Speaker 1: Welcome back, everyone to a new episode of You Were
Wrong with Molly Hemingway, editor in chief of The Federalist
and David Harsani, senior writer at The Washington Examiner. Just
as a reminder, if you'd like to email the show,
please do so at radio at the Federalist dot com. So, Mollie,
I'm listening to Donald Trump and Joe Rogan's podcast, and
all of a sudden, I hear the former president of
the United States bring up Molly Hemingway and what an
excellent and smart writer she is. Were you surprised when
you heard that?
Speaker 2: Well, I was at an event out in Seattle the
night that it was released, and my phone kind of
started lighting up immediately, and it has continued to the
point that my nephew was texting me in the wee
hours of the morning because he had just listened to
it last night. So I wasn't surprised by the time
I listened to it, but I was shocked at how
much reach that podcast has. I've heard from high school friends,
tons of family members, cousins, you know, people at church,
former longtime former colleagues, neighbors. There really is a difference
when you're on something like that with that many listeners.
I don't know how many listeners that is, but it
obviously it's the most popular podcast in the world or
the country, and definitely has broad reach.
Speaker 1: It has a wider reach than any news show or
you know, sixty minutes or anything like that. I mean,
it's hard, I think for our generation and people are
older than us for sure, to wrap their heads around
that fact. But I think it is true.
Speaker 2: Okay, So Nate Cavanaugh at The Federalist was saying that
he gets such a kick out of how whenever you
talk to an older person. I think he was talking
about me, But whenever you talk to him about an
older person or a boomer, they always say, I don't
have time for a three hour podcast, which is totally
something I say all the time.
Speaker 1: I was literally going to say that, and.
Speaker 2: He's like, and then they complain about how the kids
don't have any attention span. I was like, Oh, that's
kind of a good point.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's true. I just it's difficult for me to
listen to a three hour podcast about that's just this
roving all over the place conversation. But I can't say
I listened to every minute of it. But I saw
tons of highlights. I guess, did you sit down and
listen to the whole three hours?
Speaker 2: Okay, So, as I mentioned, I was in Seattle. So
Saturday morning, I had to fly back from Seattle, which
was a beautiful flight. I had a window seat and
I got to see our beautiful country. But that's like
a five plus hour flight. So a three hour podcast
is actually the exact right thing to do for that.
And so yeah, I listened to it. I didn't realize
it was I'm such a lot of that I did. Like,
I had to have Mark before I even headed out
to Seattle, explained to me how to connect my headphones
to my phone.
Speaker 1: You know, so I didn't have air pods or whatever
you connect.
Speaker 2: I don't like those it, so I have like the
you know, these big jbl things. And I did not
realize that you could watch the podcast on Spotify. I
thought you could only listen to it. So it's like
it took me two hours before I realized I could
actually be watching it as well as listening to it.
Speaker 1: And I just learned about this myself.
Speaker 2: That I was laughing so hard. I was laughing so
hard that I thought my seat mates must be wondering
what's wrong with me because there were just some funny lines.
Speaker 1: He is an entertaining fella, for sure. I mean I
see all these clips and he's I think he's probably
the funniest major presidential candidate we've ever had. But anyway,
so I saw it. Look just quickly want to say
I saw Joe Rogan mentioned today that he had sent
an invitation to Kamala Harrison. They were in talks to
do it, but she only wanted to do an hour,
which on that show is like just scrape, you know,
the scraping the surface or the introduction part of the podcast.
I don't think she could survive three hours speaking off
the cuff in that way, in any kind of coherent way.
But do you think, what do you think of the podcast?
Does it have an effect, does it matter? Did he
help himself? What do you think?
Speaker 2: Okay, So I actually think this might be the most
important moment of the campaign, was this three hour podcast.
I have so many convoluted thoughts, so just bear with me.
I was I feel like I might have mentioned this
to you before that. Nicole Shanahan, the RFK vice presidential
running mate, had said that when she saw Donald Trump
on previous long form podcasts, that it had completely changed
of the man, and that she was just shocked to
see how generous he was with the hosts or with
the other guests, and how inquisitive and thoughtful, and that
he answered questions, like even tough questions about say the
twenty twenty election, so much better when he was in
these types of environments that he does when he's in
these like cartoonishly hostile interviews with corporate media. And I
feel like i know Donald Trump pretty well, not super well,
but I've interviewed him so many times. I've spent time
with him. I've even had some really interesting conversations with him.
And that Joe Rogan podcast was different than anything I
had ever seen. And one of our listeners had sent
me a note saying, Rogan just gave the largest earned
media donation in history. This is so great. You have
to praise this to High Heaven next week. Molly. By
the way, this person is a former never Trumper and
very well educated person. He says, Rogan is himself. He
has a point of view. He's not a pushover, but
he is not a jerk. I have never heard Trump
speak this way ever, this stand up comedian Jiu Jitsu
moron from Fear Factor just showed up the entire US
media for my entire lifetime. I wish Kamala would go
on We deserve to hear from her for three hours too.
And he just specifically was saying Trump is not right
about everything, but who had Trump knows more about President
McKinley than I do on his bingo card. He's not
a caricature anymore. After this, this is the most important
thing that has happened since twenty fifteen, no joke. And
then another thing. He's not correct about every jot and
tittle of what he says, but he shows much more
capacity to speak expansively about world affairs than anyone, even
the most MAGA would have suspected. It was Nixon Esque
in the good sense. So I then was telling this
person about a friend of mine who was a Clinton
voter in twenty sixteen and a Biden voter in twenty twenty,
and she just voted for Trump. And she was saying
that one of the reasons why she had not voted
for Trump in twenty sixteen is she just thought, I
can't vote for someone who hasn't read a book, which
is not an unfair analysis of what it seemed like.
Donald Trump has written more books than he has read.
It seems like. But when you listen to this interview
and you hear him speaking so expansively on policy issues,
on history, you know, on previous presidents and the meaning
of different things that happened in American history, it's like
this is Donald Trump. Like he's still Donald Trump, but
it's just a completely different side to him.
Speaker 1: Okay, I you know, I don't want to argue with you.
Speaker 2: Why not? I mean, I do the show is wrong
is to argue.
Speaker 1: I mean, what I mean is that you can listen
to that, and I probably would. They probably listened to
an hour of the three, right, I just took out
some of the more stuff I was interested in. I
would say this. Everyone reacts to an interview differently and
sees things differently because they have different concerns about the guy,
right or whatever. But I feel like I read and
listened to his Bloomberg interview, which was also kind of long,
not three hours or anything, but he got into some
economic stuff, and the idea that he knows anything about
McKinley is a joke just because he's saying stuff doesn't
make it true, Okay, and what he said was ridiculous,
but that's his tariff stuff. It's never going to change.
I think that Trump is just much better at retail
politics than any politician I've seen in a long time,
and meaning also that he can sit down with someone
and have a wide ranging conversation and be funny and
engaging in a way that guarded politicians can't, and that
because he is not guarded at all. So on that front,
I think it's true. I think it humanized him. That's
a stupid way to say it, but they do dehumanize
him in a way for you younger voters probably who listened
to show assumed the demographics are relatively young. I don't know,
so yeah, I think it shows that he is also
willing to stand and answer some tough questions, which Kamala
rarely is, and when she answers them in a way
that's crazy, they just edit it for her. So I
can't do that. On Rogan, I think it would have
been a disaster for her to go on there. Sorry,
I don't know.
Speaker 2: I actually don't. I'm not sure if I agree with that.
I wonder if a three hour sit down or even
a two hour sit down with Rogan or Kamala might
have gotten her out of this weird place she is.
You know, she just clearly is in her head too
much about what to say and what not to say,
and maybe a long form Joe Rogan, what did my
friend call him? Like the jiu jitsu moron. He's a
really good interviewer. He handled Trump really well. He pressed him,
he moved him on, but he was polite. It was
a friendly environment, I think. And he said, I just
want to sit down with Kamala and just talk to
her as a person. I think there's a hunger for
that in America, to just see what is she like
as a person. In a sense, we have no idea
at all, and maybe that kind of interview would help.
Speaker 1: But the inherent assumption there is that she is actually
bright and just hiding her and just unsure of herself.
I think she's an impostor and she can't answer questions
and she would be a wreck in a three hour interview,
and I don't think people like her personality on top
of that, so it's not helpful for her to have
an expansive discussion with someone who asks good questions.
Speaker 2: So Joe Rogan has a ton of people who fit
these descriptions on his show, and he still has interesting interviews.
And I think that might be one of the things
he does well is that he kind of matches the
subject where they are.
Speaker 1: And this isn't This is not a dig at him,
it's a dig at her. I just don't think this
is If I was her campaign manager, I would let
her sit down for three hours with someone who's going
to ask you a question.
Speaker 2: I get why they're I totally get why they're not
doing it. I would be terrified of it too. But
I'm trying to make a bigger point here too, which
is Donald Trump didn't do sixty minutes this year. And
he didn't do it because sixty minutes is a joke
of a news program. CBS is a joke of a
news organization, and most importantly, CBS no longer controls the discourse.
You can go on CBS get listened to by a
few million people, or you can go on Joe Rogan
for three hours and get listened to by like fifty
million people. And in a few days and back to
the boomer comment that Nate Kavanaugh was saying, We are
a much stupider country in many ways than we were
a while back. But you learn about how in those
Lincoln Douglas debates they were just going on for hours
and people were really getting a feel for each candidate
and their strengths. Wouldn't it be great if we could
you know, obviously it's not going to happen this time,
but in four years you have jd Vance and Gavin
Newsom both sitting down together, maybe with nobody, I think
ideally with nobody and just talking for three hours in
a wide ranging discussion where you see what they think
about policy issues and they kind of dig into it
with each other. That is the future of debate and discourse,
I think, because we cannot survive more of this insane media,
out of context clipping, deceptive editing, gotcha questions for one side,
puff questions for another, like we cannot do it anymore.
Corporate media. I think may may, It'll take some work
here in the next four years, but they may have
killed themselves this cycle. Joe Rogan might have helped kill them,
along with an army of other podcasters on left and right,
and that will be very good for the country.
Speaker 1: I don't know if they if they killed them, I'll
talk about or if you want it, we can talk
about now the whole endorsement controversy and the lack of endorsements.
Jeff Bezos wrote a and so let me go take
a step back. The Washington Post decided not to endorse
for president. Now I want to stress here they didn't
endorse Donald Trump. They just decided not to endorse. That's one.
Then there was USA Today decided not to endorse. The
Los Angeles Times decided the same. And then there was
one other, I think the Tampa Bay Times it's called
decided that as well. So there was just a massive meltdown. Now,
the massive meltdown happens because I believe many of these
people have convinced themselves that Donald Trump is an actual Nazi,
and that Republicans are actual fascists, and that they're going
to do all these horrible things kill women. On Morning
Joe Miko at Brazinski is that her name? Brazinski said
that Trump was already killing women. Every woman's life is
on the line here especially.
Speaker 2: That's not hyperbole, that's not exaggeration.
Speaker 1: That was Nicole Wallace said that. Oh sorry, yeah, she said.
Also every woman's life is on the line. So this
kind of just over the top insane stuff. People have
convinced themselves. So if you believe that someone's Hitler and
then the paper you work for doesn't endorse against Hitler,
it's very upsetting for you. So a few people quit,
though I have to point out some of them quit
the editorial board. They didn't actually step down from their jobs,
which is, you know, not exactly the bravery, it seems.
And then one guy, Kagan forgot his name, first name,
Robert Kagan, who always is calling him Donald Trump a
Nazi or.
Speaker 2: Something, you know, NaNs who want to go to war.
Speaker 1: Confused, so he stepped down. But then I looked into it.
He wrote two pieces this year, so it's not exactly.
Speaker 2: He was the only person who stepped down whose name
I noticed. I don't obviously, I don't read the Washington Post.
Why would you. I mean, there are occasional people who
have a good column or will I will seek out
Jason Willock. I will admit that, but they must have
a massive editorial team. But they said, oh no, they
said three people on the editorial board stepped down, and
all three were names I had literally never heard.
Speaker 1: Of Well, one name that didn't step down is Jennifer Rubin,
who is cheering on a bunch of other people who
did step down at the Los Angeles Times. She is
just she's a piece of work. But you know, and
a friend of mine a texting is like, why even
give her attention? Why She's got like a million followers.
She's in the biggest paper in the one of the
biggest papers in the country in Washington, the Capitol, and
she has a big voice. And I read a story
that the Biden administration listens to her or whatever. So
why wouldn't we go after her.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she's a very big person on the left and
they view her as a thought leader, and so as
terrifying as that is, you do need to listen or
you do need to deal with it. I always think
it's not Jen Ruben, it's the Washington Post that's the problem.
Jen Rubin is clearly not mentally well, she's clearly not
able to you know, she's one of these people who
will switch one hundred and eighty degrees from her old
positions in defense of her new friends, the Democrat Party.
Speaker 1: And then not explain them at all.
Speaker 2: Even onlike israel I mean, she is there's no issue
that she will not change her mind on for her
political friends.
Speaker 1: Do you remember how she was to say, it's.
Speaker 2: The Washington Post that's responsible there. Of course she is
who she is. You should not employ people like that.
You should help them get the help they need, yes,
but you should not employ them.
Speaker 1: So she was the same way. If you remember when
she was in when she loved Mitt Romney more than
anyone has ever loved Mitt Romney, right, So I remember this.
It was im I thought Mitt Romney would be a
fine president, but the way what she was doing was
just embarrassing. And I remember speaking to liberal columnists or
left wing columnists that when we still spoke was at
the Washington Post, you know, saying that, you know, the
whole staff is embarrassed. Are they embarrassed now about what
she does know? Because it was only about you know,
who you're acting, you know, like an unhinged lunatic four
So yeah, that's embarrassing. You know, she's sort of I
think someone at the La Times quit and she was like,
that's so brave.
Speaker 2: This is the way, you know, And yeah, someone at
the La Times quit when their owner said, we're not endorsing.
She said, she praised that person in the high heavens.
She said, this is absolutely what you have to do.
And then when her boss did it, when her owner
did it. She's just been tweeting little resistance memes and
things like that. She's she's clearly clinging to this Washington
Post job, desperately and bitterly.
Speaker 1: So. I mean, I just mentioned the Jeff Bezos column
that he wrote explaining why where. I think it was
a good piece. I think he explained himself very well.
I think I was on an editorial board and we
used to endorse for the presidency, and I thought it
was kind of dumb. But I think it even means
less now. That was maybe more than ten years, you know,
years ago or whatever. I think endorsements are important in
a newspaper in smaller races or amendment issues or things
where the normal voter might not be educated on it, right,
I think that's fine. I don't really think they're necessary
at all, but whatever, but the presidency, He's right. No
one in Pennsylvania's like, whoa the Washington Post endorsed Kamala Harris.
Now we have to vote for her, no one, not
one person, and it just hurts the paper in the
long run. Though. One last thing, the idea that I
don't know where the Washington Post already stands is cuckoo right.
Every story is biased. They're one of Pulitzer for the
Russia collusion stuff. They are not a dependable paper anymore.
They're economic writers are ridiculous. I don't know. So even
they're at a they have Max Boot and Jen Rubin,
it's not you know, they have holdovers like George will
I guess it's the only you know. You used to
have crowdhammer. It was amazing, But now, I mean, everyone
knows where they stand.
Speaker 2: So I think if newspaper endorsements ever played a role,
it was during that era where the news pages were,
while certainly biased, they were a way of presenting facts
that everyone could kind of agree on, even if they
disagreed with the particular bias of the reporter. And a
lot of reporters didn't actually exhibit bias. And so then
when the editorial page would say, we've gathered all of
these facts and information, and we've studied these issues so
that you don't have to and we say candidate X
is better than candidate Y on this bond issue or whatever,
or on this you know thing, or this bond issue
is good or bad. You kind of took it more
seriously because they weren't opining in every word of every
article there. Opining on every article is what the Washington
Post does now. I mean, they've got a guy who
works there who's covering MAGA, who wrote a book called
I Hate Maga. I mean, it's just like Isaac Hnsdorff,
who is You go through a collection of his articles
and it's almost funny how biased he is. And incidentally,
he's married to Liz Deutsch, who was clerking at the
Supreme Court the year of the Dobbs decision and is
a pro abortion activist, and he was best friends with
the reporter who ended up publishing the Dobbs League. So
this is a partisan family and a real activist family,
and that's their key reporter on MAGA. I don't think
people are confused about where Philip Bump, who doesn't know
where babies are made, incidentally, where he stands on the
Kamala Harris race. He's another one of their supposed reporters
and came from like a crazy left wing publication. And
even though he's been at the Washington Post for years.
Speaker 1: He's like a union ACTIVISTO.
Speaker 2: Yeah, every single reporter they have is sharing their endorsement
every day in every way. We don't really need to know,
you know, I'm not confused about where Ruth Marcus stands
well on the race.
Speaker 1: One of the complaints I think Business mentioned it as well,
is that a lot of readers don't understand the difference
between editorial page and the hard reporting. Well, yeah, they
don't because there is no difference anymore. That's what they
don't understand it. People are not I mean, most people
are not idiots. People who read newspapers aren't, you know,
don't have low IQs. Typically they would understand it if
there was a difference. But there's so much like Aaron Blake.
Let's say, all right, you know, so he's a left
wing guy, but he writes in the rhetoric and drapes
his writing in a reporter's kind of language, so people
think he's you know, reporting, but he has an opinion.
And if you don't make a distinction there, then people
don't know. I you know, some people are like, well,
get rid of columnists, just do news. I think columnists
are actually important I think making argument, synthesizing information, trying
to give it context was important. But if you're just
going to be an activist like these people are, then really,
what's the purpose. Second thing I wanted to mention just
at the Washington Post is the Washington Post has four
people that I can think of off the top of
my head. We're full blown pro Hamas people who worked
at Al Jazeera, who spread Katari propaganda at the Washington Post.
If you're not going to do anything about that, I'm
never going to read you anyway. I only read it
when I have to.
Speaker 2: Well. And then on the other side of things, they've
long been known as being a hub for neo conservatives
rather than realists and foreign policy, so they're not getting
good foreign policy discussions in there. And they also think, oh,
if we're going to hire a so called conservative, it's
almost always or maybe exclusively, it will be a neo conservative,
which is kind of dying in the Republican Party.
Speaker 1: But the neo conservatives aren't even conservative in any other
way anymore. Mexico isn't conservative, Riden isn't conservative.
Speaker 2: No, I'm thinking of people like a Charles crowd. I'm
saying I don't mean it.
Speaker 1: Those are to the people.
Speaker 2: Who they have I but I just mean that it's
not totally representative of the country. So I'm thinking of
a Charles Kroudhammer. I'm thinking of a Marktesen. I actually like,
you know, a lot of what Mark Tisen writes too,
but or you know, I think it's interesting and it's
a really good example of the argument put forth by
neo cons But Jeff Bezos says he's going to round
out the columnists there. You can't fill it with people
who don't represent the actual tens of millions of voters
in the Republican Party, which is what everyone in media
has been doing. Oh, we have a right of center person,
we have Bill Crystal.
Speaker 1: I mean, come on, how are they going to hire
a real conservative? Though? Let's say they hire Molly Hemingway.
And do you think the staff had a melt down
because they didn't endorse Kamala they endorse Donald Trump's imagine
they bring it. They can't bring in someone representative who's
going to represent Trump voters. They just don't see it
happening again.
Speaker 2: And I actually think the path to credibility is about
reforming the so called news organisms I wouldn't let Washington
Post cross the threshold of my front door because I
have children. I do not want them to see the
absolute drivel that is published in the Washington Post or
just get discouraged by the overwhelming propaganda. They need to
reform their news side far more than they do the
editorial side.
Speaker 1: Do you think they'll make jobs? Is what is sparking
this string of non endorsements.
Speaker 2: Okay, Okay, So that's what I find interesting. Los Angeles
Times and everyone says, Oh, it's because the owner's friends
with Elon and then with Bezos. They say, oh, it's
because he needs to do it for money reasons. And
he addressed that in his letter, saying that he actually
has never stepped in related to his money. USA Today
did it other papers? I think there was like a
paper in Florida or somewhere down south to Tampa Bay,
Tampa Bay.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: So I think that the last people to know about
the credibility crisis affecting the media history are the reporters
who you trust to report the news and be on
top of reality. They have steadfastly refused to deal with
any of their credibility problems. And I think that there
are these threats. I mean, Jeff Bezos was the worst
part of his letter was when he disparaged alternate media
and podcasts and social media, because it just seemed elitist
and stupid. But he does understand that people aren't getting
their news and information from Washington Post anymore. The only
thing they're getting is affirmation of their left wing values,
and that's not a way to be able to sell
advertising long into the future. Perhaps perhaps, I mean, it's
worked for the New York Times the Washington Post very
well for the last ten to fifty years. But I
think that they are I wonder if Elon showing courage
about free speech and caring about the country that some
of these other wealthy people are saying, we're hurting the country.
So I don't know if that has anything to do
with what's going on. I'm actually somewhat confused. It's not
sufficient that one owner of one paper says, you know,
it seems to realize the credibility crisis with employees. We
need it, We need so much more. And the response
from the Washington Post staff, almost top to bottom, is
not encouraging. But what do you think? What do you think?
Speaker 1: Well, I think different reasons. Los Angeles Times. I read
a piece sounded pretty credible to me that the daughter
of the billionaire owner is like a Prohamas person and
they're angry at Kamala. So that's why it happened. Yeah,
he seems somewhat credible, but I.
Speaker 2: Don't already he already denied that.
Speaker 1: He denied it, all right, So whatever reason it is.
Bezos lost seventy seven million dollars on the Post last year.
This this outrage about what he's done by the staff.
You know, they keep saying that, you know, now billionaires
control the media, and it's terrible that we have to
live by their whims and stuff like that. I mean,
you wouldn't have a paper without him. If it wasn't
for Jeff Bezos, the Washington Post would probably be out
of business, or at least, you know, half the staff
would be gone. So I think they should be thankful
that he exists, not kind of dump on him. But moreover,
I think they've lost over two hundred thousand subscriptions apparently,
which is a significant number in my mind. It's and
it just reflects that they have this that the readership
there and most of this left wing readership has come
to expect they're so siloed they never hear an opposing argument,
and their expectation of media is not to gather information
or hear arguments. Their expectation is that they're going to
be activists for whatever cause it is. And that is
the is why you know, and the and the and
the reporters are the same, and that's a cancer on democracy,
you know, quote unquote, I think, and I.
Speaker 2: Know we have to move on, but I just want
to say one other thing, which is David Sachs had
tweeted something about how, you know, while it's no to
that nearly the entire country has lost confidence in our
corporate media to report the news accurately or fairly, they
still control the conversation, and he was saying, there is
this window of opportunity to really take them out. And
I do agree with that. I think we are in
a place the corporate media have caused so much damage
to the body politic in recent decades, and particularly i'd
say in the last twenty years. They have lied about everything.
They have encouraged the worst and most censorious impulses of
our federal government and other parts of the censorship industrial complex,
they have fueled rage mobs. They have just lied. They've
just lied and run information operations from some of the
most nefarious parts of our federal government. Again, they are
hurting the country and they do need to be taken out.
And at the same time, we need real journalism. I mean,
the country does not make it if we don't have
real journalists challenging people, challenging what we're told by our
various selected leaders or bureaucrats or other powerful entities. But
it's not sufficient that everybody realizes they're not credible. If
we still let them set the agenda on every for everybody.
It would be beautiful if we could truly just ignore
them and turn our attention to real news and developing
real solutions to the problems that face us.
Speaker 1: That's a good segue to another topic.
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Speaker 1: You Molly wrote a piece this week I found super
interesting because I was there for most of this. But
it's about Jake Tapper and it's about Russia collusion. So
explain why you wrote it and what it's about.
Speaker 2: Oh, thank you. I actually tell a story in this
article that I have never said publicly in nearly eight years.
But that explains why I knew to go hard against
the Russia collusion hooks. And the short answer is because
of Jake Tapper. But I told it publicly when normally
I wouldn't tell it publicly because this week he had
a debate with jd Vance on his Sunday show. And
it was a really interesting debate. Not because not because
that don't mean that in a good way, and I
don't mean that jd Vance was able to articulate his
policy ideas or anything like that, but it was interesting
because Jake Tapper melted down, I mean, he completely lost it.
He looked like he was going to cry. He sounded
more emotionally invested in Kamala Harris's victory than Kamala Harris.
And the entire debate was Jake Tapper saying, this person
said something mean about your running mate, and this person
said something mean about your running mate, so therefore your
running mate is dangerous. And at every turn Jadvans tries
to kind of broaden the discussion, so he's like, okay,
General Millie and Liz Cheney, they have policy differences with
Donald Trump, and also one of them got fired by
Donald Trump. There are issues here that are not really
what these mean comments are about. And Jake Tapper just
keeps getting more and more emotional, which point JD Van
sticks a knife in him, saying, and by the way,
you have network integrity problems. You pushed the Russia collusion
hoax for years. You would take the word of anonymous
FBI agents and repeat it as if it were true.
People who listened to you had the were led to
believe that Donald Trump was colluding with Russia to steal
the twenty sixteen election. And Jake Tapper's that's not true.
That's not true. What you said is false. That's just
not true. He's like, I don't know why you'd want it.
We just only reported that the FBI was investigating your
running mate. I don't know why you'd want to talk
about the FBI investigating your running mate. In other words,
continuing the Russia collusion hoax in an interview where he
denies that he did the Russia collusion hoax. And it
was so mendacious and it was so false that all
that CNN did was report that the FBI was investigating Trump,
that I decided to write about that falsehood, and I
told the story of January twelfth, twenty seventeen. Should I
tell it?
Speaker 1: Sure? I think it's interesting. Okay, as Joe Rogan has proven,
we can have a three hour broadcast if you feel
like it.
Speaker 2: Okay. So this is before I worked at Fox. So
now I work at Fox, so I can't appear on
any other media outlets. But before I worked at Fox,
I was doing quite a bit of CNN and MSNBC,
and I was on the I was on this program.
I don't know what Jake Tappers afternoon program is called.
And it was the day we were all sitting up
on set, and it was a special set because it
was ahead of the inauguration, and so sometimes TV shows
they do special sets outside before an inauguration or something
like that. So we're all up on a roof near
the Capitol, and just as we're about to go live,
Barack Obama surprises Joe Biden with a Presidential Medal of
Freedom and we end up just kind of sitting there
on the roof hanging out. Everyone's getting comfortable with each
other for like forty five minutes as I recall, and
the Presidential Medal of Freedom ceremony ends, and we started
going into the quote unquote news. So January tenth, twenty seventeen,
CNN had published the story that there was explosive intelligence
about Donald Trump being compromised by Russia, and it was
so serious and so credible that it had been briefed
we didn't know by whom, but had been briefed to
both President Obama and President Trump. This is the origin
story of the Russia collusion hoax. Like we'd had a
lot of Russia related stuff before that, but this is
what leads BuzzFeed to publish the actual dossier that had
been floating all around Washington, d C. Going to all
the reporters and that dossier was the one that alleged
that Donald Trump had paid prostitutes to urinate on a
bed that the Obamas had slept in in Moscow and
videotaped it. You know, all this crazy stuff. So this
is two days later, and the previous day, James Clapper,
Obama's Director of National Intelligence and mostly known for lying
to Congress about whether the National Security Agency had collected
metadata on tens of millions of Americans. He was asked
point blank by under oath by Senator Biden, and he
said nope, And then later he said that he misunderstood
the question or didn't hear it, And then later still
he said, well, yeah, I lied, but I tried to
do it in the with the least amount of lyne,
which just and by the way, never prosecuted, never held accountable,
and currently I believe a CNN contributor on national security,
So James Clapper had issued a statement because obviously what
was happening when this CNN wrote their story is that
someone was telling CNN what had happened in presidential briefings,
and they claimed that they had two sources, and so
Clapper issues a statement saying, I don't believe the intelligence came.
I'm deeply like, I'm deeply upset about the leaks, but
I don't believe that this came from the intelligence community.
And he says, this is you know, this is a private,
private security document aka Hillary Clinton campaign operation. And so
we do need to we do need to brief people
on what's going on out there. And as they read
that statement, so we're on set and Evan Prez is remote,
meaning not on set. He's probably at the Capitol or something.
So that's what's being aired to people, so you can
still talk to each other on set without people in
the viewing audience hearing. So Evan Prez reads Clapper saying,
I don't believe the leak came from the intelligence community,
at which point Jim Shudo, who's on set and was
one of the four authors of this story and is
a former Obama political appointee, says out loud, pretty sure
he knows the leak came from the intelligence community, because
and then he kind of rolls his hands slowly suggestively,
like because right, and Jake Tapper was sitting next to him,
to his left, and he immediately kind of grabs his
wrist or you know, kind of squeezes his wrist like
shut up, you idiot, and I'm watching it all and
I'm like, oh, oh, that's interesting. That's sure interesting. Like
I don't know if he's saying my source was Clapper,
or my source was Clapper's secretary, or my source was
Clapper's you know, Clapper deputized someone to tell me, or
even if it's just Clapper and Comy are conspiring and
it's one of Comy's people who told me or told
one of my three colleagues, I don't know exactly what
was being said by the smart Jim Shudo there, but
I knew what he was saying, you know, And I'm
just I remember, my heart just started kind of racing
because and I know. Now everyone's like, of course this happened,
like why what.
Speaker 1: We didn't know at the time, Yeah, we knew nothing.
Speaker 2: We didn't know how this story came out. We didn't
know that the FBI was completely corrupt. We didn't know
they were running operations against every member of the Trump
transition team. We didn't know James Comy was at the
center of this. We didn't know about the unmasking. We
didn't know at this point that our entire media complex
was nothing more than a receptacle for leaks from the government.
They were just regime mouthpieces.
Speaker 1: And it should be said, having written about conspiracy theories
and stuff like this in my book, that sometimes the
bigger and more expansive the lie, the harder it is
to untangle and to debunk. Do you know what I'm saying.
So like, if someone says the president is you know,
an asset for Russia, well that's a massive, massive story
and it's very difficult to just disprove it. And people,
I think we're nervous just to say it wasn't true,
because what if it was true, We don't know. This
was the first time they'd done something to this scale
in my view at least, and they had story after
story you know, that seemed to be credible because we
trusted them at the point. Now this will never happen again,
but anyway, storry to ender it.
Speaker 2: Well that's about it, I mean, except that when we
left the set, Jake Tapper, who's a very you know,
like it's difficult to be a television host and these
people are very confident in their abilities, and I understand
that and kind of have to be not arrogant but
sure of yourself. And he's definitely one of those people.
So even though I had met him a ton, he'd
never really talk to me and accept in my DMS.
As everyone knows, Jake Tapper slides and everybody's DMS if
you say anything slight. I didn't block him, but I
don't follow him, so he doesn't have the capacity to
DM me anymore. But he comes up to me and
he says, oh, Mollie, you know, I've been thinking we
really need to get you on my Sunday show. And
I was like, yep, that pretty much confirms everything I
just saw. You know, because in Washington, d C. And
I don't understand this. This is like a hot ticket.
I like to go to church on Sunday mornings, and
I love when I don't get asked to do Sunday
shows or when I don't have to do it. But
everyone wants to do a Sunday show because that means
they're important or something. So I understood what he was saying,
which is, let's all be it's I'll be cool here,
you know, instead of being cool. Two days later or
a few days later, I wrote my first big piece,
debunking the Russia collusion hoax about how Intel leaders were
at war with Donald Trump over foreign policy differences. And
the thing I just want to say is I would
not have known to write that piece had Jim Shudo
and Jake Tapper not done what they'd done, said what
they said on set that day. And so I'm kind
of thankful for them that way. But I also say,
if their little interaction of a few seconds gave me
what I needed to know that this was an Intel
chief op, which we all know now, how much more
did they know at the very beginning? And it makes
them such liars to say, as Jake Tapper said, oh,
all we did was report on an FBI investigation. That's
not true. They fanned the flames. They did hundreds of
false stories, hundreds or deceptive of maliciously deceptive stories. They
hired the colluters, Andy McCabe, Jim Clapper, all sorts of
people who could help ban the flames of this information op.
They are nothing more than apparatchicks for the regime, and
they should be treated this much.
Speaker 1: I know that he's probably stewing after reading your piece,
because you know, he was in my DMS quite a
bit as well. And I won't share those things. I
think you know, off the records, off the record, but
he's clearly very sensitive. And I will say that the
idea that they weren't a huge part of this is crazy.
Like I was thinking about, here's the main problem. If
you know, if your sources burn you like they did
supposedly Manu Raju's story about Don Junior and the phone
you know in the and the Russian agent. And how
about the story that Tapper's name was on where it
said that Jim Comey was going to publicly say that
he had never I forgot what it was, he had
never told the president that he was under investigation. Do
you remember that I haven't forgotten.
Speaker 2: So yes, Jake Tapper, who all we did was report
on an FBI investigation, co authored another story saying that. Okay,
So again, if you go back in time, you have
Donald Trump saying didn't collude with Russia. He was later
proven to be one hundred percent right. And then you
had an army of intel people saying we have very
concerning signals and this is a we have reports that
we've confirmed this and that, and you know it was
all like anonymously sourced in all bs And when donald
Trump fired James Comy. A bunch of people in the
corporate media really genuinely believed that Donald Trump had fired
him because he was uncovering the Russia colusion oaks. And
Donald Trump said, that's not even true. He told me
three times that I wasn't under investigation. And James Comy
didn't say anything in response, but then he had to
testify in front of Congress later, and Jake Tapper writes
a story saying, Jim Comey is going to refute and
show that Donald Trump lied when he said that he
was told three times that he was not under investigation,
and it went wide and it was big news, and
everybody else was reporting it based on Jake Tapper's story,
and CNN was crazy about it for days. And then
Jim Comy testified and he said, not only had he
told Trump three times that he wasn't under investigation the
first time, he just volunteered it.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: It wasn't even like Trump saying, gosh, it kind of
seems like you've got me under investigation. The first time.
Was just Jim Comey going out there. And by the way,
you're not under investigation for the Russia collusion.
Speaker 1: Hoax.
Speaker 2: But by this time they had already started the Special Council,
which Jim Comey had leaked his memos to a friend
who then leaked them to the New York Times in
order to get that Special Council investigation going and go
on for another like year and a half and just
completely thwart the presidency, and Jake Tapper colluded with these
people to do it. I know he's not dumb, so
I know he knows what he was doing because I
knew what he was doing, and I didn't. I wasn't
even privied all of what he was doing, but I
knew enough, so he knew, and he just like that
is so untrustworthy. I put in my article a thing
that Joan Dideon wrote. I was quoting this New Yorker
look at something Joan Didyon had written about Bob Woodward
and people saying, like, the problem with him isn't that
he makes things up, although obviously Bob Woodward makes things up.
The problem is that he just receives the information as
it's presented to him and doesn't dig deeper, and he
just republishes manufactured stories. You can so easily manipulate a
Bob Woodward or you can so easily manipulate a Jake Tapper,
they're not going to get the real story. Like the
real story, The really interesting, roundbreaking, shocking story was that
our intelligence community tried to coop the president of the
United States, and instead of reporting that story, which Jake
Tapper knew, he instead participated in the coup effort. I
just journalistically indefensible and awful.
Speaker 1: Oh I'm sorry his name escapes me. Who was the
congressman who first went down to read the memos? Okay,
so Devin Nunaz. I remember writing a piece. It was
my first anti Russia collusion piece. I wrote, maybe we
should listen to Devin Nunas. This sounds somewhat plausible to me.
I have never gotten such angry blowback in my life
on anything I've ever written, I don't think, and it
was just venomous. And why because we can listen to
a congressman who was in there, we can disapprove and
debunk him then. But the way they reacted made me
incredibly suspicious about something, right, And they tried to call
you a trader today, to call you a Nazi in
those days, you were a Russian trader. Like it's always
going to be something. In fact, I wonder what the
new thing will be if Trump wins. I wonder what
the new conspiracy will be.
Speaker 2: Just real quick, I want to say a couple more
things on the Devin Nunas thing. Devin Nunas is probably
was Congress's biggest Russia hawk. He actually cared about Russia.
Unlike these people who used Russia or were just upset
at Russia for not following along with what they wanted
Russia to be doing. Who they just used Russia to
go after Trump. Devin Nunaz actually had a long track
record of being concerned about Russian expansion and thinking that
we needed to do things to check that. So when
he came out against the Russia collusion hoax, it was
devastating to them, and so that's why they then tried
to marginalize him, do ethics complaints against him and the like.
You said, you had gotten a lot of pushback for it,
and I just want to say again, I don't think
people understand how difficult it was to speak truth during
that era. The amount of pushback was unlike anything I've
ever seen, except possibly for people who are opposing Ukraine
war stuff, which I haven't gone deep into but I've
certainly received pushback on that too. But we're talking high
level people pressuring you, all of the corporate media saying
that you know, saying that you're a joke and the liar.
It was very difficult to have the courage to stand
up against Jake Tapper's Russia collusion hoax. And then I
also wanted to just say about Manu Raju. He wrote
a story that again CNN went wild with wild, claiming
that they'd kind of broken the Russia collusion story wide open.
And it was that Donald Trump Junior had received advanced
notice of WikiLeaks which showed that the Trump campaign was
conspiring with Wiki leaks and colluding with Russia because Wiki
leaks is Russia. We found it with walls are closing in.
And it was based on this September fourteenth email that
some rando in California had mailed to a public email
account of Donald Trump Junior, saying, Hey, did you see
these wikiligues documents that are posted publicly on their site?
But Manuraju, who claimed he had two anonymous sources who
were clearly on Adam Shift's committee, said that the email
had been sent September fourth, and they both said it
had been sent September fourth. It had been sent September fourteenth.
Manu Raju never demanded to see the underlying document like
a journalist would. He just took the word of two
completely self interested people on Adam Shift's committee and went
wild with it. And then Kendlanian and other reporters said
that they too had confirmed this report. They confirmed it.
It was true. These same two anonymous sources told other
people the same false thing, and so everyone was crazy
about it for a day. And then it turned out,
oh whoops, when the Washington Post or whoever actually looked
at the email, it was September fourteenth. It was just
public information. That is a picture perfect example of the
Russia collusion hoax. Frenzied, you know, hysteria. Then moving on
once it turned out that it was all.
Speaker 1: Fake, yeah, it The idea that you would allow the
same sources who burn you in that way to continue
to be sources is just not what real journalists would do,
but yet they continued. It reminds me very much. So
if we can move on to this MSG rally story,
So before it even started, you knew they were going
to come up with something so they could compare it
that they had before to the Nazi nineteen thirty tine
thirty nine German Bound Get Together, because you know, it's
an MSG, even though it's not in the same building.
I don't think. But they did that because some comedian
and maybe we'll argue about this, I think, made a
dumb joke and they pretend now that it was just
this kind of hate, which clearly wasn't. There were Israeli
flags up, they were Jewish people putting onto fill in.
I mean, it was not anything like that from what
I saw. And what happens is there's a full court
you know, press that tries to convince people something happened
that didn't so everyone is just horrified. Puerto Ricans are horrified.
Everyone is horrified, and they just flood to zone and
try to convince people it's true, and then when people
realize it's not true, they move on to the next
you know, hysteria. This is what they did during the
Russia collusion hoax. This is what they're doing now now.
I don't think. I think having a circus like that.
I just wish the presidency was a more serious thing.
And I don't think that kind of comic is smart
to bring on. You probably disagree, but who was really
insulted by that? Not a single person on earth was
really insulted by that joke. I don't think so.
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't know. Maybe there are some very
sensitive Puerto Ricans out there. There were lots of insult
from the insult comic. I saw this little clip from
from John Stewart on The Daily Show last night where
he was saying, oh, who could ever, you know, put
this person out there, this comedian And then he shows
a clip from the Tom Brady Roast, which was, you know,
very well known roast, and this comedian is kind of
known as a as like that's his specialty as roasting people.
And he shows all these horrible jokes that and insults
and racial humor that this that this guy did at
the Tom Brady Roast, and John Stewart is like, I'm sorry,
it's funny, you know, it's funny. And inviting an insult
comic to a political rally and not having them perform
would be like inviting Beyonce to a political Oh right,
you know, Beyonce came to Kamala Harris's rally and famously
didn't sing a song, didn't even sing the national anthem
or anything, and it was a bit of a disappointment.
So I do have completely different views on it. Not
that I thought that his jokes landed. It seemed like
he was kind of learning who his audience was as
he did his as he did his ten minutes, and
at first it was clear that he had not realized
how conservative the audience was because they were booing, not booing,
but like groaning. Even comments about them groaning and or
just like the jokes didn't land. But then he started
picking up steam, particularly as he was making fun of
some of the Democrats and their celebrity endorsements and Nancy
Pelosi's stock trades and things like that, which seemed to
go over much better with the crowd. But I thought
it was funny, and I just thought it was impressive
that someone of that caliber, likes he's a big comic,
would do something like that. I I kind of enjoyed.
I had it on in the background while I was
working on my piece on Jake Tapper, so I was
kind of listening to it and enjoying different parts of it.
Everyone had really short speeches or fairly short speeches, and
they had really interesting things to say, and there were
artists and singers and comedians, and it was a really
interesting slice of Americana. I'm not saying I liked everybody
or everybody's speeches or anything like that. But also one
of the big things that kill Tony was saying was
the importance of free speech, and I do believe comics
are at the leading edge of that, making sure that
we're able to make hateful jokes and rip on each
other and not freak out about it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think there's a middle ground there. I don't
think people should freak out about it. It's ridiculous. Everyone
knows the guy's joking, but I do I don't. I
think it's it's weird for you to be running for
president and have a big event and bring it insult comic.
That seems like the not the kind of because it's
just you're lending yourself to what you're opening yourself up
to what did happen, which is yourself.
Speaker 2: Do you feel the same way about Ronald Reagan having
Don Rickles out for him?
Speaker 1: That was a different That was not a campaign event
in my view, I think it was not my view.
I don't think it was a campaign event. It was
some kind of like arts what was it?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it was, and come on, I think
it might have been an election celebration, but you know,
still a political event. Did you have a problem with
Reagan bringing out Don Rickles and making his first joke
a racial joke.
Speaker 1: I was nine, so I don't know if I had
a problem with it. Probably I wouldn't have a problem
with it. I think the world was different in those days,
and I think Donald Trump doesn't. I'm not saying it's
a big deal, but I don't want you know, this
idea that you know, anything that happens and anything that
happens around Trump has to be defended. I mean, I
just think that it's not the sort of person the President,
in his closing argument in a giant event that everyone's
paying attention into and calling a Nazi rally, should bring.
That's all I'm saying. I don't think it's a big
deal either way. I don't think most people believe that
that that there's some anti Puerto Rican animus. Maybe some
people who can be tricked, but most people. I don't
think it moves votes. The New York Times says it's
moving the whole election right now, So who knows I do.
Speaker 2: I want to just say I acknowledge that I am
extremely different than most people, and that you were probably
more aligned with your average, you know, Republican type than
I am on this. I love.
Speaker 1: That's the worst I'm saying.
Speaker 2: I'm saying that probably probably most people are listening are
arguing with you on this, and I totally get that.
And it reminds me of when Mark will send me
or you know, he would say, oh, look at this
horrible tweet from Donald Trump, and I'd be like, oh,
I thought it was funny. You know.
Speaker 1: It's not the point that I know I shouldn't.
Speaker 2: Think it was funny, but it was or whatever.
Speaker 1: Wayne is not that it's funny or not that they're
the presidents. We live in an idiocracy right now. To me,
everyone is unserious, and I just think that, you know,
these people are making life and death death decisions, they're
making economic decisions. You don't want to seem like a clown.
I'm not saying he did in his speech. I don't
really even know what he said. I'm just saying that
it's just seems like a like a self like a
mistake to do, but not, you know whatever, not a
big deal, not a big deal.
Speaker 2: Okay, so what I make one quick argument for so
I know everybody in DC agrees and they're like, who
did this? And it's crazy? And I don't assess whether
campaigns are making good decisions are bad. I will just say,
in the same way that Kamala Harris is doing her
Killer Babies tour, I think Donald Trump is doing a
lot of push for the young male vote. And that
podcast from Kill Tony is one of the more popular
podcasts out there for young men.
Speaker 1: Do you feel like I'm older than you, but I
just feel like I don't know who's famous anymore? Like
I never even heard of this person.
Speaker 2: You've watched those roasts you write comedy two.
Speaker 1: I like comedy, but I had never heard of this person.
Maybe I had watched them and not known it. But
everyone's like, I'm like, who is this and they're like
he's huge, and I'm you know, I just like if
the top ten songs, I just don't know.
Speaker 2: Even John Stewart was like, this is one of my
favorite got.
Speaker 1: I'm not even good comics don't land all their jokes
all the time. I mean, you know, it just seemed
like a weird person to have there. But I get
where you're saying.
Speaker 2: You and I were fighting off podcast, and we decided
we wanted to bring the fight on the podcast about
the issue of all the conservative writers clutching their pearls
over this comedian's performance and me thinking that that was
not a great idea for people. Or you said that
you hate it when people say to you what that
you're not being helpful? So can you tell me?
Speaker 1: I'm not here. I'm not here to be helpful. That's
not a job of a pundit. Listen, my job is stupid.
Like Andria, you really think deeply about it, what I
do is not necessary, right. But if I'm going to
do what I do, right, I'm not here to be helpful.
I say, I don't like a lot of what Donald
Trump and JD. Vance say about the economy, so I'm
going to write about them. People tell me why, now,
why do you have to be unhelpful like I'm on
the campaign or something I'm not. I'm just being honest.
Don't you think that that's the job of a pundit?
What do you disagree? How do you disagree with me there, I.
Speaker 2: Don't necessarily disagree with you. I was thinking about this
after we were talking about it, about how I think
people love you in part because you have this perspective
you were going to say whatever you believe, regardless of
what the consequences are, and you are genuine and you
are able to stand firm no matter how much people
come after you say.
Speaker 1: To stop it. What.
Speaker 2: I've followed you stuff for a really long time. You're
very consistent and all that, and I think that is
a and people know you're just going to say whatever
you think and feel, and that's great. I think it's good.
And I think when people say you're not being helpful,
you're like, oh, you confused me with a Republican Party
operative or a campaign strategist, and I'm not.
Speaker 1: I also no police, go on, I have nothing to say.
Really interesting, Okay.
Speaker 2: So I do think though that there are different roles
for different people. And I always find it interesting that,
you know, like, I just say what I think too,
but people seem to really appreciate it and feel that
I am helpful sometimes, right. And I remember during the
like heyday of never trump Ism, they'd always say, like,
tribalism is bad, and I would think, I think I
kind of like it. I always think when I'm on TV,
in particular, so there's the writing, in which case I'm
definitely just writing much more nuanced arguments and trying to
showcase other people's perspectives and things like that. On TV,
you do not have the luxury of being nuanced. You
have to just kind of go for the jugular, and
so I do. I will say I do kind of
think about where I grew up in California, which was
this small rural community with people who are just the
best people on earth, and I always think, what do
they need someone to say on TV? Like that is
the perspective that's never included on TV. We get a
lot of perspective from the military industrial complex, or from corporations,
or from powerful Republican or Democrat figures. We don't only
get the viewpoint of people who farm or you know,
in Colorado people where I lived after California, I met
all these wonderful peopleeople, some rural, some suburban, and again,
their perspectives are never included on air. And I kind
of view what I get to do on air as
being not a representative, but you know, just representing their
viewpoints and seeing what would happen if their viewpoints were
brought to bear international conversation. And so if I'm on
air and you have you have to pick one thing
to say, I'm almost always going to pick what they
would say if they were in my shoes. And that
is tribal, I guess.
Speaker 1: But that's why they love you, and that's why you
are on TV. And I respect that for sure. And
I also want to just quickly say, I see a
lot of people if you take a side, you know
that just a Trump you know, you know whatever, that's
not true. I think everything you say you believe and
you've thought through. I think that that people are wrong
when they say that. But I do want to say
this about me. I obviously am more inclined to be
conservative vote for Republicans, right, So, actually, when JD. Vance
comes out and says something I don't like, because I
know he's smart and going he's going to change the
trajectory of the party that I more identify with, that
somehow is often more bothersome to me. And I feel
I need to say something more than I do about Kamala,
which who everyone knows I dislike and I would, and
I believe is a far bigger threat to the constitutional order,
to children, to everything. But so I feel like some
people within the tribe, which I am part of, for sure,
need to speak out about things they don't like, right,
so that they can help, just like you would when
there were neo cons in charge, right, you know, I
feel like it's a similar kind of thing for me
economic freedom.
Speaker 2: Or when Donald Trump was saying squishy things about abortion.
Speaker 1: Right exactly. So for me, economic freedom is a pillar.
It's like important as any other freedom. And I don't
feel like the Republican Party is on the right track
there and some other issues as well. Yeah, and even
Donald Trump is squishy on abortion. But anyway, that's my
perspective and why I do the things that I do.
But there's one but.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's one thing about this though. So we're talking
about the Madison Square Garden thing, which I did follow
much of it, and I thought it was an absolutely
almost like magical, kind of weird experience because of where
it was. And I'm not saying by that that I
agreed with everything that was said by any stretch of
the imagination, but it was just, you know, I spend
a lot of time in New York. It does feel
like something different is happening there, you know, seeing the
crowds of people who didn't even make it into MSG,
the ones who were in there. How you had people
of all different stripes, Muslim, jew Christian, secular, all sitting
together in Madison Square Garden with this hope about what
might happen in the election. It's an interesting thing and
reporters should be wanting to understand what's going on there.
And James Carville a few weeks ago, as soon as
this was announced, he said, oh, they're going to do
a Nazi rally, because the Nazis held a rally in
Madison Square Garden during World War two or before World
War two, before.
Speaker 1: Nineteen thirty nine. Yeah, and.
Speaker 2: It's an absolutely ludicrous thing to say. You know, FDR
hosted a presidential rally two years after that and nobody
said you're on a Nazi rally. So many presidential candidates
have done rallies at MSG and nobody said that. But somehow,
when Donald Trump does it, that's the narrative that goes out.
And then everybody decided that they were going to say
that no matter what happened, and this is bile, horrific
stuff from our corporate media. And so when kil Tony
tells his jokes and they say, oh zee, it's it's
a Nazi rally. I hate to see people go along
with what's clearly an information operation. I don't care if
you don't like the joke. I don't care if you
wouldn't have brought an insult comic to your rally. But
this idea that you have to just like join James
car James Carville and his other Democrat colleagues in and
outside of the media, that they're join their info op,
it's stupid. The moment someone does an info op, my
instinct is to resist it. I don't care if it's that.
Like the moment that someone that the Washington Post reported
without evidence that Brett Kavanaugh was a rapist, my instinct
was that's I'm gonna reject that like that I guess
could be true, but you're gonna have to do a
lot more than a Washington Post story with flimsy sources
for me to go along with it. And I think
other people's instinct is like, well, if this is true,
this is very disconcerting, and you know what that isn't helpful.
It's stupid, like we need everyone who's not the propaganda
press to fight the propaganda press, whether that's Kavanaugh rape
smear or MSG Nazi rally smear. And so when you
kind of go along with it in any way, it's like,
what are you doing here? What are you doing here?
Speaker 1: There's a third way. The third way is just to
say what you feel about it and say, maybe it
wasn't the greatest comic, but of obviously it's not a
Nazi rally. No, I don't like this where I have
to you're dealing going to let the liberal I'm not
going to let them decide what I say either either way,
I'm not gonna let Just because they are making this
BS up doesn't mean I can't be critical of something.
Speaker 2: Okay, Well, then they give it content. You have been
allowed to fester for so long as people are like, oh,
I don't I don't know what's going on.
Speaker 1: Yes, we all have to, we all have to lockstep
and every time anything happens, just completely go to the
other side and not give an inch, even if it's true,
because God forbids someone can't understand a subtle Okay, Okay,
So or think about the contextualized comment.
Speaker 2: But but it's never like think about the Covington smear
where the kid goes to the PROLA rally wearing a
MAGA hat and the corporate media say, oh, he was
attacking the Native American and everyone like these same types
of people, the same type of people who say, oh,
kill Tony's comment, he was bad. They also went along
with that. They always go along with everything, and then
like later it turns out, oh, I found myself susceptible
to an info op. Like we need people to be
so much smarter than to just you know, without thinking
things through.
Speaker 1: Like I don't think those are comparable situations.
Speaker 2: Because these people who criticize this joke didn't watch the rally.
They just saw what MSNBC said about it.
Speaker 1: All right. It's so it's it's every day there's something
like this, and it's just so difficult to navigate to
just try to talk about something in a way that's normal.
Everyone is with their info ops. I just quickly want
to take a sid I wanted to say something about
this Nazi this. So obviously there's a concerted effort among
all Democrats and all media to talk about Republicans and
Donald Trump as if he was a fascist, and to
say he is Hitler and all that now, I mean,
Kamala Harris called him Hitler over this John Kelly thing.
Now it aside from all everything else, I don't know,
or maybe they do realize that they are belittling something
that is real and horrific in a way that no
one of this generation or very few people left have experienced.
And every time they do that, they belittle what Hitler
did and what Nazism was at all of that. And
that makes me really angry about this, you know, aside
from the rest. And sometimes I wonder, and I don't
know how you feel about this, that maybe they've convinced themselves.
I do sometimes I'm not sure if they're just being cynical,
and obviously a lot of people on TV are, but
if normal people have convinced themselves that the Nazis are
coming because they don't know history, they don't understand anything
in a real way, you know, And I worry about
that as well. Because people think you're Nazis, They're going
to do crazy things, try to assassinate the president, try
a coup, undermine the government, undermine transition, if they lose
all of that right. So it's I just think the
Nazi thing is more dangerous than we're even making it out,
and generally to be morally and also for the stability
of the country. That's my schmir on that we.
Speaker 2: Weren't going to talk about it, but on CNN last
night this kind of came to a head with CNN
and had the entire day calling all Republicans Nazis, and
people are concerned about it because not just because it's
not true and it's wrong to lie, but because they
seem to be setting the groundwork for violence against Republicans
and resistance to democracy, and they're doing it NonStop. They're
doing it on every major media outlet, they're doing it
on Twitter, they're doing it. It's just very, very bad.
And so there was a discussion where one of the panelists,
a guy what was his name, Meddi Hassan, who's actually
too extreme for MSNBC and has a really troubled track record,
was calling the conservative guest a Nazi, and the conservative
guest respond did with a joke about how he hoped
that guy who's a big supporter of Well Ross hasbala.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Matthiasan is a terrible person. I mean he's an
anti semi. I am not exaggerating here. He's a Katari.
He basically took money for Qatar for years. And also
I said terrible things about Christians, Atheists, gay people everything.
He's just terrible person. So he's on there. He's let
go from MSNBC because he is so nuts, right, CNN
brings him on. There's some show with Abby Phillips or Philip,
I forget her name. At night is like a rant.
So it's the guy's name I think is Ryan Gerdsky.
I don't really know him that well, but he's a
conservative and he's actually quite good, I think on that
show the few times I've seen him. So Matthiasson's calling
him a Nazi and he says, well, I hope your
pager doesn't go off because they get angry at each other.
He's immediately taken off the show. Abby Philip apologizes to
Matti Hassan says, hope he comes back the show. So
it's okay to call someone who has done nothing, nothing
to implicate him as a fascist or a nots or anything.
I mean, I don't know this guy. I'm assuming nothing
does and yet the guy who is is this right
to say the closest we actually have to Nazis in
our media scope, you know who hates Jews, who is
pro Hamas he is going to be back on the show. Now,
tell me that is not morally just messed up. And
you know, CNN is just every time I think a
network is the worst, another network does something to me.
I'm like, oh, yeah, CNN is actually the worst. They
worse than MSNBC. So every day, all day, like you say,
they were basically, you know, in deep thought about how
we can live with fascism, how all these Nazis are
going to take over, And then you're not allowed to
make a joke. By the way, I hope your page
doesn't go off is probably not very nice, but I
don't think it should be a fireable offense, and certainly
not in a heated argument where someone's calling you a
Nazi's not anyway, I don't know, it really bugged me
last night, was all worked up about it.
Speaker 2: Well, I really hope that the media do not succeed
in getting people killed. It seems like that's what their
their goal is, seems to be violence or inciting people
to violence, and it's it's worrisome. And I'm not saying
that you're not allowed to call people harsh names or
criticize them strongly. Of course you are, it's free country.
But I also think that people in positions of great
influence should try, you know, try to try to particular
I mean, why are we been talking at influence their
news people. They shouldn't be doing this at all.
Speaker 1: I honestly have Mechdiasan on. I think it's great. He
is so ridiculous that it just he hurts his cause.
I don't know if you've ever seen Douglas, you know,
Douglas Maria's author. So he was in a debate with
Macthiasan and he did what the Germans did to the
Polish and World War two to mechdi Hassan. That funny
thing about that is machdia Son is a book about
I think it's had the titled how to Win Arguments
or something. So he's destroyed every time he debates, and
he was destroyed there and he needed to hide behind
someone's skirt as usual. And I don't even know what
I was talking about him, just angry.
Speaker 2: Well, I think we should probably rip it did nobody
has made it to this point, and I think you
and I.
Speaker 1: Know that everyone's made it. Everyone has made it. It's
just captivating listening culture.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, what do you have?
Speaker 1: I actually had a couple of things last week. I
went to see a classical guitarist play, one of the
greatest guitarist owner technically, his name is Marco Tapchi. I
think he's Ukrainian. Blew my mind. So I've been playing
guitar for over thirty years and every time I see
someone like this, I just put my guitars away. I'm like,
why am I even pretending that I know how to
do this at all? The guy's fantastic, So I recommend
him if you're into that. I can only take so
much the classical guitar, to be honest. Yeah, played Bach,
I know you're a big fan. And just he transcribes himself.
He was like a prodigy at four, he was like
playing and he's just really amazing. The other thing I
watched was just Real Quick was the a documentary. It's
a three part documentary at Netflix about the Zodiac Killer.
I thought it was interesting, but honestly, I had read
the book by one of the books by Robert gray Smith,
and he had already kind of keyed in on this person.
The cops of keed in on him. It seems to
me his name is Arthur Lee Allen, that he was
guilty for sure, and he probably, you know, almost surely
is the zodiac. So that was interesting. I didn't give
anything away by the way they start off with the
guy's name. And then lastly, just quickly wanted to say
I've been rewatching The Wire, which I think the greatest
show probably ever made or up there, and I just
want to mention that we've talked about journalism, films and
people you know, and that kind of stuff, but season
five of The Wire has the best depiction of a
newsroom I've ever seen. It feels exactly like how the
newsroom is at an newspaper when I worked there. But moreover,
I think it's interesting because there's a guy who's sort
of making up stories and how real journalis deal with that,
and how some of the people in powers and people
in charge don't care because the story is perfect and
they like to hear it. So it reminded me a
little bit of what's going on with you know, what
happened with CNN and the Russia collusion stuff and all that.
So that's it, right, cool you.
Speaker 2: I've been traveling a lot and reading and writing a lot,
so I don't really have anything listening.
Speaker 1: To three hour podcasts on the plane instead of watching
movies like you should be right.
Speaker 2: I did start watching this old Luthor movie from the
fifties that is really good. It's on Amazon Prime. I
wanted to watch the Luthor movie with is it Rafe
Fines or Joseph Fines. I don't remember which. Fine, brother,
how are you saying that.
Speaker 1: Because Martin Luther movie. Okay, I'm sorry I didn't.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's Reformation this week, so we celebrated Reformation on Sunday.
Speaker 1: Oh.
Speaker 2: I actually going to say this. In my church, we
do liturgical dressing, like we dress the color of the day.
We don't do it necessarily during the ordinary time, which
is just green for months, you know, but for other
days you might wear red or purple or you know whatever.
Gold is one of the options for.
Speaker 1: Well splash of color. Yeah, I get it.
Speaker 2: Reformation Day is a huge day for us. It's like
a really big, you know, globally day where we celebrate
the liberation of the Gospel and we wear red. And
there are some women at my church who just go
all out, and so I was like, you know what,
I'm going to get into the competition this year. And
I was wearing the brightest red, you know, silk shirt
and knitpan and it was just red head to toe.
And then I felt like the people I go to
church with kind of brought it down a little bit
this year. So I just looked like, Holy, this.
Speaker 1: Is person, who is this insane person dressed in all red? Yes,
red is not a fall color.
Speaker 2: But this nineteen fifties Luther movie, which was written by
Yaroslav Pelican, who's a great theologian who actually I know
as Orthodox, but it was I don't know, I'm really
enjoying it. It just kind of gives the history in the context.
And I had been in Italy this summer and I
had such a wonderful time and I just loved the
art and loved visiting the Vatican Museum and all that.
And I hadn't you know, you study in high school
and college about the political nature of you know, how
politics plays into religious changes. But being in Rome and
in the Vatican and kind of getting a sense for
how much the Holy Roman Empire was empire and politics.
It just helped me understand it better. And then I
think that's also helping me understand what was happening with
the Lutheran Reformation as well. So I'm only halfway through it,
but it's like an over black and white thing.
Speaker 1: It's good, all right, Molly. I think that was a
pretty good episode. It might I think that might have
been our longest episode ever. And by the way, when
you said I cut you off, I want people to
know I didn't cut you off like in a rude way.
Speaker 2: I cut you off because I'm so sorry.
Speaker 1: It's okay. Our time had run out on my recording device,
so I had to go to a new one. But no,
it's okay. Also go quickly. Want to mention my book
is coming out soon. If people are interested, please reorder
The Rise of Bluing on how the Democrats became a
party of conspiracy theorists. I really think and hope that
it's going to be very topical, because from what I'm seeing,
it's going to be top pickle. Other than that, we'll
be back next week, maybe sooner. Until them be Lovers
of Freedom and Anxious for the Fray