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.
Speaker 3: We sometimes created conspiracies to deceive 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. Well, today's guest is Will Summer.
Speaker 1: Will is a senior reporter at the Pullwark Or. He
Speaker 1: writes the False Flag newsletter about right wing media and
Speaker 1: the MAGA fringe. He's also worked previously for The Daily
Speaker 1: Beast and The Washington Post. He's the author of Trust
Speaker 1: the Plan, The Rise of QAnon, and The Conspiracy The
Speaker 1: Unhinged America. So Will, let's talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: someone You've written about, someone who's actually quite important in
Speaker 1: our nation security space now that I never thought would
Speaker 1: be Dan Bongino. He's the FBI deputy director who was
Speaker 1: a right wing radical and conspiracy theorist with his own podcast.
Speaker 4: I'm telling you there could be some national security problems here.
Speaker 4: Because ladies and gentlemen, nobody knows how much material people
Speaker 4: have on Jeffrey Epstein, who was videoed where those videos are.
Speaker 5: I was told by.
Speaker 4: Someone a long time ago, a very knowledgeable reporter, and
Speaker 4: so my information, I'm not hiding me.
Speaker 5: Oh you're hiding up for some foreign government you're protecting
Speaker 5: I'm not protecting anyone.
Speaker 4: I'm only telling you what I was told that some
Speaker 4: governments around the world may have some material that's related
Speaker 4: to the Epstein thing.
Speaker 5: Bill Clinton was knee deep in this. Man. I have
Speaker 5: a very very good source.
Speaker 4: He was on the plane with Bill Clinton and Epstein
Speaker 4: on one of Epstein's planes when Bill Clinton was on
Speaker 4: the plane with some women who, according to my source,
Speaker 4: looked under age, like I killed himself, and now nobody's
Speaker 4: gonna know.
Speaker 5: My buddy was on the plane.
Speaker 4: He didn't see anything directly, but there was like apparently
Speaker 4: some area in the back of the plane where everybody
Speaker 4: went to go whatever, do their thing. I've told this
Speaker 4: story a thousand times, and it's amazing how because it's
Speaker 4: the Dan Bongino Show, where we've been right about just
Speaker 4: about everything, everyone in the media ignores it.
Speaker 5: Even though this source is still out there.
Speaker 1: But he seems to be having a hard time squaring
Speaker 1: his new work overseeing the FBI workforce with his previous
Speaker 1: fan base who he told he was going to destroy
Speaker 1: the FBI.
Speaker 6: You know, just the age that were in Deputy director
Speaker 6: FBI Director Dan Bongino doesn't seem that crazy, but then
Speaker 6: you think about it, you go, wow, that's really crazy.
Speaker 6: I mean, I you know, being in DC, I used
Speaker 6: to hear him on like he would call in the
Speaker 6: local talk radio. He was this ex Secret Service agent.
Speaker 6: You talk about how awful it was working in the
Speaker 6: Obama administrator. And so I thought, all right, I'll never
Speaker 6: hear of this guy again. I guess I was wrong.
Speaker 6: So this is a guy now obviously he's working under
Speaker 6: Cash Btel. He's his podcaster. Famously, he couldn't take over
Speaker 6: the FBI until his podcast ad sponsorships run out. I mean,
Speaker 6: so a real serious situation here, and now he has
Speaker 6: this he just has all this pressure on him because,
Speaker 6: like Cash Battel, he was saying, you know, the FBI
Speaker 6: is a bunch of crooks, the Democratic deep state is
Speaker 6: run amuck. All these people should be indicted. And now
Speaker 6: that he's in charge, he hasn't indicted anybody. I mean,
Speaker 6: some of these conspiracy theorist thought they were going to
Speaker 6: get fifty thousand indictments and now no one's been busted.
Speaker 6: So the heat is kind of on for Dan Vongino.
Speaker 3: Well, Dan Vongina's problem is he trusted the plan right
Speaker 3: from cue and I so, but trust the planet. I'll
Speaker 3: be I got to pay them their due. Some of
Speaker 3: the stuff came true insofar as Trump's back, right, I mean,
Speaker 3: we haven't seen the Adrina chrome or people are not
Speaker 3: getting older because they're like killing babies and things like that,
Speaker 3: but they haven't been arrested for that either. So for
Speaker 3: me just to what was the plan and if they're
Speaker 3: trusting it, where should we be with the plan now?
Speaker 6: So, I mean, you know, in the QAnon case, they
Speaker 6: love the phrase trust the Plan, and then sort of
Speaker 6: more broadly in Trump is you know, there's maybe like
Speaker 6: a slightly more watered down version of that, but basically
Speaker 6: it's the idea that these democrats, this cabal of people
Speaker 6: in Hollywood and banking and finance, Yeah, they're running the
Speaker 6: world and they're drinking children's blood and all this stuff,
Speaker 6: and that ultimately, you know, if only we could get
Speaker 6: in office. If only Trump could control the FBI and
Speaker 6: the Justice Department, then all the secrets would be unveiled.
Speaker 6: And what we're seeing is we don't have the mythical
Speaker 6: Epstein client list. The JFK files haven't revealed much of anything.
Speaker 6: All this stuff, and in Dan Bongino's case, they thought
Speaker 6: he was gonna You know, this is the guy who's
Speaker 6: saying the FBI's out of control. We got to root
Speaker 6: and vine perform it. And now he's just tweeting all
Speaker 6: the time. I'm working really hard. You can't quite see
Speaker 6: what I'm working on. But just again, as you said,
Speaker 6: trust the plan is basically what he's asking people to
Speaker 6: keep doing forever.
Speaker 1: For example, one of the guys that they had made
Speaker 1: into a boogeyman that they're going to go after is
Speaker 1: this FBI agent named Stephen Jensen, who was appointed to
Speaker 1: lead the Washington Field office recently under Bongino and Patel,
Speaker 1: and he oversaw the investigations of January sixth. So to
Speaker 1: Bungino's Maga faithful, he's a demon who went after the
Speaker 1: Proud Boys and all these other kind of things. He's
Speaker 1: trying to tweet it away, but do you see this
Speaker 1: causing a real problem for him?
Speaker 6: I do. I mean, as you said, this Stephen Jensen
Speaker 6: guy is agent who in the broader world I had
Speaker 6: never heard of him. But if you're a January sixth
Speaker 6: person or like, really follow that, cause this was a
Speaker 6: key FBI guy in terms of the January sixth response,
Speaker 6: which I think for normal people would say, oh, good
Speaker 6: for you, But in this case they see him as
Speaker 6: sort of like a devil figure. And the idea that
Speaker 6: he's been promoted now to run the Washington Field office
Speaker 6: is crazy. There's this whole universe of like ex FBI
Speaker 6: whistleblowers such as it is, people who were talking how
Speaker 6: much they hate Naga inside the FBI, and that now
Speaker 6: these people have podcasts and they do media appearances, and
Speaker 6: they say Longino and Cash Mattel are throwing us under
Speaker 6: the bus. They're not really gonna in this case expose
Speaker 6: the truth about J six and how we were all innocent.
Speaker 1: So Margo's going to destroy Maga. Naga is not Maga enough.
Speaker 3: You can never get like too far. If Dan Dongino
Speaker 3: in his I'll use the word ilk.
Speaker 2: I love that word.
Speaker 3: It's like, I'm not sure what an ilk is but
Speaker 3: Damigino in his ILK who were saying that they had
Speaker 3: the inside scoop. If they become establishment, are they leaving
Speaker 3: the space open from QAnon guys coming and say, oh,
Speaker 3: they've been they've been turned, or they've been you know,
Speaker 3: sort of recruited by the deep state.
Speaker 7: I gave up everything for this. I mean, you know,
Speaker 7: my wife is struggling everything.
Speaker 5: And I'm not a victim.
Speaker 7: I'm not Jim Coleman.
Speaker 5: It's fine.
Speaker 7: I did this, and I'm proud I did it. But
Speaker 7: I think we're there for tea and crumpets. Well, I mean,
Speaker 7: Cash is there all day. We share our offices are linked.
Speaker 7: He turns on the faucet.
Speaker 2: I hear it.
Speaker 7: He's there at he gets into like six o'clock in
Speaker 7: the morning. He doesn't leave till seven at night. You know,
Speaker 7: I'm in there at seven thirty in the morning. You know.
Speaker 6: He uses the gym.
Speaker 7: I work out in my apartment, but I stare at
Speaker 7: these four walls all day in DC. You know, by
Speaker 7: myself divorce from my wife, not divorce, but I mean
Speaker 7: separated divorce. And it's hard. I mean, you know, we
Speaker 7: love each other and it's hard to be a part.
Speaker 7: People ask me all the time, you know, do you
Speaker 7: like it? I say no, I don't, but I didn't
Speaker 7: the President asked me to do this to like it.
Speaker 7: You know, you nobody likes going into an organization like
Speaker 7: that and having to change things and make big, bold changes.
Speaker 7: But you know, I was at one of our facilities
Speaker 7: yesterday down in Winchester, and a woman who worked there,
Speaker 7: very nice, said, you know, I used to watch your show.
Speaker 2: I miss you.
Speaker 7: I said, you know, I miss me too. You know,
Speaker 7: part of you, part of you dies a little bit
Speaker 7: when you see all this stuff from behind the scenes.
Speaker 3: And does that leave room on the far right for
Speaker 3: like a new version of Q and one point two
Speaker 3: or now that they're in, you know, they can control
Speaker 3: their own crazies and it's not going to happen.
Speaker 2: There's no nothing gets to the right of them. So
Speaker 2: what's your sense on that.
Speaker 3: Is there going to be a new sense of conspiracy
Speaker 3: theories with these guys now at the center of it?
Speaker 2: Or no, once they're in, it's over.
Speaker 6: Yeah. I mean, I do think people like Dan Bongino
Speaker 6: and Cash Reteller are at risk of being outflanked on
Speaker 6: the right with people saying you've gone Washington, you're going
Speaker 6: to these Georgetown cocktail parties already. In the case of
Speaker 6: Pam Bondi, for example, she tried to win over these
Speaker 6: right wing influencers with her Epstein Binder. Then it turned
Speaker 6: out to all the old information people started saying, maybe
Speaker 6: Bondi is part of the cover up. You look at
Speaker 6: someone like RFK, maybe like the ultimate hero to anti vaxers,
Speaker 6: and he even grudgingly has to say, well, I guess
Speaker 6: two kids are dead, Maybe you should vaccinate your kids
Speaker 6: for measles, and suddenly they're flipping out at him. So
Speaker 6: there's really no satisfying these people on the right because
Speaker 6: I think a lot of it is decades of right
Speaker 6: wing media. They've been told like you can kind of
Speaker 6: make your own reality. We saw in the Fox News
Speaker 6: lawsuit the emails saying, oh my gosh, if we admit
Speaker 6: the election wasn't stolen, we're going to lose all our audience.
Speaker 6: So I think Bongino as like a hybrid right wing
Speaker 6: media guy and politician. He has to. He's very conscious
Speaker 6: of this, and I think that's why he keeps tweeting
Speaker 6: about it.
Speaker 1: It's interesting to me to see that Telca Gavard and
Speaker 1: Radcliffe and Bongino, and they continue to tweet and have
Speaker 1: this sort of public face, which is really unusual. We've
Speaker 1: never seen previous CIA or d and I directors or
Speaker 1: FBI people constantly out there trying to have a public
Speaker 1: face as well as do the work. So it's really interesting.
Speaker 1: And you follow right wing media, and so I think
Speaker 1: a lot of us are just learning about how big
Speaker 1: it is and how much of it's based on podcasts
Speaker 1: and all these alternative media. And I see now that
Speaker 1: some Democrats are going on these kind of like gro
Speaker 1: podcasts and stuff. What is your sense of that and
Speaker 1: where that's going the right wing media and how to
Speaker 1: best engage with it.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I think it's a real challenge for Democrats. The
Speaker 6: idea that you know, I thought such a useful dample
Speaker 6: during the election was that these podcasts like Joe Rogan
Speaker 6: or Theo Vaughn were reaching people who did not really
Speaker 6: actively seek out you know, let me load up the
Speaker 6: New York Times or sit down and watch CNN, but
Speaker 6: who brushed up against media, brushed up against the news
Speaker 6: or politics. And so they're listening to Joe Rogan because
Speaker 6: they like comedy or UFC or whatever and then he'll
Speaker 6: casually say, you know, well, I think Democrats did this
Speaker 6: conspiracy theory or something, and they go, okay, I guess
Speaker 6: so and so. In that way, I think Democrats have
Speaker 6: really struggled. And you know, even the sort of progressive
Speaker 6: YouTubers or people on Twitch or whatever, their content is
Speaker 6: often also about how much they hate the Democratic Party.
Speaker 6: And so I talked to this guy who's kind of
Speaker 6: like a hip hop YouTuber named Adam twenty two, who's
Speaker 6: very successful, very like normy Democrat, but this is also
Speaker 6: a guy who films adult films with his wife and
Speaker 6: posts them and all this other kind of unsavory stuff.
Speaker 6: I mean, I think several of his co hosts just
Speaker 6: caught Rico charges and this is the He's desperate to
Speaker 6: become like the liberal Joe Rogan. But at the same time,
Speaker 6: for Democrats, that's going to mean making some compromises. Maybe
Speaker 6: it's a good idea, maybe it's a bad one, but
Speaker 6: that's kind of a I think when people say we
Speaker 6: need the liberal Joe Rogan, that's often what that's going
Speaker 6: to look like.
Speaker 1: We're going to continue in just a moment, we'll be
Speaker 1: right back.
Speaker 3: So I'm ashamed to say, I watched an entire episode
Speaker 3: of Tucker Carlson recently.
Speaker 2: And the reason I did that is there was a
Speaker 2: former colleague of John and I a CIA officer, who
Speaker 2: was on it, and I wanted to see sort of
Speaker 2: like what was going to say it. One of the
Speaker 2: things I thought was really interesting coming out of this
Speaker 2: is squaring the circle as to how it is that
Speaker 2: former right wing guys who claimed they knew about QAnon
Speaker 2: who are now establishment figures who aren't coming down in
Speaker 2: the One of the things be forward by Tucker Carlson
Speaker 2: is that he claims he knows senior politicians in the
Speaker 2: US and Congress and in the Senate who supported Trump
Speaker 2: and supported some of these right wing conspiracy theories, and
Speaker 2: when they go into a skiff, which is one of
Speaker 2: the rooms that protected from eavesdropping, they go into the
Speaker 2: skiff with some CIA officers alone, and when they come out,
Speaker 2: they're different, and.
Speaker 3: So he's he's basically Tucker Carlson was saying that basically
Speaker 3: we're brainwashing people inside of these skiffs, and it's an
Speaker 3: interesting way of squaring the circle so that the conspiracy
Speaker 3: he's now spun is that these aren't bad guys, but
Speaker 3: these are guys who were actually been captured by the
Speaker 3: d state.
Speaker 2: We need to free them.
Speaker 3: It was interesting to wat Check, the CIA officer, who
Speaker 3: knows what goesana this is in methods.
Speaker 1: We should change the name from skiff to truth rooms.
Speaker 1: They went into a room and they were different.
Speaker 3: I guess I'm just utterly gobsmicked by the inventiveness of
Speaker 3: the right, and I was wondering if you could go
Speaker 3: into like, you know, do you think there are any
Speaker 3: limits on.
Speaker 2: Where they can't go?
Speaker 3: I would have thought it was like Nazis or JFK
Speaker 3: Junior coming back, but it's I can't seem to see it.
Speaker 2: Across long time.
Speaker 3: I know, I know, I know, but you're you're an
Speaker 3: expert with q andon, So what's your sense of that
Speaker 3: are there any limits? Because I worry about authoritarianism and
Speaker 3: losing our democracy, so.
Speaker 6: Of course, yeah, no, I mean, I to be frank,
Speaker 6: I don't think there are like really any obvious limits
Speaker 6: that people are bumping up against. I think the there
Speaker 6: is kind of this challenge now that Trump people are
Speaker 6: in office that we've underlined with Bongino and many others,
Speaker 6: where there is like a baseline level of reality that
Speaker 6: these appointees realize they need to operate in in an
Speaker 6: rfk's case, because Okay, we can't just keep having more
Speaker 6: kids die, so I'm going to have to reel it
Speaker 6: back in a little. And then that's causing people to
Speaker 6: flip out. But at the same time, you know, you
Speaker 6: mentioned the Hitler kind of revisionism, and this kind of
Speaker 6: goes into the whole world of like bro podcasts too.
Speaker 6: The idea that Tucker is from to this guy, this
Speaker 6: guy who gets martyr made, guy who gets out there
Speaker 6: and says, I'm working on a podcast about World War
Speaker 6: Two and my big discovery is that Churchill is the
Speaker 6: main villain of World War Two. And you listen to
Speaker 6: it and it's like, well, you know, I wouldn't even
Speaker 6: put him at you know, top five, top ten, you know,
Speaker 6: I mean, even in the most kind of crazy idea.
Speaker 6: But there is kind of this whole sale kind of
Speaker 6: on the right, this attempt to sort of like reimagine
Speaker 6: history and and and you know, and and in that
Speaker 6: way kind of our shared reality. So I think up
Speaker 6: until I think the when we see this with the
Speaker 6: tariffs too, it's such a wide ranging thing where this, oh,
Speaker 6: we're going to restructure the whole economy. I mean, so
Speaker 6: there is kind of a sense to I think, make America,
Speaker 6: and a lot of that involves, you know, remaking what
Speaker 6: we understand to be the world and our country.
Speaker 1: And frankly, that's not unusual what Jerry and I lived
Speaker 1: in places overseas, former communist countries, or we're author darian governs.
Speaker 1: Crafting a false history or crafting a false narrative for
Speaker 1: people to believe is something you do to keep power
Speaker 1: and to control your people. So that's not that unusual,
Speaker 1: at least with a more simple question, how did you
Speaker 1: come up with a name for your newsletter the false Flag?
Speaker 6: The false flag? Yeah, well, you know, it's funny. I mean,
Speaker 6: I was brainstorming about what I wanted the newsletter be about.
Speaker 6: I mean, it's about writing media, the fringe, conspiracy theories
Speaker 6: and often you know these days, how that stuff plays
Speaker 6: out in the world we live in and the government,
Speaker 6: and so in that way, I mean, false flag obviously
Speaker 6: is a big kind of byword on the right or
Speaker 6: by phrase, because they think everything that happens in the
Speaker 6: world is a false flag event, or that there's a
Speaker 6: shadowy force behind it. Things are not as they seem
Speaker 6: and so given that that's the world we're living in
Speaker 6: now and that kind of thinking is informing what happens,
Speaker 6: I figure I go with it, you know, And it's
Speaker 6: kind of it's evocative, kind of hopefully catchy, a little punchy.
Speaker 2: So where we go? One we go?
Speaker 7: All?
Speaker 3: I think that was a really you know, it's a
Speaker 3: little long for a bumper sticker, but it's still pretty cool.
Speaker 3: But are they going?
Speaker 6: All?
Speaker 2: Do you see any fracturing with looking back?
Speaker 3: Historically way you have extreme political movements, they often begin
Speaker 3: to fracture into different people try to take control of it.
Speaker 3: So are you seeing fracturing on the right now that
Speaker 3: they're facing reality? And or as long as we have
Speaker 3: the figure of Trump as the central figure, that the
Speaker 3: messiah like figure, they can all sort of rarely around
Speaker 3: that that's not happening or not happening yet.
Speaker 2: So what's your sense of that?
Speaker 6: You know? And this is maybe a bit of good
Speaker 6: news that I see so much fracturing and factionalization, all
Speaker 6: this stuff that I mean, I could fill a newsletter
Speaker 6: twice a week with examples of backfighting or backfighting and
Speaker 6: all this scheming. Yeah, I mean, I do think it's
Speaker 6: easy to be a united movement when you're out of power,
Speaker 6: whether it's business Wall Street types who want lower taxes
Speaker 6: versus like religious zealots or anti vaccine people, you can
Speaker 6: all kind of unite together. But then when you're in office,
Speaker 6: you actually have these policies, let's say in the case
Speaker 6: of tariffs, that are going to infuriate business people, but
Speaker 6: you know, perhaps these work where blue collar people want it.
Speaker 6: I mean, all this stuff is you know, we're seeing
Speaker 6: people splitting. It's just a couple off the top of
Speaker 6: my head. I mean, now that even Republican appointed judges
Speaker 6: are starting to restrain Trump on immigration, I'm seeing a
Speaker 6: lot of attacks on the Federalist society, who, of course
Speaker 6: were very involved in stocking the judiciary with Republicans. So
Speaker 6: a lot of people on the writer are saying, you know,
Speaker 6: I think the federal society, you know, there are a
Speaker 6: bunch of deep staters and stuff, which for people, you know,
Speaker 6: perhaps liberals, I mean great, you know, if you want
Speaker 6: to go after the Federalist society who handed them the judiciary,
Speaker 6: that sounds like a great idea. Or attacks on Amy
Speaker 6: Cody Barrett, all this kind of stuff. So I do
Speaker 6: think there is like a huge amount of fracturing. I
Speaker 6: think we're seeing a lot of people who maybe got
Speaker 6: into trump Ism because they were sick of wokeism or
Speaker 6: pronouns in bio, these things that I think in retrospect
Speaker 6: they're coming to realize we're minor annoyances that suddenly they're
Speaker 6: realizing like, wait, who have I thrown in with? Who
Speaker 6: are these nuts who are now running the country.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the term that Jerry used there was a QAnon
Speaker 1: term just for people who don't realize it. And one
Speaker 1: person who famously said it publicly was Michael Flynn, a
Speaker 1: former army general, three star general, who Jerry and I
Speaker 1: know very well.
Speaker 2: He was selling merch with that.
Speaker 1: There was so much So where is he now and
Speaker 1: why hasn't he been brought in? And how is he
Speaker 1: responding to the new people in the Trumpet mission? Is
Speaker 1: he even supportive of is he staying away from it?
Speaker 1: Is he just trying to make money?
Speaker 2: What's what's he up to?
Speaker 6: Well, you guys are gonna love this one. So Michael
Speaker 6: Flynn is he was a hero in the q and
Speaker 6: On community. But all these things, you know, they eat
Speaker 6: their own and so really, just in the past week,
Speaker 6: or two. Michael Flynn has really been targeted by QAnon
Speaker 6: and conspiracy theorists who say he is a deep stater.
Speaker 6: They're looking at his brother, who I believe was in
Speaker 6: the military still was yes and was like somehow involved
Speaker 6: in the military response to January sixth, and they're saying,
Speaker 6: maybe he allowed Jerry six to happen to make Trump
Speaker 6: people look bad. So Michael Flynn has been, you know,
Speaker 6: spending the past couple of weeks basically taking shots from
Speaker 6: these right wingers who were saying, you're in the deep
Speaker 6: state too, and and so they're really you know, once
Speaker 6: I went to this q no On convention and he
Speaker 6: was kind of holding up quilt. You got to tell
Speaker 6: us that, oh my god, I got kicked out. And
Speaker 6: so they folding up Qan on quilts and selling him
Speaker 6: for thousands of dollars. And so he was their hero,
Speaker 6: and now they're really turning on him.
Speaker 2: Let's pause for a second. We'll be right back. So
Speaker 2: q and on Ink is there still money to be
Speaker 2: made in this?
Speaker 6: I think there is. You know, it's in some ways
Speaker 6: we don't see the cues anymore. We don't hear people
Speaker 6: saying where we go on we go all. In part
Speaker 6: that's because Q after the election said after twenty twenty
Speaker 6: said the brand has become tarnished. People have figured out
Speaker 6: that we're nuts. So stop saying Q and on specific stuff.
Speaker 6: Let's keep talking about Democrats eating kids, keep talking about
Speaker 6: the stolen election. Just don't say QAnon because that makes
Speaker 6: people of normally people have figured out that that's that's
Speaker 6: for lunatics. And so but I think, you know, this
Speaker 6: kind of thinking like we're talking about, it became a
Speaker 6: lot broader and now it's you know, an article of
Speaker 6: faith in the GOP that you need to be skeptical
Speaker 6: of vaccines, or that the twenty twenty election was stolen,
Speaker 6: or that Ukraine is part of this kind of like
Speaker 6: international cabal. And so I think in that way, I
Speaker 6: think there's like a huge amount of money to be
Speaker 6: made and you can still sell pills and sell nutritional
Speaker 6: supplements or there's a whole lot of money still out
Speaker 6: there for them.
Speaker 1: As you look at that group out there, one of
Speaker 1: the things it's clear and politicians have done this forever,
Speaker 1: but it seems to be very prevalent amongst this right
Speaker 1: wing MAGA group is they use fear to push things
Speaker 1: how does it work. On one hand, that they were
Speaker 1: willing to push this kind of fear. For example, there
Speaker 1: was outside of Dallas they were building this mosque and
Speaker 1: they're using it in Texas politically, Oh my gosh, Sharia City.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, Muslims are coming. They're going to kill
Speaker 1: us against this bro tough guy culture. So part of
Speaker 1: the MAGA thing in charge is we don't care. We're tough,
Speaker 1: you know, we listen to these pro podcasts and stuff.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, oh no, a mosque is being built.
Speaker 1: Heaven's to Betsy, Like, how does that work together?
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean that's a great point. I mean, you know, similarly,
Speaker 6: you have these situations where it's like I go into
Speaker 6: the city, I got to keep my head on a swivel,
Speaker 6: you know, and we all managed to survive, you know,
Speaker 6: going into the city the otherwise. But yeah, I mean,
Speaker 6: in this case, you're talking about this thing called Epic City,
Speaker 6: which is shaping up to be a very typical Dallas
Speaker 6: ex serb. Except it's being organized by Muslims who are
Speaker 6: affiliated with this mosque. And it looks like, you know,
Speaker 6: it hasn't even broken ground, So I can't even say
Speaker 6: it looks like this, but it seems to be I'm
Speaker 6: from Texas. It looks like one of a million sort
Speaker 6: of suburban housing developments. But Republicans have absolutely lost their
Speaker 6: minds over it, including John Corn and the Senator, Ken Paxton,
Speaker 6: the Attorney General, and Greg Abbott the governor, are basically
Speaker 6: competing with each other to violate these people's First Amendment rights.
Speaker 6: And say, I think there's something like ten investigations now
Speaker 6: into this operation. I asked Greg Abbat's people, I said,
Speaker 6: can you just what is the crime here that's being alleged?
Speaker 6: What is the basis of the investigation? And it's, oh, well,
Speaker 6: maybe they raised money to build buildings, but they hadn't
Speaker 6: built the building yet, so that might be securities fraud.
Speaker 6: I mean, this kind of like Penny Anti stuff. But
Speaker 6: it's I think it's very clear that they just do
Speaker 6: not want a Muslim community happening in Texas. And this
Speaker 6: has become like a realistic on Fox News talk radio.
Speaker 6: It's become a cause to let on the right.
Speaker 3: And so I get that people are suspicious and don't
Speaker 3: like foreigners getting involved, their foreign cultures getting involved in
Speaker 3: our politics, But explain to me, at least from their
Speaker 3: point of view, why it is that it's okay if Russians.
Speaker 8: Do this, right?
Speaker 3: I mean, so we have as former CIA officers, we
Speaker 3: dealt a lot with conspiracy theories and conspiracies, and this
Speaker 3: is a real conspiracy, right. I mean, the Russian government
Speaker 3: was subsidizing through a cutout right wing podcasters, you know,
Speaker 3: and you know Tim Pool, Benny Johnson, and that's okay.
Speaker 3: But I guess George Soros, who's an American citizen, if
Speaker 3: he supports something that's not okay, on is one is.
Speaker 2: Nefarious and one is the other one isn't.
Speaker 3: So at least could you explain to me from their
Speaker 3: perspective why it's okay?
Speaker 2: Or do you just explain it away by Russia? Russia
Speaker 2: Russia hoax? But so what is the rationale or how
Speaker 2: did they view that?
Speaker 6: Yeah, I'm so glad you guys brought that up. You know,
Speaker 6: obviously john has the experience with Russia, And when you
Speaker 6: brought that up, I said, oh, man, I would love
Speaker 6: to talk about tenet media. This case square Timpoole and
Speaker 6: Benny Johnson and Dave Rue money. They're taking huge amounts
Speaker 6: of money. In Tim Poole's case, I believe it was
Speaker 6: one hundred thousand dollars per video. Just imagine if we
Speaker 6: finished this video and then you got to check clear
Speaker 6: for one hundred thousand dollars.
Speaker 2: It's crazy. You do exactly Maybe you know well, but you.
Speaker 6: Know, it's so funny. There is this aspect. I think
Speaker 6: even some liberals they say, oh my gosh, we went
Speaker 6: so overboard with the Russia stuff. Sometimes Russia really did
Speaker 6: do stuff, you know, and continues to And as someone
Speaker 6: who tries to live in reality as much as I can,
Speaker 6: you also have to acknowledge that. Like, I think it
Speaker 6: became a kind of a knee jerk thing among Democrats
Speaker 6: to say, oh, you know that Russian stuff was made
Speaker 6: up too, but it wasn't a lot of it. I
Speaker 6: don't know, I'm not an expert, but like, but you
Speaker 6: look at it, and so I mean, in the case
Speaker 6: of this Tempoole situation, this was personally for me very
Speaker 6: satisfying because I had been watching this YouTube channel Tenet Media,
Speaker 6: and I was saying, I don't quite understand why this exists.
Speaker 6: It's these popular right wing YouTubers and they kind of
Speaker 6: made a collective on YouTube, but it's very not successful
Speaker 6: and are getting hundreds of views per video, and then
Speaker 6: the FBI came out and said, hey, we have this indictment.
Speaker 6: This is all upfront for our tea. And so for
Speaker 6: me it explained a lot of things. And it's also
Speaker 6: I mean, these people are, you know, in the case
Speaker 6: of Timpoole, Benny Johnson, these people are successful right wing
Speaker 6: figures without Russia. But the idea that perhaps they were doubling,
Speaker 6: maybe tripling their incomes because of these payments, it was
Speaker 6: very interesting to me. In Tim Poole's case, he has
Speaker 6: some compounds out in western Maryland and West Virginia, and
Speaker 6: he had already a skater and so he had started
Speaker 6: taking he buying local skate parks and this kind of
Speaker 6: stuff really kind of like impresario type things. And then
Speaker 6: suddenly the Russian money gets turned off, maybe related, maybe not,
Speaker 6: and somebody's saying, oh, I have to pull back on
Speaker 6: all my businesses.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 6: And so for me it's just interesting seeing the dynamics
Speaker 6: of this. And you are often left wondering, really when
Speaker 6: someone makes a move that seems odd to be like
Speaker 6: very pro Russia or on kind of a specific Russian
Speaker 6: issue that has no kind of valence in the United States.
Speaker 6: You wonder, like what's going on here.
Speaker 3: Like like with Ed Martin, right, district attorney for at
Speaker 3: least potentially for Washington, DC, just slipped his mind. You
Speaker 3: mentioned RTE slipped his mind that he had been on
Speaker 3: RT Russian television over one hundred and fifty times and
Speaker 3: forgot to mention it to the Senate. And it's still
Speaker 3: not clear how much he got paid.
Speaker 6: Right, Yeah, I mean that's a great example. And now
Speaker 6: he's one of the top law enforcement figures in the
Speaker 6: country and then as a DC resident, and it's truly
Speaker 6: bizarre seeing him tweet. You know, it's, Oh, this guy's
Speaker 6: selling pro Palestine merchant Georgetown. Oh I'm looking into this.
Speaker 6: I mean, that's not a crime. You know, all these examples,
Speaker 6: I mean, this is a we have a legitimate crime
Speaker 6: problem in DC, and that Trump people were more than
Speaker 6: happy to talk about up until the election. And now
Speaker 6: it's it's all these culture work things.
Speaker 1: What is the right way to look at sort of
Speaker 1: the maga's view of Jews. They're attacking universities claiming they're
Speaker 1: anti Semitic, but they also seem to promote a lot
Speaker 1: of nasty Nazi stuff.
Speaker 6: Yeah, they do yeah, and you know, this is an
Speaker 6: interesting case. I think there's a lot unfortunately, particularly among
Speaker 6: like younger skewing right wing media right now, I think
Speaker 6: the energy is really much more towards anti Semitism than
Speaker 6: towards you know, supporting Jews or not or Israel. You know.
Speaker 6: I think we can look at Ben Shapiro, for example,
Speaker 6: in the Daily Wire, which are obviously very pro Israel
Speaker 6: and yet have really been going through a lot of
Speaker 6: business struggles. In the case, he had this person named
Speaker 6: Candice Owens, who is like a very successful host, and
Speaker 6: then she started making all these anti Semitic remarks. She
Speaker 6: came up with wackaduke because she you know, Macrone in
Speaker 6: France his wife is secretly trans and all this stuff,
Speaker 6: and she's been hugely popular with that, and ultimately they
Speaker 6: fired her roughly a year ago, and she's continued to
Speaker 6: be very popular while the Daily Wire has all these
Speaker 6: business issues. Or you know, I'll tune into like Stephen Crowder,
Speaker 6: a guy who is very much kind of like, you know,
Speaker 6: not making waves of his own. He'll kind of go
Speaker 6: whichever direction the right wing is going. I just tuned
Speaker 6: in one random day and he was doing this like
Speaker 6: insane anti semitic skit where a Jewish guy won't hire
Speaker 6: a guy once he finds out he's Jewish. I mean
Speaker 6: he was was like what and this is like Daily
Speaker 6: Stormer type stuff. But now these days on the right,
Speaker 6: and I think particularly in kind of like the Manisphere world,
Speaker 6: it's becoming very common.
Speaker 8: We're gonna stop here today and will we turn next
Speaker 8: week with more of our conversation with will Summer here
Speaker 8: on Mission Implausible. Mission Implausible is produced by Adam Davidson,
Speaker 8: Jerry O'shay, John Seipher, and Jonathan Sterr. The associate producer
Speaker 8: is Rachel Harner. Mission Implausible is a production of honorable
Speaker 8: mention and abominable pictures for iHeart Podcasts.