Speaker 1: My colleagues, None of this today that you are bringing
Speaker 1: makes sense, your inconsistencies, your hypocrisy, your sick of fancy
Speaker 1: unless you are in a cult.
Speaker 2: And guys, I'm starting to think you're in a cult.
Speaker 1: If you claim you back the blue but want to
Speaker 1: defund the police when the police go to your nominee's
Speaker 1: house to retrieve national security secrets, you might be in
Speaker 1: a cult. If you're supporting a guy who's felony convictions
Speaker 1: prevent them from getting a security clearance, you might be
Speaker 1: in a cult.
Speaker 3: I'm John Cipher and I'm Jerry O'Shea. I served in
Speaker 3: the CIA's Clandestine Service for twenty eight years, living undercover
Speaker 3: all around the world.
Speaker 4: And in my thirty three years with the CIA, I
Speaker 4: served in Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East.
Speaker 3: Although we don't usually look at it this way, we
Speaker 3: created conspiracies.
Speaker 4: In our operations. We got people to believe things that
Speaker 4: were true.
Speaker 3: Now we're investigating the conspiracy theories we see in the
Speaker 3: news almost every day.
Speaker 4: Will break them down for you to determine whether they
Speaker 4: could be real or whether we're being manipulated.
Speaker 3: Welcome to Mission Implausible.
Speaker 5: I'm thinking about today's show which is a maddening show.
Speaker 5: We're going to talk about Sandy Hook and the conspiracy
Speaker 5: theories around Sandy Hook and watching John Stewart on The
Speaker 5: Daily Show talking about the dialogue around guns and how
Speaker 5: a lot of politicians and the GOP essentially guarantee that
Speaker 5: there's going to be such a supply of guns so
Speaker 5: little restriction, that there's going to be mass shootings, and
Speaker 5: then they also want somehow credit for saying that they're
Speaker 5: against mass shootings.
Speaker 4: Now, all of us, by the way, is not to
Speaker 4: say that gun crime does not exist.
Speaker 6: Of course it does, and some cities are worse than others.
Speaker 4: But here's the thing, and I say this.
Speaker 6: With all due respect, the balls of these right wing
Speaker 6: mothers talking about how there's too much gun crime and
Speaker 6: chaos in our democratic cities when Republicans are the ones
Speaker 6: who've enabled the flood of illegal weaponry into our city
Speaker 6: in the first place.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 5: So, Sandy Hook, clearly, in my mind, there is a
Speaker 5: very mentally ill young man who had access to weapons
Speaker 5: he shouldn't have access to, and this massive movement of
Speaker 5: trying to turn that conversation into some completely crazy conversation
Speaker 5: where instead of that being punished by our society. People
Speaker 5: are rewarded. They make money by converting what is clearly
Speaker 5: a conversation about guns into a conversation about crisis actors
Speaker 5: and conspiracies.
Speaker 4: It's a certain sense, it's a way of avoiding truth
Speaker 4: in facts, right that are unpleasant. There is a monster
Speaker 4: under your bed, and you don't want to talk about it.
Speaker 4: And if you don't want to talk about facts, you
Speaker 4: make up a false narrative that gives you control. I mean,
Speaker 4: it's a fact that the three states with the highest
Speaker 4: murder rates in the US are Mississippi, Louisiana, and Alabama.
Speaker 4: There is a thirty three percent higher murder rate in
Speaker 4: red states and in blue states. And I don't think
Speaker 4: people in the Southern states are any more are violent
Speaker 4: than anybody else. I think, quite frankly, it's people having
Speaker 4: access to firearms who shouldn't have them, and rather than
Speaker 4: have the conversation about, you know, sensible ways of protecting
Speaker 4: our children, it's morphed into this can't be stopped, or
Speaker 4: you know, strangely, we should just arm the children or
Speaker 4: the teachers. And then it goes beyond just the tragedy
Speaker 4: of the children being shot. People then attacking the parents
Speaker 4: of the children. With some of the parents of the
Speaker 4: Sandy Hood kids have been threatened with death. They've had
Speaker 4: to move because they're under a threat by people saying
Speaker 4: that they're bad actors or that their kids didn't exist,
Speaker 4: and the burden of proof then is placed on them.
Speaker 4: You must prove that your child died or that your
Speaker 4: child existed. And this is simply taking logic and turning in.
Speaker 4: It's on its head.
Speaker 5: But you guys did find a brave truth teller.
Speaker 3: So we're proud today to have Eric Swallall, a friend
Speaker 3: and a congressman from California's fourteenth district in the East
Speaker 3: Bay of northern California. He worked on Homeland and National
Speaker 3: Security committees and ran for the Democratic nomination in twenty
Speaker 3: twenty as a gun control advocate. Hey, guys, great to
Speaker 3: have you Eric.
Speaker 2: Yeah, of course, mind my pleasure.
Speaker 3: So, Eric, one of the first questions I wanted to
Speaker 3: ask you about is, I know you did a lot
Speaker 3: of work on gun control. What do you do when
Speaker 3: you hear these kind of conspiracy theories that shootings aren't real,
Speaker 3: that it's crisis actors, that it's a hoax, the federal
Speaker 3: government is doing it classified training exercise, or it's a
Speaker 3: sy opera, what have you. How do you look at
Speaker 3: these issues?
Speaker 2: Well, first, I look at it as a father.
Speaker 1: I've got a seven year old, a five year old,
Speaker 1: and a two year old, and the two oldest have
Speaker 1: sheltered in place about a half dozen times this school
Speaker 1: year because of gun violence threats the greatest cause of
Speaker 1: death for children. And so first, I just want to
Speaker 1: protect my kids, and I want to protect everyone else's
Speaker 1: kids and keep the most dangerous weapons out of the
Speaker 1: hands of the most dangerous people.
Speaker 2: I also approach it as a prosecutor.
Speaker 1: I prosecuted homicide cases in Oakland before I was elected,
Speaker 1: and I remember two of the victims in two separate
Speaker 1: trials that I did. The victims were teenagers, so sadly
Speaker 1: adding to that statistic of children the greatest cause of
Speaker 1: death for them being a homicide, and believing, you know,
Speaker 1: we don't have to live this way. And also I
Speaker 1: approached this as the son of a cop, a gun owning,
Speaker 1: duck hunting police officer who would take me elkin deer
Speaker 1: hunting when I was a kid.
Speaker 2: So I grew up around guns. I'm comfortable around guns.
Speaker 3: And you've had death threats too, haven't you a lot?
Speaker 1: Yes, And so I understand why people want to protect themselves,
Speaker 1: and I also understand the culture of hunting in America.
Speaker 1: But I just happen to believe that we can preserve hunting,
Speaker 1: let people shoot for sport, and allow people to protect themselves,
Speaker 1: and still keep the most dangerous weapons from the most
Speaker 1: dangerous people. So I guess it was fitting in a
Speaker 1: sad way that when I was going through congressional orientation
Speaker 1: in December of twenty twelve, that the Sandy Hook mass
Speaker 1: shooting occur, and just to set the scene for like
Speaker 1: my perspective on this. The Harvard Institute of Politics at
Speaker 1: the Kennedy School hosts new member orientation that they do
Speaker 1: every newly elected member of Congress, and I was elected
Speaker 1: in November twenty twelve, is sent to Harvard and we're
Speaker 1: there and it's an exciting time. It's bipartisan, you're getting
Speaker 1: to know your colleagues. And it was the last day
Speaker 1: that we were there that we woke up to this tragedy.
Speaker 1: And one of the members of my freshman class was
Speaker 1: newly elected Congresswoman Elizabeth Esti, who represented Newtown where Sandy
Speaker 1: Hook was and So just imagine going to orientation, you
Speaker 1: just got elected Congress and this has come to your community.
Speaker 1: And I remember we all really rallied around Elizabeth to
Speaker 1: support her and promise to do anything we could. And
Speaker 1: first meeting I had with Speaker Pelosi, or Leader Pelosi
Speaker 1: at the time in Congress was a gun violence task
Speaker 1: force stood up by the leader asking Mike Thompson of
Speaker 1: Napa Valley, a former marine who duck hunts.
Speaker 2: If he would lead the task force.
Speaker 1: And I was invited to be a part of it,
Speaker 1: naively believing, well, twenty children and six teachers were slaughtered
Speaker 1: by an assault weapon at the place we hold most
Speaker 1: deer in our communities, a schoolhouse, surely, like this is
Speaker 1: what it takes to finally do something about gun violence.
Speaker 1: And it was just a punch in the stomach to
Speaker 1: see that it would go nowhere. But what I and
Speaker 1: I guess I should have expected that. What nobody expected, though,
Speaker 1: was that many far right gun extremists who were afraid
Speaker 1: that this would be a galvanizing moment, they invented a
Speaker 1: conspiracy around what happened.
Speaker 4: There wasn't one conspiracy, There were like several competing illogical conspiracies.
Speaker 4: One being that nobody died, right, it was all crisis actors.
Speaker 4: In fact, some of the crisis actors as part as
Speaker 4: this conspiracy supposedly showed up in the Super Bowls singing
Speaker 4: in twenty thirteen along with Jennifer Hudson. I mean, it's
Speaker 4: not crazy, he gets. But another conspiracy is that Adam
Speaker 4: Lanza was hypnotized and drugged by the US government to
Speaker 4: carry this out. So the conspiracies go from it didn't
Speaker 4: happen at all. It was crisis actors too, it did happen,
Speaker 4: and who was really behind it? But what unites them
Speaker 4: all is this was a setup to basically push gun control.
Speaker 2: That's exactly right.
Speaker 1: And the biggest, loudest voice with the widest audience was
Speaker 1: Alex Jones. He stated once on his own podcast that
Speaker 1: he said, they clearly used actors. I mean they even
Speaker 1: ended up using photos of kids killed in mass shootings
Speaker 1: here in a fake mass shooting in Turkey or Pakistan,
Speaker 1: And so yes, it had. Obviously the immediate effect was
Speaker 1: to just raise doubt about the shooting, to undermine any
Speaker 1: justification for a change in policy. See and then of
Speaker 1: course the emotional toll that it took and put on
Speaker 1: the family members of the students and the victims. But
Speaker 1: again that what I have found, especially in this disinformation age,
Speaker 1: and we would really be lurching into it as we
Speaker 1: would go into the twenty sixteen election, was that we
Speaker 1: found ourselves on defense rather than offense. That we rather
Speaker 1: than saying this policy allowed children to be slaughtered, we
Speaker 1: have to change the policy. We start with saying, no,
Speaker 1: this was not a conspiracy that you know, they were
Speaker 1: not crisis actors or was not set up by the
Speaker 1: government to take away your gun. So we're already apologizing
Speaker 1: or being defensive about what he has put out there,
Speaker 1: and it just made it all that much harder. And
Speaker 1: sadly it wasn't even the last school shooting.
Speaker 3: Let's take a break.
Speaker 2: We'll be right back.
Speaker 3: And Rebecca, you know Sandy Hook was just one of many.
Speaker 3: And you've been on the hill for much of this,
Speaker 3: and so now I think we've all learned that people
Speaker 3: who follow politics, what do expect from either side when
Speaker 3: there's one of these horrific incidents. But I wonderful from
Speaker 3: you on Capitol Hill when you deal with these people
Speaker 3: every day. Is there a different is there different things
Speaker 3: from behind closed doors?
Speaker 2: John.
Speaker 1: It may surprise you that many of them believe that
Speaker 1: we should have tighter and stricter gun safety laws. But
Speaker 1: they have confided in me and many of my colleagues
Speaker 1: that the NRA is quite loud. And what they mean
Speaker 1: is that, you know, we have a system in our
Speaker 1: elections where outside organizations can spend unlimited, non transparent money.
Speaker 1: You know, we call them super packs. And because most
Speaker 1: of our elections are not very competitive, it's low turnout
Speaker 1: in these elections, for the primaries, and so the Republican
Speaker 1: colleagues and mind, they're not afraid about They're not afraid
Speaker 1: of losing in November to a Democrat. They're afraid of
Speaker 1: losing to a more conservative Republican. And they know in
Speaker 1: a low turnout election, it won't cost that much money
Speaker 1: for the NRA, you know, to spend in their race
Speaker 1: and turn out you know, the most extreme voters. However,
Speaker 1: you know, the signal does not match the noise here
Speaker 1: because of course, across the country you see approximately eighty
Speaker 1: percent of gun owning Republicans want background checks, but the
Speaker 1: twenty percent who do not, you know, they're very loud.
Speaker 1: What's amazing to me, I guess not so amazing anymore,
Speaker 1: twelve years on the job. Is that I used to
Speaker 1: think that I served with people who were otherwise employable,
Speaker 1: like we had all given up like better paying jobs
Speaker 1: to do this important job. But what I've come to
Speaker 1: find is that I serve with a lot of people
Speaker 1: who think this is the only job they can get.
Speaker 1: And then so if you think this is the only
Speaker 1: job you can get, then of course you're going to
Speaker 1: be afraid of, you know, voting a way that's contra
Speaker 1: to how you really believe, but a way that would
Speaker 1: likely keep you in your seat.
Speaker 3: Some of them may be right though, Right.
Speaker 4: Eric, I probably tell the audience that you and I
Speaker 4: met in a paradise where there was no gun control
Speaker 4: at all, and that was Iraq in twenty fourteen. And
Speaker 4: of course, incredible amounts of guns firearms were flooded into
Speaker 4: Iraq with no regulations whatsoever. Isis was able to arm itself,
Speaker 4: and we saw, you know, what a society looks like
Speaker 4: without any gun control regulations, right, And in fact, the
Speaker 4: first time we flew in a helicopter, there was surface
Speaker 4: to air fire, right, people firing weapons in the night,
Speaker 4: possibly even at our helicopter.
Speaker 1: So I think I asked you if that was just
Speaker 1: you know, local fireworks celeration.
Speaker 2: You told me it was.
Speaker 4: I lied to you and told you it was celebratory
Speaker 4: fire and I could have relevant shooting at the noise
Speaker 4: of the helicopter we were flying in from beg Dad Airport.
Speaker 4: It did.
Speaker 1: And right now and you still see conspiracy theory is
Speaker 1: you know, being peddled about, you know, who won the
Speaker 1: last election, or the federal government being out to get
Speaker 1: Donald Trump and what this has inspired, right because if
Speaker 1: you recall, I believe it was after the mar Lago
Speaker 1: raid on you know, Donald Trump's possession of classified documents,
Speaker 1: a madman with an assault rifle went to an FBI
Speaker 1: field office, you know, looking to kill FBI agents and
Speaker 1: thankfully they killed him before he could do that. But
Speaker 1: in a country that's armed to the teeth and just
Speaker 1: you know, teaming with conspiracy theories, I mean that that
Speaker 1: is a very violent recipe for disaster. Violence is of course,
Speaker 1: I have always seen it, and I always tell juries
Speaker 1: it's the lowest form of communication.
Speaker 3: Do you think the NRA piece will change, because obviously
Speaker 3: in the last couple of years, the NRA has gone
Speaker 3: through all kinds of convulsions, and seems to be in
Speaker 3: a much weaker place.
Speaker 1: You know what's interesting, John, is that it turns out
Speaker 1: that Wayne Lopierre, the executive former executive director of the NRA,
Speaker 1: did not really have the interests of the members in mind.
Speaker 2: And shocking, but what it turned out was that hard
Speaker 2: to believe for him to.
Speaker 1: Enjoy a lavish lifestyle of private jets flying him, shuttling
Speaker 1: him all over the world and other.
Speaker 3: Like a Supreme Court judge.
Speaker 1: Like he was a Supreme Court judge, a fole of
Speaker 1: yea and a closet full of you know, ten thousand dollars.
Speaker 4: Suits yachts to the Caribbean.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he had to raise money from the members to
Speaker 1: support that, and how did he do it. He did
Speaker 1: it by firing up his members, vilifying anyone who had
Speaker 1: any recommendations on how to make us safer, and then
Speaker 1: collected the donations from the members and the gun manufacturers,
Speaker 1: suggesting that, you know, their freedom was at risk. And
Speaker 1: it turns out it was really just a personal grift.
Speaker 1: Sounds like somebody else we know who has fifty million
Speaker 1: dollars of his supporter's money, you know, for his own
Speaker 1: legal fees, and they think that it's going, you know,
Speaker 1: to elect he and his ideas to the White House.
Speaker 4: So Eric Marjorie Taylor Green famously said, just a couple
Speaker 4: of days ago, right, I look at your comments on this,
Speaker 4: that the FBI represented a threat to the president, to
Speaker 4: President Trump's life when they raided Marilaga. Right, they didn't
Speaker 4: really raid it per se. But I'll tell you John
Speaker 4: and I when we dealt with the FBI, so CIA
Speaker 4: and the FBI sitting down over coffee to discuss it,
Speaker 4: they were armed as well. They're always armed, and in fact,
Speaker 4: they're paid extra to carry a firearm, and if they
Speaker 4: don't carry a firearm, they actually take a cut and pay.
Speaker 4: So they always want to carry a firearm. So spinning
Speaker 4: this up into a conspiracy theory of assassination and murder
Speaker 4: that takes it to a different level. And I'd sort
Speaker 4: of like your take on that.
Speaker 1: The search warrant protocol showed that they were authorized, you know,
Speaker 1: to use lethal force if necessary, and so yes, they
Speaker 1: would be armed. And so Marjorie Taylor Green tweets out,
Speaker 1: I was the first to tell him, him being Donald Trump,
Speaker 1: that the FBI was out to assassinate him. So it's
Speaker 1: dangerous in so many ways. One, she's told this to
Speaker 1: President Trump, and he's now of course stoked this to
Speaker 1: his benefit. He's actually even put it in some of
Speaker 1: his legal filings.
Speaker 4: To be clear, he was in New York City at
Speaker 4: the time, right, he wasn't even there. But okay, I
Speaker 4: just want to make that.
Speaker 2: Let's walk yeah, let's let's debunk this.
Speaker 1: He was in New York City, and as you know,
Speaker 1: just like the agency, this is the FBI, they knew
Speaker 1: where he was. He also had a secret Service detail.
Speaker 1: If they were out to get him, they would not
Speaker 1: have gone to an empty house.
Speaker 2: They wore polo shirts.
Speaker 1: Just because they didn't want the raid jackets, and then
Speaker 1: they didn't want to be seen as disrespectful. So he
Speaker 1: actually was treated better than most people who were subjected
Speaker 1: to an FBI raid. Third, President Biden, when his documents
Speaker 1: were retrieved that he had in his possession, was subjected
Speaker 1: to the same protocol. And fourth, every search in America
Speaker 1: that the FBI conducts follows that protocol. So it was
Speaker 1: no better or worse other than the polo shirts for
Speaker 1: Donald Trump. But the danger, though, is that Marjorie Taylor
Speaker 1: Green and Trump putting this conspiracy theory out there.
Speaker 2: What it does is it creates a pretext.
Speaker 1: For violence for people in their movement to believe that
Speaker 1: this is us versus the government, and unless we take
Speaker 1: up arms and defend Donald Trump from an assassination, they're
Speaker 1: going to get him. And going back to the earlier point,
Speaker 1: and a country that has over three hundred million, it
Speaker 1: has more firearms than people that should be really concerning.
Speaker 4: This allows them to say they're just fighting back as
Speaker 4: opposed to actually initiating violence.
Speaker 1: I guess I'll just put a button on the Sandy
Speaker 1: Hook conspiracy. Thankfully, although policies were not changed, assault weapons
Speaker 1: are still allowed, we don't have background checks. The four
Speaker 1: different families did bring multi million dollar lawsuits against Alex Jones,
Speaker 1: who perpetuated this conspiracy, and they won, and actually the
Speaker 1: judgment ended up being one point five billion is what
Speaker 1: their loss was deemed to be for the trauma that
Speaker 1: they were subjected to to be told over and over
Speaker 1: that their children did not die or they were crisis actors,
Speaker 1: and so there was, you know, thankfully, some accountability and
Speaker 1: hopefully that does deter others.
Speaker 3: I recall also, I think it was in twenty seventeen
Speaker 3: or twenty eighteen, the Newtown School Board wrote to President
Speaker 3: Trump and urged them to recognize that the murders of
Speaker 3: the twenty six people at Sandy Hook and ask them
Speaker 3: to remove your support from anyone who continues to insist
Speaker 3: the tragedy was staged or not real. And my understanding
Speaker 3: is Trump nor the White House responded to that letter.
Speaker 3: But what I don't understand is in the process they
Speaker 3: continue when they're angry and start talking about undermining the
Speaker 3: Justice Department, undermining the FBI, underne our law enforcement system
Speaker 3: that those people rely on. They expect that the Justice
Speaker 3: Department is professional and takes it seriously because they rely
Speaker 3: on it themselves, But at the same time they're undermining
Speaker 3: it with the American people. I can imagine FBI officers
Speaker 3: who do now today, probably as they travel and they
Speaker 3: go about their business, they have to worry about violence
Speaker 3: because it's out in the community that they might have
Speaker 3: tried to assassinate President Trump and.
Speaker 1: John It may surprise me that these radicals who would
Speaker 1: believe Marjorie Taylor Green may not be so discerning when
Speaker 1: it comes to law enforcement. They may just see a
Speaker 1: local cop on the beat and lump them all together
Speaker 1: and it just seems that if it's not condemned and buried,
Speaker 1: that it puts a target on the backs of all
Speaker 1: law enforcements. So we had a Judiciary Committee hearing today.
Speaker 1: We had the ATF director at the hearing. Judiciary Committee
Speaker 1: has jurisdiction over the FBI, and I took a little
Speaker 1: bit of a detour from my questioning of the ATF
Speaker 1: director pointed out what Marjorie Taylor Green had said, debunked
Speaker 1: it with also the FBI statement, but also the points
Speaker 1: I just made earlier. And then I did something I
Speaker 1: rarely do. I asked my Republican colleagues, if any one
Speaker 1: of them, starting with Chairman Jordan, would condemn what Marjorie
Speaker 1: Taylor Green said, and I just I held, and I paused,
Speaker 1: and I waited, and I could only get one of them,
Speaker 1: and he said, he said, that's a ridiculous statement that
Speaker 1: you would have to ask us that, And I said,
Speaker 1: it sure is, and it's ridiculous that she would say
Speaker 1: it and put us any of us in a position
Speaker 1: to have to condemn it. And so it's really unfortunate
Speaker 1: that they just what they fear is that condemning it
Speaker 1: puts a target on their back, so they would rather
Speaker 1: keep the target on the back of the police than
Speaker 1: to shift it to themselves.
Speaker 4: Okay, let's take a break from the craziness just for
Speaker 4: a minute.
Speaker 2: Or two, and we're back.
Speaker 4: James Fetzner, who started began the Sandy Hook conspiracy that
Speaker 4: Alex Jones hooked into. He's gone wider and claimed it
Speaker 4: was a Mosad hit squad and this is part of
Speaker 4: the Jewish conspiracy. And our enemies in Iran in Russia
Speaker 4: have picked up Alex Jones and Fezner and are also
Speaker 4: pushing this as well.
Speaker 1: I'll leave you at this the struggle that I have
Speaker 1: with conspiracy theories because after Trump was elected, I believe
Speaker 1: it or not, the Democratic Caucus, I think brilliantly, Speaker
Speaker 1: Pelosi brought an NYU psychologist to our retreat to talk
Speaker 1: about Trump and.
Speaker 2: To talk about how to.
Speaker 1: Counter a lie. And the psychologist she told us something
Speaker 1: that was really fascinating. She said, the problem you face
Speaker 1: is that once he puts it out there, yes, with
Speaker 1: like maximum response.
Speaker 2: Like data shows that if he.
Speaker 1: Says the sky is red, not blue, and you spend
Speaker 1: a lot of time and resources say no, the sky
Speaker 1: is blue. Here's the proof that yes, in the near term,
Speaker 1: you can get people back to believing that the sky
Speaker 1: is blue. She said, the research shows in the mid
Speaker 1: and long term they regress to the original lie. And
Speaker 1: so you are in a position always with folks like
Speaker 1: this as to do I try and counter the lie
Speaker 1: or do I just let it go and hope that
Speaker 1: not that many people hurt it and not amplify it.
Speaker 3: So, Eric, do you think that you know, the majority
Speaker 3: of them have come to the point like where you said,
Speaker 3: where they believe this guy is red or do they
Speaker 3: in their heart our hearts, know that it's not red.
Speaker 1: I think too many believe that it's read because they're
Speaker 1: told by you know, a messiah like figure of Trump
Speaker 1: or others that it is. But I do believe that
Speaker 1: a good amount just recognize something that is weaponized to
Speaker 1: benefit their own political position that they've staked out. It
Speaker 1: feels also that I work in pro wrestling, and what
Speaker 1: I mean is that you have so many personas that
Speaker 1: I encounter, But when we're like not in the quote
Speaker 1: unquote ring or not on camera, they act a completely
Speaker 1: different way, and they may hit me over the head
Speaker 1: with a steel chair when we're.
Speaker 2: In the ring.
Speaker 1: But when we're not and we're not on camera, they'll
Speaker 1: want to brow out or be your friend.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think I think Eric made some really good
Speaker 4: some really good points there. So John, what do you
Speaker 4: think what's the difference between a cult and a conspiracy?
Speaker 4: What do you think it is?
Speaker 3: Jed, I don't know, but our friend Eric Swall, I think,
Speaker 3: did a quick take on that.
Speaker 4: And this was the Congress.
Speaker 2: Let's take a look, my colleagues.
Speaker 1: None of this today that you are bringing makes sense,
Speaker 1: your inconsistencies, your hypocrisy, your sick of fancy unless you
Speaker 1: are in a cult. And guys, I'm starting to think
Speaker 1: you're in a cult. That is your right, but it's
Speaker 1: not your responsibility. I promise you that's not what your
Speaker 1: constituents would want. So if you believe in states' rights
Speaker 1: except when a jury in that state convicts your nominee
Speaker 1: for president, you might be in a cult.
Speaker 2: If you can't.
Speaker 1: If you claim you back the blue but want to
Speaker 1: defund the police when the police go to your nominee's
Speaker 1: house to retrieve national security secrets, you might be in
Speaker 1: a cult. If you're supporting a guy who's felony convictions
Speaker 1: prevent them from getting a security clearance, you might be
Speaker 1: in a cult.
Speaker 3: Now, let's speak with our producer Adam Davidson and try
Speaker 3: to sort this all out together.
Speaker 5: So, of all the many, many things that are absurd
Speaker 5: about these conspiracies, I'm particularly obsessed with this idea of
Speaker 5: crisis actors. Let's just say we decided we wanted to
Speaker 5: do something that involved hundreds of crisis actors. How do
Speaker 5: you find them?
Speaker 4: Where do you do you?
Speaker 2: Do you audition?
Speaker 5: Do you audition? Do you hire them crisis by crisis
Speaker 5: or do you I mean some of the conspiracies say, oh,
Speaker 5: look this person was in this one and was also
Speaker 5: the Parkland shooting or whatever. It's really hard, by the way,
Speaker 5: to act well, and children are rather famously like there's
Speaker 5: a reason why at any given moment there seems to
Speaker 5: be one child actor who's in all the movies because
Speaker 5: Hollywood can find one or maybe two, like seven year
Speaker 5: olds who can actually act. They're like, all right, you're
Speaker 5: in every movie until you're twelve, and then we need
Speaker 5: a new seven year old. So that's just one air Like,
Speaker 5: how do you find them? How do you cast them?
Speaker 5: How do you Leaving aside the ever present issued in
Speaker 5: every conspiracy, which is how do you keep everyone silent?
Speaker 5: But then the other is are you casting them on demand?
Speaker 5: So are you bringing you know, if we need a
Speaker 5: thousand crisis actors in Sandy Hook, where are we holding these?
Speaker 5: Or the other alternative I think of is do you
Speaker 5: have them already? And they're just like, how do you
Speaker 5: bring them in?
Speaker 2: How did you.
Speaker 5: Stage the incoming of these folks? Did they get a
Speaker 5: per diem? Did they get a per diem in a hotel?
Speaker 5: Someone at the school is going to be like, you know,
Speaker 5: I happen to notice that two weeks ago we didn't
Speaker 5: have any students and suddenly we have a thousand new students.
Speaker 5: This feels to me like a self refuting conspiracy theory
Speaker 5: because you just think even the slightest thought of how
Speaker 5: would we make this happen? Are their cities filled with
Speaker 5: crisis actors and they've just been there for.
Speaker 3: It's amazing nobody can find the advertisement for them?
Speaker 5: Yeah, how did this work? Is it like the old
Speaker 5: Russian military cities where there's just a locked city that nobody.
Speaker 4: That's a good idea and the crisis actors can only
Speaker 4: have one role? Right? I mean on TV when you're
Speaker 4: watching a movie and you're like, oh, I know that
Speaker 4: guy he was in? What movie was he in before?
Speaker 4: But with a crisis actor, you can't have I don't
Speaker 4: want to make light of this, but you can't be like,
Speaker 4: play a kid who's killed in real life and then
Speaker 4: show up in the next mass shooting.
Speaker 5: Although some of them claim, like that's one of the
Speaker 5: crazy conspiracy theories, so they'll show see this picture here,
Speaker 5: this kid looks just like this kid in this other
Speaker 5: mass shooting. But like, either way, it doesn't make any sense, right,
Speaker 5: And then what do you do after, Like, now there's
Speaker 5: a seven year old kid, do you kill him? Do
Speaker 5: you send him to Slovenia to grow up?
Speaker 3: I think even lots of crazy people know that there's
Speaker 3: no such thing as crisis actors for these kind of things.
Speaker 3: It shows a desperation of someone wanting to deflect or
Speaker 3: change the things. Like my only thing I can argue
Speaker 3: is that a crisis actors that pretended like they were killed.
Speaker 3: I truly have no other arguments.
Speaker 4: If I was brought into a meeting in the agency
Speaker 4: and they said, Okay, hey, we're gonna we're gonna do
Speaker 4: all these fake shootings. We're gonna make people feel bad.
Speaker 4: And the reason to do this is to stop guns
Speaker 4: being taken. Well, they're not being taken anyway.
Speaker 5: I happen to live in America where there are these
Speaker 5: mass shootings and I happened to notice none of them
Speaker 5: cause gun control. Like I feel like, if you guys
Speaker 5: came to me the forty eighth time, I'd be like, guys,
Speaker 5: this is really expensive. We've now like had four hundred
Speaker 5: thousand crisis actors. We've had to like bury them in
Speaker 5: the Mariana trench to get rid of their bodies, and
Speaker 5: we don't have any gun control. So can you come
Speaker 5: up with a new idea?
Speaker 3: Texas who pays the take? Like, we should go to
Speaker 3: the irs and see, Like, we'll.
Speaker 5: Walk me through that. Let's just walk through pretend the
Speaker 5: CIA was running this. What is the paperwork involved on
Speaker 5: a per person basis?
Speaker 4: Oh my gosh, this is this is like so crazy.
Speaker 2: I don't even notice.
Speaker 4: So first of all, if their miners would have to
Speaker 4: get their parents permission, we don't know how to do this.
Speaker 4: There'd have to be a budget.
Speaker 5: Actually, I would love to bring our producer John Stern.
Speaker 5: Are you there?
Speaker 4: John?
Speaker 6: Oh?
Speaker 7: Thank you for inviting the Adam. I'm always here.
Speaker 5: Cause you have actually created TV shows and movies. You've
Speaker 5: done them with big casts sometimes.
Speaker 7: And we can list all of my credits if you like,
Speaker 7: but I'll be very specific. If we had one hundred extras,
Speaker 7: here's what the support would need to be. Where do
Speaker 7: they park? So you're going to need to rent a
Speaker 7: parking lot. A parking space is obviously not going to
Speaker 7: be right by the suburban house. You need to find this.
Speaker 7: You have a locations department that finds the parking lot.
Speaker 7: So there's the people who own the parking lot. You
Speaker 7: have someone who works for you parking PA. Now you
Speaker 7: need to shuttle everyone to the location.
Speaker 5: Sorry, a crisis, parking PA.
Speaker 2: That's right, crisis PA.
Speaker 7: Shuttle Now you need to shuttle all these people to
Speaker 7: the location. Generally you'll do this in fifteen pass vans
Speaker 7: at rotate back and forth and are driven my team stairs.
Speaker 7: Maybe you can get some non union people. If it's
Speaker 7: in a southern state and those vans you're renting and
Speaker 7: you're filling with gas and you're ensuring, so then they
Speaker 7: need a holding area. You might rent another space. If
Speaker 7: there's a church right on the corner or a school. Well,
Speaker 7: in this case of school is a set or you'll
Speaker 7: set up a tent. If it's in hot weather, you
Speaker 7: need to have air conditioning, you need to have bathrooms.
Speaker 7: You generally bring those in and a honeywey. Let's dispense
Speaker 7: with the idea that any of them need any makeup
Speaker 7: or clothes. They just all come as they are. Let's
Speaker 7: make it easy. But they all do need to sign
Speaker 7: in and out and release forms, and there's generally one
Speaker 7: extra PA production assistant for every fifteen extras mention. Their
Speaker 7: parents would have to come with them too, right, it's
Speaker 7: not just the kids or the parents could drop them off.
Speaker 7: But technically, I mean the rules are the parents have
Speaker 7: to be on set. If you really get into it,
Speaker 7: if they're working during a school day, then you have
Speaker 7: to have an onset tutor and you have three or
Speaker 7: four hours of the day that they're tutoring. All right,
Speaker 7: Then there's food you buy, law have to have craft services,
Speaker 7: and someone who buys that food brings that food there,
Speaker 7: serves that food, cleans up afterwards, and then you do
Speaker 7: that again, you say lunch. Then you need a payroll
Speaker 7: department to pay all these people.
Speaker 5: I mean that logistics are insane.
Speaker 7: Well housing them. They're not local because everyone would know,
Speaker 7: oh my god, this is a real production.
Speaker 5: This is not a first idea best idea situation. All right, guys,
Speaker 5: this one fascinating, heartbreaking. But next week we'll try and
Speaker 5: to do a goof your one.
Speaker 1: If you're supporting a guy who's felony convictions prevent him
Speaker 1: from getting a security clearance, you might be in a cult.
Speaker 1: And if the guy you're supporting for president has felony
Speaker 1: convictions that prevent him from going to Cherman, Tina, Cambodia, Canada, Chile, China, Cuba,
Speaker 1: Dominican Republic, Egypt.
Speaker 2: Eat the Opian.
Speaker 8: My motion takes Presidentia, Iran and Israel, Japan, Macau, Malaysia, Mexico, Morocco, Nepal,
Speaker 8: is Out of New Zealand, Philippines, Singapore, South Atlina, South Korea, Taiwan, Tanzania, Tunisia, Turkey, Ukraine, United.
Speaker 9: Mission Implausible is produced by Adam Davidson, Jerry O'sha, John Cipher,
Speaker 9: and Jonathan Sterner. The associate producer is Rachel Harner. Mission
Speaker 9: Implausible is a production of honorable, mention and abominable pictures
Speaker 9: for iHeartMedia