Speaker 1: All right, guys, So we're joined this morning by Ken Klippenstein,
Speaker 1: who is a journalist in many.
Speaker 2: Regular watchers of the show will.
Speaker 1: Recognize him as a fantastic substack where he breaks a
Speaker 1: lot of national security news in particular, and that has
Speaker 1: become quite relevant in our national conversation because there has
Speaker 1: long been a jd Vance dossier compiled by the Trump
Speaker 1: campaign that we've known for months now had been hacked
Speaker 1: by some actor. Put a pin in that there are
Speaker 1: suggestions it might be iron we'll get Ken's thoughts on
Speaker 1: that as well, but put a pin in where it
Speaker 1: came from. And quite a variety of mainstream news outlets
Speaker 1: were refusing to publish it now. They cited two primary reasons.
Speaker 1: One was because it was a hacked document, and the
Speaker 1: other was that in some estimations it was deemed to
Speaker 1: be not newsworthy. Well, Ken was able to get his
Speaker 1: hand on that dossier published it to his substack. In fact,
Speaker 1: I can pull this up while we're talking about it,
Speaker 1: so that people could judge for themselves whether or not
Speaker 1: it was in fact newsworthy and see what sorts of
Speaker 1: concerns the Trump campaign had internally about jd Vance and
Speaker 1: his selection onto the ticket as Donald Trump's vice presidential pick.
Speaker 1: So Ken joins us now to talk about that, but
Speaker 1: also to talk about the fallout after posting this dossier.
Speaker 1: He's now been banned on Twitter. Elon Musk has gone
Speaker 1: after him, personally describing the publishing of this dossier completely
Speaker 1: unredacted as quote evil. So we want to talk about
Speaker 1: all angles of this this topic. Ken, thank you so
Speaker 1: much for spending some time with us this morning. Could
Speaker 1: it be with you, Yeah, of course. So first, just
Speaker 1: take me through your thinking why you came down in
Speaker 1: a different place on publishing this dossier than other news
Speaker 1: outlets did.
Speaker 3: Yeah. A number of other news outlets acquired this, included
Speaker 3: The New York Times, Politico, the Washington Post. And I
Speaker 3: just thought it was the worst of media paternalism to
Speaker 3: decide that the public that they knew better and the
Speaker 3: public doesn't need to know these things. And to the
Speaker 3: extent that they did talk about it, I mean, they
Speaker 3: were happy to paraphrase some of the contents. So I thought, well,
Speaker 3: why not just show people the underlying thing instead of
Speaker 3: relying on their paraphrase. And an initial concern I had,
Speaker 3: having worked in media for a number of years now
Speaker 3: and seeing how when media tries to make the judgment
Speaker 3: about what people are going to be interested in and
Speaker 3: misreads what the general public might be interested in because they're,
Speaker 3: you know, overwhelmingly focused on other things. I think that
Speaker 3: turned out to be true in this case. I encourage
Speaker 3: people to go and read the actual document and compare
Speaker 3: it with the articles that were said to have paraphrased
Speaker 3: it and which the media was saying, Look, we've already
Speaker 3: basically talked about what's interesting there, what's the you know,
Speaker 3: what's the what's the deal here? Look at the actual document.
Speaker 3: Compare that with reporting, and you're going to notice a
Speaker 3: gulf between those two things, a huge difference in terms
Speaker 3: of this specific parts of the document that were never
Speaker 3: mentioned in any stories, and just the tone of the campaign.
Speaker 3: To me, the most interesting thing is not the disclosures
Speaker 3: looking at this as something like the steel dosier that's
Speaker 3: going to have all this salacious detail that was never
Speaker 3: what this was. What's interesting about this is the meta
Speaker 3: textual point of that. It gives you insight into what
Speaker 3: the campaign thinks is problematic about VANCE and what's interesting
Speaker 3: about it is overwhelmingly the theme that they focus on
Speaker 3: being his liability is what makes him trumpy. It's like
Speaker 3: the maga dimension to his character that they seem uneasy with,
Speaker 3: which is funny and interesting because it shows that the
Speaker 3: party is in conflict with Trump. They both need him
Speaker 3: to win and they're uneasy with They're uneasy with with
Speaker 3: his policies, particularly the ones that tend towards isolationism and protectionism.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there were definitely some things in here that made
Speaker 1: me personally like, oh, if this was the JD. E.
Speaker 1: Vance that was put forward, I would be more receptive
Speaker 1: to him. Like, for example, he was critical of Donald
Speaker 1: Trump when he assassinated Irani. In general custom Solimani, he
Speaker 1: describes himself as a non interventionist. These were all things
Speaker 1: they flagged as like potential political problems for him. And
Speaker 1: the two things that I found interesting was number one,
Speaker 1: as you're laying out, the two big areas that they
Speaker 1: thought were of vulnerability for Vance were number one, his
Speaker 1: overwhelming past criticism of Donald Trump. And I do think
Speaker 1: that that turned out to be somewhat of a focus
Speaker 1: of conversation, somewhat of a liability for him. And there's
Speaker 1: chapter and verse of him going through, you know, all
Speaker 1: the ways that he used to hate Donald Trump and
Speaker 1: think that he was unfit and believe his sexual assault accusers,
Speaker 1: and all of those sorts of things, right, which you
Speaker 1: probably many people will be familiar with the what jd
Speaker 1: Vance has said about Donald Trump in the past because
Speaker 1: of mainstream coverage. The other bucket was him being a
Speaker 1: non traditional conservative and having views that for example, you know,
Speaker 1: talking about how he thought Democrats had some policies that
Speaker 1: would be favorable to the working class, how he had
Speaker 1: said some favorable things about unions, for example, and they
Speaker 1: saw that as a liability, which is interesting in and
Speaker 1: of itself. But the other piece that I found interesting,
Speaker 1: Ken is what wasn't in this dossier, which is that
Speaker 1: I wondered if they had surfaced some of the comments
Speaker 1: that have genuinely been a problem for jd. Vance, which
Speaker 1: is like his whole you know, his whole motif on
Speaker 1: childless cat ladies, and similarly, you know, situated commentary about
Speaker 1: women and what he thinks role for women should be,
Speaker 1: and this very sort of narrow and contemptuous view that
Speaker 1: he has of women who don't fit the prescribed roles
Speaker 1: that he would like to.
Speaker 2: See them in.
Speaker 1: And that was none of that was in here at all.
Speaker 1: So I mean that's interesting in one regard because there
Speaker 1: have been a question about whether Donald Trump really realized
Speaker 1: all of these things about him, whether he would have
Speaker 1: put him on the ticket if he knew he had
Speaker 1: said all of these things, And also interesting because you
Speaker 1: realize how these standard issue Republican consultant consulting firms which
Speaker 1: would have been behind this type of this type of dossier,
Speaker 1: how blind they were to what the actual liabilities would
Speaker 1: be for him in this camp exactly.
Speaker 3: And I should note a campaign in which policy is
Speaker 3: not centered. I mean, this is a ViBe's campaign. I
Speaker 3: as a reporter, am trying to find something anything to
Speaker 3: be able to talk to readers about what these people
Speaker 3: stand for and what we can expect will happen. And
Speaker 3: it's really hard because they don't talk about I'll give
Speaker 3: you an example. I went through the not just the
Speaker 3: Republican Convention, but the Democratic Convention collectively. They mentioned the
Speaker 3: word healthcare twice during the entire speeches, and in both
Speaker 3: references they had essentially nothing to say about it. And
Speaker 3: then you look at national security basically like slightly more
Speaker 3: to say about that, but still basically nothing. I mean
Speaker 3: it's really hard to define what they're doing. And so
Speaker 3: when you have a document like this that gives you
Speaker 3: some sense of not just what the attitudes of the
Speaker 3: party are, but I think too why they're so quiet
Speaker 3: about a number of things, because they're uneasy with their
Speaker 3: position on a lot of different things, including on things
Speaker 3: which it wouldn't be it's sort of counterintuitive that they are.
Speaker 3: So if this document, as was suggested by the media,
Speaker 3: oh it's just going to be based on polling or whatever,
Speaker 3: then they're going to talk about overwhelmingly the cat lady
Speaker 3: stuff that you're saying. Because because gender is a huge
Speaker 3: issue of it's a huge problem Republican's face. It relates
Speaker 3: to the abortion question and is central to I think
Speaker 3: their main liability going into this election post Dobbs decision
Speaker 3: of the overturn of Row. But instead they're interested in
Speaker 3: these positions that you know, it could be characterized to
Speaker 3: be definitely popular among the you know, isolationist wing of
Speaker 3: the Republican base, probably so among reporters generally, and they
Speaker 3: acted as though it's a liability. That tells you that
Speaker 3: they're not primarily concerned with public opinion. They have other
Speaker 3: concerns I mean, I'm guessing where their money comes from.
Speaker 1: Point.
Speaker 2: That's a very interesting point.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean they had lots in there about you know,
Speaker 1: they knew the fact that he had these fringe extreme
Speaker 1: abortion views would be a potential problem, although it's kind
Speaker 1: of down the list in terms of the areas that
Speaker 1: they were concerned about, which is also interesting to me.
Speaker 1: But you know, there's also a quality to these, you know,
Speaker 1: official campaign like vetting documents where it doesn't take into
Speaker 1: account any of the quote unquote X factor, like whatever
Speaker 1: it is about Jade Vance that just judging by the
Speaker 1: polls and the fact that he has the lowest favorability
Speaker 1: rating of you know, the set of the four Kamala
Speaker 1: tim Walls, Donald Trump and him, he has the lowest
Speaker 1: favorability ratings. There's no real putting your finger on whatever
Speaker 1: that lack of an X factor or whatever, the off
Speaker 1: putting nature of him, which I think is tied up
Speaker 1: in some of this like weird childless cat lady type
Speaker 1: comments that is completely absent from this as well, which
Speaker 1: to me was an interesting insight too.
Speaker 2: Ken.
Speaker 1: Before we move on to you know, sort of what
Speaker 1: has happened with you and Twitter, etc. Since this was published.
Speaker 1: The handling of these hacked documents obviously very different from
Speaker 1: how the media handled the Hillary Clinton campaign hacked documents
Speaker 1: back in twenty sixteen. Now, one argument you could say is,
Speaker 1: you know a lot of liberals were very us said
Speaker 1: about that. People like you and me supported the you know,
Speaker 1: publishing of those hacked materials because guess what, journalists get
Speaker 1: weird source materials from sketchy people all the time. You
Speaker 1: factor in their motivation, but if it's legitimate information, the
Speaker 1: public deserves to see it. So we supported that, but
Speaker 1: a lot of liberals didn't. And so one of the
Speaker 1: arguments is, okay, well, the news outlets were pressured by
Speaker 1: liberals to change their ways, and they basically quote unquote
Speaker 1: learned their lesson and decided this time around they were
Speaker 1: not going to publish hacked materials that may have come
Speaker 1: from an Iranian government actor. And again, we'll put a
Speaker 1: pin in that and discuss that more later. What is
Speaker 1: your sense of why the handling this time appears to
Speaker 1: have been so different from the handling back in twenty sixteen.
Speaker 3: I think the point that you made is essentially right,
Speaker 3: and that's kind of half of the story. I'll get
Speaker 3: to the second half in a moment, but the first
Speaker 3: half of the stories that media has locked themselves into
Speaker 3: this narrative. I don't mean to say they've said this explicitly,
Speaker 3: but the kind of vibe in twenty sixteen or twenty
Speaker 3: seventeen was oh, on the part of a huge number
Speaker 3: of liberals was oh Trump, you know, Trump won because
Speaker 3: of election interference from the Russians. Now, if you actually
Speaker 3: break down the data and look at that, I don't
Speaker 3: think there's a lot of evidence. Yeah, not the case,
Speaker 3: but that was the vibe and because of it, and
Speaker 3: when the media affirms that, then they lock themselves into
Speaker 3: that rationale. And so then when you have another foreign
Speaker 3: interference case like this, well we've already gone pot committed
Speaker 3: for this narrative before, so I guess we have to
Speaker 3: follow through with it. And in the next case, and
Speaker 3: that happens to be about a Republican It's very strange.
Speaker 3: It's very surreal to see these publications Democracy dies in darkness.
Speaker 3: I mean some of the most stridently you know, liberal
Speaker 3: and resistance figures being like, no, we can't use this
Speaker 3: thing about JD. Vance. It's like surreal. I didn't this
Speaker 3: is completely assided from why I published it because I
Speaker 3: just generally think if something's about a public official and
Speaker 3: it relates to policy, like that's fair game. But it's
Speaker 3: just bizarre to watch. As to the second dimension that
Speaker 3: I mentioned before, I think that that is much more
Speaker 3: in sitious one that's not being talked about very much.
Speaker 3: There has been, and I've reported on this on my
Speaker 3: sub stack the last five months or so that we
Speaker 3: run it on the obsession with foreign influence campaigns, including disinformation.
Speaker 3: They have up new offices across the federal government to
Speaker 3: focus on this purported problem. Now, I don't deny that
Speaker 3: it exists. I don't deny that the Iranians, the Russians
Speaker 3: in the Chinese are doing this. I take the intelligence
Speaker 3: communities assessments at their word, at least in at least
Speaker 3: in broad strokes. But the efficacy of those programs there's
Speaker 3: almost no evidence to suggest that they're broadly efficacious.
Speaker 1: It's often very selective. It's only the official bad guys
Speaker 1: that we get upset about when they're interfering in our elections.
Speaker 1: There's been quite a bit of reporting, including by Haratz
Speaker 1: and The New York Times, about Israeli official government influence operations,
Speaker 1: and those don't get the same level of national security
Speaker 1: state scrutiny to.
Speaker 3: Stay the least exactly, So setting all that aside for
Speaker 3: a moment, the media sees that, and frankly, it's scary
Speaker 3: to them. I mean, when I worked at the Intercept,
Speaker 3: I got a number of the Tertiarra documents early and
Speaker 3: I wanted to just publish the underlying documents, and they
Speaker 3: balked because I don't remember how I was described exactly,
Speaker 3: but there was clearly concern about just the whole There's
Speaker 3: just this ambiance our national security and the FBI, and
Speaker 3: oh god, what do we do? And so I really
Speaker 3: think that part of part of this, which is not
Speaker 3: talked about, is that when the government obsesses with foreign
Speaker 3: influence campaigns, and you saw it in the case of
Speaker 3: this ridiculous those those Tenet media guys, and I mean,
Speaker 3: it's just so ridiculous. Yeah, And obviously I'm fine with
Speaker 3: DJ prosecuting that. Nope, I mean that makes sense. But
Speaker 3: you look at the actual numbers of the videos and
Speaker 3: you guys get more views than them in like a week,
Speaker 3: it's than they did in an entire year. I mean,
Speaker 3: these are not huge operations. And again I would like
Speaker 3: for them not to happen, but to just throw the
Speaker 3: baby out with the bathwater and say, you know, we've
Speaker 3: got to stop doing news and get the public access
Speaker 3: to things for fear of this abstract thing, which again
Speaker 3: there is no evidence that it has swung in a
Speaker 3: presidential election before. There just isn't right, and there's there's
Speaker 3: a lack of evidence that it's swung elections down ballot either.
Speaker 3: And so you can both think it exists and think
Speaker 3: it's bad, but then have a sort of rational and
Speaker 3: proportional response to it which doesn't include this just freak
Speaker 3: out about it, you know, just upending American society, Like
Speaker 3: that's not easy to do our own politicians can't propagandize
Speaker 3: us effectively. Do you know how hard that is?
Speaker 2: Hard?
Speaker 3: That is culturally to do that? From a different I always.
Speaker 1: Think about that too. I mean, billions of dollars will
Speaker 1: be spent on the election trying to move the needle
Speaker 1: by a half a percentage point, and yet somehow people
Speaker 1: will can be convinced that you know, a handful of
Speaker 1: poorly worded, like awkward Russian memes through the election to
Speaker 1: Donald Rummer twenty sixteen, is like, all.
Speaker 3: Right, exactly.
Speaker 1: So I think there's also a real paternalism about deciding
Speaker 1: what you think the public can handle, what information you
Speaker 1: think the public is allowed to have access to, if
Speaker 1: it's accurate information and it's newsworthy, you know, to me,
Speaker 1: that's that's sort of the bar and the standard. And
Speaker 1: I think that's you know, that's what you've articulated as well,
Speaker 1: just very quickly, you know, is it your sense put
Speaker 1: this up on the screen while you're talking, but is
Speaker 1: it your sense that these were documents that were hacked
Speaker 1: by the Iranian government? That's been sort of suggested but
Speaker 1: not definitively, you know, asserted. The Trump campaign certainly seems
Speaker 1: to suggest that. We also just got this news that
Speaker 1: federal grand juries indicted multiple Iranian nationals for their involvement
Speaker 1: in a plot to hack and steal non public materials
Speaker 1: from form President Trump's campaign. Could be that what you
Speaker 1: receive this JD vance, you know, vetting document, could have
Speaker 1: been among those non public materials that were hacked by
Speaker 1: Iranian nationals. What is your sense or what is your
Speaker 1: view of that?
Speaker 3: That's my guess, yes, But I'm glad that you pointed
Speaker 3: out that, you know, this is just a possibility. Here's
Speaker 3: a lot of sloppy media coverage around this. I've read
Speaker 3: the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, that's the
Speaker 3: agency that oversees the whole intelligence community, and their statements,
Speaker 3: if you read them carefully, they've said that there's malicious
Speaker 3: cyber activities from the you know, I Iranian connected directed
Speaker 3: at and they even named Trump, which is unusual, but
Speaker 3: they won't say which. There's no specifics as to which articles,
Speaker 3: which hacks, which you know what specific information, and so
Speaker 3: that would certainly apply to all of this and what
Speaker 3: I'm working with. So it makes sense. But the truth is,
Speaker 3: we just don't know, and we have to be careful
Speaker 3: with it, not just in the abstract, because going back
Speaker 3: to twenty sixteen, for example, there were Russian state backed
Speaker 3: hacks of democratic information, but there was at the exact
Speaker 3: same time contemporaneously a hack of Hillary Clinton's emails by
Speaker 3: just some random I'm trying to remember what country it was,
Speaker 3: Romanian national. I think he went by the Hanngele Guchafer
Speaker 3: And it came out that he was just some dude
Speaker 3: that was just like didn't like Hillary Clinton. It was like,
Speaker 3: I'm going to hack intor emails that he did it,
Speaker 3: and any reasonable observer at that time I probably would
Speaker 3: have just assumed, Yeah, it's probably the Russians, because that's
Speaker 3: what they're doing too. But the world is complicated and
Speaker 3: chaotic and there's so many different things, so, you know,
Speaker 3: gun to my head, would I guess it's er Anians? Yeah,
Speaker 3: I would guess that, but I don't know, and I'm
Speaker 3: careful to say that I don't know, and I resent
Speaker 3: that when you were careful to try to get the
Speaker 3: facts right, people like, oh, are you trying to defend
Speaker 3: your Antians? No, we just don't know, and I'm trying
Speaker 3: to be careful with that, you know, Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely all right.
Speaker 1: So let's move on to the subsequent events which have
Speaker 1: made you a central part of this story, which is
Speaker 1: that after you publish this dossier and you posted about
Speaker 1: it and linked to the substack, your substack where the
Speaker 1: dossier was posted, you were banned by Elon Musk and
Speaker 1: I want to put up on the screen you posted.
Speaker 1: This is also from your sub stack. I want to
Speaker 1: put up here the reason that they gave you, and
Speaker 1: so it says your account has been suspended for violating
Speaker 1: the X rules. Due to a user report, specifically for
Speaker 1: violating our rules against posting private information. You may not
Speaker 1: publish or post other people's private information without their express
Speaker 1: authorization and permission. So they're asserting that they took down
Speaker 1: your account and by the way, banned people from even
Speaker 1: linking to your substack because of effectively of doxing you
Speaker 1: published this entire report, including some information about jd Vance,
Speaker 1: including a portion of his social Security number, an email address,
Speaker 1: and a home address. So, first of all, you know,
Speaker 1: just give me your reaction if you think that's really
Speaker 1: the reason why twitter Is has suspended your account and
Speaker 1: is banning the linking to this report, and also your
Speaker 1: rationale for why you didn't take out those private personal details.
Speaker 3: Okay, so first of all, I think I think that's
Speaker 3: a pretext. Of course, Elana is not going to come
Speaker 3: on and say we don't like his politics. He's criticizing
Speaker 3: the guy gave a bunch of money too, and we're
Speaker 3: gonna get rid of him. They have to come up
Speaker 3: with something else. And every time I've done a high
Speaker 3: profile story, this is what happens. They find some detail
Speaker 3: to to try to make the story about that. Now
Speaker 3: I'll explain in a moment why we decided to publish
Speaker 3: what we did, which it included what you said. But
Speaker 3: first of all, I want to point to something that
Speaker 3: was really weird and interesting in that screenshot that you
Speaker 3: showed viewers describing my suspension from Twitter. So it of
Speaker 3: course includes the link to the Vance dossier, but includes
Speaker 3: a second one, and nobody seems to have noticed this,
Speaker 3: and it's really important. The second tweet, foreign Influence, is
Speaker 3: me saying foreign influence operations are a joke and if
Speaker 3: you think they can swing an election, a presidential election,
Speaker 3: you need to take a deep breath. And it links
Speaker 3: to my story making that case. There is no private
Speaker 3: information in that tweet. That was articulating the point that
Speaker 3: we've just been talking about this past few minutes. And
Speaker 3: it's very interesting that that was included in the band
Speaker 3: because there's no again, there's no private information to speak of.
Speaker 3: It's just making the case that I that I said before,
Speaker 3: which I think is uncontroversial, but which there's currently I
Speaker 3: think a sort of moral panic around that the government
Speaker 3: is gonna there's some foreign government is going to redirect
Speaker 3: an election, and which social media companies are terrified of
Speaker 3: getting called in front of Congress and asked questions about
Speaker 3: and and you know, drilled about and are making every
Speaker 3: effort to look like they're complying with what the federal
Speaker 3: government wants, which I think is problematic. And so I
Speaker 3: really want to know why they included that among it,
Speaker 3: because those are the only two emails listed. Again, that
Speaker 3: was just an analysis piece. I think I interviewed a
Speaker 3: couple of people, but there were no documents. And so
Speaker 3: that makes the point that that I want to make
Speaker 3: with all this, which is that these companies are terrified
Speaker 3: of having the government say, hey, you didn't respond sufficiently
Speaker 3: to this threat after the election doesn't go one party's
Speaker 3: way or the other's way. And to the question, to
Speaker 3: the point about the addresses and the partial Social Security number,
Speaker 3: all of that information is publicly available. It is not
Speaker 3: factually true to say that that you can say informally,
Speaker 3: you can say sort of like informally that's private information.
Speaker 3: But media companies buy it for research. I could go
Speaker 3: on my computer right now and in two minutes pull
Speaker 3: up an address, put and pull up any of this
Speaker 3: information that they're talking about. Journalists do it all the time.
Speaker 3: Corporations are selling this stuff. The people running those people
Speaker 3: running for office preside over a legal system which does
Speaker 3: not regulate that kind of information. So it's out there
Speaker 3: in the open. You can literally google and find all
Speaker 3: of those addresses that were listed on there. The reason
Speaker 3: we did this, and it was an intentional was because
Speaker 3: the whole point of the story is that we are
Speaker 3: tired of adhering to these norms that exists to deprive
Speaker 3: people of information. And it felt dishonest to decide, Oh,
Speaker 3: but we're going to do this for a public figure
Speaker 3: who's running for vice president, who the media has done
Speaker 3: segments of in front of his house early including last week,
Speaker 3: like including on the house, like the address label, like
Speaker 3: in front of the door. So I think that this
Speaker 3: entire thing is a tempest in the teapot, and to
Speaker 3: the extent that people are oh, I, you know, I
Speaker 3: sympathize with this kind of thing. He's not a private
Speaker 3: individuals not at that house. That's not how this works.
Speaker 3: He's going around campaigning, And I guess more generally, I'm
Speaker 3: just frustrated by the there there's there's a mission creep
Speaker 3: that exists when the media is like, oh, we got
Speaker 3: to get you know, you can't do this, You can't
Speaker 3: do that. And then I was going through the document
Speaker 3: and thinking about this, and it occurred to me, there's
Speaker 3: all kinds of address stuff for businesses, does that count
Speaker 3: of something you'd redact? And then for associates businesses, And
Speaker 3: it's kind of like this whole game that I just
Speaker 3: I have played it in the past. You know, I'll
Speaker 3: be candidate about that, but at a certain point, I'm
Speaker 3: just like, what is the point of any of this?
Speaker 3: Is this is a public figure that has a security
Speaker 3: detail and is facing less. You know. It's just so
Speaker 3: it's kind of a philosophical point. And I understand that
Speaker 3: I probably in the minority there, but that is the
Speaker 3: philosophical position that we have on freedom of information.
Speaker 1: So let me lay on the countercase and you can,
Speaker 1: you know, you can respond to it. So the countercase
Speaker 1: would be, listen, he may not be there, but his
Speaker 1: family is, and yes, this information if you want to
Speaker 1: dig and find his address, there's no doubt that you can.
Speaker 1: But you know, as public figures, you and I being
Speaker 1: less of public figures than dat e vance, but still
Speaker 1: being public figures, you know it if it takes a
Speaker 1: few hoops for people to jump through to find my
Speaker 1: home address, I prefer it that way because you're just
Speaker 1: going to end up with a little bit less crazy
Speaker 1: at your doorstop and your mailbox, etc. If you make
Speaker 1: it widely available, you open up the funnel, so you're
Speaker 1: likely to get a little more weirdness at your doorstep.
Speaker 1: That's that's one piece, And then, of course this is
Speaker 1: all in the context of his running mate having just
Speaker 1: you know, gone through two different assassination attempts.
Speaker 2: And then the other.
Speaker 1: Piece is like, it's hard to argue that a partial
Speaker 1: social Security number and a home address have any sort
Speaker 1: of news value, So why not just air on the side,
Speaker 1: which is kind of standard practice. As I think you
Speaker 1: would you would acknowledge of just taking those details out
Speaker 1: since they really aren't important, newsworthy details for the public.
Speaker 2: What's your response to that.
Speaker 3: I spent a long time interrogating my views on because
Speaker 3: this whole story is about what I said before, media paternalism,
Speaker 3: and you know, the media knows best this kind of thing,
Speaker 3: and at a certain point, I'm just like, how do
Speaker 3: I'm still if you're drawing a line somewhere, you're ultimately guessing,
Speaker 3: and you're doing that, and it felt hypocritical in the
Speaker 3: context of the story that we're doing, which is like
Speaker 3: a response to media paternalism to be like, oh, but
Speaker 3: we know about this. And I considered the you know,
Speaker 3: knock on effects, and I thought, you know, a home
Speaker 3: and then I mean, it's that you can't tell what
Speaker 3: the social security number is. I think half of it
Speaker 3: is redacted. That's why it's in the report. That's how
Speaker 3: they were able to get it. And that was ultimately
Speaker 3: my view. It just felt fake. It felt it felt
Speaker 3: phony to say, hey, media doesn't no best, then we
Speaker 3: know best.
Speaker 1: So let me put this up on the screen from
Speaker 1: Glenn Greenwald, who you know was broadly supportive of you
Speaker 1: and has been fairly consistent on freedom of speech issues,
Speaker 1: you know, whether it was Hillary Clinton or the Hunter
Speaker 1: Biden laptop. We'll talk more about the Hunter Biden laptop
Speaker 1: and potential hypocrisy with the handling or the treatment of
Speaker 1: that from the right, or you know, with regard to
Speaker 1: pro Palestine speech. Like he's been fairly consistent. So he says,
Speaker 1: there's no question the Vance report that was published did
Speaker 1: contain information that should have been redacted prior to publication,
Speaker 1: including Vance's home address, but not only that. The solution
Speaker 1: is to take that down, repost a redactive version, and
Speaker 1: reinstate Ken's account. What is your opposition to You know,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't even have to necessarily take this version down
Speaker 1: just posting a separate version that doesn't have those details
Speaker 1: and then linking to that on Twitter, and that way
Speaker 1: you're kind of calling Elon's bluff of like, all right, well,
Speaker 1: it's really about this quote unquote docxing. Here's a version
Speaker 1: that has all the details that you want stripped out,
Speaker 1: stripped down. Now, am I good to go? And you know,
Speaker 1: if the answer is yes, okay, that's one thing. If
Speaker 1: the answer is still know, then the ideological motivation behind
Speaker 1: this action becomes even more clear.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's funny you say that, because that is exactly
Speaker 3: what we were planning to do shortly, oh yeah, and
Speaker 3: put the onus on him and still have that, still
Speaker 3: have that document available, because there's all kinds of ways
Speaker 3: that you can that you can host things. But then
Speaker 3: see and then say, okay, well, so Elon, so this
Speaker 3: is all about that, then what's what's this about? I
Speaker 3: think what you'll find is that it's going to show
Speaker 3: that this this whole thing wasn't about that. It was
Speaker 3: about the it was about the hack of a political
Speaker 3: candidate whom he has given large sums of money and
Speaker 3: helps that will win. Yeah, so I guess, well, I
Speaker 3: guess we'll see what happens.
Speaker 1: We will see what happens. Oh, we got a little
Speaker 1: breaking news from you. I appreciate that. Let me get
Speaker 1: you to respond directly to what Elon said here.
Speaker 2: He describes this as.
Speaker 1: One of the most egregious evil doxing actions we've ever seen.
Speaker 1: Presidential candidates are not speculatively in danger. There have already
Speaker 1: been two attempts on Donald Trump's life. Moreover, the doxing
Speaker 1: included detailed information on the addresses of their children. So
Speaker 1: what is your response to Elon's commentary here, specifically saying
Speaker 1: this was an evil one of the most egregious evil
Speaker 1: dosing actions that he has ever seen.
Speaker 3: Well, this is the same guy that said that somebody
Speaker 3: posting public information about the location of his private jet
Speaker 3: are assassination coordinates. So am I surprised that he's being
Speaker 3: a little hysterically here, No, that's who he is. I mean,
Speaker 3: I hope that people recognize it's hysterical and that these
Speaker 3: comments come in the context of these other crazy things
Speaker 3: He said about is. I mean, these billionaires, they want
Speaker 3: a degree of privacy that nobody else has. That's the
Speaker 3: point of this this information. Anybody with an Nexus account
Speaker 3: can access literally in ten seconds. Corporations have it, the
Speaker 3: media has it, with the one audience that can't seem
Speaker 3: to have access to it as regular people, and that's
Speaker 3: frustrated to me. I understand that this is sort of
Speaker 3: a abstract point that I'm making, but I don't know.
Speaker 3: Just a lot of people disagree with me. A lot
Speaker 3: of my friends disagree with me, But I'm just trying
Speaker 3: to candidly articulate, like what my point of view on
Speaker 3: it is. I mean, I don't want anybody to get hurt.
Speaker 3: I don't want anybody to get threatened, and when we
Speaker 3: publish it, my honest guess was that they wouldn't. And
Speaker 3: I'm frustrated that he says that, you know, this plays
Speaker 3: into these streats. The threat matrix, as I've reported, as
Speaker 3: I've gone on the show to talk about, exists because
Speaker 3: of the breakdown of the national security state that is
Speaker 3: pushing this entire threat inflation ideology in the first place,
Speaker 3: that they the fact that a shooter can even get
Speaker 3: on a roof that is a profound failure on the
Speaker 3: part of these agencies. It is not speech that's causing
Speaker 3: these things to happen, and the insinuation that that's kind
Speaker 3: of the catalyst for this is very dangerous and takes
Speaker 3: the onus off of these ridiculously incompetent agencies to do
Speaker 3: the most basic function of their job, which is protect
Speaker 3: current informer presidents. And so yeah, that really pissed me off.
Speaker 1: So one of the responses that resonated with me, and
Speaker 1: just to be candid, like I would not have included
Speaker 1: those details. I don't think it's the biggest deal in
Speaker 1: the world that you did. As you said, this is
Speaker 1: you know, largely publicly of it is publicly available if
Speaker 1: you search for it. But I would not have made
Speaker 1: that choice. I'm also not a journalist. But one of
Speaker 1: the things that I thought was important to note is,
Speaker 1: you know the right and Elon Musk specifically made a
Speaker 1: big deal of the fact that the information on that
Speaker 1: that was you know, taken from the Hunter Biden laptop,
Speaker 1: that that was blocked on Twitter, that you couldn't share it,
Speaker 1: You couldn't even DM it if you shared it. Even
Speaker 1: you accounts are getting banned just from sharing links to
Speaker 1: this information. And you know that was described by the
Speaker 1: right as election interference, and you know, I was sympathetic
Speaker 1: to that. I don't think it you know, through the
Speaker 1: election for Joe Biden. But I don't think that it
Speaker 1: was the right choice that was made there in terms of,
Speaker 1: you know, in the interest of free speech and in
Speaker 1: the interest of you know, public having all of the
Speaker 1: information they possibly can to make an important decision about
Speaker 1: who they're going to vote for for president of the
Speaker 1: United States. But Leifong, who you know, we both know,
Speaker 1: and who's a former colleague of yours, says the Hunter
Speaker 1: Biden laptop, which had news where the info that was
Speaker 1: fair game, also had personal docs info far more than
Speaker 1: this vance doc. The Biden laptop had bank and credit cards,
Speaker 1: personal addresses, nudity, etc. You can still link to those
Speaker 1: Biden docks on x, but the vance doc link is
Speaker 1: banned question mark. And I do think that sort of
Speaker 1: exposes the ideological motivation here, which again I mean I
Speaker 1: shouldn't be surprised to anyone. Elon Musk is one of
Speaker 1: the largest contributors to Donald Trump's campaign. As far as
Speaker 1: we know, he appears to run x explicitly as a
Speaker 1: platform to try to favor Donald Trump. Whether that's working
Speaker 1: for him or not is another question. But the very
Speaker 1: different approach to those two stories, to me, kind of
Speaker 1: gives up the game of the ideological motivations behind this,
Speaker 1: behind this banning. And Lee has also noted, which I
Speaker 1: think is important. Note as well, you also didn't publish
Speaker 1: those details on Twitter. You provided a link to your
Speaker 1: substack where those details were available, and that's also a
Speaker 1: different approach than has been taken in the past. In
Speaker 1: the past, the standard has been okay, if these public
Speaker 1: details of these private details are published on Twitter, that
Speaker 1: could get you banned. But if you're linking to something
Speaker 1: that links to something that has those details, as far
Speaker 1: as I know, that has never passed muster in terms
Speaker 1: of causing an account suspension.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the parallels with the Hunter Biden laptop case are
Speaker 3: so overwhelming. I saw a number of conservatives, including Nick
Speaker 3: Fuentes of all people, defending me and saying, look, I
Speaker 3: don't like this communist guy or whatever, but this is wrong.
Speaker 3: And I was stunned because these are like never in
Speaker 3: my you know, most insane like eating too much pizza.
Speaker 3: If we're going to bed induced nightmares. Would I have
Speaker 3: imagined that these types of people would be defending me.
Speaker 3: But I mean, honestly, credit to them for actually having
Speaker 3: some measure principle on some specific issue. Because they're on
Speaker 3: this issue, they're right and and and so I think
Speaker 3: that really speaks to it. And I don't know, well,
Speaker 3: I mean, what can you say? It's just so absurd, right,
Speaker 3: I mean, it's like a meme at this point, like
Speaker 3: oh yeah, quote unquote Elon Musk, free speech warrior. But
Speaker 3: it's like, I can't really think of a more kind
Speaker 3: of vivid rebuttal of that of his of his self sould,
Speaker 3: what do you call himself? An absolute an absolutist on speech?
Speaker 3: Then then the thing that Republicans like him are most
Speaker 3: activated by than and doing the doing basically the exact
Speaker 3: same thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, last question for you, Ken is about you personally.
Speaker 1: You know, Elon Musk is very powerful individual, very wealthy
Speaker 1: individual as a big microphone megaphone in terms of running
Speaker 1: this platform. Uh, he also has a very devoted following,
Speaker 1: so you know he's been expressing a lot of concern
Speaker 1: about threat spacing.
Speaker 2: JdE Vance and potentially Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: You knows as this resulted a larger number or an
Speaker 1: increased level of direct threats to you the way that
Speaker 1: you've been you know, described as your actions, described as evil,
Speaker 1: et cetera.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, and I'm not remotely worried about it because they're
Speaker 3: very noisy elon fans. I've gone through this type of
Speaker 3: a new cycle before, it's never resulted anything. I don't
Speaker 3: expect to result in anything here. And that's another point
Speaker 3: I want to make. I've always been consistent on this.
Speaker 3: When people post the same information that I included in
Speaker 3: that dossier about me, I don't love it, but I've
Speaker 3: never once reported them. I've never complained about it. You
Speaker 3: can go through my comments. I've never said, hey, this
Speaker 3: is like this person should be ejected from whatever the
Speaker 3: platform is, because I don't believe that that's true. I
Speaker 3: don't like it. I think it's unpleasant, say it's rude even,
Speaker 3: but to say that's a threat, I mean, it's just
Speaker 3: so evocative of Again, this is a national security brain
Speaker 3: where you're looking at threat matrixes and who's going to
Speaker 3: come and attack us and all these kind of things,
Speaker 3: and I just I don't think that's a help the
Speaker 3: place for society and I think there's a creep where
Speaker 3: people's concept of what constitutes a threat. Look at the
Speaker 3: word doxing, for example, that has come to encompass so
Speaker 3: many things beyond what it initially meant, which it had
Speaker 3: a specific meaning initially, and now you see people throw
Speaker 3: that word around to describe anything. That's what Elon is
Speaker 3: playing into when he says, oh, you're doxing my jet
Speaker 3: or whatever, and it's like, where is the limit? This
Speaker 3: is going to keep good? You know what I mean?
Speaker 3: Public individuals are going to keep exploiting people's understandable empathy
Speaker 3: for these things, not realizing that they exist in a
Speaker 3: very different world than an ordinary private person does. I mean,
Speaker 3: they have private security, they don't live at the houses
Speaker 3: that they have listed or whatever. It's like completely different
Speaker 3: situation and I feel like they're exploiting it, and so
Speaker 3: I needed to do a story on that. Really, it's
Speaker 3: like the kind of sprawling counter threat ideology and how
Speaker 3: it's encompassing more and more things and it results in
Speaker 3: less speech. And that's the thing I'm most concerned about.
Speaker 3: It's just this attitude and will shift on what is
Speaker 3: acceptable speech.
Speaker 1: Well, one thing I will say, ken is, you know
Speaker 1: people may or may not disagree with the way you
Speaker 1: handle this, the decisions you made, et cetera, but I
Speaker 1: don't think anyone could disagree that you've been principled when
Speaker 1: each of these cases has come up. So Ken, tell
Speaker 1: people where they can find you on substacks, since you,
Speaker 1: at least for now are not on Twitter, if they
Speaker 1: want to support your work.
Speaker 3: My subseec is Kenklippenstein dot com.
Speaker 1: All right, Ken, thank you for your time this morning.
Speaker 1: It's great to see you.
Speaker 3: Good talking to you, Crystal.