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May 11, 2022 - Viva & Barnes

02:39:12

Sidebar with Journalist Michael Tracey! Viva & Barnes LIVE! (& Special Guest Tyson Hockley)

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	If protests are peaceful, yes.
	My house is, there's protests three, four times a week outside my house.
	That's the American way to peacefully protest is okay.
	And I've been, that's my wife, sorry.
	Maybe there's a protest outside.
	Go ahead, Manu.
	No.
	Can we appreciate that Chuck Schumer has a flip-top cell phone?
	I mean, that on an ordinary day would be the most offensive thing about what we just watched.
	I'm joking about the flip-top people.
	Some people think that those phones are more reliable and less invasive than the evil iPhone.
	I want people to appreciate...
	What we just witnessed here.
	This is a senator doing nothing shy of encouraging or sanctioning in the sense of authorizing, condoning.
	What is an outright criminal action?
	Just listen.
	Do you have any problem with the protests, was the question, that are going on in front of, I think it's Alito's house.
	Listen to what Schumer says.
	Are you comfortable with the protests going on outside Alito's home, I believe?
	If the protests are peaceful, yes.
	My house is, there's protests three, four times a week outside my house.
	If the protests are peaceful.
	Well, Chuck Schumer, you have just encouraged people to commit a federal crime.
	And don't trust me because I'm just a schnook Canadian in his basement talking to a camera.
	Behind which there are lots of people.
	We talked about this yesterday.
	It's a crime.
	Black on white letter of the law.
	Now, I don't know if it's equally as illegal in front of a senator's house.
	We're going to see what this provision of law says.
	But when Chuck Schumer compares protesting on the front lawn of a sitting judge's house, his home, while he's in the process of rendering a decision...
	Obviously, for the purposes of influencing or affecting the decision that that judge is in the process of rendering, I don't know if this provision of law would also apply to doing that to a senator, but let's go see, shall we?
	It's 18 U.S.C., Section 1507, picketing or parading.
	Whoever with the intent of interfering with, obstructing, or impeding the administration of justice, or with the intent of influencing any judge, juror, witness, or court officer in the discharge of his duty, pickets or parades in or near a building housing a court of the
	or with such intent uses any sound truck or similar device or resorts to any demonstration in or near any such building So as far as I'm concerned, Jock Schumer, your analogy is legally not analogous.
	Because I don't think you're a judge, jury, or officer of the court and anyone's picketing on your front lawn to...
	What was the purpose of it?
	Where did it say for the purposes of?
	What's my problem?
	Oh, yeah, sorry.
	With the intent of impeding the administration of justice.
	Now, do bear in mind, obstruction of Congress, which is what they went with full force against everyone on January 6th and their grandmother, literally, they went full force on that.
	But when it comes to this specific provision of law that specifically prohibits...
	Picketing or parading at the residence of a judge for the purposes of interfering with that decision.
	It's a specific, overt, codified criminal act, and you have a senator, a sitting senator, saying he's okay with it.
	Cool.
	No biggie.
	Just go harass judges outside their homes.
	Oh, if it's peaceful harassment, if it's peaceful picketing, that's not what the law says, Schumer.
	And so you are a sitting senator encouraging people to go break the law.
	I accidentally tweeted that he should be impeached, but I don't think senators can be impeached.
	I think they can just be expelled.
	Just imagine.
	Just imagine the world in which we're living, where Trump, giving a speech at Capitol Hill, telling people to peacefully protest, fight like hell for the country, peacefully protest, impeached.
	By the...
	I think by the same...
	Was it by the same Senate?
	No, no, no.
	But you get Schumer.
	Actively saying, if it's peaceful, go break the law.
	Mostly illegal.
	No, sorry.
	Mostly peaceful, but totally illegal protest.
	Schumer should be expelled.
	He should be censored.
	There should be political consequences for what Schumer is doing.
	It is sanctioning an outright assault on the judicial system itself at the highest level.
	And just a little bit of...
	Interesting tidbit.
	Sanction is the one language, one of the few words in the English language, which means both one thing and the exact opposite.
	To sanction is to penalize, to sanction is to authorize.
	All right, with that said, people, I started early tonight because I wanted to bring on a special guest before the sidebar special guest.
	And I don't want to say that one is more special than the other because they're not.
	Everyone is equally special.
	Everyone, as my father says, is a snowflake.
	In the sense of being unique, not in the sense of being a fragile little thing that dissipates under the slightest aspect of heat.
	But, no, we've got an interesting guest before the sidebar guest, Tyson Hockley.
	Canadians might know who he is.
	He's a 14-year-old kid.
	I think he's 14. 14-year-old kid who has been live-streaming the Ottawa protests as they occurred, or as, you know, the sister protests occurred in British Columbia.
	He's been discovering the internet.
	Discovering his voice, discovering his fighting spirit.
	We're going to get there in two minutes because he's backstage and I want to have a discussion before we go live with Michael Tracy, journalist at 7 o 'clock.
	It's going to be fascinating.
	Very much following the outrageous debacle that is the $40 billion pledge of military and humanitarian aid.
	Military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine while there is literally...
	A baby formula shortage in the United States.
	Priorities.
	Priorities.
	First things first, super chats, such as this one.
	Notice his wife has his burner number and not his real number.
	Brit, the internet is smart, man.
	That is a very interesting, funny observation.
	I'm watching.
	Good.
	So, what was I about to say?
	Oh, yeah.
	No, no.
	Superchats.
	30% goes to YouTube.
	If you don't like that, we are simultaneously streaming on Rumble, where they have Rumble rants.
	Rumble takes 20%, so it's better to support the creator there, better to support a platform that actually supports free speech, even if it means standing up to the powers that would have them, or try to have them not run movies like 2,000 Meals, not give a platform to Russian disinformation like RT.
	They are fighting the good fight at Rumble, so you might want to contemplate.
	Supporting them.
	If I don't bring your super chat up and it's going to make you upset, don't give it.
	I don't like people being...
	No, dementia is not setting in, for goodness sake.
	It's just called having too many things on my mind.
	If I don't bring up your super chat and it's going to make you angry, don't give the super chat.
	I do my best to bring them all up, but I'm not going to get them all up.
	And if they say something I don't want to bring up, I reserve the right not to bring them up.
	Okay, with that said, Tyson Hockley.
	Couldn't have a better Canadian name if you wanted it.
	It's like hockey with the hockey stick L in it.
	Tyson, I'm bringing you in.
	You're ready, man.
	Hey, Viva.
	How you doing?
	Hey, thank you so much for having me on.
	How about you?
	The world is crazy.
	The world is fortuitous.
	I'm in Ottawa, there for the Rolling Thunder protest, the Rolling Thunder rally.
	Somebody says, dude, you have to check out Tyson Hockley.
	I've never heard of you.
	Went to see what you're doing.
	It's great.
	If I wish I were doing such productive things when I were 14 instead of what I was doing when I was 14, tell the world who you are.
	Yeah, so my name is Tyson Aucaly, 14-year-old, and I have a passion for doing YouTube.
	And I've been going out in Victoria, BC, downtown every single Saturday.
	They have a Freedom Rally down there.
	And I've kind of made it a commitment to try to get out there as much as possible.
	And what I do is I go to these rallies and I just fire up a live stream.
	I'm just a kid with a camera.
	Let me ask you, you got into it because you saw what was going on in Ottawa or did you get into YouTube earlier on than that?
	So I've had my channel for like three years now.
	So this kind of stream in the Freedom Rallies is kind of like a new era for my channel.
	But yeah, I remember my mom like...
	I pointed it out.
	It was on the news, like the Freedom Convoy in Ottawa.
	So I kind of did my research, and it seemed interesting, and I saw a lot of people were interested in it.
	So I had the idea to go down there and just livestream, just try it out.
	I wasn't really expecting much to come from it.
	I was expecting, yeah, maybe there'll be a few people down at the legislature, maybe a handful of people I'll livestream.
	And I end up getting downtown, and there's 10,000 people at the legislature in Victoria.
	So, actually, just to stop you there, Victoria.
	Now, for those of you who don't know, Victoria is quite left-leaning as far as politics goes, if I'm not mistaken.
	This is Victoria, BC, which is Tabarnouche.
	Vancouver Island?
	Is it on Vancouver Island?
	Yeah.
	I drew a blank for a second.
	I didn't want to look totally stupid.
	It's a pretty left-ish culture, is it not?
	I think so.
	And without giving too much away, you're born and raised in Victoria?
	Yeah.
	How many siblings?
	I'm an only child.
	Very interesting.
	Okay.
	What do your parents do?
	So my mom works at a dental office and my dad works for the government.
	Okay.
	Okay.
	And now do you not have the risk of like, do your parents not say, do your parents say stop doing this?
	We don't want you getting involved in this.
	Are they supportive of what you're doing?
	No, they're very supportive.
	My mom actually let me have the day off school today because in Victoria at the Supreme Court, there was a challenge to the BC vaccine passport.
	And I was able to go down there today instead of going to school and kind of do like a live little Twitter update on what was going on.
	And I met some people, reporters at Rebel News.
	And it was just kind of a fun experience.
	But my mom did have a deal that if I wanted to have the day off school, I had to complete all my homework last night.
	Which I did.
	But yeah, it's a lot of fun today.
	I got to meet Andrea Humphrey from Rebel News and Matt Brevner from Rebel News.
	And they actually interviewed me afterwards too, which is amazing.
	That's fantastic.
	Only child means you get a lot of attention from your parents.
	Is that right?
	Yeah, a ton.
	When did you start this YouTube, the YouTube venture?
	So it was kind of like in quarantine, like mid-pandemic.
	Kind of like the...
	First couple months of the pandemic, my baseball just got cancelled, which I said on Live from the Sheds interview.
	But baseball is like my main thing.
	I've been working three years preparing for a tournament that we were hosting.
	So when that got cancelled, everything kind of went crashing down for me.
	I didn't really have much to do.
	And of course, cut off from my friends because it was social distancing and all that at the start.
	So I've always kind of thought about doing YouTube.
	So this kind of a perfect opportunity for me to start it up and kind of just see where I did a 24-hour challenge on my roof.
	I did a 24-hour challenge on my tent trailer.
	Just silly stuff.
	But I had a ton of fun with it.
	It was after I did my first YouTube video that I realized this is what I want to do.
	And three years later, here I am streaming the Freedom Rallies.
	And I'm still loving every second of it.
	So when you say the 24-hour challenge was on YouTube, this is when you're first just discovering the platform and doing...
	So you stayed on your roof for 24 hours and you streamed it?
	Yeah.
	What was the...
	I say, what was the viewership?
	What were you talking about for 24 hours, man?
	So I just kind of did like an update every half an hour.
	Like, here I am on the roof eating a granola bar and stuff like that.
	My parents were in on it.
	They knew I was on the roof.
	And even if they weren't in on it, they'd probably hear me walking around up there.
	But I got my dad to actually come in at the end of the video and act all surprised and angry.
	So he had a little cameo in that video.
	It's obviously a flat roof.
	It's not an A-frame shape.
	No, it's flat.
	Now, jokes aside, you're 14. When this pandemic started, you're 12 years old.
	I don't even know how you're going to contextualize this or remember it in retrospect.
	What does it feel like?
	You're an only child.
	What happens in Victoria when all of the poop hits the fan when they, you know, two weeks to flatten the curve?
	What did that start off like?
	And what did that, I mean, how did that impact you?
	It was a really weird vibe.
	Like, everybody was scared, including myself, like, the first couple, first month.
	Like I said, baseball got shut down, school got shut down, and I don't know, it felt like one of those apocalyptic movies.
	Like, it felt like I was in a movie.
	Like, it was surreal, hard to explain, kind of, coming from a 12-year-old at that time.
	Of course, it was kind of fun having school shut down.
	I was able to have a lot of free time, but that gets old after a couple months of not being able to see your friends.
	But yeah, it was definitely, it's like...
	It was almost like my whole world got flipped upside down because I'd been working so hard at baseball and that had been kind of my whole life is just friends and baseball, friends and baseball.
	So to have those two things out of nowhere just ripped from you, I don't know.
	I don't know how to describe it.
	It was really weird.
	And so friends and baseball, which is the life of a 12-year-old, and then it goes to no baseball and basically no friends.
	I mean, were you...
	I don't want to get you in trouble.
	Were you breaking the rules?
	Were you having sleepovers?
	Or was this like you're not seeing friends and if you do, it's outside and everybody's totally freaking out and staying six feet apart?
	Well, I still kept in touch with some of my friends.
	We'd do this thing called Squishy Ball, which is like baseball but with a squishy ball.
	We kind of made up for our own little game and we'd all get together and play that.
	I had a couple sleepovers later into everything, but...
	Yeah, not really much.
	Like, it went from seeing my friends every single day to, like, seeing my friends maybe once a week.
	Maybe twice a week.
	And how long was school shut down for?
	School...
	So school got shut down, like, spring break.
	Like, the end of spring break.
	And then it shut down for the rest of the year.
	So what is that?
	Like, five, six...
	Actually, I don't know.
	So it's like, basically, it's a full year and a half.
	And you have school online?
	How did that work for you guys in Victoria?
	So we did.
	We had school online, but nobody did it.
	My parents made me do it, but none of my friends actually did it.
	And what they'd do is they'd post like what you have to do for the next four weeks, but it was like nothing because they didn't expect kids to actually do it.
	So I'd log on and I'd do like all four weeks of work in one day and then I'd have four weeks off.
	One of my kids just came in here.
	You want to say hi or no?
	No, he doesn't.
	He doesn't want to say hi.
	I got a kid who came.
	He found me in the basement.
	I'm going to be live for like two and a half hours.
	You might want to go back upstairs.
	He wants to go biking.
	Ask mom.
	Go ask mom.
	She'll take it.
	Go.
	It's a full year lost of school.
	It's going to be a ridiculous thing, but do the children appreciate or do they recognize that they basically did not get an education for that year?
	Is it an inside joke or do some people think this is how easy it's going to be going forward?
	I think most of my friends are pretty...
	Um, pumped.
	Some of my friends still say that, um, when school got shut down, that was, like, the best moment of their lives.
	Because, I mean, like, it's kind of just typical.
	Kids don't like going to school.
	Um, but like I said, after, like, a couple months of no school, it got old, um, for sure.
	Uh, it's definitely a lot better being back.
	Now it's a full normal year.
	There's no masks anymore, no cohorts.
	So it's just, like, a normal year now, which is nice.
	Um, but yeah, it was kind of nice having school shut down.
	I don't want to ask a loaded question because I know the way I feel about this, but have you noticed among any of your friends any lingering...
	I'll call it trauma.
	Have any of your friends had a difficult time?
	If so, what sort of anecdotes can you share of your direct experiences with people who didn't necessarily cope all that well with the last two and a half years of this?
	From what I've experienced, most of my friends have coped pretty well.
	Most of them are over it.
	By now, it wasn't that great of an inconvenience for some of them.
	Some of them actually enjoyed the experience, like I said.
	I wouldn't say that there's any trauma from it.
	But, yeah, everybody's just happy to be back to normal from what I've observed.
	Very cool.
	Now getting back into the YouTube stuff.
	So you start off, as does everybody.
	Someone in the chat said, Viva, you started off.
	Doing squirrel videos.
	That was actually late.
	I started off running obstacle course races in a business suit.
	Suit and tie, full jacket, lip syncing pop songs.
	If anyone hasn't seen that, go look up Wrecking Spartan for full cringe.
	But you find your way.
	So how did you get into this?
	One day you go down to Victoria and there's 10,000 people and you're live streaming and you're like, this is the coolest thing on earth?
	Yeah, well, I mean, of course, part of doing YouTube is you have to provide content that people actually care about and that people actually want to watch.
	And I also enjoyed it.
	It was fun.
	I love getting down there and live streaming.
	It's a highlight of my weekend sometimes when I don't have baseball, just getting down there and live streaming.
	But it was really from seeing how many people actually have a hunger for that content because there's not many streamers in Victoria.
	There's VicBCLive, TyGuy266, or a couple, but it's just me and them pretty much.
	So I also kind of feel an obligation to get down there and stream because without me and without the other streamers I just mentioned, then nobody even knows what's going on.
	I actually didn't know it was quite so big in Victoria.
	So every week they have a protest.
	Sometimes they do a little convoy up island so there's a smaller group at the legislature.
	But yeah, every week.
	And I also want to mention one thing.
	So We Unify Canada is an organization.
	They saw us going on your show.
	They wanted me to mention this.
	So Saturday, May 28th.
	There's an event in Victoria, and they have guest speakers Brian Peckford, Roman Babber, Dr. Roger Hodkinson, and Dr. Eric Payne are speaking at that event.
	Okay.
	I just had Roman Babber on last week.
	It's great.
	And have you run into Brian Peckford?
	So he was at the very first event that I streamed.
	But he hasn't been back since.
	So he's coming back May 28th.
	And I'm thinking about trying to get an interview with him.
	I'm not sure the logistics behind that.
	But I want to interview him.
	I have some questions lined up.
	So it's just kind of a matter of how everything unfolds.
	But yeah, that is my plan.
	Tell me this, because when they had the protest in Ottawa...
	They brought in the police.
	It ended up very badly.
	I presume you saw that on the interwebs.
	What have the protests been like in Vancouver or in Victoria?
	Have they been, by and large, peaceful?
	How are the police responding to it?
	Are the people getting arrested, getting ticketed?
	What's the overall ambiance?
	It's pretty peaceful.
	There's a couple arrests and they banned honking.
	So anybody honking was subject to a $150 ticket.
	I'm not sure how many of those have been issued.
	Because there's always people honking.
	So the police would be kind of busy getting every single vehicle.
	I'm not sure how they would track down every single vehicle because there's a whole bunch of them.
	But yeah, by and large it's been peaceful.
	I haven't really seen any violence.
	I was on the bus one time.
	I saw somebody getting arrested.
	So it is happening.
	But no, it seems pretty peaceful from what I've observed.
	Do people at your school know who you are and what you're doing?
	Yeah.
	Has there been any blowback there?
	Because, look, in the education system, it tends to be certainly, you know, politically or ideologically aligned in a certain way.
	Have you noticed any flack, pushback, or what you might think is unfair treatment from teachers who might not like what you're standing up for?
	I haven't because all I do is I just kind of point my camera at the crowd.
	When I'm there, I never, like, say any of my own beliefs because...
	Here's the thing.
	Here's what I think is wrong with media nowadays.
	Media either caters to the right side of the political spectrum or they cater to the left.
	And I don't feel like enough people are just going there and sharing both sides.
	So I just don't know why they can't show both sides of the argument.
	And that's what my channel is.
	And I feel like that's why people follow me is because they see both sides.
	So no, I haven't received any unfair treatment.
	Actually, one of my teachers said that they heard my name mentioned on the local radio.
	He thought that was cool.
	But yeah, I just do non-biased reporting just there with my camera.
	And I let people make up their own mind.
	I don't tell people what to think.
	I let them think their own thoughts.
	And I kind of just let them see everything that's going on.
	I've been told I use bad lighting to stay humble.
	I thought I was using good lighting.
	I looked gaunt.
	I got off the treadmill shortly before the stream.
	I think I'm still sweating a little bit.
	But Tyson, first of all, it's fantastic.
	Have you had any close calls?
	Any odd encounters?
	Have you had anybody who doesn't like the fact that you're staying neutral?
	A lot of people say to stay neutral in the face of evil is to participate.
	In that evil.
	And then, you know, you get both people on both sides saying that about you're staying neutral to the other side.
	Have you had any unpleasant encounters or odd pushback?
	So there's one.
	Actually, there's two.
	So one time I was at the rally and somebody yelled at me, you're broadcasting a fascist organization.
	That's what he said.
	Something along those lines.
	And I also got flipped off one time at a protest by one of the counter protesters.
	And when I try to explain to him that I'm just...
	Neutral reporter.
	He asked me how much YouTube's paying me.
	And then he said, you're better off working at McDonald's.
	That's what he said.
	And then he flipped me off.
	But those are the two kind of negative experiences.
	That individual is wrong on both counts.
	First of all, there's nothing wrong with working at McDonald's.
	It's how you learn how to work, and it's how you learn how to be responsible.
	But it's amazing.
	Did you try to engage with that counter-protester?
	I said to him that I'm a neutral reporter, and I said I'm showing both sides.
	And he didn't want to hear it.
	And then he just flipped me off, walked away, and then that's the last I've ever heard of that guy.
	But I never let anything like that get me down because, of course, if anybody successful ever listened to haters, then they wouldn't get anywhere.
	So I just remain positive.
	Keep enjoying myself out there.
	Viva, when you're interviewing someone, please act in.
	Okay, I hope this is sarcastic.
	This had better be sarcastic.
	Okay, sorry.
	I got distracted.
	That had better be sarcastic.
	Tyson, now I got totally distracted.
	What you might find at one point in time, both sides are going to want to know your opinion.
	As far as all of this goes, I'm not even going to ask you your opinion, but what has been your assessment of what's going on from what you've seen?
	What's your assessment of the state of Canada at this point in time?
	Assessment of the state of Canada?
	That's a deep question.
	As a 14-year-old, I won't call you a kid.
	You're 14 years old.
	People want to know what I was doing when I was 14. Not this live stream.
	Do you feel that Canada is a free country from the perspective of a 14-year-old?
	Very mature individual.
	That's kind of a tough question.
	Yes and no.
	Yes and no in a sense that, I mean, I don't know.
	How can I answer this question with staying neutral?
	I'm trying to think.
	Here's what you might find at some point in time is that you might...
	It might be impossible to remain neutral in that even neutrality itself will be accused of being a form of bias.
	But I'll take you off the spot on that question.
	Are you thinking of getting into politics in any way, shape, or form?
	I have thought of it.
	It does interest me.
	I always have people commenting, Tyson for a prime minister and stuff like that.
	Not overly, but I don't know.
	I wouldn't rule it out completely, getting into politics.
	I am, of course, more politically interested than most kids.
	But not like politics is my life or anything.
	But I'm not going to rule it out in the future.
	I may pursue politics, perhaps.
	I guess we'll kind of just have to wait and see.
	But if I do choose to, it's going to be nice because I kind of have a head start.
	Whereas I already have like a platform here on YouTube of supporters.
	And this is going to be the biggest question for you now.
	You've seen what the public wants, you know, it fluctuates and it evolves over time.
	And like a lot of the streamers who were born out of the Ottawa protests and streamed, when they end, the question is, what do you transition to?
	You know, when the protests, when this all passes over...
	What do you envision your channel transitioning into in terms of content, in terms of, you know, on the one hand, giving people what they're interested in, but on the other hand, also following what you're interested in?
	So, I don't know.
	I've been inspired by what you do and what Dave does live from The Shed, interviewing people.
	And I honestly think I'm going to try to pursue that.
	Of course, gotta get better at interviewing people.
	I also want to pursue, like, journalism.
	Like, when big stuff is happening, I want to be the guy informing people what's going on.
	But I definitely see myself doing something similar to what you do.
	As, like, just having people on, hearing their story, and just kind of letting them talk.
	I can definitely see that being something that I do.
	Of course, though, I gotta think of questions.
	And I'm kind of just...
	It's kind of just a matter of getting used to interviewing people.
	But yeah, I could definitely see myself doing what you do in terms of just doing these live streams with guests and all that.
	All right, man.
	Now I see our second guest of the evening, our first guest, Michael Tracy, a journalist.
	Tyson, you're going to want to stick around and watch this because you look like you're interested in journalism.
	You sound like you're interested in journalism.
	You actually sound like you have a very, very...
	Firmly attached head, which is, I think, uncommon for a 14-year-old, but maybe I've just forgotten what it means.
	If you have to read a book on journalism, read James O 'Keefe's The American Muckraker.
	It's phenomenal, and if you listen to it, it's on audio as well.
	Where can people find you?
	Where can people find you?
	And I'll post the links to the pinned comments when we're done.
	So first of all, I just want to say...
	Every thousand subscribers, my mom gets me a cake.
	And we're getting kind of close to 8,000.
	Just hit 7,000.
	So hopefully we can maybe get another cake and put my mom to work.
	But you can find me on YouTube, Twitter, Rumble, Facebook.
	Kind of all social media platforms for the most part under the username Tyson Hockley.
	Well, it's the way it's spelled right there.
	Hockey with an L. Tyson, enjoy it.
	You're doing phenomenal stuff.
	I mean, I was watching a lot of your streams and I was just thinking like, dude, you're 14. You found something interesting.
	You found something amazing.
	You're making money doing it.
	You're providing something useful to the world that the world wants.
	And you're passionate about it and it's going to be amazing.
	So Tyson Hockley on YouTube.
	Are you on Twitter?
	I am on Twitter.
	Yeah.
	Today from the courthouse, I was providing live tweets.
	I don't really have that big of a following on Twitter.
	But just like everything, trying to build it up.
	Can I give a shout out to somebody real quick?
	Please, go for it.
	Okay, so the person who came up to you in Ottawa and told you about me, his name is KotaB123.
	Nothing but love and respect for him.
	He does a lot to promote me.
	And I just want to mention on here, it's all one word, so it's like Kotab123.
	Just wanted to mention him and give a little shout out and show my appreciation to him.
	Alright, let's see.
	Let's see.
	Let's see this have some impact.
	People, check them out.
	The links will be pinned.
	And when I get a chance, I'm actually going to go pin in the comment of the live chat your channel.
	Tyson, keep up the good work.
	And like Winston Churchill said, if you stop to throw a stone at every barking dog, you'll never get to where you're going.
	So you look like you appreciate that already.
	Tyson, we'll keep in touch.
	We'll be in touch in the future.
	Thank you so much for having me on.
	My pleasure, man.
	Talk to you soon.
	Yeah.
	Well, that was...
	Interesting.
	One day, people, during an AMA, I will tell the world what I was doing when I was 14 years old.
	But let's just say I went to three high schools in five years.
	I'm going to get to a few Super Chats before I bring in Michael Tracy because I see him in the background.
	Unvy Cadet marked, I heard of this story, held behind fence, removed from activities.
	Also, Tim Hortons and I, Unvy Kids to join summer camp.
	Shed following up.
	I've heard about that story, the marking on the hand.
	I know that Tim Hortons is imposing that requirement.
	Atrocious.
	Stupid stuff like GoPro scroll videos sounds familiar somehow.
	The transition looks like it's there.
	This kid, he's on to good things much earlier and can learn from the mistakes of others without having to make them himself.
	Other auto antonyms.
	Weather, seated, dusted, off, left, cleave, oversight.
	Very interesting.
	Guy, you are broadcasting a fascist organization.
	Proper response?
	Good.
	The world should know they are fascist or not.
	Touche, Brit Cormier.
	If someone's saying something stupid, don't suppress their speech.
	Give them a bullhorn.
	Instead of going into politics, play piano in a brothel.
	You'll be far less likely to lose your soul.
	All right, one more.
	Are you going to pursue a baseball career?
	I said, darn it.
	Well, we'll see.
	He might have more of a political career before anything.
	Smart kid.
	Great kid.
	And now, we are on...
	To Michael Tracy, a journalist that I think Tyson is going to have a good time listening to because Mike is doing...
	We're going to have some very substantive political...
	What's the word I'm looking for?
	Policy discussion tonight.
	It's going to be amazing.
	Michael, I'm going to bring you in.
	Barnes, I'm going to bring you in.
	We're going to work on the order here.
	Mike, how's it going?
	Going pretty well.
	How about you?
	Okay, good.
	That hesitation.
	I thought I might have been in trouble for some reason.
	Well, I was considering whether I wanted to make like a...
	Excessively clever, sort of snippy, introductory remark.
	But then I just went for this generic greeting.
	And you know what I'm going to do?
	I'm going to do this this way.
	I'm going to put myself on the bottom so I cover my own face with super chats.
	All right, here we go.
	And Robert, how are you doing?
	Good, good.
	All right, gentlemen, where do we start here?
	Now, this...
	Michael, I mean, I'm familiar with your stuff.
	I haven't been following you on Twitter for all that long.
	How dare you?
	It takes time to learn all these things.
	Although I know that I've seen your tweets before I started following you.
	We're going to get into the Ukrainian stuff that you're covering thoroughly, but elevator pitch for people who don't know who you are before we get into the beginning to get into the present.
	Who am I?
	Where have I come from?
	Where am I going?
	These are the age-old questions.
	Does that count as a response?
	I don't know.
	I'm a journalist.
	I have a substack, mtracy.substack.com.
	Also write for a variety of other publications here and there throughout the years.
	And I do different media stuff, audio, video, the whole kit and caboodle for the contemporary journalistic endeavor that I embarked upon.
	Well, when I ask where you're from, I mean like actually quite more literally.
	Oh, where am I from?
	Okay.
	I'm from New Jersey.
	I've bounced around the U.S., but I actually now live in Jersey City, so a different part of New Jersey from where I grew up.
	I grew up in North Jersey, Essex County, New Jersey.
	Yeah, heavily...
	Irish, Italian, and Jewish enclave, so I've always sort of regarded myself as a customary Jew, even though I don't happen to be Jewish.
	Most people assume that I'm Jewish, which I actually consider to be a great honor, I guess maybe due to my mannerisms and my self-deprecation.
	Yeah, you asked about my childhood.
	How many siblings?
	How many siblings?
	Oh, jeez.
	I have two siblings.
	I'm the oldest of three.
	Do people really want to know about my family composition?
	I only like to know, like to say, did you come from a traditionally Democrat background, a traditionally conservative background?
	Oh, okay.
	Yeah.
	You know, I would say not...
	An overly political background one way or another in terms of my familial upbringing.
	I would say my parents were kind of just generic, soft Democrats.
	If anything, as I became more politically conscientious, they seemed to adopt more and more of my views rather than the other way around.
	Actually, my...
	Paternal grandfather, who died in the 60s, ran for a local office in New Jersey, like a town council, as a Democrat.
	But he was an ethnic Irish politician at the time.
	Basically, if you were a Republican, you would have had to be in certain circles that were dominated by the kind of WASP type.
	So it was more kind of ethnically assorted at that time, more so than even ideologically assorted, although there are obviously ideological dimensions.
	But yeah, I do have a paternal grandfather who was in the middle of running for local office as Democrat when he...
	Died suddenly in a freak accident.
	Whether that has any effect on my political sense of self, I'm not sure.
	I'd have to hire a very smart psychotherapist to uncover those hidden truths if they really exist.
	Now, you were part of the sort of the millennial generation in part that, like Obama 2008, that brought in a lot of young people.
	There was a lot of excitement, you know, hope and change that he could make a real difference.
	You know, for my generation, that was Bill Clinton in 1992.
	We were disabused of it rather quickly, some of us.
	But, you know, what was, can you recall that for people?
	Because that was really legitimate.
	People on the right didn't quite understand it because it didn't apply to them in the same way.
	But there really was a lot of enthusiasm for Obama that faded kind of quickly.
	Like by 2012, it wasn't there.
	But can you describe both the idealism of what Obama 2008 represented and then the disappointment that it didn't quite translate like people hoped it would?
	Well, yeah, the 2008 presidential cycle was my first as, you know, a conscious adult with my own, at least, inchoate political views and ideological, maybe, affiliations.
	I did a lot of volunteer work for both the primary and the general election campaign,
	which, regardless of how that Transpired in terms of Obama's legacy or his tenure in office or what policies he did or did not successfully implement.
	It is very illuminating and educational to participate in politics in that way, which I wouldn't do now, probably, because I'm in more of a journalistic capacity, right?
	But at the time, when I was sort of a private citizen, 18, 19, 20 years old, It was pretty formative because, you know, especially if you're doing canvassing, you're going around and talking to people directly who are from different walks of life who you would probably not ordinarily otherwise encounter.
	And so those experiences, I think, are even helpful for me, were helpful for me even in giving me sort of a journalistic bug in a way because you're almost going around doing anthropology, right, and synthesizing it and, you know, trying to extrapolate from it.
	You know, one of the...
	One of the key anecdotes that I took away from that, and when I say I worked for the Obama campaign in a volunteer capacity, I mean, I was actually full bore.
	I went into the New Jersey state headquarters regularly and did just office work.
	I had traveled to New Hampshire during the primaries and spent a week canvassing.
	I did phone banking.
	I registered voters everywhere that I could for the New Jersey primaries and then the general election.
	So I was pretty deeply committed, more so than anybody I knew.
	Maybe not just in the Obama campaign, but in electoral politics writ large.
	Because back then, before everything was hyper-politicized, I mean, I guess maybe you had certain initial inklings that things were getting hyper-politicized, but nowhere near what happened under Trump.
	Back then, it wasn't considered particularly cool or fashionable to be that invested in politics, and you were somewhat weird or against the grain if you were that involved one way or another.
	But I was just going to say, one of the anecdotes that's really stuck with me was from the general election period, maybe two weeks or so prior to the election in November 2008.
	And I don't know that I would have believed that this species of person really existed unless I firsthand experienced it, right?
	But I was canvassing in North Philadelphia in one of the ethnic white neighborhoods, right?
	So in North Philadelphia, you have these legacy Irish and Italian enclaves.
	And I went around and I was canvassing, and I knocked on one door, and a young woman came out, and I just asked them how they were voting.
	The idea is to develop a rapport with the person that you've contacted.
	And she called into her mother, who was this elderly woman sitting inside, and she said, I asked, you know, because they were on a list of Democrats, like you're going around doing get out the vote, essentially, and trying to spur Democrats to make sure that they actually go vote.
	And the woman, the elderly woman sitting inside shouted out, I don't vote for N-words.
	And then they invited me in to speak.
	So, OK, so I go and I speak to the woman.
	I know it's an older white woman.
	And I said, so, you know, if that's your position, who are you going to vote for?
	Because she's not a Republican.
	She's not going to vote for John McCain, presumably.
	And she said, oh, I'm going to vote for Obama.
	And I said, wait, wait, wait, what do you mean?
	And she said, I'm going to vote for the white half.
	So, I mean, that was a real thing.
	I mean, that's the thing that, like...
	That's Philadelphia, yeah.
	Yeah.
	I mean, I wouldn't have encountered a person like that.
	In any other scenario, so just to know that that person existed was illuminating.
	It's going to sound like a joke, but is this like when she said, I don't vote for N-words, was it a hard R or a soft R?
	Is it Blazing Saddles type pronunciation?
	It was a hard R. It was a hard R. It was weird.
	My recollection is she wasn't even saying it.
	I didn't get the sense that tonally she was trying to express animosity.
	It was almost like a statement of fact, right?
	It was just what she wouldn't do.
	She was just trying to relay that to me in almost like this matter-of-fact way.
	You said ethnic white, and I've got to ask you what that means.
	That is sort of like an overly general term.
	I guess I'm just talking about...
	Particularly in the Northeast, where you have Irish and Italian kind of neighborhoods that came in from that wave of immigration in the early 20th century.
	Maybe ethnic whites isn't the best term for that, but that's just kind of what I associated with.
	More so than like, you know, Scots-Irish from the founding of the country, which you would find in like Appalachia or something.
	So, I mean, this is, it goes to show, like, I guess politics trumps race then.
	So this individual who's a registered Democrat, and I'm not drawing any broader conclusions, like all Democrats are race, whatever.
	But this person's a registered Democrat, says what she says, but still says I'm voting Democrat anyhow, I'll just find a way to convince myself that I'm voting for what I consider to be the good part of this individual and not the part that I don't like.
	Yeah.
	It's interesting because, you know, actually...
	When I did that canvassing, it convinced me that, politically speaking, Obama's selection of Biden as vice president was actually very smart.
	I mean, the kind of conventional wisdom when Biden was first selected was that Obama picked him because he had foreign policy gravitas, right?
	That he had this elder statesman vibe and Obama was this young and maybe inexperienced candidate and that would be counteracted by Biden as this...
	A foreign policy whiz who'd been around the bend and who had been involved in all kinds of international issues.
	When I did this canvassing, I actually heard from people who might, because this was an area that went strongly for Hillary Clinton in the primaries, right?
	Hillary Clinton won the Pennsylvania primary in, I think it was April or May of 2008, and then that really extended the primary season much longer than it might have otherwise gone.
	I don't know if you recall, but it went down to the wire, essentially.
	I mean, Obama was always ahead in the delegate math, but Hillary dragged it out until the final contest in June of 2008, and one of the big rationales she had for why to continue.
	You know, it's the...
	is that Biden did give them a sense of reassurance about, you know, because they're like, you know, it's the...
	They're like Kennedy Democrats.
	That's where they came of age.
	And just that Biden aura of this kind of rollicking Irish-American, ethnic-white kind of persona gave them a sense of comfort that Obama probably wouldn't have been able to impart on his own.
	How much did your experience doing things like canvassing, talking to people, organizing, being active, how much did that trigger your interest ultimately in journalism?
	What I often find is what goes into good journalists, goes into good canvassers, is often curiosity.
	There are certain people, especially these days, that if they would have heard that woman say that, they would have shut the door and said, I will not be associated with you.
	Whereas some people are like, I wonder why this person thinks, can I still persuade them?
	Can I still engage them?
	Curiosity.
	How much did that experience lead to your interest in journals?
	Yeah, I think that one did lead to the other in a way, maybe a slightly roundabout way.
	Because, you know, especially when I was a younger adult, it had never really even occurred to me that journalism was available to me as an option.
	There was an ethos, especially in the undergraduate journalism departments and colleges, that to be a journalist required some kind of credentialing process or that you had to want to professionally specialize in it in this very particular way.
	And that never appealed to me.
	I was never somebody who had any kind of cultural or social affinity with, for example, the people who ran the mainline newspaper at the college.
	And so, you know, what I did was, over time, you know, I had been, you know, I guess active in politics to the extent that that's possible for somebody of that age.
	I worked briefly in the governor's office in New Jersey when John Corzine was governor.
	You know, just because they gave me a paid internship, which was kind of rare.
	But I got to sit in the office in the governor's mansion and just kind of, you know, and really that was also driven by curiosity because what I did, which most people would find incredibly boring and almost impossible to derive anything of any kind of enjoyment from, is I had to kind of maintain their databases.
	Around of local government throughout New Jersey.
	So elected officials in different municipalities who needed to be invited to certain functions.
	And I had to make sure all the information was correctly tabulated and stuff in these logs.
	And then I would have to call them and invite them to, for example, like the State of the State address at the Statehouse in Trenton.
	And that stuff was just really interesting to me because I sort of was...
	Preternaturally curious about just the minutiae of American politics on a very granular level and that was sort of a unique exposure to it.
	I ended up getting fired from that job for mysterious reasons.
	But yeah, so eventually what happened was I just became, one summer I went to A conference, because at the time I was sort of, I didn't think that I was necessarily going to do journalism, but I wanted to do something that maybe was akin to journalism that I wouldn't necessarily articulate as journalism per se.
	So for just sort of a personal project, I did like an early podcast type thing where I was interviewing Politicians in Newark, New Jersey about gay marriage, which was then a pending issue before the legislature.
	And there was an interesting case in Newark where this guy, Ray Rice, no relation to the...
	Ex-football player.
	Ray Rice was a state senator from New Jersey, represented Newark, and he had a son, Ray Rice Jr., who was on the city council in Newark, and they both had diametrically opposite views on gay marriage.
	Obviously, the older one opposed it, and the younger one was for it.
	And so I thought that was an interesting dynamic, because I was sort of, you know, at that point, I had gathered up some contacts with, like, New Jersey politicos, you know, mostly Democrats.
	And I just wanted to explore it, so just on my own freelance sort of basis, I started just putting together a podcast on it, and I submitted it, and then I applied for an internship with This American Life, which I don't know if you're familiar with, but it was one of the very early podcasts that made a big splash, hosted by Ira Glass, you know, affiliated with NPR, where they do all kinds...
	I mean, it's sort of journalistic, sort of not, but...
	I was interested in it.
	And so I submitted that, and they said, you know, we don't have a spot for you, but this is really good.
	You know, you should continue pursuing it.
	So I said, okay.
	And, you know, one thing led to another.
	I think that summer I went to a conference in Washington, D.C. that was hosted by the Center for American Progress.
	And just by happenstance, you know, they gave you a choice.
	One day was the main conference that everybody went to.
	And Bill Clinton actually spoke that year, and I was able to briefly interview him just by shouting questions at him.
	And this was on my little recorder device that you still needed at that point because the phones weren't sophisticated enough to actually competently record stuff.
	And I got basically Bill Clinton to say that he supported gay marriage.
	And this was the first time that any president, you can go look, Google it if you'd like, 2009.
	And this was the first time that any president former or sitting had said that they supported gay marriage.
	And so I said, well, I have this what seems like a somewhat significant news item.
	I don't know what to do with it.
	And then sure enough, you know, the Center for American Progress gave you an option to either go to the activism conference on the second day or the journalism conference.
	So I said, I better go to the journalism conference to see if I can talk to any journalists who might know what to do with this.
	And there was an editor from The Nation there, Richard Kim, and I brazed.
	This to him?
	He said, yeah, write it up.
	And so I wrote something for The Nation while I was still in college and then ended up working for The Nation after I graduated.
	And then that's sort of how the cookie crumbled, I guess.
	I don't know if people are interested in this backstory.
	And we're going to get into it.
	Everyone wants to talk the $40 billion package, Ukraine and the modern stuff.
	But I think it's interesting in getting to know who you are and politically how you started, where you got to.
	One person in the chat asked, and I have to...
	I'm going to bring it up before we get into the good stuff.
	Do you regret your support for Obama now?
	Regret?
	I mean, no, not really.
	I think my reasoning at the time was defensible for me under the circumstances.
	So I don't know what use it would be to regret it.
	Obviously, as my political convictions or pre-elections matured, I went beyond just merely engaging in politics by supporting one candidate and hoping he does well in office.
	I mean, that's sort of not really my role anymore.
	But I don't think it was indefensible at the time.
	I mean, my political being was formulated really through the Iraq War.
	And this is sort of maybe a segue to the Ukraine subject, just because there's a continuity, I think, in a sense, in terms of the foreign policy dimensions of both of these issues.
	But, you know, growing up, basically George Bush was the only president that I knew of in the sense of directly experiencing him.
	I have, like, faint memories of...
	Bill Clinton, but not enough to have any firm opinions about anything that was going on, really, at that time.
	And so, you know, because, you know, day after day, the Iraq War was so dominant in my political consciousness, and that was the, you know, signature initiative of George W. Bush and the Republican Party.
	I don't think my instincts were off in wanting the most viable alternative to that trajectory as represented by the Democratic Party and in the field of candidates available.
	I think it was also defensible to want Obama over Hillary Clinton.
	And so I think given the depth of my understanding of politics at the time, the conclusion that I came to sort of just instinctively I think was Defensible still today, although what wouldn't be defensible is to just remain in that same orientation without widening my perspective as time goes on.
	I've tried to do that and obviously morphed into different roles, including journalism, which obviously puts me in a different vantage point.
	To what do you attribute sort of independence of thought that you and others have shown in a wide range of areas that you're willing to risk the accusation of, you know, doing anything that could help Trump, doing things that, you know, promoting Assad, promoting Putin, whatever the latest line is.
	I think Dan Crenshaw's answer to Marjorie Taylor Greene today was anybody who didn't vote for the $40 billion is auditioning for RT.
	That kind of nonsense.
	Did he say that directly to her?
	Yes, he did.
	On Twitter.
	And all she had done is, he had said something in response about why it's good money spent, because he is, again, explicitly, these people are clueless in terms of just diplomacy, but he said it's a proxy war against Russia, and we get to weaken Russia without an American soldier dying.
	We just get to whack a bunch of Ukrainians.
	So, woo-hoo.
	I mean, he actually put it that way, effectively.
	She responded to that saying, how is this in America's interest to be in this fall involved in this?
	And that's all she said.
	She didn't attack him personally at all.
	I mean, there was plenty of personal attacks to be made on Crenshaw.
	She didn't do it from the right.
	And Crenshaw responded with, I guess you're still auditioning for Russia Today.
	So it's that mindset.
	There was a part of the left that was still what I call the anti-war, anti-empire, whatever sort of label people want to put on it, but come from the old, historic, skeptical of American foreign policy left.
	That Obama was supposed to have represented in 08 by opposing the Iraq War, whereas Hillary was the pro-Iraq War.
	He was the, we're going to do different trade deals, not do a bunch of bad trade deals.
	He said he was going to reverse NAFTA, a lot of things like that.
	And ultimately, a lot of that didn't come to fruition, and that's sort of a whole different debate.
	Why didn't that come to fruition?
	Was it something in Obama?
	Is it something about the nature of our government?
	Because a lot of Trump's promises on a lot of war and foreign policy also did not come to fruition.
	I think the way Putin put it, he goes, I think they all mean well, but the men in gray suits run your country sooner or later.
	Yeah, I think Putin has actually said something to the effect of, you know, it really doesn't matter who's in office as far as we're concerned.
	You know, the policy doesn't change.
	And I don't know how much he's wrong.
	I mean, it was in the good interview series he did with Oliver Stone.
	And I think there's a lot of truth to that, frankly.
	But, like, for you, Aaron Maté, Max Blumenthal, Glenn Greenwald, Jimmy Dore, to some degree, Tulsi Gabbard in the political space, you know, represented this continuation.
	What was going all the way back, a long history of being a war skeptical, put it that way, sometimes anti-war, part of the left base philosophically, politically, journalistically, etc.
	Yet we just had a vote on Ukraine.
	We're zero Democrat.
	I mean, the first one, at least, Tlaib and Omar voted no, but now they even dropped off.
	And it's like, where in the world has the anti-war left gone representationally?
	But you and others have kept it alive, journalistically.
	What do you think led to that independence of thought when so many others are just on the war train?
	Yeah, I mean, first of all, it's sort of farcical to think that Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib have a passionate devotion to the idea of sending interminable amounts of weaponry to Ukraine.
	I mean, do you really think that that animates their passions?
	It's kind of a joke.
	No, I think there are a couple of...
	Well, I mean...
	Wrong reasons, but sorry.
	Yeah, I think there are a couple of dimensions to this.
	At least for me, number one is that, like I said, my coming of age politically was so dominated by the Iraq War that...
	Did I freeze?
	No.
	No, no, you're still going.
	You look good.
	Oh, okay.
	My screen froze for some reason.
	Can you still hear us?
	Yeah, I can still hear you.
	Okay, well, let's just continue then.
	Yeah, let me know if anything weird happens.
	Yeah, because my coming of age politically was so dominated by the Iraq War, foreign policy became sort of like a loath start for me in terms of how I evaluate politics.
	I think if your sense of what is worthy of prioritization politically hinges primarily on...
	More cultural-type issues, whether you're at least using the current jargon, if you're pro-woke or anti-woke, and foreign policy is down the priority pyramid for you, if it's even on there at all, then you're much more likely to just flip back and forth between the fashionable cause of the day on foreign policy and not really have the wherewithal or the knowledge base to come up with any kind of countervailing.
	Views regarding the prevailing issue of the day.
	So that's one thing, which is why I've noticed that...
	Now you're good.
	I was just about to interrupt you.
	Oh, he's gone.
	Robert, I hope he comes back.
	He has the invite so he can link back in.
	Robert, I had a question about...
	Tell me about this.
	When they talk about whips, and when AOC was crying after she had to vote on, I think it was funding Israel.
	Was it the vote on the military package to Israel?
	She was crying, and she was seen crying after something, and then everyone was like, she had to vote against her wishes, and she was crying because Pelosi and the Dems whipped her into voting the right way.
	Do they actually do that?
	They say if a Democrat votes out of line.
	We're going to sanction you or do whatever we can politically to make your life hell?
	No, they just ask.
	I mean, they can put pressure on you, you know, and the pressure is raising money, putting a primary opponent against you, not giving you the committee positions you want, things like that.
	But that's all.
	Sorry about that.
	You said before you froze, you asked if you froze.
	Okay, now we were talking about AOC.
	And Ilhan Omar, I believe, supporting, you know, the only two who hadn't supported previously, now supporting this unanimous 40 billion.
	It was Rashida Tlaib and Omar, I think.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, I was just going to say that if you're, I don't know when I was cut off exactly, but I think if your sense of what is worthy of prioritization in the political domain hinges more on...
	I think you're more likely to have a transient sense of what your convictions are in the foreign policy arena.
	And so that's kind of why I've noticed, especially since the Ukraine war started, that a lot of these media personalities, and I'm not going to name anybody in particular because it's the gay drama, but a lot of the media personalities who...
	Many things I tend to agree with or be aligned with who are, I guess, generally categorized in this, you know, broadly speaking, anti-woke category.
	They're basically just a prong of the consensus now on Ukraine.
	Either they don't discuss it really or they actively support it, depending on who exactly we're talking about.
	I know I'm generalizing, but I don't really want to get into the weeds of who in particular I'm referring to.
	And I think that's partly a function of how the culture war or whatever the kind of signature cultural issues are of the day informs their sense of their political orientation.
	Whereas for me, it's just different.
	I think foreign policy has always struck me as something that I can't even fully explain it other than the genesis of my political upbringing in the midst of the Iraq War.
	I would just have had this sense that because I happen to live in this era, in the world's sole military superpower, that therefore it's incumbent upon me to be extra diligent and pay extra mind to the foreign policy undertaken by the government of which I'm a citizen.
	I think that's sort of...
	I think Tulsi Gabbard, who you mentioned, has a similar take in terms of her presidential campaign.
	In 2020, it was one of the rare presidential campaigns that was oriented around foreign policy primarily.
	That's usually not the case unless there's a major war happening or something to that effect.
	So I think that's one part of it.
	And the same goes for these kind of left...
	Earlier today on Twitter, I called them lifestyle brand leftists.
	What does it seem like really animates somebody like AOC the most?
	Yeah, I mean, she can be cajoled into some sort of labor action, like what happened, I think, with the Amazon organizing in New York recently.
	But you do sort of...
	I have to infer with her, and I think others in her cohort, that mainly what they really are impassioned by are these culture war type issues.
	And I think that's just, it's automatically going to lend itself to a certain superficial, superficiality in their approach to politics such that, you know, they could...
	I'm sure AOC in the midterms later this year will be campaigning as this stalwart progressive and she's going to stand up for all the blah, blah, blah values.
	And she won't even perceive, or maybe she will, but she'll try to hide it or stifle it.
	But I think that she won't perceive any disconnect between her bandying herself around as this socialist or...
	DSA-endorsed superstar and basically voting in favor of, as she did yesterday, for an enormous escalation in a U.S. proxy war.
	So now the U.S. is even more militarily and financially invested in this ever-escalating conflict, which also in the vote also entailed...
	Maybe there's some convoluted argument that could be proffered to argue that that is somehow consonant with her wider claims ideological perspective as a self-proclaimed socialist.
	But I'm not sure what that argument would be.
	Go ahead.
	Mike, just one question so that you can clarify for people watching.
	I'm in Canada.
	I'm seeing pictures of empty shelves in the States, baby food, a baby formula shortage.
	You're a journalist.
	I don't know if you have to go on the ground to get that.
	Is this as real as it looks on social media?
	Is this an actual thing or is it exceptional situations in certain stores being blown out of proportion that you know of?
	Well, as far as baby formula, which has been coming up in the past few days, you know, it's not a product that I would go out of my way to seek out.
	So I wouldn't have known about a shortage other than hearing about it through social media or through other anecdotal accounts.
	You know, I have gone to, you know, it's just at the grocery store on Sunday and there are still these...
	Notices hanging on different aisles about shortages of certain products.
	Actually, you know, a telling example for me personally was that in February I had a car problem and I was, you know, in Scranton, Pennsylvania.
	Believe it or not, I was actually going to go cover the Ottawa stuff.
	I was going to drive there.
	And my car essentially broke down in Scranton, Pennsylvania, right?
	So I had to go get it repaired at the local Firestone, you know, auto body shop.
	And because of the supply chain problems, I guess at that point, it wasn't mostly about the supply chain as far as I was told by the repair guy.
	It was about truck shortages, shortages of truck drivers and trucks themselves.
	I guess maybe that was combined with also actual supply shortages.
	But because of that, it took me...
	So the car broke down, I think, on February 20th.
	And I didn't get it back.
	It wasn't completed until...
	The repairs weren't completed until the end of April.
	So basically, I was without a car for what is like over two months or something.
	That was okay for me, actually, because I happened to have been abroad during much of that time.
	But if I needed a car on a regular basis, I would have been out of luck because to get a new one would have been astronomically expensive, as you might be aware if you've looked at the prices recently.
	I actually did briefly consider that, but it almost made no sense to get a...
	The prices were so mind-boggling that I almost didn't know how to make...
	Sense of it in terms of what would be the rational option of getting an expensive repair versus getting a new one or a used one, etc.
	So yeah, I have seen some of these indicia of inflation stuff and supply chain stuff gone berserk.
	But not the baby formula one.
	Now, one of the things you've done a lot of is get out on the ground, wherever that's been, throughout the 2016 campaign, 2020, especially towards the end.
	Interesting reports out of Scranton.
	That was a sign that Biden was actually going to do a little bit better than expected in his old, where he claimed ancestry.
	But also, you covered a lot of what was happening on the ground in the BLM riot context, or what's been labeled the BLM riot context.
	I guess the Seattle mayor called the Summer of Love.
	But particularly in Minneapolis, that a lot of these...
	The disparate impact was being felt by minority business owners in particular.
	And you're one of the few journalists who was covering that from that perspective, from that standpoint.
	Not covering it from a let's highlight crime perspective.
	Not covering it from a let's highlight police abuse.
	Instead, what happens to ordinary small little businesses that have their little shop that's now gone?
	Because of what happened.
	What inspired that desire to cover?
	And have you followed up with some of those folks that you talked to?
	Well, really, it was...
	Largely just very simple journalistic desire because that first week or so when the riots slash protests first exploded in May and early June of 2020, I knew that I was never going to get the full story of what was actually going on as filtered through the media and activist class in which the media is so fully intertwined because of how zealously Committed
	they were to what they perceived as the cause of the protest.
	Now, I don't think in many cases they could cogently articulate what that cause supposedly was.
	But regardless, they were all in on the perceived righteousness of what was going on.
	And even if you do think that it was a righteous quote-unquote cause, You probably ought to be simultaneously aware that that's going to have certain distortive effects in terms of the accuracy or breadth of the information that's being transmitted to you.
	When I saw that there were so many protests and riots happening in so many disparate areas, I got that initial intuition that there was something historically unique going on, and therefore it was probably It was probably warranted for me to go out and try to experience it and report on it as much as I could.
	So I didn't consciously think to myself, you know, I have to go track down the stories of these small businesses that were destroyed and see how they were affected.
	It was much more simple even than that.
	I just wanted to go and look around and talk to people.
	And so when you do that, you go to these affected areas, almost inevitably you end up encountering some of these small businesses that have been, in many cases, just flat out ruined.
	And the sentiments of people affected by that, I found, were not being accurately represented in the media, whether that was just the progressive media, the...
	Mainstream media, which is like left or center-left probably overall, and even the conservative media I thought was doing a poor job covering it.
	Because in the case of the conservative media, you saw this meme going around or this kind of untested assumption that in areas where there was major rioting, Trump is going to automatically benefit because he's the law and order candidate, right?
	So he's going to...
	The riots are going to just kind of intrinsically redound to his electoral advantage.
	And that always struck me as probably not right.
	I think that was my intuition.
	But on the other hand, the left or progressive media, they would be very much disinclined to amplify The perspectives of people who had been harmed in one way or another, indirectly or directly, by the riots aftermath, because their accounts wouldn't align with the predominant narrative either, as far as those left liberals were concerned.
	Because most of the time, the people who were affected in these areas were themselves minorities, particularly in Minneapolis, but, you know, all over the place.
	You know, it's, and, you know, I remember the first time I went back to Philadelphia before I really set out for my nationwide trip, which is slightly later, but one of the big blowout weekends, I went to Philadelphia where the National Guard had been called in, and I went to Kensington.
	Which is a rough area.
	It's actually one of the wildest places yet.
	I don't know if you've ever been there that you could go to anywhere.
	I've ever seen anywhere in the U.S. It's just an open-air drug market, essentially, with rows and rows and rows of people just camping who have residences set up on the street.
	It's very strange.
	I think most Americans probably are not aware that a place like that would even exist in the U.S. Skid Row-ish, I guess.
	But anyway, I went there and there were National Guard deployed.
	You know, full military fatigues with the assault rifles in tow, although they didn't have, they weren't loaded, but they were there for visibility purposes.
	And almost every person I spoke to, every black person I spoke to, I would say probably nine times out of ten, if I would talk to an ordinary Black person in these areas about what they thought of the presence of the National Guard, they would be supportive.
	And it was interesting because they...
	Probably would be not anywhere near as supportive of the police.
	They might not support the rioting, they might not support the destruction, but they also wouldn't be just rah-rah in favor of police back the blue because they have, especially the older black people, have legacies of, I think, genuinely being harassed and probably wrongfully treated by the police at times throughout the ages.
	Philadelphia has a pretty grisly history of that as well.
	So I guess there were...
	There were incomplete or misleading narratives percolating from all segments of the political spectrum that I thought maybe if I were to go and experience it firsthand to the best of my ability that I could cut through it.
	So that was my basic...
	Instinct for doing it.
	And then, you know, particularly in Minneapolis, even today, I'll occasionally get people contacting me who either see this Medium post that I did in July of 2020 or this long Twitter thread that I did.
	And they'll say, wow, how is it that I had no idea that the scope of the destruction was so...
	Intense in Minneapolis, because really all I did was just go around and talk to people, interview people about what happened during the riots, how they experienced it, what they're feeling now, what happened during the peak of it, and take photos and so on.
	But for whatever reason, that very standard, uncomplicated reporting was seen as this revelation for a lot of people.
	So that tells you a lot about the biases that are very ingrained in the media ecosystem.
	Well, revolutionary, but first of all, Tracy's reporting on BLM rights was epic.
	But the question is this, Michael, you cover things just to show what's actually going on and just to actually talk to minorities who, by the media's stance, are totally against the government, totally against police, and then you talk to them and you find out they're not, and they might not be so much on board with BLM as a movement for what it's known for.
	Do you start getting pushback from the Do you start getting pushback from the left, from the BLM supporters who say, we don't want you broadcasting to the world what's actually going on here because we've got a narrative to spin?
	Well, yeah.
	I mean, I got a multifaceted pushback from the quote-unquote left, broadly construed during that period because they didn't like a number of aspects of my coverage.
	One thing that I would point out...
	Because I was sort of interested from a sociological standpoint was that much of the time these protests, which were being portrayed in the media as just for racial justice, much of the time these protests were predominantly or even at times universally white.
	And even just pointing out that Demographic fact people found infuriating.
	And I'm not sure, I mean, I'm still not sure I understand why.
	Like, why is it so offensive and scandalous to point out just that obvious demographic reality?
	Like, I was in Upper East Side of Manhattan, so around Gracie Mansion.
	I've seen a lot of protests in New York City, but that protest that I saw the first week or two of the George Floyd saga might have been the whitest protest I've ever seen in New York City.
	Which is like, okay, so whatever the ultimate thing that one might extrapolate from that.
	It is quite interesting.
	It is notable.
	It's worth noting.
	But even by noting it was seen as outraged by a lot of people.
	Another amazing example was I was in Chicago on Juneteenth.
	Can you explain to those who might not know what Juneteenth is?
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Juneteenth was first inaugurated as a federal holiday last year, June of 2021.
	I actually think it's a good idea.
	I support the holiday.
	It purports to commemorate the liberation of American slaves on this.
	I think the idea is that on June 14th of 1860-something, Galveston, Texas, released the final slaves.
	I don't think that was actually when slavery was abolished in the U.S., but it became sort of a regional holiday in Texas.
	Spread outwards.
	And then as one of the kind of policy responses to the George Floyd stuff that I actually thought was reasonable and would have been reasonable, even absent the George Floyd stuff, it was made into an official federal holiday in 2021.
	But in 2020, Juneteenth was still being celebrated, not as formally, but it was...
	There were big events held all over the place, especially given the energy that had been ushered in by this protest movement.
	Basically, it's a black American-originated holiday.
	There were Juneteenth celebrations being held in Chicago.
	And so I was in the middle of downtown Chicago.
	Where was it exactly?
	I forgot the exact neighborhood of Chicago.
	But it was a mixed slash black, maybe plurality neighborhood in Chicago.
	And there was a protest as part of one of these Juneteenth commemorations earlier in the day.
	And I'm not exaggerating when I say that at this march through Chicago, I think it was maybe...
	I'm not going to mess up the neighborhood because I'm not an expert in the topography of Chicago.
	But in Chicago, on Juneteenth, the police force that had been dispatched to monitor the protests and kind of trail the marchers and just be present and visible to enforce...
	The law, if anything were to go awry, the police force was more diverse than the protesters because the protesters were so predominantly white on Juneteenth in Chicago.
	And, you know, again, that was just a factoid that struck me as very interesting, and I wanted to more fully comprehend the significance of it, but people would get just so angry if you even mentioned it.
	Another thing that I think is, you know, that's sort of funny, but less funny is that in Minneapolis, you know, when I'd be going around to some of the most, you know, riven areas from the violence, I would talk to shop owners who, you know, whose exteriors of their shops were both boarded up and they would have pleas to please not attack them.
	You'd go around and there would be this apartment building where the windows of the shops below would be boarded up and would have spray paint on it.
	Children live here, please don't burn.
	Which is like, wow.
	This is a major American metropolis.
	But anyway, the shop owners told me...
	I talked to a Somali shop owner of a little grocery.
	And he said that the instigating protesters when the riots first broke out, and I guess protesters are sort of a misnomer, but the people who instigated that initial phase of the rioting in Minneapolis, and Minneapolis was the hub of it, and that's where everything originated.
	The ones who started doing the arson attacks and started wreaking the most havoc, they were white people.
	Not exclusively, but over time, because I had been to so many different cities and talked to so many different people about the chronology of how the protests slash riots materialized.
	New York, Chicago, Minneapolis, St. Paul, Seattle, Portland, and even smaller cities like Green Bay.
	Fort Wayne, Indiana, you know, places where you wouldn't expect ever for a riot to happen.
	But for example, in Green Bay, Wisconsin, they had the biggest riots they ever had in their history, at least according to people who told me that that was what they could recall, who had lived there their entire lives.
	But over time, you sort of notice a pattern, which is that the riots seem to develop first, but with ideological, you know, maybe anarchist or really extreme Left-wing type zealots who want to, you know, foment some kind of, you know, insurrection.
	That's sort of an overused word now.
	But I think that, you know, if you are a diehard, thoroughgoing anarchist, a strain of thought in that School is to, as best as you can, eventually foment a genuine insurrection so that the state could be, you know, potentially overthrown.
	You know, I don't know if they thought they were going to get that far.
	But anyway, so at least in Minneapolis and some other places, it seemed like the chief instigators of the initial wave of violence with the arson attacks and the more elaborate violence.
	We're these ideological activists, predominantly white.
	And then, you know, once there's this vacuum in the city where the police resources are being used up and they have to go, you know, attend to certain fires or incidents or whatever, at that point, you know, order breaks down.
	And then the local population, which is predominantly black.
	In certain of these areas, then they can go, you know, do opportunistic looting.
	Because, you know, if all your friends are rushing into a footlocker, then you might as well just follow them, right?
	And so I thought that was...
	And that pattern seemed to repeat over and over again based on what I observed.
	I had never really...
	I hadn't seen anyone...
	Explain it that way.
	And so that's what I tried to do.
	I grant that there's some variation throughout the country, but I think in broad strokes that seemed to be how that initial phase of the rioting unfolded.
	And this is significant historically because these were the most widespread and destructive riots in the U.S. since at least the 1960s.
	And they seem to have been more widespread geographically even than the 1960s.
	In the 1960s, there were some individual riots that were probably worse.
	But in terms of just how ubiquitous they were across parts of the country, that you would never expect there to be any kind of tumult like this.
	Yeah, it had some unique historical qualities that I think were worth chronicling.
	Now, I'm not asking you this question because you are a lefty, according to some.
	Well, a lot of lefties don't accept that I'm a lefty.
	There's no question about that.
	I'm not that wedded to the label.
	But here's my observation.
	Setting aside the traditional accusations of racism against the conservative Republican GOP side.
	We know those.
	You agree or disagree with them.
	What you're describing is what a lot of people are witnessing.
	It's this, on the left side of things, this white savior complex.
	You have more, demographically speaking, more white people protesting at Juneteenth, George Floyd.
	You have more white people at the same time simultaneously causing the havoc at these protests because we saw it in real time.
	There's looting.
	You're right.
	In certain inner-city riots and wherever, unrest, you have looting.
	But you see the demographically, sort of ethnically demographic...
	Protesting in support of the people they purport to be trying to help.
	You have the same different groups seemingly initiating the violence at these protests.
	And then in the crosshairs, you have the actual ethnic minority demographic that all of these interests are supposed to be protecting suffering the consequences of this.
	How do you explain this phenomenon from what is supposed to be protests for, in support of, but ultimately only causes harm to?
	I think one of my motives to point out the curious demographic composition of many of these protests was that oftentimes in the popular discussion online and whatnot, or in the media, you'd see the riots slash protests of 2020 being kind of blithely likened to the protests of the 1960s.
	And what they're referring to basically were Like, for example, in Newark, New Jersey, which is, you know, where both sides of my family are from, there were the significant riots in 66, what's it, 67?
	And those riots came to be referred to as, you know, like ghetto uprisings.
	That was sort of a more glamorous way to put it.
	Those riots were actually spearheaded by the local population, by and large.
	It was Blacks who were, in many cases, living under deleterious circumstances.
	One thing led to another, and they did do a lot of these rioting activities.
	I think putting them in the same category as if...
	What happened in 2020 was just this seamless continuation of what happened in the 1960s, missed a fundamental difference as to what led to the actual riots.
	Because if destitute, impoverished people...
	Do an uprising against a genuinely abusive police force in the 60s.
	That has a different valence to it than a bunch of ideologically committed left-wing slash anarchistic activists organizing amongst themselves online saying, oh, look, there's an opportunity here in Minneapolis.
	Let's flood in and try to wreak as much havoc as we can in hopes that it'll, I don't know, lead to some sort of...
	Anarchist revolution.
	Those are wildly different scenarios.
	And so, because in 2020, there was such an intense desire to portray the riots slash protests in the most favorable possible light, it was...
	Kind of connected, I think, unjustifiably to this romanticized version of what happened in the 1960s.
	And I'm not saying that somehow what happened in the 1960s was "good" or "better" or whatever.
	It was just much different.
	But this comparison was structured in a way to engender the same sympathy that one might have had for blacks living under Jim Crow or something in the 60s.
	As though in 2020 it was just this, again, seamless continuation of before.
	To your point, I think it's worth thinking about what actually came of those protests slash riots in a policy sense.
	What changed?
	Maybe not even just a policy sense.
	What changed tangibly?
	That we could nail down with some precision as a result of what the New York Times famously declared was probably the biggest protest movement in U.S. history.
	That's a striking fact, and it seems true.
	Okay, so what came out of that?
	Well, you had a lot of sports teams that were kind of bludgeoned into changing their names and mascots.
	You had a lot of media organizations that had these internal...
	Coups where the old guard was dislodged and the new journalists who had a different idea of what the ideal journalistic philosophy is takeover in these hostile takeover attempts You had a lot of jargon and new acronyms introduced that, you know, the nonprofit sector adopted and the kind of professional activist class adopted.
	You know, I wrote a piece that came out, I think, in March for that new magazine, Compact, that's started by Saurabh Amari and Matthew Schmitz.
	Edwin Naponte, I think.
	Anyway, so they asked me if I wanted to be a contributing editor and write a piece for the launch of it.
	So I said, sure.
	And they gave me this assignment to look into what the Omidyar network has been up to.
	So Pierre Omidyar, the founder of eBay, now...
	Giant philanthropists who, among other things, funds First Look Media, which is the umbrella organization for The Intercept, etc.
	But one thing I looked into was his philanthropic network and what sort of dispersals of monies he's been up to in the past five or six years.
	Because like many other people, including many affluent people, he was radicalized and highly politicized under Trump.
	And after 2020, after that riot period, he started donating tons of money to these different racial justice-inflected activist organizations.
	And I looked into one of them, which I think received, I think it was $150,000.
	So a chump change in terms of his overall fortune, but enough where you can do maybe a half a year or a year's worth of...
	Work with that as a significant contribution for one of these organizations.
	And it turned out that the executive director of this organization that Elmajar's entity gave $150,000 to was going around on TV and actually overtly saying explicitly, no equivocation, that the point of her organization was to defund the police.
	She actually used that And then, you know, we were later told that nobody was saying that, right?
	Or that it was just a fringe view or whatever.
	Whereas, you know, this was one of the premier, basically, new racial justice organizations that had money flooding into it after 2020 because a lot of people felt they had to, quote, do something.
	And, you know, if you're wealthy, then one of the things you can, quote, do is just give money into this nonprofit industrial complex where there's hardly any auditing, hardly any You know, accountability mechanism to determine where the hell the money's been going or whose pockets it's lining.
	And so that was also the other results of the riots.
	You had a lot of corporate branding exercises that were undertaken.
	And, you know, maybe aside from a couple of state-level reforms, I think most of which were probably good.
	I mean, I'm of the mind that the U.S. was overly incarceral.
	Especially from the 1980s onward.
	It is sort of a blight to have a prison population that is much bigger by percentage than even the height of the Soviet gulags.
	Especially with drug prohibition, people end up getting a lot of time in prison who never ought to have.
	I'm also of the belief that there are problems with...
	American policing culture.
	You know, especially, as I mentioned earlier, I grew up in New Jersey, and so granted, this issue is going to be much different for people who grew up in inner cities.
	But, you know, my experience and the experience of most of my contemporaries in a small town in northern New Jersey in the suburbs was at the police department, you know, because, of course, in the U.S., every municipality has got to have its own police department, right?
	So they can collect taxes and they can give the chief a ton of money as a salary.
	It's funny.
	I remember I looked up back in 2014.
	I was doing some sort of research on policing.
	And the chief of police in 2014 in Carlsdart, New Jersey, which is sort of like a tiny, it's an insignificant municipality in, is it Passaic County, I think Passaic County, New Jersey?
	He made more money just through seniority and accruing compensation over the years.
	His salary was higher than the vice president of the United States.
	So, you know, I think there's a lot of kind of ingrained corruption amongst police in the U.S., and a lot of the transparency and, you know, quote-unquote accountability that's been imposed on them, I think, is probably for the better.
	The problem was reasonable policy recommendations as to how to improve police.
	Culture became so intertwined with these bizarre cultural neuroses, these hangups about speech codes, and somehow it got all connected with gender and gender identity and all this, and it just became an all-purpose youth.
	Social movement that may have been initially prompted by concerns about the police, but then spiraled outward to encompass everything that anybody under 30 thought was important, which tends to be dominated by identity-related issues nowadays.
	And so I think that was probably a disservice to the overriding objectives such as it existed to reform the police.
	Aside from here and there, you'll get maybe an example of something that was done.
	And I know on a federal level, I believe Rand Paul actually introduced a measure to reform policies around no-knock raids, which don't strike me as warranted in pretty much any instance, especially with that.
	That led to the death of Breonna Taylor.
	Kentucky.
	So aside from a couple of examples of something that is arguably positive that resulted policy-wise, mostly what happened was just a change in the cultural ether to be more censorious, to be more moralistic, to be more knee-jerk in denunciations of anybody who might deviate from certain contrived consensus.
	this, you know, presuppositions.
	I was going to say another example of that, where there was promises that they were going to use these policies to protect the most vulnerable, and the most vulnerable ended up the most punished, was a lot of the pandemic policies.
	And you were also one of those people who broke from the institutional narrative at the point aspects of it no longer made common sense in the pandemic context, not only in the sense that So if being close to other people in a public setting spread the virus, then the...
	Mass protest would spread the virus.
	And yet suddenly, magically, the virus was like a woke virus.
	It disappeared at Walmart.
	It disappeared at a range of big corporations.
	Big box stores, but not mom and pop stores.
	Exactly.
	The local store, they knew right to attack there.
	But somehow, if it was a politically correct rally, no problem.
	Politically incorrect rally, it would raid right away.
	So what led to being willing to challenge?
	Because I've been a little startled at what...
	I would call most like inquisitorial mindset, almost celebration of sort of instant.
	You know, if someone puts on a white lab coat, magically they have authority suddenly and they can't make anything wrong.
	Even if there's someone like Fauci, whose history of how he handled AIDS was just a disaster.
	What led to your willingness to contest that?
	Because at the end of the day, you're an upper-middle-class professional who can work from home anyway, who can get food delivered anyway, whose kids get tutors often anyway.
	Not as big an impact.
	You're a working-class African-American, say, in certain parts of New York, who was stuck riding crowded subways because they decided to limit the number of subways traveling in the ways it made.
	What led you to be, you know, those people disproportionately suffering from the virus, disproportionately suffering from the lockdown.
	Kids took major steps, as even Harvard's now admitted, major steps back in educational progress, overwhelmingly hurt poor and working class kids more than anybody.
	But what led to your willingness and discernment to spot that before a lot of other people did in the journalistic world?
	Yeah, well, I mean, when the...
	When COVID first arrived in earnest in March of 2020, I, because, you know, I am not somebody who has extensive knowledge of infectious disease or epidemiology or whatever, and I was talking to smart people at the time who were telling me that this was, you know, a really serious problem.
	I think, you know, it is a serious problem, even still, but that doesn't justify the barrage of Utter irrationality that accompanied that problem.
	Because, you know, it's similar to 9 /11.
	I mean, 9 /11 was a serious event, right?
	Lots of people died.
	It was bad that some buildings were knocked down and people's lives were disrupted.
	But, you know, the badness of 9 /11 as such doesn't justify the whole bevy of insanely irrational policies that were implemented.
	As a consequence of 9 /11 or in reaction to 9 /11, it's a similar thing with COVID.
	Although I wasn't one of those people who was, from the very beginning, crusading against any form of lockdown or any form of restriction just because I didn't know what the right solution was at the time.
	I tried to be humble about it.
	And I tried to just be open-minded.
	I would read the people who were the more diehard skeptics and just understand.
	But in terms of what I was personally going to advocate for, I thought that given the exceptional circumstances, it probably made sense to at least temporarily for at least the time abide by, generally speaking, the stay-at-home orders and then figure things out shortly thereafter once we get a better hold of what's going on.
	So that's what I did.
	I think for maybe a month and a half or so, I just did the stay at home.
	Or as proclaimed by New Jersey, which entailed the park across the street from the New Jersey City being shuttered by order of the governor.
	So apparently it was better for people to pack onto the sidewalks when they wanted to get some air and not be cooped up in their apartments all day.
	So that seemed a little ridiculous.
	And actually, to this day, if you go look at the notice laying out the park regulations, it still says you must wear a mask.
	I mean, nobody does anymore.
	Nobody enforces it.
	But it's sort of like now an artifact from a bygone era.
	So even at the earliest part of COVID, when I was kind of at least begrudgingly willing to accept some restrictions that, you know, given the apparent gravity of the situation, I still said, and I said it publicly and thought, that, you know, listen, this could be atrocious for civil liberties.
	So anybody who has any hint...
	Of fidelity to the preservation of civil liberties needs to be acutely mindful of how these things could go haywire.
	I mean, these are unprecedented actions being imposed by the government to require everyone to stay in their domiciles and so on and so forth.
	So I thought to myself, okay, look, if I can't claim I have all the answers epidemiologically, I can hone in on...
	Aspects of the policies that are being imposed that could have troubling implications civil liberties-wise.
	So the first thing I did after I emerged from my accepted stay-at-home order was I got The Spectator magazine to write me a letter saying that I was an essential worker as a member of the media, which is like a joke.
	I mean, if the media are essential, then that category has no...
	And what I was going to do was go to the state of Delaware, because I had read that there was a singular policy that had been imposed by Executive Fiat, as most of these policies were, by the governor of Delaware, John Carney, whereby anybody with an out-of-state license plate...
	Traveling on non-major roadways, so not like I-95 or something, but on one of these smaller roads throughout Delaware, could be subject to being pulled over by the police and fined, merely by dint of being in the state with an out-of-state lessons play, which is, you know...
	It's particularly ridiculous in the case of Delaware because it's a tiny state.
	So, I mean, there are plenty of people who live in Pennsylvania or live in Maryland or something, or Washington, D.C., or just constantly going in and out of Delaware just as an ordinary aspect of their jobs, right?
	So I went to Rehoboth Beach.
	And, you know, first I wanted to test to see if I would get pulled over because I have New Jersey license plates, right?
	And I never did.
	I never had to brandish my letter that I was an essential...
	A worker, which is, you know, when people talk about lockdown in the U.S., yeah, I mean, there were stay-at-home orders and stuff, and there were school closures, and places of business were closed and stuff.
	But, you know, it's also worth being mindful that, like, for example, in Europe, you know, to say nothing of Asia, there actually were stringent, you know, lockdown orders where you got, if you were doing something that you weren't supposed to be doing, there's a very good chance that you were going to be.
	Harshly penalized.
	My girlfriend actually lives in England.
	Her mother went to go visit my girlfriend's grandparents periodically because they needed help to get them goods and food and everything.
	She, at one point, had to evade the police.
	This is such a law-abiding person who would never dream of knowingly violating the law.
	But she had to evade the police because it was technically illegal to sit on a park bench outside and have food.
	Otherwise, you could be fined, which is why, you know, when you see these, I don't know if you're aware of these controversies happening in the UK right now, but, you know, Boris Johnson got a fine from the police for supposedly taking part in a birthday party, you know, in June of 2020.
	And, you know, a lot of that stems from, you know, when they talk about lockdown, especially in England and Scotland and Wales, you know, it was a real lockdown, right?
	Or realer than here, at least in most places.
	On the other hand, you know, one of the more punitive lockdown measures, or at least you might put it in that category of policies, that I could see was this one in Delaware, which, you know, if you're giving license to police to have a pretext to pull over basically anybody they want...
	Or if you're expanding the range of people that the police have the right, the authority to pull over, just if they can identify them as having an out-of-state license plate, then that drastically increases the numbers, the number of the opportunities that citizens have to have an interaction with the police.
	And some percentage of those are probably going to go wrong, right?
	Where, you know, this is why we see these viral videos of a traffic stop where, you know, there's escalation in tensions and then potentially it leads to some sort of violent event, right?
	So that had pretty dire civil liberties implications.
	Years ago, when I was a columnist for Vice, I would write about traffic law in the U.S. and how it sort of basically empowers the police to just totally vaporize your civil liberties on the roadways, which I don't think most people appreciate.
	I mean, you more or less have no rights whatsoever if you're behind the wheel of a car on a public roadway.
	The police can basically pull you over for any reason at any time.
	I actually represented myself in court once when I got a traffic ticket.
	I took it all the way to trial and basically got the officer who pulled me over in New Jersey to admit that that was his understanding.
	They have magic smelling abilities.
	They can smell pot miles away.
	That's actually, I think, one of the genuinely positive effects of marijuana becoming legal in many states now, including New Jersey.
	As of last year, marijuana is now legal in New Jersey, which I really never thought I would see the day.
	Because when I was a teenager, police who had nothing better to do would constantly, especially in these suburban towns, be constantly basically harassing kids.
	So one of the reasons why the police unions and the police lobbies were so vehemently against these legalization initiatives, it's not probably because they had any intrinsic problem with marijuana per se.
	It was because it took tools out of their toolkit.
	To initiate these stops and to make arrests and distribute fines and such, which fills the municipal coffers with revenue.
	Anyway, in Delaware, when I went and did that trip, for example, I was in Ria Booth Beach, and although I hadn't gotten pulled over despite trying to almost bait the police into doing it, I mean, I didn't go crazy on the roads or anything, but I kind of made myself visible.
	Test if it would result in me getting pulled over.
	But I would talk to a guy who lived in Maryland, right over the border from Delaware, and then would drive 30 minutes north into Rehoboth Beach to work at a pizza place, and who told me that he was getting pulled over by the police just for going to his job.
	I mean, this is just his regular job, and this is not crazy for him to be in Delaware because it's a tiny state, so he happens to live over the border.
	And there are many examples of stuff like this where most journalists wouldn't think to, if not question the premise of it, at least question the civil liberties ramifications of it.
	And I also did this in...
	In New Jersey nearby to me, which is I just FOIA'd, and I did this on, I published this on Substack about a year ago, but I FOIA'd the Newark, New Jersey police for logs of whatever citations they might have issued pursuant to the emergency order of the governor or of the mayor around COVID, and a year went by.
	So I submitted this in around May or June of 2020.
	And then in May of last year, or June of last year, somewhere there, I finally got a CD-ROM in the mail.
	I almost think they wanted to get it out there because they went through a lot of trouble to burn the information onto a CD.
	I actually didn't have a CD drive at the time, so I had to get one of these USB drives and put it in.
	And, you know, there was a huge, I don't have to remember the number off the top of my head, but there was a ton of citations issued in Newark, New Jersey, by the police for the most petty of violations, like standing on a corner or walking.
	A lot of it seemed dystopic in terms of the nature of the violations that were cited.
	You know, my understanding when I looked into it last was that a lot of these citations have been...
	And it was so vague.
	I mean, it was just like the violation cited was just violating the governor's emergency order or the mayor's emergency order.
	And, you know, if you're empowering the police to do that, then you're empowering them to also...
	Exercise their subjective judgment about who deserves law enforcement scrutiny, which then comes with all kinds of other potential biases, right?
	And I even talked to a, I think it was an Egyptian, somebody who was in, who immigrated to the U.S. from Egypt on asylum grounds and was working in Newark at this auto place.
	And one day, I think it was in April of 2020, the police did a sweep of the entire block to see who was out there.
	And because he had just come one afternoon to pick up some stuff from his store, he was sighted.
	And, you know, he was actually somewhat disturbed and concerned by it because he thought it could jeopardize potentially his asylum I think a lot of these, at least those cases in Newark, were disposed at the discretion of the prosecutor and judge ultimately.
	But nonetheless, even if you're not penalized for that infraction per se, if you're exposed to the criminal justice system, By its very nature makes it possible that you're going to get hit on something else, right?
	Or that you're liable to get into some kind of other trouble that's maybe ancillary to that initial infraction.
	So when you ask what equipped me to do that, I don't know.
	I think a part of it was curiosity, which we were talking about earlier.
	The type of person who actually is edified by reading these local and state regulatory schema that are decreed.
	Because there was an unprecedented surge of heretofore unthinkable powers that were being prescribed to the state.
	So that alone, I think, should warrant journalistic attention, even attention from citizens.
	I'm going to bring this one up because hallelujah for your first time on the channel, Michael.
	This would be satire ordinarily when one reads this, but I think hallelujah means it seriously.
	I'm not trying to be like, hallelujah, you should take pride in what you're posting.
	Our veterans fought for our system of government, not a bunch of crybabies scared of a mask and a little needle.
	Doug Ford landslide.
	Doug Ford is Ontario Premier.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Our veterans fought for our system of government.
	I think you mean freedom is what you mean by our system of government.
	Not a bunch of crybabies scared of a...
	And let's flip this around.
	First of all, in a little needle, you can have cyanide.
	So it's not the delivery system that's the issue.
	It's what's being delivered.
	And some might flip that around and say, they died not so that a bunch of crybabies could be scared of a coronavirus and the risks that go along with being alive.
	Which necessarily involve the risk of getting sick.
	Is this person calling for Doug Ford to be re-elected by a landslide?
	Oh yes, I believe this person is.
	How familiar with Canadian politics are you?
	Somewhat.
	I tried to familiarize myself more than I had been when I was in Quebec for a while last fall.
	But my understanding is that Ontario was pretty much In line with most of the predominant COVID policies, wasn't it?
	Doug Ford tried to go full police state and require anyone out of their homes to show reasons for which they were out of their house.
	And the police force refused to abide by that.
	So Doug Ford is on borrowed- So why does that person want Doug Ford?
	We have recurring people on the channel who we invite.
	I'll pull up the comments just to address them.
	I was just going to say, sorry to lose this thought.
	Going back to your initial question that prompted me to do that soliloquy, sorry if I was long-winded, but what sort of equips me or endows me with the ability to go against the grain on this subject and maybe other subjects?
	I think part of it is just the curiosity.
	Also, it's a disinterest in seeking validation from media peers, which really is the driving motivation for a lot of people in media.
	I mean, they are desperate to have the validation of their peers.
	They basically care about nothing more than that.
	They're more invested in that than they are getting the validation of readers or viewers, which is why, you know, they are generally disconnected from the broad swath of the public.
	Um I also think that in the case of something like COVID policy, if you were to challenge some of the premises underlying those policies in a kind of fulsome way,
	there's a good chance you were going to get automatically castigated as being an anti-vaxxer or And if you were an anti-vaxxer, that meant you were dangerously right-wing, and that meant you were probably affiliated with MAGA, and that you might have been at the Capitol on January 6th.
	And there's this whole slew of labels that kind of make you supposedly in line with contemporary right-wing extremism.
	And that's the worst thing you can be affiliated with by the lights of the contemporary media.
	So they do everything in their power to avoid even giving the appearance of that.
	But it does provide a disincentive for people to go to delve into certain topics that might result in them being subjected to that accusation.
	So, you know...
	You had certain liberal critics who would get away with challenging certain aspects of the irrationality, especially as time went on.
	There was a consensus developed around how school closures were probably overdone and had too many negative side effects to have been justifiable.
	But if you kind of cross a certain line, you were probably going to be deplored as somehow right wing extremist or pro Trump, which is sort of ironic, because if there's anybody who is most single handedly responsible for bringing about the vaccine in on Earth, it was Donald Trump.
	Yeah, and he very consistently recommended that his followers get it.
	And yet, because the media needed to have this kind of fulcrum in their narrative where he was somehow Fomenting anti-vax sentiment, they kind of just ignore that or glossed over it, which is odd still.
	I remember even this last summer, maybe in July of last year, there was this wave of hysteria around when the Delta variant happened about how Republicans, governors, Republicans weren't doing enough to To implore their constituents to get vaccinated, and they're harboring anti-vaxxers and all this.
	And so I actually did the somewhat tedious work of looking up what every single Republican governor did in relation to vaccine distribution in 2021, and without any exception, all not only just facilitated their...
	Vaccine distribution programs, but they recommended that people get it.
	And many of them even did the obligatory selfie where they're tweeting out photos of themselves getting the injection itself.
	Because anti-vax at the time was this convenient way to erect an ideological enemy around which the media could revolve.
	In opposition to, it almost didn't matter what the Republican governors did because it was just assumed that because this burgeoning right-wing insurrectionist fervor is bad, then that must be connected to the anti-vax sentiment, which is also bad.
	And for people in the media, especially if you're reliant on The legitimization of media institutions for your sense of social acceptance and also for professional standing, then you're going to be hyper-conscious of what might offend the sensibilities of people who have that power over you.
	Now, I don't have that problem, thankfully, in part because I've set up an arrangement for myself where I'm basically independent.
	I do write on occasion for different publications that are mainstream media, you could say, but I'm not dependent on them for my livelihood.
	Whereas if you are, then that's going to dictate a lot of what you're able to cover.
	And it's also going to probably have subconscious effects on just your genuine beliefs.
	And that goes...
	And I think that could be expanded as an explanation for why I've been able to charter a certain course on a whole variety of issues from, you know, Russia gate, now the Ukraine war, to COVID, to the riots and stuff, and to other issues.
	Speaking of the Ukraine war, so you decided to go over to Poland to witness kind of the gray space grift.
	See it in action.
	We have arms going over there.
	We have no idea where they're going.
	Some of the arms don't appear to be useful, actually, in combat.
	If you wanted to be a Lord of War, War Dogs, Nicolas Cage, Jonas, kind of character from those films, there's no better time than probably to be in...
	Eastern Poland right now with the kind of money that's flushing through.
	And now that's going to escalate off the charts.
	You know, we went from $13 billion to $40 billion.
	We got land lease.
	I mean, it's just going to be flowing.
	Everybody's emptying everything to get those checks back up.
	But you talk about, like, for all the pressure...
	You know, you can't question the pandemic, public policy, or you're anti-science.
	You can't question whatever's happening with riots where you're racist.
	You can't question what happened with Russiagate or you're a Trump apologist.
	But that all reaches a whole other peak of cliquish behavior if you challenge or contest or question the defense industry, particularly in the West.
	I mean, frankly, it's worse in the West than it is in a lot of other places in terms of the ability to have independent media coverage of what the heck's happening in a foreign war.
	One, what led to you wanting to go over to Poland?
	And what was witnessing that what I can only imagine is almost craziness in live time?
	Yeah, well, when the war broke out, I had a strong feeling that I wanted to do something other than just sitting around in my...
	Apartment in Jersey City, New Jersey.
	I felt like that wasn't kind of congruous with the, um, imperatives of the events that were, uh, transpiring.
	Um, So, but on the other hand, I didn't really feel it would be fruitful for me to, you know, be this like war correspondent and go in to Ukraine itself and like try to cover the aftermath of different, you know, maybe Russian missile strikes or Ukrainian, you know, counteroffensives or whatever.
	Because, you know, number one, I don't have, you know, institutional backing where stuff can be arranged for me in that way.
	But number two, there was just a glut of that stuff anyway.
	And it didn't, it doesn't seem that informative for the most part.
	They'd be saying, you know, you're not doing real journalism because you're not going into the war zone itself.
	So, you know, I was actually on the physical border of Ukraine.
	I saw into Ukraine, so I saw the land of Ukraine.
	But it's true that I stayed in Poland because Poland is the...
	I mean, that's where the U.S. is basing its operations to facilitate the disbursement of arms into Ukraine.
	I mean, there's some stuff going through other countries.
	But by and large, you know, it's happening with Poland as the focal point, namely Southeastern Poland.
	And there are more U.S. troops now in Poland overall than there have been in decades.
	At least when I was there.
	Their mission in other parts of the country, like Krakow, was just to provide reassurance by just being physically present in Poland.
	So it was sort of bizarre, but you'd have units of 19-year-olds walking around the touristy areas of Krakow, Poland, and just taking photos of each other and goofing around and stuff.
	And that was supposedly the fulfillment of their mission.
	And they didn't really have a whole lot to do otherwise.
	I mean, they would occasionally do a little...
	But even some of the units didn't do training with the Polish military.
	That was more of like the senior officers, as far as I could tell.
	And the grunts were just kind of hanging out, seemingly.
	But in the southeast, particularly around Yeshev, is where the U.S. has...
	It's appropriated an airport to basically be the hub of these arms shipments.
	So when we talk about, you know, the proxy war being a U.S. enterprise, it really is the U.S. I mean, it's not NATO who's running these logistical operations in Yeshev.
	It's not, you know...
	Poland itself.
	It's Poland allowing an arrangement with the U.S. where the U.S. is running things.
	So even when you hear occasionally about Slovakia sent 25 radar systems or whatever, that is all being done by way of the U.S. as the prime mover here.
	Question here.
	We've heard of Canadian troops training.
	I don't know if it's in Poland or in Ukraine.
	And there was also the rumor of a Canadian military person that was captured in a steel manufacturer.
	Robert, what were the details on that?
	That a Canadian general, but according to Canada, he was no longer active, found in the steel factory in Mariupol.
	I mean, they were what...
	What anybody who paid attention would know they were.
	They went just to protect the public health of Ukraine, put it that way.
	And whether the Russian documents are reliable and trustworthy will be another debate for another time, but at least from an initial first glance.
	There's no reason, honestly, to doubt them.
	I mean, I get it's Russia, so people are going to say you can ignore everything they say.
	But, yeah, that's what I found fascinating.
	It's like you're right there in the middle of seeing the troops, of seeing some stuff that's like bad theater.
	Like large parts of this war felt like bad theater.
	I mean, we got a president of Ukraine that, you know, he's just going to retire.
	And Sean Penn and Angelina Jolie are going to co-produce reality TV shows for him.
	I mean, he literally played a character pretending he was president.
	Now he's president.
	He's playing it.
	You know, he's dressing like Che Guevara and Fidel Castro.
	You know, everything's all great.
	Well, I mean, it's, you know, the history.
	I mean, we have recurring examples of this now.
	I mean, didn't Trump end up bringing back, like, the apprentice boardroom scenario in the White House to tell people, you know, you're fired and stuff?
	Yeah.
	It's escalating.
	But for it to be in a war is still a little startling to me.
	And there's just aspects of this.
	I mean, some even what I consider false flags events are not even done.
	I mean, the ghost of Kiev.
	I mean, it's like you just hear that and be like, okay, that's really not probably true.
	Well, I mean, I think, you know, it's similar to part of the intuition that I had and why I went to cover the riots in 2020.
	I knew that, you know, the information being filtered out is going to be so agenda-driven and so slanted that...
	You know, to the best of my ability, I want to experience what I can firsthand to have a better understanding of the reality.
	You know, a lot of journalists, they think in order to do real journalism covering the war, you have to, you know, go be this, you know, war correspondent flanked by, you know, fixers and handlers and security guards.
	And you're going, you know, stepping on rubble and stuff and talking to the victims.
	And there could be some value in that.
	I mean, the people who are directly affected inside Ukraine itself, you know, they should have an ability to express what their experiences are, just like, you know, the riot victims in Minneapolis or whatever.
	But the fact that so many of them wouldn't even, It wouldn't even occur to them to go to Poland to cover the U.S. proxy war component.
	Because they don't think that the wisdom or the virtue of the U.S. proxy war is even a debatable proposition.
	It's just like, you know, this...
	Arrangement whereby the U.S. military is orchestrating the biggest, even starting in March, I think, it was the biggest infusion of weaponry into Europe since Harry Truman, at the beginning of the Cold War, was sending arms to Greece.
	But it was hardly covered from an adversarial standpoint.
	Not that you have to be an obnoxious bomb thrower and go around challenging people, but you should at least cover things with a critical eye, and there was just none of that with regard to the U.S. military operations, because they thought that the moral parameters of the war had already been ordained, and then their coverage reflected that they wanted to go and just exhibit how horrible Russia is.
	Defend the war.
	Actually, you know, when the invasion was launched, I actually, you know, I knew I was going to be pressed constantly to condemn the war.
	And I actually did think it was condemnation worthy to have launched a preemptive war of aggression, you know, especially given how that could spiral into nuclear conflagration.
	And I know, especially, you know, with Putin doing these threats of...
	Potential nuclear reprisal.
	I mean, I don't think there's any justification for that.
	And it is dangerous.
	But at the same time, you know, I'm a citizen of the United States.
	I have most insight into how my own government works.
	And my own government is the one that is executing this ever escalating proxy war.
	And so I want to have as much of an understanding of that as I can.
	And so I would go around to these bases, try to talk to soldiers, talk to these civilian contractors who have been flooded in to provide logistical support for the erection of basically brand new military installations across Poland.
	I mean, one thing that was told to me is that in Yeshev, Poland, which is about 60 or so miles from Ukraine, they're basically converting it into a ram Romstein is this airbase in Germany that had been basically the hub of a lot of military operations in Europe for decades.
	And that's what they're doing in Poland now.
	And so even if the war were to end tomorrow, you think that infrastructure is just going to be dismantled?
	No, of course not.
	They're going to find ways to keep it going and probably expand it, especially if they can say that they're doing it out of deterrence or whatever.
	If you want to go anywhere in the world right now, and I haven't been there now for about a month and a half or something, but if there's anywhere in the world that you could go right now, if you are an enterprising prospective illicit arms trafficker,
	you should definitely go to Poland and the adjoining areas because that's where these Armors are being shipped into, and that's where you could encounter all kinds of shady...
	I mean, the shadiest people on Earth are going into this...
	It's a little different now because I guess it's easier to traverse Ukraine than it had been because I was there before the Russians had done a partial withdrawal from around the Kiev area and such.
	But even now, I'm sure it's somewhat similar in that you have this...
	Gigantic influx of some of the shadiest profiteers and spooks on earth.
	You've got $40 billion worth of the newest military that's undoubtedly going to at some point fall into the wrong hands.
	CNN quoted anonymous officials saying that to them, Ukraine is just a black hole in terms of where these weapons shipments are going.
	I mean, they have no insight at all into where they're going.
	People think, oh, yeah, there's a scrupulously monitored chain of custody or something.
	No, I mean, they have no clue.
	Sorry.
	And when you see weapons being sent over that don't have an apparent purpose, either because of lack of training of Ukrainian military personnel on those weapons or the weapons are of an age or other issues with them not being useful for this particular kind of battlefield, you know, what I see is I see arms laundering.
	That's what I see.
	I see, like, the defense industry can't send something to a bunch of blacklisted, say, countries or regions of war conflict.
	But they can send it to Ukraine or for Ukraine, and then it can get there with other middlemen.
	And at least some of the setting and scene you were describing was like something out of a Jean-Luc Carré novel, in that the kind of actors and participants that you could only witness by going there and being in the middle of it.
	And just getting the vibe of it, the texture of it.
	The way these people will talk so casually about what should be morally shocking to the conscience of the West, sadly it's not.
	In part because the media is not covering it or exposing it in the way you were.
	Yeah, because the media sees nothing controversial about it.
	And they are so emotionally and ideologically, politically, financially, militarily invested in the...
	Battlefield victory, I have one quote aside, that dictates how they conceive of the entire conflict.
	So, you know, they're not even going to be conscious of why it is that the U.S. war, the component that is the U.S. war effort ought to be subject to scrutiny.
	I mean, every now and then you'll see...
	Kind of incremental examples of this, like CNN, as I mentioned, did something very uncharacteristic and actually had a very enlightening story by their standards in April sometime when they reported that these...
	I think the headline was, Where are the U.S. weapons in Ukraine going?
	No one knows.
	And, you know, so that was kind of a candid, admirably a candid admission on their part, you know, given that they probably feel strongly about the overall thrust of the war in terms of, you know, favoring Slava, Ukraine and whatever.
	But yeah, when you talk about the, I almost, part of me felt a little bad about how easy it was to come by some of this sketchy information because really at times all I would have to do is,
	you know, Go down from my hotel room and sit in the restaurant or bar area, and you just have these loudmouths yapping it up about how this guy who's connected to all these special ops.
	Colleagues, you know, has a direct line to the Ukrainian military general staff, and he's thinking about getting an air cargo plane sent in from Canada to deliver armor.
	And, you know, he's talking about how they can navigate the tax system of Poland to minimize the amount that they'll have to pay, you know, on VAT and all this.
	Loudly yapping about all this stuff.
	Meanwhile, he's talking on Signal to somebody in the U.S. That he needs to encrypt.
	Maybe he just didn't think that there were anybody around who spoke English.
	This is just one example of many.
	I did a substack on this guy because it was just so unbelievable.
	Once this guy was flaunting how supposedly connected he was to the war effort, And was, by his own lauded mission, seeking to profit off of it.
	I went to go just ask him who he was.
	Of course he wouldn't tell me.
	And he claimed that he was just there on a purely humanitarian mission.
	Well, if you're there just on a purely humanitarian mission, shouldn't you be boastful of that?
	Shouldn't you be more than happy to reveal who you are and what you're up to?
	And no, he wasn't at all.
	And he was just one of many characters that are slithering around that part of the world right now.
	There was more of an appetite for covering the nitty-gritty of who's profiting based on this war and who are they getting direction from and what angles of personal benefit have they seized upon.
	It would require a whole lot of journalistic resources devoted to covering that story, but you just don't really see it.
	So I tried to do a little bit of it.
	You know, just another thing that was interesting was that I, of course, would overhear the chatter about how there were former US Special Forces guys in Ukraine at the front lines on behalf of this NGO run by this guy, Chef Jose Andres, you know, to provide just food throughout Ukraine.
	And this guy's been feted everywhere.
	During the White House Correspondents' Dinner weekend, he was at this House party hosted by the Atlantic, where, of course, the CIA director is there, and Blinken is there, and all these other hot shots from the elites of D.C. He was there because he was a guest of honor, right?
	And he was one of his top employees.
	Didn't know that was there, but of course I heard it and then I asked them about it afterwards.
	We're saying how, yeah, their whole operation is to have these former Special Forces guys at the front lines of Ukraine, and they didn't know what that meant in terms of combat.
	So when you're supposedly giving money to one of these incredibly benevolent organizations that are just doing pure humanitarian aid, like for example, last weekend I saw something Going around Twitter where a guy went to a restaurant in Dallas and got a Ukraine fee, a $1 Ukraine fee tacked onto his restaurant bill that you had to proactively opt out of if you didn't want to pay the dollar.
	What happens if you opt out of that?
	Don't order a second course.
	You're a Putin propagandist.
	Then you're denounced for not standing with Ukraine.
	But the dollar apparently goes to this organization run by Chef Jose Andres in Ukraine.
	And the restaurants supposedly did it as this act of joint solidarity of the restaurants in the Dallas-Fort Worth area or something.
	And what people don't realize is that it's not like that dollar just goes to buying a loaf of bread or something.
	It goes to this whole apparatus of NGO kind of influence peddling and whatever, including a huge percentage that goes to these Private security operations, you know, which is a massive payday for a lot of these shady characters, you know, flaunting their wares, how, you know, how they, their special forces and now they're on the front lines in Ukraine and keeping everyone safe.
	And maybe they do a little bit of combat on the side.
	I don't know.
	I mean, I can't prove that, but it wouldn't surprise me based on the, you know, how they were just, you know, how these, the presence of those guys was being discussed.
	And then we, and when I was, I was in UK until last week for about a month, And while I was there, an amazing story came out.
	Conveniently enough, it was on a Friday at 10 p.m. local time of a bank holiday weekend on Easter.
	So it was like the ideal time to bury a story.
	But it came out that there were British special forces on the ground in Ukraine.
	Boots on the ground in Ukraine from a NATO country.
	And this just didn't cause that much...
	It barely got any attention at all.
	So, you know, I think just over time we're going to learn the true scope of the involvement, especially in the U.S., is going to be unveiled.
	And, you know, you saw that part shortly last week with the New York Times having these leaks about how crucial U.S. intelligence was and supposedly sinking the flagship Russian warship and killing generals and such.
	So it's only a matter of time before probably more and more of that comes out.
	Michael, I don't know if you did a substack on this, but look, and I don't know if it means anything or if it means more than what I think it means.
	I just noticed.
	A lot of howitzers.
	M777, M777, which is an odd number that's going to get people's attention because it's one off of M666, whatever.
	There's a lot of howitzers.
	I wouldn't have got my attention for that reason, I have to say.
	I need somebody with your perspective to...
	I don't pay attention to connection in numbers.
	I just know that people are going to see that.
	I just noticed, America's giving...
	Howitzers and munitions are part of their $40 billion.
	Canada, training how to use unhowitzers as part of our contribution to this war.
	And then I just looked up who makes the howitzers.
	It's BAE Systems in the UK.
	Looked up the shareholders in BAE or BEA Systems.
	I forget which.
	BAE, yeah.
	And they have US divisions as well.
	Yeah, and it's BlackRock.
	And I don't know if BlackRock, which we're hearing, is buying up real estate.
	Robert, Michael, I mean, I don't know any more about this.
	Am I...
	Connecting dots that don't have any connection, or is this part of the club that we are not a part of?
	Well, I mean, it's very much a part of the military-industrial complex.
	I mean, it's why it is the power that it has.
	I mean, if you're a congressman, you retire, that's where you're going to go to work, or for a related kind of group, either Wall Street or the defense industry loosely.
	Writ large, you could add the surveillance and big tech subcomponents to that that are really kind of part and parcel of it.
	It's where the money and the power is.
	When J.D. Vance was considering whether to be opposed to the no-fly zone, he said, look, this was going up against the national security apparatus, deep state, whatever you want to call it, is risky.
	What happens?
	He makes a position.
	Every Rupert Murdoch publication takes a hit piece at him.
	Politico even does it.
	You know, a bit of a hit piece after he wins the primary, insists that it couldn't have anything to do with his opposition to the war, even though that's the only position that was significantly distinguished him from his two opponents, where he went from fifth to first.
	He went to first before Trump endorsed.
	Trump makes his broad kind of, hey, we should work for peace statement.
	After he sees J.D. Vance surge in Ohio, not before.
	And he sees a correlation between the two, given the statements made by Donald Trump Jr.
	But the institutions know, the same reason why three-quarters of Republicans are voting for $40 billion for Ukraine, when that would not...
	If that was a referendum, it would not pass more than 50% of Republican primary voters.
	And not because all of them are opposed to the war in Ukraine, but for some, just foreign aid is a no-go.
	And for some, it's why get involved in a foreign war.
	It's not our business.
	Who cares?
	Especially after the second Iraq war debacle.
	But the institutional Republican Party is still heavily controlled by the Romneys and Bushites and neocons.
	And this is where the think tanks are.
	This is why people like Dennis Prager are whoring for war.
	This is why people like Sebastian Gorka are whoring for war.
	It's that they don't want to offend real institutional weight in D.C. because they think, okay, I'm going to end up run out on a rail because that's where the political – just look what's happening to Madison Cawthorn.
	Maybe it's a coincidence.
	Maybe it's not.
	He takes a very verbal, vocal stand against Zelensky, against getting involved, makes other statements about the moral corruption of D.C., And all of a sudden, he's not only subject to criticism from the left, but the insurrection.
	Probably nothing will happen because he serves on the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is basically the CIA's representative in the Senate.
	I mean, that was supposed to regulate the intelligence community, not be the intelligence community's representative.
	But that's the way it is.
	And Senator Tom Tillis is the same.
	So the defense industry, I mean, there's a reason why Eisenhower did his farewell speech saying this is a problem.
	And this was a guy who helped build this in part.
	And he was like, well, hold on a second.
	This is probably going to get out of hand.
	And it is.
	And now we're seeing the consequences of it.
	But I thought your reporting in Poland was great.
	It reminded me of not only the Jean-Luc Corée novels, but I can't remember the name of the movie.
	There's a movie with Mel Gibson describing the collapse.
	Maybe it's Indonesia.
	It's one of the Southeast Asia countries.
	He's the actor portraying a journalist who lived it.
	It's the same kind of scene.
	You're seeing this scene of British journalists in these bars, and there's just a certain mindset that you're like, where does that come from?
	But it's really...
	Prevalent and pervasive in this conflict.
	Thank you.
	It was just strange because so many people were so angry.
	It was sort of similar to the riot reporting in that sense.
	People were angry about the mere fact of me being there.
	On the one hand, there's a faction of these...
	Security state apparatchiks who are, some are anonymous online, some aren't, who have this, you know, running joke about how idiotic it was for me to just take some photos of some U.S. military installations that I came across because, you know, how is that a story, number one, is what the criticism will be.
	But then it will also be coupled with that I was somehow compromising national security.
	So they kind of don't seem to be able to get it straight what the supposed problem was.
	You know, Malcolm Nance, who is this deranged MSNBC, former MSNBC analyst, before he shipped off supposedly to Ukraine to take up arms, although he seems to just be in a...
	But because I took photos of some of these installations around Poland, he was calling on the Polish military police to throw me into the ground and arrest me for espionage.
	This was a guy who was actually on TV and had some semblance of a platform.
	But, you know, there's other people who had other criticisms.
	Just before I forget, on the point of the $40 billion that was passed yesterday, 57 Republicans voted against it.
	But a thought that I immediately had when I saw that was how many Republicans are voting against this principle, meaning they don't think that it's prudent or sound to...
	How many have procedural objections or technical objections?
	Sure enough, this speech from Chip Roy, the Texas Republican congressman, was going around where he spoke on the floor yesterday evening and was saying, look, we only got this bill at 3 o 'clock in the afternoon and now it's 9.30 and we have to vote and we can't even review it, which is obviously a legitimate point.
	There ought to be, in theory, ample time to I asked his communications person, Chip Roy was one of the 57 who voted against it.
	And I asked his communication person, is this about the principle of eight To Ukraine?
	Or is it a procedural thing?
	And he said it was a procedural thing.
	Meaning, you know, Chip Roy had an article, but he did an op-ed in The Hill from a few days ago where he's saying, look, you know, there needs to be more of a plan.
	You know, Biden needs to work more with Congress or something on, you know, telling us where the money's going to go, stuff to that effect.
	But, you know, I would say probably around half, if not more, of the Republicans who did vote against it yesterday.
	Probably, if you dig down to their position, would go out of their way to affirm that, of course, we support the sending of arms to Ukraine.
	It's just we don't like the manner in which it's being done.
	And I think a relatively smaller percentage would actually have a problem with it in principle, which doesn't really give one much.
	confidence that there actually is this major upswell of anti-war sentiment within the Republican Party.
	It's just that, you know, within a certain faction of the Republican Party, you can kind of oppose certain something on the ground of Biden doing it and the Democrats doing it and sort of gin up that partisan reflex rather than develop an actual intelligible position that addresses the substance of what you're voting on.
	One thing is clear, the public sentiment is clearly not reflected in the political elite.
	Now, I believe I'm being summoned for reasons that are beyond my control as a kid who's still down here.
	But I want to bring up one question, which is from GoodLogic.
	And at first, it was supposed to be a joke, but I think he thinks that 2,000 mules might be verboten terminology on the YouTubes.
	Has 2,000 jackasses influenced Michael's perspective about...
	See, that's the F-word joke.
	Joe's another lawyer on the channel.
	The F-word is more serious than mules.
	Have you seen 2,000 Mules, and what do you think about it?
	I haven't seen it.
	You know, I'm not a huge fan of the Dinesh D'Souza filmography.
	I reviewed earlier productions of his back during the Obama era and was not especially impressed when he said, you know, he basically did a whole movie in 2012, which I think was called Obama's America.
	Which basically, you know, frantically was warning us that if Obama won in Mitt Romney law, so if Mitt Romney did not become president in 2012, then America was totally done for and would descend into like apocalyptic desolation.
	And, you know, I think it was, let's say, a bit overwrought.
	So, no, I haven't seen this latest movie.
	You know, I think Robert and I did a talk on election fraud stuff shortly after the 2020 election.
	When people are putting that issue to me, they have to be specific about what they're identifying as a problem.
	Because when people say stuff is rigged, sometimes they're just talking in broad strokes about how they think that the system was unfair and Trump was...
	Disadvantaged by media bias and big tech and all that.
	I think those are largely legitimate points.
	But then there's sort of like a blurry line between that in terms of how they put it between that and actual physical election fraud, which for the most part I don't think has been amply substantiated to the point where I would consider myself a proponent of that theory, although I haven't seen the movie.
	I'm offended that I wasn't invited to the premiere at Mar-a-Lago.
	A lot of us weren't invited to the premiere at Mar-a-Lago.
	I was invited.
	I just couldn't make it down.
	I have too many family commitments.
	I'm joking, people.
	I was not invited.
	Robert and I were going to do a live thing on Viva Barnes Law merged with Rumble, but it didn't pan out.
	Mike, you should go watch it.
	Sorry, Robert, I cut you off.
	Oh yeah, no problem.
	Well, yeah, no, I was just going to say, as our sort of exit question, where can people find you?
	Where can they follow you?
	Knowing social media, I know you're an editor at the new publication, but also you have the Substack.
	Where can people follow you if they want an independent perspective on a lot of these topics?
	And I think you've done fantastic work.
	We have different political perspectives, but you've done a lot of very important...
	Value that, frankly, nobody else is doing.
	Nobody's going on the ground.
	Nobody went on the ground the way you did in Minneapolis.
	Nobody's going on the ground in Poland like they should be because that's where the real war is being waged.
	I was even on the ground during the 2020 election in Atlanta in one of the big hot spots that was supposedly rife with fraud, and that led me to certain conclusions that maybe were not as...
	Friendly received by certain people on the right, but that's okay.
	Yeah, I mean, just Substack is a good thing to subscribe to, mtracy.substack.com.
	And then, you know, Twitter.
	Just mtracy on Twitter, where I post pretty much everything.
	But those are basically the two main places to see everything I'm doing.
	Fantastic.
	Excellent.
	Now, my kid has found his way into...
	I got a box of fishing lures from a company called Heart Tackle, and he's found his way into them.
	He's got to make sure he doesn't find the ones with hooks in them.
	So, so far, he's got the rubber, the rubber things.
	Okay, so...
	Excuse Carlos.
	Maybe you should go and handle that.
	Yeah, he'll be, he'll be, he'll learn the hard way.
	I will, he found that one.
	Okay, good.
	I'm going to pin your links in the pinned comment, Michael.
	It's very interesting.
	I do think you have to go watch 2,000 Reels, even if it's only to disregard it afterwards, but it's more information.
	More data, even if you write it off, is still better than less.
	And I think it's worth the watch.
	But this has been great.
	I did not realize, I did not know you were what some people call a lefty.
	And now I don't know what that means anymore, but it's interesting.
	Some people call me a fascist as well.
	Some people call me a hard right extremist.
	Michael.
	We'll be in touch.
	This is fantastic.
	All three of us, stick around.
	We'll say our proper goodbyes.
	Everyone in the chat, thank you as always.
	I'll be live tomorrow.
	Apparently there's been some news with a Canadian guy who's walking across Canada.
	I don't know if the news is true yet.
	I'm going to go look it up.
	Michael, stick around.
	Robert, stick around.
	We'll say our proper goodbyes.
	Everyone in the chat, see you tomorrow.
	Enjoy the evening.

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