June 1, 2024 - The Political Cesspool - James Edwards
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You're listening to the Liberty News Radio Network, and this is the Political Cesspool.
The Political Cesspool, known across the South and worldwide as the South's foremost populist conservative radio program.
And here to guide you through the murky waters of the Political Cesspool is your host, James Edwards.
Ladies and gentlemen, we're going to have some fun tonight.
This Saturday evening, June the 1st.
Of course, we have fun every night.
We've had a lot of fun the last two weekends.
Two weeks ago, TPC's 20th anniversary conference.
What an event.
We spent the entire show last week recapping it because there's been so much said about it, so much excitement and enthusiasm having stemmed from it.
But tonight, we're going to get back to business as usual to an extent.
Coming up tonight, Is America Doomed?
Dr. Greg Johnson, the editor-in-chief of Countercurrents, will weigh in on that online debate.
A little bit later, we're going to hear from our friend, former U.S. Congressman Steve Stockman, about the forthcoming documentary.
Steve Stockman, Patriot Prisoner.
You're not going to want to miss that.
But first, we're going to get back into our TPC at 20, a retrospective series.
This is something we're doing intermittently throughout our 20th anniversary year, revisiting clips from some of our most memorable interviews over the past two decades with fresh reactions and commentary.
So far, we have featured revisitations of our interviews with Drew Lackey, the former chief of police of Montgomery, Alabama, pictured in that iconic photo with Rosa Parks.
Anthony Kumia, the New York-based radio host, turned serious XM, turned wild man.
Love that guy.
Zelchko Glasnovich, former member of parliament in Croatia, former major general in the Croatian War of Independence.
Walter Jones from a U.S. Congressman, movie star Sonny Landam from Predator.
And tonight, we're going to revisit the interview we did with Donald Trump Jr. on Super Tuesday, March 2016.
You may or may not have heard that interview before, but you've certainly heard about it.
And that's what we're going to get to.
But before we play it or play some of the highlights from it, let's first let Keith say hello.
Keith, great to have you tonight.
Big show tonight.
And just looking at the assortment of some of these classic interviews that we're revisiting as part of our 20th anniversary ongoing celebration, that's a hell of a lineup, but it's going to get even hotter tonight.
And haven't things changed over the interim since then, James?
You're talking about Super Tuesday.
Did we even have Super Tuesday this year?
No, we did not.
You know, we're nearly a decade into the Trump era now, but if you can allow yourself to go back to March of 2016, it was all still ahead of us.
It was all so exciting.
And so Trump was coming to Memphis, and I applied for press credentials.
And I, you know, I waited till the very end.
At first, I was like, nah, I'm not going to go.
And then I applied for press credentials, and we got them.
And people would say, well, you know, probably everybody who signed up for him got them.
Well, that was not the case.
And in fact, the media made sure people knew that that was not the case because it was talked about for months in the media how I was able to get them, but so-called reputable media was not.
But I'll take you back to that day.
I got the press credentials and then you have to get cleared by Secret Service.
And I arrived there about five hours early.
Got there at about 1.30 p.m. for a six o'clock rally at a small airport.
He was meeting at one of the hangars.
He was doing that back then, as you'll recall.
And there was a long line of supporters waiting to gain entry into the event, you know, hours before.
I mean, there was rock music blaring and people tailgating in the parking lot.
It felt very much like a college football atmosphere.
Plenty of vendors hawking Trump merchandise.
They had concession stands with the Make America Great Again burger.
You know, of course, that featured all-American beef and cheese, 100% American cheese.
They had the Ted Cruzburger, which featured Canadian bacon.
They had the Bernie Sanders pork nachos and the Hillary Clinton soft drinks, which had been scrubbed clean.
I mean, it was a fun atmosphere.
And I was fortunate enough to be able to bypass the crowd in the long line.
I had a VIP parking lot for press that I was able to go to, which was located directly behind where Trump was going to be speaking.
And when I got out of the car, I ran immediately into Katie Tour, who was the Trump beat reporter for NBC, and ran just almost you had to talk to her because I just almost ran over her.
And of course, I knew who she was.
And Trump had done an interview with her about a month before, which was just amazing.
And we talked for a few minutes.
I ended up getting a picture together.
She took my phone to make sure she looked good in the picture.
But what was interesting about that is she's the former girlfriend of Keith Olbermann, who once referred to me as the worst person in the world on his now thankfully canceled television show.
But anyway, we had a good time with that.
But as game time approached, and she was little, he called her little Katie and for good reason.
As game time approached, there was just a real palpable energy in the crowd, a real sense of excitement that was undeniable.
I mean, this place was this rally being held in a rusted concrete hangar that looked like it had been built during the Cold War in case the bomb got dropped.
And it's amazing how such a location could have been transformed into the place to be.
10,000 people packed inside there with no chairs and no complaints.
And I got to say, Trump knows how to put on a show.
The crowd was in a frenzy.
He landed in his airplane, the 757, the Trump private jet, and they pulled the jet up right to the podium.
And he comes down the stairs of the airplane and walks right to the podium.
I mean, he knows how to make an entrance.
And he took the mic at just before 6 p.m. Central Time on a Saturday night.
So we actually had permission to broadcast the political cesspool live from the press pen.
And I was actually able to hear Trump's speech while I was broadcasting that night for the full time we were live from the event, the full three hours.
Now, he didn't speak for three hours, but he had some warm-up acts and all that was going on.
And so being able to broadcast TPC Live simultaneously while he was making his remarks, pretty interesting, painting a verbal picture of the scene.
That was a real novelty and something that I still remember.
And you can still find that show, of course, in our broadcast archives.
Just go back to March of 2016.
It was interesting to be in the middle of all of these media folks, though, who had been attacking me for years already, but not nearly to the extent that they would just hours later.
But it was fun being there.
It was a wonderful experience.
Trump ended the stem winder and worked the ropes for a while before climbing back aboard Air Trump and rumbling back down the runway and into the Tennessee sky.
But you were there, Keith.
You were there.
And what do you remember about that particular night?
Well, I remember being in the hog pen, as we called it, you know, the press pen.
They had a little fence around us in the hangar.
And the hanger really is.
It's World War II vintage.
It could be a movie set for some old movie about bombers in World War II.
It's part of the Naval Air Station that used to exist in Millington, Tennessee, which is where they trained all the Navy pilots back in the day.
So it was, and you're right.
It had an atmosphere of either like a carnival or a football game or something.
And you're right that Trump really knew how to melt the crowd.
I remember his plane landed and he kind of took about 30 minutes for his plane to get there.
Well, he was late, and it was fashionably late.
But everybody, well, I thought that was part of what he was planning to do because it basically whipped the crowd into a frenzy by the time we got there.
By the time he got there, yeah.
Yeah, well, but I remember we had Eddie there.
We had you and me.
Who else was there?
There was a lot of people from the show that came out just as part of the general audience.
Obviously, they didn't all get press credentials.
But in any event, what happened after that was I got an email the very next day from This was the last Saturday in February, and Super Tuesday that year was on March 1st.
Super Tuesday was on March 1st, which would have been the biggest day of the campaign to that point.
And of course, at that point, you know, Trump was a blank canvas that we were rejecting our hopes and political dreams upon.
And, you know, looking back on it now, it's hard to remember, you know, what it was like back then after all the ups and downs and so on and so forth.
But I got an email from the Trump press team asking an email to James Edwards at thepolitical Cesspool.org asking if we would have Donald Trump Jr. on the program.
And I thought about it because I knew what would happen if we did.
And I didn't know that it would be as intense as it was, but I knew what would happen.
So I called him up.
And I just said, well, I got this email from you.
What do you have in mind?
And I said, we want to do an interview with you on Tuesday, Super Tuesday, to help get out the vote.
And we're doing a lot of interviews that day, and we'd like to work your show in.
And I said, well, honestly, my show airs on Saturdays.
We could tape something.
But I actually, let me get back to you.
I have another idea.
So I called Sam Bushman because Sam Bushman has a Monday through Friday show.
And if the purpose was to get votes out for Trump, work the radio scene on Super Tuesday.
I said, Sam, why don't you take this interview?
It's just going to be hell for me.
And it would be, you can have him on and it would serve the purpose.
And, you know, that'd be fantastic.
He said, well, I'm happy to do it, but they came to you.
You should be a part of this interview.
I really want you to be part of this interview.
So that's how it ended up.
We had Donald Trump Jr. live on Super Tuesday, but it ended up being on Sam's show because they wanted to do something on Tuesday and we wanted to help get out the vote.
And if you've never heard it, we're going to play parts of it for you right now, and then we're going to talk about the media reaction to it.
This is Donald Trump Jr. on Super Tuesday.
Sam kicks off the interview.
We're not going to play all of it.
We're going to play parts.
And here we go.
How was it growing up with your dad as Donald Trump?
I can't imagine how that would be.
Oh, listen, it was interesting.
But, you know, he, with us, really stressed the right kind of stuff.
I mean, I think there's a reason you probably hear about us perhaps in a lot better light than a lot of other kids of similar backgrounds and wealth.
And, you know, he made sure we understood what it was that we had, how lucky we were.
He made sure we didn't take any of that for granted.
I mean, he focused on education and work ethic.
You know, he had, I always joke, I mean, I'm the only son of a billionaire that's more comfortable in a D10 caterpillar bulldozer than I am on a golf cart because those are the kind of jobs we started doing.
He made sure we got that.
It wasn't, congratulations, you're now the president of the company and you've never done anything.
So he's about merit and about hard work.
And so he was a great dad.
He just, you know, people don't see the warmer side of Trump really.
They hear about the business accomplishments and this and that.
They see that.
But I know him as a dad and I know him as a grandfather now.
I have five kids myself.
And, you know, he's as good with my little 18-month-old daughter as he is with the toughest construction guy in the country.
So he's just an amazing guy.
All right.
We got James Edwards, the political cesspool host with us as well.
He was at the Donald Trump rally on Saturday live.
It was incredible.
Over 10,000 people there, James.
Well, Mr. Trump, it's great to talk to you.
I want to say one thing very quickly.
I'm based down here in New Zealand and I am a Southern Baptist, and I think it's absolutely disgusting what some of the church leadership like Russell Moore has done to your father.
And I can tell you that that is not the way the people in the pews believe, and that I hope that your father becomes the next Charlemagne after he becomes president of the United States.
But as Sam mentioned, your father was in Tennessee on Saturday, and I was in the press bin as a member of the credentialed media.
And I can tell you that I was the only person on that side of the fence who wants to make America great again.
One of the things we were talking about before you called in was: it seems to me that the establishment press has long since abandoned objective reporting and now sees itself as the enforcer of political correctness.
Am I off base in drawing that conclusion?
And why do you think?
No, not at all.
I mean, it's amazing when I see some of the stuff that's there.
And I've been to these rallies.
I travel around and I go to the debates.
And I'm actually there.
And, you know, it's so disingenuous at this point.
But I think because of my father, maybe he's got a big smokebox and that's why he's able to do it.
But the average American is finally getting it.
They see it because I'll watch a speech for an hour and you'll see it.
And I'm sure you can vouch for me on this one.
He'll say something in minute number five.
He'll say something in minute 15.
He'll say something in minute 45.
And they blend the three things together as though it was one thought.
And they say, he's such a terrible person.
Look what he said.
You know, it's so phony.
But people are getting it now.
And that's what's amazing because, you know, this isn't just a political campaign.
It's a movement.
You know, the number of people that show up these things.
It's not a campaign rally where the number two guy is really thrilled because he had 123 and a half people in a room and maybe there was a dog in the background.
I mean, he's getting 10, 15, 20, 30,000 people in a stadium to hear him because, A, they're fed up, and B, he's giving a voice to hardworking Americans again.
You know, the hardworking American, the people that made this country so great, they've been left in the dust.
You know, they're not a political class that's catered to.
The left could care.
The left would worry about people who don't want to work, who could care less.
They cater more to people who are here illegally, and they care more about the feelings of countries that would love to see us wiped off the face of the earth than they do hardworking Americans.
It's ridiculous.
And people get it.
We've tapped into that.
My father, you know, he talks to those people.
He talks with those people.
He's not talking at them like these other guys who are basically academics.
They're talking in theory about how everything should ideally work in a perfect world.
They don't get it because they've never functioned in the real world.
They do whatever their political, the guys that write the $5 million checks to their campaign, they tell the people what they want to hear, and then they do whatever the special interests tell them to do.
It's so fake, and I think we've changed the game forever because people are finally onto it.
All right, Kurt Cosby, do you want to ask Donald Trump Jr. a question?
Kurt?
Well, thank you, sir, for being with us.
And by the way, Pat Buchanan has got a recent article.
He says, you're watching the Republican Party being reborn, and I agree with him.
And I think it's exactly what you've just stated.
Thank you.
I appreciate it.
Do you think the Republican Party is going to change forever as a result of this?
Is the crony capitalism and behind the back door dealing gone?
Well, listen, I think if we become president, that certainly will.
That's why they're so afraid.
That's why the right, rather than embracing someone who's bringing in new people to the campaign, to bring in new people into the GOP, having reckoned.
We got a quick break.
Do you have a couple of extra minutes?
Yeah, I got a couple minutes.
Right, stay there.
All right.
So we take a break at this point in the interview, and then I can't play the whole thing because of time constraints, because I want to get to the media reaction over the course of the remainder of that year from the first week in March all the way through the election and beyond to this interview.
But you're hearing it so far.
And what do you hear?
That sounds as controversial as they made it out to be.
Let's get back to the interview.
It doesn't pick up right here, but we'll pick up with it right here.
Before the pause, we were talking about Pat Buchanan.
He's saying the death, he's calling it a death rattle of the establishment.
No doubt about it.
Donald Jr., your father is really growing the Republican Party.
They claim that it's different, but they're lying everywhere you see.
He gets more crowds than anybody, and people are quitting the Democratic Party left and right for your father.
Listen, I agree.
I mean, I was saying it's not a campaign anymore.
It's a movement.
He's getting people.
He's winning all these independents.
He's turning Democrats who are just sick of the same old lives.
They may not even be on board with a lot of conservative ideology, but they're saying, I want to get someone getting things done.
The independents that are coming over.
We joke.
We go to my father's rallies.
We won in Nevada with fat people.
We won with skinny people.
We won with smart people.
We won with not so smart people.
We won with Hispanics.
So they're like, well, how could he win with Hispanics?
There's two Cubans in the race.
It's like, well, A, they know that these guys will just tell him whatever they want to hear.
B, when my father brings up issues, he talks about immigration.
He's not afraid to have the conversation.
Everyone else, before it was taboo, all of a sudden it's a huge talking point.
He's not afraid to talk about how disastrous the VA system is.
We want to take care of our veterans coming back.
And well, we can't talk about that.
That's a disaster.
All these things that are becoming big issues in the party are because he wasn't afraid to talk about them initially.
He's also employed more Hispanics than the other gentlemen have even thought about, right?
Oh, well, with that question, but look at who's hurt by illegal immigration the most.
It's not going to be me.
It's going to be people who, you know, Hispanics who are sitting there being like, yeah, these guys come in, they undercut my jobs.
They'll work for less because they're not paying taxes.
They're not paying in this system.
We brought up all of these things.
So people who are finally fed up, people who haven't had a voice in for so long because they know the little cadres and establishment guys, they control all the power.
They keep it everywhere.
They keep everyone else out.
And finally, someone like my father has the strength and the ability to break into their box.
And they know their little world is over.
So, I mean, it's a real movement.
Just look at the turnout.
We even win with evangelicals.
We're winning with this because they're sick and tired of the same old nonsense.
And I think Jerry Balwell Jr. said it best.
He goes, listen, Carter may have been the perfect Sunday school teacher.
He may have been the perfect evangelical, but he was a disaster as a president because he didn't know how to get it done.
Someone like Trump who does care about family, does care about the things that we really hold dearly, but he also has a track record of actual success, doing it in the real world.
And he's going to do that.
That's why we're winning people over.
They get it.
All right.
Last question from James Edwards.
Then we'll go ahead and let Donald Trump Jr. with a final parting shot.
Go ahead, James.
Well, you're absolutely right, Donald, and that is here in the South, I can tell you, evangelicals are in a frenzy over your father, and in a very good way, they're going out, and we're going to carry Super Tuesday.
In fact, as soon as I get off the line today, I'm going to vote, and I'm going to be voting for Trump, obviously.
But I want to say this.
He's going to do better with Hispanics and other minorities than either John McCain and Bitt Romney did.
You wait and see.
Of course, Nevada, the results out of there have already suggested that.
And in terms of growing the party, look at how huge.
Tennessee, the Secretary of State of Tennessee, where I am, has already said that early voting broke all records.
And that is because of one man, and that's Donald Trump.
And I can tell you this.
We mentioned Pat Buchanan a couple of times.
I got my start with Pat in 2000.
I have never voted for a Republican nominee.
I've always voted conservative third party.
I will vote for a Republican nominee for the first time in my life in November.
So that is going to be a lot of fun.
I really appreciate it.
I see it all the time.
Listen, I live in New York City, right?
I'm a good old boy at heart.
I mean, I'm a hunter.
I'm a fisherman.
So I spend a lot of time in the South.
So I see it all.
But, you know, I'll be at dinner in New York City with my wife.
Put the five kids to bed, go out to dinner with my wife.
And some old lady will come up to me.
I want to talk to you about your father.
I'm saying, oh boy, I got to get a fight with that lady at a restaurant.
I don't need this right now.
They're saying, I'm voting for your father.
I say, that I did not see coming.
And they're saying, we're sick of it.
We're fed up.
And they're telling me, literally, I have never voted for a Republican in my life.
And I'm not just saying, it's not like a sound fight.
Like, I've heard it so many times.
It's almost like, oh, my God, there's really something here.
Like, we're going to win New York State as the GOP, which has probably never happened, at least not in my lifetime, because people get it.
They're sick of it.
We're going to carry some of these states that the Republicans, it's like, why even bother?
Like, don't even show up.
You know, it's incredible.
And we're getting just the movement across the board.
Yesterday, we had the CEO of NASCAR come out and endorse us.
Chase and Bill Elliott, drivers come out.
You're getting everything.
And now you're actually even seeing some of the great guys, Jeff Sessions, coming out and endorsing us because they get it.
They're like, you know what?
Maybe it's time to actually do something for the country rather than just keep lining our own pockets as politicians.
Now, Donald Trump has a press conference today, right?
Yeah, he's all over the place today.
I know he's working hard, and that's what he does.
He's always worked hard his entire life.
He's employed people.
He's given, he's created jobs.
He's had, you know, he's created.
You know, these other guys, they talk about, oh, they've never even had an original thought, let alone created anything.
And they talk about, well, what do you, you know, he had 2,000 deals.
We'll talk about one deal that didn't go well.
Let's talk about it.
It's like, of course, that's called life.
Anyone's going to have a deal that doesn't go well.
It's going to happen.
They don't talk about the thousands of successes, the billions of jobs and the benefits that have been created because of those things.
It's time.
If you're fed up, if you think politicians are doing a lousy job, go vote for my father.
Let's change the game a little bit.
If you think the country is going in the right direction, if you think that the politicians who, these guys are promising you what the last 10 guys have promised you, guess what?
How many of them delivered?
Ever?
None.
What's going to be different this time?
Nothing.
If you think that those guys are doing a great job, go vote for them.
We don't want that vote.
But if you're fed up and you're sick and tired of it, like I am, and like all the people that I run into that I've run into across the country, now that I've been a politician for nine and a half days, if you're fed up, go vote for my father.
You're going to see some change.
Well, like everybody else on the planet, everyone's frustrated.
Not just with the minorities are going to come out, but the white working class is going to come out, which is really the face.
Oh, by the way, think about it.
I can't tell you, we've built more jobs, union, and stuff like that than anyone.
But you think those traditional voting blocs that are union guys, you think they're voting for Hillary?
What have the Democrats done for the unions for the hard work?
You guys do absolutely nothing.
They keep allowing everyone who doesn't belong in the country, let them in, give them jobs, give them this, give them health care, let them undercut your wages and prices.
Those guys are going to come out for a Republican for the first time ever.
It's a movement.
All right.
Donald Trump Jr. with us, ladies and gentlemen.
One last point.
Then you can make a parting shot and fly.
It seems to me that Donald Trump has almost become the elixir of truth.
In other words, at first, these politicians make you believe this and lie about that.
And pretty soon, though, you find out who's who and Donald jumps in the middle of it.
Pretty soon, you got Glenn Beck completely out of control.
You got all these different people just beside themselves.
Ben Sasse was supposedly elected as a good conservative guy.
Now he's going, I'm going to vote third party if Trump gets the nomination.
These people are melting down and showing their true colors, Donald.
Listen, I agree, but it goes to show you how desperate and weak they are.
They know their little party is over.
They know they've been taking advantage of the American people for too long.
And now, because of my father, we're onto him.
We get it.
We see what's going on.
He's picked up the skirt, so to speak.
Everyone knows what's going on now, and they can't get away with it.
You know what?
It's time.
It's time for these guys to be held accountable, to actually be held accountable.
I mean, it's a novel concept.
Marco Rubio, he shows up to his job 35% of the time, and he talks about all his experience and all the things.
What happens if you show up to your job 35% of the time?
You don't have to.
No, I'm gone.
It's ridiculous.
It's over.
It's over.
All right, you got a parting shot, sir?
Listen, guys, just get out and vote.
You know, showing up to the rallies, being supportive on social, showing up and screaming for Trump, putting up signs in your yard.
None of it means anything if you don't actually go out and vote.
Go out, vote, vote for my father.
We're going to make America great again.
Thank you so much.
Godspeed, tell your family hello from us.
Thank you, sir.
I will do that, guys.
Thank you.
There you go.
All right.
So that is what it sounded like on Super Tuesday, March 1st.
And getting out the vote through TPC and Liberty News Radio, Liberty Roundtable, Sam Bushman, chairing that interview because of the day it needed to be done.
And what was the media's reaction to that?
No.
Hine on.
Stay tuned for the blowback.
Informing citizens.
Pursuing liberty.
You're listening to Liberty News Radio.
USA News.
I'm Ryan Daniels.
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Welcome back, everybody.
Continuing our TPC at 20, a retrospective series, one classic interview per month.
This is part six of 12 tonight, the first Saturday in June, and that's Donald Trump Jr. As he sounded being interviewed here on March the 1st, 2016.
I, of course, remember that interview for a lot of reasons.
And I do remember saying, I do remember believing that he was going to get a bigger part of the non-white vote.
I mean, you know, with the black community, that means taking it from 2% to 4%, maybe.
But I did think he would get a larger share of the Hispanic vote, which he ended up doing in 2020, especially.
But as I mentioned to Donald Trump Jr. in that interview, he was going to motivate the white base of the Republican Party.
And that, of course, is what put him over the top and had him beat Hillary Clinton.
Now, you heard that interview.
You didn't hear every second of it, but you heard enough to know the kind of way it was going.
Very good interview.
He agreed with everything we said, and then, of course, stayed longer than he was scheduled for, as you heard.
But the media reaction to that, Jared Tagler sent me an email during the middle of the media furor.
And I saved it because Jared's a guy who's been through a lot of this as well.
And he wrote to me that week in March of 16, the media is coming down on you as heavily as I've ever seen them come down on anybody.
And I must say, you're handling it impeccably.
You haven't flinched, you haven't turned back, and you haven't apologized.
Anyone who can stand up to the face of this kind of attack and come back for more is a great example for the rest of us.
Now, what was he talking about?
This is what happened that very same week that interview aired.
And it was everywhere.
Washington Post, Donald Trump Jr. stumbles out of his father's shadow and into the spotlight with white nationalist interview.
New York Times, Donald Trump's son calls interview with white supremacist.
Reuters, Donald Trump Jr. appears with white supremacist on radio show.
Huffington Post, white supremacists are broadcasting from inside the Trump rallies.
New York Daily News, Donald Trump Jr. interviewed by pro-white radio host who called slavery the greatest thing to ever happen to African Americans.
Of course, I never said that.
It was the worst thing that ever happened to whites, but I digress.
Newsweek, Donald Trump Jr. appears with white supremacist on radio show.
UK Daily Mail, Donald Trump Jr. campaign for debt on radio show with white supremacist.
It goes on and on.
Times of Israel, white supremacist says he will air interview with Donald Trump Jr.
I could list a hundred more headlines from some of these so-called prominent media outlets, but you get the picture.
It was appearing everywhere.
Canada, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Nigeria.
I didn't even know Nigeria had press, Pakistan and elsewhere.
And it wasn't confined to print.
Anchors were lining up to take free shots on CNN, MSNBC.
There was a panel on CNN talking about this interview.
They called me a white supremacist, but when CNN used to fly me up to New York to give commentary, they always referred to me as a conservative.
So I didn't do any press.
I didn't answer any of these requests.
I did issue a statement, a statement to all the press.
And this is what I wrote.
The political cesspool promotes a proud, paleoconservative Christian worldview.
We reject media descriptions of our work as white supremacist and pro-slavery and other such scare words.
In no way should anyone interpret our press credentialing and interview with Donald Trump Jr. as an endorsement by the Trump campaign.
The grotesque way in which the media is purposefully misrepresenting my work by certain cherry-picked statements taken wildly out of context is both shameful and reprehensible.
Throughout my career, I have been unfairly defamed as a white supremacist.
I am, however, unequivocally a pro-white advocate, which has nothing soever to do with white supremacy.
I will not be silenced by your shut-up words.
I apologize for nothing, and I retract nothing.
Every media outlet wanted a comment from me that week.
None of them printed the official statement, not one.
And it was, I mean, the libel and the slander were so over the top, it didn't even sound, it just sounded ridiculous.
Slavery-loving white supremacist, you know, was what they were running with.
And I doubt that the media even believes what they write, you know, when they write things like that.
I mean, I spent enough time to go all the way back.
They spent enough time to go all the way back to find an obscure blurb that I posted in 2008 during which a black writer for the Jamaican Observer said that descendants of slaves live a better life in America today than their counterparts in Africa.
I said, I agree.
And the headline is pro-slavery radio hosts.
So that's where that all came from.
There were thousands of articles, okay, that, you know, thousands of articles on my website where I explained my beliefs in detail.
All got overlooked.
We actually ended up doing a drinking game for political cesspool fans there in March, and the rules were pretty simple.
You read an article about the political cesspool's interview with Donald Trump Jr., and whenever you come across words like anti-Semite, extremist, neo-Nazi, racist, pro-slavery, white supremacist, you take a drink.
But we had to discontinue the game because too many people were dying.
Alcohol poisoning.
But that was the first week of March, Keith.
And when I say that it continued that way for the rest of the year, brother, let me tell you, it continued that way for the rest of the year unabated.
Those were just some of the headlines from the first week in March, right after that interview aired with Donald Trump Jr.
I fast forward, just to give you an example, to the week of September 20th, 2016.
So this is now months later, nearly half a year after the interview, and there was no updates, nothing to cause this to be back in the news.
Just goes to show how much the media thought that they could damage Trump by linking him to white supremacy.
It's probably the thing that actually won him the White House, because when normal white people see someone being called a white supremacist, they say, well, this is probably a guy I have something in common with.
They understand that these are slurs, and they understand that it's not really what these people are, but they're probably white people who don't hate themselves, and we're going to get behind it.
And I always have thought the Trump campaign always had plausible deniability, but I always thought that they set up the interview just so they could signal.
And that's fine with me because at the time we really wanted Trump to win, and I'm glad that he did.
But you go to September, months later, and with no updates, no breaking news or new events to cause this to be in the news.
But just to go to show, here's a Washington Post.
Well, the Washington Post was complaining in September still.
The Trump campaign has repeatedly banned reporters from across the political spectrum from attending Trump events.
The campaign has, however, provided credentials to disreputable media like white nationalist radio host James Edwards.
Remember that the Detroit News, that whole article that led to my infamous libel lawsuit where they called me the leader of the Ku Klux Klan, that was all part of the media attention this year.
But to go to September, months after the interview in March, where are some of these headlines at?
Oh, I know where I got to go.
I got to go to my favorite places here where I have it to say.
But anyway, Keith, comment very quickly.
We'll get back to this.
Well, I listened to the interview.
I don't see how any Trump supporter, any true Republican, could have anything to say negative about your comments, Sam's comments, or the interview generally.
Or Trump's comments.
Right, exactly.
Donald Trump, everything about that was solid gold as far as, you know, it was just a good interview.
It wasn't sensational.
It wasn't shocking.
It was just, you know, talking about what was going on that week.
And that was the most important day of the campaign at that point.
Super Tuesday, he's taking time to appear live, get out the vote.
Tennessee votes on Super Tuesday.
That's why I wanted to be on a Tennessee show.
That was a crucial watershed moment in Super Tuesday.
And see, they never quoted you in all the negativity that they directed at you.
They never said, listen to what he said because everything that you said was unobjectionable.
But they got this white supremacist theme and they were like a bulldog with a bloody bone.
And they pasted, you know, years old content from the SPLC and ADL.
That's what they did.
Now, of course, the media had covered the political cesspool for years, the media at large.
I mean, again, we were contributors on CNN for a while.
So the media knew us, but this thing, they really latched on because the Trump and TPC connection really caused a synthesis.
Like a bulldog with a bloody bone is what they were.
Here are the headlines in September.
I finally found them.
New York Times, middle of September.
Donald Trump Jr., a close political advisor to his father, Donald J. Trump, the Republican nominee for president, posted on Twitter on Monday night, imagine a white bowl full of rainbow-colored Skittles.
The image came with this text, quote, if I had a bowl of Skittles and I told you that just three would kill you, would you take a handful?
That's our Syrian refugee problem.
So they're talking about this.
And then with any time he was in the news, they linked it back to TPC.
The next paragraph, in March, Donald Trump Jr. Appeared on a radio show that once had David Duke as a guest on the show.
Mr. Trump conversed with James Edwards, whose radio show, The Political Cesspool, has been described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as racist and anti-Semitic.
This was page A1 of the New York Times in September.
All right.
Who isn't listened to now, the SPLC, the Southern Poverty Law Center?
They have faded into nothingness, and the political cesspool has been ever on the rise since this.
This was republished, of course, because you know all these newspapers, we really got to go quick here, but you know, all these newspapers just copy and paste each other's content.
They all speak with the same mouthpiece.
This was republished in the Chicago Tribune, the Atlanta Journal Constitution.
It was everywhere.
This was the middle of September.
All right.
So another one, Washington Post.
With 42 words and a hashtag and a bowl of Skittles, Donald Trump Jr. set out to illustrate what he saw as the danger of letting Syrian refugees into the United States.
Instead, he set the internet ablaze with controversy.
In March, Trump Jr. drew scrutiny when white nationalist radio host James Edwards aired an interview with him.
So again, just tying something that's in the news and just pulling this back into it.
Washington Post.
There were three articles in the Washington Post on the same day in September that mentioned this.
See, there are no quotes from you, and there are no quotes from the actual interview.
It was just their spin on you based on lies published by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
And here's another one.
This is the Washington Post.
This is an op-ed.
We're proud to have never fawned over Donald Trump Jr.
His convention speech, this is talking about the RNC convention, which we were at with press credentials again.
Praising his father left us cold.
His manner reminiscent of so many arrogant children of rich men.
Since then, he's made fools of those who defended Trump on the grounds that his children turned out so well.
This comes after incidents in which Donald Trump Jr. made a Holocaust joke, tweeted an alt-right character, made sexist wide cracks, and did an interview with radio host James Edwards, a known white supremacist who has said in the past that slavery was a good thing.
I guess if they repeat that, it'll become true.
But anyway, Washington Post again, the same day.
Donald Trump Jr. says things, lots of things.
Sometimes they are problematic things.
At least twice this week, he was forced to defend an action or remark viewed as racially or culturally insensitive.
In March, he did an interview with James Edwards, a white nationalist who prefers the term pro-white advocate.
In the past, Edwards has decried interracial sex and said slavery is the greatest thing that ever happened to white people.
So again, word to the wise folks.
This is just a little PSA from your humble servant.
Don't ever agree with the opinion of a black columnist from the Jamaican Observer when it comes to slavery or his words will be attributed to you forever.
But what's funny about these Washington Post stories in September, they seem to want you to believe that Donald Trump is somehow bad because he answered the questions that I gave him in an interview.
But the same rule doesn't apply to journalists when they interview me, of course.
There's a complete news breakout about what he said in regard to what your questions were or what your questions were.
It was all just trying to call you a white supremacist without any backup except SPLC lies and then trying to continue to hammer that home.
And never once did they run a tape of this interview.
No, no, no, they didn't ever quote anything from the interview.
But, all right, here's the Daily Beast.
Donald Trump Jr. is the Trump campaign's worst surrogate.
There's extremely stiff competition for the title of worst surrogate.
But in March, where do you think they're going to go with this?
Donald Trump, this is in September.
This is how much it was, and it was incessant the whole year.
He did an interview with white supremacist radio host James Edwards on the show.
Well, they actually did get something here from the actual show.
Edwards told Trump Jr. he hoped his father would become America's Charlemagne.
Donald Trump Jr. didn't take issue with that.
Edwards also said that he had no trouble getting press credentials.
In the past, Edwards has said slavery was good.
So at this point, the lie about being a pro-slavery advocate had lost any semblance of context, and it had just been pared down to media reporting that I said slavery is good.
What did Charlemagne have to do with black people or something?
When did Charlemagne become a toxic reference?
But, you know, it's interesting when all of these people in the media who were clamoring, I didn't do any interviews in all of 2016.
I only did the first interview I did with so-called major press was in January of 17 with Serge Kovaleski of the New York Times.
That was the first interview I actually granted that year.
I didn't do any of them, but when they email me for interviews, it's always Mr. Edwards and Sir, and can you please give us a comment?
Would you please, you know, this and that?
And then, you know, but this is where they go.
Huffington Post, Donald Trump Jr. makes Holocaust joke.
Donald Trump Jr.'s oldest son, a primary surrogate for his father's presidential candidate.
See, alluded to the mass killing of Jewish people in Nazi Germany while laying out what he sees as a media double standard in campaign coverage.
He has gone down similar paths before by appearing on a radio show with, all right, you get what's going on here.
What he actually said was that the media wants to put Trump supporters in a gas chamber.
He didn't say anything about World War II or World War II history, real or imagined.
I didn't know that the term gas chamber, just by mentioning gas chamber, it was uniquely related, that there was like a trademark and a copyright on that that makes you think of the 1990s.
Don't wear many ideas.
There will be by nightfall.
Listen, I can't even get, we only got 10 minutes left this hour.
I can't even, I mean, this was just a random week in mid-September, and I got through, you know, maybe about, I don't know, a fourth of the headlines that were going on.
And go on, it did.
It got so much.
The legend that the media created over that, you know, 15 minutes, it was about a 15-minute interview.
I think we might have played, you know, actually it was about a 20-minute interview we did.
I think we played about 10 to 12 minutes today.
But the media actually ended up naming me as one of the top 20 right-wing media fixtures responsible for Trump.
They so over blew that interview and so far blew it out of proportion that they said that it ended up being one of the top 20 reasons Trump would have been.
We'll take credit, but that's typical of their exaggeration and hyperbole.
They cannot be dependent upon.
They would tell a lie when the truth sounds better.
They would climb on the roof to tell a lie rather than stand on the ground and tell the truth.
And the people listed in that as the right-wing media fixtures most responsible for Trump included Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hennity, Bill O'Reilly, and us.
And it was just so bizarre to see the media doing this to the extent that it did.
Now, we had had, by 2016, we'd already been on the air 12 years.
We've been attacked non-stop from the get-go.
So I'm used to it.
But this level of overzealousness, if that's a word, was something.
It even ended up, Hillary Clinton even ran an ad, a campaign ad.
If there was ever any doubts that we played a role in presidential politics in 2016, it was laid to rest shortly before the demise of Hillary Clinton when the former frontrunner issued a campaign statement warning voters that if Donald Trump emerged victorious, that extremists like James Edwards would end up shaping the country.
That happened.
And that was a paid ad by the Hillary Clinton campaign.
You're going to be the Dick Cheney of the Trump administration.
So there's just one more just to accentuate the absurdity.
This was a Salon headline.
Now, look, the media lying, the media doing what it does.
Everybody gets it now.
In 2016, they were still learning.
But Salon actually wrote a story that I'd interviewed Eric Trump.
And I was just like, I'm going to email them.
And I'm just, you know, I'm going to, you know, just be helpful and let them know that, you know, actually it wasn't Eric Trump.
It was Donald Trump Jr.
And just to see if they would even correct such a basic error in facts.
And to my surprise, they did publish a correction.
And here's what they wrote.
Are you ready?
This is their correction.
This is the establishment media with all of its professionalism correcting the fact that it wasn't Eric Trump, it was Donald Trump Jr.
Here it is.
Donald Trump Jr. was interviewed by virulent white supremacist James Edwards.
This story has been corrected to reflect that Eric Trump didn't appear on virulent white supremacist James Edwards' anti-Semitic political cesspool, but rather it was on another show broadcast on the same network that syndicates the virulent white supremacist James Edwards' program and sometimes invite the white supremacist to be a featured guest.
I tell you, I didn't know you were virulent.
Maybe I should be wearing a COVID mask while I'm here in the room with you.
That's our media, ladies and gentlemen.
And I just can't understand why now people see them as partisans.
But yeah, what happened was Sam Bushman did interview Eric Trump later on that year, which brought it all back up again.
But it had nothing to do with me.
That wasn't one that we had a hand in setting up.
But it was a hell of a year.
We were at the Republican National Convention.
I was in the arena when Trump accepted the nomination.
I was at the inauguration, probably about 20 feet away from Trump at the inauguration when he was sworn in.
But it all started by getting press credentials in the last day of February in 2016, going there to that event and broadcasting live.
And then two days later, interviewing Donald Trump Jr. on Super Tuesday, March 1st, 2016.
So, yeah, that was, you know, when you're looking back on this series, TPC at 20, a retrospective, and you're talking about just some of the more interesting interviews we've done over the course of 20 years, I think that one certainly has to be included in this series, Keith.
Yeah, I'd have to say that is a high point, and it's a low point for the left and for the anti-Trump forces because it showed just how absolutely feckless their criticisms are.
If anything, their commentary on that interview helped push Donald Trump across the finish line, in my opinion.
I think it did.
I think so many people had been called racist for so long just for being whites that didn't hate themselves or having a traditional view of America or wanting to restrict immigration or whatever when Trump was called this.
And then by association, we were called this or we had been called this.
Anyway, everybody gets called this.
This is the thing.
I wrote the book Racism-Schmacism back in 2010.
I mean, that was a prescient book about how the left was using the R word.
But by 2016, it had just gone so far over the top that people just basically decoded it.
Hey, racist means a white person, a conservative white person that I'm probably going to have something in common with.
If the media is calling somebody a racist, he's probably a pretty good guy.
And I think, you know, Donald Trump was called racist every day before he did, you know, before his son did the interview.
But I think it's just all, people figured it out that year.
I tell you what, having James Edwards on your side is sure better for the Trump campaign than having Mitt Romney or somebody like that on there.
Well, it was a, you know, Donald Trump Jr. went on to say months later, I think after the election, or maybe it was even on election night, he was being interviewed on a television program and it got brought up.
And he said that that interview will follow me for the rest of my life.
There was a chapter on it in his Wikipedia page.
It may still be there.
And of course, you know, the Trump campaign pushed back and said, oh, we didn't know, you know, that he was a slave, you know, was an advocate of slavery, which, of course, I never had been.
I don't know.
They had plausible deniability.
We can only guess as to why that happened.
But what I can tell you is that never before, we've been on the air since 2004.
That's a lot of presidential campaign cycles.
Never before had a presidential campaign solicited an interview.
Not Bush, not McCain, not even the also Rands like Romney and Santorum and Chris Christie and John Kasich, that guy that has a faith that looks like a potato.
We didn't get any solicitation.
So I don't know how, you know, God's hand, divine providence.
Maybe they meant to do it to signal.
They always had plausible deniability.
Maybe they didn't know.
I don't know.
All I know is that it was an interesting change.
Well, what it does show is that they are not the standard suspects on the Republican Party side.
The establishment, Mitt Romney, John McCain, George W. Bush, would never have contacted you.
And that's great.
We would never have wanted to give an interview for them.
On the other hand, Trump broke the mold, and that's why he was elected.
And that wasn't, again, I got to say, that was just not an interview that took place on a random day in the dog days and so on.
You had a super teacher.
You can seek them out.
And, you know, again, getting that email a day after they had given us credentials, after they had vetted us, you'd have to, you know, I had to think that, okay, they really want to be on this show.
It would have been totally different if I had solicited the interview and somehow gotten it with them, you know, not knowing.
But when they solicited it, I had to think, well, you know, they want this.
You know, they are politically savvy.
Maybe that was a case of 4D chess being played.
We'll never know for sure.
But it was a fun thing and a fun chapter in the history of TPC.
And it showed the left for what they are-a bunch of raving lunatics.
And just to be, you know, to be out there.
I mean, this is smash-mouth presidential politics, ladies and gentlemen.
So, you know, it never did bother me.
Trump, I even said it on the air, you know, when we were covering this at the time.
This is the big leagues.
I don't take these things personally.
The Trump campaign can denounce me until the cows come home.
But so long as they build the wall, I was supporting him because immigration is the single biggest problem that our nation needs to solve.
Demographics is destiny.
I don't care if Donald Trump supports me.
I was supporting him.
You cannot have a first-world nation with a third-world population, which we've said forever.
Which I said on CNN, which is something I got from you.
That was your quote, and we took it all the way to primetime CNN.
But yeah, anyway, I mean, now, again, that was March of 16.
Now you've had that whole campaign, Trump's first term, the loss to Biden, and then this whole campaign.
So you're coming up on a decade of the Trumpian era, and that was one of the very early days in it.
That was just really a few weeks after you're here.
Now we hope that Trump will finish the job and actually build the wall.
Is America doomed?
Where are we going from here?
Well, we're going to ask Greg Johnson that question.
Next, he's our featured guest this evening.
Still coming up later tonight, though.
You're going to hear comments from our friend, former United States Representative Steve Stockman, about the forthcoming documentary, Patriot Prisoner, the Steve Stockman story.
Steve's a great guy, larger-than-life character, fun guy, fierce guy, fearless guy.
And we're happy to know people like him and Steve King and work with them.
So we'll talk a little bit about that in the third hour.
But next, Greg Johnson.
I hope you're enjoying this TPC at 20 retrospective.
It took 20 years to get here.
We're enjoying looking back on some of these chapters.