Speaker 1: Welcome everybody to this warning. Addition, we're thrilled to be
Speaker 1: able to bring you jud Legum. Jud is an extraordinary journalist,
Speaker 1: one of the leaders of this new era of independent journalism,
Speaker 1: of people that can't be bought off, can't be made
Speaker 1: to bend the knee, can't be made to capitulate, and
Speaker 1: fundamentally are on your side if you're an ordinary person
Speaker 1: out there trying to understand what's going on. I have
Speaker 1: a political perspective that one of the issues of our
Speaker 1: time that must be dealt with very squarely is the
Speaker 1: accumulation of power, government power, police power, tech company power,
Speaker 1: pharmaceutical company power, the power of monopolists, the power of
Speaker 1: conglomerate that have stifled competition, that have become intrusive of privacy,
Speaker 1: have become arrogant, have become officious. Extraordinary moment that marks
Speaker 1: the end of an era, the beginning of a new one.
Speaker 1: At Trump's inaugural where he is sitting there seating the
Speaker 1: American oligarchs for the world to see, even in front
Speaker 1: of his cabinet. The indiscriminate, thoughtless damage done to public
Speaker 1: institutions without debate by the world's richest man, Elon musk
Speaker 1: the disintegration of that relationship. Jud Legum covers all of
Speaker 1: it and goes in depth, substantively reports facts that are
Speaker 1: necessary for citizens to have. In a free society, where
Speaker 1: there's no accountability, there can't be any oversight of government.
Speaker 1: And in this country, government is of the people, by
Speaker 1: the people, for the people, by design, and so we
Speaker 1: see a lot of testing, a lot of probing, a
Speaker 1: lot of assertion, and a lot of crumbling of institutions.
Speaker 1: And with jud Legum you have somebody who can help
Speaker 1: explain it. If you do not subscribe to popular information,
Speaker 1: I really urge you to do so. This is something
Speaker 1: that I read very very very early in my reading
Speaker 1: cycle of the day. It's something that I put in
Speaker 1: the first rank of credibility. I know when jud Legum
Speaker 1: says that this is the story of what has happened here.
Speaker 1: If this is asserted in a jud Legum story as
Speaker 1: a fact, it's a fact. And so we have spaces
Speaker 1: in this country where you can be informed, where you
Speaker 1: can find out what's happening, but it's on you to
Speaker 1: go find it, and so to be better informed, I
Speaker 1: really urge you to go to popular information and arm
Speaker 1: yourself with information and popular information. I imagine jud had a
Speaker 1: very specific meaning when you when you named it, Can
Speaker 1: you take us inside that how it came to be
Speaker 1: and as you were sitting there in that moment that hey,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna I'm gonna do this, how this gets started
Speaker 1: and how the name come to be.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, there's a there's a a famous quote
Speaker 2: that a democracy, you know, without popular information or the
Speaker 2: means for acquiring it, is a prologue to a farce
Speaker 2: or a tragedy. H And that was by James Badison,
Speaker 2: and the idea being that democracy itself, the whole premise
Speaker 2: of it is focused on people having an accurate understanding
Speaker 2: of the world so they can make decisions the whole
Speaker 2: massive people.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: And I think that that's something that's really under attack.
Speaker 3: Obviously.
Speaker 2: You have an administration now that is basing a lot
Speaker 2: of its efforts on inculcating people with ideas that that
Speaker 2: are are grounded in reality.
Speaker 3: So that's you know, that's really what what I'm trying
Speaker 3: to do.
Speaker 2: Uh, you know, and I'm not going to get to
Speaker 2: everything I do four for newsletters a week, but trying
Speaker 2: to pick out the things that are the most important
Speaker 2: or that not necessarily even the most important, but the
Speaker 2: things that I feel like are not getting adequate coverage
Speaker 2: elsewhere where I can provide some added value and bringing
Speaker 2: that to as many people as possible. So it's not designed,
Speaker 2: I think when I was conceiving of the name, it's
Speaker 2: there's a lot of political newsletters that are really geared
Speaker 2: towards sort of an insidery audience, people who are working
Speaker 2: in politics, the lobbyists, the staffers, all of those folks,
Speaker 2: and obviously you know there's nothing that they're free to
Speaker 2: read this newsletter as well.
Speaker 3: But my goal really is to have.
Speaker 2: Is to have this appeal to a broad audience, because
Speaker 2: that's where I think is really the important work to
Speaker 2: be done, and really underserved group of people.
Speaker 1: So you have this incredible body of work, and it's
Speaker 1: so in depth. Can you just take us inside. How
Speaker 1: you approach the week, how do you settle on this
Speaker 1: is what I'm going to cover this week? How much
Speaker 1: time goes into each story? How many stories are you
Speaker 1: developing at any one time, and what's the total footprint
Speaker 1: of popular information? I mean, your output to me is
Speaker 1: something that, Wow, he must have a giant newsroom behind
Speaker 1: him and I suspect the actuality. You don't, but I
Speaker 1: just you're very prolific, and you talk about necessary stories
Speaker 1: across this broad front and I find them just universally interesting,
Speaker 1: but they take us inside that story reselection process that hey,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna like, this is something I got to get
Speaker 1: on and I'm gonna go deep on this and then
Speaker 1: not not the not the names of course of sources,
Speaker 1: but how do you how do you get into some
Speaker 1: of this stuff as deeply as you do while publishing
Speaker 1: as frequently as you do.
Speaker 3: Well thanks for that question, Steve. I think the way
Speaker 3: that it really works is that I'm working usually on
Speaker 3: at least two tracks, most of the time three or four,
Speaker 3: so I try.
Speaker 2: I usually always have a few stories, and these are
Speaker 2: stories that I can be working on for for weeks,
Speaker 2: for months.
Speaker 3: You know, I'm working on a story. I'll just kind
Speaker 3: of give a little teaser forks.
Speaker 2: I think I'm finally gonna be ready to put it
Speaker 2: out next week on a member of Congress who just resigned,
Speaker 2: and I had some video of him appearing side by
Speaker 2: side with a lobbyist and sort of trying to understand
Speaker 2: what it was he was doing and what the implications
Speaker 2: of all that were and contacting people. And I've been
Speaker 2: working on that for a few weeks now, you know,
Speaker 2: making sure that I understood the got the story right.
Speaker 2: At the same time, I published four times a week
Speaker 2: at six thirty in the morning Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday,
Speaker 2: and so I'm always I always hit that that those times,
Speaker 2: and so as I'm working on those stories, I'm slotting
Speaker 2: them into some of those these longer term, you know stories,
Speaker 2: and some of them are these ones where I get
Speaker 2: a tip or a piece of information through people that
Speaker 2: I know, and but I also put my signal number
Speaker 2: out there or my signal username now out there so
Speaker 2: that people.
Speaker 3: Can contact me. That was what was going on.
Speaker 2: Of course, a lot in the beginning of this administration,
Speaker 2: so many people in the federal government just desperate to
Speaker 2: tell people what's going on?
Speaker 1: Is that chilled? Has that changed?
Speaker 3: It has?
Speaker 2: And I think the reason why is I had a
Speaker 2: lot of people in different agencies, you know, and I
Speaker 2: produced a lot of reporting on the Social Security a
Speaker 2: lot on omp different places where I had people who
Speaker 2: were on the inside, and anytime something that they thought
Speaker 2: was significant happit, they were reaching out to me. Most
Speaker 2: of those people have now left. The people that I
Speaker 2: was talking to, at least most of them have now left,
Speaker 2: And I think the ones that are.
Speaker 3: Still there, there's been a real.
Speaker 2: Crackdown and people are much more hesitant to talk. And
Speaker 2: I think my guess is that there's a lot more
Speaker 2: surveillance going on. There's a lot more aggressive rooting out
Speaker 2: of anyone who was trying to get information out there.
Speaker 2: It still occurs, but it's nowhere ne the level that
Speaker 2: it was. I think also part of it is sort
Speaker 2: of this natural kind of I think the things that
Speaker 2: were happening initially were such a shock. Maybe people aren't
Speaker 2: even reaching out as much because what's going on doesn't
Speaker 2: even shock them as much anymore.
Speaker 3: But but yeah.
Speaker 2: I have that and then and then you know, so
Speaker 2: so some of these stories are are are days or weeks,
Speaker 2: you know, and some of them are from tips. Some
Speaker 2: of them are you know, research projects that I'm looking
Speaker 2: at data or you know, there's filings coming out I'm understanding,
Speaker 2: Like when the you know, the end of this month,
Speaker 2: we've got a big filings, we'll understand and they'll finally
Speaker 2: be disclosed. Who's contributed to all of the super PACs,
Speaker 2: the main Senate super packs, the House super PACs. That'll
Speaker 2: be pretty interesting to see what happens. But then other
Speaker 2: times I don't have one of those ladies, so I'm
Speaker 2: gonna go and find something that I can turn around
Speaker 2: in six or seven hours.
Speaker 3: I do have two full time staff people.
Speaker 2: Who helped me out, so we can get you know,
Speaker 2: between the three of us, we can get pretty in
Speaker 2: depth in you know, six or seven hours, and and
Speaker 2: and try to find something something new, talk to some folks,
Speaker 2: look at some primary source information, and we'll get something
Speaker 2: out the next day. So so that's that's the that's
Speaker 2: those are sort of the two ways in which it occurs,
Speaker 2: and they're all kind of all going on at once. Uh,
Speaker 2: And it can be a bit of a challenge, but
Speaker 2: it's something I really enjoyed doing, so it's I don't
Speaker 2: I don't consider it a burden. It's just that's kind
Speaker 2: of you know, my my way of life. And then
Speaker 2: you get something out and you're thinking about the next idea.
Speaker 1: How do you know when something's hit? What? What what
Speaker 1: do you what do you measure success as right? You know,
Speaker 1: at some level you've made the commitment to report it
Speaker 1: you've done it with integrity, You've put it out there,
Speaker 1: so there's pride in the work. But how do you
Speaker 1: know when this is a piece of information that's really
Speaker 1: landed with the with the public. And how often are
Speaker 1: you seeing your original reporting then picked up in other
Speaker 1: places and carried forward? And is their crossover of popular
Speaker 1: information reporting into that corporate media space where they're sourcing
Speaker 1: popular information right as the credible, independent investigative news agency
Speaker 1: who has brought to light something that was not in
Speaker 1: the public sphere prior.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that certainly does happen, and we try to put
Speaker 2: all the information into each newsletter so that people can
Speaker 2: feel confident of that. So when we're gonna if we
Speaker 2: are going to report on a me that was produced
Speaker 2: by the Social Security Agency, you know, a big one
Speaker 2: that we put out was one where they were describing
Speaker 2: the impacts of scaling back and really eliminating phone service
Speaker 2: for a huge swath of beneficiaries, and it was really
Speaker 2: described as potentially catastrophic. This was in an internal memo
Speaker 2: that was widely picked up by a lot of media outlets.
Speaker 2: I think that ultimately what I'm looking for is impact.
Speaker 3: You know, I don't think this is just a.
Speaker 2: Process where you're just you know, entertaining people or tried to,
Speaker 2: you know, just find something that people enjoy reading. I
Speaker 2: hope people do enjoy reading it. I hope people feel
Speaker 2: like they're getting something out of it. But at the
Speaker 2: end of the day, I want the work to have
Speaker 2: an impact on the world. So a story that we
Speaker 2: worked on earlier this year regarding the big fight about
Speaker 2: the Supreme Court race in North Carolina, which was the
Speaker 2: very last race of twenty twenty four to be decided.
Speaker 3: The Republican candidate was trying to.
Speaker 2: Throw out tens of thousands of ballots and actually convinced
Speaker 2: the same Supreme Court of North Carolina that he was
Speaker 2: ready for to throw out a bunch of ballots on
Speaker 2: the grounds that they had never lived in North Carolina.
Speaker 2: We actually found and even with a local partner that
Speaker 2: we teamed up with, talked to many of these folks
Speaker 2: and found that they had in fact lived in North Carolina,
Speaker 2: some of them had never lived anywhere else. And it
Speaker 2: was just, you know, as often these things are, a
Speaker 2: data air that was then cited in both state and
Speaker 2: federal court and ultimately in the decisions that you know,
Speaker 2: settled that election. So that's not going to happen all
Speaker 2: the time. But for me, that says, Okay, we dug
Speaker 2: into it. We worked hard on this story, we got
Speaker 2: out and substantiated the facts, and now it's had an impact.
Speaker 2: Other things are going to have an impact over time.
Speaker 2: You know, I think that that's it's not going to
Speaker 2: be you put the story out, it appears in this lawsuit,
Speaker 2: and then the lawsuit goes one way. It's going to
Speaker 2: be something that occurs over months and years and hopefully
Speaker 2: you help shape people's understanding of an important issue.
Speaker 1: How do you approach this ice issue. I'll give you
Speaker 1: a political analysis of this, which is that this perversely
Speaker 1: named propagandist propaganda like named bill the big beautiful Bill,
Speaker 1: so big, so incomprehensible, and there's so many things in
Speaker 1: it that will harm p bull do real damage. We
Speaker 1: could talk about it for many, many hours. There's one
Speaker 1: big thing that didn't get through the bill, which as
Speaker 1: a political learning is important, and that was the public
Speaker 1: land sell off that Mike Lee tried to orchestrate, which
Speaker 1: was an act of profound you know, Taylor Sheridan could
Speaker 1: write thirty thirty series about the corruption in that public
Speaker 1: land spin off. But what the what the bill will
Speaker 1: be Berkeley, is that this created a national secret police
Speaker 1: force that, if it was a military, would be the
Speaker 1: fifteenth ranked military force in the world is which is
Speaker 1: a very potent military And they got it through without
Speaker 1: a lot of debate. And now all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: and it struck me that there was an ICE official,
Speaker 1: a sector chief, leaning against a armored vehicle and he said,
Speaker 1: he doesn't work for Karen Bass, and the federal government
Speaker 1: will do whatever it wants in Los Angeles. And you know,
Speaker 1: I wish somebody to ask him a follow up question
Speaker 1: because I wonder who it is that he believes that
Speaker 1: he works for. Right if it would have been Tom
Speaker 1: Homan or Christy nom or Donald Trump, I suspect his
Speaker 1: answer would not have been, what I work for the people,
Speaker 1: And of course he does. He works for us. So
Speaker 1: you look at this guy, the sector chief, and he's
Speaker 1: got his long rifle, he's got a ar it's got
Speaker 1: a ammunition kit, you know, on the on the back
Speaker 1: of it. You know, the whole the whole militarized picture.
Speaker 1: And it makes you think, well, you know, who's the
Speaker 1: enemy here. And so I'm fifty four and I've worked
Speaker 1: in a White House, I've worked in the Congress, I've
Speaker 1: worked for the governor of California. I've worked at politics
Speaker 1: all around the world at every level, and there's never
Speaker 1: been an official with the title sector chief that's mattered
Speaker 1: in the a life of an American citizen. I wonder,
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, how many powerful sector chiefs who
Speaker 1: command armies we're going to have in the United States
Speaker 1: posing on armored vehicles, announcing that the official who got
Speaker 1: millions of votes in the second largest city in the
Speaker 1: country and the fourth largest in North America doesn't matter,
Speaker 1: and their officiousness and their arrogant So I think that
Speaker 1: that story right in the in the change to society,
Speaker 1: it will break and the chaos it's in an unleash.
Speaker 1: How how do you intend to cover this? Right do
Speaker 1: you have? Do you think is ice penetratable? Right? The
Speaker 1: National Guard soldiers that are that are cooped up in
Speaker 1: this coast playing performance, Like, how do you conceptualize the
Speaker 1: the coverage of a story that at some level, if
Speaker 1: we were sitting around talking about this five years ago,
Speaker 1: six years ago, seven years ago, this would be a
Speaker 1: crazy conversation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think that looking at the bill,
Speaker 2: the bill that passed, it did not pass because the
Speaker 2: components of it were popular, or that the whole thing
Speaker 2: put together was popular. It passed because they had the
Speaker 2: power to pass it, and that's what they did. And
Speaker 2: so I think that what happens next is going to
Speaker 2: depend on people's understanding of how this plays out, how
Speaker 2: it impacts society. I agree that this ICE issue, and
Speaker 2: really the unfathomable amount of money that was given to
Speaker 2: IC not just oh well, let's double their assets. So
Speaker 2: this is twelve thirteen times. You know, they're what they
Speaker 2: had to work with before in a lot of these categories.
Speaker 3: So how do we.
Speaker 2: Allow people to begin to understand how these resources are
Speaker 2: being used. I don't think people want a secret police
Speaker 2: that's roaming the country snatching up their neighbors. You know,
Speaker 2: the reason why Trump was successful kind of demagoguing on
Speaker 2: this is because he painted the idea that he was
Speaker 2: going to be rounding up these horrible criminals. I think
Speaker 2: they've already run out of folks to target. They're ripping
Speaker 2: people out of these muties who've been there for decades.
Speaker 3: No criminal history.
Speaker 2: So for me, I'm thinking about, well, how can I
Speaker 2: get into the source actually looking at this today. One
Speaker 2: of the things I want to do, and I think
Speaker 2: I'm going to have I think it's going to be
Speaker 2: not too long, but probably a couple of months before
Speaker 2: this happen, is every contract that ICE is going to
Speaker 2: sign to spend this money, because they're not actually going
Speaker 2: to be able to spend it internally themselves. They're going
Speaker 2: to have to just outsource a lot of this because
Speaker 2: they don't have the capacity to spend this much money.
Speaker 2: Is public information that's listed on the government contracting database,
Speaker 2: and so that's I think a pressure point because there's
Speaker 2: going to be a lot of people, I think quite quick.
Speaker 2: I mean there's a lot of people already who are
Speaker 2: very upset. You know, Joe Rogan is very upset because
Speaker 2: he didn't think there was any possibility to predict this.
Speaker 2: But many people are very upset.
Speaker 1: And and.
Speaker 3: I think that allowing people to understand, well, what corporations
Speaker 3: are going to be complicit in this, who are going
Speaker 3: to be grabbing for this, you know, a piece of this,
Speaker 3: these billions of dollars, that's something where I think I'm
Speaker 3: going to add value because I don't think a lot
Speaker 3: of other folks are going to be looking at that closely.
Speaker 1: It is the private prison industry and area that is
Speaker 1: of interest specifically to you or that you think about
Speaker 1: as as top of mind as you follow the money
Speaker 1: on this. Yeah.
Speaker 2: In fact, we just did a story last week. This
Speaker 2: was while all this other stuff was happening, you know,
Speaker 2: the bill was passing all of that, there was a
Speaker 2: very quiet story that the f CC had reversed a
Speaker 2: rule it was put in place last year that would
Speaker 2: prevent companies from charging incarcerated people these outrageous fees for
Speaker 2: phone calls, you know, something like twelve dollars for a
Speaker 2: fifteen minute phone call and a lot of these facilities
Speaker 2: and there's really no reason. And so the question is, well,
Speaker 2: why are they doing this? Because the companies that sell
Speaker 2: these telecommunication service of prisons, it's not really at and T,
Speaker 2: it's relatively small companies. They don't really even get a
Speaker 2: lot of money to candidate, So why are they doing this?
Speaker 2: Looking into it, the reason why these fees are so
Speaker 2: high is because the people who operate the prisons, including Geogroup,
Speaker 2: cour Civic, the big private companies, they get a kickback,
Speaker 2: sometimes as much as fifty percent of all of the
Speaker 2: revenue that these companies bring in and they get it
Speaker 2: sent back to them as part of the contracts they sign.
Speaker 2: So we now have that industry, which as you know,
Speaker 2: is one of the top industries as far as you know,
Speaker 2: donating money to the Trump super packs, donating money to
Speaker 2: the inauguration. Just really one of the industries that's gone
Speaker 2: all that really went all in on Trump. And now
Speaker 2: you have the FCC for really no reason. Actually the
Speaker 2: chairman of the FCC, Brendan Carr, who's very conservative, voted
Speaker 2: for this rule last year because no one's really for this,
Speaker 2: even if you you know, I don't think anyone is
Speaker 2: pro criminal, but nobody thinks they should have to pay
Speaker 2: fifteen dollars to talk to their daughter or their mother
Speaker 2: for a few minutes when they have the opportunity to.
Speaker 3: Voted for it.
Speaker 2: Now it's been a sudden reversal, and I think it's
Speaker 2: that influence of the private prison industry, and so yes,
Speaker 2: I think they're highly influential. I think there's very little
Speaker 2: accountability for how they operate, and it's something that I'm
Speaker 2: going to have a, you know, a very close eye on.
Speaker 2: I think they're probably going to be one of the
Speaker 2: primary beneficiaries of all of this, all this money.
Speaker 1: When when you think about I had, I had this.
Speaker 1: I had an experience that was among the most astonishing
Speaker 1: of my life in this conversation, but it was at Auschwitz.
Speaker 1: And you know, the first time I went to Auschwitz,
Speaker 1: it was it was part of the US delegation for
Speaker 1: the sixtieth anniversary of the of the liberation and Eli
Speaker 1: Bezel was on that trip and I spent a fair
Speaker 1: amount of time with him, which was which was an
Speaker 1: extraordinary experience. And then I went back last last March
Speaker 1: and I went on a tour with the head guide.
Speaker 1: His name is Paul Powell, and he was a journalist
Speaker 1: who left a radio news job to become teacher educator
Speaker 1: guide there and he took Elon Musk around and I
Speaker 1: asked him, I said, well, he didn't make an impression
Speaker 1: at all, and he said, I'm afraid not. And that
Speaker 1: was early in the day out on this tour. And so,
Speaker 1: you know, hat a couple of takeaways from the from
Speaker 1: the experience. But you know, one of them is is
Speaker 1: that as you comprehend the place, it was that even
Speaker 1: the people like el like Elise who survived Auschwitz really
Speaker 1: didn't fully experience Auschwitz, in that the only people who
Speaker 1: did were the ones who walked down the steps into
Speaker 1: the showers, into the gas sin, into the ovens. Right,
Speaker 1: and there was no surviving that, right. Nobody came back
Speaker 1: from that, nobody, nobody survived that. And so we're in
Speaker 1: this corner of the camp and he tells me this
Speaker 1: story about what he describes as the Polish Clint Eastwood
Speaker 1: who escapes from Auschwitz. They kill a couple of SS
Speaker 1: guards and we're sitting off in this corner and he says,
Speaker 1: you know, people will say to me things like, well,
Speaker 1: is it true that even the birds don't fly over Auschwitz?
Speaker 1: And he and he and he points out a stork
Speaker 1: that is taking off from one of the ponds where
Speaker 1: the SS dumped the ashes of the of the murder Jews,
Speaker 1: and he says, look, there's a stork taking off. And
Speaker 1: he points to a building and he says, do you
Speaker 1: know what type of building that is? And I said,
Speaker 1: that's a water treatment facility and he says that's correct,
Speaker 1: and he goes, did you know that Auschwitz opened up late?
Speaker 1: And I said I didn't know that. And he said
Speaker 1: they couldn't get the permits for the water treatment, for
Speaker 1: the waste sewage plan, and for the fire codes and
Speaker 1: the barracks, and he goes, yeah, he goes the SS
Speaker 1: was not omnipodent in Germany. It was an agency of
Speaker 1: the government. It was powerful, it was corrupt. But the
Speaker 1: Germans were a highly organized bureaucratic society needed the stamp.
Speaker 1: And when the SS announced that the plan was to
Speaker 1: dump the waste of the one hundred thousand prisoners in
Speaker 1: the prison designed in the woods to hold one hundred
Speaker 1: thousand people, the German bureaucrat didn't say, why are we
Speaker 1: building a prison for one hundred thousand people in the
Speaker 1: woods here in Poland? Where are you dumping the waste
Speaker 1: for the one hundred thousand people when they sat in
Speaker 1: the river and there were Germans down river? He said nine.
Speaker 1: And so the killing gets off to a late start. Now,
Speaker 1: Schwitz and these buildings are built to last, and we're
Speaker 1: sitting there and he pulls out of his pocket a
Speaker 1: piece of the paper and he goes, hey, he goes,
Speaker 1: this is the permit, and he goes, that's the stamp
Speaker 1: that opened Auschwitz. And so it didn't It didn't open
Speaker 1: with a bullet to the head. It opened with a
Speaker 1: stamp from a water bureaucrat and as this concentration camp,
Speaker 1: and it is a concentration camp. And I'll debate anyone
Speaker 1: till the end times right about that. And the definition
Speaker 1: of what a concentration camp is in Florida is that
Speaker 1: in the debate we had as a society in the
Speaker 1: aftermath of World War II, where people look back and say,
Speaker 1: what did we know about the Holocaust and the camps
Speaker 1: and what could have been done? Could it have been
Speaker 1: bombed the rail lines? And of course the leaders of
Speaker 1: the Allied countries fundamentally said, well, in order to bring
Speaker 1: the killing to an end, the abuses to an end,
Speaker 1: we win the war. So anything that diverts us from
Speaker 1: winning the war prolongs the suffering of the Jews and
Speaker 1: the camp. And once you're in that position, there's an
Speaker 1: elemental pragmatism that gets involved. But at the beginning, right now,
Speaker 1: as the camp is coming to be, as it's coming
Speaker 1: to be formed, and they have a budget of forty
Speaker 1: five billion dollars to construct these camps, and put that
Speaker 1: in perspective, the top line NFL stadiums, the one in
Speaker 1: Vegas and the one in La the Sofi Stadium, where
Speaker 1: when you walk into it you say, holy shit. Those
Speaker 1: two stadiums cost two billion dollars each. So I don't
Speaker 1: know what forty five billion dollars worth of these detention camps,
Speaker 1: concentration camps look like across the United States. And I
Speaker 1: just like, how do you think about that as an
Speaker 1: issue in covering that as a as a society issue,
Speaker 1: Because at some level to me, even talking about this
Speaker 1: in those terms like as I feel totally confident at
Speaker 1: an honesty level, at an integrity level, right at at
Speaker 1: a truthfulness level about we have to talk about this.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, I'm like, am I crazy?
Speaker 1: And the truth is I'm not crazy? So like, how
Speaker 1: how do we talk about the coverage of this Budge
Speaker 1: day burgeoning forty five billion dollars of concentration camp building
Speaker 1: out across the country.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think I don't think you're crazy
Speaker 2: bringing that up. And I think one of the things
Speaker 2: that people forget is that we really the the fundamental
Speaker 2: legal principle that we're now you know, the Trump administration
Speaker 2: is now fighting against by setting up you know, these
Speaker 2: concentration camps, These the tension facilities. You know, we've seen
Speaker 2: one get created in Florida that I think is probably
Speaker 2: the you know, maybe maybe it's the blueprint for for
Speaker 2: the others. UH is that there was a concern that
Speaker 2: the United States did not do enough to take in
Speaker 2: Jews that were threatened in Germany and elsewhere and provide
Speaker 2: them with asylum, provide them with refuge.
Speaker 3: And that's why we passed a law in the.
Speaker 2: United States where we do not simply turn away anyone
Speaker 2: who shows up in the country without you know, all
Speaker 2: of their paperwork. We have a process in which they
Speaker 2: are able to make a case that they would be
Speaker 2: subject to persecution if they were to return home, and
Speaker 2: if they can prove that they can stay here. You know,
Speaker 2: that's something we decided after we saw what happened in
Speaker 2: World War Two and decided that we were not going
Speaker 2: to do so little again as far as taking people in.
Speaker 3: So now we have completely.
Speaker 2: Abandoned that and we're going really back into the opposite
Speaker 2: into the opposite way. So I think understanding the legal
Speaker 2: history and really the fundamental principles that are behind our
Speaker 2: immigration laws is important. That's not to say that we
Speaker 2: you know that twenty twenty five is the same as
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty five or nineteen forty five, and that we
Speaker 2: shouldn't make adjustments. But there was a time when Democrats
Speaker 2: and Republicans understood that these were human beings that deserve
Speaker 2: compassion and that shouldn't be demaized, you know. So hopefully
Speaker 2: we can find a way back to this. I think
Speaker 2: what we're in, what we're what we're dealing with right now,
Speaker 2: is an experiment to see how far this can be pushed.
Speaker 2: And that's it's it's it's quite distressing.
Speaker 3: It's quite distressing.
Speaker 2: But what keeps me going and wanting to understand as
Speaker 2: much as I can about it and then share that
Speaker 2: with the people, you know, who read my newsletter and
Speaker 2: and get the information I put out elsewhere, is that
Speaker 2: I've also seen how these things can shift rapidly back
Speaker 2: and forth, and sometimes you sometimes it takes unfortunately a
Speaker 2: severe overreach in order to provoke that kind of shift
Speaker 2: backwards too. So I think that's what's you know, that's
Speaker 2: what's confronting us here is are we going to go
Speaker 2: deeper and deeper and deeper into the into the darkness
Speaker 2: here as we you know, round up, folks, or are
Speaker 2: is there going to be a reality check.
Speaker 1: You know, there's a there's a reason that the manager
Speaker 1: of the Yankees gets more media coverage than the Triple
Speaker 1: A team, and Columbus that gets more coverage than the
Speaker 1: Double A manager, the single A manager. So when you
Speaker 1: when you think about people in the in the government
Speaker 1: and in the in the hierarchy, we cover the people
Speaker 1: at the top of the chain, the people that have
Speaker 1: sentate confirmed jobs, the secretaries of defense and State and
Speaker 1: so on and so forth. But the commandant, right the
Speaker 1: warden of this camp in Florida, is that an individual
Speaker 1: who's worthy of tough and unrelenting media scrutiny along with say,
Speaker 1: for example, the sector chief in Los Angeles who's leaned
Speaker 1: against the armored vehicle saying we're not we're not leaving
Speaker 1: as the city is held under a siege by its
Speaker 1: federal government. Is that I think? I think so. Is
Speaker 1: that somebody that is that should be covered relentlessly?
Speaker 3: I think so. And I think that.
Speaker 2: You know, there's there's a real effort to try to
Speaker 2: intimidate people against that kind of coverage. Say that you know,
Speaker 2: this is the media trying to docs you know this
Speaker 2: person or you know trying to subject them to harm.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm not going to print, you know, their
Speaker 2: home address or something like that. I'm not going to
Speaker 2: talk about you know, I'm not going to you know,
Speaker 2: hand out their phone number so people can call them.
Speaker 2: But I think letting people understand who they are, what
Speaker 2: their background is, how are they acting.
Speaker 3: These are people.
Speaker 2: All of these positions are positions where someone's supposed to
Speaker 2: be acting in the public trust. They're supposed to be
Speaker 2: acting in accordance with their local laws, the state laws,
Speaker 2: federal laws, the Constitution. So all of that is fair
Speaker 2: game because ultimately, you know, it's not going to be
Speaker 2: Donald Trump that is rounding all the people up. He's
Speaker 2: not going to be the one doing it. So if
Speaker 2: you limit your coverage just to the very top, you're
Speaker 2: going to miss a lot of the story. I think
Speaker 2: that it's also it also just is such a limiting
Speaker 2: lens to look at it, because if you only and
Speaker 2: this is I try to think about this, you know,
Speaker 2: as I'm thinking about, how do you plan out your
Speaker 2: week if if every story I'm writing is just Donald
Speaker 2: Trump said this and that's not true. You know, I
Speaker 2: could just write that story every day, But I don't
Speaker 2: think people would, and sometimes you need to write that
Speaker 2: story because it's an important story to write that particular day.
Speaker 2: But I don't think that's gonna get people anywhere that
Speaker 2: they aren't where they aren't already. People need to understand
Speaker 2: the full spectrum of how of how all of this works,
Speaker 2: and and that's what I think creates a greater level
Speaker 2: of understanding and a greater level of accountability because there
Speaker 2: right now, it's probably it's probably past date to hold
Speaker 2: Trump accountable for anything, but there's a lot of other
Speaker 2: people who's gonna need to work by his side who
Speaker 2: still can be held accountable. And I think that's that's
Speaker 2: a really important piece of business.
Speaker 1: One of the things that I find most curious about
Speaker 1: all of this, and I've had this conversation privately, but
Speaker 1: also on the warning, is the degree to which you
Speaker 1: look at the arrogance of the people involved in this,
Speaker 1: and there's no semblance of restraint or notion of well,
Speaker 1: we may be voted out and hold before congressional committees
Speaker 1: two years from now. It's as if they are deluded
Speaker 1: into believing that Trump's deaf teflon right covers all of them.
Speaker 1: And I know it is their arrogance in the moment, right,
Speaker 1: And that's the craziness. And it's not the fact that right,
Speaker 1: they know something that I don't know, right, and right
Speaker 1: they've got in the plan that it's all over and
Speaker 1: that it's entirely the arrogance. But do you ever, do
Speaker 1: you ever sit there in scratch your head when you
Speaker 1: look at the performances of some of the spokespeople, the disrespect,
Speaker 1: the factlessness, the just the lying, the yelling, the you know,
Speaker 1: the the preening, the performance of a Carolyn Levitt. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, I know my audience is skewing my age
Speaker 1: and up right, you know, I know, but I hope
Speaker 1: we have some young people on here, and you know
Speaker 1: they're just not old enough to remember Bagdad Bob Right,
Speaker 1: who was Saddam hussein spokesperson, right and was a caricature
Speaker 1: right of dishonesty right literally at the airport saying the
Speaker 1: Americans will never take the airport as the tanks are
Speaker 1: rolling behind him. I mean, she, Carolyn Levitt, is that
Speaker 1: level of disingenuousness and totally crazy. And you know, and
Speaker 1: and and you know, fairness to Bagdad Bob Right, Saddam
Speaker 1: Husain is going to shoot him probably right if he
Speaker 1: didn't say like what he needed to say, right, And
Speaker 1: you know Trump's not going to shoot Carolyn Levitt, I
Speaker 1: don't think. But what I mean, well, do you ever
Speaker 1: scratch your head and think about these people like it
Speaker 1: seems like they haven't imagined that they're about to be
Speaker 1: voted out of here, right, you know, at least in
Speaker 1: the Congress in two years like that there's no possibility
Speaker 1: of it? Or is that just me?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I mean I think for I think it's for
Speaker 2: It definitely takes a certain kind of person to be
Speaker 2: willing to do that, that's for sure. I think somebody
Speaker 2: like Gerrold Levitt, Like, when I think about it, I
Speaker 2: think she'll probably get us softly at lead somewhere. I
Speaker 2: could see her getting set up, you know, on a
Speaker 2: nice show on Newsmax or something like that, and it'll
Speaker 2: probably be fine. She may not ever have to confront,
Speaker 2: you know, what she's been involved with. The Thing that
Speaker 2: I just can't quite understand are these institutions and and
Speaker 2: people who are definitely going to be around at a
Speaker 2: time where you know, you'd have to think there's at
Speaker 2: least a fair possibility that it's going to be a
Speaker 2: much different, uh political environment. You know, you look at
Speaker 2: the Washington Post, which you know has has really taken
Speaker 2: decades of of work, you know, establishing itself as you know,
Speaker 2: one of the premier journalistic outlets, and kind of flushed
Speaker 2: a lot of it, you know, down the drain in
Speaker 2: in a few months here in an effort to appease Trump.
Speaker 2: I saw that, you know, just before we're getting on here,
Speaker 2: I saw that there. You know, they sign out a
Speaker 2: letter to all their staff talking about how you know,
Speaker 2: this is a new era they're they're going to read.
Speaker 2: They've revamped their opinion page, the opinion page that you
Speaker 2: know endorsed Pambondi for Attorney General, and you know, is
Speaker 2: doing everything they can to kind of cozy up to Trump.
Speaker 3: And if you're not, you know, if you're if you don't,
Speaker 3: if you're.
Speaker 2: Not on board with all of this, you know, we're
Speaker 2: we're happy to accept your your resignation, and we'll give
Speaker 2: you some you know, uh severts, a severts package.
Speaker 3: They are going to.
Speaker 2: Be around when they're going to have to have credibility
Speaker 2: with a variety of audiences.
Speaker 3: Trump is not.
Speaker 1: Gonna you think, do you think that they have credibility
Speaker 1: as an institution.
Speaker 3: Not anymore, not anymore.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think they've I think that they're they're
Speaker 2: certainly journalists there that I respect to continue to do
Speaker 2: great work kind of in spite of it, you know,
Speaker 2: so nothing to do with the institution anymore. But I
Speaker 2: think the readers, they've lost hundreds of thousands of readers.
Speaker 2: They're they're searching for a reader that doesn't really exist.
Speaker 2: But it's clear that the priory is to create good
Speaker 2: feelings within one person, which is Donald Trump, and that
Speaker 2: has worked. You know, Donald Trump has praised Jeff Bezos
Speaker 2: and what Jeff Bezos has done at the Post publicly.
Speaker 2: Jeff Bezos said that's what he was going to do,
Speaker 2: you know, that's what he set out to do once
Speaker 2: Trump got elected. And it's working. But my, my, my,
Speaker 2: The thing that I don't understand is that's going to
Speaker 2: work for a few years and then we're going to
Speaker 2: at some point move on to something else where we
Speaker 2: at least we might and where is that going to
Speaker 2: going to leave him? And And that's really what I
Speaker 2: don't understand. These are these are supposed to be some
Speaker 2: of the most sophisticated UH people in the world, these
Speaker 2: kind of you know, capitalists, savants or whatever you want
Speaker 2: to whatever you want to call them. It seems like
Speaker 2: if I can think of it, that they probably can
Speaker 2: also think of this, but for some reason they.
Speaker 3: Do not here or they or they're not thinking about it.
Speaker 1: Well, right from a from the Bezos perspective, right, you know,
Speaker 1: you have to let's unpack this. So Jeff Bezos says, well,
Speaker 1: this is what the consumer demands, this is what the
Speaker 1: audience needs to have in the way of news, and
Speaker 1: all of the changes to the editorial pages right reflect
Speaker 1: this sensibility. And this is a guy who just threw
Speaker 1: the wedding that he threw, right, So Jeff Bezos throws
Speaker 1: that wedding, and he thinks that the people of the
Speaker 1: world care about this, as opposed to being appalled by it. Right,
Speaker 1: So he lives in a total bubble of surreality and delusion.
Speaker 1: But you know, he's certainly not alone. I mean, I
Speaker 1: don't necessarily think he's any more delusional than David zaslov
Speaker 1: for example, Right, at some level, right, David Zasloff is
Speaker 1: even more offensive given that right, it's a failing public
Speaker 1: company and he's managed to right figure out how to
Speaker 1: rig a theft of fifty two million dollars of compensation
Speaker 1: right from the shareholders. But it's just also corrupt, and
Speaker 1: you know, and I wanted to ask you about that,
Speaker 1: which is what motivates you to kind of chase down
Speaker 1: the corruption in an era that is just so unfathomably
Speaker 1: corrupt and so fast. I mean, when I was in
Speaker 1: the White House, I had a sci security clearance, and
Speaker 1: I had I had a political job, you know, and
Speaker 1: I dealt with the press, and so I was terrified
Speaker 1: at all times of breaking the Hatch Act, violating the
Speaker 1: Hatch Act, which was a real thing if you worked
Speaker 1: in the Bush or the Obama administrations, until Kelly Ann
Speaker 1: disregarded it, and terrified of making a mistake with the
Speaker 1: piece of classified information. And the truth is right, you
Speaker 1: see these classified briefings and write what was in the
Speaker 1: briefing was on the front page of the New York Times.
Speaker 1: Some reporter asked you a question about a story on
Speaker 1: the front page of the New York Times after you
Speaker 1: saw the classified briefing in the morning. Right, You're in
Speaker 1: a difficult position. So I never talked about any of that, right,
Speaker 1: just never wanted to talk about any of that, any
Speaker 1: of that stuff, but the corruption, the liing that this honesty,
Speaker 1: like what keeps you motivated to keep chasing it as
Speaker 1: opposed to feeling defeated and drowned by it because the
Speaker 1: waters are rising everywhere with it. Right, it's so much
Speaker 1: worse and it was last year, which was worse than
Speaker 1: it was the year before, which was worse than it
Speaker 1: was the year before. In this titanic tidal wave of
Speaker 1: epic corruption. Yeah, it's it is stunning.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think just the not not that Trump
Speaker 2: is using the presidency to you know, profit before himself.
Speaker 2: I mean that I think everyone expected, but just the
Speaker 2: brazenness that's going on. I think I stay motivated because
Speaker 2: I'm trying to look at the long term view of this.
Speaker 2: One of the things that is demotivating is you are
Speaker 2: not going to shame this group of people into changing
Speaker 2: what they're doing.
Speaker 3: They're going to keep doing it.
Speaker 2: So you got to have to put that that because
Speaker 2: that's usually one of the one of the nice things
Speaker 2: about exposing something that's corrupt is that you know, if
Speaker 2: you expose it, well then they might stop.
Speaker 3: That's not going to happen.
Speaker 1: But I do find that to be a thread in
Speaker 1: the coverage though of him, then it holds out a
Speaker 1: possibility that it could stop, and may stop. He may
Speaker 1: do the right thing today, because I see, I think
Speaker 1: that's endemic to like ninety percent of the media coverage.
Speaker 1: And I don't mean to interrupt you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, No, I mean I think I do think that
Speaker 2: there's I do think that there's a normality about the
Speaker 2: coverage that doesn't reflect the abnormality of the behavior.
Speaker 3: So I think that that is said, Yes, I agree
Speaker 3: with that.
Speaker 1: And your your point is like, it's they're they're the
Speaker 1: good Fellow's crew, and the good Fellow's crew is gonna
Speaker 1: steal shit, right, yeah, and so Donald Trump isn't going
Speaker 1: to stop doing what he's doing, and so so go ahead.
Speaker 3: I didn't mean yeah, but I was gonna say that.
Speaker 2: I think what they are the goal of this is
Speaker 2: just to push ahead and push ahead in two exhaust
Speaker 2: people bull into kind of throwing up their hands, and
Speaker 2: to a certain extent it's worky. But I want to
Speaker 2: try to be a counterbalance of that. So we spent
Speaker 2: a long time and written several articles about, you know,
Speaker 2: about Jerry Kushner and this investment fund that he set up,
Speaker 2: which is mostly money from Saudi Arabia and other countries,
Speaker 2: and how he's now funneled that. Now, Jerry Kusher has
Speaker 2: never been in private equity, has never done anything about this.
Speaker 2: In fact, his primary experience was nearly bankrupting his family business,
Speaker 2: which he inherited and got bailed out of that, so
Speaker 2: no one would ever give him money. And in fact,
Speaker 2: the independent board in Saudi Arabia that decided that decides
Speaker 2: to do this said, this is a ridiculous thing where
Speaker 2: it gets it at only the crowd prints, you know,
Speaker 2: overruled them. But then you have him now funneling the money.
Speaker 2: He's now acting as a funnel and they're building you know,
Speaker 2: new Trump towers in the Middle East and in Europe.
Speaker 2: And so the money is going directly from Saudi Arabia
Speaker 2: into Jared Kushner's you know, Affinity Partners. He takes his
Speaker 2: management fee and all of the other cuts, and he's
Speaker 2: then giving it to essentially his father, the Laudadeld Trump
Speaker 2: and the rest of the Trump sons.
Speaker 3: It's gotten very little coverage.
Speaker 2: I think is probably the most brazenly corrupt scheme in
Speaker 2: presidential history, just just taking money from before envelopment and
Speaker 2: just pouring it right, just giving these millions of dollars
Speaker 2: right to the president. I think it's but I think
Speaker 2: it's I'm not going to get defeated by that. We're
Speaker 2: just going to keep beating the drum and try to
Speaker 2: make sure that there's at least someone watching this occur.
Speaker 1: So when let me just set to this story on
Speaker 1: the facts and correct me if my memory faults here
Speaker 1: and I get a detail of this wrong. But some
Speaker 1: six months after leaving the Trump White House, where Jared
Speaker 1: Kushner was initially denied a security clearance, was granted one
Speaker 1: by presidential intervention, and, according to multiple news reports, was
Speaker 1: the primary consumer of the nation's most closely guarded secrets.
Speaker 1: Was insatiable with his desire to have access to compartmentalized information.
Speaker 1: Jared Kushner, six months after leaving, takes in two billion
Speaker 1: dollars of direct investment to an investment fund, despite having
Speaker 1: no experience investing anything anywhere at any time ever. Takes
Speaker 1: the money against the recommendation of the Saudi professional advisors
Speaker 1: who advised the sovereign Wealth Fund. The Crown Prince directly intervenes,
Speaker 1: gives Jared the money and I said at the time,
Speaker 1: this isn't a this isn't a conflict of interest story.
Speaker 1: This is an espionage story. That is like, we have
Speaker 1: a country where why is oldra James in prison? Right?
Speaker 1: Why is the you know, I was thinking of the
Speaker 1: FBI agent, Robert, you know with these guys, these were
Speaker 1: small timers, right in terms of the money that was taken.
Speaker 1: It's it's astonishing amounts of money. And I couldn't agree
Speaker 1: with you more on the fact that it's probably the
Speaker 1: most brazen act of corruption in the entire history of
Speaker 1: the country. That's right, Robert Hinson, thank you postcards from home.
Speaker 1: It's like the third time today I've had a memory
Speaker 1: failure on someone someone's name. So I don't I don't
Speaker 1: know what's going on, but Robert Hanson, But it's a
Speaker 1: it's a it's astonishing right to behold the corruption? What
Speaker 1: why do you think that there isn't more coverage of
Speaker 1: it on on the television shows? Is it a resource issue?
Speaker 1: Is it that our voters excuse me, that our audience
Speaker 1: doesn't care to complex a story? Right, there's easier stories
Speaker 1: to tell, right, What why why isn't there more coverage
Speaker 1: of this?
Speaker 2: I I don't think it's too complex, and I don't
Speaker 2: think that people think there's a lack of interest. I
Speaker 2: do think it's an issue where members of the media
Speaker 2: have decided that because Trump's core voter base does not care,
Speaker 2: that this is not worthy of continual coverage. There was
Speaker 2: a much more complicated story, which I think was a
Speaker 2: legitimate story, which was when Hillary Clinton was running for
Speaker 2: office in twenty sixteen. There was concern that foreign governments
Speaker 2: who donated to the Clinton Foundation, not her, but the
Speaker 2: Clinton Foundation, would then get some kind of special access
Speaker 2: as a result because they donated to the Clinton Foundation
Speaker 2: and the Clinton Foundations and using that money to buy
Speaker 2: anti malarial drugs or whatever they're doing. I think that's
Speaker 2: a legitimate thing to talk about. You know that that
Speaker 2: could be a conflict. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't.
Speaker 2: I did an analysis between January first, twenty fifteen, an
Speaker 2: election day, so that basically the whole campaign in twenty sixteen,
Speaker 2: The New York Times wrote seventy nine stories about this issue.
Speaker 2: That's one story a week for twenty two months about
Speaker 2: the possibility that this for now, they were going to
Speaker 2: stop taking for money if she were to have won.
Speaker 2: So This is about prior money being given out, not
Speaker 2: while she was president. Now we have money that's being
Speaker 2: dulled out while he's president that is not going to
Speaker 2: a charity, but is directly benefiting a company that is
Speaker 2: owned and controlled by Donald Trump. And it has gotten
Speaker 2: a couple of stories, but you don't see this kind
Speaker 2: of continual coverage that can drive it into the consciousness.
Speaker 3: Of the American voter.
Speaker 2: I bet very few people are even aware that this
Speaker 2: has occurred because it got Why why why won't they
Speaker 2: cover it?
Speaker 1: Why do you thing? I think?
Speaker 3: I do think it's an idea that.
Speaker 2: His that his voters don't don't care that somehow it's
Speaker 2: when it's your voters that are I actually don't I mean,
Speaker 2: I'm speculating.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I think it deserves more coverage. But of course there's
Speaker 2: ways to continue this because he's now using this money,
Speaker 2: he's developing, you know, an island in Albania. And every
Speaker 2: time he's doing this, it's creating conflicts because now Trump
Speaker 2: and Kushner's profits are contingent on good relationships with those
Speaker 2: local governments because they need to get all the permits
Speaker 2: and everything else that they're doing. This is occurring simultaneously.
Speaker 2: While Trump is renegotiating teriff rates with every country on Earth,
Speaker 2: so will the country is that Trump needs to maintain
Speaker 2: good relationships are to complete these projects, get better teriff freights.
Speaker 2: That's certainly something I'm keeping my eye on with this,
Speaker 2: and I think that to the extent, I don't think
Speaker 2: it's true that people do not care about these issues.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: Do Trump's corps voters, the twenty five or thirty percent
Speaker 2: of Americans who are gonna go out and vote for
Speaker 2: Trump no matter what happens, did they care? Probably not,
Speaker 2: because they don't. They don't seem to change their view
Speaker 2: on this. But I do think there are people who care,
Speaker 2: and there are people who would want to see other
Speaker 2: folks take a stand on this if it could be
Speaker 2: raised now hopefully. I mean, one thing that could happen
Speaker 2: that could change, you know, things change if the Democrats,
Speaker 2: you know, regain let's say the House, you know, one
Speaker 2: of the chambers. Something like that they could have here
Speaker 2: is they could have a hearing on this. They could
Speaker 2: have they could subpoena people, they could get more information
Speaker 2: out there. And that's something that I see as Okay, well,
Speaker 2: we have to start setting the predicate for this and
Speaker 2: start laying out the facts so that at least when
Speaker 2: we get to the point in which that might be
Speaker 2: a possibility, maybe those members of Congress can understand what's
Speaker 2: at stake and what's going well.
Speaker 1: I send your stuff around to no small number of
Speaker 1: members of Congress, and you know, we talk about it, right,
Speaker 1: you know, on text, and it makes an impact and
Speaker 1: they see it even though right the opposition such as
Speaker 1: it is and the Congress isn't hitting like I would
Speaker 1: like to see it see it hit. And there's a
Speaker 1: bunch of different reasons for that. But let me just say,
Speaker 1: as we come up on the hour, my admiration for
Speaker 1: you is immense. You are a person of integrity. Uh.
Speaker 1: You truly are the best of what journalism is. And
Speaker 1: what journalism is is a public service that is essential
Speaker 1: in a free society to give the public the information
Speaker 1: they need to have to hold the government of the people,
Speaker 1: by the people, for the people accountable because some of
Speaker 1: the people are bad. And that's the way, that's the
Speaker 1: way it's always been right. And power corrupts, and absolute
Speaker 1: power corrupts absolutely as the as the saying goes, and
Speaker 1: so one of the things when you when you consider
Speaker 1: the collapse and I and I consider it a collapse
Speaker 1: of corporate media, the integrity of so many institutions that
Speaker 1: that we counted on. If you took a glass and
Speaker 1: you and you threw it against the wall and it
Speaker 1: fracts and all those chards fell into the soil, that's
Speaker 1: how you have to think about that moment. But because
Speaker 1: this is the United States, that soil is hospitable because
Speaker 1: of the First Amendment to an independent journalism and at
Speaker 1: the foremost front of that the tip of the sphere,
Speaker 1: the best of the best and really getting into complex issues,
Speaker 1: covering them with a great deal of integrity, and putting
Speaker 1: it out there, not looking for outreage, not looking to
Speaker 1: antagonize into insight, but to inform, to arm and formed
Speaker 1: citizen is a dangerous citizen to the authority of any oppressive,
Speaker 1: tyrannical force. And that is essential in this moment. And
Speaker 1: so for the two five hundred people on this evening,
Speaker 1: Wednesday evening who've taken time out of your out of
Speaker 1: your night, thank you for joining. Really urge all of
Speaker 1: you and follow me. Please subscribe to Judd Legum and
Speaker 1: support that work. He can't do it simply by force
Speaker 1: of his personality and indefatigability. He needs your support, and
Speaker 1: I hope you'll consider giving it to him. Jud I'm
Speaker 1: gonna leave the final word with you tonight to say
Speaker 1: good night to everybody, but thank you so much for
Speaker 1: joining and for the conversation, and keep up the great
Speaker 1: job you're doing. You really are a great patriot, and
Speaker 1: the work that journalists do, like yourself is the work
Speaker 1: of patriots at a time when this country is in
Speaker 1: a great crisis because of all the lying, because of
Speaker 1: all the power grabbing, because of all the corruption, and
Speaker 1: because of all of the people who have lost faith.
Speaker 1: Been a really powerful idea. So thank you so much
Speaker 1: for being here with all of us tonight. Well, thanks
Speaker 1: so much for having me, h Steven. I think in
Speaker 1: the I've really enjoyed this conversation.
Speaker 2: I think, you know, it's very clear why you've collected
Speaker 2: such a large and passionate following on this platform. You
Speaker 2: bring such a rich political and historical perspective to all
Speaker 2: of these issues, which I think is so important because
Speaker 2: we get wrapped up in each moment, you know, every year,
Speaker 2: it's like the moments and the news cycle we used
Speaker 2: to talk about news cycles as if it was a
Speaker 2: day or an hour, and it's just the unit of
Speaker 2: time keeps getting shorter and shorter. So I think it's
Speaker 2: really important to broaden your aperture out to understand the
Speaker 2: scope of things, and I think you really help people
Speaker 2: do that. Thanks for having me for hosting b and
Speaker 2: thanks everyone for tuning in and listening.
Speaker 1: Thank you, jud Keep up to Fight. I'm Steve Schmidt.
Speaker 1: This is the warning. I invite you to join this
Speaker 1: community where I promise to be honest, blunt and direct
Speaker 1: about what is happening in this country. America is in crisis.
Speaker 1: Follow and subscribe to this channel and on substack. Thank
Speaker 1: you