Speaker 1: I'm John Cipher and I'm Jerry O'Shea. I was a
Speaker 1: CIA officer stationed around the world in high threat posts
Speaker 1: in Europe, Russia, and in Asia.
Speaker 2: And I served in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East
Speaker 2: and in war zones. We sometimes created conspiracies to deceive
Speaker 2: our adversaries.
Speaker 1: Now we're going to use our expertise to deconstruct conspiracy
Speaker 1: theories large and small.
Speaker 2: Could they be true? Or are we being manipulated?
Speaker 1: This is mission implausible.
Speaker 2: So Michael Ian Blank is a comedian, actor, writer, and
Speaker 2: a keen observer of the absurd and American culture, which
Speaker 2: aimfully is these days one in the same and you're
Speaker 2: repeat offender on mission in Plausa, Yes, Sam, on a
Speaker 2: more serious thing, on one of your more serious works,
Speaker 2: one of the classics you've written, A pig Parade is
Speaker 2: a Terrible idea twenty ten. And in A Pig Parade
Speaker 2: is a Terrible Idea, you claim that while people can
Speaker 2: be convinced that a pig parade might sound like a
Speaker 2: great idea, it just isn't in practice.
Speaker 3: The pigs are a metaphor for capitalists. You think it's
Speaker 3: gonna be great, You know you're gonna you're gonna You're
Speaker 3: gonna throw open the doors, and then what are they
Speaker 3: gonna do. They're gonna snuffle all over everything. They're gonna
Speaker 3: eat more food than is their share. They're gonna be destructive,
Speaker 3: they're gonna be sloppy, and at the end of it,
Speaker 3: who's cleaning up the mess us the proletariat.
Speaker 1: And it fits on top of that there is going
Speaker 1: to be a parade. We're told in just recent days
Speaker 1: that President Trump is gonna hold a military parade like
Speaker 1: he wanted to do in his first term, which happens
Speaker 1: to be on his birthday.
Speaker 3: He's an asshole. Can we just make Has the United
Speaker 3: States ever held an official military parade? We must have,
Speaker 3: right at some point. I'm not saying that outside of
Speaker 3: wartime when we're sort of, uh, we're not not bringing
Speaker 3: back soldiers from the Gulf or something like that, But
Speaker 3: have we ever just had, for the hell of it,
Speaker 3: a military parade?
Speaker 1: I think the military is usually against that type of thing.
Speaker 1: There's been times, like when President Kennedy died and there
Speaker 1: was a kison with some military. You know, there's ceremonial times,
Speaker 1: but I don't think we've ever had one like he
Speaker 1: wants that. Apparently he saw military prede in France and
Speaker 1: said we need to have that with tanks and everything, and.
Speaker 2: They didn't want to do it because the tanks were
Speaker 2: going to chew up Pennsylvania Avenue. And like the I
Speaker 2: think they.
Speaker 3: Also didn't want to do it because it's not who
Speaker 3: we how we want to represent ourselves as a purely
Speaker 3: martial power. But now that we have reduced and or
Speaker 3: eliminated all of our soft power, why not just have
Speaker 3: pershing missiles flying down constitution.
Speaker 1: Pete Hagg's got doing push ups on the top of
Speaker 1: a Bradley fighting Don.
Speaker 3: Bongino in his personal pretoriat? Is that what a preetoriat
Speaker 3: guaritorian guarding?
Speaker 2: Yes, go back to Roman times.
Speaker 1: Apparently he's the first deputy of the FBI who has
Speaker 1: to have a security detail because normally FBI agents are
Speaker 1: trained and can carry guns, and he is not.
Speaker 3: He's not trained to carry a gun, or he's not
Speaker 3: allowed to have a gun because of things in his past.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I didn't read deep enough into the article I
Speaker 1: saw on this, so I.
Speaker 2: Did have a question about conspiracies in the US government
Speaker 2: and your background as a poker player, right, I never
Speaker 2: want to play poker with you. You want you know
Speaker 2: you're a pro, You want to want a lot of
Speaker 2: words and competitions. And so we're involved in like the
Speaker 2: biggest fucking poker game ever with this right now, at
Speaker 2: least economically, with these tears. Do you think, with what's
Speaker 2: going on now, that they have a plan, the conspiracy
Speaker 2: to pull this shit off their eight dimensional chests or
Speaker 2: is this just like general fuckery, like you've got to
Speaker 2: rub at the table.
Speaker 3: Well, in recent weeks, what we've seen is Trump deploying advance,
Speaker 3: deploying the poker metaphor remember how many times Trump has
Speaker 3: said of Ukraine, they just don't have the cards, they
Speaker 3: don't have the cards. And Avance said it about Greenland.
Speaker 3: I think that are the car I mean, they just
Speaker 3: they keep talking about the cards. But what your question
Speaker 3: presupposes is that they're actually that they have something in
Speaker 3: mind that they're trying to achieve. And I do have
Speaker 3: a sort of wild eyed conspiracy theory about this very topic.
Speaker 2: Let's here.
Speaker 3: It begins, this conspiracy theory with Trump believing in climate change.
Speaker 3: It begins with Trump, maybe during his first administration or
Speaker 3: some other time, being surrounded by advisors who say, you know, sir,
Speaker 3: and these are big advisors, tears rolling down their faces.
Speaker 3: You know, sir, climate change is real. Here's the data.
Speaker 3: In the next one hundred years, the southwest and some
Speaker 3: of the south of the United States is going to
Speaker 3: become less and less hospitable to human life. And Trump
Speaker 3: may have pooh poohed that poop pooh, that poo poo that.
Speaker 3: The second part of my conspiracy is the assassination attempt,
Speaker 3: which I'm saying is real. If somebody tried to kill him,
Speaker 3: and then immediately after, if you recall, everybody was saying, oh, Trump,
Speaker 3: he's a changed man. He's become more reflective, he's different now,
Speaker 3: and we all thought, those of us from a distance, thought, oh,
Speaker 3: that means he's going to become kind and compassionate. I
Speaker 3: think the opposite happened. I think it made him more
Speaker 3: belligerent and hostile. And so when you combine those two
Speaker 3: things plus the other part of the assassination attempt that
Speaker 3: I think it did get him thinking about was Oh.
Speaker 3: I think it did get him thinking about his own
Speaker 3: mortality and thinking that he's going to be dead at
Speaker 3: some point, and what is his legacy going to be.
Speaker 3: And I don't think he necessarily considered that before that,
Speaker 3: because I think he thought of himself as immortal. Okay,
Speaker 3: you put all that together, what do you get? You
Speaker 3: get a guy thinking about his legacy who understands that
Speaker 3: the southern half of the United States over the next
Speaker 3: hundred years is going to become lad less than hospitable.
Speaker 3: At the same time, up in Canada, all of that
Speaker 3: land is going to warm, all those resources are going
Speaker 3: to become more available, more accessible. Up at the Arctic Circle,
Speaker 3: all of those resources are already in dispute and already contended.
Speaker 3: At the same time, you've got Greenland where all of
Speaker 3: this is taking place climate wise. At the same time,
Speaker 3: you've also got demographic trends in the United States which
Speaker 3: say that by the year twenty forty something or whatever,
Speaker 3: white people are going to become the minority. We know
Speaker 3: that he has surrounded himself by white supremacists and fascists
Speaker 3: who believe that white people should be in charge of everything.
Speaker 3: What does Canada have a lot of white people? What
Speaker 3: does Greenland have a lot of land? What does Russia
Speaker 3: our new ally have a lot of white people? And
Speaker 3: ultra Christianity, Orthodox Christianity. So you combine all those things,
Speaker 3: and what I think that I think, my wild eye
Speaker 3: conspiracy is that Trump and his people are trying to
Speaker 3: position America as a soup superpower for the next one
Speaker 3: hundred and fifty years or two hundred years, which is
Speaker 3: allied with Russia, as a bulwark against Russia and against Asia.
Speaker 3: And so you have this massive land mass which is
Speaker 3: North America minus Mexico, Canada, Greenland, You've got the Arctic Circle,
Speaker 3: and then you've got our closest new ally Russia. And
Speaker 3: what you've done is you've created a scenario where we
Speaker 3: become impregnable and incredibly formidable. That's my conspiracy theory.
Speaker 1: What's the fee that's as delusional as the UFO stuff
Speaker 1: you talk to us about less.
Speaker 3: Podcast, I said, delusional. Don't you think that makes perfect sense?
Speaker 3: White people, Russia, Christianity, Liban Swum.
Speaker 1: Let me ask you this, have you seen anything else
Speaker 1: in Trump's history in the last twenty five years that
Speaker 1: makes sense?
Speaker 3: Like you're saying, like.
Speaker 1: A guy can think of a plan more than five
Speaker 1: seconds ahead of.
Speaker 3: But what I guess what I'm saying is it's not
Speaker 3: his plan. He's just sort of instituting it, and he's
Speaker 3: being sort of led down the from Rose path by
Speaker 3: Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon and the coupal of weirdos
Speaker 3: who's guiding this presidency.
Speaker 2: The Heritage Foundation. I, you know, genetically just don't like
Speaker 2: conspiracy theories. But I'm gonna, I'm gonna actually say that
Speaker 2: I think there's elements in that that that actually resonate
Speaker 2: with me. The thing about a legacy, I think, the
Speaker 2: thing about wanting a white Christian nation, although he's hardly Christian,
Speaker 2: but not really the white nationalist thing. I think his
Speaker 2: whole thing of expansion. And when was the last time
Speaker 2: a president's went around praising William McKinley, right, I mean
Speaker 2: it's been a lot. I'm the only one who's read
Speaker 2: his memoirs recently, but but yeah, I mean, will I
Speaker 2: think there's there is something to that, although I suspect
Speaker 2: it's less of a cunning plan than just feral instincts
Speaker 2: that that come together. But I think this is an
Speaker 2: administration riven by conspiracies and conspiracy theories. I mean, look
Speaker 2: no further than Laura Lumer walks into the Oval office
Speaker 2: and suddenly and a sort of Madame LaFarge's head start
Speaker 2: to roll, and there's no understanding why the head of
Speaker 2: the n essay was fired, and just people in airal
Speaker 2: security and a sea are being fired, like why.
Speaker 3: I think the more pregnant question, and I use that
Speaker 3: word advisedly, is why is Trump listening to Laura Lumer?
Speaker 3: Why is she always in and out of his orbit?
Speaker 3: Of all people like she's such a weirdo. Everybody around
Speaker 3: him hates her. They all try to keep them apart.
Speaker 3: And the question is why why does she have his ear?
Speaker 3: And I think that's I think that's an interesting question.
Speaker 2: Does she have just his ear?
Speaker 1: Almost every one of those things you brought up to
Speaker 1: talking about they they they And one of the things
Speaker 1: I see with that Trump and this time it was
Speaker 1: a little different last time, is there's a they is
Speaker 1: not a cohesive thing. I think he has overlapping and
Speaker 1: very different people who work for him. So he's got
Speaker 1: Musk who has a completely different view of what where
Speaker 1: the world should go and should go to Mars and
Speaker 1: we should destroy the democracy. And then you've got the
Speaker 1: economic tariff people, and then you've got the true crazies
Speaker 1: and the lower Lumer people. You've got a group of
Speaker 1: real pro China people and then a separate group of
Speaker 1: real anti China people. Even just yesterday they were asking
Speaker 1: about the tariffs and are they going to stay, are
Speaker 1: they not going to stay, or they just to do
Speaker 1: Different people in the administration, senior people who conceivably were
Speaker 1: in the same meetings together, say absolutely the opposite things
Speaker 1: because there's no coordination. So, Michael, with that lead up
Speaker 1: and the fact that I think these people do have
Speaker 1: different agendas and I think you agree to that, what
Speaker 1: do you think Elon Musk's agenda is?
Speaker 2: And with his fighting with Peter Navarro, can there be
Speaker 2: only one who must be out? Or Navarro be out
Speaker 2: two months from now?
Speaker 3: Well, Musk has already said he's leaving. Musk is saying
Speaker 3: that he's going to leave by early May. Ockham's razor
Speaker 3: would suggest that Musk is primarily interested in Musk. So
Speaker 3: how does all this random nonsense benefit Elon Musk? And
Speaker 3: obviously like he's destroying all the agencies that would regulate
Speaker 3: his particular industries, But then why go after Social Security?
Speaker 3: Why go after USAID? Like I don't understand, I don't
Speaker 3: understand it at all. I don't understand how the nation
Speaker 3: as a whole just accepted the premise of waste, fraud,
Speaker 3: and abuse. We just were like, oh, yeah, well, the
Speaker 3: government spends too much money, and there's too many people
Speaker 3: in the government, and it's doing too many things and
Speaker 3: it's but why did we just accept that premise? I
Speaker 3: never accepted that premise. It seemed to me that the
Speaker 3: government in general's probably doing a pretty good job. Like,
Speaker 3: I know people who work in the government, they work hard.
Speaker 3: You guys worked in the government, you work hard, you
Speaker 3: did good work. I'm friends with people who work in
Speaker 3: the UN World Food Program. All they do is try
Speaker 3: to feed people. That's their whole thing. Trump just destroyed
Speaker 3: their program. All the scientists, the meteorologists, the firefighters, Like,
Speaker 3: why did we just accept that premise? I find it infuriating.
Speaker 3: I also find the premise and narrative around immigration infuriating
Speaker 3: that we just accepted that illegal immigris Is.
Speaker 1: That because is it an education thing? Do you think
Speaker 1: the American public just don't understand their government because I
Speaker 1: don't accept any of those things.
Speaker 3: I think we've been propagandized so effectively by the right
Speaker 3: wing media and pireennial what you want to call it.
Speaker 3: I think Historically, I think we all know that Americans
Speaker 3: have a kind of fundamental, inbred distrust of government that
Speaker 3: stems from our origins as a nation. But over the
Speaker 3: last few centuries, we've asked the government to do more
Speaker 3: because we needed as we became more complex economically, militarily, industrially, technologically,
Speaker 3: we needed people to regulate this stuff, to look at it,
Speaker 3: because when we don't, we end up with things like
Speaker 3: the Great Depression or all the depressions that preceded the
Speaker 3: Great Depression, or we end up with a sort of
Speaker 3: hodgepodge of like laws around who gets educated and who doesn't,
Speaker 3: and who's allowed to buy real estate and who doesn't,
Speaker 3: and who can get married and who doesn't like all
Speaker 3: of these things. We've asked the government to provide some
Speaker 3: oversight and regulation because it was necessary and for the
Speaker 3: American people that just turn around and go, oh, yeah,
Speaker 3: we didn't mean any of that. You didn't think. You
Speaker 3: hadn't thought it through. That's the issue. And so now
Speaker 3: we're seeing what happens when you think it through and
Speaker 3: you start asking people left and right, and suddenly the
Speaker 3: Social Security Administration you can't get through on the phone.
Speaker 3: Why because we're getting rid of the phones. It's just insanity.
Speaker 3: And I don't understand what Musk's role is in all
Speaker 3: of this. To answer your question, I don't know. It
Speaker 3: doesn't make any sense to me other than if your
Speaker 3: goal is to actually rip apart the government, which it
Speaker 3: seems like that is their goal. But to what end?
Speaker 3: That's getting back to your original question about the poker.
Speaker 3: To what end? What are they trying to accomplish? And
Speaker 3: I don't know that they've articulated it in any way
Speaker 3: other than to say we're going to make it.
Speaker 2: I've come to think that this is chaos, that there
Speaker 2: is no conspiracy here. There is no three dimensional eight
Speaker 2: dimensional chess here. The American society, and I know people
Speaker 2: are going to like balk at this. We have it.
Speaker 2: We currently have it so good. We don't even think
Speaker 2: we need these things anymore. We haven't had people die
Speaker 2: of measles or measles outbreaks in twenty thirty years. Polio
Speaker 2: is gone. The Great Recessions was the nineteen thirties. We
Speaker 2: haven't had a land war in Europe in eighty years? Right,
Speaker 2: Why do we still need vaccines? Why do we still
Speaker 2: need NATO? People don't think they need them because like
Speaker 2: we have work because they've worked exactly right. Yeah, we
Speaker 2: haven't an award because we've had a we have an alliance,
Speaker 2: and we also and this is much more difficult. Globalization
Speaker 2: is a fact. It just friggin' is. And there are
Speaker 2: winners and losers, just like there was when we moved
Speaker 2: from horses to the internal combustion engine. Right, if you
Speaker 2: were in the horse tending business, you were fucked, you know.
Speaker 2: Henry Ford was the Elon Muskiv's day, and you know,
Speaker 2: when we're moving towards green energy, and I think a
Speaker 2: lot of people are scared, and I think that has
Speaker 2: been pushed, but there's no plan other and this is
Speaker 2: one conspiracy that I do buy into Project twenty twenty
Speaker 2: five with the Heritage Foundation. I think they do have
Speaker 2: a plan.
Speaker 1: Just hold on for a short break.
Speaker 2: We'll be right back. All right, we're back from the break.
Speaker 1: Let's get back into it.
Speaker 2: I think because people are scared, perhaps one thing is
Speaker 2: that people around Trump are thinking is, yeah, it's like authoritarianism.
Speaker 2: Let's just give them a simple solution. And that is
Speaker 2: something we see in history over and over and over again,
Speaker 2: going back to ancient Greece when you get the Athenians
Speaker 2: afraid they're going to look for a tyrant, or the Romans,
Speaker 2: or let's go to nineteen thirty three with the Germans.
Speaker 2: If you can make people afraid and offer simple solutions,
Speaker 2: you can have power. And I think that's the pot
Speaker 2: at the center of the table at this poker game
Speaker 2: is power. What they want to do with it, I'm
Speaker 2: not really sure because I don't think there's a day.
Speaker 2: I think there's different days. Peter Navarro where he wants
Speaker 2: to go, and where Milan Musk wants to go, and
Speaker 2: where the Koch brothers want to go. But it's a conspiracy.
Speaker 2: Everybody's looking to control this tired, confused old man at
Speaker 2: the nasty old man at the sitting and sitting behind
Speaker 2: the Resist desk with Elon Musk's kids booger on it.
Speaker 1: But I think Musk is different from Project twenty twenty five.
Speaker 1: I think they am different, and I need to dig
Speaker 1: into it more. But I think the Musk people, there's
Speaker 1: some books and things that Peter Teel and Musk and
Speaker 1: sort of these South African tech guys have this view
Speaker 1: that the US government is just a giant and giant
Speaker 1: insurance company with an army, and the problem with the
Speaker 1: government is it spends all its money to support the
Speaker 1: Week in society, and the Week are holding us down.
Speaker 1: And if we're going to move to a new world
Speaker 1: that's in Mars and Ai driven, we have to actually
Speaker 1: destroy that and get rid of the Week and have
Speaker 1: a group of white people who could do things. And
Speaker 1: so I think his view is different probably than a
Speaker 1: lot of these other people around Trump.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think you're exactly like Peter Teel and Elon
Speaker 3: Musk and like David Sachs, the other South African member
Speaker 3: of this troika. They're part of this techno utopian slash
Speaker 3: feudal vision for how they see the next phase of
Speaker 3: human development playing out. And they've utilized the bizarre writings
Speaker 3: of Curtis Jarvin, this sort of weird philosopher of the right,
Speaker 3: as a kind of intellectual undergirding for their project, which
Speaker 3: basically just amounts to a new feudalism where you're going
Speaker 3: to have these tech overlords controlling literal land masses as
Speaker 3: private essentially countries that you can then move to and
Speaker 3: become a citizen of. But it will be but they
Speaker 3: will be ruled over by these monarchs, the Peterteels, the
Speaker 3: Elon Musks, the David Sachses of the world, and you
Speaker 3: will abide by their rules, and presumably you will have
Speaker 3: freedom of movement. I guess if you decide you don't
Speaker 3: like their rules, and then you can go to some
Speaker 3: other tech oligarch's country. But then what happens when the
Speaker 3: tech oligarchs start fighting, as they inevitably will. Are they
Speaker 3: going to maintain their private tech oligarch armies and there?
Speaker 3: I mean, what are we doing? What are we doing?
Speaker 1: What?
Speaker 3: And how do they even envision the role of the
Speaker 3: United States in all of this? And I don't really know,
Speaker 3: other than maybe it's what you said. They'll be a
Speaker 3: kind of insurance company with an army, and they'll be
Speaker 3: there to sort of mediate these disputes so that David
Speaker 3: Sachs and Elon Musk aren't sending armies of in cells
Speaker 3: to fight with each other. I don't know. None of
Speaker 3: it makes sense to me.
Speaker 2: On Social Security. My grandmother had a an Irish immigrant.
Speaker 2: She had a third grade education. She had four kids
Speaker 2: and was pregnant three months pregnant with my father when
Speaker 2: her husband died of par toniis she would have starved
Speaker 2: a death without Social Security. But it's like Roosevelt friggin
Speaker 2: saved her. But dismantling that Muscus called it a Ponzi scheme?
Speaker 2: Is there money to be made here by first of
Speaker 2: all making Social Security inoperable, cut its funding, cut its
Speaker 2: it budget so it doesn't function anymore, Then blame it
Speaker 2: for being poorly run after you've made it poorly run.
Speaker 2: And then, of course the next step is to privatize
Speaker 2: it or just not pay it out, so that the
Speaker 2: vast majority of people are then dependent on sure on
Speaker 2: what on the government and or on people like Elon Musko.
Speaker 2: What's your sense why would tech brows and Musk in particular,
Speaker 2: why would they be setting their sights on Social Security?
Speaker 2: Because they must understand something has to come after it.
Speaker 3: I can only assume what you just said is accurate,
Speaker 3: that they want to privatize it, and that they know
Speaker 3: that there's tremendous amounts of fees to be made in
Speaker 3: financial transactions and management and all of this billions and
Speaker 3: billions of dollars that they can then line their pockets
Speaker 3: with to pursue their dreams of going to Mars or
Speaker 3: whatever the hell they're trying to do. And I think
Speaker 3: you you could make the good faith argument, although I
Speaker 3: don't think it's necessarily very good faith argument, that social
Speaker 3: Security could be made more profitable if you invested it in.
Speaker 3: Those funds into the market are sort of risk your investments.
Speaker 3: But all of that is blied by the events of
Speaker 3: the last week. If you're relying on the market for
Speaker 3: your retirement and then you see it crashing fifteen percent,
Speaker 3: maybe twenty percent by the time this podcast airs, well,
Speaker 3: aren't you shooting yourself in the foot. So security was
Speaker 3: never designed to be an investment vehicle. It was designed
Speaker 3: to be a safety net so that when you reach retirement,
Speaker 3: or you have a disabled child, or you are a
Speaker 3: young widow, you don't have to worry about that money
Speaker 3: coming in. It was never meant to be a get
Speaker 3: rich quick scheme. It was meant to supplement whatever retirement
Speaker 3: savings or pension or later on for a one K
Speaker 3: that you might have. And if you don't have those things,
Speaker 3: then it will keep you, at the very least hopefully
Speaker 3: right out of poverty. And that's enough. That's all it
Speaker 3: was meant to do. That's all it ought to be doing.
Speaker 3: And it drives me crazy, having a mother who worked
Speaker 3: in source security for many years, it drives me crazy
Speaker 3: to see them trying to dismantle literally the most successful
Speaker 3: social program in our nation's history for no reason.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of these things that
Speaker 1: work against each other. At the same time, we are
Speaker 1: using up a lot of our One of the reasons
Speaker 1: that the administrations that they didn't want to give more
Speaker 1: weapons to Ukraine is we don't want to use up
Speaker 1: our weapons that we may need to fight the Chinese.
Speaker 1: And then now we're using all of these weapons to
Speaker 1: bomb the Yemenis and the Hootis. And the reason supposedly
Speaker 1: we're doing that, and we know that because we've listened.
Speaker 1: We watched the signal chat between the main players who
Speaker 1: are looking to bomb yemen Is because we're worried about
Speaker 1: global traffic through this Suez Canal and the fact that
Speaker 1: it's disrupting global supply chains. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: all of the policies of the government in tariffs are
Speaker 1: destroying the supply chains of the world. So like, on
Speaker 1: one hand, we're doing more damage to the supply chage
Speaker 1: and business ability to think forward, and then we're bombing
Speaker 1: the hell out of a country because we're claiming that's
Speaker 1: what we're trying to protect.
Speaker 3: I think that's right. And if that doesn't make sense
Speaker 3: to you, then you just don't get it. Bro, they
Speaker 3: just don't get it. Let me ask you how as CIA,
Speaker 3: that's how bad from an intelligence perspective was the signal
Speaker 3: gate thing.
Speaker 1: It's bad on a number of levels. And the first
Speaker 1: thing I think of, having been like Jerry, a senior
Speaker 1: officer at CIA, is just on the leadership place. If
Speaker 1: anyone could understand if you work for an organization and
Speaker 1: your boss says one thing and does the other. Thing
Speaker 1: that you're saying to everybody in your organization, the tens
Speaker 1: of thousands of people, is you cannot do this. If
Speaker 1: you do these things, you will be fired, prosecuted. It's dangerous,
Speaker 1: it's against national security. You're helping our enemies. And then
Speaker 1: they do it. And then not only do they do it,
Speaker 1: but they then lie about it and obfuscate and then
Speaker 1: pretend like it's normal. You've just sent a message to
Speaker 1: your workforce that you're not serious, you don't care about
Speaker 1: the things that you tell them to do. So on
Speaker 1: the leadership side, it's bad. On the national security side
Speaker 1: the fact that these people have been using private devices.
Speaker 1: It was a window that opened up to show us
Speaker 1: that's happening and let us all think about it. But
Speaker 1: I think that's been happening for a long time. I
Speaker 1: think foreign intelligence services have been living off of President
Speaker 1: Trump's telephone and listening to everything and all the crazy
Speaker 1: things he's doing talking to people. Once you can get
Speaker 1: into someone's telephone, it doesn't matter that you're then using signal,
Speaker 1: which is an encrypted thing, because signal, if you try
Speaker 1: to break in between the two encrypted pieces, which is
Speaker 1: the hard part, it's encrypted and it would take a
Speaker 1: sophisticated organization to be able to do that. Can we
Speaker 1: do it sometimes? So it's bad. I think it's bad
Speaker 1: on the nest security front. It's bad on the security front,
Speaker 1: it's bad on the leadership front. And then of course
Speaker 1: the lying is the biggest problem, because leadership should be
Speaker 1: about character, and our nationalecurity officials show that they have
Speaker 1: no character and they can't be trusted. That sends another
Speaker 1: message to our enemies.
Speaker 2: And once you're in a device, you're in it. Yeah,
Speaker 2: So maybe they're talking about Yemen, talking about Iran, talking
Speaker 2: about the Ukraine, negotiations the Russian that for us would
Speaker 2: be like that was our quest, if we can figure
Speaker 2: out plans and intentions of the leadership. We've done everything,
Speaker 2: We've done our job. And the fact that you've got
Speaker 2: somebody with the phone in Moscow talking about this, you
Speaker 2: just simply got to assume that not only did they
Speaker 2: get his phone, they got everything on it. You got
Speaker 2: to assume that. And let's be clear about this. People
Speaker 2: are gonna get killed if the Russians got this, and
Speaker 2: I think you got to be you have to just
Speaker 2: assume they did. If they told the houtis in advance,
Speaker 2: just hey, get your air defenses ready, just one phone call.
Speaker 2: And the Russians do work with the hoodies, right, they
Speaker 2: don't hit our ships. They do talk back and forth,
Speaker 2: they trade. They certainly work with the Iranians. I'm going
Speaker 2: to get in your jet and you're gonna lie in
Speaker 2: and they're waiting for you. It's like the Battle of Midway.
Speaker 2: We knew the Japanese were there. That's why that's why
Speaker 2: we won the Battle of Midway and then won the
Speaker 2: war in the Pacific. It was because of good intelligence.
Speaker 2: So this is there's been so much other shit going
Speaker 2: on that we've swept that under the carpet. But this
Speaker 2: is horrific. Now I just want to quick come back
Speaker 2: on the poker thing I've just seen right now as
Speaker 2: we're talking, Trump apparently has paused all terrors and except
Speaker 2: for China for ninety days. Right.
Speaker 1: It's good because now we have all these new factories
Speaker 1: that have been built in the last.
Speaker 2: Line, all these new factories. Right. So I'm saying this
Speaker 2: is this is a blink thing. So you're playing poker
Speaker 2: and he's just you know, warinated on the tailor. He's
Speaker 2: playing park. He's bluffing. Don't fuck with me, man, I
Speaker 2: got four aces. And now he's he's funny.
Speaker 3: He's folding because the rest of the world and the
Speaker 3: nation called his bluff. They're like, you want to do this, Okay,
Speaker 3: we're gonna we're gonna crash of markets. We're going to
Speaker 3: create a new Asian Pact between China and Japan and
Speaker 3: South Korea. We're gonna get Europe to retaliate. Like he folded.
Speaker 3: He folded because it's stupid. I assume it's a declare
Speaker 3: of victory and say, everybody's kissing my ass and everybody
Speaker 3: wants to negotiate, so we can hold the we can
Speaker 3: hold the tariffs for ninety days. But the problem, and look,
Speaker 3: what do I know. I'm a jerk on I'm a
Speaker 3: college shop out who believes in uf folks, So what
Speaker 3: do I know? But it seems like it seems like
Speaker 3: as an economic matter, how as a business person do
Speaker 3: you project out for the next three months, six months,
Speaker 3: year if you don't know every ninety days if Trump
Speaker 3: is going to be slapping tariffs on all the nations
Speaker 3: that you're trying to import your goods from, or are
Speaker 3: you going to say, maybe I need to start investing
Speaker 3: in the US and I'm gonna spend two billion dollars
Speaker 3: creating new factories and infrastructure. And then four years from now,
Speaker 3: some other dude gets in and it's listen and it's
Speaker 3: just like, yeah, these tariffs make no sense, so we're
Speaker 3: going back to free trade. Like, how do you plan
Speaker 3: anything if you're a business person right now? I have
Speaker 3: no idea. Thankfully, I'm an idiot about business and money,
Speaker 3: so I don't have to worry about it too.
Speaker 2: But let's talk politics for just for a second. Given
Speaker 2: that we're going to actually have fair elections in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty six D, which is not a given. But let's
Speaker 2: run with that. Where do Republicans if they don't want
Speaker 2: to lose the House in the Senate like your fo okay,
Speaker 2: your Fox News. Let's pretend Rupert Murdoch is going to
Speaker 2: live this long. And how do you spend this as
Speaker 2: a as immediate personality yourself? How do you spin this
Speaker 2: as a win?
Speaker 3: It's a huge win? Are you kidding me? This is
Speaker 3: this has been an incredible win for the American people
Speaker 3: over the What have we seen over the last few days.
Speaker 3: We've seen every single nation on earth, including the ones
Speaker 3: that are only populated by penguins, picking up the phone
Speaker 3: and calling the greatest president who has ever lived and said,
Speaker 3: let's make a deal, mister president. All of them, even
Speaker 3: the Pelicans, had tears in their eyes, just rolling down
Speaker 3: their eyes as they say, you're absolutely right, mister President.
Speaker 3: Not only were you right, we have been unfair and
Speaker 3: we want to do whatever we can to ensure moving
Speaker 3: forward that America is our biggest booster and friend and ally,
Speaker 3: and we're just gonna write We're just going to write
Speaker 3: checks to you, and the American people are getting rich,
Speaker 3: richer than you can possibly imagine richer than they've ever
Speaker 3: been because of this president's foresight and bold leadership.
Speaker 1: Mister Fox News reporter, you just said yesterday that these
Speaker 1: terrorists were going to stay in place for years so
Speaker 1: that we would fundamentally change our system so that manufacturing
Speaker 1: comes back to the United States. How do you say
Speaker 1: that today's something completely different.
Speaker 3: You in the fake media are so obst with this
Speaker 3: president's comand of the American economy that you can't wrap
Speaker 3: your heads around all the good things that he's doing.
Speaker 3: The American people. Look at what the stock market is
Speaker 3: doing right now, right now, and you will see the
Speaker 3: bold leadership that this man has performed. And yes, we
Speaker 3: need to bring back manufacturing to these shores, and all
Speaker 3: of our conversations with our partner nations will ensure that
Speaker 3: they invest right here in America.
Speaker 2: And more importantly, it is wrong that trans athletes are
Speaker 2: like fencing with real women. Let's talk about the really
Speaker 2: important things about which bathroom you get to use? That's right,
Speaker 2: That's all this economic stuff. Don't worry about it. Don't
Speaker 2: worry your pretty little head, baby.
Speaker 3: I have to say, John, just acting as a White
Speaker 3: House spokesperson slash Fox News analyst, it's very easy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think you'd be good at it. Yeah, to
Speaker 1: try that, because if you're on CNN, no one's watching it.
Speaker 2: You got to get over on Fox News.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's easy to lie if you just don't care.
Speaker 1: That's the thing is if you have one talking point
Speaker 1: and it's just do whatever, say whatever it is to
Speaker 1: make the present look good. Right, whether it's consistent with
Speaker 1: yesterday or five minutes ago, does.
Speaker 3: Consistency's irrelevant And when you're cornered attacked the questioner.
Speaker 2: So let's take a break and be back in a moment.
Speaker 2: Let's pick up where we left off.
Speaker 3: I do like your theory about how no reason we're
Speaker 3: so willing to get rid of things is because they
Speaker 3: work so well, and so you don't understand that these
Speaker 3: things are happening in the background. That's my theory about
Speaker 3: how Trump got elected in the first place, because Obama
Speaker 3: did a good job, and so the America was like, well,
Speaker 3: if this guy who came out of nowhere and he's
Speaker 3: just a black dude, if he can do the job,
Speaker 3: then why wouldn't Why why wouldn't we elect this genius
Speaker 3: billionaire business man. He'll do it ten times better. I
Speaker 3: do think a good president makes it look easy, and
Speaker 3: so you think anybody can do it, and then you
Speaker 3: and up with a clown like this.
Speaker 1: For years, it'll be like the government needs to be
Speaker 1: run more efficiently like a business businessman. America is about business.
Speaker 1: And I don't think previous presidents, even ones that we
Speaker 1: thought did well, communicated effectively with the American people that
Speaker 1: the government is different than a business and it's different
Speaker 1: because it's in support of the American people. Like the
Speaker 1: US government is set up for fairness, not efficiency necessarily,
Speaker 1: So if the Defense Front wants to buy a new thing,
Speaker 1: it has to put out bids and give everybody an
Speaker 1: opportunity to bid. Everybody could do you can. They can't
Speaker 1: just say Michael, I like you, your company is good,
Speaker 1: I'm going to buy your thing, and I'm not going
Speaker 1: to look at so I can move fast, and the
Speaker 1: same thing with Elon Musk. Yes he can blow up rockets.
Speaker 1: I can move fast and destroy things. But if you're
Speaker 1: in the US government and nasty, you can't just blow
Speaker 1: up rockets. In other words, there are fundamental different things,
Speaker 1: and it's not just efficiency and speed, it's other things.
Speaker 1: So the business thing has never really been the proper
Speaker 1: way to look at it. Yes, we want our government
Speaker 1: to be a active and more efficient, but it is
Speaker 1: going to be slower than potentially businesses. But businesses go
Speaker 1: out of business all the time, and the United States
Speaker 1: can't go out of business.
Speaker 3: And the other thing that short of drives me crazy
Speaker 3: about that analogy is the subtext of it, which is
Speaker 3: that if the American government will run as a business,
Speaker 3: it would then be in a sense profitable. We hear
Speaker 3: this kind of talk when they talk about the post
Speaker 3: Office or Amtrak or any number of services that the
Speaker 3: government provides for the common good, that if we just
Speaker 3: privatized it, the government or whomever could be making money
Speaker 3: hand over fist with this stuff. But that is not
Speaker 3: the purpose of government. The purpose of the post Office
Speaker 3: is not to make money. It is to provide postal
Speaker 3: service for the American people at an affordable price. And
Speaker 3: that's just a common good.
Speaker 1: If you wanted to make money with the post office,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't send things to these talents with three people
Speaker 1: and I'm way out in the middle of nowhere. Effective
Speaker 1: thing to do is go to bigger places and cut
Speaker 1: off these smaller places. But the postal services said, we're
Speaker 1: going to make sure that every American, no matter where
Speaker 1: they live, can get mail.
Speaker 3: You can extrapolate that to the whole of government, because
Speaker 3: in a sense, when you're saying you want the government
Speaker 3: to be more efficient, in a way, what you're saying
Speaker 3: is we want it to it's a rough analogy, but
Speaker 3: we want it to make more money. We want it
Speaker 3: to do more with the money that we provide it.
Speaker 3: That is a natural and justifiable feeling to have. But
Speaker 3: if you don't understand what the government actually does or
Speaker 3: how it does it, you're not in a position to
Speaker 3: say we just need to cut everything. You're just not
Speaker 3: in that position. And the Democrats, I agree with you,
Speaker 3: have never made the case, or at least in my lifetime,
Speaker 3: for government why we have these things, why they're important,
Speaker 3: How your life will be materially worse without these things.
Speaker 3: Like the fact that so many people think or thought
Speaker 3: that the American government spends something like twenty percent of
Speaker 3: its annual budget on foreign aid is maddening to me.
Speaker 3: We pay a penny less than a penny on the
Speaker 3: dollar for all of that foreign aid, all of that
Speaker 3: stuff that we were doing, feeding people, saving lives, preventing aids, education,
Speaker 3: helping women get out from under the thumbs of the
Speaker 3: men in their lives and the patriarchal cultures that were
Speaker 3: controlling them. Like all of that cost, relatively speaking, so
Speaker 3: little and provided us so much in return, and we
Speaker 3: don't Nobody was making that argument, And I don't understand why.
Speaker 1: Michael Lewis was making the argument better than the US
Speaker 1: government was. He's the best person I listened to on this.
Speaker 2: Generationally, are at least my parents trusted the government because
Speaker 2: their experience with the government was helped us out of
Speaker 2: the Great Depression, right social security. We won World War Two,
Speaker 2: we won the Cold War, And I really think it
Speaker 2: all changed when Ronald came in, although he didn't mean
Speaker 2: it this way, but he said, I'm from the government.
Speaker 2: I'm here to help, and everybody laughed. If you're from FEMA,
Speaker 2: you are from the government and you are there to help, right,
Speaker 2: Or if you're making sure that people aren't driving in
Speaker 2: unsafe vehicles, or the food you eat isn't poison, or
Speaker 2: there's no insider trading the court's work. The police aren't
Speaker 2: like bribeable like they are in the Third World. They
Speaker 2: are from the government. They are here to help. But
Speaker 2: I think this is something inside of the American psyche
Speaker 2: to be distrustful of government. And I think that in
Speaker 2: its measure is good. But like anything else, when you
Speaker 2: take it to the NTS degree, you get to nihilism.
Speaker 2: But before we go, I did want you to comment
Speaker 2: on a conspiracy theory that I do buy into, but
Speaker 2: I find very difficult to articulate. So all the countries
Speaker 2: in the world, to include country, you know, places with
Speaker 2: just penguins or poor little Lisutu or Bhutan, they all
Speaker 2: got schwat with tariffs, but not at all. Russia didn't
Speaker 2: get hit with a tear And then he's true that
Speaker 2: off his order negotiating. We're also negotiating with Ukraine and
Speaker 2: other places. So what do you think the deal is
Speaker 2: with Russia and Trump? What is it? There's something everybody knows.
Speaker 2: There's something. Everybody's senses it. John has written articles on it.
Speaker 2: You know, in the intelligence community, we'll sit around Congressmen
Speaker 2: have speculated on it. There is friggin' something.
Speaker 3: I guess I know. I don't know if that I
Speaker 3: ever was, but I guess I'm no longer of the
Speaker 3: opinion that there's any sort of compromot or anything like that,
Speaker 3: because Trump is so shameless, Like, what difference would it
Speaker 3: make at this point, What possible information could they have
Speaker 3: on him that would in any way damage him. I
Speaker 3: don't think there's anything.
Speaker 1: But it suggests that he needed help to win these elections.
Speaker 1: It wasn't just himself, and he can't live with that.
Speaker 3: So I'm at a loss. None of it. Is it
Speaker 3: as simple as he looks at the way Putin runs
Speaker 3: his nation. He understands that Putin is getting a kick
Speaker 3: back on every dollar that these oligarchs earn. He understands
Speaker 3: that Putin is arguably the richest man in the world,
Speaker 3: or one of the richest men in the world, and
Speaker 3: he just wants that. He said it over and over again.
Speaker 3: I want generals who will salute me, and I want
Speaker 3: Hitler's generals, and want when I want people to stand
Speaker 3: up when I like he said all this stuff. It
Speaker 3: might just be the sort of theatrics of power and
Speaker 3: the image of it. And I think he's enraptured with
Speaker 3: this idea of the strong man. And if he could
Speaker 3: be the strong man of the strongest country that the
Speaker 3: world has ever known, I could see that holding some
Speaker 3: appeal for him.
Speaker 1: You've written a little bit about Trump and a third term.
Speaker 1: What's your take on that.
Speaker 3: If And I know you guys know this, but your
Speaker 3: viewers or your listeners and they probably know this too.
Speaker 3: But clearly the playbook for this regime is to maintain
Speaker 3: power at all costs. And the question is why. And
Speaker 3: we've talked on that a little bit, but I think
Speaker 3: Trump understands and the Trump people understand that whatever that
Speaker 3: goal is, whatever they're aiming for, cannot be accomplished in
Speaker 3: this term. Fully, you can put the pieces in motion,
Speaker 3: you can make it a lot more likely that this
Speaker 3: project will succeed in four years, but it may not
Speaker 3: be possible to execute everything they want to do in
Speaker 3: that time. And they know, and Trump certainly believes, and
Speaker 3: it's probably correctly that the movement falls apart without him.
Speaker 3: That's probably true. And so if that's the case, then
Speaker 3: you've got to figure out a way to keep this
Speaker 3: guy in power. And that obviously feeds into his own
Speaker 3: narcissism and ego. And so they're going to try any
Speaker 3: novel theory that they can think of to get around
Speaker 3: the constitution. And I'm not convinced they won't be successful.
Speaker 3: I'm not convinced that John Roberts and whoever else is
Speaker 3: going to somehow find some sort of narrow legal ruling
Speaker 3: like they did with Gore v. Bush or Bush vers
Speaker 3: or whatever that was, to sort of allow some weird
Speaker 3: precedent that will allow him to serve or he'll do
Speaker 3: like a Putin Medyedev thing where they where he gets
Speaker 3: Vance to be the president and he's the vice president
Speaker 3: and then Vance resigns. I don't know, but I don't
Speaker 3: think he's going to go quietly. And he said that
Speaker 3: he's been talking about this since his first administration, and
Speaker 3: I don't see any indication that he's at all joking,
Speaker 3: and he said in recent days he's not joking.
Speaker 2: I think the one thing I would add to that, though,
Speaker 2: is I think he doesn't want to go to jail.
Speaker 2: I think he knows he's guilty of a lot of shit.
Speaker 3: Okay, so he knows that, and he knows they all
Speaker 3: know that twenty twenty six, at least the elections were
Speaker 3: held today, would be a blood bath for them. So
Speaker 3: you got to figure they're already anticipating that. So what
Speaker 3: are they going to do? Where are they going to
Speaker 3: do that?
Speaker 2: I think there's a conspiracy there. I don't know what
Speaker 2: it is yet.
Speaker 1: Act cheap.
Speaker 2: It's a hell of a pig parade.
Speaker 1: Michael. Awesome to talk to you. As always, I do
Speaker 1: follow your substec I think it's really fascinating and we
Speaker 1: hope we can have you on it anytime.
Speaker 3: I'm mostly unemployed. Even though I'm on TV and I
Speaker 3: write the sun Stack, I'm mostly unemployed.
Speaker 4: Mission Implausible is produced by Adam Davidson, Jerry O'shay, John Cipher,
Speaker 4: and Jonathan Stern.
Speaker 2: The associate producer is Rachel Harner.
Speaker 4: Mission Implausible is a production of Honorable mention and Abominable
Speaker 4: pictures for iHeart Podcasts.