Welcome back, everyone to a new episode of You Were Wrong with Molly Hemingway
and David Harsani. Just a reminder, if you'd like to email the show,
please do so at radio at the Federalist dot com. We love to
hear from you. Molly, did you hear about this reporter at New York
Magazine who handed fifty thousand dollars in cash to some stranger who claimed to be
with the CIA in front of her home? I forget if it was Brooklyn
or Manhattan, then just dropped it into their car and let them drive away
with it. I did I read that story. What makes that story quite
interesting and funny is that it was the financial advice columnist for the New York
mag And I don't want to make too much listen first, I just want
to actually preface this by saying, I am pretty skeptical that that story's true.
Do you do you have? Are you skeptical at all? It seemed
so. I know that scams happen all the time, but that particular scam
seemed to be setting off alarm bells for anyone who's reading about it in like
ten different places, and that it didn't for her, and that someone she
didn't know managed to get her to like lie to her husband and you know,
go to a bank and get fifty thousand dollars cash. It was very
hard for me to believe. So I'm open to the idea that maybe this
is a cover story for how she lost you know, fifty thousand dollars or
something. But I don't. I don't know, I really don't. Are
we maybe overestimating how smart people in the media are. It's what I'm thinking
here, by trying to rationalize what she did, if we can just first
point out that scams happen, and they keep happening because they work, right,
I mean, I know people who I do not consider to be not
bright who have almost fallen for the scam where someone calls and claims they're a
family member who's been injured in a car accident and they need money at the
hospital. You know. My next door neighbor, her son tells me that
she's kind of falling for scams all the time, although she's older and very
vulnerable to them. So I understand that they were They happen because they work,
So I don't want to make light of the fact that they do work.
I think it's probably very embarrassing to have it happen. But this particular
one, the CIA told her to pull out money to protect her money from
an identity theft ring that they had just told her about, just seems like
there were ten steps along the way where she didn't do good journalism. In
response, I mean, yes, maybe that's because journalists don't do journalism anymore.
Yeah, I don't want to diminish how the seriousness of scammers. I
know some people in my own life who are older and have almost been scammed
by you know, pretty sophisticated spots or whatever. You know, It's not
I get it. Oh, however, I'm oh sorry, on, no,
go on. I was just going to say, with AI being able
to imitate voices, I imagine that scams are just going to get super charged
now, because it really will sound like your son calling you to tell you
that he's in a bind and needs money or something. Yeah. I mean,
I think there's a special place in hell for people whose who target the
elderly with stuff, you know, with with that that kind of thing.
So, but I'm just saying, if you're a journalist, your job is
to be skeptical somewhat to begin with. And even if this was like really
the CIA, I still wouldn't hand them fifty thousand dollars. Really, what
is the especially not handle hand money to the CIA? Like, I don't
know much, but I know they're up to no good. And also the
CIA is not supposed to operate within the United States, so I would have
a lot of I would have a lot of questions before my fifty thousand dollars
was handed over to a stranger who drove away. I just thought it was
interesting because I have a low opinion of modern journalists. And I'm not trying
to pick on this one woman, but she is the financial advice columnist,
and I'm not sure how you keep your job after handing fifty thousand dollars over
to scammers. After that, it does seem to be a fireable offense for
that particular job. It's almost like falling for the Russia collusion hoax, right,
It is always to have your job, and yet so many have And
I believe the response to people quote unquote falling for the Russia collusion hoax was
to give them awards. Why is there any news on that front? David,
Actually, neither you brought something up. I just remembered something we had
not planned for. Is that what's your name? Natasha Bertrand, Natasha Fusion
GPS Bertrand. She was nicknamed Fusion GPS because she funneled Fusion GPS propaganda to
corporate media outlets about the Russia collusion hoax. She also was the author of
the story that fifty one intel experts say that Hunter Hunter Biden's laptop is Russian
disinformation. Natasha Fusion GPS Bertrand, she probably shouldn't be in journalism, right,
No, she should not. When I remember that famous New York Times
magazine piece about Ben Rhodes, Yeah, I thought you were bringing her up
because she got a promotion, and I was trying to set you up to
say that, Oh yeah, I was going to say it after this next
comment, thank you. Yes, she got a promotion at CNN. She's
falling upwards and upwards. Where what is she at CNN? She's some senior
reporting us there a hoax editor. I was just going to mention that.
I was just going to quickly say that that famous piece about Ben Roads in
the New York Times magazine, about the echo chamber and about fooling these young
reporters into just repeating what every year say. Every time I think about that
or read about it, her face is the image that's in my mind,
like I think of people like her and her specifically. And speaking of the
Russia collusion hoax, have you seen that there are a bunch of politicians now
who are back on the Russia collusion bandwagon. This is I think it's going
to be a major talking point again. I saw Nancy Pelosi the other day.
Here's the Jen Saki asks Nancy Pelosi, We're all wondering what do you
think Utin has on Trump? Nancy Pelosi, I don't know what he has
on him, but I think it's probably financial. Now, his his taxes
were leaked, right, you know, we know everything he's done. He's
one of the most famous men. A two year Special Council prosecution was ginned
up precisely to find even the tiniest little bit of substantiation the delusional conspiracy theory
that Russians had something on Donald Trump, and they were unable to find a
single solitary even like whisper of a thing related to that. And Nancy Pelosi
is bringing back the old hits, but she's not alone a bunch. I
saw the usual characters doing the same thing. But now you mentioned Muller,
but there was also you know, there's there was a house investigation, there's
a Senate investigation. There was there's every media outlet on earth with tons of
money in their pockets, probably engaged in years long investigations to try to find
something, and none of them have ever found anything. But yet they continue
talking about this and they're treated with respect by these major media organizations. Though
they are no better than an Alex Jones or whatever. I mean, they're
no better. It's just there's anesthetically, yeah, they're worse, yes,
because this is normalized and given credence by media. But there's this quote how
Man. I forget who said it, but someone once said that. You
know that there's authoritarianism or totalitarianism when people stop debating issues and start only talking
about motivations. And that's what I feel like is happens today. They can't
even debate issues. I don't care if you hate Donald Trump, you can
debate the issues he's talking about, tell us why we should be in Ukraine.
But no, it has to be always some conspiracy, some plot,
some you know, blackmail, and I can't believe we have to go through
like come up with a new conspiracy theory. I don't want to relive the
last one again. Well. I think part of the problem though, is
that people if the only response to Nancy Pelosi saying that she believes a delusional
conspiracy theory about this, or a media entity treating it like that's a legitimate
thing to say, is mockery and derision and condemnation. It's not to engage
the topic. It's not to say, Okay, here's how we know that
Donald Trump didn't commit turns out Donald Trump was not a secret sleeper spy for
Russia for twenty years. And the only crazy people think that, you know,
you just you just sort of don't even give it the time of day.
I think you mock it. Yeah, we mock it. So all
of this kind of came about, I think because Donald Trump said that if
Europe wasn't going to pay up there, you're supposed to use a certain percentage
of your GDP on military needs in Europe. And none of these countries pay
their bills. Germany hasn't paid up. I think it's two or three percent.
They're supposed to pony up every year for decades, like we've just been
protecting these people, you know, and even Barack Obama had a problem with
that. But then Trump of course takes it, you know, a step
two four and says, I'll let Russia do whatever it wants, you know,
and everyone immediately. But again again this is not twenty sixteen. So
in twenty sixteen, Donald Trump said, I don't think we should be paying
for all of NATO's defense. We're all supposed to pay, you know,
x percentage of GDP, and we're not seeing that from these other countries.
And then as they claimed that there was this existential threat Houghton on their borders
about to overrun all of Europe, and you'd say, gosh, if that's
true, and there's a lot of reason to think that that's not true.
But if you believed that to be true, wouldn't you be spending much more
on defense? And so, you know, in twenty sixteen, Trump is
talking about like the need to pay more, and then during his administration he
actually gets them to pay more, although still not sufficient to the issue at
hand. This is not immediately following World War Two, where we are basically
subsidizing everybody because their countries were destroyed. This is many decades later. The
year the current year is twenty twenty four. So if if they're in,
they're grown up. Countries really grown up and the boar was long time ago,
and so they need to be paying their own share. And so yeah,
he says like, if you're not paying your share and putin comes in,
I'm not going to worry about it, or something like that. And
everyone pretends like they don't understand what's going on, which is Trump is saying,
I'm sick of subsidizing for eighty plus years your defense budget. Now,
that is an incredibly important point. I wrote about this in my book on
Europe. You know, there was there was a huge boom in Europe in
the post war years for the countries that were destroyed, and we helped that
along to whatever extent. But what we really did was give them an umbrella
of protection that allowed them to use a lot of their you know, you
know, to save a lot of money and a lot of manpower not to
have to build these armed forces. But now, why are we still doing
it to the same extent. It doesn't make any sense to me. You
say anything against NATO and people get hysterical, like you're talking about giving up
a state or something. Well, we're not Europe, and I you know,
Germany is one of the richest countries on Earth, and they don't even
pay three percent of their GDP into protecting Europe there on borders. I just
don't I think, you know, I think Trump has a good point on
that. So anyway, and even if he was saying I like Putin better
than I like, you know, I like Moscow better than Berlin, that
still doesn't make him a trader to the United States. It's a position you're
allowed to take here. By the way, I keep forgetting that we're not
actually at war supposedly with Russia. And it's not treachery to say something about
the guy that's nice like Tucker maybe did you know recently or whatever? I
think they're wrong, but it's not treachery. It's not sedition anyway, I
don't know. You see, we're just talking about doing the same thing we
did five six years ago, Right, We're talking about the same dumb topic,
don't you think. Yeah? But I so, I've been extremely busy
for the last week, and therefore how I'm getting my news and information is
a little bit disrupted. So you said you thought that the Russia colusion hoax
was starting again because Trump said that NATO countries should pay their fair share.
But I kind of thought it was starting again because that double agent we had
that we used for many years and paid a lot of money too, was
charged with lying about the Biden family corruption. No matter what side of funding
the war in Ukraine you fall on, enough is enough. The watch Dout
on Wall Street podcast with Chris Markowski. Every day Chris helps unpack the connection
between politics and the economy and how it affects your wallet. Conress is taking
your tax dollars, but they don't want to offset it by cutting anything else.
They'll just throw it onto the pile of trillions of more debt. Cut
it from somewhere else in the budget. Whether it's happening in DC or down
on Wall Street, it's affecting you financially. Be informed. Check out the
watchdot on Wall Street podcast with Chris Markowski on Apple, Spotify, or wherever
you get your podcasts. I actually saw Raskin and Shifting these guys doing it
before that story broke. But tell tell us a little bit about that story.
Well, I actually kind of want to do a little deeper dive on
this later, so I'm just kind of saying my own perception on this.
So we know that there was an informant that the FBI worked with regularly.
They've now admitted that they used his information many times and found him credible to
achieve convictions and trials. He may have been a Russia collusion hoax witness.
I think there's some ambiguity about that right now. Then he reported that there
was something about Biden family corruption related to Barisma and Ukraine. And what's interesting
about this is that at the time he reported it, nobody cared. Then
even when someone found that he had reported this, like during the second impeachment
or first first impeachment era, still the DOJ did not really go into it
and look into it or anything like that. They seem to just be running
cover for Biden. Then there are whistleblowers who are saying, it's kind of
insane. We had this guy. He was using language that other people have
used to talk about Biden family coruption in terms of Joe Biden being the big
guy, and before it was publicly reported by anyone else, you know,
making allegations about schemes and plots that would be very difficult to uncover, and
the DOJ just doesn't care and they're not looking into it, even as they
ran the Russia collusion hoax and other stuff. And so finally this like special
counsel who declined to charge Hunter Biden with anything at all and then was like
sort of forced into it. He looks into it and says that this guy
is not telling the truth and charges him with crimes. And I'm like,
oh my bleep. We had so many people involved in making up the Russia
collusion hoax just out of whole cloth. They were referred to the Department of
Justice for criminal prosecution. I mean it was Lindsey Graham and Chuck Grassley who
referred Chris Steele very early on in the Russia collusion hoax for making up stories
in his dossier, right, and nobody was held accountable. I think they
might have won awards and gotten money, you know, nobody who was held
accountable. Then this guy who they say had like the wrong date on something,
who they found very credible in every other way and used him for convictions.
This guy was lying. And so even though he's just one part of
the larger story of Biden family corruption in terms of you people on the record
with their face and name and all the details. Check out people like Tony
Bobolinski, who was a business partner of Hunter Biden's, who met with Joe
Biden about the Biden family business and getting used his own name and all that.
You've all these this guy's just like one little tiny part of it.
Now, all the people on the left who never covered the Biden family corruption
issue, which is ongoing and serious, say well, it's all made up
because we say this guy had the wrong date for when he alleged, you
know, one part of the scheme. And it's un believable what the Department
of Justice will do to protect Joe Biden, whether that's letting him get away
with classified document mishandling when he was not president, while going after his top
political opponent for classified document mishandling from his time as president. You know,
all of this just insanity is too much to cope with. This was the
guy who said that Biden had been bribed, right, I think he said
there was an elaborate scheme of some kind. Yeah, and it would take
that it would take ten years to unravel right, So just take what he
said out of the entire Hunter Joe equation and it doesn't really change anything.
That's that was never sort of the main thrust of any story. There is
a lot of evidence outside and not outside. There's tons of evidence that has
nothing to do with that guy's comments. He was paid one hundred K or
something, So I wonder if it's taken so seriously by our government that they
paid him for his information, but then when he said something against their favorite
person, Joe Biden, all of a sudden, now he's being charged with
crimes. And they tried to keep him from They tried to keep him locked
up so he couldn't talk to any journalists or other people. You know,
it's insane. I wonder what this. I wonder if this chills for other
informants from speaking about stuff. Meaning it's how you frame it, right,
this is what I heard. I'm not an expert on this stuff, but
I heard this thing about Joe Biden. That's how I remember it being framed.
How could you be prosecuted for relaying information you hear? It seems like
a bad way to run informants. Oh, I absolutely think you should be
prosecuted. For sharing bad information. If you know it's a lie, I
don't trust them that that's what the case is here. This guy pretty clearly
seems like a double asient we were running of some kind. It's probably very
difficult to know what's a lie or not in that world. That's what Chris
Steele said. I have a person who knows a person who said this thing
about this other person, and you know, that's that's what the whole Steele
dossier was. I still think he should have been charged, and that costs
this name, you know, four years of multimillion dollar investigations. Okay,
exactly, David. So they take the Chris Steele dossier bought and paid for
by literally Hillary Clinton and the DNC. It has no basis in fact,
and they use it to run an operation to undermine the administration for years,
to bankrupt and imprison people. Four years with the Joe Biden info that comes
from someone they claimed was like so trusted that they actually paid him six figures
and they used his information to convict their enemies, and they because it goes
against Biden, they sit on it. They sat on it from before,
you know, I don't know when that tip first came in, but it
was well before the first impeachment, so they sat on it then, and
then during the impeachment they tried to hide it, and then they tried to
hide it for years later, and only because they were shamed into looking into
it. Do they look into it? And then are you kidding me?
They read, then use it to start a moller probe two point oh that
undermines the whole administration. They then say, no, it turns out this
guy that we told, that we've you know, for years said was the
most credible person in the world. We're gonna We're going to try to jail
him for saying something mean about Biden. It's it. It'd be interesting to
know what other stuff this guy told them and if that those were investigated,
you know what I'm saying. But we'll never know, probably, or we'll
know a long time from now. I all I just want to say is
that I'm so sick of I'm so sick of this stuff. But anyway,
Okay, I'm supposed to be more positive about all the terrible things that are
happening. My letter writers say, so I'll move forward. Can we move
to So? I just wanted to talk about another thing you had suggested that
I watch an hour long interview that Tucker Carlson did with Mike Ben's I think
it is his name on sort of the censorship apparatus and you know the deep
state stuff, right I had. I have not watched it. I'm going
in at that, but I will. But it seemed like it really got
people talking. So can you just give like an overview of what that was
about? And I know it's a lot. Just here's my deeper question before
you even go into it, is are we going? Is you wrote a
whole book called Rigged. A lot of it had to do with censorship in
various ways. Are we Do you think things have gotten better? Are people
more skeptical of what they're hearing? Or are we going through going to go
essentially through the same thing? Again? I have so many thoughts here.
First off, I just want to say that I asked everybody on staff to
please watch it so we could talk about it and have good strategies for what
to do in terms of covering it. So I want to thank you first
off for taking the time to watch it as I requested. Okay, so
I just want everybody to watch it. I think It's a really important and
easy listen or watch that explains what's happening with the censorship industrial complex. I
have been trying to talk about this for years, and I was so happy
that someone else who's watched by like millions of people was talking about it so
that it's easier to talk about it with other people. So what Mike Ben's,
who was previously with our federal government in cybersecurity efforts, talks about is
how we have all these different entities that are supposed to be outward focused on,
you know, shaping a foreign policy, shaping situation in other countries that
is beneficial to us. You know, we might push for certain people to
be elected, or we might push for certain movements to be amplified because they
are targeting a regime that we don't like, and how those have always been
kind of outward focused. And then during the Russia collusion hoax, it gave
permission sort of for these federal agencies that are supposed to be more outward focused
to look internally and claim that there's disinformation that they have to fight here.
So it sort of opened up all of their censorship tools that they use in
social media to a domestic audience, and the Russia collusion hoax was key to
that because you're not supposed to target Americans, but if you can claim that
it's Russians who are doing this, then you can kind of get an entry
to censorship. You might remember that Matt Tayibe had exposed how so much of
this like group called Hamilton sixty eight, which was one of the never Trump
outlets that got so much coverage in corporate media. They would claim that people
were Russian tools, and then if you actually looked at who they were through
the Twitter files, you found out that they were just like a farmer in
Iowa or a college activist in Pennsylvania. But they'd been sold to the press
as if they were Russian agents when that was not true. So the tools
that are at the federal government's disposal for censorship exist in the State Department,
the Department of Homeland Security, and throughout the military, and they help with
as our lawsuit that the Federalist has done a lawsuit again, it's the State
Department for its role in the censorship industrial complex. They kind of help set
up censorship schemes, they help market censorship tools, they help distribute censorship tools.
This one's like fund the launch of them, and there are hundreds of
these outside the government that exist to amplify left wing news and information, suppress
conservative news information or news that's pro regime gets elevated in news that's against the
sort of like dominant regime gets gets suppressed. And it is a massive,
unbelievably well funded thing that involves federal agencies, NGOs, academic institutions, and
for profit censorship tools. And they're being used to affect like how we talk
or think about every single issue that we vote on. So it's just massive
election interference. And just by example, to remember, during twenty sixteen,
they claimed that the twenty sixteen election was ill legitimate and that Donald Trump had
stolen the election because Russia had spent one hundred thousand dollars on Facebook ads,
some of which benefited Hillary Clinton and some of which benefited Donald Trump, and
that was enough to launch the Molar probe. And like the hysteria, and
we're talking about I don't even know how much the inkind money or the actual
outlays are to control the way people think and what they are able to share
about every topic under the sun. From like pandemic response to free speech issues
to like what they think about how elections are being run. Even Oh,
that's like actually one of the best parts about the Mike Benz thing. He
looks at how if you criticized radical changes to election laws, that was viewed
as an attack on democracy, and so therefore they could suppress your discussion of
those things. It is when you say they can suppress your discussion about these
things, you mean that they apply pressure to private entities like social media platforms,
et cetera, to banish people talk about it or to you know,
to censor them. Right, So it's not even about applying pressure so much
as all the left wing people in the government and in these different entities are
just kind of working together to help their critical team. And so if you
say things like we came up with a way that you could view this as
an attack on democracy, you know, they're kind of like helping with the
search terms or the turns of phrase that might be used to flag that someone
is a problem. And then once someone's a problem, they're always a problem.
So let's say you said, I think that it makes more sense that
the COVID came out of the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Than then it came
out of the wet market and you say that, they say, Okay,
this person's spreading disinformation, so we just need to like flag them and keep
them limited on Facebook. And that happens to so many people, and it
also happens on other social media, or it could be that the actual topic
gets suppressed. We're not going to let this be distributed again. If you'd
watched this or listened to this, we could talk about it in a more
knowledgeable way. And so I would commend everybody to spend the very short period
of time of one hour to watch this. And I know tens of billions
of people have already. I feel like you're throwing shade my way. Listen,
I was doing works, working on other things. I planned to watch
it, and it's slipped through the cracks. An hour is a long time
in my life. I'm not saying I'm like super busy, but an hour
is not that short a time. Though, then when I start talking about
culture and all the things I watched, them like, maybe an hour is
a short amount of my life, but you can also speed it up.
I was on the plane, I was on the plane with my husband,
and I had already made it through more of the interview when we started,
but then he finished before me, and I said, how do you do
that? And he said, I listened to it at one point five speed.
So I'm also kind of down on Tucker, and honestly, some of
the people he has on his show really offend me. But then he has
good guests too, so I don't know. So I'll just say about this,
and I think it's fair. I think I think it's okay. You
know that he's like a friendly interviewer, but it can be very frustrating when
he has people that need to be asked tough questions, right, And I
think that's why some people were worried about the Vladimir Putin interview. Wouldn't ask
about Putin's treatment of journalists and stuff. So it was good that he did
it. But it just happens that in this particular interview, Tucker barely talks.
I mean, it's almost nothing at all. It's just Mike Ben's kind
of going through everything in a very easy to understand way. I mean,
the Overton window has been moved so much that we talk about this stuff and
it's not even that surprising when you mentioned how this works. But if you
really think about it, the government State's Apartment, the Homeland Security Department,
which didn't exist a while back, really are involved in your speech, like
they take an interest in what you say, which is not that the government's
job in any way. It is nowhere in the Constitution. It is.
In fact, I would make an argument that it is unconstitutional for the government.
It would make the argument that the First Amendment is in the constitution.
That's an interesting argument. Yes, yeah, I just say you say overton
window and like this is kind of great. It's more than that. It's
that one of the things that's foundational to our country is that we have the
right to seek the truth and share the truth with other people. And in
order to do that, because we can't have the government be the decider of
what is true or not, because it doesn't work that way, you have
to be free to speak your mind, publish your thoughts, share your thoughts,
worship God the way you know it to be right. And that's why
the First Amendment puts all of those things together, because it's about how we
have the right to seek truth and share truth. And that's what the government
is preventing us from I'm doing right now, I shure. I'm sure you'll
remember a few years ago, the White House was like, if Facebook keeps
allowing these people to talk, you know, they're going to be in trouble.
They're going to be punished, which is just like mind blowing for the
government to say. And people also seem to forget, certainly liberals or leftists,
that if I want to spread misinformation or even disinformation, that's my prerogative.
It's really none of their business to stop me from speaking what I want
to say. I'm not even saying that that's true. I think they use
that as a pretext to censor people who are saying things they don't like.
But even if it were true, a lot to talk about whatever I feel
like, or I used to be. I like to switch from this topic
to some of the law fair stuff against Trump and one of what I think
is one of the or I think it's maybe the most egregiously transparently political civil
trial I've ever ever seen. Right, so, I'm talking about the civil
trial against Trump and New York against his business. I think he's charged within
for he was you know, he was charged with inflating the worth and value
of his holdings, and he was fined by a judge four hundred and fifty
million dollars. Now, I just want to quickly say that the most egregious
thing that he did in this suit was over estimate the square footage of Trump
of a area in Trump Tower from by like twenty thousand square feet, which
sounds terrible, but Trump Tower is a huge building. So every kind of
real expert on this situation that I've listened to, either you can read between
the lines or they'll just explicitly say it. Think that this this penalty and
this case is kind of ridiculous, even people who don't like Trump. First
of all, all these rich guys try to inflate their worth to get loans
and so forth. But the fine is outlandish. It essentially would ruin Donald
Trump in New York and not let him do any business. And the person
who brought this forward was the Attorney General what is her name, Lalita or
what is her name Jones? I forgot her name, Leticia Letitia Jones maybe
or something. Anyway, whatever, she ran explicitly saying James explicitly saying that
she was going to find Trump guilty of something and ruin him. Then she
brings this case. Then the judge, you know, then there's just this
just outrageous fee. This is to me, this is one of the worst
cases because obvious justly punishing him for his political career and interviews. Yes,
unlike all those other cases that are not doing the same exact thing. But
I get your point. I mean there's you know, the classified document case.
I think that's selective prosecution. But there is something there, right,
I just this, I don't even believe there's almost anything even there, you
know, I don't know. Well, yeah, so in this particular situation,
he was charged with inflating the value of his assets. Now, the
bank did its own assessment of his assets and they decided to do the loan.
They I believe, testified on his behalf or they were seen as viewing
as being on his behalf. They gave him the loan. The loan was
repaid, they were very happy. Trump was happy. There are no zero
victims, zero victims here, and the punishment for this non crime is to
try to bankrupt him and his family. And so, yes, this is
obviously horrific. It's horrific. Whether you love Trump or hate him if you
care about the country and you care about rule of law, and you care
about the eighth Amendment to the US Constitution, which prohibits barbaric punishment, and
that can mean anything from like barbaric physical punishment to giving someone a life sentence
for a parking ticket. You know, there is supposed to be an appropriate
level of punishment to the crime. This is an insane punishment for no crime.
And I was reading about Alexander Navalni after he died last week, and
he you know, may not have may or may not have technically been killed
by the Putin regime directly when he died, but he'd been put through such
horrific treatment for decades, including poisoning, that I think it's fair to say
that Putin killed him. But the original attacks on him involved charging him with
mysterious financial crimes that didn't really make sense, and then finding him guilty,
and then if he complained to the judge who was doing a sham trial,
they would charge him with contempt toward the judge. Then, of course,
he was charged with insurrection for his political opposition to Putin. And everyone in
the world kind of recognizes this as gosh, this guy was a political prisoner
and a political a victim of his politics. That's what That's what the problem
was. And yet with Donald Trump, they're cheering on and not realizing theyre'
are the bad guys, the very very very bad guys. Evil guys.
Only evil people try to bankrupt their political opponents. That's evil. It should
be called evil. It should be treated as what it is. Like there's
nothing legitimate about any of this, and it's kind of weird to me.
How while I think a lot of Americans under it, and so far as
they know about this situation, view it as horrific, you're not seeing much
leadership, Like I haven't heard Mitch McConnell say, uh, you remember,
I supposed to care about the Constitution, and the Constitution says this is bad,
Like he's just completely out to lunch, conspiring against Trump, caring more
about his hatred for Trump than being a leader of the political party or the
country. Even I mean, even Biden should be speaking out against this.
Anyone who cares about America should say, I don't think we should destroy the
country. Just some of us really hate this person, right, Uh yeah,
I mean, you know, I think the Left actually likes the power
Putin has. They just don't like his targets, like they wish they had
that power themselves. They just don't like the targets. They're just trying to
destroy the court system here in a way to abuse it for politics in a
way that authoritarians do. I'm completely on board with that. I don't think
I don't like when people say we're just as bad as Russia, because overall
I don't think we are. But what they should be saying is we don't
want to be like Russia. And this sounds like something that would be happening
in Russia. So we're you know, against it, even though this is
a person that is our political opposition. I mean, this was clearly politically
motivated. The judge is clearly politically motivated, the AG is most politically motivated.
And you know, there's also an an NRA trial going on. I'm
not sure if that's over in in New York. Also, they were just
specifically going after the NRA because of its politics, and you know what's going
to happen. A lot of people are just not going to do you know,
we're conservatives are never going to go and do business in states where they
can get, you know, be the target of prosecutions. I don't think
that's very good. But yeah, I mean especially this trial. I mean
there's no excuse for this at all. I mean it is completely political.
So I don't know, I don't know what happens here. Is there a
way for him to be I heard there was really no good way for him
to even appeal this decision or it's very difficult. In order to appeal,
he has to give a lot of the money. All of the money,
I don't know. I think is it Letinia James. I hadn't got the
name James. Leticia James has threatened to take you know, to start confiscating
his property, you know, before an appeals process is even over. Yeah,
why not? What's stopping her? I do want to say that I
thought it was interesting that Kathleen Hokeel admitted that this was a politically targeted prosecution.
Everyone was kind of like, wow, they can seize your assets if
they don't like you in New York, we should probably move our businesses.
And she said no, no, no, no, no, don't worry.
This is just about Trump, which is like, I don't think you're
supposed to admit that even though we all know that's true. Did you see
there was a leak I forget who it was, maybe Politico where they quote
Biden being really upset and angry because they keep saying how angry it is.
Angry he is to pretend that he's actually not just a zombie, but how
angry he is that Merrick Garland isn't moving quicker to go after Donald Trump before
the election, Like, isn't that just admitting that this is politically motivated and
that you don't want to face him and that you want to undermine him through
Yes, lost, so it's admitting that you are trying to you know,
there's this thing where every time Donald Trump said, gosh, this lie that
I'm secretly a Russian spy is bs and they say he's trying to direct the
Molar probe impeach him. But then Biden goes to Politico or the New York
Times and he's like, hey, TikTok, we're not going to be able
to control this election if you don't politically prosecute this faster. And everyone's like,
I didn't notice anything inappropriate. That doesn't seem weird at all that he's
communicating his desires through Politico and the New York Times to the Justice Department that
he claims is completely independent. Yeah, I mean it also yeah, like
you said, it also shows that he might be speaking to Garland through the
media, if not directly telling him and pressuring him to do more. Like
I don't really know how much more the guy is supposed to do here.
But okay, I mean they're how many case I mean, I know they're
not all driven by him, but how many cases are there you know,
are ongoing or enough of that? Let's talk about culture. I have to
say, I was visiting South Carolina. What a beautiful state, huh.
I was in Charleston area. Pretty nice. There are a lot of building
going on. It's like a booming place. But anyway, it did not
get to do a lot of culture. I only watched a few episodes of
a show I'm trying to get into called Boardwalk Empire. Have you watched this?
I think I watched a few of it, a few episodes many years
back. Like, if you wrote up the perfect show, this would be
it for me. But some for some reason, I'm having a really hard
time, Like I'm getting through it, but I'm not like super enjoying it.
He did not grab me either. Yeah, it's just it, you
know, it's about mobsters. I like that, it's about you know,
it's just history. I like that. But for the actors are all great,
and it's got people from the Wire and the sopranos, and yet it's
just not working for me. But anyway, how about you. Well,
I was at Hillsdale. In fact, I got off the plane from Hillsdale
and came right here to tape this podcast. And while I was at Hillsdale,
one of the deans was talking about you, saying how he really wanted
to meet you, and he thought, you know, maybe you'd be at
our Christmas party. And I was like, ah, he doesn't come out
in public, so no, but you know, you had no like we
did a Federalist gathering. Oh yeah, yeah, I remember. You might
remember because you didn't show up. But that's okay. I I'll come next
Christmas, I promise. I agreed. And then I went to the Library
of Congress this last weekend with my children and it was quite the hot ticket.
Like you have to reserve tickets, then you have to wait in line
in the snow in our case for like an hour and then we got in.
It was very beautiful inside and it was really fun, nice little museum
to watch to go through. But then I went to the gift store and
in the gift store they were selling almost no books and the book selection was
not good and one of them was white fragility or something like, you know,
one of those like just it was embarrassing. Let me see beautiful architecture,
beautiful art, beautiful quotes. And then you go to the museum store
whatever, the bookstore and it's like the gift store and they're selling really bad.
Okay, humble brag for a second. Someone sent me a picture of
the Alamo bookstore, I guess, and there was my book, First Freedom,
my Gun book? Was that me? Who did that? No?
I went to the Alamo. I went to the Alamo gift Shop this year.
Oh it was so much fun. I really loved the Alamo, the
Alamo Museum and the Alamo Gift Shop. They are all great. I cannot
recommend them enough. It was almost life changing. It was life changing,
I can say that, really inspirational. And you know, I'd come like
just weeks after being at Masada, so that was kind of cool too.
It was a summer of that type of wait, what'd you say? Where'd
you come from? Masadah? I was just writing notes down here and saying
that weirdly, the Alama reminds me of Masada, sort of like the Martyrs
of the Freedom or you know, so at Masada, before you take the
tram up to the top, they do a little video and on the video
they show parts of the Alma. I hiked up. Oh so cool,
good for you. Did you know there's a church up there? Ruins of
a church up there? No, they must have it's like fourth century.
Yeah, oh interesting. I had been up there before, but this time
when I went, I took like a slightly different route, and I was
very surprised to see that there. It was kind of building right as like
a Herod's like vacation home or something. But when you look around, you're
like, this is a desolate place, like who wants to vacation? Yeah?
I love it. I think it's beautiful up there. Then sort of
related. I just today finished the Old Testament in my Bible reading, and
it ended with some bangers that was really good, and I could have kept
reading on the plane, beginning with Matthew but I wanted a little bit of
a breather, even of a day before I start in the New Testament.
So that's been really great. And then the only thing I saw recently was
who's the woman from X Files? Jillian Anderson? Anderson, She's in this
movie called House of Mirth, which of course is based on Edith Wharton's House
of Mirth that I had never read, and so I thought it was going
to be sort of like a Jane Austen set in the US, kind of
like fun romp through the Gilded Age, how interesting it is how women have
to manage all these things, and it was. It was the most it
was inappropriately misnamed there is no mirth in House of Mirth at all. Births,
Oh my goodness. I'm not like giving anything away because everybody else,
of course has read it or watched it, but like it's it's this woman
who's, you know, sort of trying to get married and she ends up
dead of a drug overdose and poverty. A wealthy woman who's trying to get
married who ends up dead of a drug overdose in poverty. It was who
intense I saw an interview with Gillian Anderson once She's one of there's a name
for it, but I won't remember what it is. She is. She
has a British background, I think, and an American background somehow. I
think she was in both places, so she can slip into either accent naturally
without trying and just speak that way. So that's why she does a lot
of Uh. I think that's why she does a lot of British TV.
She was in The Fall. Did you ever see that show, Irish show
The Fall? Yeah, I would give that a I would give that a
soft recommend. That's pretty it's a down or two. It's about a serial
killer. What was Oh? You know what? I also did watch something
else. I'm sorry. I was just thinking of Jillian and we need content
now. I love The X Files. That's one thing I used to watch
all the time in college. And I was like super obsessed with David Duchovny.
He's a very handsome man, and that he had a bit part in
Zoolander. Yeah, he was the hand model, the glass around his hand.
And I did rewatch that sort of like I wasn't totally paying attention,
but I rewatched it a little bit, and you know, it's not a
very serious movie, but it kind of works. It's funny. I rewatched
that, I think this summer, and I thought it wouldn't be as funny
as it was, But I think it holds up. I look at David
Bowie's in it. The scene where the male models are doing their fight at
the gas station and then they like themselves on fire. It's really good.
Then he makes a he has a memorial fountain to them. There was a
sequel that you lander too. Yeah, I didn't. I saw it,
but I don't remember anything about it. I'm sure it wasn't great. Okay,
all right, that's a good discussion. And we were both busy,
so we didn't have a lot of time for culture. But we'll be back
with more culture and more politics next week. Until then, be lovers of
freedom and anxious for the friend