Speaker 1: Hey guys, Saga and Crystal here.
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Speaker 1: Good morning, everybody, Happy Tuesday. Have an amazing show for
Speaker 1: everybody today.
Speaker 4: What do we have, Crystal, Indeed, we do.
Speaker 2: Lots of interesting developments out there in the world. We
Speaker 2: are going to update you on the quote unquote drone
Speaker 2: situation in New Jersey and very excited to get to
Speaker 2: talk to Rich McHugh, who is a fantastic journalist.
Speaker 4: We've actually known him for quite a while.
Speaker 2: He helped Rodan Pharaoh break the story about however You Wednesday,
Speaker 2: and he is now over at news Nation and it's
Speaker 2: been all over this drone story has probably done the
Speaker 2: best reporting on it, so he's going to join us
Speaker 2: for and update this.
Speaker 4: Monk really looking forward to that.
Speaker 2: We have Rocanna back in the studio to talk about
Speaker 2: the Democrats, whatever's going on with them. It looks like
Speaker 2: Pelosi was successful in blocking AOC from being chair of
Speaker 2: the Oversight Committee.
Speaker 4: There's a lot to talk to there.
Speaker 2: And Rowe also had a fantastic op ed that we
Speaker 2: want to get his reaction to about money in politics
Speaker 2: and how Democrats can move.
Speaker 4: On from their big donor era.
Speaker 2: We also have some updates for you on that very
Speaker 2: weird and very fake feeling CNN Syria prisoner rescue video.
Speaker 2: We now know the identity of this individual, although a
Speaker 2: lot of questions remain about just what the hell was
Speaker 2: going on there, so break that down for you. Also
Speaker 2: have a deeply troubling story out of California and Open
Speaker 2: AI whistleblower was found dead. We will tell you what
Speaker 2: he was saying, what he was warning about, and the
Speaker 2: circumstances surrounding his death. I'm taking a look at Bernie
Speaker 2: Sanders warning about American oligarchy and Sager is talking about Japan.
Speaker 4: Yes, what reflections on your trip, give us a.
Speaker 3: Little previews, just why it's the greatest country in the world,
Speaker 3: why it challenges all the foundational myths of the United States,
Speaker 3: and what a real great society should look like, and
Speaker 3: why we should aspire to be more like the Japanese
Speaker 3: and not reverse.
Speaker 4: Why do I have a feeling like I'm going to disagree.
Speaker 1: You've never been? How would you know? You know?
Speaker 3: You know, that's one of those you have to see
Speaker 3: it to believe it. You have to understand and what
Speaker 3: it's like to feel absolute physical peace in a major
Speaker 3: metropolitan area, something basically impossible in the United States of
Speaker 3: America and basically the entire Western world.
Speaker 1: So perhaps it's what we can see from them.
Speaker 3: And if you're interested in the obesity crisis, safety, public safety,
Speaker 3: American innovation, theories of capitalism.
Speaker 4: They have like a massive birth rate crisis.
Speaker 1: Of course, they absolutely problem.
Speaker 3: I think they'll you know what, as with all things
Speaker 3: throughout the centuries, they figured it out and I have
Speaker 3: faith in them.
Speaker 1: They should not listen to us, We should listen to them.
Speaker 4: All right, Well, I will listen with an open mind,
Speaker 4: and we.
Speaker 1: Chelsea has universal healthcare.
Speaker 3: You should be happy about that, Okay, let's talk about
Speaker 3: the drones, shall we. We've got a little bit of
Speaker 3: an update here for President elect Donald Trump is alleging
Speaker 3: a massive government cover up.
Speaker 1: Let's take a listen.
Speaker 4: You comment on the drones that are flying out New
Speaker 4: Years reports, and it seems like they're people have a
Speaker 4: big distance the government.
Speaker 5: The government knows what is happening. Look, our military knows
Speaker 5: where they took off from.
Speaker 3: If it's a.
Speaker 5: Garage, they can go right into that garage. They know
Speaker 5: where it came from and where it went. And for
Speaker 5: some reason they don't want to comment, and I think
Speaker 5: they'd be better off saying what it is. Our military knows,
Speaker 5: and our president knows, and for some reason they want
Speaker 5: to keep people in suspense. I can't imagine it's the enemy,
Speaker 5: because it was the enemy they'd blasted out, even if
Speaker 5: they were late, they'd blasted Something strange is going on.
Speaker 5: For some reason, they don't want to tell the people,
Speaker 5: and they should because the people are really I mean,
Speaker 5: they happen to be over Bedminster. We want to know
Speaker 5: they're they're very they're very close to Bedminster. I think
Speaker 5: maybe I won't spend the weekend in bed Minster. I've
Speaker 5: decided to cancel my trip.
Speaker 1: An intelligence briefing on the drones.
Speaker 3: I don't want to comment on that, all right, So
Speaker 3: he doesn't want to comment on that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that was actually a good follow up.
Speaker 1: That's not fantastic.
Speaker 2: Hey, you know, you get these intelligence briefings now you
Speaker 2: want to share anything with us.
Speaker 1: Now, I'm not going to comment exactly right now.
Speaker 3: When he says a couple of things like we know
Speaker 3: where the drones took off, we know what they are,
Speaker 3: et cetera. But they don't want to know. Is he
Speaker 3: speaking from an informed position or not? Remember is the
Speaker 3: president elect of the United States. You get the full
Speaker 3: presidential daily briefing, the same one that Joe Biden would
Speaker 3: receive in the Oval Office.
Speaker 1: Could he be making stuff up?
Speaker 6: Maybe?
Speaker 1: I don't think so.
Speaker 4: He's bullshitting.
Speaker 3: I don't on this one. I mean he's been specific
Speaker 3: about a couple of things. So recall the Ukraine casualty numbers.
Speaker 3: The Ukrainians freaked out about that, by the way, because
Speaker 3: he was like a million people have died. Meanwhile, Zelenski's like, oh,
Speaker 3: actually it's just seventy five thousand people have been killed.
Speaker 3: It's like maybe at a zero and it's somewhere near
Speaker 3: the accurate numbers.
Speaker 1: So he's talked about that.
Speaker 3: He's talked previously about some previous military things and others.
Speaker 1: So I actually think this one might be.
Speaker 2: Then if he knows the answer and he's just not
Speaker 2: telling us because he got an intelligence briefing, then he's no.
Speaker 3: He's not the president yet, so you know, maybe he
Speaker 3: doesn't have any folks, but I know.
Speaker 2: He really holds to those rules and norms of the
Speaker 2: presidential transitions are coming.
Speaker 3: No idea, all right, All I'm saying is what I
Speaker 3: will say. I will take it seriously because he is
Speaker 3: the incoming pressure.
Speaker 2: He is very skilled at like jumping on a public sentiment,
Speaker 2: and that's what I see in this. I kind of
Speaker 2: doubt that he got any special information in his briefing.
Speaker 2: Like I said, if he did, then okay, come out
Speaker 2: with it, like tell us what's going on. I think
Speaker 2: he's just like sees this as a moment, sees this
Speaker 2: is a thing that's going on, and as he had,
Speaker 2: is very skilled at doing sort of jumps on it, positions,
Speaker 2: positions himself in an advantageous way.
Speaker 4: That's all I see going on here.
Speaker 3: Look, it definitely could be true in fact, I kind
Speaker 3: of hope that's true, because then he can get into
Speaker 3: office and he can tell us what's actually happening with it.
Speaker 3: But regardless, what we do know is that it in
Speaker 3: New Jersey.
Speaker 1: People there are just fed up.
Speaker 3: The governor has fed up the state and local officials
Speaker 3: in terms of all the lies that are being propagated
Speaker 3: by the federal government. Just yesterday we got another update
Speaker 3: on the lies from the White House from the Department
Speaker 3: of Homeland Security. The Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro
Speaker 3: Mayorcis has said those absolutely nothing to worry about.
Speaker 1: Don't worry.
Speaker 3: And actually Chris Christy, the former New Jersey governor, so
Speaker 3: clearly somebody at least with some authority, spoke out against this.
Speaker 1: Let's take a listen. You're a New Jersey resident.
Speaker 3: Have you seen any drouns?
Speaker 7: Yeah, two mornings ago over my house at six fifteen
Speaker 7: in the morning, saw them myself, so did my wife,
Speaker 7: and so yeah, they're there. And I've been traveling around
Speaker 7: New Jersey as I normally do all week, and I
Speaker 7: can't tell you the number of people have called it
Speaker 7: to me concerned about it, and.
Speaker 1: That is this a mass hysteria of some sort well.
Speaker 7: Here's why, George, because of answers like the secretary just gave,
Speaker 7: they're not answering the questions.
Speaker 5: Well, he said that they're monitoring it, they haven't seen
Speaker 5: any unusual activity, and they need more authority.
Speaker 7: Let me say something. I agree that they need more authority,
Speaker 7: but to not say that this is not that, to
Speaker 7: say this is not unusual activity, it's just wrong. I
Speaker 7: lived in New Jersey my whole life. This is the
Speaker 7: first time that I've noticed drones over my house. And
Speaker 7: I was in a restaurant in Mammoth County on Friday night,
Speaker 7: had people at the bar coming up to me and saying,
Speaker 7: Governor Murphy won't tell me anything. The President won't tell
Speaker 7: me anything. Do you know, Like, well, I don't know,
Speaker 7: but I will tell you this. I think this is
Speaker 7: what happens in our society now, George, When because we
Speaker 7: were used to having things so rapidly, if you don't
Speaker 7: fill that vacuum, then all the conspiracy theories get filled
Speaker 7: in there. So you've got people at Congressman Jeff Vanrew
Speaker 7: saying there's an Iranian mothership off the coast of New Jersey.
Speaker 8: Absolutely not true.
Speaker 3: There you go, then's he's actually said it well, which
Speaker 3: is that in our current environment where you have videos
Speaker 3: going around, where you have multiple news reports. We're going
Speaker 3: to talk to Rich just here in a little bit.
Speaker 3: He himself witnessed many of the drones. By the way,
Speaker 3: the drone situation has now gone across the entire country. Actually,
Speaker 3: even Global Germany is now reporting drone problems. We were
Speaker 3: talked about Wright Patterson Air Force Base, which was just
Speaker 3: closed yesterday. The audio of that confirms their own freak
Speaker 3: out for what's happening. There have been multiple other incidents
Speaker 3: across the entire East Coast. And yet despite this, the
Speaker 3: NSC spokesperson John Kirby, let's put this up there on
Speaker 3: the screen, he says, and continues to say, Oh, all
Speaker 3: of these just don't worry about it. It's commercial drones,
Speaker 3: it's hobby drones, it's law enforcement drones. It's planes, it's helicopters,
Speaker 3: it's stars that people have mistook for drones. Now, look,
Speaker 3: is it true that some people have mistaken these?
Speaker 1: Absolutely?
Speaker 3: You know you had what was it, the governor Larry
Speaker 3: Hogan is that his name? Who mistook the stars for drones?
Speaker 1: Like, okay, not spending a lot of time.
Speaker 3: Stargazing, it's planes or its hobbyist drones. But you know,
Speaker 3: whenever it comes to the hobby the commercial drones and others,
Speaker 3: it doesn't make any sense for them to be flying
Speaker 3: at night specifically, because that's not how First of all,
Speaker 3: they're not allowed to, but also there's some various different
Speaker 3: ways to enforce that. In terms of the law enforcement drones,
Speaker 3: well maybe, but you know, if you listen to the
Speaker 3: law enforcement people themselves, they say, every time our drones
Speaker 3: get close to one of these so called drones, those
Speaker 3: drones are able to go away. They don't have any
Speaker 3: heat signature, they're able to quote unquote go dark. As
Speaker 3: the governor said, planes, I mean, as I said literally yesterday,
Speaker 3: it's very easy to say what is a plane and
Speaker 3: what's not that's up in the sky. Any one of
Speaker 3: us can open the flight aware or any of these
Speaker 3: other apps and look up immediately and identify what a
Speaker 3: plane is. It's tail, it's file, et cetera for like
Speaker 3: first route, where it's going. So their explanations just continue
Speaker 3: to not make any sense, and they continue to obfuscate
Speaker 3: whatever the truth is. But the more that this continues,
Speaker 3: the more full blown cover up that it continues to look.
Speaker 2: Like, Yeah, I mean it's they continue to be very
Speaker 2: evasive in their answers, and obviously the sightings continue and
Speaker 2: the questions remain. So one thing that I had seen
Speaker 2: is what New Jersey just like loosened up their policy
Speaker 2: allowing civilian usage. Yes, that's one sort of innocuous explanation
Speaker 2: that's been put out there. So I mean, I do
Speaker 2: think that's part of what's going on. Is some of
Speaker 2: the things that people are seeing are like commercial air
Speaker 2: craft and civilian drones, and they just now are paying
Speaker 2: attention and this drone usage rule has been loosened up, whatever.
Speaker 2: But there have been enough people with some credibility and
Speaker 2: knowledge that have seen things that I'm convinced that's not
Speaker 2: the whole of what's going on. So with that being said,
Speaker 2: let's speak to one of those people who I consider
Speaker 2: to be quite credible. Rich mc hugh as an incredible
Speaker 2: reporter and journalists. As I said before, and you know,
Speaker 2: it's demonstrate a lot of I would say courage in the.
Speaker 4: Field of journalism.
Speaker 2: Has taken on stories even when it was uncomfortable and
Speaker 2: inconvenient in mainstream press. He's now a reporter for News Nation.
Speaker 2: He's been on the ground in New Jersey reporting out.
Speaker 2: He had his own sighting of what dozens of these
Speaker 2: drones while he was there reporting. He spoke to local
Speaker 2: law enforcement as well. We played some of this on
Speaker 2: the show yesterday, So let's go ahead and get to that.
Speaker 3: Joining us now is investigative correspondent for News Nation, Rich McHugh,
Speaker 3: highly respected journalist.
Speaker 1: It's great to see you, sir. Thank you for joining us.
Speaker 8: Great to see both. Good to be back here with you.
Speaker 1: Absolutely all right.
Speaker 3: So, Rich, you did a report that we played on
Speaker 3: our show yesterday where you were credulous of these drone sidings.
Speaker 3: You said to yourself that you were skeptical going in.
Speaker 3: Why don't you just break down a little bit of
Speaker 3: what you saw and some of the further reporting that
Speaker 3: you've done since you did that segment.
Speaker 9: Sure, So I was absolutely skeptical before starting on this,
Speaker 9: Like I kind of didn't even pay attention to the
Speaker 9: story because I thought it was just a bunch of
Speaker 9: wing nuts in New Jersey with drones stirring up something.
Speaker 9: Then I started looking at it and I talked to
Speaker 9: I interviewed the sheriff of Ocean County and his drone
Speaker 9: team and talk to them about what they saw. Talk
Speaker 9: to the drone operator about what he saw when they
Speaker 9: put a drone up. You know, he was saying things
Speaker 9: like this thing that with this drone that we encountered
Speaker 9: was much bigger than ours, and they have like an
Speaker 9: industrial grade drone and had it didn't have a heat signature.
Speaker 9: I didn't know what a heat signature was, but apparently
Speaker 9: that's a thing. So like they can track drones with like,
Speaker 9: you know, heat, and so he was emphatic that this
Speaker 9: thing did not have the normal kind of it was
Speaker 9: not giving off the normal heat. So there's all these things.
Speaker 9: Then there's all these sightings in the communities. Monmouth County,
Speaker 9: Ocean County. Residents I talked to were saying, look, we're
Speaker 9: seeing these things.
Speaker 8: Overhead, like no doubt about it.
Speaker 9: One resident told me he looked up and he saw
Speaker 9: something like eighty to one hundred feet above his house.
Speaker 9: He said it was so close, he said, I screamed
Speaker 9: at it. Get the heck out of here. There's mayors
Speaker 9: all throughout the state that are saying, look, pay attention
Speaker 9: to us. They just had a meeting yesterday with the
Speaker 9: White House saying look enough of the gas lighting. So
Speaker 9: from my own personal perspective, normally you don't see stuff
Speaker 9: around here. Last Thursday night, after I'd met with the
Speaker 9: Ocean County Sheriffs Mike Hamerman, and we got reports that
Speaker 9: there was all sorts of sightings in Monmouth County.
Speaker 8: So we raced to Montmouth County. There was sightings in Red.
Speaker 9: Bank like these look looked like these things were low
Speaker 9: flying over the over the city and over east by
Speaker 9: Earl and in Middletown, and so we started seeing this
Speaker 9: and you know, I was like, I'm used to flight patterns.
Speaker 9: I'm used to like, I know where this area and
Speaker 9: I know what's what and what normally flies over had
Speaker 9: these looked like a mix between helicopters and something else
Speaker 9: because they were flying so low. And so we started
Speaker 9: filming them, you know, to be honest, uh, I've kicked
Speaker 9: the tires on our reporting. And I've asked CIA former
Speaker 9: CIA drone specialist. I've asked a CEO of a drone company,
Speaker 9: currently respected person. I've asked an aviation expert of forty
Speaker 9: three years military. You flew in the military and it
Speaker 9: was a commercial pilot.
Speaker 8: I asked all of them.
Speaker 9: Formercia drone specialists said, I think they're drones. The drone
Speaker 9: CEO said, they're not drones. You're filming planes. I think
Speaker 9: those are planes. And the aviation expert, the pilot of
Speaker 9: forty three years, is I think they're drones. So the
Speaker 9: bottom line is we don't know. Reporting this is like
Speaker 9: we really don't know, and reporting this is the experience
Speaker 9: I equate to is like reporting in a funhouse. It's
Speaker 9: like you look over here and there's a little bit
Speaker 9: of truth here and a little bit of truth there,
Speaker 9: but like you're trying to make sense of it all.
Speaker 8: You know.
Speaker 9: I think when you boil it down, I think there's
Speaker 9: room for both. I think there's a lot of stuff
Speaker 9: actually happening. I think there's real drone activity happening in
Speaker 9: New Jersey and these other states, as evidenced by the
Speaker 9: reports you're getting out of these military installations. There's incredible
Speaker 9: you know, people on these bases at Earl here nearby,
Speaker 9: and pickets and you're saying, we are seeing these and
Speaker 9: so that is the real issue, and the fact that
Speaker 9: the federal government up until you know, three a couple
Speaker 9: of days ago, was saying, you know, there's really no
Speaker 9: credible you know, incredible instances of drones flying over these airspaces.
Speaker 8: Well, now they're kind of they're kind of backpedaling on.
Speaker 9: That and saying, well, there, there, there are, but you
Speaker 9: know they're they're not They're not really something we're concerned about.
Speaker 8: And that doesn't make sense to me as a reporter.
Speaker 9: It's like, if you get anywhere near these military installations,
Speaker 9: you can't you know.
Speaker 8: The most sensitive thing.
Speaker 9: Ever, So there's there's a disconnect on a on a
Speaker 9: from the from the messaging that is coming from the
Speaker 9: federal level, and that's what's alarming.
Speaker 4: Can you tell me a.
Speaker 2: Little bit more about how local law enforcement is thinking
Speaker 2: about this, like are they fearful, are they nervous, are
Speaker 2: they like what's the energy? And do they have any
Speaker 2: theories about what is going on? Do they have any
Speaker 2: advice for residents about how to think about what is happening.
Speaker 9: I talked to Sean Golden. He's the mayor or the sorry,
Speaker 9: the sheriff of Monmouth County. Yesterday I went in. He
Speaker 9: is the one who's kind of like, I don't want
Speaker 9: to say like I've been at the forefront of this,
Speaker 9: but he has since the end of November and now
Speaker 9: he has a heat map in the kind of like
Speaker 9: the brain room inside of his sheriff's office and the
Speaker 9: thousands of sightings since December second, and it's pretty wild
Speaker 9: to see it. So he's tracking them, he's logging everything,
Speaker 9: he's directing everybody to the federal government. He is actually
Speaker 9: calling for laws to be enacted, which I believe is smart.
Speaker 9: He says, Look, with planes, you have the FAA, and
Speaker 9: we can see on these open sourced websites you can
Speaker 9: track them, you know, like on flight Aware or whatever,
Speaker 9: you can see every plane that's going there. With drones,
Speaker 9: we don't have that, and there should be a requirement
Speaker 9: that you can through GPS track at least where the
Speaker 9: controller of the drone is so we can weed out,
Speaker 9: you know, bad actors, and then trying to figure out
Speaker 9: what's going on, because right now it's just an unregulated
Speaker 9: wild West. The sheriff of Ocean County I talked to,
Speaker 9: and he has the drone team. They're actively looking for
Speaker 9: this stuff. This is the sheriff who told me this
Speaker 9: story about a police officer in their district was on
Speaker 9: the beach and called nine to one one, which is
Speaker 9: something remarkable in itself.
Speaker 8: A police officer calling nine on one, but you know,
Speaker 8: seeing fifty of these things come off the ocean. And
Speaker 8: I heard that.
Speaker 9: And I was like, come on, like fifty of these
Speaker 9: things come off the ocean and he's she's a sworn officer.
Speaker 9: They put out the drone to go look for this.
Speaker 9: They called the FBI, They called the Coastguard. They say,
Speaker 9: the Coastguard put out their boat and they reported back
Speaker 9: that thirteen of these things followed their boat in. So
Speaker 9: I can't imagine a sheriff and coastguard are making that
Speaker 9: kind of claim up. It's so how are they going
Speaker 9: about it? I think they're just saying be vigilant, you know,
Speaker 9: try not if you see one of these things, don't
Speaker 9: necessarily call nine to one one. If you see something
Speaker 9: and you're convinced of it, then then you know, take action.
Speaker 8: Here's where you can call wow.
Speaker 3: So yeah, Rich, last question for you is just in
Speaker 3: terms of what does your gut feeling think in terms
Speaker 3: of all of the theories that are out there. Of course,
Speaker 3: so we were talking a little bit before, there's UFO
Speaker 3: theories that.
Speaker 1: Are around this. There's a viral quote unquote nuclear theory.
Speaker 3: In terms of reporting at least or there's just what
Speaker 3: you said, is that a lot of these is they
Speaker 3: loosened up some of their drone regulations and people are
Speaker 3: just having some fun having you know, you said, kick
Speaker 3: the tires of those What do you think.
Speaker 9: I think it's a combination. I think it's complicated. I
Speaker 9: think it's a combination of things. I think Number one,
Speaker 9: there is something going on here with drones, no doubt
Speaker 9: about it.
Speaker 8: People are seeing it. Mayors are seeing it, like.
Speaker 9: The sheriff's officers seeing that, they're they're you know, military installations,
Speaker 9: they're seeing and I think in talking to Sean Golden
Speaker 9: that the sheriff, He's like, look, I believe a lot
Speaker 9: of these sightings probably are planes that were people are
Speaker 9: now staring up and looking at the sky and maybe mischaracterizing.
Speaker 8: So there's some of that going on.
Speaker 9: I think that the narrative coming out of the government
Speaker 9: is helping fuel that because it's it's people don't have answers.
Speaker 9: If I had to guess after talking to these to
Speaker 9: these sheriffs and seeing the messaging coming out of the
Speaker 9: White House and federal officials, I think I think they
Speaker 9: know far more than they're letting on. I think you know,
Speaker 9: if I'm going to be a betting person, the government.
Speaker 8: Knows exactly what this is.
Speaker 9: These are our own you know, these are not foreign
Speaker 9: bad actors, because I truly believe that if they were
Speaker 9: foreign bad actors, we'd be we'd be stopping it.
Speaker 8: Instead, the messaging is like.
Speaker 9: Uh, we we acknowledge that this is happening, but it's
Speaker 9: not a harm to you people. Well, it's like that
Speaker 9: that's a irresponsible statement to put out unless you know
Speaker 9: something more correct.
Speaker 4: Yeah, very true.
Speaker 2: Well, Rich, it's always great to see You're like, you're
Speaker 2: like the forest Gump of reporting. You always get on
Speaker 2: these incredible.
Speaker 1: Stories and story historical.
Speaker 2: Moments, et cetera. So we're really grateful for your time
Speaker 2: this morning.
Speaker 8: Thank you, thank you, thank you. Good to see both.
Speaker 4: Yeah, same to you.
Speaker 2: So we are fortunate to be joined this morning by
Speaker 2: Congress and Rocanna here in the studio. Always great to
Speaker 2: see you in personal coming in. Lots of interesting Democratic
Speaker 2: Party news going on that we wanted to pick your
Speaker 2: brains on. So, guys, if you could put B four
Speaker 2: up on the screen here, we'll start with this. Alexandria
Speaker 2: Cossio cort has has been trying to become ranking member
Speaker 2: on the House Oversight Committee, which is, you know, a
Speaker 2: significant role and uh one that she seemingly, based on
Speaker 2: her past work, would be relatively well suited for reporting.
Speaker 2: Is that Nancy Pelosi decided she would rather have Jerry Connelly,
Speaker 2: who was reallyatively aged and also suffering from cancer, in
Speaker 2: that position. Yesterday in the Steering Committee, he was able
Speaker 2: to win that vote.
Speaker 4: Now, typically minor steam. You can correct me if I'm wrong.
Speaker 2: Is usually the way the Steering committee votes is the
Speaker 2: way that the whole caucus votes. So this is likely
Speaker 2: a defeat for AOC.
Speaker 4: Do you think that she still has a chance to
Speaker 4: get this position?
Speaker 2: What do you make of this sort of backroom dealing
Speaker 2: to block one of the young rising members of Congress
Speaker 2: for an older, more establishment figure.
Speaker 6: Well, I don't agree with that.
Speaker 10: Right after this, I'm going to vote in the House Caucus.
Speaker 10: I'll be voting for AOC for a couple of reasons. One,
Speaker 10: she was the vice chair, She's done the work, she
Speaker 10: comes very well prepared to the whole committee. In the
Speaker 10: minority is about getting out in the media and being
Speaker 10: an effective communicator.
Speaker 4: That's true.
Speaker 10: We don't have that many effective communicators, right now in
Speaker 10: Congress in these leadership positions, but she's going to be
Speaker 10: an underdog. I don't understand, you know why the Steering
Speaker 10: and Policy committees, right commendation has so much wey And
Speaker 10: then someone explained it to me. Everyone wants to get
Speaker 10: on their committees, and the Steering and Policy Committee basically
Speaker 10: determines what committees you go on.
Speaker 2: So if you go against them, you mayby screwing yourself
Speaker 2: in your committee position.
Speaker 10: And one of the biggest complaints I heard about AOC
Speaker 10: secondhand was that she had endorsed in primary challenges. You know,
Speaker 10: God forbid you endorse against an incumbent in our party,
Speaker 10: And I've said, you know, we should have competition. Just
Speaker 10: because you're an incumbent doesn't mean that you're guaranteed that seat.
Speaker 10: But this is where you're seeing that those who are
Speaker 10: willing to question the system shake things up. That that
Speaker 10: doesn't go well when you want to try to be
Speaker 10: in leadership in the.
Speaker 2: I'm glad you brought that up, because there was actually
Speaker 2: reporting that, as part of her attempt to become ranking
Speaker 2: Member of House Oversight, she was willing to agree not
Speaker 2: to back primary challengers against incumbent Democrats. Which I think
Speaker 2: is you know, I mean, I think it's extraordinary to
Speaker 2: begin with, because, as you point out, it's important to
Speaker 2: have that democratic choice. I think it's been part of
Speaker 2: her brand. Obviously, she came in challenging a long time
Speaker 2: in charge of Democratic and come and Joe Crowley. You
Speaker 2: also came in in a Democratic primary challenge, and so
Speaker 2: I thought it was extraordinary that she was willing to
Speaker 2: give that up.
Speaker 4: But I also thought it was extraordinary that she was
Speaker 4: willing to.
Speaker 2: Give that up, and they still were like, not good enough,
Speaker 2: we still want our guy, Jerry Connolly.
Speaker 10: Yeah, I don't think we should give that. I mean,
Speaker 10: let's say someone was challenging member of Congress on the
Speaker 10: Iraq War.
Speaker 6: That's how I started. I lost that race.
Speaker 10: But wouldn't you want to have incumbent's challenged if they
Speaker 10: voted for the Iraq War? Yes, of course, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 10: And this is where the lesson for progressives is, we're
Speaker 10: not going to build power just by making compromises. We've
Speaker 10: got to get more of our folks elected. Now, the
Speaker 10: fact that she got to twenty seven is pretty remarkable,
Speaker 10: but we'll see what happens in the house.
Speaker 8: Clawkus.
Speaker 3: So the reason you're here is in this context feature
Speaker 3: the Democratic Party? What is this all about? So we
Speaker 3: have a hilarious element here. Can we put what does
Speaker 3: it be?
Speaker 8: One?
Speaker 1: Please? Up on the screen?
Speaker 3: From the Atlantic, they write, maybe Democrats didn't do so
Speaker 3: badly after all. The party's debate about reinventing itself after
Speaker 3: the election has gotten more complicated. They talk about some
Speaker 3: of these retcon positions and others. You've been a part
Speaker 3: of this conversation, so we're curious for your reaction to that,
Speaker 3: and whether is this higher colleagues feel and generally about
Speaker 3: this theory of change and where things go from here
Speaker 3: under a second Trump administration?
Speaker 1: What do you make of an argument like this?
Speaker 10: I think we have to make a distinction between could
Speaker 10: we have won this election by a couple points or
Speaker 10: can we win back twenty six or twenty eight? Of
Speaker 10: course we can versus a long term problem for the
Speaker 10: Democratic Party. Let me talk about that long term problem.
Speaker 10: We've been losing working class votes, White working class of votes,
Speaker 10: African American working class votes, Latino working class votes. You've
Speaker 10: gone on Ohio from President Obama carrying it by five points, yes,
Speaker 10: carrying it by three points, losing it by eight points,
Speaker 10: losing it by eleven points. Anyone looking at the data
Speaker 10: has to say, Okay, even if we can win in
Speaker 10: twenty twenty six, because Trump does something really dumb. This
Speaker 10: is not what the Democratic Party coalition, and we've got to,
Speaker 10: in my view, get back to the FDR coalition on
Speaker 10: economic populism, economic liberalism, whatever you want to call it.
Speaker 10: I call it a new Economic Deal, which says we're
Speaker 10: going to raise Americans wages. We're going to guarantee people
Speaker 10: healthcare when they're really upset that healthcare is being denied.
Speaker 10: We're going to bring business leaders, labor leaders altogether to
Speaker 10: industrialize America and left out places and be the party
Speaker 10: of economic renewal. It seems that we have the elements
Speaker 10: in our different parts of our party, but we've got
Speaker 10: to be bold with standing up for these policies.
Speaker 2: Just to follow up on that we can put I
Speaker 2: believe it's B one B. This New York Times tearsheet
Speaker 2: up on the screen, which has some of the specific quotes.
Speaker 2: Here is the New York Times version of the same sentiment.
Speaker 2: Democrats argue that the twenty twenty four election actually had
Speaker 2: its bright spots and a quote a little bit, they
Speaker 2: say to hear's some party leaders in their allies talk
Speaker 2: Democrats had plenty of November victories to be proud of.
Speaker 2: Jamie Harrison, chaired the DNC, wrote a memo to party
Speaker 2: members last week pointing to down ballot triumphs, declared Democrats
Speaker 2: beat back global headwinds that could have turned this squeaker
Speaker 2: into a landslide. Representative Hakeem Jeffries, the House Democratic Leader,
Speaker 2: wrote in a statement recently that his caucus had quote defied
Speaker 2: political gravity. So when you're in these internal House Democratic
Speaker 2: Caucus meetings, is this the sentiment you're getting or is
Speaker 2: there a sense of we have to do some significant
Speaker 2: reforms and changes?
Speaker 4: Is it divided? What does that breakdown look like?
Speaker 10: It's not that, I mean, this is pr I understand.
Speaker 10: You know, if they're leading and you have a bad result,
Speaker 10: you're obviously going to look for the bright spots. But
Speaker 10: the reality is people know that we've got to have
Speaker 10: a much stronger economic message, that we've got a channel
Speaker 10: anger of people. That doesn't mean, okay, let's just invent villains,
Speaker 10: you know, in a caricature.
Speaker 6: Way, it means why are people upset? You know?
Speaker 10: Why are they upset that jobs have gone off shore?
Speaker 10: Why are they upset that corporate greed and insurance companies
Speaker 10: are denying insurance claims? Why are they upset that billionaires
Speaker 10: are determining a political elections and speak honestly about it,
Speaker 10: Like you could speak honestly about it in a suit.
Speaker 10: You can speak honestly about it in a hoodie. You
Speaker 10: can speak honestly about it in eloquent language or cursing.
Speaker 10: That's not the point. It's not stylistic, it's substantive. Are
Speaker 10: you willing to speak truth about the condition most people
Speaker 10: find them?
Speaker 3: So you've talked about pack there's one of the reasons
Speaker 3: you want to come on here to talk about not
Speaker 3: taking PAC money. In others, you're trying to project a
Speaker 3: new vision of what that party could look like. So
Speaker 3: what is that in your view?
Speaker 10: Well, the DNC should make some very basic commitments. No
Speaker 10: super pac money in democratic primaries. If there is a
Speaker 10: super pact clearly affiliated with a candidate, the DNC and
Speaker 10: elected official leaders should endorse against the candidate affiliated with
Speaker 10: a super PAC. Let's not take corporate p money in
Speaker 10: the DNC. That's just getting back to what we had
Speaker 10: in two thousand and eight under Obama when he ran
Speaker 10: saying I'm not going to take pack money or a
Speaker 10: lobbyst money. Let's get behind the main initiative that passed
Speaker 10: in main seventy percent regulating the amount people.
Speaker 6: Can give to super pack.
Speaker 10: So you couldn't get Elon Musk or Bill Gates giving
Speaker 10: fifty million dollars to a super pack.
Speaker 6: You could only give thirty three thirty three hundred dollars.
Speaker 6: That passed, but seventy percent of the vote.
Speaker 10: Why isn't the Democratic Party saying we're going to have
Speaker 10: a fifty state strategy. We're going to run the main
Speaker 10: ballot initiative in every state. You know, we're going to
Speaker 10: answer that.
Speaker 1: Question, Well, they make a lot of done, they have a.
Speaker 4: Lot of people.
Speaker 3: There's a lot of super pac money on the Democratics
Speaker 3: side because more Yeah, yeah, that's right.
Speaker 8: A lot.
Speaker 2: And as you know, Congressman, you know a lot of
Speaker 2: what the party selects for at this juncture is not
Speaker 2: necessarily political skill or aptitude or a vision.
Speaker 4: It's who can raise the dollars.
Speaker 2: That has become an important, maybe the central litmus test
Speaker 2: for aspiring Democratic candidates. So for people who've come up
Speaker 2: in that system, that's their primary skill. Are they going
Speaker 2: to be willing to go in this direction?
Speaker 6: Well, if they want to win, they will.
Speaker 10: And it's not just a matter of winning, it's a
Speaker 10: matter of can we actually govern right? Seventy percent of
Speaker 10: people in this country one fundamental economic transformation. Only twenty
Speaker 10: percent trust the federal government to do that. Why is
Speaker 10: that Because they see politicians spending most of their time
Speaker 10: raising money, They see these elections being dominated by super PACs,
Speaker 10: and they don't think that people in the government in
Speaker 10: Congress have a vision looking out for them. So if
Speaker 10: our party doesn't reform these basic things, we're never going
Speaker 10: to earn the trust of the American people to actually
Speaker 10: get our agenda through. And it's you're absolutely right, though,
Speaker 10: But the first question when someone's running for Congress that
Speaker 10: people ask is how much can they raise?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 2: I know, I run for Congress. Those the first question
Speaker 2: I got.
Speaker 1: Got worse since then, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 10: And now it's how much can you raise? And who
Speaker 10: are your key a super pac allies? Not what is
Speaker 10: your platform? Are you for increasing the minimum wage? Where
Speaker 10: do you stand on medicare? What do you think are
Speaker 10: the big issues?
Speaker 2: Now?
Speaker 10: I mean those and those are the issues that matter
Speaker 10: to voters. But we're just selecting a terrible criteria in
Speaker 10: what it takes to get to selective office.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which means that you're going to end up primarily
Speaker 2: with people who come from wealth or connected to wealth,
Speaker 2: and it creates very little class diversity.
Speaker 4: In the Congress.
Speaker 1: Absolutely.
Speaker 3: What is the democratic theory that you're hearing about how
Speaker 3: to act under the Trump administration? So the first time around,
Speaker 3: the theory was Trump is an illegitimate president, We're just
Speaker 3: going to treat him as like resistance, et cetera. Kind
Speaker 3: of worked twenty twenty. This time around, it's different. Popular
Speaker 3: about mandate. This is just general exhaustion with a lot
Speaker 3: of this. So what are the fights inside? Like, what
Speaker 3: are the fights that you're going to pick with Donald
Speaker 3: Trump and the incoming administration to position yourself, not you yourself,
Speaker 3: but the party for twenty six and for twenty eight.
Speaker 6: Different schools of thoughts.
Speaker 10: One is we've got to revitalize the resistance. There are
Speaker 10: some people who say, look, we've got to resist more,
Speaker 10: we've got to resist stronger. And the other school of
Speaker 10: thought is we got to focus more on what we
Speaker 10: need to do. How the Democrats are going to govern
Speaker 10: what we are going to do on economic issues, on
Speaker 10: different issues around the country. I'm in the second camp.
Speaker 10: That doesn't mean you don't push back. I mean Trump
Speaker 10: is invariably going to betray certain promises. I think the
Speaker 10: time to push back is with specifics. Why aren't you
Speaker 10: raising the minimum wage? Why are you giving corporate tax
Speaker 10: cuts to have more offshoring of jobs when they have
Speaker 10: the tax bill?
Speaker 6: Are you really going to give these tax cuts to
Speaker 6: the very very wealthy.
Speaker 10: But if we just say blanket resistance, we're not going
Speaker 10: to connect with people on actual things that affect their lives.
Speaker 2: Congressman, you were one of the first, I think politicians
Speaker 2: to of course condemn murder of Brian Thompson healthcare CEO,
Speaker 2: but also say, you know, there's a reason why people
Speaker 2: are reacting the way they are and why they are
Speaker 2: so disgusted with the health care if you can call it.
Speaker 4: That system that we have.
Speaker 2: Obviously, we don't have the majorities for Medicare for all
Speaker 2: though what you and I would both like to see
Speaker 2: as the system in this country. But are there areas
Speaker 2: where you think that we could bite off some chunk
Speaker 2: of improvement in the healthcare system that would make it
Speaker 2: less cruel, fewer bankruptcies, and less deadly.
Speaker 10: Well, you can have two different thoughts simultaneously. Murder is
Speaker 10: unconditionally wrong and the healthcare system is irretrievably broken. Yeah,
Speaker 10: and those are both what we're seeing happening. I'll just
Speaker 10: give you one statistic. If you have cancer, and many
Speaker 10: people know someone who's had cancer, the average, forty two
Speaker 10: percent of cancer patients within two years have lost their
Speaker 10: entire life savings. And so many people have denial after denial,
Speaker 10: and you know what they do. Many times they just
Speaker 10: don't take the medicine or they don't get the procedure.
Speaker 6: One of the simple things we can do.
Speaker 10: Is to say, if a doctor prescribes a medicine and
Speaker 10: if Medicare would cover it, then the insurance private insurance
Speaker 10: company should cover it. But just to the front page
Speaker 10: today of the New York Times is the corruption of
Speaker 10: the system. If you look at it, it says that
Speaker 10: private insurance companies colluded with PBMs to basically get Americans
Speaker 10: addicted to OxyContin, and they were paying PBMs to say,
Speaker 10: fill more of the oxy contin prescriptions.
Speaker 6: It is a corrupt system.
Speaker 10: And all you have to do is look at the
Speaker 10: front page of the New York Times. Medicare for all
Speaker 10: is the answer. I'm tired of people saying it's not
Speaker 10: politically possible. If there is ever a moment that we
Speaker 10: should be pushing that, it is right now.
Speaker 3: But how do you square that with what you just said?
Speaker 3: Only twenty percent of people say the federal government can
Speaker 3: solve their problems.
Speaker 1: How are you going to convince them that?
Speaker 10: Well, Medicare is one of Medicare is one of the
Speaker 10: places where people do like, right, I mean, and so.
Speaker 3: They like when they pay their bills, but they don't
Speaker 3: like when being told what to do rational care, et cetera.
Speaker 10: Right, wellicare and Medicare doesn't cover ration the care I mean,
Speaker 10: I think when it look, there's certain things. When it
Speaker 10: comes to job creation, creating high paying jobs, I do
Speaker 10: think you need to have a whole of society approach.
Speaker 10: You need to get business leaders, you need to get
Speaker 10: technology leaders, you need labor. One of the great things
Speaker 10: about FDR is he was basically a conductor. He had
Speaker 10: all the talent, and the politician was just saying, Okay,
Speaker 10: I'm going.
Speaker 6: To mobilize that.
Speaker 10: But when it comes to Medicare for all, for public health,
Speaker 10: for people's healthcare. I think people realize that shouldn't have
Speaker 10: a for profit motive, that having the Medicare pay for
Speaker 10: the coverage makes sense. And then you can have your
Speaker 10: private doctor, you could have your private nurses, you can
Speaker 10: have your private hospitals. It's important to let people know
Speaker 10: that those are going to be private. Many people don't
Speaker 10: even know Medicare is a federal program, and they'll say, yeah,
Speaker 10: I like Medicare, but I don't like the federal government
Speaker 10: at the same time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 2: No, that's a great point. Well, Congress, and we always
Speaker 2: appreciate your time.
Speaker 4: There's so much.
Speaker 1: To see.
Speaker 3: Yes, we have an update for you on the CNN situation.
Speaker 3: They are now admitting that their segment, at least in part,
Speaker 3: was a complete lie that we showed all of you
Speaker 3: on Thursday, where you had this miraculous freeing of a
Speaker 3: prisoner who had allegedly been in the cell for months
Speaker 3: on end, and even though he'd been there for months
Speaker 3: and there was no waste in the cell and his
Speaker 3: nails are perfectly manicured, and he actually looked fine, and
Speaker 3: he wasn't pale or didn't show signs of acute malnutrition
Speaker 3: or of hunger, or of lacking water for several days. Well,
Speaker 3: it just turns out that at the very least the
Speaker 3: name that he gave them, it is totally wrong. Let's
Speaker 3: put this up there on the screen. According to CNN themselves,
Speaker 3: they tracked down some of the people who knew him,
Speaker 3: and they say a man who was filmed by CNN
Speaker 3: note the passive language being released ry rebels from a
Speaker 3: Damascus Gel was a former intelligence officer with the deposed
Speaker 3: Syrian regime, according to local residents, not an ordinary citizen
Speaker 3: who had been imprisoned as he had claimed. CNN in
Speaker 3: actually found the man while pursuing leads in a video report,
Speaker 3: Clarissa Ward and her team, accompanied by rebel guard, came
Speaker 3: across the cell in Damascus that was padlocked. The guard
Speaker 3: blew off the lock and the man was found alone
Speaker 3: inside the cell. When he emerged, he appeared bewildered. Questioned
Speaker 3: by the rebel fighter who freed him, he identisified himself
Speaker 3: as adr Adel Gurbal from the central Syrian city of Homes.
Speaker 1: He claimed he'd been kept in the cell for three months.
Speaker 3: However, his real identity is said to be a lieutenant
Speaker 3: in the Assad regime Air Force Intelligence Directorate. Salama Mohammed Salama,
Speaker 3: a resident of Baiata neighborhood and homes, gave scene and
Speaker 3: a photograph said to be of the same man while
Speaker 3: he was on duty in what appears to be a
Speaker 3: government office. Facial recognition then matched him to that role,
Speaker 3: and it appears that he was actually in prison as
Speaker 3: of a month ago because he had been extorting and
Speaker 3: shaking people down for quote, profit sharing from extorted funds
Speaker 3: with a higher ranking officer. At the very least, the
Speaker 3: story is bullshit, right, three months in jail, Nope, he
Speaker 3: was in prison less than a month ago. They said
Speaker 3: he was some heartbroken rebel prisoner. No, it turns out
Speaker 3: he was in ASAD intelligence thug who at least had
Speaker 3: been had been in prisoned for shaking people down. Maybe
Speaker 3: right according to them. And then his current whereabouts completely unknown.
Speaker 3: So this raises all kinds of questions, and it's a
Speaker 3: total joke and terrible look for CNN because there's broadcasted
Speaker 3: stuff without a single They don't check anything, they don't
Speaker 3: ask anything, They broadcast it live. Everybody's reacting to a
Speaker 3: crystal shre stuff. This is one of most extraordinary moments
Speaker 3: in American television that I've ever seen. Normal people are like,
Speaker 3: this is a bullshit.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 3: I didn't come out and say it one hundred percent,
Speaker 3: because you know, you never know. Ryan and I, but
Speaker 3: we were like, well, it looks fake.
Speaker 4: You go very diplomatic.
Speaker 2: I watched your section, They're very diplomatic.
Speaker 4: Possibility.
Speaker 1: Internally, I was just like, yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, just so for people who didn't see your original
Speaker 2: segment and maybe haven't seen this original CNN segment, let's uh,
Speaker 2: let's relive and just in your mind, like, imagine if
Speaker 2: you were. The story they're selling here is that this
Speaker 2: man has been in prison for at least three months,
Speaker 2: that he's gone days and days without water, I mean,
Speaker 2: you can only go a short period of time before
Speaker 2: you die without water, and that he's been hiding under
Speaker 2: this blanket the whole time. Yet he's you know, he's
Speaker 2: like his haircut looks pretty fresh, the.
Speaker 4: Jacket he's wearing is really clean.
Speaker 2: Like, there's still a lot of questions, So let's go
Speaker 2: ahead and relive this CNN segment and then I can
Speaker 2: tell you a little bit more about what we know.
Speaker 4: On the other side. I'm a civilian, he says, I'm
Speaker 4: a civilian.
Speaker 8: Okay, you're okay, Okay, you're okay.
Speaker 1: Okay, it's water.
Speaker 8: It's water.
Speaker 1: After three months in a windowless cell, you can finally
Speaker 1: see the sky.
Speaker 4: So you know, it went on from there.
Speaker 2: But they yeah, and there's a whole emotional scene, etc.
Speaker 2: In any case, let's go and put up on the screen.
Speaker 2: CNN was not the outlet that first track down who
Speaker 2: this individual actually was. It was this organization which caused itself,
Speaker 2: like an Assyrian fact checker, the headline here updated to
Speaker 2: CNN fabricate the story of quote freeing Assyrian detaining from
Speaker 2: a secret prison.
Speaker 4: They are the ones who tracked down.
Speaker 2: The actual identity of this individual and talked to local
Speaker 2: residents and got the story from them. And according to
Speaker 2: local residents, he was imprisoned, as you said, Soccer, less
Speaker 2: than a month. It was due to a dispute over
Speaker 2: profit sharing from extorted funds with a higher ranking officer.
Speaker 2: So it was the ASSAD government itself who had imprisoned
Speaker 2: their own guy, right. And then he also was known
Speaker 2: allegedly again according to local residents, as someone who had
Speaker 2: murdered and tortured civilians. So not exactly the like heartwarming
Speaker 2: tale that CNN wants you to take away from their
Speaker 2: original rewarding. But the other thing is, like, so many
Speaker 2: questions still remain, because even now that we know the
Speaker 2: apparent identity of this man and the reason that he
Speaker 2: was apparently imprisoned, the whole setup is still seems really fake.
Speaker 2: You know, the whole idea that he was in prison
Speaker 2: for so long they had no food and water, that
Speaker 2: they just stumbled upon him and miraculously rescued him, et cetera,
Speaker 2: et cetera. It raises a lot of questions, and it's
Speaker 2: also just incredible. You know, I don't Cloris's award. She's
Speaker 2: a long time foreign correspondent, like she's been in war zones.
Speaker 2: This is not someone who is just naively showing up. Certainly,
Speaker 2: she's been in a lot of dicey situations with a
Speaker 2: lot of people who want to propagandize you and you know,
Speaker 2: convince you and trick you, etc. So the fact that
Speaker 2: this was just accepted at face value is really quite
Speaker 2: wild to me.
Speaker 3: Oh, absolutely, she should know better than anybody else. But
Speaker 3: Ryan was bringing this up, and I think it's actually
Speaker 3: the most important. These journalists, they're not neutral people as
Speaker 3: in Clarissa Ward admitted to sounding an email to Ben Rhodes,
Speaker 3: who was the National Security deputy under Barack Obama, and
Speaker 3: was like, I hope that you're happy with yourself, because
Speaker 3: she was upset with him for not bombing the Asad
Speaker 3: regime in twenty thirteen. She admitted on the stage to
Speaker 3: all of this, she literally said, on this issue, I'm
Speaker 3: an activist, and so what happens we.
Speaker 1: All get carried away.
Speaker 3: You know, I'm particularly aggravated by this entire situation because
Speaker 3: you would think that these al Qaeda guys are the
Speaker 3: greatest heroes on Earth, and listen, I'm I'm fine with
Speaker 3: value neutral analysis. I'm openly was fine, not fine, but
Speaker 3: I said, well, it's preferable to leave Afghanistan and let
Speaker 3: the Taliban take over.
Speaker 1: I know the.
Speaker 3: Taliban is bad, I know a lot of people will suffer.
Speaker 3: I just don't think we should have anything to do
Speaker 3: with it. But you basically have two regimes where now
Speaker 3: effectively the same. Look at the media treatment of the
Speaker 3: way that the US pull out from Afghanistan has happened,
Speaker 3: and look at these people. They're like heroes, you know,
Speaker 3: and you know, let's check in five six, years from now.
Speaker 3: Let's see how it works out for the Alo white Christians,
Speaker 3: or for the Druze population, or the Shia or any
Speaker 3: of these other religious minorities.
Speaker 1: Let's see.
Speaker 3: You know, everybody said, oh, Afghanistan's gonna be a harbor
Speaker 3: of terrorism and all this stuff. Why don't they say
Speaker 3: this same stuff about Syria, Like somehow they have decided
Speaker 3: that Asad was worse. And look, he's not a good guy,
Speaker 3: but you don't have a lot of good options to
Speaker 3: choose from here. Yeah, So that's why I'm just infuriated
Speaker 3: by people like her and all these other Western journalists
Speaker 3: who selectively decide like who the good guy is and
Speaker 3: who the bad guy is. And it doesn't even make
Speaker 3: any sense. It's internal logic is completely contradictory. It's totally ridiculous.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think when we had Jeremy Skahill on I I
Speaker 2: think he said it well, which is that, of course,
Speaker 2: there are very good reasons why many Syrians are celebrating
Speaker 2: these developments, and that means something. And you know, I'm
Speaker 2: not I'm not Syrian, and like they deserve to get
Speaker 2: a chance to run their own country and to have
Speaker 2: a representative government and to shape their own destiny. And
Speaker 2: at the same time, while you're holding that thought in
Speaker 2: your head, you also have to recognize that the peril
Speaker 2: is great based.
Speaker 4: On who we know.
Speaker 2: The new government is comprised of their track record, and
Speaker 2: also what we've learned through the the Arab Spring, what
Speaker 2: we learned through our intervention, our disastrous intervention in Libya
Speaker 2: and other brutal, catastrophic misadventures. So you know, I hope
Speaker 2: that the story turns out differently this time, but jaded
Speaker 2: enough to be not too optimistic.
Speaker 1: About that, as you should be.
Speaker 3: And also you know, for everybody, Oh, let the Syrians decide.
Speaker 3: We decided to be it's different. A long time ago,
Speaker 3: Syrians didn't get to play a role in any of this.
Speaker 3: Katar Uae, the United States, Iran, Hasbola, Israel, dare I say.
Speaker 1: Turkey go on forever?
Speaker 3: It's turned into a complete regional proxy. It's like Ukraine.
Speaker 3: They themselves, they never had a chance to determine their
Speaker 3: own future. From day one, it became a foreign playground,
Speaker 3: and they're of course the ones who paid with it
Speaker 3: with their lives.
Speaker 1: So I feel terrible for them.
Speaker 3: But now at this point, I mean, yeah, I literally
Speaker 3: I am looking at a thing right now, a pre recorded
Speaker 3: video from the new leader of Syria, al Jalani. When
Speaker 3: we build the Islamic Caliphate, Christians will pay the jizia
Speaker 3: under Islamic Sharia.
Speaker 1: Okay, if you don't know what that is, it's attacks.
Speaker 1: So that's what isis did too.
Speaker 3: By the way, whenever they imprison sex slaves in Syria, this.
Speaker 1: Is what I'm talking about.
Speaker 3: And these people act like they're heroes, yes, like they
Speaker 3: has he changed his tune? I hope so, you know,
Speaker 3: for the people of Syria. But you can't preemptively be
Speaker 3: given these people the benefit of the doubt.
Speaker 1: So I don't know.
Speaker 3: I just think willful prop willful tools of propaganda are ridiculous.
Speaker 3: They did this with Egypt, they did this with Libya,
Speaker 3: they're doing it now with Syria.
Speaker 1: The track record is bad.
Speaker 3: So yeah, I'm hopeful that for the people Assyria, I
Speaker 3: actually wish for them. They actually got to decide their
Speaker 3: own fate.
Speaker 1: But let's not be naive. Let's not be about naive again.
Speaker 4: That's exactly right.
Speaker 1: For ten years now that's been going on.
Speaker 2: I think in this situation with this CNN report, I mean,
Speaker 2: the simplest and most obvious explanation is Clarissa Ward, who
Speaker 2: should know better because she is an experienced reporter, has
Speaker 2: been too many war zones, has been in these sorts
Speaker 2: of situations that she allowed her ideology to blind her
Speaker 2: to the fact that she was being taken for a ride.
Speaker 2: Like I think that's I actually think that's the most
Speaker 2: charitable explanation of what unfolded her.
Speaker 1: Let's hope that that's the case.
Speaker 4: But then you also have to think, you know, it's
Speaker 4: not just her because.
Speaker 2: She records this, and then there's a chain of producers
Speaker 2: who edit it and executive producers who okay it, and
Speaker 2: you know on air host I believe it was presented
Speaker 2: originally with Anderson Cooper, who accepted as credible. When I
Speaker 2: mean the vast majority of people when they saw this
Speaker 2: immediately were like, this is bullshit. So somehow it got
Speaker 2: through all of those chains and made it to air
Speaker 2: without any major caveats of we may we don't really
Speaker 2: know what unfolded here, but we're going to show you
Speaker 2: the story. Okay, that's one thing. But it was presented
Speaker 2: as if they felt confident that the story they were
Speaker 2: being said was the real and accurate truths.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and last thing on this there's often a feeling
Speaker 3: in the US that, oh, I can't believe how bad
Speaker 3: things have gotten. No, no, no, no, It's always been this way,
Speaker 3: as in this ten to fifteen years ago, this Clarist
Speaker 3: Award segment. There's no Internet all right, like there's no
Speaker 3: Twitter or anything for people like this is BS. And
Speaker 3: I was reminded actually of the Dan Rather. The Dan
Speaker 3: Rather incident. Do you remember this. We was fired from
Speaker 3: CBS News after they were found manufacturing a story. And
Speaker 3: if you think about it, like that was right at
Speaker 3: the beginning.
Speaker 1: Of the blog story about George W. This was about
Speaker 1: Bush and yeah, excepit his National.
Speaker 4: Guard Service or whatever it was that. Yeah.
Speaker 3: My point though is that it Dan Rather was a
Speaker 3: household name in this country, right, he was like Walter
Speaker 3: Cronkite two point zero and all this, and it took
Speaker 3: the blogosphere to be like, hey, this is BS. Now
Speaker 3: rewind to Vietnam. So all of the people who have
Speaker 3: all this nostalgic feeling, I have this kron Kaite book
Speaker 3: behind me, all right, people should go and read it.
Speaker 3: Because the news has always been fake. It's just that
Speaker 3: now you know it's fake and we have this, we
Speaker 3: have this theory about oh.
Speaker 1: Things have gotten worse.
Speaker 3: It's like no, no, no, For the very first time you
Speaker 3: actually have and can see behind the curtain.
Speaker 2: Well Brian Williams, Oh, yeah, like Potter fire while he
Speaker 2: was in a military helicopter rock or something something like that.
Speaker 2: And yeah, it took years for that to ultimately emerge
Speaker 2: that he just completely made that up. And I think
Speaker 2: there were several other instances of we'll call it fabulousm.
Speaker 1: Of course from him. There's so many of.
Speaker 2: That led to his ultimate to his down, although he
Speaker 2: was resurrected, brought back into NBC with that's.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they put him at eleven PM.
Speaker 3: But yeah, that's the other thing is that you lie
Speaker 3: was fine, you know, no worries. But I just wanted
Speaker 3: to put that out there because I see way too
Speaker 3: many people thinking how could CNN ever be like this,
Speaker 3: and it's like, well, let's rewind three in the Iraq War.
Speaker 3: How many of these things were you guys seeing out
Speaker 3: there like oh, we've been welcomed as liberators and all that.
Speaker 3: We just didn't have Twitter to be like this is
Speaker 3: bullshit for people in Iraq to be like.
Speaker 1: No, actually, this is entirely staged by.
Speaker 2: The penantl ecosystem of independent journalists like this.
Speaker 4: I'm Syrian group.
Speaker 1: This is what Glen Glenn is the og of this.
Speaker 3: He was the first person on the blogosphere with others
Speaker 3: talking about how anthrax was The anthrax story was fake.
Speaker 3: Iraq was fake. But he was a lone wolf, you
Speaker 3: know at that time. So God blessed Glenn. Shout out
Speaker 3: to him. He set the stage for all of us.
Speaker 3: But anyway, it's just a it's just a reminder. It's
Speaker 3: like all this nostalgia about things were in the past.
Speaker 3: You just didn't know this is this was half the
Speaker 3: stuff that was coming up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that's a great point.
Speaker 8: Pett