Speaker 1: Hey, guys, ready or not?
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Speaker 3: But enough with that, let's get to the show.
Speaker 4: During our sixty minutes interview, Kamala Harris was also asked
Speaker 4: a question that it seems like she wasn't quite ready for.
Speaker 1: If she might not be ready for the answer. Here,
Speaker 1: let's take a lesson.
Speaker 5: Which foreign country do you consider to be our greatest adversary?
Speaker 6: I think there's an obvious one in mind, which is Iran.
Speaker 6: Iran has American blood on their hands. Okay, this attack
Speaker 6: on Israel two hundred ballistic missiles. What we need to
Speaker 6: do to ensure that Iran never achieves the ability to
Speaker 6: be a nuclear power? That is one of my highs priority.
Speaker 5: So that must be is building a nuclear weapon?
Speaker 1: Would you take military action?
Speaker 6: I'm not going to talk about hypotheticals at this moment.
Speaker 3: I'm Sorry, what what.
Speaker 2: I've been I've been upset about this basically from the
Speaker 2: moment that I saw this, because this was in the overtime. Yeah,
Speaker 2: first of all, why didn't they put that in there?
Speaker 2: That's an insane thing to say. So we're talking about
Speaker 2: a regional power, non nuclear state, maybe nuclear that threatens.
Speaker 2: Is that is the right answer if your name is Israel,
Speaker 2: if you're the president of the United Look, even with
Speaker 2: a liberal framework, say Russia. Russia is a stupid answer too.
Speaker 2: You can make a case for it. Right, It's got nukes,
Speaker 2: it invaded Ukraine. All right, I still think that's not
Speaker 2: all that high priority in their idiotic world. So yeah, yeah, exactly,
Speaker 2: you got you got boomers who are worried about, you know,
Speaker 2: the drills or whatever.
Speaker 3: Okay, so I get that.
Speaker 2: I still think it's an incredibly dumb answer. But Iran, Iran.
Speaker 2: I notice that she said it's our greatest threat. She
Speaker 2: talks about American blood on their hands. I assume that
Speaker 2: she's talking about those proxy attacks on US soldiers three
Speaker 2: killed in that Jordanian attack recently and then previously the
Speaker 2: war in Iraq.
Speaker 3: But then she starts talking about.
Speaker 2: Is a whole on a second, you said our greatest adversary,
Speaker 2: not Israel's greatest adversary. I mean, that is honestly one
Speaker 2: of the most troubling answers I have ever heard from
Speaker 2: a presidential candidate, because what does that mean for your
Speaker 2: worldview of what you think adversary to the United States
Speaker 2: is not to Israel? Not voting for the president of
Speaker 2: Israel supposed to be voting for the president who's looking
Speaker 2: at our commerce. I mean, like I just said, you
Speaker 2: can make a fine case for Russia.
Speaker 3: I still think it's dumb. China's the most obvious answer,
Speaker 3: even within that.
Speaker 2: I mean, Biden says China, right, like, what are we
Speaker 2: doing here with Iran?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think she treated it as a pop quiz,
Speaker 4: didn't know the answer, and I reached for one. Oh
Speaker 4: my god, I don't think she actually believes that iron
Speaker 4: Ore is our biggest threat. How cool, though, would it
Speaker 4: be to have a president who said, none of the
Speaker 4: only thing we have to fear is fear itself.
Speaker 3: Honestly, that'd better answer.
Speaker 2: Again, I don't agree with that necessarily, but yeah, I
Speaker 2: could make a philosophical case, you know, in one where
Speaker 2: America is so powerful that our own division and lack
Speaker 2: of unity is a threat to US, our you know,
Speaker 2: to global instability.
Speaker 3: And to other natures.
Speaker 2: In fact, you know, I don't almost I don't not
Speaker 2: believe that, but I just think that they're you know,
Speaker 2: within the framework of the greatest adversary. But I just
Speaker 2: have no idea how you arrive at Iran. And also
Speaker 2: noticed Ryan, she didn't even think about it. She immediately
Speaker 2: went to it. It's like, if you look back at
Speaker 2: those previous debates and I said this on Twitter, I
Speaker 2: was like, I honestly think that is the stupidest answer
Speaker 2: this question. In several decades during the Cold War, it
Speaker 2: was not really that difficult. The only time where it's
Speaker 2: ever been in flux is that twenty twelve famous debate
Speaker 2: Romney and Obama where Romney says Russia and Obama correctly
Speaker 2: makes fun of him.
Speaker 3: He's like, well, we don't have bandit's anymore, you know, mister.
Speaker 2: Romney and all that, and he was Obama's right, you know,
Speaker 2: by the way, because he said China.
Speaker 3: But you know, in the Year of Our Lord twenty
Speaker 3: twenty four.
Speaker 2: To say Iran is so crazy, like again, we are
Speaker 2: not talking about a nation that in any way like
Speaker 2: when you say greatest adversary, you are talking about global competition.
Speaker 2: You are talking about somebody who poses a genuine existential.
Speaker 3: Threat to the super power.
Speaker 2: There is only one nation in the world for which
Speaker 2: that's not even one hundred percent true, but he can
Speaker 2: make a case for it, and that's China. That's why
Speaker 2: the Russia one is so dumb. And that's why Iran.
Speaker 2: I mean again, we're talking about shipping lanes. Okay, fine,
Speaker 2: you know, live a little damage to the US economy.
Speaker 2: Not even saying it would be good, it would be
Speaker 2: I think it would be a disaster, you know, for
Speaker 2: to get into a war with Iraq.
Speaker 3: But to say our greatest adversary, they're.
Speaker 2: Doing backflip in Beijing, They're doing backflips in Moscow over this.
Speaker 3: If you're so dumb that you think that I can't
Speaker 3: help you.
Speaker 4: I think the actual answer to this is that our
Speaker 4: greatest adversary is ourselves are our own military adventurism, our recklessness,
Speaker 4: and also our sanctions policy, which Jeff Stein has caused
Speaker 4: has covered so well, our sanction's policy, which is going
Speaker 4: to eventually drive the rest of the world stop using
Speaker 4: the dollar, which is the main thing I think.
Speaker 3: That's a fine answer. And the reason why, again is
Speaker 3: just fine.
Speaker 2: Is it acknowledges like superpower status and it's like, actually,
Speaker 2: the only threat to us is ourselves because we're so big,
Speaker 2: we're so powerful that only our own missteps can lead
Speaker 2: us into desa, which is true. I mean, if you
Speaker 2: look at Iraq and all, nobody could have damaged America
Speaker 2: more than the American innovasion of Iraq. But yeah, I mean,
Speaker 2: I just just ideologically framework wise to talk about Iran.
Speaker 2: I mean also when you say our greatest adversary, at
Speaker 2: least on Russia and China, we have a limiting principle
Speaker 2: of war called nuclear weapons like that at the end
Speaker 2: of the day, that stops it from escalating into the
Speaker 2: worst areas.
Speaker 3: With Iran, they don't have nukes, at least not yet.
Speaker 2: And we're on the precipice of a potential is really
Speaker 2: strike on nuclear facilities or even oil facilities, which could
Speaker 2: lead to blowback that actually could lead to a full
Speaker 2: blown hot war which would draw the United States in
Speaker 2: almost certainly.
Speaker 3: So is that where we're setting the stage here? I mean,
Speaker 3: that's the crazy too. The part two.
Speaker 4: The latest leaks out of Israel are that they have
Speaker 4: decided not to target the nuclear sites because they're inside
Speaker 4: of a mountain and they can't do it. Yeah, we
Speaker 4: paid them off and begged them not to do it. Instead,
Speaker 4: they're going to attack the oil industry, which Iran has
Speaker 4: said it will respond by attacking Saudi exactly, Iraq and
Speaker 4: other oil fields throughout the Middle East and just setting
Speaker 4: an entire thing on fire.
Speaker 1: So we'll see how that goes.
Speaker 4: That we have an interesting example of our own recklessness
Speaker 4: that I was referring to over at drop site. If
Speaker 4: you can put up this element here. Our correspondent over
Speaker 4: in Israel, Yaniv Kogan, writes this piece blinkn approved policy
Speaker 4: to bomb aid trucks, Israeli cabinet members suggest, and that
Speaker 4: might sound crazy, go read the story. I'll put the
Speaker 4: link in the description down below. What Yaniv identified here
Speaker 4: is that at October sixteenth and seventeenth, from into the
Speaker 4: early morning hours of the seventeenth, Secretary of State Blincoln
Speaker 4: goes to Israel. So this is ten days out after
Speaker 4: the attack and humanitarian aid has been cut off to Gaza.
Speaker 4: The first thing that Netnyah who says to him, is that, look,
Speaker 4: I can't actually lift this siege. I've got people in
Speaker 4: my cabinet who don't want a bottle of aspirin getting
Speaker 4: into Gaza. He says, I will negotiate this with Biden,
Speaker 4: not with you. And Blincoln says, Biden's not getting on
Speaker 4: a plane and coming to visit here on unless you
Speaker 4: change this policy, okay, And so Blinken thinks that that
Speaker 4: bluster is going to move netyah who he meets him
Speaker 4: six hours later that Yahoo still hasn't moved.
Speaker 1: So what Yani reports here.
Speaker 4: Blincoln sits down with the security cabinet of Israel and
Speaker 4: they hash out a humanitarian aid policy, and the policy
Speaker 4: that they finally agree to is that, okay, we will
Speaker 4: let in some aid trucks, not through Israel, will let
Speaker 4: them come in through Egypt. Egypt has to basically let
Speaker 4: us monitor everything that's going in, and if we believe
Speaker 4: that there is any Hamas involvement with any of these
Speaker 4: aid convoys, we are allowed to strike those convoys. And
Speaker 4: Blincoln then signs off on those And one of the
Speaker 4: key pieces of evidence of this they first the first
Speaker 4: draft was published in English, which is, you know, the
Speaker 4: kind of a giveaway is going back and forth and
Speaker 4: the word.
Speaker 1: That they use to thwart. They say, we will thwart it.
Speaker 4: If it's connected to Hamas, we will thwart the convoy
Speaker 4: is the same Hebrew Wordy points out that they often
Speaker 4: used to describe assassinations, so thwart is they're clear about
Speaker 4: what's going on here. The State's Department spokesperson Matthew Miller
Speaker 4: was asked by side Eric Coott yesterday about this report
Speaker 4: at the State Department briefing.
Speaker 1: Let's take a listen to that.
Speaker 5: Let me ask you about a report and drop side
Speaker 5: and it says that Secret Blinken approved a policy to
Speaker 5: bomb eight trucks. That what an israeted cabinet members said,
Speaker 5: are you aware of that? Your void and you have
Speaker 5: any comment.
Speaker 7: I am aware of the report. I'm glad you asked
Speaker 7: me about it. Look, the suggestion that we in any
Speaker 7: way signed off on bombing humanitatorian convoys is absurd.
Speaker 1: It's just not true.
Speaker 7: Of course, Israel has the right to target Hamas militants.
Speaker 7: That has always been the case. And so look, if
Speaker 7: if you had a situation where Hamas commandeered convoy and
Speaker 7: AMAS militants were operating a convoy, of course Israel would
Speaker 7: have the right to strike those militants. That's not been
Speaker 7: the situation that we've seen over the past year. Except
Speaker 7: in some very limited circumstances. There have been a few
Speaker 7: reports here and there of AMAS commandeering convoys, in most
Speaker 7: cases returned quickly to the humanitarian organizations. It has not
Speaker 7: been there's not been any widespread evidence that we have
Speaker 7: seen of AMAS actually taking convoys and commandeering them, which
Speaker 7: is I think the scenario or the propositions this scenario presumes.
Speaker 7: So the strikes that Israel has conducted on humanitarian convoys
Speaker 7: have been times when they have had failures in their
Speaker 7: deconfliction processes, where they have had intelligence failures, and when
Speaker 7: they've just made basic mistakes. And the thing that we
Speaker 7: have made clear about those is that those mistakes are
Speaker 7: unacceptable and that humanitarian workers need to be protected and
Speaker 7: humanitarian aid needs.
Speaker 1: To be protected.
Speaker 7: So the idea that we anyone of this apartments signed
Speaker 7: off on bombing humanitarian congress is just absolutely ridiculous.
Speaker 4: So if you notice their sager, he starts by calling
Speaker 4: the report absurd, but then throughout the answer he basically
Speaker 4: confirms the report that if Israel believes that Hamas is
Speaker 4: involved with these convoys, then of course they have the
Speaker 4: right to strike it. That rationale is, of course the
Speaker 4: one that the IDF has used each time it has
Speaker 4: struck a convoy. If you think back to the World's
Speaker 4: Central Kitchen attack that killed all those aid workers, they said, well,
Speaker 4: we thought that there were a couple of Hamas militants
Speaker 4: at some point before it went into the warehouse, and we.
Speaker 1: Thought maybe they were still there.
Speaker 4: Every attack on an aid convoy has used this very rationale.
Speaker 4: The other policy option available is, you know what, don't
Speaker 4: attack humanitarian aid convoys.
Speaker 1: Let's just have that as our policy.
Speaker 4: Like, that's an available policy, and still to this day,
Speaker 4: not one that the US has insisted on.
Speaker 2: I'm I mean the report itself is I actually encourage
Speaker 2: people to go read it. But on the response from
Speaker 2: Matt Miller, what did you make then of his categorical
Speaker 2: denial or was there room for this within his framework?
Speaker 3: What did you think of that?
Speaker 4: So if you parse, if you're used to parsing these responses,
Speaker 4: absurd is a word that they use.
Speaker 1: That's not a categor old denial.
Speaker 3: Oh I like that, right, Yeah, it's absurd, but it
Speaker 3: could be.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it doesn't actually mean it's not true, and then
Speaker 4: he later says, of course, you know, if Hamas has
Speaker 4: commandeered an AID convoy, then Israel has a right to
Speaker 4: strike that. That's what we reported, got it, And so
Speaker 4: they're confirming that that is the policy because, like I said,
Speaker 4: the alternative policy is we don't care who is driving
Speaker 4: the AID convoy.
Speaker 1: You don't strike an AID convoy.
Speaker 4: You deal if something happens to an AID convoy, you
Speaker 4: deal with that later. In other way ways, the Flower
Speaker 4: massacre where one hundred plus people or so were slaughtered
Speaker 4: at this intersection, Uh, there was a Hamas security official
Speaker 4: who was in charge of the security around that delivery
Speaker 4: of the flower. Like this is often who AID organizations
Speaker 4: are communicating with the Hamas police officials. Hamas is the
Speaker 4: de facto government. So you're gonna find Hamas if you
Speaker 4: and if and if you're Israel. You have been saying
Speaker 4: for years that Unra is a front for Hamas. So
Speaker 4: a low level or mid level operative who is behind
Speaker 4: the button on the drone. Oh Unra, Well, we already
Speaker 4: believe that they're a front for Hamas and thoroughly infiltrated
Speaker 4: and a terrorist organization that ought to be banned there's
Speaker 4: an enra and you see you see one guy with
Speaker 4: a gun, like, all right, well we're going to hit
Speaker 4: this AID convoy. It also raises the question who do
Speaker 4: they want to do security for these AID convoys? Blackwater
Speaker 4: available for business to start shepherding AID convoys through Gaza,
Speaker 4: Like what are they talking about? So the result is
Speaker 4: that AID convoys gets struck, And the result of an
Speaker 4: AID convoy getting struck is not just that that particular
Speaker 4: flower or water or medicine doesn't get delivered, but then
Speaker 4: the AID organization itself not only has lost personnel but
Speaker 4: usually stops for an extended period of time delivering aid.
Speaker 2: What do you make of this in the context of
Speaker 2: previous stuff you guys have reported about Blinking and his
Speaker 2: overruling of things within the Department.
Speaker 4: That he's effectively acted as basically an attorney for like
Speaker 4: Smotrich and Benevie, like taking their harshest ideological positions and
Speaker 4: massaging them into something that's acceptable from a US perspective.
Speaker 4: And I think that if you delved into his heart
Speaker 4: of hearts or something, what he would be saying is, look,
Speaker 4: it was either this or abject starvation. Because they were
Speaker 4: telling me that not a single aspirin was going to
Speaker 4: get in, and I got fifty trucks in, and then
Speaker 4: the next day there was sixty trucks in. And yes,
Speaker 4: the result was that some convoys got struck, and that's unfortunate,
Speaker 4: but the alternative was much worse. So I think that's
Speaker 4: that's what that's what they would argue. But on the
Speaker 4: other hand, it's the greatest superpower in the history of
Speaker 4: the world that is just getting you know, walked around
Speaker 4: by a client.
Speaker 2: That's what underscores to me is like we go through
Speaker 2: all this bureaucratic bs to like approve all of this
Speaker 2: Israeli violation of US law, and then you see the
Speaker 2: same machine kick in to justify anything Ukraine you know,
Speaker 2: wants to do. And it's like when you put those
Speaker 2: two things together, you're like, what are we doing here?
Speaker 5: Is a choice?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, these are explicit choices. These are by I mean,
Speaker 2: if anything, it seems to me like Blinkin' is such
Speaker 2: a power of force because Biden is so cooked and
Speaker 2: so irrelevant that Blincoln does run a lot of US
Speaker 2: foreign policy with just with respect to these discrete choices,
Speaker 2: when you know, Biden can coherently be like, just give
Speaker 2: them whatever they want, but he's the one actually mechanically
Speaker 2: executing all this.
Speaker 4: There was a new Axios report this morning. I love
Speaker 4: that new reports absolutely four sources say that Biden is
Speaker 4: increasingly frustrated and doesn't he doesn't trust, he doesn't trust
Speaker 4: that the Israelis are honest brokers when it comes to
Speaker 4: their their talks with him.
Speaker 2: It's like, okay, I got it, very very useful. Any
Speaker 2: other plans on the State Department? If you were, when's
Speaker 2: the next briefing today?
Speaker 1: I'll be at it.
Speaker 4: I was at this one and I got I got
Speaker 4: dist on the on the follow up?
Speaker 3: What what do you want to ask him today?
Speaker 1: I don't know that people should tell me what they
Speaker 1: want to ask.
Speaker 4: One thing I have been uh, I've been wanting to
Speaker 4: ask is what happened to the American concern for civil casualties?
Speaker 1: When? When?
Speaker 4: When Israel bomb this top PAMAS command killed a TOPAMAS
Speaker 4: commander in two thousand and two, this is six It
Speaker 4: was six months after.
Speaker 3: The nine eleven administration. I remember this, Yeah, six.
Speaker 1: Months after nine to eleven.
Speaker 4: Islamophobia in fear of terrorists is ripping through the American
Speaker 4: body politic. They take out a top a mass commander
Speaker 4: and killed like eight civilians or so in that strike.
Speaker 4: Bush like the Bush administration loses it on them, like
Speaker 4: this is an unacceptable civilian death toll. Now you can
Speaker 4: take out two to three hundred civilians in a single
Speaker 4: strike aimed at a top Hesbola commander, and the answer
Speaker 4: from the State's apartment is, well, you know, Hesbela shouldn't
Speaker 4: be near all of these civilians, right, Not even not
Speaker 4: even a reference in it an a Lloyd Austin statement
Speaker 4: or a Blinken statement, or a Biden statement or Arao statement,
Speaker 4: not even a line that says this civilian death toll
Speaker 4: is unacceptable.
Speaker 1: What happened?
Speaker 4: So I'm curious from their perspective, what happened in the
Speaker 4: twenty years since then to make it so that we're
Speaker 4: cool with that, you.
Speaker 2: Should ask him that I'd like to see that. I
Speaker 2: remember I've brought that up before about the Bush administration.
Speaker 2: How in O two even Ari Fleischer, who actually that's
Speaker 2: the ironic part.
Speaker 3: Fleischer said that in two thousand and two.
Speaker 2: But now he's on Fox and who's being like, actually,
Speaker 2: Israel is the most moral, moral army in the history
Speaker 2: of the world. I'm like, wait, but I know nothing matters.
Speaker 2: But you know you said that, he'd be like, well
Speaker 2: that was President Bush, not me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm sure the compassionate conservative.
Speaker 2: Amazing. All right, let's move on to Hillary Clinton. This
Speaker 2: is something I've been wanting to put in this show
Speaker 2: for quite some time. I actually watched this interview live.
Speaker 2: I was sitting in State of Pennsylvania.
Speaker 3: You know, is in the morning.
Speaker 2: You know, my father in law loves to keep CNN on.
Speaker 2: Don't ask me why, but I was forced to endure
Speaker 2: this struggle session and this It's funny because it's one
Speaker 2: of those things where Smerconish clearly does not really a
Speaker 2: magnitude of what actually just was said. But if you're
Speaker 2: listening carefully, you're like, that's one of the most insane
Speaker 2: things I've ever heard. So here we have Hillary talking
Speaker 2: about how imperative it is to censor and to monitor content.
Speaker 3: Let's take a listen. There should be a lot of
Speaker 3: things done.
Speaker 8: We should be in my view, repealing something called Section
Speaker 8: two thirty, which gave you know, platforms on the Internet
Speaker 8: immunity because they were thought to be just passed through
Speaker 8: that they shouldn't be judged for the content that is posted.
Speaker 8: But we now know that that was an overly simple
Speaker 8: view that if the platforms, whether it's Facebook or Twitter
Speaker 8: x or Instagram or TikTok, whatever they are, if they
Speaker 8: don't moderate and monitor the content, we lose total control.
Speaker 2: We lose total control, all right? So what do we
Speaker 2: take away from that rhyme? We lose total control? Right?
Speaker 1: Who's who's the we?
Speaker 3: What are you controlling? What are we?
Speaker 5: What are we?
Speaker 2: You know, it's interesting too we should consider, like what
Speaker 2: the context of this interview actually happens, because it happened
Speaker 2: within the general context of being asked not necessarily about
Speaker 2: social media, but about election strife ahead of this election.
Speaker 2: So that was specifically being talked about in the context
Speaker 2: of quote unquote misinformation ahead of the current election. And
Speaker 2: I was thinking, Wow, that's very revealing, isn't it. It
Speaker 2: also gets to the bitterness of Hillary because you have
Speaker 2: to remember that the through line for all of this
Speaker 2: is still Russia twenty sixteen, And now they've foe intellectualized
Speaker 2: the argument about all this and look, you know the
Speaker 2: whole section two thirty thing. There's arguments to be made. Actually,
Speaker 2: I've seen from the right, from the left, about it
Speaker 2: about liability and all that. But if you're making the
Speaker 2: argument explicitly to say that we need straight up much
Speaker 2: more criminal liability for platforms for spreading misinformation, that gives
Speaker 2: the game away in a very certain sense.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it also suggests that she still believes that most
Speaker 4: of big tech. Obviously she feels like Twitter has fallen,
Speaker 4: but she still feels like most of big tech is.
Speaker 1: Susceptible to her pressure.
Speaker 4: Yeah that if that, you know, if she that there's
Speaker 4: some alignment there that they're they're doing enough according to her,
Speaker 4: But she feels like if that, if she makes the case,
Speaker 4: if Democrats put enough pressure on them, they can Yeah.
Speaker 4: Two thirty is interesting for people to know that that's
Speaker 4: the section of the law that says that if you're
Speaker 4: a platform, basically say you're a comment section, that you
Speaker 4: are not personally liable. Your company is not liable for
Speaker 4: something that somebody says in a comment section. Because the
Speaker 4: argument is that you can't have a free flowing debate
Speaker 4: of user generated content if you have to fact check
Speaker 4: every single thing that every Tom, Dick and Harry is
Speaker 4: putting up on your site. The argument against it is
Speaker 4: that that was the case when platforms were neutral, and
Speaker 4: that every but he had an equal chance, and that
Speaker 4: the published product of that platform was the thumb of
Speaker 4: the parts of the voices that were allowed to flow
Speaker 4: freely into it. So the argument is, if you're no
Speaker 4: longer balanced, and your algorithm is pushing something far to
Speaker 4: the left, or pushing something far to the right, or
Speaker 4: driving a particular narrative, then you are actually a publisher
Speaker 4: and you no longer should have the shield of two thirty.
Speaker 4: Let's say to take Twitter, for example, if they can
Speaker 4: prove that like Musk like goes in and puts his
Speaker 4: s thumb on the scale, or old Twitter, If with
Speaker 4: old Twitter you could prove that they were going in
Speaker 4: and putting their thumb on the scale and pushing it
Speaker 4: in Biden's direction on the Hunter Biden story or whatever else,
Speaker 4: they would say, well, actually that's not protected, and you
Speaker 4: now can be sued for defamation.
Speaker 2: I just think that the context of this, well, actually,
Speaker 2: you know what, we never got to talk because that
Speaker 2: also came after that Tim Walls clip from the debate.
Speaker 1: We haven't seen enough time.
Speaker 3: We all had to move on.
Speaker 2: But yeah, what okay, as a leftist, give us the
Speaker 2: take on why Tim Wallas was wrong.
Speaker 1: Shocking, Yeah, Tim Wallas.
Speaker 4: Well, first of all, he did the stupid can't yell fire,
Speaker 4: yell fire in a crowd theater? Was yeah, if there's
Speaker 4: a fire, you absolutely can. And if you yell fire
Speaker 4: in a crowded theater and you do not cause panic,
Speaker 4: then that also is fine, Like you're allowed to do that, right.
Speaker 2: This is a commonly sided thing. I don't know what
Speaker 2: the origins of it even are.
Speaker 1: It was in a Supreme court. It was in a
Speaker 1: Supreme Court ruling.
Speaker 4: Where he was saying like, obviously, you can't yell fire
Speaker 4: in a crowded theater and cause yes, false falsely and
Speaker 4: you call falsely yell fire in a crowded theater and
Speaker 4: to cause panic, so you need all of those different elements.
Speaker 1: You have to know it's false, and you have to
Speaker 1: cause panic.
Speaker 4: And they were using it to lock up socialists who
Speaker 4: were calling for resistance to the draft.
Speaker 1: That's World War One. But they weren't even calling for
Speaker 1: risins the draft.
Speaker 4: They were telling people to call their member of Congress
Speaker 4: and argue to repeal the draft law. So and and
Speaker 4: they and that that, and they locked the head of
Speaker 4: the Socialist Party up for like six months for that
Speaker 4: or whatever. So like terrible for anybody to point to
Speaker 4: that in any in any way. More worrisome, I thought,
Speaker 4: was what he said right after that. He's like, he said,
Speaker 4: you don't have a right to hate speech.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 4: Oh actually did like bro, Yeah, that's the whole point, right,
Speaker 4: and what speech that is?
Speaker 1: Just loving speech? Yes, makes no sense. Who's going to
Speaker 1: prosecute for well.
Speaker 2: Especially terrifying in the context of all these like democratic
Speaker 2: current efforts to like institutionalize what is it the the
Speaker 2: definition of anti Semitism? What is the IHR definition, which
Speaker 2: basically is just it's anti semitic to criticize Israel, which
Speaker 2: is nuts, I mean, and by the way, that fits
Speaker 2: with a lot of those Republican BDS laws that are
Speaker 2: already on the books, totally unconstitutional for you.
Speaker 4: Just outsourcing the definition of something like that to a
Speaker 4: private organization which.
Speaker 1: Could then go on its website and change it again.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the whole thing is crazy. But anyway, I mean,
Speaker 3: it's alive and well in the sense.
Speaker 4: In Columbia that said you can't use Zionist in a pejorative.
Speaker 2: That just happened, Yeah, didn't you. You talked about that
Speaker 2: because well, Columbia's it's different.
Speaker 3: Becau's private.
Speaker 2: We can criticize it, but there's not much you can
Speaker 2: do on an institutional level.
Speaker 1: You don't get federal funding.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but you made a good point. You're like, wait,
Speaker 2: but what about in like history.
Speaker 1: Classes, like eat papers.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like in papers, you know, in a literal
Speaker 2: academic context. But suddenly a lot of those concerns just disappear,
Speaker 2: and because what we all know is that they really
Speaker 2: mean it that if it's in a historal context is fine,
Speaker 2: But if it's in a political context on campus, you
Speaker 2: don't like it, and especially if the donors don't like it,
Speaker 2: that's when you're going to get expelled.
Speaker 3: And that's when it's a problem.
Speaker 2: Okay, we've got Jefferson Morley standing by, so let's get to.
Speaker 1: It all right.
Speaker 4: Joining us today is Jefferson Morley, who's the author of
Speaker 4: many books on the JFK assassination. I've been investigating it
Speaker 4: for many decades.
Speaker 1: How long thirty years? So thirty years.
Speaker 4: At this point, you have a new piece out, and
Speaker 4: let's put this up on the screen. This is at
Speaker 4: his substack JFK Facts, which everybody should subscribe to. One
Speaker 4: thing that Jefferson is known for is almost never relying
Speaker 4: on anonymous sources. Everything is document based and people who
Speaker 4: are willing to put their name to something. This latest
Speaker 4: story is significantly based on an anonymous source, which to
Speaker 4: me signals how important you think it is.
Speaker 1: That's true that you're willing, that you're willing to go forward.
Speaker 4: So tell us what this source told you and why
Speaker 4: this is in advance on what we understand, or at
Speaker 4: least adds new questions to what we understand about the assassination.
Speaker 5: This source approached me a few years ago and said,
Speaker 5: in the course of working at the CIA, had seen
Speaker 5: a document that disturbed them, and so we talked about that.
Speaker 5: I investigated a little bit, found a lot to corroborate that.
Speaker 5: I also checked out the source professional expertise, experience, and
Speaker 5: I felt very confident this source is highly credible and
Speaker 5: I wouldn't like you say, I rarely rarely use unnamed sources,
Speaker 5: but in this case, I felt if the source was
Speaker 5: willing to take a chance of disclosing classified information, then
Speaker 5: I could take a chance on the source.
Speaker 4: Do you feel like that this source will ever come forward,
Speaker 4: like we're going to learn who this is at some point.
Speaker 5: I think the sources will be willing to do that.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about what they told you.
Speaker 3: What did you do? What did they show you.
Speaker 5: The source had two really significant things. One that there
Speaker 5: was a file room in a CIA office in Herndon, Virginia,
Speaker 5: where the CIA keeps its assassination related records. Now that
Speaker 5: doesn't mean that those are all secret records. Those may
Speaker 5: be records that have been shared with the Congress, we
Speaker 5: don't know, but that there is a dedicated facility like that.
Speaker 5: And I did some reporting talk to people who have
Speaker 5: worked in that building, one of whom confirmed to me
Speaker 5: that there was a JFK facility within a skiff as
Speaker 5: a secure compartmentalized intelligence facility, and so I felt good
Speaker 5: about that. The second thing that the source said was
Speaker 5: that in the course of duties at the CIA, the
Speaker 5: source had seen a document about the CIA's reaction to
Speaker 5: the Congressional investigation of the nineteen seventies, and the source
Speaker 5: felt that this document, lengthy document forty fifty pages, apparently
Speaker 5: produced by the CIA Inspector Gene, showed an intent to
Speaker 5: deceive the congressional investigators. The source says, this document shows
Speaker 5: that they knew they weren't being totally forthcoming, and when
Speaker 5: Congress didn't penetrate their deception, they celebrated. Now, there's no
Speaker 5: document like that that's been released in the past thirty years,
Speaker 5: with all the JFK releases under Trump and Biden, there's
Speaker 5: no document that fits that description in the remaining thirty
Speaker 5: five hundred JFK documents that still contain redactions. So this
Speaker 5: document is not in the JFK collection. Obviously it should be.
Speaker 5: One of the important things about the story and this
Speaker 5: made me. Also made me feel good was when I
Speaker 5: asked the CIA for comment, they did not deny any
Speaker 5: of the facts in the story. In fact, they said
Speaker 5: something slightly disturbing if you parse their statement carefully. What
Speaker 5: they're saying is we're under no obligation to release this document,
Speaker 5: and if we want to keep it public, we.
Speaker 1: Will got it.
Speaker 2: And so one of the things, as you talk about
Speaker 2: in the stories about Oswald in.
Speaker 5: Mex Yes, and that's the core of what he's talking about.
Speaker 5: The source says that the House Select Committee was called
Speaker 5: in and showed a bunch of documents about the CIA
Speaker 5: surveillance of Oswald in Mexico City shortly before the assassination
Speaker 5: with President Kennedy. The CIA has always said we never
Speaker 5: obtained any photographs of Oswald in Mexico City. The source
Speaker 5: says one of the things that he saw in the
Speaker 5: JFK file room was what looked like a video case
Speaker 5: that was labeled Oswald in Mexico and dated nineteen sixty three. Now,
Speaker 5: if there is photography of Oswald in Mexico City in
Speaker 5: the possession of the CIA today, that alone will rewrite
Speaker 5: the JFK story because they have been so adamant about
Speaker 5: denying this over the years. And what you see, the
Speaker 5: larger point of the story here is that what you
Speaker 5: see as this fits a pattern of withholding information, closely
Speaker 5: held information that the CIA had about Lee Harvey Osweald
Speaker 5: before the assassination. And that's what's really going on here,
Speaker 5: is they are withholding JFK documents to this day. And
Speaker 5: the source's story makes that story, you know, makes that clear.
Speaker 5: And the fact that the CIA is not denying it,
Speaker 5: not saying that doesn't say the document doesn't exist, doesn't
Speaker 5: say the facility doesn't exist. You know, we're onto something.
Speaker 5: So this is really about you know, why does it
Speaker 5: matter today? Well, this is about accountability. You know, it's
Speaker 5: about transparency. We've had these assassination attempts on President Trump,
Speaker 5: lots of conspiracy theories, politicization of that. Obviously, we need transparency,
Speaker 5: we need credible investigations around it. And the same goes
Speaker 5: for President Kennedy. This, you know, this is a that
Speaker 5: doesn't go away in American politics. We're still talking about
Speaker 5: it sixty years later because of its symbolic importance and
Speaker 5: because you know, we have this mistrust of government. Government
Speaker 5: institutions aren't legitimate. And if you look in the broad
Speaker 5: sweep of history, when did US government begin to lose
Speaker 5: its credibility? It was right around nineteen sixty four, according
Speaker 5: to the polls around the more In Commission report in
Speaker 5: nineteen sixty four. Since then, that report not particularly credible.
Speaker 5: With the American people, confidence in government has been going down.
Speaker 4: One of the theories that says actually there was there's a
Speaker 4: theory says there was no conspiracy to assassinate Kennedy. And
Speaker 4: in fact, what we're looking at when it comes to
Speaker 4: CIA is CIA that they actually are just covering for
Speaker 4: their own incompetence, and once and then its snowballs into
Speaker 4: covering for their.
Speaker 1: Cover up and does this fit that or does this
Speaker 1: fit the other?
Speaker 5: I mean, I think that this points more to complicity
Speaker 5: because of numerous false statements and the way CIA operations
Speaker 5: are structured. This looks like a CIA operation, not CIA
Speaker 5: in competence, but the available evidence. I have good friends
Speaker 5: who argue the other way, like you're saying, this is
Speaker 5: just they screwed up and they're just covering their assets. Well,
Speaker 5: that's why we have the JFK Records Act. The JFK
Speaker 5: Records Act of nineteen ninety two says the government has
Speaker 5: to release all JFK records in its possession. They have
Speaker 5: to review them and release them. They have a presumption
Speaker 5: of immediate disclosure according to the law. So if the
Speaker 5: CIA explanation is right, that doesn't mean that they don't
Speaker 5: have to disclose these records. They do have to disclose them.
Speaker 5: And if that's the case, then they should quell conspiracy
Speaker 5: conspiracy theories and conspiracy theorizing and say we screwed up
Speaker 5: and here's here's how we did it. But to say
Speaker 5: we're innocent and we're not going to share all the
Speaker 5: records with you, that's not credible.
Speaker 2: And so yeah, in that let's take people back if
Speaker 2: they're not all that familiar about Oswald's time in Mexico
Speaker 2: and the meetings that he allegedly was having there, and
Speaker 2: how that would fit into a conspiracy explanation. Why is
Speaker 2: that significant Oswald's time in Mexico.
Speaker 5: So Oswald, the accused assassin who denied We.
Speaker 1: Wrote a book up Our Man in Mexico.
Speaker 5: Yeah, So the story that I tell in Our Man
Speaker 5: in Mexico is Learvy Oswald, the man who will be
Speaker 5: accused of killing the president and who will deny it
Speaker 5: and then be killed in police custody. Goes to Mexico
Speaker 5: City six weeks before the assassination and visits the Cuban
Speaker 5: consulate and the Soviet embassy, seeking to get a visa
Speaker 5: to travel to Cuba. The visa request is rejected. He's
Speaker 5: told he has to go get that in Washington, and
Speaker 5: so Oswald returns to the United States. What the CIA
Speaker 5: told the Warrant Commission was, we didn't know anything about
Speaker 5: this guy. We did, you know, We knew so little
Speaker 5: about him. Didn't even get a picture of him, a
Speaker 5: surveillance picture of him. As I report in Our Man
Speaker 5: in Mexico. The station chief in Mexico City, when Scott
Speaker 5: said specifically that was not true. He had a very
Speaker 5: sophisticated surveillance system around both of those. Unlike the CIA's
Speaker 5: statement that the cameras weren't working that day, falls investigators
Speaker 5: established that they were working, and the cias insists on
Speaker 5: this while we never got his we never took his picture,
Speaker 5: so and in fact, they knew a whole lot about him.
Speaker 5: Senior CIA officials are looking at Oswald's file six weeks
Speaker 5: before the assassination, writing cables about him, thinking about him,
Speaker 5: and by the way, not calling any attention to him,
Speaker 5: despite the fact that he had been arrested for fighting
Speaker 5: with CIA funded group that summer, he had a Russian wife.
Speaker 5: When he defected to the Soviet Union, he offered military secrets,
Speaker 5: and now he's visiting Soviet and and Cuban diplomatic compound
Speaker 5: where everybody in those working in those compounds was presumed
Speaker 5: to be an intelligence seas and most of them in
Speaker 5: those work just like a lot of people in the
Speaker 5: US embassy were, of course, and so the notion that
Speaker 5: they didn't get his picture was, you know, was never
Speaker 5: particularly credible. So what's going on here? Did they just
Speaker 5: miss him. Well, that would be the cya. We didn't
Speaker 5: understand who he was. He went on and shot the president. Sorry,
Speaker 5: missus Kennedy, we just screwed up. What's hard to understand
Speaker 5: from our point of view today is, you know, the
Speaker 5: man who supposedly killed the president was well known to
Speaker 5: top CIA officials. Imagine if one of these accused assassins
Speaker 5: with President Trump was well known to a small group
Speaker 5: of top CIA officials, would that be Would we say
Speaker 5: that's relevant to the story. Yes, of course the CIA
Speaker 5: hid all of that. And all of those people who
Speaker 5: watched Oswald's for four years as he made his way
Speaker 5: to Dealey Plaza, none of them lost their job, None
Speaker 5: of them even got so much as at the merit,
Speaker 5: mostly because nobody knew. Over the last sixty years, the
Speaker 5: story has come out in bits and pieces, and my
Speaker 5: story now is just the latest part of we're getting
Speaker 5: behind that curtain of official secrecy that has always surrounded
Speaker 5: Oswald and Cuba operations. And when we go through that
Speaker 5: courtin we see, oh there's still more classified stuff behind it.
Speaker 5: And that's what's going on today is the CIA saying,
Speaker 5: you know, we really don't have to obey that law
Speaker 5: you know that law that says all JFK records, we
Speaker 5: don't really have to obey that. And you know, the
Speaker 5: CIA and the Constellation of American power a very strong
Speaker 5: institution on JFK records. They got what they wanted, exactly
Speaker 5: what they wanted from two very different presidents. From Trump,
Speaker 5: who said all the JFK records were released in twenty seventeen,
Speaker 5: wasn't true. He had cut a deal with Mike Pompeo
Speaker 5: and the CIA and lots of records main secret and
Speaker 5: Biden more more expectedly, an institutionalist said, CIA, good guys,
Speaker 5: they can handle it from here on out. I wash
Speaker 5: my hands of the matter. So that's where it is
Speaker 5: right now. Trump's made a little bit of an issue
Speaker 5: of it, saying he would release the JFK files when
Speaker 5: RFK endorsed him. You know, Trump had a chance to
Speaker 5: do it in twenty seventeen. He didn't, So it remains
Speaker 5: to be seen if he's elected, would he do would.
Speaker 2: Okay, question of why we always talk about this All
Speaker 2: the people involved are dead, presumably, so why do they
Speaker 2: still care so much about.
Speaker 5: Keeping because symbolically it's really important, and this is why
Speaker 5: they can't even back up an inch, because if they
Speaker 5: said we screwed up, you know, people get called up
Speaker 5: to Capitol Hill. Yeah, it asked the director, what's going
Speaker 5: on here? How did this happen? How come you didn't
Speaker 5: tell us about this? You know they might get their
Speaker 5: budget cut. So, yes, all the people involved are dead.
Speaker 5: And maybe the CIA could say, you know that was then,
Speaker 5: this is now. But I think the path of least
Speaker 5: resistance and when you have the power of official secrecy,
Speaker 5: we're just going to bury that. Move along, folks, and
Speaker 5: you know this is what the CIA does. Presidents come
Speaker 5: and go, journalists come and go, the CIA is always there,
Speaker 5: and so I think they're thinking, well, you know, we
Speaker 5: can just wait this thing now.
Speaker 4: No, that's all I got. I mean, I guess last
Speaker 4: thing if you have a minute. People also point to
Speaker 4: this police officer who claims that he accidentally squeezed the trigger.
Speaker 1: I'm sure you've seen this one. What do you think
Speaker 1: of it? What do you make of it?
Speaker 5: This is the most the most persistent hopes in the
Speaker 5: JFK story. The Secret Service man did it.
Speaker 1: You're gonna you're gonna see for people in the comments.
Speaker 4: Secou probably talk about this, So tell us about Okay.
Speaker 5: Yeah, The claim is that the Secret Service man panicked
Speaker 5: and turning around accidentally shot the prison The only problem
Speaker 5: with this theory is there's no eye witness evidence to
Speaker 5: support it, there's no forensic evidence to support it, there's
Speaker 5: no photographic evidence to support it. And the author who
Speaker 5: first offered this, when facing legal action from one of
Speaker 5: the Secret Service offers involved, formally retracted the whole thing.
Speaker 5: So there's no evidence and it's been renounced by the
Speaker 5: person who offered it, so chances are there's nothing to it.
Speaker 5: But I just I want to say one last thing
Speaker 5: is you know, people I ask why does it matter today?
Speaker 5: You know, what did Kennedy's ass What was the political
Speaker 5: meaning of Kennedy's assassination? And I think it's this. This
Speaker 5: is more my opinion. You can draw your you know,
Speaker 5: the facts of the fact. After Kennedy, the most warlike
Speaker 5: faction in the US government always had the upper hand,
Speaker 5: and Kennedy was steering us away from that, trying to
Speaker 5: end the Cold War, not going to war in Cuba,
Speaker 5: pulling out slowly in Vietnam. There's debates about all of
Speaker 5: those things, but the big picture that Kennedy articulates in
Speaker 5: the summer of sixty three. We don't want a pas Americana,
Speaker 5: he says. Imagine that. Imagine if there was a Democratic
Speaker 5: candidate or a Republican Kennedy who said, we don't want
Speaker 5: a Pax american We are in a Pax Americana era
Speaker 5: right now. We are establishing packs Americana in Ukraine, Gaza.
Speaker 5: You know, we are trying to maintain that there is
Speaker 5: another way, and the other way died with Kennedy.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And whether the key thing to me is whether
Speaker 4: or not the CIA actually assassinated him. Every president since Kennedy,
Speaker 4: including LBJ, believed that they did.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and operated accord operated this.
Speaker 5: Yeah. And this is super important to where there's this
Speaker 5: discourse that tries to marginalize, you know, conspiracy theorists Harry Truman,
Speaker 5: Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon had their foibles, had their problems.
Speaker 5: They were not conspiracy theorists. These were men of power
Speaker 5: who understood how American power worked. And none of them
Speaker 5: believed the CIA's story of a quote unquote.
Speaker 2: We've got verified of that were terrified of them in
Speaker 2: the NBI, that's right, and it governed a lot of
Speaker 2: their decision making.
Speaker 3: Highly recommend people.
Speaker 1: That's why Trump did not release the documents. Slightly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, seriously, Yeah, there you go.
Speaker 2: Subscribe to the substack by the Books. Appreciate you joining us, sir,
Speaker 2: Thank you, thanks a million. We'll see you guys later