President Trump's threats to prosecute a journalist over an F-15E shootdown in Iran on April 3, 2026, spark debate between rescue success and uranium extraction theories. Former pilot Cousin Eddie details how two C-130Js and Dash 8s deployed Mini Birds, potentially sacrificing aircraft to prevent tech capture amid MANPADS risks. While Israeli journalist Amit Segal claims exclusive reporting on the missing second airman, conflicting narratives from CBS and social media fuel skepticism about Pentagon transparency. The episode concludes by highlighting Ash in America's First Amendment victory against doxxing charges, underscoring a broader crisis of truth where operational secrecy clashes with press freedom in an era of disinformation. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Post-Truth World of Leaks00:02:08
Ladies and gentlemen of the interwebs, in a world of post information truth, in a world where you see both A and not A simultaneously across social medias, where you literally do not know what to believe and what to not believe.
This is totally unrelated, but we're starting with a clip about Trump suggesting there may have been a classified leak and going after the journalist who broke the information on the rescue operation in Iran.
But these two extraordinary rescues, because it was two, and as you probably know, we didn't talk about the first one for.
An hour, then somebody leaked something, which we'll hopefully find that leaker.
We're looking very hard to find that leaker and talked about there's somebody missing.
They basically said that we have one and there's somebody missing.
Well, they didn't know there was somebody missing until this leaker gave the information.
So, whoever it was, we think we'll be able to find it out because we're going to go to the media company that released it and we're going to say, National Security, give it up or go to jail.
And we know who, and you know who we're talking about.
There's some things you can't do.
Because when they did that, all of a sudden, the entire country of Iran knew that there was a pilot that was somewhere on their land that was fighting for his life.
And it also made it much more difficult for the pilots and for the people going in to search for him.
All of a sudden, these two extraordinary rescues.
They know what's coming.
They know there's an enemy.
There's an American behind enemy lines.
They know that there's this massive rescue operation, which is low and slow in terms of the manner in which it's being conducted.
And they knew it.
Hold on, my hair's in a ponytail still.
They knew it, allegedly, apparently, because of a leak of one pilot having been rescued and another not yet rescued, which means that he was behind enemy lines.
We are living in a world that is so post truth, a world where it's inundated with information.
Trusting Sources in Chaos00:09:00
Misinformation, disinformation, and I don't believe in malinformation.
There is no such thing as accurate information that is harmful, that needs to be suppressed, or that is otherwise misleading.
Yesterday, I started the show off with my take on the rescue operation that Jake Shields was suggesting that the rubble or the wreckage of what was left subsequent to that apparent alleged rescue operation was an indication of losing.
Jake Shields says, Are you tired of winning yet?
And I say, Bad example, the fact that they extricated, extracted this pilot out of Iranian territory successfully is a miracle.
Health Ranger, who I've known for a while on the internet and I appreciate, I don't want to use the word conspiracy theories because it's an unfair way to disregard ideas without addressing the substance of them.
Health Ranger is definitely more skeptical and cynical in terms of his digestion of any form of information whatsoever.
And he actually said something which I hadn't really fleshed out by way of a thought experiment when I was looking at this and, say, taking it at face value.
It's not the type of information where I would be shocked or appalled if it ended up being what the other theory that is being posited was yesterday.
The operation of rescuing the downed American pilot behind enemy lines in Iran, a successful rescue operation, or as some people are hypothesizing, a blundered, botched uranium grab.
Health Ranger says, just curious, why do you take the Pentagon's version of events as fact?
That's the issue here.
They lie every time they say something.
When I say that we're living in post-war, post-truth, I keep saying post-war, a post-truth era, You literally don't know what to believe ever anywhere at any point in time.
Today, this morning, I mean, in one given day, you can, I say, literally see A and not A simultaneously.
Today, on a given day, you have the Daily Beast, which, you know, shouldn't be trusted as far as you can throw it, but not any more than leading report.
You have the Daily Beast saying the damning poll reveals that a significant number of Trump's 2024 voters say they will not support a Republican candidate in the midterms.
Say, what was this?
This was April 6, 1206.
This was three hours ago.
An hour before that, on the same day, you've got leading reports saying breaking Republicans are leading net favorability by plus five points ahead of the 2026 midterms, per CNN.
The reality is, you can, on the one hand, not know what to believe.
You can say, I don't know what to believe because one trustworthy garbage outlet, and I say they're trustworthy in being garbage, the Daily Beast is saying they're losing support, they're suffering at the polls.
The other garbage network, you can rely on them to be garbage, says, no, Republicans are winning, plus five.
And you then sit there as someone who's just trying to digest the information and say, I don't know what to believe.
Now, it doesn't mean shutting your eyes and being stupid.
I know what I believe, and I don't believe that it's looking good.
For Republicans come midterms.
That is my personal belief based on my own assessment of facts and reaching a fair number of people.
So, despite the fact that Daily Beast, which is known garbage, says something that I already have come to by way of conclusion myself, the reality we live in right now is people just say, I'm not going to believe.
Even if it's something that I would otherwise believe or might believe on my own, I'm not going to believe it because X, Y, and Z said it.
So, Health Ranger says, Why would you believe anything the State Department says they lie all the time.
Well, the reality is that is kind of the philosophy that leads people to actually say, I don't believe anything the government says.
And therefore, when they tell me the earth is round, as a matter of protest, I'm going to choose not to believe that.
A broken clock is right twice a day.
Even a liar tells the truth because lying doesn't mean lying every single time.
Lest if you know someone is lying every single time, it's almost as predictive in terms of truth as someone who tells the truth every single time.
But it's not because the State Department or the FBI says anything that you have to believe the opposite just for the sake of believing the opposite.
Get into this argument over the Charlie Kirk assassination.
How you believe the Tyler Robinson?
Oh, now you believe the FBI's slop narrative.
A, I don't believe all of it, but I'm not going to not believe something that I've come to by way of my own conclusion based on whatever access to evidence there is out there simply because the FBI says so as well.
I'm not going to not rely on something that I believe simply because CNN says it.
And so now you have.
People, it's interesting.
I'm trying to find a, you know, call it a quasi legitimate source suggesting that maybe the operation was not a successful extraction, but an unsuccessful, or sorry, not a successful rescue, but an unsuccessful extraction of the uranium in Iran.
And I appreciate now it's an interesting theory.
And when you understand the details of the extraction, you know, there might be some questions to ask in terms of what that was.
Now you have Trump coming out this morning.
And saying, we're going to prosecute the leaker who allegedly leaked the allegedly classified information that there was one pilot behind enemy lines, which frustrated our ability or at least made it more difficult, more risky, and certainly put that pilot at risk.
Now, if you don't believe that it was a rescue operation, you're not even going to believe any part of that story.
If you might entertain the idea that it was a very successful rescue operation, you might have other issues and there are going to be free speech issues and whatever.
But this is where it's coming to the point where you don't know.
What to believe.
You don't really know who to trust, although I do say there is a big ass asterisk to that.
You know who to trust, not necessarily by accepting or agreeing with everything everyone says, but by respecting and understanding a methodology that that source employs.
At the very least, trustworthiness in knowing that if the source that you rely on gets it wrong, they will let you know.
And so it's a difficult thing right now.
But this was a, I just want to bring this one up here because it's also mildly hilarious.
Speaking of, I say sources that are either trustworthy or not, you got Nate Silver, Nate Silver538, who once upon a time might have been a trustworthy source for polling, can't be trusted as far as you can throw him.
I don't know how much he weighs, but assuming he weighs the average of a male, trust him as far as you can throw him based on polling results, puts this out.
These are the Twitter X accounts with the most engagement so far in 2026.
I suppose I had some intuition for how bad it was, but geez.
This is what you get when the ecosystem is broken.
And some of you might not recognize all of these names in here.
Clearly, you got Elon Musk.
And by the way, yeah, red is right leaning and left is left leaning.
And blue is left leaning.
And then neutral is in gray.
Let's see who they got in neutral.
I don't know who those are.
TMZ neutral.
Yeah.
Jimmy Fallon neutral like Switzerland.
He's not even.
Switzerland at least feigns neutrality.
Jimmy Fallon neutral.
Adam Kinzinger neutral.
And then, who do you got as right leaning?
Well, you got Nick Sortor, Eric Doherty, Dottery, and Gunter Eagleman.
Accounts that you've seen, you know, matter of fact, incorrect stuff, no, but certainly slanted and certainly ideologically oriented.
But the one I want to draw your attention to is Jackson Hinkle in red, right leaning.
Jackson Hinkle is a self avowed communist, literally, I believe, is a co founder of the American Communist Party in red here.
What you can decipher from all of this is that you can't trust Nate Silver.
Period.
What you can decipher from that, and I'm sure we've all had the same experiences, is Twitter is becoming, I won't say something of an echo chamber, but something of a platform where it's very difficult now to rely on for accurate alternative media.
And I sit there and I do whatever independent verification I can, and I know which sources I rely on, and I hope to not make a blunder that is so serious that it would be reputational damaging.
And I think thus far, touch wood, I know the big mistakes I've made throughout my.
Analyst career.
One was believing that tweet from that doctor, Soulnet.
Still feel bad about that one who said I would get the jab again.
And even if I get myocarditis, you know, that's me loving people and not being a stubborn anti vaxxer.
But we're dealing now with an ecosystem that is circulating and cycling abject disinformation, AI videos that people then retweet, fake AI videos, right?
Airline Pilot Rescue Logic00:14:54
Because their definition AI videos that are fake, retweeting them as fact, something of an Echo chamber ecosystem, and wherein on any given day you are literally being told two diametrically and mutually incompatible truths.
It wasn't a rescue operation, which I still, for the time being, believe it was until evidence to the contrary, but there might be interesting theories that might lend some credence to the idea that it was actually an attempt at extracting the uranium, which might also make sense in terms of the deception that you see in times of war.
But when it comes to accurate information, and when you have the not privilege, but when you have the good fortune of having a massive community like we have at viva barnslaw.locals.com, that I, you know, access and reach to people that we've met throughout the years.
And in our community, we have a commercial airline pilot.
We have veterans.
We have people who I would say gun experts whose brains I can go and pick when I need information that I know that I don't know and expertise that I know that I don't have.
And when it came to this rescue operation, We have a commercial airline pilot in our community who had some insights.
I said, let's come on and talk about it because I've heard this theory being floated around that it was actually an attempted uranium grab that went south and it would explain a few things in terms of the equipment that they were using.
And I want to talk about that today with Cousin Eddie, who's going to come in in a second.
And then we're going to, my dog seems to be doing something behind me.
We're going to have Cousin Eddie come in, who's a commercial airline pilot, and talk about the idea that this may or may not have been a potentially Botched uranium grab versus a successful rescue operation.
Let me just tell him to come on in.
Come on in.
Oh, and there he is, Cousin Eddie.
Hey, Bill.
How goes the battle?
It's good.
Good to see you.
The same, the same.
Okay, now, so we don't need to get into things that I know you, you know, when you actually, you don't, opinions do not reflect those of employers and, you know, you're expressing your own opinion here.
People always want to know credentials.
And in case they didn't see our last, the last time we came on, For a discussion, so that people can know that you're not a kook or someone who's totally ill equipped to actually understand what's going on, if you could give us whatever overview you comfortably can.
Well, probably the applicable part for today is I flew C 130s for two decades for the Air Force, which were the two aircraft that they destroyed on the FARP there.
And then currently I work as a commercial airline pilot.
It doesn't have a lot to do with this particular situation, but I have, yeah, 24 years of.
Aviation experience with Air Force.
Okay.
So I wanted to, I mean, I don't want to go through the details with you on screen, but I do want people to know your knowledge of the details of what happened is coming from, I say, it's coming from the media.
So, yeah, I don't have any inside source.
I've been out too long.
No, but at the very least, what's good is that it's coming from what's the word I'm looking for when things are available to the public.
Is it called public sourced information?
What's it called when you?
It's publicly sourced information.
Yes.
Yeah.
There was another word for it, I think, when it was called open source.
Open source.
That's right.
Sorry.
Thank you.
So, you know, you can whether or not it's whether or not the information is accurate because there might be some reasons for military deception based on the information.
So, apparently, the military operation was plane goes down.
Trump suggests there was some leaked information from a journalist which disclosed to the general public that only one of the pilots had been rescued, which puts the other one at risk.
And I'm going to come back to that afterwards when you're not here because we want to know we're trying to figure out which journalist that is and which outlet it is.
If it was, in fact, a Set aside whatever the operation was.
The items used in this were Black Hawk helicopter and two C 130s.
Is that what you understood?
So, I did a little more digging today after I texted you this morning.
And so the C 130s landed there and they had on board mini birds, which is a small helicopter that special forces use.
So, they offloaded those, put them back together, and those were the little birds they were using to transport the special ops guys into where that pilot was.
So, that does make sense why they would have used C 130s to.
Infill them, that would have been the smallest plane that could have carried those helos into country like that.
And okay, just to clarify this for those who might not understand this is a plane that's carrying a helicopter inside.
How big is a C 130?
It's pretty big.
It's full combat weight, takeoff is 175,000 pounds.
It's a pretty big plane.
175,000 pounds, four engines.
What distance, minimal distance of a runway, or is it even, I don't know how it lands and takes off, but what's required for this to land and take off?
3,000 feet.
3,000 feet of what?
Dirt, gravel, you name it.
So, what my guess is some people have said that they think the C 130s were damaged in the firefight and that's why they couldn't take off.
However, the planes they brought in to get everybody off of that FARP were Dash 8s, which is a two engine, much lighter cargo plane.
And so, I'm still thinking that when they did the soil survey, they didn't.
Account for something and the C 130s probably sunk in the dirt because they were a little too heavy.
So that theory makes sense.
Okay, so the C 130s, these are matte, if I may, comparing it to a standard Air Canada, JetBlue, I'm picking the Canadian.
Sure.
Compared to a 737 size.
Okay, so that's a full size plane.
I say full size.
Four engines.
It requires 3,000 feet to land and to take off.
That's what is that?
That's the better part of it.
That's like 0.6 of a mile?
Yeah, about there.
It's a very short runway capable aircraft.
Okay.
Now, for my own personal benefit, a commercial airline runway, how long is that?
So, on the plane I fly, we need 7,000 feet minimum.
Really?
Okay, not to get too technical, what is required to actually allow a plane of that size and that way to take off in half the distance of, say, a commercial airline?
It's because it's a flat wing or straight wing turboprop.
So it's generating a ton of lift with just the engines blowing over the wing.
And it just, so its short field takeoff and landing capability is unrivaled when it comes to like heavy lift.
You can do short field takeoff and landings in a C 17 also, which is our big.
Transport aircraft with four jet engines, but C 130 can still do a little bit tighter distance.
And the C 17s would need much harder surfaces so that the C 130 could normally have landed in that dirt, no problem, turned around, offloaded, got whatever on board and taken off.
But they set up a forward air refueling point, is what I've seen now.
And that makes sense why the C 130s were still staying there.
Yeah, they were fueling all the helicopters in the search and rescue things from that point.
And so the C 130s brought in that fuel bladder, is probably what was on one of them.
Okay, just actually explain that.
What did you call it?
A forward refueling, a C something refueling?
A forward air refueling point, a FARP.
Okay.
That's just a way for us to let helicopters leapfrog because, you know, the helo is not going to be able to go near as far because it's limited range.
So you can land C 130s with a fuel bladder in the back and Offload fuel onto helos and they can like jump forward because of it.
That is so cool.
Now, you actually flew these planes in your service.
Yeah, I flew C 130s for about 20 years.
Okay, so it requires 3,000 feet.
I mean, I'm going to ask a stupid question.
I don't know how you evaluate this, but what?
So you say it could be dirt terrain, but I presume it has to be relatively level dirt terrain to land and take off.
It's not so much level, but you don't want a bunch of humps or, you know, ridges in it in the runway.
So where they were at was described as an agricultural runway that they took over.
So probably something that like crop dusters and stuff were flying out of in Iran.
And that makes sense.
It's fairly short field.
Nobody'd be really watching it.
Yeah.
Like that's the kind of place the military would, you know, go hold.
If I, what is the rough range, I guess, of the helicopters that are on the, C 130, like is it a 100 mile direction radius or not even?
You know, I don't know the mini birds what they've got for fuel tanks, honestly.
But it's, I'm sure that they can fly, you know, two, maybe 200 miles, 300 miles without fueling.
And I'm sure it's a decent clip.
So, so I want to bring up a, it's Washington Post people.
And yes, it's garbage.
And it doesn't mean that everything they say is factually incorrect.
But just to get at least some of the mainstream reported elements of this risk, of this, um, Rescue.
Trump did.
He describes the rescue of the F 15 crew and averted potentially disastrous POW.
Let's just go here.
I want to get the details.
Out of Jerusalem.
That's weird.
Okay.
As President Trump prepared for the White House news conference to celebrate yada yada, his escalating.
Okay, fine.
1 p.m. news conference.
Trump is expected to share the details.
Where am I getting the rescue operations here?
The extraction operation was extremely risky with U.S. C 130s and rescue helicopters flying low and slow over Iran's mountainous terrain to locate the missing airmen.
Two of the rescue helicopters that.
Had been searching for the F 15 crew member, took ground fire from Moran during the operation.
Some of the servicemen on board were injured, but all returned safely.
U.S. forces also had to blow up the two C 130 cargo planes and at least two MH 6 Little Bird helicopters.
Equipment worth 10,000.
Yeah.
After the aircraft got stuck in the train of a makeshift airstrip.
Overall, the incident showed U.S. forces engaged in increasingly dangerous operations, yada, yada, yada.
So, from that fact pattern, I call it a makeshift airstrip.
That makeshift could be, I mean, they can't get in and, uh, I don't know if you know, this is not like a makeshift as in they made it for the purposes of that, but they took over a potential flat land, or would they be able to land on a cropped field or something like that?
You wouldn't want to land a C 130 on a cropped field.
The crop rows would damage it.
And that's the problem with this tiny little field.
It probably had ruts and stuff, but C 130s are pretty good about rough terrain, being able to land on it as far as a runway goes, considered.
Now, you have zero classified or inside information on this.
A C 130 flying low and slow, from your experience, what does that trigger by way of radar or detection?
Because I presume it has to be easily detectable.
Well, so you're kind of talking about two different things.
So when they picked up the first pilot, that was done with conventional Seesaw assets.
And that was two MH 53s and a tanker C 130.
And the reason they'd go slow and low where that video was captured or whatever, it looked like he was refueling the helos at the time.
Well, when you refuel helos, you have to slow the C 130 down to as slow as it can go.
And the helo is going as fast as it can go to get gas.
So That I mean, I don't know why the headline says that, but whatever that that was just normal ops.
So the C 130, you know, would fuel the helos, they go out and they found that first guy pretty quick with conventional SAR assets.
And but I'm my guess would be that that kind of tipped off the IRGC as to where the other guy was.
Um, or and you know, whoever leaked that shame on them, but uh, that let them know there was somebody else there.
You know, if you got two pilots in a plane and Now you know there's two of them, and you saw where they were searching for the first one, and he's gone.
Hey, guess what?
It doesn't take a genius to figure out there's another guy there.
And that's also when that A 10, I believe, when they were still looking for him, he took that missile and had to go out over the coast and eject because he probably just couldn't land the airplane.
But that anytime that, you know, now you have the IRGC surrounding that guy, and they probably figured it was going to be a fight at that point.
What I would say for the uranium guys is they could have had special ops down there about to take out a bunch of enrichment.
I have no idea.
That's possible.
But when that pilot went down and they couldn't get him with, well, in this case, the Wizzo, they couldn't get him with conventional SAR.
They probably just said, hey, we've got a special ops team on the ground already.
Their new mission is going to be rescue this pilot.
Forget the stupid uranium.
Let's go get this pilot instead.
I mean, not to oversimplify things, but a lot of times the simplest solution is probably correct.
Amazing.
And so the idea it's going to be a stupid question now.
They come in with two C 130s, they end up having to destroy them, one of the helicopters.
Do you know what they got out on?
Yeah, the De Havilland Dash Eight, that's a much, that's why I think that they got stuck in the mud, is probably right, or dirt, sand, whatever.
The Dash Eight's much lighter aircraft.
So they brought in three of them and that they got everybody out on those.
How many people would be on a typical C 130?
Like, how many people would they have to extract after leaving now the two other planes?
Sure, but you got to also remember they didn't necessarily have to extract everybody on those three planes.
The people they would have wanted to get the heck out of there are all the aircrew.
And all of anybody injured, they would have wanted them out on the de Havilland.
Special forces could have just walked into the bush and disappeared.
Those guys are crazy.
But the de Havillands, I don't know exactly how many people those hold.
I've ridden on them before.
Lighting Rockets for Extraction00:12:56
I want to say it's like 20, 25, something like that.
They'll hold a C 130 can hold a lot more people, but you got to remember the C 130s came in with the helicopters and the fuel pit.
So they probably only carried in, you know, whatever 20, 30 guys.
And then all that equipment.
So I don't know how the special operations guys got there, but like I said, they could have already been there.
They could have been there for weeks, who knows?
And getting ready to do another op.
And they went, oh, guess what?
New tasking, get this pilot, and it's going to be a fight.
Okay, makes sense.
Well, have you ever been on a C 130 or a helicopter that had taken enemy fire?
Like, I don't know what that even is.
What does that look like in terms of like what type of ammunition or what type of weaponry can actually do meaningful damage to it versus, I don't know, imagine firing a handgun is still not safe, but like what is the type of ammunition that can do meaningful damage to it?
What's it like being in there?
Well, I mean, even somebody with a rifle, just like an AK 47, could get a lucky shot, damage an engine or something, but.
Um, typically, all we ever saw because you won't see like what we would call small arms fire from the ground, you might see the muzzle flash.
That's about it.
What you're gonna see, or what we saw when I was flying them, would be tracer fire from an anti aircraft gun, so something bigger, 30 millimeter, something like that.
And that isn't so much about like one bullet doing a bunch of damage, although it can, it's you know, they light you up with like a whole string of a hundred bullets ripping apart parts of the aircraft.
And I've never been hit by anything, but I've seen the tracers and come towards the aircraft.
And I've had like that A 10 got hit with a man pad, right?
Well, I've had man pads shot at me, but they were lucky for me, they were old ones.
And so our missile warning system deployed flares and it defeated them.
It's not like it happens all the time.
And that's kind of the problem they run into is, you know, once that IRGC element started surrounding them, they were going to have man pads.
So they knew they'd be in for a bit of a fight.
And not that I can pretend to know what it was offhand, but man portable air defense systems, man pads, shoulder fire surface to air missiles designed to be operated by single soldiers or small crew against low flying aircraft, particularly during takeoff and landing.
That's so, I mean, it's interesting.
So, this set aside the conspiracy theories, some people are going to say like the extraction never even happened.
And this is all just misdirection.
I mean, once you don't believe anything, there's no point, you know, okay, let's just operate on some of the potential premises.
This could have been either.
A simple search and rescue extraction.
It could have been a botched operation.
It could have been a bit of A and a bit of B that they were going to try one and abandon that and went for the emergency rescue.
They decide to take off and they decide they need to destroy the planes so that they don't fall into the hands of the Iranians.
Do you have any idea?
Is it internal self destruction?
Is it something that's triggered?
So, how do they blow up those planes and make them not just unusable, but I guess unreversed technology?
There wouldn't have been a ton of tech on those planes that would be like uber secret.
They would have taken anything classified off of them and brought them back with them.
But if you want to destroy the aircraft, they just plant a detonation charge, like C4, and put it on the fuel tanks.
And that's all she wrote.
That's amazing.
And another stupid question do these planes back up?
Like if you land, C 130s can.
Okay.
And so, like, you could have the same 3,000 foot runway.
You don't have to have 6,000 feet because it would defeat the purpose.
So you could back it up and then.
Take off again.
Yeah, usually you just turn around at the end and take off in the opposite direction, unless the wind won't allow for it.
And then you would have to tack, you could back up or taxi down and then turn around again.
And that might be where they got stuck because when you turn the plane, you're putting greater force on one of the wheels and it can dig into that dirt.
It's kind of a, it's where you always got to be cautious on a C 130 third field landing.
You want to be careful on the turnaround.
Unreal.
First, I love the fact that, you know, between my ammunition experts, Pilot experts within the community, I am so much smarter because of the community.
I have to search and try to find reliable sources.
I want to see if there's any questions that I didn't yet ask you, Eddie.
Because here, F. Chartrand says From what I'm seeing there, saying this was a rescue.
However, all the assets used were meant to be used for the uranium operation at a different time.
It foiled their plans and forced them to go in early and not fully prepared.
Yeah, we'll see.
I mean, we'll see.
It's possible, but it makes just as much sense to say, like, Hey, they were getting ready for that off, but this down pilot took priority.
Okay.
That makes a lot of sense to me after I thought about it this morning when we were texting.
I'm like, well, those guys were probably already there and they just changed their tasking.
Yeah, that's one thing I was appreciating, you know, getting informed of having never had any experience with this is assets on the ground already, you know, local and crazy SEAL type stuff.
And then, and then this now, and obviously, look, when they downed the F1, it was an F15.
Was it an F8?
F15.
F15.
You presume that they see the pilots eject regardless, correct?
Not necessarily.
You know, that plane's all on tail and they hit it with a missile.
I mean, they could have held that plane together for 10 minutes and 10 minutes, they'd be way gone.
You know, the further you can get away from the guys who shot at you, the better your chance of survival is.
So I'm sure they didn't eject till they had to.
Have you seen the pictures of the downed or the exploded aircraft?
Some people are suggesting that it looked like an older aircraft, but the C 130s, they're a relatively old craft.
To begin with, right?
No, not those ones.
There's a newer model, which I also flew called a C 130J, and that started production in 98, I think.
And they were still making them, I think, all the way through like 2000, 2000.
I'm sorry, 2020, maybe 21.
And it's a way more advanced C 130.
It's got all digital displays.
And I know that I can tell that those were C 130Js because it's a six-bladed prop and they're.
The only C 130s that have a six bladed prop.
Oh, so you could tell that it was a C 130J, which is the newer version.
Six.
And then that I understand.
As opposed to what was it before?
Four.
Hmm.
And I've flown those two.
But to somebody who doesn't know, they look almost identical, but I can tell the difference.
So these were new planes, now destroyed.
Newer.
Hundreds of millions.
See, the idea like, oh, $90 million, as if.
The destruction of a $90 million item is even comparable.
It's not even like a factor that you rationalize and say, do we go in and save this guy?
And once we've already saved him, do we just destroy this stuff as opposed to risking more people over these planes?
That's amazing.
The US isn't going to risk people for a military asset, but they will risk military assets for people.
Fantastic.
I want to see here.
I'm going to see if there's any questions that I missed in the chat.
I think now, cousin Eddie, have I missed anything to ask you that is relevant to your insights on this, which are amazing?
And maybe you'll come back on periodically to explain what the heck is going on.
But nothing I forgot to ask you that would be important to mention.
Not that I can think of.
No, I just wanted to tell you about C 130s if you had any questions about them, just because I thought I definitely.
Know enough about to help you.
F. Chaton says, Why would they have C 130 have a rocket booster for a quick takeoff?
That wasn't an option.
The C 130Js don't need JATO assistant.
The C 130Js' engines are about twice as powerful as the old ones.
The old ones were the ones that they used JATO rockets on.
And the problem was the JATO rockets would go off and not go off sometimes, and it caused a lot of damage to the airplane.
So we went away from those JATO assisted takeoffs.
I know what he's talking about, but we don't use those anymore.
Is it Jado like J A D O or J A T O, jet assisted takeoff?
Okay.
But they were too unreliable in their solid fuel rockets.
So once you light them, they're going.
And it just always caused problems.
So we stopped using those.
You said that I have to ask solid fuel rockets versus liquid.
Yeah.
So liquid, you could just turn off the gas, if you will, right?
The fuel, you could just turn it off if something happened.
But on solid fuel rockets, once you light them, there's no putting them out.
So when they would light off those JATO rockets, you couldn't turn them off.
You just had to, they just burned until they burned.
But sometimes they would light them off and one side would go off, but not the other.
So now you got all this differential force on the plane and they just caused a lot of problems.
That is wild.
That is okay.
Amazing.
Cousin Eddie, other than being in our amazing locals community, do you have any social media you want to mention?
I don't use social media.
I'm on that locals board and that's it.
What kind of person doesn't use social media?
And it's cousin Eddie on our Viva Barnes Law.
Locals.com community.
When was that?
You were on the last time when we had it was the helicopter crashing into the plane over Washington.
We didn't actually talk about the incident that happened at LaGuardia.
No, that was unfortunate.
That controller, yeah, he messed up.
Totally unrelated.
But just on that incident, and everybody.
It's a tragedy, and people want to.
People were saying that the pilots actually did something that prevented potential catastrophe.
Like, I read somewhere that they were saying the pilots were heroes in the manner that they dealt with it, which is they took the brunt of the fire truck to their cockpit as opposed to trying to turn, which might have exposed the gas, the engine, not the engines, I'm sorry, the fuel tanks.
If that would have happened in split seconds, that's a tough one.
Maybe I didn't see anything like that necessarily, but.
I'm certain that whoever was at the controls was trying to think of something to save everybody.
You know, not, and I'm there.
I'm not, no, there's no backseat driving or anything here.
The plane is coming in at 170 miles an hour, give or take at that point, or is it a little slower?
It would have been slower than that, probably 100.
And I don't know that exact airplane's landing stuff, but it probably would have been about 110 miles an hour at that point.
Hypothetically, you know, what goes in?
I've never, I've only seen planes, you know, come touch down and take off to avert disaster.
What goes into repowering so that it can, you can, I don't know, can you even just immediately take back off or, or it depends.
And again, I don't know that particular aircraft, but like on the one I fly, once the mains touch, once the main landing gear touches down and the spoilers deploy, you're not taken back off.
That's, you have to land at that point.
You're, you're committed.
Um, whereas like a C 130, I could have touched down at any point and pushed the power up and taken right back off.
And it just comes down to landing distances and all kinds of complicated aeronautical equations.
But basically, big passenger carriers, they don't want them doing touch and goes, is what you would call that.
So, in order to maximize their landing distance capacity, they really only train you to go around until the spoilers have deployed.
So, if I had to guess on that Air Canada crash, their spoilers probably came out.
And they were committed to the landing and they did.
There was nothing they could do about it.
Am I crazy for thinking it was a miracle that it actually didn't explode or didn't?
Yeah.
I'm surprised all people involved didn't die.
That was something.
Because I mean, I couldn't believe that the fireman on the truck survived.
But I don't know how much a fire truck typically weighs, but that's like a lot.
Biltong USA and Landing Distances00:03:35
Yeah.
It's like almost a fixed piece of steel, which is effectively a razor blade at that speed.
And yeah.
And they probably saw the truck and slammed on the brakes.
So they probably weren't going nearly as fast when they actually hit the truck, but they were still probably cooking pretty good.
Eddie, thank you very much for coming on and shedding some light.
And if you'll come back anytime you can and anytime I need a bigger brain to pick, let me know.
I may not be a bigger brain, but I know some stuff about airplanes.
Well, you know what?
I'm not sure that I know everything I don't know because it's infinite, but I definitely know who to go to when I have questions about specific expertises, and you're certainly one of them.
All right.
Thanks, Vito.
Have a good day.
Have a good day.
I'll see you soon.
Cheers.
Okay.
That's fascinating.
Cousin Eddie is my aviation guy.
Lynn Westover is my military guy.
Bill Brown is my.
I got a bunch of overlapping firearms and military guys.
Lynn Westover, Bill Brown, Ginger Ninja.
Ginger Ninja, who made this.
We're not yet done with this.
And by the way, I forgot to mention, we got Ash in America coming on at 4 o'clock.
It's going to be for the Rumble exclusive, Rumble Premium Locals after party.
We're going to talk about Tina Peters.
I just sound like a total Canadian.
We're going to talk about Tina Peters.
And I'm going to publish it across platforms afterwards.
But it was the way the timing of the show worked out, and Cousin Eddie was coming on to talk about this.
So, stay, oh, obviously, stick around.
Stay tuned for that.
We're going to get back to the leap stuff in a second.
But for now, what I do want to do, eh, duty, I want to do this.
Bring up a few of the rumble rants on Rumble.
Dominant one, who is undoubtedly going to make a joke, a homoerotic joke about Anton's meat.
Do not sit on Anton's firm and juicy meat.
Put Anton's firm and juicy meat in your mouth instead.
From King.
Underscore of underscore Biltong.
That's his, uh, what is that?
His, um, that's a rumble handle.
Biltong USA is not a discount code, no backdoor delivery.
King of Biltong says premium Biltong from Biltong USA.
High protein, keto friendly, no additives, US source beef, authentic South African flavor.
Get some now at BiltongUSA.com.
Use code VIVA for 10% off.
And we got, uh, oh, well, he did it twice.
Thank you, Biltong.
I hope you meant to do it twice.
And let me just go see what's going on on the Viva Barnes Law.
So it's interesting.
I certainly, first of all, amazing.
Assume that the operation went down.
It's amazing.
Now, whether or not it was whatever, we can get there later.
As more information comes in, the trick is simply to be skeptical, healthily skeptical.
Dr. Zoidberg says, I'm your crustacean guy.
Well, luckily, you know, I thought Bill was his MJ guy.
No, I don't do that.
And hyphen is the clock, man.
Yeah, that's amazing.
All right, now, back it up.
Do I want to back it up?
Just mind your business.
I want to replay the clip from the beginning of the show because I want to highlight something here.
So, Trump, Trump talking about.
I did it again.
Trump talking to Boot.
This is Trump talking about the potential leaker that could have risked or apparently did risk operational security of this rescue extraction mission, if you believe that, or military operation, if you don't believe that, or it never happened and we're living in the Truman Show.
Real-Time Journalist Insider Tips00:11:11
Listen.
But these two extraordinary rescues, because it was two, and as you probably know, we didn't talk about the first one for an hour.
Then somebody leaked something, which we'll hopefully find that leaker.
We're looking very hard to find that leaker.
And talked about there's somebody missing.
They basically said that we have one and there's somebody missing.
Well, they didn't know there was somebody missing until this leaker gave the information.
I want to pause it there because it's interesting.
Last week, there was a story of a stripper in San Diego or San Francisco that took to TikTok talking about how a bunch of servicemen came to get lap dances and they were saying that they're about to be deployed.
And this TikToking stripper took to TikTok to talk about her stripper experience and how she felt for these military men who looked, I don't know, stressed or whatever.
You know, they wanted one good lap dance before they went off for service.
And she didn't appreciate that by saying that, she's giving information that, to the extent it's accurate, there are military men and women.
Although I suspect many of the women are probably not hitting lap dances with the same propensity as the men.
No judgment.
I don't like strip clubs.
I've been to a strip club, as my grandmother would say, twice, the first and the last time.
And it was when I was 21 for someone's bachelor party.
And it really made me depressed.
But set that aside, people don't appreciate when they might actually be disclosing information that might be useful to an enemy.
I think there was another incident of someone sharing the lobster dinner, which is the last meal before people deploy.
And if you know that certain forces are being deployed, you might be giving information, useful information, to an enemy, or at least releasing operational, classified secret information to the public.
When a journalist might get wind from an insider hey, dude, plane went down, we got one, we're still looking for the other, and this journalist breaks it.
Well, set aside the journalist's liability.
There might be an issue about having.
Unwittingly disclosed classified information that actually puts people at risk.
And that might be what we're dealing with right now.
Why did I just take it out?
Because I want to bring it back in and continue playing from where I was.
So, whoever it was, we think we'll be able to find it out because we're going to go to the media company that released it and we're going to say, National Security, give it up or go to jail.
And now this goes back to I appreciate the Pentagon Papers where there couldn't be prior restraint on publication of classified information, even if it put military men and women at risk.
And I won't purport to take a legal opinion one way or the other as of now.
They know the outlook that published it, and now they're going to say, give us your source, someone within who told you that the other pilot had not been rescued, or you're going to go to jail.
Contempt, order to produce information, and if you don't do it, you'll go to jail for contempt of court and be held there forever.
How long?
Okay.
And we know who, and you know who we're talking about.
I'm not sure about that.
Some things you can't do, because when they did that, all of a sudden, the entire country of Iran knew that there was.
A pilot that was somewhere on their land that was fighting for his life.
And it also made it much more difficult for the pilots and for the people going in to search for him.
Pause it there.
I don't know who the lead, I don't even know.
I had to like ask AI or Google.
You know, Google is basically like, I'm not sure which outlet it was.
From what I understand, there might have been, I thought it was CBS.
That's why I used the CBS avatar in my thumbnail.
And then I thought, I'm not sure that I'm right about that.
Let me bring up the link of.
Where was it?
I sent it to myself earlier today.
Yeah, this is just the.
The search results where it says President Trump's demanding the media, yada, yada, here.
CBS News is the media outlet that published the details Trump is referring to.
And I'm going to pull up that article just to show you.
But then I also found something else somewhere else.
And again, nobody wants to make a mistake.
So we're going to always leave that window open and say this is the best.
This apparently, allegedly, is the article, at least that AI brought up as being the article that contained the allegedly classified information that was leaked to a journalist.
It's April 3rd, 2026, 7 33 p.m.
That's in the evening.
American fighter jet shot down over Iran.
One crew member rescued, which would imply that another one hadn't been.
And what do we say here?
There was a shot down over Iran Friday, and one crew member from the plane was later rescued by American forces.
U.S. officials confirmed to CBS News.
Do they say they had to say it under the protection of anonymity?
The F 15E is flown by a two member crew, and the search for the second crew member, a weapons system officer, is continuing.
Two U.S. officials said.
The jet was shot down by Iranian forces, the official said.
And the combat mission ensued shortly after.
Okay, here.
An A 10 Warthog was part of the search and rescue team.
Yadda, yadda, yadda.
Here.
Two helicopters.
Oh, here.
I just say they keep saying officials.
I just want to say anonymous is not in there.
Okay.
And source.
Let's just say the source is not in there.
And let's just see.
Official is in there again.
Were they allowed to disclose it?
Official said the helicopter carrying the recovered pilot was hit by small fire.
Fine.
The official who said the helicopter landed.
Yadda, yadda, yadda.
Okay.
It would seem that this individual was given information from an official, and that official wasn't allowed to disclose that information because it revealed real time, critical, operational information.
I did find somewhere else, and I don't know if it's accurate because we're living in a post truth world where somebody else is saying, well, someone else is at Ryan Grimm.
Let me see, do we know each other?
Ryan Grimm, reporter at Dropsite News, author of We've Got People, The Squad, and This Is Your Country on Drugs, co host of Breaking Points Signal.
Cherry Garcia.01.
That's weird.
He writes, as Amit Segal just acknowledged on his Telegram channel, he was the first to publish details about the missing second airman.
Segal is an Israeli journalist known for his immediate proximity to Netanyahu.
Trump has threatened to jail the journalist who first reported on this issue, on the missing airman.
And now this is, I don't trust screen grabs.
I'm going to double check this right now in real time.
In fact, we'll ask Grok if this screen grab is real, but I don't trust Grok's ability to review screenshots because it misidentifies based on photos.
This is allegedly from Amit Segal's Instagram page.
Will history remember that the decisive blow on Iran was delivered by the U.S. president with a rabbit by his side?
Trump, Amit Segal, we didn't talk about the first one we rescued, and then someone leaked something about the Navigator.
We're going to find whoever leaked it, whoever it is.
We'll manage to track them down.
As you may recall, this was first published here.
The Houthis today, there will be the most powerful attacks, and tomorrow, even more.
The Iranians should rise up against the regime.
Attack now in Tehran.
Now, I'm going to double check this because I don't.
Like feeling insecure about the information.
Let me ask here.
We'll go into Grok in there and just say, is the screenshot verified?
And let's just see if we can even get this from Grok in real time.
And this is the world that we're dealing with in terms of.
I have a long lasting theory that people love it when I do consider myself to be reliable.
Whether or not you trust me is different, where people try to get reliable sources to make mistakes so that they can then discredit them and say, oh, you fell for X, Y, and Z, or Z, whatever it is.
Agent two.
Yes, the screenshot is verified and authentic.
It's a genuine capture from Israeli.
I'm still not taking this for gold, but.
I meet Seagal's public telegram.
In it, Seagal posts in English a quote, paraphrasing, yada, yada, yada.
Seagal then adds, as you may recall, this was first published here.
This is his way of acknowledging he was the first to report the details of the missing second airman.
But then, who wrote the article?
Was Eleanor Watson, James Laporta, and Tucker Reels the CBS News article?
So, either way, we'll address the legalities of it come Sunday's show.
Viva and Barnes, Law for the People.
The reality is that people might be revealing real time information that will actually potentially put people at risk.
It's on the one hand one of the benefits of social media like X and whatever else where you can share real time information.
The risk is that it's inaccurate.
And the risk is also that sometimes when it's accurate, you might be revealing more than you should be revealing, given what's at issue and given what it might be inadvertently revealing to the general public.
But we'll see what Trump does with it.
I think one of the sarcastic Comments of Grimm's post is, oh, if it's an Israeli journalist and because Trump is owned by Israel, is he going to go arrest Amit Segal?
We'll find out.
I can also anticipate where people are going to go with potential untenable or more outlandish conspiracy theories.
Was Amit trying to sabotage America so that the incident turns into an even more serious Black Hawk-down type incident if he inadvertently or reveals that there's another soldier on the ground and it turns into a catastrophe that justifies or that?
Goads America even further into the war.
I can think, I can think like a conspiracy theorist every now and again.
Was it a happy accident?
Was it an accident?
Or was it deliberate?
Who knows?
One can never read intent.
Bottom line, if it was in fact revealing real time information that put that soldier at risk and made that operation even more risky to the extent you think the operation happened, that the operation was in fact a search and rescue and not a Bosch uranium grab, well, you might have just done that.
How do we like these thought experiments?
Okay, let's see what's going on here at our viva barnslaw.locals.com community.
Lucky and Grateful is a new name that I don't think I see too often in the chat.
4D chess is just a CIA tightrope to hide the fact that geopolitics are complicated, the game of kings.
Ali Michael, whose name I definitely know.
Ali, how are you doing?
It's ironic that Trump's social media company is called Truth Social.
I'm not trying to get.
Look, in a time of war, you have to be, unfortunately, deliberately misleading or at least deceptively misleading.
F. Chatan says this is so frustrating.
Iran shot it down, therefore, they knew the pilots ejected.
There was no secret leaked.
Well, I mean, we did ask Cousin Eddie.
You know, I mean, they knew the pilots were down either dead or alive.
They may not have known that there were, I don't know, if you can fly an F 15E with only one pilot.
So maybe they thought if there was only one, whatever.
You can understand the argument that it's real time information that could be used to aid the.
Adversary in this war.
Tony DeMarcus says, I used to work at a strip club.
Lord Buckley Movie Reviews00:02:12
Imagine how depressed I am.
No, I remember.
I have the distinct memory.
It was in Montreal.
And I want to say if anybody knows Montreal, they had that disgusting street called St. Catherine.
And there was a section of it back in the day that was dedicated to strip clubs.
It's such a disgusting thing.
Like, oh, yeah, I want to go to the strip club area of Montreal and go strip club hopping.
And we went for somebody's bachelor party.
And I remember, like, distinctly, Noticing it was a very weird, like a core memory, because I think it was 21 or 22.
Bruises on the woman's legs.
And I say, like, this is, and I'm looking around, it's like, this is probably the most depressing environment imaginable.
I've never been to one since, and I don't know what they're like in Vegas.
I mean, I can only imagine some of the night, the dance clubs.
I don't dance, but you walk to and from and see those things while I was heading to the poker rooms.
Nasty, nasty, nasty.
All right.
Is that it?
Yeah, that's it on that for now.
Let's go see what's going on in the Rumble chat.
Before I want to just put something on blast because Joe Hanneman, Steve Baker have started their new venture, and I think it's important for all of us to support.
I think it's important.
Sorry, I got distracted by the hold fast, Vivo.
I hope you're not talking about the strip clubs, Elijah Fire.
I'm not holding fast there.
I'm never going back.
Period.
No judgment.
I mean, I say no judgment.
Anybody who goes, whatever.
Quebec is a different culture, says Ned Toons.
They get businesses spinning.
Okay, here.
Yeah, they're gross, says Ultra Chase 513.
Prison is more depressing, says Gank01.
Well, yes.
And by the way, while we got everyone here, thank you for reminding me about prison.
Oh, Ash in America is here, I believe.
Okay.
While we're talking about prison, You may or may not know, everyone, the politics in the world, the state of the world is getting very, I'm not reading a script now.
This is, I'm just saying, politics is enough to make you very, very upset.
Viva and Lord Buckley go to the movies.
Why can't I find this?
And Lord, Viva and Lord Buckley go to the movies.
Streaming Trial and Truth00:07:47
Mark Grobert and I have started a new thing where we review movies.
And the last movie we reviewed was The Shawshank Redemption.
And what's amazing is, first of all, I've loved movies my entire life.
I studied film in Sejep, which is like the two years of it's like pre university after high school.
I did film.
I used to make videos as a kid.
And then look what I grew up to do as an adult.
I love reviewing.
This allows me to go back and relive or revive a passion of my childhood.
I've given everyone the link.
Go watch our reviews because going down rabbit holes of these movies and the facts and things that you learn.
When doing these, hold on, you guys see the intro.
Very intense.
Can't wait to do Mongol.
I can't wait to do Mezrin.
I have that.
I have a Mezrin, I think it was one and two on DVD.
Amazing move.
Anyways, go check it out.
Subscribe.
And all right, let's see if Ash is in the chat.
Let me text her.
I don't know if she's going to hear me right now.
Ash in America.
Oh, I hear it.
And now we're gonna, yeah, I can hear you.
Okay, here we go.
Okay, hi.
All right, amazing, Ash.
It has been a while.
When was the last time we talked?
Oh, the last time that we talked was when I was doxxed in the um 14th amendment trial, President Trump's 14th amendment trial, and uh, they stopped right after Kash Patel and they were like, Ashley, up, he's streaming unlawfully.
Remember that?
Oh, yeah, no, absolutely.
I remember, I remember because I had a similar experience where I thought that the court was talking about me being a streamer, and they weren't.
Yeah, that's gotta be a minute, um, Ash.
Okay.
For those who are meeting you for the first time, tell everybody who you're.
Oh, I'm an independent journalist that is sort of an enemy of the state here in the state of Colorado.
I work with Badlands Media, and you can find me over there six days a week.
And yeah, just telling the truth.
Telling the truth about Tina Peters and telling the truth.
It's not just Tina Peters.
There's so much corruption here.
I've had way too many stories that I could even have time to write.
But yeah, that's me.
Okay, now what we're going to do now, I'm going to go raid.
I think we're at the Russell Brandis.
We're going to wait a few minutes, actually, and then we're going to do the raid and then we're going to go to the locals after party.
But before we even get into the Tina Pita stuff.
So you have to refresh everybody's memory as to when you were doxxed during the Trump 14th Amendment in Colorado.
Now, I just have to get, I have to refresh my memory on that because that was when they were trying to remove Trump from the ballot in Colorado.
And they were trying to do it on the basis that he participated in insurrection and was therefore ineligible to be on the ballot.
And then the question at law was whether or not states could unilaterally declare.
Insurrection for the purposes of restricting from the ballot someone who was never charged with or impeached for insurrection.
And in the context of that trial, they had Kash Patel testifying on the stuff that Trump had offered the National Guard.
And so, sorry, that was the long winded description for those who forgot, but tell us exactly what happened.
And it was a civil trial.
So they had a finding of oath breaking insurrectionist in a civil trial just so they could go out and say oath breaking insurrectionist in the 2024 campaign.
The lower court found that Trump could stay on the ballot.
It then went to the Colorado Supreme Court.
They said he couldn't.
Then it went to the US Supreme Court.
And obviously, Trump is president now.
So he did.
But during the trials, it was actually right after Kash Patel's testimony.
It's day three, and I was streaming on Badlands, Ash in America on the screen, streaming on Badlands.
And it was, I've said a little punchy, you know, it was day three of a long trial, listening to people that I can't stand say things that aren't true.
And I'd started putting up overlays.
I had the judge as Jessica Rabbit and overlays with like sustained and overruled anytime she made a ruling.
Kash Patel gets off of the stand, and before they move forward with the next witness, Eric Olson, who was five seconds ago, Before this trial, a senior solicitor for the attorney general's office, but then quit, started his own firm, and this was his first case, suing Jennifer's fault.
Hilarious.
They were all, this was all their own little kayfabe law thing that happened.
But he stands up and he says, Your Honor, we've heard that somebody is streaming unlawfully.
No, doesn't have the right.
She says, Well, is the person covered under the expanded media coverage, i.e., is the person, you know, a journalist streaming on a network?
No, Your Honor, her name is Ashley Epp.
And she is streaming of her own accord.
So he just lied, right?
Like I've never streamed under my government name.
It's Ash in America, always, or just Ash.
And I was on Badlands.
I wasn't on my own channel, right?
So he just lied to the judge.
The judge turns, looks into the camera, and tells me to stop streaming, which is first I was like, I don't think they can do this.
And then I talked to John, who owns Badlands, and he's like, well, we should probably maybe just stop.
Like, you know, we don't know what's going to happen.
If I had, so six months later, I went through my own trial where I defended myself on First Amendment grounds.
And if I had done that before, Before this happened, I would have told them to eat all of the dicks.
Can I say that on here?
Oh, you could say whatever you want.
Yeah.
But I didn't.
I hadn't gone through that yet.
I hadn't actually defended the First Amendment in court before that, which I have now.
When they singled you out, were you not already on the political radar?
Because you had your trial later on, but you had already been, what do I want to say, charged?
We all know me.
I don't know if Sarah Wallace knows who I am, but Eric Olson definitely knows who I am.
Jenna Griswold definitely knows who I am.
And he just like, oh, Ashley Epps.
Like, you know, I've testified before the guy before.
And also, the next day in that trial, they brought up USEIP, which is the free association that I co founded with Holly at Altitude, hollyataltitude.com.
And they started asking one of the witnesses in President Trump's trial about USEIP, which had nothing to do with the 14th Amendment case, but I really believe was just intended to intimidate me.
No shit.
I mean, having a judge name you during the trial, and as though what you were doing was stream commentating, which was, you know, there was no publication ban.
In that trial, whatsoever.
You know, pure intimidation.
And you ended up winning your own or defeating your own.
Yeah.
We won it on a 52C, actually.
I defended myself.
We were accused of voter intimidation, suppression, coercion, and threats under the KKK Act and the Voting Rights Act.
And our attorneys, right on the eve of trial, said, you know what, you should really settle.
And this whole 14th Amendment thing had just happened where they then brought up USAIP.
And I'm like, this is a fishing expedition and they're going to turn the civil case into.
Criminal, there's no way I'm settling.
You know, you accuse me of violating the KKK Act, I'm gonna clear my name.
So, I fired them in December and then, you know, figured out how to learn the rules of federal court.
And we didn't even have to bring our defensive case in chief, they didn't have a case, they made the whole thing up.
And at the end of the day, we won.
Then they appealed.
We're in the 10th Circuit now.
Any day now, we should have an answer in that.
Unreal, they just keep dragging you through the court system, yeah.
All right, Ash, what we're going to do now, I'm going to go hit raid.
You're going to go raid Tim Pool, everybody.
Let him know from whence you came.
I'm going to publish the entire Tina Peters segment separately across all platforms because it's not just that important.
It needs to start getting to the right people's ears if it hasn't already gotten there, but I suspect it has, and they just have their fingers in them.
So, confirming the raid to Tim Pool, if you want to opt out, opt out.
And when you're in Rumble Premium, you're going to stay in, and we're going to have this party on locals and Rumble Premium, but the rest of the world's going to get it just not live.