Speaker 1: Hello, They're happy Monday, and welcome to another episode of
Speaker 1: the Chuck Podcast. We'll tell you we are in Washington
Speaker 1: and in the DMV we're having some amazing weather, and
Speaker 1: I'm telling you the following is not a coincidence. Literally
Speaker 1: the day it seemed as if we got rid of
Speaker 1: our humidity the day Congress left town. I mean, use
Speaker 1: every stupid joke you want to make, but the hot
Speaker 1: air leaves town and literally took the hot air with it.
Speaker 1: We have had some incredible weather days here in the DMB.
Speaker 1: There is nothing like living here in Washington when Congress
Speaker 1: is not here. The traffic is better, the flowers are brighter,
Speaker 1: the air is clearer. Anyway, I'm being I'm obviously being
Speaker 1: a little a little snarky about this, but only a little.
Speaker 1: It has been fascinating that once they left, it is
Speaker 1: as if the sun came out and the bird started chirping,
Speaker 1: and the flowers started blooming and all of those things.
Speaker 1: Because it is one of those weird, weird times here
Speaker 1: in Washington, where you know, people will regularly ask me, so,
Speaker 1: how you doing. I'm like, well, my family's doing great,
Speaker 1: personal life's doing great. Works, you know, even really enjoying
Speaker 1: this new business ventures and all of this stuff, but
Speaker 1: oh my god, the country's in trouble. And that's like,
Speaker 1: it's this like this nagging thing. It's like, you know,
Speaker 1: you I wish I were losing you know, I'm glad
Speaker 1: not to have personal challenges, but it means I'm losing
Speaker 1: sleep over over what's happening to our country collectively. And
Speaker 1: I think we're all a little concerned about that. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna give you a little heads up what I'm doing today.
Speaker 1: I interview with a terrific new book. Tim Winer has
Speaker 1: written a slew of books about the defense, about both
Speaker 1: the Pentagon, our national security world and intelligence, written a
Speaker 1: number of books on the CIA. Has got a new
Speaker 1: book on the c I A he spoke to, uh
Speaker 1: the not counting Ratcliffe now, but the six all six
Speaker 1: of the previous heads of the CIA that go back,
Speaker 1: uh since nine to eleven. Uh And the CIA is
Speaker 1: still trying to figure out it's mission, you know, in
Speaker 1: a post nine to eleven world, uh in a in
Speaker 1: a in a in a world where uh uh, the
Speaker 1: CIA was asked to be uh more of a of
Speaker 1: a military uh more more of a paramilitary organization than
Speaker 1: it had been in quite some time, right after nine
Speaker 1: to eleven, the impact that had h and the impact
Speaker 1: the Trump administration's having, uh, and the trust or lack
Speaker 1: thereof in the intelligence community. That goes both ways, right
Speaker 1: Trump Trump doesn't trust the intel community. In the intel
Speaker 1: community doesn't trust him. It is it is a it
Speaker 1: is a recipe for concern.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: And uh, look, it's a it's a pretty it's a
Speaker 1: pretty star conversation that Tim and I have. But man,
Speaker 1: he is he understands how the CIA works better than
Speaker 1: pretty much anybody alive right now. And so I take
Speaker 1: his warnings quite seriously and you should too. And in fact,
Speaker 1: the timing of this interview, I interviewed him last week,
Speaker 1: but it hitting today. Look, is President Trump even listening
Speaker 1: to his intelligence and to the intelligence folks when it
Speaker 1: comes to what Putin's really up to? What does Putin
Speaker 1: really want? It's pretty clear he doesn't listen to national
Speaker 1: security and intelligence folks when it comes to how to
Speaker 1: deal with Putin, or he wouldn't have given Putin a
Speaker 1: summit on American soil. Meeting him in Alaska has got
Speaker 1: everybody nervous. Giving a two bit a sort of tin
Speaker 1: pot dictator like Putin. This is not a serious world leader.
Speaker 1: This is a person who has nuclear weapons, so you
Speaker 1: have to take him seriously. But as John McCain call me,
Speaker 1: he's basically just, you know, a guy who runs a
Speaker 1: gas station with with nuclear weapons. And yet Trump loves
Speaker 1: to elevate him, and Putin loves that Trump loves to
Speaker 1: elevate him. You know it is It's fascinating to me
Speaker 1: that when the idea of this summit was out there,
Speaker 1: immediately the Trump administration i e. Marco Rubio hinted that
Speaker 1: this would be no summer would happen without Zelensky being involved.
Speaker 1: Maybe Trump and Putin would meet first and then Zelensky
Speaker 1: would be involved. Then suddenly Trump just agrees to a
Speaker 1: one on one summit. Maybe maybe Zelenski's there, maybe he's not.
Speaker 1: So Already Putin is getting everything he wants and the
Speaker 1: biggest danger here and this is going to dominate the week,
Speaker 1: by the way, This isn't I've got I've got something bigger.
Speaker 1: I want to I want to focus on before we
Speaker 1: get to the interview with Tim. But this is going
Speaker 1: to dominate the week. And you know, the I think
Speaker 1: the biggest concern Europe, Ukraine and for frankly, anybody that
Speaker 1: wants a world that favors liberal, small l liberal democracy.
Speaker 1: For those of you that want to take that word
Speaker 1: and claim on saying something else, it is not liberal
Speaker 1: as in an American ideological term, but liberal as in
Speaker 1: the world order. Do you want to live in a
Speaker 1: world where where there's essentially where democracy flourishes, or do
Speaker 1: you want to live in a world where authoritarianism flourishes?
Speaker 1: And there is a concern of all the Western world
Speaker 1: that Trump wants a deal too badly. If he wants
Speaker 1: a deal, if he goes into that summit with Putin
Speaker 1: without Zelensky there and he wants a deal too badly,
Speaker 1: he's going to end up giving away stuff that Ukraine's
Speaker 1: not going to sign off on, and I don't think
Speaker 1: Europe signs off on. And what happens then, you know,
Speaker 1: does he get angry, does he side more with Putin?
Speaker 1: It looked like he wanted to get tough with Putin,
Speaker 1: and then all of a sudden he just rolled over
Speaker 1: this week and said, sure, let's do a summit. So look,
Speaker 1: we'll see how he handles this week. We'll see if
Speaker 1: Zelensky is it really would be a huge I think.
Speaker 1: I think at a minimum, he's got to bring Zelensky
Speaker 1: to Alaska and and sort of force force the situation
Speaker 1: if he really wants a deal. Look, I get that
Speaker 1: he wants this deal. He's obsessed with somehow creating. You know,
Speaker 1: he keeps talking about this Nobel Peace Prize. He's everything
Speaker 1: Obama has he wants, right, I mean, who knows. At
Speaker 1: some point he may wish Michelle Obama was the first
Speaker 1: Lady instead of Malania. But it does seem as whatever
Speaker 1: Obama got he wants, right, he's obsessed. The obsession Trump
Speaker 1: has with all things Obama is quite something, and so
Speaker 1: obviously because Obama got a Nobel Peace Prize, he wants
Speaker 1: a Nobel Piece prize. Talking about all of these, you know,
Speaker 1: he goes out of his way. If he sees a
Speaker 1: dispute between two countries, he inserts himself. I'll be honest,
Speaker 1: I don't mind that he does that. I don't mind
Speaker 1: that an American president wants to use the prestige of
Speaker 1: the American presidency to try to bring peace. That is
Speaker 1: a good thing. So I don't want to sit here
Speaker 1: and say this is a bad thing. The concern you
Speaker 1: have though, is how badly does he want to deal?
Speaker 1: And that's got to be the concern when it comes
Speaker 1: with Putin. How badly is he going to want to deal?
Speaker 1: And does he give does he essentially give up so much?
Speaker 1: And then what is Ukraine and Europe supposed to do
Speaker 1: if Trump and Putin agree to something and Ukraine doesn't
Speaker 1: want to agree to it. As the Lunsky keeps pointing out,
Speaker 1: just trading Land is against the constitution of Ukraine. Now,
Speaker 1: maybe Trump doesn't care about Ukraine's constitution because frankly, I
Speaker 1: don't think he cares about America's constitution, which is the
Speaker 1: focal focus of what I want to get out here
Speaker 1: in a minute. But that is that is going to
Speaker 1: dominate the week. It should dominate the week. But it
Speaker 1: is interesting. You do get a sense that the people
Speaker 1: around President Trump, namely Marco Rubio, since he is both
Speaker 1: National Security Advisor, Secretary of State, head of the Archives.
Speaker 1: I don't know how many other jobs he's been handed.
Speaker 1: Maybe he's the next bedchair. We saw we have more
Speaker 1: people with two jobs these days with the Treasury secretary.
Speaker 1: Now he's running the hi RS. That's an interesting story
Speaker 1: which I'm going to get to in a minute. But
Speaker 1: the fact is there was an attempt at a check
Speaker 1: and balance. Donald Trump didn't like that somebody pushed back
Speaker 1: and refused to do something that was likely unconstitutional, So
Speaker 1: he pushes Billy Long out. That is what happened, folks.
Speaker 1: So that is a concern. But that does bring me
Speaker 1: to this larger, the larger issue we're ald dealing with
Speaker 1: right now. So when you look at what's happening with redistricting,
Speaker 1: redistricting is is just a It's just the latest skirmish
Speaker 1: between what is turning into a cold civil war. All right,
Speaker 1: this way, this is what it is. I hate using
Speaker 1: that rhetoric, I using those words, but what else are
Speaker 1: you going to describe it. We are literally having a
Speaker 1: redistricting war between the states right now, and we have
Speaker 1: governors who have decided they don't care about the minority
Speaker 1: rights in their own states. Greg Abbott doesn't care. If
Speaker 1: you don't agree with Greg Abbott, he is going to
Speaker 1: force his will upon you in the state of Texas.
Speaker 1: And if you don't agree with Cavin Newsom and how
Speaker 1: they're going to he's going to force his will upon you.
Speaker 1: This is not this is not what the founders intended.
Speaker 1: But look, let's I mean, look, I'm obviously pretty critical
Speaker 1: of how the Democrats have responded to the Republicans. But
Speaker 1: make no mistake, it is Donald Trump and the Republican
Speaker 1: Party are creating this unprecedented challenge to this to our
Speaker 1: constitutional republic. Okay, on so many levels, redistricting is really
Speaker 1: just the tip of the iceberg. This is not a
Speaker 1: policy fight. This isn't the use partisan back and forth.
Speaker 1: It is a direct stress test of whether our constitutional
Speaker 1: system actually works. When a president and his party decide
Speaker 1: they don't have to care about the limits that are
Speaker 1: written down on paper. Okay, he is Spinello. Trump has
Speaker 1: spent years, parts of his first term, and much so
Speaker 1: far of these first two hundred plus day bending and
Speaker 1: breaking the guardrails of the of the Republic. He's weaponized
Speaker 1: federal agencies for personal vendettas. He's ignoring constitutional boundaries on
Speaker 1: executive power, treating the Justice Department in his personal law firm,
Speaker 1: unilaterally imposing tariffs for reasons that have nothing to do
Speaker 1: with trader law. That's unconstitutional. I think the courts are
Speaker 1: going to figure that out soon enough. And the GOP
Speaker 1: from its leadership to its so called moderates in the
Speaker 1: party have all chosen to enable him. They've confirmed his
Speaker 1: most troubling cabinet choices, including one who is wrecking America's health,
Speaker 1: which I talked about last week. They've refused to conduct
Speaker 1: meaningful oversight over these horrendous decisions. They've allowed the constitutional
Speaker 1: tools that the founders gave them. They're in their hands
Speaker 1: and they're just gathering dust. But here's the part that
Speaker 1: people on the left don't want to talk about. The
Speaker 1: Democratic response is pretty troubling because right now, as a party, okay,
Speaker 1: as an official party apparatus, they've decided to frame this
Speaker 1: moment as a war, right, Okay, you got to fight
Speaker 1: fire with fire. That we're in a this is an
Speaker 1: unprecedented moment. So they're framing as a war. And when
Speaker 1: you tell yourself you're in a war, you start rationalizing
Speaker 1: things you'd normally not do that you would say is
Speaker 1: immoral or wrong or unprincipled, But hey, it's war and
Speaker 1: all spare and war. Right, that's the mindset. For a decade,
Speaker 1: the Democrats made the moral and civic case for less
Speaker 1: partisan redistricting and in some cases to take it out
Speaker 1: of politicians' hands altogether. The Demoocratic Party, many inside the party,
Speaker 1: Eric Holder has been working on this. Others have spent
Speaker 1: money on referendum around on states Florida and California and
Speaker 1: Ohio and New York and Virginia and many of these
Speaker 1: places too, because they argued it was the right thing
Speaker 1: to do. And guess what, I think it is the
Speaker 1: right thing to do. Take as much politics out of
Speaker 1: this as you can.
Speaker 2: So.
Speaker 1: The Democratic Party, they championed independent commissions and they wanted
Speaker 1: competitive maps. But now with Republicans openly wanting to break
Speaker 1: the rules like they're doing in Texas, Democrats say, all right,
Speaker 1: we're going to break them too. And if you criticize
Speaker 1: that decision, as I've been doing, I've been told I'm naive,
Speaker 1: that I don't understand the stakes, that you are not
Speaker 1: taking this threat seriously. Oh contrary, my friend, I do
Speaker 1: goddamn understand the stakes. And we are not replacing one unprincipled,
Speaker 1: unconstitutional set of leaders with another set of on principled
Speaker 1: and constitutional set of leaders. And that's the mistake people
Speaker 1: keep making with Trump. Trust me, I'd love to tell
Speaker 1: the guy all these things and do all these horrible things,
Speaker 1: but you're not. You go low with him, and he wins.
Speaker 1: What he wants is to drag his opponents into the
Speaker 1: same immoral gutter that he lives in to make them behave.
Speaker 1: He wants all of his opponents to behave as immortally
Speaker 1: and a morley as he does. And the moment somebody does,
Speaker 1: he wins, because then what does he say? See, I
Speaker 1: told you the entire system is corrupt. They're all corrupt.
Speaker 1: I'm just more honest about it. They're all like me.
Speaker 1: And we've seen it in little ways, in big ways.
Speaker 1: Marco Ruby in his little hands, right, what was the
Speaker 1: end of Marco Rubio's political career when he decided to
Speaker 1: go low with Donald Trump? Anybody that is attempted to
Speaker 1: go into the gutter with him has has only allowed
Speaker 1: him to win. But let's go through the blueprint that
Speaker 1: the Founders actually gave us. The Founder saw this danger coming,
Speaker 1: maybe not Trump specifically, but the idea of a leader
Speaker 1: or a faction that believed winning an election meant a
Speaker 1: blank check to rule. Minority rights be damned. The Founders
Speaker 1: feared two things above all, another king and tyranny of
Speaker 1: the majority. Here's what James Madison said in Federalists number ten,
Speaker 1: if a majority be united by a common interest, the
Speaker 1: rights of the minority will be insecure. His solution was
Speaker 1: a very large republic. He wanted enough competing interest to
Speaker 1: make it quote very improbable, if not impracticable, impracticable, excuse me,
Speaker 1: for one majority to unite and trample the rest that
Speaker 1: there would be so many sort of different groups of
Speaker 1: majorities at any one time that would be a check
Speaker 1: on any sort of dictator like figure. And in fact,
Speaker 1: in Federalists fifty one he sharpened the point and he said,
Speaker 1: this ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The great
Speaker 1: security consists in giving each department the necessary constitutional means
Speaker 1: to resist encroachments of the others. Checks and balances, folks, Okay,
Speaker 1: checks and balances. Hamilton added in Federalist seventy eight, when
Speaker 1: he was defending the need for an independent judiciary, he said,
Speaker 1: neither force nor will, but merely judgment. That's the shield
Speaker 1: against mob arrel. These weren't lofty ideals, they were tools.
Speaker 1: They were designed to be used when majority power got dangerous.
Speaker 1: Well guess what, folks, Majority power is dangerous right in
Speaker 1: this moment. We have the tools no one uses them,
Speaker 1: or someone like Mitch McConnell is afraid to use them.
Speaker 1: He had the most important tool of all and he
Speaker 1: failed the biggest test of his life. He will have
Speaker 1: to live with that. Maybe he can't. But here's where
Speaker 1: we are. The tools are still there, but the people
Speaker 1: holding them refuse to use them. The moderate or mainstream Republicans,
Speaker 1: the ones who actually know Trump is wrong, have chosen
Speaker 1: silence over action. They confirmed troubling cabinet secretaries that they
Speaker 1: all knew were going to create problems, problems for our
Speaker 1: health with Bobby Kennedy Junior at HHS. My god, it's
Speaker 1: a bigger disaster than anybody could have predicted, and a
Speaker 1: lot of people predicted this would be a disaster, but literally,
Speaker 1: this man is a menace to society, a menace Pete
Speaker 1: hag Seth, that Defense weighing over his head, lots of
Speaker 1: concerns about readiness, lots of concerns about troop morale, all
Speaker 1: due to the bizarre leadership that hag Seth has had
Speaker 1: at Defense. And again, multiple members of the Senate basically
Speaker 1: got intimidated into voting for him. Jony Earns him and
Speaker 1: Tom Tillis knew this guy was totally unqualified for the job,
Speaker 1: and they got bullied by MAGA into supporting them. And
Speaker 1: of course there's Tulsa Gabbert, who may or may not
Speaker 1: be the single most important asset Rush has ever had.
Speaker 1: Congress is also ignored on the unconstitional tariff abuse. They're
Speaker 1: not the ones that have filed suit in the courts
Speaker 1: that Trump is unilaterally using authority that belongs to the
Speaker 1: legislative branch. It's others that have filed suit. The Congressional
Speaker 1: Republicans have looked the other way as foreign aid was
Speaker 1: gutted and the intelligence community hollowed out. They've not lifted
Speaker 1: one finger of oversight. Not one. It's not they're not
Speaker 1: even You can't even say there's been a week check
Speaker 1: on Trump. It has been no check on him at all.
Speaker 2: Guess what.
Speaker 1: The Constitution can't enforce itself without people willing to wield
Speaker 1: those checks. All we have our words on a yellowing
Speaker 1: parchment paper. All right, this isn't just a Washington politician problem.
Speaker 1: Look at some of these entities. CBS, paramount CC is
Speaker 1: slapping unconstitutional handcuffs on the News Division, blatant First Amendment violations.
Speaker 1: Remember the First Amendment is specifically about what government can
Speaker 1: can and can't tell you what to do. Okay on this,
Speaker 1: but CBS has decided it's easier not to fight, so
Speaker 1: they've accepted these unconstitutional handcuffs. And by them swallowing these restrictions,
Speaker 1: they potentially create a precedent, and they're coming after other networks.
Speaker 1: Renting car has all but said this, He's coming after
Speaker 1: NBC's coming after They're going after all the networks, and again,
Speaker 1: totally unconstitutional for government to do what he's been trying
Speaker 1: to do here. Founders Again, the founders did not write
Speaker 1: the Constitution so it could sit in a display case
Speaker 1: at Mark Rubia's National Archives. Remember he's currently also the archivist.
Speaker 1: Right now, they're meant for it to have a living
Speaker 1: set of guardrails, but the guardrails only work if someone
Speaker 1: grabs the wheel. I want to call my friend Andrew Sullivan,
Speaker 1: who just nailed it in this most recent substack, right
Speaker 1: he said, this is a permanent stain, and that's scary.
Speaker 1: Here's what he writes in the face off between this
Speaker 1: man's wilful power and liberal democracy. Liberal democracy would just fold.
Speaker 1: We didn't think that was going to happen. But it has.
Speaker 1: We've watched Trump used tariffs, which is constitutionally Congress's job,
Speaker 1: as personal punishment against countries that displeased him. Me and
Speaker 1: what he's doing with Brazil.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: Now, I'll defend what he's doing with India if he
Speaker 1: really means it about Russia. But is this about Russia anyway?
Speaker 1: But we digress. He declares every judicial ruling against him
Speaker 1: is corrupt and every ruling for him is justice. That
Speaker 1: is no small d democrat, that is somebody who does
Speaker 1: not believe in the constitutional republic. He's turned the Justice
Speaker 1: Department to his own enforcement arm, and he's abused the
Speaker 1: pardon power, turned it into a loyalty test, freeze violent rioters,
Speaker 1: promises immunity for crimes done in his name, and anybody
Speaker 1: who pays it, he pays him or his family enough money,
Speaker 1: they get they get a little extra something. I mean, look,
Speaker 1: just go look at the lobbyist filings right now. Right
Speaker 1: those with the every country trying and company trying to
Speaker 1: get an exemption from the tariffs have all hired the
Speaker 1: same firms who know what the correct way to do
Speaker 1: business with Trumpets. I think I think some in another
Speaker 1: life people would have just referred to this as mob rule.
Speaker 1: I don't want to leave. I don't want to leave
Speaker 1: Tim Cook out of this moment. Apple CEO stands in
Speaker 1: the Oval office and he hands Trump a golden plaque,
Speaker 1: an engraved Apple glass, smiling for the cameras. Right, pay
Speaker 1: the tribute to the king, to the mad camp Now,
Speaker 1: I get it to Cook. This is a small gesture, Eh,
Speaker 1: they look at it. The statue is nothing compared to
Speaker 1: the damaged Trump could do to Apple's business. Okay, so
Speaker 1: I understand, and he's got a fiducial responsibility to his shareholders.
Speaker 1: But I assume Tim Cook considers himself a patriotic American
Speaker 1: and believes in the US Constitution because by doing what
Speaker 1: he did, this is America's most famous company now, right,
Speaker 1: the pre eminent corporation right, arguably the most valuable real company.
Speaker 1: I know, Palanteer I think technically has a higher value
Speaker 1: right now. But that is all speculative, like Apple is
Speaker 1: essentially right, this is this is the symbol of an
Speaker 1: American company in the twenty first century, all right, Apple,
Speaker 1: what GM was, what GM and Ford were in the
Speaker 1: fifties and sixties, That's what Apple is, right, And here
Speaker 1: he is bending the knee, setting an example. What are
Speaker 1: other corporate leaders supposed to do? Bend the knee or fight?
Speaker 1: Nobody's fighting. All of these folks have constitutional tools to
Speaker 1: fight this tyranny. The founders gave them all these tools
Speaker 1: to do this. And everybody's surrendering, and everybody's surrendering for
Speaker 1: self protection, political survival, shareholder price, maybe their own survival
Speaker 1: in a corporation. All seems like good ideas until we
Speaker 1: lose it all. We're not in a constitutional republic. If
Speaker 1: we lose this democracy, you're going to lose a lot
Speaker 1: more than a few dollars of price on apple shares.
Speaker 1: So this gets me to what the Democrats are doing.
Speaker 1: They're taking the bait. They've decided the only way to
Speaker 1: fight is to act just as ruthlessly revenge redistricting in Illinois,
Speaker 1: New York, California. And they tell themselves it's self defense,
Speaker 1: but in reality, it's exactly what Trump wants to make
Speaker 1: his opponents, his illegal and immoral game by his rules
Speaker 1: in his universe, and here we are. It's the political
Speaker 1: version of the old saying when you get into the
Speaker 1: mud with a pig, you both get dirty, and the
Speaker 1: pig likes it, replacing am and don't give me this
Speaker 1: crap rationalize that. You know he's a bad mob boss.
Speaker 1: You got to do whatever you cake, we'll be a
Speaker 1: good mob boss. The answer is no mob bosses at all. Look,
Speaker 1: I don't like the lazy comparisons to nineteen thirties Germany.
Speaker 1: I hate the quote second Civil War predictions. I'd like
Speaker 1: to believe that we're a lot better than that. And frankly,
Speaker 1: you know, I sort of buy into to that thesis
Speaker 1: that says I think it's Godwin's law when it comes
Speaker 1: to the Nazis. You know that, you know, if you
Speaker 1: can't make your point without invoking the Nazis, and you're
Speaker 1: probably not very good at debating and making your point.
Speaker 1: But let's be honest, it's a bit uncomfortable seeing how
Speaker 1: many mistakes from the eighteen fifties, from eighteen fifties America
Speaker 1: or pre war Europe in the early nineteen thirties are
Speaker 1: happening again right here. The normalization of the unacceptable, the
Speaker 1: rational rationalizing of just this once will breach our principle.
Speaker 1: Just this once will do this because it's in the
Speaker 1: name of something bigger and better. The founders gave us
Speaker 1: these tools to prevent this. They feared a king, they
Speaker 1: feared a united majority trampling on the rest of us.
Speaker 1: They didn't imagine leaders who would just refuse to use
Speaker 1: the tools. They didn't they'd come back here and be appalled,
Speaker 1: be appalled. And here's the thing, you know right now,
Speaker 1: both political parties only hear from the loudest voices, and
Speaker 1: the loudest voices are angry, and they're in the base
Speaker 1: base MAGA, and you have the progressive base, and they're
Speaker 1: all on fire right now for various reasons. One is celebrating,
Speaker 1: one is on fire and anger, okay, But the majority
Speaker 1: of us live somewhere in between those bases, and many
Speaker 1: of us have tuned out. I haven't. I hope some
Speaker 1: of you who were tuning out or tuning into me,
Speaker 1: tuning into somebody who isn't going to sit here and
Speaker 1: just tell you what you want to hear on stage left,
Speaker 1: stage right. I'm just trying to live in the real world.
Speaker 1: I like a world where there is always look. I
Speaker 1: think when one party goes too far and want the
Speaker 1: other party to get power and drag them back. I
Speaker 1: am one of those who believes that this country is
Speaker 1: always better off when we just sort of we do
Speaker 1: that little balance, not quite a rocking seesaw, but that
Speaker 1: little balance that would go a little one way, a
Speaker 1: little the other. And then I count on members of
Speaker 1: both parties, even when they're in the minority or majority,
Speaker 1: to know when to work with the other side when
Speaker 1: they realize, hey, this is like our health. I mean,
Speaker 1: the idea that a majority of the US Senate can't
Speaker 1: get up here and impeach this menace to society and
Speaker 1: Robert F. Kennedy Junior, who is literally making decisions that
Speaker 1: are going to kill people, and they're doing nothing about this,
Speaker 1: nothing about this. And it's the independence. It's the people
Speaker 1: here in the middle that are not being represented by
Speaker 1: either one of these parties right now. These parties are
Speaker 1: trying to protect their own They're trying to entrench their
Speaker 1: own power, right Republicans are trying to save it and
Speaker 1: Democrats are trying to entrench what they have to get
Speaker 1: it back. But nobody is trying to think about what's
Speaker 1: the right thing to do, what's the right way to
Speaker 1: do this. Who's going to stand up because you know what,
Speaker 1: redistricting blue states, that's the easy way out. You know what.
Speaker 1: The hard way is running a campaign and defeating Greg
Speaker 1: Abbott as governor, or going to win some legislative seats,
Speaker 1: organizing in the state of Florida. That's the hard way.
Speaker 1: The easy answer is an undemocratic power craft with your
Speaker 1: own undemocratic approach. The hard way is to resist within
Speaker 1: the law, within the constitution, and within your own principles,
Speaker 1: even if it might cost you politically. Madison's warning still
Speaker 1: sands of the majority be united by a common interest,
Speaker 1: the rights of the minority will be insecure. And right
Speaker 1: now the people who could stand up aren't standing up.
Speaker 1: Leaders in both parties are failing this test. Nobody is
Speaker 1: looking out for the best interests of how a very
Speaker 1: fragmented society can live. We are a very fragmented society.
Speaker 1: Not everybody was united on how whether we should even
Speaker 1: revolt from the British and how to do it. But
Speaker 1: they wanted to come up with a system that would
Speaker 1: give everybody a chance, and everybody a voice, and everybody
Speaker 1: a say, and everybody some protection. And the Bill of
Speaker 1: Rights were designed not to help the majority rule, but
Speaker 1: to make sure the majority didn't overrule and then run
Speaker 1: over people's rights run over people's rights to on faith
Speaker 1: or not to have faith. I mean, you look at
Speaker 1: what Louisiana and Oklahoma are doing. They're shoving religion through
Speaker 1: the public school system. That is not what the constitution
Speaker 1: allows for, and that is unfair to the minority who
Speaker 1: do not want If you want a religious based education,
Speaker 1: you can go to a private school and do that,
Speaker 1: but you don't use tax dollars to force it down people.
Speaker 1: This is happening left and right these days. So if
Speaker 1: nobody's going to stand up and defend the rights of
Speaker 1: the minority, which again that's why we have the Bill
Speaker 1: of Rights, was to defend those in the minority in
Speaker 1: any given moment, in the minority, on speech, in the minority,
Speaker 1: on religion, in the minority, on political power. They were
Speaker 1: not to be thrown out of the country. They were
Speaker 1: not to be thrown in jail. They were not to
Speaker 1: be called treason. Is the most patriotic thing you can
Speaker 1: do is to disagree with your president. There's nothing and
Speaker 1: it's just as patriotic to disagree with them as it
Speaker 1: is to agree with them. And sometimes it's just as
Speaker 1: unpatriotic to agree with them. If you're doing it in
Speaker 1: order to slim your fellow US citizen. So I couldn't
Speaker 1: be more disappointed. There is literally zero leadership in the
Speaker 1: Democratic Party that's standing on principle right now. We already
Speaker 1: have a Republican Party that's principalists amoral at this point,
Speaker 1: right Johnson and Thune are doing nothing here. Nobody is
Speaker 1: standing up to this stuff. But the Democrats answer is
Speaker 1: using tools and behaving in ways that is only going
Speaker 1: to make it easier for him to get what he's
Speaker 1: trying to get done, not harder. Look, the Democrats actually
Speaker 1: had a much smarter way to resist Trump in the
Speaker 1: first term, and a lot of Republicans stood up to
Speaker 1: Trump in the first turn, and that was the proper
Speaker 1: way to deal with a mad king, and the guardrails
Speaker 1: got dented, but they worked. Nobody's even trying it that
Speaker 1: way this time. That's a shame and that's a problem.
Speaker 1: Before we get started with Tim Winner, I do want
Speaker 1: to focus on the tragedy that unfolded at the CDC
Speaker 1: because it dovetails.
Speaker 2: Look.
Speaker 1: My interview this week on Newsphere Sunday Night with Check
Speaker 1: Todd is with Francis Collins, and first of all, if
Speaker 1: you listen to nothing else. You need to listen to this.
Speaker 1: Francis Collins wrote a song and it's kind of a
Speaker 1: bluesy song, and it was It's It's it's lyrics. You
Speaker 1: need to listen to the lyrics carefully. So after our
Speaker 1: interview he asked if he could play. He brought his guitar,
Speaker 1: and I thought, why not. And when you listen to
Speaker 1: the lyrics, it's all about a man wants to make
Speaker 1: the point that when it comes to disease, disease, they
Speaker 1: don't they don't find out if you're a liberal or
Speaker 1: a conservative. The disease comes for you. They don't find
Speaker 1: out if you're rich or poor, disease comes for you.
Speaker 1: But it's his way. He's looking for any way to
Speaker 1: communicate to people that what what, hh, what nih has
Speaker 1: been doing has been only for the betterment of the
Speaker 1: human of human health, period and that this nonsense that
Speaker 1: Kennedy has spewed is just that it's nonsense. It's complete
Speaker 1: and utter nonsense, And it was just a very The
Speaker 1: whole interview is very troubling when you just hear about
Speaker 1: all all of the things that we're now that that
Speaker 1: Kennedy has set us back on decades. If Kennedy went
Speaker 1: away tomorrow and you could flip the switch, Francis Collins
Speaker 1: told me that it would still take years to recover
Speaker 1: from all the lost researchers who have been fired, who
Speaker 1: are now leaving the country. In some cases, he said,
Speaker 1: from Australia to France, to the UK, to Japan to
Speaker 1: South Korea. All of these allies of ours who believe
Speaker 1: in medical research are all recruiting all these people that
Speaker 1: worked at nih SO. And obviously Kennedy's not going the
Speaker 1: way tomorrow, so this damage is going to be exponentially
Speaker 1: worse with every day he's there. But I don't want
Speaker 1: to let this moment go without what letting you know what.
Speaker 1: I'm sure some of you followed what happened. But late
Speaker 1: last week a lone gunman opened fire on the Centers
Speaker 1: for Disease Control and Prevention CDC, killed a police officer,
Speaker 1: shattered some windows across the campus. CDC employees are obviously
Speaker 1: in shock and in fear about what happened. So this
Speaker 1: is a real moment. HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Junior
Speaker 1: is in charge of the CDC. Now the CDC's chief
Speaker 1: medical officer told staff on a Saturday morning call, we're
Speaker 1: mad that this happened, and on that same call the
Speaker 1: agency's new director, doctor Susan Monarez. She tried to reassure him,
Speaker 1: but one employee asked her directly, quote, are you able
Speaker 1: to speak to the misinformation, the disinformation that caused this issue,
Speaker 1: and what is your plan forward to ensure this doesn't
Speaker 1: happen again. Well, here's the issue. According to law enforcement,
Speaker 1: the suspect that had become fixated on the coronavirus vaccine
Speaker 1: and convinced that the vaccine was causing all of his
Speaker 1: physical ailments inside the CDC. Many are seeing this attack
Speaker 1: as part of a disturbing pattern where public health workers
Speaker 1: have been targeted by political, verbal, and now physical assaults
Speaker 1: ever since the pandemic began. So this is just violence
Speaker 1: at the workplace. It was violence born from disinformation, the
Speaker 1: kind of disinformation that's been allowed to fester, amplify, and fantastasize.
Speaker 1: Much of this disinformation is courtesy of an anti vaccine
Speaker 1: activist by the name of Robert of Kennedy Junior. Now,
Speaker 1: of course, now he's a HHS secretary and he oversees CDC.
Speaker 1: He never spoke publicly about this issue on Friday. By
Speaker 1: late Saturday morning, according to one report, more than half
Speaker 1: an hour after posting phishing photos on social media first,
Speaker 1: Kennedy finally posted condolences on x and pledged to support
Speaker 1: CDC employees. Later in that day did send an email
Speaker 1: to the entire HHS workforce, and the email, he said,
Speaker 1: this is a reminder of the very human challenges public
Speaker 1: servants sometimes face, even in places dedicated to healing and progress.
Speaker 1: But it also reinforces the importance of the work you
Speaker 1: do every day. That was the official response. But let's
Speaker 1: not forget the backdrop. Here's the backdrop. Kennedy spent years
Speaker 1: calling the CDC quote a cesspool of corruption. That was
Speaker 1: what activist Kennedy called it. He also referred to the
Speaker 1: CDC once as a fascist enterprise. Robert of Kennedy, those
Speaker 1: are the words he's used and again. He has been
Speaker 1: called by Nature magazine the leading super spreader of health
Speaker 1: misinformation and vaccine misinformation. He accused scientists of ignoring vaccine
Speaker 1: arms feeding right into what the shooter claims to children,
Speaker 1: and he compared them to the Catholic Church covering up
Speaker 1: a child child sex abuse. He called the COVID vaccine,
Speaker 1: the deadliest vaccine ever made. So that's the backdrop. This
Speaker 1: stuff has real world consequences, misinformation and disinformation in particular,
Speaker 1: and the weaponizing of it. Look, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: social media companies that need to rethink how they've handled
Speaker 1: Kennedy and how they handled health because they really put
Speaker 1: up we don't control the distribution of good information the
Speaker 1: tech company to do. Just remember that. So look, this
Speaker 1: is this is the public record, This is Kennedy's public record.
Speaker 1: This happened on Kennedy's watch. Now he's got to lead
Speaker 1: the CDC. Nobody's going to trust him on the inside,
Speaker 1: and nor should they. How do you expect them to?
Speaker 1: The only thing I think we all should fear is
Speaker 1: that if the CDC gets purged the way nih has
Speaker 1: been purged. This is anyway, it's a rough moment. It's
Speaker 1: a rough moment. But I want to quote Celine Grounder.
Speaker 1: She's an infectious disease specialist at Bellevue and she put
Speaker 1: it this way. The intersection of disinformation, conspiracy theories, and
Speaker 1: political violence is getting scarier by the day. I'm very
Speaker 1: worried about how this is now going beyond defunding of
Speaker 1: infectious diseases in public health to political violence against the
Speaker 1: people working in those fields. Leadership matters here, folks. I
Speaker 1: think what he's already done are multiple impeachable fences. If
Speaker 1: the US Senate would get off it's ours and do it.
Speaker 1: Bill Cassidy said it was troubling what Kennedy did with
Speaker 1: in the cuts to when he cut r mRNA funding
Speaker 1: completely from NIAH, canceled all those contracts. I think it's
Speaker 1: more than troubling information. I believe we have impeachable offense.
Speaker 1: And then some Congress needs to do oversight and quickly
Speaker 1: because America's health is counting on it. All right, once again,
Speaker 1: I had a very uplifting way to open. I know
Speaker 1: it's what you guys turned to me for right to
Speaker 1: feel good about everyday life. I'm half kidding, of course,
Speaker 1: but I'm gonna sneak in a break when we come back.
Speaker 1: My interview with Tim Winer. It is terrific, all right.
Speaker 1: He was in a remote location in Vermont, so the
Speaker 1: audio is you know, we need more broad band in
Speaker 1: rural America, folks, but it's look, he's worth the interview.
Speaker 1: I know the audio is going to be a little
Speaker 1: bit different than you're normally used to, but trust me,
Speaker 1: it's a good interview. I really think it's worth your time.
Speaker 1: So take a listen, enjoy the break, and when we
Speaker 1: come back after it, I got a little sports update
Speaker 1: for you and I'll do some questions. Joining me now
Speaker 1: is one of the most prolific reporters authors when it
Speaker 1: comes to the world of intelligence. Tim Weiner has written
Speaker 1: extensively about the inner workings of the American intelligence community
Speaker 1: in general, the CIA specifically. And I have him on
Speaker 1: today because he's got a new book on the CIA
Speaker 1: sort of in What Is the Mission in the twenty
Speaker 1: first Century? In this post nine to eleven world, he
Speaker 1: spoke to six the six CIA directors that have had
Speaker 1: have been running the agency in the twenty first century.
Speaker 1: It is a terrific book. In it, we're I feel
Speaker 1: like we're constantly trying to figure out what is the
Speaker 1: mission of the CIA, what should their role be in defense,
Speaker 1: in intelligence and everything, and it it isn't something that
Speaker 1: actually we seem to I feel like every decade it
Speaker 1: slightly changes, and I think it's fair to say we're
Speaker 1: in another one of these transition periods. And Tim's book
Speaker 1: does a good job of sort of setting that predicate
Speaker 1: and Tim joins me, now, good to see you, hi, Shot.
Speaker 1: So look, you've you've, like I said, you've reported on
Speaker 1: the agency for decades. This feels like you're trying to
Speaker 1: and this goes to it. I guess we've been trying
Speaker 1: to figure this out for other parts of the government
Speaker 1: since the fall of the Berlin Wall. But is the
Speaker 1: CIA still looking to figure out what its role is
Speaker 1: post Cold War? I mean, is it is this still?
Speaker 1: Does this still go back to not figuring out what
Speaker 1: is what is the role of the CIA in a
Speaker 1: post Cold War world?
Speaker 2: Let's remember that the CIA is an instrument of American
Speaker 2: foreign policy. It is an executor of American foreign policy.
Speaker 2: With the rare exception, it does what the president wants
Speaker 2: it to do. Every president. It's the cis foundation that
Speaker 2: forty seven trewman the trucks. He used and abused the
Speaker 2: CIA in ways that it is desires his deepest desires,
Speaker 2: his I in foreign policy. If you want to know
Speaker 2: what the president really wants and really take go to
Speaker 2: the CIA and you go at them what they're up to.
Speaker 2: You go mean, they're clacked records, which needs to be
Speaker 2: fairly belluminantan no longer you talk to them. The mission
Speaker 2: of the CIA from its creation Partwood, its core mission
Speaker 2: spion art no thy enemy, Sunsu wrote in the Art
Speaker 2: of War, and then one hundred ballants will not be defeated.
Speaker 2: After nine eleven, counter terrorism swamped everything for fifteen years.
Speaker 2: Espionage it's swamped counterintelligence, which is spy cascading starting against
Speaker 2: enemy penetrations of the government of state. And that was not,
Speaker 2: in the long run a good thing. And the espionage
Speaker 2: mission didn't really get revived until about eight years ago.
Speaker 2: I'd talk about that later in the show.
Speaker 1: You know that to me is what's striking about the
Speaker 1: CIA in the twenty first century, is it It seemed
Speaker 1: to for a period of time, And I'm curious if
Speaker 1: you think it's still this way now. It became almost
Speaker 1: not just an arm of the military, but it developed
Speaker 1: its own military wing.
Speaker 2: No, well, the CIA has always had what was once
Speaker 2: a small powamilitary. In the immediate aftermath of nine to eleven,
Speaker 2: counter terrorism and paramilitary operations dominated CIA. Counter terrorism budget
Speaker 2: CIA multiplied ten bold, thousands of people were added, mostly
Speaker 2: ex military, and you know, it went out to destroy
Speaker 2: the enemy. George Bush ordered the CIA to construct secret
Speaker 2: prison to inflict tortures on its prisoners, and to kill
Speaker 2: the entity. The CIA was never created to do any
Speaker 2: of that. You know. I interviewed the guy who was
Speaker 2: put in come to constructing the secret prison system on
Speaker 2: the record, as all the interviews in the book are,
Speaker 2: and he said, you know, we're not jailors. We didn't
Speaker 2: have enough people who spoke Arabic, much less knew how
Speaker 2: to do an interrogation. The only killed interrogator they could
Speaker 2: find had been harshly disciplined for misconduct in teaching the
Speaker 2: contours in Central America how to torture back in the
Speaker 2: nineteen eighties. Not good instructor, you know, for for your
Speaker 2: recruits in detail to run a secret prison system. And
Speaker 2: the other thing is they do this would not stay secret.
Speaker 2: It's very hard to keep a secret in America. Preparing
Speaker 2: and they knew they would be caught violating the laws
Speaker 2: of God and man, not to mention the Geneva Convention,
Speaker 2: and they knew that they would take it in the net,
Speaker 2: not the president who ordered.
Speaker 1: Them, And that's what happened. I mean, you know, I
Speaker 1: mean it in some ways, And would you say they
Speaker 1: have they dismantled all of these secret prisons. Are they
Speaker 1: out of this business?
Speaker 2: Now? Obama ordered the secret prisons dismantled and sent the
Speaker 2: CIA in a different direction. He figured it was better
Speaker 2: to kill people than to capture them, and he mightily
Speaker 2: stepped up the drone war for the first bod his presidency.
Speaker 1: Now there's a criticism of that, wasn't there that by
Speaker 1: killing these folks, you were By killing these folks rather
Speaker 1: than capturing them, you were you were potentially eliminating intelligence assets.
Speaker 2: But the CI. But at the same time, the CI
Speaker 2: station in Islamabad, Pakistan was recruiting al Ata has despired
Speaker 2: recruiting members of all Kate and that help not torture
Speaker 2: cow The CI count its way where in about about
Speaker 2: Pakistan uh in twenty eleven. Yeah, Obama dismantled the secret
Speaker 2: prisons and Mike Hayden, who was the director of the
Speaker 2: CIA hundred bush. Then you know quite eloquently the next
Speaker 2: president wants the water board. A prisoner had better bring
Speaker 2: his own bucket. They all need that.
Speaker 1: So there's real regret, there's real regret at the CIA
Speaker 1: over over those first over those tactics in the first
Speaker 1: eight years after.
Speaker 3: NATA were correct is not the word I would. They'll
Speaker 3: live with it, Okay, that's I get that.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know when you sign up at the
Speaker 1: CIA that that's part of the the deal. But and
Speaker 1: I get you say they'll live with it, but they
Speaker 1: know and how, but they'll never do it again.
Speaker 2: Well none onless the President of the United States order
Speaker 2: some to do it. And I have to say that
Speaker 2: weeks a very dangerous place right now. Uh, the people
Speaker 2: Trump has put in charge of American national here do
Speaker 2: a crap, Pops and Pool. You've got Pete White Christian
Speaker 2: nationalists and not arably watch Fox News host running the Pentagon.
Speaker 2: It had just doesn't know how to run the Pentagon.
Speaker 2: You've got the conspiracy theorist and you know, orderline nutcase
Speaker 2: Pelti Gabbard running the Director of Natural Intelligence, which oversees
Speaker 2: all seventeen US intelligence agency. H do you want to
Speaker 2: Obama running the CIA at a time when it was
Speaker 2: uncovering Russian election interference to help Trump in twenty sixteen.
Speaker 2: Over the FBI, You've got the right wing podcaster and
Speaker 2: MAGA soldier Ash Patel, who is running Perhaps the right
Speaker 2: word is ruining the FBI dismantling its intelligence and Natural
Speaker 2: Security divisions and firing everybody who was involved in investigating
Speaker 2: the Russian This is madness. And at the CIA you've
Speaker 2: got Jon Rador. Now. Radcliffe was a three term Texas congressman,
Speaker 2: former personal injury lawyer who had briefly served on the
Speaker 2: House Intelligence Committee. When Trump saw m on Fox defending
Speaker 2: him against the so called Russia hopes, and he liked
Speaker 2: to cut a gym, and so for eight months and
Speaker 2: twenty twenty, he made him the Director of Natural Intelligence.
Speaker 2: In those eight months at the end of Trump's first term,
Speaker 2: Radcliffe spent all his time distorting and twisting intelligence reportant
Speaker 2: to absolve the Russians of trying to help Trump, cutting
Speaker 2: off intelligence reporting on the Russian Congress, and generally telling
Speaker 2: Trump anything he wanted to hear and not telling him
Speaker 2: things that he didn't want to hear. He's doing much
Speaker 2: the same as the I director, and much worse.
Speaker 1: Who is the ultimate filter of this information to Trump
Speaker 1: right now? Is it d N I. Gabbard or is
Speaker 1: it CIA Chief Rackliff.
Speaker 2: Well, both of them? The Director of Natural Intelligence and
Speaker 2: basically of bureaucracy that oversees days and as you know,
Speaker 2: Chuck and Alcid observer things in Washington oversided the two
Speaker 2: faith word it means to actually, you know, conduct oversight,
Speaker 2: and it means to overlook things and not conduct them.
Speaker 2: And so TIA does you know heavy lifting in uh,
Speaker 2: gathering intelligence and analyzed and intelligence and gathered. Unfortunately, it's
Speaker 2: the filter for the president's gay breath, which you know
Speaker 2: was the holiest of holmes at the CIA. It's the
Speaker 2: briefing that the president gets supposedly every morning. Were Trump
Speaker 2: doesn't do intelligence right, and he cureinly doesn't read intelligence briefings.
Speaker 2: And when he talks about intelligence, he usually puts it in
Speaker 2: a scare quote, right, And uh, you know at root
Speaker 2: of this, Jock, is that Trump is an ideologue. Ideology
Speaker 2: is the enemy of intelligence. If you are an ideologue, right,
Speaker 2: you don't care what the way.
Speaker 1: That's the enemy of journal I always say it's the
Speaker 1: enemy of journalism because we're in the same business as
Speaker 1: the CIA. It's funny, I'm I'm actually working with an
Speaker 1: organization call Trust in Media that is not just journalists,
Speaker 1: but it's actually two former CIA agents, former State Department.
Speaker 1: Because the issue is good information and there is a
Speaker 1: real concern what I have found and I'm sure you
Speaker 1: found in your book, but I'd love for you to
Speaker 1: explain this that among the rank and file Intel gathers,
Speaker 1: the people that have that work through, that worked in
Speaker 1: both the Bush era and the Obama era and were
Speaker 1: held over in some cases into the Trump era. They're alarmed,
Speaker 1: and they're very right, they're totally alarmed that there is
Speaker 1: no longer you know that, you know the accusations of
Speaker 1: political bias that the CIA come with every administration, but
Speaker 1: it is now, it is now actionable, right it is.
Speaker 1: It has gone to another level of political interference. And
Speaker 1: they have a real fear that our political leaders are
Speaker 1: not going to get unvarnished information from the intelligence community
Speaker 1: in the same way we've seen what happens when the
Speaker 1: American electorate doesn't get straightforward, unvarnished information without an ideological
Speaker 1: tilt to it, and what happens to the information ecosystem.
Speaker 1: This is a huge problem right now in our in
Speaker 1: our system.
Speaker 2: Because Trump has appointed Mata acolyte to run the instruence
Speaker 2: of American National Security. None of them want to, you know,
Speaker 2: don't make Daddy mad, don't tell them things he doesn't
Speaker 2: want to hear, are twisting and distorting the intelligence reporting
Speaker 2: that is coming from the racket file. Their amateurishness, their
Speaker 2: faulty to Trump increases the risk of a catastrophic intelligence
Speaker 2: stature and the risk of another surprise on the United
Speaker 2: States at home abroad. Let me ask you a rhetorkey questions, Scott.
Speaker 2: Let me ans script here, what do you think Trump
Speaker 2: would do if the United States were hit again?
Speaker 1: Blame somebody else number one, probably blame find a political
Speaker 1: enemy to blame internally. I mean, I you know, he
Speaker 1: wouldn't let it go, I think I. I mean, look
Speaker 1: what he's doing now, right, he's using Look what he's
Speaker 1: doing to the census today. All right, we're taping on
Speaker 1: August seventh, on a Thursday. This is going to be
Speaker 1: dropping Monday, so we were tapping about three days before
Speaker 1: this is going to drop on my feed. But he
Speaker 1: wants to essentially renumber the census, right, you know, he
Speaker 1: wants to because he is claiming without evidence in order
Speaker 1: to support what he did at BLS. Hey, all of
Speaker 1: this is manipulated. Everything government does is manipulate, right, So
Speaker 1: it's sort of a bit of a power grap And
Speaker 1: if we got hit again. You know, it's pretty clear.
Speaker 1: You know, they don't let you, don't let anything get
Speaker 1: in the way of the of the ability to sort
Speaker 1: of concentrate power. So I think they'd see it as
Speaker 1: an opportunity to concentrate more power.
Speaker 2: I think he would declare martial law. And I also
Speaker 2: think he would cancel the upcoming election. That's it would
Speaker 2: declare his pandom natural emergency in which he could rule
Speaker 2: as well.
Speaker 1: Look, he's threatening already with d C. Look what he's
Speaker 1: story with d C. So this is a you know,
Speaker 1: it is it mattered what he's the rhetoric about DC matters,
Speaker 1: because once you open that door in DC, you open
Speaker 1: the door with what you're talking about.
Speaker 2: Could that happen? And I cannot stretch strongly enough that
Speaker 2: the chaos that Trump has created in the American intelligence
Speaker 2: piece is the pit of the surprise attack of bolt
Speaker 2: from the Blue at home or abroad. If that happens
Speaker 2: and Trump declares himself the supreme eat, we are at
Speaker 2: the end of our nearly two hundred and fifty years
Speaker 2: experiment in American democracy. Chut My mom grew up in
Speaker 2: Hitler's German and she made it up of Skinberte, and
Speaker 2: I don't want my daughter to have to face that terrible,
Speaker 2: terrible prep.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about why we're likely to miss the warning
Speaker 1: on something like this. What you've just described about the
Speaker 1: CIA and our intelligence community isn't just your assessment. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna guess it's the assessment of Masad. It's the assessment
Speaker 1: of I six And you know where I'm going here,
Speaker 1: which means I assume the intelligent sharing operations that have
Speaker 1: been so crucial to intelligence gathering for the CIA for decades,
Speaker 1: I assume it's at risk right now because there is
Speaker 1: concern that he could manipulate what they give them, that
Speaker 1: it could get leaked, that it could not get that
Speaker 1: it could get misused. So how blind do you let
Speaker 1: me ask you this, how blind our rank and file
Speaker 1: CIA intel gatherers feeling right now when it comes to
Speaker 1: our supposed best intel allies, and I'm talking about Israel
Speaker 1: and the Five Eyes.
Speaker 2: I don't want to paint an apocalyptic picture here, because.
Speaker 1: Well, martial law martial law for the midterms kind of
Speaker 1: was apocalyptic there, tim.
Speaker 2: Yes, But I don't want to want sure the intelligence
Speaker 2: the relationship that exists between the CIA and its trusted
Speaker 2: foreign allies, which includes countries that you would not pick
Speaker 2: up as American allies on the top of your head.
Speaker 2: The relationships between a CIA station chief in a foreign
Speaker 2: capital and his foreign counterpart hand the lahn understurbed, even
Speaker 2: if above ground diplomatic relationships are crumbling and harsh words
Speaker 2: are being sproken between that country's leader and president or
Speaker 2: United States. However, the CIA relies Michael as does the
Speaker 2: United States on those alliances because born intelligence, the GIA
Speaker 2: cannot do its job without its liaison with foreign intel services.
Speaker 2: The CI does not have enough people, enough language skills,
Speaker 2: enough country knowledge to cover the entire planet. So if
Speaker 2: something really dangerous is happening in Jordan or Pakistan, it
Speaker 2: relies on its liaisons, as they are at times with
Speaker 2: the host intelligence service. Now let us say that you
Speaker 2: are the head of the BND, the German intelligence and
Speaker 2: you are perceiving correctly because this is happening right now,
Speaker 2: that Putin is waging a war of sabotage and subversion
Speaker 2: in Western Europe, and you've got some good sorting funds
Speaker 2: recruited Russian Are you going to share recruited Russians intelligence
Speaker 2: with Pelsey Gabbard, who is a putent apolitics, you would
Speaker 2: think twice about doing this. And you know there are
Speaker 2: roadblocks in this two way street now, and that increases
Speaker 2: the danger for being that state, as does you know
Speaker 2: Trump's rupturing of relations with the nation to NATO. Right,
Speaker 2: what Trump has done in books short months is to
Speaker 2: take a wrecking ball. The architecture of American national security
Speaker 2: was built over the court of eighty World War two,
Speaker 2: with one of its primary purposes being keeping the Russians
Speaker 2: from attacking arrest of the world. The Russians are attacked
Speaker 2: the nations of Europe. They are conducting assassination, they are
Speaker 2: conducting political warfare, they are conducting information warfare, and they
Speaker 2: are conducting actual lacks of sabotage on information infrastructure in Europe.
Speaker 2: If Vladimir Putin is allowed to keep one square inch
Speaker 2: of Ukrainer, yeah, you will not stop there. He will
Speaker 2: move westward. And the United States is you know, essentially
Speaker 2: withdrawing moral, political, financial, and military from the nations of
Speaker 2: Europe to prevent that. That's World War three, Betty, No.
Speaker 1: I mean, look, if he gets a piece of Ukraine,
Speaker 1: He's going to Lithuania, latvi Estonia, one of them, maybe
Speaker 1: all of them next and that's going to be the
Speaker 1: real test of Article five, right, But the real test
Speaker 1: of Article five is going to be those three Balkan countries,
Speaker 1: those first three, right. And you know, I'll never forget
Speaker 1: Tucker Carlson going on a rant once, an anti NATO rant,
Speaker 1: and he said, our American soldier is going to die
Speaker 1: for Estonians. And I thought, well, that's what treaties are about.
Speaker 1: And we signed the treaty.
Speaker 2: And let's remind people that Article five is a fundamental
Speaker 2: principle of NATO, so that an attack on one is
Speaker 2: an attack on all. And when the United States was
Speaker 2: attacked on September eleventh, the nations of the NATO, you know,
Speaker 2: put it on their boots and put those boots on
Speaker 2: the ground in Afghanistan and then hit the ruck and
Speaker 2: came in the defense of the Nunited States.
Speaker 1: By the way, speaking of you, called her a Putin apologist.
Speaker 1: And I had another source tell me that if you
Speaker 1: were the Russians, you and you wanted an asset in
Speaker 1: in the US government, that the single best listening post
Speaker 1: to have an asset would be DNA.
Speaker 2: A lot of journalists, diplomat, spies, and other interested parties
Speaker 2: how to spend a lot of the past decade wondering
Speaker 2: about the relationship of Trump. What is this strange bromance?
Speaker 2: Does Trump like Putin because he wants to be like Putin?
Speaker 2: That is government's an autocrat? You know? Do the Russians
Speaker 2: have something on Trump called promot from some time? And
Speaker 2: unless the intelligence archons brush are opened at some point
Speaker 2: in the future and there's a big boulder in it
Speaker 2: labeled b Trump, we're not going to know the answer
Speaker 2: that question. But in a way, the question now answers himself.
Speaker 2: Trump has not been Pudent's agent. He's been Putin's ally, right,
Speaker 2: And you know, somebody evidently got to him a couple
Speaker 2: of weeks ago and said, you know, you really have
Speaker 2: to man up again, Pudin, because he's been leading you
Speaker 2: around the nose by the nose for the last sevil year.
Speaker 2: And so you know, nowsum, we'll believe Trump and Fuodin
Speaker 2: are going to sit down and Trump is going to
Speaker 2: say this warned to end, and Food is going to say,
Speaker 2: you know, stop people, thank you very much. Uh, there's
Speaker 2: the door. You don't think he.
Speaker 1: Gives them like a two week cease fire. I think
Speaker 1: he hands him like a like a two weeks cease
Speaker 1: fire and then it and then it, you know, something
Speaker 1: like that, like something uh a fig leaf.
Speaker 2: Uh. And U I learned a long time ago that
Speaker 2: he who lives by the crystal ball wing broken blood.
Speaker 2: You're right, Uh, But but you asked me about celto gathering.
Speaker 1: Yep.
Speaker 2: There is a term of art in the American intelligence
Speaker 2: and the CI, which is agent of influence. Now, an
Speaker 2: agent of influence does not have to be a recruited
Speaker 2: agent in the in the pay of a how style intelligence.
Speaker 2: An agent of influence is someone who acts, who advance
Speaker 2: the foreign policies or political goals of a foreign power. Right,
Speaker 2: don't you know, Chelsea Gabbert will not be photographed taking
Speaker 2: a briefcape full of frimlin gold under a bridge in
Speaker 2: Piena at midnight.
Speaker 1: But she will be photographed meeting with a sad in Damascus,
Speaker 1: just saying yeah.
Speaker 2: It is very dangerous to have someone that unbalanced mm
Speaker 2: hm in charge of what is, on paper, the most
Speaker 2: politically influential American intelligence operation. And now we have the
Speaker 2: spectacle of Celtic Gabert, John Ratcliffe, CIA and Caspitel at FBI,
Speaker 2: following the president's orders, did gin up a prosecution at
Speaker 2: the Justice Department of not only the CIA officers and
Speaker 2: Intel director who oversaw the irreputable report about the liaisons
Speaker 2: between Team Trump and Team Putin during twenty sixteen, but
Speaker 2: also to prosecute the President of the United States at
Speaker 2: the time, Barack Obama, well is CI director John Brennan,
Speaker 2: and possibly any number of CIA officers and FBI eight.
Speaker 2: As my friend Garrick Rafts, the great journalists and author,
Speaker 2: often says, if he saw that happening in another country,
Speaker 2: what would you call it?
Speaker 1: What would you call it?
Speaker 2: A political warfare operation run by an autocratic guest?
Speaker 1: So let me ask you this. There is one person
Speaker 1: in the Trump national security team who co authored a
Speaker 1: report about Russian interference at the Senate Intel Committee, who
Speaker 1: genuinely knows that Tulsea Gabbert and John Ratcliffe are totally
Speaker 1: completely unqualified for the positions that they have. Is he
Speaker 1: the only hope If you were an ahead of the
Speaker 1: MI six and you really needed to get something in
Speaker 1: the United States, and you didn't trust the CIA and
Speaker 1: you didn't trust Gabbert, do you go to Marco Rubio?
Speaker 1: You see the last bastion of potential truth in Trump's
Speaker 1: ear or not. Well, Duck, I never covered politics, and
Speaker 1: you have so correct me if I'm getting a quotation raw.
Speaker 1: But I believe that the late great Governor pets and
Speaker 1: Rick Keegs once instead of uh, President George Hubert walker
Speaker 1: Bush when he was running for president.
Speaker 2: Yeah, at John much the manhood in the blind truck.
Speaker 1: Maria Bell, Yes, it's it's an alzheimer. It's an Alzheimer's. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, if anybody wants to go on YouTube, it's funny,
Speaker 1: It's hilarious.
Speaker 2: Poor Joel Rubio, who knows.
Speaker 4: Better, Yeah, has put in his manhood in the blind
Speaker 4: trust and given Dome Frump the key to the safe
Speaker 4: where that blind trust is filed.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm.
Speaker 2: It is hard to expect that a man who does
Speaker 2: know better has presided over the destruction of the US
Speaker 2: Agency for Interacting Development, which was the most powerful foreign
Speaker 2: policy tool the United States has ever wielded, has presided
Speaker 2: over ideological purchase of the State Department, has put a
Speaker 2: spokesman in place who belonged on North Korean state telemension,
Speaker 2: and is putting what is left of the reputation of
Speaker 2: the United States abroad at the deepest risk. You know what,
Speaker 2: if I were an ambassador or born intelligence chief and
Speaker 2: I wanted to back channel something into the contexts of
Speaker 2: the American government, I just give it to my friendly
Speaker 2: local CI station chief. I would certainly not give it
Speaker 2: to any memor member of Trump's cabinet or inner circle.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean that. Yeah, I'm sitting here thinking because
Speaker 1: you're basically outlining that we have all these blind spots
Speaker 1: now because of political the politicization of the intel world.
Speaker 1: And you know what would be the way, you know what,
Speaker 1: is there any way for good intelligence to make it
Speaker 1: through the system so that good actors could act responsibly.
Speaker 1: And what you're saying is it's unclear that there may
Speaker 1: not be a way to get good actional intelligence in
Speaker 1: front of rational actors.
Speaker 2: That essential part of the American national securities is being
Speaker 2: deliberately broken by Donald Trump, his cabinet and his CIA.
Speaker 2: You know, I wasn't raised by jetsamen, but the Jesuits
Speaker 2: teach you that there's two kinds of aor in the world.
Speaker 2: There's invincible ignorance and invincible ignorance. And invincible ignorance there
Speaker 2: is the stuff, you know, you're not ever really gonna know.
Speaker 2: God works in serious ways to fall in the world.
Speaker 2: But vincible agor is the stuff that you do know,
Speaker 2: you need to know, but you don't want to know. Yeah,
Speaker 2: because it's too unpleasant, too harsh, because it bumps up
Speaker 2: against your preconception. And that kind of ignorance goes a
Speaker 2: long way to explaining why we were in Vietnam, why
Speaker 2: we were in Iraq, and what lies ahead for the
Speaker 2: government of the United States. It's natural to jurity establishment
Speaker 2: and it's an intelligence community. You've got a president who
Speaker 2: is wilkilly ignorant, who doesn't want to know, and who
Speaker 2: despises and disdains the CIA because it is, in his
Speaker 2: mind the capital of deep state.
Speaker 1: I mean, he doesn't like the CIA for the same
Speaker 1: reason he doesn't like journalists. We surface, we surface uncomfortable truth.
Speaker 2: You make. You make an excellent point there, jeh. I mean, yes, yeah,
Speaker 2: there is an affinity between the CIA offerture over thieves
Speaker 2: and the foreign courts bond overseas.
Speaker 1: That's why the joke is some of us in media,
Speaker 1: are we getting recruited by the CIA or not?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: Like, it's not that reporters are actually have the skill
Speaker 1: set in theory.
Speaker 2: Okay, well, since nineteen seventy seven I had not been
Speaker 2: allowed to recruit foreign journals. I can take one or
Speaker 2: two over the decade to kind of recruit them films.
Speaker 2: But that's another seat.
Speaker 1: Enough.
Speaker 2: We both want to molt secrets the spy and bribe.
Speaker 2: We both want to and I'm quoting dak Field Hammett
Speaker 2: here the multi s falcon lit the lid off like
Speaker 2: that look inside of the work. We both can you know,
Speaker 2: parachute into a foreign capital like Cartoon or Tobble and
Speaker 2: say take me to your leader, and likely is not
Speaker 2: we will be taken to the leader. This is good.
Speaker 2: They're the roads diverge. Okay. The CIA pays handsomely, very
Speaker 2: handsomely for information. We don't unless you know we're crooked,
Speaker 2: and most of us are not. The CIA is recruiting
Speaker 2: for an agent to you know, enter into a criminal
Speaker 2: conspiracy to commit treason. We just want, you know, enough
Speaker 2: facts to write a decent story. Right and uh, but
Speaker 2: I have found that the the you know, small but
Speaker 2: significant ben diagram between what spies do and what journalists
Speaker 2: dout has helped me, you know, over the years, conduct
Speaker 2: hundreds of on the record interviews with u C I officer,
Speaker 2: c I analy C I veterans BI director. And you
Speaker 2: know this is not some meat trick. Uh, this is
Speaker 2: just you know, good journalism. If people are on the record, yep,
Speaker 2: they're much less likely to fudge or to play or
Speaker 2: to concoct, okay, because their name is attached to what
Speaker 2: they said. I haven't been a Washington journalist since the
Speaker 2: late twentieth century, and I find that, you know, if
Speaker 2: you're on deadline, if you're working for the New York
Speaker 2: Times or Washington Posts, yeah, off the record or background instance, okay,
Speaker 2: but not if you're writing a book, right, okay, and
Speaker 2: you're playing the long game. Why should you reader trust me?
Speaker 2: If you writing a book with off the record, you know, source.
Speaker 1: It.
Speaker 2: To work as to work in this realm, coin is
Speaker 2: the only sorry, I repeat myself, no.
Speaker 1: Of course I know where you're going.
Speaker 2: Yeah, to work in this realm. Grus is the only Curtesy, right, okay.
Speaker 2: And you know I've been doing this for light going
Speaker 2: on forty years now. Yeah, by my youthful appearance, and
Speaker 2: uh uh, you hang around long enough, people start to
Speaker 2: trust you.
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: This is why I think your book is is so
Speaker 1: is you know, going to be gobbled up not just
Speaker 1: by uh folks like myself, but actual CIA agents too.
Speaker 1: They want to see the In some ways, you're helping
Speaker 1: to paint a bigger picture. They're they're in their own departments,
Speaker 1: they're in their own silos. You're, you're, you're, you're in
Speaker 1: some ways probably showing them the larger picture that they
Speaker 1: don't get to see every day.
Speaker 2: I note with pleasures as we speak, the book is
Speaker 2: number three on the bestseller list of New York Times
Speaker 2: Listen to Starships.
Speaker 1: Well hopefully it's number one by the time we dropped.
Speaker 1: We dropped this podcast.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's not happen. Uh. The both the left and
Speaker 2: the right and the center for that matter, have a
Speaker 2: very distorted picture of what the CIA is and what
Speaker 2: it does and how it works. It's not like in
Speaker 2: the movie and TV it. You know, your average CIA
Speaker 2: officer does not perps in regret, you know, applying to
Speaker 2: a foreign capital of French quote Ava Martini, make love,
Speaker 2: overthrow the government and leave on the Midnight book. That's
Speaker 2: not how it works. The mission of the CIA is
Speaker 2: to figure out what's happening in the world. Okay, that
Speaker 2: is a vital function. And if the CIA in its reported,
Speaker 2: and of course they had made catastrophic mistakes in the past,
Speaker 2: as we all know, you know by saying, for example,
Speaker 2: it's that I'm staying had uh you know our toolm
Speaker 2: brickling weapons of mass destruction, and you know the stench
Speaker 2: of that lasted for a long time. But if the
Speaker 2: CIA in its reporting tells the president something terrible has happened,
Speaker 2: something terrible is likely to happen in the not dis
Speaker 2: in the future, and the president of the bull kit,
Speaker 2: I don't believe it. If the CIA is not believed,
Speaker 2: it has no purfect right. And you know, uh, substantial
Speaker 2: risks are taken in trying to gather information over seasons,
Speaker 2: Risks to the recruited agents, risks to the officers themselves
Speaker 2: at the dirty, typicult, dangerous business. And you're going to
Speaker 2: get burned from ton. But if you're a superpower, you
Speaker 2: need an intelligence service to look over the horizons, and
Speaker 2: it anticipates surprise, and if you don't have that, you're
Speaker 2: gonna get surprised.
Speaker 1: We spent a lot of time on Russia and Europe.
Speaker 1: How you know, one of the concerns over The last
Speaker 1: one of the concerns, for instance, in the Middle East
Speaker 1: was do we have enough human resources, human intelligence in Iran,
Speaker 1: human intelligence in the Middle East. Well, let me ask
Speaker 1: the same question about China.
Speaker 2: How how.
Speaker 1: How wired in is the CIA with China compared to
Speaker 1: how wired it is in Russia. We clearly are well
Speaker 1: wired in Russia. Look at I mean, I think, you know,
Speaker 1: the biggest win for the CIA in the last ten
Speaker 1: years is you know, basically teleg you know, showing the
Speaker 1: world telling Zelenski. You know, you got to believe us.
Speaker 1: Look at our intel here right, the the intel that
Speaker 1: Russia was going to invade Ukraine is a is a
Speaker 1: win right for the for the intel community on this one.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And and in the mission, I tell what I think, brother,
Speaker 2: you know, gripping story of how after the Russians monkey
Speaker 2: wrench in the twenty sixteen election, the head of the
Speaker 2: chief spy, the head the Clanderton service man named Tomas Rakutar,
Speaker 2: who reached with check, said, the Russians just manipulated our
Speaker 2: freaking election. How are we going to make sure this
Speaker 2: never happens again? And he ginned up a call to
Speaker 2: arms and the result for years later is that the
Speaker 2: CID Vladimir Futla's war plans out of the Kremlin.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: That is espionage, and that is the proopuse of epstinas.
Speaker 2: You know, you're envy shinner. In the first decade of
Speaker 2: this century, the CI built a remarkable network of recruited
Speaker 2: foreign agents, recruited Chinese, probably a thirty Gilbert pay people
Speaker 2: who were up and coming rising stars in the Chinan's
Speaker 2: poet Buro, the Chinese military, the Chinese Communist Party, and
Speaker 2: notably the Chinese Ministry of State secured their chief spot service.
Speaker 2: And they did this by recognizing how corrupt the Chinese
Speaker 2: political system was, and by paying their promotion kees broad
Speaker 2: that they had to pay to claw their way up
Speaker 2: the greasy poll. And these were substantial keys, you know,
Speaker 2: millions of dollars, and by roughly twenty ten they had
Speaker 2: an agent network in China that was remarkable. One by
Speaker 2: one by.
Speaker 5: One, between twenty ten and twenty twelve, these people were
Speaker 5: identified by the Chinese, arrested, tortured, and killed, and the
Speaker 5: camera intelligence people at CIA are still trying to set
Speaker 5: out how it happened, although they have two of the
Speaker 5: three pieces of the puzzle that they need.
Speaker 1: This is ten years later and they still don't quite know.
Speaker 2: How they got intelligence investigation tape decades sometimes wow years
Speaker 2: years with the norm. And so gradually the CIA is
Speaker 2: attempted to get back in the game in China because
Speaker 2: they long term will be our strongest addressary in the
Speaker 2: twenty first century. Yeah, and win k Burtns, the CIA
Speaker 2: director under Biden, established a very large China Mission center
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty three and twenty twenty four. The CIA
Speaker 2: hired a very large number of people, train them up,
Speaker 2: make sure they assible Chinese, and you know, put them
Speaker 2: in the Chinese China Mission Center, go forth and smile
Speaker 2: on China. When Radcliffe came into office, he summarily dismissed
Speaker 2: everyone that CIA had hired and trained in twenty twenty
Speaker 2: three and twenty twenty four because they were Biden hires
Speaker 2: and Elon musk Polding the cut five percent out of
Speaker 2: if they.
Speaker 1: Were inside the two year whatever it was, so they
Speaker 1: could easily canary period.
Speaker 2: That's right now, Well, this is madness, Chuck, my god,
Speaker 2: it is.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Then he took their names, their true first names and
Speaker 2: first initials, all these people and sent them an unclassified
Speaker 2: email to the White House and Elon Mutz and his
Speaker 2: doge brods, so he closed them all. Wow, and the
Speaker 2: doge bros are walking cardiffs. They are they do not
Speaker 2: have good op sec. You know, they do not have
Speaker 2: good hygiene when it comes to guarding against somebody. You know, think, hey,
Speaker 2: bro on a LinkedIn, how would you like a really
Speaker 2: good job working from the X y G Corps? And
Speaker 2: they're Chinese spire.
Speaker 1: So what you're saying is DOSEE may have just provided
Speaker 1: the dose staffers that were all brought in by Mosque
Speaker 1: may have essentially been the type of guys that like
Speaker 1: come into a backyard and forget to shut the gate.
Speaker 1: And they basically were they that easy marks for Chinese espionage.
Speaker 2: Each of them has a gigantic bullseye target on their back.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: The Chinese have already penetrated all the US hell coms,
Speaker 2: the unclassified systems of the US government, and ten years
Speaker 2: ago they broke into electronically the Office of Personnel Management
Speaker 2: and DC and stole the personnel files of everyone twenty
Speaker 2: two and a half million people who worked for the government.
Speaker 1: Because my understanding, not just personnel, but I think even
Speaker 1: you and I are in that list because we've been
Speaker 1: credentialed by the federal government. If you've ever had a
Speaker 1: credential from the Pentagon or the White House, I think
Speaker 1: we're in those files.
Speaker 2: But also in those files through security clearance forms of
Speaker 2: everybody who worths at CIA, okay, including packboard and information
Speaker 2: Kata burt true names. Okay. The Chinese took this incredible
Speaker 2: treasure trobe they uh uh cross indexed it with biometric
Speaker 2: data stolen from the world's international airports when you have
Speaker 2: asport control. They gave it all to Alibaba. Ali Baba
Speaker 2: crunched it. And now the CIA has a pretty good
Speaker 2: person self following everybody working for CIA. Okay. And if
Speaker 2: you are a CIA officer newly stationed abroad and you
Speaker 2: are gathering your bags at the baggage carousel in a while,
Speaker 2: the Doogu or Kuwhala, Lumpur or Beijing, likely enough a
Speaker 2: Chinese intelligence officer to come right up, he sticks figuring
Speaker 2: your chest and say, hey, show I know you are.
Speaker 1: We just have we penetrated the Chinese government effectively. I
Speaker 1: mean I always assume whatever we're being done to us,
Speaker 1: we're doing to them.
Speaker 2: What the Chin The short answer is no, and long
Speaker 2: answer is the Russians and the Chinese have two very
Speaker 2: different cultures and their intelligence. The Russians just want to
Speaker 2: screw us, but the Chinese want to know us, okay,
Speaker 2: and their goal is to take the surveillance steake that
Speaker 2: they have established in China. Up on top of your head,
Speaker 2: how many GTTV cameras do you think there are in
Speaker 2: China looking down at the.
Speaker 1: I'd assume, just at any individual, probably ten, all over
Speaker 1: all over the country, right all about mainline China. How
Speaker 1: many GGTV I'm going to assume millions, I mean probably
Speaker 1: a million, half a billion, half a billion, even more.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but g licis, plate readers, plus you know, eyeball stands,
Speaker 2: plus you know, you go to pay something on your phone,
Speaker 2: they got your data, all.
Speaker 1: Right, Well you could say that about our contrade.
Speaker 2: What they want to do, What the Chinese want to
Speaker 2: do is to project their surveillance state into the United States. Okay.
Speaker 2: They've already stone not just the opposite personnel management files,
Speaker 2: the healthcare records, hundreds of millions of them per Anthem, okay,
Speaker 2: and a number of other data hauls. As I mentioned,
Speaker 2: they penetrated all the health comms, and what they want
Speaker 2: to do is if more conflict or crisis comes, they
Speaker 2: want a complete information dominance. They want to see the enemy,
Speaker 2: see the battlefield mapping, and they're well on the way
Speaker 2: to that. Chuck and Trump has dismantled every single cybersecurity
Speaker 2: entity of the government that was set up after the
Speaker 2: Russian hack of the twenty sixteen election, dis medled them them. Okay,
Speaker 2: we are defenseless against this kind of thing because Trump
Speaker 2: wants it that way, because those agencies.
Speaker 1: Right upheld.
Speaker 2: The true story of the cooperation between Team Trump and Tate,
Speaker 2: Team Putin and the actions of Team Putin in the
Speaker 2: twenty sixth election. So narrative, the club is now attempting
Speaker 2: the memory hole.
Speaker 1: So what does this do for us on cyber? I mean,
Speaker 1: it's the CIA. Are they as forward leaning on cyber
Speaker 1: as NSA is?
Speaker 2: Well? Any day is about is several multiples bigger than I.
Speaker 2: And they have the cyber Command they have lead CIA
Speaker 2: come up with a new sort of digital directorate that's
Speaker 2: now ten years old, and they are trying very hard
Speaker 2: to get up to speed. Okay. The trouble with it
Speaker 2: at the CIA is secrecy and compart petrolization. Okay, you
Speaker 2: know the CIA was criticized, and rightly so, for a
Speaker 2: failure to share intelligence with IF friends and enemies at
Speaker 2: the FBI and elsewhere in the government before nine eleven.
Speaker 2: So then after nine to eleven, the in Washington it's
Speaker 2: something goes from me go one hundred day experienced in
Speaker 2: the other direction. The impetus was, then there's a need
Speaker 2: to tear, a need to share, not a need to know,
Speaker 2: but a need to share.
Speaker 6: Okay, well, how do you think you know, Julian Assange
Speaker 6: hacked into the classified systems of the government because of
Speaker 6: a need to share, and he found, you know, a.
Speaker 2: Army private Chelsea Manning, who you know naively did his
Speaker 2: bidding and that was to be you know, as Thane
Speaker 2: was a Russian agent. He has pleading guilty aspion architernatives.
Speaker 2: And that's an example of the need to share net work.
Speaker 2: It's a fine line between the needs own need to share.
Speaker 2: But we're Americans. We're an open people. We love everybody,
Speaker 2: we trust everybody.
Speaker 1: Right, you interviewed all six heads of the CIA, not Radcliffe.
Speaker 7: I assume right he wasn't added. The CIA w a
Speaker 7: anything up that book. I got hit him into the epilogue,
Speaker 7: but no, Radcliffe doesn't do interview period.
Speaker 1: Who understood the mission best? I don't want to say
Speaker 1: who was the best, but who understood the mission best?
Speaker 1: Tenant Hayden, Panetta, Petraeus, Brennan, Gena haspell Bill Burns. Who
Speaker 1: do you feel like Burns? That's what I thought too.
Speaker 1: Burns feels like the perfect I'm glad you said it.
Speaker 1: I I didn't want to lead you. You said it,
Speaker 1: so now I am going to lead you. I mean,
Speaker 1: Burns might have been the best equipped I had the
Speaker 1: CIA in the moment we live in right now.
Speaker 2: In addition to being widely you know acknowledge is the
Speaker 2: greatest American diplomat of the generation. Burns had been ambassador
Speaker 2: to Russia e fluent Russian, had been ambachored in Jordan's
Speaker 2: fluent Arabic, had been the head of the State Department,
Speaker 2: you know, Middle EU directorates, and the Deputy Secretary of State.
Speaker 2: This is a man who nubs the world. And this
Speaker 2: is the man who realized that intelligence is not something
Speaker 2: necessarily to be hidden in a faith once it's obtained
Speaker 2: that intelligence is information and that information is power. And
Speaker 2: when the CIA, after a four year remarkable effort that
Speaker 2: details somewhat book lay in the mission Dold Glaimer Pruden's
Speaker 2: war plans out of the Kremlin. Burns said, we need
Speaker 2: to tell the world about it, right, okay, incredibly sensitive
Speaker 2: secret intelligence that we have stolen from under Prutent's nods.
Speaker 1: Let me Pauld you right, there would any other CIA
Speaker 1: de head that you had interviewed over the years come
Speaker 1: to that conclusion that Burns came to. I mean, I
Speaker 1: feel like pre Burns, if you've stole some that valuable,
Speaker 1: that the inclination of every other CIA head would be
Speaker 1: keep it, keep it close.
Speaker 2: Don't expect I'm gonna yes that Leon Panetta would have
Speaker 2: done it, done it weekly Panetta. One of Panetta's great
Speaker 2: advantages when he came to CIA under Obama was that
Speaker 2: he had been a congressman, what eighteen terms.
Speaker 1: As we're the only only person to run the CIA
Speaker 1: who was an elected official at any point in time
Speaker 1: in his career John Radcliffe and now John Radcliffe of
Speaker 1: course and portered god oh right, was ghost yes country, Yes,
Speaker 1: I forgot about it. That was the pride of Florida.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: But you know, Panetta had also been White House Cheep,
Speaker 2: the White House budget Director. He has UH in that
Speaker 2: field political judge. Yeah, because of her perhaps despite about
Speaker 2: it experience, and you would have done it with a
Speaker 2: big smile on his face.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but that's it, right, not betray us. I don't
Speaker 1: take tenant right. Those guys don't do it right.
Speaker 2: You know, this is this is uh counter factuals. What
Speaker 2: might not have happened there? But Burns had Burns practiced
Speaker 2: intelligence diplomas. You remember Evan Berchami, the Wall fut General reporter,
Speaker 2: was in much of Britney gran here. Uh. The the
Speaker 2: w went the eighth Star in prison in Russia, had
Speaker 2: a number of other political prisoners that boot held who
Speaker 2: were released about a year ago. Uh, and flew back
Speaker 2: to Dover and Biden and Kamala Harris were there. Burned
Speaker 2: to TI did that Yeah, bull stop So intelligence diplomacy,
Speaker 2: intelligence that by uh an accomplished ship from that man.
Speaker 2: That's that's a high ideal. What we have now is
Speaker 2: the reverse, uh, which is intelligence has politics, not diplomas.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let me get you out of here on this.
Speaker 1: And it's a it's a it's the boutique CIA issue
Speaker 1: for the conspiracy theorists. Why does the CIA fight the
Speaker 1: release of these JFK files so much. I mean, I
Speaker 1: have my thesis, but but why do they fight it
Speaker 1: so much at this point?
Speaker 2: Well, I can, I mean, I can tell you why
Speaker 2: because those files contain the names and identities of recruited
Speaker 2: hurban agents. Okay, and the lap dune. There were a
Speaker 2: number of people a bill whom were still alive who
Speaker 2: got burned from that, and you know that's bad ju ju,
Speaker 2: you don't do that. To answer the larger question, you
Speaker 2: know that tenders of millions of Americas believed that the
Speaker 2: CIA killed JB. Yeah, it's fat that they believed that.
Speaker 2: And the reason they believed that is that not long
Speaker 2: after the assassination of President Kennedy, the KGB put out elaborate,
Speaker 2: reconstructed disinformation that appeared person foreign papers and the American
Speaker 2: papers that the CIA did kill JFK and was part of,
Speaker 2: you know, a massive conspiracy to do so uncovered up.
Speaker 2: In nineteen sixty seven, Pack the Wollan's restrict attorney named
Speaker 2: Jim Garrison prosecuted and persecuted a New Orleans businessman who
Speaker 2: had once or twice's been the Greek by the Iopa
Speaker 2: seas and said, you know, he had conspired with osbal
Speaker 2: killed every Well, the jury threw that out about fay
Speaker 2: two minutes. And then twenty five years later OLIVERT. Stone
Speaker 2: made a move and.
Speaker 1: Put day Garrison in it. By the way, Yeah, he
Speaker 1: played the.
Speaker 2: Judge with millions in American saw and Congress's reaction was,
Speaker 2: we had to release all these files because there may
Speaker 2: be some dark, terrible secret hidden in them. American people
Speaker 2: need to know. I once to put this question to
Speaker 2: Richard held who u was the CIS director from nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty sixt in nineteen w three and the head of
Speaker 2: its Plants and Service at the time of the JFKs.
Speaker 2: And he says, well, you come to a court in
Speaker 2: the room. Either you believe that Lee Harvey Oswalder trained
Speaker 2: marine marksman not off a million to one shot, or
Speaker 2: you believe that the intelligence services of the Soviet Union
Speaker 2: and Cuba conspired to capitate the government of the United
Speaker 2: States by killing its president. It's one or the other.
Speaker 2: The CIA, during the course of the Cold War, after
Speaker 2: committed many mistines, almost all of them at the beads
Speaker 2: of President. I mean, do you think that a couple
Speaker 2: of CI offered FOP were sitting around in a kind
Speaker 2: of a mad man setting in nineteen sixty having their
Speaker 2: second or third Martiginis, and one of them said, Hey,
Speaker 2: I have a good idea. Let's go to the old cadel.
Speaker 2: That didn't happen.
Speaker 1: No, it was a residence.
Speaker 2: Eisenhower and Kennedy and President Kennedy's brother Bobby Right bonded Fidel.
Speaker 2: Conspiracy theories, Chuck, are gonna be a contributing factor to
Speaker 2: the death of American democracy should that terrible event. Company
Speaker 2: path conspiracy theories are in this country are not only
Speaker 2: home grown, they are concocted by the intelligence services to
Speaker 2: Brussia and China, right, the Russians millions of this country,
Speaker 2: but millions of people in this country believe that the
Speaker 2: aged virus was manufactured in their laboratory run by the
Speaker 2: Army in Maryland. You know, put that story out a
Speaker 2: g okay. Millions of Americans believe it, and you cannot
Speaker 2: mon they We're people have no Please. You have a
Speaker 2: president today who, like Bladder, wants you to believe that
Speaker 2: there are no facts and there is no truth. You
Speaker 2: might as well just give up. Yeah, that will be
Speaker 2: the death of it.
Speaker 1: Well, the one theory that I wanted to throw by
Speaker 1: you is that that the CIA is also petrified that
Speaker 1: when you start pulling the thread on Oswald, and the
Speaker 1: thread being they probably had him under surveillance, they kind
Speaker 1: of knew a little something about them, but that it
Speaker 1: was almost, Oh, no, they're going to believe we were involved,
Speaker 1: and that there was a fear like it, like the
Speaker 1: revert like it. They're gonna like, why weren't we on
Speaker 1: top of this type of mindset?
Speaker 6: Uh?
Speaker 1: And oh, by the way, we don't want they don't
Speaker 1: want everybody to know what the hell we were doing
Speaker 1: in South America all the time.
Speaker 2: Of course it CEI had a file on Lee rb Us. Well,
Speaker 2: he was a marine who defected the Soviet Union, right exactly. Okay,
Speaker 2: you know who screwed up. The FBI screwed up. The
Speaker 2: FBI should have had this man on the surveilance includes surveillance,
Speaker 2: particularly after he went down to the US embassy, sorry,
Speaker 2: and particularly after he went down in the Soviet embassy
Speaker 2: in Mexico City trying to find a way out of
Speaker 2: the United States. The FBI, thanks to the Mexican Secret Service,
Speaker 2: had that embassy wired. Okay for the FBI and Jaggar Hoover.
Speaker 2: After the assassination disciplined I think it was nineteen FBI
Speaker 2: agents and said that they were guilty of growth snag wars.
Speaker 2: So you want to Blayne in and on Jen or
Speaker 2: Hoover in the FBI, who in their declassified files that
Speaker 2: I wrote about in Enemy's History in the FBI, UVU's
Speaker 2: like maya freaking Kulpaman, we blew up. But the CIA
Speaker 2: did not kill President Kenny, nor did it have a
Speaker 2: hand in a conspiracy to cover up the real killer. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Look, it's uh, it's pretty clear that that they just it.
Speaker 1: I think you just said it earlier. Best. We don't
Speaker 1: keep secrets very well, and if this was some big secret,
Speaker 1: there'd be plenty of people out there selling it.
Speaker 2: And let us see. Ashion was an earlier history CIA
Speaker 2: that I wrote eighteen years ago with Waiting for Tree
Speaker 2: on the paperback bestseller was lived in the New York
Speaker 2: Times Next week to Miracle. Uh. The epigraph for that
Speaker 2: book is a quote from me tempteen satory play right
Speaker 2: Joan Racine, which is there are no secrets the time
Speaker 2: will not reveal.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there you go, Tim Winer. As you as you
Speaker 1: can tell, I'd keep going and going and going, and
Speaker 1: I think you would humor me, but at some point
Speaker 1: I need to wrap it up. This is great. I
Speaker 1: really recommend this book because it is, you know, the CIA,
Speaker 1: what is its role? How much is political politics impacting it?
Speaker 1: And how does it survive this moment? Right? I assume
Speaker 1: already you may be working on your next book on
Speaker 1: what the hell does the CIA look like? In four you.
Speaker 2: My wife is giving strict orders that I don't start
Speaker 2: the next book until next year, so I'm chilling.
Speaker 1: Well, good luck trying to keep yourself away from observing
Speaker 1: what we're observing these days. Hey, Tim, this was great.
Speaker 1: Congrats by the way on the book. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: so thank you for your patience on the audio with
Speaker 1: Tim Winer. Trust me, the book is great.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: Look, he really is methodical about this. This guy's a journalist. Journalist.
Speaker 1: He's such a pro. He's been doing this for so long,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, it is. It's a few things
Speaker 1: that I took away from him that are kind of interesting.
Speaker 1: I thought his take that just remember the CIA is
Speaker 1: always in arm of the whoever the president is, which
Speaker 1: I thought was interesting that ultimately a whatever the CIA's
Speaker 1: mandate almost always comes directly from their president, right, It's
Speaker 1: like they bypass everybody else. It's the one thing thing.
Speaker 1: So I thought that was interesting. And when you actually
Speaker 1: look back, you do sort of see that pattern there
Speaker 1: a little bit. But the other, of course, is what
Speaker 1: he had to say about about Russia and about Putin,
Speaker 1: and then the and then and then of our what
Speaker 1: maybe what maybe our intelligence gaps with China. Anyway, I
Speaker 1: I enjoyed the book. It's it's a it's a it's
Speaker 1: a thick read. But I mean that in a in
Speaker 1: a good way. But ay, you know, and it was
Speaker 1: interesting that he came to the conclusion that I had,
Speaker 1: which is that Bill Burns he is somebody. I'm sorry
Speaker 1: that that Trump only views everything through his myopic lens,
Speaker 1: because Bill Burns should still be, say, a director, you
Speaker 1: have a guy who understands how Putin ticks better than
Speaker 1: sometimes Putin does not. Many people are that way, and
Speaker 1: we've sidelined this guy anyway. Seems to be a huge
Speaker 1: missed opportunity. All Right, I've been ranting and raving about
Speaker 1: my frustration about the Constitution and about about healthier so
Speaker 1: I thought i'd do a little bit of of a
Speaker 1: little bit of my own little sports talk here. Yes,
Speaker 1: I've been watching way too much preseason football. But here's
Speaker 1: the here's the only takeaway I have. And if there's
Speaker 1: one theme with my two little sports nuggets today, it's
Speaker 1: oh my god, I'm old and that is and I
Speaker 1: am about to make some of you feel really old.
Speaker 1: But I learned this watching the Ravens preseason game. I
Speaker 1: think it was Ravens Colts that the Ravens are I
Speaker 1: think a year or two away from have to have
Speaker 1: been in Baltimore longer than the Colts were in Baltimore.
Speaker 1: More importantly, the Colts have already been in Indianapolis longer
Speaker 1: forty one years. I think it is going back to
Speaker 1: it was an eighty two that they moved eighty three
Speaker 1: something like that, right, it was eighty three, eighty four something.
Speaker 1: They've been forty one, forty two years. They've now been
Speaker 1: in Indianapolis longer than they were in Baltimore. So the
Speaker 1: Indianapolis Colts are now older than the Baltimore Colts. Okay, see,
Speaker 1: I told you i'd make you feel old if you're
Speaker 1: someone of a certain age. And for those of you
Speaker 1: that go, yeah, so what screw you? All right? Some
Speaker 1: of us want mark time. The other is Mario Rivera. Jesus,
Speaker 1: he lived my fear. I constantly I have stopped playing
Speaker 1: pick up basketball. I miss pick up basketball. I've been
Speaker 1: trying to talk myself back into it. Now that I
Speaker 1: see Mario Rivera torp ripped his achilles playing the old
Speaker 1: timers game shag and fly balls. He I think he
Speaker 1: and I are about the same age. He might be
Speaker 1: a year older or a year younger. Man, Mariano, you
Speaker 1: just convinced me I'm out. I am just going to
Speaker 1: stick to running. I am now going to do these
Speaker 1: extra I'm a doctor. I messed with my doctor gave
Speaker 1: me some how to strengthen your calf, to try to
Speaker 1: strengthen to limit to the possibility that you that you
Speaker 1: could tear your achilles. So let's just say that, Mario
Speaker 1: and Rivera, you've just motivated me better than any any
Speaker 1: trainer could motivate me to do those exercises. For sure,
Speaker 1: I might as well give you a quick mats up.
Speaker 1: They took two of three from the Giants, so it can't.
Speaker 1: First of all, the Giants obviously not so good after
Speaker 1: after overperforming in the first half for a while. You know,
Speaker 1: it never looked like a team that was going to
Speaker 1: be a real contender there. But I do imagine Buster Posey,
Speaker 1: we'll turn those things around. But look, the biggest news
Speaker 1: for US Nats fans was that cade Cavally looked great.
Speaker 1: All right, this was a guy that has had two
Speaker 1: Tommy John's think about that. That's amazing that he's back pitching.
Speaker 1: It was a terrific outing thirteen outs, but I'll take it.
Speaker 1: It was pretty good. Mackenzie gored a great outing against
Speaker 1: Justin Verlander. I know verlandery Verlander anymore, but uh, you know,
Speaker 1: he's it's still that's still a pretty good, pretty good, uh,
Speaker 1: pretty good thing to say he did, which is to
Speaker 1: get a win over Verlander, which Gore did. And it
Speaker 1: was nice to see James Wood in the leadoff spot.
Speaker 1: Let's see more of that, more of shaking that out.
Speaker 1: But I will tell you it's still frustrating. I'm glad
Speaker 1: to see Barry Zarugula took it, took it to the
Speaker 1: Nats correctly. The Washington Post Sport section did a separate
Speaker 1: piece about how Nats fans are frustrated with the ownership
Speaker 1: and with the front office. Finally, some public heat is
Speaker 1: being applied to the Learners, which needs to happen. They
Speaker 1: are harassing me and other season ticket holders right now
Speaker 1: to hurry up and renew, and I basically I keep
Speaker 1: dodging the call right because I'm waiting for the Learners
Speaker 1: to speak, and they still haven't spoken. Will you please
Speaker 1: tell us the direction of this franchise. Are you trying
Speaker 1: to contend next year or not? Are you going to
Speaker 1: sell the team or not? Doing this? No man's land
Speaker 1: is why you are getting people to say sell the
Speaker 1: team now. I think the Learners have earned the right
Speaker 1: to change direction here because they did bring us one winner,
Speaker 1: but saying nothing, please, we already have enough people not
Speaker 1: being leaders in Washington DC. Don't become just another another
Speaker 1: member of the Washington DC community who refuses to lead.
Speaker 1: We expect more from you, mister Lerner. All right, so
Speaker 1: there's my little sports update, and with that, let's do
Speaker 1: a few questions. Let's get the little ass Chuck in here.
Speaker 1: Ask Chuck, all right, we got a little overseas questions
Speaker 1: comes from the Netherlands. Heare, mister Todd. I'm a regular
Speaker 1: listener to the podcast, truly appreciate how you unpack complex
Speaker 1: political topics with such clarity. Thank you for saying that.
Speaker 1: I've been wondering how did the US and EU, too
Speaker 1: long standing allies drift so far apart diplomatically and politically,
Speaker 1: and why does it feel like neither side knows how
Speaker 1: to respond. Also, as a European who feels connected to
Speaker 1: the US, I'm troubled by how much influence one individual,
Speaker 1: be it a president or billionaire, can have globally. Have
Speaker 1: we reached a point where democracy no longer feels like
Speaker 1: it's truly in the hands of everyday people or regards
Speaker 1: Randall Vanderval from Leyden, the Netherlands. Randall, I appreciate the
Speaker 1: question on that. Well, Look, I think there's always been
Speaker 1: a little bit of a political divide about Europe right
Speaker 1: where the right has always been a little more eurosceptic
Speaker 1: than the left. Part of it has to do with
Speaker 1: the governance of many Western European countries democratic socialism in
Speaker 1: the Nordic states in particular, but there's been some disagreements
Speaker 1: on sort of some of those governing styles, and then
Speaker 1: of course on some cultural things, and in some ways
Speaker 1: Europe's a bit culturally, you know, more liberal or culturally
Speaker 1: more progressive than the United States is and so I
Speaker 1: think so, I think some of it is because we're,
Speaker 1: you know, currently the the right is ascended on culture.
Speaker 1: That culture is is in some ways an anti discurrent
Speaker 1: set of your European leaders. I say current set because
Speaker 1: there is also this connectivity between the American right and
Speaker 1: the European right right the breaks of Tears Steve Bannon.
Speaker 1: You've got the a f D party in Germany getting
Speaker 1: a lot of love from like the seapack world. You've
Speaker 1: got hungry right, you know. So there is there's also
Speaker 1: been this sort of unity of the of the far
Speaker 1: right parties both in the United States and Europe.
Speaker 2: There.
Speaker 1: But you know, it's interesting to me, as you're right,
Speaker 1: I think in that we're you know, part of it
Speaker 1: is that there's been some in the foreign policy community
Speaker 1: who believe that Europe is a yesterday problem and Asia's
Speaker 1: today and tomorrow problem. So part of it is there's
Speaker 1: some in the national security form policy space that's not
Speaker 1: hard left or hard right, that simply is less focused
Speaker 1: on Europe and believes we should pivot to Asia, pivot
Speaker 1: to the Pacific right. That was Obama's last half of
Speaker 1: his lifelast term was the pivot Asia because everything was
Speaker 1: China right when everything was the Cold War, Europe was
Speaker 1: everything without the Cold War. Now you would think that
Speaker 1: Russia's aggression would have brought the EU in the United
Speaker 1: States together, and in some ways it has, right, Right,
Speaker 1: NATO's never been better funded, NATO's never been more euro
Speaker 1: you know. I mean the addition of Sweden and Finland
Speaker 1: have been huge, right. I mean, if if we ever
Speaker 1: have to go to war with Russia, we're going to
Speaker 1: crush them. It's not going to be that close. I mean,
Speaker 1: we have the much more durable collective security than they do.
Speaker 1: So I think some of it is just simply attention
Speaker 1: to the Pacific. So that so there's a little bit
Speaker 1: of atrophy in the relationship. Some is what I described earlier,
Speaker 1: sort of the right wing skepticism of the sort of
Speaker 1: democratic small d democratic socialism, that sort of you know, mindset,
Speaker 1: you know. And and then of course I think Europe
Speaker 1: in general is very anti trumpa, right, So then that
Speaker 1: makes Europe seeing anti Republican these days. So and it's
Speaker 1: the Republicans that are in charge. So you put all
Speaker 1: those ingredients together in it, and that's what you have.
Speaker 1: So look in some ways this could be the best
Speaker 1: thing to happen to the EU, that they have to
Speaker 1: be prepared to be more independent, less reliant in the
Speaker 1: United States. That doesn't mean the United States isn't the
Speaker 1: single most important ally to the to the EU and
Speaker 1: EU nations, but that doesn't. But you've got to but
Speaker 1: you've got to assume that there are going to be
Speaker 1: times when there's a more hostile government. So so in
Speaker 1: that sense, look, I think and I think you're starting
Speaker 1: to see more European leaders, well they're not happy about it,
Speaker 1: embracing the reality that that's what that's what has to happen.
Speaker 1: But let's just say the entire relationship between Europe and
Speaker 1: the United States may transform again depending on whether Trump
Speaker 1: gives Pootin everything he wants at this summit later this week.
Speaker 1: So let's just say the relationship is still. The irony
Speaker 1: is that both continents are dealing with a migrant crisis,
Speaker 1: and the migrant crisis is caused by the same issue,
Speaker 1: right displacement due to lack of opportunity, some of its
Speaker 1: climate change inspired. What's happening right in Central America, what's
Speaker 1: happening in North Africa. And I think that that migration
Speaker 1: is really stirred a lot of populist politics and a
Speaker 1: lot of nationalist politics, both in Europe and in the
Speaker 1: United States. So in that sense, we have a lot
Speaker 1: in common on that front. Not sure if I answered
Speaker 1: the question the way that as thoroughly you're asking, you know,
Speaker 1: why it's been so much you know, just sort of
Speaker 1: the future of democracy. Look, I think, you know, sometimes
Speaker 1: I think we've had we had it so good and
Speaker 1: so easy for so long, we forget that sometimes citizenship
Speaker 1: demands work and keeping a democracy healthy, you got to
Speaker 1: attend to the democracy garden a little bit, and we
Speaker 1: haven't tended to that garden. You've been hearing me come
Speaker 1: up with a lot of ideas about how to essentially
Speaker 1: reanimate the democracy here, and I think my guess is
Speaker 1: we're not alone. I think it needs to be reanimated
Speaker 1: in a lot of Western societies. Next question comes from
Speaker 1: Judith w and she asks, I've just finished listening to
Speaker 1: your introduction to the episode that dropped August six, and
Speaker 1: there are two things that I want to ask. One,
Speaker 1: how come it has taken the media so long to
Speaker 1: see Trump's mental decline? Too? It was evident long before
Speaker 1: Biden left the race too. The people that are suggesting
Speaker 1: that blue states also redistrict would agree with you that
Speaker 1: redistricting to gain seats is not a good thing. But
Speaker 1: what is it that you think the Democrats should do
Speaker 1: to counteract the redistrict in Texas and other Republicans states?
Speaker 1: This seems like just one more issue than in the
Speaker 1: long run needs to be resolved updating the constitution. But
Speaker 1: in the short term Democrats don't appear to have much
Speaker 1: of a choice. Thanks. Look, obviously I get your answer
Speaker 1: on the on the first part on the mental stuff,
Speaker 1: I think with Trump, Trump's always been a little weird,
Speaker 1: and so I think in fairness, you're not sure whether
Speaker 1: you know whether this is same old Trump or whether
Speaker 1: Trump is losing it a little bit now. I think
Speaker 1: you're starting to see some signs that he's sunsetting a
Speaker 1: bit in the evening, right, He doesn't look he's not
Speaker 1: traveled the country at all. He travels the country very rarely. Now,
Speaker 1: when was the last time he saw him do a rally,
Speaker 1: doesn't do them very often. Doesn't like leaving Washington, DC much,
Speaker 1: doesn't like leaving the New Marlago patio that he put
Speaker 1: into the Rose Garden, there, and so I think some
Speaker 1: of that is just, you know, like anybody, the older
Speaker 1: you get, the less you want to leave your own abode.
Speaker 1: And he's behaving that way, and he's certainly behaving put
Speaker 1: it this way, he is behaving like somebody like a
Speaker 1: president of a second term who's burned out on traveling
Speaker 1: the country because he hasn't done it. And I think
Speaker 1: that's politically a huge problem for Republicans because he's not
Speaker 1: selling his agenda at all. He's dictating his agenda, but
Speaker 1: he's not selling it. He's not traveling the country, he's
Speaker 1: not trying to sell it. And I think part of
Speaker 1: that is is that he's just getting too old to
Speaker 1: do the job on We're starting to see certain signs
Speaker 1: in certain places that that's the case. He's certainly getting
Speaker 1: a lot more bad information than he ever has before.
Speaker 1: Whether that is intentional that he's getting this bad information
Speaker 1: or he's just not as as as well read as
Speaker 1: he once was is unclear. Look, you ask, what should
Speaker 1: the Democrats do. Run a campaign in Texas, Go run
Speaker 1: a campaign in Florida, Go build a party, Go push
Speaker 1: back on Greg Abbott, Go push back on Rondo Santis,
Speaker 1: Go push back. Look, I think what the Democrats are
Speaker 1: doing in the state of Texas, you do everything you
Speaker 1: can and you're elected officials. But I so but but
Speaker 1: I think sort of going and hoping. Here's my problem
Speaker 1: with it, right, which is, if you think it's unfair
Speaker 1: what Texas is doing, then why I go to your
Speaker 1: own home state and intentionally make it unfair to the
Speaker 1: minority community in your state, to the minority of voters
Speaker 1: in your state who don't who aren't blue. There's a
Speaker 1: reason for the expression too wrongs don't make a RNY
Speaker 1: And this is to me, I don't know. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is the screams too wrongs don't make right. My
Speaker 1: frustration is they The hard thing to do is to
Speaker 1: go figure out how to run a tougher campaign in
Speaker 1: Texas than in Florida and make them pay a price
Speaker 1: at the ballot box. That's the hard thing to do.
Speaker 1: The easy thing to do is to change the rules
Speaker 1: somewhere where things are more supportive. Final question comes from
Speaker 1: Greg w. Hey check love the new show and format.
Speaker 1: The longer form has made you my walking podcast. I
Speaker 1: appreciate that one of my favorite ways that somebody was
Speaker 1: marketing at one of my favorite cannabis shops was marketing
Speaker 1: little pre roles as dog walkers now, which I thought
Speaker 1: was hilarious. I don't so, I don't care. I think
Speaker 1: a walking I don't want to be just a dog
Speaker 1: walking podcast is shorter. I think a long walk podcast.
Speaker 1: I'll take that anyway. He asked. What amazes me is
Speaker 1: when you bring on another political walk like yourself, and
Speaker 1: you can discuss an individual running into district only to
Speaker 1: end up talking about the history of that district in
Speaker 1: terms of voting or events that change how the district votes,
Speaker 1: how are What do you use to find out that information?
Speaker 1: I'm betting some of it is just living in that world.
Speaker 1: But for newcomers, what are some information sources we can
Speaker 1: look at? Well, I'll tell you what I did when
Speaker 1: I was younger to learn. I mean, I was obsessed
Speaker 1: with understanding every congressional district. So the Almanac of American Politics.
Speaker 1: And it's funny you're bringing this up. I'm going to
Speaker 1: be interviewing my friend Charlie Cook this week. He's written
Speaker 1: the big introduction to them, The Almenic of American Politics,
Speaker 1: which is published by my old employer in the National Journal.
Speaker 1: It was founded by Michael Barone at Harvard in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy two with a gentleman named Grant Ujifusa. And it
Speaker 1: is it is. It is called the Almanac of American Politics.
Speaker 1: But what it really is is it's a profiles all
Speaker 1: foreign and thirty five districts, all fifty states, and then
Speaker 1: it has profiles of every governor and every US Senator.
Speaker 1: So you have one hundred and fifty of those profiles,
Speaker 1: plus four and thirty five House members. It's five hundred
Speaker 1: and eighty five profiles. And the profiles of the congressional
Speaker 1: districts are one half about the member and one half
Speaker 1: about the district. Now, what did a dork like me do? Well,
Speaker 1: so I started. You know, my first almanac, working almanac
Speaker 1: was was for the ninety for the ninety two cycle,
Speaker 1: which so it was nineteen ninety two almanac is always
Speaker 1: up to date through the ninety elections. The ninety four
Speaker 1: almanac is up to date through the ninety two elections,
Speaker 1: and so on and so on. Well, I had to
Speaker 1: make sure I had every single cop every single edition,
Speaker 1: so I have every edition going back to seventy two.
Speaker 1: By the way, our friends in Congressional Quarterly have have
Speaker 1: their theirs. It's called politics in America. It's a little thicker. Frankly,
Speaker 1: I think a little drier some of the profiles that
Speaker 1: think national journals. I think the Almanac is a little
Speaker 1: a little more readable all the informations there in politics
Speaker 1: in America, don't get me wrong. And it's good info
Speaker 1: in some ways, sometimes more thorough in some data there
Speaker 1: than than than the Almanac has. And I've that for
Speaker 1: previous and what I've done over the years, and what
Speaker 1: I did early on is I read every you know,
Speaker 1: anytime I would focus on a congressional I would go
Speaker 1: back and read what the read the various Almanac bios
Speaker 1: from previous editions, and it's look, it was fun. I
Speaker 1: used to say, you could see Michael Barone's evolving politics, right.
Speaker 1: Michael Barone was a big liberal in seventy two, fairly
Speaker 1: conservative these days. And I used to say, if you
Speaker 1: just read the Henry Waxman profiles, the ones he wrote
Speaker 1: in the eighties were this liberal do gooder champion would
Speaker 1: take it to government every now and then, versus the
Speaker 1: one he'd write about in the nineties and the odds,
Speaker 1: who he thought was a limousine liberal, and that sort
Speaker 1: of mindset. But you could, you know. I used to
Speaker 1: say you could see you could read Michael Barone's evolution
Speaker 1: through that, but he you know, all kidding aside. It
Speaker 1: would be in the profiles of the individuals that you
Speaker 1: would sort of you could you could hear. I know
Speaker 1: Michael well enough that I could see some of his
Speaker 1: police evolutions, if you will. But it's the profiles of
Speaker 1: the district itself, finding about its history of voting and industry.
Speaker 1: It's second enough, right. The model that Barone created is terrific.
Speaker 1: National Journal has kept that model and I don't think
Speaker 1: there's anything like it, and the new edition's coming out
Speaker 1: it is. And I always say this, Almanacs are more
Speaker 1: useful the older they are, you know, because the most
Speaker 1: recent stuff is usually front of mine. Anyway, I have
Speaker 1: most of that, but as it gets older, you're really
Speaker 1: thankful to have it. So I don't work for them.
Speaker 1: I don't get any money from them anymore. There was
Speaker 1: a time I really wanted that my real ambition, before
Speaker 1: there was ever a meet to press, I wanted to
Speaker 1: be co author the Almanac of American Politics. So that's
Speaker 1: how much I love the reference book. I think it's
Speaker 1: the single most important reference book in politics. So but
Speaker 1: you need to get every single edition comes out every
Speaker 1: two years, and it's been coming out every two years
Speaker 1: since nineteen seventy two. And I will tell you, just
Speaker 1: like in card collecting, there's a short print the seventy
Speaker 1: six edition, which is the Watergate elections through seventy four.
Speaker 1: It's the short print. For whatever reason, they didn't have
Speaker 1: that many, they didn't print as many of that edition.
Speaker 1: I think I spent five hundred dollars at a used
Speaker 1: bookstore to get my copy of my seventy six almanac,
Speaker 1: because by the way around around Washington, when I was
Speaker 1: first trying to make get every single edition, I had everything,
Speaker 1: you know, going back to eighty two because National Journal
Speaker 1: had older copies, but they didn't take over publishing until
Speaker 1: eighty two, so it was the previous those seventy two, four,
Speaker 1: seventy six, seventy eight, and eighty I was trying to
Speaker 1: get and the last one was seventy six. But I
Speaker 1: can't tell you how many times I'd go to a
Speaker 1: used bookstore they say, Okay, we'll put your name on
Speaker 1: a list, but you know you're below Charlie Cook. And
Speaker 1: I was like God damn it. Charlie Cook was also
Speaker 1: trying to do the same thing back in the day.
Speaker 1: But like I said, Charlie's gonna be on the show
Speaker 1: soon and we're going to be giving a lot more
Speaker 1: love to the Almanac after that. All right, So enough
Speaker 1: of me promoting that. I do want to promote my
Speaker 1: news for you. Interview with doctor Francis Collins. You want
Speaker 1: to understand what mRNA vaccines are, why this technology is
Speaker 1: so important, and how incredibly just how it's a dereliction
Speaker 1: of duty for the future of healthcare, for what Kennedy did.
Speaker 1: You'd also got to check out my blues man, Francis Collins,
Speaker 1: because he's got the blues. He's got the blues, but
Speaker 1: he also has the blues and you could feel it
Speaker 1: and hear it in his music. It's a little different.
Speaker 1: But I think doctor Collins is just one of the
Speaker 1: great treasures of the United States, one of the great
Speaker 1: treasures of America, and I hope you take a look
Speaker 1: and take a listen. So with that, I appreciate you listening.
Speaker 1: Thanks for keeping the faith with me. And until we
Speaker 1: upload again,