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March 26, 2025 - Uncensored - Piers Morgan
57:43
20250326_us-signal-security-breach-piers-morgan-says-fire-m
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Fraudulent Decisions and Dementia 00:08:48
As I also stated yesterday, nobody's texting war plans.
Maybe it's a black general or a woman.
Imagine what Pete Hegseth would be saying today.
Trump has to decide what he wants to do right now.
It's not up to Trump.
The Republicans act like a board of advisors to a CEO.
Democrats just had four years of a president with dementia and a completely unqualified cabinet.
So tell me more about the Republicans.
Most left-wing media outlets in the United States had been added to that.
They probably would have contacted the Biden administration and let them know that they had made an error.
Y'all know we got Governor High Wheels down there.
Come on now.
We're really going to get five middle-aged white guys on here just like tis-pisking people over a little joke.
We're still talking eight years later about Donald Trump mocking a disabled reporter, but people want to excuse Jasmine Crockett actually making fun of disabled people.
The bungling of sensitive information by top officials is sadly nothing new.
President Clinton used his very final day in office to pardon the CIA director for keeping classified documents on his home computer.
His wife Hillary infamously stored top secret files on a private email server.
President Trump was indicted for keeping classified files at Mar-a-Lago.
President Biden avoided being indicted for keeping classified files in the garage next to his Corvette because the special counsel felt he was an elderly man with a poor memory.
In each case, the other side has demanded jail time and resignations galore.
That is the nature of modern tribal partisan politics.
So it's difficult to blame Democrats in their current punch Trump miasma of despair for seizing on moments like this.
How did a Trump-hating editor of The Atlantic end up on your signal chat?
You know, Laura, I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but of all the people out there, somehow this guy who has lied about the president, who has lied to Gold Star families, lied to their attorneys, and gone to Russia hoax, gone to just all kinds of links to lie and smear the president of the United States.
And he's the one that somehow gets on somebody's contact and then gets sucked into this group.
Seems quite clear that Jeffrey Goldberg was sucked into his group by Mike Waltz, who was the one that added him to the group.
The Atlantic editor was able to see Vice President JD Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, among others, discussing an imminent bombing raid on the Houthis in Yemen and making Europe pay for it.
The consequences were limited.
The U.S. attack on the Houthis was a military success.
Trump's position on Europe paying its fair share for defense is perfectly clear already, but it's still incredibly embarrassing.
And Mike Walsh got a bit closer to the correct response when he said this.
Well, look, a staffer wasn't responsible.
And look, I take full responsibility.
I built the group.
My job is to make sure everything's coordinated.
But how did that number?
I mean, I don't mean to be pedantic here, but how did the number of people?
Have you ever had somebody's contact that shows their name and then you have somebody else's number?
Right?
You've got somebody else's number on someone else's contact.
So of course I didn't see this loser in the group.
It looked like someone else.
Now, whether he did it deliberately or it happened in some other technical mean is something we're trying to figure out.
It shouldn't be too hard to figure that out.
President Trump is the grandmaster of deny and deflect, and he has enough legitimate grievances with the way he's been treated by legacy media to repeatedly pull that off.
But with respect to Mike Waltz, he's no Donald Trump.
And this might have gone away a lot faster if his first response had been, I'm sorry, this was a monumental cock-up.
It was incredibly stupid and I won't do it again.
Instead, Goldberg's been attacked the same the chat included classified information and detailed war plans, but failing to prove it.
Now, the Secretary of Defense and the White House press secretary have said you're lying, have said there are no war plans there, have said there's no classified information.
So the obvious question is, shouldn't you now demonstrate it?
You publish the text?
No, because they're wrong.
They're wrong, but how can you prove that you're on?
Maybe could you.
Should you provide them to the House and Senate special committees on intelligence maybe, I don't know?
Wow well, you want to become my lawyer?
Well, Tim Miller will be joining us shortly, and THE Atlantic has indeed this morning published compelling new details on why the chat was clearly classified and obviously did include war plans.
The texts make it blindingly obvious that that was the case.
That only strengthens the point.
President Trump's first 65 days in office has been a whirlwind blitz of reform, and there's plenty to celebrate and plenty to debate, arguing that whether the dog ate, Mike Walls' homework should never have been allowed to take center stage for the first time in his second presidency, it's time for the president to wield his formidable index finger and use the words that made him world famous, you're fired.
Well, joining me now is the host of Rubin Report SHOW, Dave Rubin, the Democrat congressman from Massachusetts, Jake Orkin Clos and Walkaway campaign founder Brandon Stracher and, as I said, Tim Miller will be joining us very shortly.
All right, Dave Rubin?
Um, I want you to pretend for a moment this was happening on Joe Biden's watch, when he was president and involved a bunch of senior members of the Democrat cabinet in that administration, I would imagine your response would have been Vesuvian in its rage and fury.
So my question for you is, do you feel the same way?
Now it's your side here's, i'm really glad you asked, asked that question and framed it that way, because that's a that's a great point, and we know that it's very rare to find people that'll be intellectually consistent when these things happen.
I I would predicate it first, just also hitting something you said in your lead up right there, which is that I think you could argue that every single decision that was made by the Biden administration was fraudulent, because he obviously was mentally compromised the entire time.
You signed all of these orders by Autopen and we don't even know if he knew about it, including just his last day in office, the the way they pushed him out of Uh, out of running for re-election, etc etc.
So I think there's a broad, broad sort of conspiracy and, I think you could argue, probable negligence by all of the people who, many of whom weren't even qualified to have these jobs in the first place because, by his own admission, he often hired people based on their skin color and their sexuality, etc etc.
So, but okay, putting that aside, did Tim Walz absolutely uh uh, make sorry Mike Waltz?
Did Tim Walz thankfully he's not involved in all of this uh, did Mike Walls absolutely make a mistake here for sure?
Are they allowed to communicate on signal?
It sounds like.
According to CIA director Ratcliffe, who testified yesterday on this, it sounds like it was pre-installed on some of their computers and they were told they were allowed to.
But was there a mistake adding this guy in?
Yes, have we all made probably similar mistakes on IMessage or on signal?
When you have two names that are similar or initials that are similar?
Yes, I would say one other thing on this though, which is that I don't necessarily agree with you that he should be fired.
You know what we've seen out of this administration, I think, and if you just look at the entire thread in Signal, it's competent people like Tulsi and JD and Hegset making cogent arguments for what they're doing.
They show a little bit of disagreement.
They talk about these things and the American populace.
So you see, you see thoughtful people.
Hang on, Dave.
You missed, you missed out Waltz.
Is that deliberate on his comments in there?
No, you just listed three people and said they've done great things and speak really well.
You didn't include Mike Waltz.
Was that deliberate?
No well, I think he's well putting aside what he said in the chat.
I mean, I think he's obviously qualified for the job.
Nobody was really doubting that until these last couple days though, because actually, what we've seen in the last week with Mike Woltz we've seen a series of interviews he's given in which I would seriously dispute whether he's up to this job.
He didn't seem to have any straight answers for Laura Ingram when he appeared on that.
I'm looking at a guy that I personally might.
The more I see and hear of him, the less qualified he seems to be, and it's hard for me to imagine.
Dave honestly, you know my, my lot of my family have served a high level in the UK British armed forces.
It is hard to imagine a more egregious thing than to be dis openly discussing times and weaponry use and intimate details of an imminent attack where US servicemen are going to be risking their lives in combat, and you're casually having this chat on Signal, and you've added a guy who is a Trump hating journalist.
Keystone Cop Scandal 00:02:07
I mean, and apparently we're supposed to believe this happened by pure chance because his name is under the wrong number in his phone.
All of it is like, you know, over here, we had a ridiculous comedy show called The Keystone Cops, where everything used to go ridiculously wrong.
It's Keystone cop stuff.
And I just think the honest, look, we talked earlier about having an honest intellectual response to things is always the best way, right?
There is no getting away from this.
This wasn't just a mistake, as you politely put it.
This was a monumental, egregious breach of every security guideline imaginable that could, and I stress the word could because the military operation, as it turned out, was unaffected because Goldberg did not do anything the fairest with this information.
But had it got into the wrong hands, right, that could have imperiled the lives of American servicemen.
And for that, if he was a senior ranking official in the armed forces, he'd probably already be gone, wouldn't he?
Piers Morgana-Senson is proudly independent.
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Disputing Classified War Chat 00:07:14
Now, on with the show.
I'm not defending Mike Waltz adding this guy, right?
Like, he Trump has to decide if he thinks that's an egregious enough error.
And clearly, it's turned into a bit of a scandal here.
That's why we're talking about it.
So, Trump has to make a decision on that, whether he wants to do the you're fired on that thing.
As for though, them discussing this stuff on Signal, it still seems unclear to me whether they're allowed to do that or not.
Again, Ratcliffe testified yesterday it was pre-loaded on their computers and other devices.
So, if someone's making the argument that they weren't allowed to discuss this stuff on Signal, that's different, but I haven't heard that argument made.
As for, again, I'm repeating myself, but as for the point of him being invited in, if Trump decides that that is worth firing the guy, then that's Trump's decision.
Before I go to the other channel, that's why he's the president.
Before I go to the other panel, just to be clear, do you believe from everything that the Atlantic has now reported, including all these text exchanges, do you dispute that this was chat about war?
Because it seems to me utterly indisputable.
No, well, it was chat about war.
I mean, military strikes.
So we've established that.
So secondly, by definition, talking about an imminent attack on foreign soil by U.S. military, by definition, is highly classified information, right?
Again, I'm not, everything that was in the chat is fairly obvious.
No, I'm just asking you whether, as you know, there are lots of people on the right who are trying to dispute that it was classified.
The administration are disputing it was classified.
I think certain things are indisputable.
This was war chat, and it was clearly, by definition, highly classified.
Well, but the issue is not whether it was classified or not.
The issue is, are these guys, are Marco Rudy and Hegseth and some of these people in the United States?
No, because are they a reason to have those conversations?
No, they are, but it is being disputed.
Well, the administration are disputing that the information itself was classified.
And I think it's indisputable that it clearly was.
Well, I think you'd have to speak to a lawyer about that specifically.
If you were telling me they weren't allowed to talk about it on Signal for some reason, then that seems like a fairly obvious issue.
No, no, no.
I'm not an expert in it.
No, I'm not asking that.
I'm personally not an expert in what is classified and what isn't.
I don't think anyone has to be a lawyer or an expert, Dave.
Come on.
This is people talking with specific timings about an imminent attack on foreign soil by the U.S. military.
It is hard to say.
Because were they allowed to be a signal or not?
That's separate than whether Jimmy's not going to be able to do it.
I'm not going to be invited into the chat.
Right, but I don't think I could think of anything that could be more highly classified, can you?
I'm not arguing whether it should be classified or not, but they're allowed to have conversations.
The question is, are they allowed to have them on Signal?
And again, Ratcliffe testified yesterday.
No, no, I'm not disputing that.
That signal was pre-loaded on their computer.
Listen, on that, I think we need more clarity on that.
Clearly, if you're just going to get random members of the cabinet adding whoever they feel like it, and they have people's names in their phone under the wrong numbers, that's clearly a perilous situation, which has to be stopped.
Absolutely.
Has to be stopped.
All right, look, I've given you a hard time simply because, hey, you're Dave Rubin, he can take a hard time.
And B, because actually, it's really interesting to me, the intellectual honesty aspect of this.
And I think you've been pretty honest, actually.
I'd love to hear the other panelists' thoughts on this.
I'll give you credit for fronting it out.
Jake, let me bring you in here.
I mean, the Democrats are clearly having a lot of fun with this, as they would.
You know, I saw Hillary Clinton gleefully tweeting about it.
And of course, you would.
And I understand why Democrats are so up in arms.
Just, again, certain repetitive questions, but do you believe there's any doubt that they were having conversations about warfare or that they were involving specific timings and what kind of weaponry and aircraft were going to be used and so on?
And secondly, that by definition, I think it's inarguable that that must be classified information.
Piers, I agree with you, and I don't think it's fun or funny because this hypocrisy and incompetence is a gut punch to the American military.
I was a captain in the Marine Corps.
If I had shared highly classified operational plans over Signal, and yes, that's illegal, my career would have been over, done.
And Secretary Hegseth right now is lying to the American public.
He is lying to Congress.
He is lying to the military in order to avoid the same accountability that would befall a captain or a corporal.
And those double standards are toxic to the good order and discipline in the ranks.
But even worse than that is this is incompetence incarnate.
This kind of conduct is why America is being out-negotiated right now by Russia over Ukraine.
The Russians are protecting their Black Sea fleet.
The Russians are protecting their assets in Europe.
The Russians are getting sanctions relief and they're giving up nothing.
And the reason they are able to have these wins in these rounds of negotiations is because Donald Trump is sending these Keystone cops to get out negotiated by hardened Kremlin apparatchiks.
It's embarrassing and it's dangerous.
It certainly is dangerous.
Brandon, I'll come to you now.
I mean, I want to play a clip.
Tim Miller interviewed Jeffrey Goldberg from the Atlantic, who broke this story and was the guy on the call.
And he talked here about somebody being named in the conversations.
Let's listen to this.
There's a CIA operative named on the thread, right?
Yes, and I withheld her name from this.
They named somebody who's an active CIA officer in this thread, which is on Signal again, a commercial app, in which I'm watching.
You know, and I withheld it.
I didn't put it in the story because she's under cover.
But, I mean, the CIA director put it into the chat.
I just found that, again, staggering.
If this had not been, I mean, it's unbelievably good luck for the administration that it was Jeffrey Goldberg, even though he hates Donald Trump and the administration.
If in Mike Waltz's phone, he had, say, the Russian ambassador's number, which had accidentally been attributed to whoever he was trying to add to the group, and that CIA operative's name was then in the hands of the Russian ambassador as a CIA operative who might even be operating in Russia, for all we know.
You can see how cataclysmic this could have been if it had been somebody else who'd been casually added to that group.
I mean, Brandon, can you defend any of this?
I would go on record as saying I think it's a misstep for sure.
But I mean, we could sit here until the end of time and come up with hypotheticals about what could have happened and how cataclysmic and terrible it could have been if this person had been added or that person had been added.
But the fact of the matter is that's not what happened.
What did actually happen is that we had an incredibly successful airstrike, which in the long run is going to have a very good impact on global trade and security around the world.
Serious Accusations Against Biden 00:15:12
So, I mean, that's what we really should be talking about was that this was an incredibly successful mission.
And sitting around wasting time, I think, talking about all the terrible things that could happen.
Okay, so just to be clear, all right, just to be clear.
So if the National Security Advisor under Biden had done this, you would be very keen, would you, in that eventuality, to be extolling the virtues of the successful mission and not the fact that he'd added some random journalist to the group chat with the four most senior defense people in the country talking about an imminent strike on the Houthis?
Be honest.
Well, I think if we're going to compare the two things, then let's compare them across the board.
Because number one, I would say that if a reporter from the Atlantic or most left-wing media outlets in the United States had been added to that, they probably would have contacted the Biden administration and let them know that they had made an error.
And then they would have run cover for them in any possible way to make sure that this never got out and it never escaped.
And to that point, I would say that this kind of thing probably did happen under the Biden administration numerous times, and we never found out about it because you don't know that.
There we go.
You don't know that.
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Piers, I mean, it took us about five minutes to get to the MAGA's favorite excuse for everything, which is to whine about the media.
It is amazing what snowflakes the MAGA Republicans have become.
Everything bad that happens, they blame journalists for.
Can you guys ever take responsibility for your own mistakes?
Funny enough, you know, it's interesting you say that.
It's interesting you say that, because if I honestly, look, Donald Trump wasn't involved in this.
And if I was Donald Trump, A, I'd fire somebody.
I'd make a point of saying this really matters.
Secondly, and I would fire Mike Wolse if I was him, for what it's worth.
But secondly, I would also, I think, urge everybody that was on that call who's now being interrogated about it.
I've just seen Pete Hegset.
I like Pete personally.
I've known him, work with him.
And he's just shooted a statement saying, let me get this straight.
The Atlantic released the so-called warplanes, war plans, and those plans include no names, no targets, no locations, no units, no routes, no sources, no methods, and no classified information.
Those are some really shitty war plans.
It only proves one thing.
Jeff Goldberg has never seen a war plan or an attack plan, as he now calls it.
And then I'm reminded that one of Pete Heggs' messages on the group was weather is favorable, just confirmed with CENTCOM.
We are go for mission launch at 14:15, strike drones on target.
And this is the Hootie WhatsApp group, not WhatsApp group, signal group.
Brackets, this is when the first bombs will definitely drop.
It's hard to imagine anything more specific than that.
There's the exact time, the exact way they're going to do it.
That's the first thing we're going to see.
And again, if you're a nefarious person reading this, you could obviously use that information in a very damaging way to America.
Now, I simply say this to you.
I wouldn't care if it was the other way around, it happened under Biden.
I would be exactly the same with Democrats that tried to defend this.
I would want some intellectual rigor and consistency and the ability to say this is a massive fuck-up of epic proportions.
And someone's head's got to roll because otherwise it means people don't think it's serious.
And Pete needs to stop putting out these statements which try to minimize stuff that is contradicted by his own messages.
And I say that as a mate to him, right?
So look, look, we've got Tim Miller's joining us now.
Let me bring Tim in at this stage.
Tim, I like your interview with Jeffrey Goldberg, but it just seems to me, and you know, again, just to stress, if it was the other way around, I'd say exactly the same thing.
I don't care which side is doing it.
But anyone that tries to defend this or downplay the severity of it or play what a battery or anything else, I think it needs to stop.
This needs to be accepted for what it was.
A tremendous error, which could have had tremendously serious consequences.
And if it was a senior military person who'd done it, they'd already be gone.
For sure.
Look, to that senior military example, look, Pete Hegset has already fired several generals.
He's fired several people throughout the Department of Defense.
So is Elon Musk as part of the Doge process?
Imagine, you know, we're doing the hypotheticals.
What about Biden?
I think the more apt hypothetical is imagine if a low-level general who is involved in this operation had texted the exact time and location of a military strike to an anti-Trump journalist.
Now, and imagine if that general is one of these woke generals that they're going after.
Maybe it's a black general or a woman.
Imagine what Pete Hegset would be saying today.
Imagine what Dave Rubin would be saying today.
We know what these guys would be saying.
These woke generals, they're the deep state.
We need a court martial.
We need an investigation.
This person needs to be fired.
I think we can all agree that that is what would be happening today.
That person, if they were a two-star black general or female general and they had done this, they would be fired today.
I think that's very obvious.
And so, you know, look, Pete Hegseth might be a mate of yours, might be a good person.
I don't know.
I've never met Pete Eggseth.
But to me, you read this signal chain, and this looks like it got its way in over his head.
And this is not, if General Mattis here, it's impossible to imagine General Mattis texting emojis and all caps pathetic to like a signal group chain, preparing them for when the strikes would be.
It's just, it signals to be somebody that's not serious.
It's not up for the job.
The fact that then on the chain, he says we have 100% operational security here.
And there's someone on the chain he doesn't know.
You didn't check to make sure you knew everybody on the chain?
I just, I think it shows just an unbelievable lack of seriousness.
And I think clearly, if this was one of the woke generals that Pete Hegseth doesn't like, they would be fired today and there would be a DOJ investigation targeting them.
All right.
Dave Rubin, a lot to unpack there, but I mean, a lot I agree with, I have to say.
Look, let's talk about the signal aspect.
If they, as you say, and I've seen that report, if they were encouraged to use Signal, and in fact, it had been put on a lot, apparently, of their phones and so on when they came into their positions.
So they're allowed to use Signal, which is deemed to be one of the more secure ways of communicating.
And you believe, as Pete Hegsteth clearly did, that you've only got on there the Secretary of State, you know, the Defense Secretary, the National Security Advisor, and so on.
In other words, all the senior members of the cabinet that would be involved, plus one or two hand-picked staffers who are at a very high level.
If you assume that's who you're talking to privately, then I'm not too phased about emojis and stuff like that.
You've got to have some presumption, I think, when you're conversing with people at that level that you presume to be that level, that it will remain private.
So I'm not sure I can get too exercised about that part of it.
The thing that still exercises me, though, is just that if it hadn't been Jeffrey Goldberg, but had been somebody who wanted to really damage the administration, they really could have done.
And you could have seen American planes blowing out the sky.
Sure.
Look, there's a couple of things going on here.
First off, I think your guest in the center, I'm sorry, I don't remember the congressman's name.
I think he said it was illegal to use Signal in these chats.
Now, again, Ratcliffe, who is the CIA director, is saying, as you just said again, that it was pre-loaded on their computers and devices.
So I don't think that's illegal, but it clearly is.
There's some legal material.
If there's some legal portion of this.
Well, just for the record, it's Jake is classified over Signal.
Well, just to introduce you again, Jake, for Dave, it's Jake Orkincloss, who's a Democrat congressman from Massachusetts.
So, Jake, you want to respond to him?
Okay, so, well, there's some issue as it pertains to whether signaling.
You cannot share classified material over signal.
Okay, so that's interesting.
So, Congressman, just to be clear, it is illegal to share classified information over signal.
Is that what you're saying?
Yes, the military has its own entire network.
They have skiffs inside the homes of every senior military commander.
They have skiffs co-located with the Secretary of Defense precisely so that they are not putting highly classified operational plans on commercial messaging apps.
It's illegal, full stop.
And Pete Hegseth needs to own that accountability because if this happened to a corporal or a captain or a general, their career would be over.
He shouldn't have this job in the first place.
And my goodness, he certainly shouldn't have it now.
Dave, I mean, if it turns out that that is correct, and I don't dispute what the congressman just said, then, you know, should Pete Hegseth consider his position?
It's a legitimate question which Republicans would be asking of the Democrats.
I don't know.
I can only hear the information that you're hearing on the fly the same exact way.
If it turns out that they were told you are not allowed to put classified information in a signal chat and they went ahead and did it, even though it was pre-loaded on their computer and Ratcliffe testified that he was briefed by people at the CIA about using that stuff, well, then there's a secondary problem.
And also, it should be reiterated.
I don't think anyone here is defending the fact that Mike Waltz apparently let this guy into the chat.
So there is some intellectual consistency here.
And it's up to Trump.
Trump has to decide what he wants to do right now.
Does he think this is a big enough scandal?
And it's not hiring a guy that he just doesn't say or not.
It's not up to Trump.
See, this is the problem with the way Republicans, this is the problem with the way Republicans are acting these days, is they act like a board of advisors.
The Democrats just had four years of a president with dementia and a completely unqualified cabinet and virtually everyone that had anything to do with it.
So tell me more about the Republicans.
The Republicans act like a board of advisors to a CEO as opposed to a separate and co-equal branch of government.
They have abdicated their responsibility.
Mike Johnson acts like a courtier.
John Thune acts like a courtier.
They're the ones who confirmed this junior varsity squad of people who are getting out-competed by the Kremlin and out-negotiated, who are being laughed at by the Chinese Communist Party right now as they prepare to blockade Taiwan.
This is threatening the safety of the American people.
These people are not fit for the office that they hold.
And all Republicans in Congress can do is...
Do Joe Biden have dementia?
Did Joe Biden have dementia and we had four years of him?
Do you think Joe Biden was mentally competent to be president for four years?
Do you think Joe Biden knew things?
It's amazing the whatabout-isms.
Why not what aboutism?
Because it asks you a question.
Does he want to talk about Barack Obama's tan suit as well?
You would do anything to not have to talk about the fact that the Secretary of the Samsung shared classified warnings.
To be fair, both sides.
Was Joe Biden mentally capable of being president?
Let's all accept Joe Biden was mentally unfit for office.
Let's accept that.
As we've been talking, one of us isn't expecting.
There is a report now that Pete Hegseth and other Trump administration officials are being sued by a government watchdog group for using Signal to discuss the military plans to strike duty targets in Yemen.
American Oversight alleges in his lawsuit, the chat on the unclassified commercial app that mistakenly included the Atlantic editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, violated federal records law.
So that does appear to be something that is now an active lawsuit.
Tim Miller, just to bring you back in on this, what do you think should happen?
I mean, in terms of accountability, at the moment, there's a sort of Trumpian playbook of them all doubling down, launching a lot of Water Battery attacks back, but nobody wanting to actually say, it's a fair cop gov and I better stand on my sword.
Yeah, look, I mean, I think that there should be an actual investigation into this.
I don't really have any hope that the Pam Bondi or Cash DOJ or Kash Patel FBI will take this seriously, but I think there should be.
And I also think that, sure, Mike Waltz should be accountable for this.
And Mike Waltz was on Fox last night.
This is crazy, Pierce.
Like Waltz was on Fox last night suggesting to Laura Ingram that Jeffrey Goldberg might have gotten on this signal chat deliberately.
That's what he said.
He said it might have been deliberate.
I don't want to be a conspiracy theorist.
That's our national security advisor.
That's a very serious accusation.
He's saying that a magazine editor might have committed illegal espionage.
And so, but he just doesn't want to actually take the same thing.
Well, then he changed.
So to find out whether or not that was true, you'd need to have a real investigation by DOJ or by special counsel.
And they don't want that because he knows it's him.
So he just wants to throw out those lies willy-nilly.
And it's kind of an absurd lie, really, actually, if some boomer magazine editor was able to sneak onto the chat illegally.
That I think speaks even more to how incompetent the administration other than the true story.
Yeah, I found it slightly more disconcerting that his second explanation, because he had quite a few on the Lawrengro interview, was that somehow Jeffrey Goldberg's number had been under somebody else's name in his contacts list.
And just to remind the viewers watching this, this guy is the national security advisor for the United States of America.
The idea that he doesn't know whether everyone's name in his contacts list is attached to the right number and can therefore be communicating with God knows who without any actual knowledge that they are who he thinks they are is frankly terrifying.
I mean, when you think about who his contacts may include, I mean, Brandon, can you find any explanation for this that makes any sense?
This guy's the number one security guy in the country.
Yeah, no, I mean, look, I think it's not a great situation.
And I think that the messaging that's been put forward by him at this point has not made people feel terribly confident.
But again, at the end of the day, I maintain the fact that it could have been a bad situation.
Investigating the Successful Operation 00:07:14
I think at this point it should be investigated.
I think that obviously communications are going to be tightened up.
They will learn from this experience.
I don't think anything like this will ever happen again.
Probably shouldn't have happened in the first place.
I do agree that from what we know so far, it doesn't seem like any laws were broken by using Signal.
I don't think that we have any evidence at this point that the information being discussed could be determined as classified.
I don't think that's been definitively determined.
Come on, come on, Brandon, Brandon, come on.
Let's come back to planet Earth and reality, right?
I literally cannot think of anything that could be deemed more highly classified than openly talking in a group of people on a platform where you're apparently it is unlawful to talk about classified information.
And I take the congressman's word for that.
And certainly this lawsuit seems to reinforce that that is the case or they wouldn't be launching it.
But the idea that these specifics that they were talking about, times, weather conditions, type of aircraft being used, who they were attacking, and they're giving a running commentary on how it was going with emojis punching the air and American flags and so on.
The idea that that doesn't constitute classified information makes me wonder what on earth you think would.
This is before.
They were doing this two hours before an attack.
What could be more classified?
I mean, I'm prepared to be educated.
I just can't think of anything more highly classified than that information.
Can you?
No, I can appreciate your position and I can appreciate it.
Well, what's your position?
I can appreciate it.
My position is that I would like to wait for an investigation to do that.
You don't think it's classified.
That's not classified.
There's not going to be an investigation.
I think that it's not.
I think that it's not determined.
If it were determined, we wouldn't be sitting here talking about it right now.
And there wouldn't be congressional hearings right now where this is being discussed and determined.
I don't even know.
I saw Telsi Gabbard yesterday giving evidence at the Senate, obviously.
She said it wasn't.
She repeatedly said it's not classified information.
Twitch, my question would be, well, Tulsi, what is?
You know, I mean, my point is that it is being debated.
So you can feel strongly that it shouldn't be debated.
It's not been determined to be delivered.
How can talking about a war operation two hours before it's about to happen not be highly classified?
Unless you think that it should all be openly discussed.
Well, look, again, you're never going to convince me.
There's a difference between an airstrike.
I don't think you're going to need a war player.
To be honest, I think I've got more chance of convincing Brandon.
I mean, Dave, let me just bring you back.
What's going on?
Hang on.
I want to play the scene of cancel culture.
Well, that's how higher leaders bother.
Can I talk about why?
Can I talk about why this matters to the American public, though?
Yeah.
Because this matters to the American public, because America used to be known as a country that was no better friend and no worse enemy.
And now we're picking fights with Canada and we're appeasing Russia.
And the rest of the world doesn't know what kind of a friend we are and they don't know how seriously to take us as an enemy.
And when they see this kind of incompetence, when they see this kind of hypocrisy, when they see this kind of chaos and corruption coming out of the Trump administration, it makes Americans everywhere less safe because it makes our adversary.
It's a successful operation and it makes our allies trust us less.
It was a successful operation.
It was a successful operation.
It was a successful operation in spite of the cockup.
Let me bring Dave back in.
Dave, I want to play.
At the same time.
Hang on, hang on.
Hang on.
I want to talk about the options.
Hang on.
I want to play with the money.
Okay.
Let me just play a clip of Tulsi Gabbard from this talking about whether she was even on the group.
Director Gabbard, did you participate in the group chat with Secretary of Defense and other Trump senior officials discussing the Yemen war plans?
Senator, I don't want to get into this.
Ma'am, did you, were you on?
You're not going to be willing to.
So you're not.
Are you denying?
Answer my question, ma'am.
You were not TG on this group chat.
I'm not going to get into the specifics.
So you refuse to acknowledge whether you were on this group chat.
Senator, I'm not going to get into this.
Why are you going to get into the specifics?
Is it because it's all classified?
Because this is currently under review by the National Security.
Because it's all classified?
If it's not classified, share the text now.
I mean, Dave, I thought that was a very good question, a very good way of skewing Tulsi, because he's basically saying, look, the only reason you wouldn't be prepared to confirm that obviously true fact that you were on the on the chat, because we've seen the chats, would be if you deemed it classified material, which by definition now, we believe would be an unlawful act if they were talking about classified information on signal.
So he kind of trapped her there, didn't he?
Sure.
Again, there's a couple of things going on here.
Number one, I think we're all in agreement that Walt screwed up by putting this guy in the chat.
That's number one.
There seems to be a little, for everybody, a little legal confusion around whether signal can be used or not.
The congressman's saying it absolutely can't for classified information.
Ratcliffe is saying not only was he told it could be, but it was pre-loaded on their computer.
So why did the CIA put it on their computers?
I think that's really worth thinking about.
I agree.
If it is illegal to use as a mode of communication, why is it put on their computer?
Well, to be fair, to be fair, Dave, to be fair, on that point, you can use signal, but the point being it's illegal to put classified information on the signal.
Yeah, this is not complicated.
They're not saying you can't.
That might be true.
It would be a little odd that they would preload it onto the CIA director's computer then.
But okay, we can put that there.
Which is a perfectly valid question.
I agree.
Yeah, as for what Tulsi said there, she's saying there's an investigation, so she's just not going to comment on it right now.
I mean, that's what virtually every official does with every hearing we've ever seen.
So I'm not going to sit here and throw her under the bus for that.
Do you think, Dave, anyone should be fired?
I think if, look, Wall's made a cataclysmic mistake, right?
He's basically admitted it at this point.
And just like I said 20 minutes ago, if Trump makes the estimation that that stupidity, sheer stupidity, whether it was that he had the wrong name in there or he just, you know, we all have multiple people with the same initials or whatever it might be, whether it was just stupidity, ignorance, not understanding signal, whatever that might be.
If Trump deems that fireable, then so be it.
If I was the president right now and I had this, knew that this group existed, would I probably fire the guy who created this firestorm?
The answer is yes.
But Trump has to make that estimation.
That's a perfectly reasonable and honest assessment.
Thank you.
Hey, Mike Baker here, host of the President's Daily Brief podcast.
If you want straight talk on national security, foreign policy, and the biggest global stories going on of the day, this is the show for you.
We publish twice a day, Monday through Friday, once in the morning, again in the afternoon.
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Outrage Over Democracy Attacks 00:15:14
Also on our YouTube channel at President's Daily Brief.
Let's just change tank.
I think you'll enjoy this one a bit better, Dave.
I'm going to start with you, Tim, on this.
This is the Democratic Texas Congresswoman, Jasmine Crockett, talking about the...
This is more my style.
I appreciate it.
I thought you might enjoy this.
Talking about the Texas governor, Greg Abbott, who, of course, is a wheelchair bound.
Let's take a listen.
Y'all know we got Governor High Wheels down there.
Come on now.
And the only thing hot about him is that he is a hot ass mess, honey.
Tim, not only did she make a crass, repulsive jibe about the fact that Greg Abbott is a disabled man in a wheelchair, and that is clearly indisputable in my eyes, she then did this.
She issued a statement saying, I wasn't thinking about the governor's condition.
I was thinking about the planes, trains, and automobiles he used to transfer migrants into communities led by black mares, deliberately stoking tension and fear among the most vulnerable.
Literally, the next line I said was that he was a hot A-Mess, referencing his terrible policies.
At no point did I mention or allude to his condition.
So I'm even more appalled that the very people who unequivocally support Trump, a man known for racially insensitive nicknames and mocking those with disabilities, are now outraged.
Now, Tim, you're an intelligent human being.
You're a fair-minded human being.
Am I?
She's talking utter bullshit, isn't she?
The statement was not necessary or great and obviously untrue.
I don't, I think she should have just wrote it out with the joke.
Everybody can make a judgment about whether they appreciate a joke at Greg Abbott's expense.
I find it hard to imagine that my co-panelists from MAGA World are going to start clutching their pearls over somebody making a mean joke at somebody.
And that's like the core to the president of the United States.
We get outraged over jokes.
It's you guys who get outraged over the years.
That's the difference.
Made it.
Excuse me, Dave.
Tim, the difference is that we are not the people who get outraged over every joke and every word and every sort of innuendo.
It's you guys who do.
So I'm not outraged at the joke.
I'm outraged at the fact at a human rights campaign fundraiser where it's about all the marginalized people and the perceived oppression of the trans people and everything else, that there she's making a joke about disabled people and they're laughing at it.
I'm not outraged at the joke.
I make far worse jokes than that on my show every single day.
I mean, I'm going to be bringing...
We're slicing it kind of thin there.
So we're going to pretend to be outraged about her joke when the president of the United States core brand is making these sort of jokes.
So I wouldn't, if I was her, I wouldn't have put out the statement afterwards.
If it's me, you know, I don't know.
I think that Dave's kind of business model over there.
You know, I don't take money from any Russian assets.
Like, that's just me.
So I'm able to just kind of say what I really want to say.
You don't take money from MSNBC.
So I understand why he might not, you know, he might want to pick his spots.
All right.
Well, let me bring great work you're doing at Bulwark, a real solid place of journalism over there.
But we haven't taken any money from the Russians or the Bulwark peers.
I don't know if you know this, but Dave took $400,000 per month from a Russian information operation.
And so you understand why.
And what was the name I said of the show that I did for the Russians?
Tell me that.
And now it's just handing things over to the Russians.
He has to pretend to be outraged about things.
You know, just you don't know who's paying for it.
What was the name of the show I did for the Russians, Champ?
It was Tenet Media that paid you.
Tenant Media?
What was the name of the show?
$400,000 per month.
$100,000 signing bonus.
That's not you?
Yeah, you just literally don't know what you're talking about.
Which is standard.
You work for MSNBC and the Bulwark.
It's impressive.
All right.
So that's fine.
You weren't commentator one in that indictment there, Dave?
That wasn't you?
Yeah, I was commentator one.
It was nice to read something honest about me that I did all my due diligence trying to figure out what was going on over there.
What was the name of the show?
Tell me about the propaganda I put out there.
What was the name of the media that was paying you?
Tenet Media was a Russian RT Cutout.
Yeah, you know, an RT Cutout.
I've never been paid by a Russian cutout, so I don't exactly know how it all works.
You're paid by MSNBC, which is state-owned propaganda.
You're paid by the Bulwark, which is sheer, which should be just called state-owned.
That would be a better name than the network.
Whatever it is you people are doing over there.
What was the name of the show that I did?
What was the name?
You don't know.
You don't know because you don't know what you're saying.
All right, let me wrestle that.
Let me wrestle things back.
Timeout.
Let's wrestle things back to the actual.
I'd rather talk about Jasmine Crockett's eyelashes.
Let's talk about Jasmine Crockett.
I want to bring in Jake here.
I mean, Jake, presumably, you would condemn both the joke and the statement that was obviously a pack of lies.
Yeah, Piers, I agree with Tim that the Outrage Olympics is a little tiresome and rings hollow.
I also am an elected official, and I know that what is communicated is not what is said, it's what is heard.
And what was heard from her statement did strike me as reflecting the governor's disability?
And I don't think that's funny.
And that's rule number 1A as a politician is if you're going to make fun of somebody, make fun of yourself.
That's what's actually going to get laughs.
So I don't think it was an acceptable statement.
And I don't think it's acceptable when Trump mocks people with disabilities.
I don't want to see Democratic politicians do it either.
And so her statement was therefore, by definition, from what you said, a pack of lies, right?
In which she played the race card, the Trump card, the disabled card.
There wasn't a card she didn't try to play in an effort to deny what we'd all heard with our own ears.
Here's what we should do as a country.
We got to stop talking to people based on immutable characteristics and start talking to people as Americans, as individuals with inherent worth and dignity.
Focus on what unites us.
Focus more on the unum than the pleuribus and e pluribus unum.
And stop you wouldn't even have a party in the hard right.
Democrats need to divide people by race, gender, and sexual orientation.
You wouldn't even have a party.
Your party wouldn't have a platform.
So what are you talking about?
And I'd love to sound off honestly on this issue of Jasmine Crockett because this is representative of a really pivotal moment in my life.
This is why I left the Democratic Party seven, eight years ago, because I believe the left-wing narrative that Donald Trump had mocked a disabled reporter, which actually turned out to be yet another Democrat Party liberal media lie.
We're still talking eight years later about Donald Trump mocking a disabled reporter, but people want to excuse Jasmine Crockett actually making fun of disabled people when Donald Trump actually wasn't making fun of disabled people.
But then, of course, Donald Trump doesn't play the clip.
Hang on, hang on, hang on.
Hang on.
I'm going to play the clip.
I'm going to play the clip.
Wait, Brandon.
Let's play the clip.
Let viewers remind themselves of what Trump did talking about a reporter who does indeed have a disability.
Let's watch.
Written by a nice reporter.
Now, the poor guy, you got to see this guy.
Oh, I don't know what I said.
Ah, I don't remember.
He's going to like, I don't remember.
Oh, maybe that's what I said.
This is 14 years ago.
He's still, they didn't do a retraction.
Now, Brandon, Trump did vehemently deny he was mocking the reporter's disability.
He has a disability with one of his arms, but he certainly looked like he was, right?
And I remember, well, I do remember the Democrats getting very outraged about it.
But, you know, to the congressman's point, should we all try and elevate all ships here in the way that we talk about people on a personal level?
Well, hang on, because first of all, you did what the left-wing media does, which is take that moment out of context and assign a false meaning to it.
What we haven't talked about is that Donald Trump has done that.
Just like January 6th, right, Brandon?
That exactly.
January 6th.
It was an episode.
You were just at the Capitol.
We'll talk about a four and a half years.
False narrative that of January 6th.
That's why you have a criminal conviction.
Actually, I don't.
I'm pardoned for that.
False narrative.
For my nonviolent misdemeanor charge for standing outside of the Capitol shooting video.
Yes, I've been pardoned for my Class B misdemeanor charge.
But calm down.
I'm going to finish my point.
Donald Trump has done that exact same voice and that exact same gesture numerous times throughout the years when he was imitating anybody who was flailing because they were caught in a lie.
He was making fun of the fact that that reporter who happened to be disabled was flailing because he was caught in a lie.
What the left-wing media did was freeze frame a moment from that, put it side by side with that reporter and say that he was making fun of his disability, which in itself is actually disgusting, what the media did.
But Donald Trump was not making fun of a disabled reporter.
What Jasmine Crockett did was actually make fun of a disabled person and then double down and turn herself into the victim and play the racial identity card instead of apologizing for what she did.
And I'd like to know, where's the Democrat Party outrage about this?
We're still talking about Donald Trump.
Well, to be fair, when it comes to intellectual honesty, both of the left-wing members of the panel have both said it was wrong, and they both said they don't believe her statement.
I'm not sure what more you could expect.
I was pleasantly surprised to hear that.
Well, Tim didn't really say it was wrong.
And Jake said that it was sort of wrong, but that we need to stop playing identity politics in this country.
Tim said, I totally agree with you.
Literally his party's platform.
All right.
I think we can all agree.
She was obviously...
I said her statement was nonsense.
And I just want to say, maybe me and Elon Musk agree on something.
Let's legalize humor.
We're really going to get five middle-aged white guys on here just like tis-tisking people over a little joke.
Honestly, Jasmine shouldn't have lied about her statement.
I appreciate that Congressman Arkinclaw says he wouldn't make a statement like that.
But this is silly.
Isn't the whole point of your guys' platforms?
That we shouldn't have cancel culture.
We shouldn't get so outraged about everything.
Nobody's calling to a question.
It's not a TV show.
It's so fake.
Well, the trouble, Tim, is that when I haven't, I haven't checked in the immediacy of what you've just said.
I haven't got the capacity to do that.
But if we went back to when Trump was seen supposedly mocking that reporter and he denied it, like I said, what did you say at the time?
Did you take a view that I didn't like that?
I didn't like that at the time.
It's been 10 long years, Piers.
It's been 10 long years.
So would you like to apologize for being better cheating?
Would you like to apologize?
All right, but Tim, would you like to apologize then for overreacting to that?
You want to lead the way?
I don't want to apologize.
I think that we've had a change in what is acceptable discourse in this country in a way that I probably don't like.
I wish we could go back to 2015 where we didn't do this, but we had an entire ecosystem that you guys just profit off of.
When you say you guys, what do you mean, you guys?
Hang on.
What do you mean?
You guys.
Tim, you're literally the only person who's holding the whole disorder.
Hang on, hang on, Brandon.
Brandon, let me speak in.
Hang on one second.
You're a whole lot of people.
Hang on one second.
The only difference, Tim, between you and me is that I'm pretty much in the center.
You're to the left.
I'm in the center.
Dave's to the right.
I don't know what you mean by you guys.
We're not all on the same page.
I said, like, back in 2015, my point is that in 2015, Donald Trump, I really can all agree, changed what was appropriate discourse in this country.
And he really cracked it and coarsened it.
I think a lot of people are upset about it.
And what you're definitely on this planet is that anybody upset about it.
There was a whole media ecosystem that grew that defended him and defended it and said that anybody that makes joke, that anybody gets outraged about this is a snowflake and that we should be allowed to make jokes at all this country.
And so the coarsening of our party is a lot of people who are not going to be able to do that.
You know what, Donald Trump taught people to stand up.
I don't get outraged over people like you anymore.
I don't think the Georgia just anymore.
Things have changed.
Donald Trump changed things.
You guys wanted it to change.
I mean, you guys, in this case, Brandon and Dave.
And here we are.
Dave, do you want to respond?
You're the only person who's engaged in personal attacks.
We can speak more freely and honestly about things.
We have a less censored internet now than we did 10 years ago.
Donald Trump uncovered all of this deep state nonsense.
He uncovered the collusion with mainstream media and big tech and the government to silence people.
These are all good things.
I got one for you, Tim, for example.
Very fine people.
Hoax are not hoax.
You work at the Bulwark.
They're very great people in journalism.
Very fine people.
You wrote a very extensive story on the very hoax or not hoax.
Hoax or not hoax.
One word.
One word.
No, it's not.
It's obviously not a hoax.
If you want me to explain why, people can go read Robert Trasinski's story.
He was there.
He's in Charlottesville.
He's a conservative.
He explains why it's not a hoax.
I can't explain that if you want, or I could explain it.
Whatever you want, Dave.
Illusional.
Yeah, you can explain it.
Donald Trump, for 10 years, Joe Biden literally ran his initial campaign for presidency, saying Donald Trump said very fine people on both sides.
What was the line that Donald Trump said next, Tim?
Right after very fine people on both sides.
Yeah.
What did he say after that?
I don't remember what the exact sentence was right after.
I'm not talking about the white supremacists or the neo-Nazis who should be condemned completely.
But you work for the Bulwarks, so you are in the job of laundering the mainstream media lies.
And now we are in a position to fight against those lies.
So you hate independent people who are allowed to actually tell the truth because they use their own minds instead of being NPCs like you who are just urging basically state-sponsored nonsense.
Dude, you were taking Russian money.
You're not using your own mind.
What was the name of the show, Tim?
Do you know what you're talking about?
What was the name of the show?
Let me bring it in.
Let me bring Jake back in.
Have you given it back?
Did you give it back?
Oh, you are a clown.
You are a clown.
You literally don't know what you're talking about.
What was the show that I did?
What did I say that was Russian propaganda?
You have literally no idea what you're saying.
Okay.
I've never been indicted.
I've never been in an indictment for taking Russian money.
Let me bring in Jake.
Was I indicted, Champ?
Can we in an indictment?
The Russian talking points, the Russian talking points being paradigmed.
Everyone hates leftists.
It's just endless.
Than the Russian talking points.
The Russian talking points being used by Steve Witcoff, who is actually timeout for a second.
Stop with the lecture for somebody who has defended the January 6th insurrection against the United States government.
I do not want to hear you talk about false narratives or talk about drivel when the two conservative panelists on this show launch attacks against a free and fair election, one of whom has a criminal conviction for it, trying to make themselves through performance art look like there's some kind of market.
Stealing Voters in 2020 00:01:50
You two have attacked the kind of democracy.
You had no platform.
You have been an apologist for the MAGA right-wing false narrative around January 6th.
I was in the building that day.
They were trying to hang the president, the vice president of the United States.
They were trying to attack members of Congress, all in order to steal the voters' voice and vote of the 2020 election.
So you two do not have credibility talking about Charlottesville, talking about left-wing media narratives.
Please spare me.
What I'm focused on right now is Russia and the fact that this administration is seizing what you're focused on right now.
You just talked about a four and a half-year-old riot for five minutes.
Yeah.
Parroting Russian talking points as they are negotiating for Ukraine's sovereignty and independence, and it puts Americans at risk.
All right.
Dave, last word, given the wax you there.
Yeah.
Look, Piers, as I always come onto your show, I tell the truth.
I tell people what I think.
They can agree or disagree.
And I'd love to find out if Tim knows if there's very fine people on both sides.
Again, none of this debate.
I would encourage you both to continue those fascinating debate after we finish.
Got to leave it there, chaps.
Thank you all very much.
I appreciate it.
Thank you.
Thanks, Piers.
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