Speaker 1: Today, we've got another exciting mini episode of Mission Implausible.
Speaker 2: You know, every day when you open up Twitter or
Speaker 2: you watch the news, it's one after the other. I
Speaker 2: just just today, I've opened my Twitter and there's from
Speaker 2: Trump ally Candace Owens. She's now pushing a conspiracy theory
Speaker 2: that the wife of French President Emmanuel mccron is a man. Like,
Speaker 2: where does stuff like that come from?
Speaker 1: These things become sort of litmus tests that you know,
Speaker 1: you gotta believe it or you're not in the club.
Speaker 1: I mean, not only did she say that mccrone's wife
Speaker 1: was born a man, but she also said that she
Speaker 1: was betting her professional career on this. But of course
Speaker 1: she will.
Speaker 2: Does you have a professional career?
Speaker 1: Oh no, no, I know she's a news commentator, I guess,
Speaker 1: but she well, she's an entertainer, she's not a journalist.
Speaker 1: But really, when I read that, it struck me. It's
Speaker 1: very much like the Birther conspiracy. I'm going to make
Speaker 1: some outlandish claim assertion, and I don't have the burden
Speaker 1: of proof, but you have to prove that I'm wrong.
Speaker 2: And I think your willingness to go to those extremes
Speaker 2: at you into the club that's like her willingness to
Speaker 2: say this stuff publicly means that she's a warrior for
Speaker 2: our side. One of the things that the right wing
Speaker 2: media has picked up on a New York Post in particular,
Speaker 2: is they take cuts of activities where President Biden's involved,
Speaker 2: and they cut them cleverly to try to make it
Speaker 2: look like Biden's walking away or stumbling or not paying
Speaker 2: attention or The thing that's patently crazy about it is
Speaker 2: like it's just so clear what they're doing, Like all
Speaker 2: you got to do is watch the rest of the clip.
Speaker 2: But obviously I think they're trying to pander to people
Speaker 2: who aren't really paying attention to politics, so they just
Speaker 2: see something saying, oh my god, did you see that
Speaker 2: that President Biden just wandered off like a crazy man? Right,
Speaker 2: and a certain number of people are going to buy
Speaker 2: into it.
Speaker 3: RNC Research, which is managed by Donald Trump's campaign, shared
Speaker 3: a clip which appeared to show President Biden wandering off
Speaker 3: from other world leaders before the Italian Prime Minister comes
Speaker 3: over to alert him about a group photo. That moment
Speaker 3: is also on the front cop of Today's New York
Speaker 3: Post with the headline Meander in Chief. But these photos
Speaker 3: and the clip you just saw don't show the full
Speaker 3: context of what was happening.
Speaker 4: There was another video circulating the New York Post yesterday
Speaker 4: suggesting that President Biden awkwardly saluted the Prime Minister of Italy.
Speaker 4: You watched the video. It was less than a second
Speaker 4: in the middle of a handshake, he puts his hand
Speaker 4: down like that. And they're funneling that straight into the
Speaker 4: New York Post, onto Fox News, and apparently even into
Speaker 4: the Wall Street Journal.
Speaker 1: So Hunter Biden was convicted of gun charges buying a
Speaker 1: gun while under the influence of being an edictor under
Speaker 1: the influence of drugs, and found guilty by a jury
Speaker 1: of his peers. And then there's a Democratic senator who's
Speaker 1: under investigation for corruption and endes out of New Jersey.
Speaker 1: And there's another congressman who's also under indictment, a Democratic congressman.
Speaker 1: And you would think that on the mega side they
Speaker 1: would say, oh, well, this clearly shows that the Department
Speaker 1: Justice isn't working. And yet what the claim is is that, ah,
Speaker 1: this is all part of some grand scheme and that
Speaker 1: you know, Hunter Biden was thrown under the bus by
Speaker 1: the Bidens to distract from the fact So there's basically
Speaker 1: two possibilities. One is the Department of Justice is doing
Speaker 1: its job and Donald Trump is a felon right, which
Speaker 1: is straight up what it is that he's guilty. And
Speaker 1: the other is this is part of some grand conspiracy
Speaker 1: that involves the Justice Department to go after other Democrats
Speaker 1: to deflect from Trump.
Speaker 2: You know, we've learned in this podcast why conspiracy theories
Speaker 2: are so popular because you can always double down. You
Speaker 2: can always say something is company for something else. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so you know it's like, oh, Biden's son was found guilty. Ah,
Speaker 2: that must mean right as a cover for something else.
Speaker 2: And you can just keep going with that. You're not
Speaker 2: trying to convince everyone, You're just trying to keep some
Speaker 2: people on your side.
Speaker 1: I would agree with you, except for January sixth. Now,
Speaker 1: if you remember January, stick started out with what were
Speaker 1: the different versions of this? First of all, it wasn't
Speaker 1: Trump supporters who stormed the building, remember this, It was Antifa.
Speaker 1: It was Antifa. And then they were desperately looking for
Speaker 1: pictures of people of color or so then it was no, no,
Speaker 1: it wasn't Antifa, it was the FBI. These peaceable people,
Speaker 1: they were really nice people, but these one or two
Speaker 1: FBI guys like incited them to attack, so it wasn't
Speaker 1: their fault. Yeah, that didn't work either. So then it
Speaker 1: was like, okay, they were our guys. They weren't incited,
Speaker 1: but they were peaceful. It was like nothing happened. It
Speaker 1: was all fine. They were invited in. It went from
Speaker 1: it wasn't us, it was us, but we were like
Speaker 1: made to do it by the FBI too. It didn't happen.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's no logic.
Speaker 2: There was logic is you kicked the ball. You're pushing
Speaker 2: the ball down the field to see whats and just
Speaker 2: continuing to come up with stuff so that you never
Speaker 2: actually accept blame. And then you hope that the next
Speaker 2: election rise your way, and if it doesn't, you just
Speaker 2: keep going. You know who you knows. I would suggest
Speaker 2: to people there's a really good book Michael Hayden, the
Speaker 2: former CIA director, a real.
Speaker 1: Hero, American hero and a Republican.
Speaker 2: Yeah, wrote a book called The Assault on Intelligence about
Speaker 2: the post truth world, and he talks about how can
Speaker 2: the national security state and the intelligence community function when
Speaker 2: we're in this sort of post truth world where nothing
Speaker 2: is true?
Speaker 1: So ja you know some of the conspiracies happening now
Speaker 1: is that the Epic Times, which is this newspaper and
Speaker 1: this online presence. It's run basically by the following Gong
Speaker 1: religious cult that came out of China that's now banned
Speaker 1: in China. And the head of the Epic Times was
Speaker 1: just arrested for money laundering. And apparently what was going
Speaker 1: on was that the Epic Times was reporting huge revenue,
Speaker 1: and where that revenue was actually coming from is they
Speaker 1: were washing profits from organized crime. The money was coming
Speaker 1: in from fallacious workers' comp claims, and basically they were
Speaker 1: taking the money and paying seventy cents on the dollar
Speaker 1: from the worker's comp claims, and they were plowing it
Speaker 1: into their own organization and then using that to buy
Speaker 1: political influence, putting it into the Republicans. The Feds claim
Speaker 1: that they can prove that he stile at least sixty
Speaker 1: seven million dollars and the Epic Times was basically a
Speaker 1: right wing mouthpiece, but it was a criminal conspiracy that
Speaker 1: was buying influence.
Speaker 2: I think this is one of the bigger things in
Speaker 2: the last couple of decades is this attack on what
Speaker 2: they call MSM main street media.
Speaker 1: And do they have fact checkers, or don't they. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and
Speaker 1: they get things wrong, but they'll usually say so afterwards.
Speaker 1: I mean, there was a piece I think it was
Speaker 1: yesterday in the Post I thought spoke really well of it.
Speaker 1: It was the Post finding dirt on the incoming editor
Speaker 1: of the Washington Post, Right, I mean, so can you
Speaker 1: imagine that at Fox? But go into the Epic Times,
Speaker 1: which is run by a foreign religious cult that is
Speaker 1: also a criminal money laundering operation. I don't think you
Speaker 1: should be getting your news from them.
Speaker 2: Let's take a break, we'll be right back.
Speaker 1: And we're back, John. You know, you could talk import
Speaker 1: to anybody on the importance of the intelligent oversight committees
Speaker 1: in Congress.
Speaker 2: There's two oversight committees whose job is to provide oversight
Speaker 2: to the intelligence community and that include CIA. And one
Speaker 2: is in the House, the Hipsie House Permanent Select Committee Intelligence,
Speaker 2: and the other one is SISSY, the Senate Select Committee
Speaker 2: on Intelligence.
Speaker 1: Love Sissy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, their job is to provide oversight. The intelligence community
Speaker 2: has to report to them on the things that they're doing,
Speaker 2: both covert action.
Speaker 1: And report everything. And they control their money. That's right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they can they control the money. And I
Speaker 2: think we've talked about it in previous episodes about sort
Speaker 2: of reforms and the intelligence community in nineteen seventies that
Speaker 2: pulled in what was becoming of sort of a more
Speaker 2: rogue intelligence community that was doing things that presidents asked
Speaker 2: them to do, but maybe was not something that was
Speaker 2: fully compliant with our policy or some of our laws
Speaker 2: even And so traditionally leaders in the House and the
Speaker 2: Senate have tried to put serious people on those committees.
Speaker 2: And just recently, Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House
Speaker 2: of Representatives, chose to place two very sort of extremist
Speaker 2: congress people, Representative Ronnie Jackson of Texas and Representative Scott
Speaker 2: Perry of Pennsylvania, on the House Permanent Select Committee Intelligence.
Speaker 2: There's a real concern amongst some others in Congress that
Speaker 2: this is a real mistake. Ronnie Jackson was the President's
Speaker 2: doctor during the Trump administration and was a former naval
Speaker 2: admiral who was then bucked down to yeah there was
Speaker 2: demoted based on some of his activities and his drinking,
Speaker 2: and then ran for Congress in Texas and is one
Speaker 2: of the most extreme right wing Republicans and Scott Perry.
Speaker 2: It was specifically involved in the attack on that's right,
Speaker 2: the capital on Genuous sixth and even.
Speaker 1: Part of that. And we have John. We've briefed Hipsy
Speaker 1: and Sissy numerous times, and Hipsey and Sissy often comes
Speaker 1: out to like foreign posts where we've been, where we've
Speaker 1: been chiefs, and we sit down and we talk with them.
Speaker 1: And I've been pretty impressed with both the Republicans and
Speaker 1: the Democrats on Hipsy and Sissy by and large there
Speaker 1: they're serious people, and people may not realize that when
Speaker 1: CIA officers and we sit down with an important source,
Speaker 1: like you know, a Russian asset is going to tell
Speaker 1: us what's going on in the Kremlin, we look at
Speaker 1: them and we say, I can keep you alive, I
Speaker 1: can keep your identity secret. And yet that information is
Speaker 1: often available. We may not offer it to the to
Speaker 1: Sissy and Hipsy, they may not want to know the
Speaker 1: exact names and so forth. But you know, lives are
Speaker 1: at stake. It's worked pretty well, but putting firebrands, partisans,
Speaker 1: conspiracy theories into these committees could really hurt national security
Speaker 1: and it's going to get people killed. This is a
Speaker 1: serious business.
Speaker 2: Is Congressman hold ahand wrote says that there are literally
Speaker 2: hundreds of duly elected and upstanding members of Congress on
Speaker 2: both sides of the who understand the gravity of the
Speaker 2: responsibility of oversight, particularly the seriousness of overseeing our nation's
Speaker 2: most dear and potentially sensitive intelligence data and information. These
Speaker 2: other representatives have no record of personal misconduct or entanglement
Speaker 2: in criminal activity, no active conflict of interest for the
Speaker 2: agencies under jurisdiction, and not at risk of compromise by
Speaker 2: forum aligned interest, and the Speaker of the House should
Speaker 2: know better.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I remember this is partisan, but it's sort of funny.
Speaker 1: I remember there was one I'm not even going to
Speaker 1: say what it was, a congressman or a senator, but
Speaker 1: it was a very senior Republican and after Trump won,
Speaker 1: it was the country I was in. I was the chief,
Speaker 1: and that they were coming through getting briefings, and afterwards
Speaker 1: we went out for drinks. There were three Republicans. They
Speaker 1: were very nice, very thoughtful. We were drinking whiskey in
Speaker 1: this nice hotel. They were picking up the bill because
Speaker 1: I can't pay for it. One of them said, I
Speaker 1: asked him what he thought of the president elect. Trump,
Speaker 1: and he said, you know, he's a retard, but he
Speaker 1: must have something because that's who they elected. And he
Speaker 1: was sort of shaking his head. It's like, I can't
Speaker 1: believe we won this thing.
Speaker 2: Well, Jerry, another short episode of Partonage, and I'm saying
Speaker 2: that without having any clue actually what it means other
Speaker 2: than from context.
Speaker 1: In our next episode, we're going to revisit what's going
Speaker 1: on with Hunter Biden's laptop, an update the story which
Speaker 1: we are unfortunately personally involved Hunter biden laptop. It's like
Speaker 1: Shaharah Zad's story, right, you know, she had to continue
Speaker 1: her story forever. The Emperor would have her killed when
Speaker 1: her story end. So Hunter Biden's Laptop is the Shahara
Speaker 1: Zad of politics. Never stops