Speaker 1: To be a journalist. It is like a working class job.
Speaker 1: You have to get your fingers dirty. If you really
Speaker 1: do journalism right, you have to be out there with
Speaker 1: the people. It shouldn't be reserved just for people who
Speaker 1: have fancy degrees.
Speaker 2: You've landed some interviews at drop Site that a lot
Speaker 2: of people in the media would be envious though interviewing somebody,
Speaker 2: let's say that's.
Speaker 1: Hy uk In Hamas journalists should have an ethical obligation
Speaker 1: go and interview those people and to tell their readers
Speaker 1: back in their home country what the objective reality looks
Speaker 1: like on the ground. Our job is not to get
Speaker 1: Kamala Harris elected, you know. Our job was not to
Speaker 1: get Barack Obama elected. Our job is to hold politicians accountable,
Speaker 1: regardless of which party they're a member of. People are saying, oh,
Speaker 1: what are you doing. You're gonna help Trump. No, we're
Speaker 1: going to help the public to have a real understanding,
Speaker 1: and I think we have to. We have an obligation
Speaker 1: to point that out and not just treat it as
Speaker 1: you know, Orange Hitler is coming back into.
Speaker 3: Power today on Counterpoints were joined by my colleague at
Speaker 3: drop Site News, Jeremy Skhill, which is part of our
Speaker 3: kind of ongoing series of getting to know in the
Speaker 3: Pennant journalists better, how they got into journalism, how they
Speaker 3: how they approached their craft. If people missed our long
Speaker 3: interview with Matt Taibi, that was a fun one. Oh
Speaker 3: there were times during that interview where I kind of
Speaker 3: forgot the cameras were rolling.
Speaker 4: Can be dangerous, but it's good, Like that's what you want.
Speaker 4: That's the best interview.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it is, so, Jeremy. Welcome to Washington, d C.
Speaker 3: You don't get here very often, so it's nice to
Speaker 3: see you in person.
Speaker 5: Try to avoid it at all.
Speaker 4: Don't blame you.
Speaker 3: So you guys were both just talking about your shared
Speaker 3: Wisconsinant upbringings. Shared a lot of similarities, seems like both
Speaker 3: both from the Catholic families with any social justice leftyism
Speaker 3: in back in your Wisconsin family.
Speaker 2: So my dad has is from a Catholic family in Watosa,
Speaker 2: and there's seven of them, so in there, I think,
Speaker 2: just in the mixt Yeah, absolutely, I didn't grow up Catholic,
Speaker 2: but yeah.
Speaker 5: I did, but you know, I mean Milwaukee.
Speaker 1: I I grew up in an interesting household because my
Speaker 1: my dad was very nearly a priest, you know, my
Speaker 1: mother prevented that and also the Vietnam War. I mean,
Speaker 1: he he grew up. His parents were Irish immigrants, you know,
Speaker 1: came to the US as teenagers, and you know, he
Speaker 1: had two sisters and the he was the only boy,
Speaker 1: and it's like, okay, you're going to be a priest.
Speaker 1: So I think for much of his life he thought
Speaker 1: he was going to end up being a Jesuit priest.
Speaker 1: And he got politicized by the Catholic left at the
Speaker 1: you know, sort of at the height of the Vietnam War.
Speaker 1: He he tells the story of seeing Dorothy Day, the
Speaker 1: founder of the Catholic Worker movement, who's up for beatification
Speaker 1: right now and in fact may may become the first
Speaker 1: saint known to have had an abortion. But he was
Speaker 1: really you know, because he grew up in this Irish
Speaker 1: Catholic family. The kind of weaving in scriptural reference to
Speaker 1: opposition against war really you know, took hold of him
Speaker 1: and he sort of altered his path in life.
Speaker 5: And he ends up going to New York City and
Speaker 5: moving into.
Speaker 1: The Catholic Worker house with Dorothy Day dad this is
Speaker 1: my dad, Yeah, And you know, so he was there
Speaker 1: and actually he when he was there, it was like
Speaker 1: about ten years after the Cuban Revolution, and there was
Speaker 1: a very kind of close relationship between the Catholic Worker
Speaker 1: Movement and the Cuban Revolution. Although the Catholic Worker Movement
Speaker 1: was an anarchist pacifist movement. So Dorothy Day had gone
Speaker 1: to Cuba many times, was a supporter of the Cuban Revolution,
Speaker 1: but critical of the methods used in the It was
Speaker 1: a violent revolution. And you know, my dad was just
Speaker 1: a kid from the South Side of Chicago, and you know,
Speaker 1: he had never really been anywhere, and Dorothy Day asked
Speaker 1: him if he wanted to go to the harvest of
Speaker 1: ten million tons. In nineteen seventy one, my dad went
Speaker 1: on the second venceer Ramo's brigade to Cuba and he
Speaker 1: spent a couple of months cutting sugarcane and he meets
Speaker 1: you know, remember this is you know, the height of
Speaker 1: Vietnam War, civil rights movement, the Black Panther Party, and
Speaker 1: what had happened is that Fidel Castro had issued this
Speaker 1: call to young people and revolutionaries around the world to
Speaker 1: come to Cuba, and my dad took a bus from
Speaker 1: New York City to Mexico City, and you know, he
Speaker 1: was on the bus also with like supporters of the
Speaker 1: Weather Underground and you know, people who were part of
Speaker 1: sort of movements in the US that were on the
Speaker 1: hard left of the movement. So he goes down there
Speaker 1: and he ends up writing an article about the Cuban Revolution,
Speaker 1: defending the Cuban Revolution. It was called up from Nonviolence,
Speaker 1: and it was grappling with how how can you be
Speaker 1: an American pacifist, a Catholic and believe that you have
Speaker 1: some moral authority to stand in judgment over the people
Speaker 1: who felt that they needed to take up arms to
Speaker 1: confront a dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista and remove it when
Speaker 1: Americans had failed to prevent their own government or stop
Speaker 1: their own government from propping up these kinds of dictatorships
Speaker 1: and entities.
Speaker 5: In Latin America.
Speaker 1: And that altered his life, and he ended up deciding
Speaker 1: to become a nurse actually because he wanted to work.
Speaker 1: There was a big believer in the Sermon on the Mountain,
Speaker 1: you know, and took it very seriously. So he spent
Speaker 1: he and my mother both were nurses and spent their
Speaker 1: whole life working, you know, in hospitals and clinics.
Speaker 2: And well, it sounds like it actually may have altered
Speaker 2: your life as well, huge impact, massively influential, and maybe
Speaker 2: a good way to get into that, I don't know
Speaker 2: if you have other questions to start, Ryan, is like
Speaker 2: the influence of social justice Catholicism on the Democratic Party
Speaker 2: is literally waning in the figure of Joe Biden right
Speaker 2: now in the White House, somebody who invokes a lot
Speaker 2: of those sentiments often but is basically alone in it,
Speaker 2: is not entirely serious about it, and the way that
Speaker 2: a lot of radicals were during the period of the
Speaker 2: Vietnam War. So tell us a little bit about how
Speaker 2: that influenced you and where you've kind of seen it
Speaker 2: go over the arc of your career.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: You know, one other thing that relates to this about
Speaker 1: Milwaukee is it's also the home of one of the
Speaker 1: most prominent white civil rights priests in the United States
Speaker 1: at the time, father James Grappi, who then left the
Speaker 1: priesthood and ended up becoming a union organizer with the
Speaker 1: bus drivers, and he actually drove a bus himself in
Speaker 1: the city of Milwaukee. And there, you know, as you know,
Speaker 1: also there were there were a string of socialist mayors
Speaker 1: in Milwaukee, Frank Zeidler, you know, perhaps the most famous
Speaker 1: among them. And you know, you as a kid, you
Speaker 1: grow up and you aren't you think your parents are boring,
Speaker 1: and you know, it's.
Speaker 5: Like I just knew.
Speaker 1: In fact, I actually had a lot of interactions with
Speaker 1: kids at school who, you know, would make fun of
Speaker 1: the fact when they would say, what do your parents do?
Speaker 5: And I would say, my parents were both nurses, your
Speaker 5: dad is a nurse.
Speaker 1: You know, is this sort of you know, thing of
Speaker 1: having to grapple with the fact that my dad was
Speaker 1: a male and he was I was a nurse. But
Speaker 1: you know, I think it was probably when I was
Speaker 1: around maybe like ten or eleven years old, I started
Speaker 1: to realize that there was some you know, my dad
Speaker 1: was telling these stories about another part of his life,
Speaker 1: and I finally stopped being a knucklehead and started saying, like,
Speaker 1: what was that about? And you know, our house was
Speaker 1: filled with all of these books from you know, all
Speaker 1: kinds of revolutionaries, violent, nonviolent social justice writings, and yeah,
Speaker 1: we grew up, but it wasn't so much like my
Speaker 1: parents were not the kind of people who would drill
Speaker 1: these things into your head. It was more watching how
Speaker 1: they treated other people, you know, and you know, there
Speaker 1: was this spirit, you know, it's particularly with my dad,
Speaker 1: of just servitude to others, and you know, and I
Speaker 1: think that when you grow up in a house where
Speaker 1: you see your parents treating other people with dignity, and
Speaker 1: then you start to put that together with injustice in
Speaker 1: the world, it you know, you get set on a path.
Speaker 1: And so I think it wasn't that my parents like
Speaker 1: trained me to be anything. They just they had an example.
Speaker 1: And then when I expressed interest in it, I started
Speaker 1: to realize there's layers behind it that are not just
Speaker 1: about personal values, but are political values also.
Speaker 4: So what's the path there? Then into journalism?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 5: I mean, you know it's funny, is I was.
Speaker 1: I was never a good academic student, but I was
Speaker 1: a voracious reader. And you know, I remember when I
Speaker 1: when I left high school, it was you know, I
Speaker 1: was having trouble getting at any university. I did get
Speaker 1: into a university, but I just I really my guidance
Speaker 1: counselor in school said that I should consider, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe being an electrician or a plumber going to trade school.
Speaker 1: And I found that so offensive at the time, But
Speaker 1: I was wrong. And actually the guidance counselor was right.
Speaker 1: I needed to go into a trade.
Speaker 5: You know. The university wasn't you know what I didn't.
Speaker 5: I didn't feel comfortable there.
Speaker 1: It wasn't because I wasn't thirsty for knowledge.
Speaker 5: I was.
Speaker 1: It was that the way that the schools were structured
Speaker 1: just didn't speak to me as a person. And you know,
Speaker 1: my dad wrote this letter to me before I went
Speaker 1: to you know, off to college which I would then
Speaker 1: drop out of, that said, don't let school get in
Speaker 1: the way of your education.
Speaker 5: And you know, and I I to this day I
Speaker 5: think about that.
Speaker 1: But what happened is that so I was at the
Speaker 1: University of Wisconsin, I was on academic probation.
Speaker 5: I you know, I was. I was certainly not.
Speaker 6: Freeing books are having too much fun.
Speaker 5: I was a mixture of both. But you know, really
Speaker 5: I would, I would. It was funny when I would would,
Speaker 5: I would actually do the work, like at a history course.
Speaker 5: I would.
Speaker 1: I would get you know, pretty good grades. But it
Speaker 1: was more that I was so I was involved with
Speaker 1: everything else. I was involved with the newspaper and activist causes,
Speaker 1: and you know, and in ninety I believe it was
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety five, we staged a huge sit in
Speaker 1: at the administrative buildings at the University of Wisconsin. A
Speaker 1: mother Jones named us one of the top activist campuses
Speaker 1: in the country, and I was one of the students.
Speaker 5: That coordinated that.
Speaker 1: It had to do with the university's treatment of homeless
Speaker 1: people who were living around the campus and the way
Speaker 1: they wanted to eject them. But also I watched how
Speaker 1: as when students were trying to get their professors to
Speaker 1: kind of join them, there was a lot of cowardice,
Speaker 1: and the professors would preach a kind of social justice
Speaker 1: gospel in this liberal hamlet in medicine. But then when
Speaker 1: students would say, hey, can you join us, you know
Speaker 1: on the line, it was hard to get them to
Speaker 1: do it. So, for a combination of reasons, I ended
Speaker 1: up leaving the university and hitchhiped out to Washington, d C.
Speaker 1: And I moved into the nation's largest homeless shelter at
Speaker 1: the time, which was the Community for Creative Nonviolence, just
Speaker 1: a few blocks from the from the Capitol. And when
Speaker 1: I was When I was there, a lot of what
Speaker 1: I was doing was mopping floors, cleaning toilets, taking you know,
Speaker 1: guys to doctor's appointments. You know, the number of veterans
Speaker 1: who were homeless was stunning to me. But I listened
Speaker 1: to a lot of talk radio, and you know my
Speaker 1: walkman for you know, younger people may not know it,
Speaker 1: but it's sort of like you know when you're listening
Speaker 1: to music or on your on your iPhone. But I
Speaker 1: would had this, like, you know, I had my headphones
Speaker 1: and my little walkman because I would be just waiting
Speaker 1: all day or cleaning. And I heard this woman on
Speaker 1: the radio who was confronting then Speaker of the House,
Speaker 1: Nute Gingrich, and confronting him over the Contract with America
Speaker 1: and his agenda about women. And if you remember at
Speaker 1: the time Gingrich, Gingrich's mother had been interviewed. This is
Speaker 1: in the mid nineteen nineties. Gingrich's mother had been interviewed
Speaker 1: by Connie Chung, who was then one of the most
Speaker 1: famous news people in America, and she had said, Kanyie
Speaker 1: Chung had asked her, what did your mother think? What
Speaker 1: does your mother think of First Lady Hillary Clinton? And
Speaker 1: they talked about it, Well, what does Nut Gingrich, your
Speaker 1: son think of First Lady? Oh, I can't say it.
Speaker 1: You know, she said, I can't say the word, and
Speaker 1: you know, one of them said, does it rhyme with which?
Speaker 5: And it's yes.
Speaker 1: So I heard this journalist confronting new Gingrich. Remember he
Speaker 1: had the Daily Speakers press briefing, so and so this
Speaker 1: journalist confronts him about it and he gets completely flustered
Speaker 1: and she says, so are you saying.
Speaker 5: That your mother is a liar?
Speaker 6: Qunnie?
Speaker 1: And that was the last Daily Speaker briefing that knew
Speaker 1: Gingrid Shid And the journalist who was questioning him was
Speaker 1: Amy Goodman, who would you know, would then go on
Speaker 1: to become the founding host of Democracy Now. And the
Speaker 1: Washington Post headline at the time was something like Gingrich
Speaker 1: can't ditch bitch comment, But it was I had never
Speaker 1: heard someone with that kind of like backbone to merity
Speaker 1: taking on this incredibly powerful person. And then I started
Speaker 1: like seeking out, what is this PACIFICA radio? I started
Speaker 1: listening to it.
Speaker 3: And then when at the time, was she like the
Speaker 3: congressional correspondent or the was Washington correspondent for PACIFICA or something?
Speaker 5: Yeah, she was. She was one of the most important
Speaker 5: figures at their news division.
Speaker 4: And you know, she was also a foreign correspondent then too.
Speaker 1: She had Yeah, i mean, Amy Goodman is her whole
Speaker 1: life story is really extraordinary. But she had been Yeah,
Speaker 1: she's I mean, she has a really interesting She's also
Speaker 1: an extraordinary baker by the way, and she had a
Speaker 1: whole other life too where she was.
Speaker 5: Yeah, she worked in a bakery.
Speaker 1: But you know, but Amy Goodman had in the early
Speaker 1: nineteen nineties, she had gone to East Tmoor when it
Speaker 1: was still under the control of Indonesia with the journalists
Speaker 1: that I consider one of the most important mentors in
Speaker 1: my life, an investigativejournalist named Alan Nairn. The two of
Speaker 1: them were in East Timor. Pope John Paul the second,
Speaker 1: was going to be visiting there largely Catholic population, you know,
Speaker 1: in this former territory of Indonesia that was under a
Speaker 1: mass extermination campaign from a US armed and funded Indonesian military.
Speaker 1: And they went there ahead of the Pope's visit because
Speaker 1: the people of East team were felt that if the
Speaker 1: Pope comes, their plight was going to be made clear
Speaker 1: to the world, that it would you know, the when
Speaker 1: powerful people come somewhere, then the media comes. So the
Speaker 1: way but the way that the Indonesian regime responded to
Speaker 1: local people was to was to commit a horrific series
Speaker 1: of massacres, the most famous of which was called the
Speaker 1: Dilly Massacre. And Amy and Allen were there and watched
Speaker 1: scores of people being gunned down with USM sixteens and
Speaker 1: they were themselves beaten almost to death. Alan skull was
Speaker 1: cracked open. And both of them believed that they pulled
Speaker 1: out their American passports and we're pleading with there would
Speaker 1: be murderers, assassins to spare them. And and Amy and
Speaker 1: Allen both have said that they believe that the Indonesian
Speaker 1: soldiers realized that the guns in their hands were from
Speaker 1: the United States and that they there would be a
Speaker 1: consequence for killing people with a passport of the nation
Speaker 1: that is providing them with the support and the guns.
Speaker 1: And so they lived, and they survived, and because of
Speaker 1: the two of them and a handful of others, the
Speaker 1: world understood what was happening in East Timoor. And you know,
Speaker 1: when East Timor became an independent country, they were both
Speaker 1: given credit by the new leaders of the country for
Speaker 1: for having been crucial to the independence of East Teamoor.
Speaker 4: And so you start, you start, so.
Speaker 1: She had to decide whether to get like to let
Speaker 1: me volunteer or get a restraining order against me. You know,
Speaker 1: I would actually send her like real letters and I
Speaker 1: would go to all of her events, and it's always wild.
Speaker 2: They were like magazine cutout letters.
Speaker 5: And I sign my actual my actual name. But what
Speaker 5: I was also doing at the time, I I I lived.
Speaker 1: I moved to this community in Baltimore called Jonah House,
Speaker 1: and I lived with the late father Philip Brigan and
Speaker 1: his wife Liz McAllister. And Jonah House was a was
Speaker 1: a community of resistance but also of service, rooted in,
Speaker 1: you know, in Catholic liberation theology. And for people that
Speaker 1: don't know, Philip and Daniel Berrigan were the two organizers
Speaker 1: of an action in nineteen sixty eight known as the
Speaker 1: Catonsville Nine. And they what they did is these were
Speaker 1: two Catholic priests at the time, Daniel Bragan. They're both priests, brothers,
Speaker 1: Philip and Daniel. Daniel Berrigan was a well known author
Speaker 1: and poet and a significant voice opposed to the war
Speaker 1: in Vietnam. But they didn't want to just be involved
Speaker 1: with kind of you know, abstract theology. They wanted to
Speaker 1: take action, and so they organized a raid on a
Speaker 1: draft house in Catonsville, Maryland in May of nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: eight that had hundreds of A one draft files that
Speaker 1: were being used to send Americans young Americans war in Vietnam.
Speaker 1: And so, in the middle of a workday, these two
Speaker 1: Catholic priests and their seven comrades go into this draft
Speaker 1: house in Catonsville, Maryland with little metal garbage bins, and
Speaker 1: they proceed to take out the draft files and right
Speaker 1: in front of the clerks of the of the house
Speaker 1: and put them into this garbage bin. They bring them
Speaker 1: into the parking lot of the Catonsville Draft House and
Speaker 1: they burn them with homemade napalm. And they had made
Speaker 1: the napalm because of the US Army Field Manual that
Speaker 1: had been made public. And the opening line of their
Speaker 1: you know, just a protest against the war in Vietnam.
Speaker 1: The opening line of the statement of the Catonsville Nine
Speaker 1: that Daniel Berrigan wrote was our apologies, good friends, for
Speaker 1: the fracture of good order, the burning of paper instead
Speaker 1: of children, you know.
Speaker 5: Like.
Speaker 1: And so so I lived with Phil Brigan, and you know,
Speaker 1: they they said, if you want to follow Jesus, you
Speaker 1: have to look good on wood and so you know,
Speaker 1: they both spent considerable amount of time in and out
Speaker 1: of prison.
Speaker 6: So you're then you're at Democracy Now well as.
Speaker 1: I was at Jonah House and then, but we would
Speaker 1: listen to the radio every day. Still I was still
Speaker 1: stocking Amy Goodman. I then moved to the Catholic Worker
Speaker 1: in New York, in part because I knew Amy Goodman
Speaker 1: was there and Democracy Now was there. And to make
Speaker 1: a very long story short, Amy Goodman made the mistake
Speaker 1: of coming to do a story about an art exhibit
Speaker 1: about the life of Dorothy Day that I had helped
Speaker 1: organize with some friends.
Speaker 5: And I went up to it.
Speaker 1: I'm like, I'm the guy who's been writing you, and
Speaker 1: it's like literally like I know this too when I speak. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she was sort of looking like I'd wish I had
Speaker 1: a security guard here, but she actually then agreed and said, Okay,
Speaker 1: we can try it for one day, and I went
Speaker 1: into the old studios of WBAI in New York across
Speaker 1: from Madison Square Garden and sort of that was the
Speaker 1: beginning of my life as a as a as a journalist,
Speaker 1: and Amy taught me how to edit. She was an
Speaker 1: incredible editor of audio tape, like the old reel to
Speaker 1: reels where you would cut it with an actual razor blade.
Speaker 1: So she taught me how to do that because she
Speaker 1: was a master at it, and I became pretty proficient
Speaker 1: at editing, and other journalists would ask me to edit
Speaker 1: their stories. And that's so to go back to the
Speaker 1: very beginning of our conversation, my guidance conselor said you
Speaker 1: should go into you know, look, look at a trade.
Speaker 1: I ended up doing that. The trade was journalism. And
Speaker 1: that's always what I tell young people too. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm almost fifty years old, and you know, it's hard
Speaker 1: to think of myself as being that old. But like
Speaker 1: I often tell young people, it's, you know, to be
Speaker 1: a journalist, it's it is like a working class job.
Speaker 1: You have to get your fingers dirty. If you really
Speaker 1: do journalism right, you have to be out there with
Speaker 1: the people. And it's not it shouldn't be reserved just
Speaker 1: for people who have fancy degrees.
Speaker 2: Journalism as activism and journalism as social justice activism. It
Speaker 2: seems to me that a lot of people that go
Speaker 2: through that pipeline now are hyper educated. They have master's degrees.
Speaker 2: They all live and they come from similar backgrounds. They
Speaker 2: actually tend to come from upper middle class backgrounds.
Speaker 6: It's not to say.
Speaker 2: Everyone, but it's become really different than it was in
Speaker 2: the past. And wanted to get your take as somebody
Speaker 2: who's been sort of through all these different steps from
Speaker 2: democracy now to the intercept to drop site of how
Speaker 2: that has perhaps influenced the way that the media it
Speaker 2: talks about social justice.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think and it's a great question and issue.
Speaker 1: I also think though that what you know, you can
Speaker 1: come you can come at journalism from a number of
Speaker 1: different pathways, and I certainly came at it from you know,
Speaker 1: a kind of social justice activist perspective mixed in with
Speaker 1: sort of liberation theology. But you you then there's a
Speaker 1: point at which you have to learn the actual trade
Speaker 1: of journalism, and you know and the and and that
Speaker 1: facts matter, that context matter, that you know that history
Speaker 1: actually matters. So you know that that's really important no
Speaker 1: matter what path you took to it.
Speaker 5: It's also like, I think.
Speaker 1: That there are really responsible, good journalists who are conservatives
Speaker 1: who I don't agree with politically, but I know when
Speaker 1: I read them that they're making an effort that that
Speaker 1: there is a dedication to facts, and that that's how
Speaker 1: I kind of, you know, draw a line. When I
Speaker 1: was doing the work on Obama's drone wars and stuff,
Speaker 1: there were a lot of you know, journalists on a
Speaker 1: totally different political perspective, myself, who I thought did really
Speaker 1: good reporting on it. I think the key is, do you,
Speaker 1: you know, do you keep that same principle when your
Speaker 1: guys are in power? And that's where I think we have,
Speaker 1: you know, sort of main you know, major problems. You
Speaker 1: can't be a vegetarian between meals. You can't be like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm a journalist now that you know Donald Trump is
Speaker 1: in power. I mean, this goes to your other question.
Speaker 1: This happened to Ryan too when Trump was president. I mean, clearly,
Speaker 1: Donald Trump is not someone who represents much of my worldview,
Speaker 1: but there were elements of Trump's foreign policy were that
Speaker 1: represented a departure from what we saw under the eight
Speaker 1: years of Barack Obama or kind of the elite consensus
Speaker 1: in Washington, d C. And anytime we would point out,
Speaker 1: like I did a story at one point where I
Speaker 1: was talking about Trump's kind of stated opposition to Forever Wars,
Speaker 1: and I wrote something and did a podcast on it
Speaker 1: that said that Trump might be our best bet to
Speaker 1: actually get out of some of these And I was
Speaker 1: making a complicated argument that had to do with the
Speaker 1: nature of this alliance between the neocons and the Democrats
Speaker 1: and how Trump, whatever you think of him, represented, you know,
Speaker 1: sy Hirsch said at the time, as a circuit breaker,
Speaker 1: this isn't to praise him, it's a state facts. Well,
Speaker 1: people went completely nuts. Oh sk Hill is pro Trump.
Speaker 1: Oh you called Trump the dove. Never called Trump the dove.
Speaker 1: The guy expanded drone strikes, he used the mother of
Speaker 1: all bombs, He assassinated Costum Sully money I fact. I
Speaker 1: mean Trump was a highly militaristic president, but he had
Speaker 1: certain basic things that he had put on record that
Speaker 1: were a departure from the way that Democrats and Republicans talk.
Speaker 5: And I think we have.
Speaker 1: To we have an obligation to point that out and
Speaker 1: not just treat it as you know, orange orange Hitler
Speaker 1: is coming back into power, like we have our responsibilities
Speaker 1: what's true and what's not so and you know, working democracy.
Speaker 1: Now to the intercept to drop site. I think that
Speaker 1: you know, the the spirit that Ryan and I and
Speaker 1: our colleagues are trying to embrace is is one of
Speaker 1: we called it non aligned journalism at the beginning. That
Speaker 1: doesn't you know, nonpartisan is you know, that's tired, you know,
Speaker 1: but I think not online, this this idea that facts
Speaker 1: actually matter and that we're not afraid to say, you know,
Speaker 1: that the Democrats are engaged in a genocidal war, and
Speaker 1: that we're not going to pull punches because people are saying, oh,
Speaker 1: what are you doing. You're going to help Trump. No,
Speaker 1: we're going to help the public to have a real understanding.
Speaker 1: And people like us who are perceived to be you know,
Speaker 1: on the left or you know, sometimes people erroneously call
Speaker 1: us liberals. Our job is not to get Kamala Harris elected.
Speaker 1: You know, our job was not to get Barack Obama elected.
Speaker 1: Our job is to hold politicians accountable, regardless of which
Speaker 1: party they're a member of. And I think that on
Speaker 1: the right you don't have many people that are willing.
Speaker 1: Maybe it increased a bit because of Trump, but in general,
Speaker 1: I don't think you see, look our old colleague Glenn Greenwald,
Speaker 1: you know, he went way out on a limb and
Speaker 1: he was you know, I think he's right about cancel
Speaker 1: culture and speech issues. But he also saw in a
Speaker 1: very real way that some of the people that he
Speaker 1: thought were allies in this, all of a sudden when
Speaker 1: it comes to Palestine, they want to shut down that speech. So,
Speaker 1: you know, I think that the people I respect, regardless
Speaker 1: of their political outlook, are people that apply the same
Speaker 1: principles regardless of who's in power.
Speaker 5: And there are a lot of.
Speaker 2: People who in conservative media actually which I'm a pretty
Speaker 2: launch defender of, who do unfortunately see their jobs helping
Speaker 2: a candidate. And I think journalism is about helping facts
Speaker 2: and truth. You just have to If you want to
Speaker 2: be on a team, that's fine, but it's not journalism, right,
Speaker 2: go do that. Yeah, if you think that's the just
Speaker 2: way to go about your business, fine, but it's not journalism.
Speaker 1: But also, look at look what we're witnessing right now
Speaker 1: with you know, with Liz Cheney and Dick Cheney endorsing
Speaker 1: Kamala Harris and not just endorsing Kamala Harris. Kamala Harris
Speaker 1: then does an event with Liz Cheney in Wisconsin in
Speaker 1: which she goes out of her way to praise Dick
Speaker 1: Cheney for his service to the country This is one
Speaker 1: of the most notorious villains in modern American history. You know,
Speaker 1: I mean people talk about, you know, Henry Kissinger. I mean,
Speaker 1: Dick Cheney and Henry Kissinger are on the same level
Speaker 1: of the amount of destruction that.
Speaker 5: They wrought in the world.
Speaker 1: And to have common Mala Harris, you know, there would
Speaker 1: have been a different way to handle that. But to
Speaker 1: actually go out of your way to thank him for
Speaker 1: his service.
Speaker 3: This was a what service I mean, if you want
Speaker 3: to specify what service.
Speaker 5: Dick Cheney was the guy who in Congress.
Speaker 1: First of all, you know, these guys thought that, like
Speaker 1: the Nixon administration, was a model for how you should
Speaker 1: deal with Congress and deal with secrecy. Dick Cheney, when
Speaker 1: he was in Congress, wrote the so called Minority Report
Speaker 1: for the Iran Contra scandal, saying, not only should no
Speaker 1: one go to jail for this, but this is actually
Speaker 1: a model for how he should be doing it.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: They believe that the president, when it comes to quote
Speaker 1: unquote national security policy, should effectively operate a dictatorship of
Speaker 1: the executive and that Congress's only function is to fund
Speaker 1: the operations.
Speaker 5: But then you talk.
Speaker 1: About when they were actually in power the torture. The
Speaker 1: man still defends waterboarding, He still defends torture. These were
Speaker 1: the guys that were big into the warrantless wiretapping, the
Speaker 1: secret prisons, the torture, the wars of aggression, the declaration
Speaker 1: that the world is a battlefield. What is Kamala Hera
Speaker 1: thinking saying she's thanking this person for his service, you know,
Speaker 1: to me, though, it's indicative the Bill Crystal neo con wing,
Speaker 1: you know, of the Republican Party, It's not. This narrative
Speaker 1: that they're just concerned about the fate of American democracy
Speaker 1: is complete nonsense, And actually it's an insidious narrative because
Speaker 1: the truth is they're totally they totally love what Joe
Speaker 1: Biden and Kamala Harris are doing on a foreign policy
Speaker 1: level right now in the Middle East. They're just just
Speaker 1: like Dick Cheney loved the fact that Obama was able
Speaker 1: to normalize drone strikes and assassination as a fundamental part
Speaker 1: of American policy for liberals, you know. And so you
Speaker 1: message that and people say, oh, what are you doing
Speaker 1: trying to help Trump? Well, what is the Democratic Party
Speaker 1: doing proactively praising Dick Cheney's record?
Speaker 5: You know, it's Kamala Harris.
Speaker 1: Can't help it if Dick Cheney says, I'd rather have
Speaker 1: Kamala Harris, but then she goes out of her way
Speaker 1: to say this about someone that Democrats used to say
Speaker 1: it was one of the most notorious war criminals in
Speaker 1: modern American history.
Speaker 2: Joe Biden was on TV in the Bush era saying
Speaker 2: that he had shredded the Constitution and he didn't care
Speaker 2: about the Constitution.
Speaker 1: So, yeah, one interesting thing about Joe Biden. You know,
Speaker 1: early in Joe Biden's career, he focused pretty intensely on
Speaker 1: the War Powers Act, you know, and if you go
Speaker 1: back and you look at Joe Biden's career, he actually
Speaker 1: understands these issues of war powers. He was at times
Speaker 1: he dissented within the Obama White House. But what we're
Speaker 1: what we're seeing now, you know, and there's talk of
Speaker 1: the United States potentially participating in an offensive attack on
Speaker 1: you know, on Iran, which would be a clear violation
Speaker 1: of the of the War Powers Act. Biden's career those
Speaker 1: shows that when it actually comes down to when your
Speaker 1: people are in power, those things go out the window.
Speaker 1: And under democratic administrations, Biden made all sorts of excuses
Speaker 1: and exceptions under Clinton and certainly under Obama for violating
Speaker 1: the War Powers Act.
Speaker 3: And so then in the two thousands, and you know,
Speaker 3: twenty tens, you became known for your reporting on mercenaries
Speaker 3: and then also drones strike in America's dirty wars. So
Speaker 3: as you're at democracy now, late nineties, early two thousands,
Speaker 3: lead up nine to eleven, then the lead up to
Speaker 3: the war, how do you go from the editing room
Speaker 3: mopping the floors. Yeah too, I presume you continued doing
Speaker 3: those things, but then also getting to participate in the
Speaker 3: in the trade craft of producing it then gets added.
Speaker 1: What happened was that the in nineteen ninety eight, Amy
Speaker 1: Goodman was wanted to go to Nigeria to investigate the
Speaker 1: role of oil companies in that country, and she had
Speaker 1: done one of the only US interviews with the poet
Speaker 1: Ken Sarah Wewa, who was the one of the lead.
Speaker 1: He was a world renowned poet from Nigeria, one of
Speaker 1: the leaders of the Ogoni.
Speaker 5: Tribe in the Niger Delta.
Speaker 1: And with the complicity of the Shell Oil Corporation, the
Speaker 1: Nigerian military junta hanged Ken Sara Wewa and eight others
Speaker 1: they were known as the Ogoni Nine. But Amy had
Speaker 1: interviewed Ken Sarah Wewa when he came briefly to the
Speaker 1: United States in the mid nine It was, I think
Speaker 1: it was even months before he was he was hanged,
Speaker 1: and Amy really cared deeply about She was deeply moved
Speaker 1: by meeting Ken Sara Wewa and started working on investigation.
Speaker 1: She actually asked me to go along with her to
Speaker 1: Nigeria and and so I went kind of as her
Speaker 1: assistant more or less. So we traveled all around these
Speaker 1: riverine communities of the Niger Delta, and I mean it
Speaker 1: was incredible to watch Amy Goodman work as the most
Speaker 1: tireless aggressive journal I've ever met. I mean, she is
Speaker 1: she she is a force of nature. I'll just tell
Speaker 1: you one story though.
Speaker 5: So we go.
Speaker 1: We interviewed, we documented this massacre of indigenous villagers who
Speaker 1: had protested Chevron, and it was clear that Chevron had
Speaker 1: provided them with company helicopters, the paramilitary force with Chevron
Speaker 1: helicopters to go and attack these indigenous villagers that were
Speaker 1: doing a non violent occupation of one of their oil barges.
Speaker 1: So we went and we did the people side of
Speaker 1: the story. We interviewed survived witnesses, et cetera. And then
Speaker 1: we went back to Lagos and at the time, the
Speaker 1: dictator Sani Abacha had just died. It was an extremely
Speaker 1: dangerous situation in Nigeria. Another military figure had taken control
Speaker 1: of the country. And we went to Chevron's headquarters in Legos,
Speaker 1: so we had We were in a car with the drivers,
Speaker 1: me and Amy.
Speaker 5: We pull up. We had no appointment.
Speaker 1: Amy, we had figured out the name of the managing director.
Speaker 1: Amy said we're here to see the managing director and
Speaker 1: they're like, well, do you have an appointment? And she said,
Speaker 1: we're Americans and he said, okay, yeah, yeah, but do
Speaker 1: you have an appointment We are Americans. We need to
Speaker 1: see him right now. Chevron's an American oil corporation. And she
Speaker 1: talked her way through the security. We go in there
Speaker 1: and within minutes we're sitting face to face with the
Speaker 1: managing director of Chevron in Nigeria, and Amy proceeds to
Speaker 1: get him to admit to the entire thing, just you know,
Speaker 1: in the course of this interview, and at one point
Speaker 1: he says to her, she's asking about the helicopters the
Speaker 1: providing helicopter. He says, oh, actually, our head of security
Speaker 1: went with them. Chevron's head of security went.
Speaker 5: With this war. Oh yeah, she was recording. Amy was
Speaker 5: recording the whole thing.
Speaker 4: Huh, it's nice to tell.
Speaker 1: So Amy's can you talk to him? Oh yeah, we
Speaker 1: can get it. So they bring him into the room
Speaker 1: and She's saying out, did they have any weapons? Well,
Speaker 1: they had like voodoo charms. He's saying, you know, they've
Speaker 1: made up. They had this whole thing.
Speaker 5: The congression. We come back.
Speaker 1: Then we do this documentary called Drilling and Killing Chevron
Speaker 1: and Nigeria's oil Dictatorship. It wins the George Polk Award
Speaker 1: that year and the Congressional Black Caucusted Investigation.
Speaker 5: And you know, and I learned.
Speaker 1: I learned journalism as a trade like you would be
Speaker 1: an apprentice.
Speaker 5: So I soaked up everything.
Speaker 1: I had notebooks filled not just with what we were seeing,
Speaker 1: but what I was witnessing. Amy as someone I considered
Speaker 1: to be my mentor, how she was, how she worked,
Speaker 1: the aggressiveness, the temerity, the thoroughness.
Speaker 5: I mean, Amy is in a relentless fact checker. I
Speaker 5: mean she is incredible.
Speaker 1: To watch a journalist's work like that, and I I
Speaker 1: mean I think about it every day because it's you know,
Speaker 1: I think if you look at how much laziness there
Speaker 1: is in journalism today, also what our devices have created.
Speaker 1: People think you can just source, Oh can you give
Speaker 1: me a quote? Everything is now being done remotely. We
Speaker 1: lose something when we're not in the field, when we're
Speaker 1: not talking face to face with people.
Speaker 3: And so then you had an interesting arc in the
Speaker 3: sense that after the war breaks out and you've got
Speaker 3: these war criminals Bush and Cheney in the office, you've
Speaker 3: become kind of like a hero of Democrats because you're
Speaker 3: out there criticizing you know, eventually Democrats, no, they support
Speaker 3: I mean Democratic voters who are against the war. Democrats themselves,
Speaker 3: half of them voted.
Speaker 5: For the war. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So what's that experience like to go from oh, it's
Speaker 3: surreal every you know, MSNBC and.
Speaker 6: You know, sort of marginalized leftists, and.
Speaker 3: Then everybody's loving what you're saying, and then all of
Speaker 3: a sudden, oh, yeah, you're saying the exact same thing.
Speaker 4: I mean, so new boss and.
Speaker 1: So had I had spent years going in and out
Speaker 1: of Iraq, even before nine to eleven, I started going
Speaker 1: to a rock in the late nineteen nineties. Amy, you know,
Speaker 1: Amy supported me going to do that. So I was
Speaker 1: doing reporting from Iraq starting in the nineties when Saddam
Speaker 1: Husin was in power, and a lot of what I
Speaker 1: was one important thing in journalism is to be humble
Speaker 1: enough to know what you don't know. And Amy also
Speaker 1: told me that too. She said, you don't feel like
Speaker 1: you need to tell the whole political story when you
Speaker 1: go somewhere to report. Remember you're just starting doing this.
Speaker 1: It's valuable to tell the stories of what you see
Speaker 1: around you, and don't don't pretend that you're an expert
Speaker 1: on something that you're not. And so a lot of
Speaker 1: what I did in my early reporting, I was in
Speaker 1: you know, Serbia during.
Speaker 5: The nineteen ninety nine NATO bombing.
Speaker 1: I was in Iraq under the sanctions and the no
Speaker 1: fly zone bombings of Bill Clinton, and a lot of
Speaker 1: what I did was to go talk to ordinary people
Speaker 1: about what happened today in your family, you know, telling
Speaker 1: these stories of ordinary people. And in Iraq, I had,
Speaker 1: you know, did a lot of stories about the hospitals
Speaker 1: in Iraq. So when when the Iraq War happened, I
Speaker 1: already had spent years going in and out of Iraq,
Speaker 1: and I understood the dynamic. I knew that there were
Speaker 1: no weapons of mass destruction. I was there when the
Speaker 1: Weapons Inspector stuff happened. And you know, anyway, then, you know,
Speaker 1: Democrats largely posed the war, although people like Hillary Clinton
Speaker 1: and Joe Biden was a major facilitator of the Iraq War.
Speaker 1: No matter how he wants to try to revise history,
Speaker 1: he was the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
Speaker 1: at a time when they should have been, you know,
Speaker 1: pointing out all of the problems with the administration narrative.
Speaker 1: And Biden largely was a facilitator of the war. So Democrats,
Speaker 1: as an institutional power entity should not be ever let
Speaker 1: off the hook for their role in that.
Speaker 5: But the base was opposed to that war.
Speaker 1: So when I then started doing this reporting on Blackwater,
Speaker 1: you know, it tied together so many things have I
Speaker 1: first encountered Blackwater in New Orleans actually in the aftermath
Speaker 1: of the flooding of the city and Hurricane Katrina.
Speaker 5: So it was like.
Speaker 1: A surreal experience to see these guys walking the streets
Speaker 1: of an American city, you know, with automatic weapons, and
Speaker 1: to say that they've been deputized by the governor of
Speaker 1: the state of Louisiana to shoot.
Speaker 5: Looters and to discover that these forces.
Speaker 1: And at the time, nobody really had heard of Blackwater
Speaker 1: yet there had been an incident where four Blackwater operatives
Speaker 1: were ambush and killed in the Iraqi city of Falluja,
Speaker 1: which then gave the US a excuse to lay siege
Speaker 1: to it, and it was one of the most horrifying
Speaker 1: episodes of the early stages of the Iraq War. But
Speaker 1: in general people didn't know much about them. And then
Speaker 1: we did this reporting showing that they were in and
Speaker 1: this was for the Nation magazine at the time, that
Speaker 1: they were in New Orleans, and I became obsessed with
Speaker 1: this company and this kind of shadowy figure, Eric Prince
Speaker 1: and his family history, and the fact that they were
Speaker 1: some of the premier funders of the radical religious right, and.
Speaker 5: They were kind. The Prince family was one of the
Speaker 5: main funding engines for the merging that happened in the
Speaker 5: Republican Party between what's now known as the religious right
Speaker 5: and then the kind of traditional conservatives bringing them together.
Speaker 4: People don't know Betsy Deva.
Speaker 1: Betsy Devas is Eric Prince's sister and you know, of course,
Speaker 1: was a cabinet official in the early days of the
Speaker 1: Trump administration.
Speaker 4: Fantastically rich.
Speaker 1: You know, they were the main funders of like focus
Speaker 1: on the family and you know all you know this,
Speaker 1: and Erik Prince's mother continued to be the premier funder
Speaker 1: of defeating ballot initiatives on.
Speaker 5: You know, on gay marriage, et cetera.
Speaker 1: But so I started writing article after article, and I
Speaker 1: had gotten a fellowship at the Nation magazine. My friend
Speaker 1: Naomi Klein had recommended me for it, which generally means
Speaker 1: you get paid a small amount of money to do,
Speaker 1: you know, as much work as you possibly can will
Speaker 1: keeping your head above the water. And I mean, like
Speaker 1: the Nation was was so it was, it was so great.
Speaker 1: I loved the Nation. I had applied as a young
Speaker 1: person for an internship and got rejected, and then years
Speaker 1: later I would be hired as their national security correspondent
Speaker 1: and I'm doing all this reporting on Blackwater.
Speaker 5: And Katrina Van and Hoovil.
Speaker 1: And Betsy Read, the editors at the time, said you know,
Speaker 1: we love you, we love the work you're doing, but
Speaker 1: we are a pretty small magazine. We can't publish an
Speaker 1: article every week about the same company, like you either
Speaker 1: need to diversify your beat or like write a book.
Speaker 1: So I wrote a book, and you know, my advance
Speaker 1: for that book was thirty thousand dollars, which means that
Speaker 1: you get ten thousand dollars when you sign it. I
Speaker 1: mean I didn't have health insurance or anything at the time,
Speaker 1: or you know, I a small amount of money from
Speaker 1: a fellowship and then I get this thirty thousand. I
Speaker 1: didn't understand how the book advanced work.
Speaker 5: You know, you get paid a third event. I was like, okay,
Speaker 5: I can do that. That should last me for you know months.
Speaker 5: I can do this.
Speaker 1: And then you get the first check and it's pre TAXI.
Speaker 5: Right, and you're like, I didn't even have an agent
Speaker 5: at the time. It just went with the Yeah.
Speaker 1: And so I wrote the book, and I thought that
Speaker 1: I was going to be like selling it out of
Speaker 1: my backpack.
Speaker 5: I really didn't. I really was kind of naive in
Speaker 5: that part of life. Like I didn't. I was.
Speaker 1: I wasn't doing it because of money. You know, most
Speaker 1: people don't make any money from a book. So so
Speaker 1: I write this thing and it debuts at number nine
Speaker 1: on the New York Times bestseller list.
Speaker 6: What year is.
Speaker 1: By the way, this was two thousand and seven, and
Speaker 1: so it debuts at number nine. I had and next
Speaker 1: thing I know, I'm like, you know, getting interviewed on
Speaker 1: big TV shows. But remember what happened that year in
Speaker 1: two thousand and seven, is in September of two thousand
Speaker 1: and seven, Blackwater mercenaries open fire on a crowded circle,
Speaker 1: traffic circle in Baghdad known as Square, and they kill
Speaker 1: more than a dozen Iraqi civilians. And it was an
Speaker 1: enormous story at the time, huge story around the world.
Speaker 1: And actually that night I had been out with my
Speaker 1: friends in New York and one of the things we
Speaker 1: were kind of celebrating is that I was sort of saying,
Speaker 1: I'm going to be done with Blackwater now and I
Speaker 1: want to move on to try to do other reporting.
Speaker 5: And I had gone out with.
Speaker 1: A bunch of friends that night until like four in
Speaker 1: the morning, and one of the things we were kind
Speaker 1: of jokingly celebrating was that Jeremy's going to find something
Speaker 1: else to do with his life.
Speaker 5: And then I wake up.
Speaker 1: That morning to a series of text messages from Amy
Speaker 1: Goodman and other media outlets saying can you come into
Speaker 1: the studio, and from that moment. For like months on end,
Speaker 1: I was permanently on TV. I was on CNN, NBC, Fox,
Speaker 1: MSNBC regularly on all of these things. Then I ended
Speaker 1: up being a correspondent on the Real Time with Bill Maher.
Speaker 1: You know, like I wasn't a known person at that time.
Speaker 1: You know, I was probably considered like an up and
Speaker 1: coming independent lefty journalist or something, but like not, I
Speaker 1: wasn't anything mainstream. All of a sudden, I'm on TV
Speaker 1: all the time, and that lasted, you know, for a
Speaker 1: sustained period where I would be called to talk about
Speaker 1: the Iraq War, about Blackwater, et cetera. And as long
Speaker 1: you know, when Bush and Cheney were in power, Democrats
Speaker 1: were very happy to have me. You know, I testified
Speaker 1: in front of Congress multiple times. I had good relationships
Speaker 1: with a number of Congress people would be they would
Speaker 1: ask me about legislation that they were going to put in.
Speaker 5: On these issues.
Speaker 1: And then Obama becomes president and people didn't like it
Speaker 1: when I then applied the same standards to what they
Speaker 1: were doing in the realm of assassination and drone strike And.
Speaker 3: Was there anything in particular that got you, like an
Speaker 3: MSNBC ban or was it just gradual?
Speaker 5: Well, there was.
Speaker 1: There were two things that I mean, you know, that
Speaker 1: world of being banned at these networks, it's very hard
Speaker 1: to like nail it down. I was told by a
Speaker 1: friend within MSNBC that after a particular incident occurred that
Speaker 1: I was that a note book order had been issued
Speaker 1: on me, and for a long time after this happened,
Speaker 1: I was not allowed on.
Speaker 5: What happened is that I was on.
Speaker 1: Rachel Maddow's show, and it was when my book Dirty
Speaker 1: Wars and the film Dirty Wars were out, and you know,
Speaker 1: Rachel had had me on a lot, and Keith Oberman
Speaker 1: used to have me on like all the time.
Speaker 5: So I was on with.
Speaker 1: Rachel, who I always had a you know, I don't
Speaker 1: know her as a as a person. I know her superficially,
Speaker 1: but she's always she always was pretty supportive of my work.
Speaker 1: So she has me on and we were talking about
Speaker 1: the drone strike that had killed a sixteen year old
Speaker 1: American citizen teenager in Yemen named ab the Rochman Alacki.
Speaker 1: His father, of course, was anwar a Lacki, who the
Speaker 1: United States openly said was on a kill list. And
Speaker 1: then they did in fact kill him in a drone strike,
Speaker 1: but then two weeks later they killed his teenage son
Speaker 1: of the Rockman. So I was on Rachel's show, and
Speaker 1: right before that segment where Rachel interviews me, she had
Speaker 1: had Robert gibbson, who at the time was an MSNBC contributor,
Speaker 1: and Gibbs had been the campaign spokesperson for Barack Obama's
Speaker 1: re election campaign in addition to having been an official
Speaker 1: in the press.
Speaker 4: I think I might go ahead.
Speaker 5: He was the press secretary, and then he when he
Speaker 5: said the.
Speaker 1: Thing that I'm going to tell you, he was the
Speaker 1: campaign spokesperson for the Obama reelection campaign.
Speaker 4: He said it to me. Yeah, okay, my god, that's funny.
Speaker 1: So what happened is that Gibbs had been asked about
Speaker 1: the killing.
Speaker 4: Of the boy spin room.
Speaker 5: So this was a right good The story's even better.
Speaker 3: So the debate, At every debate afterwards, there's the spin room,
Speaker 3: and they send a Sturgets out to talk to the reporters,
Speaker 3: and the question you're supposed to ask is did Obama
Speaker 3: do what he needed to do against Mitt Romney?
Speaker 4: And then you get the spin from Robert Gibbs.
Speaker 3: I said Obama just assassinated a sixteen year old boy
Speaker 3: in Yemen.
Speaker 4: What's your reaction?
Speaker 6: Is going to win the election?
Speaker 3: What's your reaction to that? And Gibbs said he should
Speaker 3: have had a better father, He.
Speaker 5: Should have had a more respond father. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I sent that comment to the White House, and I
Speaker 3: remember they put enormous pressure.
Speaker 6: On me this Politico. You were at Politico.
Speaker 3: I was at hof Post at the time, saying he
Speaker 3: really regrets having said that.
Speaker 4: He shouldn't have said that to you. Can you please
Speaker 4: not really?
Speaker 5: I never heard that part of it.
Speaker 4: Can you please not publish this?
Speaker 6: Wow?
Speaker 5: So that happened in twenty eleven?
Speaker 3: He said it, yeah, yeah, to the Pound sand then
Speaker 3: and I published it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the killing.
Speaker 1: Happened in twenty eleven, so this must have happened like
Speaker 1: twelve or so twelve, Yeah, because it was right, it
Speaker 1: was right, Okay, So that makes sense. That was Gibbs,
Speaker 1: So this would have been then twenty thirteen. I guess
Speaker 1: when I was on with Rachel and we were talking
Speaker 1: about this episode, but Gibbs had been on talking about
Speaker 1: something unrelated before me, because he was an NBC contributor
Speaker 1: at the time.
Speaker 5: So then when the interview starts with Rachel. I mentioned
Speaker 5: the fact that you just had Robert gibbson, and one
Speaker 5: of you should ask him about this, because we were
Speaker 5: about to now talk about the killing of this.
Speaker 1: Kid that Ryan had questioned him about. So I said,
Speaker 1: you know, one of you guys should ask him about this.
Speaker 1: You know, now that he's an MSNBC contributor. You know,
Speaker 1: it's shameful to I don't remember my exact words, but
Speaker 1: I made the point that it's you know, it's shameful
Speaker 1: to imply that this kid deserved to die because you know,
Speaker 1: his father wasn't responsible that that. Therefore, it's like okay
Speaker 1: to drone assassinate a kid that no one has ever
Speaker 1: made any allegation he had any connection to terrorism or
Speaker 1: anything whatsoever.
Speaker 5: And you know he was also an American citizen.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I said to Rachel during it wasn't I wasn't
Speaker 1: like attacking Rachel Metow.
Speaker 5: I just made made a comment.
Speaker 1: And after the show ended, I don't remember exactly what
Speaker 1: Rachel said, but she made a comment to me that
Speaker 1: you know, that was not appropriate that I had done
Speaker 1: that or something like that, And did.
Speaker 2: You get the sense that it was from someone in
Speaker 2: her ear? Telling her to say that, or was it anybody.
Speaker 1: I don't think she needs anybody to tell her no.
Speaker 1: And I, you know, I mean again, just you know,
Speaker 1: to clarify I I don't know Rachel Mattow. Well, she
Speaker 1: always had been very you know, positive about my work,
Speaker 1: and but that was the last time, you know, I
Speaker 1: ever saw her. I was certainly never invited back on again,
Speaker 1: and then I wasn't invited on others. And then what
Speaker 1: happened with CNN was when Trump authorized the missile strikes
Speaker 1: against Syria early in his administration. I was on Brian
Speaker 1: Stelter show, and I was and on his show, I
Speaker 1: went after Fared Zakaria. I said that, you know, Fared
Speaker 1: loves these missile strikes and if you could have sex
Speaker 1: with a cruise missile strike, you would, And then I
Speaker 1: started talking about the like.
Speaker 5: He's just like in love with these things.
Speaker 1: It's so but it's creepy when you watch sometimes his
Speaker 1: reaction to these military actions. It's really I find it
Speaker 1: creepy with some of these pundits, how giddy they get.
Speaker 1: There was that famous Brian Williams thing about the you know,
Speaker 1: the beautiful the beautiful lights and everything, but so I'm
Speaker 1: on that show. And then I also called out their generals,
Speaker 1: and I named some of their generals and said that
Speaker 1: you aren't disclosing the fact that they have a profit
Speaker 1: motive for advocating this kind of military action. And after that,
Speaker 1: I was told there was a note book order issued
Speaker 1: out me at CNN after that.
Speaker 3: So I had to give Gibbs this pushback. I just
Speaker 3: found the story from October twenty twelve. He said what
Speaker 3: he was trying to say was that he didn't realize
Speaker 3: that the son was killed two weeks after the father,
Speaker 3: and I guess he thought the kid was just killed
Speaker 3: with his father, So that was his.
Speaker 1: I find that I find that a difficult explanation. You Know,
Speaker 1: what I was told at the time was that Brennan,
Speaker 1: John Brennan, the CIA director, that Obama himself was, was
Speaker 1: livid when he heard that the kid had been killed,
Speaker 1: that the sixteen year old had been killed. And you know,
Speaker 1: I tried to trackl justifiable. It's completely unjustifiable.
Speaker 5: But you know, I had been told at the time
Speaker 5: I had good sources in the in that world, and
Speaker 5: I was told that both Obama and Brennan were trying
Speaker 5: to figure out how exactly the kid was killed, because
Speaker 5: there's been a lot of suspicion that they intended to
Speaker 5: kill him.
Speaker 1: No one has ever proven that. What I my best
Speaker 1: guess is that part of what is if they were
Speaker 1: using There's a whole convoluted story about why that kid
Speaker 1: had run away from home and was looking for his
Speaker 1: dad that I won't get into now.
Speaker 5: But the short of it is, I think that the
Speaker 5: disposition matrix. We know that the child.
Speaker 1: We know this from leaked documents, whistleblower documents that Abd
Speaker 1: Rochman Alacki's sixteen year old American citizen was assigned a
Speaker 1: terrorism tracking number by the United States government, which is
Speaker 1: not necessarily shocking given that his dad was, you know,
Speaker 1: a wanted figure. He would have been considered like a
Speaker 1: known associat or family member. But he did have a
Speaker 1: terrorist tracking number, and certainly his cell phone and other
Speaker 1: communications would have been monitored, you know, when the US
Speaker 1: was hunting for his dad, and you know, the initial
Speaker 1: reports was that he was killed in an area with
Speaker 1: people who were members of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
Speaker 1: What may have happened is that they used these formulas
Speaker 1: where it's like if this SIM card is communicating with
Speaker 1: this sim card, and these five sim cards are now
Speaker 1: together and we're tracking it. We know that that's a personality.
Speaker 1: You know that it has the sorry, the signature of
Speaker 1: a group of terrorists rather than it being a personality
Speaker 1: strike where you know who you're getting. They have enough
Speaker 1: signatures of being a terror grouping that we bomb them.
Speaker 1: So it could have been that, it could have been
Speaker 1: that someone signed off on killing him. We don't actually know,
Speaker 1: but I don't find Gibbs's explanation credible given that I
Speaker 1: believe that Obama and Brennan at the time were concerned
Speaker 1: about the fact that kid was killed.
Speaker 2: So what I find fascinating about all of that is
Speaker 2: this is sort of the era when I was coming
Speaker 2: of age, Dixie Chicks, Culture Wars era, and I remember,
Speaker 2: you know, shows like Real Time with Bill mar I
Speaker 2: remember outlets like huff Post and The Nation and the
Speaker 2: early days of the Intercept. I'm curious how you guys
Speaker 2: would weigh in on this sort of platforming. I think
Speaker 2: in a really good way. A lot of this almost
Speaker 2: like crunchy leftist kind of social justice.
Speaker 5: I watch it now.
Speaker 6: If the if the Birkensack fits. But you know, I've
Speaker 6: I really.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah you do like Homemadkeranala, but I really found
Speaker 2: that stuff to be like actually very compelling, and it
Speaker 2: just a lot of those institutions.
Speaker 6: MSNBC is such a good example.
Speaker 2: Rachel Matta herself is such a good example, and that
Speaker 2: she used to have conversations with people like you. They
Speaker 2: seem to have made a business decision that in the
Speaker 2: Trump era especially, this no longer sold. This was no
Speaker 2: longer the product that would do best for them. Obviously
Speaker 2: the politics conveniently underlined or or were conveniently aligned with
Speaker 2: that as well. But what I'm so curious about is
Speaker 2: at drop site. Now, I think there is an incredible
Speaker 2: market for exactly the type of journalism that you do,
Speaker 2: whether it's pegged as you know, unfairly I mean as
Speaker 2: like crunchy leftist whatever, or if it's just good journalism
Speaker 2: that happens to be by people who are on the left.
Speaker 2: It seems like this is a huge mistake on the
Speaker 2: part of MSNBC, a huge mistake on the part of
Speaker 2: places like HuffPo, missing that there's a real audience for this.
Speaker 2: I remember being in Chicago at the DNC when there.
Speaker 6: Was a drop Site party.
Speaker 2: Your guys' turnout was incredible, and also just the enthusiasm
Speaker 2: for the product, the loyalty to the product. I mean,
Speaker 2: Drop Site fans love both of you. It's a real
Speaker 2: like allegiance to your guys's work is it speaks to them.
Speaker 2: And what I find very interesting is the business decision
Speaker 2: that the media made after the Bush era, after the
Speaker 2: Obama era, to walk away from having some of these
Speaker 2: much more challenging conversations. Seems to me like what you
Speaker 2: guys are doing at drop Site proves that.
Speaker 4: That was wrong.
Speaker 5: You know, I think I think that era that you're
Speaker 5: describing too. Let's remember there was a moment where where
Speaker 5: Chris Hayes was given a weekend spot on MSNBC. They
Speaker 5: was Up with Chris Hayes was yeah still yeah, still up.
Speaker 1: And I would go on that show a lot and
Speaker 1: he would have really interesting, diverse panels of people, and
Speaker 1: I thought it was really one of the best shows
Speaker 1: on television at the time because, uh, you know, you
Speaker 1: had you had people from different you know, he would
Speaker 1: have Eli lake On debating, you know, someone like me,
Speaker 1: and you know, there would be there was there was
Speaker 1: this intellectual opening that was so unusual for MSNBC at
Speaker 1: that time. I thought it was remarkable with what was
Speaker 1: happening on that on those weekends with with Chris Hayes,
Speaker 1: and of course that was you know, that was short lived.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean they've totally leaned into this identity
Speaker 1: as they are. They are the kind of media front
Speaker 1: that's going to prevent Orange Hitler from you know, taking power.
Speaker 1: And I have deep concerns about Donald Trump. I I
Speaker 1: I think that man is an utter disaster. I think
Speaker 1: that the narratives about you know, the narratives about Trump
Speaker 1: that his supporters and defenders try to offer up to
Speaker 1: people on the left, like, they just don't they don't
Speaker 1: hold any weight whatsoever. Did you hear that, Ryan, Well, no,
Speaker 1: I'm just I'm making it clear that I think that
Speaker 1: there is a way to to to to approach covering
Speaker 1: this election that is is not a mirror image of
Speaker 1: the critique Democrats offer of Fox News. And you know,
Speaker 1: I find it totally intellectually dishonest, and I think that
Speaker 1: it's it's not about whether it's fair to to Trump
Speaker 1: or not. It does a disservice to their own audience
Speaker 1: on the on the issue of the you know of
Speaker 1: the Gaza war. Uh, you know there news organization should
Speaker 1: be aggressively questioning Kamala Harris. She she wants to have
Speaker 1: it both ways. She is saying, oh, I've been a
Speaker 1: part of every single decision that's been made. But then
Speaker 1: you know, her supporters say, yeah, but she's not the president.
Speaker 1: But then every opportunity she's given to explain what she
Speaker 1: would do differently, she takes that opportunity to say nothing, nothing,
Speaker 1: I would I would do nothing differently, maybe the rhetoric
Speaker 1: would be different. And so, you know, I don't believe
Speaker 1: in pulling punches because the audience is going to be
Speaker 1: upset that you've landed them on powerful person. I think,
Speaker 1: to me, I don't see integrity in that. And so
Speaker 1: I think the people that are subscribing to drop site,
Speaker 1: they don't think that Ryan and I are right every
Speaker 1: single time, but I think they know.
Speaker 5: I think we've both proven over the course of.
Speaker 1: Our time in journalism that we are willing to apply
Speaker 1: the exact same standards of critique, analysis, investigation to democrats
Speaker 1: as we are to Republicans when they're in power. That
Speaker 1: should just be basic journalism. Though this isn't this shouldn't
Speaker 1: be something unusual.
Speaker 3: And I think even though we clearly have a perspective
Speaker 3: that we're coming from in our reporting, the fact that
Speaker 3: the perspective and the principle has stayed the same no
Speaker 3: matter which party is in power. Lets people who disagree
Speaker 3: with us read it and be like and let them
Speaker 3: think think for themselves.
Speaker 4: It's ironic. The mainstream media says that they're.
Speaker 3: The kind of you from nowhere, like they're the objective ones,
Speaker 3: or it's just the facts and we're going to let
Speaker 3: you decide, but in fact they're actually just They obviously
Speaker 3: have a person spective, everybody does, but it's very hard
Speaker 3: to tell what it is, and so people don't know
Speaker 3: when they're being fed propaganda, whereas with us, they're always
Speaker 3: getting our perspective and so they can take it or
Speaker 3: leave it, but they know that the facts are going
Speaker 3: to be.
Speaker 5: A look at what we've seen.
Speaker 1: It highlights Ryan's point, but from a little bit of
Speaker 1: a different angle when you look at the broader corporate
Speaker 1: news or mainstream news coverage of Gaza, the view from
Speaker 1: nowhere is actually, if you drill down and say what's
Speaker 1: happening here, what's happening is that for the Palestinians of
Speaker 1: Gaza and increasingly of the West Bank, and certainly now
Speaker 1: the people of Lebanon. For their plight to be recognized,
Speaker 1: or for the crimes committed against them to be recognized
Speaker 1: as crimes, requires so much evidence that it makes it
Speaker 1: almost impossible for their humanity to be recognized in any.
Speaker 5: Just objective way.
Speaker 1: The assertions made by the Israeli state for an entire
Speaker 1: year straight are often treated as though there are facts,
Speaker 1: and you know when you look at the narrative around
Speaker 1: hospitals in Gaza or the number of people killed this administration,
Speaker 1: the Biden Harris administration, has promoted some of the most
Speaker 1: nefarious lies and propaganda of the Israeli state from the beginning,
Speaker 1: and news organizations, the framing of it is often that
Speaker 1: the you you trust but verify supposedly the Israelis, and
Speaker 1: with the Palestinians, there is no initial they must be
Speaker 1: lying and and but that that also if you if
Speaker 1: you apply it to American politics, there's the same kind
Speaker 1: of intellectual dishonesty at play there, and deference to the
Speaker 1: powerful that you see among immediately elite media toward their
Speaker 1: own preferred candidates.
Speaker 6: Or you don't trust the powerful, then verify.
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, I mean, and especially you should assume that
Speaker 1: the powerful are not telling you the truth. And and
Speaker 1: but it's your job then to go and you know,
Speaker 1: verify what the facts are. And that's that's that is
Speaker 1: the policy towards all Palestinians would have anything to say about.
Speaker 1: You know, you can have a child, you can have
Speaker 1: American doctors saying that they saw infants or tiny children
Speaker 1: shot with sniper bullets in the head in Gaza, and
Speaker 1: it's like it doesn't even make a dent in the
Speaker 1: public consciousness. I mean, think think about this. We have
Speaker 1: multiple doctors who sent this letter recently also to the administration,
Speaker 1: and they were saying, all of us have seen evidence
Speaker 1: or treated people where you have younger than teenage children being.
Speaker 5: Shot with sniper rounds there. And this is almost a
Speaker 5: non story, you know. I mean, right as we sit here,
Speaker 5: the Israelis are laying siege to the north of Gaza.
Speaker 5: They basically issued an order flee immediately or be considered
Speaker 5: a combatant. It's being done with US weapons, with the
Speaker 5: support of a president of the United States who goes
Speaker 5: out of his way constantly to say that he is
Speaker 5: a Zionist and that he continues to portray Israel's offensive
Speaker 5: actions as defense. I mean shame on.
Speaker 1: The broader press Corps for the way in which it
Speaker 1: has not held this administration accountable. But more than that,
Speaker 1: one hundred and seventy plus journalists have been killed in Gaza,
Speaker 1: almost all of them are Palestinians, and almost all of
Speaker 1: them have been killed by the Israeli government with American weapons.
Speaker 1: A Fox News reporter recently, I don't have his name,
Speaker 1: maybe yeah, thanks, their chief foreign correspondent, you know, he
Speaker 1: posted and I give him total credit for doing this.
Speaker 1: And actually this wasn't the first time that he made
Speaker 1: that point. He you know, Trey, through the months, he
Speaker 1: has consistently raised this issue. It might, you know, people
Speaker 1: might have criticisms of how he's done it. I give
Speaker 1: him immense credit because you look at some so called
Speaker 1: liberal journalists who have never had a word to say
Speaker 1: about Palestinian journalists being killed. It's also raises a point
Speaker 1: that goes back to something earlier when James Rosen at
Speaker 1: Fox News, when there was a you know, an investigation
Speaker 1: over him, you know, for this North Korea reporting that
Speaker 1: he had done. And it became clear that the government
Speaker 1: had been also reading his gmails.
Speaker 5: And I stood up and defended James Rosen post.
Speaker 4: We called for airic holder to resign over that.
Speaker 3: We're going after this Fox News National Security correspondent.
Speaker 6: I don't think that would happen at half Posts today.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, if it happened today at drops, that
Speaker 1: we absolutely would report on it, you know, And it's
Speaker 1: you know, I think that a huge mistake is made
Speaker 1: when there's a core freedom that's being attacked in journalism.
Speaker 1: And this goes to the earlier question it comments to
Speaker 1: about cancel culture stuff, and then all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: the Palestine thing shows that all those people, almost all
Speaker 1: of them, were total frauds on that issue. But the
Speaker 1: same is true of media freedom. Like I believe the
Speaker 1: Russians had no business locking up Evan Gershkeovic in that prison,
Speaker 1: and I'm happy that the Wall Street Journal reporter was freed.
Speaker 1: And I saw all of these famous journalists, Jake Tapper
Speaker 1: and others every day putting up a thing about free Evan.
Speaker 1: Where are they on the traumatic head injury of a
Speaker 1: journalist in this week in Darryl al Bala, Where are
Speaker 1: they on the decapitating of Ismael Alghoul. Where are they
Speaker 1: on the mass murder of wild Daudoo's family, the former
Speaker 1: Al Jazeera bureau chief in Gaza. Where are they on
Speaker 1: the killing of any of these journalists.
Speaker 4: Who wrote for drops?
Speaker 1: Yeah, even before the Gaza October seventh justification, an American
Speaker 1: citizen quite clearly assassinated in the West Bank.
Speaker 5: You know, the Biden administration.
Speaker 1: Has uh and the FBI under Biden has not done
Speaker 1: anywhere near the kind of aggressive investigation that they should
Speaker 1: be doing about this killing of an American citizen by
Speaker 1: an American ally when she was doing her job as
Speaker 1: an award winning journalist. But I say shame on all
Speaker 1: of these people who have never had a word to say.
Speaker 1: The fact that a Fox News journalist issued one of
Speaker 1: the strongest condemnations of the killing of Palestinian journalists by
Speaker 1: any mainstream American journalists under itself as a damning condemnation
Speaker 1: of the so called liberal media.
Speaker 3: To close the arc on consistency too, uh, the Edward
Speaker 3: Snowden League, YEA, so what what you know? How'd you
Speaker 3: learn about what was your role with Glenn on that?
Speaker 3: Because you and Glenn and Laura then go on to
Speaker 3: found the intercept, So I mean Glen.
Speaker 1: You know, Glenn and I had known each other for
Speaker 1: some years, and you know when he started when he
Speaker 1: started his blog and then he was at Salon. You know,
Speaker 1: there was a lot of overlap when we got to
Speaker 1: know each other sort of you know, online, and and
Speaker 1: had only met a couple of times in person. And
Speaker 1: I don't remember how far ahead of it was, but
Speaker 1: like some it could have been days or maybe a
Speaker 1: couple of weeks before Glenn and Laura flew to Hong
Speaker 1: Kong to meet Edward Snowden, Glenn had gotten in touch
Speaker 1: with me and said, uh, I remember I was actually
Speaker 1: at I was. I was at a restaurant with Michael Rattner,
Speaker 1: the late head of the Center for Constitutional Rights, who
Speaker 1: was a dear friend of mine, one of the greatest
Speaker 1: lawyers in American history.
Speaker 5: And I see I have this call from Glenn.
Speaker 1: So I step out and I talked to Glenn, and
Speaker 1: Glenn says, I can't tell you much about this, but
Speaker 1: I want, you know, I want I need somebody I
Speaker 1: trust that can be sort of my contact person for
Speaker 1: something I'm.
Speaker 5: Going to be doing.
Speaker 1: I'm going to be flying, you know, to the other
Speaker 1: side of the world to meet someone who has information that,
Speaker 1: if it's true and valid, is is going to be
Speaker 1: a volcanic explosion to the national security state. That was
Speaker 1: how Glenn had described it. And he said, you know,
Speaker 1: can you can you be available? And I said, of
Speaker 1: course yeah. And you know, so Glenn, they they go
Speaker 1: and you know, I we had developed a way to
Speaker 1: be in touch. So Glenn was just sort of you
Speaker 1: know a lot of journalists do this when you go
Speaker 1: to a dangerous place. You have somebody that you always
Speaker 1: touch base with when you're in a place. So so
Speaker 1: for you know, in a very behind the scenes way,
Speaker 1: I was. I was honored to, like when I then
Speaker 1: realized what it was, you know, honored to to have helped.
Speaker 5: But I wasn't like, you know, in on the snowedn
Speaker 5: thing it was.
Speaker 1: You know, I played a very minor role in helping
Speaker 1: out a friend and a colleague league who you know,
Speaker 1: I was going into what he described as a potentially
Speaker 1: dangerous situation and and I knew enough to not ask
Speaker 1: him any more detail about it. And so you know,
Speaker 1: there was a battle in The Guardian too that took
Speaker 1: place at the beginning of this. You know, the god
Speaker 1: that of course, the you know, the the White House
Speaker 1: pushes back.
Speaker 5: Immensely against this.
Speaker 1: I think they were only just starting to realize the
Speaker 1: problem and there was some question of whether it was
Speaker 1: gonna ended up getting published in The Guardian. So Glenn
Speaker 1: had asked me to work on a backdoor alternative. So
Speaker 1: we actually started talking to other news outlets about publishing
Speaker 1: it if The Guardian didn't publish that first story, you know,
Speaker 1: right out of the Gates, which they ended up doing,
Speaker 1: and they want to pullet serve for the you know,
Speaker 1: for the series. But I would imagine the yeah, the
Speaker 1: pressure that all of them were under. So you know,
Speaker 1: then then I'm visiting Glenn, you know, after that down
Speaker 1: in Brazil with his like five bazillion monkey dogs and
Speaker 1: monkeys and other things in his thing and.
Speaker 6: Ut the zoo.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you didn't need to go to Yeah, you'd be there,
Speaker 5: you know, Glenn.
Speaker 1: Glenn is sitting there with like you know, he's he's
Speaker 1: got his laptop, he's wearing his Bermuda shorts and his
Speaker 1: flip flop and he's sitting there just completely taking on
Speaker 1: the most powerful government in the world, you know, with
Speaker 1: with his Bermuda shorts on and it was. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's Glenn is one of the most unusual interesting
Speaker 1: people that I've i've you know, that I've ever met,
Speaker 1: and and we ended up starting, uh, you know, starting
Speaker 1: the Intercept with you know, Glenn and Laura and myself
Speaker 1: and you know, related to drop site too, Like what
Speaker 1: remember what the Intercept was actually started to do? You
Speaker 1: know that the purpose of it was, you know, was
Speaker 1: to try to publish secrets that the government wanted to
Speaker 1: you know, want to remain locked up, to provide a
Speaker 1: platform for whistleblowers and others to to speak out and
Speaker 1: to do no holds barred journalism without fear or favor,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 5: And and I.
Speaker 1: Think that's you know, we're we're trying to embrace that
Speaker 1: original ethos of the Intercept at you know, at drop Site.
Speaker 2: Well, can you guys actually maybe talk about that, because
Speaker 2: I don't know if you've ever talked publicly together about
Speaker 2: whether it's been hard to watch what happened to the
Speaker 2: Intercept when you're on the inside. But also it has
Speaker 2: created a wonderful new product and drop Site. So what
Speaker 2: has that just been like for both of you?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm curious for Jeremy say you know, institutions evolved.
Speaker 3: And also, like two years ago Piero Midyard who was
Speaker 3: made an initial like two hundred and fifty million dollar
Speaker 3: pledge I think it was.
Speaker 5: That wasn't to the Intercept though, it was the whole thing.
Speaker 4: It's been misreported a little bit.
Speaker 5: Yeah, people people exaggerate what the Internet was going to
Speaker 5: do well with their magazine. He wanted to He was
Speaker 5: considering buying the Washing Post, is what happened, and that's
Speaker 5: where that number came from.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 3: He wanted to buy the washing Post that was going
Speaker 3: to cost two fifty and he's like, well, why don't
Speaker 3: I just spend two fifteen build my own? Right, And
Speaker 3: he was going to do Racket by Matt Taibi, which
Speaker 3: was going to look at you know, economics and like corruption.
Speaker 4: Then he was going to do sports and leisure.
Speaker 1: That was going to be like an omnibus news organization,
Speaker 1: was my recollection, Yeah, like a good The Intercept was
Speaker 1: going to be like a vertical basically within it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and like a good VC.
Speaker 3: He was buying at the top, like this was thee
Speaker 3: of digital media basically, and it collapsed after that. And
Speaker 3: so the only one that ever got off the ground
Speaker 3: was the Intercept because he cared about it not as
Speaker 3: a commercial product. The other ones were supposed to be
Speaker 3: commercially successful products, and he cared about it, and it
Speaker 3: very quickly became clear there was no digital like possibility there.
Speaker 3: But yeah, he cared about the idea of having a
Speaker 3: well funded news organization that would take on like these
Speaker 3: national security state projects, and that had a legal defense fund,
Speaker 3: which is very important. Yeah, because you're constantly getting lawsuit threats.
Speaker 6: It turned out to be very important.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: One thing that's also incredible, like the Looney Tunes stuff
Speaker 1: that sometimes gets thrown at us about the Intercept and
Speaker 1: about Omitir and all of this, is you know that
Speaker 1: Omiitir was somehow in control and doing all these things.
Speaker 1: It was remarkable how much freedom pier Omidiar gave to
Speaker 1: the people that he.
Speaker 5: Was funding entirely himself.
Speaker 1: I mean, one of the first stories that we did
Speaker 1: at the Intercept actually was quite critical of Omitiar himself.
Speaker 1: And there was never there was never a takedown order,
Speaker 1: there was never pressure, There was never oh I want
Speaker 1: you guys to cover this it nothing, never did a
Speaker 1: single thing like that ever occur, which is you know,
Speaker 1: which is remarkable all of us.
Speaker 5: I think we're feeling like a day is going to
Speaker 5: come when.
Speaker 1: These guys are going to tell us you can't do
Speaker 1: this story And to his credit, that never happened with Omidiars.
Speaker 3: Politics were different than certainly different than Glenn's. He was
Speaker 3: like a Russia Gate guy.
Speaker 5: Later, yeah, I mean at the beginning, his whole thing
Speaker 5: was about you know, he was I think he was
Speaker 5: really deeply moved by Edward Snowden. He was really concerned.
Speaker 1: About civil liberties and privacy issues, and I think that
Speaker 1: was his motivation at the beginning, was that he felt like,
Speaker 1: this is a crossroads moment in the history of the
Speaker 1: American Empire, with this epic, courageous whistleblowing moment.
Speaker 2: What about ahead. I was just saying, like, personally too,
Speaker 2: what was that like? Not with a minyar, but just
Speaker 2: you know, there are people's who's added to towards things
Speaker 2: like surveillance. Really did shift because now there's all this
Speaker 2: talk of having this vast digital censorship apparatus, and sometimes
Speaker 2: that's justified by people who would have been on the
Speaker 2: other side of the Snowden question ten plus years ago.
Speaker 2: And I imagine personally that's not been super easy.
Speaker 3: I mean, yeah, politics change, and this is not the
Speaker 3: Edward Stoden era anymore. It's almost like the NSA one,
Speaker 3: Like Snowden exposed everything that was going on did lead
Speaker 3: to you know, did lead to reforms.
Speaker 4: There are ongoing fights over.
Speaker 3: FIZA and FISA Court, and it's like we've covered the
Speaker 3: fights here. There's this kind of transpartisan coalition of like
Speaker 3: libertarians and progressives who are still taking these issues pretty
Speaker 3: seriously about mass collection and what you can search through.
Speaker 5: Some of it.
Speaker 6: Project twenty twenty five by the way, excellent.
Speaker 3: But the public is the public is like is extremely
Speaker 3: cynical about it and just believes that they already have
Speaker 3: access to everything, and so what's the point in fighting it?
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's also I mean to one of
Speaker 1: Emily's earlier points too, you know, uh, when when when
Speaker 1: when the Obama administration was doing these drone assassinations, and
Speaker 1: really and and and and the poll support for among
Speaker 1: liberals for targeted assassination, you know, drone strikes was going
Speaker 1: you know, was was going up because mister constitutional law scholar, uh,
Speaker 1: Barack Obama had normalized this for an entire class of voters.
Speaker 6: Community organizer.
Speaker 1: But but if you remember, you know, some of the
Speaker 1: heroes on Capitol Hill of that moment, you know who
Speaker 1: really did have the courage to speak out at a
Speaker 1: high level.
Speaker 5: You know, you had Ron Wyden.
Speaker 1: You had Rand Paul in fact, right, you know, Rand
Speaker 1: Paul on multiple occasions participated in kind of disrupting business
Speaker 1: as usual on the floor of the Senate to speak
Speaker 1: out about you know, the assassination regime that had been
Speaker 1: put into place there.
Speaker 5: I mean, even you know Michael at times, you know,
Speaker 5: and might Micha Lee.
Speaker 1: Ran Paul has been very consistent on these issues throughout
Speaker 1: you know, the aftermath of the launch of the so
Speaker 1: called war on Terror. But Mike Lee at times too,
Speaker 1: has actually made really good points about issues that should
Speaker 1: be bread and butter issues for liberals. One thing I
Speaker 1: was thinking about last night in anticipation of talking to
Speaker 1: you guys also was just how utterly militaristic the Democratic
Speaker 1: Party has become when it's in power, you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: in the eight years of Obama, you look at the
Speaker 1: initiation of the air wars in Yemen that then led
Speaker 1: to a kind of genocidal situation with the Saudi air wars.
Speaker 1: But you know, Obama, months after taking office in two
Speaker 1: thousand and nine, authorizes a series of secret air strikes
Speaker 1: in Yemen. The first one killed dozens of civilians in
Speaker 1: a cruise missile attack, and they also used cluster you know,
Speaker 1: cluster bombs, cluster munitions, and they allowed the Yemeni government
Speaker 1: to take responsibility for it. But had you know, Obama
Speaker 1: intensifying the war with the war within the war in Afghanistan.
Speaker 1: You you had the expansion of the drone strikes into
Speaker 1: Somalia into Yemen, then the support for the Saudi attacks
Speaker 1: in Yemen itself. This was a very militaristic administration throughout
Speaker 1: the course of those eight years. And then with Biden,
Speaker 1: who you know, seldom in his fifty plus years in
Speaker 1: politics has met a US war. He didn't love support
Speaker 1: or facilitator.
Speaker 5: At able in some way.
Speaker 1: In fact, he made a mistake, you know, in the
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety one you know Gulf War. He he you know,
Speaker 1: opposed it, but then quickly.
Speaker 4: Backtracked and the one popular.
Speaker 5: On oh oops, I made a mistake.
Speaker 4: Yes, I actually had never against the war again.
Speaker 1: But we're, I mean, we're we're seeing the face of
Speaker 1: a powerful part of the Democratic Party in this policy
Speaker 1: over the past year in Israel. I mean it had
Speaker 1: had the had this not happened, what would we have
Speaker 1: talked about on a foreign policy level with Biden when
Speaker 1: it comes to Pitism. Certainly, the you know, the Ukraine issue,
Speaker 1: and you know the the aggressive support for Ukraine, the
Speaker 1: kind of Cold War, the embrace of the Cold War
Speaker 1: two point zero, that certainly would have been part of
Speaker 1: what we were talking about with Biden. The Afghanistan withdrawal. Yes,
Speaker 1: this was a horrifying catastrophe that had occurred. I think
Speaker 1: there's a legitimate, certainly line of attack and criticism against
Speaker 1: Biden for how that was handled. But largely speaking, Biden
Speaker 1: implemented a plan that was on the desk when Trump
Speaker 1: left office. There was a thwarting of Trump. Trump really
Speaker 1: did was trying to get this done in his first administration.
Speaker 1: I think he also deluded himself into assuming he was
Speaker 1: going to be president for four more years. But also
Speaker 1: the military industrial political complex did not They did not
Speaker 1: want this to happen under Trump. So and Biden is
Speaker 1: the kind of empire politician that could make that happen,
Speaker 1: and he did make it happen, and at the time.
Speaker 1: I wrote an op ed in The New York Times
Speaker 1: giving Biden credit for actually doing it and saying that
Speaker 1: he shouldn't listen to hawkish voices like Hillary Clinton and
Speaker 1: others who were agitating against it at the time. But
Speaker 1: we didn't just see Biden do the typical American we
Speaker 1: support Israel. He went all in in, you know, over
Speaker 1: the top way over this past year, and it may
Speaker 1: well cost Kamala Harris the White House.
Speaker 2: Well, you've landed some interviews at drop site that a
Speaker 2: lot of people in the media would be envious of
Speaker 2: and wish that they would have had. And I know,
Speaker 2: Ryan and I want to talk a little bit about
Speaker 2: just process as a journalist, what it's like when you
Speaker 2: were interviewing somebody, let's say that's high up in Hamas
Speaker 2: or anybody that actually finds himself in that or that
Speaker 2: you find yourself in that situation.
Speaker 6: Do you have anything to add to it?
Speaker 1: If you go back and think about you, You're Osama
Speaker 1: bin Laden was interviewed by CNN prior you know, prior
Speaker 1: to uh to nine to eleven, and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: and uh there was there used to be an understanding
Speaker 1: you can go back to World War two, and look
Speaker 1: at American journal less interviewing Nazi officials and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: and others.
Speaker 5: You can go through all all sorts of wars.
Speaker 1: The people that you're you're told are the enemy, journalists
Speaker 1: should have an ethical obligation go and interview those people
Speaker 1: and to tell their readers back in their home country
Speaker 1: what the objective reality looks.
Speaker 5: Like on the ground.
Speaker 1: And you know, I think objectivity as defined in our
Speaker 1: elite media culture is nonsense, you know, objective. You know,
Speaker 1: Caesar doesn't always deserve his say, you know, like they're
Speaker 1: What's what matters is are you being accurate?
Speaker 5: Are you being fair?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 1: Are you characterizing that person's position in a fair way.
Speaker 1: If you're making a serious allegation about someone, you have
Speaker 1: an ethical obligation to get their response to it. You
Speaker 1: you are not obligated to pretend as though person X says,
Speaker 1: this person X says.
Speaker 5: Why, well, we just don't know what's true.
Speaker 1: If you know that person X is largely telling the
Speaker 1: truth and person why is not, you you also haven't
Speaker 1: a responsibility to tell your readers that. So, you know,
Speaker 1: in terms of interviewing, Yeah, we got attacked a lot
Speaker 1: because I did a series of articles where I interviewed
Speaker 1: senior officials from Hamas and also the number two figure
Speaker 1: in Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
Speaker 5: And we knew we were going to take heat.
Speaker 1: For this because we didn't just say, you know, we
Speaker 1: didn't just ask them the kind of three questions that
Speaker 1: are allowed, you know, that are allowed of any of
Speaker 1: these officials.
Speaker 3: I told them he should ask all the Hamas officials
Speaker 3: if they condemn Hamas, but do you Condemnmas?
Speaker 5: But what you know? So?
Speaker 1: And I did ask, you know, I asked the questions
Speaker 1: that you hear when you do see clips of them,
Speaker 1: you know, about the killing of civilians on October seventh
Speaker 1: and other you know, I mean, I of course I
Speaker 1: did all of that questioning. I don't find some of
Speaker 1: the answers very satisfying at all, you know that that
Speaker 1: these guys gave.
Speaker 4: And I have, you know, I have different answers they
Speaker 4: haven't eve figured out.
Speaker 2: Which comes through the interview, by the way, which is
Speaker 2: why you do the interview, right.
Speaker 1: But what I think, what I think is is important
Speaker 1: is if we you know, we're being told that Israel
Speaker 1: deserves to have an endless supply of weapons produced, manufactured
Speaker 1: authorized for sale or transfer by the government of the
Speaker 1: country that we're citizens of and that we live it.
Speaker 1: That right, there is a starting point for journalists have
Speaker 1: an obligation to track that.
Speaker 5: You know, is.
Speaker 1: This speaking on behalf of the public. Is it being
Speaker 1: used in a way that's consistent with law, you know,
Speaker 1: for instance, But also we're being told that Hamas and
Speaker 1: Palestinian Islamic Jihad are the modern day equivalent of the Nazis.
Speaker 1: Repeatedly they're compared to the Nazis. You know, there's an
Speaker 1: upside down world narrative about this, where you know, the
Speaker 1: roughly one thy one hundred Israelis and foreign workers who
Speaker 1: died on October seventh, their lives must exist in a
Speaker 1: realm of importance that is a universe away from the
Speaker 1: lives of any Palestinians that we have at a minimum
Speaker 1: forty one thousand Palestinians who have been killed with US,
Speaker 1: largely with US weapons over the past year. Their humanity
Speaker 1: is degraded to an almost meaningless piece of dust on
Speaker 1: the ground in the narrative compared to any Israeli who
Speaker 1: was killed on October seventh. But if we're being told
Speaker 1: that this these are the modern equivalents of the Nazi Party,
Speaker 1: Journalists have an obligation to go, let's talk to them,
Speaker 1: Let's understand what is their idea. I think it was
Speaker 1: too great public interest here. What did they think they
Speaker 1: were doing on October seventh? And then after seeing all
Speaker 1: of the incredible destruction in Gaza, how they assessed what
Speaker 1: has happened in the time since then, How they answered
Speaker 1: to the question that you should have foreseen that Israel
Speaker 1: would do this. You've endured this for seventy six years,
Speaker 1: beginning with the Nakba and the creation of the state
Speaker 1: of Israel. How could you not have assessed that if
Speaker 1: you were able to get into Israel and take two
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty people either hostage or prisoner, depending on
Speaker 1: whether they were civilians or soldiers. I mean, another interesting
Speaker 1: thing I said to them, to multiple Hamas and Islamic
Speaker 1: Jiad officials, like taking elderly women, babies, Like what what
Speaker 1: were you thinking? Like how do you think that's defensible?
Speaker 1: And none of them tried to defend it. What they
Speaker 1: told was a different story, which had to do with
Speaker 1: the fact that there was a second wave of people
Speaker 1: that had come in. Maybe there were organized criminal gangs
Speaker 1: maybe you know, but also it's like, this is a
Speaker 1: population that's lived in a prison camp and you know,
Speaker 1: and I think we have to. It's that doesn't justify
Speaker 1: anything you know that that you know is involves taking
Speaker 1: a multi month old baby.
Speaker 4: I think a mistake they made.
Speaker 3: I'm curious if any of this came up was so
Speaker 3: they they told you, and they've and they've said elsewhere
Speaker 3: that you know, in the days immediately after they said,
Speaker 3: we did not mean to take these many people. We
Speaker 3: will return all the civilian hossages in exchange for netya
Speaker 3: who committing not to do a ground invasion, bomb the
Speaker 3: hell out of us, like we'll have and then we'll
Speaker 3: have negotiations between the prisoners, the idea of soldiers that
Speaker 3: we have for our own prisoner exchange.
Speaker 4: Dan Yaho rejects that out of hand.
Speaker 3: I think at that point they should have just let
Speaker 3: all of the civilians.
Speaker 4: Go now they but there's thousands. I understand why they did.
Speaker 3: There's thousands of civilians held hostage by Israel.
Speaker 4: But at the same time that it's just the right
Speaker 4: thing to do.
Speaker 3: And if you're going to like try to claim the
Speaker 3: moral high ground, but also like I can.
Speaker 1: Sit there with you know, with officials from Hamas or
Speaker 1: Islamic Jihad, and ask them these questions. But if you
Speaker 1: then ask, if you ask an Israeli official or even
Speaker 1: an American politician defending israelis about the fact that there
Speaker 1: are ten thousand, for all practical verbs as political prisoners being.
Speaker 4: Held administrative detemption, including.
Speaker 1: Children, including journalists, including people that are being held for
Speaker 1: six month stretches that can be renewed indefinitely where they
Speaker 1: have no access to a lawyer or any other kind
Speaker 1: of visitors or communications, and that so many of them
Speaker 1: are you know that that is that's a non issue.
Speaker 1: Those are hostages too when you're taking especially I mean,
Speaker 1: look at the recent reporting on taking a five year old,
Speaker 1: seven year olds that they're taking and treating them as adults.
Speaker 1: It's the only country in that that proclaims itself a
Speaker 1: democracy that is putting children into military court systems.
Speaker 3: Yeah, people arms, And that's what drove that's what drove
Speaker 3: like this hostage crisis, this vicious cycle of the only
Speaker 3: way to get somebody out of administrative attention is that
Speaker 3: then kidnap somebody else in exchange them.
Speaker 6: Which is why the prisoner.
Speaker 1: Exchanged yeah, and it's you know this, this is such
Speaker 1: a minefield to walk in because it's been It's a
Speaker 1: manufactured minefield as part of our political culture. But I'm
Speaker 1: not afraid to say it. Palestinians have a right to
Speaker 1: defend themselves, including by taking up arms against a colonial
Speaker 1: apartheid regime. We can talk about individual war crimes, and
Speaker 1: we should talk about them, and there should be accountability
Speaker 1: for them, But the underlying narrative is that they had
Speaker 1: no right to do anything on October seventh, and I
Speaker 1: would say that that is inconsistent with international law. It
Speaker 1: totally rejects the fact that we have a seventy five
Speaker 1: year history that led up to the events of October seventh,
Speaker 1: and it erases as though the Palestinians are in a
Speaker 1: class of their own, their right as a people to
Speaker 1: rise up against what global law and institutions have clearly
Speaker 1: defined as an illegal occupation and an apartheid state.
Speaker 5: And that has to change. We cannot pretend that the
Speaker 5: Palestinians somehow have no right. They do have a right.
Speaker 1: You look at the stealing of Palestinian land right now,
Speaker 1: the expansion of the settlements, which is a US backed
Speaker 1: Israeli government policy to support this is you know, all
Speaker 1: the lip service from Harris and Biden on the issue
Speaker 1: of settlements is worth nothing if the policy just goes
Speaker 1: forward with no consequence. So the fact that you know,
Speaker 1: roughly eleven hundred people were killed on October seventh, thousands
Speaker 1: of other Israelis were We're wounded, that is a is
Speaker 1: very relevant. We should talk about that the people who died,
Speaker 1: that they deserve that have their stories told, and they
Speaker 1: deserve justice. But to pretend as though it existed in
Speaker 1: a vacuum, that history doesn't matter, that there doesn't have
Speaker 1: to be a discussion about what rights do the Palestinians have.
Speaker 1: I think this is an outrageously dishonest framing that we've
Speaker 1: tolerated for a year.
Speaker 2: Well so ultimately doesn't leave the Israeli people more safe
Speaker 2: either to ignore the larger history.
Speaker 4: Managing the conflict is what the strategy was called.
Speaker 3: And if you're quote unquote managing the conflict, you're accepting
Speaker 3: that there's going to be endless conflict.
Speaker 2: And let's maybe a good place to kind of wind
Speaker 2: down would be, Jeremy, if you could talk a little
Speaker 2: bit about now that drop site is up and is
Speaker 2: doing well. You have this amazing career going from Democracy
Speaker 2: Now to the Nation, to the Intercept and now to
Speaker 2: drop site. If you could talk maybe just a little
Speaker 2: bit about what you've learned in the last few months
Speaker 2: about media and the future of media potentially as somebody
Speaker 2: who's seen had a front row seat to so much
Speaker 2: of this evolution as technology evolved and the business evolved.
Speaker 6: What are some big lessons?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean one of the things when we decide
Speaker 1: how we're going to do a story, or like if
Speaker 1: we're talking to you know, freelancers that we want to
Speaker 1: work with, or somebody on the ground somewhere. You know,
Speaker 1: we're we don't want to run like strictly op eds,
Speaker 1: you know, just telling people our hot take. That doesn't
Speaker 1: mean that there isn't going to be analysis or opinion
Speaker 1: in what we do, but we're trying to embrace a
Speaker 1: kind of hybrid approach. We want every article that we do,
Speaker 1: we want there to be information or a perspective in
Speaker 1: it that people wouldn't get but for that reading that article.
Speaker 1: And I don't just mean like an interesting take. I
Speaker 1: mean that we've talked to people on the ground somewhere,
Speaker 1: or that we're presenting information or facts that they wouldn't
Speaker 1: get elsewhere. An example of that is, you know, Yaniv Kogan,
Speaker 1: who's one of our contributors. You guys talked about his
Speaker 1: his reporting, you know, recently has is a phenomenal researcher
Speaker 1: and is and is in the kind of spirit of
Speaker 1: if Stone, you know, tries to dig up what is
Speaker 1: hidden in plain sight in Israel right now. And he's
Speaker 1: based in Tel Aviv, and you know, and he did
Speaker 1: this story about the Israeli cabinet officials saying that they're
Speaker 1: they were under the clear understanding that Anthony Blincoln had
Speaker 1: signed off on you know, bombing AID trucks if they
Speaker 1: had been believed to be hijacked by by Hamas. So
Speaker 1: you know, one thing that I've learned is that, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, opinions are are very very cheap, and that
Speaker 1: if you if you take the time to do old
Speaker 1: school raking of the muck and you work the phones
Speaker 1: or you go out into the field to do reporting,
Speaker 1: that people actually do appreciate that.
Speaker 5: I think social media is incredible.
Speaker 1: I you know, I'm I'm trying to figure out TikTok,
Speaker 1: you know, but I you know, I'm obviously, I've I've
Speaker 1: rekindled my addiction to Twitter.
Speaker 5: I'm back. I'm back on it.
Speaker 1: I've been you know, I called used to call myself
Speaker 1: a recovering Twitter combatant, but you relapsed.
Speaker 5: I mean I post things on like blue Sky and
Speaker 5: other things. But you know, I have to say, like I.
Speaker 1: What I what I think was great about the old
Speaker 1: Twitter too, is that you could mix it up with
Speaker 1: people that you disagreed with, and there was a it
Speaker 1: was much more of a global forum. I'm deeply concerned
Speaker 1: about what Leon has done with you know, Elon or whatever.
Speaker 5: What he's doing, I think people do.
Speaker 1: I think I call it that because I think that's
Speaker 1: one of the sub things that people call him Leon
Speaker 1: is a way to like not be tracked by him
Speaker 1: or something. But I think it's kind of you know,
Speaker 1: like the what I think what I've learned too is
Speaker 1: that you know, there's a lot of chatter, but if
Speaker 1: you if you're presenting facts, enough of the public is
Speaker 1: intellectually honest and actually is concerned with it. I think
Speaker 1: that's a narrative that that has been kicked aside in
Speaker 1: the current political culture. I think a lot of people
Speaker 1: look my family, working class people I have cousins and
Speaker 1: others they support Trump. I don't look at them and say,
Speaker 1: you know, you're bad people. You listen to you listen
Speaker 1: to the why of it, and it's you know, and
Speaker 1: and if you're humble enough to actually listen, there's an
Speaker 1: interesting story about people feeling talked down to, you know,
Speaker 1: about people struggling about And I think that the Democratic
Speaker 1: Party has has engaged in really poor messaging, you know,
Speaker 1: toward people that would be inclined to support them. And
Speaker 1: then when the actions then show that you don't have much,
Speaker 1: you know, regard for human life in the case of
Speaker 1: this war, you know, then then you want to say, oh,
Speaker 1: you're supposed to vote for US at election time, Well,
Speaker 1: they might find out, you know, like they they aft
Speaker 1: around and they might find out with continuing this genocidal war,
Speaker 1: and you know, they could hand Trump the White House.
Speaker 1: They want to blame Jill Stein, you know, they want
Speaker 1: to blame the uncommitted people. They want to blame you know,
Speaker 1: Muslims or Palestinians in this country, or other people who
Speaker 1: are opposed to to genocide. When are they When is
Speaker 1: it ever time for the Democrats to take responsibility This
Speaker 1: tired old narrab oh Ralph Nader was responsible for for
Speaker 1: George Bush winning the White House. It's empirically and literally
Speaker 1: just false. Who was responsible for George Bush winning was
Speaker 1: a combination of a bad campaign run by the Democrats
Speaker 1: and chickannery and thievery that went on, and then the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court. But it's like this narrative that somehow your
Speaker 1: respect if you don't vote for a party that has
Speaker 1: not listened to you at all, that continues to facilitate
Speaker 1: a genocidal war, and that you're somehow it's going to
Speaker 1: be your fault if they lose. This is the constant
Speaker 1: cry baby game of the Democrats through all their electoral losses.
Speaker 1: It's always the fault of someone else except themselves.
Speaker 6: I could do this all day, all day.
Speaker 1: I can also talk about Donald Trump and his Charlatanism
Speaker 1: and the dangers of his administration, but actually, I think
Speaker 1: people like us I don't want Donald Trump to be
Speaker 1: in power, but I can't in good faith stand here
Speaker 1: and say, oh, you have to vote blue no matter who.
Speaker 1: I think people have a right to make decisions based
Speaker 1: on their own principles and their own morals, and I
Speaker 1: think people from the left need to be willing to
Speaker 1: stand up and be honest about politicians that claim to
Speaker 1: speak for.
Speaker 5: All of them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and their experiences too. I mean I was in
Speaker 2: Butler this last weekend covering the Trump real for that.
Speaker 2: It's amazing how many people you talked to. I mean,
Speaker 2: it's Taylor as old as twenty sixteen, the same thing
Speaker 2: over and over again. They feel ignored, they're struggling, and
Speaker 2: he feels like hope to them. And journalists may lack
Speaker 2: the humility to see why that makes sense to people, but.
Speaker 6: It does a lot of people see that.
Speaker 4: There we go.
Speaker 2: What a beautiful note to end on Donald Trump, hope
Speaker 2: and change. Ryan Grimm said it.
Speaker 4: There you go. Well, Jeremy, thanks so much for joining
Speaker 4: us here.
Speaker 3: Welcome to the DC. I hope you enjoy your time here.
Speaker 3: I doubt you will, but.
Speaker 5: I like the Imperial bubble. Oh, I appreciate it. Thank
Speaker 5: you guys for all the work you do. Oh my gosh,
Speaker 5: go Wisconsin.
Speaker 2: Yes, that's right, we didn't even We could have debated
Speaker 2: so much more bitterly next time. Yeah, are you a
Speaker 2: marquette or a Badger's fan?
Speaker 6: You're Badgers?
Speaker 5: I have to be Yeah, I have to be.
Speaker 1: I would say I was enrolled at UW, I wouldn't
Speaker 1: say I attended. That's a good way of Yeah, Badger's
Speaker 1: always in my heart.
Speaker 6: There we go, all right, well, drop site news. It
Speaker 6: is wonderful.
Speaker 2: Subscribe if you haven't already, and we will be back here.
Speaker 2: Brian will be here with Tagger. I'll be on a
Speaker 2: work trip, but Ryan will be here with soccer for
Speaker 2: Bro Show on Wednesday, and we'll see you.
Speaker 4: Then later
Speaker 3: H