring you now to this absolutely wonderful meme posted by Cassandra Fairbanks.
Democrats defending Joe Biden be like, don't touch my garbage.
And it's a picture of an opossum in a garbage can snarling at somebody.
Isn't that just so cute and hilarious?
And that's actually how I feel.
The best part is, it's not just Trump supporters who are laughing at this meme.
It's the progressives in the far left, too.
You know, I would absolutely love to have any one of these universal basic income Bernie Sanders supporting far leftists come here.
We can all hold hands, you know, all hold the hands with the Trump supporter and the Biden, I'm sorry, and the Bernie supporters, and we can sing hilarious meme songs about how Joe Biden is awful, how his campaign is in complete chaos, the dude can't make a live stream work, and yes, the campaign is garbage, And we all know it.
At least the one good thing from all of this is that Joe Biden's incompetence and the failures of the Democratic establishment is a unifying force for the populist left and the populist right, thus mending this ever-present culture war and bringing people together at a time when we thought very seriously that, you know, civil war was a real possibility.
No, I don't know.
Look, I think a lot of these far leftists right now are ragging on the Democratic establishment out of, you know, anger that Bernie was centrally pushed out.
But I'm fairly confident that should Donald Trump be reelected, we are going to see much of, you know, many of these far leftists roam the streets screeching and yelling and dropping to their knees and yelling no, just like we saw last time.
So maybe it's just a temporary alliance because we all enjoy yelling at Joe Biden.
Well, a lot of progressives predicted that Joe Biden couldn't beat Donald Trump.
So right now, I think one of the reasons many of them are actually entertaining this and attacking Joe Biden is that they really want him to lose so they can say, I told you so.
Not that they want Trump to win, but I'll tell you what.
They're angry.
Bernie was their nominee, and he had a ton of support, and he had a real potential.
And I gotta say, I don't think Bernie Sanders could have won this time, but I think he could have won last time.
So that anger is ever-present.
The Democrats had an opportunity.
I do think Bernie could have won in 2016.
I think he may have actually won.
Because around, I believe it's like 12% of Bernie's voters flipped for Trump.
It's 12 to 18 depending on which polls you look at.
And then around 9 or so, 9 or 10% of Obama voters actually flipped for Trump as well.
Bernie could have maintained some of that, you know, excitement.
But Bernie also flip-flops, so Bernie is worthy of criticism, too.
Nonetheless, for the time being, I will happily enjoy the memes coming from both far left and right as they refer to Joe Biden's campaign as garbage.
Oh, poor sleepy Joe, man.
I feel bad.
Seeing him struggle and wander off camera and his live streams fail It really is kind of sad, you know?
This poor old man can't even, can't even just do a live stream, you know?
And they just keep propping him up.
So, you know what?
I'll leave it there.
It really is sad.
It breaks my heart.
But you know what?
Look, he wants to go for it.
I don't think the campaign is real.
I really don't.
Or at the very least, it's just so utterly incompetent.
Could anyone argue with this?
I guess the Democrats are going to pretend like, no, that's not true, Tim.
You're just biased.
Oh, shut up, man.
We can all see it.
Stick around.
The next segment is coming up at 6 p.m.
YouTube.com slash TimCastNews.
It is a different channel, and I will see you all there.
I hope you are all prepared for the coming weeks because we just got these transcripts.
More documents are expected, and things are about to get crazy.
Or maybe not, because we've been kind of waiting for something to happen for a long time, and it's just a slow trickle.
Bring it on, man!
Dump the documents!
Make an arrest!
Obama knew details of wiretapped Flynn phone calls, surprising top DOJ official in meeting with Biden, declassified documents show.
For most of you who have been following this, and I know many of you have been following this a lot more than I've actually talked about it, some people say, Tim, you're behind on this story.
Well, hold on.
I'm just waiting for everything to come out so that I can say definitively, here's what we got.
You got to be careful with these things, right?
Obama knew.
How did he know?
Why did he know?
What was going on?
And as many people speculated for a long time, Obama was in on it.
Now, I don't know for sure, and that's why I'm being very careful.
But more documents are expected.
What I can say, in this story from Fox News, we're now learning from these transcripts that for the past couple of years, this information was kept from the public.
To what level involvement did Obama have, and why did he know about it?
Let's actually just read this.
There's a lot to go through.
But this pertains to Michael Flynn.
And I'll tell you what, man.
There's, like, prominent resistance-type leftists, and they are in full-on panic mode trying to justify what we can now— Look, man, I'm just going to say it.
It was a conspiracy against Michael Flynn.
It really was.
And isn't it funny?
You can't say that word, the C word.
But think about it.
Let me show you this from The Washington Post.
August 8th, 2016.
Lisa Page.
Trump's not ever going to become president, right?
Right?
Struck.
No, no he's not.
We'll stop it.
Stroke to Page.
I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy's office.
That there's no way he gets elected.
But I'm afraid we can't take that risk.
It's like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before 40.
So, here we have these texts.
We know that the FBI was going to close the case against Michael Flynn.
We know that from the released notes, they were trying to get him fired.
Come on, man.
Now, I know it's a little bit.
It's a little bit.
We're seeing through a keyhole into this large room full of just crazy shenanigans.
But at this point, with the evidence that's been released, it really does seem like rogue FBI agents, for now, conspired, because of their fear of Trump, to take out Trump's staff, and I mean that career-wise, politically, targeting his job, trying to trick him into lying, and trying to use the Logan Act in a way that makes literally no sense.
And now it gets even crazier, because Obama knew.
Why?
How high up did this go, apparently, to the President?
Let's read this.
Fox News says President Obama was aware of the details of then-incoming National Security Advisor Michael Flynn's intercepted December 2016 phone calls with then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, apparently surprising then-Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, according to documents released Thursday, as exhibits to the government's motion to dismiss the Flynn case.
Obama's unexpectedly intimate knowledge of the details of Flynn's calls, which the FBI acknowledged at the time, were not criminal or even improper, raised eyebrows because of his own history with Flynn and because top FBI officials secretly discussed whether their goal was to get Flynn fired when they interviewed him in the White House on January 24, 2017.
Obama personally had warned the Trump administration against hiring Flynn, and made clear he was not a fan, according to multiple sources.
Obama had fired Flynn as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency in 2014.
Obama cited insubordination, while Flynn asserted he was pushed out for his aggressive stance on combating Islamic extremism.
On January 5, 2017, Yates attended an Oval Office meeting with then-FBI Director James Comey, then-Vice President Joe Biden, then-CIA Director John Brennan, and then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.
According to the newly declassified documents, including an FD302 FBI witness report, they were discussing Russian election interference along with National Security Advisor Susan Rice and other members of the National Security Council.
After the briefing, Obama asked Yates and Comey to stay behind and said he had learned of the information about Flynn and his conversation with Russian ambassadors about sanctions.
Obama specified that he did not want any additional information on the matter, but was seeking information on whether the White House should be treating Flynn any differently, given the information.
A previous memo from Rice stated that Biden also stayed behind after the main briefing had ended.
So Joe Biden knew as well, huh?
At that point, the documents showed Yates had no idea what the president was talking about, but figured it out based on the conversation.
Yates recalled Comey mentioning the Logan Act, but can't recall if he specified there was an investigation.
Comey did not talk about prosecution in the meeting.
It was not clear to Yates from where the president first received the information.
Yates did not recall Comey's response to the president's question about how to treat Flynn.
She was so surprised by the information she was hearing that she was having a hard time processing it and listening to the conversation at the same time.
Yates, who was fired by the Trump administration after taking the extraordinary step of refusing to defend its travel ban executive order in court, would later say that she was concerned Flynn would be vulnerable to blackmail because of his interactions with Russia.
The Fox goes on to say the Logan Act, an obscure statute has never been used successfully in a
criminal prosecution and acted in 1799 in an era before telephones. It was intended to prevent
individuals from falsely claiming to represent the United States government abroad. In its motion to
dismiss Flynn's case on Thursday, the DOJ noted that the law was an unserious dead letter.
Also released as an exhibit Thursday was a head-turning two-page document outlining why
the FBI opened its counterintelligence probe into Flynn in August 2016. The FBI offered only three
That Flynn was cited as an advisor to the Trump team on foreign policy issues, February 2016.
He has ties to various state-affiliated entities of the Russian Federation, as reported by Open Source Information.
And he traveled to Russia in December 2015, as reported by Open Source Information.
The state-affiliated entities line was an apparent reference to Flynn's paid appearance at a Moscow gala for Russian state TV network RT in 2015.
Flynn also reportedly received thousands more in expenses covered by the network and in speech fees from other Russian firms, including some payments that he initially didn't disclose on ethics forms.
The payments raised eyebrows on Capitol Hill, although Republicans pointed out that many other prominent officials, including Bill Clinton, have traveled to Russia for highly paid speaking engagements.
Glenn Greenwald.
Progressive.
Anti-Trump.
The Intercept.
You know him, you love him.
He tweeted this, I'd still like to understand what was improper about the incoming national
security advisor of a newly elected administration calling his Russian counterpart to try to tamp down
tensions in the weeks before he took office. I wonder how many Americans even know about
the recently discovered FBI notes regarding their intentions before interviewing Flynn.
Same question for the recently discovered FISA documents undermining much of the
the Russia get conspiracies.
These have been largely buried in the media.
Why did the FBI want to get Michael Flynn fired?
Perhaps there's a reason.
But it really does seem that because it was Peter Strzok who literally did keep the Flynn investigation open, based on his conversations and the text messages published, we've seen this news for years, the insurance policy.
Washington Post says, FBI texts evidence of treason and a coup.
I'll tell you what, man.
When an FBI agent says, no, he's not, we'll stop it.
And then does what he did to Michael Flynn, to Donald Trump's staff, stands to reason his intent was not law enforcement.
Put these things together, and I'll tell you what, I'm only scratching the surface on this one, because like I said, I'm taking only the surface level stuff here and making sure this stuff is in stone.
Now a lot of people have speculated, there's a lot of opinion on the matter, but this is what we have in fact.
An FBI agent said he was going to stop Donald Trump.
An FBI agent tried to keep, he literally kept a case open when the FBI was trying to close it against Michael Flynn.
And then in notes, they stated, the FBI agents, they wanted to get Flynn fired.
That has nothing to do with law enforcement.
It should be clear right now.
It should be clear right now!
Motive!
Intent!
Action taken!
It's crazy to me, man.
But I'll tell you what.
Let's go back and read.
This is a lot to go through.
I want to show you this story from the New York Post.
FBI lovebirds Lisa Page, Peter Strzok conspired in Michael Flynn case documents.
So this is just from the other day.
Disgraced anti-Trump FBI lovebirds Lisa Page and Peter Strzok conspired to keep the case against Trump's former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn ongoing when they found out it hadn't been formally closed.
In a trench of court documents released after the Justice Department dropped its case against Flynn on Thursday, emails between then lovers Strzok and Page in 2017 revealed they contemplated charging Flynn using the Logan Act as the FBI was preparing to end the investigation.
Two weeks before Trump's inauguration, Strzok, one of the lead agents on the FBI investigation into Russian interference, sent senior FBI lawyer Page a definition of the Logan Act,
saying any existing rules on the act does not involve incoming administrations.
Page replied, you are awesome, thank you.
The Logan Act makes it a crime for unauthorized Americans to negotiate with a foreign government
in a dispute with the United States, but has never resulted in a prosecution.
The emails were sent on the same day that Strzok, then FBI Deputy Assistant Director, learned that the investigation had not been closed in a timely manner, leaving it unexpectedly still formally open.
Strzok relayed the serendipitously good news to Page, telling her, our utter incompetence actually helped us.
His former lover, then the special counsel to FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, reacted with surprise and relief.
Documents suggest the FBI was prepared to close an investigation into whether Flynn was a Russian agent before Trump took office in January 2017, but instructed agents to keep it open for now.
Their affair became public, yada yada, we get it.
So let's break this down.
Michael Flynn, Donald Trump's national security advisor.
Contacted a Russian ambassador and started talking to him about, you know, what they should or shouldn't do, blah blah blah.
Calm down tensions, right?
That's what Glenn Greenwald's saying.
What's wrong with that?
How is that a violation of the Logan Act?
Why would they try and threaten him with a violation of the Logan Act?
As we now know, According to numerous reports, they wanted to get Flynn fired, and they threatened him with his son.
They said, if you plead guilty and cooperate, we will not go after your child.
Now, I get it.
I use the word child, but, you know, his son's an adult grown man.
But you understand.
What would a father do for their kid?
So he pled guilty.
Pleading guilty is not proof that you've done it.
It's you just pleading guilty.
Now I wonder, as we now know of basically what happened, are there going to be any indictments?
I mean, I'm not a lawyer.
I'm also not confident.
I don't have a lot of faith in the federal government to deal with these things.
Trump just tweeted out, drain the swamp, he said.
Oh, come on.
Trump has done such an awful job of draining the swamp.
First of all, there are some swamp monsters he has brought in, sort of.
I don't view Trump or his administration, for the most part, as swamp monsters.
Trump's something else, right?
He's a populist.
He's not part of the swamp establishment.
The swamp is that crony establishment.
But you see, when Trump came into office, he had an opportunity to actually fire tons of people, and he waited.
Now, I get it.
Some people have said, and I've actually argued this myself, That one of the big reasons for keeping this case open and investigating Trump was to prevent him from draining the swamp.
While Trump was under investigation for the Russiagate stuff, if he fired a bunch of these people, they would argue it was obstruction of justice.
And they're still trying to.
So Trump couldn't actually make any moves until this had been cleared.
And sure enough, after it was, he started draining the swamp.
I still don't think he's done a good enough job, because you have a bunch of people who are in the National Security Council, or were, who are leaking information and basically plotting against him.
I mean, I say basically.
It is rather opinion.
Because some people say, oh, but they're heroes blowing the whistle.
It's like, nah, man.
It's politics.
Trump could have fired a ton of people.
He should have done it sooner.
He didn't.
You know, Trump's not, he's not a swamp player.
You know what I mean?
I think these other administrations that do politics, they understand what they're going into.
And Donald Trump wasn't.
He was an outsider.
So he didn't know what he was getting into or the tactics that would be used against him.
Don't get me wrong, there's reasons to criticize him.
But what we're learning now is shocking, to say the least.
And I really mean it.
But what do you think our good friends over at the r slash politics subreddit are saying?
What are the resistance pro-Biden lunatics saying?
Boy, I tell you what, it is a paranoid, delusional state.
And of course, they argue the same things about me and about you.
I'm not here to argue for policy.
I'm not here to argue that Trump is a good person.
I'm not here to advocate for the federal government.
I actually like the idea that executive authority is being, you know, curtailed because they're so desperate to stop Trump.
Hey, these are great things.
But I'll tell you what, the facts are the facts.
Insurance policy text?
We're not going to let Trump get elected.
We're going to keep open an FBI investigation.
We're going to get a guy fired.
Long?
There was no reason to charge Flynn?
They tricked him?
They threatened his son?
Come on, man.
And Obama knew about it?
That's the crazy part.
Well, let's pop over to Reddit and see what's happening over on politics.
More like anti-Trump.
Here's the number one post.
Don't forget, Michael Flynn pleaded guilty twice.
That's right, he did.
That's great.
Here's the top comment.
Defendant, yeah, I'm guilty.
AG, well clearly there's nothing worth prosecuting here.
And then we see this.
The next comment says, it's almost like, now I'm going on a limb here, it's almost like the bar is crooked.
Whoa, I hear you say, surely such a prestigious office wouldn't stoop to such depths.
Surely the rule of law means something.
Surely the sanctity of the office stands for something.
Then you realize, nah, it's a criminal enterprise.
It's a world where black dudes get lynched for jogging.
Where mass death is acceptable in the name of freedom, and where Jared Kushner is the second most powerful person in the world.
Oh man, I love it.
It's like they don't actually read the news.
You know what I mean?
So, after everything I've just laid out before you, them trying to keep open an investigation into a man to get him fired, clearly not a law enforcement matter.
And they're arguing Bill Barr is crooked, even though it wasn't Bill Barr who recommended the dropping of this case.
It was sent to someone else.
This other person then made a recommendation to Bill Barr, and then Bill Barr took action.
What more do you want to happen?
You see, the problem with these people and how they view the world is that unless it goes their way, it's a criminal enterprise, no matter what.
So if Bill Barr came out immediately after he was appointed by Trump and said, I'm going to drop all these cases, I don't care.
Yeah, then you could argue like, whoa, he's just doing that for Trump.
If Trump says do this thing and Bill Barr is actually disagree with the president publicly, And he says, I'm going to appoint an independent third party to review this and back away.
And the independent third party comes back and says, yeah, this makes no sense.
Drop it.
And Bill Barr says, you got it.
What more do you want?
Perhaps these people need to realize maybe you are wrong.
But no, they can't.
I love it, man.
So back over at rslashpolitics, here's what they're talking about.
First, don't forget Michael Flynn pleaded guilty twice.
Then we have the CDC guide to reopening was trashed by Trump admin.
Orange man bad.
William Barr's DOJ is now covering up crimes for Trump in broad daylight from Slate.
Trump-Russia investigation.
House releases long-awaited transcripts from closed-door interviews.
Okay, finally.
Something kind of normal, right?
Just some regular old news that we can talk about.
I wonder what the comments are.
Well, let's pop over to this article and see what they're talking about.
Oh, what's this?
The top comment is just the transcript between Schiff and Don Jr.
that proves nothing, and that's what they're looking at?
I love it.
Here we can see that, uh, you know, and it's funny too because they comment like, over on Fox News, it's a different reality, man.
They've somehow convinced all these Fox viewers that the Democrats are evil.
They have?
Bro.
The FBI agents.
Has nothing to do with the Democrats.
Literally did this.
Saying, do we want to get him fired?
Why?
Why are you leaving that out?
Here's what they show you.
They show a conversation between Adam Schiff and Donald Trump and all they really show is legalese discussion that ultimately resulted in nothing.
It's what I don't get.
I'm reading this and I'm like, this is their smoking gun.
These people are trying to argue that Schiff is the good guy and that what they've released is actually damning for Trump.
And all they really have is that Donald Trump Jr.
is saying, I talked to my lawyer.
Did you go to a meeting to get Russian dirt?
And he was like, not necessarily.
That's it.
Schiff asks basically if, you know, you thought this meeting was about getting dirt on Hillary Clinton.
And he says, part of it, sure.
And he says, you called it a bait and switch because it turned out as about some kind of Russian adoption.
He says, yes.
And while I think it's not a good look for Donald Trump Jr., there's no smoking gun here.
They question—he puts all these texts in bold—they question why it is that he's saying, I only discussed it with counsel.
Now, Mr. Trump, apart from counsel, there are no privileged conversations.
So, you know, did you talk with anyone else?
Schiff asks, so did you discuss this with your father, with counsel present?
Yes.
And?
Well, these people don't seem to realize.
The way the language goes.
The reason Schiff is asking the questions, and the reason Trump is answering the way he is, Trump Jr., is because they're dealing with a legal matter, and language must be absolutely precise.
People don't seem to understand that when you're dealing with a conversation, you've got to make sure you've covered all your bases, you're talking about your lawyers, and you're speaking as specifically and precisely as possible.
So in the end, what do we have?
I don't know.
Bad judgment.
That's about it.
I mean, look, you want to criticize Don Jr.
for taking this meeting in the first place, sure.
You know, by all means.
But here's what happens in the end.
I'm not going to pretend to be an expert on, like I said, I don't know if there will be indictments because I don't know what it takes for any of these things to be a crime, from, you know, FBI to Obama's knowledge.
All I know is that I don't like the looks of things.
I don't like the idea that Trump Jr.
wanted to take a meeting, potentially to get dirt on Hillary Clinton.
But Robert Mueller himself has said there's no evidence of collusion.
Nothing happened.
We've also heard from all of these other witnesses who testified, there was no evidence of collusion, even Clapper.
So why would I pretend this is a smoking gun in any respect?
I wouldn't.
I think it just makes Trump Jr.
look, I don't know, dumb.
He did something stupid.
But if the people going after him specifically said there was no evidence of collusion, and even in the testimony, no evidence of collusion, Then why am I going to assume there was?
What you're seeing, this is the best they could do?
Discussing dirt on Clinton, nothing came of it, it was about an adoption, that's it.
And then it's funny because they go on to say it's like damning evidence of like the law being broken.
Bro, even Robert Mueller didn't say that.
And he was the one investigating, your supposed hero.
What do we have though?
I'm not going to argue whether or not Strzok, Page, Obama, anybody broke the law, I don't know.
I will tell you all of it looks bad for everyone.
But you know what looks really, really bad?
You can argue some of these things about Trump Jr.
We'll have a discussion about why he did or didn't take these meetings, what he should or shouldn't have done, how he testified.
But you want to tell me that the FBI was set to close an investigation into Flynn, talked about going after his kid, demanded he plead guilty, and then he does.
Then all of a sudden you're lording that over him.
Did you even read what they were trying to do?
I'm trying to get him fired.
Obama knew what was going on and why.
So I don't know what constitutes a crime.
And I know a lot of people are probably screaming, saying, Tim, it's clearly criminal.
No, I get it.
I get it.
I defer to Bill Barr.
Seems like the dude's on the up and up.
They certainly don't like the fact that they're losing.
So they're going to claim that Bill Barr is crooked.
Ah, sorry, man.
I'm not interested.
Bill Barr was the AG before, and he's the AG now.
There's no reason to believe that all of a sudden, after he left the DOJ, he became corrupt.
I'm not going to play those silly games.
So I guess the question remains now.
To what extent was Obama involved?
Why did he know about this?
Why was the FBI case, you know, left open?
And I think you know the answers to some of these questions, for sure.
I'm just asking them.
In that context, where do we go from here?
Will there be indictments?
Well, the Durham investigation is now a criminal investigation.
Will something happen in the next week?
I don't know.
But boy, it does sound like this is potentially one of the biggest political scandals in the history of this country.
I guess we'll find out.
I'll leave it there.
Look, man, I don't know who's guilty, I don't know who's innocent, but it really does seem like, based on the evidence coming out, we know Russiagate was a hoax, okay?
The people going on TV saying, oh, they did it, they testified, oh, I actually don't know that.
I kid you not.
So why was Adam Schiff, Nancy Pelosi, saying it was Russia in December, in January, when they knew it wasn't?
The best they had was that Donald Trump may have met with somebody and then nothing happened?
That's not evidence of anything.
But Schiff kept saying he saw the evidence.
Never released it.
Now these transcripts come out proving they've known the whole time.
There was nothing.
Why did they keep saying it?
I think we know why.
We'll see how this plays out.
I'll leave it there.
Stick around.
Next segment's coming up at 1 p.m.
on this channel and I will see you all then.
The early projections were wrong.
First, they were predicting millions of deaths if we didn't do anything.
Then they said that if we did lockdown, we could expect hundreds of thousands dead.
We did lockdown.
We practiced social distancing.
We built emergency field hospitals.
And now we're seeing the result.
The field hospitals are standing down most without treating any COVID-19 patients.
We're also learning.
Now, this study comes from the UK, so it's a bit different.
But they ask, was Britain's full lockdown a waste of time?
Scientists find blanket stay-at-home orders had little effect on curbing coronavirus outbreaks in Europe, but closing schools and banning mass gatherings did work.
Stands to reason.
All we really needed to do was practice social distancing.
In fact, another study we saw the other day says that 66 of people who are getting infected now are staying at home.
So there are more people who are locked down getting sick than people who aren't locked down, the essential workers.
It stands to reason that we should be outside because you are less likely to get sick.
It also stands to reason we may have overreacted and perhaps It was wrong to rush out and spend hundreds of millions of dollars building emergency hospitals.
But I'll actually argue I don't think the hospitals were the wrong thing, though we are learning that they're standing down and they've never had a single patient.
It's important to point out, you know, as I've stated before, when someone forecasts a hurricane, and we go out and board up windows and buy supplies, we don't later complain that the hurricane didn't come.
We're glad it missed us.
So in this regard, we saw the forecasts, the forecasts were incorrect, and we're lucky.
It could have been so much worse.
So we're basically dodging this storm.
But I do think it's important to point out that in our overreaction, we actually caused serious damage with the economic shutdown.
Now we're seeing multiple studies coming out showing that the mortality rate is very, very low, that more people had this than we realized.
There's also some studies saying maybe the tests are wrong, so we really, really don't know.
It makes a very difficult situation for us.
But if we're now seeing that the lockdown was ineffective, according to one study in the UK, and that we don't actually need these hospitals, perhaps it's time to slowly start reopening, which is what many states are actually doing.
Now, of course, we're still seeing Democratic states insist on extending their lockdowns.
We're seeing New York City say, you're not allowed to go out and protest in violation of the First Amendment.
But how much information is enough?
Apparently, for tribal reasons, people just refuse to accept the lockdown didn't work, may have made things worse, or at the very least, it's time to reopen regardless.
They're going to argue simply because they want to say Trump is bad, but I'll tell you what, they are helping Donald Trump.
Let me tell you, man, and we'll read the story.
Donald Trump for the first three years of his presidency had record-breaking economic numbers.
Jim Cramer of CNBC, I believe CNBC, said, love Trump or hate him, these are the best numbers of our lives.
So now that the economy is taking a major hit and unemployment is at like 14 or 15 percent, who's best equipped to get us back to normal?
Joe Biden or Donald Trump?
I'm sorry, the pandemic.
It's Donald Trump.
You know, the economy was going really, really well.
The pandemic wasn't his fault.
I mean, it's a virus.
It's an act of nature.
And now Trump's, you know, if he, if he gets elected president, he'll probably fix the economy again.
So in the end, the sustained lockdown just seems to benefit the president.
This is what I can't stand about the Democrats and the left.
They can't, there's no focus, there's no strategy, and they just hurt themselves in confusion.
Every.
Single time.
Let's read about these hospitals.
NPR reports.
As hospitals were overrun by coronavirus patients in other parts of the world, the Army Corps of Engineers mobilized in the U.S., hiring private contractors to build emergency field hospitals around the country.
The endeavor cost more than $660 million, according to an NPR analysis of federal spending records.
But nearly four months into the pandemic, most of these facilities haven't treated a single patient.
Check this out.
This one in McCormick Place, Chicago.
$65,000,000.
3,000 beds.
37 patients.
Hey, at least they treated some people, right?
Here's one in Colorado.
$34,000,000.
2,000 beds.
No patients.
In fact, it looks like according to this chart, only three of the hospitals they list actually had patients.
Now, the Javits Center.
With 1,900 beds, actually treated 1,095 patients.
That makes sense.
Early on, we are seeing tons of people go to hospitals, filming them, saying, there's nobody here, what's going on, I thought these hospitals were overrun.
We have seen endless TikTok cringe nurses wasting time doing stupid memes, And just trying to one-up each other.
And it's cringe.
It is the cringiest trash I have ever seen.
Clearly, most of these nurses were not in a panic or being overrun.
But that's fine.
That's normal.
You see, the tribalists on the left will tell you, oh no, we're panicked, we don't have enough.
And you'll find people on the right saying, why aren't these hospitals, you know, full of people?
What's going on?
The truth is closer to the middle.
Some hospitals were overrun.
We needed this in New York.
It worked.
The hospital in New York worked.
It was the right thing to do.
Almost, more than 50% capacity.
Wonderful.
There were other hospitals in New York that were not overrun.
The example people often give to explain this is, You know, McDonald's serves, you know, what, like a billion, two billion people a year or whatever.
One McDonald's could not handle all of that.
So yes, we saw some hospitals completely overrun, the Javits Center picked up the overflow, we had that ship come into New York, but many places did not need their emergency field hospitals.
So like I said, you can say we overreacted.
But I think when we look at this, what we do now is we say, I still think it was the right thing to do.
It's better safe than sorry.
Perhaps it was too expensive.
That's an argument that can be made.
But in the future, let's assess this and use this information to improve what we have done.
I'm not going to complain that we had emergency hospitals, man.
That's the Army Corps of Engineers rushing in, contractors coming in, building something and doing something awesome.
And I'm glad we didn't need to use them.
However, we locked everything down in our panic, and it's seriously hurting us.
They say public health experts said this episode exposes how ill-prepared the US is for a pandemic.
Oh, what?
How do you conclude that?
They praised the Army Corps for quickly providing thousands of extra beds, but experts said there wasn't enough planning to make sure these field hospitals could be put to use once they were finished.
What?
There was no people.
We just saw that expose from Veritas where one hospital was staging their testing line.
Or I shouldn't say the hospital was, but the line was staged.
Be it the news organization or the hospital, somebody did it.
We panicked, we set all this up, and for the most part, we didn't need it.
That's fine.
Just admit it.
Just like I said with the hurricanes.
We say, you know what, we did our best, and we went a little over the top, but it's better safe than sorry.
No, now they're trying to claim what really happened is that, you know, it was a bureaucratic mess and we couldn't get them to be used.
Nah, man.
There weren't people to use them.
What do you mean, redo it?
Because what it's showing is that the plans we have in place, they don't work," said Robin Gershon,
a professor at New York University's School of Global Public Health.
We have to go back to the drawing board and redo it. What do you mean, redo it? Redo what?
The nation's governors, who requested the Army Corps projects and in some cases contributed
state funding, said they're relieved these facilities didn't get more use.
They said early models predicted a catastrophic shortage of hospital beds, and no one knew for sure when or if stay-at-home orders would reduce the spread of the coronavirus.
Perhaps what this public health expert in New York is saying, it's showing the plans we have in place don't work.
Do you mean that we shouldn't have put up these hospitals?
That's the only thing I can conclude.
The governors aren't acting like people were blocked from going to the hospital, so what is the point you're trying to make?
We have to go back and redo it?
So you're saying, wait, this doesn't even make sense.
Experts said there wasn't enough planning to make sure these field hospitals could be put to use.
Are you arguing for more sick people?
Like we should plan to get people sick?
What's your point?
It makes no sense.
It sounds to me like what they're saying is there was a bureaucratic obstruction, but that's not the case.
Absolutely not the case.
Quote, all of those field hospitals and available beds sit empty today.
Ron DeSantis of Florida said last month, and that's a very, very good thing.
Gretchen Whitmer said, these 1,000 bed alternate care sites are not necessary, they're not filled, thank God.
So who is this expert trying to argue that we made a mistake?
Democratic Governor Whitmer, who everyone's mad at, and Ron DeSantis have both said, great, we didn't use them, we didn't need them.
I mean, which Whitmer is straight up saying we didn't need them?
Senior military leaders also said the effort was a success, even if the beds sit empty.
General John Hyten, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was asked at a news conference if it bothered him to see the field hospitals go unused.
For gosh sakes, no!
If you see beds full, that means the local capacity of the local hospitals to handle this has been overwhelmed.
And now we're into an emergency situation.
The Army Corps started building more than 30 field hospitals, retrofitting convention centers, and erecting climate-controlled tents in mid-March.
Agency officials pushed to get these facilities done fast, limiting the bidding process and often negotiating directly with contractors they knew could deliver on time.
I tell our guys, you have three weeks, Lt.
Gen.
Todd Semonite, commander of the Army Corps of Engineers, said at a Pentagon news briefing in March.
You get as much as you can done in three weeks, and then the mission is complete.
We have a narrow window of opportunity.
If we don't leverage that window of opportunity, we're going to miss it.
At Chicago's McCormick Place, workers scrambled in April to transform the convention center into a massive temporary hospital with 3,000 beds, more than the biggest hospital in Illinois.
This was an empty convention hall, J.B.
Pritzker said during a news conference, while flanked by construction workers in hardhats and bright yellow vests.
Monumental, round-the-clock dedication is what got this done before we need it, preparing for saving lives in the event that things become as bad as some have predicted.
But just as construction got underway, states were issuing stay-at-home orders, and the spread of the coronavirus eventually began to slow.
And actually, like I said, one study may have shown that may have made it worse, in which case, man, we really didn't need these.
You know what, man?
You can make the hurricane argument that I'm glad that it didn't hit us, but perhaps we need better experts.
I mean, look, as much as many people seem to like Dr. Fauci, he was saying early on it wasn't a big deal.
He was saying it was fine.
He's been saying the same as everybody else.
No one knew more than anyone else.
Our experts got this wrong.
So here's what we do.
I'm not going to begrudge the experts for doing these things, for building these hospitals.
We didn't need them?
Good.
We need to take this information into account moving forward, and then we need to start lifting the lockdown, start putting people back to work, start letting people go back to work, I should say.
But instead, when you go on social media, you just hear people screeching like the world is ending, as if they haven't even read any of the data.
Like, what are you supposed to tell these people who are like, we can't reopen the country!
It will get worse!
What do you tell them when you're like, the hospitals are standing down?
Like, NPR.
You love NPR, right?
They're reporting this.
Are they?
Yeah, you know what, man?
These conversations are pointless because people who want to maintain the lockdowns Are ignoring the UN.
They're ignoring the hunger, the meat, the supply chain breaking, the food chain, you know, food supply chain shattering.
They're ignoring it all.
They don't care.
They're not paying attention.
And worse still, they think they know the science.
They're like, science is on our side.
You didn't read a single article, dude!
Show them this!
The hospitals are standing down.
They're not being used.
Please read this.
Okay?
I understand.
That if we reopen things, well then maybe we might need some of these hospitals.
That makes sense, right?
If we slowly reopen, however, and that study previously is correct that the lockdown made things worse, then things will get better.
That's the science.
You want to argue with me?
Fine.
You're arguing against the science.
Can science be wrong?
Yes.
That's why it's science.
But you can't simultaneously argue you're on the side of science and then dismiss multiple studies that have come out showing this.
Look at this story in Britain.
They say draconian stay-at-home orders and shutting down all non-essential businesses had little effect on fighting coronavirus in Europe, according to a study.
But the same scientists discovered closing schools and banning all mass gatherings did work in slowing outbreaks across the continent.
Like I said, social distancing seems to work.
The lockdown didn't.
University of East Anglia researchers now say relaxing the stay-at-home policy and letting some businesses reopen could be the UK's first step to easing the lockdown.
Excellent.
The findings throw into question whether Britain's total lockdown announced on March 23rd was ever necessary amid claims social distancing policies announced on March 16th curbed the crisis on their own.
Other leading scientists have claimed Britain's COVID-19 outbreak peaked and started to decline before the official lockdown began, arguing that number 10's drastic policy to shut the UK down was wrong.
Transport use plummeted, and fewer people were visiting GPs with telltale coronavirus symptoms the week before lockdown, suggesting the government's call for the public to work from home where possible and to only take essential travel was effective enough.
And one Swedish researcher, Dr. John Gjeseke, who has seen his country resist calls for a lockdown but escape relatively unharmed, said the pandemic is unstoppable and everyone will be exposed to the coronavirus sooner or later.
It comes after Boris Johnson yesterday confirmed that strict rules imposed under the six-week coronavirus lockdown will start to be eased on Monday, on the same day the British death toll became the first in Europe to rise above 30,000 and the number of people diagnosed with the disease surged past 200,000.
The Prime Minister will outline a five-step plan for Britain's second phase on Sunday, with the government set to drop its stay-at-home message and replace it with stay safe.
But as the UK and other countries in Europe prepare to lift restrictions, the World Health Organization has warned them not to be afraid of restarting them if the virus begins to take off again.
In other developments to Britain's coronavirus crisis, Boris, and then they show a bunch of other stories which we don't need to get into.
The main point of this.
I think it's fair to say that we have more than enough science on our side to say, it's time to reopen.
We're dealing with an economic crisis, a political crisis, and a health crisis.
As it turns out, we may have made some mistakes along the way, but I'm glad that we did our best.
We're wrong.
You don't want to fault someone for trying.
You just say, okay, now we know and we'll do better in the future.
Knowing what we're knowing now.
I think it's fair to say that it's time to reopen, lest we end up with, say, I don't know, a boogaloo of some sort.
People who are showing up and protesting with weapons, saying, you know, defying these lockdown orders, a salon owner getting arrested, the State Supreme Court of Texas overturning this, yet we shouldn't be doing any of this.
We're now dealing with an economic collapse because we locked down and we shouldn't have, but you know, hindsight is 20-20.
And now we're dealing with a political crisis because people are starting to freak out.
In the U.S., our Constitution is being just stomped all over.
New York City is saying there's no right to protest anymore.
Yeah, you can't do that.
So it's time.
It's enough.
Enough.
This story I find funny, however.
Police complain they're becoming the villains of the pandemic as officers prepare to crack down on bank holiday sunbathers.
Police fear talk of lifting COVID restrictions could cause problems this weekend.
Why?
The data says otherwise.
Get off your high horse and read the science.
Thousands of motorists are expected to defy restrictions to go to the beach.
Others will head to beauty spots in the countryside for the long weekend.
Police fear they will be seen as villains for enforcing the lockdown.
Uh, duh.
Because you are!
You guys see that viral tweet?
Where it was some cops took a picture of their shadow.
And it said, think going to a rural area for a picnic, you know, and you won't be caught?
We'll pop out of the shadows and find you!
It's like...
What?
Dude, you are the baddies.
Now look, I get it.
The UK doesn't have a constitution.
You guys don't have freedom.
Unfortunately.
I'm half kidding, but really, I get it.
You kind of don't.
You got Count Dankula getting arrested for making a joke.
Come on.
In the U.S., we've had our problems, too.
There have been people arrested for rap lyrics and stuff.
But we have a constitution.
We're still seeing the same thing.
New York City is saying no protest.
What are you going to do?
Arrest people?
They have.
They've violated the constitution.
So I'll tell you what.
Any police officer in New York who is upholding a decree by the mayor, you need to stop, sit down, take a look at one of your buddies and go, are we the baddies?
Yeah, because you are.
Because apparently you were supposed to have sworn an oath to uphold the Constitution, and as soon as your boss was like, don't do that, you were like, okay boss, I won't uphold the Constitution.
Now in the U.S.
there are many sheriffs who are refusing to act on, to enforce unconstitutional decree.
These aren't laws.
The governor coming out and saying, you can't do this, is not a law, that's not how it works, you can't do that.
Okay, we are not a monarchy or a despotism or whatever, a dictatorship.
You can't just do that.
Yet still we see police enforce these things.
In Raleigh we saw the cops say protesting is not an essential activity.
Nice try.
It doesn't matter what you think it is.
But apparently these cops have not upheld their oath to the Constitution.
Or maybe many of them never even swore an oath in the first place.
Many people call them the oath breakers.
So if the cops are so concerned about being the villains, perhaps you should be paying attention to what the data is showing us.
To do otherwise would be anti-science in the United States, unconstitutional, a violation of civil rights and civil liberties, and a waste of our time and money.
Man, it really does look bad, I'll tell you what.
If you, you know, again, hindsight being 20-20, I think when this all first started, we all did what we needed to do and we all thought similar things.
I mean, Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats like to drag Trump because he didn't move fast enough.
Wow.
Maybe now they're going to look really bad because, as it turns out, Trump probably did too much because the lockdown didn't do anything.
In which case, hindsight being 20-20, they're going to have to backpedal again.
Now I'll tell you what we can expect in the U.S.
Democrats are going to come out and say, you know, all of these studies are showing that the lockdown did more harm than good and that was on Donald Trump.
He bragged about how he shut the country down and he did all these things.
You know what's coming.
No matter what happens, it'll always be his fault.
That's what I can expect.
I can also expect to see tribal partisans being, like, a week late to the party.
How many studies need to come out?
How many reports need to come out?
How much information do you need until you realize this isn't working?
130 million people face starvation, according to the UN, because we locked everything down.
Well, perhaps we need to slowly start bringing things back, you know, to work.
field hospitals stand down most without treating any COVID-19 patients.
This should be enough for everyone.
The hospitals weren't overrun.
Some were.
Javits Center was needed.
But for the most part, we didn't need all of this.
We went way above and beyond.
I'm glad we did.
Fine.
Let's stop right now, using the new data, and get back to normal.
And you know what?
I'll say it one more time.
Who's the man best equipped to fix the economy?
Joe Biden or Donald Trump?
Because we know that's what it comes down to.
And Donald Trump has a history of the past three years of making the economy work.
Sorry, it's not Joe Biden.
You can hate Donald Trump.
You can hate his foreign policy.
You can hate his character and everything about him.
But it's a fact.
He will do better on the economy than Joe Biden ever could.
So if your concern is the economy, well then, enough's been said.
I'll leave it there.
Stick around.
Next segment's coming up at 4 p.m., youtube.com slash timcast.
In the description below, there is a link.
Click it.
It's another YouTube channel.
Go check it out.
I have more content right there, and I will see you all then.
Jimmy Kimmel purposefully took a clip out of context to frame Mike Pence, claiming that he was delivering fake boxes of protective equipment for a publicity stunt, which then got picked up by this guy Matt McDermott, who literally tweeted, Mike Pence caught on Hot Mike delivering empty boxes of PPE for a PR stunt, with 4.2 million views and 70,000 retweets and the whole thing is fake.
And even out of context, it's obvious that it's fake.
Now, what did Jimmy Kimmel do?
He didn't admit fault.
He just said, I'm sorry, I was wrong about him staging.
What did he say?
Let me show you.
It would appear that VP was joking about carrying empty boxes for a stage publicity stunt.
The full video reveals that he was carrying full boxes for a staged publicity stunt.
Oh, shut up, dude.
These people push fake news all day and night, and what happens?
New York Times and NBC reporters just parrot it and push it out because there's no real journalism in this country anymore.
BuzzFeed, however, for some reason, actually fact-checked it.
Don't ask me why, but before we read the fact-check, because we know it's fake, let me show you what this guy does.
This guy, Matt McDermott.
He lies, right?
He then says, Trump's White House summarized.
Those are empty, sir.
Pence was making a joke.
After they had already loaded in the legit gear, he went to the van and they said, we're all good.
Those are empty.
And he goes, oh, I can't carry the empty ones.
Look good for camera.
And the other guy laughed.
He goes, it is easier.
And then he closes the van, gets in and leaves.
It was a joke in passing as he left.
He delivered real gear.
Here's what Matt McDermott says.
No better example of the institutional failures that have happened during this crisis than the vice president delivering empty boxes of masks to a nursing home before a gawking press, which did not happen.
And then he says additional context to the Kimmel segment.
With 75,000 Americans dead, Pence is joking about empty boxes of PPE during a publicity stunt after the White House press secretary said they had no time for publicity stunts in the middle of a crisis.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Just admit you are liars.
Is it so hard?
Thank you, BuzzFeed News.
I want to give a round of applause here.
New York Times, NBC, y'all just got fact-checked by BuzzFeed.
What does that say about you?
No, Mike Pence did not deliver empty boxes to a nursing home for a publicity stunt.
A viral clip from Jimmy Kimmel was edited to remove some important context.
Boy, I can't wait for Twitter to step in, flag this video, take it down for misleading content during an election.
What's that?
Yeah.
Of course they're not going to do it.
That's not how the game is played.
We know how it goes.
Vice President Mike Pence visited a nursing home facility in Virginia on Thursday, meeting with staff and unloading boxes of PPE from FEMA.
He was joined at Alexandria's Woodbine Rehabilitation and Healthcare Centers by Seema Verma, Administrator of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and Navy Rear Admiral John Palachuk, Vice Director for Logistics for the military.
FEMA is currently delivering PPE to 15,400 nursing homes across the country, with the facilities hit hard by the coronavirus.
Wait a minute.
I thought Jimmy Kimmel said it was a staged PR stunt.
You mean FEMA is already doing this and Mike Pence was just helping?
No, of course.
I think it's fair to point out that it's great publicity for Mike Pence to help.
But you want to call it staged when FEMA was actually doing this?
You know what would happen if FEMA wasn't doing it right?
They would say, why isn't FEMA delivering emergency gear to these people in need?
And Mike Pence is like, I'll help.
You know, it'll look good.
Great.
That's not a staged event.
That's just Mike Pence helping, and it makes him look good.
These people are incorrigible, to say the least.
After the vice president greeted the nursing home administrators at a socially distant
six feet, wow, he helped unload a van containing the boxes before the cameras.
Buzzfeed really going to defense for Mike Pence here.
On his Thursday night show, late night comedian Jimmy Kimmel used a clip of Pence at the nursing
home to suggest there was nothing inside the boxes.
Since it was going so well and because he didn't realize he had a mic on, Magic Mike decided to keep going, said Kimmel.
Listen in closely here.
Kimmel then cut to video showing the vice president inquiring about the last boxes in the van before being told they were empty.
Well, can I carry the empty ones just for the camera?
Pence can be heard saying.
Kimmel then said, So, will Jimmy Kimmel now be taken down from everywhere this segment exists?
Because it should be.
Maybe he'll actually delete it.
metaphor for who he is and what he's doing. A big box of nothing delivering another box of nothing.
So will Jimmy Kimmel now be taken down from everywhere the segment exists?
Because it should be. Maybe he'll actually delete it. Yeah, right.
The show later tweeted the clip but deleted it Friday after BuzzFeed News contacted ABC for
Bravo, BuzzFeed News!
What?
BuzzFeed actually calling out fake news.
On Friday morning, the clip went viral on Twitter.
One tweet alone suggested Pence had been caught on a hot mic delivering empty boxes, and it was shared tens of thousands of times and viewed more than 1 million times.
Yeah, 4.2 now.
But the clip was selectively edited by Kimmel's team.
The full clip from C-SPAN clearly showed Pence, along with Verma and Polowczyk, loading and unloading boxes of some weight.
Then, as Pence returns to the van one final time, he makes the comments about the empty boxes and immediately smiles at those around him.
Laugh?
Copy editor, guys.
When the man helping to unload the van says, absolutely, the same man then says jokingly, they're a lot easier, to more laughter.
Pence then immediately closes the van door.
He does not proceed to carry any of the boxes he was informed were empty.
A representative for Kimmel's show did not immediately respond to a request for comment, nor did staff for Vice President Pence.
According to the press pool traveling with Pence on Wednesday, his staff said the boxes contained 137 pairs of eye protection, 1,267 masks, and 1,500 pairs of gloves.
eye protection, 1,267 masks, and 1,500 pairs of gloves.
BuzzFeed News also, also Woodbine Rehabilitation Center.
You contacted?
But on Facebook, the facility did not thank Pence for- Okay, I don't know what they're trying to say here.
This sentence is a fragment.
You guys gotta copy-edit her BuzzFeed.
It's like the one time you actually get a story right.
This is what you do.
John Thompson, a campaign spokesman for Pence, accused Kimmel of misleading the public.
This is absolute garbage spread by Jimmy Kimmel, he tweeted.
Pence is clearly joking about empty boxes, and if Kimmel showed the full clip from C-SPAN, not the one he selectively edited, you'd see and hear it.
Pence's visit before the cameras on Thursday came a day after White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany told House Democrats to act in good faith and not perform PR stunts.
We don't have time in the middle of a pandemic for publicity stunts, she said.
It's not the time for that.
It's not the place for that.
Well, David, I believe it's David Mack who wrote this story.
He did a good job, except for a few grammatical errors, which I have no problem with.
So how is it that BuzzFeed has one-upped The New York Times and NBC?
The Washington Examiner tells the basic story.
We get all that stuff.
They say Democratic consultant Matt McDermott spread a video of the joke, claiming it was evidence.
We know all this.
What can we say?
Fake photo op wrote NBC's Andrea Mitchell.
Kimmel's video was retweeted by New York Times columnist Jamie Bowie and Vox co-founder Matt Iglesias.
Come on, Matt!
You've written some pretty good pieces, some pretty bad ones, but some good ones as well.
You could have done better than this.
Matt Iglesias, I'm pretty sure he's the one who wrote that Trump was a moderate.
Of all people.
This is a metaphor for so much of their botched response, commented Joe Biden's director of rapid response, Joe Bates.
Is that a new director?
Some evangelicals said they supported Donald Trump because Mike Pence is supposedly a devout Christian, wrote CNN's political analyst April Ryan.
But Exodus 2016 says, you shall not lie.
Carrying empty boxes and pretending they're PPE supplies for cameras in a pandemic is an shameful lie and a sin.
Kimmel has since deleted his original tweet.
It would appear that that was joking.
What's going on, you guys?
Oh, that's what he said.
Oh, it would appear that VP, that's why they cut it up, was joking about carrying the empty boxes for a staged publicity stunt.
My apologies.
I know how dearly this administration values truth.
Neither Pence nor Trump have commented on the incident.
I am in a bad mood right now, particularly because there's a lot of fake news going around, and I'm sick and tired of people just eating it up.
And you know what, man?
So many people fall for this stuff all day, every day.
Here was Jimmy Kimmel manipulating the public with his show.
Because Mike Pence didn't actually do anything wrong.
FEMA is giving out this equipment.
Mike Pence decided to help out.
Is it a publicity stunt?
No.
Does it look good for Mike Pence?
Yes.
If FEMA is already doing it, and Mike Pence is like, I'll help out, they didn't stage the event, Mike Pence just helped out knowing it would make him look good.
But is that even his motivation?
I'm not gonna assert that.
You know, look, I think it's fair to point out politicians go for these PR stunts, 100%.
But I'm not here to play games about what I think someone is or isn't doing, like, what I mean is, like, why they're doing it.
Now is it fair to say, in all likelihood, Mike Pence wanted to look good?
For sure!
Absolutely.
We don't have those facts.
We can't read minds.
The best we can say is Mike Pence delivered some protective equipment to nursing homes for FEMA during one of FEMA's deliveries.
But this is what we get, and it's what we deserve, because this is what people click.
People click this stuff, they eat this stuff up.
And I got another segment coming up for you in a few minutes, because I'm in a bad mood about this Ahmed Arbery stuff.
Because it's so funny to see conservatives just jumping on the bandwagon without evidence.
It's like Covington 2.0.
Now, I'm not saying the story is fake.
I'm just saying everybody loves to just join the bandwagon, jump on whatever they think the mob wants.
I don't play that game.
I don't care.
I'll say it if it's offensive, if you don't like it, because I deal in facts.
What else do you want me to say?
Jimmy Kimmel, you're a liar.
Stick around.
Next segment's coming up in a few minutes, and I'll see you all shortly.
By now, most of us have heard the story of Ahmaud Arbery.
And the story is...complicated.
There's a lot going on.
But, you know, everyone seems to think they know for sure because they watched some grainy video on the internet.
You know what, man?
I'm not playing this game.
But I'm gonna start with this lead story from the post-millennial.
And I'm starting with this specifically to show you the danger of mob mentality.
I know where you live.
Sean King threatens to send killers to Georgia murder suspects' home.
So these two men have been accused by the left of hunting down a man named Ahmed Arbery, who was jogging, and killing him in cold blood.
We do not have evidence to support that claim, and we have a Fifth Amendment in this country.
Oh, and I'll get to it.
I've got some shade to throw at the Trumps, Ivanka particularly.
Donald Trump himself actually made a kind of decent statement, actually.
So, we'll get to this.
But what Sean King did, and the reason I'm highlighting this first, is a really good example of the dangers of jumping the gun.
Now, of course, we're all familiar with the Covington kids.
How we saw this video, everyone knew exactly what had happened, you had no idea what happened before that video, no idea what happened after that video, but that video was enough to condemn these children.
You think I'm gonna play that game?
You are wrong.
Now take a look at what Shaun King said to Gregory and Travis McMichael.
I need you to know that I know where you live and where you are hiding out.
Right now I'm the only thing keeping about 150 different from people killing you.
To the state of Georgia, hold these men accountable for the lynching of Ahmed Arbery.
I assure you it's in your best interest.
Shaun King is the king of grifters.
The dude just lies all the time.
And you see what he does?
He wants death, destruction, chaos, and pain.
That's who he is.
The Post Millennial brings up this tweet from the Spectator.
Relatives of a white man misidentified by Sean King as possible suspects were threatened
on Facebook.
Someone is going to...
I'm not even going to read this.
Just horrible threats sent to this man because of what Sean King did.
So you know what I do when I see a story like this?
I read the news.
I read the reports.
I watch the video.
And then I say, here's what we can and can't conclude.
Right now, Donald Trump has said, you know, he was shocked by the video.
And the statement was fine.
It was a fine statement.
I think it is horrible.
This young man, Ahmaud Arbery, lost his life.
I think it's possible that evidence will emerge showing that these two guys did in fact murder him and cross that line.
Do we have that evidence as of right now?
No.
But what we are seeing is a public mob campaign pressuring police to go after them and this is the most dangerous thing for our For English common law, how our justice system works, the Fifth Amendment.
But of course, people just want to jump on the bandwagon and pander for social justice points.
And of course, given the opportunity and the power of public opinion, you'll see the Trumps and conservatives jump on board as well.
I tweeted about this, and I had a bunch of people saying like, oh, Tim, man, I don't know.
We've all seen that video.
I don't care, bro.
I don't care.
You gotta prove it to me beyond a reasonable doubt.
Beyond a grainy video of two guys fighting and some bangs.
That's what we got.
Okay, maybe I'm missing a video.
Maybe I'm missing something here.
But you see what you get with Sean King?
This is the last thing we need.
Going to rally people to get pitchforks up someone's house?
This is what happens when people push this stuff.
Now I have this story from the Washington Post.
Let's read this and break this down.
I'm going to tell you where I'm at on this one.
I previously made a video saying it was not cold-blooded murder, and the leftists, what they were pushing, was not true.
That's because we don't have the evidence to support this.
Okay, first of all, there's a Fifth Amendment for a reason.
The last thing we need are people having their lives threatened because someone saw a grainy internet video.
Is it possible they actually hunted this guy down and killed him?
Yes.
In fact, new information emerging suggests the video we saw was from a third party, who may actually be charged, who was also following Ahmed Arbery.
And the reason Ahmed was running towards the pickup was because he was followed from both sides and they flanked him.
So, why a fight broke out, why they were struggling with a shotgun, I honestly have no idea.
I think it's fair to say we may be looking at an innocent man who died.
And I also think it's more important to say, stop pandering, wait for the evidence, and don't rally mobs to get justice for you.
That's not what our legal system is supposed to be about.
It's about evidence beyond a reasonable doubt.
And even Donald Trump said, I believe it was Trump, said something to the effect of, there may be more to this video we're not seeing.
There's even a 911 call where somebody said they saw this man in a pre-construct property and then he took off running.
And people are lying about that call to justify because they're just playing this game like they always do.
Listen, here's what I'm trying to say.
I don't know.
I don't know.
That's it.
That's it.
It could go one way or the other.
I actually lean more towards the guy may have actually been innocent.
I'm leaning.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I have no idea.
But you are getting so many people, even on the right, just saying they do know.
And I tell you what, when you adopt this mentality of, I'm sure, man, then you're gonna fall into a Covington trap again.
Yeah, we should coin it, that phrase.
When you see a snippet of a video and you assume you know what happened.
Here's what the Washington Post says. Father and son charged in the killing of black Georgia jogger
Ahmed Arbery after footage sparked outrage. A Georgia Bureau of Investigation official said
Friday that there's no plan to investigate the local prosecutors and law enforcement agencies
that failed to arrest or file charges against suspects in the fatal shooting of a black jogger
in February. The state agency arrested Gregory McMichael, 64, and his son, Travis McMichael, 34,
and charged them with murder and aggravated assault Thursday evening. More than two months
after 25-year-old Ahmed Arbery was killed.
The charges came days after a video showing the moments that led to Arbery's death went viral, eliciting strongly-worded condemnations from activists and politicians.
Former Vice President Joe Biden compared the incident to a lynching.
Let me tell you something.
They're charging them with murder and aggravated assault.
Do you know what the problem here is?
We see this all the time.
This may be a case of manslaughter.
A couple of guys who suspected somebody, whether rightly or wrongly, doesn't matter, went after him.
That may be true.
We've seen some of the reporting suggest that.
Then we see a video of him running towards the pickup.
We see Arbery run past the right side of the pickup, turn 90 degrees to the left, and get into a fight with, I believe the man's name is Travis.
They're fighting over the shotgun.
Ahmed punches the guy in the face.
You hear bangs.
According to the prosecutor, one shot went through his hand.
The other shot, I believe, actually struck and killed him.
There's a lot we don't know, but I can say, a murder charge requires intent to kill.
Now, they might argue because they had the guns, they had the intent to kill, but you could just as easily argue if they really did have probable cause, which was in the prosecutor's report, then they were just planning on defending themselves.
And I know a lot of people are going to say, how dare you say that, Tim?
We know for a fact- No!
You don't!
You don't know what they were thinking.
You don't know why they did what they did.
You didn't see anything before that video.
You didn't see anything after it.
You have no idea what's going on in this community.
Stop pretending you do.
Otherwise, you fall into the Covington trap.
But I'll tell you what.
The only thing I can say, based off of just the video and what I've read, I do not believe you will succeed in a murder charge if you show a jury a video of two people fighting over a weapon.
Because Travis is going to say, I didn't mean to do anything, and the only reason the gun went off was because he was pulling on it.
That's something the prosecutor said.
Now, okay, you want to argue the prosecutor is biased?
By all means, do so.
There's some connection to the office he worked, previous investigations.
In fact, the police are now saying that there were no burglaries.
There were no burglaries reported.
But does that prove there were no burglaries?
No.
Everybody thinks they know, man.
A murder charge is intent.
You've got premeditated murder.
You've got passion murder.
But someone running up to you and fighting with you over your weapon wouldn't even be murder in a blank context.
And that's why the prosecutor initially did not charge them.
Now, if you went out of your way and tracked down someone because of what you thought and you were wrong, there was no intent to kill, manslaughter.
Does this person deserve justice?
Oh, you betcha.
Ahmaud Arbery absolutely does.
Because even if it was just a burglary, he didn't deserve to die.
But you then encounter a problem.
Where he fought with someone over a weapon.
Now here's the counter argument from the left.
In the video, there is a car behind him as he's running towards the pickup truck.
The argument is that the man in the car was an accomplice and that they were trying to
basically form like a pincer maneuver, you know, where they surround him on both sides.
But he could have just turned around and ran the other direction.
Now I'm not saying he did something wrong or he should have done something.
I'm not blaming the victim.
I'm saying I don't understand and I don't know.
And I'm trying to piece these things together.
And when you jump the gun, you know what you do?
You rally behind lunatics like Sean King, who actually entered like, I got a bunch of
people are going to kill you and has done this in the past and has really ruined people's
lives and falsely accused people.
You want to stand behind this guy jumping the gun for the sake of brownie points?
By all means, go ahead and do it.
I don't play that game.
People tweeting at me, how could Tim say this?
Oh, is someone hacking his account?
No, I just require evidence.
You wonder why it is?
When the Covington story came out, I was one of, like, two people who initially said no.
You know, it was Robbie Suave of I Believe He's With Reason who dug into this and found out the Covington story was wrong.
I'm not going to pretend like I was before or after him.
I don't know.
All I know is around the same time, like a day after the video, I made a video saying it's fake news, and I went through all the video evidence proving Covington was fake.
And I had conservatives Tweeting at me saying, I don't know, man.
Like, I've seen this video.
That kid should not have been doing that.
And there were so many people, even right-wingers, who were like, man, this is a really bad look for Trump supporters.
Why would this kid do that?
And y'all could have just waited.
You want to be mad at me?
I don't care.
I'll say what I think.
I'll say what I feel.
And I don't care if someone's going to get mad and give me a thumbs down.
Do whatever you want, man.
I mean this sincerely.
I'm not trying to convince you.
I'm not trying to tell you what to believe.
I'm telling you why I do what I do and how it's worked out for me.
So, it very well may be, these guys are bad dudes.
Bad hombres, man, and they should get locked up and throw away the key!
I don't know.
I wasn't there.
I've only read what's been stated.
And if you trust the prosecutor, stands to reason these guys should not have been arrested.
If you don't trust the prosecutor, and you trust the new investigators, it stands to reason they should have been arrested.
The problem, when you get an outrage campaign, where everyone's piling on this, saying, we've seen enough, the video was enough, arrest them all.
And then, a new prosecutor says, oh, oh, yes, that's just good enough for me, I don't buy it.
We've seen it before.
People get arrested and charged because of outrage.
Remember Darren Wilson?
People, if they put up a stink on the internet, then the government says, we don't want to deal with the pressure, and so they react.
I don't know these men.
I don't know Ahmaud Arbery.
I don't make assumptions on people based on their race.
I don't know who's innocent.
I don't know who's guilty.
I've seen a video of two people fighting over a weapon, and one person lost their life.
You want me to draw a conclusion from that?
Ain't gonna happen.
I'll leave it there.
You believe what you want.
I got one more video coming up in a few minutes and I will see you all shortly.
Thanks for watching.
Boogaloo meme is not far-right!
Please!
What is wrong with these people?
Journalism in this country is in the gutter.
Boogaloo's just a meme!
It doesn't have anything to do with the right or the left.
It's just a meme.
It's a joke.
Civil War II, American Boogaloo, it's from the 80s movie.
Yes, conservatives say it.
Yes, people on Twitter say it.
Yes, some people are far-right.
But these dudes they're referring to come off as pretty anti-fascist.
They're calling people Nazis.
It's like, dude, you know what, man?
Y'all have no idea what you're talking about.
But, uh, let's read the Vice article on the Boogaloo Boys anyway, because it's fun.
The younger, S-posting face of the armed far-right.
often called Boogaloo Boys, have been showing up at anti-lockdown protests across the U.S.
toting their AR-style rifles and wearing their trademark Hawaiian shirts and leis.
It's a troubling sign that the far-right Boogaloo meme, used to refer to or even incite an impending civil war, oh, incite an impending civil war, or violent anti-government rebellion, is now spilling out into the real world.
It's a small handful of people.
They're just so desperate to scrape the barrel, man.
What do they say?
On Monday, a group of heavily armed men, including at least one with links to the Boogaloo movement... Oh, it's a movement now!
...were arrested following a tense standoff with SWAT outside Big Daddy Zane's bar in West Odessa, Texas.
The men claimed they were protecting the bar, whose owner was defying Texas' lockdown orders, by remaining open.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott loosened some of the restrictions on businesses in recent weeks, but bars remained shuttered.
Here's the question I have for Vice.
If you're such an anti-authoritarian, why aren't you writing a story saying Texas sent Bearcat SWAT APCs or whatever to a bar because some lady wanted to serve drinks?
Isn't that a more alarming story to you?
The government is using special weapons and tactics to go after some lady serving alcohol?
Apparently not.
Here's the video.
Local authorities called in the Ector County Sheriff's SWAT team to raid a peaceful protest at Big Daddy Zane's.
The bar opened this afternoon, and this is how the government reacted.
And the dudes who showed up with weapons immediately put their hands up and were arrested.
That was it.
There was no rebellion, it was a protest.
A total of eight- so there's a question here which is really interesting because of all places on Reddit, They were bringing up questions around what this means and who's right or who's wrong.
And a lot of these, you know, Reddit lefties were saying, listen, if you're legally allowed to open carry and you're legally allowed to stand outside and gather, what laws did they break?
Now, according to the police, it was that they had weapons on a licensed property, but according to, well, my understanding and what people have said to me, so this could be wrong, you have to be in the premises.
So in Texas, you can't have a firearm in a bar, like if they're serving alcohol, something like that.
These guys were outside.
So what law did they break?
And why was a SWAT team necessary?
You could've just taken one regular old guy and welcome, come on guys, time to go.
We're coming in.
And the guys put their hands up and they left.
A total of eight people were arrested.
Seven armed vigilantes.
Armed vigilantes!
I love it, Vice.
Bravo.
Because what did they do to make themselves vigilantes?
Like, were they stopping the bar?
Because if they were trying to uphold the law, right?
And the bar owner, a Facebook page for Wyatt Wynn, one of the arrestees, shows that he follows about two dozen pages dedicated to Boogaloo.
Recently uploaded photos show Wynn posing with a group of armed men in Hawaiian shirts.
Other memes he shared reference Duncan Lemp, a 21-year-old student with anti-government views, who has been martyrized by the armed far-right after he was killed by cops in Maryland during a nighttime no-knock raid in March.
Police said they were executing a high-risk search warrant following a tip that Lemp was in illegal possession of firearms.
And apparently, in that raid, they fired their weapons through a window, striking his girlfriend.
Come on.
You want to talk about what's going on, you should probably provide the details.
Now here's what I love in this image.
It's kind of like a Gadsden flag thing.
It's a snake coming out of a bunker and it says, clickety-clack, get the F back.
And then this guy Wyatt said, They are descendants of Nazis pissing on the Bill of Rights daily.
Well, I mean, look, Vice, you're the one who told me that to be anti-fascist, you need only oppose fascism.
Well, this guy's insulting Nazis, so you're saying he's Antifa.
Alright, let me fix the headline for you.
You said, uh, what did you say this was?
The Boogaloo Boys are bringing their AR-15s?
Okay, I'll put, Antifa brought their AR-15s and Civil War ideology.
Now that doesn't make sense, does it?
Perhaps it's because the definition of Antifa is wrong, and they're lying to you.
These guys oppose authoritarianism and fascism.
That's it.
Boogaloo boys, they say.
Lemp's death and the political tensions surrounding coronavirus-related lockdown orders have galvanized the Boogaloo movement.
I didn't realize there was a movement.
Whose adherents have used the two events to drum up anti-government sentiment.
No, the two events drummed up anti-government sentiment.
You've got it backwards.
A report by the Tech Transparency Project last month identified 125 Facebook groups that were dedicated to Boogaloo, and more than 60% of those had been created between February and April.
On those pages, S-posting, racism, and anti-government memes intermingle.
That's typical for Boogaloo pages, according to a February report by the National Contagion Research Institute, which tracks how hate moves from the internet into the real world.
Now, I'm sure they post spicy memes and very offensive ones, but that's not the point.
The question is, or I should say the point is, that Vice is often just looking for shock content.
Ooh, we're gonna getcha.
Now I think it's fair to point out this is a dramatic escalation and kind of worrisome.
Dudes showing up with weapons in front of a building.
I think we're getting dangerously close, and I would absolutely recommend against what these people are doing.
But there's a big challenge, and I think right now the best thing we can do, and I'm saying right now, is these guys put up their hands and got arrested.
Because I think they get it.
Lawsuits will come after this.
The Bill of Rights is being trampled all over.
In New York, they're saying protesting's not allowed.
Well, bring on the lawsuits.
It's actually incredible that we have this system.
I'm a huge fan of the American system.
You know how it works?
We have checks and balances.
If Governor Whitmer in Michigan says, I'm extending the lockdown order in defiance of the state legislature, they file a lawsuit, and it goes to the courts, putting a check on each different branch.
I love it.
I love it.
I absolutely do.
Now it is problematic, I love that word by the way, for someone to arrest you when you've done nothing wrong but you sue after the fact and these guys will probably win and then set precedent.
So hopefully that deters things in the future but I'll tell you what, it is also fair to say that the Bill of Rights is becoming Swiss cheese.
Over the years it's been eroded and eroded And it will just keep being eroded.
And I'm not- I'm not for- Look, I'll tell you what, man.
The more that happens, you're gonna see more and more of this.
And it's gonna get bad, and it's gonna get dangerous.
And I don't know what the solutions to it are.
I really, really don't.
Quote, while many still use the Boogaloo meme jokingly, an increasing number of people employ the phrase to incite an apocalyptic confrontation with law enforcement and government officials or to provoke ethnic warfare.
Oh, come on.
It's a small fraction of people who are doing the worst.
It's just so absurd.
The incident in West Odessa, Texas, was just the latest example of extremists, including Boogaloo Boys, taking up arms in response to lockdown orders.
On Thursday, Colorado police said they were investigating threats of civil war made against health centers.
We the people are done with this effing BS, one person wrote in an email, according to local news outlets.
And you're about to start a hot, shooting, no BS civil war.
That's not a threat, in my opinion.
Like, telling someone, hey man, if you keep doing this, this might happen, isn't a threat.
Depends on how you say it, though.
If you said something like, you realize what's coming if you keep doing this.
Yeah, you're gonna get this.
And it's like, it really, really depends.
Crossing that territory is, you know, it's difficult.
It's not so easy.
Because it's true that some people are just warning, like, I'm not advocating for anything.
I'm telling you right now, man, it's gonna get scary.
Because these people are pissed.
Last Friday, federal agents arrested Bradley Bunn, a 53-year-old man in Loveland, Colorado, for possessing pipe bombs, which he said he'd planned to use against law enforcement if they raided his property in the middle of the night, a possible reference to Lemp.
Local news outlets identified him as a member of a militia and reported that he'd planned to attend an armed lockdown protest.
Crazy people exist, man.
Following Bunn's arrest, according to CITE Intelligence Group, which tracks extremist
activity, misinformation about an impending FBI raid on armed protesters began circulating
on 4chan and far-right telegram channels, with some users encouraging armed resistance.
Bad, bad idea.
I don't know what to tell you, man.
I really don't.
Also last week, heavily armed men with long guns stormed Michigan's capital.
Stormed.
Apparently they were temperature checked on the way in, so please calm down.
On May 1st, armed militia men also showed up to protest lockdown orders in Richmond, Virginia.
Uh, isn't that May Day?
The famous labor protest.
Aren't these people protesting for the right to work?
Wouldn't that just be an Antifa May Day protest?
Oh, I love how this all comes full circle.
Don't you get it?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Other stuff happened.
They say, the day after Lemp was killed, Swenson changed his Facebook page picture, his Facebook
profile picture to a photo of himself in a Hawaiian shirt and an armored vest and the
hashtag his name was Duncan, according to a BuzzFeed report.
And they say the cover was armed protester Wyatt Winn, waits for Actor County Sheriff
officers and Texas State Trooper who are monitoring the protest.
Wynne and others supporting the bar's owner, who decided to open despite the orders from the governor.
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Yeah, we get it.
Okay.
Well, I wonder what's going to happen because the governor is easing up on the restrictions.
So, you know, that salon owner got released.
And I believe the governor said no one will be jailed over this.
So I guess we'll see how things play out.
But let me tell you about this.
Two things.
I do think it's fair to bring up the Boogaloo stuff.
I've brought it up too.
I think it's absolutely fair.
What I don't think is fair is to try and paint it as this far-right, you know, nightmarish situation, when it's... a lot of people are freaking out.
It's an issue of a violation of our civil liberties and rights, and how people respond to it.
Not an issue of, like, the far-right and ethnic conflict, like they try to say.
But I'll tell you what, while they try to paint the picture of these guys as, you know, far-right, evil, whatever, I don't know what they're trying to say.
I don't think it matters.
I mean, the point is, these people are getting angry.
Something might happen, and I hope it doesn't.
I hope everyone stays calm and just, you know, we'll see how this thing plays out.
You gotta keep in mind that Bill Barr is threatening the states, so I don't think you're in a losing position right now.
You know, Bill Barr's gonna— Hopefully, we'll see what happens.